The Next Wave – A Conversation With John Markoff - <AUTHOR> http://edge.org/conversation/john_markoff-the-next-wave

<comment><USER2> Anytime I see John Markoff's name, I think of the ethical issues in Kevin Mitnick capture, case and book. Has that air been cleared? Time for me also to move on as Mr Markoff work since then has cleared that shadow?

<comment><USER3> John Markoff exploited his privilege as a New York Times tech reporter and the general public's ignorance of computer hacking for personal gain, creating the infrastructure that tortured another human being for what ended up being not much more than e-graffiti tagging, trolling a few people, and having access to code that ended up being open sourced anyways.

He laid the framework for the ridiculous idea that Kevin Mitnick could "launch nuclear missiles by whistling into a phone", and as a result Kevin was thrown into solitary confinement for 8 months, and then after that he spent the remainder of 5 years in a prison cell without being given the due process of a fair trial:

`Mitnick served five years in prison—four and a half years pre-trial and eight months in solitary confinement—because, according to Mitnick, law enforcement officials convinced a judge that he had the ability to "start a nuclear war by whistling into a pay phone"`

As this process unfolded, John Markoff did nothing to attempt to correct for the consequences of his actions, unpollute the public's understanding of hackers, apologize, or do anything. Instead, he continued to defend what he had wrote, knowing full-well that it was completely false information, and signed a book deal that ended up further polluting the public's knowledge of the situation (and being a terrible book, 2.5 stars on Amazon and I'm amazed it's even that high).

The shadow is still very much there, and it will continue to stain journalistic ethics for many years to come.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's interesting how we have written off all of computing's current problems as solved and are seeking the next big thing. I'd hardly say the world's information is organized, universally accessible, and useful. In fact, while the Search Engine concept has served us well, I really hope it is not the last word on making information accessible and useful. There is so much room for innovation here it is sad, really.

Computing leaves so much to be desired.

</comment><comment><USER5> Riding waves is a good analogy for what's going on with Markoff and similar people. They take the ideas that came out of transhumanism and cyberpunk futurism, and resell them as their own work.

On the one hand it's probably a net-positive that these concepts remain a part of public discourse, but on the other hand it's a bit painful to watch these self-referential imposters get rich and famous for re-packaging ideas mined from subcultures, passing them off as revolutionary concepts they came up with on their own.

</comment><comment><USER6> I disagree that we're underestimating the time to automate human tasks with robots. Speaking of the failures of humanoid robots at the recent DARPA robotics challenge, he notes "We're at that stage, where our expectations have outrun the reality of the technology."

Sure the robots were awkward and performed poorly. The situation was much the same at DARPA's autonomous vehicle grand challenge in 2004 that he mentions. Then, none of the robots finished the 150 mile course. CMU's vehicle traveled the farthest, 7 miles. Now Google and others are pretty far along with self- driving cars.</comment>


Marry Your Passion and Divorce The Rest - <AUTHOR> http://mindpetals.com/blog/2007/04/marry-your-passion-and-divorce-the-rest/ <comment> A-Merchant You know, I've realized that many great people are great at things they started when they were young.

I think that's because, growing up, you often stumble across what you're passionate in at a young age.

So - are you working on you're passion?

</comment><comment> A-Merchant (deleted)</comment>


Razer targets perfect Linux support - <AUTHOR> https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1333298720061240&substory_index=0&id=113306788727112 <comment><USER2> I am one of many disgruntled Razer Blade Stealth and razer core owners, currently awaiting a refund. Some customers are on as many as their 4th or 5th replacement unit. They have no English support in the UK, just a couple of german phone numbers which nobody seems to answer. The forum is terrible and they can't translate emails correctly. It's insulting.

The typical issues are usually related to firmware, which myself and other users would be willing to wait for to be fixed, but Razer's default, almost auto-response, solution is to just send you another unit, with the same issues.

In general though, the razer blade stealth is not even in the same league as an x1, mbp, or xps, and it's not supposed to be. It's just priced the same.

Razer. Apple prices, gateway support.

<comment><USER3> I also got bit by this. Razer's simpler wired keyboards and mice might be OK, but their systems are fundamentally broken.

The Razer Blade Stealth (7500u) has broken Thunderbolt 3 / USB-C support. Most popular devices simply won't work at all, even though they work with other Kaby Lake computers, and even though they work with Razer's own previous Stealth laptop (6500u model).

The Razer Core has broken display software (double vsync lag) which makes it not work properly if you use an external GPU and monitor (which is ostensibly the purpose of the device)

Additionally, the Razer Core's USB ports just flat out don't work. There's a power short of some sort in the internal USB hub, so that if you plug in a device that draws any more than the lowest amount of power, it cycles through a connecting/disconnecting state, looping forever.

All of these are fundamental flaws with the product itself, so you can (and will be asked to) RMA units over and over for eternity, but you'll never get the problem fixed.

\---

Razer Support has known about all of these issues for months now. There is zero communication coming from Razer -- they won't discuss their design flaws, they won't support their devices, they won't even acknowledge these issues as happening.

When asked directly, the CEO claimed he "wasn't looking at product reliability because we're actually one of the top few in terms of product quality". - [https://www.reddit.com/r/razer/comments/5v8zkh/improving_raz...](https://www.reddit.com/r/razer/comments/5v8zkh/improving_razer_customer_service/de088x3/) Since Razer's leadership doesn't care about quality at all, I can't imagine the company will ever care either.

At this point, I'm not spending another dime with Razer ever again, and certainly couldn't recommend any one else do so.

<comment><USER4> Even Razer's mice are pretty shit quality. I've had them going back to the original Boomslang, and I don't think I've ever had one last more than two years. I just like their ergonomics and features -- and the fact that Razer is good about replacing them when they break quickly, which they often do -- enough to put up with it.

I'm probably harder on input devices than most people, but I have working Logitech and Microsoft mice that are older than Razer itself.

<comment><USER5> I use a Razer mouse at work, and it's still going strong after five years of heavy usage. So, like anything, YMMV.

To be honest, even if they only ever lasted a couple of years, I'd still buy Razer mice. All non-gaming mice nowadays seem to be awful, cheap crap, and most gaming mice are over-decorated contraptions. Razer mice seem to be the only one they combine good, simple ergonomics with high precision and a quality feel.

<comment><USER6> Try Roccat. They're amazing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Any Razer engineers here? I'm a proud owner that would like to work with you directly to fix some of the remaining driver support issues.

Also, has anyone gotten the Razer Blade to work with the Razer Core thunderbolt 3 expansion chassis? On default Ubuntu 16.04 it picks up the thunderbolt hub, but nothing underneath. This would be an amazing laptop for machine learning if I could supercharge it with a Titan-X.

Also, consider a 32GB build for us developers...

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure that is something that could be "fixed" in 16.04 unless you can convince the Ubuntu kernel maintainers to backport patches for PCI-E hotplug / thunderbolt support.

<comment><USER9> LTS releases (like 16.04) get hardware enablement stacks where X/kernel/etc gets upgraded to the versions from the non-LTS releases. So if you make it work with ubuntu 17.04 for example it will trickle down to the LTS users. Makes LTS a much more attractive solution on the desktop. I've stopped bothering with the intermediate ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is great! I picked up a Razer 2016/1060 a couple months ago and have been running Ubuntu on it since then.

There's been a few issues, but overall it's been a great machine to transition to after a decade of Mac usage. If you're interested, it will require a bit of configuration (and even then its not 100% perfect just yet). See here for a list of issues/solutions: [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jI2jlVi1V0H8SeNm5kspJ1qX...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jI2jlVi1V0H8SeNm5kspJ1qXVtibLOnxNOkDr8ExoSI/edit#heading=h.nkiewtcyw910))

Feel free to ask any questions if you're curious about picking one up!

<comment><AUTHOR> Ohhh, nice doc :D Looks like you found a few solutions that I haven't. Thanks for sharing!

<comment><USER10> No problem! Just to be clear, I can't take credit for the content of the doc or starting it, but I've found it very useful.

If you have a solution / issue that isn't listen - please add it as a comment on the doc :).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Well, I think I'll refrain from buying razer because of this: [https://mobile.twitter.com/internetofshit/status/83665111681...](https://mobile.twitter.com/internetofshit/status/836651116817498118)

<comment><USER12> This is for their razor blade laptop, are you really going to avoid their entire line up because of that?

<comment><USER13> This isn't even the laptop, it's for Razer Synapses which is their cloud mouse/keyboard settings program. This is literally nothing to do with their laptop line up.

<comment><USER14> This seems to be how the world of Windows works. Every peripheral I have seems to need an account to save your settings in the cloud, a feature I pretty much never care about. Every vendor wants you to know that yes, you're using their thing, and that they employ an entire team of engineers and designers that have never seen a computer before. I wish someone would put a stop to it.

<comment><USER15> This is why I had reservations about many high end mechanical keyboards that had all their macro/lighting/etc support done via software. Found out that Ducky makes keyboards that are 100% hardware configured, no OS even needed, just power. (Also IKBC keyboards do configuration via firmware too, I believe.)

As for my mouse, I had to use some Corsair junk to configure the button mappings, sensitivity, and turn down their ridiculous LED, but then it saved the settings to the mouse firmware so I can uninstall it and use it just fine on Linux. No more touching it again. Still not happy about it. Would rather it had been some tiny DIP switches underneath.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, I got on board the mechanical keyboard train before it was cool, and as a result my keyboard has no software that can configure it. There's a DIP switch to make caps lock into control. Perfect.

