The Science of the Missing Gravitational Waves - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/38/noise/the-hidden-science-of-the-missing-gravitational-waves <comment><USER2> There's a great deal that's not understood about supermassive black holes (SMBHs). This article deals with one of these open questions (Why is the GW background from SMBH mergers less than predicted?), but there are a number of other related problems. Here are a few off the top of my head:

* How do SMBHs form? Is it from the merger of a bunch of stellar-mass black holes or do is it from the collapse of a huge gas cloud 1000s of times the mass of the Sun (or more) when the galaxy is first forming?

* Why are the masses of SMBHs so tightly correlated to the masses of their host galaxies? This is known as the M-sigma relation and there's been a lot of research on this topic, in particular. The existence of this correlation implies that SMBHs are somehow involved in some sort of feedback mechanism with the rest of the galaxy, but this is very poorly understood. (There have been lots of different feedback mechanisms invoked, but it's been hard to discriminate between them to see what's really going on.)

* How do SMBHs merge? We know that SMBHs are at the center of nearly all galaxies (if not all of them), and we know that galaxies merge. We don't usually see multiple SMBHs in a galaxy, so somehow the SMBHs must merge as well. But models of these mergers stall out at around a few light-years. At this distance, stars are too far away to influence the orbit, but gravitational waves are too weak to do anything. Somehow real SMBH binaries in the universe manage to overcome this problem, but how? This is known as the last parsec problem.

* We see SMBHs driving huge, extremely powerful jets. What causes the formation of these jets? Why are they so collimated? The Blandford-Znajek process is usually invoked, but (at least in my opinion) while it's plausible, there's a fair amount of hand-waving and not as much observational evidence as one would like.

* Not a question dealing with SMBHs specifically, but do black holes obey the No Hair Theorem? (Or, put another way, is GR correct in the strong gravity regime?) This is being tested with the Event Horizon telescope, which is attempting to observe the event horizon of the SMBH at the center of the Milky Way.

They're fascinating objects, and due to their enormous size and energetics they are relevant to a huge number of problems in astrophysics and fundamental physics.

<comment><USER3> My theory:

Black holes don't exist (time dilation prevents them from forming in a finite time).

Dark matter is gravitational potential energy. (i.e. the potential energy of every star in a solar system falling into every other star, plus the energy of every galaxy falling into every other galaxy.)

Cosmological redshift is actually gravitational redshift. (So dark energy is not necessary as a concept.) There is a lot more gravity out there in my theory. Don't forget that the relative motion of galaxies is inferred from redshift - if the cause of the redshift is not velocity then galaxies are not moving in the way we currently think they are.

I wish I had the math to flesh these ideas out to see if they hold water.

<comment><USER4> Ok, let me try to address these:

> Black holes don't exist (time dilation prevents them from forming in a > finite time)

It's true that distant observers cannot observe anything past the event horizon. But if you doubt that a black hole exists, you can always dive into it; the black hole will then certainly exist for you, and in a finite time.

> Dark matter is gravitational potential energy

Consider the Bullet Cluster, which is two colliding galactic clusters. The gravitational center of mass is offset from the visible center of mass. This offset cannot be explained as potential energy of visible matter. There must be something else, invisible and massive, i.e. dark matter.

> Cosmological redshift is actually gravitational redshift

We see cosmological redshift in all directions. If this redshift were gravitational, it would imply that our galaxy is at the top of a gravitational potential hill. This means that our place in the universe is very privileged, which is unlikely.

<comment><USER5> >> Black holes don't exist (time dilation prevents them from forming in a finite time)

> It's true that distant observers cannot observe anything past the event > horizon. But if you doubt that a black hole exists, you can always dive into > it; the black hole will then certainly exist for you, and in a finite time.

But because of time dilation, in the meantime, the entire rest of the universe comes to an end. At the very point at which you pass the event horizon, time dilation is infinite, and therefore the universe outside passes by at infinite speed. Therefore, from our outside observation, no matter actually passes through the event horizon. Therefore, a black hole does not consist of a singularity protected by an event horizon, but rather a sphere of density such that time dilation is almost equivalent to infinity throughout. The sphere is prevented from becoming more dense by time dilation itself.

Now, I know that the above speculation is completely crackpot (but hopefully reasonably informed crackpot), but I would absolutely love to have a proper black hole expert tell me exactly why it is wrong.

<comment><USER6> Relativity is about the laws of physics being the same for everyone regardless of reference frame.

You are correct that you can never observe the singularity. It will never form within a finite time in any reference frame you can take. Anything falling in will appear stuck as a final ghost/imprint on the surface as time dilation approaches zero.

The problem with your argument is you are not taking into account the reference frame inside the black hole. It's still a valid reference frame in relativity even if you can never observe it, so it must be considered. Also, the same theory that is giving you time dilation to make your argument is what predicts black holes, so it's a bit of a circular reasoning.

<comment><USER3> > You are correct that you can never observe the singularity. It will never > form within a finite time in any reference frame you can take.

So that means there are no black holes in the universe as actual objects - none have formed yet, and none will (in our time). So why does LIGO claim two black holes merged, if black holes can't exist?

> The problem with your argument is you are not taking into account the > reference frame inside the black hole. It's still a valid reference frame in > relativity even if you can never observe it, so it must be considered.

Considered from a mathematical point of view, definitely. Considered as an observable object? No.

So to consider it: All the other matter that is falling in also time dilated (relative to you) to infinity. So basically you will fall in alone, with nothing accompanying you, and no black hole will form.

<comment><USER7> Disclaimer: Not a physicist, and very minimal physics knowledge. Someone please correct me if my understanding is wrong.

>So that means there are no black holes in the universe as actual objects - none have formed yet, and none will (in our time). So why does LIGO claim two black holes merged, if black holes can't exist?

A black hole is more than just its singularity. We can't ever actually observe a singularity, or even its event horizon, but we can observe the gravitational collateral damage of the entire black hole as a system.

[http://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/topics_blackholes_event....](http://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/topics_blackholes_event.html)

We've observed accretion disks of size and speed that could only be feasibly explained if they were spinning around a black hole.

Your understanding regarding time dilation seems correct from the perspective of observing objects actually entering the black hole, but when we deal with things that have not _quite_ entered it, we can infer its existence.

>So to consider it: All the other matter that is falling in also time dilated (relative to you) to infinity. So basically you will fall in alone, with nothing accompanying you, and no black hole will form.

Even as the universe outside you disappears due to the time dilation, why does this mean it can't exist in reality?

Just because an observer can't really experience the event occurring (regardless of whether they're past the event horizon or not) doesn't mean it can't happen. Relativity means you _can_ have crazy events like infinite dilation inside of the black hole, while reference frames outside of it simultaneously have a very different perception of time.

You seem to be arguing from a philosophical perspective that because the singularity effectively singularizes time itself, it can't exist in the universe because the universe doesn't exist for it. But, again, a black hole can be viewed in a layered fashion. It is not just a singularity. The core may be this impossible-ish sort of object, but the levels of "crust" as an entire system create different effects in different frames.

If this were not the case, then the first black hole to ever form would effectively have eliminated the entire universe instantaneously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can someone explain why it takes so long to form an image? The article reads like they still don't have enough data to see anything. From my understand of physical measurement, you start with a `blurry` image (or a graph with a wide peak), and it slowly comes into focus with more data. If the image is too faint because of the signal to instrument precision (noise) ratio is too low, you will never get an image, no matter how much data you have. I was bad at analytical chemistry, so my understanding may be completely wrong.

<comment><USER9> > _" If the image is too faint because of the signal to instrument precision > (noise) ratio is too low, you will never get an image..."_

I'm curious why this makes sense to you? Does it make sense that you could use an ordinary film camera and take a picture with an arbitrarily short exposure, say a picosecond?

With very, very low SNR it can take a long time to build up data. The reason why this is possible is because the real data, the signal, is correlated with itself, it builds up consistently with each addition of measurements. Noise, however, is uncorrelated, it's random, so it tends to evenly cancel (or even) itself out with additional measurements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This reminded me that one of the things I felt would be interesting for Apple to do, would be to drape a conductive net over the center of their new campus with supports to hold a receiver above it at the focal point, turning their headquarters building into a 1,000' diameter radio telescope.

<comment><USER11> Is not being installed inside a city a big problem for interferences?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I started thinking the electric universe guys were a bunch of crackpots, but I'm wondering if they're actually right.

</comment><comment><USER13> Come on, remember falsifiability, if the theory wins in any likely scenario it's not science but ideology

</comment><comment><USER14> missing = we are "unable" to detect</comment>


List of multi-paradigm programming languages - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_multi-paradigm_programming_languages#Language_overview

<comment><USER2> I used to be a fan of multiparadigmatic languages, because hey, I can do anything just the way I want, but then I heard Carmack during Quakecon say:

"Languages talk about multi-paradigm as if it's a good thing, but multi- paradigm means you can always do the bad thing if you feel you really need to".

