For Safer Food, Just Add Viruses - <AUTHOR> http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/nature/phages-for-food-safety/ <comment><USER2> Viruses seem so weird to me. They're naturally emergent nanobots.

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't really call them nanobots; they don't _function_ in any active manner. They're really just like their digital counterparts--malicious _program data_ that gets executed by our cellular machinery.

<comment><USER4> They are not pure code. They come with a protein coat and a bunch of proteins/enzymes to bring the code to the cell or nucleus, and sometimes more functions.

<comment><USER3> Sure, but those are produced by the cell at the behest of the viral code; not produced by the virus. The freshly-minted copy of the virus doesn't get to _react to stimuli_ by producing proteins once it has left its host cell. It's a lot more like the relationship between, say, pollen spores and the gametophytes they contain.

To put it another way--a post-code and stamp on an envelope will get the postal system to deliver its contents to the right destination. That doesn't mean the contents are functioning to deliver themselves there; they're relying on a working mail-transport system that wants to take them there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Given that the human digestive tract (reportedly) contains more bacteria than the human body has cells, and they are vital to our survival, how can spraying bacteria-killers on food not be harmful?

<comment><USER6> According to this link: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3278644/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3278644/) phages target specific pathogenic bacteria, and "[...]phages only minimally impact non-target bacteria or body tissues". So that would mean that even though they target bacteria, they would only target a specific bacteria and not all.

<comment><USER7> You do have to wonder if they aren't over-stating the specificity. The older I get, the more I come to expect the unstated "but..." on claims like that. As the saying goes, "When it's too good to be true, it probably is."

<comment><USER8> I don't think they're overstating this claim. It's a double-edged sword.

If you have an infection your doctor can give you antibiotics and send you home. Antibiotics tend to be wide spectrum and kill entire classes of bacteria, like gram-positive, indiscriminately.

A phage that kills one strain of E.coli might be completely incapable of infecting a closely related E.coli strain. Thinking that a single phage could be effective against closely relate pathogens, for example E.coli AND Salmonella, is wishful thinking. This might have the upside of preserving gut flora, but it's easy to see how it would confound treatment: some things are very difficult to grow in vitro.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _Elanco, sells a liquid phage product called Finalyse that is sprayed on the hides of cattle before they're slaughtered._

I'm thinking that name is just a little too on the button.

</comment><comment><USER9> This was fascinating. Could phages be engineered to attack mrsa and other superbugs we see in hospitals?

<comment><USER8> It depends.

There are extant phage that predate staph, like Phage K. There are some hurdles you'd need to overcome. Foremost among these is when compared to antibiotics, phage suck for treating disease. This is a big part of the reason everyone beat a path to antibiotics

Phage are extremely narrow spectrum. You can select for a high-fitness phage with serial passages: Plate the host bacterium along with some phage. Find the largest region of dead host (a plaque), pick it and repeat for several hundred generations. The good news is that you'll have a high-fitness phage. The bad news is that it will probably only infect the particular strain of bacteria you've been using to select it. I worked with a fitness optimized E.coli phage that wild-type E.coli probably would have laughed off. I haven't read the therapeutic phage literature, but my assumption would be that you may need to optimize

Phage have some issues with immune clearance. The immune system really loves to eliminate foreign looking viruses. The concentration of phage injected intramusucularly falls very fast. Again, this might be something you can overcome with serial passages. There was some work in rabbits where the authors found an enrichment for mutations in the capsid (the phage's head). I don't recall if they quantified the fitness impact of these mutations.

If I ever get out of software development, it'll probably be to work on phage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This could be a replacement for antibiotics once they become completely ineffective</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a concept to icon mapping dictionary? - <AUTHOR> Has anyone created a list of mappings for common concepts to standard icons (font awesome / bootstrap etc)? For example if I want an icon to represent the idea of "settings" then I know that commonly maps to "wrench". However, I often find myself unable to easily make that connection, or wishing there was an agreed standard.<p>An example of one that is a bit more obscure would be the concept "type". If I want an icon that indicates the idea of "type" or "category" what would I use? Perhaps a mixed gender icon? <comment><USER2> I would say that the information that is published with emojis included in the newer UTF-8 standards seem to cover this.

You can also have a look at Emojipedia[1] where there is a lot of information about each symbol.

I believe there is a certain overlap between common icons and symbols used for emoji.

There is also some information to be found in various icon style guides, se Google's[2] for instance

[1]([http://emojipedia.org/](http://emojipedia.org/))

[2]([https://material.google.com/style/icons.html](https://material.google.com/style/icons.html))

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks the emojipedia is interesting!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is Rust stable enough for use in Production? - <AUTHOR> The motto behind the nightly releases is "Stability Without Stagnation", but is Rust really stable for use in building Production systems?
If yes, why aren't we seeing more Open Source Project being built using Rust as compared to Golang? Is it just because of the development time?
I'm particularly curious about why new Open Source DB's are choosing Golang as opposed to Rust or even C/C++.
YugaByteDB had gone with C++, which IMO is a safe and tested choice. CockroachDB however seem to be investing time working around GC pauses and FFI overhead of Golang.
I would love to hear HN's opinion on this topic, given that there is so much talk about Rust over here(mostly positive).
I've also come to understand through reading HN that : All that Google builds is not Gold.
So I'm skeptical about Golang.. <comment><USER2> > _If yes, why aren 't we seeing more Open Source Project being built using > Rust as compared to Golang?_

That might be your bubble. I'm seeing a ton of new Rust projects almost every other day here on HN, some of them quite serious.

> _CockroachDB however seem to be investing time working around GC pauses and > FFI overhead of Golang._

Twitch.TV I heard are struggling with the GC pauses as well. Golang is far from the safe choice in any situation where you need high performance. Its advantages come with some drawbacks.

> _I 'm particularly curious about why new Open Source DB's are choosing > Golang as opposed to Rust or even C/C++._

I spoke with several Golang devs the last several months and the answer is quite prosaic and you might not like it: Go is easy. Rust, Haskell, OCaml are hard. People almost always opt for what allows them instant productivity and never stop to consider if that doesn't mean problems down the road.

\---

IMO Rust still has stuff to sort out -- I am particularly not fond of the many ways to do the same thing for example, and the compilation speed. Also the async/await thing might need some more polishing still.

But everything I've written in Rust is extremely stable and performant so far and I am sticking with it. The core team has proven themselves extremely capable, many times, and they deserve a vote of confidence.

</comment><comment><USER3> > is Rust really stable for use in building Production systems?

Of course. Rust code has been shipping in Firefox for years now, and most of FAANG uses Rust in production to some degree. The bigger question is whether Rust has the features you need. Async IO, for example, is still quite new. And some C++-like features like const generics are still in development.</comment>


Disturbing photos highlight drug, homelessness issues in San Francisco's SoMa - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/disturbing-photos-SoMa-drug-use-homelessness-9624487.php <comment><USER2> "Disturbing" if you're new to the city, I guess. The numbers may be seasonal, and the epicenters of misery may shift from time to time... but such images are quite familiar to any long-term resident of the city.

<comment><USER3> > such images are quite familiar to any long-term resident of the city.

This. I think there is an amusing misconception that the world outside of SF has about the place, that it is an idyllic place full of rich technologists in multimillion-dollar hipster-yuppie homes, working to change the world from their conferences at luxury hotels and debating hot JavaScript frameworks over single-origins at Sightglass, Blue Bottle or Ritual.

Well, some of that is true, but by and large the city is a place of wealth disparity and struggle for a lot, and that narrative is conveniently lost in the startup gold rush. Nothing in this post is that "disturbing" once you have lived in SF for a while.

I don't understand why the Deli Board guy is now suddenly freaking out about this. SoMa has always been "urban decay", and the spot Deli Board is in was pretty cosmetically dirty even when Deli Board opened up there. Even then, SF was a hell of a lot seedier than it is now 15 years ago that's what makes it cool to a lot of people. I remember lots of shady raves down there, hanging out at nightclubs and S&M bars, I remember when kink.com moved to the Armory in 07 and SoMa had a small uproar.

Some pieces of that still remain along Folsom there (1015, like a block from Deli Board, for example). I'm happy he's showing off what SoMa is like but this isn't news to anyone, and it shouldn't be to him either.

<comment><USER4> There's a difference between a seedy city with some personality and a culturally neutered city with homeless people and human feces everywhere.

San Francisco has not always been the way it is now. Look at the numbers. This doesn't seem to be a complaint that poor people exist, it's that SF is failing its citizens by allowing this to get worse.

<comment><USER3> > it's that SF is failing its citizens by allowing this to get worse.

The electorate of San Francisco themselves are failing these people.

The San Francisco government is elected by and serves (primarily) the property owners, then tenants, of San Francisco through their tax revenue. If people are this pissed off about it, they should be funding and opening more shelters and affordable housing, but instead NIMBYism and the zoning laws are forcing more "luxury" apartments and lack of building that these people never had any hope of affording.