I have a Corsair mouse, and their software is spectacularly awful. (Their other software is also terrible; like configuring fan speed profiles for the water cooler.) No account required, but the button configuration is horrendously complex and in the end completely useless. I never figured out how to make a mouse button show up to Windows as an extra mouse button. Switched to a DeathAdder, and while their software is also terrible, at least the extra mouse buttons show up to the OS as mouse buttons. (Razer's software is terrible in a different way; the UI is overdesigned and I don't want to type in a username and secure password to change my fucking mouse settings... but once you're in there, the software does actually work well, letting you configure what you want in a relatively straightforward manner.)

All in all, this stuff is all super gimmicky. I want the marketing people to know I bought their product _in spite_ of the software they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars developing. I would be happier without it. The company would be more profitable without it. The mouse is for pointing at enemies and clicking when their head is under the crosshairs. I don't need a "brand experience". I don't need fancy colors or "game optimization". Just translate my hand motion to input events. I'll do the rest. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If they're reading this, here's my wishlist:

1) 15.6 inch laptop (14 is too small, especially with those bezels).

2) As thin of a bezel as possible (see XPS)

3) Camera on top! I don't want to show my fingers in conference calls. This may force the bezels to be larger on top, that's fine. (Pop-out camera?)

4) Offer the highest quality display from a color reproduction point of view, not the refresh rate. This is NOT a gaming laptop, or at least not a pro one.

5) The resolution should allow me to use the OS without scaling. If you can squeeze more than 1080p (1440?) the better. We need vertical space for coding! Some folks like 4K, so that should be an option.

6) Connectivity is important; lots of ports. Also, Intel WiFi cards, not Killer.

7) The sound should at least be decent. I don't understand how a phone can have better (ok, lounder) sound than a laptop.

8) Give us an option to optimize for power vs battery life. I want the fastest CPU (within reason) and a good GPU (1060 or 1050, but ideally 1060) at the expense of battery life, but others would like more battery.

9) I'm picky about the SSD that goes into the laptop. Either allow me to replace it or allow me to pick what I want (960 Pro).

10) Good trackpad, ideally with buttons.

11) Good keyboard, super important...

12) Under 6lbs

13) Cooling has to be top notch and the air intake cannot be on the bottom. I actually use the laptop on my lap.

14) Height should be around 1 inch. Making it super thin like MBPs is not worth the tradeoffs.

15) That logo needs to go or at a minimum don't make it glow...

<comment><USER7> It IS a gaming laptop...

And basically all your points sum up to it being a radically different laptop than what it is. Why not buy something else than ask changes of what Razer fans love?

<comment><USER16> Currently, yes, but I was giving suggestions in case they want to branch out. They asked a few times on Twitter what a developer would like in a laptop. The wish list reflects that. Unfortunately, I couldn't find something that would check off most of the items above.

<comment><USER7> If that's what you want... then buy an Apple MBP, or a Dell. For a Developer that is already eying a Razer, a more reasonable response is probably "32GB, trackpoint, ability to charge via dock, Linux driver support" not "completely redo your design and form factor."

<comment><USER17> As a Game Dev and Networking Dev, i'm def. keeping an eye on the razor blade linux support. It is most assuredly a gaming laptop and I like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've been using a Razer Blade 2015 as an Ubuntu-only computer for several years now, and I've recommended it on HN in the past. It's been a great machine, and Linux works surprisingly well. (Of course that means that there are some minor problems, but "surprisingly well" is high praise in the world of Linux on laptops.)

Lots of people here complaining about build quality issues, but mine has been completely solid. The only issues I've experienced are some of the keyboard keys are losing their matte black printing, which is surprising but not fatal.

Additionally, at first I had a hard time getting a Blade that did not have a screen with a pink-to-white tint to it. However this appears to be an issue with all IPS panels--my Nexus 6 has the same issue and you can find people on Apple forums complaining about similar problems on Macbooks. Razer support was very helpful, and they hand-checked a unit to send me as a replacement, which is the one I'm using to this day.

In short, I'd continue recommending Blades for development work as Linux machines, and even moreso if they can iron out the usual Linux driver issues that plague all laptops.

Edit: I should also add that my limited experience with Razer support has been good, in that I got personal replies from people who didn't seem to be reading from a script, and who were happy to accommodate my returns and pickiness about screen quality.

<comment><USER19> What is battery life like for you? I tried Ubuntu on an Asus laptop 4 years ago. Windows would get ~7 hours, while Ubuntu barely managed to get 3 hours.

I love using it on desktop, but it sucks (sucked) on laptop when I used it.

<comment><USER20> Try using tlp and powertop to diagnose the issue (your CPU might not be entering low power C states -- a common problem with older kernels that don't support the latest Intel CPU architectures), so also upgrade your kernel.

Linux has consistently gotten 1.5x as much runtime on battery for me as Windows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> For readers confused as I was, the Facebook post only says they're "looking at" better Linux support. The author buries in a comment a target for flawless Linux support[1].

But I'd expect if flawless Linux support was actually their goal they'd announce it more prominently, which they did not.

[1][https://www.facebook.com/minliangtan/photos/a.11684295504016...](https://www.facebook.com/minliangtan/photos/a.116842955040162.11402.113306788727112/1333298720061240/?type=3&comment_id=1333320063392439&reply_comment_id=1333321023392343&comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R9%22%7D)

<comment><AUTHOR> I wasn't sure about their commitment either, but on the linked page, Min-Liang Tan (Razer CEO) comments:

"Well - our objective is to get the Blades to be running Linux flawlessly."

That seems like Razer is setting a clear target for Linux support.

<comment><USER22> Under promise but over deliver!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Razer's Synapse, or cloud based drivers seem like a huge step backwards. Needing to make an account so I can change the sensitivity of my mouse is crazy.

I've heard the argument

* they needed more space on the device so couldn't include the drivers and configuration

* cloud drivers allow portability of configuration

Both of those fall on their face in reality. Lan gaming is mostly dead since most multiplayer games are online and memory space is cheap.

<comment><USER24> you can run synapse in offline mode.

<comment><USER25> Still worth avoiding. It's a bad precedent to have hardware on the "cloud" for no reason. I still need to interface with their online service to use my offline device. Having a keyboard capable of calling home is not something I want any part of.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think the developer community right now is siganificant enough to offer a meaningful market for smaller shop like Razer. If they manage to deliver a relatively well-built (not to the level of apple, something close to xps or thinkpad), with solid linux integration, slightly expensive (like 10% over the mass market models with equivalent hardware spec), I will buy for sure.

<comment><USER27> I don't own a Razer, although I've been thinking about buying one. My understanding is they're top notch, maybe even on par with Apple, _if_ you get one without issues. They have above-average defect rates and way-below-average customer support. If you check out forums or /r/razer you'll find some people gushing over their laptops, and many complaining about support.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm a gusher myself, and I'm super picky. I looked for backlight bleed, dead pixels, scratches, unlevel feet.

If you're worried about buying a lemon, they sell them at the Microsoft store. In stock. You can buy and return all in the same place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Please also add trackpoint[0] so that we thinkpad (linux) users can be more comfortable considering switching to your platform.

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

<comment><USER29> I know some people love them but compared to the massive glass trackpad with multitouch that I have on my MacBook I don't understand the appeal. Is it a portability thing?

<comment><USER30> I won't vouch for the productivity savings from moving your hands less, since I think that's an absurd micro-optimization. Rather, I prefer it because I find it to be quick and accurate. After a week or so of getting used to it, when I first got a ThinkPad that only had it, it became the most natural and comfortable way of navigating. Not having to repeatedly paw at the bottom of the laptop and confort my hand to make a click (or deal with a single-finger click0 has been nice.

Mind you, I'm only speaking for the real ThinkPad trackpoints. The one in a Dell laptop I had for work was nowhere near as comfortable, and felt slippery and awkward.

<comment><USER31> Exactly, it is about not having to "paw". I own a 2016 MBP and even with the massive trackpad I end up having to swipe and reposition at least a couple times for big movements, unless I set the sensitivity to a level that makes precision movements impossible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I really like someone stepping up and making a high quality linux laptop. After the thread yesterday about System76 (who I thought was doing that) this makes me really happy. It's also somewhat a threat to Apple. If you aren't doing any iOS development you will now get a really nice alternative to a Macbook Pro.

<comment><USER32> Aren't Dell doing this well already with their XPS series?

<comment><USER33> Really not impressed with my XPS 13. The screen automatically changes brightness depending what is shown on it (dynamic brightness). The touchpad works really poorly, detects palm touches as clicks all the time. Nearly impossible for me to type without clicks. Messing with settings reduced palm clicks but made the pad unresponsive to clicks from my finger.

Had lockups until I upgraded kernel and flashed now BIOS. Audio had really loud hissing until I opened alsamixer and set controls to exactly the right values (got of a wiki page). To be fair, the audio is noisy on Windows 10 too.

My old Lenovo X200 works nearly flawless on Linux. Again, pretty disappointed with Dell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> To chime in, I recently (this week) purchased a new Razer Blade laptop (1920x1080) with the intention of dual-booting windows and linux, as a permanent replacement for my MBP.