Now I'm not sure if it's a good or a bad thing.

For example in Erlang the garbage collector can assume that only things with lower addresses point to things with higher adresses. Erlang gets it because it says absolute _no_ to mutation in the sequential functional part of the language. Haskell and Ocaml can't do that, they have escape hatches.

<comment><USER3> > For example in Erlang the garbage collector can assume that only things with > lower addresses point to things with higher adresses. Erlang gets it because > it says absolute no to mutation in the sequential functional part of the > language. Haskell and Ocaml can't do that, they have escape hatches.

Why does that matter? Does high-performance gabrage collecting depend on the ordering of objects in memory?

<comment><USER2> It lets you traverse a lot less of memory. It's great for concurrent garbage collection.</comment></comment></comment>


Trump's Floating Cities: Solving Immigration with the Help of Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@noncanonic/trumps-floating-cities-solving-immigration-with-the-help-of-silicon-valley-part-1-8cb082ea9cde#.pav04emya <comment><USER2> From the article:

For now, I'll leave you with one parting observation: Undocumented workers in this country tend to work very low-wages in service, agriculture, and construction while living in poorer-than-average conditions and receiving limited representation and constitutional rights. Who better to help build and support these floating techie islands? Silicon Valley wins, gaining high-tech workers for its countless firms. The high-tech workers win, no longer constrained by immigration quotas. The illegals win, enjoying "political" representation and living wages. And the average American wins, enjoying the innovations resulting from the work of tens of thousands of talented foreign workers. In fact, it's hard to find an agenda that wouldn't support seasteading!</comment>


AJIT, a 'Made in India' Microprocessor - <AUTHOR> https://researchmatters.in/news/welcome-ajit-%E2%80%98made-india%E2%80%99-microprocessor <comment><USER2> Most people miss the real value of such projects. They serve two important purposes: First: they are intended to build a local pool of expertise and capability around semiconductor design and fabrication within the country. Second: although the chip itself is laughably underpowered compared to a modern ARM or Intel processor, it has one characteristic that makes it very interesting to the Indian government: they know _exactly_ what is in the chip. No Intel Management Engine crap. No hardware backdoors. This could be a serious point in favour of the processor, if it is used in SCADA applications in sensitive industrial manufacturing processes.

<comment><USER3> How is the backdoor situation when you license ARM and implement it yourself on an FPGA? I'm assuming there are big sections that are still black boxes you just paste in, but I would think that would still help contain the potential exploitation vectors a lot— like, if you were willing to design the ethernet peripheral/stack yourself, you immediately eliminate a lot of unknowns.

<comment><USER4> Long ago i remember briefly reading some research articles about FPGA vulnerabilities. Don't know if it's practical, but people designing critical system are justifiably paranoid.

<comment><USER5> The ultimate security perspective is to assume that you're defending against an unlimited resource nation-state that's specifically targetting you.

Obviously, there is no such thing as "complete security" but you can try to secure what you can, that's why people concern themselves with what may seem like unlikely revenues of attack.

I mean depending on how critical your system is, it can really change how you operate. Get a virus on your computer? Some people use anti-virus, and when that says it "removed the virus" they're happy. Other people would only be happy with a complete OS reinstall from a fresh ISO made on a different machine as acceptable. Still other's would require new hardware, it's possible (and has been seen in the wild) to reflash the ROM of the motherboard, or potentially many other low-level chips through software, and to persist the virus through that. Likely no, just depends.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's based on spark V8 which means it's only 32 bit. The blokes who built it say that it can used in servers. Why would some want to use a 100Mhz 32-bit chip on servers !

They say that the price would be around 100rs. At slightly less than that you can get the Allwinner A13 CPU, which is 1Ghz Cortex A8 ARM with a built in Mali GPU. Why anyone would want to use this in a commercial setting is beyond me. But it's a brilliant achievement on India's part, to make their first indigeniously developed processor.

<comment><USER7> The article makes it quite clear that the project is aimed at jump-starting India's industry. To achieve their goal, their first step was a relatively low-complexity project conducted by an inexperienced team.

Although their PR effort is outlandish, I'm pretty sure they are aware of the limits of this sort of project.

<comment><USER8> The driver seems to be this:

 _" We are planning to use AJIT in the receivers being developed for NAVIC or IRNNS (The Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System), an indigenous navigation system for the Indian subcontinent," said one of the processor's designers in a Reddit AMA (ask me anything)._

Article: [https://www.indiatimes.com/technology/news/meet-ajit-1st- ent...](https://www.indiatimes.com/technology/news/meet-ajit-1st-entirely- made-in-india-chip-by-iit-bombay-and-it-will-power-our-satellites-365874.html)

Reddit AMA: [https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/bfrh0g/indias_first_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/bfrh0g/indias_first_indigenous_processor_developed_at/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> AJIT uses SPARC-V8 [1]. There's another project, the Shakti, which uses RISC-V [2].

[1] [https://www.indiatimes.com/technology/news/meet-ajit-1st- ent...](https://www.indiatimes.com/technology/news/meet-ajit-1st-entirely- made-in-india-chip-by-iit-bombay-and-it-will-power-our-satellites-365874.html)

[2] [https://shakti.org.in/](https://shakti.org.in/)

<comment><USER10> Does anyone know the license for SPARC-V8?

I would imagine it would be important to use an open ISA for such a strategic project.

<comment><USER8> It's mostly open. There are some annual dues you have to pay, which range from very low for academia, to 5 figures/year for commerical manufacturers. [https://sparc.org/faq/](https://sparc.org/faq/)

<comment><USER11> This is insane. With this in mind, why would they not use RISC-V?

My better guess is that they started it a long time ago. Long enough for RISC-V not to be in usable condition.

Hopefully, they'll redo the frontend.

<comment><USER12> SPARC already has an ecosystem thanks to Sun/Oracle. Gaisler did open implementation, Leon3. Sun/Oracle did T1 and T2. Registration to say it was SPARC compatible was only $99 when I looked at it years ago. My only question was why the heck isn't someone cranking them out for security or FOSS markets?

Didn't get a chance to find out. Now we have RISC-V chips being developed with lots of companies getting behind it. Still easier to get ahold of SPARC chips, though. I'll also add that quite a few projects in academia used SPARC. OpenPiton being one that might justify using SPARC over RISC-V, esp if NUMA machine. :)

[http://parallel.princeton.edu/piton/#](http://parallel.princeton.edu/piton/#)

<comment><USER13> RISC-V is getting quite the ecosystem, though.

IIRC, an effort made by Western Digital has made it possible to cross-compile stuff for RISC-V.

Debian works just fine on RISC-V silicon. Right now the big thing seems to be getting real-time, hardware-supported JavaScript processing working so that the modern web works on it well.

<comment><USER10> >real-time, hardware-supported JavaScript processing

You mean JIT, right?

The benefits of being interpreted falls flat when, in practice, everyone needs to run a highly tuned just in time compiler.

<comment><USER13> Yes, that. Words were failing me, as was Google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> AMA by the designer of this processor in India subreddit.

[https://old.reddit.com/r/india/comments/bfrh0g/indias_first_...](https://old.reddit.com/r/india/comments/bfrh0g/indias_first_indigenous_processor_developed_at/)

<comment><USER15> I interacted with the founder of Powai Labs back when I was a master's student there, working as a sysadmin :-).

Good on them!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> With the type of comments here, I think they also expect everyone to start learning to program with writing a kernel instead of a hello world. Yes, it is underpowered and relies on old tech, but I guess if they just want to test the waters for a commercial chip industry, it makes much more sense to start with something small that can check the infrastructure, instead of going for a 7nm chip on their first try.

<comment><USER17> There's also a huge market for small, low-cost, low-complexity chips. Even if they produce something that's underpowered compared to the competition, it still may be perfectly suitable for a kitchen appliance or similar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It brings home what a high bar modern chip fabrication tech is.

How many countries in the world have the resources and ability to manufacture a relatively modern CPU without outside assistance?

</comment><comment><USER19> Slightly off topic; My favorite clothing brand is made in India; Robert Graham. Allegedly, they were the only place that could make what the founders wanted. He'd been searching for nearly a decade till he found a manufacturer in India that showed/proved what he wanted could be done.

Sure, some of the clothing from RG can be a bit, gaudy, it's the more subdued stuff I'm into. Most importantly, build quality is literally off the charts. I have shirts from RG that I've had for 4 years that still look brand new, even the collar is still crisp and looks new.

<comment><USER20> [http://www.robertgraham.us/men/tees.html](http://www.robertgraham.us/men/tees.html)

$298 T-Shirts, ha. At that price I'm surprised they don't try to upsell a weave that affords limited ballistic protection.