Of course, slacktivism reigns due to its easier barrier to entry.

<comment><USER2> Yup. We'd think that a city that literally pulled itself up from the ashes not too long ago could take care of its current public defecation issues, if it had a half a mind (and a bit of spare change) to devote to the issue.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


FlightCaster (YC S09): Mother Nature Wins Today - <AUTHOR> http://blog.flightcaster.com/mother-nature-wins

<comment><USER2> Obviously you can't predict these sorts of things. The question I have is how do these events affect FC's business? Did they notice a significant drop in app sales for the day?

As a somewhat related aside, I recently had the displeasure of taking a U.S Airways flight to Indy which stopped at Charlotte. The weather in Charlotte was foggy, which meant that our plane was put in a holding pattern until planes were cleared to land. Unfortunately during our 20-30 minute holding pattern, the pilot said the plane was running out of fuel and had to divert to Myrtle Beach. By the time we refueled and flew back to Charlotte I of course missed my connection and all others were sold out. So I had to sleep overnight in the airport because USAir doesn't put people up in hotels and wait for a flight out in the morning.

There are many unpredictable events in flying that you can't forecast. These events don't fit the models. But you can give context. A good example was a road trip I took to New Orleans. As I was driving down I-10 I checked my Google Maps app on my Iphone, and it showed red lines indicating lots of traffic was fast approaching. I quickly recalculated another route using side- roads and completely by-passed the congestion.

If FC can devise something similar (I don't know what that would look like) I would pay big big money for that.

<comment><USER3> _"So I had to sleep overnight in the airport because USAir doesn't put people up in hotels..."_

For all airlines, it's generally not policy to put people in hotels unless the delay was mechanical or due to some negligence by the airline. Weather obviously does not count for this.

<comment><USER2> You know, I had thought of that too, but I also thought the plane running out of fuel was the responsibility of the airline. I fly almost every other week, sometimes in quite terrible conditions that have warranted holding patterns and I have never heard that excuse to divert.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> At least Europe has high-speed trains, so if you are traveling within Europe there is the possibility of making progress towards reaching your destination.

</comment><comment><USER5> I didn't know Flightcaster offers data on flights outside the US? Was this something recently added?</comment>


Experimenting with Bluetooth to revolutionise safety for cyclists - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/robinhayward/roadar/blob/master/README.md <comment><USER2> Fantastic project. I just upvoted. Interestingly, too, the OP may be interested in the Vanhawks Valour smart bike: [https://vanhawks.com/](https://vanhawks.com/) which integrates smartphone Bluetooth, sonar detection, and the bike itself.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, those smart bikes look good, not seen those before.</comment></comment>


Turbochargers Will Keep Getting Better - <AUTHOR> http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a18260/future-turbochargers-will-be-more-powerful-and-efficient/ <comment><USER3> > While smaller turbocharged engines have improved EPA scores, in many of our > road tests, we haven't seen such radical mileage swings compared with > naturally aspirated engines. Ford's EcoBoost 2.7-liter and 3.5-liter V-6 > engines, for example, return mileage on par with Chevy's larger 6.2-liter > V-8.

Are these really standard fare in the US? In Europe the norm is more like 1.0-1.6 liter turbo engines in new cars.

<comment><USER4> >> In Europe the norm is more like 1.0-1.6 liter turbo engines in new cars.

The Ford Focus and Ford Fiesta are the smallest cars that Ford sells in the US, and they are available with the 1.0 and 1.6 liter turbo engines.

Ford's mid-size car and crossover Ecoboost engines are the 1.5, 1.6, and 2.0 liter turbo engines.

The Ford Fusion sedan isn't a small vehicle, however. It's curb weight is 3,431 to 3,681 lbs.

The Ford Taurus full-size sedan is available with the 2.0 and 3.5 liter turbo engines, it's curb weight is 3,917 to 4,327 lbs.

The 2.3, 2.7 and 3.5 liter turbo engines are found in Ford's full size SUVs like the Explorer and Expedition, and full size 1/2 ton trucks like the F150.

<comment><USER5> You can buy the Mondeo in the UK with the 1.0 Ecoboost (yes, even the Estate version), which you'll know as the Ford Fusion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wouldn't the development of turbochargers naturally direct itself toward special industry/heavy duty applications, as climate change and new technology spurs more investment in electric & autonomous vehicles? In five years, once one in four (i'm pulling that number out of my ass) of every new car is a hybrid, will the efficiency of turbos matter?

<comment><USER7> Those applications don't have the huge volumes that the vehicle market does. Ford is going to sell 1 million turbos this year, what industrial market for engines approaches that?

As to the relevance of turbos in the future, they increase peak power more than anything else, so I would expect them to continue to be useful in parallel hybrid configurations (if it enables a smaller ICE, it's probably a win).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> You can possibily prespool turbo chargers so that the turbo pressure is already there from start RPMs. Techniques to do that is either electric or compressed air.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_turbocharger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_turbocharger) [http://www.motorauthority.com/news/1094807_volvo- reveals-450...](http://www.motorauthority.com/news/1094807_volvo- reveals-450-hp-four-cylinder-with-electrically-driven-turbo-video)

</comment><comment><USER9> We're heading in a good direction with turbochargers. I suspect we're getting close to the Carnot limits for gasoline engines [1].

Next steps would be adapting the regenerative braking technology, like that on the Porsche 918, into regular vehicles. There's a lot of kinetic energy wasted in brakes and we're soon going to be able to recapture it.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot_cycle#Efficiency_of_rea...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot_cycle#Efficiency_of_real_heat_engines)

<comment><USER7> Is there something notable about the brakes in the Porsche? Regenerative brakes are a big win in many of the hybrids that have been brought to market.

<comment><USER10> It's a significant car because it currently holds the lap record in Nürburgring for a supercar.

<comment><USER11> There is nothing notable about the regenerative brakes in the Porsche 918. Other hybrids have been using regenerative brakes for years and years now. As for a Nürburgring "record" I dont see the relevance in this conversation

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> With the direction this seems to be moving in with ever bigger turbos on smaller engines, I wonder how long it will take before we simply remove the piston engine altogether and just switch to (turbine) generators. It seems this would work quite well as part of a hybrid setup.

<comment><USER13> Large industrial processes can be analyzed by looking at flows of hot, warm and cold fluids etc. They can then be optimized mathematically so you lose the least energy while producing the same useful output.

Often people with already basic knowledge of thermodynamics can spot the large inefficiency sources in many of the currently common processes. This stuff has been known since the 1800s.

It's just that the implementation has been too expensive (payoff is too slow), or politically inconvenient (the technology is in another department/company). There might be some reliability or emissions or noise issues etc...

The world is full of massive technical inefficiencies and thus, great business opportunities.

You can look at the car as an industrial process as well. Intercoolers, capacitor energy recovery, heat pumps for heating (and not just for air conditioning). Most of the mechanical technology is 100+ years old. The turbocharger was patented in 1905. With batteries and capacitors and control electronics there's some fairly new stuff.

You could for example skip the piston engine and instead have just a turbine and then a bottoming engine with CO2 cycle recovering the waste heat. Ships run with turbocharged diesel engines, but GE is championing precisely this turbine + bottoming for them. So why not cars? There are some big operational differences of course (heating the working fluid in an external combustion engine takes a while). But there could be some big benefits too, like if you don't have reciprocating machinery at all, the noise is different and there's no vibration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is like trying to improve the buggy whips when the cars first appeared. Make them faster, cheaper, lighter - and ultimately pointless.

EVs will dominate new car sales within 10-15 years. And that's the more pessimistic view.

<comment><USER15> I think that's a very optimistic view.

Full EVs are a drop in the bucket right now. The Model 3 isn't even released, probably won't be widely available for another couple years, will likely cost around $50K comparably equipped, and even then Tesla likely couldn't make enough to make a dent in the overall market.

The Leaf is a great car (IMO), but even in a major metro (DFW) spot-charging is really impractical. There are NO DC quick-chargers in North or North East Dallas last I looked, and you at minimum have to have a subscription just to have the option to pay to use them. There's a reasonable number of Blink Network chargers around, but no one who's actually used those would suggest they're a viable way to maintain a charge without major compromises. Using a Leaf to commute to the suburbs is an experience fraught with stress as well.

Maybe in a couple years the Leaf will have kicked the range-anxiety issue to the curb. And the Chevy Beat looks very promising. 2 cars in the range of the average new car purchase price does not make for domination though.

