Estonia sues Gemalto for €152M over ID card flaws - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/estonia-gemalto/estonia-sues-gemalto-for-152-mln-euros-over-id-card-flaws-idUSL8N1WD5JZ <comment><USER2> This provides some more information [0].

Not only did Gemalto fail to notify Estonia in good time about the ROCA flaw (the discoverers of which noticed that Estonia were still issuing vulnerable cards, so notified them themselves), some cards had their private keys generated outside of the card and then inserted, rather than on-card generation. I think Estonia is to be applaued here for handling all this in a sane manner.

[0] [https://dan.enigmabridge.com/estonia-hits-gemalto-again- inse...](https://dan.enigmabridge.com/estonia-hits-gemalto-again-insecure-eid- cards/)

</comment><comment><USER3> They made everyone regenerate their private keys on the card recently during a short window, and those who missed it (like me) ended up with a fancy piece of paper with their name on it. Oh joy.

Just when I'd decided to use my e-Residency for something, it becomes worthless.

They're asking me to reapply for a new ID document and pay the fee all over again. I'd honestly do it, but then they can't hand it over to me in Pakistan and I'm not flying out of the country just to grab an e-Residency card when my previous one hasn't even expired yet.

I guess I'm still a bit sour over this.

<comment><USER4> That 'short window' was some period of months, I thought. It's not cool the problem happened but sounds like you didn't consider it high enough priority to get onto it.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, unfortunately, short is relative. As I mentioned elsewhere, I was under intense work pressure at the time and everything else in life seemed far lower a priority in comparison.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Problem was not security flaw.

Problem was that Gemalto did not tell Estonia that there is security flaw.

That led to rush security fix which could have been worked on for months before not do it in weeks.

</comment><comment><USER6> I suppose the Estonians are partially at fault for trusting Gemalto with anything, post Snowden.

<comment><USER7> Nothing to do with Snowden revelations, but with RSA prime number generation. Because of a bug on the chip, primes were generated starting from numbers divisble by ten, which are way rarer than those divisble by two (pardon the extreme simplification.)

That's a hardware design error. The claim is that Gemalto failed to fullfil the contractual clauses about quickly informing the customer (the Estonian state) of the security breach, not the existance of the security breach itself.

<comment><USER8> Well, there was this revelation that NSA had the 'Gemalto network wide open'. After week long investigation Gemalto denied any breach, leading to situation where you could either believe NSA or Gemalto.

[https://www.wired.com/2015/02/gemalto-confirms-hacked- insist...](https://www.wired.com/2015/02/gemalto-confirms-hacked-insists-nsa- didnt-get-crypto-keys/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Everyone told them you can't have secure electronic voting.

<comment><USER10> That's a statement that applies to everything, including classic paper voting. It's never a question of whether there's absolute security, because nothing has it. It's about comparing the security and other benefits of different systems.

<comment><USER11> The main problem with electronic voting is that you can't understand what the machine is doing. Source code won't help, because you don't know what is running on the machine. Source code won't help because you don't know what the compiler will do (maybe insert some extra stuff?).

Paper voting is comprehensible by everyone.

<comment><USER10> That's an illusion. People can comprehend paper voting on a source code level, in that they know what should happen in theory. No single person can even fully observe a single counting station, much less a whole election. You still end up having to trust the system.

<comment><USER11> It's not. People can comprehend paper voting on "source code level" aswell as the "compiled" version.

>No single person can even fully observe a single counting station, much less a whole election.

First is possible (just observe the person whos counting), second not, for obvious reasons that you can't be at two places at once.

<comment><USER10> > _just observe the person whos counting_

.. and trust the votes to all be real?

A person voting could put two votes instead of one. (It can still look like one, using the same method that's used for card tricks.) Even if you introduce extra steps, like every paper needing a stamp or something, you're still going to need to trust this stamper person. They could be in on it, and either stamp multiple or leak the stamp design.

The staff could be inserting fake votes into the ballot box before it gets counted, even without actual voters.

The counters could add votes from their sleeves, again classic card trick mechanics.

The counters can remove votes from the pile by stacking two or just sliding one off the table while also performing a distraction. Once again, classic magic trick mechanics that are used for vanishing jewelry etc.

Basically my point is that if the counting station is being staffed by magicians from Vegas, they can produce any result they want without an average person that's _observing_ understanding anything.

Besides, at the end of the day it doesn't even matter, because one counting station is within the margin of error for the whole election.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is surprising. Estonia was oft quoted example of digital governance. Any ideas on how this will effect their blockchain projects?

<comment><USER13> Estonia had excellent digital governance before the blockchain fad so they'll handle it pretty much just fine.</comment></comment>


The excellence myth: Why 10,000 hours isn't enough - <AUTHOR> http://www.sportsscientists.com/2011/06/10000-hours-doping-sports-science-in.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FcJKs+(The+Science+of+Sport)

<comment><USER3> The following comment is a good summary:

 _Having said that, I don't totally disregard Bounce, Outliers and those theories of practice. I just think it's ludicrous to say that "practice is sufficient". And that's the crux. It's not about dismissing the role of practice, it's about asking the right question. And it's pretty crazy to ask "Is practice important?" That's obvious, particularly at the elite level. And if you read Bounce and Outliers, then you'll see that they argue this - <USER2> position is that practice will get anyone to the level of the best performers. Can't be true.

So basically, I'm just calling for moderation, a more balanced view. There's not a decent physiologist in the world who would argue that it's ONLY genes, so why argue that it's ONLY practice. In fact, I have data from research that shows that practice is very poor at explaining performance, that if anything, practice is less important than some other, unmeasurable factors.

I'm getting into the details, and as I said, I'll get this done as a proper series, but the bottom line is that it must be both - you must be born with the right genes, then train in the right environment. Gladwell and co are addressing only the latter part, and sure, it's important and helpful, but it's also wrong to be exclusive... _</comment>


Ask HN: How to avoid putting off reading articles on the Internet? - <AUTHOR> Whenever I come across a good article on the Internet, I just use "Add to Reading List", "Read Later", "Pocket", "Instapaper", ... and don't read it really. Hoping that "some day" I will have enough time and energy to read it. In reality though, I never do it.
I know this is wrong, but I don't know how to fix this habit... Do you just ignore those articles, or do you actually read them while you're at it?
I guess that "some day" will never come as I find myself swamped more and more. <comment><USER2> Hit the power button, walk outside.

<comment><USER3> It clearly has to be more complicated than that!</comment></comment>


Microsoft-Yahoo Deal Struck, Will Be Announced Within Next 24 Hours - <AUTHOR> http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090728/microsoft-yahoo-deal-struck-will-be-announced-within-next-24-hours/

<comment><USER2> In terms of how this might benefit the innovation or the internet as a whole is still a question. They both might together own 30% of the search market, but what difference does it make? any thoughts?

<comment><USER3> This news actually has a practical impact on my business: if it means that I can buy advertising across both search engines at the same time through the same interface with the same creatives (ad text), then Microhoo can deliver me enough clicks per month to make it worth my time to actually sign into their website.

I pay Microsoft $30 a month for ads currently, and they just don't generate the traffic necessary to justify me logging in and optimizing their ads like I did for Google. (Which can fill $500+ per month of ads per me, even at the cheaper post-optimization CPC prices.)

I also tend to rank fairly well on Bing for searches of consequence to me relative to Google. Currently, that scarcely matters because few of my customers use Bing. More of my customers presumably use Yahoo (you should see how many @yahoo.com email addresses I have in my database) but for whatever reason I've never ranked particularly well there. Thus I'd expect a modest increase in traffic. However, the sad fact of the matter is ranking #1 on Microhoo for a tier-one keyword has been worth less to me than ranking #8 on Google for a tier-two keyword. (Tiers assigned subjectively based on search volume, perceived fit to my business, and observed conversion rates.)

<comment><USER4> I run lots of accounts and my experience is the same but more. Here in Australia, Google search seems to account for more then 10X Microsoft + Yahoo.

Yahoo (the number 2 at around 5%-10%) doesn't justify logging in to optimise. It also doesn't justify getting good at working with the platform to get the most out of it with less effort. The platforms are also just not as good as adwords. On top of that, the conversion rates seem to always be lower. I'm not sure if this is a reflection on Microhoo users or the ability of the system to optimise the ads themselves. It might even be that having less 'stock' (ads) to run, they are left with poorer choices and run my ads in less then optimal scenarios where google would see the low ctr and run some other ad.

It all ads up to Yahoo & Bing being ignored.

*Ideally, I would like to run everything from a central console that links to Google, yahoo & whatever else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Long ago, it was Google who served Yahoo's search results.

<comment><AUTHOR> And it was Yahoo who served Microsoft's search results (via Inktomi). How about that for recursion ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I hope delicious comes out ok in all this.

<comment><USER6> Does delicious generate revenue for yahoo? I can't see how it can be, but maybe I'm missing something.

<comment><USER5> It generates data. Which was supposed to be able to help search, but they never actually did the research.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is there any word on whether Yahoo Japan is involved in this? I know that Bing is running in Japan now, but Yahoo Japan has always been a very separate legal entity.

</comment><comment><USER8> er, it's only for Bing to provide search results. Yahoo's been here before with Inktomi.

<comment><USER9> no, msft will be collecting all the click data as well. yahoo may have the chance to sell ads for search on the phone, but no one wants to do that anymore. when you go to fill out a webform to sell ads on bing, it will be a msft page being served

y! really is exiting search AND search marketing here

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I really liked Yahoo. It will be missed.

<comment><USER11> It's a search deal, not an outright sale of the company.