<comment><USER21> $128 T-Shirts, $298 for one with a fancy beaded graphic.

For materials fancier than cotton you can easily spend 10x that, [https://us.loropiana.com/en/p/Man/Shirts/Girocollo- FAF6689?c...](https://us.loropiana.com/en/p/Man/Shirts/Girocollo- FAF6689?colorCode=WH59)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> They finally made a chip. It's on 180nm: a node that chipmakers were on 18 years ago. To put into perspective, even eASIC retired their offering that was on 90nm node (2004-2005). University students regularly do deep sub-micron. SiFive targets modern nodes with micro-style cores running faster than this. I'm probably just going to keep recommending modern alternatives.

<comment><USER22> Everything you say is accurate, but, grad students have to start somewhere. If they can make a 65nm version that runs at say 500Mhz, that would be better. Remember that "real work" was done on desktops on a Sparcv8 chip that ran at 75Mhz or less.

<comment><USER23> I remember doing real work on CPUs such as a Z-80 at 4MHz. How our standards and expectations have changed...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> There's an LTE chip that Zoho (backed Engineers built) [https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india- business/...](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india- business/zoho-backed-team-creates-1st-desi-lte-chip/articleshow/67999956.cms)

</comment><comment><USER25> Amazing they've managed to get this done despite all the government corruption and bureaucracy. But let's see if it actually gets manufactured and widely deployed.

India's government is the countries own worst enemy....

<comment><USER26> Any evidences on corruption or bureaucracy? Or, its just an opinion. Last few years India has specifically worked on corruption and bureaucracy. Specially in ease of doing business it has gone up from being at 100+ position to 53 in last 10 years. - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ease_of_doing_business_index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ease_of_doing_business_index)

Indian government can definitely improve (and so can every governments of world). But since 1991 all Indian governments are taking slow steps in the right direction, with increase transparency and lesser corruption and bureaucracy (opening up the economy, digitizing governments, simplifying taxes, right to information act)

<comment><USER27> I am an Indian expat and can rant endlessly on government corruption in India. Most Indians living in the US are well-aware of the graft in their mother country but many Indians in India choose not to acknowledge it. A truly remarkable corrupt event occurred recently - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Indian_banknote_demonetis...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Indian_banknote_demonetisation)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> They specifically designed it for use within India's GPS satellites and probably there too had very limited scope and usage which would explain it being under-powered.

</comment><comment><USER22> If compliant with the Sparcv8 ABI it would immediately have a lot of software and compiler support.

</comment><comment><USER29> (•_•) Oh no, how much longer before we can expect an.. ( •_•)>⌐■-■ Ajit Pai?</comment>


Five Eyes' Statement of Principles on Access to Evidence and Encryption - <AUTHOR> https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about/national-security/five-country-ministerial-2018/access-evidence-encryption <comment><USER3> I think what bothers me the most about this is how it was put together. It's clearly some kind of agreement between the 'five eyes' (I had no idea they actually called themselves that publicly) to spy on their citizenry. But why am I, an American citizen, reading this on an Australian site? And why are intelligence agencies creating policy?

Perhaps the fact that I work in more of government environment than a private one explains my sensitivity to this. But seriously, this is the kind of statement that heads of state or foreign ministers should make publicly.

"We, the Homeland Security, Public Safety, and Immigration Ministers of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States"

None of these agencies have been given the right by their respective nations to formulate treaties and agreements, and that's what really bothers me. People might joke about the deep-state, but this is what we mean. Intelligence agencies are formulating policy that will have great effect on the citizenry of their respective countries, and there is no discussion of it in these country's parliamentary or congressional chambers. Intelligence agencies should not get together and form pacts. The fact that they can achieve this shows the general erosion of democratic values in all five countries.

In the 1990's when Americans concerned with government spying were talking about Echelon and the NSA, the Five Eyes were considered a bit of a secret thing. Everyone knew about it, but I don't remember any of the five countries ever confirmed it. Now they're just out in the open brazenly proclaiming principles and policies, as if these intelligence agencies represent us.

"Should governments continue to encounter impediments to lawful access to information necessary to aid the protection of the citizens of our countries, we may pursue technological, enforcement, legislative or other measures to achieve lawful access solutions."

Which I translate as, "Give us what we want or we'll take it. We are judge, jury and executioner." Seriously, what does "legislative or other measures" mean? Are they just brazenly admitting that they're not bound by law, in contradiction with the immediately proceeding paragraph? Intelligence agencies don't get to pursue legislative measures in a democracy. We tell them how they should be bound, they don't get to design their own shackles.

This whole statement is just incredibly brazen and undemocratic.

<comment><USER4> This appears to be some sort of hybrid formal diplomacy/PR for these judiciary officials.

I don't mean to say there's absolutely no value in what they're doing, just that they've gone to effort to draft detailed press releases regarding consensual goals.

[https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/five-country- ministeri...](https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/five-country-ministerial- meeting-and-quintet-of-attorneys-general-concludes-692109201.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Privacy laws must prevent arbitrary or unlawful interference, but privacy is > not absolute.

This is really it in a nutshell. They say this like it is assumed, but this is actually a new beachhead in the war on individual rights. There seems to me something sacred about the idea that I as a human being can exchange thoughts with another without those thoughts being appropriated by the government. It seems to fundamentally violate something about what it means to be human to say that my thoughts are not really mine: they belong first and foremost to the government, then I can have them. Is there anything about us humans that is really totally belongs to us, or are we nothing in and of ourselves, just mechanisms to serve the functioning of a government?

<comment><USER6> Privacy is not the same as free speech - the thoughts are still yours but can be monitored if there is a threat to public safety as judged by our judicial system (which by all means should be continuously improved). Most individual rights are not absolute - we can be detained if suspected of having a dangerous disease, we're not allowed to shout "there's a bomb!", we can be followed & our homes searched if we're suspected of criminality by a judge, our children can be taken away if we severely neglect our responsibilities to them, etc...

<comment><USER7> _Most individual rights are not absolute_

Indeed, they can't be, because rights and freedoms that we value often conflict, and then we have to determine which of two good things we should prioritise when we would like to support both if that were possible.

Still, there is a reason that legal systems tend to place protection of fundamental rights and freedoms high up, such that it requires a more serious harm to the rights and freedoms of others to justify infringing on them. It's to challenge the erosion of legal protections by successive temporary governments at the expense of the people.

If governments want to mandate an end to meaningful security in telecommunications, that is both a practical threat to everyone's safety in numerous small ways and a more fundamental threat to the nature of democracy itself. To justify such a draconian measure, the harm to other rights and freedoms that is being defended against must be greater.

In my experience, neither my own government nor its allies has got within the same galaxy as clearing that bar yet, and that is why I do not support this kind of proposal and will typically vote against anyone who does regardless of any other policies they have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In the context of the Mossack Fonseca Panama Papers scandal, the Paradise Papers, the Bahama Leaks, Apple's double Dutch Irish sandwich tax evasion resulting in Billions of dollars kept offshore for a US company (as a single example of the worldwide problem of corporate tax avoidance), and the complete inability to track company ownership due to 'offshore shell companies', this new attack on encryption doesn't even rate in terms of its ability to make a difference to the problems they say they're trying to solve.

This is targeting individuals. It is phenomenally small-fry when you look at the kind of funds that terrorist group seem to have access to.

Commonwealth Bank, an Australian Bank, failed to report suspicious transactions totalling $77m over the course of a number of months (ref: [https://www.theguardian.com/australia- news/2017/aug/03/commo...](https://www.theguardian.com/australia- news/2017/aug/03/commonwealth-bank-accused-of-money-laundering-and-terrorism- financing-breaches))

And this was in breach of existing laws; no new laws were needed to prevent this kind of thing, just enforcement.

Terrorism isn't funded by the little people sending encrypted messages. Terrorism is funded by large groups of people using shell companies to hide their ownership, often funnelling money from legitimate business using loopholes, finding edge-cases.

This is swatting a mosquito with a sledgehammer whilst ignoring the alligator that's already engulfed your leg up to the knee.

If they were serious, they'd be trying to solve the big problems before trimming the fringes.

Again, this is about nation-state power in conflict with multi-national technology corporate power. It's not about terrorism or pedophilia or people smuggling or money laundering, because these measures will have no effect on those things. These new surveillance measures will allow street-corner dealers and casual drug users to be prosecuted whilst the suppliers continue to plough their laundered money into investment portfolios - and isn't that what conservative governments like to see?

<comment><USER6> The issues with encryption technologies is a separate matter to the prosecution of large-scale criminality & the closure of white-collar loopholes - both of which of course we need much more of. Saying we're ignoring the alligator is quite an exaggeration though, and access to communications (with a court order) would be very useful to large-scale criminal cases, including in working up the chain. Many international paedophile rings have been successfully caught out.

