What App Developers Want: Letters To Steve Jobs And Larry Page - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/16/what-app-developers-want/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><USER3> Not that I like TL;DRs, but I can give you a quote which will save you time:

"On the whole I like Android even more than iOS. [Mention of Java, and less polished dev tool chain]. I can live with those quirks, though, and otherwise it's mostly a developer's dream: powerful, flexible and open(ish)."

So, as you might expect, the Apple "requests" are "Please be more like Android". Having done a lot of iOS dev, Garbage Collection isn't even in my top 10 wants (his claim that it adding it would halve iOS dev times is bunkum). An Android like multitasking model is also not in my top 10 (widgets + the ability to do preemptive content downloads would cover ever use case I've ever wanted, and basically every other need I've seen). His repeated use of "fanboy" also gives the article -20 karma: Apple, and Apple developers never said multitasking is evil, just that unrestricted desktop (i.e power unlimited device) multitasking was a poor fit - a position that's still true.

For iOS, I do want: Better notification system. The ability to silently respond to pushes (i.e. Update my databases without showing any UI). Better system wide connectivity notifications. Better inter-app connectivity (something like Androids intents, I guess). Cocoa data bindings. A sync service API (desktop to iOS or web service to iOS).

I do _not_ want iOS to become OS X, or a desktop OS. That is not helpful to me, or my users. A phone is not a tiny laptop, and frankly, nor is a tablet.

<comment><USER4> As an Android Dev, his requests aren't even on my top 10 either. Everything he requested can be solved by developers if they put in more time. If you want your Android app to look polished and shiny, you can, and it's pretty easy actually, but it takes time.

Fragmentation as the root of this problem - well, again, it just takes more time.

I want to see things change in the Markets of both platforms. This is an area I cannot change with more time - this is an area I have no control over and have a lot of complaints about.

My top 10 list all lives in the Market for Android.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Please give us real multitasking, like Android"

Please DO NOT.

OLPC wanted to halt the CPU from time to time to reduce consume and discovered that it was feasible... if only the software let them. A lot of linux apps were designed using polling that make that impossible to do, so they had to modify it and remove the polling in all apps, a huge task that took an enormous effort.

Steve Jobs, who is not stupid learned from them and decided to not let coders be lazy with iOS so the same battery rocks way more than Android.

The difference between "What App develovers want", and "what iOS users want". Long battery life.

<comment><USER6> At this point, I kinda wish there was a "no multitasking" switch in iOS. It would make it a lot easier for some people to use the device.

<comment><USER7> You can indicate via the Info.plist that your application doesn't support multitasking. The app will run through the full startup and shutdown routines on foregrounding and backgrounding.

<comment><USER6> I am thinking more system wide. It was not uncommon for people to hit the home button as a sort of "escape".

<comment><USER8> In what scenarios can they not do that in the post-iOS 4 world?

<comment><USER6> there are plenty of apps that don't go back to their start point on hitting the home button and re-entering the app.

<comment><USER8> Ah, I read what you wrote to mean that users could no longer "escape" using the Home button. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interestingly, John Siracusa's latest episode of Hypercritical, "A Dark Age of Objective-C" touches on much of the issue of Apple's reliance on Objective C both for OS X and iOS, and argues that in the long term, it's extremely problematic. Highly recommended:

<http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/14>

</comment><comment><USER10> "Please make it possible to develop iOS apps on something other than a Mac."

A few months ago I wrote a quick HTML5 app and when it came time to port it over to a proper iOS app, I found out Xcode only worked on Macs. And I'm a PC guy.

What did I end up doing? I made it into an Android app.

I'm sure I'm not the only casual app developer that didn't end up submitting to the App Store just because it was too much of a hassle. There's certainly no shortage of apps in the Store, but I think mine could have been better than at least 40% of them.

<comment><USER11> I don't develop for smartphones(yet) but this is something Apple should consider. MBP are too damn expensive for developing world, and even in the developed countries, many people don't own a MBP by choice. When people who don't own a MBP develop for the smartphones and its time to go native, they end up going Android even when they wanted to do it for IOS or for both.

I am not very familiar with iOS development infrastructure but since MacBook is BSD based, it should be possible to at least make it run on Linux and FreeBSD.

<comment><USER12> You don't _have_ to buy a MacBook Pro. A MacMini works just fine for development, and it's half the price.

> since MacBook is BSD based, it should be possible to at least make it run on > Linux and FreeBSD

Mac OS X has a UNIX foundation, not the MacBook - you can run Windows on your MacBook if you really want to. A lot of the low-level system libraries are open source (<http://opensource.apple.com>) and can be compiled for Linux/FreeBSD. I highly doubt they're going to do the necessary work to port over the development tools and UI that sit on top of that, though.

Would it be nice? For some people - possibly. Is it ever going to happen? Nope.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's as if the author took some of the marketing points that the two platforms used against each other and then used that as an argument for what programmers want?

Garbage collection is so simple. Once you're over the fear of feeling overwhelmed by having to "manage" memory it's really a non-issue.

Real multitasking? No thanks. I can't come up with a "real world" problem that the current implementation doesn't solve.

I'm actually from the "developing world," and I must say his argument is a bit of an insult to me. Sure, I we don't typically make as much money as an American or a European, but we buy the things we like... And if that happens to be Apple hardware then that's what we buy.

I can't argue with his Android points since I've just started coding on Android.

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't feel like somebody from TechCrunch is a good representative of all developers.

</comment><comment><USER15> I have been doing Objective-C development since 1991 and started with Java around late 95/early 96. I am still using both language almost on daily basis and honestly the GC is not something I really miss on iOS. In fact I like the fact on how I can fine control the memory deallocation as I want rather than decided by the OS. Of course with close to 20 years of Obj-C dev it seems natural.

I would love rather an improved AppStore and even better access to some underlying part of iOS. I can't speak much for Android since I just started with it, but any developer learning iOS SDK should rather spend the appropriate amount of time to understand the simple concept of retain/release and how to use each framework to write stable application rather than apps that crash way to often.

What is really a bummer is that the iOS SDK provide some good tools to discover memory leaks when debugging the app (with Instruments) and even the great analysis tools now fully integrated with XCode 4. Unfortunately a good chunk of developers releasing apps in the AppStore do not necessary invest the time to learn the tools they are using.

</comment><comment><USER16> There are currently ~300,000 iOS apps and 99% of them are junk. As much as I would welcome simplified iOS development, its primary effect would be to attract simplified developers and that is the opposite of what Apple needs right now.

I don't _like_ that arbitrary hoop-jumping is effectively used to weed out low-quality code, but I can appreciate why developer convenience is not a priority for Apple.

<comment><USER12> I really don't feel like Apple is purposely making development harder - <USER2> to try and weed out the lowest of the low.

That being said, I agree with the sentiment that most of what's in the store is utter crap. Personally, I think the barrier to entry is far too low. Apple opened the floodgates to try and get as many apps in the store as possible, and it worked. But now they're faced with the daunting task of cleaning house.

I would love to see them implement a monthly service fee - rather than charging $99/year up front, they should create a couple of price tiers with limits on the number of apps you can submit. That way, if your app isn't selling, you have a good incentive to remove it. They could also charge a smaller percentage as you move up the tiers.

As it stands, $99/year is just too easy to justify leaving everything in there - you're bound to get a few downloads from somewhere.

<comment><USER16> They're not trying to make development harder but they're not trying to make it easier either. They won't put the effort into fixing developer pain points if the only practical outcome will be more mediocre apps.

As long as they don't scare away the A-list developers, or hurt the quality of their apps, the development situation is good enough and they would rather spend resources on things that more directly benefit customers.

At the same time, the marketing dept. is milking their leading app count for all it's worth, so they won't be doing a purge. Rather, I think they will work on more ways for the cream to float to the top, like the "genius" feature of the app store, and on raising the quality bar with their own apps like Garage Band and iMovie.

<comment><USER12> > They're not trying to make development harder but they're not trying to make > it easier either.

Agreed. There are so many things that can and _should_ be improved upon. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for iOS 5.

> They won't put the effort into fixing developer pain points if the only > practical outcome will be more mediocre apps.

I think you're being a little too cynical. I prefer to give Apple the benefit of the doubt. After the whole Xcode 4 mess, I get the feeling that there's some disconnect between how Apple uses the tools and how the community at large does - a gap I hope Apple works to eliminate.

> At the same time, the marketing dept. is milking their leading app count for > all it's worth, so they won't be doing a purge.

Yeah - totally agree. They'll never do a _direct_ purge (ie "Hey, your app isn't selling, so we killed it"), but I'm holding out hope of my other suggestion of their using a price schedule to "encourage" developers of low- sellings apps to pull them themselves.

> Rather, I think they will work on more ways for the cream to float to the > top, like the "genius" feature of the app store

It's a hard problem to fix, and I imagine we'll see some good breakthroughs in this area in the next year or so. I'm genuinely curious, though, about how your experience with the "genius" feature has been. To me it seems to just recommend random apps from similar categories; most of the time, I walk away thinking, "No, I already bought an app to deal with [x/y/z] - I don't _need_ a second." Given the amount of info Apple has on me (app, music, and movie/TV show purchase histories, age bracket, metro area, etc, etc), I'm surprised that their recommendations are not better.

> and on raising the quality bar with their own apps like Garage Band and > iMovie.

I think they've definitely succeeded with this one. After seeing apps like that, it really makes you want to push the boundaries and really up the quality of your apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Apple has enormous success that is largely due to it's control freak tendencies. They make some really great innovations, and then lock everyone in to their proprietary ecosystem using the appeal of these innovations.