<comment><USER12> Good call, I really think yahoo is bigger than just search. They could also use the money to develop their properties like flickr and news - think of it like in monopoly when 2 players trade with each ending up with a monopoly and get started building hotels. In this case the odd man out (google) doesn't get sympathy because he's rich and hansome; and already owns 60-8o% market share

<comment><USER11> Yahoo is terrible. The only reason I even go to Yahoo! is Yahoo! finance, however, as soon as I get my hands on some real data sources again, Yahoo! is gone completely.

<comment><USER13> Yahoo finance is probably the only yahoo service I still use also. Flickr very rarely.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Real-time Chess (not turn by turn): Ninja Chess - <AUTHOR> http://ninjachess.net/

<comment><USER2> There was something called Kung Fu Chess a while back that was this exact same concept. It was really fun, but I think it shut down in 09. Best of luck with this one.

</comment><comment><USER3> I see only a latency graph but the board is "broken" and when I log in there is not checkerboard just a gray frame. That's on safari

</comment><comment><USER4> This is awesome. The chess pieces can be moved at any time, but each piece has its own cooldown before it can be moved again. At first, I was confused by the fact that you are allowed to move the king into check, but after a couple games I realized that it makes perfect sense for a real-time game.

</comment><comment><USER5> This reminds me of kunfuchess, which has the same gameplay. I'm not sure if that's still around.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm very confused by this, it seems you can win by 'taking' the king.

<comment><USER7> USCF blitz chess is played this way. "Real time" chess seems more similar to blitz then standard chess to me, so I think this makes sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Seems to work alright, but with a chat it would be more fun.

</comment><comment><USER9> I cant even make the moves

</comment><comment><USER10> the demo website seems to be down at my end ..</comment>


Upgrade of an old console - <AUTHOR> http://fishki.net/en/comment.php?id=92670

<comment><USER2> The practice of making portable consoles was popularised by the _almighty_ Ben Heck. He has done many.

<http://benheck.com/all-game-projects>

He also wrote a book:

<http://benheck.com/hacking-videogame-consoles>

</comment><comment><USER3> I believe here is original link (google-translated)

[http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=es&...](http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=es&u=http://www.inventosunicos.com/viewtopic.php%3Ff%3D10%26t%3D14&ei=7zopTtHYGIKmhAeW3MXrCw&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCYQ7gEwAA&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dhttp://www.inventosunicos.com/viewtopic.%26hl%3Den%26biw%3D1440%26bih%3D690%26site%3Dwebhp%26prmd%3Divns)

</comment><comment><USER4> I would love to see what cognitive neuroscience research exists on this: This project seems to support my lay hypothesis that there exists a continuum of "aspect ratio blindness." Here is a master craftsman who has spent innumerable hours building a beautiful, unique device -- with a 16:9 screen that will, by the nature of the hardware inside, only ever display stretched 4:3 images.

 _I'm willing to consider that this aspect ratio blindness may consist of "lack of OCD."_

<comment> loup-vaillant I didn't notice until I saw the finished product. This is indeed a pity. Now, is there _one_ 4:3 screen of that size on the market?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _This_ is supremely brilliant. Really embodies the hacking spirit :)

</comment><comment><USER6> What is the brown stuff used to fill in the gaps, is it Bondo? The results are surprisingly good!

<comment><USER7> It looks like the Pattex stuff was used to build up the gaps, and then according to the original forum post ([http://www.inventosunicos.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=14](http://www.inventosunicos.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=14)):

"SE LE DA MASILLA DE CARROCERO Y SE LIJA"

Google Translate turns masilla to "caulk," I'm not sure what it is. Would love to find out - I never thought it would be possible to take a bunch of dissimilar plastic junk pieces and turn them into something that looks like it was molded as one piece.

<comment><USER8> Looks like this <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gt0s4SSZxP8>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> nsfw warning for ads.

</comment><comment><USER10> Brilliant and very inspiring, thanks for sharing!

It goes without question, of course, that it could have been done much better, that's not the point though.</comment>


Sweden's Coronavirus Strategy Will Soon Be the World's - <AUTHOR> https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/sweden/2020-05-12/swedens-coronavirus-strategy-will-soon-be-worlds <comment><USER2> An opinion piece by three academics who don't seem to have any expertise in the fields of public health and epidemiology. Caveat emptor.

<comment><USER3> Did we read the same article?

For instance, this quote from it, "Lockdowns are simply not sustainable for the amount of time that it will likely take to develop a vaccine."

I don't need an epidemiologist to tell me that. In fact, an epidemiologist _can't_ tell me that. But an economist or a psychologist could.

The article is about human reactions more than epidemiology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [https://outline.com/PDcfJU](https://outline.com/PDcfJU)</comment>


Bitcoin Crashing - <AUTHOR> http://markmaunder.com/2013/12/01/next-bitcoin-crash-begins/

<comment><USER2> There were many cries of "It's Crashing!" a week or two ago when it mtGox hit $1000 and then started falling. It stabilised around $800 before climbing up again.

This may be the same, or it might not. I can't tell, and probably neither can you. What you can be assured of is those who scream "It's a Crash!" at the first sign of a drop have generally been wrong more often than right. Some will be right when it does crash, but how much of that is luck, wisdom, or the fact that they got it right by calling it enough times that they were bound to hit the mark when it did happen.

<comment><USER3> Looks like it's exactly the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Kevin Rose, Digg founder and VC, just made a post about Bitcoin's fall on /r/bitcoin:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1rutkt/bitcoin_is_f...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1rutkt/bitcoin_is_falling_again_here_is_why_it_really/)

<comment><USER5> He sold at $300, I bet he regrets that decision.

[https://twitter.com/kevinrose/status/398865551730036736](https://twitter.com/kevinrose/status/398865551730036736)

<comment><USER6> I sold at $30 two and a half years ago.

I regret it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Then, as has happened before, it will climb back up to $1200 and beyond, > probably up to somewhere between $4K and $10K before the next big crash. If > you do want to speculate on crypto currencies, wait a day or three and > you're about to get a great deal on Bitcoin.

These kind of statements are a red flag for me. The majority of the people trading bitcoins seem to be interested in capital appreciation or alternative assets (e.g. Chinese stashing assets), rather than using it as a currency for transactions. Currencies are embraced for their stability and predictability... that's why the USD is a reserve currency for the rest of the world.

The Economist sums some of this up in their recent article: [http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21590901-it-looks- over...](http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21590901-it-looks-overvalued- even-if-digital-currency-crashes-others-will-follow-bitcoin)

</comment><comment><USER8> If Bitcoin drops to around $200, it's just following long term exponential growth trend with of booms and corrections.

If Bitcoin drops much below $100 we can talk about crash.

</comment><comment><USER9> Most people aren't willing to put a day and a price on their predictions. I will look forward to another post in two days of you either celebrating cause you spotted something, or explaining why your prediction didn't pan out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Will do. BTC-e has already crashed down from $930 to $750 in the last 1.5 hours and volume is spiking there too. (it tends to be cheaper to buy BTC because of greater risk)

<comment><USER10> Why is BTC-e greater risk?

<comment><AUTHOR> Because it's based in Bulgaria and no one knows who actually owns it. But it's good software and one of the few places you can trade other currencies like Feathercoin and Litecoin with plenty of liquidity.

<comment><AUTHOR> ...and funny you ask because a commenter just posted on my blog that Sheep Market Place was scammed out of $40 million in BTC which is a possible cause of all the selling:

[http://www.techienews.co.uk/973470/silk-road-like-sheep- mark...](http://www.techienews.co.uk/973470/silk-road-like-sheep-marketplace- scams-users-39k-bitcoins-worth-40-million-stolen/)

<comment><USER11> If this theory is true, it shows that BTC lacks book depth and the current price is just speculation on the edges, not a true price for the entire stock of BTC. (That is, if a large portion of BTC users wanted to get out of BTC, they couldn't realize the nominal market price.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Bitcoin Wisdom[1] is a great chart to watch for those interested. Very detailed.

(I am not affiliated with BW in any way.)

1: [http://bitcoinwisdom.com/](http://bitcoinwisdom.com/)

<comment><USER13> This dip looks like a dump and pump.

<comment><USER14> How so? As a noob in trading, I find it fun to ponder all the psychological factors. People buying fuels mania leading to more people buying fueling more mania. Until some turining point when too many people start to sell fueling a depression making more people sell fueling more of a depression...

Obviously people with enough money can try to artificial trigger those processes, but what are the conditions for that to work? Maybe the overall trade volume needs to be small enough?

How does an artificially triggered cycle look different from a "normal" cycle?

I suspect going from 100$/BTC to 1000$/BTC as a "pump and dump" would have required a lot of money for pumping?

<comment><USER13> The candlesticks on the sell where extremely sharp, meaning it could be a naturally occuring sell of a huge account, but the very similar volume of the candle at the bottom of the dip lead me to believe they are related.

And now the pack mentality has taken over and the volume is racing up.

<comment><USER14> So it would be a reverse pump and dump - sell a lot, count on falling prices, then buy again?

<comment><USER15> Yes. Think of it as pushing a couple of rocks over and hoping to start an avalanche. In this case it worked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wish i would know more about algorithmic trading. On all these markets a lot of bots are fighting right now on various strategies.

And the price jumps are insane right now going from 850-930$

<comment><USER17> There are bitcoin trading bots? That sounds interesting. How would that even work, and how would you set one up?

<comment> behold- Very simple - Bitstamp, MtGox, BTC have trading APIs.

