France to introduce controversial age verification system for adult websites - <AUTHOR> https://www.politico.eu/article/france-to-introduce-controversial-age-verification-system-for-adult-pornography-websites/ <comment><USER3> As a kid, I was able to figure out limewire, Emule, torrents and I'm sure kids today will be able to download a free vpn or use similar tools I used as a preteen to figure out how to circumvent these pointless blocks. I started with free video samples and only moved onto methods by high school to get access to premium websites. As a human, our strength is not only the ability to do these things but to also teach others to do it. I was able to help my friends to get access as well. If one ape discovered fire it would die with them, but our ability to spread information, like a virus is what gives humanity intelligence. One kid like me at school is all it takes to make this stupid law useless.

Adult websites want brownie points and also don't like nonpayers, but mess with their revenue and you'll get a push back.

<comment><USER4> A mistake many people do. Maybe there are people now wary of children being subjected to certain content on the net. They are forgetting at least three things:

They also were exposed and survived just fine

Their kids are probably going to be better with tech at some point.

The vast majority of pornographic content is available without being on the market which makes regulation nearly impossible. Yes, you can maybe attack the platforms hosting it, but I don't see this going anywhere. You would punish commercial distribution on push other content underground. Many in porn are already directly financed by their viewers.

Wasn't the Australia block circumvented within 24h by a ~14-year old kid?

Some people suggested to make brushing teeth illegal so that kids do it in secret in a dark corner.

<comment><USER5> I agree - for many of people(including teens) circumventing restrictions is part of the thrill.

That said I do think there has been an escalation of porn over the years. It's really apparent when you look at things from the 70s. Though apparently banning porn from cinemas shifted content to more "trashy" VHS/DVD/Online videos

I feel data-driven analytics has probably accelerated this, like a race to the bottom (pun unintended). Extremity probably drives engagement so the porn kids are exposed to today is much more extreme than what we may have been as up and coming internet users.

<comment><USER6> It is so easy to encounter it, even accidentally. Things have improved a bit, but 3 yrs ago when I switched to DDG almost any image search with SafeSearch=off came with sudden unexpected nude or porn pics on page 2 or 3 almost regardless of the search term.

<comment><USER7> You mean you turned the safe search feature off, and you got unsafe results?

<comment><USER6> Sure, what can you expect, right? Imo not that any unrelated search yields porn. With google this never happened (actually I can't remember ever seeing porn images unexpectedly in ggl image search where I also had safe search off). It held me back recommending DDG to others. Though, as I said, things have improved a bit nowadays, and it happens less often.

<comment><USER8> I think I read it here on HN that google has/had an entire team dedicated to making sure you never ever got porn unless you were very specifically searching for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Websites that don't follow the new AV laws will have to sanctioned. If the website is local, you can go 'round to their office and arrest the owners. Lock 'em up and throw away the key, it being _the only language they understand_ etc.

However, if the website is not local then it must be blocked, either by statute, by the courts, or by a regulator.

This may require a _National Firewall_ to block sites (eg The PRC.) As a bonus, your blocking infra can also be used for monitoring and logging.

If you're lucky though the nation state will implement its _Great Firewall_ using a borked DNS infra (eg The UK) that isn't even mandatory for ISPs with a small enough userbase.

Exciting times, er, _temps fantastiques_ , even. What tech does _En Marche_ intend to mandate for blocking hairy armpits? Hopefully nothing too competent.

<comment><USER10> Websites may already be blocked in France upon order from the Government, based on anti-terror laws.

Basically, the Ministry of the Interior decides and orders all Internet access providers to block a site. Courts are not involved on the premise that this must sometimes be carried out as quickly as possible, though there is a right to contest a decision _a posteriori_.

<comment><USER11> There's no such thing as blocking a site. You can direct DNS providers to block DNS, which doesn't help for anyone using Firefox. You can direct ISPs to block an IP but then you have hard decisions when the site you want to block is hosted by a foreign cloud provider.

<comment><USER12> How does foreign cloud provider matters. As of now encrypted SNI is not there, so they can block simply based on SNI. If SNI info is not correct, they can ask the foreign cloud provider to block the website. Any cloud provider where SNI block won't work well is large enough to not deny requests from the french government.

<comment><USER11> In the long term plaintext SNI is going away. I'm not convinced that France can implement such a system much faster than TLS WG can thwart it.

Also while some US cloud providers might cooperate I doubt that in particular Cloudflare would. It only takes one.

<comment><USER12> In the long term things are hard to predict. If we look from 2010, E2E encryption wasn't there, or atleast not in a form usable by the masses. E2E is now here, and is as easy as using Signal. However, you see countries making laws against it. I doubt they will let eSNI pass through. And eSNI will be much easier to block, since you don't need to block it for consumers, you just need to impose big fines on businesses using it, since any such business will need to earn money somehow from their customers in the country. Unlike E2E, you don't have to worry about some random person forking signal and running their own servers. And video on internet is expensive enough that only an entity with good bank balance can do it, thus easy to punish with economic fines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Oh so using sex to implement fear and uncertainty and despair ( FUD ) among the populace? Think of the children! By the way, here's a firewall to block whatever websites we don't like. Oh and you're being monitored 24/7 now. But not now. In like, five years.

<comment><USER14> I'm not sure if it's intentional or not, but the 'D' usually stands for Doubt (sometimes Deception).

<comment> ur-whale Not in this case, since it's about filtering porn. /s

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There's a meta-issue with pushing regulatory requirements that are trivial to bypass: you effectively normalize bypassing regulations and effectively create a culture where regulatory bypass is seen as "not a big deal" even if that wasn't your original intent.

People have been using VPNs because they think region-locking streaming content is something where the risk-reward calculus is fairly obvious, and from what I can see that's a fairly normalized cultural trend.

If you do the same thing with porn, you are now adding another layer of depth to the emergent cultural phenomena.

If you think there needs to be a serious conversation about porn access and psychology, implementing restrictions trivial to bypass only serves to reduce the legitimacy of agents trying to make the case for such education.

Edit: you also see this phenomenon with respect to COVID mask mandates

</comment><comment><USER16> It's a continuation of an ongoing trend nowadays to elevate to a government level issues that should be solved in the family. Instead french government should spend its efforts on actual society problems that affect every child, like fixing french school system. But then they have to spend brain power and money while fighting entrenched interest groups, so as always, low hanging fruit is easier to pick.

<comment><USER17> I wonder if we could pinpoint when this awful trend got started (in France and elsewhere).

<comment><USER18> My guess is that most people believe that their own family is functional, but that other people's families are creating delinquents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Honestly, this is completely ridiculous and makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. It'll not only disturb people's lives if it goes on ahead, but could also have the potential risk of identity theft increasing depending on how it is implemented.

And the saddest part of all, is that this is completely pointless. It's extremely easy to circumvent, including for those with little to no tech knowledge, not to mention you can find hardcore pornography on platforms such as Twitter by typing 3 letters "Sex" and one click, plus all the hundreds of thousands of keywords that will lead you there, including such words as "Amateur", "Schoolgirl"...

They learned nothing from the UK.

<comment><USER20> If a 9-year-old types into Google, they will easily find porn.

But, maybe it shouldn't be so easy. And yes, once they're in middle school and high school they'll just figure out alternatives, but I don't think it's unreasonable to put up some dead simple barriers to protect innocence.

Just because it was easy for those of us growing up in the 90s and after doesn't mean all children have to be exposed like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> They tried it in Russia with Telegram. All they did is teach the entire country how to use VPNs.