My prediction is that it's realistically going to be _at least_ 3 car generations before that has a chance of happening, and most manufacturers haven't even released a full EV yet. That's a good 15 to 20 years as a best case scenario. That doesn't address the Truck and family SUV market either. These things are made for hauling. They're going to suck down a lot more power. "Work Trucks" aren't going to convert for much longer Though I think there's a good chance many will go hybrid in ~10 years. There's got to be a ton of utility in a series-hybrid truck for towing, site power, etc.

Just my 2c. I've actually owned a Leaf. I think EVs are great. A lot more so than people even realize. Instant torque and acceleration response makes them really fun to drive. That doesn't mean I think they'll somehow become dominant in the same timespan that it took Nissan to come out with a massively compromised diesel truck nobody is going to buy. That's beyond optimistic IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I keep seeing more cars with tiny engines and turbos, which have decent performance and very good fuel economy.

<comment><USER17> Yeah - we have a 1.2 turbo ŠKODA Yeti which is a great wee car. Had a couple of VW's before that had the 1.4 twin charged engine (turbo and a supercharger as well) which I liked as well.

[NB I have had cars with much bigger engines in the past (e.g. 4.4 BMW) and I honestly don't miss them].

<comment><USER5> I have the same engine in the SEAT Ibiza. 1.2 8v only a single overhead cam, but direct injection and a turbo. Makes 105 PS and 175Nm in the model I have, but in the larger cars they tune it to 110 PS.

Most of the time it feels alright, about on par with a 1.6 16v engine but sometimes I miss the power of my old RenaultSport Clio.

<comment><USER17> I certainly don't miss the speeding tickets! I used to speed regularly - <USER2> last time I got a ticket I decided to stop speeding completely (I literally _never_ go above the marked speed limits).

So no worries about speeding tickets, use much less fuel, I find driving less stressful and it turns out that it doesn't seem to make a huge difference to how long it takes to get anywhere.

Edit: I find it amusing that when I look into the engine bay of our Yeti that I can actually see the road in the gap behind the engine - probably makes it much easier to service!

<comment><USER5> The funniest thing about the 1.2 TSI is the oil filter pointing straight at you.

Looks like you could change it in seconds.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Obsessive Search for the Tasmanian Tiger - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/02/the-obsessive-search-for-the-tasmanian-tiger <comment><USER2> As a native to south-western australia, this all reads pretty accurate. The animal certainly is alive and strong in hearts and minds, if not real life. There's all the usual local country-town big-creature legends, and a bit of 50-year-old evidence helps as well.

The idea of 'monsters' of all kinds have always fascinated me. As the article mentions, it's only in the _extremely_ recent past (last couple of hundred years) that extinction was recognised as even something that was possible.

We normally think of extinct megafauna as something that existed in prehistoric times - literally, before we invented writing, but the word here is often by the layman used to mean "before we invented conscious thought". Many Aboriginal Dreamtime stories (so, within the last 80k years) are thought to involve now-extinct megafauna, other large creatures are known to have gone extinct only in the last 2-3000 years, untold small species have disappeared in the last ~200 years... it's hardly surprising that humans are such a superstitious bunch, considering we're only ~8 generations away from huddling in a village, frightened of the wolves and anything else that goes bump in the night.

>Tasmania, which is sometimes said to hang beneath Australia like a green jewel

...we don't say that. I don't think even Tasmanians say that. They're too busy trying to convince everyone not avoid the place so they can enjoy it.

<comment><USER3> > Considering we're only 8 generations away from huddling in a village, > frightened of the wolves and anything that goes bump in the night.

I think you severely underestimate our predecessors. They were not feral beasts, they were almost exactly the same animals as you and I, minus some education and technology.

8 generations ago (25? 30 years each?), the Age of Exploration in which western European powers sent huge sailing ships, (more than a hundred feet long with dozens or hundreds of cannons) around the world to map and claim unknown lands was drawing to a close, because they were running out of unknown lands. London was a city of more than half a million people, importing goods from the furthest corners of the empire, with huge textile mills and blast furnaces and other factories ramping up,the industrial revolution. They weren't huddling in the mud and dark, they were sitting around candles and oil lamps, near streets lit with oil from whales they killed.

Even 80 generations or more ago the Romans, Greeks, Babylonians and Egyptians were dealing with problems of empire governance not wolf packs. (To say nothing of the Chinese, Japanese, or Mayan civilizations which I know less about.)

They may have been superstitious, but they were definitely _homo sapiens_.

<comment><USER4> Well I'm still terrified of wolves, so I don't get your point. Did you misread the parent comment? Fear isn't dictated by technology. We still fear things that can't really hurt us easily.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> At some point people need to accept that we killed all of them. Much like almost happened to the Tasmanian devil (part of the reason for the virulence of the their transmissible cancer is the lack of genetic diversity, caused by farmers trying to exterminate them as well)

<comment><USER6> They were effectively killed by the introduction of the dingo a few thousand years ago. Tasmania is too small to support an apex preditor like the Tasmanian tiger long term and maintain the needed genetic diversity. This is the same problem faced by the Tasmanian devil and it is why the transmissible cancer has spread.

<comment><USER7> Uh, but the Tasmanian Devil is still alive. The Tiger was "effectively" and literally wiped out by European immigrants.

<comment><USER6> Umm I think you missed the point of my post. The Tasmanian tiger was found all over Australia until a few thousand years ago. It was the introduction of the Dingo that caused its extinction (this was not by European immigrants by the way). Only the population in Tasmania survived thanks to the rising sea level cutting off Tasmania from the Australian mainland.

The population in Tasmania was too small to support the genetic diversity required for a sustainable population - the extinction was just a matter of time due to inbreeding. On this topic while there was some hunting, the cause of the collapse of the Tasmanian tiger population is unknown and there is some thought that it might have been due to disease not hunting.

Yes the Tasmanian devil is still alive, but it has almost no genetic diversity. This is why the facial cancer is able to spread from animal to animal.

Edit. I should add the Tasmanian devils were also found on the mainland until the dingos wiped them out too.

<comment><USER8> Your "extinct from inbreeding" theory is not likely. There are many examples of animals coming back from groups well under 100, and doing fine. Such as the sea otter of California which was down to somewhere between 25 and 50 and is now over 3000, with no signs of deformities or other problems.

<comment><USER6> Sustained inbreed on a small island is a very common way for apex predators to become extinct and there are lots of examples from around the world of this happening after the last ice age.

100 might be OK for a short drop (~150 is considered the bottom end for most populations), but sustain a population at 50 breeding pairs for a few hundred generations and every allele in the population will end up homozygous though genetic drift.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's a nice little film with Willem Dafoe about this, called _The Hunter_ , showcasing the beautiful Tasmanian wilderness. [https://wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunter_(2011_Australian_film)](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunter_\(2011_Australian_film\))

<comment><USER10> Great movie!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> There are no Thylacines left. If there were, one would have been road killed by now.

Source. Australian. Have had near misses with every kind of non-extinct Australian wildlife while riding motorbikes around tassie.

<comment><USER6> There are a few dead ones in museums. As long as the DNA remains there is hope we could bring them back.

<comment><USER12> This way of thinking, "but we could always bring them back" can be also a problem. I would call it the belief in Magic science.

We don't know the economics of recreating an extinct species, but would be most probably not only technically challenging, but also very expensive. Even if we technically could bring back the rainforests to small areas of the sahara, the probability of seeing it done is zero. Is possible, but the huge resources needed are limited and would not allow it.

Saving the vaquita or the totoba, or the frogs, can be challenging but is easier and much cheaper than trying to bring back the same animals from the extinction tomorrow.

<comment><USER6> I agree, but I was just trying to make the point that the Tasmanian tiger is only 99.99999% extinct. The genetic information we have is vastly better than having nothing all.

I personally would love to see a living Tasmanian tiger and while I don't think I ever will, maybe my grandchildren will.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think the chance of finding(much less capturing) a live specimen is even smaller than the chance of successfully _cloning_ one, especially given that its genome has been recently sequenced[0].

[0] [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-017-0417-y](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-017-0417-y)

</comment><comment><USER8> I strongly suspect that all the armchair naysayers about this and things like sasquatch, yeti, and so forth, have not spent much time in the great outdoors. I have. There are many wild places in the world and most creatures in it are fairly shy and good at staying undetected, as well as very sensitive and can smell, see, or otherwise detect clumsy, smelly, loud humans from very far off.

There could easily be small populations of an animal like this in a place the size of Tazmania, never mind a whole continent the size of Australia...both of which are sparsely populated besides.

Besides that, why would people lie about all the encounters, that are random and coming from many sources, clearly it isn't a conspiracy or something.

I will never understand how people can just smugly write off so many things as impossible, fantasy, myth, superstition, etc. when the world is so big and not that explored, the seas are basically unexplored, and space...well that's really enormous.

A lot of things could be out there, and it is very, very hard to prove with certainty that something doesn't exist, or that the largest of some creature has been caught, or whatever. Scientists love to make proclamations, but they frequently are proven wrong...