I had a bot doing cross-exchange trading a few months ago, but than MtGox made the withdraws extremely slow and Bitcoins price started raising exponentially.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I am honestly surprised this link is on the front page of HN right now. It reminds me of what the newest tab on r/bitcoin looked like two weeks ago: [http://imgur.com/C2fncy2](http://imgur.com/C2fncy2)

</comment><comment><USER19> How is this post different from any other thread on the bitcointalk.org speculation forum[1]?

[1] - [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=57.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=57.0)

</comment><comment><USER20> I wonder when BitCoin will stop being tech news and start being financial news. That will be a watershed.

<comment><USER21> Once Bitcoin starts moving with fundamentals. I don't think it will happen soon, or at all though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Well bud. Congrats on demonstrating to the world that your "analysis" was fucking retarded.

</comment><comment><USER23> The biggest problem with Bitcoin is the lack of liquidity, and this is why we're always going to see massive price fluctuations with this currency. And, until the liquidity problem is fixed, no way in hell is this going to ever be close to the reserve currency. Who wants to own an asset which prices may fall precipitously if you decide to sell all of your holdings at once?

<comment><USER24> You mean like stocks, bonds, or any other commodity in existence? Yeah, the value is fairly unstable currently, largely because the current valuation is being driven almost entirely by speculation, however that is set to change. There's already a lot of interest being shown by various retailers in accepting bitcoin as a form of payment. Currently as an actual currency you can use to buy stuff (as opposed to a commodity being traded) it's fairly rare, but as it becomes increasingly common you should see the price fluctuations start to damp down as more and more real world goods starting having their values tied to the value of the currency.

I'm definitely shocked by the rapid climb in price we've seen recently. It's unclear if this is a short term bubble driven by rampant speculation and renewed media interest, or if this represents the new "normal" and with the new interest the currency was effectively massively under-valued before now. It's even possible that if there's significant interest shown by some major players (say if for instance amazon and facebook signed on to allow payments/money transfers via bitcoin) we might see yet another massive upward valuation of the currency.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> " If you've been watching BTC price for a while you'll recognize this as just another profit taking crash after a big runup."

aka correction. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_trend#Secondary_market_t...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_trend#Secondary_market_trend)

I wouldn't touch BTC yet in any form or shape, but I really wish for people diving into this from an investment point to learn fundamentals of technical analysis, fundamental analysis (not all that applicable for BTC) and especially risk management. Folks, don't get burned please. You don't have to.

<comment><USER25> I'm interested only in the uses of bitcoin after this settles down but I would be interested in your take on what the fundamentals of investing are (serious question really)

<comment><USER21> I'm not sure if you're asking about fundamental analysis or investment fundamentals in general?

In a nutshell:

\- Technical analysis are technical indicators over price, such as charts and overlays over those prices which would in theory provide you with an insight where price will go based on past performance/situations by only looking at the price action. Namely, charts and patterns as well as trends is all you need. Though there is more. Whether you 'believe' in it or not, turns out it's a self-fulfilling prophecy because lots of people 'believe' in it, so it's a good mechanism to rely on in general.

\- Fundamental analysis is where talk, politics and outside factors (earthquakes, scandals, stuff) influence price action. Some people monitor news and trade based on that, some do it only by TA (technical analysis), smart ones use both.

\- Risk management is how you calculate how much you will trade, how much you will take out once your trade goal is reached, or how much you will lose if your position is losing - and where you will take the loss. In my opinion this is the most important part of investing in anything. Good rule in trading is to make positions in such a way that they allow you at least 2:1 ratio of profit. Meaning that for each win you'd have to incur two losses to wipe that win out.

Those three things are the pillars of investment fundamentals. In my opinion, good defensive risk management strategy is over half the battle, if not more.

<comment><USER26> Isn't the efficient-market hypothesis dispute the effectiveness of both fundamental analysis and technical analysis?

<comment><USER21> Maybe, but that's in the realm of philosophy though. People use metrics and it's certainly debatable if it works or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I have a question. Is BTC inherently crash resistant right now? Due to the difficulties of withdrawing large amounts of money at once from BTC, wouldn't that make the currency pretty resistant to a crash?

<comment><USER28> Which difficulties? When you sell on coinbase they ACH you your dollars within 2 business days. The problems you're talking about only affect a single exchange (MtGox) out of many.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is nowhere near the end for this currency, but I'm sure the speculation is going to make for a wild ride the next couple days.

<comment><USER30> 'currency' and speculation never go well together. You really only get one or the other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Seriously how does this nonsense get this high on HN while perfectly good articles from Hackaday get penalised into oblivion?

</comment><comment><USER32> A few hours != a trend, this is ridiculous speculation.

<comment><USER33> Not at all! This is just what in the olden days they would have called "Internet Time".

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> The big crash will coincide with the next equity market correction. The recent run-up in Bitcoin is a reflection of people's irrational risk appetite. It will be a chain reaction.

</comment><comment><USER35> Sweet! I was hoping for a nice quick crash so I could buy at an opportune time.

</comment><comment><USER36> What stops another crypto currency from replacing bit coin?

</comment><comment><USER37> It is retarded that this has been upvoted to the main page. I am disappointed in all of you.

<comment><USER3> Here here.</comment></comment>


Simple Nano Explanation - <AUTHOR> https://www.orc.press/coins/nano <comment><USER2> Interesting this explanation conveniently omits any mention of how all Nano (aka RaiBlocks) was allocated to the developer, with only some of it being "distributed" via a website with a captcha setup by the lone dev.

      The initial distribution of XRB was performed through
      "manual mining" limited via a captcha.
      The distribution rate was 17 XRB (Raiblocks) per hour per ip4.

Dev aside, this method was easy to automate, and easy to bypass with the plethora of VPNs and users who own hundreds of IP4/IP6 addresses.

[https://github.com/nanocurrency/raiblocks/wiki/Design- featur...](https://github.com/nanocurrency/raiblocks/wiki/Design-features)

[https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=raiblock+captch...](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=raiblock+captcha)</comment>


Show HN: Best Practices for Using Public Wi-Fi - <AUTHOR> https://www.hackerfoss.com/2019/08/best-practices-for-using-public-wi-fi-tip-card.html <comment><USER2> This submission is just a blog post. Please review the "Show HN" guidelines, in particular:

> Blog posts, sign-up pages, and fundraisers can't be tried out, so they can't > be Show HNs.

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

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the information, will keep in mind from next time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What about "use a VPN?"

<comment><AUTHOR> Blogged an article on VPN [https://www.hackerfoss.com/2019/09/do-you-need- virtual-priva...](https://www.hackerfoss.com/2019/09/do-you-need-virtual- private-network.html)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Page flip effects on the web - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN, I have recently been asked to build an online/e-magazine in the same vein as those done by issuu.com with a non-flash based page flip effect. From articles and comments on the web, I've noted many have a dislike of such superfluous animations. At least I consider them superfluous.<p>What are your reactions to page flip animations and do they interfere with the content? <comment><USER2> Any animation like that simply slows me down. It's cute for the first 15 seconds, then it's just annoying.</comment>


OpenGL 4.4 is launched - <AUTHOR> http://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/showthread.php/182296-Official-feedback-on-OpenGL-4-4-thread?p=1252885#post1252885

<comment><USER2> The discussion on the forum is interesting, especially this post:

[http://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/showthread.php/18229...](http://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/showthread.php/182296-Official- feedback-on-OpenGL-4-4-thread?p=1252920&viewfull=1#post1252920)

(However, it's incorrect regarding patents, as stated later.)

<comment><USER3> Not really, as I can understand from the whole discussion Mesa will need to join Khronos if they ever want to fully implement OpenGL 4.4.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Especially welcome are DirectX-porting helpers. Other changes are performance tuning, as far as I have seen.

</comment><comment><USER5> finally time to get the new red book... _grumble_

<comment><USER6> I don't think there is going to be a redbook for 4.4, seeing as the last edition (for 4.3) was published last April...

<comment><USER7> That one probably took a lot longer as it was a complete rewrite to deal with the core profile. 4.3->4.4 would only have to add the 4.4 stuff in.

4.4 doesn't seem to be a major change. Only adding some buffer stuff, DX10 compatibility and mega-texturing.

<comment><USER8> They probably wont put out another edition just for 4.4. They didn't for 3.3 and after all the complaints the 7th edition received, I doubt they'll put out another insignificant update.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook's Free Basics blocked by India over net neutrality rules - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/in/2016/02/08/facebooks-free-basics-blocked-by-india-over-net-neutrality-rules/#gref <comment><USER2> Facebook and other companies would like to see "the other billions" of people connect to THEIR servers and have their data flow through THEM. From an architectural point of view this is not necessary. The internet needs more platforms, like email and usenet, which can be locally hosted and sync up through large pipes asynchronously in the larger internet. The way things used to be built before broadband internet in the USA.

</comment><comment><USER3> The entire PDF[1] is worth a read, and shows a clarity of understanding the internet not usually seen in the Indian government.

[1] [http://www.trai.gov.in/Content/VerReg/10243_0_ProhibitionofD...](http://www.trai.gov.in/Content/VerReg/10243_0_ProhibitionofDiscriminatoryTariffsforDataServices.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER4> I think Mark Zuckerberg's benevolence is going to be put to the test now that India has rejected it on his terms.</comment>


Mirai Botnet Linked to Dyn DNS DDoS Attacks - <AUTHOR> https://www.flashpoint-intel.com/mirai-botnet-linked-dyn-dns-ddos-attacks/ <comment><USER2> The manufacturers of devices should be held responsible for the security of the devices they sell. This is not different from what they are required to do for the electrical and physical parts of the devices. Pass some standard tests that would prevent at least the most obvious vulnerabilities, default passwords and other bad practices. Run metaexploit against it, etc.

