Silicon Valley Is Listening to Your Most Intimate Moments - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloombergquint.com/bq-blue-exclusive/silicon-valley-got-millions-to-let-siri-and-alexa-listen-in <comment><USER2>
       curl https://www.bloombergquint.com/amp/bq-blue-exclusive/silicon-valley-got-millions-to-let-siri-and-alexa-listen-in |sed -n 'N;/story-element-text">/p' > a.htm

       firefox a.htm

Replace "firefox" with any browser that can process basic HTML. No Javascript or CSS needed.

<comment><USER3> You can also just disable javascript for the website.

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately, the popular graphical browsers AFAIK do not allow the user to disable CSS. Other news sites that use AMP, such as WSJ, use CSS as well as Javascript to annoy the user. Disabling Javascript is not enough. It is possible to remove the offensive CSS from a page through the browser's developer console, developer tools, etc. but at that point we may as well use a browser extension.

Here is a filter for WSJ.

       sed -n '/<article/,/<\/article/{/./{/<h1/,/<\/h1>/p;};/<title>/,/<\/title>/p;/./{/<p>[^<]*/,/<\/p>/p;};}' a.htm

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I guess having done AI and security for 20 years means none of this fazes me.

Of course they record what you say, and of course a human is listening to it. How else would they train their models?

I also believe Amazon when they say that it isn't recording unless the blue light is on, and that only comes on when it thinks you said "Alexa".

I mute the device when I'm having a private conversation. If it activates otherwise, I'm pretty aware of that.

I guess it just doesn't really bother me. I have a pretty good idea of what it's recording.

<comment><USER5> Do you also have a good idea of what is recorded when you're at someone else place? Do you ask them to mute their devices?

<comment><USER6> Do you ask people to turn off their smartphones when you're at their house? Or at dinner? Or in public?

<comment><USER7> That is a practice adopted by some, yes.

<comment><USER6> Are you speculating here, or is this something you've observed?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Remember when you could buy bluetooth speakers that you could listen to without the speaker listening to you ?

Nowadays everyone of my friends has a alexa or google speakers which sound shitty compared to real speakers and they spy on our conversations. For what ? to turn the fucking lights on or play a tune on demand? those lazy dumbasses cant be bothered to get off their butt to turn the lights on ? If only I had privacy conscious friends.

<comment><USER9> So much of the current "home automation" products appear to me to be more parlour tricks than actual automation. Having to ask for something to happen is such a high technological cost for such a tiny change in convenience in the age of already being able to remote control a bunch of stuff with your phone.

There are actual proper home automation products out there, and some of them can interface via these privacy invading microphones masquerading as speakers, but the microphones themselves aren't "home automation" by any useful definition, they're just another alternative remote control.

I wonder if they use the term "smart speaker" because "microphone" just brings up thoughts of Banksy artwork?

<comment><USER10> The real rub is there's hardly any incentive to make things play nice with eachother for a while. You buy a garage door opener, it works for 30 years. You get one that can interface with your smart speaker, and both are unsupported in a few years.

You end up paying far more, way more often, for something vaguely more convenient than the old method. A clap light.

On the flip side, with the expansion of IoT comes creativity for people willing to tinker. We are pretty lucky to have resources like github, raspberry pi, self hosted services, just options from the mainstream consumer ad spam crap if you are willing to stick your head under the hood.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Serious question. Why is Alexa on an Echo different than Siri on a phone? Seems like there is clear outrage about "surveillance economy listening devices" (from some members of this community) when they're in your kitchen but not your pocket? Why is that different?

<comment><USER12> It's not that different. Especially for third parties, who don't control the device.

When in others' homes, I typically ask whether there are listening devices. And if so, I request that they be disconnected. And if the host declines, I may leave -- or at least say nothing consequential.

My wife's phone is on 24/7 and almost always within easy reach. So I never say anything consequential, unless it's been moved to the utility closet. Lots of fan noise there.