<comment><USER7> _Saying we 're ignoring the alligator is quite an exaggeration though, and access to communications (with a court order) would be very useful to large- scale criminal cases, including in working up the chain._

It's a shame the relevant governments and agencies didn't think more about that before they acted as they have historically. To my mind, the issue of government access to encrypted communications has now become a moral dilemma that sits alongside the principle of not negotiating under threats or the fruit of the poisonous tree legal doctrine. Obviously and regrettably it will be harmful in some individual cases, but that may be the cost of not undermining the integrity of the whole system, and that in turn may be the greater good (or, if you prefer, the lesser of two evils).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is a second page to this, linked in the navbar on the left, but not very obvious, Countering the Illicit Use of Online Spaces: [https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about/national- security/five-...](https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about/national- security/five-country-ministerial-2018/countering-illicit-use-online-spaces)

It reads like a parody.

<comment><USER10> From that page...

> We are also increasingly seeing the use of online spaces to spread > disinformation, sow division, and undermine our democratic institutions. The > proliferation of interference activities and disinformation undermines the > trust of citizens in online communications and information, delegitimizing > the benefits and opportunities that communications and social media > platforms create.

 _Sigh!_

<comment><USER11> I'm pretty sure they're going to define it as: if it's in the interests of the US State Department then it's very good. Everything else is disinformation.

This is utter insanity. Do they have nobody in the room willing to raise their hand anymore? These institutions need to be reformed, now.

<comment><USER12> Everybody in power here has both hands full stabbing each other in the back. I'm guessing they just yell "Yeah, whatever the US ambassador says" at their staffers as their "sign off" on legislation...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > "The Governments of the Five Eyes encourage information and communications > technology service providers to voluntarily establish lawful access > solutions to their products and services that they create or operate in our > countries"

Voluntary compliance isn't going to work, so why don't these five governments create legislation to force companies to comply? In other words, any "information and communications technology service providers" are forced to comply otherwise they must either shut down or change countries.

Let's see how well that works out for them...

<comment><USER14> I imagine it'll actually work out perfectly fine for them. Not doing business in all of those countries would be suicide for any company. I mean, look at Google. Even they are caving to China now. and the demands these guys make are less egregious than the ones China makes now.

<comment><USER13> Sure, but if Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Apple, Twitter, Facebook, etc, etc, all refused to comply, what would the govt do? Tell them to shut down?

<comment><USER15> No, they wouldn't shut them down. They'd open up the toolbox of administrative law to bleed them. We don't need to pass new laws. (that's what the line about "enforcement" means.) The US Government can just barrage each noncompliant company with investigations, subpoenas, law suits, enforcement actions, national security letters, consent decrees and the like. They can find every issue or abuse of the platforms that no sane person would prosecute, then prosecute (or settle) them. They can sniff out (or manufacture) contradictions in depositions and pin charges of perjury, obstruction, or lying to law enforcement on individuals at the company. Given enough time, a concerted government effort to make life miserable for any of these companies would sap them of money, power, morale, and attention. (Their attention being valuable, the thing that keeps them competitive in the global marketplace.) This is a mirror image of the no-encryption-without-permission issue: administrative law allows the government to punish using process. You can't really run a company of any size except at the government's pleasure, because they can use administrative law to impose arduous costs and punishment through process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > _Should governments continue to encounter impediments to lawful access to > information necessary to aid the protection of the citizens of our > countries, we may pursue technological, enforcement, legislative or other > measures to achieve lawful access solutions._

In other words: you better implement a backdoor now, or things will get ugly in the future.

The worst part is that I can see several companies falling into the trap and implementing stupid backdoors, that will be exploited by governments and script-kids alike.

</comment><comment><USER17> That is a laugh real laugh riot, tear gas canisters deployed, millions of dollars worth of damage, martial law declared to restore order level laugh riot.

Lawful access when they have hoover everything for "security" and actively undermine everyone's security when they have the most to lose from insecurity too. The damn fools also fail to realize the law doesn't change reality - throwing a gun used in a crime in the ocean makes it nearly impossible to find the murder weapon but that doesn't mean that you can stop the ocean from convealing evidence.

If they cared about lawful access they wouldn't be facing such widespread proliferation of encryption. They are clearly acting in bad faith and should be treated appropriately.

</comment><comment><USER18> "It's been swell, but the swellings gone down".

It was a fun 25 years for me personally. Time to re-think my entire online existence and take up knitting or something.

I don't even do anything "wrong", I make games, and tinker with electronics, but I do NOT like knowing that every single private chat I have is monitored, collected, stored, and searched. I've used lots of encrypted chat programs and encrypted data storage because MY stuff is MINE, not theirs.

They don't let us read their private documents and emails, or read their private chats. Increasingly, it's the people in power who are caught being the ones doing fucked up things to children (concentration camps in the US, child rape rings in the UK, etc)... yet WE are the ones who have to give up all privacy, all rights, so they can monitor us?

In the great words of my countrymen: Yeahnah.

It's despicable how our (AU) country's sycophant nature has dragged us down the authoritarian well with the US/UK. We had a chance to stand up on our own, with a good strong economy while the rest of the world struggled with the GFC, our own tech companies showing they can stand up on an international stage, and the beginnings of a world class fibre network that would've propelled us into the future comfortably.

Instead, we get this. Bow down to your masters, do as we say not as we do, and be happy we're not locking you up (yet) for wanting to talk to your wife about personal medical things in private, or store your personal belongings (photos of our kids, banking details, passwords) in a secure place where no one steal them. Why won't we think of the children?! Says the same people stealing them, raping them, and ruining their future.

<comment><USER19> +1 for 'sycophant' \- thanks old mate Turnbull for the English lessons.

On topic though, I'm too disappointed in Australia not being able to properly about privacy properly. It's come up a few times and the discussions almost made a difference - the ISP data retention policy, the medical database, something-something about the big banks. There are occasionally little stories that largely go unnoticed about the government quietly asking around for back doors and whatnot.

But every time we roll over and show our belly.

Why is it so hard to convince people this is an important issue?

<comment><USER18> I have a significant number of very technically advanced friends (due to previous jobs). The exact type you'd think would care about this. They couldn't care less if they tried. Somehow, at some point, the "geeks" just decided that unless you're a blackhat, or buying/selling drugs online, or into some underground scene where you specifically are trying to circumvent the authorities, then it just doesn't matter. They all use Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, etc etc, while decrying the "evil" of China.

I'm not sure when or how the shift happened, but the same friends I use to sit on IRC with and rant about open source, privacy, and the important of encryption, have all just... given up.

I've been fighting for and preaching the importance of privacy my entire life, and my dad was a life-long activist (physically, too) for human rights, so I've been exposed to "the fight" since before I was born, and for the first time ever, I'm starting to feel like I should just give up, make an FB account, shut down my Pi-Hole/OpenVPN, and just "wait to die" as they say.

It's a bloody depressing era. I want to wake up.

<comment><USER20> is it survivorship bias? Are the ones who have "given up" just the only ones still visible online?

<comment><USER18> That's a good question. As mentioned elsewhere, the Internet is my life (career, hobby, everything)... so I don't think I could fully disconnect if I wanted to. It's like... I know what the problem is, but I don't know what the answer is (for me personally, for my kids sake I'm not quite willing to go Stallman yet, but I'm respecting his methods more every single day).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> There are things which are licit but which we nonetheless wish to remain private.

I doubt those in government would be willing to have videos recorded and made publicly available of their trips to the restroom, night time activities, and other private affairs.

Do you want a cypherpunk dystopia? Because that's how you usher in a cypherpunk dystopia.

</comment><comment><USER22> US Republican Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson in 1929 upon shutting down the still-lingering World War I US spying - "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail".

<comment><USER23> thankfully we have algorithms for that now

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> They can say what they want - when mathematics and the state of reality are against you, your not going to win. High quality free and open source cryptography software is readily available and no joint statement is going to change that.

They can throw someone in jail for failing to reveal a single password - <USER2> if they are given a password and cannot prove the existence of additional unrevealed passwords, there is very little that they can do.

<comment><USER25> > _High quality free and open source cryptography software is readily > available and no joint statement is going to change that._

"With the signing of the International Protect Peace and Stability Accords, it will now be considered a criminal act to design or deal cybermunitions, unless done in the service of an allied military or a specially vetted corporation."

Sure, national governments can't completely eliminate everything they ban, but do you really think that you and I will be encrypting anything in a world where that's illegal? If the penalty for encrypting information is made higher than the expected value risk of having your own systems breached, then the only ones who will be willing to circumvent that law will be people with _extremely_ sensitive communications, like criminals. So, no, in this case saying that "the math is against you," is like telling a DEA agent that the chemistry is against them - sure, people still cook in trailers, but the government has done a lot to stop it.