This would raise the attention to secure software development also in other areas of the IT business. Sure, it costs more upfront but we gain as we suffer less from this kind of attacks.

<comment><USER3> Easier to say then do. Information security _is different_ from electrical and material safety and the key difference is pace of technical progress. The latter areas are relatively developed and stable, significant progress occurs in decades. While infosec landscape can drastically change in years and even months, within life-span of devices. To give you some perspective, toxicity of asbestos was discovered half a century after beginning of its widespread use [1]. And it took another half to fully realize the danger and stop using it.

When designing a new device, you can't mitigate a threat that you can't imagine. And you don't have enough time and budget (time-to-market is the key) to mitigate all known threats.

I'm not advocating status quo, which is dire. But there is no easy solution in sight.

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestos#Discovery_of_toxicity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestos#Discovery_of_toxicity)

<comment><USER4> There is. Stop making useless networked devices. You dont have time and budget to mitigate threats. Then dont release.

<comment><USER3> If they were useless no one would buy them. They are indeed useful. The problem is they also can be harmful, but not to their users.

The situation can be remotely compared to RF interference. If you use RF spectrum irresponsibly, you harm your neighbors, police, military and other parties, so everyone understands some regulation is needed. RF spectrum regulation is in everyone's interests.

If you use insecure IoT devices, they are exploited to harm some abstract people on the other side of the globe, who cares about them? If more people realize their devices can be used to shut down their Twitter and Instagram, maybe something will change. But I personally doubt that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It looks like it's going to be necessary to get serious about ingress filtering. See RFC 2827, which laid out the basics. Fortunately, there aren't that many ISPs left. If Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon got serious about ingress filtering, it would cut way down on the number of devices that could get through with a random IP source address. The ISPs are in a good position to tell their customers to unplug whatever is causing the trouble. (Assuming it's not the ISP's own router, which they should be able to fix remotely.)

At the big-pipe level, there should be sampling. 1 in 10000 packets has been suggested, which will reveal any massive attack without hurting privacy much. If a big pipe has an excessive fraction of attack packets, that indicates the sending end isn't doing proper ingress filtering. That's a matter to be dealt with between network operators, possibly with involvement from CERT and Homeland Security if necessary.

This problem is solveable, but it's going to take some ass-kicking. There are now enough big companies annoyed about this for that to happen.

<comment><USER6> I think you mean egress filtering.

[https://www.sans.org/reading- room/whitepapers/firewalls/egre...](https://www.sans.org/reading- room/whitepapers/firewalls/egress-filtering-faq-1059)

<comment><USER7> From the ISP perspective, it is ingress filtering -- he's saying they should be filtering their customer's traffic as it _enters_ their network, such as leaving customer's cable modem and entering the CMTS.

<comment><USER6> Ya, had to put on my ISP hat to see that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Calling for government regulation of devices is all fun and games until the government comes along and mandates closed source, irreplaceable firmware like the FCC did with Wifi access points.

<comment><USER9> Good regulation isn't impossible. For example, mandating a unique admin password for each IoT device would go a long way to helping prevent this kind of fiasco.

<comment><USER10> How would a unique admin password help in cases where there's a backdoor accessed via an open port? A lot of the devices used last Friday had port 23 open. The password used in the backdoor was compeletely separate from the device admin password.

Your advice is good but it wouldn't have helped last Friday.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I really hope that dyn releases some graphs of queries per second for a few day range so we can see how large this DDoS attack really was.

<comment><USER6> I read 1.2 Tbps:

[http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/D/DISRUPTIVE_CYBERATTAC...](http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/D/DISRUPTIVE_CYBERATTACK?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2016-10-21-17-26-28)

<comment><USER12> For reference, the earlier Krebs attack is quoted on Wikipedia as being 620 Gbps [1]. I'm not sure it's really comparing apples to apples though with this being at DNS level. ~2x the traffic sure, but at a layer with a lot more impact on everyone, so the outcome is much more than ~2x worse.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirai_(malware)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirai_\(malware\))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is there a way to determine electricity used during all of this? Certainly each IoT device has low bandwidth and load draw, but each of their service requests is honored the same as any normal human request. A small signal from a device prompts more electricity in potentially multiple servers upstream until the host can satisfy the request. So are there potentially thousands of kWh being wasted even with mitigation? Or can requests from certain IP's be denied and thus electricity saved?

<comment><USER14> I don't think electricity here is the problem. In fact, measuring the impact is probably pointless, a lot of servers are always-on regardless of traffic.

<comment><USER15> Yes, but of course the lost productivity of the eastern continental U.S. for just a few minutes likely dwarfs the wasted electricity by many orders of magnitude.

<comment><USER13> Sure, the current draw per byte of information exchanged is negligible. But I'm curious as to how these millions of cheap, low-power IoT devices can essentially act as transistors in the sense that their requests can prompt more relatively higher current draw elsewhere. Once again, this draw is likely miniscule.

In theory, if every internet connected device in the world could be a part of Mirai, not only would we not be able to use the internet, but wouldn't the majority of datacenters be running at full capacity?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is there any established way to test my router/IOT device for Mirai vulnerability?

<comment><USER17> Check and see if the Mirai code has default credentials for it, and if so, try logging in with them.

<comment><USER18> try logging in from the WAN, not the LAN. Mirai has no method of attacking lan interfaces unless a upnp rule was already set up

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is there a page somewhere that maps the passwords to corresponding devices? Essentially a list of what devices are affected by this botnet? I don't think anything I own is affected, and I monitor my network pretty closely, but would like to double check. And make sure not to buy any of them either.

<comment><USER20> Your post is late, but I would like to +10 it.

AFAICT, Mirai gains access ONLY through telnet on port 23. I see no one mentioning that anywhere here. If you do not have a device with something answering on port23, then you cannot be p0wned by Mirai.

Can anyone verify that statement as correct or incorrect?

<comment><USER10> I just came into this thread yesterday and today and mentioned it but I get the feeling this thread but maybe it's too late for discussing as this thread's been around for like 5 days. I'd like to discuss it more, maybe start another threwd but it might be futile to try to talk about this topic more. It's a bummer there's not more passion for this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's easy to call for companies to be held responsible for botnets etc. but it's important to be much more specific than that.

Google has an absolutely _massive_ bot network in all Android devices running Play Services, which basically keeps an open root shell to the mothership at all times. However that is used mostly for good, by keeping devices updated and removing malware remotely. An responsibility model would entail insurances, and that could easily change the situation for the worse.

But it's also important the realize the inherent risk in this. Has anyone tried to quantify it?

Then there has to be a line drawn somewhere. Holding the keys to Window Update means a potential botnet. Maybe even being a Debian Developer. That probably shouldn't carry the same responsibilities.

</comment><comment><USER22> I wonder what the goal of these guys is. Several high profile attacks with little impact, source code and attack vectors leaked, users and vendors scrambling to set up defenses.

Is this some "look what could happen" scenario or is someone using it to show off the skills of his other botnet?

<comment><USER23> Another speculation is that these were very specific attacks. Are there any online monitoring / logging / audit services that stopped being reported to? I know that at least the SPF checks failed for emails. Some other infrastructure could fail too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Can someone ELI5 how does malware infect IOT devices ?

The firmware which is there can only be upgraded from the OEM sites right ? So unless there is a way to affect the firmware from outside, how will a malware affect it ?

And what can I do to secure an IOT device if I have one ?

<comment><USER25> The malware hardcodes 62 common username:password pairs like root:12345 [0] and apparently there are millions of IOT devices out there where these trivial passwords will get you root.

[0] [https://github.com/0x27/linux.mirai/blob/6d5a3e2760852444de9...](https://github.com/0x27/linux.mirai/blob/6d5a3e2760852444de9d39b082b06cb7176cd2c1/mirai/bot/scanner.c#L138)

<comment><USER26> I think he's asking more about how the attackers get past the simple NAT. I mean, unless you deliberately expose the device as a webserver to the public internet, a device should be by-default hidden theoretically unless it goes _looking_ for trouble online. Of course, considering the quality of most routers, it's not like the NAT itself is terribly safe.

<comment><USER22> They don't need to. Millions of devices have their telnet port open to the Internet (just check Shodan), after infecting those, Mirai has a beach head to scan and attack the rest of the network.

<comment><USER10> This is what so few people seem to talk about. Why? I'm baffled.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> How difficult would it be to write a anti-mirai virus which disables the remote access on these IoT devices? Or at least warns the user in some way that this device is being used for DDoS.

<comment><USER23> Relatively trivial. Mirai didn't prevent future access as far as I know. But it would be illegal as well.

Warning the users would be much simpler. The hosts used to report infections are known. Destination port for the infection is known and normally not exposed.

I think that at this point ISPs should do the same thing with incoming port 23 as they did with outgoing 25. Disable by default, allow people to enable if they want to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I don't understand how they can scan IoT devices if IoT devices are behinds a router which is usually our home network setup. So we will expose a public IP, and NAT is usually not enabling by default anyway so how the heck they can telnet/connect to the IoT devices to brute force password?

It seems like somehow we

<comment><USER29> UPnP is enabled on lots of routers by default and enables devices and services behind NAT to forward traffic for specific ports to their internal IP address to allow direct connections from the internet.

<comment><USER28> I see. I just check mine and luckily DD-WRT disabled it by default.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Has anyone seen any estimates of how much economic productivity was lost from today's DDoS?

<comment><USER31> Or gained :)

<comment><USER32> github being down was a big pain for me today, and I'm surely not the only one...

<comment><USER33> why? were you trying to fork new repos or just your usual commit/push flow?