<comment><USER22> And blocked most of AWS in the process, I understand ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wonder why they're using credit cards or leave it to the platforms to figure out verification mechanisms. In Germany the national ID card has age verification mechanisms built in[1]. This also has the advantage of not handing personal information over to the porn websites as all the veriifcation is done by the official eID server.

Given that the article also addresses future standardized European solutions this seems like a pretty reasonable step forward.

[1][https://www.personalausweisportal.de/EN/Citizens/Electronic-...](https://www.personalausweisportal.de/EN/Citizens/Electronic- Identification/Electronic-Identification_node.html)

<comment><USER7> I couldn't find much information, but in this case, doesn't the government directly have access to the sites you used this feature on?

<comment><USER23> I suppose they would know which provider requests the authentification. However in one document I found the process is described as 'ephemeral' which I suppose suggests they don't store these requests.

<comment><USER7> And would you trust them not to store them? I certainly wouldn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Children should be deterred from looking at pornography. Watching pornography of normal acts with male or female anatomy I doubt will cause issues. But what about other nasty content? It's easy to fall down a rabbit hole and such content is available with just three words in google.

The internet is not a safe place and when a child watches obscene content that very well starts to warp their mind and perception. They hunt for further gratification and this can lead in to more murky content. Pornography can be malicious and internet pornography addiction is real too.

I am in favor of restricting content however for the reason that there really is nasty content which young children are discovering and it's leading them to grow up corrupt. If there was a way to divide the two but you can't, however the way it is it's either all or nothing.

Filter it, let a child hack around the filter expanding their computer skills and reward it. That it self is far more positive then being able to view all the content that is available. Innocence can be lost prematurely and that's disastrous for the child if it is lost.

Pornography nowadays isn't like it was during the MTV years which many will compare from.

<comment><USER25> who is to decide what is obscene and what is not?

<comment><USER26> Me. I declare censorship an absolute obscenity in a free society. There now that we have rendered that stupid question meaningless we can move on as a society.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's been a while since I worked in adult, but I recall when Germany did something similar, no one outside their jurisdiction had to follow the rules, so no one did. Additionally it just required the user to enter an ID number the site owner had to validate against a government API, that charged per request. This was flawed because... Kids could find/share the ID card numbers and bad actors could run up your bills by dictionary attacking the validation form. It was a need and was utterly unenforceable.

The solution is parents need to be parenting. Where there is a will, there is a way (and that's directed to both sides).

</comment><comment><USER28> I guess DNS over HTTPS will become popular much faster in France.

<comment><USER12> It won't help alone without encrypted SNI.

<comment><USER29> eSNI can't come soon enough.

<comment><USER30> Sure but eSNI only works for this on the theory that large CDNs are too big to block. It's domain fronting as a service.

The problem is that if you're too big to block you're big enough that governments can drag you into court.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Blocking content is absolutely pointless, and ironically increases demand. Circumventing controls and doing something you shouldn't is exciting.

Personally I don't have a problem with porn and I'd rather not see this used as a way to weasel in real id verification systems into websites which I think is the real motivation here.

Next it will require real id for comment forums to quell "hate speech", and then eventually to identify dissenters and other utopian pursuits.

<comment><USER17> Governments taking the role of parents.

<comment><USER32> Parents aren't technically competent enough to do this kind of thing properly. Governments, on the other hand… aren't technically competent enough either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This will never work, there are too many websites and too many ways of getting around this limitation.

BUT, there are plenty of parental control softwares for computers and phones, I think this is the only valid solution. So instead of passing some stupid laws, we just have to teach parents.

Otherwise, it's like trying to replace all knifes by platic ones; no we let parents teach kids it's dangerous.

<comment><USER12> I don't think people making these laws care of 1-5 % people using a workaround. If 95% people are blocked, I think they are good.

<comment><USER7> I think you get the percentages wrong: 95% of kids who want to watch porn will easily find a workaround.

<comment><USER12> Unless 95% of kids can get a VPN, I doubt how kids can find a workaround for SNI based blocks.

<comment><USER34> There would be informal distribution networks via groups on various messaging apps or general-purpose cloud storage services. This might spell the end for the major "tube" sites if they can't make enough ad revenue, but this is definitely not going to be the end of porn.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The thing that cracks me most is that they suggested to mandate the use of e-government authentication tools for accessing adult content.

If they want to fight this, the most effective way would be a nation-wide ban of VPNs, ip blocking and deep packet inspection to discover and ban other tunnels/VPNs. Sure, you can rent your own server and run shadowsocks on it but it will complicate the process.

In Turkey, I feel like most VPNs are actively banned, it's a roulette basically to get a working one. The only reliable solution is to rent your own server and setup your own VPN. I think in China, they can also find out and block those.

</comment><comment><USER36> Do you remember when France banned encryption software from being used by non- government entities in the 90s? I do.

[https://slashdot.org/story/99/01/15/0044246/france-to- recons...](https://slashdot.org/story/99/01/15/0044246/france-to-reconsider- its-cryptography-laws)

> Until 1996 one had to ask permission to use any form of encryption, or pay a > 6000-500000 FF fine with 2-6 months of prison if found out. Currently > encryption that the french authorities can break is legal, but this is not > secure enough to encourage e-commerce.

(1999)

<comment><USER37> Yeah. My university had the choice of either breaking the law, get hacked or not providing remote SSH access to students. They broke the law...

<comment><USER36> To us other europeans, those years were kind of formative to us about viewing France as a relic to be laughed about.

What great french internet startups have ended up expanding outside their country in a meaningful way?

<comment><USER26> That also explains a whole lot of French tech jealousy politics and their many stupid failed ventures. They always were moronic control freaks essentially and won't change, the only solution is to replace the damn fools.

<comment><USER36> Everything can be solved with a multi billion euro EU-funded project!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Ignoring the subject matter of the article, one phrase in particular stood out to me - "digital sovereignty."

This is the first time I've heard that phrase. I've never conceived of the web being carved up into territory by governments before. However, when I think about it now, the Web _is_ being fought over by governments - China, India, the USA, etc.

That makes me a little sad.

<comment><USER26> Always remember the true meaning of sovereignty. If the universe was really a MMO server and the PVP flag was switched off and magically nobody could kill or steal, detonating a bomb only endangered the bombmaker if it was in a blast radius, and even drunk drivers could only harm themselves it would be a catastrophy for sovereignty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Only for the record, the (of course, and as often happens not possible in practice) Italian norm has nothing to do with credit cards and age verification by the content provider.

It says essentially that phone, TV and internet providers must by default prevent access to some type of contents and that this access can only be unblocked by the subscriber of the contract through an explicit request.

I.e. it is more like a form of Parental Control", and of course the basic issue (since the "not suitable to minors" includes not only pornography, but also violence and other objectionable content) deciding which is which is either impossible or needing to implement some sort of automatic filters that inevitably will tag objectionable contents as "fine" or viceversa block access to perfectly suitable content, in this latter case with obvious consequences to freedom of expression.

<comment><USER40> The UK has a similar system - agreed between the four main ISPs and the government, rather than legally binding. The code of practice says that subscribers must be forced to make a choice between a filtered or unfiltered internet connection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Why are only porn sites regarded as harmful? What about violence? What about sites peddling snake oil?

<comment><USER42> "Core values".

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> It is so interesting to see various country approaches to the flow of information, i.e. internet regulation.

At its foundation, the idea amounts to 'there exists information that is dangerous and it is our job to protect them (the people).'

Based on the range of human abilities, few could argue against the idea that 'there exists dangerous information' (that is dangerous to some people).