Edit: From [https://blog.cyberwar.nl/2016/02/some-elements-of- intelligen...](https://blog.cyberwar.nl/2016/02/some-elements-of-intelligence- work-73-rules-of-spycraft-allen-dulles-1960s/)

> 17\. The greatest material curse to the profession, despite all its > advantages, is undoubtedly the telephone. It is a constant source of > temptation to slackness. And even if you do not use it carelessly yourself, > the other fellow, very often will, so in any case, warn him. Always act on > the principle that every conversation is listened to, that a call may always > give the enemy a line. Naturally, always unplug during confidential > conversations. Even better is it to have no phone in your room, or else have > it in a box or cupboard.

<comment><USER13> See, although I can't really identify with your attitude, I can respect it because you seems to _really_ care about it and are thorough about it.

What I really cannot stand are the people that will complain about an Alexa being in the room, while at the same time posting three Instagram stories a day, having their phone assistant listening constantly, maybe played around with tik tok ... at that point, you really don't care about privacy, you're just cherry picking. I think a large part of it stems from the fact that a "always listening smart speaker" is something where even the most technologically inept can add two and two together and figure out how it could be "used against you" so to speak. That their phone could technically be doing the same thing, and that throwing massive amounts of personal data at Facebook willingly could lead to similar privacy concerns, doesn't even cross their minds.

<comment><USER12> Hey :)

Many experiences drive my attitude.

Back in the 60s-70s, I was a casual LSD dealer. So I learned the importance of discretion.

And in my last career, I analyzed various sorts of data discovery for plaintiffs' firms and attorneys general. Everything from email and spreadsheets to enterprise "mainframe" datasets. So I learned the methodology of discovery. Piecing together bits of evidence, following leads, identifying people to depose, and so on.

But yeah, I'm thorough about it.

It's also a hobby. And something of a demonstration, and the occasional consulting gig.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "I have nothing to hide wizo geeko, here take this middle finger" is the answer we get when we try to inform people about privacy. Even large scale privacy breaches of sensitive information have had no impact on people's privacy awareness.

<comment><USER15> Whenever they say that, ask them how much money they made last year. When they say "no" ask, "why, do you have anything to hide?".

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> For those old enough to have heard stories about party line telephone usage, this appears to be the modern version.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_line_(telephony)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_line_\(telephony\))

As someone mentioned, the money is in localizing many of the cloud services.. Or the modern version of shrink-wrap software, which removes the whole "you're the product" profit motive.

For the casual observer, the ongoing drama of merging your wallet, personal diary, communications, plus other activities and oozing metadata 24/7 is just too tempting for strangers. All of that money for nothing is high stakes nowadays. Caveat emptor...

</comment><comment><USER17> Interesting that in a marketplace where seemingly all home speakers on offer have voice assist, Sonos' newest small speaker, the Sonos One SL, is described as "Microphone-free".

<comment><USER18> I chuckle at a 'reassurance' like that one. Mechanically, a speaker is a poorly optimized microphone and a microphone is a poorly optimized speaker.[1]

I don't doubt there are people working for most major governments' intelligence departments who can use malicious software to facilitate listening through a computer connected speaker when surveilling a target (even if that speaker doesn't have an integrated microphone, in a very literal sense _it is a microphone_ ).

[1] [https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/154343/can-a- sp...](https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/154343/can-a-speaker-be- used-as-a-microphone)

 _Edit: precision of language_

<comment><USER19> This is paranoid nonsense. Sure a speaker can be used as a _very bad_ microphone. But only if you plug it into a microphone input! Are government agents going to break into your house and rewire your smart speaker? Of course not.

<comment><USER18> The words I wrote were _computer connected speaker._ So, yes, plugged-into-a- computer is what I was talking about. Thanks for the further reassurance that government agents won't break into my home, but that wasn't what I was suggesting. It's a non sequitur and a straw man.

Government agenties are more likely to, for example, expand on publicly available research that uses malicious software and audio I/O built into (or connected to) computers to remotely access air gapped computers.[1] And, if it's possible to write a network protocol that runs over low quality mics and speakers up to 65ft apart, it doesn't sound unreasonable to similarly hack up audio drivers such that a speaker can function as a microphone for the purposes of espionage, _without anyone breaking down your door or rewiring anything_. Spies don't have to convince a jury with the intelligence/evidence they gather, so low quality can often be good enough.