Locking users down doesn't work forever though. iTunes did for a while, with DRM on every song. Finally users were able to pay to get rid of it, as other sources (Amazon MP3) were offering competition. The only way I can see Apple continuing to be so successful with iOS is through continued innovation, not by caving in to developers demands for features---what developer has refused to reach Apples enormous market because they weren't happy with development tools? Something like no garbage collection seems like a small issue when considering the upsides of developing for iOS. (I really hope better web technologies will change this.)

It reminds of a quote sitting in my high school journalism room: ``People like cocaine and prostitutes, but we don't give them that either.''

<comment><USER12> > The only way I can see Apple continuing to be so successful with iOS is > through continued innovation, not by caving in to developers demands for > features [...]

Let's not forget that a significant (however you choose to define that) reason for the success of the iPhone was - and continues to be - due to the apps available for the iOS platform. Apple understands this - just look at their marketing.

GC? As has been said by others, it's not really on the wishlist. Most devs have much simpler requests that would make development so much more enjoyable. By the time you've written a basic HTTP request-response wrapper for the 10th time, it starts to get really old...

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Fragmentation is my primary concern with Android development, and is something that I faced head on with much frustration with my own apps. But what exactly can Android do about this? It seems that Android's staggering success is at least partially based on its Windows-like approach to essentially go "broad spectrum" and get on as many devices as possible. How do you negate fragmentation without clearing out a large swath of your device base?

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm an iOS developer and there is one reason why I don't develop for Android: Java.

If Google would officially support Go as a development language for the system it would be awesome. I'd support Android without hesitation then.

But Java? No thanks ...

<comment><USER7> I'm an iOS developer and the one reason why I don't develop for Android is: there's way more money in iOS.

The one app I ported to Android was massively pirated and minimally purchased.</comment></comment>


Can we 3d Print houses for Flood affected 300k people in Kerala India? - <AUTHOR> Is it possible to 3d print houses for Flood affected 300K people in Kerala, India? <comment><USER2> Yes. Lets say an average family is of 3 people so the total homes required will be around 100K.Also the 3D printed home takes around 24 hrs (1 day) to built. So let's say even 1K companies or 3d printers are working round the clock, then it would take around 100 days. so it will take quite long (3.5-4 mo) time. but its possible.

update: also it will be requiring a lot of funding or donation as 3d printers are costly and also the material and transportation cost will add up more to the cost.</comment>


Twıtter.com redirects to Turkey's ruling party's website - <AUTHOR> http://www.twıtter.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I am terribly sorry to use a throwaway but I can't risk associating this kind of posting with my real account as Turkish government has been arresting people for speaking their minds on internet for some time now.

I don't know if this is against the law, but this seemed like something twitter officials should know and HN most likely has people who can get in touch with them.

[http://www.twıtter.com](http://www.twıtter.com) (i without the dot) redirects to PM Erdogan's political party's website. Turkish alphabet also has the character "I" separate from i on the keyboard so this would be a very easy mistake to make. My guess is that there are people who are trying to reach twitter but reaching AKP website instead. This could be the work of a lone AKP supporter or as sinister as a honeypot to collect people trying to reach twitter as PM Erdogan stated "Twitter and social media is a menace to society."

</comment><comment><USER2> This is not twitter.com, but twıtter.com (note the i).

      $ host www.twıtter.com
      www.tw\196\177tter.com has address 126.96.36.199

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that is correct. It is impossible for anybody outside Turkey to make this mistake and it is even harder for them to spot it in regular writing. But in Turkey where most protestors communicate over twitter, it is possible to make this mistake.

[http://www.twıtter.com](http://www.twıtter.com) resolves to [http://www.xn-- twtter-q9a.com/](http://www.xn--twtter-q9a.com/) also.

edit: curiously, when i tried to ping twıtter.com from mac terminal, it errors: "cannot resolve twıtter.com: Unknown host" but i think that is the i without the dot causing a problem.</comment></comment>


Abandoned McDonald's Holds Glimpse of Life on Moon [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/videos/2013-08-15/abandoned-mcdonalds-holds-glimpse-of-life-on-moon

<comment><USER2> This project was the subject of a WWDC lunch session in 2009 I believe. One of the best I have seen.

There was so much more content in the WWDC presentation, I wished they had filmed lunch sessions at the time:

\- It was not only moon orbiter pictures but also stuff from the apollo missions

\- The analog pictures were actually transmitted over radio with an analog process (converting black and white in frequencies)

\- This signal was then digitized and used to recreate images on the ground

\- What they use (at least what they showed 4 yers ago) is the raw sound files that were recorded. Of course this is much better than the recreated on the ground images because you are one step closer to the source.

\- They first had to find a way to read those files on tapes. They actually called this presentation "data archeology" because of this. Had to find tape readers, get them back to work, etc.

\- Using DSP processing they were able to significantly improve the quality of the reconstruction process, dealing with mechanical problems on the space side (like the film were moving on a roll which speed was not perfectly constant)

\- One of the most interesting result was an image reconstructed in 2000s compared to the original image. Turned out to be one of the first picture of earth poles (and ice cap). Extremely useful today.

For more info:

\- [http://lunarscience.nasa.gov/articles/nimbus-ii-and-lunar- or...](http://lunarscience.nasa.gov/articles/nimbus-ii-and-lunar- orbiter-1-imagery-a-new-look-at-earth-in-1966/)

\- [http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/02/26/the-lunar-orbiter- imag...](http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/02/26/the-lunar-orbiter-image- recovery-project-original-data-for-science-posterity/)

Found the slides from the wwdc presentation!

[http://www.slideshare.net/kcowing/presentation-by-dennis- win...](http://www.slideshare.net/kcowing/presentation-by-dennis-wingo-on-the- lunar-orbiter-image-recovery-project-at-the-2009-apple-wwdc)

Enjoy!

<comment><USER3> Enjoyed very much, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 1:30, Austin Epps _" The quality of the analogue process used during the 1960s significantly degraded the actual quality of the images that were taken onboard the spacecraft, they didn't have the computing power necessary to do this as an all digital process back then whereas right now, you can basically do what was impossible to do in 1964/5 on a $2000 computer"_

2:36 Dennis Wingo _" I really want this material to be to be conserved, part of scientific validity is to be able to go back to the original sources."_

Nice catch. I am a 'vicarious lunatic' and look forward to the publication of this material.

Please, anyone with budgetary power, pause for thought about the preservation of _raw_ data for the future

</comment><comment><USER5> Sort of random note, it is kind of creepy to ride your bike around the base housing at Moffett. Kind of expect zombies or something to come shuffling out.

The preservation efforts are really vital. I was amazed at how much data is "trapped" in media that is slowly decaying over time at NASA. Definitely worth saving.

</comment><comment><USER6> I regognized the name of the reporter, Ashlee Vance. He used to be one of the good american reporters on the theregister.co.uk. And wrote a book I got, "Geek Silicon Valley".

Love this kind of reporting, and the characters.

</comment><comment><USER7> I worked down the street from these guys for 4 years, and supported them on a couple of web projects. The work they do is great... it's a shame they don't get more resources.

</comment><comment><USER3> Short, entertaining, and relatively informative. I'm pleasantly surprised after seeing the page and encountering the autoplaying ad - usually those do not bode well for the content.

</comment><comment><USER8> Can anyone explain why he believes a future lunar colony would be located at the Moon's north pole?</comment>


Ask HN: What should two geek tourists do in San Francisco? - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN!
I guess the title explains itself, so: me and my brother are from Brazil, and we are going to MIX in Las Vegas, then we are going to spend 3 days in San Francisco.
The only thing we have scheduled to do is visit Alcatraz. What else should we do?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I'd go and see Hendrix myself <http://www.yelp.com/biz/jimi-hendrix-statue- seattle>

</comment><comment><USER3> You may like to visit the science museum:

<http://www.exploratorium.edu/></comment>


The Ironic Truth About Stupid People - <AUTHOR> http://www.kikabink.com/news/the-ironic-truth-about-stupid-people/

<comment><USER2> What comes to mind is Occam Razor.

Thinking that Sarah is stupid is not the simplest explanation.

Couple of reasons:

1) Sarah got into university

2) Sarah finished university

3) Sarah pass approximately 32 course at university

4) Sarah maintained a high enough average to be select to work in the corporation she is in now.

5) Sarah was chosen as the expert in her field

There is only two things that point to Sarah being stupid:

1) Copying others' work and thinking that a simple change of font is sufficient enough to mask it.

2) What your mother said.

As you would have noted, evidence for Sarah being smart can't simply be explained away. It would require a few professors and classmate helping her out. It would require someone botching the interview and the selection of an expert. This isn't the simplest explanation.

If we assume Sarah is smart, why did she make such a glaring mistake and why does your mom said what she said? A possible reason why Sarah did what she did was because she didn't want to do it again. I assume the effort that Sarah placed into copying and the conversation with Michelle was not more than 30mins.

People who do a good job are normally rewarded with more of the same work. So, instead of 30mins of work, Sarah might have ended up putting 300hours of work into something that will most certainly not yield a high payoff for her. So, in this case it might be best if she pretended that she is stupid, which would basically fast track her career by months if she was to working on stuff with high payoff instead.

But, you could tell Sarah's boss about her incompetence. No you wouldn't; the easiest thing is to ask for another expert. Even if you did, she can simply say she was going to write legal a letter that it might be in the best interest of the company to purchase the copyrights of these paper, instead of having a highly qualified person wasting time and money on something that might essentially be fruitless.