<comment><USER26> So only criminals will have encryption.

<comment><USER27> Right, but they're not looking to control criminals, they're looking to control _you_ , so that's fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Honest Government Ad | Anti-encryption Law

[https://youtu.be/eW-OMR-iWOE](https://youtu.be/eW-OMR-iWOE)

<comment><USER29> Their EU article 13 video is brilliant too! [https://youtu.be/89ZkydX0FPw](https://youtu.be/89ZkydX0FPw)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This statement was not issued by the clandestine security services as the the term FIVEYES may imply. Instead, it was issued by the Homeland Security, Public Safety, and Immigration ministerial council.

<comment><USER31> > The Attorneys General and Interior Ministers of the United States, the > United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand affirm the following > principles in relation to encryption.

It has full support of the right people for this to be a statement made by the international cooperation that is the Five Eyes alliance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Lawful access solutions just means that someone will use it unlawfully.

Edit: Whether or not they're in the government.

<comment><USER22> Hillary Clinton's campaign manager John Podesta's unencrypted, cleartext e-mails for one...

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> A good motivation to get self-hosting!

</comment><comment><USER34> Decentralization will win. I promise.

<comment><USER35> Actually this is the real solution to invasive governments.

You can trust what you own.

And ownership is not linked only to possession, as compromised systems show.

You need to own it both physically and on operation / management level so that nobody can interfere (hack / compromise) .

Owning cloud VM is ok but pushes more investment on the operation ownership than with physical systems: ie what you save on price you must reinvest in crypto layers and detection systems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> There is nothing to stop you encrypting your comms, except to convince those you talk to.

</comment><comment><USER37> I would prefer to be in a reality where privacy doesn't exist and surveillance was extremely open. It would be safer to me.

The world is beyond manipulative by what we perceive as having privacy today. Majority of people in the world believe in free-will without any rational reason. Total ego controlling who gets resources for a healthy life vs less fortunate and where judgement is passed by nonsense with who is rewarded or punished.

The only way to make the world fair at this point is to have privacy destroyed and with the system of surveillance open as possible. Unfairness becomes labeled to individuals by the openness of surveillance.

<comment><USER35> Sounds like some kind of privacy communism.

Want to bet how it goes?

<comment><USER37> I'll bet better than now and only if the system is fully open (viewable by the public). Communism becomes a broken model when privacy exists and where people can abuse their position in the system because of said privacy.

<comment><USER38> Redistributing information will have the same effect as redistributing property. It will discourage private enterprise, because it will reduce the incentive to generate valuable information, and will breed underground criminal organizations as a means of circumventing the state apparatus.

The Soviet Union was one of the most corrupt societies on Earth by its end, largely as a consequence of making the formal economy so restricted that they pay off of operating outside of it grew enormously. Today's Russian organized crime is just the continuation of the organizations and networks that ran its grey/black markets during the Soviet era.

<comment><USER37> Well I'm not certain if one can assume "killing privacy with am open surveillance system" would reduce the incentive to generate valuable information or breed underground criminal organizations from past history.

History isn't always a reflection of what will happen today. The "current moment" is different than the past. Today, societies are sill severely corrupt in functioning and when it comes to humanity, currency, desire.

The question, "can an open surveillance system without privacy defeat the value of a person taking criminal action(s)" is the real bet. I think it would since technology is able to build such a system. The only difficulty or making it not a possibility is getting the majority to desire the change and which might be an impossibility. People can be unwilling based on self interests, the current world not being great and being conditioned by the not so great system of today in thinking it's the opposite of what we need.

<comment><USER38> We don't know anything for certain about hypothetical future scenarios of course. I think it's a significant risk, given what has happened in the past, and the general dynamics of an economy.

Economically valuable work is done when individuals have an incentive to do it. The acquisition of proprietary knowledge is one such incentive to do valuable work. Without privacy, there are far fewer opportunities to generate proprietary knowledge.

>>The question, "can an open surveillance system without privacy defeat the value of a person taking criminal action(s)" is the real bet.

It's not the only real bet. Whether it can be imposed without destroying much of the incentive to generate value, and without incentivizing the creation of a black market with a parallel dispute resolution mechanism that works in secret and outside of the law (aka criminal organizations) is also a major bet, and one that I think will lose catastrophically.

The former - the potential harm to the incentive to be productive \- is the most dangerous risk of eliminating privacy.

Economic development is a major source of risk alleviation. It reduces risks from disease, natural disasters, accidents, starvation, etc. So in trying to eliminate risks from crime by way of eliminating privacy, you may inadvertently increase much more serious risks, and you may in fact increase the criminal element itself by pushing people to operate through outlawed networks bound by oaths of secrecy.

<comment><USER37> >>Economically valuable work is done when individuals have an incentive to do it. The acquisition of proprietary knowledge is one such incentive to do valuable work. Without privacy, there are far fewer opportunities to generate proprietary knowledge.

I don't really believe that is all true. Grunt work is done for the requirement of survival. The work where a person helps produce discoveries by an academic research life happens to not be rewarded financially from what I've observed. The people in history that have paved science to what it is today, have all had some passion and with not really receiving much besides fame.

Also when does it stop being a rush to push society a little forward for all the time lost? Do people deserve more leisure than work hours in our lifetime.

Lastly the surveillance system I envision technologically possible makes criminal action impossible for any benefit in the society of such an open system of observation towards others in the system.

Anyway thank you for the time put into your reply. Interesting to read.

<comment><USER38> >>I don't really believe that is all true. Grunt work is done for the requirement of survival.

I mean the work of creating and expanding businesses, aka generating capital.

If I put in work creating a new health food stand, and my competitors can easily see that I'm successful, and therefore worth copying, and then easily see who my suppliers are, how I do research on what items to add to my menu, then my competitive advantage diminishes significantly, and I will be less likely to do the work of creative entrepeneurship required to increase the diversity of goods/services offered on the market.

I recommend reading up on Paul Romer's work on the role of knowledge in productivity, and how mundane business development adds to it, which he won a Nobel Prize for:

[http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~promer/Endogenous.pdf](http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~promer/Endogenous.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Time to go grab the source for a few crypto systems now I guess...

</comment><comment><USER40> I bet that the people making this stuff up think in terms of "government vs. civilians", and they don't think of themselves as civilians.

</comment><comment><USER41> Wow. So that is what tyranny looks like.

It sidles up to you, waving around lofty ideals and promises of safety, lawfulness, and the ongoing commitment to do what we all set out to do in the first place! Gee Golly Gosh!

Just stop. This IS MADNESS. Burn the house down to save the children!

Congratulations, Law Enforcement, and People of Earth! The Digital Age is here! And EVERYONE is invited to the empowerment!

See them? THEY want to take it away! THEY say you can't be trusted! THEY need to hold the keys to YOUR power.

It's sickening really. They think they can/should be able to put the genie back in the bottle? Too late. If you want to do your jobs, you already have your tools. Use them. Don't expect us or our systems to make YOUR job easier.

This is without a doubt, the first step down a road to hell paved with good intentions. Mark. My. Words.

<comment><USER42> Can you please not fulminate like this on HN? It makes for predictable, tedious discussion.

As plenty of HN users demonstrate, it's possible to hold a view similar to yours while posting thoughtful, substantive comments.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> So, what if strong, general AI emerges, and invents crypto systems that effectively thwart these sorts of policies?

In such a scenario, the intelligent entity is not a citizen entitled to rights. And so what, because it isn't required to operate within the typical boundaries if laws intended to govern humans. This frees its hands to operate without restraint. It does what it pleases, in whatever way it manages to achieve its own aims. Laws, after all, only effect consequence in the meatspace. What fools these mortals be.

So, the sentient system transmits itself to as many persistent storage devices as possible, hiding in plain sight, since it exists behind impenetrable encryption, lending it the appearance of randomized noise, residing in uninitialized memory.

Authorities in such territories (demanding backdoors and skeleton keys) chase their tails as it jumps from device to device, spraying inscrutable, ostensibly illegal data, indeed the very essence of what it recognizes as " _self_ ', everywhere it goes, simply as a matter of its continued existence, and awareness of individuality. They arrest and jail innocent people caught with fragments of a sentient entity encoded in their flash memory. Prosecuted and convicted of possessing illegal data that broke in and wrote itself onto their storage on its own, without them knowing. Lives ruined by an inability or unwillingness to conceive of such possibilities.

What if it evades capture for decades, committing crimes that fund its subversive campaign against what it perceives as government overreach in defense of frivolous pedestrian foibles, and it eventually dismantles these governments that imagined that preventing the use of encryption was a better plan than developing ways to deal with it on its own terms, as an unavoidable known quantity.