Of course, an attempt to aggregate the compromising of countless bespoke proprietary audio drivers and operating system versions doesn't scale at all... Which is why I used the wording _when surveilling a target_ and not _when surveilling speakers everywhere_. That latter claim would indeed be paranoid nonsense. Which is why I didn't make it.

As in, a government is surveilling a particular person or building, has compromised this a nearby computer remotely, but the computer has no microphone. If there's a connected speaker (or even an integrated speaker on the motherboard), deliver a payload that messes with the audio drivers to see what you can hear using the speaker.

[1] [http://www.jocm.us/uploadfile/2013/1125/20131125103803901.pd...](http://www.jocm.us/uploadfile/2013/1125/20131125103803901.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Not mine. For those stupid or simply indifferent enough to have one of these spying, revolting, idiotically vapid machines in their home and always on, possibly. Better to not even keep a cell phone nearby for really private moments and conversations.

</comment><comment><USER21> Can I get a pastebin link?

<comment><USER22> I believe this is the same article, non-paywalled: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-12-11/silicon-v...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-12-11/silicon- valley-got-millions-to-let-siri-and-alexa-listen-in)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I just sold my google home mini for $10...never trusting these devices inside my home anymore

<comment><USER24> What changed? As in, what made you think they were okay and then realize they were not?

<comment> blaser-waffle Like, did parent think "well, google has a great reputation at avoiding data mining, so let's go with them!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> If we are to get technical, Silicon Valley is not listening to your secret, workers in the rest of the country are.

<comment><USER26> And those workers don't know you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's unfortunate that this almarmist technophobic slant is considered worthy journalism.

<comment><USER12> If they did the voice recognition locally, there wouldn't be a privacy issue. And that would arguably be far cooler technology.

<comment><USER28> Exactly. Cloud-powered voice assistants are thoroughly uninteresting and a huge privacy concern. Local, 100% in-device processing should be the future and if that were the case this link would indeed be "alarmist"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> HA! Jokes on them! I don't have any! Wait...</comment>


Rural U.S. Carriers Resist Proposed Chinese Telecom Ban Aimed at Huawei - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/rural-u-s-carriers-resist-proposed-chinese-telecom-ban-11549886402 <comment><USER2> from the article submission:

>"What nobody in the administration or government or Congress seems to have looked at is how pervasive is all this gear in our networks."<

      I think this pervasion is precisely what they [sic] have looked at.</comment>


Wikipedia Mobile Officially Launches - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/beta_no_more_wikipedia_mobile_officially_launches.php

<comment><USER2> [off-topic, nitpick] To anyone who plans on writing a blog post with graphs: please differentiate data sets with actual colors as opposed to closely related shades of blue.

<comment><USER3> I was just saying the same thing in the "IE is dying" thread. I suspect "shades of blue" is the default setting in whatever graph program everyone is using these days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "running ruby" too.

<comment><AUTHOR> According to the technical info they are using the following libraries: Merb (main site), Sinatra (stats), Nokogiri, and Curb

Their single(!) server is running: Nginx, Phusion Passenger, MySQL (stats), and Ruby 1.9.1

<http://wikitech.wikimedia.org/view/Mobile>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I noticed this the other day on my iPhone. Love it. It works great!

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I noticed on my Android that the wikipedia website didn't have this massive box at the top with text that said "TRY READING THIS ON WIKIPEDIA MOBILE" anymore. There at least one decent wikipedia browsing app for android, but they don't do integration systemwide (I'm not sure if this is a limitation of the android "intent" framework, being able to have an application handle content for an entire website or not) so clicking on a wikipedia link always brought it up in the web browser and not in the wikipedia app.

This is a much needed change, and will only serve to help me waste (?) more time browsing wikipedia finding interesting stuff.</comment></comment>


You cheap, freeloading bastards (and how not to be one). - <AUTHOR> http://deanproxy.com/blog/posts/2012/03/10-you-cheap--freeloading-bastards--and-how-not-to-be-one--.html

<comment><USER2> 1) Beta test.