Sometimes it might not be in your best interest to appearing competent all the time. Appearing competent all the time is akin to a greedy algorithm which might not be the optimal solution to achieving your end goal.

In terms of the author's mom, maybe she is right but it doesn't apply here.

In summary, the simplest explanation is that Sarah is smart, but for whatever reason she chose to appear incompetent in this scenario; I have outline such a scenario above. If Sarah is stupid it would require, more than likely, over a dozen people willfully assisting Sarah's incompetence, but if she is smart it just requires her to play dumb for 30mins.

This is not to prove comprehensively that Sarah is smart but really to show that other simpler explanations exist. If I was Michelle, a lot of alarms will be going off in my mind, and I would not simply dismiss it as she is stupid.

<comment><USER3> In my experience labelling someone as smart, just because he/she finished college and got a job, is a mistake or a bad assumption. I have plenty of ex- classmates who ware A students trough high school and college, but they fail miserably at anything that requires thinking, common sense, or coming to conclusions on your own. They ware just good at learning things from books, remembering them word by word but not understanding a thing they just "learned".

<comment><USER4> Same experience here. I know a lot of people that are not even good at learning word by word but somehow manage to go through university

I can add my experience for jobs too: most of the times people get jobs because employers do not bother to verify if they are good or not. This has sadly happened in half the companies I've been. Where I'm working now there are a couple of persons working as developers that don't know how to program and don't even have a background in programming or computer science just because the two non technical founders did not bother to have some technical guy at the interviews to verify the candidates.

<comment><USER5> Same here. I knew people who memorized their way through their mid-term and final exams, but couldn't explain any of what they'd memorized.

That applied to some of the professors also -- one even put a question on a mid-term for biochemistry asking for the rate of a reaction at equilibrium (no joke). When questioned about this, the TA proctoring the test simply didn't understand what was wrong with the question.

<comment><USER6> My chemistry is extremely rusty, but I thought that even if the reaction was at equilibrium, there is still a rate of reaction--it's just that the forward and backward reaction rates are the same, so there's no net change.

(anyone with a better knowledge of chemistry please correct me if I'm wrong)

<comment><USER5> The rate of the reaction would be the net, which is by definition 0 at equilibrium, as you described. So the answer SHOULD have been 0, but to be a question worth putting on a mid-term for biochemistry, the question should have specified starting concentrations of the various components (reagents and products) in the solution.

More to the point though, the person who wrote the exam didn't understand why the equilibrium part mattered...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The reverse is also true, some (not all) people think others are intelligent like them (or close to).

This is optimistic thinking. It never ends well.

</comment><comment><USER8> Funny, cute, or sad, but <http://notironic.com/>

</comment><comment><USER9> I often have a terrible time figuring out whether someone is being dishonest or is just stupid. Take buying a car at a dealership, refinancing your house, or anything else involving a lower-level salesman. They make absurd statements which benefit their cause if I believe them.

Last week, I was talking to a mortgage salesman affiliated with my financial advisor (who I think is pretty smart). The mortgages rates offered are about 0.25% lower with a "point" (percentage of loan amount) paid up-front. One can compute the approximate ( _) length of time the loan must be held for this to be a good deal. This guy, without any knowledge of how long I expected to stay in my home, said, "I never put people into points....you gotta pay all that money up front, you know?"

Was he being dishonest? I don't think his commission varied much depending on which product he sold me, and he seemed legitimately interested in forming a longer-term relationship rather than making a sale that day. When I mentioned that the point of indifference was probably around two and a half years and that I planned to stay in the house, he backed off of his claim.

I suspect he was just not .too sharp but perhaps realized that, when confronted with too many confusing mortgage choices, many people would just choose irrationally not to refinance. If someone chooses to buy nothing, he gets no commission. Maybe he was smart enough to want to reduce the number of choices for me to consider. And, when confronted with the need to cough up a percent of their homes' values, many people might back out of deals, so he decided to eliminate choices which might not pan out in his favor.

I have taken the adage "Never presume malevolence for what can be explained by stupidity." to heart and try to react in such situations with the presumption of stupidity. It's really hard though when I can't figure out how someone could actually believe the things he's saying. After all, shouldn't someone who spends his days selling mortgages understand the trade-off of paying a point down up-front for a lower rate?

(_) I don't know how the average person figures out which mortgage product is best. I have to put together a complicated NPV spreadsheet when deciding such things. And, even then, I'm not properly accounting for the interest rate options implicit in the products.

<comment><USER10> HN uses the asterisk to style text. Ideally, the parser would be smart enough to know you wouldn't be trying to italicize three paragraphs at a time, but as you can see, it isn't.

Hopefully you will check back within the edit window, in time to correct the mistake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is incredibly condescending and to be honest, you're not that intelligent if you have to resort to the faceless ridiculing of someone in a public forum.

I had to work with plagiarism first-hand at a first-class graduate school. You would think the caliber of talent for such a prestigious university would weed out disingenuous individuals, but the truth is that plagiarism is a cultural phenomenon. Just type in "plagiarism china" into Google to find out how students are being raised to copy work and rewarded for their efforts. Then they come to learn over in America in a culture where its frowned upon, and you see them with the same confused expressions when they correct their work. Not to say that what China is doing as a country is right, but you can't simply state that people are stupid.

<comment><USER12> It really isn't held as a major sin by the general public in the US. [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/b...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/2607505/Joe- Biden-plagiarised-Neil-Kinnock-speech.html) <http://www.slate.com/id/2198597/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> To me going to university isn't the surprise. But that Sarah was apparently picked as the subject matter area expert for this topic.

This leads me to think that maybe there was some confusion going on. Is it possible that Sarah actually wrote the source article and thought that her seminal work in the field would be good background information?

<comment><USER14> And then failed to use that as a (rather good) defense? That strikes me as a stretch.

<comment><USER13> Without the author of the post being Sarah or Michelle, and given the problems I have with it... it's hard for me to tell what really happened.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Unfortunately abusing someone is not always a question of "intelligence".

A lot of con-men are not especially intelligent, they just know how to exploit one's weakness. And we all have our weaknesses, and no amount of intelligence can shield them enough.

Funny story nonetheless.

</comment><comment><USER16> I think this is more related to the Dunning-Kruger effect, where incompetent people are very confident in their competence (inversely, competent people are not confident).

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect>

</comment><comment><USER17> This is a little off topic but I was a little taken aback at the elitist attitude regarding University graduates. Look at these quotes:

"Rather shocked that someone who had, in fact, gone to university and was working for a major corporation, considered it okay to blatantly copy someone else's article"

"I don't know which I found more appalling: that someone had made it through university and into a major corporation believing it was acceptable to plagiarize"

What about "going to University" imbues someone with automatic moral virtue? Does this person believe the unwashed masses think it's absolutely acceptable to plagiarize? While the elite University students are somehow above that?

Maybe I'm just over sensitive as someone who didn't go to college but it really bugged me.

<comment><USER18> The idea is not that those who haven't gone to university don't know better, but that going through university (which is assumed to have and take seriously an academic integrity policy) would teach them (even though many would already know better). To say that something is typically true of members of a group does not mean that it is typically not true of non-members.

<comment><USER19> Yes, this. There isn't really a single avenue of study at University you can choose where you shouldn't encounter this. Unless you can make it through a degree without writing a single paper. The idea that you can plagiarize anything in any context at all is basically anathema in almost all academic circles. Not that it doesn't happen, but most people that even attempt it are smart enough to do more than change the font size to hide it.

<comment> mike-cardwell I did a BSC in Computer Science at University. About half my class failed our first ever programming assignment because of plagiarism. Loads of people had just shared the code between them, character for character. There were a few cases where they even left the original authors name in the comments at the top of the code.

Instances of plagiarism dropped after that. At least they learned how to change variables, function names, comments and whitespace enough to get around the automated plagiarism detection tool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Keep in mind that everyone is a Dilbert at something....

</comment><comment><USER21> Not irony (not even the pseudo-irony that has become the norm).

This reads like one of those "feel smart by setting up a strawman" things that, _ironically_ (yuk yuk), "stupid" people resort to.

<comment><USER22> I disagree. Basically it's saying that it's the stupid ones who underestimate the intelligence of people they try to cheat. The sort of incongruity that irony is made of. If, say, only the worst martial artists picked fights with strangers, that would also be ironic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I don't think she was being devious, I think she thought she had done the right thing.

<comment><USER24> For some interpretations of "thought" and "right" only.</comment></comment>


The Art Of Braid: Creating A Visual Identity For An Unusual Game - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3753/the_art_of_braid_creating_a_.php

<comment><USER2> The artwork in Braid is amazing. I like how the article shows Braid's graphical roots and how it has evolved from there. Great insight into the process.

David Hellman (the graphic designer behind Braid) has more Art of Braid articles on his blog at <http://www.davidhellman.net/blog/category/art-of- braid/>

</comment><comment><USER3> "reluctantly compromising perfectionism" -- an interesting notion, from last paragraph on last page.</comment>


Io.js community thoughts on reconciliation - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/iojs/io.js/issues/1336

<comment><USER2> Reading through the posts, this one struck me as the best solution...

"Personally, what I would love to see is io.js take the Node name and handle all of the development through the community. Joyent could then select specific releases that they will support as LTS for enterprises, complete with the requisite paid support packages. That seems like it might be a scenario where everyone could win."

Not only is it a practical solution that fixes problems on both sides, there are examples of similar arrangements that have worked out well, such as the symbiotic relationship between RHEL and Fedora.