In the U.S. those on the left are asking corporations to protect people by banning 'dangerous information'

In China, the CCP has spend a large percentage of their GDP and has defined almost all information not related to consumerism and good manners as 'dangerous'

In France, this.

If everyone were perfect, there would be no dangerous information, because people would be able to read things in perfect context. That will never happen.

</comment><comment><USER44> If you are a parent - use [https://nextdns.io](https://nextdns.io) AFTER having a conversation to filter porn. Why let government do it? Why not state funded child education and parenting centres if you can't even do this or educate yourself about it?

As an underage person, I would just run wireguard on the router with open wrt if I wanted to bypass filter.

Being brutally honest, if your kid is at high risk of porn addiction or is already addicted - you have failed miserably at parenting. You really want to look at other aspect to life to evaluate and fix the problem. Porn addiction is a result of some other problem in 95% cases.

</comment><comment><USER45> I am French and this is the first time I hear of that.

After checking the sources, there is indeed a law passed, it needs an extra vote end July and then it is up to the site to cooperate.

Otherwise the can be blocked after a trial.

Which means in clear text that this is a law passed so that someone can put a checkmark on a list.

The funny thing is that there wqs a proposal to use FranceConnect, or uber serious portal allowing unified login to serious sites (tax, health,...). Having a porn site using this would be memorable.

</comment><comment><USER46> We tend to forget the damage that porn causes to young minds.

If this law fails to educate on pornography, at least it'll educate youngsters on DNS. I'm ok with both scenarios.

<comment><USER47> > We tend to forget the damage that porn causes to young minds.

There's a fair amount to unpack here.

"We tend to forget" seems to indicate this is proven and beyond dispute. I'm not sure that is true.

"damage" is a very strong word that implies permanent harm - almost at the cellular level. Not everyone would accept that "damage" is even the right way to frame this. It's part of a complex social and behavioural pattern that is very hard to pick apart.

"young minds" \- how young? Is it dependent on countering with good sex education or is the "damage" something that would resist all countermeasures?

<comment><USER48> You can probably find more information than I did with a Google Scholar search for the effects of porn on adolescents and children - though this is a very hard thing to "prove beyond dispute" for several reasons - people react to media in very different ways, effects may only be activated by pre-existing patterns of behaviour and attitudes, there is a large influence from religiosity, among other things; and of course, it'd be unethical to expose children to porn in a lab setting. The best you're going to get is controlled suveys and questionnaires, from researchers working at a school, for example. Consider that we know cannabis and alcohol can have a detrimental effect on young people, but we're obviously not able to watch them smoke or drink it in a controlled environment. All that said (and note that the authors of the first paper are probably the foremost scholars of porn effects research in psychology):

"Additionally, there is meta-analytic evidence to indicate that viewing more pornography and viewing extreme pornography is associated with the sexual objectification of women and more aggressive attitudes (Hald et al., 2010)[0]. Some longitudinal findings link sexual aggression and use of violent pornography, for example, one study of 10-15 year olds in the US found that those who intentionally viewed violent X-rated materials were nearly six times more likely than others to report sexually aggressive behaviour (Ybarra et al. 2011)[1]."[2]

The research on effects of porn is chequered and often has methodological problems, replication problems, and unfortunately assumes one kind of mainstream porn (leaving out, say, erotica, fanfiction overwhelmingly written and read by teens, online erotic roleplaying, etc.) - that said, from my own amateur reading around the topic, there is a strong pointer to substantial negative effects which are usually (though not always) mediated, much in the same way alcohol consumption effects are.

[0] Hald, G.M., Malamuth, N.M., & Yuen, C. (2010). Pornography and attitudes supporting violence against women: Revisiting the relationship in non- experimental studies. Aggressive Behavior.36, 14-20. doi: 10.1002/ab.20328

[1] Ybarra, M.L., Mitchell, K.J., Hamburger, M., Diener-West, M. & Leaf, P.J. (2011). X-rated material and perpetration of sexually aggressive behavior among children and adolescents: Is there a link? Aggressive Behavior, 37, 1–18.

[2] Victoria et al. (2016). Identifying the routes by which children view pornography online: implications for future policy-makers seeking to limit viewing report of expert panel for DCMS. Technical Report. Department of Culture, Media and Sport.

<comment><USER49> Violent people watch violent porn, who would have thought. Then increase vanilla porn to offset violent porn, maybe this way people will be more exposed to non-violent content.

<comment><USER48> This is not what the research is showing. It's showing that increased exposure to _any_ porn has effects on attitude (measured in a lab setting; outside the lab, we need to be careful with mixing up correlation and causation), but the effects are more pronounced with violent porn. There's also the Coolidge Effect to take into account.

<comment><USER50> > that increased exposure to any porn has effects on attitude

What does your research say about the fixation of that attitude? Is it like, forever and ever? How those effects compare to watching martial arts, war footage from the news, movies etc?

Isn't it just a Pavlovian response training thing? Before the age of 25 people are more susceptible to learn or relearn, and some are just born (and exacerbated by insane upbringing instead of proper diagnosis and meds) with predilections.

> but the effects are more pronounced with violent porn

Sure, and if they had a fist fight behind a school, a kiss, a cigarette, a caffeinated drink and listened to violent music in a short time they'd probably had a heart attack.

Your conclusion reminds of witch-hunt-approving arguments like, violent games make kids violent. Which is moot, Take for example Children's Crusades[1] in 13 century, which was induced by religion and politics. Or, I know some parents who watched a documentary about how a talented musician was raised with beatings, so they took that literally, you know what I mean? Sick ideas find a fertile ground.

Btw did you watch that Black Mirror episode "Arkangel", seems related. Or The Alienist by Caleb Carr, the book and series, about underage male prostitution in 19 century, the plot is based on real life, sort of.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Crusade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Crusade)

<comment><USER48> >Your conclusion reminds of witch-hunt-approving arguments like, violent games make kids violent. Which is moot, Take for example Children's Crusades[1] in 13 century, which was induced by religion and politics. Or, I know some parents who watched a documentary about how a talented musician was raised with beatings, so they took that literally, you know what I mean? Sick ideas find a fertile ground.

I can see and understand the concern, and some results can fuel moral panics and witchhunts, but they don't need to lead to there necessarily. Finding that porn has effects on attitude and aggression, and long-term, increased, or more violent use can have greater effects does not provide an _ought_ from the _is_. It can provide some scientific and empirical basis for such an argument (for example, an argument to ban porn), but we shouldn't reject science because of the normative conclusions it might lead us to.

You may be interested in a book[0] from a little while ago which examines the debate quite closely, with lots of empirical data which supports both sides of the argument. From what I've read, behavioural scientists and policy-makers largely do not consider the evidence "against" porn to be all that decisive in supporting a ban.

In other words... the proper strategy should be to get the data, scrutinise the data, and then decide what action we will take (if any) based on the data. The book mentions a comparison with the effects of alcohol, which is quite apt. Many people who would argue for porn to be banned, I imagine, would not have the same opinion on alcohol, especially given the history of the Prohibition.

[0] [https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/debating- pornography/](https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/debating-pornography/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> For some reason, I thought of the Leisure Suit Larry age verification system which asked questions that only an 18 year old ( at the time, with no internet ) could answer: [https://allowe.com/games/larry/tips-manuals/lsl1-age- quiz.ht...](https://allowe.com/games/larry/tips-manuals/lsl1-age-quiz.html)

</comment><comment><USER52> Something interesting about being forced to use the "FranceConnect" OpenID service for adult websites is it's what we use in France to connect official taxes, health insurance, retirement and car registration website. It also use social security number as login depending on which website you bounce from.