You know what I'd really like to see some scientists get around to studying seriously? Crop circles. Still completely unexplained...

</comment><comment><USER14> Wikipedia has all the (undisputed) footage of a Thylacine [1].

1\. [https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AThyla...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AThylacine_footage_compilation.ogv)

<comment><USER15> Should be noted this is footage of the last known Thylacine, in a Tasmanian zoo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> They recently found a new disease free group of Tasmanian Devils down in a remote spot in Tassie. I didn't read the article, so maybe that is in there. If a group of uninfected Tassie Devils can be hiding away, then so can the Tigers.

EDIT source : [http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-28/healthy-population- of-...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-28/healthy-population-of-devils- discovered-in-remote-south-west-tas/9706864)

<comment><USER12> This is a recolonization probably, Tasman devils do it all the time.

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

When the last tasman devil in an area dies, the area is totally cleaned from Tasman devil canker also. A very remote area can be reached only by healthy animals. The only able to endure the travel of several weeks or months.

The area will remain clean for a while. Eventually the boom of animals born in the area with higher survival chances will extend and recolonize the wide empty space between the populations with and without canker.

With a lot of luck all the diseased populations could collapse in this time, and the species could be free of the cancer eventually. With bad luck, an ill animal could get trapped in a truck, travel and be released in the clean area. Being isolated, the remote population would quickly vanish.

The difference with tylacine is that tasman devils have several uncorrupted backups in zoos and also in the wild.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> > _Could a global icon of extinction still be alive?_

Betteridge's Law applies: no.</comment>


Why the Biggest Bitcoin Mines Are in China - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/why-the-biggest-bitcoin-mines-are-in-china <comment><USER2> The pictures in this article and details of power consumption make the inherent proof-of-work approach very hard to defend.

The counter argument is that the resources required to secure, print and transport traditional currencies is probably still orders of magnitude greater. But on a MWh per $-equivalent flow, Bitcoin is probably orders of magnitude less efficient.

Would be great to see someone with actual numbers do calculations of that sort to watch trends over time. I wonder if the W / $-value-transaction is going down or up over time? That is, the energy spent vs. rate of flow of currency (as a rough measure of its utility), denominated in dollars.</comment>


How We Overturned the Retroactive Tax on Startup Founders - <AUTHOR> http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2013/10/07/overturned-retroactive-tax-startup-founders/ <comment><USER2> I have already emailed my accountant to file for the refund.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there is a "news" version of this story? The press release makes it hard to understand what the actual issue is, and what happened.</comment>


My resignation letter is in ANSI C++ - <AUTHOR> http://adamwynne.wordpress.com/2010/09/04/turning-the-page/

<comment><USER2>
      #include <stdio.h>

      int main (int argc, char **argv) {
        puts("Screw you guys! I'm going home.");
      }

I'm thinking they were glad to see you go because you took an hour to do 60 seconds worth of work.

<comment><USER3> He could have put in some templating to make it easy for the next person to quit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is argc really a const in C++'s main? I can't imagine why it would be, given that _argv++; argc--;_ is a very standard idiom in command-line argument processing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Seeing I wasn't using it, I thought I might hint to the optimiser that it could optimise it away. But now that you mention it, the argv should have been const char * const _

<comment><USER4> The optimizer is quite able to recognize that a variable is unused. :-)

In fact, if you compile that code with warnings turned on, you'll get a "variable is not used" warning -- which most style guides say should be silenced by adding the following line to the start of your function:

      (void)argc; /* UNUSED */

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Overkill</comment>


Show HN: IdeaValid – Let Artificial Intelligence validate your business idea - <AUTHOR> http://www.ideavalid.com <comment><USER2> Have you run your own business idea through your validation process? That could be a good example to show in the landing page.

I personally think it is a good idea to use AI for that. Really good idea. I just can't know if it works and if your process is good enough, so I'm not paying (but I don't have any money either, so I'm not your target potential customer).

</comment><comment><USER3> If you want people to pay for this, you should at least show some profound examples of your Service(and the outcome) and explain the process a lot more in depth.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I added a sample report!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think costs need to be displayed up front and the value shown straight away; questions that can be answered through the service. Also step away from using TypeForm and develop your own system to collect data and payment so it can be more secure and a more consistent experience with the rest of the website.

<comment><USER5> >develop your own system to collect data and payment so it can be more secure and a more consistent experience with the rest of the website.

I was really concerned when I saw this (I thought you were asking them to not use Stripe or PayPal), but I strongly concur. Using Typeform for collecting credit cards is an extreme violation of PCI-DSS.

You need to pull down your site immediately and don't put it back up until you aren't running cards through Typeform.

I am normally very loose with rules and I know validating is hard, but you are exposing yourself to major financial implications by doing this.

EDIT: Spoke too soon. Looks like they are properly exchanging info for a token and not passing info to Typeform, just the token.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm unsure about how this works. Are you creating surveys that get filled up by users? How is AI going to validate a business idea without input from real users?

Some more information about your process would help - because it sounds interested as a service but leaves a lot of questions unanswered.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your feedback! I added a sample report.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Firefox says "connection not secure", and the form at the bottom asks for your credit card number. Hmm.

Not saying anything dodgy is going on, but it doesn't make for the best first impression.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, so funny it's like tell us your business idea and now your credit card details in one small scroll form window. Feels so out of place.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for all your feedback!</comment>


Lulzsec and Anonymous Hackers leak over 10GB of Law Enforcement Agency Details - <AUTHOR> http://www.invisblenandu.com/2011/08/lulzsec-and-anonymous-hackers-leak-over.html

<comment><USER2> Ugh, the personal data and "snitch list" seem particularly bad to release. It does raise the question as to why this stuff is on remotely accessible servers, but still, it seems like this is just a freebie handout to identity thieves and perhaps worse for the snitch list?

<comment><USER3> From the release:

 _"We have no sympathy for any of the officers or informants who may be endangered by the release of their personal information. For too long they have been using and abusing our personal information, spying on us, arresting us, beating us, and thinking that they can get away with oppressing us in secrecy. Well it's retribution time: we want them to experience just a taste of the kind of misery and suffering they inflict upon us on an everyday basis. Let this serve as a warning to would-be snitches and pigs that your leaders can no longer protect you: give up and turn on your masters now before it's too late."_

You must remember, despite what the police would like you to believe most "snitches" are _not_ little old ladies reporting violent crimes.

Edit: Yeah, just read through about half of these. Most of them are along the vein of _"My neighbours keeps to themselves, therefore they do drugs"_. Fuck these people.

I did get a chuckle out of "jessica bruno - knows who set fire to land excavator equipment" though. The thought of setting a bulldozer on fire absurdly amusing to me for some reason ;)

<comment><USER4> "Yeah, just read through about half of these. Most of them are along the vein of "My neighbours keeps to themselves, therefore they do drugs". Fuck these people"

If anyone wonders why I flag stories like this, here's a good example.

<comment><USER5> I don't understand? Why is this story needing to be flagged?

<comment><USER3> I was assuming it's because it made me resort to the dreadful horrors of profanity, but that's a good question. Why _does_ this quotation demonstrate why these stories should be flagged?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Also on that site, I just noticed he posted admin and db info for MIT damn

</comment><comment><USER7> Someone who isn't me had this to say:

"Be careful, the mail archive contains dozens of .exe virus files. Verified by SecurityEssentials. If you accidentally run them then you'll infect yourself. (This implies many of the officers are using infected computers, since these exes are in their email.)"

</comment><comment><USER8> Is there a list somewhere of all these different leaks? It is getting hard to keep track, these days.

</comment><comment><USER9> Isn't the main problem that technology moves so fast that the only way to have an organisation (that must) be secure is to staff it with teenagers.

You can have incompetent but responsible adults or competent but irresponsible teenagers. Choose one?

<comment><USER10> That's absurd. Why would a teenager know more than an adult about security?

<comment><USER9> The hackers are kids, the people getting broken into are adults, so apparently they do know more.

<comment><USER11> This is a really bad generalization. We don't know how old most of these hackers really even are. But let's just say, for sake of discussion, they were all kids. That doesn't necessarily mean they are more talented or know more. They are more focused, perhaps? The US government has fallen behind in cyber security. That doesn't mean the people they employ aren't as good as these hackers. In fact, the government probably holds them back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Move over, Wikileaks, there's an even bigger group of cunts with even lower ethical standards in town!

This will not end well.

</comment><comment><USER13> Are all these USA-only?

</comment><comment><USER14> Why?

<comment><USER3> Read the article:

 _"We hope that not only will dropping this info demonstrate the inherently corrupt nature of law enforcement using their own words, as well as result in possibly humiliation, firings, and possible charges against several officers, but that it will also disrupt and sabotage their ability to communicate and terrorize communities.