<comment><USER3> That's what happened with GCC and EGCS. Tired from GCC's slow development, some developers created the EGCS fork. After a couple years, the EGCS fork became the official FSF GCC. A detailed history is here:

[http://www.softpanorama.org/People/Stallman/history_of_gcc_d...](http://www.softpanorama.org/People/Stallman/history_of_gcc_development.shtml)

<comment><USER2> Interesting, didn't know that, thanks cpeterso.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Politics and "what it may mean for the future" talks aside, are there any API / performance / engineering differences between io and node today? I mean, there's a lot of talk regarding why joyent is bad or how joyent did nothing wrong, but from a js user's point of view, I'm rather more interested in the tangible non-human differences in node and io.

<comment><USER5> Node.js current uses an unmaintained version of v8. io.js v8 is more up to date and they seem to have a better relationship with Google v8 team.

If you look at the git history of the two projects, the Node.js project contributions have slowed down drastically, while many of the active developers have been contributing to io.js instead. This means more stability in terms of bug fixes and also more features

<comment><USER6> Is there any obvious reason why they are so behind on v8 versions? It feels like that would be pretty much in the top 2 things you need to do as a maintenance part of being in "control" of node.

<comment><USER7> The V8 team's number one priority is Google Chrome. They don't really care much about supporting node, io.js, or any of the other projects that use V8.

As such, APIs break/change often from release to release which makes it hard to keep up. This is made worse by the fact that old versions are completely unsupported.

This isn't really the V8 team's fault - this is just what they are paid to do. And to be fair, V8 is frequently used outside of Chrome because it's the best JS engine around.

<comment><USER8> In practice, Mozilla's Spidermonkey and WebKit's JavaScriptCore offer comparable performance to V8, and they tend to have less breaking changes.

But V8 is definitely the engine that has the best marketing. Chrome 1.0 launched with that great comic by the legendary Scott McCloud [1], where several pages were spent on explaining JS engine performance -- something that most people had never thought about before... Ever since then, it seems like many assume V8 remains unique regardless of what's happened in the real world.

[1] [http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/](http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/)

<comment><USER9> I agree -- I think you would be hard pressed to find substantial differences if you ran on top of SM, for instance. It was more than just marketing at the time, though. JSAPI (Spidermonkey's API) was C based and had a lot of pre- processor macro cruft at the time V8 came around and from the embedder point of view V8 was nicer to work with. Probably the biggest practical difference was that V8 exists in a separate repository. Spidermonkey must be pulled out of mozilla-central, and requires files in directories outside of js/src to build. Since Node (and other projects) embed V8 in their repos, it is more work to rip out Spidermonkey and keep it up to date. (source: I work with Spidermonkey a lot :))

<comment><USER3> JXcore is fork of Node that supports either V8 or SpiderMonkey. I suspect neither the Node or io.js developers are interested because they don't want the extra maintenance costs of supporting more platforms and abstraction layers. However, decoupling your product's core from its third-party dependencies is usually a good idea. V8 API and ABI changes have been enough a problem that someone created the NaN library ( _Native Abstractions for Node.js_ ) to help Node plugin maintainers.

[https://github.com/jxcore/jxcore](https://github.com/jxcore/jxcore)

[https://github.com/rvagg/nan](https://github.com/rvagg/nan)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Despite the submitted title, the ticket history seems more like a discussion soliciting additional feedback, implying that a decision has not yet been definitively made.

Is that accurate? Or is the weight of the io.js community on-board and we're only reading a vocal minority's opinion in the github ticket?

<comment><USER11> You are correct, no decision has been made as of yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I rather like the idea of io.js being a faster moving fork of node. Hopefully a "reconciliation" would mean essentially re-naming the projects to something like "node stable" and "node edge" but maintaining both, since depending on your needs you might choose one or the other.

<comment><USER13> But that's not what it is. Io.is uses the currently supported version of v8 while node doesn't; so it wins on features AND stability.

<comment><USER14> That's not necessarily true. Some of the stability comes from the bindings and interface between v8 and node. So updating v8 could temporarily decrease stability.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > Joyent have squandered much of the trust and respect they once had and they > continue to frustrate even in their involvement in the AB and Foundation > discussions. Does their re-involvement in this community have an impact or > do we imagine they will once again become the constructive force they used > to be or perhaps they will be neutralised in a way that everyone's happy?

What's this all about?

<comment><USER16> Joyent practically stopped development on node.js. They promised a 0.12 stable release repeatedly over 2 years before it was finally released. Joyent also has gotten into squabbles with StrongLoop over contributions to node.

<comment><USER5> It reminds me a lot of embrace, extend, extinguish employed by Microsoft.

Once they got platform adoption and popularity, it's like they stopped investing in the platform.

At least that's my perception as an outside user.

<comment><USER17> eh, this sounds more like an "embrace and ignore" situation (like IE6). The "extend" was about adding new features that were incompatible with the existing standard (which would in turn lead to the existing standard being "extinguished" because MS was so dominant that whatever they pushed would become the new defacto standard over whatever they "embraced" in the first place).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder why they (both node.js and io.js) chose to use processes instead of threads to do multiprocessing, because with threads you can have at least structural sharing of immutable data structures.

<comment><USER19> There is an open pull request that adds "workers" to io.js, uses threads - [https://github.com/iojs/io.js/pull/1159](https://github.com/iojs/io.js/pull/1159)

<comment><USER18> Ok, good to know, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The title should be something to the effect of "io.js contributors weighing pros/cons of Node.js merge"

Reconciling makes it sounds like they are merging. From the posts I've read in that thread, it seems like they're as far apart as ever.

<comment><USER21> Most of the discussion seems to be "we shouldn't reconcile".

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This title should be changed......

</comment><comment><USER23> Node seems to have tons of controversies around it ever since its inception.

As much as I would love to enjoy Node, I can't. It's just too much drama around it.

Strongloop, Joyent, none of these companies are guiding the Node community in the right direction (the Node community itself probably are too full of "strong opinionated" individuals that caused further drama).

Strongloop is basically a bunch of people with money, hired a few Node core contributors to get street creds (of course the Node core contribs people would be more than happy to get paid and be the face of a company... y'know, ego and money) and try to be the RedHat of Node (oh, they bought NodeFly and laid everybody off ).

Joyent saw "gold" in Node but it's quite clear they're having hard time to capitalize their first-mover advantages. Maybe Accounting still doesn't like the idea of paying a bunch of people with money to support an "open source project" and figure out how to make money later on.

Hence we're seeing how Joyent just didn't own NodeJS and leave everybody to dust with tons of contributions... if you want to own an OSS project, invest tons of resources, make sure you own a large percentage of the codebase, deliver tons of new and exciting features, put lots of marketing behind it, and make sure people have hard time to "catch up" thus creating an invisible barrier to enter. Hire the smart ones that still can somehow understand the codebase and contribute effectively. Another way is by providing sub-par documentation for the public to contribute, of course that's more "evil" than making it hard for individuals to get to know the codebase...

Now we have IO.js, a "community" driven with individuals who "work for corporation with Node interest" behind them...(those APM companies and Node- based service providers wanting to be the recognized leader in Node).

Let's be honest (and be real): Node is positioned to be the next popular framework after Rails. It's not hard to see why there are so much politics around it. The difference is that Rails has DHH as BDFL and he didn't want to make money out of Rails (if you don't count public speaking...) and Node has no BDFL...

<comment><USER24> >The difference is that Rails has DHH as BDFL and he didn't want to make money out of Rails (if you don't count public speaking...) and Node has no BDFL...

Node has had a few BDFLs in its lifetime: Ryan Dahl (2009-2012), Isaac Schlueter (2012-2014) and TJ Fontaine (2014 onwards)

Almost all of Node's problems stem from Joyent. They're just incompetent at stewarding the Node project.</comment></comment>


Robin Hanson's Opinion Warning Signs - <AUTHOR> http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/09/opinion-warning-signs.html

<comment><USER2> It's kind of ironic to promote the cause of "truth over all else" by such lists of arbitrary items. They always remind me of Borges' classification of animals (<http://www.multicians.org/thvv/borges-animals.html>).

Let's just look at the last point: "Your opinion doesn't much change after talking with smart folks who know more." It is so full of subjective judgment. You can hardly tell when you are yourself in such a situation (does the other guy really know more? is he really that smart? has your opinion changed enough?), much less accuse others who might reasonably differ on any of these points.

<comment><USER3> The list consists of signs that indicate when you might want to evaluate the basis of your opinions. It is not claimed that the list items, taken individually or collectively, are necessary or even sufficient for self- identifying your biases. The list does not say, "If your opinion does not much change after talking with more knowledgeable people, your opinion is reflective of your bias." Rather, it's merely that should you find yourself unswayed by seemingly knowledgeable people, some introspection may be in order: do you have a reason for disagreement beyond mere conviction?

<comment><USER2> "It is not claimed that the list items, taken individually or collectively, are necessary or even sufficient for self-identifying your biases."

So, basically, you're saying the list is useless. I agree with that. Or maybe we are to take its precepts as Zen koans, to be meditated upon despite their paradoxes?

<comment><USER4> I think your problem is in thinking that the list is intended to be a litmus test for opinions. For instance you said "much less accuse others who might reasonably differ on any of these points." which indicates that you want to be able to point to one of these items and tell someone they're wrong.

This list is just a starting point for you to question your own opinions. Of course it's subjective, I don't think introspection is ever intended to be objective. As a starting point for introspection the list is fine; as something you could ever apply to someone else you're right it's completely worthless.

Also, what paradoxes were there? In your first post you complained that the list was subjective (which it is) but now you're saying that it contains paradoxes without ever saying what those paradoxes are.