I have to say, the build quality _seems_ top shelf. The laptop itself is a sturdy feeling machine. It booted up out of the box just fine, and within a bit I was supporting 2 player rocket league on an external 34" monitor with no problem.

After some fussing about, I finally got Antergos up and running on a smaller partition, and now it's working flawlessly.

I am not a linux guru, so I had to bash my head a little bit, but here I am...

I cannot speak anything about the quality of the customer service, or how long this laptop will perform admirably (obviously), but so far I am extremely happy.

edit: I should say that I received the laptop today (at time of writing) and getting linux up and running only took a few hours of my uneducated self faffing about.

</comment><comment><USER35> For many of Razer's peripherals, there are some very well supported reverse engineered drivers: [https://github.com/terrycain/razer- drivers](https://github.com/terrycain/razer-drivers)

</comment><comment><USER36> Slightly off topic: I was about to ask, in this day and age of responsive web design, why do Facebook, Wikipedia and others still have m. -prefix websites? On further reflection I can only assume it's in order to provide a bandwidth constrained alternative, rather than just a visual change. Still, these look like crap on a desktop, and it's a frustrating leak of implementation details when someone posts a link to Wikipedia from their phone, and suddenly I'm looking at a weird design on desktop. They're so good at detecting when people are on a small screen and redirecting to .m - couldn't they please do the reverse too and redirect from .m to the normal version for desktop clients?

And if someone needs a bandwidth constrained version on desktop (developing countries and people trying to avoid data roaming fees come to mind), then maybe we could come up with a better way for clients to tell this when requesting pages, rather than try to infer it from screen size?

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h A counterpoint: I frequently use the mobile version of sites on desktop because they're lighter, and I like just being able to use m. _

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I have a 14" Razer laptop from 2016. I am currently running Windows on it, and FWIW I have never been more pleased with a laptop.

I wonder if they will add compatibility for the Razer Core on the Linux side of things.

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently, requires modding the BIOS.

[https://insider.razerzone.com/index.php?threads/razer- core-o...](https://insider.razerzone.com/index.php?threads/razer-core-on- linux-with-razer-blade-stealth-requires-bios-mod.20677/)

Hopefully, that changes in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I'll just put it this way: BIOS updates require purchasing a Razer Core or RMA'ing your entire laptop. Not a lie. Not an exaggeration. It's the truth for Blade and Blade Stealth owners.

The experience is borderline terribad. I got things (mostly) working with Linux Mint, but:

1) Runtime is maybe 2 hours. 2) It won't sleep when you close the lid (I have sleep hotkeyed instead) 3) The USB support is loltastic 4) External HDMI connector worked for a week then quit 5) Takes 3 hours to fully charge the battery

I could go on but it's Friday. I had really high hopes for this laptop and was ultimately let down by Razer. They should stick to making their peripherals work with Linux, then they can put on their bigboy pants and try to make an entire system.

</comment><comment><USER39> They control the hardware. Linux is open source. This is their problem. Why do they need "feedback, suggestions and ideas on how we can make it the best notebook in the world that supports Linux."

</comment><comment><USER40> I discussed this with the CEO a while ago on Twitter [https://twitter.com/minliangtan/status/447658322544439296](https://twitter.com/minliangtan/status/447658322544439296)

I think their best bet would be to have someone at the company work specifically on Linux issues. Dell did this and made a handsome return on their investment.

I currently use a Dell Developer XPS, but would definitely consider the Blade as a candidate for my next laptop if they were good about Linux compatibility in their next release.

<comment><USER41> I'd love to work there on improving Linux support.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Here's my damage report for running Linux of a late 2016 Razer Blade Stealth laptop: [https://www.reddit.com/r/razer/comments/5orvy5/late_2016_rbs...](https://www.reddit.com/r/razer/comments/5orvy5/late_2016_rbs_qhd_linux_damage_report/)

</comment><comment><USER42> Calling it now: Razer is going to eat Apple's share of the *nix-based developer market over the next few years.

</comment><comment><USER43> This is a quick way for me to buy them instead of a new MacBook Pro. Awesome to see someone step up to the plate!

</comment><comment><USER44> I brought a used razer blade stealth laptop from my colleague.

He said it wasn't that bad, but it overheats easily and CPU is almost always forced down clocked because of it. So it didn't achieve the performance he expected from the spec.

Razer Blade Stealth is almost perfect in spec. Built-in 4K display with NO NVIDIA GPU. That's great for the linux. Unfortunately, it's too thin. Not only it's bad for overheating, it doesn't have many useful ports. Especially the Ethernet.

I can't understand why the computer, advertised as the gaming laptop, doesn't have Ethernet.

I don't use it long enough to evaluate it, but so far, it's good for a portable toy computer.

</comment><comment><USER45> Anyone else own a Razer mechanical keyboard that doesn't work in GRUB/BIOS menus?

I have a Black Widow Stealth and it works great... except not in BIOS menus or GRUB menus. In those cases I have to plug in my old keyboard to get a response.

<comment><USER46> You may need to enable legacy USB support in firmware and hope it works with your machine or mainboard.

Other than that, some of the advanced devices initialize too slow and firmware is not waiting on them long enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I recently purchased a Dell Precision 5520 because its linux support is terrific (or, it was on the 5510). If they pull this off then the next laptop I buy will almost certainly be a razer. No question.

<comment><USER48> Can you clarify?

Given your praise of the Precision 5520, why would you get something else next time?

<comment><USER49> I was in the market for a new laptop and strongly considered the 5510/5520s. They look amazing even when seen from the perspective of coming from a MBP. That said, the video cards on that series are optimized for CAD and not for gaming. If you are looking at a Razer at all, then you likely have some need for the gaming support, but if you bought the Dell, you are probably airing on the side of sensibility. If Razer were to make reliable products then the Razer Blade would be the perfect thing.

I recently bought a new laptop after considering the two above. My final choice was one I wouldn't typically wouldn't have made: MSI Ghost GS63VR. I needed to have the computing and graphics power at a low enough price point that I could afford to bounce back if the laptop goes bad (the first one I bought last week failed within 2 days).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> At first I thought the coloured keyboard on most of their systems was useless, but I wonder if I could rig it up to switch colour based on vim mode. That might be fun. Is it controllable from software?

<comment><USER51> There's an SDK for interacting with all Razer Chroma enabled devices, so it's doable.

[http://developer.razerzone.com/works-with- chroma/download/](http://developer.razerzone.com/works-with-chroma/download/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Non-mobile link:

[https://www.facebook.com/minliangtan/photos/a.11684295504016...](https://www.facebook.com/minliangtan/photos/a.116842955040162.11402.113306788727112/1333298720061240/?type=3&theater)

dang, can we get the link changed to this since most phones will redirect to the mobile version, but for some reason, people haven't figured a way to redirect to desktop versions from mobile?

<comment><AUTHOR> As a counter point, the mobile version works without javascript. That's important to some of us :)

<comment><USER52> That's interesting. Thanks for letting me know!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> If you are not doing Rails work, do people find Linux that much more productive these days than windows?

I generally buy Thinkpads because of the keyboard and cost (upgrade myself), and used to use Ubuntu probably 85% of the time. Overtime I have found myself doing more and more in Windows, because of both drivers and battery life.

For sys admin in makes sense, but for general dev work, I tend to find everything works just fine on windows, plus it makes day to day usage easier.

</comment><comment><USER54> I got a 2016 Blade recently and installed Arch Linux on it. The only thing I found problematic so far was Nvidia Optimus, which seems a general issue.

<comment><USER55> A few days late here, but Nvidia Optimus is a general issue on _all_ platforms, including windows. I raved for years about linux graphics support being crap, to the general amazement of the rest of the linux community. When I switched to windows, I found I had the same problems I did on linux. Oops.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Not a gamer, but wanted a better mouse so I bought some razor mice products over the years, required internet to setup/huge bloated driver/software package, and then hardware wise the build quality wasn't there. Gave up on them and went to the Apple mouse, much happier (didn't realize at the time but gestures are much nicer than buttons if you're not a gamer).

</comment><comment><USER57> This got the attention of Alberto Ruiz at RedHat...

<comment><AUTHOR> Muhahaha, my plan is working! ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Interesting that Razer is targeting Linux before macOS. I bought a Logitech mechanical keyboard (G810) and mouse (G502) primarily because they are the only manufacturer that offers first-class drivers for their products on macOS.

EDIT: misread HN headline; article mostly about Linux support on their laptops so comment is somewhat moot.

<comment><USER59> I have never seen a mechanical keyboard that required drivers. What abou that Logitech keyboard requires a driver?

<comment><USER60> Keyboard drivers provide additional support for controlling LED backlight color (many of them are RGB per key) and for managing 'macro' keys which send bulk key sequences.

Both features are popular in the gaming community. But they are also useful in other ways, I've got a mod which blinks the F11 key when I've got a meeting/appointment coming up (for example)

<comment><USER15> This is why I bought a Ducky keyboard, which does all this via an ARM controller/firmware right on the board. Zero software for my macro, lighting, settings, etc.

<comment><USER60> Interesting keyboard, challenging manual :-). Having ARM Cortex-M chips as controllers really opened up the abilities of keyboards.