<comment><USER53> That sounds scary if used by companies who rely on advertising and, when they get hacked, extortionists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> We could do all that and kids would still watch porn. They would just share the downloaded video files.

<comment><USER17> So more hassle.

Which could be the difference between teenage curiosity and the beginning of a debilitating addiction (depending on the transfer speed).

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I wonder to what extent a state can block a website.

ESNI - HTTPS - <USER2>

That's all it takes to bypass the porn filters in the UK and other websites banned by the high court such as the Pirate Bay.

It only takes one geek kid to figure it out and they'll all know it.

</comment><comment><USER55> Yes, it is entirely safe to post PII to sites that are known to be targeted by hackers heavily and daily, to extract data that can be used to blackmail people. The adult websites are never hacked before right?

/sarcasm off

<comment><USER56> Proponents of these types of laws are anti-porn. If fear of sharing the required PII with porn sites reduces the number of visitors to those sites, all the better in their mind.

The 'save-the-children' vibe is a smoke screen for banning porn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> More thrill to get the content, more dopamine hit once you get to the goal, the more likely it is to be more addictive. If it's not forbidden, it's not nearly as exciting.

</comment><comment><USER58> France would like to ban the Internet in general. They ban everything: Amazon, google, Uber, websites, ...

<comment><USER59> Maybe they're still sour that minitel[0] never took off outside of France.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Tor with obfs4 gets around this.

</comment><comment><USER61> I just arrived in France. What should I see?

</comment><comment><USER17> Putting aside for a moment the (important) issue of privacy.

I'm wondering if people here would react the same if "adult websites" was replaced with "added sugar".

Would people use arguments like

\- kids will always find ways to become diabetic!

or

\- I use to eat plums, I never had problems.

<comment><USER12> I think the main difference is that far too many people eat sugar, and even more importantly, far too many people can proudly admit in public that they eat sugar.

<comment><USER17> Far too many people watch porn excessively too.

People just don't realize it _precisely_ because we don't talk about it, people around don't notice it and you can keep the same pair of trousers (unlike when you drink too much soda).

I think that in a few years, opinion will shift and we'll consider porn as a public health problem.

<comment><USER26> When will we consider prudes a public health issue? Their shaming is unhealthy and when they get power cause generations of harm. Worse they have no care for it so long as they get their righteous indignation high! Given the sheer toll of prohobition judgementalness is the most insidious and deadly of all of the vices.

<comment><USER17> Shaming? prudes? judgmental?? What on earth are you talking about?

Look, an increasing number of people (not just me) are realizing how detrimental to their life this little habit has been. Many wish they realized it sooner. And when they realize they are far from being alone [1], they naturally tend to think the effect of porn might be understated in our society.

I'm not judging anyone, if people enjoy it and it doesn't affect negatively their lives, good for them. And if I'm wrong and people like me end up being just a minute minority, then Great News!

But I really don't understand why I get downvoted for this and I understand even less this rambling about 'prudes'.

[1]: [https://forum.nofap.com/index.php](https://forum.nofap.com/index.php)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> What is the controversial part, if I may be so bold as to ask?

<comment><USER63> It might for example require reddit to ask you for your credit card before it lets you see an nsfw subreddit. And then again the same procedure on the target site. Not everyone is comfortable with giving adult websites their credit card information. (I for sure would not be.)

<comment><USER7> And at the same time you'd give your NSFW internet usage patterns to your credit card company. I image they'd love it, even more information to sell about you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> There should be much smarter moves to work with porn sites towards better sex education.

Force porn websites to do age verification on their models (most high traffic site currently do).

For all videos and especially those that display acted scenes where consent is unclear, prominently display next to the video in English+local language that the video actors and actresses are performing willingly consentual sex acts, even if the video scenario suggests otherwise for some fantasy's sake.

</comment><comment><USER65> I wonder if people will abandon France as fast as they abandoned Tumblr when they banned adult content? Or 70 million people download Tor.

<comment><USER66> I did it. In fact, for a lot of people who got an higher education the main question for after graduation is not _what will you do_ but _where will you go_ (where being implicitly abroad). This is of course not because of porn sites, but the general negative and insecure (economically, etc.) climate. The ship is sinking and people are asking for more of the things that precisely made it this way. This is painful to see.

<comment><USER67> Hailing from a former communist state from which quite a few people emigrated to France I wonder what are your options as a French person?

What countries are France's France, or in other words, places where salaries are easily 2-3x as high and the general standard of living is proportionally better?

<comment><USER68> Canada, US, UK, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Japan, etc... Salaries don't have to be 2-3x as high (past a certain level it doesn't matter all that much), salary isn't the main reason why french people emigrate.

<comment><USER40> London is the city with the sixth biggest French population. There are more French people living in London than in Bordeaux or Strasbourg for example.

<comment><USER69> ... and it's still hard to find a decent _pain au chocolat_ here

<comment><USER70> Did you mean _chocolatine_?

<comment><USER69> I'm not getting involved in _that_ fight</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Julian Assange to Be Questioned by Sweden Over Rape Claim - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/12/world/europe/julian-assange-sweden-ecuador.html <comment><AUTHOR> "Another consequence of the delay is that several of the accusations are now barred due to the statute of limitations. We can't see any other outcome for this investigation than that it be shut down."</comment>


EZing let you host your own messaging-infrastructure - <AUTHOR> https://ezing.de/index.php/2016/03/17/host-your-own-infrastructure/ <comment><AUTHOR> If you want to communicate safely with your people, whoever they are and wherever they are, you might be interested in eZing-infrastructure. All you need is a mailserver or even some mailaccounts and a php-driven webserver.</comment>


3D-Printed Hearts Help Surgeons - <AUTHOR> http://www.livescience.com/48816-3d-printed-hearts-improve-surgery.html

<comment><USER2> Url changed from [http://3dprintingfromscratch.com/2015/01/cardiac-research- an...](http://3dprintingfromscratch.com/2015/01/cardiac-research-and- surgeries-move-forward-with-3d-printed-sensors/), which points to this.

Additional photos are at [http://www.livescience.com/48812-photos-3d-printed- hearts.ht...](http://www.livescience.com/48812-photos-3d-printed-hearts.html).</comment>


Paradoxes of Software Architecture (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1963779 <comment><USER3> Extreme Programming had this idea of doing "the simplest thing that could possibly work". Don't get hung up on lots of architecture or design; make something simple that works. But of course, that doesn't work for long - <USER2> requirements get more sophisticated, and the simplest thing no longer works. Then you have to refactor/redesign/rearchitect. And that's OK, _because now you know which direction to do it in_. But don't do more than you need for now, because you don't know which direction to do "more" in.

Design up front for reuse is, in essence, premature optimization.

<comment><USER4> I guess that's sort of true but often you know what direction you will be heading, just not now. I see it like a game of chess, you want to be able to at least predict the next few moves and cater your architecture towards that. However, this is an acquired skill that takes practise.

I also think there is a difference between architecture and features where keeping it simple as possible is more about the features and less about the architecture, i.e. keep the features as simple as possible but have your architecture cater for the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting to think that complexity can be a result of trying to do proper software architecture. It occurs to me that the way software is typically built probably approaches the problem of complexity in software architecture from the wrong end. We try to build software systems that minimize complexity, have predictable behavior and operate under controlled conditions. Most software has extremely low tolerances for aberrant behavior.