We are doing this in solidarity with Topiary and the Anonymous PayPal LOIC defendants as well as all other political prisoners who are facing the gun of the crooked court system. We stand in support of all those who struggle against the injustices of the state and capitalism using whatever tactics are most effective, even if that means breaking their laws in order to expose their corruption. You may bust a few of us, but we greatly outnumber you, and you can never stop us from continuing to destroy your systems and leak your data."_

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Most people are going to says lulzsec is doing something illegal and immoral here. Consider a different example:

A bank robber robs a bank, stealing hundreds of millions of dollars, then proceeds to hand out the money to anyone who wants it. Who are you more mad at? The bank robber who figured out a way to steal the money, or the bank who has no clue how the money was stolen?

<comment> eric-hu I was with them until the snitch list. These aren't exactly people abusing power (AFAIK). If there was one particular person among the snitch list that was interesting, they should've just cited that one. Releasing the entire list can seriously endanger some innocent people.

Overall I still like that they're trying to wrest power from those who abuse it, but I think it hurts their stance to cause collateral damage like that.

<comment><USER16> the reason snitches talk is because they ran out of ways to avoid prosecution, so i feel the innocent would be the minority in that group, as the police wouldn't have anything on them to compel cooperation.

<comment><USER17> Regardless of why snitches talk, it's a basic assumption that their collaboration will be rewarded by the protection against retaliation by those they inform on.

If those snitches are helping the investigation of violent crimes, it's really, really irresponsible to release their identities.

<comment><USER18> I have to say this is the first time I've seen someone argue that confidential informants receive special protection from Law Enforcement outside of the Witness Protection Program, which is a federal thing and quite specific (and limited) in its application. Do you have a reference for this "basic assumption?"

<comment><USER17> It's only fair that you protect your sources. As a law enforcement agent, would you be comfortable if you recklessly exposed your sources to harm? If, for no other reason, you protect your informants so they continue to inform you.

<comment><USER18> I'd say that's an assumption (or agreement) some of the time, but I'd wager just as soon that the "protection" offered is always post-hoc: someone gets busted and drops dime, getting them protection from prosecution in their instant case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Shit just got real...

<comment><USER20> AFAIK shit's been real for quite a while. How is this worse than past publications?

<comment><USER17> I'd finger the snitch list. If those are active in violent crime investigation, they'd better run.

<comment><USER20> .. the Arizona publication?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Instagram Is Estimated to Be Worth More Than $100B - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-25/value-of-facebook-s-instagram-estimated-to-top-100-billion <comment><USER2> Until it implodes of course. Like every other social network.

<comment><USER3> You mean like Twitter? 12 years later, it's not imploding.

Or maybe you mean like Facebook. 14 years later, it's still growing, not imploding.

Social is a mature segment now, the big winners are not going to implode as MySpace and Friendster did. Those companies lost because they were replaced by superior products, they didn't just magically implode, they were beaten in the market.

Show me the competitive threat to Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, Twitter, etc. There aren't any, the race is over.</comment></comment>


Police ask for whole city's Google searches, and a judge says yes - <AUTHOR> http://www.citypages.com/news/edina-police-ask-for-whole-citys-google-searches-and-a-judge-says-yes/416319633 <comment><USER2> I'm trying to see what the big deal is here (relax, I'll explain).

Police are not asking for the entire search history of everyone in the town, then combing through it to see what they've searched for. Rather, police are asking Google who, in a narrow amount of time, searched for the name of a relatively unknown person who had $28K stolen from him.

Is this really that different from police asking for security camera footage from a convenience store after a robbery? In either case, obviously innocent bystanders will be quickly eliminated from the list of possible suspects. Any remaining suspect(s) will still need to be (1) charged, (2) have a judge allow the evidence in court, and (3) convicted on the basis of evidence beyond reasonable doubt by a jury of their peers.

Unfortunately, I think obvious invasions of privacy (e.g., PRISM) have made folks very jumpy about _any_ electronic evidence collection, which I don't think is warranted.

EDIT: Thanks to guelo for pointing out that this was an unsuccessful attempt at wire fraud, so the victim (fortunately) retained the $28K. I missed that previously.

<comment><USER3> > Is this really that different from police asking for security camera footage > from a convenience store after a robbery.

The crux of the debate is whether Google is a quasi public place, like a convenience store, or something private, like your closet.

I think _legally_ , Google is no different than any other business. Following the appropriate process, police can ask a convenience store to search their sales records to see who bought something on a particular date. They can ask a credit card company about someone's purchases on a particular date.

On the other hand, people disclose information to Google that they don't disclose to their convenience store clerk. That information is even more intimate than what people disclose to a credit card company. Someone's searches can reveal the deepest darkest things about them.

On the other other hand, Google as a service is not really one of trust. It's not like a bank that provides a safe deposit box and promises to not look inside (and is usually legally barred from doing so). Google rummages through your personal information for its own profit. Twenty years ago, if you had asked people: "If you had a service that data mined the information you gave it for advertising purposes, where potentially dozens of engineers and operators have access to that information--would you consider that a trusted and private system?" They would have said "no."

<comment><USER4> Legally Google is different.

They are required to keep records that brick and mortar businesses do not.

They have a de-facto monopoly as the largest search provider for the general populace. They are a public resource that is a requirement for many of us to use in our day to day lives.

Google in this instance is more like a library card catalog that keeps records of all of the things people search for.

This is the same as asking a library for all people who looked for books on dogs.

Google not only has adults that search for things. They have grade school children in their datasets.

If you are OK with this request, are you OK with the subsequent request to facebook that says "give me the social network tree for all of the people within this dataset"? we're looking for a woman who knows one of the people that searched for Douglass on Google within the Edina area. And then the final query to AT&T, "we need the phone records for all of the households on this list of women who are within 3 links to people who searched for Douglass in the Edina area"?

This is an overly broad search with no particular limit and no logical connection to the crime. The police don't know for certain that the thief arrived at the image used via a google search, let alone a google search for someone's first name. They don't know for certain that the thief was in the Edina area. They don't know for certain that the thief was in the Edina area when searching.

<comment><USER5> > Legally Google is different... They are required to keep records that brick > and mortar businesses do not.

> They have a de-facto monopoly as the largest search provider for the general > populace. > They are a public resource that is a requirement for many of us > to use in our day to day lives.

Wait, what? Has the "defacto monopoly" been legally established? They're a "public resource?" Please cite the legal meaning of "public resource" and where it was established through legislation or judicial action that Google is one?

<comment><USER4> [https://definitions.uslegal.com/d/de-facto- monopoly/](https://definitions.uslegal.com/d/de-facto-monopoly/)

Jiminy christmas. I made a comment on hackernews and you're trying to parse it like we're in a court of law.

The fact is that Google is different than a mom and pop shop with a video camera. It's ludicrous to suggest otherwise.

<comment><USER5> Forgive me for quoting you. You started with "Legally Google is different" so I assumed you wanted to talk law or legislation.

Also, I don't recall comparing Google to smaller organizations.

I may be oversensitive, but when I hear terms like "They are a public resource" I assume you mean that they should therefore be regulated by the government and paid for with tax money.

<comment><USER4> Forgive me...

I made a flippant comment following this thread of conversation:

> Is this really that different from police asking for security camera footage > from a convenience store after a robbery?

> I think legally, Google is no different than any other business.

And when I came back to the thread there was a series of comments parsing my words.

I overreacted to the group and you were the target of that over-reaction.

<comment><USER5> No prob! This is important stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Which is why I use ddg.gg (DuckDuckGo). They don't track you.

People are starting to wake up to the implications of a world without privacy. I carry around Snowden's quote on my phone and repeat it verbatim when people say they have nothing to hide:

"Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say".

Do not be discouraged. Just keep educating people one-by-one and we will win this fight. We have to, otherwise our ancestors who fought and died for freedom and liberty will have done so in vain.

<comment><USER7> I know everyone wants to hate on google, but I think we should be more worried about our government and ISP's

[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/gop-senators- new...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/gop-senators-new-bill- would-let-isps-sell-your-web-browsing-data/)

no one is safe if this bill passes.

<comment><USER8> That bill opens up to ISP's what website's ( like google ) hav e been doing for years. If no one is safe because of that bill, then no one is safe already. VPN'ing around your ISP is about the same level of difficulty as setting your default search engine to not be google.

<comment><USER7> google doesn't sell or share your personal information to anyone. Its a huge distinction.

<comment><USER9> > _google doesn 't sell or share your personal information to anyone_ [ _sic_ > ]

The article is about Google sharing someone's private searches with the police.

<comment><USER10> TFA is about Google _being ordered to_ share information to police, _by a (currently) legal court order_. There's no call for [sic] in your quotation of GP.

<comment><USER9> GP said Google doesn't share personal information with _anyone_. That's not true. The article shows them sharing it with someone. The point isn't pedantic when one of their competitors, DuckDuckGo, literally can't--court order or not.