<comment><USER34> Downvoting this post is kinda shitty, because it's just obliquely pointing out something that nearly every developer should already know--that having a single point of failure for your builds and your tests (the only reason Github being down should impact you) is a bad, bad idea. Your code should be building and deploying from git remotes _you_ control, if you want to be using push-as- build CD. If you have dependencies, bring them in-house on your own Artifactory, gem server, npm mirror, whatever. Controlling the entirety of your deployment stack is not just a good idea, it's a _requirement_ for safe and sane operations.

<comment><USER35> Are you aware of some well-built systems for enabling that? What you're describing, while simple in concept, is not so simple to set up. There's tooling to be written and authentication to synchronize.

<comment><USER34> I...just do it? I don't find it to be complex at all. Use one or another method of user authentication for SSH (I use SSSD, but no solution can be really universally recommended), launch gitolite (a six line Chef recipe), do the same for Boxcutter or whatever you need.

I tend to think that the problem isn't complexity, the problem is the current developer culture being so predicated on _it 's easy, you don't have to understand things_ that having to understand things borders on anathema. Yes, doing this does require understanding how your tools work, but that doesn't make it complex. And you should know anyway.

Or pay me. My rates are reasonable. =)

<comment><USER35> I've been doing this for 20 years now, and little has changed. It's not that developers don't think they have to understand things; it's that their incentives are to understand things that are relevant to the problem domains of the products they are working on. Reliable and efficient deployment strategies are not usually in their problem domains.

<comment><USER34> They may not have been in their problem domains twenty years ago (though they were for me from the start, albeit merely fourteen or so years ago =). I think that the future is obvious and that the expansion of the "stack" to the underlying runtime infrastructure is a foregone conclusion; this is ignored at a developer's own peril.

(As it happens, I was a developer first--but I was managing my own infrastructure, too, and so from a very early age I had to be _damned_ comfortable with doing that. Now the industry is pivoting there as "devops" becomes more and more of a thing.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> To get around the DNS attacks, one of the cloud providers I use posted their IP address to Twitter. Of course, when Twitter is down too, it doesn't help much.</comment>


Gambit, a payment engine for social games - <AUTHOR> http://getgambit.com

<comment><USER2> This is what Facebook should have done shortly after launching the platform. Kudos to you for scratching your own itch and then opening it up to the world. Reducing developer friction, _handling refunds_ , easy integration across payment providers, and the optimization of the offers are all huge wins for small app developer shops.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> chris smoak, shoutfit.com and another developer tools thingy.

</comment><comment><USER3> Which YC Alum?

</comment><comment><USER4> Awesome guys!</comment>


Visa Type for South Africans Attending YC - kishan-kalan Looking for some advice from fellow South Africans who have travelled to US for YC or any other incubator programmes on which Visa Type to apply for?
We've applied to YC W18, and wanting to sort out travel visa for when/if we get accepted.
US Embassy points towards either:
B-1: Temporary Business Visitor Visa  , or
B-1/B-2: Business & Tourism (Temporary visitor) visa types.
I have searched HN for related answers with no luck.
Thanks <comment><AUTHOR> I am not certain but I believe the B-1 will be the one you need. Regardless I'm sure YC will be able to point you in the right direction.</comment>


Stream Sweep – Search across multiple streaming platforms for a track - <AUTHOR> http://streamsweep.com/

<comment><USER2> Is there a good service like this but for Movies/TV?

I would love to be able to search for a movie and have it tell me it's available on Prime streaming, so I can go straight there instead of searching HBO Go and Netflix first. Ideally, I am also logged in to all my services and it just starts playing.

<comment><USER3> Yes! You're looking for [http://www.canistream.it/](http://www.canistream.it/) , and it's great.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Initially a tool made for editors looking for a good stream and a high quality images for a specific track, also a good benchmark for browses capability on performing css blur filter "smoothly", currently, the blur performance on Yosemite safari seems far superior than of other top browsers out there.

More platforms and other features to be added, suggestions welcome!

</comment><comment><USER4> Looks like this is trying to solve the same problem as [https://bop.fm/](https://bop.fm/)

<comment><USER5> Good lord I think their error page just burned a few of my braincells!

[https://i.imgy.org/df/9e/bop-500-error.png](https://i.imgy.org/df/9e/bop-500-error.png)</comment></comment>


China charts a path into European science - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586-019-01126-5/index.html <comment><USER2> whether china does this because they cannot transition into services quickly enough and they need to manufacture a new capital stream to purchase their own products or because of some benevolent world connection plan is largely inconsequential, where there is political will there is a way.

a) china offers to triple your standard of living in the next decade through a massive transnational infrastructure project that will allow increased trade and job opportunities, growing local export sectors and connecting you into the largest economic region in the world.

b) continue to be brain drained by germany and scandinavia while their large agrobusiness interests buy your farmland on the cheap and create a monoculture base of gmo exports to feed their growing welfare states, in the name of human rights and european unity of course.

this is going to be a hard choice for easte-.... western eurasia. crimea and syria are just russia and america trying to get a station on this supercontinental train. the general tone towards china's plans, reminds me of the attitude towards japan and the shinkansen project in the 60s. sometimes pragmatic long term thinking beats moonshots. a traveler in 2050 will likely be on a high speed train from europe to asia than on a spaceship to low earth orbit.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3LLgzO_PrI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3LLgzO_PrI)

<comment><USER3> I don't think it's either of those things. I suspect China is doing it as a way to get a foothold in EU politics. Smaller, poorer countries are easier to bribe, coerce or just plain intimidate than say France or Germany.

Furthermore, those investments will do nothing to fix the problems those countries have. My biggest concern is that those countries will not be able to honor their obligations to China and the consequences of that.

<comment><USER4> > _Smaller, poorer countries are easier to bribe, coerce or just plain > intimidate than say France or Germany._

Not to mention, many of those countries are already being bullied and coerced by France and Germany anyway, so they may see some international abuse as the lesser of two evils.

Now, if countries like Romania could get their act together and stop accepting the free _outward_ movement of _people who they 've just paid to educate_, maybe the equation changes.

<comment><USER5> And how would you stop accepting the outward movement of people educated in Romania? Not sure if you are proposing to restrict freedom of movement, but that would be pretty hard to pass, and frankly scary. As I see it, the only reasonable way to fight the brain drain is to make it attractive for young people to stay in Romania.

<comment><USER4> > _Not sure if you are proposing to restrict freedom of movement, but that > would be pretty hard to pass, and frankly scary._

My thought is that they should create some form of obligation or tuition option for the schools so that they don't subsidize people who ultimately leave their economy. You stay in Romania, your tuition is subsidized like normal, if you leave Romania and become resident elsewhere, you pay a bill to recover the cost of educating you.

Obviously they can't, as a matter of civil rights, prohibit people who are not criminals from leaving the country, but they have tools to enforce agreements like that at least with EU member states, and states they generally have relationships with regardless (i.e. UK).

<comment><USER3> A couple of problems with this idea - one, the people emigrating and their parents paid for that tuition through taxes. Second, what about all the people who finish college and stay in Romania, but work in some dead end job that doesn't even need higher education?

And lastly, this would mean keeping the people most dissatisfied with the current state of the country _in_ the country. No corrupt government would want that. Much better for them to leave and not cause any trouble.

<comment><USER4> > _their parents paid for that tuition through taxes_

The way that (modern) governments finance programs like this is exactly the opposite of your model of it. Your parents didn't pay to subsidize your education, the next generation did (this is in part why birth/immigration rates falling is taken as such bad news).

> _Second, what about all the people who finish college and stay in Romania, > but work in some dead end job that doesn 't even need higher education?_

The next ones will know from that more about the demand for educated people, and adjust accordingly; at least they mainly wasted time and not money on getting into that dead-end job.

> _And lastly, this would mean keeping the people most dissatisfied with the > current state of the country in the country. No corrupt government would > want that. Much better for them to leave and not cause any trouble._

Sure, but should we govern based on what the government wants? The people benefit when the legitimately dissatisfied are heard rather than just swept under the rug.

As for it being a corrupt government that encourages the people most likely to become dissidents to leave the country, what does that say about the countries receiving those dissidents? Is it moral to accept masses dissatisfied people from a country that suffers more from politics than from geography? Is that moral even when that country does have enough semblance of free expression that you could conceive of dissidents making a difference from the inside?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Europe has a special place in the venture because it was the final destination of the original Silk Road."

Is this really true? Wasn't China the final destination of the original silk road. Isn't it why we call it the "silk" road.

My understanding was that the silk road was primarily a loose idea of trade links between the middle east, india and china. Europe was an afterthought.

You could argue Europe is the final destination today since it is china wanting to get access to europe. But in the past, wasn't it the other way around?

But more to the point, Europe ( especially western europe ) is significantly wealthier than China. Why is it that China is investing in poorer european countries and not the wealthy western european countries? They can find money to fund wars all over the world, but can't find money to invest in tech/science in central and eastern european countries?

<comment><USER3> I suspect that the reason wealthy WE countries aren't investing in EE and the Balkans is that it is in general, a poor investment (due to corruption and brain drain).

The real question should then be - why _is_ China investing in those same countries?

<comment><USER7> You can actually gain a lot from investing in "poorer" Eastern European countries, like a lot of tech outsourcing occurs there because the intellecutual labour is much cheaper yet the quality of work is comparable to Western European standards.

A lot of products or scientific research can be made at a much cheaper price in East Europe and maybe even at a higher quality. The issue for Western European countries is that they don't need to and likely don't have the huge budget that China has to put into foreign investment. Also although China may seem like it is investing a lot, it's not much in terms of its budget so it seems much more affordable to China.