<comment><USER2> The author has stated as his main purpose the acquisition of truthful opinions, and avoiding delusion with groupthink and such. "Objectivity" is, I believe, the generally accepted name for such a pursuit; and introspection with such an object is a perfectly valid activity. Hence the main paradox of the article, which is that the author doesn't seem to have engaged in any form of such introspection before writing down these unstructured, and pretty much useless, musings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Any honest attempt at attaining objectivity through introspection will, I believe, be written in the first person. See the introduction to Descartes' "Discourse on the method" for the classical example. This list looks more like the author being pissed off after some arguments, and gathering a collection of what he believes are his opponents' repelling personality traits.

<comment><USER5> "Behold! I have brought to you Socrates' man!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I find that I have a too "sure" worldviews. There isn't much doubt within me, because I don't know what I don't know specifically.

It does seem to me that the more I know, the better grip I get on my true state of knowledge. For example, within programming, I knew that I lack many abilities and strength. It's humbling to me.

In some area I am really weak in, I know that I lack social skills. I am unsure what's the rule of engagement in some of the social situation that I dealt with.

</comment><comment><USER7> The only one I disagree with is: "You care far more about current nearby events than similar distant or past/future events." That just seems rational to me. I spend more time developing opinions about things that are happening near, spatially and temporally, because those are the things I am most likely to be able to affect for the better.

<comment><USER6> Most current news already happen too fast for me to affect things for the better or is outside of my influence.

By learning from past, when everything is settled down, I can prepare for future changes. By improving myself, I can expand my sphere of influence and make better decisions for things that I can affect within my influence.

<comment><USER7> That sounds nice, but I'd appreciate some concreteness. Personally I don't think "history" has much to teach you unless you are a general, world leader, or someone who likes learning things for their own sake. There's not much actionable content back there for normal people.

How exactly are you "improving yourself" and "expanding your sphere of influence"? And have any of those had more concrete results than attending city council meetings or telling your friends to vote for legalization?

<comment><USER6> _How exactly are you "improving yourself" and "expanding your sphere of influence"?_

Start a Tim Ferris style business, improve fitness(to increase lifespan), learn economic analysis, build social network and social skill and lot more.

 _And have any of those had more concrete results than attending city council meetings or telling your friends to vote for legalization?_

My opinion is that I am unlikely to have concrete positive impact by voting in elections. I prefer to look for way to disrupt the democratic process and the current balance of power. That's a hard thing to do. (Some people might think I am evil for opposing democracies though)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


MOV is Turing Complete [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sd601/papers/mov.pdf <comment><USER2> On a similar thread, Julian Bangert and Sergey Bratus have an implementation of the game of life that performs its computation on the MMU using traps[1] that technically uses 0 x86 instructions to run the computation. There's a video of it running available too [2].

[1] : [https://github.com/jbangert/trapcc](https://github.com/jbangert/trapcc)

[2] : [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSRcvrVs5ug](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSRcvrVs5ug)

<comment><USER3> They win since the game of life is Turing complete.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This amounts to using your x86 CPU as an OISC [1], more specifically, as one with a transport triggered architecture [2].

\--

Edit: I wrote a tiny TTA CPU simulator to better understand the concept when I first encountered it back in 2006. I recently discovered its code in a old backup and this story has prompted me to upload it; here it is: [https://bitbucket.org/networked/oisc- sim](https://bitbucket.org/networked/oisc-sim). The code is ugly in places and lacks comments but it still might be easier to get started with than x86 assembly.

The simulator has the command syntax of

        REG1 REG2

where both REG1 and REG2 are register numbers. This transfers the contents of REG1 to REG2. By default all registers contain unsigned int values. There are registers that are mapped to the sum, difference, product, etc. of registers 0 and 1; that's how you do arithmetic and comparisons. Flow control is accomplished by moving the desired instruction number to REG_PC (register 3). Input and output (numerical only) is done by moving data to and from REG_IO (register 4). To store a literal move its value to REG_CONST (register 11; you can then move it to whatever register you like from there).

If you find yourself short on registers increase REGS_N to, say, 256 in mov- rev.c.

Because it's easy to get lost in the register numbers a sample factorial program I've included ([https://bitbucket.org/networked/oisc- sim/src/3b3903518033494...](https://bitbucket.org/networked/oisc- sim/src/3b3903518033494476ad10f4f3eb0d0bf59166b6/fact.oisc?at=master)) uses the C preprocessor to assign them names. Download the simulator and type

        make fact

to try it. It'll ask you to input a single number followed by the <enter> key.

There's no documentation to speak of but you can get a dynamically generated special register reference by running

        mov-rev -h

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

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

<comment><USER5> From the paper:

> Finding Turing-completeness in unlikely places has long been a pastime of > bored computer scientists. The number of bizarre ma- chines that have been > shown Turing-complete is far too great to describe them here, but a few > resemble what this paper describes.

> ... [several examples] ...

> A single instruction machine using only MOVE was described by Douglas W. > Jones [1], where Turing-completeness is gained by having memory-mapped > arithmetic and logic units (so that other operations can be performed by > moving data a predefined memory location and collecting the result > afterwards). Some machines based on this principle have been built, and are > generally known as "move machines" or "transport-triggered architectures".

Also:

> Removing all but the mov instruction from future iterations of the x86 > architecture would have many advantages: the instruction format would be > greatly simplified, the expensive decode unit would become much cheaper, and > silicon currently used for complex functional units could be repurposed as > even more cache. As long as someone else implements the compiler.

:)

<comment><USER6> > > Removing all but the mov instruction from future iterations of the x86 > architecture would have many advantages: the instruction format would be > greatly simplified, the expensive decode unit would become much cheaper, and > silicon currently used for complex functional units could be repurposed as > even more cache. As long as someone else implements the compiler.

I realize it's tongue in cheek, but saying the decode unit in x86 is expensive is kind of a tired and untrue adage in today's computer architecture terms. But I guess it is fair to say that the die is stuffed with as much cache as they can fit :)

<comment><USER7> It may not be accurate to say "decode unit" anymore but who wouldn't welcome anything removing the large amounts of cruft from the ISA? Nobody uses most of the damn opcode space except where required for mode trickery or legacy code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> From the Discussion section:

      Removing all but the mov instruction from future iterations of
      the x86 architecture would have many advantages: the instruc-
      tion format would be greatly simplified, the expensive decode unit
      would become much cheaper, and silicon currently used for com-
      plex functional units could be repurposed as even more cache. As
      long as someone else implements the compiler.

:D

</comment><comment><USER9> I was very familiar with references #1 and #2, those are good papers. Three minor issues:

1) Both this article and reference #3 make claims about not using or needing adders to avoid self modifying code, although both implement indexed addressing where you take a base address and a offset and er... um... argh... ADD them together. So you're using an adder but playing word games. Only reference #2 actually "does it" without an adder. If you're doing it for "fun" then self modifying code is plenty of "fun".

2) The claim the compiler is going to be the icky part is not accurate. To a crude approximation a compiler would do something about as hard as a FPGA synth of a microcode decoder for a soft CPU. Not as simple as implementing a HTML BLINK tag but its just no big deal breaker. The icky part is going to be performance. Just adding a little cache isn't going to help if your code stalls it inherently and you're going to be pretty well memory starved. Good luck doing a fast floating point multiply-add for a DSP with this architecture.

3) A minor issue but it should be possible to get instantaneous power very low with this design. No one writes about this interesting issue (unless its in reference 3 which I don't have access to) Of course "power per FLOP" type of metrics are (Probably? Inevitably?) going to suck, unless I'm wrong.

I've done a lot of daydreaming about actually implementing a system outta reference #1 for fun. Its about the simplest hardware "processor" you can possibly build. After all, you're going to need (memory mapped) I/O anyway and who cares if one of the memory mapped I/O is a 32 bit wide full adder, or whatever other CPU-like functional module you'd like to entertain. I have two amusing daydreams, one is a 256 bit wide move machine (why 256 bits wide? Why the heck not? Difficult, but barely inside the limit of buildability) the other strange daydream is vaguely like an old IBM1620 but why not try floating point instead of BCD? Yes I'm no noob I know all about floating point rounding issues and I consider it a huge part of the "fun". Also I'm well aware a binary adder would be a wee bit quicker for the program counter than a floating point adder... that's the whole point I think a pure float machine would be hilarious fun. I'm not talking about merely sticking a floating point copro on a chip, but literally using IEEE 754 on the address bus (obviously with a bit of rounding) Quad precision floating point should be enough digits for an address bus to have a heck of a lot of fun with some slack for rounding issues.

<comment><USER10> > _1) Both this article and reference #3 make claims about not using or > needing adders to avoid self modifying code, although both implement indexed > addressing where you take a base address and a offset and er... um... > argh... ADD them together. So you 're using an adder but playing word > games._

Your concern is _addressed_ in this paper:

"It would appear that we are cheating slightly by allowing arithmetic in addresses. However, our "arithmetic" is of a very restricted form: the indexed instructions may only be used when R_{src} (or R_{dest} for stores) is an even-numbered memory address. Since offsets are always 0 or 1, then our "arithmetic" can be implemented as bitwise OR, or even bitstring concatenation."

<comment><USER11> Hmm, I still don't see it. Can bitwise OR be implemented with just MOV?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This share is most likely a cross-post from a great community of reversing folks at [http://www.reddit.com/r/ReverseEngineering/](http://www.reddit.com/r/ReverseEngineering/) . I encourage interested people to watch out for other papers and resources related to reverse engineering software and hardware at that subreddit.