My use of _sic erat scriptum_ means I'm quoting GP, grammatical errors and all. This point, in contrast to the previous one, is pedantic :). (One doesn't share information _to_ someone, but _with_ them. "Google doesn't sell your personal information to, nor share it with, anyone" or "Google doesn't sell or share your personal information" are more correct.)

[1] [https://duckduckgo.com](https://duckduckgo.com)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The police aren't asking for a city's searches. They're asking for anyone, anywhere, who searched Google for 'Douglas ? ?' in a 5 week period. The article this one links to explains this much better.

[https://tonywebster.com/2017/03/minnesota-search-warrant- any...](https://tonywebster.com/2017/03/minnesota-search-warrant-anyone-who- googled/)

Google isn't the only search engine on the internet, but the police claim they were unable to find the information in Yahoo or Bing results. They suspect it must have come from a Google search, because that's where they were able to find the same information. The judge felt this provided probable cause to permit the search on Google.

This article is bad. It appears to be written by a layperson who doesn't understand law or how the internet works. And it pours on the hyperbole to excite emotions.

Fake news.

<comment><USER12> This is not fake news. It's real news. Just because you don't think it's particularly newsworthy doesn't make it _fake_.

<comment><USER11> The citypages link on HN is fake news. It misrepresents and mischaracterizes the events reported on the tonywebster link.

"Cops figure if they could just find out who in that affluent suburb has Googled that name, they'd narrow their suspect list right down."

This is fabricated tripe. The cops are not looking specifically in the victim's suburb. The person who wrote the citypages article is being a complete imbecile. His heart might be in the right place, but he's got his facts all wrong. The warrant pertains to information on anyone, anywhere on the entire planet who might have accessed Google's servers and searched for that name between Dec 1 and Jan 7.

<comment><USER12> Getting one fact wrong doesn't make the story fake news. Most of it (and, most importantly, the actually important parts of it) are completely true.

Fake news is news stories that are intentionally made up, not news stories that contain mistakes.

<comment><USER11> The one fact he got wrong is the whole point of his fake news story.

<comment><USER12> Not really. The point is the police are trying to solve a case of attempted fraud by asking Google for all searches for a particular name within a particular time period, based on the fact that searching for that name in Google Images comes up with the images used on the fake passport. The story is reporting that they're asking specifically for searches made by people in a particular city, but that detail is pretty incidental to the story itself.

And again, please stop calling this "fake news" just because it contains a mistake. I've already explained that this is not at all what that phrase means.

<comment><USER11> "Police ask for whole city's Google searches, and a judge says yes"

Fake news. The title is entirely false.

"The people of Edina probably don't know it, but they're doing battle with the Edina Police Department over the right to online privacy."

Fake news. The people of Edina are not the targets of the warrant.

"The cops are winning."

Be afraid! Cops are winning... something.

"a Hennepin County judge has granted the Edina Police Department an extraordinary degree of access to citizens' Google history"

More fake news. Completely fabricated misrepresentation of the truth. The cops have no access to their general search history at all.

"Of course, people's Google search history not only isn't public, it's not usually available to local cops trying to bust a small-time swindler."

Fake news. Google is "bombarded" by user data requests from government.

[https://www.cnet.com/news/google-were-bombarded-by-govt- requ...](https://www.cnet.com/news/google-were-bombarded-by-govt-requests-on- user-data/)

The article is fake news. The title is fake news. The content is fake news.

<comment><USER12> Stop calling it fake news! It's a real story that's been misinterpreted by the journalist. That doesn't make it fake. That just makes it an error.

Fake news is stories that are _made up_. This story isn't made up. It's just erroneous.

Why do you keep insisting on incorrectly using the term "fake news" for this?

<comment><USER13> Let's recap:

\- Misinterpreted real story, i.e. misinformation. \- Clickbaity eye-catching headline, i.e. deliberate attempt to inflate readership and sharing.

AFAIK writing misinformation so it will spread falls into the realm of fake news.

<comment><USER14> IMO there's a difference between fake news and opionated news. Fake news is stories like Ted Cruz's father being involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. There's nothing factually true in the story itself. This is an article that reports true facts and tries to subvert them to serve an agenda. Almost all mainstream media outlets do this to varying degrees. But that doesn't make this article fake news. Clickbaity title and opionated reporting != fake news.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This title is click-bait.

They did not ask for "whole city's Google searches", they asked for the identity of the "person who searched for a specific search string", which is _not_ the same thing!

Suggested new title: "Edina police ask for identity of person who searched for specific name, and a judge says yes"

<comment><USER16> Technically they ask for ALL the identities that searched for that name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Here is the original source with more info on the actual crime they are investigating and the reason they are targeting Google.

[https://tonywebster.com/2017/03/minnesota-search-warrant- any...](https://tonywebster.com/2017/03/minnesota-search-warrant-anyone-who- googled/)

Edit: I find it rather amusing that the cops found the image used in the fake passport on google images, but decided to request google searches for the name instead of access logs for the image on the actual server.

<comment><USER11> Post-edit, this is the best comment in the entire thread. You should be at the top of the page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm not too outraged over this one. They're asking who in a specific city googled a specific name during a specific timeframe. This is how you find out who your suspects are. I understand it's a razor thin line between "normal police work" and "dragnet surveillance" but this time I think it's the former.

<comment><USER13> > They're asking who in a specific city googled a specific name during a > specific timeframe.

Nope. the clickbait article that got posted here tries to spin it that way, but the warrant is for anyone/anywhere.

[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/judge-oks- warran...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/judge-oks-warrant-to- reveal-who-searched-a-fraud-victims-name-on-google/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Curious: if anyone thinks it is bad for Google to give the police information, do you think it's bad for Google to have the information in the first place?

Another way to think about this is: _when_ (not if, but _when_ ) Google gives a government information in some time in the future, would that change your behavior now?

<comment><USER6> The problem with Google and Facebook is they lack context. Let's say you doing a search for school on Islamic State. How do they know the difference between you and a member of this terrorist organization?

Context is everything.

<comment><USER20> Isn't that exactly what the court system is for? I've never heard of anyone being charged with terrorism merely for googling IS, and I suspect any judge would throw out a case like that in a heartbeat.

<comment><USER21> The vast majority of prosecutions never go to trial. Plus the president can lock up enemy combatants without trial.

<comment><USER22> > The vast majority of prosecutions never go to trial.

But that's a result of the evaluation of prospects at trial, so the protections that apply at trial directly influence that.

> Plus the president can lock up enemy combatants without trial.

Such detentions of alleged enemy combatants can be (and have been) challenged in court as well.

<comment><USER23> > But that's a result of the evaluation of prospects at trial, so the > protections that apply at trial directly influence that.

That would be nice, but it's not true. Prosecutors use the threat of trial to get innocent people to accept plea deals out of fear of being found guilty anyway and facing the full penalties of the charges.

You're assuming good faith from prosecutors, you shouldn't; they only care about winning cases, not justice. The justice system is not your friend and is not out to ensure justice is done. The justice system is for those who can afford lawyers, it does its best to fuck anyone who can't.

<comment><USER22> > You're assuming good faith from prosecutors

No, I'm not. Access to and competence of defense counsel is actually more relevant to the _degree_ of effect that the available adversarial process has on the outcome of plea deals that avoid (some part of) that process, but even with imperfect access to and competence of counsel the fact that some share of cases do go to trial and prosecutors can't certainly predict in advance which cases will be in that set means that the protections in the adversarial process create incentives that influence behavior in the process that precedes arrest and charging.

(This contrasts sharply with, e.g., the foreign intelligence surveillance warrant process, where the warrants do not feed into an adversarial process even in principle, and thus there is far less constraint on government misconduct even with a judicial warrant process.

<comment><USER23> Prosecutors know who they can bully unfairly and have the discretion to back down if they make a mistake. If what would fly in court were any real behavior influencer, they wouldn't bully people into plea deals that were unjust just because they can. Most people do not have access to competent council and prosecutors know it, and they know the fear of being found guilty will get even innocent people to accept a plea; if you don't have money, the justice system isn't for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The end-game of Google (and Facebook, etc.) is to feed on everything everything you think, do, and say so they can predict and influence your beliefs and what you purchase. Of course, law enforcement wants a piece of the cake as well to be able to control and predict the behavior of the population. Break free from the hive mind. Disconnect yourself from the spying apparatus.

And now for a more amusing take on the matter: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUIcCyPOA30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUIcCyPOA30)

</comment><comment> k-mcgrady >> police want to know who has searched for a particular name [douglas] used as part of that fraud

This is a super click-bait headline. Sounds like Police got the search history of everyone in the city. The reality, which is quickly explained in the article, is nothing like that. They have a list of people in the city who searched for a pretty specific term and it sounds like Google does the digging and gives them a list of names.