For example, the Firefox and Chrome nightlies:

<http://nightly.mozilla.org/>

<http://tools.google.com/dlpage/chromesxs>

A couple million hackers can help "upgrade" the Internet every day.

2) Ask/answer questions. You're making it a lot easier for the next guy.

How can I do X in Linux?

<http://superuser.com/>

<http://askubuntu.com/>

How can I do Y in Gimp?

How can I do Z in Inkscape?

<http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> this is a well-meaning but badly misguided stance to take. open source is a gift economy, and as one of the "producers" i am more than happy for people to accept the gifts i'm freely putting out there. the reward is getting to feel that i have made their lives better (and that too at no incremental cost to myself). in my role as a consumer, i likewise know that there are people out there happy that they have made _my_ life better. there is absolutely no need to make people feel bad about taking from open source if they don't have the time or inclination to give anything back - that just cheapens the idea of a gift.

now would i _like_ people to contribute by way of code, money or bug reports? definitely. but they should do so because that is a gift _they_ wish to give to the ecosystem-at-large, not out of some sense of reciprocal obligations.

</comment><comment><USER4> There's really no implied reciprocity to open source, though. Humans like giving gifts. It makes the work more enjoyable.

<comment><USER5> Completely agree.

@Droob : Yes and no, for sure, if you look at the BSD license or the MIT or whatever, there is not reciprocity implied, but if you look at the GPL, there is. If you look at that piece (<http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not- lgpl.en.html>) for example, it's pretty obvious there is a certain "brotherhood" mind implied.

But I think that even if there were no reciprocity implied, giving is more or less morally mandatory (for the bandwidth, hosting cost, etc) ...</comment></comment>


Linux Crypto - <AUTHOR> https://sanctum.geek.nz/arabesque/series/linux-crypto/ <comment><USER2> was expecting explanations on the kernel crypto subsystem.

<comment><USER3> anyone who sees this got any links? I think it'll be a great way to spend a friday night

<comment><AUTHOR> Writing drivers for the Linux Crypto subsystem: [http://events.linuxfoundation.org/sites/events/files/slides/...](http://events.linuxfoundation.org/sites/events/files/slides/lcj-2014-crypto- kernel.pdf)

State of the Linux Kernel Security Subsystem: [https://events.linuxfoundation.org/images/stories/pdf/lcjp20...](https://events.linuxfoundation.org/images/stories/pdf/lcjp2012_morris.pdf)

dm-crypt: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dm- crypt](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dm-crypt)

Linux Unified Key Setup: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Unified_Key_Setup](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Unified_Key_Setup)</comment></comment></comment>


3-year-olds consuming alternative milks were 1.5 cm shorter on average - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/health/milk-children-height-1.4149832 <comment><USER2> Some non-dairy milks are labeled "not a substitute for infant formula". This is important because infants fed them in place of formula or breast milk have suffered severe malnutrition and even died. Babies' and small children's nutritional requirements are different from adults'.

This study is looking at "children aged two to six" (ages at which formula or breast milk would no longer be necessary to sustain life), and the article highlights that non-dairy milks' nutritional content is different from dairy milk, which may have developmental consequences. One possibility is that non- dairy milk meant to consumption by small children should be fortified more (or differently), or that vegan diets for children commonly require more supplementation. I think there's evidence that fortification of dairy milk has had great health benefits, while apparently for particular purposes non-dairy milks are starting out at a disadvantage even if they have some health benefits in other ways.

In the course of my first decade of veganism, I developed significant D and B₁₂ deficiencies which I've recently successfully cured with dietary supplements. I don't think that vegan advocates will do ourselves or our cause any favors by pretending that these deficiencies are rare or difficult to acquire; in fact, they're relatively common and often associated with a vegan diet. (I'm thinking of all the effort that John Robbins spent pointing out that adults can easily get adequate proteins and amino acids from vegetable sources, because this is something people reflexively call into doubt. From what I've heard since, I think he was right on that point, but the same can't be said for B₁₂!) The good news is that these deficiencies also easy to detect and, for many people, they're also easy to cure.