I've been collecting a list of features that I'd like if I had a completely hackable keyboard (or built one).

<comment><USER15> Yea, the only thing I'd like more is a firmware that would let me just straight up tweak it with C or Rust code, or Lua if performant enough.

I'm wondering if any of the DIY keyboard controllers are hackable. That'd be a nice future project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> These laptops are WAAAAAAAY over priced for what you get. I got a MSI G Series GS70 STEALTH-037 17.3-Inch Laptop and love it!!! Solid as a rock, always stays up to date firmware and plays Battlefield 1 smooth as butter. Plus 2 hard drives and you can connect 3 monitors.

I can't recommend them enough.

<comment><USER62> I used an MSI laptop for over a year as a Linux/primary dev laptop:

[http://penguindreams.org/blog/msi-ws60-running- linux/](http://penguindreams.org/blog/msi-ws60-running-linux/)

I now have a desktop and put Windows back on the lappy to play games, but it was an excellent Linux dev device, although I did have to get Wi-Fi working myself as I was an early adopter.

I never did get Bluetooth working, but after putting Windows back on, Bluetooth still didn't work and I realized it was a faulty adapter. :-/ One day I'll open it and replace it, but for now I just use a USB adapter.

If you use a laptop for Linux dev, you'll most likely struggle with some hardware that's not supported yet (although I've been very lucky with ever Dell being supported by the mainline kernel and latest linux-firmware).

Getting hardware working is the _fun_ part. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Razer owner for many years now. Love it, best gaming device I have laid my hands on. Comparisons with Apple don't make sense. They are targetting different audiences.

</comment><comment><USER64> I mean, this is one of those things where either you're a real company, or you're not. Half a company is, like, supply chain management. The other half is, pushing the perspective beyond the horizon. Razer solve all the supply problems, obviously, or else there wouldn't be a working catalog, but as far as pushing things beyond the event horizon, signs are that there is much more to come.

Look at it this way... what Apple did with NextStep in 1999, Razer, et al., could be doing right now, finally, and catching up. With Linux.

Only 20 years behind the ball, but .. then again .. these are not yet $Billion companies. Yet.

</comment><comment><USER65> This is confusing. It looks like they opened up a forum for users to discuss Linux support on their machines. Have they done anything at all beyond that?

<comment><AUTHOR> The CEO said, hey, I want my laptops to run Linux flawlessly. Let's work on making that happen together. Here's a forum. Let's get some feedback on what we can do to better support Linux in future hardware.

This is a company that makes prototype laptops with three displays :D The dude will sink time and money into this if that's what he wants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Give me Triple Display Notebook - Project Valerie [0], for under 2K, I will throw my Macbook Pro. This will be my dream Development machine.

Its interesting we have Game/Business centric notebooks. No Development centric notebooks.

[0] [https://www.razerzone.com/project- valerie](https://www.razerzone.com/project-valerie)

</comment><comment><USER67> If they just made the bezel more like XPS I'd be handing over my credit card right now.

</comment><comment><USER68> Fix this enormous basel and ad support for 32GB memory and there will be no competition ...

<comment><USER46> It is either bezel or thickness if you want proper cooling in a small laptop - only 17" ones are likely to get away without either.

Or you can stick with low power cool hardware but that defeats the point of the gaming laptop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> But why? Linux desktop and Linux gaming are deader than democracy is in America.

<comment><USER70> Ok, I'll bite. I'm on Windows 7 right now, and in the market for a new machine (on a lenovo t410). When I get a new machine, I can go with windows 7, but it's much easier for me to just go to win 10. But win 10 scares me. An OS that shoves advertisements and pictures of Trump into my start menu, as well as includes a keylogger, advertisements in my lock screen, etc screams to me of "corporate spyware!!" and every part of me that wants to keep some shred of privacy just can't accept the tradeoffs.

So, stay on an OS that's two versions out of date, or upgrade to a Windows Spyware Platinum. I hate Macs/OSx so that's out.

OR install linux, run windows apps in a VM, and hope more games come out for linux. Hell, I can even dual-boot win 10 and play games there. Seems like a decent option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> 32GB RAM and a TrackPoint/pointing stick, please.

</comment><comment><USER72> I would also vouch for FreeBSD on Razer laptops.

<comment><USER73> Why would BSD Desktop need a powerful laptop? What applications are you running on a desktop BSD?

<comment><USER73> It's okay to vote me down but I really am wondering what Desktop BSD are doing? I have been an old Amiga guy that ended up finding a home with Linux. I tried BSD several times and have BSD running a server at my home. My experience with Desktop BSD just didn't see where you would use the available application that would need a strong computer except for developing for BSD?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> i keep wondering whether i should check out razer or dell for my next laptop, but i can't give up my thinkpad keyboards.</comment>


Keyboard Layouts for Programmers – Dvorak, Colemak, or Qwerty? - <AUTHOR> http://codingsupply.com/keyboard-layouts-programmers-dvorak-colemak-qwerty/ <comment><USER2> There are multiple versions of Qwerty, and the worst one is the European ISO one, since it requires you to press multiple keys(2 to 3 keys) when making anything from huggies {} or bananas () or even staples [] because every key on the numbers row has 3 symbols on it</comment>


Why Linux Developers Should Use GitPrompt - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/why-linux-developers-should-use-gitprompt-8d654e5b87e1 <comment><USER2> I'm the author of this article, and I'm flattered that someone posted it here (even though I realize it was probably a bot ).</comment>


Ask HN: How can I learn to use logic, reason and critical thinking practically? - <AUTHOR> I am currently looking at 2 courses to study logical thinking and reasoning

  1. Introduction to Logic: This teaches Propositional, Relational and Herbrand logic

  2. Think Again:This is a 4 part course that teaches the following:

        How to Understand Arguments

        How to Reason Deductively

        How to Reason Inductively

        How to Avoid Fallacies
 Since these courses are academic, how can one start using this knowledge practically? <comment><USER2> That all sounds like a starter pack for arguing like undergraduates--one accusing the other of this fallacy that, while being insufficiently critical of--or even outright oblivious to--the premises they're starting from.

Would probably be better served digging into epistemology, all of the great philosophers, and if you want to start getting mathematical about it, look into Judea Pearl's books.

For something less academic, Ray Dalio is a surprisingly good resource in this area.

<comment><USER3> I second your recommendations and would like to add the blog "Farnam Street." [1] Mostly because, when it comes to reading, it emphasizes comparing and contrasting books and evaluating arguments and having them checked by others.

Getting your arguments checked by others is critical to making sure your arguments actually make sense in form.

Furthermore, if you are interested in getting started with philosophy I would recommend starting with some books in the "Very Short Introductions" series. Not all of them are good but some of them are and enough of a jumping off point.

[1]: [https://fs.blog/blog/](https://fs.blog/blog/)

edit: added link

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My 2c: I don't know how long or good those particular courses are. They do sound short. (There are many good books on those and similar topics) But if you think, talk, engage in conversations/debates/arguments, write (which I think everyone does) you can't but help 'using the knowledge practically', I should think. The more you understand arguments, fallacies, inductive and deductive reason, the better.

The logic one sounds less practically useful in everyday life (except maybe in analytic philosophy, computer science or linguistics.) The thinking course probably would cover the logic useful in everyday thinking/talking/writing. I hadn't heard of Herbrand logic, but judging by [0] it sounds more like the kind of thing used in programming (lambda calculus/functions and BNF/parsers/compilers) than in traditional logic. But sure, if you find it fascinating, go for it.

[0] [http://intrologic.stanford.edu/notes/chapter_09.html](http://intrologic.stanford.edu/notes/chapter_09.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> It depends on what you want to accomplish but if you want practical skills such as being able to convince people of your ideas or leaving positive impressions and getting the outcomes you want, I would suggest studying psychology, specifically evolutionary psychology and psychological biases, as well as communication.

Only in an academic setting does anyone care whether or not an argument is valid or sound or even know what those two mean.

</comment><comment><USER6> Get to know somebody who is a (constructive) critical thinker, and spend time with them. Read books by people who are good critical thinkers. If you want to develop a practical skill, watch people who are good at it doing it.

Oh, and as hashr8064 said: Constructing a logically sound argument is one thing - bringing your opinion across to someone else is an entirely different matter. Learn communication skills, and don't neglect the social aspect of an argument ;-)

</comment><comment> alok-g In my opinion, reading this will be more helpful: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoscience#Indicators_of_th...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoscience#Indicators_of_the_possible_presence_of_pseudoscience)

If you are on those courses, you are likely to be logical enough. Learning to sense misinformation and how to counter and work though it would then add more value to you.

Note: The 4th part, How to Avoid Fallcies, may already be covering the above, though possibly not since the link above only gives "indicators" of "possible" presence of pseudoscience. Avoiding fallacies is different from avoiding pseudoscience.

All of this can also make your life more challenging since you are not and would not be a typical person, but living with many of them. So make sure to master people skills too unless you are already there.

</comment><comment><USER7> "Rationality: From AI to Zombies" and SlateStarCodex are what you're looking for. These are by far the best resources to learn practical rationality and logical thinking.</comment>


Regular Expressions – Theory and Practice - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/mbtpAyn0n0o <comment><AUTHOR> A discussion of 'Regular Expressions - Theory and Practice'. It covers a bunch of interesting aspects including Chomsky's Hierarchy, Büchi automata, grammars and much more.