Whether that's a problem or not is still up for debate but that headline is ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER25> Minnesotan here:

The inside joke about Edina is that it stands for "Every Day I Need Attention"; it's mostly old money, old-ways of doing things. For example: Up until a few years ago, they outlawed happy hour (as a state, we recently approved liquor sales on Sunday; odd, I know) and no, I'm not kidding.

Having said, this doesn't surprise me at all. Not that a judge approved it, but that Edina of all places requested it.

<comment><USER26> Illinois banned happy hour until a couple years ago, and Massachusetts still does.

<comment><USER27> Massacusetts sucks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Mac addresses? Under what scenario does any provider (ISP even) end up with your mac address? (Am I missing something here that I don't know about?)

Understand that your router has your mac address and in theory your ISP could end up with it by getting it there if they wanted to but don't know of cases where they legally actually do this or have any need for the info. True?

<comment><USER29> I guess, if for whatever reason Google had a MAC address of say a Chromebook in some other unrelated database. And the serial of that Chromebook was associated with your account. It's a stretch, and you have to wonder if Google would even go that far.

<comment><USER28> The other scenario I thought about was the unique browser footprint. Info in server logs that is very specific to someone's machine and the way they have it setup (screen size, os, browser and a host of other info). In certain cases the probability becomes highly likely that it can be linked to another log where your identity is known because the same footprint (not sure if that's the correct word) is in that other log.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This may sound silly to you all but I have recently given up paying for internet at my house as an experiment due to the prevalence of free public wifi nearly everywhere. I'm about 9 months into having cancelled my internet/cable entirely and it is working out well for me. I have only ever been very mildly inconvenienced by it.

Things like this make me never want to go back in all honestly, I save quite a bit of money with basically no downside (unless you count buying very very slightly more coffee than I otherwise might). Since I don't use google logins, disable tracking/cookies, and also change my mac address semi-regularly this seems like an adequate solution without going full on Tor/NoScript all the time(which I would prefer but the inconvenience cost becomes too great).

If this is allowed to legally stand, I am going to have to think long and hard about ever subscribing to an ISP or creating a google account ever again.

</comment><comment><USER31> If Google gives that information, I will stop using it right away

<comment><USER10> Google is legally obligated to provide that information. They can fight the subpoena's merit in court if they wish, but right now, the requesting police and the issuing judge are the problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Terrible Headline but genuinely scary request.

Police are NOT requesting "whole city's Google Searches" \- they are requesting the Whole WORLD's Google searches (if you will) for a specific search string (actually a variation of strings).

Realistically complying will get them a bunch of IP addresses. Lets say they get 100 IP addresses; then what? Track down and investigate every one of them? For what? How do you go from IP address to potential suspect in Bank Fraud?

Apparently now rather than having a suspect and then going to Google for that specific suspect's records is no longer the in thing. These lazy coppers want Google's help to even develop a suspect...very very close to a fishing expedition.

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm not sure living in the future is worth this.

</comment><comment><USER13> How does this kind of clickbait which is false get promoted to HN front page ?

Specially when the source is given in the posted article and is the actual original source[1] and has no clickbait nor lies. Also this story is covered by ars technica[2] and a copy of the warrant is available online[3].

[1]: [https://tonywebster.com/2017/03/minnesota-search-warrant- any...](https://tonywebster.com/2017/03/minnesota-search-warrant-anyone-who- googled/)

[2]: [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/judge-oks- warran...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/judge-oks-warrant-to- reveal-who-searched-a-fraud-victims-name-on-google/)

[3]: [https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3519211-Edina- Police...](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3519211-Edina-Police- Google-Search-Warrant-Redacted.html)

</comment><comment><USER34> The best solution for avoiding government surveillance overreach continues to be for nobody to store the data. A service provider can't be forced to disclose information it doesn't have.

I recommend duckduckgo.com for those bothered by this: "We don't store your personal information. Ever. Our privacy policy is simple: we don't collect or share any of your personal information."

</comment><comment><USER35> This was unclear from the article...but from what I understand the police want info on anyone who searched a specific term on google for a specific image from geo-location/IP in that city a week before the crime took place ?

1\. What if the criminal didn't use Google?

2\. What if the criminal did use Google but used a VPN or Tor or a Proxy?

<comment><USER13> This article is a piece of crap and is plain wrong.

Police asked for a warrant for anyone anywhere over a 5 weeks period who search for the name that leads to the picture used in the fake passport that you can find on google but not yahoo or bing.

[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/judge-oks- warran...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/judge-oks-warrant-to- reveal-who-searched-a-fraud-victims-name-on-google/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> If I understood the article correctly, the title is misleading.

The cops were not granted an entire raw database of all google searches by person. Instead, they were granted _" 'any/all user or subscriber information' of anyone in Edina who'd looked up that name between December 1, 2016, and January 7"_ which is IMHO a much less serious breach of privacy.

You could retort that collecting these users' _" name(s), address(es), telephone number(s), dates of birth, social security numbers, email addresses, payment information, account information, IP addresses, and MAC addresses"_ is a serious breach of privacy, but I believe those are all available to law enforcement (save the internet-specific info).

<comment><USER37> That is still really quite bad though. And all of this privacy invasion just for a wire fraud case?

<comment><USER38> Google uses this stuff to advertise for toys etc. Using it to catch a fraudster is more important than that.

<comment><USER39> Unless you are prosecuted by accident, news papers write about you and charges are dropped. You apply for a job, someone googles you and reply with "Thank you for your time. Unfortunately..."

<comment><USER38> I don't think we can assume more information increases the likelihood of false accusations. It certainly can for any given situation, but it can certainly greatly reduce the risk by identifying the real perpetrator.

If I were on trial when I was innocent, I'd really appreciate having this information available.

Though if there was empirical data to suggest that it was more risky, I could be convinced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> It does not mention what Google's response was, or if they have complied with the order.

</comment><comment><USER41> theoretical question: what if google will say that they do not know how to get this specific information out of their data? how can anyone prove if its true without full access to google infrastructure? will the police confiscate all their servers?

</comment><comment><USER42> Wait a second - I thought a year ago I had an email from Google telling me this is last chance to opt out of them collecting my search queries. I remember clicking and google page told me thanks we won't collect your searches.

Is that not the case anymore?

</comment><comment><USER43> I wonder what principles a judge in the U.S. justice system? Is it only constitution? Can people somehow adjust what makes a judge? (speaking of competency in privacy matters)

<comment><USER44> It depends on the state. In Minnesota, judges are elected in nonpartisan elections, so people can adjust their qualifications every 6 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I wonder which is the case here:

1) Google will query some internal search logs

2) Google will query a bundle of search histories which we see at "My Activity" page

</comment><comment><USER9> FYI, you can delete your Google account records from here [https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/465?co=GENIE.Plat...](https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/465?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en)

<comment><USER46> You can _appear_ to delete your Google account records from there. I wouldn't trust any company that cooperates with the NSA and State Department to actually ever delete anything the government could find useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I remember seeing something like this online. I think it was murderpedia.org ?

Details are a bit fuzzy and might be wrong. In the 90's someone murdered a person or two. Somehow the cops asked the local ISP for anyone making constant searches of the case. They traced it back to the murderer.

<comment><USER48> Recall anything else? Even something as simple as the state, MO of the killer, etc?

<comment><USER47> I was kind of wrong on the details, was in 2002 and they asked Microsoft.

"Instead, agents simply tapped into the wealth of information that Microsoft Corp. and other Internet companies keep on people who visit their Web sites and use their services."

[http://murderpedia.org/male.T/t/travis- maury.htm](http://murderpedia.org/male.T/t/travis-maury.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> We should have a new Technology court, where qualified hybrid legal/whatevertech folks preside.

</comment><comment><USER50> So, unconstitutional decision by the judge, and cops are surely happy to run with it.

</comment><comment><USER51> Unvoted and flagged as misleading:

Title:

> Police ask for whole city's Google searches, and a judge says yes

Implying searches not related to the case are included.

Article:

> In specific, police want to know who has searched for a particular name used > as part of that fraud.

</comment><comment><USER52> This title is so inaccurate it should be changed. Asking who in a city searched for a term is not the same as asking for a whole city's Google searches.

<comment><USER53> I actually disagree. Answering the question requires searching through each and every person's Google searches. So it's the equivalent of going door-to- door and searching every house for the one with the item.

<comment><USER52> The government is not getting access to (nor asking for) all queries. The government is getting access to information identifying who searched for a term. Google's query may include all search terms but Google obviously already has that data anyways.

This is equivalent to asking FedEx who in a given city was shipped something from a specific address. Sure when FedEx does a search it may technically search over all shipments from any address, but the government isn't getting access to that information. Hardly equivalent to door-to-door searches of every house.