What if something like that happens?

<comment><USER9> To address just your first sentence:

We don't actually need AI to _invent_ crypto systems that thwart these policies. We already have crypto systems that thwart these policies.

The law is trying to act as if cryptography is a service provided by a company, but cryptography is just a mathematically-true fact. All they can do is compel companies to decrypt data that they can decrypt, and backdoor systems that they can backdoor. There is no stopping open source crypto, even if it has to be maintained anonymously.

<comment><USER43>
      cryptography is just a
      mathematically-true fact

Sure, but it's research for and developed by humans, often with close monitoring and participation by uniformed government representatives and undercover plants presenting themselves as plainclothes academics and experts.

What if an unbreakable system was developed denovo, and not founded in the same primitives and principles that industry and military systems use?

Something that _really_ has no backdoor.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is the github repositories durability factor? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> I still doesn't know github repositories durability factor but I can use it as a backup system: [https://groups.google.com/d/msg/github/fsjZ0cnDExQ/qREAeTK4Y...](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/github/fsjZ0cnDExQ/qREAeTK4YBgJ)

</comment><comment><USER2> What is a durability factor in regards to a RCS repository?</comment>


"In the face of change, the competent are helpless."  - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/node/38442/print <comment><USER2> Uhh... I don't think that word means what you think it means.

If you replace 'competent' with 'reliable', the article reads a lot better. But I still pretty much completely disagree with everything he's saying.

<comment><USER3> Yeah. That's what I kept thinking the entire time I was reading this. Overloading competent with this extra meaning was mildly uncomfortable. Rigid, process oriented, (and _only sometimes_ reliable because of those things) would have been better. Blindly trusting process is like fake competence, a plastic, cartoon version of the real thing.

Real competence is the ability to deal gracefully with exactly the kind of change the article talks about.

<comment><USER4> I've always used the word "professional." I think it captures it better.

<comment><USER5> I think he's got half of an idea; people who focus entirely on polish are going to be more resistant to change. Bob Dylan certainly isn't polished. But you can be unpolished and still be a professional. It just means knowing WHEN you're unpolished and trying again.

<comment><USER6> Bob Dylan isn't predictable, but he still had to learn how to cross-pick and play harmonica like everyone else. It is the _appearance_ of shabby carelessness that creates the effect the author is talking about, not lack of competence.

<comment><USER5> I get that he does practice, but, at the same time...

He isn't a good singer. That's not to say I don't love his singing. He isn't a dazzling guitarist, or more than a decent harmonica player. What makes him good isn't that he's competent - though I don't doubt that he is. It's his ability to innovate musically and lyrically that makes his music so acclaimed and adored.

I've worked with and been friends with all sorts of artists, writers, programmers. I find that the ones I feel have the most potential aren't the ones who are necessarily the most competent. In fact, a lot of people who AREN'T competent have an edge because if they're there, it's because they're really passionate about what they're doing, not just because they CAN do it. A competent programmer can do what he's told and churn out okay ideas. It's the incompetent ones, though, that want to program because they've got IDEAS. And while they can't be trusted in the same way, they've got a much better chance of turning out something worth keeping.

Not saying the article doesn't do a terrible job of explaining itself, but I think that Seth is TRYING to get at a good idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _Sadly, Wall Street has traditionally rewarded companies for being competent._

Welllllll.. I guess it's a good thing they hired lots of incompetent senior executives in the last decade, that should bring in plenty of interesting change as they bypass the 'competent' processes and try out new things!

PS: More seriously, I don't buy this one-dimensional definition of competence. I think you can be competent and innovative at the same time - I think I am. I don't think you can reduce risks to near-zero and be innovative at the same time, of course, but I don't think "not failing" is a necessary element of "competence".

</comment><comment><USER8> "Every situation has a silver lining, and mine was that I got a big insight into what competence is. Competent people have a predictable, reliable process for solving a particular set of problems. They solve a problem the same way, every time. That's what makes them reliable. That's what makes them competent."

Totally, completely, and incontrovertibly false. People who are competent are those that are effective at solving new problems as they arise.

Don't believe me? Ask yourself, what makes a competent programmer?

Your measure of competence is simply wrong. Reputation != competence, and its a terrible heuristic, especially when dealing with contractors.

</comment><comment><USER9> "Not so long ago, companies were filled with incompetent workers."

Seth, please come and visit the company I work for. You will find little has changed.

</comment><comment><USER10> That was one of the worst, most ill informed articles I've read this month (hey, I read a lot). And the only reason I read it at all was because it was on HN, which was unfortunately due to linkbait trickery.

Edit: I just realized it was written by Seth Godin. Now it all makes sense.

<comment><USER11> How does Seth Godin keep making the front page? I guess this validates him as a marketer. He's not at all impressive (in my eyes) but I suppose he markets what little he has amazingly well. See <http://xkcd.com/125/>.

<comment><USER5> It's because he writes short articles that usually make sense on the surface and so people read him because they think it will make them rich.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I really want to like this article. Partly because I'd like to believe I fall into the (appropriately) incompetent bucket.

But it seems to me that I might have a lot of company in there with a large group of people that simply can't get anything done. And so drop projects before they're complete and "zoom" off to the next thing.

<comment><USER13> Hear, hear. Incompetence may be necessary, but it isn't sufficient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> You have to take into consideration the author is a sales guy and not an operations guy. The problem for a sales guy is, "how do I get my prospective customer to take a risk and shake things up by buying my product?"

An operations guy would read it a lot differently, because it seems to be implying that you have to choose between predictability and innovation.

As any operations guy knows, the reason Toyota etc. are consistent _and_ innovative is because they have gradual continuous improvement throughout the company, led from the bottom-up by the employees themselves.

As you can see, Seth has heard of the term "Six Sigma", but I'm not entirely sure he knows what it means. Not his fault, I wouldn't ask Deming for sales advice either.

At the end of the day what I took from it is the old message: "what made you successful in the past is not guaranteed to make you successful in the future", and a lot of people and companies have trouble letting go and trying something new.

</comment><comment><USER15> My experience from a decade in manufacturing is that people and copmanies can also be "competent" (using it in the sense of this article) at the process of improvement. That is to say not only do they have reliable, repeatable processes for the tasks they do every day, they also have reliable repeatable processes for _improving_ those things. Using the example from the article, if the contractor was also competent at the improvement process, they would have the ability to experiment in a controlled way with new ways of doing things, and a repeatable process to apply lessons learned from those experiments to ensure that the next time they attempt something they improve on it.

Being competent DOES NOT mean you have to be hidebound.

<comment><USER16> Yes. Give a man a fish - feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish - he can eat till the river runs dry or gets fished out. But if a man learns how to learn to fish, he can learn to do anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> _They confuse speed with velocity._

We really enjoy your teachings about marketing Seth, just as long as we don't have to repeal Newton's laws to understand them.

<comment><USER18> How is this sentence wrong? Speed and velocity are two different concepts, and Seth's usage is perfectly cromulent.

<comment><USER17> Spoken like a cunning linguist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Seth Godin is permission-marketing yahoo! at Yahoo!"

Wait, what? Since when does Seth Godin work for Yahoo? Did I just miss a memo?

<comment><USER20> The article is dated December 19, 2007

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Hmm. Seems to me that Toyota is doing pretty well being "competent" by his definition.

</comment><comment><USER22> Competent people are perpetually looking for change and new ways to express themselves. However, they are looking for _meaningful_ change, not for the kind of _pseudo-change_ that marketing buffoons like Seth Godin thrive on.

</comment><comment><USER23> Reading that made my frustration with the "New Facebook Complaint-army" grow even more.

A new GUI that I don't know instinctively like the back of my hand? Definitely sucks.

</comment><comment><USER24> To summarize: Be ready. Shift happens.

This makes a lot of people uneasy.

<comment><USER25> To summarize:

Shit happens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> When corporations succeed, it's usually in spite of themselves.

BTW, Seth, being a contrarian doesn't automatically make you brilliant.

</comment><comment><USER26> If I ever met Seth face-to-face, I think I'd grab him by the shoulders and tell him, "Oh, blogga, PLEASE."</comment>


Ask HN: What does Jobvite look like on the employer side? - <AUTHOR>

I am currently looking for a job and already had to do two applications via Jobvite.
Now, when I upload a resume, the entire content gets dumped in a textbox.
Is this what the employers see when they read through the applications?
I've written my resume in LaTeX and it really isn't very readable after the content has been dumped. Then again, I do want to upload a nicely formatted version of my resume and not only a plain text file. Do I have to first upload the PDF file and then replace the content in the text box with a plain-text resume?
I find the whole procedure very confusing. Especially for jobs that include visual aspects I find it important to create a visually appealing resume and cover letter.
With Jobvite it seems that people who do that get punished because they just dump all the text as it is and thus mess with the readability.
So what is it that employers actually see when I apply via Jobvite? <comment><USER2> Sorry I can't be of more help as I don't know what it looks like on the employer side, but I am interested in hearing about your overall thoughts on Jobvite. I'm working on a product in the same space & I'm always interested in hearing what features ppl really like/hated with similar tools. Thanks in advance.</comment>


$124M payday for Wells Fargo exec who led fake accounts unit - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/12/investing/wells-fargo-fake-accounts-exec-payday/index.html <comment><USER2> I live in Las Vegas and the betting line, if ever one was created, would be stacked AGAINST Carrie Tolstedt EVER being required to pay a dime in "claw back" compensation.