This is a weekly discussion that takes place among TerminusDB core team. It doesn't have to be work, it doesn't have to be TerminusDB, it can be anything really. We are a moderately distributed team and we have plenty of opportunity for detailed technical discussion (indexing strategy anyone?) so we thought that it'd be a good idea to start a less formal weekly exchange. One member of the team leads the discussion and the rest contribute with questions & comments.

This is the first time we have recorded. This was yesterday.</comment>


OK, Airlines, here are your bailout terms - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/taxpayers-bailout-us-airline-industry-2020-3 <comment><USER2> As someone who leans heavily free markets, even I buy the argument that it's not wise to let every airline in the country fail simultaneously, regardless of fault.

Here's the thing, there is nothing unfree market about demanding terms for those bailouts, it should be a negotiation, not an ultimatum from the airline industry. So for example, if you enforced all bonuses to be canceled for the next three years and retroactively fined for the last three years, set executive pay at a max of $50k for the next three years (and banned any new stock incentives during that time), fined the executives equal to 125% of capital gains they made on stock incentives, during the stock buyback period, and made all bailouts loans not grants at above market rates, you could ostensibly let them decide how much bailout they wanted without continuing this endless cycle of letting them run at losses knowing the public will foot the bill. And if they don't take it, then let them die.

Basically the end result of the bailout has to be drastically net negative over the last 3-5 years for every airline executive for this not to create moral hazard. I think that is achievable.

Unfortunately well probably just hand them $50 billion and make poor people pay for it.

<comment><USER3> The shareholders who invested in companies also need to feel the effect of moral hazard. They need to be wiped.

I say so as someone with 80% of my assets in the market. If we keep bailing them out, they will keep doing the same.

The business is dead. Shareholders would be wiped without the bailout. Nationalize the airlines that need money, fix em up new management, new charter and mission, and IPO them immediately after the crisis ends.

Investors need to think about the long term risks of the companies they are investing in, and face the consequences of those risks. Because why wouldn't you invest in airlines if you know they will do a ton of buy backs and will get bailed out at the slightest hint of trouble?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure I see the point of bailing out airlines in the US. What is it?

I would think the key thing for the government to consider is 1) protecting the assets of any failing airline so they can be reused when it comes time to reboot the domestic market. 2) taking care of all the workers that are going to be laid off. Because regardless of bailout the airlines will lay them off anyway.

In a lot of smaller countries bailouts make sense because they have tiny markets and there is only one airline, or they have a strategic need for a national carrier.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's missing a component for minimum 15-degree seat recline and minimum leg room consistent with the largest leg room available in emergency exit row in economy cabin, not subject to shrinkage.

<comment><USER6> Why should I be forbidden from choosing to save some money by getting a smaller/non-reclining seat?

<comment><USER7> Because that interferes with my ability to get better service?

This is a very broad question, applicable in many situations. For example, signing non-compete agreements may get you better employment deals, but some legislations decided it's better to forbid such practices.

In this particular case I'm not sure what would be a good approach :) .

<comment><USER8> Banning non compete deals often makes sense, if they have become a standard part of terms and conditions and are hard to avoid. But people flying budget airlines usually have many other choices. Often they could upgrade to an exit row seat for a small fee, or choose a more expensive carrier with more room. They usually have the choice and the majority choose not to. This doesn't look like a market failure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have mixed feelings about things like airline bailouts.

If we do, you essentially reward bad behavior.

If you don't, you are likely to induce a massive consolidation within the airline industry, leading to less competition and more anti-consumer behavior.

I don't really see a solution, and maybe the second point is less likely than I think...

<comment><USER7> > If you don't, you are likely to induce a massive consolidation within the > airline industry

Maybe this should not only be forbidden by law, but also reverse process - splitting existing airlines - should be started. "Economy of scale" benefits could be estimated lower than benefits to the society from increased competition and stimulus to innovate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> _"If, despite our help, you fail, we will sell your airplanes and recoup 100 cents on our dollars before any of your other lenders get a penny."_

Which airlines actually own their own planes as collateral? I thought they all were leased now.</comment>


Exploring Lodash Part 1 – Introduction and _.isArray - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/when-code-explodes/exploring-lodash-part-1-78f7596a5071#.oxudckojf <comment><AUTHOR> Would love your feedback, thanks!</comment>


Why Jupiter's Great Red Spot Refuses to Die - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/why-jupiters-great-red-spot-refuses-to-die <comment><USER2> > There are tons of data from the Voyager trips collected 31 years ago that > are still unanalyzed, and getting funding to examine them is very, very > difficult.

the PIs i dealt with on space missions were usually on to the next piece of hardware they were going to fling into space before they had the data from the last one.

and i think the lab i was at had some voyager (or pioneer?) data laying around that one of the emeritus scientists was talking about getting transferred off of tape so he could finally look at it.

<comment><USER3> Too bad this data can't be opened for hobbyists to review, in the same manner that hobbyist astronomers assist in discovering new stars.

<comment><USER4> I had a 50-odd CD set of voyager data dumps from NASA once. Not sure what happened to them but the data was out there and obtainable.

Edit: turns out you can download at least some of them from archive.org! [https://archive.org/details/VoyagerstotheOuterPlanetsVol5](https://archive.org/details/VoyagerstotheOuterPlanetsVol5)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm glad it is still there. It's such an interesting feature.

</comment><comment><USER6> Here's one thing that has bugged me for a while. Why is it said that the great red spot is around 500 years old? How do we know that it hasn't been around for much longer?

Do we have before/after evidence that at one point it didn't exist, and then around 500 years ago it existed?

<comment><USER7> In fact we don't even know that it's been there for 500 years. It's only been continuously observed for 187 years.

While there were earlier observations of large spots on Jupiter, it's not 100% certain they were actually the same storm.

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

To extend, a series of disjoint astronomical observations of the Earth would likely show a hurricane/cyclone/typhoon _somewhere_ , but it wouldn't necessarily follow that they were all the same one.</comment></comment>


The next revolution after Git - cool-RR http://blog.garlicsim.org/post/4362874439/the-next-revolution-after-git

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, something that might be useful if anyone bothers to build, at least...</comment>


Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-18/florida-man-accused-of-97-million-robocalls-says-he-s-no-kingpin <comment><USER3> Hopefully this is the first domino that ends all this crap. Myself and everyone I know has been getting hammered with spam robo-calls for the past year or two with no signs of slowing down. I don't even answer my phone anymore unless I know who's calling.

<comment><USER4> > I don't even answer my phone anymore unless I know who's calling.

I have considered enabling a feature that blocks all calls unless the caller is in my contacts list but I am concerned about missing something important.

Any thoughts on this?

<comment><USER5> Me too. The _vast_ majority of my spam calls are on the local exchange for my phone's native number. I use Google Voice on a Pixel2, so nobody should even be using the native number. I've often wished for a way to either:

Block any call for the native, non Google Voice number or Block any call claiming to originate from any number in the native number's local prefix. Eg, 604-233- __ __

I haven 't found a call blocker that can do this, but it has been a while since I looked.

<comment><USER6> Hiya on android will allow you to block numbers that start with a prefix, so you could block all calls that start with 604-233 604-232 and 604-234

<comment><USER7> But will it allow me to block all calls from 604-232 and 604-234 that are not in my contacts? Because I've noticed a similar trend where I get calls from numbers that begin with the same 6 numbers as my phone number.. but I have friends and family with phone numbers similar to mine and I don't want them blocked. Just ones not in my contacts list.

Edit: I read a review of Hiya and it sounds like they're still missing what we're all looking for: "Two things are missing. First, the ability to block all calls not in contacts. I have to download a separate app for that. Second, on inbound calls from the same area code (i.e., spoofed numbers) it does not pre-screen the call."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've frequently wondered why, in this day and age, telcos are permitted to provide telephone service without any guarantee whatsoever of the originating phone number being accurate.

<comment><USER9> Part of it is that their are legitimate reasons to spoof CallerID such as when a company wants to set all outgoing calls to show the main company name and number, even when the call originates from a direct inbound dial line. Carriers could block calls from numbers that supposedly don't exist or dial out--and I believe some are starting to offer than as a service. But if they spoof as a real number, that won't work.

I suspect a higher-level issue is that illegal junk calls fall into the mild annoyance category for most people. If the average person was getting a hundred calls a day to the point where they couldn't use their phone service, something would happen.

<comment><USER10> >"If the average person was getting a hundred calls a day to the point where they couldn't use their phone service, something would happen."

This does seem to be the endgame. The last excuse I heard was "what if a friend of a friend wants to invite you to her party so she gets your number from the shared friend, and she also does the same for a bunch of other friends of friends?"

<comment><USER11> I'm not on it, but judging by the parties I've missed, everyone else uses facebook rather than the phone for this purpose.

This also seems problematic?

<comment><USER12> Do you ever wonder if Zuck has some kind of ghost profile for you anyway? This person that shows up in photos but has no profile...he probably knows your name and where you fit in the social graph.

<comment><USER11> He probably has _numerous_ ghosts of me. I know that every time anything gets updated about a small business (phone number, address, principals, etc.) FB spins up a new ghost page for that business. They're not only bad at finding dupes, they're also bad at removing dupes once they've been notified of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am 64 and am approaching the date I can enroll in Medicare. I am getting 30+ robocalls a day at home and a handful at work and on my mobile phone trying to sell me medicare supplemental plans.