<comment><USER22> > This is equivalent to asking FedEx who in a given city was shipped something > from a specific address.

It is neither equivalent to nor even really analogous to it. It's more like asking a retailer that keeps such records for a list of every purchaser of a specific product.

Which, just to be clear, is something law enforcement will do in some circumstances already.

<comment><USER52> Agreed that's a much better analogy. In this case the "retailer" already maintains such records. The government isn't even asking for the list of all purchases by all individuals, just the name of who purchased a particular item.

Sure in the course of getting the answer to that question the _retailer_ may sift through the records of all purchases, but this is data they already have.

This is hardly something to be outraged about. Title implies something much different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Well, one would think that they'd have been bright enough to use StartPage/DuckDuckGo, a VPN, Tor, or some combination of them.

</comment><comment><USER55> Good motivation to continue security work

</comment><comment><USER56> It's not "whole city's Google searches"

</comment><comment><USER57> That's it. Incognito mode, permanently.

<comment><USER58> Is this a joke? I sincerely hope you understand that incognito mode will not help in this case.

<comment><USER57> Yes. It is a joke.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Use duckduckgo. Problem solved.

</comment><comment><USER60> Is this an episode of South Park? Or it just seems that way

</comment><comment><USER61> I totally agree with switching to DDG and ceasing all Google activity.

However, this is fear-mongering, slippery-slope-fallacy-ridden sensationalism. They targeted a specific name. The judge isn't going much further than that.

I get it - the police are potentially violating innocent peoples' privacy.

But for some reason, what this judge did doesn't overly bother this Google- hater / privacy defender. Maybe it's because the article is written for the National Inquirer.

</comment><comment><USER26> Unfortunately there are people who don't really care for free speech either. Our president is foremost among them.

<comment><USER62> The potus revels in his 1st amendment rights. Not sure what you're getting at.

<comment><USER63> His. No one else's. Have you been living under a rock?

<comment><USER62> > No one else's.

You can hurl insults about the US president all you want. But, this is not the forum for it. And if you do, please show some proof.

People are getting hysterical, making ridiculous statements intended to invoke certain feelings about the potus based on false premises.

It's completely transparent and lame.

<comment><USER63> No, it is pathetic that you are unaware of Trump's exclusion of major news sources from coverage, baseless attacks on the credibility of sourced articles, and explicit statements that he desires to go after news organizations for unfavorable reporting using libel laws. Especially in the light of his recent slander against Obama regarding wiretapping.

If you have your eyes closed in denial, then there is nothing I can do for you. The fact that you consider my statement "ridiculous" or "hysterical" just goes to show how utterly deluded you are about the activities and hypocrisy that he's actually engaged in. Trump has absolutely no interest in defending free speech, only his speech.

<comment><USER62> > baseless attacks on the credibility of sourced articles

I'm sure potus gets it wrong firing from hip so often, but I don't know to which articles you're referring. These news outlets are on full attack against this administration. Just look at positive vs negative news coverage.

> Only 3 percent of the reports about Trump that aired on NBC and CBS were > positive, while 43 percent were negative and 54 percent were neutral.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey- cage/wp/2017/02/2...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey- cage/wp/2017/02/28/news-coverage-of-trump-is-really-really-negative-even-on- fox-news/?utm_term=.70b34ef1b543)

> Especially in the light of his recent slander against Obama regarding > wiretapping.

Slander? You don't know the truth yet and you're ready to believe what you want to believe. That's what's pathetic.

[https://www.infowars.com/former-cia-analyst-obama-gave- green...](https://www.infowars.com/former-cia-analyst-obama-gave-green-light- for-nsa-cia-to-sabotage-trump/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> I think we need to get over the idea of privacy. It's not technologically, politically or legally feasible to expect that anything you do on the internet can or should be kept from the authorities.

Big data is such an incredible tool for crime prevention. Minority Report is not a dystopian vision: it's a blueprint for a more just society.

If every "private" email, video conference and search is available for inspection and cross reference, we can end anti-social behaviour as we know it and achieve the kind of peace and harmony that only come from full accountability.

Crime thrives in dark corners. A surveillance society is a searing searchlight to expose and eradicate the the rot.

 _The question is: what comes next? If you bought a pressure cooker on Amazon a month before the Boston bombing, do police get to know about it? "_

Absolutely. That is valuable information for an investigate. That doesn't mean everyone who bought a pressure cooked should be locked up, but that information can be used in conjunction with other information to narrow down a list of suspects. Legitimate buyers have nothing to fear and terrorists get caught.

<comment><USER65> > Minority Report is not a dystopian vision: it's a blueprint for a more just > society.

Yeah arresting people for crimes they have yet to commit doesn't sound more just to me.

> Crime thrives in dark corners. A surveillance society is a searing > searchlight to expose and eradicate the the rot.

Crime thrives when people have no other options. Providing economic opportunities for everyone reduces crime far more than mass surveillance ever will.

<comment><USER66> The entire moral quandary behind minority report could be avoided simply by having police monitor people, and _if_ they are actually about to commit murder---prevent it and arrest them for _attempted_ murder.

The reason they didn't do that was simply because it's a movie, and movies work better if instead of picking a compromise point between our society and some future ideal---you just pick the future ideal that will seem crazy to people.

It's like Logan's Run (movie) where the issue isn't just that you kill everyone over 30 to save resources, but that you lie and pretend _no one can physically live past 30_ and _everyone gets reincarnated_. They inserted the moral quandary to make the story interesting.

<comment><USER65> If the only moral quandary you see with Minority Report is that they do the arrests before the crimes happen then I sincerely hope you're never in a position to guide public policy on anything really.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Free micro-payments via phone. Big UK bank, Barclays, releases Pingit today - <AUTHOR> http://www.barclays.co.uk/Mobile/BarclaysPingit/P1242603570446

<comment><USER2> Nice but can't see if it's free to receive money as a small business?

Great to see more competition in the on-line payment market anyway, Paypal has had a monopoly for far too long. Stripe and new services like this will make a fairer more competitive market.

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is the Pingit for Business link:

[http://www.barclays.co.uk/Mobile/BarclaysPingitforBusiness/P...](http://www.barclays.co.uk/Mobile/BarclaysPingitforBusiness/P1242604808804)

But I agree, it doesn't make it clear what the charges are. It also claims there will be a limit of £5k for receiving funds. In the T&C's it states:

4\. Charges

      We do not charge you for sending payments through Barclays
      Pingit (network charges may apply for using the app).  If
      you are a business customer, you may incur standard
      charges for making payments as set out in your tariff.

<comment><USER3> Not exactly: "There is a maximum _daily_ limit of £5,000 for all payments received through the service."

Sounds ideal for small businesses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is there a developer API? I'd love to have a system where customers can, eg, scan a QR code, get given the details of what they're paying for, and then hit "confirm". Would remove quite a bit of friction from people fiddling around with entering your phone number.

<comment><USER5> That's the way bitcoin mobile wallets are working: [https://market.android.com/details?id=com.miracleas.bitcoin_...](https://market.android.com/details?id=com.miracleas.bitcoin_spinner)

Paying is very easy, just scan the QR code and push send. I guess we will have to wait couple of years before this kind of model becomes available for traditional money...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> On my rooted Android it detected that I had root and prevented me from using the app. Lloyds Bank mobile banking doesn't have any similar scruples.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is annoying. And from the market comments it seems jailbroken iphones are the same.

However, my assumption is that it's a security measure. They are presumably trying to stop malicious applications sending payments without user notification, and I guess that makes sense.

As a bank, they may be being overly precautious, but is there a fallback of a web app?

<comment><USER7> It's a security measure against the wrong crowd. If someone is going to use root for malicious purposes, they'll just take apart the app and remove the check for root. Blocking casual root users is doing nothing for your security.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the measure is in place FOR casual root users. No doubt there will be ways to remove the check for root, but then you've installed a non-standard application, and Barclays are presumably no longer liable for losses.

If you were a casual root user, installed this app, and there was some back- door only accessible via rooted phones, it would be the bank's problem.

Whether this is a reasonable security measure or not, I imagine it was their line of thinking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's interesting to read some of the Android reviews for the app; an interesting insight into how users value convenience over security.

Or simply how little they appreciate security

[https://market.android.com/details?id=com.barclays.apps.ping...](https://market.android.com/details?id=com.barclays.apps.pingit&reviewId=07948364984820677821)

<comment><USER9> Are you assuming having root access to hardware you own to be a security flaw?

<comment><USER8> I'm assuming that most users don't know what root access is or the implications of having it

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Doesn't seem to be via text.</comment>


San Francisco Opens The City's Data - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/19/san-francisco-opens-the-city%E2%80%99s-data/

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.datasf.org/>

</comment><comment><USER2> Someone get Adrian Holovaty on top of this, right now!</comment>