Looking at biological systems though, that is the opposite of how reliable systems are constructed. If we design from the assumption of failure and runaway complexity, with watchdog and recovery processes, and using emergent behavior from small discrete components to obtain large-scale results, then we can build software components that are much better able to recover from unexpected interaction and produce more reliable systems. It seems to me that this is what the theory should be. I just have no idea how to do that in the real world when building a web app, aside from recycling server processes every now and then.

<comment><USER6> _> If we design from the assumption of failure and runaway complexity_

This is a good pattern (one of many), but it is no silver bullet, either. If you overdo this, you end up with overly defensive programming, where all code is littered with catching theoretical error conditions that will never occur. That hides the actual functionality and makes code really hard to read and to change.

The solution pattern for this is to move checks at the boundary of the module, so that the code inside can make safe assumptions on the data it receives, so it can concentrate on the real functionality.

As the article says, whatever you do, you can overdo. Software architecture is always about balancing and judging conflicting appoaches and goals.

<comment><USER7> One thing that is challenging in managing the boundaries is that often times our languages don't prescribe enough layering. We usually have modules, classes / functions and methods to define our boudnaries. The real world dictates we deal with networks, protocols and content types, yet our languages, environments and communities prefer to recommend simplicity at the language level.

I think functional languages have a more healthy appreciation for layering by nature of requiring functions to act on data rather than having mutable data types. I believe if we want to reduce complexity we _HAVE_ to create more layered systems to scope the bounds of our complexity. The problem is many people see this as over-architecting things. With time, a design can evolve such that 10 or 20 layers, as compared to the 3 in MVC we often see, could be manageable with help from our languages and environments (IDE / text editor / etc.).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article references a paper from 1980 called "On Understanding Laws, Evolution, and Conservation in the Large-Program Life Cycle". I just skimmed it - incredible insights that continue to be relevant.

<comment><USER9> Elsevier wants $36 for this article. Ha.

[https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~a78khan/cs446/additional- material/s...](https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~a78khan/cs446/additional- material/scribe/27-refactoring/Lehman-LawsOfSoftwareEvolution.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The current trend in software architecture is called "Sacrificial Architecture" by Fowler: [http://martinfowler.com/bliki/SacrificialArchitecture.html](http://martinfowler.com/bliki/SacrificialArchitecture.html) .

You don't even try to "evolve" software but periodically rewrite it which "solves" the "Paradoxes of Software Architecture" in one fell swoop. Disposable instead of durable software.

<comment><USER11> Alan Kay has been saying that at least since the 1970's, but the likes of Joel Spolsky have always argued against it. Now comes Martin Fowler to tell us that Alan Kay was right, without crediting him, of course.

<comment><USER12> Thats interesting, any links where I can find out more of Alan Kays ideas on this subject?

<comment><USER11> Alan Kay famously went through several iterations of rewriting the first Smalltalks from scratch and he is a big believer in that approach. I don't know if it's easy to find him talk about that explicitly but here's one example:

[http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039523](http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039523)

> AK I had the world's greatest group [in the Smalltalk era], and I should > have made the world's two greatest groups. I didn't realize there are > benefits to having real implementers and real users, and there are benefits > to starting from scratch every few months.

I'd recommend his talks at OOPSLA or anything you can find on YouTube. Especially 'The Computer Revolution Hasn't Happened Yet' is a gospel for contrarians.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have been having similar thoughts recently. Someone we work with was demonstrating some module he had built. My boss asked if he could make it do something. He explained he could make it do that, but didn't want to as it would break the loose coupling he had developed. Loose coupling is nice to have but surely functionality should come first if it is needed.</comment>


Hacker news directory - find hackers at your school - <AUTHOR> http://www.hnDir.com

<comment><USER2> I really like this, so here are my suggestions:

1\. When a user joins, if their email address doesn't match an existing school, immediately prompt them for what their school is. It took me some head scratching to realize I had to add my school.

2\. When I try to join a school, don't give me an error saying "fill out your profile first", let me fill out the profile at that time and show my school as selected. This part confused me.

3\. Your form validation must die! I put in Dec. 2008 for graduation and then it spit back "must be 4 characters", consider putting something in parentheses to let me know this and shrink the width of the field.

4\. Consider letting folks add links to their personal homepages, facebook or linked in profiles.

Good idea, I only point all this out because I like it enough to care.

<comment><USER3> Awesome feature! I wish I had it while I was at school. Probably would have made some great connections. It would be great if someone could add this functionality to the core site. Maybe someone who's name starts with P and ends with aul?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cool, but .edu is almost exclusively used by U.S. schools only.

If you whitelist @uwaterloo.ca, I know that there are a few uwaterloo students on HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't mean to limit it to us schools only, I just threw this together last Saturday. How do you suggest I make this work for all hackers at all schools?

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately, not all countries have a standard TLD for schools. I think the only way around it is with a whitelist of domains, but I'm not sure where the list would come from. Maybe someone has created it already? Either that, or use the facebook API.

<comment><USER5> Even facebook in the beginning took that approach by limiting the schools you could sign up for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why is it that you can generate automatic passwords that are > 20 chars in length for us, but we can't enter passwords that are > 20 chars in length?

</comment><comment><USER7> Hmmmm. I entered my email and hit create account, got the email with my password, and tried to login but it says the username/password do not match.

Looks like a cool idea though, I would like to be able to sign up.

<comment><AUTHOR> it appears i have more than a few bugs with this, as some of the user passwords are mysteriously resetting =[ i'm going to add a reset pass function, and try to understand what's going on. i probably posted this on yc news a bit too early, as i have a proficiency exam monday that i still have to study for and haven't bug-tested this thoroughly. ack

edit> there is a reset pass function on the login page, but i need to track down this mysterious bug.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great idea. Love the colors (even though usually I hate light-on-dark).

I wonder, though: is it possible to ask Facebook to query for the intersection of users at my school and in an arbitrary (for instance, "hacker news") Facebook group? (I wouldn't be surprised if it's not, but it would definitely be an excellent feature for Facebook to consider.)

</comment><comment><USER9> you can see members of news.ycombinator.com by region at <http://www.hackrtrackr.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> someone told me about that, and another suggested using facebook for all of this, but i like being able to see what skills, startups, and club affiliations a person has too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I tried to add my school, but it says my school already exists. On the main page, my school isn't listed and there is no "+Join" link on any of the schools. WTF?

<comment><AUTHOR> what schools are you trying to join? (feel free to reach me at firstname.lastname@example.com)

<comment><USER11> My email is slava [at] cs.sunysb.edu

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Pretty cool!

signed up & added Temple University.

Beacame a lil frustrated with the "join" form, every time it goes through the error validation, it clears all the previously typed information forcing me to re-enter. I Did it twice, on the third gave up. I'll try later.

</comment><comment><USER13> What about a user who is a student or faculty member who prefers an email address without a school-related top domain?

</comment><comment><USER14> Ugh, privacy issues...

<comment><USER15> Yeah, it would be nice if there were no required fields to join a school. Great site though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Interesting but I think this would be helpful if I could click the school, view the contents inside it and see which HN handles are associated with this.

For instance, I added "Georgetown University" as my alma mater and wasn't able to see inside the link. (Granted, I'm the first person to join under this school).

I wanted to view New York University since it's right down the block from me and I want to meet more hackers here in in NYC, but I wasn't able to see which HN users attended the school.

</comment><comment><USER17> right now, access is limited to users who have .edu accounts only. please sign up by clicking "login" above.

glad there aren't hackers outside _US_ schools.

<comment><USER18> I guess we'll have to start one for people who aren't in school?