We just let the home phone roll to VM now. I don't answer the work phone and only my mobile phone if I know the caller. Grrrr.

<comment><USER14> Given your age and the fact that you're posting here I'm gonna safely assume you know more things than me, but just in case you haven't given it a shot - <USER2> took a custom google voice number and almost _never_ get unsolicited robo calls on it. The only ones I get are from a couple debt collectors that are tossing around an old hospital bill they can't decide if I need to pay or not, i.e. they got my number relatively legitimately.

Not sure if this is because of some sort of built in spam protection, or if because my area code is weird,but, worth considering?

<comment><USER15> You can request the debt collectors stop calling you and then they have to decide if they will sue you or not. If they keep calling they can be fined and you get the $$.

<comment><USER14> It's always a different debt collector. None of them have proof of debt so they're all just shitting my debt down the pyramid lol. I'm guessing the value goes down significantly each sell.

I think it's reached the "penny stock" mark by now, I haven't had a call in 8 months.

<comment><USER15> Hmm... if you make the no-contact request you can also ask them to attach that to the file if they sell it.

Is it still on your credit report? You can challenge it.

If it goes to court you can most likely have it ruled invalid as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm glad something is being done and it's being reported. But it's only one guy, and there's an epidemic of these annoying calls. My elderly father gets dozens of them a week on his landline, and I get a spoofed number at least once a day, from an exchange very similar to my own.

It's funny how freedom of speech is considered in light of for-profit stuff like this (in the Bloomberg article it was the misleading nature of the calls, not the calls themselves), but not with regards to stuff like hate speech and political speech.

In an ethical world, it would be time for a flip: heavily regulate the commercial elements of speech.

<comment><USER17> _In an ethical world, it would be time for a flip: heavily regulate the commercial elements of speech._

You're lucky: in the US, that's already the case legally. There's no such thing as an hate speech exception to the First Amendment, and political speech in general is mostly untouchable, whereas commercial speech can be much more regulated.

Which is why this man is facing a $120M fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> "This scheme was particularly abhorrent because, given its breadth, it appears to have substantially disrupted the operations of an emergency medical paging provider. It did this by slowing down and potentially disabling its network. Pagers may be low-tech, but for doctors, these devices are simple and dependable standbys. By overloading this paging network, Mr. Abramovich could have delayed vital medical care, making the difference between a patient's life and death."

[https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-17-80A1.pd...](https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-17-80A1.pdf)

<comment><USER19> A denial of service attack?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Imagine that, on average, each robocall wastes 15 seconds of a person's time. Let's round it out to 100M calls. That's 1.5B calls seconds, or over 45 years of times destroyed.

He almost murdered someone, spread out across 100M people.

</comment><comment><USER21> What an asshole. His whole line of logic seems to be:

* Open source software and long distance companies make it too easy

* Why didn't they stop me?

* They should have regulated me.

* Other people do it worse.

<comment><USER22> I can kind of understand his point though. We have the technology to stop this, but the companies don't care enough to try. We face the same problem with DDOS attacks and ISPs. It's too easy to do, and it's easy to stop, but unless people are able to influence companies with their wallets, we won't get anywhere.

<comment><USER21> We do have the technology to stop this, but it doesn't change what a miserable sack of crap he is. It doesn't absolve him of being the ONE PERSON ultimately responsible for his behavior. And you can't tell me if a simple blocking method was put in place, that he wouldn't try to work around it. In fact, why do you think they don't dial from the same phone number every time? He's already trying to work around the (very rudimentary) methods people and providers use to stop this garbage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> munk-a So reading through the article, his main argument seems to be

"There are bigger fish in the sea so why are you even going after me?"

In the US there is a real problem with selective enforcement in general but this is BS, the fact that someone else is breaking the law worse doesn't make your crime not a thing.

<comment><USER23> Answers to his question.

1\. He's right, biased enforcement is a crime against society. It _encourages_ increased criminality by those who are "above the law", and unfairly harms the personal social networks of prosecuted criminals, while the personal social networks on non-prosecuted criminals thrive and have relatively more social power.

2\. Random(ish) enforcement is a cost-effective deterrent. Convict 10% of the crooks, make them pay 11x their gains, and the expected value of the scam goes negative, deterring rational scammers.

<comment><USER24> It'd be easier to enforce the law if _they 'd use their own damn caller ID_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This guy and other slimeballs helped changed the telephone landscape.

The population of those who do not answer unknown numbers possibly has risen to 60% of the US population. I bet all of us here don't answer unknown numbers.

Text or email me and if it's important or you are important to me then I'll respond. Don't bother to leave a voicemail either unless you are going to give me money, a new job or there's a situation that desperately needs my attention.

<comment><USER26> Before my grandparents passed away, I considered it extremely dangerous for them to answer their phone and did everything in my power to discourage them from doing so unless they recognized the number. Even then, with number spoofing, it made me nervous.

One wrong call from a motivated scammer and I feared it could end in bankruptcy for them. On one occasion, a telemarketing scam ended up costing an elderly relative a couple thousand dollars that required other family members to help cover for her.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I was wondering aloud at work the other day if robocalls could actually spell the end of the phone number. It is extremely rare that I actually make a telephone call to talk to someone, it's been replaced with facetime and google hangouts, and it's very rare that someone calls me on my phone number that isn't a scam call. Pretty much the only time I get calls that I need to pick up are when my kid's day care is calling to tell me that my kid is running a fever and I need to pick them up, in this case they could probably text or email me.

<comment><USER28> I think phones are stilled needed. They're still the most reliable form of communication. But I see most people switching to white lists. Anyone not in your address book will get sent to voicemail right away.

<comment><USER29> > But I see most people switching to white lists. Anyone not in your address > book will get sent to voicemail right away.

Imagine the future of mobile adware...where they get access to your contact list, generate generic names of similar ethnicity to your real contacts, and add fake contacts. Or they add additional numbers to contacts you already have.

"Oh, my friend Stan is calling. DANGIT NO I DON'T WANT A MEDICARE SUPPLEMENT PLAN!"

<comment><USER30> Given what a lot of people now know (or _should_ know) about what Facebook and Google record about everyone, this is not the future any longer. It is achievable right now, and I would not be shocked to find that someone is doing it already. (I'd be disappointed and irate.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Ugh, this guy calls me several times a week. I'm on the no-call list, I report them to the FTC every time they call, and twice I've waited to get patched through to the "travel rep" to ask them to remove me. It's infuriating.

On a related note, I'm curious about a scam that popped up when I added a Craigslist ad the other day; I normally include my number, because I live in the midwest and people buying construction material don't have email; that's never been an issue.

But this time, I've gotten two separate robo text-messages asking I reply via email to firstname.lastname@example.com. Googling highlights this person is spamming a few public places as well: [https://www.google.com/search?q=+magalife3%40gmail.com](https://www.google.com/search?q=+magalife3%40gmail.com)

Curious if anyone else has come across something like that - is it just a way to get past spam filters by having me make an outbound email to the scammer?

<comment><USER23> Google search is amazing. #4 result for me is this article, which _predates_ the popular usage of "MAGA" and doesn't include "magalife3" in the page content, but _exactly_ answers your question.

[http://livingstingy.blogspot.com/2015/01/is-item-still- avail...](http://livingstingy.blogspot.com/2015/01/is-item-still-available- craigslist-scams.html)

Gem of a line on that page: "In reality, only poor people use Western Union, so don't be a poor person and just stop using it. "

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> >"Clearly regulation needs to address the carriers and providers and require the major carriers to detect robocalls activity," Abramovich said in testimony submitted in advance to the Senate Commerce Committee.

It's hard for me to wrap my mind around the sheer _chutzpah_ needed to say something like that. "The issue isn't that I did it, the issue is that you didn't make other people stop me." Textbook sociopathic behavior.

</comment><comment><USER33> In the US we just had congressional hearings over Facebook.

While Zuckerberg walked a fine line and performed as well as anyone could under such situation, I was left disappointed.

He (more or less) took a beating from congress without ever pointing the finger back at them, or at the telecom industry, or the NSA, or anyone else who is breaking trust and downright abusing existing platforms and ignoring privacy.

Robo calls are straight up scams. They're on the rise, and they're not being given any attention. This is indeed hopefully the first domino to fall, that will bring this to an end.

For those interested in these these scam calls, there's a guy on Twitch (live right now) who streams reverse scamming these centers and taking up their time.

[https://www.twitch.tv/kitboga](https://www.twitch.tv/kitboga)

<comment><USER34> I feel like I've read the exact same HN comment, comparing Facebook to the NSA, five times in the past couple days. Here it's barely tangentially related to the topic at hand. Is there some sort of mini PR push going on to mitigate FB's recent reputational damage?

<comment><USER35> Please don't post comments insinuating astroturfing or shillage unless you have some more substantive reason for it—in which case you should email us at firstname.lastname@example.com so we can investigate. All this is in the site guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

It's natural for things to seem this way, but that's because there's enough data on HN to produce seeming patterns of all kinds. Overwhelmingly, it's just users being users. Unfortunately the internet habit of leaping to "shill!" or "PR!" as an explanation for $annoying_view does more damage, because it's more widespread. That's why we ask people to inhibit the reflex.