Also China is also investing in Western Europe as well, they are more or less doing a scattershot approach as can be seen by the German acquisition. Its probably just that Western Europe isn't as receptive and doesn't need as much.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A Twitter clone app built with getstream.io - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/GetStream/django_twitter

<comment><AUTHOR> Disclaimer: I am the author of the linked app and a founder of GetStrean.io (TS'15).</comment>


Ask HN: What was the first CPU to implement speculative execution? - <AUTHOR> Hi all,<p>Does anyone know what the first cpu design to support speculative execution was? Everything I can find on the subject mentions that speculative execution is essential for modern designs, but none mention where the idea comes from. <comment><USER2> The answer will depend upon how broadly you define "speculative execution".

If you define it broadly as any form of computation before you know for sure you will need to perform the computation, then items such as Tomasulo's algorithm from January 1967 can be seen as a form of speculative execution ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomasulo_algorithm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomasulo_algorithm)). It was implimented in the IBM 360/91 mainframe.

If instead you define "speculative execution" as needing some form of branch prediction and execution of a predicted branch path then the Wikipedia article on branch prediction ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branch_predictor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branch_predictor)) cites a publication by Yeh & Patt (item 14 in the citations list) dated from 1991. There are likely earlier pubs, but that one provides a 27 year old age for the technique. The reason that this places a age on the technique is that the moment you begin 'predicting' a branch and executing instructions down the 'predicted' path before you know for sure the branch outcome, you are "speculatively executing" instructions (executing them before you know for sure you do in fact need to execute them).

<comment><AUTHOR> Many thanks for the comprehensive answer. I hadn't actually considered how I defined "speculative execution". I suppose what I meant is a cpu which will execute more than one path in a branch and discard those branches which are not taken. Either way, I was expecting the answer to be something like the AMD hammer or something around there. Clearly off by a bit :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The 360/91 would throw an "imprecise interrupt" error indicating that the error occurred somewhere in the last (dozen?) instructions.... which caused me untold hours of grief. Which branch ended up here?</comment>


True Surprise - <AUTHOR> http://www.docbastard.net/2019/05/true-surprise.html <comment><USER2> One of my favorite ER patients was a guy who got stabbed in the chest by his girlfriend with a 10" serrated bread knife. Came in with the knife still in him, buried to the handle. Bellowing that this proved ... something about him. He was clearly pumped. But not really bleeding. After a chest CT and removing the foreign object from his chest, there was still no real bleeding. The knife had gone in at a bit of an angle, but what really saved him was the fat. 10" of steel and it never made it to the pleural cavity.

First case report I'm aware of where fat was cardioprotective.

<comment><USER3> In the bad surprise category was the 50-ish guy I admitted as an intern for uncomplicated chest pain. He got married that day but left the ceremony in an ambulance instead of a limousine. The plan was cardiac enzymes and put him on a stress test in the morning. First set was negative and the anginal pain had abated. All the right things were done. Seemed straightforward.

Three hours later while I was trying to sleep I get a frantic call from the ED that he was coding. He was sitting up watching TV, suddenly turned grey and clutched his chest, and fell back in ventricular fibrillation. We shocked him into pulseless electrical activity and then did a three hour futile code because his new wife couldn't grasp the fact her new husband had died right in front of her. And really, who can?

Surprise.

<comment><USER4> What does "coding" mean in this context?

<comment><USER5> Yeah because this is HN, I first read it as "the patient started programming in the middle of the night".

<comment><USER6> The irony of surprise is misunderstanding in the HN context too. I too pictured the poor bloke got up, cracked open his laptop to do some coding in a hospital bed. LOL. Thought: poor guy can't even get a break from devops on his wedding day and even after a fucking heart attack.

No surprises!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I met a soldier who had been shot in the head in Iraq. He had a scar all the way round his head from near the temple right to the back of his head where the bullet had gone under the skin and travelled round the surface of his skull before exiting. He was a very lucky bastard.

<comment><USER8> Luck seems relative. He did get shot after all

<comment><USER7> True. Amend it to, 'much luckier than most other people who have been shot in the head'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is it normal in medicine to refer to a baby's physical sex as its "gender"? I'm not looking to start a debate on whether that is right or wrong, just curious to know if that's the common usage or just this particular writer's preference.

<comment><USER10> In medicine, at least in my experience, the terms are used fairly interchangeably.

<comment><USER8> Similar with scientists in my experience. Though it's more easily explained as the older generation sees the terms as interchangeable or not worth arguing about. The younger generation tends to use sex specifically and might call out improper use of gender.

// "MICE DON'T HAVE GENDER!!!!" <\- something I've heard at high volume too many times

<comment><USER9> Interesting the way it changes within a couple of generations, the "older generation" in my day, i.e. my dad - a linguist - would call out the then- modern interchangeable usage, by insisting " _nouns_ have a gender, _people_ have a sex!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great blog. Lots of cool and interesting tales. Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER12> That is interesting. I don't know if I'd ever feel 100% sure that the bullet actually bounced out until the bullet is actually found.

<comment><USER13> The bullet would have to be made of something really exotic in order to hide from a head-to-toe CT.

<comment><USER14> Didn't Mythbusters do an episode of that? IIRC they tried an ice bullet and one made out of frozen meat, neither really worked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> -log(probability_of_our_prediction)

There are no "true" and "false" surprises, it's continuous. And it is additive.</comment>


ScoreYard Offers Player Registration via WePay - <AUTHOR> http://blog.scoreyard.com/2010/11/29/online-player-registrations-available-for-all-sports/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is something we've been working on for a while now. We had a pretty big shift in focus a couple months ago from developing player stats, scheduling, etc to online player registration.

We did this for two reasons. One, because this is what the leagues we talked to were telling us they needed.

And second, to be completely honest, because we need to focus on revenue generation. We are bootstrapped. We each maintain a 9-5'er to pay the bills. And we are both passionate about getting this off the ground. But to do so, we need to generate revenue.

With that said, we love feedback and we love introductions to potential customers and people who can help us move forward.

Thanks for reading.</comment>


Senior developer, what do you look for in a junior Rails developer? - <AUTHOR>

I'll be shortly completeing a Rails app to help a friend implement his idea and another for a friend of his. Both are CRUD-focused with social/community orientations (read: sharing economy). I began my IT life desiging and developing static and wordpress sites in Chicago before coming to Portland to work with my friend and implement his idea in Rails. I've greatly enjoyed the experience and am constantly keeping up with new patterns and techniques and am now wondering if I'm at the point to solicit for junior developer positions.
To the working engineers out there, what know-how and qualities are you looking for in your junior developer?
A final note, I plan on sanitizing and posting these projects on Github soon as well, but wonder if that's enough of a resume. I'm also aware this is a frequent question on Hn, but feel there are always peculiarities on the side of the asker and answerer that may be lost in merely researching prior threads (which I've been collecting as well). <comment><USER2> Yes, you are good enough. Go apply, and never stop learning.

A more helpful answer: yes, if you've successfully done what you just said you did, you are absolutely good enough to apply for jobs. You might not get the first one, you might not get the second, but even if you don't get a job, you'll get information about what companies in your area expect (and there are very important regional differences).

Find Ruby meetups in your area. Go to them. There are many reasons why this is valuable. Trust me.

Make sure you know the libraries out there that people are using. [https://www.ruby-toolbox.com/](https://www.ruby-toolbox.com/) is helpful.

Make sure you know a bunch of other programmers. Everyone gets stuck sometimes, being able to know who to turn to is important in any discipline.

Keep writing code, and keep publishing code. Practice good coding style, and ask other people for feedback.

<comment><USER3> Just came across this, thank you. Self teaching myself now and constantly worrying about having x number of pages/apps going to show I know what I'm doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> First: if you're building sites that people are using, you are officially a "junior web developer". That's especially true if you're deploying and supporting those sites.

Second: PDX.rb is a friendly, knowledgeable group. Find them on calagator.org and go to some meetups. They'll absolutely help.

I don't really do Ruby or Rails any more so I can't offer much more concrete help than that, but welcome to Portland regardless.</comment>


Show HN: Greasemonkey script to highlight rel= links - <AUTHOR>

This is a userscript I wrote because I was curious how HN decides to put the nofollow attribute on links.  Though I'm an experienced C programmer (among other languages), I decided it was time to learn browser-hosted JavaScript and wrote a Greasemonkey script instead of using one of the existing tools or userscripts.
As such, the quality's probably not great, but I'm throwing it out there anyway and would welcome any feedback or suggestions of better techniques to accomplish the same thing.  If your curious as I was what the HN upvote threshold is for removing the nofollow tag, install the script and find out.
Here's the URL: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/96207 <comment><USER2> Edit: ./firefox/<profile_name>/chrome/userContent.css

a[rel] { background-color: #ff00ff !important; }

The above will change any anchor with any 'rel' attribute, but if you want to get fancy by only modifying anchors with 'rel' attribute having 'nofollow' then you'd need to realize rel is a space separated list.

a[rel~="nofollow"] {background-color: #ff00ff !important; }

Given that some idiots incorrectly use semi-colon or comma delimited lists for rel, you'd be better off with using the "contains" idiom.

a[rel*="nofollow"] {background-color: #ff00ff !important; }

[http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/Test/CSS3/Selectors/current/html...](http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/Test/CSS3/Selectors/current/html/index.html)

If you're really have your heart set on using in-browser javascript, look into userChrome.js --You can do many amazing things with userChrome.js due to when it runs, and it's access to the browser.