</comment><comment><USER11> > So, our Turing machine simulator consists of a sequence of `mov` > instructions, followed by an unconditional branch back to the start

Newbie question: Wouldn't it be possible to just `mov` the start address of the program into the instruction pointer register at the end of the program?

</comment><comment><USER13> The conclusion is worth reading.

"As long as someone else implements the compiler." Typical british humor.

</comment><comment><USER14> If you want to design your own TTA processor, check out: [http://tce.cs.tut.fi/](http://tce.cs.tut.fi/)

</comment><comment><USER15> [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdcTmpvDO0I](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdcTmpvDO0I)</comment>


GoToMeeting Does Not Support MacBook Pro's with Retina Display - <AUTHOR>

GoToMeeting has confirmed that their current version does not support Retina Display Mac Book Pros and there is no fix date in sight... or a workaround. <comment><USER2> Hi, GoToMeeting does work on the new MacBook Pro with Retina display, it just hasn't been optimized for it yet. This will be addressed with an update to the GoToMeeting software that is currently in the works.

@GlennDCitrix

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the screen recording is the problem. It only records the upper left forth of the screen.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a standard web framework performance benchmark test? - <AUTHOR>

I want to benchmark my web framework 'Contentigo.com', I want to see how it compares to CodeIgniter, Symfony etc.
Has somebody written a good, clear set of benchmark tests that I can also apply to Contentigo? EG:
- time to serve 100 'realistic' web pages (without any caching)
- time to serve 100 'realistic' web pages with 3 database queries per request (with some defined dataset to retrieve) (without any caching)
- time to serve 100 'realistic' web pages (with caching)
something like this? <comment><USER2> I don't think there's a standard list but make sure to not just run micro benchmarks.

I would probably do:

1\. Return a few hundred bytes of json with no I/O.

2\. Return tens of thousands of bytes of json with no I/O.

3\. Do the same 2 tests as above but read the data from a DB.

4\. Do the same 3 tests as above but render templates instead of sending json.

5\. Do everything again with it cached.

6\. Repeat all steps with 1, 2, 5, 10, 50, 100, 200, 500, and 1000 concurrent connections while paying close attention to the response times at the 99% level in addition to the reqs/second.

Also don't forget to look at the bytes transferred. There's going to be differences in the http headers between frameworks. If you're going to compare them directly to yours try to adjust the headers so it matches.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Would also be handy to create a simple set of JMeter tests to ensure consistency across frameworks.

I would would be keen to run the test against Contentigo, but not very keen to do this for all the other frameworks! I would hope that if a good set of standard tests could be found, then the various vendors/project could run the tests themselves.</comment>


Ask HN: Father vacation in New York City with my two sons 14 and 16 - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
Looking for cool stuff to do in NY later this summer (August) with my two sons (14 and 16). Places to see, eat etc., anything you would recommend that is different or less known than the typical tourist stuff. First time in NY by the way. <comment><USER2> Walk. A lot. NYC is _huge_ but it worth it. Specially if you walk through places you can see in the movies when you return home.

I think you can kayak on the Hudson river. I could not do this (not enough time) but I bet it might give you good memories.

Biking on central park is also great; but walk the park later.

Statue of Libery: expect to spend at least half day. Book the tickets today and be _ahead_ of time because they have airport-like security.

Read the news (or a book) in Bryant Park. Didn't know the place existed until we got there.

If you come from Europe and have enough time, get a bus in Port Authority and spend one day in Washington DC to visit the Smithsonian Air and Space museum. I guess it's a 4h bus trip, in a greyhound bus (like in the movies). Some of them have wifi. Totally worth it.

Do not do this:

\- Make a visit ground zero on the first place. I happened to be near and it spoiled mood for the whole day.

\- If you have tickets for music show (phantom of the opera, wicked, etc.)... Be near the theater before the show. Near means walking distance, not 1 metro station away because this is the _exact_ time Murphy's law will send you a long distance train instead a local one.

\- Do not budget less than 1:30-2h from Port Authority (42th street) to La Guardia. The Metro needs at least 1:30h. Taxis seem to be faster until there's some kind of problem.

\- United Nations: didn't find it worth the visit altough there was quite... hm... interesing people protesting on the front.

Hope this helps :-)

</comment><comment><USER3> What about The Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum ([https://www.intrepidmuseum.org/](https://www.intrepidmuseum.org/)). I enjoyed it when I was in New York.

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems to be a nice location too, plenty to see around the museum

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you book well ahead you can get crown access tickets to the statue of liberty. I did it a couple of years ago and it was awesome: a nice climb up a narrow staircase and the rangers were very cool, too.

Another tip: rent bicycles and cycle around Manhattan and Brooklyn on the Waterfront Greenway. Not for the faint of heart since it's not entirely finished, so you're merging with traffic at some points.

</comment><comment><USER5> Take them to a standup comedy show at The Stand. Or maybe explore the Whitney museum for a few hours.

</comment><comment><USER6> I would also ask /r/asknyc

<comment><AUTHOR> Great tip</comment></comment>


Getting Fuzzy with CtrlP and Vim - <AUTHOR> http://pyjamacoder.com/2013/04/25/getting-fuzzy-with-ctrlp/

<comment><USER2> Hmm, no wonder you prefer CtrlP to your previous workflow, find and grep are two horrible and verbose tools for opening files from Vim!

The canonical way to open a file for editing is:

        :e file

Of course you can use tab-completion:

        :e fi<Tab>

And the "star" wildcard:

        :e f*/fil<Tab>

And the awesome "starstar" wildcard:

        :e **/f*/fil<Tab

It's even better if you activate the "wildmenu" and play with the "wildmode" option:

        filea  fileb  filec  filed
        </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>
        [filea] fileb filec filed
        </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>
        :e filea

CtrlP is a great plugin that I use extensively all day long but… there are other ways, beyond find and grep.</comment>


Windows 10 growth hits the brakes - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/article/3039922/microsoft-windows/windows-10-growth-hits-the-brakes.html <comment><USER2> "On the plus side, Windows 10's 14.2% user share put it ahead of the combined share of 2012's Windows 8 and its 2013 upgrade, Windows 8.1"

No surprise there. W8/8.1 really sucked.</comment>


Ask HN: Idea Sunday - <AUTHOR> Whoever started it, the intent was good. We should resume Idea Sunday threads. A small HN experiment maybe. Every Sunday, a new thread will be started to share product ideas. Why? Because many people have ideas they will simply not have the time to implement, and many need product ideas to work on.
Links to some interesting Idea Sundays happened earlier:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7541601
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7582077
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7616910
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7693262
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9165278
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7654771
EDIT: Well, HN admins don't see this adds a good value to HN core. More on this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7693640 <comment><USER2> Your list omits the valid reason why it stopped: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7693640](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7693640)

<comment><USER3> The race condition would be easy to avoid by just having a volunteer operating an account. "IdeasMonthly" would post the thread once per month, with a bit of boilerplate.

I'm not strongly advocating for this though - mods are pretty clear about what they think and HN is divided.

<comment><USER4> I'll try to advocate for it strongly.

I think that there is already far too much pseudo-intellectualism, cynicism, political sniping and dull rehashing of arguments on this site to begin with. You can pretty much predict where threads about bitcoin, self-driving cars, politics or modern web design are going to go, what sort of arguments will be made, and what counterarguments. One of the problems dang warned about when he discussed killing the regular threads was that regularity breeds low quality. This seems to presume some correlation between novelty and quality that I don't think is really borne out by the content here.

I believe that, while dang was obviously perfectly within his rights to do so, this was one case where he potentially cut off HN's nose to spite its face. Surely, if discussing other people's creative and intellectual efforts is an intellectually valid exercise for Hacker News (which is what commenting on submitted links and articles amounts to) then discussing our own, creative efforts is also valid?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yeah, they stopped doing them regularly because the HN admins didn't think they added enough value. I tend to disagree and would love the resumption of this as a regular thread, but unless somebody changes their mind, it will probably continue to be shut down.

</comment><comment><USER6> I also disagree. It should be started again. It is very nice to see what people wants and it creates another ideas which can benefit community. If it is not interesting for someone it does not mean it is not interesting to others.

</comment><comment><USER3> If these do happen again:

1) A special account should be set up to post the threads (and people should flag the other threads).

2) There should be no more than one thread per month.

I did recently ask about this, and HN staff are reluctant, so I didn't go ahead.

There are websites (half-baked) and there's probably a sub-reddit (and it would be easy enough to create a subreddit).

</comment><comment><USER7> I need a nice mobile app to share pronunciation of words in various languages. Ask for the exact pronunciation of a word in a foreign language, provide the pronunciation of a word in your native tongue. Build the knowledge base on the go.

</comment><comment><USER8> Better to have this than not have it. HN admins wants to subcommittee this idea to death. Just to do it.

<comment><USER2> What? Having something for the sake of having something isn't productive.

<comment><USER9> But have not something sake of few people thought is also not productive. It will be very productive if we can discuss new ideas. It will not give only one perspective to that idea but help others to think other angles for their products. I have read past threads it is very good and fruitful.</comment></comment></comment>


I found this secret code while geocaching. What could it mean?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/axth9/i_found_this_secret_code_while_geocaching_what/ <comment><USER2> The comments were mostly nonsense, but there was one gem that made me laugh:

 _If you aren't a troll, then why were you beneath a bridge, smartguy?_

<comment><USER3> "The comments were mostly nonsense,"

You have accurately described the chief product of Reddit quite well.