I've posted a ton about this if anyone wants more background: [https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...](https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=by:dang%20astroturfing).

<comment><USER34> You're right, on reflection this was unnecessarily silly/snarky of me to post here. Thanks for the course correction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'm against the death penalty, but I'm willing to re-evaluate the position.

</comment><comment><USER37> I am wondering why I do not know of an app that can take over a call and keep the person occupied with an AI. It wouldn't have to be particularly smart, just a plausible synthetic voice (randomized) that holds up the call for a bit.

The robocallers are already using NLP to call me, so why doesn't someone use it to waste their time?

<comment><USER38> These apps exist. Here's a rather funny one: [http://www.jollyrogertelco.com/](http://www.jollyrogertelco.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Ive literally called my cell phone company to ask if I could block entire area codes...in one case I actually asked them to block Texas. Unfortunately that feature is not available.

<comment><USER14> Hah, the phone equivalent to when Hiroyuki / 4chan banned all Russian IPs during a DDOS attack.

I spent a solid couple minutes trying to find the screencap, but it went down in 4chan history for the distinct Hiroyuki-style response, that went something like

>Many DDOS IPs were from Russia. So, we block Russian IPs. Now, DDOS ended.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I too have mostly stopped answering calls from numbers I don't recognize.

What I get are not spam calls, but silent calls. When I answer them there is no sound at all from the other end. If I let calls go to voice mail they leave long silent voicemails.

I also get calls which ring for only a couple of seconds, hardly long enough to reach for my phone before they hang up.

I've heard that these may be scammers trying to trick me into calling back, so they could charge me however many dollars per minute.

<comment><USER41> They might be attempting to get you to call back, but likely they're calling more numbers than they can actually connect. It increases the odds of getting answers on particular attempt, but they can also keep track of those that answered even if their talking robot can't service every connection. Now they know they've got a live number and will try you again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Frankly, unwanted calls could be much less aggravating if phones had a proper UI.

In _2007_ , when the iPhone was first released, maybe the "phone" part was an important app. Now though, I can't believe the phone app is _still_ allowed to _immediately_ interrupt anything I am doing and take over _the entire screen_!

What's worse is that the Answer and Hang Up buttons could easily appear right under your fingers while you're in the middle of using a definitely-not-phone app, causing you to do things you don't want.

And why are my only options to "Do Not Disturb" (blocking _everything_ , including stuff I don't want to block), or to just sit and wait for the ringing to end? If I answer _or_ hang up immediately, the spammer knows I'm a real person with a valid phone number and I probably end up on a list for more spam.

Here's what I want: a checkbox that says "do not _ever_ ring my phone, allow voicemail", with an option to use a standard notification if a call comes in. Period. Tired of the full-screen-screw-whatever-you-were-doing-here's-some- spam interface.

<comment><USER43> I think 'do not disturb' has an option for only allow people from your contacts? and there are crowdsourced blacklist apps for scammer/harassment phone numbers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> He wants his fine reduced? I believe it should be increased! This is taking a property used for the common good (the phone system) and abusing it in such a way that it becomes worthless. These sort of people need to be made an example of, lowering the fine would definitely be sending the wrong signal.

</comment><comment><USER44> I got THREE spam calls this morning before I intended to wake up. I hope they throw the book at these jerks.

</comment><comment><USER45> How many of these people get prosecuted every year? Is there some sort of Interpol of spam/scam/phishing to coordinate efforts against these guys? They should be easy enough to catch. It seems that right now there's not enough disincentive for these people to stop what they're doing. If the decentralized web wants to have a chance to succeed, we'll need to find a solution against spammers and scammers.

<comment><USER24> Not many. And they make enough money that the fines aren't much of an obstacle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Wish Apple would make it so that, if a number is not in my contacts, it goes straight to voicemail (without turning on _Do Not Disturb_ ).

</comment><comment><USER47> I really wish Google would step up and put some of its power to use and stop Stephanie (My Google listing expert) from calling me (and probably thousands of others) 3 times a day. I have given them plenty of info and even offered to buy their bullshit so they can follow the money. Google couldn't be any less interested.

<comment><USER48> I HATE these calls too. Godaddy does the same thing, but uses local numbers so that they might trick me to answer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Whats stopping us from having longer phone numbers. Everyone i care about talking to can scan a QR code or something. Also it would be awesome to have seperate outgoing and incoming numbers so i cant get added to a call list when i contact a business.

<comment><USER24> What would longer phone numbers accomplish?

<comment><USER49> The reason you get calls from similar phone numbers is because they crawl from their own number. If we change up the way numbers are assigned so your number +- 1 isnt valid, this technique will no longer work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> All the robocalls near me spoof the area code AND the next 3 digits to match mine.

</comment><comment><USER51> I usually pick up the phone, but stay silent. Robocalls use voice detection to start playing their spiel, so if they don't hear anything for a few seconds they disconnect (and hopefully mark the number as inactive).

</comment><comment><USER52> That's 1 robocall for every married couple in the U.S...

It's a shame Mr. Abramovich did not learn respect at yeshiva, if he was raised in my orthodox community he would not be acting like this..

</comment><comment><USER53> I gave up my home phone because of this. Now my cell is starting to get a few a day. I'm going to be Viber/Skype/Messenger/Facetime only soon.

</comment><comment><USER54> I wonder if Project Fi has a good spam detecting system. I don't remember when I last got a spam call.

</comment><comment><USER55> It's like the final scene in The Lawnmower Man but instead it's Florida Man.

</comment><comment><USER56> Nomorobo founder here. I'm the "robocall guy" that everyone quotes in the news.

Instead of just popping my head into every comment, I wanted to give some insight into what's actually happening out there.

Background: I won the FTC Robocall Challenge back in 2013. I turned my prototype/idea into Nomorobo, which is the leading robocall blocker out there. In 4 years, we've stopped over 630 million robocalls from reaching people.

I'll actually be testifying at next week's House subcommittee hearing on robocalls.

# Not picking up unknown numbers

Unfortunately, this is what people think is the best solution. Even the government gives this advice. #1 is to use a robocall blocker and #2 is to not answer numbers that you don't recognize.

That frustrates me to no end. That's not a good answer.

"Doctor, it hurts when I do 'this'. Then don't do 'that'."

I really get worried when people say they turn on Do Not Disturb. What if there's an emergency? You have no idea who needs to call you.

This is especially important for people with kids. Is it a school? Is it a neighbor?

This is an actual story that happened to me - no BS.

My Uncle wound up in the hospital last month. Ambulance had to come pick him up off the bathroom floor and everything. No one in the family knew it was happening.

I got a call from a number that I didn't recognize but, since I trust Nomorobo, I answered it. It was my Uncle telling me what happened, what hospital he was in, etc.

Damn good thing that I answered that call.

But the fun doesn't stop there.

A few hours later, I go over to his house to pick up a bunch of his stuff and bring it over to the hospital for him. While I'm getting things together, his old flip-style cell phone starts ringing. I figure it's one of his friends that's worried about him.

I answer it.

"Congratulations! You've won a free cruise."

# Neighbor Spoofing

Yep - if the number shown is close to yours and it's not in your contacts, it's probably a robocaller. But spoofing is the norm with robocall scams.

Our algorithm detects over 1300 new robocalling numbers _every day_ and they're basically all spoofed.

Whatever number is shown usually can't be called back. It usually doesn't belong to the actual robocaller. And they usually try to make the call take a confusing journey through "the tubes" that's impossible to trace back.

Neighbor spoofing is really hard for carriers to stop because a lot of people have sequential numbers and they don't want to accidentally block good calls.

It's especially confusing when people don't understand what's going on and they call back the unknown number:

Person A: Why did you call me? Person B: I didn't call you. Why are you calling me? Person A: Because you called me. Person B: No, I didn't. Person A: Yes, you did. Person B: Leave me alone, crazy person. [blocked]

But, as an app on your phone, it's really easy for us to stop.

If you give us permission to look at your contact list (they never leave your phone and are never stored by us), then we can fully block all neighbor spoofed calls. If you don't give us that permission, we simply identify them as "Robocaller" whenever they call.

# Wasting their time

Don't waste YOUR time. It will not help. You are trying to warm up the ocean by pissing into it.

The scale that these automated callers work at is unbelievable.

According to our stats, 40% of all calls in the US are spam robocalls.

Someone mentioned Jolly Roger Telco. We worked with them this holiday season to make www.DoNotCallChristmas.com. It was fun and it makes people feel good but that's about the only impact it has on the problem.

# So...why don't the carriers just make the calls stop?

There are a lot of tech people here on HN. You know TFW someone says to you, "Oh, that's easy - you just hook up a database to a web page, right?"

"And put some that blockchains in there while you're at it."

Well, it's the same way with the phone system. It's not as easy as it looks.

The phone system has a birth defect. Call it one of the worst cases of technical debt, ever.

When it was first created, it was a closed, trusted system (with AT&T running the whole shebang). No one could imagine a situation where someone would lie about the caller ID so they didn't require it to be verified.

But then the system changed. Deregulation. The rise of VoIP. Interconnectivity.

Whoops. Toothpaste is out of the tube. It's tough to put it back in.

So, yes, secure and verified caller ID systems are being worked on (STIR/SHAKEN) but it's years off.