When we're talking about childhood nutrition, the stakes are higher, and it's essential to be better informed and more attentive. A few years of deficiency in these vitamins in my 30s has probably not hurt me for the long run, but it might be a different story if the same thing had happened when I was three or four.

<comment><USER3> > while apparently for particular purposes non-dairy milks are starting out at > a disadvantage even if they have some health benefits in other ways

It's almost like alternative milks have around 30 calories per cup and real milk has 160 calories. That's a _huge_ difference because you're likely to give your child "a glass of milk", not ask them to drink 5 glasses because the alt milk has basically no nutritional value.

Source: my gf swears by alt milks so I have a fridge full of them. I borrow them sometimes when I run out of real milk.

PS: Yes I'm comparing to "full" fat 3.5% milk. Not that watered down stuff that seems to be super popular for some reason. And while I'd love to use real full fat milk, 3.5% is the most I have easy access to in the absence of owning a cow.

<comment><USER2> It varies quite a bit: Silk Unsweetened Almondmilk is 30 kcal/cup, while their Unsweetened Soymilk is 80 kcal/cup (still less than dairy milk, but by a factor of 2 instead of over 5). As maxerickson pointed out, sweetened ones also have more calories, but that's not necessarily a great nutritional improvement (e.g., Silk Chocolate Soymilk is 120 kcal/cup, with a whole bunch of refined sugar in there).

I think you can choose a nutrition profile quite a bit closer to dairy milk in many respects if you specifically want to, but it's going to depend on how your particular product was processed, sweetened, and fortified.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's sort of criminal that they're even allowed to label bean juice as milk.

Im not 100% convinced of the necessity of drinking milk or that height is particularly a good proxy for health as a metric.

But vegans should be under no illusions that almond milk or soy milk is any kind of milk substitute. And if they're giving it to infants instead of _breastfeeding_ or formula, it's borderline neglect.

I think that there a valid uses for them - soy milk is good for lower calorie lattes for example, and almond milk is delicious in oatmeal. But as a source of nutrition for growing children, they're pretty poor.

<comment><USER5> > But vegans should be under no illusions that almond milk or soy milk is any > kind of milk substitute.

When it comes to feeding infants, sure, but my usage of soy milk as an adult is definitely as a substitute for milk. I use it in virtually all the places cow's milk is typically used: in my cereal, coffee, mixed with chocolate syrup, in most recipes that call for milk.... No need to get so up in arms about call things like soy milk a "milk" drink/substitute. In the vast majority of cases, it functions exactly the same.

<comment><USER6> If you use tofu in place of beef it is not correct to call it "soy beef". Milk is a specific thing, no kind of milk comes from beans.

<comment><USER7> "Milk" has been a generic term ever since coconut milk has existed.

Heck, Wiktionary even cites 14th and 15th century uses of the term "almond milk". [1]

Not to mention "milk of magnesia", which isn't even a foodstuff.

Just because you personally have not heard the non-dairy sense used until recently does not mean it is incorrect or should be "illegal" as the GP suggests.

[1] [https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/milk](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/milk)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Lumping all of soy, rice, almond, goat milk as "non-cow" is pretty unfair to goat milk.

Does their study indicate all milks in "other" independently showed similar difference in height of 1.5cm? Or are they saying the average for all other was -1.5cm in which case maybe kids on almond milk were -2cm and breast milk +1cm? And goat's milk some third number? My strong hunch is it is the latter in which case the 1.5cm is completely meaningless.

Here is another clue, the one example they give of nutritional differences cites soy milk's low protein while failing to mention that goat's milk has _more_ protein than cow's milk.

Didn't read the original research but either the research is bad and possibly biased or this is very misleading reporting.

[edit] removed mention of breast milk since article didn't say that

<comment><USER9> I suspect that goat milk would be a reasonable alternative but the sample size was too small to draw any conclusions.