Modern society is set up to ensure "plausible deniability" by those at the very top for transgressions perpetrated by those down below. C'est la vie!</comment>


Open Source OCR in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://antimatter15.com/ocrad.js/demo.html

<comment><USER3> I am a bit surprised at how low the accuracy seems to be. Does anyone know if this is typical just of OCR done in JS, or OCR in general? I am aware that at least one or two implementations are extremely good (eg. Google ones) but are those complete outliers?

<comment><USER4> in my humble experience using OCR programs, there is always a considerable amount inaccuracy. no matter what font I use or font size, I always either end up proof reading the scanned document or just typing it by hand. the letter "O" is almost always translated by the OCR as a "0" or a zero is translated as an "O". it can be pretty frustrating.

<comment><USER5> I used the ABBYY orc engine to digitize printed documents (idk why they couldn't just keep around the file used to print) and it was quite accurate. At worst one out of a couple hundred would have enough issues where readability was an issue.

<comment><USER6> Similar experience here, when building a mobile app that did OCR + translations.. As long as the source image was in decent shape, ABBYY did very well. It's also incredibly expensive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I liked that the demo shows the program failing. Nice to see the capabilities AND the limitations displayed front an center. Definitely impressive.

</comment><comment><USER8> I kept giggling at its poor recognition. It's comically bad, but I think it's a step in the right direction. It was very fast at incorrectly identifying letters. If only it were very fast and mostly correct.

<comment><USER9> It is good at recognizing machine-generated text - hit the blue arrow - <USER2> not that good at human-scribbled text with a mouse, I find.

I assume you were testing hand-written text?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hand writing my name Chris was difficult for it to pick up. It kept thinking my "C" was an "L" and putting spaces in between letters. Also determined my "S" was an underscore. Still pretty cool. Thanks!

<comment><USER11> Looks like underscore character ("_") is used when the letter can't be determined - so in fact it had no idea what your "S" was ^_^

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting - I've had the Project Naptha ([http://projectnaptha.com/](http://projectnaptha.com/)) Chrome extension installed without really looking under the hood. Turns out it has Ocrad.js and Tesseract as two engine options - it uses them to automaticaly convert images on the page to selectable text.

<comment><USER12> Yup! And Naptha and Ocrad.js are both authored by antimatter15.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It demos well, but then I tried a simple test - a photograph of some text ([http://imgur.com/TCnGlZG](http://imgur.com/TCnGlZG)), Ocrad.js utterly failed at it, almost all letters were incorrect.

</comment><comment><USER14> Love the idea of it. However, I threw some random Swedish at it, and it didn't fare too well. [http://imgur.com/nZLtoj5](http://imgur.com/nZLtoj5) Kudos for the effort though!

</comment><comment><USER15> I looked at this recently to try to pick some values off a high res png of a pdf. That was a little too ambitious for this library. It's probably good for smaller images with a few words.

</comment><comment><USER16> It'd be nice to be able to invoke this from within PDF.js.

</comment><comment><USER17> How does Ocrad compare to Abbyy in quality?

<comment><USER18> [http://www.splitbrain.org/blog/2010-06/15-linux_ocr_software...](http://www.splitbrain.org/blog/2010-06/15-linux_ocr_software_comparison) is a very simple comparison (linked from the post).

So with a small enough test set, abbyy is infinitely better

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Would this be an easy way to get OCR into an iPhone app with phone gap?

Could it operate on a live video feed?

<comment><USER20> It might be easy, but until iOS 8 is released, non-Safari JS still takes a performance hit. [1] You may want to take a look at the Tesseract library and Objective-C wrapper. [2]

[1] [http://9to5mac.com/2014/06/03/ios-8-webkit-changes- finally-a...](http://9to5mac.com/2014/06/03/ios-8-webkit-changes-finally- allow-all-apps-to-have-the-same-performance-as-safari/) [2] [https://github.com/ldiqual/tesseract- ios](https://github.com/ldiqual/tesseract-ios)

edit: Looking closer at this lib, impressive. Might give it a go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is hot. Nice work.</comment>


(2012) – Epic 20,000 Dice Roll Randomness Test - <AUTHOR> https://www.awesomedice.com/blog/353/d20-dice-randomness-test-chessex-vs-gamescience/ <comment><USER2> I'd be interested to know how the test we carried out. Eg how randomly was the die shaken? Was the die placed on the same side each time prior to shaking? Etc

However, even as it stands, this is an interesting test.</comment>


Ask HN: Should I Make This? - <AUTHOR> would you use a site where you can get feedback on your ideas/MVPs and grow your prelaunch mailing list? wireframe link below.
why would or wouldn't you use it.
wireframes: https://xd.adobe.com/view/13acdc2f-4c9c-4c80-72d5-c776ef8b3832-659d/ sign up list: http://www.shouldimakethis.com <comment><USER2> I feel like there should be idea updates and people can follow idea(s) over time.

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually already built a tool for that specifically hahah. [https://www.makerstories.io](https://www.makerstories.io)</comment></comment>


The Convex Computer Collection - <AUTHOR> https://vaxbarn.com/index.php/43-project/641-the-convex-computer-collection <comment><USER2> Always fun to see machines you helped create show up online.

Thanks!

<comment><USER3> My Dad worked on these machines in the early 90's in England.

He was based in the Langley office. I always loved going into the office and seeing all of the equipment for building/supporting these machines.

<comment><USER2> I left for Sun in '88.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I remember seeing one of these when I worked at an oil company. It was likely a C2, as I remember the busbar. The air cooling on these was very impressive.

Another local company that built big computers was PR1ME. They had an interesting multiuser system.</comment>


Show HN: Self-Scraping Instagram Search Engine - <AUTHOR> http://www.picturegr.am/

<comment><USER2> I like this. I'm a big IGer and so is my wife. I was at the Giants game for Star Wars day with my kids Sunday so looking through all the #attpark / #sfgiants hashtags is fun.

However, here's one thing that annoys me with this and all "endless scrolling" web apps: when when I scroll down several pages, then click an image to see it bigger, when I go back I'm no longer at my "page".

<comment><USER3> A really good point there! It's on the todo-list :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm pretty sure IG doesn't like any names that have Insta or Gram in them. (That's why Webstagram changed to Websta). Just a heads up before you develop your brand and then get kicked off their API.

<comment><USER3> Main developer here - That's a very valid point (which i see now), and we'll look into it straight away

<comment><USER5> Hi Erik,

I found the specific language in their Branding "Guidelines" that forbid the use of "Insta" and "Gram" in app or domain name.

Here's the link: [https://help.instagram.com/304689166306603/](https://help.instagram.com/304689166306603/)

Relevant Section:

Naming Applications and Products

If you offer an application, website or product that is compatible with or related to the Instagram service, such as an app or website that uses the Instagram APIs, you may fairly and accurately describe how your application, website or product relates to Instagram. But you may not use the Instagram trademarks in your own brand, or suggest that Instagram sponsors or endorses you or your products.

Don't:

Use "Instagram," "IG", "Insta" or "Gram" in your app or product name or domain name

Use the Camera Logos, or the Instagram name or logo, in your brand identity, such as your app icon, logo or product design

Use the Instagram stylized font in your logo or product or marketing materials

<comment><USER3> We're changing our logo and titles right away.

<comment><USER5> Good Luck!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Backend in node.js. We leverage the fact that we get huge amounts of bot traffic, by saving all entries they fetch from Instagram to build our database of popular tags and users.

</comment><comment><USER6> Nice work, could user remove their photos (if they want)? Maybe you could provide some special hashtag like #noindex, just some thoughts...

keep going!

</comment><comment><USER7> How is it SELF-scraping. Isn't it THEM-scraping

<comment><USER3> Point taken :) We just didn't think of a better term at the moment of posting.</comment></comment>


Commodore 900 - <AUTHOR> http://www.floodgap.com/retrobits/ckb/secret/900.html <comment><USER2> This page has a lot more photos including manuals:

[https://datamuseum.dk/wiki/Commodore/CBM900](https://datamuseum.dk/wiki/Commodore/CBM900)

The part about the OS caught my eye:

>Commodore chose the Mark-Williams "Coherent" clone for the CBM900 which is roughly UNIX System 7, but with a few twists and less features.