<http://userchromejs.mozdev.org/>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I can't believe I typed "If your curious..." instead of "If you're curious..." I must've hit maxvisit before I had a chance to edit it or something.</comment>


Elon Musk AMA - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2rgsan/i_am_elon_musk_ceocto_of_a_rocket_company_ama/ <comment><USER2> I found his comment regarding learning to be the most insightful. It is a more developed explanation of what I have found to be an effective strategy for me:

> One bit of advice: it is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic > tree -- make sure you understand the fundamental principles, ie the trunk > and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing > for them to hang on to.

Without the structure of prior knowledge, I never understand or remember facts; however, when I've had the time to develop that "first principles" knowledge, I can usually grasp and understand the significance of minutiae.

How do you of HN learn? Is it similar?

<comment><USER3> It seems like common sense, but it's so difficult to do sometimes. I agree completely.

When I first started learning Linux for example, I didn't just learn the commands I needed to do certain things, I tackled everything. I spent months and months learning everything I could about it. I bought a giant Linux book and went from cover to cover. I learned about things I would never use (and probably still haven't).

I pushed myself to recompile the kernel even though I didn't need to. Then I did it probably 50 more times that month. No joke. Crashed my system. Rebuilt it. Rinse, repeat.

After laying down that foundation in the 90s, I've kept up on it but Linux is so very "easy" for me. Setting things up and getting work done is extremely intuitive, far more so than it is in Windows or OSX. So when people ask me why I prefer it I tell them it's a personal preference because it's so easy for me, and I even I forget that foundation I laid.

I have taken on other pursuits the same way, such as development but I notice any technology that I half ass learn just to get stuff done.. is hard. Sometimes I wish I had enough time in my adult life to build such a strong foundation in something like.. JavaScript for example. And I bet if I added up the time I spent struggling in the beginning I would have been able to do just that.

But yeah, long story short this is absolutely the best way to learn something. Build that trunk.

<comment><USER4> You may find that, for some popular software _technologies_ now, so far no one has organized the material into a solid tree with a trunk and a few large branches that quickly provide good paths to any of the leaves. Instead you may be looking at a noxious _vine_ or even a patch of jungle with some poisonous plants and reptiles.

<comment><USER3> I have definitely noticed this, which is part of the reason I haven't "dug deep" with them, and instead learn enough of it to get a job done.

<comment><USER4> It takes good effort to organize a significant body of knowledge into a tree with a few big, short branches.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The moderators of r/IAMA apparently deleted several of the highest voted questions.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/2rgzgo/official...](http://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/2rgzgo/official_spacex_teslamotors_solarcity_subreddit/)

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I've been following r/spacex for a little bit.

When they started trying to work out some good questions a day ago someone suggested that everyone upvote the resulting questions but the mods there quickly shut that down. [1]

The reasons given for deleting the comments was specifically what everyone was trying to avoid, that is voting brigading. As far as I can tell no one was asking for votes, simply working together to produce some high quality questions.

[1] [https://i.imgur.com/lBCWvQh.png](https://i.imgur.com/lBCWvQh.png)

<comment><USER7> That's the attitude that they say murdered wikipedia. Rules are there to foster a better community, not to kill off good community initiatives. As soon as the adherence to the rules becomes more important than the quality of the product you've basically lost it. The whole trick is to know when _not_ to apply the rules. AMAs are an exceptional item and a different ruleset for AMAs would not be all that hard to imagine. Pity.

<comment><USER8> "Murdered" Wikipedia whose fifth pillar is "ignore all rules"?

<comment><USER7> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6612638](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6612638)

[http://www.gwern.net/In%20Defense%20Of%20Inclusionism](http://www.gwern.net/In%20Defense%20Of%20Inclusionism)

And many others like it.

<comment><USER8> Sure editor numbers are in decline, that doesn't support your point. Ignore All Rules is one of the fundamental principles the site was founded on.

<comment><USER7> The point is that that fundamental principle seems to be ignored by people that prefer to bicker over the rules rather than to be otherwise productive:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8596682](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8596682)

And that this in turn is what drives editors away. So it _very much_ supports my point.

<comment><USER9> Wikipedia at this point is one of the primary sources for _everything_ on the internet. At the early days of wikipedia, you could pick any topic and there would be major articles unwritten. It was far best to have _some_ article than a great article. I can't comment exactly on the editor situation of the wiki, but it's to be expected a shift to more specialized and aggressive "curation" of articles, specially of more solidified topics. Wikipedia's fantastic performance contradicts this argument.

<comment><USER7> > Wikipedia at this point is one of the primary sources for everything on the > internet.

That is explicitly what it isn't, anything but that.

> I can't comment exactly on the editor situation of the wiki, but it's to be > expected a shift to more specialized and aggressive "curation" of articles, > specially of more solidified topics. Wikipedia's fantastic performance > contradicts this argument.

Wikipedia would still be a fantastic resource if nobody contributed to it from today forward. But that does not mean it couldn't be a whole lot better without the army of lawyer wannabes that are in a tug of war over who gets to have the most power over others by citing policies until the cows come home.

Lots of long time contributors have left because of this and the exodus is far from over. I agree that there is an expected shift to curation but the fantastic performance of wikipedia is not in any way evidence for there not being a significant negative undercurrent at work.

That's just evidence of how good the concept originally was and how much momentum it has built up.

Any kind of success will attract two kinds of people: those that wish to contribute and those that see it as a means to their personal ends, to get a piece of that success. Since wikipedia is not big on credit for contributions the only place where people craving for recognition get to achieve their fix is in becoming 'editors', and unfortunately the motivations of those editors are not always pure.

See elsewhere in this thread for some of the more bizarre displays of such behavior.

<comment><USER10> Google uses it for their semantic searches and Apple/Microsoft use it for their personal assistants. So this idea that Wikipedia isn't a primary source of information is nonsense. It is.

Until it stops being the first search result for the majority of "typical" searches it will remain a primary source of information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Does anyone know why Musk believes so strongly that robot overlords are a serious threat? I don't understand how wasting any time worrying about AI taking over, Terminator-style, is productive. We're not going to be developing Strong AI any time soon, so it's simply not a problem worth worrying about. And if we do, the Strong AI won't be in any position to "take over." It probably won't even want to take over. That's a very human trait, and Strong AI wouldn't be human.

I'm wondering whether he was tricked by someone at DeepMind, perhaps the same way people were tricked hundreds of years ago into thinking a chess-playing robot was possible.

<comment><USER12> As far as I can tell, you have two main objections to prioritizing worrying about Strong AI:

1) Strong AI is very far away, so no use worrying about it yet.

2) Strong AI if developed will not be likely to take over.

to which I would counterpoint with:

1) Sure, but when it happens, it will only happen once and thereafter will likely be out of our hands and control. Thinking about the groundwork that needs to go into safely developing an AI is cheap relative to the opportunity cost of getting it wrong. Prevention, cure, etc.

2) If developed, Strong AI will likely have SOME goal. It's not that a Strong AI will actively seek to rule humans, it will just have aims that will likely consider us as disposable as ants. To quote Yudkowsky:

"The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for something else."

\- [https://intelligence.org/files/AIPosNegFactor.pdf](https://intelligence.org/files/AIPosNegFactor.pdf) (Artificial Intelligence as a Positive and Negative Factor in Global Risk)

<comment><USER13> I still don't buy the doom scenario. There is so much more to world domination than just intelligence... like having the proper weapons. See [https://what- if.xkcd.com/5/](https://what-if.xkcd.com/5/)

Pigs are also intelligent, but they never dominated humans because they don't have / cannot use guns.

<comment><USER14> That is true, but if we can make an AI even slightly smarter than a human, then it will be better at designing AIs than we are. It then designs an AI even smarter than it, and so on. That is the progresion that leads to the singularity. How smart could AIs go? There may be no practical upper limit.

If you have a super-genius AI, massively more intelligent than any human, how do you know you are not being manipulated by it? Tricking us into disabling it's safety protocols, or gaining multiply indirect controll over capabilities dangerous to us, might be as easy for it as an adult tricking a 3 year old. We could never know if we were safe from such a machine.

ed - Don't quite understand the downvotes.

<comment><USER15> "ed - Don't quite understand the downvotes."

With the full power of humanity you design the first AI which is smarter than a person. It's then able to out do all of humanity and instantly design an even better AI. _mind the gap._

Further intelegence is not a linear quantity as trading ex: improved poker skills for _insanity_ is not a net gain. And _insanity_ is a real option which is likely to plage most early AI attempts.

<comment><USER14> Voting on HN isn't about agreeing or disagreeing. It's about whether a post is contributing to the debate or not.

Anyway, all of humanity isn't engaged in AI research and AIs are likely to be duplicable so I think your first point is beside the point. As for Insanity, yes that's quite possible. Developing high-functioning sentient AIs is likely to be a long term endeavour. But still, I think it is one that will ultimately be successful and this debate is about the consequences of that.

+1 for your engaging contribution. (see, that's how voting is supposed to work)

<comment><USER16>
      > Voting on HN isn't about agreeing
      > or disagreeing.  It's about whether
      > a post is contributing to the debate
      > or not.

That turns out not to be the case. It once was true, but as the community has grown, so people have not been enculturated with those early ideas and principles, and now many times people read something, disagree, downvote, and move on, without ever providing counter-points, or engaging in the discussion. It's a way to punish people you don't agree with, while avoiding having to think.