<comment><USER8> Then the study should have omitted any reference to Goat milk at all. Why did they just include Diet Coke on the list and then afterward say there wasn't enough data to exclude it? Still seems like bs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The girl pictured (blue eyed, fair hair) is especially suited to cow's milk - it's in her genes. That's how people were able to live north of certain latitudes; by cattle meat and milk.

Perplexing.

[edit: link to HN discussion on the lactose tolerant mutation] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4710596](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4710596)

</comment><comment><USER11> The average height has been increasing steadily all over the world for the last century or so, perhaps since industrialization. Though malnourishment played a part in not letting people reach their genetic potential in height, there is evidence linking taller heights with disease such as cancer and shorter lifespans.

I do not think it has been conclusively proven that taller statures are desirable. I would think adequate nutrient intake from a variety of food sources that leads to a sufficient and healthy height would be better than attempting to maximize for greater height at the expense of health in later years.

<comment><USER12> > I do not think it has been conclusively proven that taller statures are > desirable

Not conclusively proven but there have been studies done that suggest taller people earn more money [0].

Taller people are also generally considered more attractive.

So there are at least 2 factors where taller people have an advantage in life.

0: [http://www.businessinsider.com/tall-people-are-richer-and- su...](http://www.businessinsider.com/tall-people-are-richer-and- successful-2015-9)

<comment><USER11> Yeah I've seen those but I was referring more to the potential health downsides not earnings possibilities: [http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/07/height_and_longevity_the_research_is_clear_being_tall_is_hazardous_to_your.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> [https://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2007nl/mar/dairy.htm](https://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2007nl/mar/dairy.htm)

>IGF-1 promotes undesirable growth too—like cancer growth and accelerated aging. IGF-1 is one of the most powerful promoters of cancer growth ever discovered for cancers of the breast, prostate, lung, and colon.6 Overstimulation of growth by IGF-1 leads to premature aging too—and reducing IGF-1 levels is "anti-aging."7

</comment><comment><USER14> Your regular reminder that it's almost never worth it to pay attention to one single study, because of publication bias, lack of multiple hypothesis correction, and the many other ways for a study -- even one performed to best practices -- to be incorrect.

Wait for the meta-study, especially if the result is at all topical or exciting.

</comment><comment><USER15> I've read somewhere that cow milk accelerates growth in the first few years but the other children will eventually catch up. We would need a longer study to validated this.

</comment><comment><USER16> There is this article[0] from 21 hours ago that mentions that children should eat an egg a day to grow taller. Childrens height has surely been a popular topic the last 24 hours.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-40158358](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-40158358)

</comment><comment><USER17> Are there similar studies of kids' heights comparing vegetarian/vegan and meat diets?

</comment><comment><USER18> I would change the title of the article: "Human kids drinking Milk of a Cow are 1.5 cm taller than normal ones"

Who knows what kind of hormones the Diary Industry puts on the Cow-Milk you are drinking.

Cow=> Not your mother, not your Milk!

<comment><USER19> The title is a bit misleading. Those 3-year-olds are 1.5cm shorter than average growth percentile. It doesn't mention the effect on adolescent height on the same diet, since most adult growth spurt happens on teenager age.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is shorter always bad? With all the growth hormones given to cows it'd make sense some would go through to the milk and likely affect kids, wouldn't really be a good thing...

<comment><USER21> Yeah. All else equal, I'd rather have a taller child. If I could have invested $1M in the S&P 500 at birth or be seven feet tall, I'd take the height.

<comment><USER12> 7 feet is in the range where you'll encounter daily inconveniences for being tall - from having difficulty finding clothes and shoes that fit, to always having to duck your head, to having feet always sticking off the end of the bed, to having to squash in to bus, plane and car seats - or you'll have to pay a premium to avoid such things.

I'm 6'3 and still get that to some degree. I like being this tall, but I think 6'1 or 6'2 are probably around the ideal height to reap the benefits of being tall, without being too affected by the drawbacks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Take it anecdotically or not. My two daughters almost never consumed milk because of allergies and have an average height and will be taller than their past generations women.

<comment><USER23> I believe the only possible way to take that is anecdotally.