<comment><USER17> yarp. We need a hacker news wiki!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I like it, though more than just schools would be good in the future. It is a little frustrating that I can look outside my startup's window and see NYU but since I'm at another school so I can't meet the person who signed up from NYU. I think you will ultimately need a Facebook like network setup if you want to go seriously with this.

</comment><comment><USER20> I bookmarked this, as I haven't attended college as of yet, but will probably be in a college as of fall of this year or spring of 2009.

Sounds like an interesting tool at the least.

</comment><comment><USER21> Have you thought about adding facebook connect integration and scraping from their networks page? This seems like the perfect app for fb connect integration.

</comment><comment><USER22> This would be such a useful service to me, I'd love to use it...we all could use a team setting, but alas I don't have a .edu email ... =(

</comment><comment><USER23> What do you get as an advantage for being part of this? I set up my school: now what is there to do?

</comment><comment><USER24> Would you mind obfuscating mailto links? My school has a decent spam filter, but even so...

</comment><comment><USER25> You might want to add support for UK universities, just check for ac.uk as well as .edu.

</comment><comment><USER26> Can I view the schools without logging in?

<comment><USER27> It looks like you can still view their pages.

For example the people above wanting to view NYU: <http://www.hndir.com/index/school/view/14>

<comment><USER15> It's now fixed. I get sent to the home page when I'm not logged in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> You cannot unregister.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is awesome</comment>


Stash just paid a significant amount of money to get Stash.com - <AUTHOR> https://jamesnames.com/2020/05/after-112-million-in-funding-stash-acquires-stash-com/ <comment><AUTHOR> After recently raising $112 million, Stash just did a big upgrade to their domain name. From StashInvest.com to Stash.com. This was likely a 6 or 7 figure purchase.</comment>


Apple Adds Do-Not-Track Tool to Safari - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/04/13/do-not-truck <comment><USER2> "No idea why Google wouldn't be leading the way on this."

Because Google cares about making the best technology that thinks solely about the user and in no way acts in Google's interest? Possibly because its not high priority for them.</comment>


A parallel implementation of gzip for modern multi-processor multi-core machines - odeke-em https://github.com/madler/pigz <comment><AUTHOR> I learned about pigz in the High Performance MySQL O'Reilly book appendix. I used it, and other techniques there to improve our MySQL backup/restore time by 7x. This in turn won first place at a company hackathon.

<comment><USER2> Have you compared with mydumper / myloader?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I love it! I just wish somebody can make a GPU based compression library (doesn't have to be gzip or bzip), every mobile device today is shipping with a GPU, there are some techniques out there like this ([http://on- demand.gputechconf.com/gtc/2014/presentations/S445...](http://on- demand.gputechconf.com/gtc/2014/presentations/S4459-parallel-lossless- compression-using-gpus.pdf)), but I am still waiting for a solid implementation.

<comment><USER4> You may find work from my colleagues interesting: Parallel Lossless Data Compression on the GPU: [http://www.idav.ucdavis.edu/publications/print_pub?pub_id=10...](http://www.idav.ucdavis.edu/publications/print_pub?pub_id=1087) Fast Parallel Suffix Array on the GPU: [http://escholarship.org/uc/item/83r7w305](http://escholarship.org/uc/item/83r7w305) I think built on top of the second paper (suffix array paper), there should be fast compression library. We have one implementation in our library CUDPP 2.0, you can try it out if you like: [https://github.com/cudpp/cudpp/blob/master/src/cudpp/app/sa_...](https://github.com/cudpp/cudpp/blob/master/src/cudpp/app/sa_app.cu)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Used extensively while a system engineer at a hosting company; 10/10, would use again. Excellent utility if you have the cpu cycles to spare and need to cut time; gzip is almost always your bottleneck. Didn't seem to quite scale linearly, but what does.

\--rsyncable support too.

</comment><comment><USER6> pigz is extremely fast and very capable, plus it's packed up and provided for almost every mainstream linux distribution, and can act as a drop in replacement for gzip as it supports the same flag syntax.

On the bzip2 side there is pbzip2, which is also a drop in replacement, [http://compression.ca/pbzip2/](http://compression.ca/pbzip2/)

<comment><USER7> pbzip2 only does parallel compression. lbzip2 can parallelize compression and decompression.

With both pbzip2 and lbzip2 I got errors every now and then while everything worked with bzip2. YMMV.

Also note that bzip2 is block based (due to bwt) and thus does not compromise compression ratios like parallelized gzip implantations.

At 32 cores you can saturate Gbit links (even with good compression ratios!). I hope we will see some more bzip2 love in the future due to it's perfect fit for parallelism.

<comment><USER8> Errors sound deeply concerning. What kind of errors? Is it too risky to use [pl]bzip2 for archival reasons?

<comment><USER7> Well, errors at a rate of one every few terabyte, and most of the time it was mainly decompression, and always caused program abort iirc.

But those have been a few years ago, so my best advice would be: retest.

You are testing your archives anyway, right? ;-)

<comment><USER9> >You are testing your archives anyway, right? ;-)

Umm no, I handle errors which I expect to be reported to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> pigz parallelizes compression. I've made changes that make it so that it can parallelize uncompression as well.

[https://github.com/mgerdts/pigz](https://github.com/mgerdts/pigz)

This feature is present in Solaris 11.3 and later. Actually, it is in some later patches to 11.2 as well. I added it to speed up suspend and resume of kernel zones.

</comment><comment><USER11> My guess is that this compresses less efficiently as you would have to shard the dictionaries. Might be close though for large files. I was surprised that there were no speed or efficiency comparisons in the README.

<comment><USER12> The max window size for zlib is 32 KB, so I don't think the default sharding at 128 KB would change much. You can pass the -b parameter if you find out a bigger shard works better on your data.

If you are looking for details of the design of pigz, there is a very well- documented overview in the source of pigz.c:

[https://github.com/madler/pigz/blob/master/pigz.c#L187](https://github.com/madler/pigz/blob/master/pigz.c#L187)

<comment><USER13> had a quick scroll thru that source code - i didnt know you could implement a try/catch in C via macros...mind blown.

<comment><USER14> This book (C Interfaces and Implementations: Techniques for Creating Reusable Software) has a whole section on it:

[https://www.amazon.com/Interfaces-Implementations- Techniques...](https://www.amazon.com/Interfaces-Implementations-Techniques- Creating-Reusable/dp/0201498413)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> And the same for LZMA: [https://github.com/vasi/pixz](https://github.com/vasi/pixz)

(it's relatively easy to remember those commands)

<comment><USER8> The main purpose of this "pixz" appears to be its chunking of the compressed data so that is it partially decompressible (i.e. random access). "xz" has -T/\--threads= already for multithreaded processing (although it does seem like pixz has a different default value "all cores" instead of "1 thread") .

<comment><USER16> xz in multithreaded mode supports random access too, at least theoretically. But there's no reasonable way with xz to actually find the file in a tarball you want to access, it's that bit that pixz provides.

Another nice thing about pixz is it does parallel decompression, as well as compression.

(Disclaimer: I'm the original author of pixz.)

<comment><USER10> I was thinking about that "no reasonable way" comment. When you uncompress the first block, you will find the first tar header. From that you can know the uncompressed offset of the next tar header. If the compressed stream does support random access, you should be able to uncompress a block (assuming uncompressed block size was a multitple of 512 bytes) to get to the next tar header. You can repeat this until you get to the file you are looking for.

With large files, this approach would be of huge value. If the files tend to be no larger than block_size - 512, there will be no speedup.