<comment><USER4> ...says the lad merrily prancing about on Hacker News.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Most likely answer so far:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/axth9/i_found_thi...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/axth9/i_found_this_secret_code_while_geocaching_what/c0jyuu8)

It's most likely a random number as it is in UUID version 4 format. The version identified by the 4 and the b in the correct spots "6d4061b1b-a7ee-4a9e-b0ae-509617252b42" (see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universally_Unique_Identifier#V...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universally_Unique_Identifier#Version_4_.28random.29)). Person who placed the geocache probably wanted a way to google anyone who found it.

<comment><USER6> UUID v4 seems kind of plausible, although it has no advantage at all over a random string if you just wanted to google. What is interesting is that caches on geocaching.com are identified by v4 UUIDs. But this one doesn't turn up anything. The person with the UUID idea has the number wrong, incidentally, it's

6d406b1b-a7ee-4a9e-b0ae-509617252b42

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> You can buy tiny magnetic geocaching containers on ebay:

[http://cgi.ebay.com/SIX-Magnetic-Nano-TINY-Geocaching- Contai...](http://cgi.ebay.com/SIX-Magnetic-Nano-TINY-Geocaching-Containers- Geocache_W0QQitemZ190369711784QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item2c52eb46a8)

I doubt it's some spy thing.

Most likely someone wanted to set up a multicache where you had to decode something to get to the next cache but never bothered to finish it.

<comment><USER8> It could be a 'live' multicache, too. There are some pretty long ones (many km) and they usually only tell you the starting point, the other coordinates need to be deduced, which would explain why it's on no map.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd really like to see a Chi-square analysis on this by a smarter statistician than me. Power should be pretty low since you only have 16 bytes.

Alternatively, in a series of sixteen uniformly-distributed bytes, what's the probability that the birthday paradox doesn't occur? That is, the probability that no two bytes are identical?

I can say as someone who's played around with English-language markov chains for years that this definitely isn't displaying the characteristics of English text, even with transformations like rot13 or multiplication. So the next logical question is, "Is it uniform?"

<comment><USER10> How would you do a chi-square on this? Doesn't seem to me to be the right sort of test.

If you think its hex/ascii, you can try to do a hypothesis test on the max frequency of each digit/letter and see what happens there. But, for any test, you need an underlying model against which you test. What model are you thinking of?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Maybe the number is the location of some Loom assets: <https://loom.cc/faq>

<comment><USER12> Okay, that is a pretty cool system. Sad now that I don't know anyone involved, can't get an invite.

<comment><USER11> 9d95c450c3a375a6d3f952b4b13b9f17

<comment><USER12> Sweet, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> you have to md5 every possible earth coordenate pair. Thats the hash of the correct one. Piece of cake. So im not going to do it for you.</comment>


James Watson's Nobel Prize Medal Will Be Returned to Him - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/james-watson-s-nobel-prize-sold-at-auction-will-be-returned-to-him-1.2866994 <comment><USER2> This is quite depressing.

There isn't anything special about Watson. Like all scientific discoveries, he was in the right place at the right time, and depending on how you look at it was sufficiently ruthless/ambitious to claim his place in history. But so what? If not him, someone else would have worked it out, just like the people that almost discovered calculus or the Higgs boson. If you want to honour science, then give 5 million dollars to someone who is actually still interested in doing research. He's had his day, and has received all the accolades he deserves, if not more.

</comment><comment><USER3> I thought he sold it because he wanted money and art.

"Mr Watson told the Financial Times he had become an "unperson" after he "was outed as believing in IQ" in 2007 and said he would like to use money from the sale to buy a David Hockney painting."

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/11261872/James- Watso...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/11261872/James-Watson- selling-Nobel-prize-because-no-one-wants-to-admit-I-exist.html)

<comment><USER4> For anyone who isn't familiar with the backstory, Watson didn't become an unperson for believing in IQ, he claimed in an interview with the Sunday Times Magazine that testing proved that black Africans aren't as smart as white people, then followed it up with the sentiment that ideally one should think that all people are equal, but "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true."

[http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1673952,0...](http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1673952,00.html)

[http://www.wired.com/2007/10/more-on- james-b/](http://www.wired.com/2007/10/more-on-james-b/)

<comment><USER5> You forgot the detail which massively complicates this : James Watson' claim about the test scores is true [1].

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence)

Note the first paragraph in the Wikipedia article : "The connection between race and intelligence has been ... It is still not resolved what relation, if any, there is between group differences in IQ and race."

Currently we have about 104 years of data, which shows, to put it mildly, a clear pattern of racial differences in intelligence (and pretty much every other metric. Size. Weight. Speed. Color. Body temperature...). Worse, they also show a clear difference in intelligence between different ideological groups (e.g. religion) (again, and they also show a large difference in other metrics).

To some extent Watson, in his first claim, has a point that we seem to be unwilling to make. There is a clear conclusion to be drawn here :

Different races are different. In pretty much any metric you can come up with.

Furthermore, if you look at the effect of average differences in a certain metric to examples in individuals, you get an even more politically incorrect result, based on pure math. If you take 2 groups, who differ by x percentage points in "blueness". Then if you take a random individual from group 1, and a random one from group 2, what are the chances that the first individual is more blue ?

x = 1% => p =~ 76%

x = 2% => p =~ 92%

x = 3% => p =~ 98%

So this means that if blue humans are 1% taller than green humans, then if you meet a blue and a green human on the street, the chance is about 76% that the blue human will win (be taller) than the green.

(Only intelligence scores vary more than 1 standard deviation. The largest difference is between 2.5 and 3 standard deviations (and does not involve either a white ethnic or a black ethnic group))

<comment><USER6> Could the downvoters give a response? - I presume you are downvoting because you disagree with wasps - I'd like to see your argument. Thanks.

<comment><USER7> I didn't down vote, but the inherent bias in the test is a possible reason but even with that factored out, the relevance is a more reasonable objection. We're not talking the difference in between being able to grock quantum physics or not, we're talking a few questions on the exam. And IQ happens to be a pretty sweet bell curve, so if you're an average white guy, then you're still dumber than 49% of the black guys out there, and dumber than 54% of Chinese guys.

So we should give up on Africa because the average black guy didn't answer the 2 train question correctly? Should we also give up on Europe and North America because the white guys didn't answer that correctly either?

The use of this stat, were it even possible to be accurate, really only serves racists. No meaningful outcome could result from the number.

<comment><USER5> > And IQ happens to be a pretty sweet bell curve, so if you're an average > white guy, then you're still dumber than 49% of the black guys out there, > and dumber than 54% of Chinese guys.

Those numbers are not accurate given the data on the wikipedia page. The first number is about double the real value, the second needs about 6 percentage points added to it for it to be accurate.

<comment><USER7> I was making the numbers up, because we cannot exclude and accurately asses racial and other socioeconomic conditions. So the numbers on Wikipedia do not tell any more truth than me making them up. The point, is that whatever the numbers are, they're irrelevant as nothing useful can be done with the data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Poetic justice also works in positive ways. It's nice to read something uplifting once in a while, though finding a Russian oligarch in such a story feels strange.

<comment><USER9> My guess is a rich Russian won't shy away from issues regarding politically correctness the same way a rich american would.

<comment><USER10> According to BBC News, in the interview with The Sunday Times, Watson said he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours -- whereas all the testing says not really." He went on to say he hoped everyone was equal but that "people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true."

Sounds more like racism than political correctness.

<comment><USER11> >whereas all the testing says not really."

sounds like his statement is based on facts known to him (and being Nobel winning scientist he probably has good skills at understanding and analyzing facts)

>Sounds more like racism

Either you're trying to say what his statement wasn't based on his knowledge and analysis of facts or you're introducing a concept of "racism rooted in facts"

I wonder though whether the Watson will accept the medal back from Usmanov's hands.

<comment><USER12>
        > > whereas all the testing says not really.

        > sounds like his statement is based on facts known to him

Really? He follows it up by saying "people who have to deal with black employees" will "know" that it's true.

My understanding is that IQ correlates to socio-economic background, but once that's adjusted for, all race considerations fall away. If you've got a credible source that says something else, I'm sure we'd find it interesting.

<comment><USER13> > My understanding is that IQ correlates to socio-economic background, but > once that's adjusted for, all race considerations fall away

Unfortunately, that's not true, but it's a common myth that's repeated. Poor whites do nearly as well as rich blacks, on average. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_achievement_gap_in_the_U...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_achievement_gap_in_the_United_States#Theories_about_the_origin_of_the_racial_achievement_gap)

We're still searching for something that would correct for racial differences in testing, but socio-economic background does not correct for it. And even supposing it did, it doesn't directly refute the premise, because it conflates cause/effect, which is why sociologists are searching for other explanations (other than the obvious one, of course, because it goes against our societal values).

<comment><USER12>
        > Poor whites do nearly as well as rich blacks, on
        > average.

Help me out here, I couldn't find that in link you provided, or in fact any evidence at all that there might be a genetic component to racial differences in intelligence?

<comment><USER13> Someone linked it below.

Do you think Aborigines in Australia have the same IQ as the Japanese? Or Pygmies? Part of accepting diversity is accepting that diversity is very real. But we want it both ways.

<comment><USER2> Yes, I do. It's biologically implausible that race has a significant impact on intelligence. If you think that socio-cultural factors don't have a massive impact on IQ scores, then look at what has happened to the IQ scores of women in the last century, and not surprisingly, that this varies between countries [1].

[1] [http://m.psychologytoday.com/blog/beautiful- minds/201207/men...](http://m.psychologytoday.com/blog/beautiful- minds/201207/men-women-and-iq-setting-the-record-straight)

<comment><USER13> > Yes, I do. It's biologically implausible that race has a significant impact > on intelligence.