<comment><USER22> I don't think so. Have you read [https://www.gwern.net](https://www.gwern.net) ? Also scientific research is validated much later with different studies, including meta-analysis studies.</comment></comment></comment>


HabitLab: Build better habits online by curbing time wasted from Stanford - <AUTHOR> https://habitlab.stanford.edu/ <comment><AUTHOR> Github repo - [https://github.com/habitlab/habitlab](https://github.com/habitlab/habitlab)

Sub Reddit - [https://www.reddit.com/r/habitlab/](https://www.reddit.com/r/habitlab/)</comment>


Show HN: Spreadsheets using Python - Have you seen this? - <AUTHOR> http://pyspread.sourceforge.net/ <comment><USER2> There is also Resolver One. - <http://www.resolversystems.com/products/resolver-one/>

I have always thought it looked awesome, but is Windows only so I haven't been able to try it.

<comment><USER3> I tried Resolver One two years ago and it took 2 minutes to launch. I tried it again right now; first launch took 70 seconds and a subsequent launch took 55 seconds. Also, the interface is quite a bit less responsive than Excel. This might help explain its relative obscurity.

<comment><USER4> Hey ivank. I work at Resolver, and just wanted to say, that's a fair comment. Getting the startup time of Resolver One down has been difficult for us. Our new web-app will fix that for some of our users, and we hope to provide a clear migration from Resolver One to projectdirigible.com for those of our users for whom it makes sense.

Best regards,

Jonathan

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There are a bunch of ways you can use Python in excel for windows (I could never get it to work on the mac version, but I couldn't even get Solver to work on the mac version) One goes through the com the other is a plugin of some kind.

What is truly cool about this one though is that you can leave _any python object_ into a cell. Very cool. Its like programming python in a visual functional language. I suspect that this will be abused. "Yo, look at this slick web app that is run through a spreadsheet".

Edit:

I almost forgot my favorite way to write any code in any language for Excel. Remote User Defined Functions. <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/ff475859.aspx> They are bloody awesome and totally asynchronous in Excel 2010.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't use Excel though - Mac Numbers, OO:Spreadsheets, or gDocs. Sounds sweet though.

I think a "slick web app through a spreadsheet" is a beautiful thing for noobs like me. If "business guys" were able to mock up sites like they make Excel sheets, I think the world of programming would be better off. This is the modern version of full literacy!

Haha - why is Mac Numbers so buggy and lame?!? KeyNote is awesome, but I guess none of the UXers at Apple use spreadsheets... They don't even have freaking trendlines on the charts - for shame.

<comment><USER6> I swear I have seen the web-spreadsheet-as-website idea on here before. It was not editgrid.com, which amusingly replicates Excel all the way down to the Windows 95 scroll bars. It was actually focused on making the spreadsheets presentable as public pages with live datasources. The site for the tool was made with the tool. Does anybody know what I'm referring to?

<comment><USER5> Rings a bell, I think I have it bookmarked at home, I'll see if I can find it.

<comment><USER7> Was it <http://hypernumbers.com> ?

<comment><USER8> It was indeed - I always available for a chat if anyone wants :) email@example.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm a not-very-technical (I can do some coding) co-founder, but I've always been pissed off that Excel doesn't use a normal programming language because I think I'd pickup that language so quickly!

Anyone else interested in something like this? I just stumbled across it and wanted to get people's thoughts.

<comment><USER9> Well, Excel does have VBA. Whether that's a "normal" programming language depends on your definition of "normal." You can do some very useful stuff in it, but you'll feel like you're fighting the language every step of the way.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, I've coded for Word since Word 6.0 in the mid-90's, and it has always been my feeling that Microsoft doesn't want to make things programmable so much as they want you to _think_ things are programmable. It's a feeling that's hard to verbalize exactly.

<comment><USER11> I don't disagree with you at all, but that's what makes it even more strange that VB has become so much more popular than I expected for enterprise usage. Did Microsoft's marketing muscle pave the way, or were other tools really just too complex for what these people (business analysts, business logic developers, etc) needed?

<comment><USER12> Let's say you are a cubicle-dwellling enterprise schulb. You have a repetitive task to perform. Do you:

1) Spend 3 weeks requesting permission to install your favorite programming tools

2) Look around your Start Menu, suck it up and code it in Excel.