Will it reduce voice spam? Of course. But, this problem will NEVER go away.

People still get ripped off every day by thinking that the Nigerian Price is going to make them rich.

# What about the Do Not Call list?

The laws that govern automated calling were written back in the early 90's.

I was using a 14.4k baud modem and connecting to BBSes at that time. The internet as we know it didn't exist. People were still paying by-the-minute for long distance phone service. Then technology rocketed past regulations.

Today, the Do Not Call list is virtually useless against modern robocalling scammers.

At the House subcommittee hearing next week, I'm actually going to advocate that the government scrap all the existing laws and rewrite them with a simple, plain thought:

High frequency, automated phone soliciting should be opt-IN, not opt-out.

You must have the express written permission of the person that you are calling. Period. Full stop.

It doesn't matter if your number is on the Do Not Call Registry or not. It doesn't matter if you're calling a landline or a cell phone. It doesn't matter if it's a business or a residential line.

Got permission? OK. Don't have permission? Nope.

Note: If you're sending a purely informational message, this doesn't apply. I'm only talking about commercial solicitations here. Think of it like preventing modern day door-to-door salespeople. Ride hailing notification, doctor's office reminders, schools closing, etc. just aren't the same type of thing.

# Closing thoughts

So, in 2018, the best way to stop these types of scams is by using a robocall blocker. I'm _highly_ biased here but I think Nomorobo is the best one out there. We understand the problem and the solution better than anyone else. It's completely free on landlines and has a 14-day free trial on mobile. On top of all that, we're extremely privacy friendly.

And, while I never blame the victims, there is a bit of a shared responsibility that we all have here. The more people that use robocall blocking technology, the less effective these scams will be. The less effective they are, the less of them there will be. It's a virtuous cycle.

Let me know if there's anything else that you'd like to dig into. I'm all ears.

</comment><comment><USER57> Death penalty.</comment>


Are Cameras the New Guns? - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5553765/are-cameras-the-new-guns?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+gizmodo%2Ffull+%28Gizmodo%29&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><USER2> The one counter argument that gives pause and should be brought out:

        http://gizmodo.com/comment/23878432

\- that recording an officer's face could be used to track him later. It's probably hard to draw a finer line though - forbidding recording his face, say, makes recording as useless for self-protective purposes as for revenge.

<comment><USER3> Probably a silly objection, just like with analogous gun control, to wit: a criminal who carries a gun illegally obviously isn't being stopped by gun control laws.

Any criminal who wants revenge on a cop is not going to be deterred by a law that forbids recording his face. For that matter, he wouldn't have been deterred in any of the cited cases, where if the cop committing a crime had known he was being captured on a camera he'd have confiscated it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Alternate subtitle: How to get pageviews by asking a stupid and provocative question in the headline.

<comment><USER3> I don't think the analogy is all that far off. After noting these two recent cases happened after in two different cases police officers were convincted on the basis of civilian video:

" _When the police act as though cameras were the equivalent of guns pointed at them, there is a sense in which they are correct. Cameras have become the most effective weapon that ordinary people have to protect against and to expose police abuse. And the police want it to stop._ "

I also can't help but notice that all three states are anti-gun, Illinois and Massachusetts viciously so. Illinois, which for the benefit of the police revised their wiretapping law to make it crystal clear also absolutely forbids all civilian concealed carry (Wisconsin is the only other state with a total ban). The other two states are technically "may issue", with Maryland effectively never issue and Massachusetts at the whim of the local police chief.

These states don't want you carrying a gun and they're making clear they don't want you carrying and using a camera.

<comment><USER4> _When the police act as though cameras were the equivalent of guns pointed at them, there is a sense in which they are correct_

I've never heard of a policeman acting as though a camera was the equivalent of a gun. If you disagree, try pointing an actual gun at an armed policeman and see what happens.

These anti-camera laws are stupid, but the analogy to guns is silly. A better analogy would be "are cameras the new penises", because pointing one of those at a policeman will get you cautioned and possibly arrested but not shot.

<comment><USER3> The analogy holds in terms of harm. Point a gun at them and they might end up in the hospital or morgue. Point a camera at them and they might end up in jail. Point a penis at them and they will come to no direct harm if they ignore it; they might get sanctioned for not stopping a disturbance of the peace, but that's a very different thing than the other three outcomes.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Can Winograd Schemas Replace Turing Test for Defining Human-Level AI? - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intelligence/winograd-schemas-replace-turing-test-for-defining-humanlevel-artificial-intelligence <comment><USER2> These Winograd Schemas are basically a subset of the Turing Test, as originally intended. "Turing Test" contests where people just try to chat normally rather than actively interrogate are not the actual Turing Test. Consider after all the example from Turing's original paper on the matter:

Q: Please write me a sonnet on the subject of the Forth Bridge.

A: Count me out on this one. I never could write poetry.

Q: Add 34957 to 70764.

A: (Pause about 30 seconds and then give as answer) 105621.

Q: Do you play chess?

A: Yes.

Q: I have K at my K1, and no other pieces. You have only K at K6 and R at R1. It is your move. What do you play?

A: (After a pause of 15 seconds) R-R8 mate.

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems useful as a necessary condition for intelligence--it requires lots of semantic world knowledge--but not as a sufficient condition. Unlike the Turing test, it's not comprehensive or open-ended. In the Turing test you could conceivably ask a participant to finish a poem or explain a joke; the result doesn't need to be good, but understanding the task already demonstrates a lot. With these Winograd schemas you could train a very specific machine learning model to guess the right co-reference relations (this is already a task in NLP that people compete for), and such a model is obviously not intelligent in any way, it can only do one thing.</comment>


Universe: Not just another website builder - <AUTHOR> http://onuniverse.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hey folks, we're announcing Universe: the easiest way to make a website on your phone. Choose a custom domain, build your site, and share it—all in less than a minute, on your iPhone, for free. Check it out!

App download: [http://apple.co/2mUjsOP](http://apple.co/2mUjsOP)

Medium post: [https://building.onuniverse.com/introducing- universe-1-0-bui...](https://building.onuniverse.com/introducing- universe-1-0-build-the-web-2210372d40bc#.h1i4vkbmt)

TechCrunch article: [https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/22/universe-a-mobile-only- web...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/22/universe-a-mobile-only-website- builder-lets-you-create-pages-in-under-a-minute/)

Join the team: [http://workatuniverse.com](http://workatuniverse.com)

<comment><USER2> I got a couple of "An unexpected error has occurred." pages on the home page and the "About" page.

The links are also, maddeningly, inaccessible to [Vimium]([https://vimium.github.io/](https://vimium.github.io/)). That's annoyingly too-common. Any reason why they can't be regular HTML links? I'd imagine that screen readers and other software would have similar problems.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ack, we're on that

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Having lots of fun with this app! Super slick experience and our site was instantly up (the onuniverse.com site load faster than the custom domains...probably cause of the DNS propagation I'm guessing).

I'm at [http://ausomeapps.onuniverse.com](http://ausomeapps.onuniverse.com), though I should've also picked up [http://pokemon.onuniverse.com](http://pokemon.onuniverse.com) while I had the chance...lol</comment>


Too little too late? China's rare earth threat prompts US action - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/66827

<comment><USER2> I'm surprised China managed to pull that off. Given all the intel budgets the US has, you'd think someone would have noticed before 97% were reached...

<comment><USER3> Well we have been trading them fiat dollars for tangible assets. So those existing rare earth purchases are now in the US. In some ways it seems, like there was an orchestrated effort to use the consumables of others while the dollar was still strong knowing full well that we could always fall back on our own reserves. So we traded paper for real goods until the rest of the world caught on, that we where doing so. I think China woke up to the fact that they where exporting their riches for a fiat. Now they are in a precarious position where they have to stop giving away their true riches while not calling it for what it is. Not until they can divest themselves of the dollar or they will implode the system while they are holding the bag. Export restrictions on raw materials would be one way to do so. At least that way these elements cant be bought in bulk and stockpiled.</comment></comment>


Dark Team Shrinks to One - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/darklang/dark-and-the-long-term-2c65ff0baf5e <comment><USER2> Thanks for posting (don't love the title though ;))

Startups are hard, and we were trying to grow something that hadn't gotten to product market fit yet. I'm working on getting to PMF, and thinking hard about what's needed to do that, while making sure Dark works in the long term.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about the title! It was my (probably poor) attempt at putting an exciting spin on the news. In the sense of "all publicity is good publicity".

Dark is a very cool project. Every time I wait for a long CircleCI job to complete, I wish our programming environment was like Dark.

Good luck with it!

<comment><USER2> No worries, and thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Do the team members being let go get to retain their stock options?

<comment><USER2> Yes, we are extending the option exercise windows for 10 years. For folks who haven't hit their 1-yr cliffs, we waived the cliffs and so they vested for the time they were at Dark.

<comment><USER3> Ok great, so if dark is successful in the next ten years with a different team then the original team still will do well financially. Kudos to you for that Paul!</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Order Healthy – Healthy Ordering Made Simple with Delivery and Takeout - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/order-healthy-healthy-ordering/id1136349857?ls=1&mt=8 <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I'm the co-founder of Order Healthy. We just released our iOS app (working on Android) and would love to hear some feedback.

Our website is www.orderhealthy.com, and feedback on it is also greatly appreciated.</comment>