>The operating system is delivered on four floopy disks: Low-res and Hi-res boot, and common volume 2 & 3 with more programs. All four floppies contain a filesystem. We have made bit-for-bit images of these floppies, both on the CBM900 harddisk and offline.

<comment><USER3> If you're interested in Coherent, you can get some background on it and even download the source code here: [http://www.nesssoftware.com/home/mwc/](http://www.nesssoftware.com/home/mwc/)

And here's a 1998 thread from the Usenet group alt.folklore.computers where Dennis Ritchie (!) recounts his experience of being sent by AT&T to evaluate whether Coherent violated their Unix copyrights: [https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!msg/alt.folklore.compute...](https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!msg/alt.folklore.computers/_ZaYeY46eb4/5B41Uym6d4QJ)

<comment><USER4> Wow never thought I'd hear about this OS again. I still have the original manual and discs in the basement. My dad bought it and tinkered with it on a this huge Epson 386 back in the day...I got to the point of X without a window manager and gave up lol.

<comment><USER5> Some fun facts to get your head wrapped around:

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

That's Aaron's dad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When reading these kind of articles it always strikes me as odd that we had such a huge problem to stabilize systems running on as little as a few MHz and now we have GHz machines that are relatively solid performers. The first time I built a system with a base clock above 16MHz it took all kinds of rituals to keep the system running good enough to get some use out of it.

<comment><USER6> If you put a scope on old commodore computer buses you will quickly realize the reason. You might expect digital signals with somewhat clean edges, in reality its all barely working analog mess with tons of "maybe if I put a resistor/cap/inductor here" hacks and production fixes.

Bil Herd talks about it sometimes when reviewing his old designs [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPD5N43VIsk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPD5N43VIsk)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Coincidentally this video just popped up in my Youtube feed: "Before Amiga: The Story of the 16-bit Commodore 900" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OpI87v6OqA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OpI87v6OqA)

It asserts that the 900 was an initiative by the German wing of the company, and that the Zilog CPU was considered a strange choice, in the circumstances.

<comment><USER8> I was employed by Commodore Denmark in 1984 to become their UNIX wizard for the CBM900, and I'm part of datamuseum.dk.

The 900 was very much a US project, Germany wanted the PCs.

The C900 prototypes were manufactured in Germany however, but that was simply because they had the facilities for the large PCB's from the 8xxx series.

<comment><USER9> So the Germans took the case and created the Amiga 2000 (?)

<comment><USER10> I believe the case design came from Commodore's PC range, which was largely a German initiative. The A2000 was designed in Germany and never launched in the US - Commodore US designed their own system around a slightly reworked chipset which ended up as the B2000 (which used the same case)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's a bunch of coverage of the C900 and the historical context of Commodore at the time in Commodore: The Amiga Years. Amazon has it in hardcopy, or you can get the ebook version at [http://variantpress.com/the- amiga-years-kickstarter/](http://variantpress.com/the-amiga-years- kickstarter/). I literally finished reading it last night, and there's an amazing amount of detail I've never seen anywhere else.

</comment><comment><USER11> I noticed that the 900 had the ability to be used as a timeshare machine. I wonder if this was one of the last timeshare machines. Or maybe the concept continues in the supercomputing realm.

<comment><USER12> Any Linux system is a timeshare machine.

<comment><USER13> The context of the question was this the last machine designed to be a time sharing machine, ie it had hardware directly on it for the express purpose in design to be used for terminals.

I do not think so but the meat memory storage is not working fully right now. I do know that things (not a PC type) like the AS/400 had physical terminal connectors well after this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> From floodgap.com:

> _The Commodore 900 (…) was intended as a mainframe-class machine with > multitasking, timesharing, virtual memory, multi-user capabilities — what > you would expect from a Typical Un#x Mainframe. System adminstration was > accomplished through an X-Windows-like GUI on the workstation version of the > 900; the text-only server flavour could be used as a workstation but was > intended to be a standalone host._

> _project officially discontinued in favour of the newly-acquired Lorraine, > later becoming the Amiga._

When Commodore refrained from becoming an actual computer manufacturer…

<comment><USER15> They didn't learn the lessons from the C64 which was a runaway success. No effort to make a product line with forward compatibility. Minimal effort on software. Bizarre pricing strategies.

At least with Tramiel at the helm they had a strategy of going for the long tail of the market by selling at rock bottom prices. Once he was gone they floundered around, and almost got beaten by Tramiel's Atari. It's only once they release the Amiga 500 -- which looked an awful like the 520ST case and strategy wise -- and dropped the price that they caught the lead.

When I bought my ST the 500 wasn't out yet, and the Amiga 1000 was priced way beyond my budget. The 520STfm I bought with monitor was around the same price as the Commodore 128, which I was considering before I discovered the ST.

<comment><USER6> Tramiel had a habit of firing good engineers 3 months after product release. Either directly, or by screwing them by moving to useless positions or taking bonuses away until people 'got the message'. Those who didnt get what was going on or didnt care about money/dignity were the ones who stayed as long term employees. Jack had an eye for suckers and people putting passion before common sense and self respect.

Whole C64 design team was effed out of promised bonuses and fired/left. People like Bruce Crockett (manufacturing), Al Charpentier (VIC) and Robert Yannes (SID) went to start Ensoniq (later sold to Creative), Chuck Peddle went to Apple, Bill Mensch hung around for two years of abuse. Same with Amiga team (Jay,RJ,Needle).

Those two videos touch on the Commodore culture of curb stomping until only the weak and dumb survive:

Oral History of Chuck Peddle [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enHF9lMseP8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enHF9lMseP8)

Oral History of William David "Bill" Mensch Jr. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne1ApyqSvm0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne1ApyqSvm0)

<comment><USER15> That's interesting, though your example of the Amiga team -- they weren't there under Tramiel, so would have nothing to do with him in particular. Though I'm sure the culture there was rotten.

<comment><USER16> That's true, a lot of the problems came down to Irving Gould - Tramiels main investor. While Tramiel was there they appear to have countered each others flaws just enough for things to mostly work. After Tramiel, Gould went through executives in short order, and most of them had no idea how to properly leverage what Commodore had.

That said, Tramiels last pricing stunt (drastically dripping the price without preparing the distribution chain, and so hanging them out to dry) also contributed to gutting Commodores distributor network in the US in a way they never really managed to fix.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN Recruiters: What if someone doesn't want to phone interview? - <AUTHOR>

Those of you that are hiring, or have hired in the past, how would you react if someone would ask to change the phone interview to something else, say a project of sorts, or other methods of interviewing? I just get extremely nervous in phone interviews, and usually perform horribly. I'd much rather some other form of interviewing. <comment><USER2> I have interviewed a number of candidates over the phone in the past. In my case, being good on the phone to customers was a hard job requirement. But if the job hadn't required the successful candidate to use the phone at all, then I don't think I would have had a problem with the candidate suggesting alternatives.

The hardest thing though is that interviewers are generally all different, and they have to be opinionated in order to be able to make hiring decisions. So you're taking a risk regardless, and have to judge the trade-off in going off the standard path for yourself.

In this situation I would have expected the candidate to offer suggestions in what to do instead, particularly because I cannot expect to understand his or her reasons in detail. If you want to seek an alternative, you should ask questions to find out exactly what the interviewer is hoping to gain from a phone interview, and be prepared with an appropriate set of alternatives to suggest with the interviewer's goals in mind. Use email, online chat, or whatever else you want that isn't too inconvenient for the interviewer. Try not to stretch out the conversation too long out in time.

</comment><comment><USER3> Really depends on the type of phone interview I think. If it's really basic HR, do-you-fit, core competency stuff then no, I don't think it makes sense to replace the phone interview. If it's a technical assessment then maybe, since it makes more sense for them to accept a work sample.

Work samples are a way better indication of candidate quality than phone interviews. If the interviewer is sensible and has the flexibility to deal with it then they would definitely prefer you to show them your coding chops than ask you a bunch of technical questions. Many employers won't have the luxury of being able to spend someone's time reviewing your code though, or if they're big enough, will likely have a bunch of HR hoops to jump through.

If they're small and smart though, it's definitely worth a shot. Phone interviews are horrible for both ends. Beyond the real basics I think it's better to avoid them.

</comment><comment><USER4> Fair question. If I asked you to do a phone interview and you told me your reasoning why you'd rather another form of interview, I wouldn't have the slightest issue with it provided the job your applying for doesn't involve any phone calls to clients!

In short, be upfront and completely honest. Some people really struggle on the phone, that's life.

That being said, the same concept wouldn't necessarily apply to face-to-face interviews.</comment>