Of course, this would need to be implemented directly in tar, not by piping the output of a decompression command through tar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why doesn't parallelized gzip get more attention? For larger files, it can be quite a pain to see a multicore machine sit mostly idle. Something like this works pretty well, but I've never seen it done outside of my own stuffs:

split -l1000000 --filter='gzip > $FILE.gz' <(zcat large_fille.txt.gz)

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm using pbzip2 to solve this problem. [http://compression.ca/pbzip2/](http://compression.ca/pbzip2/)

<comment><USER19> I was doing that too, until I tried lbzip2 ( [http://lbzip2.org/](http://lbzip2.org/)). Does basically the same, also a drop-in replacement, but is even faster by a noticeable amount!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Previous discussion 6 years ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1233317](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1233317)

</comment><comment><USER21> If you know that what you compress is alphabetised text, and space is more important to you than time, then please use lzips over gzips. For a parallel version:

[http://www.nongnu.org/lzip/plzip.html](http://www.nongnu.org/lzip/plzip.html)

<comment><USER8> Is this gunzip-compatible? If not, then as long as gzip remains the only viable/compatible compression mode for HTTP I think advances in gzip compression is still valuable.

<comment><USER21> No it's not. Lzip is more useful for storing text long term, or send very large text file as email attachments.

Text log file and database dump in text usually generate very large text file, lzip can reduce their size by a factor of 5 to 10, compared to gzips.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's amazing to see what somebody like Mark Adler can achieve when they focus on a specific niche. You often hear about the importance of specialization when positioning a business, but it isn't mentioned as much for individuals. His work serves as an ideal case of specialization—if I wanted to ask an expert for advice on compression, or was looking for an outside expert on compression that is immediately who I'd think of.

</comment><comment><USER23> You can also use 7-zip for multithreaded gz/xz/bz2/7z/zip compression.

</comment><comment><USER24> Why not just use GNU parallel?

`parallel gzip ::: file1 file2`

I wish there was a standard for this type of stuff. So that an app will check for existing child spawns and act accordingly (IPC).

<comment><USER8> That doesn't help if you have only one big file or stream.

<comment><USER25> cat bigfile | parallel --pipe -k gzip > out.gz

parallel --pipepart -a bigfile -k gzip > out.gz

The last is faster.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I use this extensively in schlepping data around for analytics work. Any data that moves over the network going into or out of a data store gets compressed with pigz.

</comment><comment><USER27> How does the strategy for parallelization of gzip in this project differ from the strategy used for LZMA2 parallelism as implemented by 7z?

</comment><comment><USER28> [http://lbzip2.org/](http://lbzip2.org/) also exists for bzip2. It works really well, especially since bz2 files are split into discreet blocks which can be un/compressed independently.

</comment><comment><USER29> We use this in production at Graphistry, super useful for latency-sensitive dynamic media applications! (In this case, we needed to add an auto-tuner + node bindings.)

</comment><comment><USER20> The big challenge seems to be parallel gunzip as that requires a special stream with an index to work, with no general purpose solution available so far.

</comment><comment><USER30> Probably useful for servers more than anything where perf really does matter at scale and content type is gzip.

<comment><USER31> Web servers have multiple connections so this isn't so applicable. Maybe special purpose ones zipping large datasets on the fly?

<comment><USER29> We combine both strategies for content: multicore native encoding + decoding :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> For bzip2 lovers the tool is pbzip2 ;)

</comment><comment><USER33> Huh. I was living under the incorrect assumption that gzip was inherently single threaded

</comment><comment><USER34> Any ideas how this would compare to gzip while on a Microserver? I'm thinking of Atom C2750 bare metal from packet.

<comment><USER35> Looks like that has 8 cores? I would imagine it would make a huge difference depending on other loads on the system. I gave it a try on my file server at home that has an AMD E-350 processor with 2 cores and it shaved off a good 42% of the total time:

      > time gzip -v xubuntu-16.04-desktop-amd64.iso
      xubuntu-16.04-desktop-amd64.iso:	  1.5% -- replaced with xubuntu-16.04-desktop-amd64.iso.gz
      gzip -v xubuntu-16.04-desktop-amd64.iso  119.07s user 4.66s system 98% cpu 2:05.22 total

      > time pigz -v xubuntu-16.04-desktop-amd64.iso
      xubuntu-16.04-desktop-amd64.iso to xubuntu-16.04-desktop-amd64.iso.gz
      pigz -v xubuntu-16.04-desktop-amd64.iso  128.19s user 6.64s system 184% cpu 1:12.97 total</comment></comment>


Stanford research turns human blood cells into functional neurons - <AUTHOR> https://newatlas.com/blood-cells-transformed-neurons-stanford/54948/ <comment><USER2> I hope the researchers some how finds a way to treat brain injuries, diseases or disorders, especially if this is something that can be achieved in few days.

</comment><comment><USER3> 3 week Neuron Bootcamp - start your career in the nervous system today!

<comment><USER4> Donating blood gives me anxiety now, or were blood cells transformed into neurons inducing nervousness? Hmm. ;)

 _Give life, donate blood_ etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am upgrading to SmartBlood(tm) at the earliest opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if this has applications in AI.

For example, folks like Jeff Hawkins are obsessed with ML techniques that mimic human neurons. This might give them a way to study and discover properties of neural networks.

<comment><USER7> Will there ever be a HN thread not wondering about something's applications on AI?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> That's the first step into tricking an ubiquitous lifeform, such as a fungus or bacterium into a computer. It comes as no particular surprise to me that teaching living cells to think would turn out easier than doing the same with rocks.

</comment><comment><USER9> Great, soon we will have to take an IQ test before donating blood. :)

<comment><USER8> My blood is probably smarter than me. It provides me with everything and appears so self-sufficient as long as I keep it happy with nutrients and solvent.</comment></comment>


Decoding UTF-8 with Parser Combinators - <AUTHOR> https://ianthehenry.com/2015/1/17/decoding-utf-8/ <comment><USER2> > _It turns out this limitation doesn't matter in practice: 0x10FFFF > (1,114,111 in decimal) is almost ten times as many representable codepoints > as there are codepoints currently defined in the latest Unicode spec, so > it's not like we're going to run out of bits any time soon._

Famous last words.

<comment><USER3> My personal prediction is that CJK will use up all the representable codepoints. Why? Well, a Chinese Hanzi character essentially corresponds to one Mandarin morpheme. And there are a lot of them. You've basically chucked all the short Mandarin words in the dictionary into Unicode. And their traditional forms. Oh, and the Japanese kanji. And the Korean hanja. And the other Chinese-derived systems. Oh, and every single variant throughout history. And their future forms.

32 bits will not be enough room to encode entire vocabularies of languages with ideographic writing systems, let alone 21 bits. We can cope with syllabaries and alphabets. But CJK will kill Unicode.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's a shame the author mixes up UTF-16 and UCS-2 when he says "Because it turns out UTF-16, another very popular encoding scheme, can't represent codepoints that big." in reference to 0x1FFFFF.

<comment><USER5> It really can't. UTF-16 extends the space by 20 bits (split into 10 bits in each surrogate pair), and the highest UTF-16 sequence DBFF DFFF is 0x10FFFF.