Elsewhere[0] you commented about an item reappearing and having its votes ages apparently reset. I hazard a guess that it was the mods playing with a mechanism to prevent "item overload." There were about a dozen submissions of the SpaceX launch, and each would fall a little way, the next would be submittted, gain a few votes and comments, then fall away to be replaced by another. One way of preventing the splitting of conversation might be to pick a canonical submission, and then prevent it from falling too far, and thus encouraging conversation only to happen in one place. Pure speculation, but it would be a mechanism I would consider were I running a site like this. Certainly there have been fewer instances lately of the "new" page being overrun by breaking news that everyone wants to submit.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8844078](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8844078)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "The best teacher I ever had was my elementary school principal. Our math teacher quit for some reason and he decided to sub in himself for math and accelerate the syllabus by a year. We had to work like the house was on fire for the first half of the lesson and do extra homework, but then we got to hear stories of when he was a soldier in WWII. If you didn't do the work, you didn't get to hear the stories. Everybody did the work."

Amazing.

</comment><comment><USER18> If you just want to read the questions/responses: [http://www.reddit.com/r/tabled/comments/2rh6si/table_iama_i_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/tabled/comments/2rh6si/table_iama_i_am_elon_musk_ceocto_of_a_rocket/)

<comment><USER19> I also made a site ([http://www.amatranscripts.com](http://www.amatranscripts.com)) that transcribes popular AMAs. Elon Musk's is here: [http://amatranscripts.com/ama/elon_musk_2015-01-05.html](http://amatranscripts.com/ama/elon_musk_2015-01-05.html)

<comment><USER20> Nicely done. I've seen a couple of these sites, but I quite like the output of yours.

Is there any logic as to what order the questions and replies are displayed on the page? It doesn't seem to be either of reddit's 'top' or 'best' sorting. Perhaps whatever order they landed in within the JSON?

<comment><USER19> The questions and answers are presented in the order that they were answered, which I believe gives the best flow to the "interview".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Nice to see his sense of humor here too

[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2rgsan/i_am_elon_musk...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2rgsan/i_am_elon_musk_ceocto_of_a_rocket_company_ama/cnfq6yo)

</comment><comment><USER22> I am still reeling from having just learned that in Wernher Von Braun's book 'The Mars Project', it is proposed that the leader of the Martian government when it is formed shall be known as the 'Elon'.

[https://i.imgur.com/65YR89H.png](https://i.imgur.com/65YR89H.png)

<comment><USER23> The book says no such thing. [http://books.google.com.uy/books?id=V16e-xQmyZQC&pg=PR5&sour...](http://books.google.com.uy/books?id=V16e-xQmyZQC&pg=PR5&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false)

Edit: There appears is a posthumously published book named Project Mars that says that. Not sure if I trust it.

<comment><USER22> I confused things as there are two separate books with very similar titles by Braun, 'Project Mars' (ISBN - 0973820330) and 'The Mars Project' (ISBN - 0252062272). The first is sci-fi and the second is technical.

Here's a pdf of Project Mars - [http://www.wlym.com/archive/oakland/docs/MarsProject.pdf](http://www.wlym.com/archive/oakland/docs/MarsProject.pdf)

The reference to the Elon is on page 177.

I hadn't initially noticed the fact it was posthumously published in 2006, however it would seem like an odd kind of forgery, if it is one.

Equally it does seem odd that Braun would choose Elon as the name of the Mars leader, so perhaps it might be a real work but with Elon added as a joke by the translator.

Or perhaps Braun chose the word Elon because he sometimes thought of leaders as trees, or something, and it is all just a massive bit of luck.

Personally I'm starting to suspect another explanation however. And if I'm right, there is an entire warehouse full of empty Elon Musk clones on ice, waiting for the spirit of Wernher Von Braun to animate each one in turn, in the event of damage occurring to the current corporeal vessel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "When going through hell, keep going".

<comment><USER24> I saw that, great quote. I also love its corollary, "If you are digging yourself into a hole, first stop digging."

<comment><USER25> Not sure what the word is, but I don't think its "corollary." Its the anti- corollary.

<comment><USER26> Niels Bohr: "Two sorts of truth: profound truths recognized by the fact that the opposite is also a profound truth, in contrast to trivialities where opposites are obviously absurd."

<comment><USER24> Ok, added that one to my quotations file.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I really like this comment

[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2rgsan/i_am_elon_musk...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2rgsan/i_am_elon_musk_ceocto_of_a_rocket_company_ama/cnfprcf)

Saying that he has no idea what is going to happen with the launch tomorrow, its a refreshing honesty.

I was also wondering on an semi unrelated note if HN had ever had AMA's from interesting people? I am not preposing that they should start happening though.

<comment><USER28> Ha, that was one of my favorite answers. When I started reading the question I kept thinking, you know he must of pulled that number out of his a* * (as Musk likes to say). Had a huge smile when I read him admitting it.

Edit: If anyone knows how to get a double asterisk in an HN comment would be grateful for the knowledge, was forced to add the unnecessary space. So far tried the HTML number code, which didn't work, and the help has no guidance.

<comment><USER29> Asterisks * * (in Arc? Or just on HN?) is used to start and end _italics_ , so has a tendency to disappear. I'm surprised to learn you got them with the space - seems to do that when there's nothing to italicise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> One thing I'd have liked to ask if I hadn't missed the window of opportunity would be regarding his desire to go to Mars himself. I have often wondered about the psychological effects of being effectively stranded on a barren, lifeless planet potentially for the rest of your life. On Earth, we can "get away from it all" and go to the country, go camping near a nice stream, listen to birds sing, go for a swim in the ocean, sit in a nice garden and eat our lunch, and so forth. How would one cope with the loss of all of that, not to mention also having to deal with the long-term physiological effects of a change in gravity?

<comment><USER31> Throughout history men have probably lived through worse conditions, either while being prisoners of war, stranded on a desert island and whatnot.

The way to cope with such harsh conditions is, I suppose, always the same : hope of escaping and returning home.

<comment><USER32> In this case, the coping strategies of martyrs seem more apt. "You are doing it for the cause."

<comment><USER31> That seems to work with Mars One, for instance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Elon Musk is a super star on Reddit. I am personally a big big fan. If you see his responses, they are terse and snappy.

</comment><comment><USER34> In the US, up-vote for Challenger Schools (at least circa 1980's). They teach successful behaviors and are worth every penny. (Reaching and accelerating kids early is important.)

<comment><USER35> Was that mentioned anywhere in the AMA? I can't seem to find a thing on that.

<comment><USER34> Nope, Musk did [http://www.whps.co.za](http://www.whps.co.za) Merely an observation that early environment shapes attitudes to life, learning, etc. which can either drive out curiosity and/or ambition or amplify it. (Excluding crucial social navigation and team dynamics, hitting most all of intelligence, ambition, curiosity, confidence (and so on) to do well, but not developing one or more of those tends to become self-limiting factor/s.) Overcoming adversity (being bullied) also helps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> >3.Our spacesuit design is finally coming together and will also be unveiled later this year. We are putting a lot of effort into design esthetics, not just utility. It needs to both look like a 21st century spacesuit and work well. Really difficult to achieve both.

I don't understand how looks are a legitimate criterion.

</comment><comment><USER37> This guy has everything. Why is it that people feel an urge to praise him right to his face? His ego is going to start leaking out of his eyeballs.

<comment><USER38> Check out this video, he's very humble and down to earth. He's worthy of the praise he gets. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOpmaLY9XdI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOpmaLY9XdI)

<comment><USER37> I didn't mean to say that he has a big ego. What I meant was that he probably has to put some effort into not letting it 'get to his head'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Q: What daily habit do you believe has the largest positive impact on your life?

A: Showering

Q: Would you ever consider becoming a politician?

A: Unlikely

<comment><USER39> I'm starting to believe there's an odd property to curiosity. Unique observations are threatening to people's identity.

Those were two actual questions asked to Elon along with his responses, and the two that stood out for me the most. Did he mention showering because that's the time he gets most of his ideas[1]? Did he say no to politics because it's more likely to change the world through innovation[2]?

Result: 8 downvotes. It'd be enough if the comment was downvoted just once, to sink in the page. That happens to everyone. But seven other people found it imperative to make an authoritative statement on the matter. Impressive. Did that keep their identity safe? Pushing threatening ideas away isn't the best way to help rearrange the semantic tree in your mind.

Could there be an inverse correlation between being downvoted and having good ideas? It shouldn't be a surprising discovery on valuable ideas if you consider the nature of the most valuable startup ideas: look like bad ideas but are good ideas.

So if you want to know if your ideas are good, it's not enough to see them gain support. It's also important to see people turn against them.

I know HN guidelines discourage commenting on downvotes, because they make for boring reading, but I'm starting to think being downvoted is a positive sign of how dangerous your ideas are.

Are you being downvoted enough?

[1] [http://paulgraham.com/top.html](http://paulgraham.com/top.html)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8801803](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8801803)

edit: revised 80% of this after having a shower

<comment><USER40> Your first post got downvotes because it is devoid of content. It just quotes, with no comment or context, two questions and answers.

I'm not sure how you get the idea that you're somehow provoking people with dangerous ideas.

<comment><USER39> Quotes are content, or at least a specific aggregation of them. The article's title is context.

What I found as a dangerous idea was pointing out things you notice when you are not sure why you notice them. Which is how the subconscious operates. Not everything that makes you pause should initially have an explanation. The majority of people's decisions occur without their awareness.

One thing I learned from this exercise was something I hadn't consciously noticed before. That I feel pressured on HN to comment. I don't like that. I want to do something about that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I live in australia and I have 4kwh of solar panels on my unoccluded WNW facing roof. My electricity grid connection charge is around $300 AUD per year (around USD 250 per year at current rates - which is about the same as my annual electricity bill since I currently feed into the grid at the wholesale rate). Given a 10 year payback time, how long will it take until a battery array with say two days headroom and a small generator is cost effective for me? Say I'm prepared to pay double that in order to mitigate market risk?</comment>