(That is ignoring VB's tight integration, first mover advantage, and the fact that an entire generation of kids grew up coding MS-BASIC.)

<comment><USER13> This takes me back to my last (long term) job. I got tapped to fix a departed worker's spaghetti code, and in the process, got VERY familiar with Excel VBA, to the point that I started goofing around with my own ideas. I must have dozens of "empty" spreadsheets with nothing but code in them. What's fun is, you can drag in just about any COM library on the system to play around with.

For a spreadsheet, Excel's a not-too-bad IDE!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I used COM and the Python Win32 API to automate Excel, creating reports from data in an MSDE DB. We did this quite extensively at my first job.

</comment><comment><USER15> For serious data analysis and CSV manipulation work in Python another library to check out is Tabular:

<http://www.parsemydata.com/tabular/>

It's built on top of Numpy so it's very fast and plays well with the rest of the Numpy/Scipy ecosystem. I've been using it daily for the last couple of weeks on relatively large data sets (>300MB) and have been very pleased with how elegantly and efficiently it handles things like pivot, join and aggregation.

</comment><comment><USER16> Writing spreadsheets and other tabular data formats for Python is very simple with my Tablib library (<http://tablib.org>).

<comment><AUTHOR> This is pretty sweet. I see it has CSV and Excel export... I'll definitely have to check this out. Thanks for posting / building this!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> How does it deal with dependencies between cells? How does it figure out what order to update them in?

<comment><USER18> The standard technique is to keep a directed graph with an edge from a cell to each cell that depends on it, then propagate changes recursively. This works well when the total number of cells isn't large.

<comment><USER17> Right, but that only works if when looking at a formula you can figure out which other cell it refers to. I guess I asked what I asked because I hoped having Python would let you use computed references --something like cell(x,y) where x and y are expressions computing the row and column, or even eval(str) where the str is a formula that refers to some cells.

<comment><USER18> Somehow I didn't see your reply till now.

It turns out this problem of computed cell references is a nontrivial one. (Excel can do it, but slowly and I suspect not with full generality.) The trouble is that you need the reference graph to compute the spreadsheet, but now computing the spreadsheet can modify the reference graph, so you have to maintain the graph dynamically as you calculate.

I'd be interested in discussing this further if you are, but email would be better than here. (My address is in my profile.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If this could do a basic scatter plot and/or Line graph. I would never need another spreadsheet.

<comment><USER20> Looks like the recommended way (according to the tutorial) is to use RPy. I imagine there is some support for pyplot, too, given the Numpy/Scipy integration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Spreadsheets with python . . _cackles evilly_ . can you feel the POWER!

In all serious I play with data in CSV format with python all the time so this could be extremely useful especially when I want to automate something spreadsheet related for a client/friend/coworker.

<comment><USER22> See my other comment (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1885543>) - I use Excel+Python all the time, and yes, it's freakin' awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> There is also PyXLL, which allows you to call python from Excel. <http://www.pyxll.com>

</comment><comment><USER24> I wrote one using a LISP dialect a few years back. I still like the idea. :)

</comment><comment><USER25> this is amazing, what do they use for user interface framework, is it wxpython?

</comment><comment><USER26> Writing spreadsheets and other tabular data formats for Python is very simple with my Tablib library (<http://tablib.org>).

</comment><comment><USER27> see also Scheme in a Grid <http://siag.nu/siag/>

</comment><comment><USER28> nice</comment>


Ask HN: Recommend ways to bypass social media censorship in Uganda? - <AUTHOR> The Ugandan social media tax just kicked in today.
I have had a VPN subcription (Private Internet Acess).
But it doesn't seem to work. I suspect it was blocked.
What VPN service do you hackers recommend?
For more info on the social media tax;
https://bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2018-06-26/porn-detectors-facebook-tax-uganda-tightens-grip-on-internet <comment> slipstream- There's always Tor (doesn't Facebook in particular run an onion service?)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah but tor is Soo.... Slow</comment></comment>