<comment><USER6> You can define a second-tier surrogate system in UTF-16 on the last 2 planes (plane 0xF and plane 0x10), which are both private use, to access all codepoints up to 0x7FFFFFFF. Use plane 0xF as leading 2nd-tier surrogates, and plane 0x10 as trailing 2nd-tier surrogates. I've written a package in go that does just that: [https://github.com/gavingroovygrover/utf88](https://github.com/gavingroovygrover/utf88)</comment></comment></comment>


How to Stay Rich in Europe: Inherit Money for 700 Years - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-23/how-to-stay-rich-in-europe-inherit-money-for-700-years?cmpid%3D=socialflow-twitter-business <comment><USER2> _More than one-third of Italy's richest people inherited their fortunes, compared with just 29 percent in the U.S. [...]_

Seriously? I know Mike Bloomberg made his fortune by juggling numbers but this isn't very convincing.</comment>


Using the big freeze to deny climate change stupidity or cynicism? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/02/using-the-big-freeze-to-deny-climate-change-stupidity-or-cynicism <comment><USER2> To be fair this kind of thing goes both ways. Things like tornados and heat waves are being increasingly blamed on global warming. The author of the article even falls into the very fallacy he's decrying by suggesting that the polar vortex may have broken down because of global warming. People don't seem to understand that weather and climate are different things. The global temperature has risen .8 degrees since the late 1800s. To claim that we can feel that at the level of weather is ridiculous.

<comment> super-serial I agree in general weather and climate are different. But concerning the polar vortex - the jet stream has become more wavy (north & south instead of west & east) due to climate change.

That's why we get -20F a couple days in Chicago, then a few days later it's 45F. Shifts like that never used to happen. The only reason it does now is because the jet stream is changed due to climate change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This title is bizarre and makes no logical sense. If you accept there are climate events such as a big freeze, then how can you deny the climate changes?

These rags like the guardian just seem to be yelling at the wind these days.

<comment><USER4> Most of the people who deny climate change seem to think "climate change" means "2.00°C warmer every day in every place" or something slightly less constrained. One can hardly discuss with such absurdly constrained notions without saying something bizarre.</comment></comment>


Pitchforks Are Coming - <AUTHOR> https://www.ted.com/talks/nick_hanauer_beware_fellow_plutocrats_the_pitchforks_are_coming?language=en <comment><USER2> This is from 2014, but it's equally relevant today. I'm unsure if I agree with the premise. Today is very unlike 18th century France. We have television and cheap food. It seems unlikely that inequality will become so bad that pitchforks become the only option for large swaths of society.

The point about about a thriving middle class being able wealthy enough to afford consumer products, which then drives business to grow, is spot on. We need growing wages and a healthy middle class to maintain America's standing in the world. It is perplexing that plutocrats or even average Americans wouldn't want it -- we should all value our country's future.

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't you think it has already started to happen since 2016 ? Not talking about politics but there have been so many eiots in Streets over things like election, murder, minimum wage, occupy wall street etc

<comment><USER2> It really depends on what the Ted presenter means by 'pitchforks'. Yes, there have been protests, that more or less fall within the Overton window: they're orderly, and peaceful -- they fall within the confines of how we make change in a Democracy.

However, the Ted speaker seems purposefully vague. Does he mean that people will resort to more extreme or not peaceful forms of protest? I'm not certain.</comment></comment></comment>


11 Common Interview Questions That Are Actually Illegal - <AUTHOR> http://msn.careerbuilder.com/Article/MSN-3503-Interviewing-11-common-interview-questions-that-are-actually-illegal/?SiteId=cbmsn43503&sc_extcmp=JS_3503_advice

<comment><USER2> I know that these questions are illegal, but what penalties are there for violations?

<comment><USER3> This may be of interest, but IANAL. [http://castle.eiu.edu/alsb/Archives/JELLvol12/You%20Can't%20...](http://castle.eiu.edu/alsb/Archives/JELLvol12/You%20Can't%20Ask%20That%20final%20edit.pdf)</comment></comment>


Verizon launching VCAST App Store to compete with Android Market? - <AUTHOR> http://androidandme.com/2010/09/carriers/v-cast-app-store-to-compete-with-official-android-market/

<comment><USER2> Verizon is eventually going to kill themselves with all this VCAST crap. It cost them the iPhone. Now it's going to alienate Google. No one wants it. It gets them nowhere.

<comment><AUTHOR> absolutely. Really hope Google puts its foot down on this kind of garbage.</comment></comment>


Compromise Pub - <AUTHOR> https://compromise.pub/ <comment><AUTHOR> You want to have a few pints with folks. You start to pick a pub. After hours of negotiations (nobody wants to go an extra mile) you realize it is a disaster. As a result, you end up with a bottle of wine on your comfy sofa.

If you have ever been in a case like that then this is a lifesaver for you. We will help you to find a Compromise Pub for your crowd. Plus, as a bonus, you will have a spare bottle of wine.

Just provide us with the postcodes you know and we will do the rest!

<comment><USER2> Only for UK?

<comment><AUTHOR> ha! Only for London for now, but we have plans to expand to the rest of the world!</comment></comment></comment>


Go to All the Meetups, they said… - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/code-like-a-girl/go-to-all-the-meetups-they-said-f4c52d41dc30#.6nr1x3wue <comment><USER2> > As a woman coming from a non-technical background (physics)

That's a new one for me. I guess she means her connections aren't in software, but physics is like the most technical non-engineering field I can think of.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have friends who embarked on a similar path. They found it much easier to join meetups where the focus was on help building stuff rather than networking. G'luck!</comment>


Are there any cons of serving audio-less videos as video  instead of GIF? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> A GIF is a lot more lightweight than having a real video.

But of course it's possible to have a video with lower quality and framerate as usual, to have an alternative to a GIF. And a lot of people use it e.g. for background videos on websites. As browsers now support video more and more in HTML5, and h.264 is established as codec across all important browsers, it gets feasible. However, you would have to disable the controls of the HTML5 video elements.</comment>


Facebook plans on offering a free version of its Slack competitor - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2017/4/18/15341156/facebook-workplace-messenger-free-slack-f8-conference-2017 <comment><USER2> It's not like it's never been obvious, but it's pretty clear to me at this point:

Facebook and Google are evil, and we must stop them.

<comment><USER3> > Facebook and Google are evil, and we must stop them.

I agree and usually we don't have a good and approachable open alternative to push. I genuinely think matrix and riot.im tick all the boxes this time though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> unless you are an ardent follower of techworld, generally people tend to assume facebook will do nothing with their data, facebook is trying to become a monopoly in everything just like google, they just want to control the world(Free Basics etc). Monopoly is always bad.

<comment><USER5> They can't both be monopolies in everything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I predict there will be more of this pattern with time. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to realize a small UI dev team can slap something shiny in front of a simple IRC cluster then add their own marketing widgets. There are already open source docker based projects one could fork like convos. The biggest hurdle for the FB and ilk to monetize this would be internal legal approval and project timelines. I bet half of the folks on HN could do this as a side project.

</comment><comment><USER4> so does it have the "new" stories feature too?

</comment><comment><USER7> Who in their sane mind would use this?

</comment><comment><USER8> Give those fucks more of your data? Why?</comment>


Hardware Accelerator for Adversarial Attacks on Deep Learning Neural Networks - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.01219 <comment><USER2> You can attack deep learning networks?

<comment><USER3> By "attack" the authors mean figuring out ways to trick the network into classifying things incorrectly. For example, you might attack a network that recognizes faces by determining certain inputs that still are recognizable as faces to a human, but not to the network.

<comment><USER4> A practical example of this is getting ads in banned ad categories (drugs, sex, etc.) around google or facebooks ad filters</comment></comment></comment>


Compiler for the C64: Introducing Turbo Rascal SE - <AUTHOR> https://lemonspawn.com/turbo-rascal-syntax-error-expected-but-begin/ <comment><USER2> Unbelievably Brilliant!</comment>