Surely you would agree we're smarter than Gorillas. Given that, how long as human intelligence been fixed? How long has it not been a selective force in evolution for humans? Does evolution not apply to the human brain?

<comment><USER2> What's your point? Your contention that race influences intelligence isn't proven, so how does invoking an evolutionary framework help?

Evolution is a great idea, but the evolutionary history of humans is of course almost entirely speculative. I'm not an evolutionary biologist, but I think there is enough trouble explaining why we walk up right or have smaller jaws than neanderthals let alone explaining how we evolved current levels of intelligence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Usmanov hailed Watson one of the greatest biologists in the history of mankind."

Does anyone have a link to a longer statement from Usmanov?

</comment><comment><USER15> So, sell it again for more charity?

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm very split on this topic. I read this on The Verge[1] and I know they're pretty left-leaning. But to my experience they rarely lie and they made many criticisms I find valid. On the other hand, marginalization is another big problem of our age. Let me elaborate.

First of all, him stealing research from Rosalind Franklin comment is a bit of a hyperbole. Sure, not asking for her permission before using data and not crediting her at all are major dick moves, but I'm pretty sure he was a brilliant scientist. The quotes from his book The Double Helix don't really help here, they are extremely misogynistic. But The Verge does not mention that in the epilogue of the same book, he said he was usually wrong about Franklin and he acknowledges the hardships she endured as a woman in science.[2] This is just the part about Franklin.

The rest of The Verge article mentions about him being a generally horrible person and does not even quote the parts about obese people and genetic screening, so bonus points for them. But one thing we need to consider is that he is _old_. Really, he is 86. Of course this shouldn't shield him from criticism, but he was born and lived in a different world than ours. Bad behavior should be called out and shunned, but there's a fine line between this and marginalization. We should all be responsible about it.

The last thing I want to add is how everyone thinks if you made one great achievement you win all the points. This reminds me a lot about what's going on with Linus Pauling.[3] He did awesome things, yes, but at some point he stopped being a pioneer in science and bullishly promoted benefits of vitamin C even though scientific community was mostly united against it. People want to see them as authority figures even after they age and lose their touch. This is sad, really. But continuing taking them seriously is usually more harm than silently ignoring them.

I'm sorry no one takes him seriously anymore. But I understand universities not considering working with him anymore. I understand press not caring about what he says anymore. They all have good reasons. But that's where my pity ends. Him deciding to sell his Nobel medal makes him look like a victim, but as far as I know he didn't do it because he was poor or anything. He wanted to buy a painting, which I'm perfectly fine with. And maybe he wanted a little attention? People get old and sad, which is depressing, but there's not much we can do about it.

Sorry for the long comment.

[1]: [http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/9/7363969/dna-pioneer- james-...](http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/9/7363969/dna-pioneer-james-watson- nobel-returned-richest-man-in-russia) [2]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Watson#Use_of_King.27s_Co...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Watson#Use_of_King.27s_College_results) [3]: [http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/07/the- vitami...](http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/07/the-vitamin-myth- why-we-think-we-need-supplements/277947/?single_page=true)

<comment><USER17> There does seem to be a movement to purge anyone with unpopular opinions from the public sphere, regardless of the context in which they developed their beliefs and how irrelevant their beliefs are to the work for which they earned fame. That it's now largely coming from the left wing, which suffered great marginalization during the Red Scare and McCarthyism, is ironic (and depressing as someone who used to identify as a liberal)

<comment><USER18> Aha. News to me, really.

That seems more like a popular right-wing conspiracy theory than anything that's actually happening.

<comment><USER19> I think the resignation of Brendan Eich actually happened, not a conspiracy.

<comment><USER18> And? I don't really see the connection. CEOs are public faces of their companies. As such, all their publicly expressed opinions are quite relevant, especially if they are threatening to their employees. End of story, really.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> A fascinating controversy in all respects. I find it difficult to argue with the conclusions in this article as an empiricist, but it does provoke some very troubling considerations about our future as a global species:

[http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/10/james-watson-tells- inconven...](http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/10/james-watson-tells-inconvenient- truth_296.php)

<comment><USER21> Prepare to have this comment flagkilled within the hour by the less empirically inclined. It happened to me when I posted this same article the last time a Watson thread appeared here.

<comment><USER20> Hence my fascination with the human mind and its inherent demons and nuanced machinations. The concept of IQ is fascinating, not least because it causes a fierce ideological firestorm almost instantaneously upon its mentioning. However, mentioning that athletic ability is genetically determined gets a heartfelt, "really, ya think??!"

Alas, we are but a bunch of hominids scrambling in the dark in fear of the world in which we find ourselves. If we get too close to an idea that can burn us, most of us scurry away back to the comfortable dark.

That is except for a few insane pioneers, who embrace the flames even at the cost of their own safety...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Should have given it to the family of Rosalind Franklin.

</comment><comment><USER23> The level of unconscious racism in this thread is amazing. Whenever the subject of race comes up and someone sites a statistic purporting to demonstrate "African" or "black" intellectual inferiority, I suggest he imagine a seismologist who stated, "Black earthquakes are inherently inferior to white earthquakes."

"I don't get it."

"Exactly. Why the hell would any reputable seismologist care about white or black earthquakes?"

<comment><USER21> Seriously. I like the example of bears, since it allows us to remain in the realm of biology. I mean, does any reputable biologist posit meaningful differences between polar bears & black bears? It's absurd. One bear is black and the other is white. What else does that possibly tell us about their behavior or other attributes?</comment></comment>


Passwordless authentication is here: new Yubico FIDO2 key - <AUTHOR> https://www.yubico.com/2018/04/yubico-and-microsoft-introduce-passwordless-login/?source=me <comment><USER2> Can someone help me understand how this is different from the existing YubiKey products, which I've used?

* Passwordless single factor with AD integration (couldn't this already be done by storing your password on the key?)

* 2factor auth with the token as one of the factors.

From the article:

\</comment><comment>-----

Single Factor: This only requires possession of the Security Key to log in, allowing for a passwordless tap-and-go experience.

Second-Factor: In a two-factor authentication scenario, such as the current Google and Facebook FIDO U2F implementations, the Security Key by Yubico is used as a strong second factor along with a username and password.

Multi-Factor: This allows the use of the Security Key by Yubico with an additional factor such as a PIN (instead of a password), to meet the high- assurance requirements of operations like financial transactions, or submitting a prescription.

<comment><USER3> "Passwordless" single factor done by storing your password on the key isn't passwordless. You have a password. U2F replaces the password with a "bearer" authentication token - it's two-factor auth without the password, instead of a password-manager based approach.

The actual announcement in this blog post is Azure AD and Windows 10 integration, not anything new by Yubico.

<comment><USER4> In the "passwordless" scenario... if someone stole your yubikey, could they access anything you had authenticated it for?

<comment><USER2> and/or could they press the button in a terminal and get your token printed out in plaintext, in a way that could be reused?

<comment><USER5> In single factor mode (passwordless), your token is your password. So if you lose it, someone could access your accounts if they know your username.

The USB tokens don't store a password, they store a master key pair, and then derives a site-specific key pair based on the URL you are connecting to. The site issues a challenge and the token signs it. This prevents replay attacks, and there is no way to export the secrets from the token. There is also no way to authenticate to a site by just having the key plugged in - you have to press the button on it. There is no way through software, even low level usb- hid commands, to trigger the button press.

Overall it's really well designed and more secure than passwords, even in single factor mode.

The major downsides are that it requires browser support, and doesn't work with iOS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is what I want for family members: the end to passwords and the end to using Facebook (or even Google for that matter) to authenticate logins. I continue to lament the end of Mozilla Persona.

</comment><comment><USER7> Legal wonks:

I know biometric identification isn't afforded the same protection by law on the basis that biometrics are public (e.g. fingerprints are left everywhere), but what about physical keys? FIDO2 is entirely analogous to a physical key, and it's not exactly public the way biomtrics are.

I'd still prefer a password for that added 5th amendment layer of protection, but I'm looking for what legal minds think about this right now.</comment>


Request for Comments: Privacy-Enhanced Identity Brokers - <AUTHOR> https://nccoe.nist.gov/projects/building_blocks/privacy-enhanced-identity-brokers <comment><AUTHOR> The deadline for comments is December 18, 2015.

Summary

As enterprises move more services online, many have given customers the option to use third-party credentials to access their services, rather then asking them to create and manage a new accounts. For example, you can use your social media account login to access your fitness tracker account. In effect, the social media company is vouching that the same person is logging in each time they access the tracker website.

Allowing third-party credentials are beneficial to businesses because it saves them time and resources in managing identities. For users, the benefit comes from not having another username, password, or a second-factor credential to manage and remember.

While these arrangements are becoming more common, organizations are finding it a time-consuming task to manage each relationship, or third-party integration. The dominant solution is a service called brokered identity management in which "identity brokers" manage the integration relationships between organizations and credential providers. Organizations can use an identity broker to manage multiple third-party credentialing options instead of having to manage each separately. However, for users, there is a concern that these connections create the opportunity for a breach, or exposure of personal information, as well as for the broker to track a user's online activity.

The "Privacy-Enhanced Identity Brokers" project will examine how privacy- enhancing technologies, leveraging market-dominant standards, can be integrated into identity broker solutions to meet the privacy objectives of users and organizations. This project is a joint effort between the NCCoE and the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace National Program Office (NSTIC NPO).

Ultimately, this project will result in a NIST Cybersecurity Practice Guide, a publicly available description of the practical steps needed to implement a cybersecurity reference design.</comment>