Rare Faint Minimum of Betelgeuse - <AUTHOR> https://www.aavso.org/aavso-alert-notice-690 <comment><USER2> This is the first time I've heard of the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purkinje_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purkinje_effect) . Unfortunately living in the city gives me a completely different reason for not expecting to see an accurate brightness factor. But if this goes supernova, smog and light pollution be damned.</comment>


Maybe an answer to Arrington bashing #TCDisrupt; was it worth the $3,000? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mention.net/event-roi-for-startups-was-tcdisrupt-worth-the-3000/

<comment><USER2> Why are upgrades from existing users attributed to the conference? What does '300 additional signups' mean measured against a typical day's signups, and more importantly 'active users'?

<comment><USER3> 1) We've only counted the upgrades for existing users that we met at the event. 2) 300 is the number of "additional" signups (in addition to our "typical day's signups") 3) Don't know if they'll be active, it's been just two days :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Disclaimer : we didn't compete on the battlefield but had a regular booth in startup alley</comment>


Ask HN: How do you find a mentor at a new job or a new place? - <AUTHOR> Hey HN. I was hoping to tap into the collective wisdom of the veterans.
So I'm just about to start a new job (graduated right now) in San Francisco for a well known mid-size company. I believe finding a mentor is one of the best ways to learn how to navigate the landscape, but I'm not sure what is the best way of doing that.
Any advice on how to find someone who can act as a mentor, either in your work or outside? <comment><USER2> If you try to "seek one out" it will look tacky. Just go with the flow and don't interrupt people when they are obviously concentrating. Be respectful and I bet senior people will go out of their way to teach you things.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know. I never seeked out a mentor. I would guess identify someone you truely admire that is not in your command chain and ask if you can pay for their lunch and ask them questions.</comment>


John Gruber: A Few Words About The Talk Show - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/2012/05/about_the_talk_show

<comment><USER2> I continue to be surprised at the slack people are cutting Gruber here. He doesn't owe anyone anything, and we'll likely never know what truly happened (or didn't happen) between him and Dan, but he should still be accountable to his audience.

He waited a week to say anything about it, and in the end didn't really say much of anything at all. Maybe he was 100% justified in what he did—we'll never know, and it doesn't really matter.

What jumps out to me through all this is that if the roles had been reversed, Gruber would have very quickly and publicly called Dan a 'dicknose'.

His lack of regard for listeners, the people who pay his mortgage, is very, very surprising and ultimately disappointing.

<comment><USER3> >> Gruber would have very quickly and publicly called Dan a 'dicknose'.

He probably would have made Dan the "jackass of the week".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wish I didn't give a shit about this whole situation. It really doesn't affect me in anyway. However, when I do think about it, this is what comes to mind:

1\. John and Dan started the podcast together

2\. John came up with the name

3\. Something happend between the two of them

4\. John leaves, taking the show with him.

From a business perspective, I'm shocked at both John and Dan. John took the whole brand and said it was his and started monitizing it right away, presumably cutting Dan out of any revenue. Dan, is just letting that slide. Doesn't he have a right to half?

Johnny Ive can't simply walk away and use the iPhone design because he came up with the idea.

...anyway, like I said, I really shouldn't give a shit about this whole situations. I just think it stinks.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm surprised he doesn't mention why they split as he did in the podcast anyway. Might have cleared it up if he'd just said 'I thought I should get more take, I was lead host, it's a job', we can all relate. Skipping round the topic makes it seem like he doesn't want to come out and say it.

<comment><USER3> I'm curious to know what percentage of the audience listened to the show because of Dan.

I listened to the original Talk Show (pre 5x5) and I could not stand Gruber's constant "y'knows" and stopped after 2 episodes.

After 5by5 started and I was listening to his other podcasts, I gave the Talk Show a second chance because I like Dan, and thankfully Gruber worked on his verbal tics. In the end, however, the Gruber part of the show wasn't interesting enough to me, and I stopped listening.

<comment><USER5> I've tried all the shows on 5by5 and with few exceptions if Dan doesn't cohost I'm not as interested. He dumbs himself down at times and acts as a foil, it works and extracts more from the cohost. From his writing he is a really smart guy but he plays the role that he has too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> If he had just done this right after the break-up, I'm sure a lot of people would have cut him more slack.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, this is what he should have said in the first place. I don't see what's so hard, just be a big boy about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've had a frantic last week, but am I confused? Didn't Gruber spit it out and say it was about the income on his last The Talk Show podcast (#2, I think?)

As an aside, I love Dan and the work he does a whole heck of a lot, but I listened to the new The Talk Show episodes, expecting them to be rambling trainwrecks, but I'm starting to think these new shows are better. Gruber seems much more engaged. It's a little more entertaining. It really illustrated how wrong I was that Dan and John had this great "odd couple" chemistry.

The only issue I have (and had on the 5by5 version) is that the time vs. information value ratio is (for me) really weak. I could spend that hour on something else that has more value to me.

</comment><comment><USER8> "I'm selling sponsorships for the show directly. Two spots per episode, $2500 per spot."

Wonder how that compares to other podcasts. Strange the network is not selling the spots.

<comment><USER9> My guess is that this was the crux of the breakup with 5by5. I have no idea what sponsors pay to be on 5by5 but I would be surprised if Gruber's cut of that was anywhere near $5,000 an episode.

EDIT: Just for the sake of comparison here are the ad rates on daringfireball.net: <http://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/>

<comment><USER10> 5by5 sponsorship costs can be seen on this page: <http://5by5.tv/advertise>

There doesn't seem to be a pricelist for a particular show's sponsorship though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Good move. As a listener, I appreciate the note and I think this will go a long way towards easing people into the new format. Also, the second episode was much improved, IMHO.

<comment><USER3> I stopped listening to the 5by5 version a long time ago. I listened to the second Mule episode just to hear the explanation, and wow, was it all over the place.

They introduced the 'controversy' right at the beginning of the show and then you had to sit through 30 minutes of meandering back and forth before Gruber finally decided to get to the point and say it was a business disagreement.

<comment><USER12> If only the podcast was as short and too the point as most of the DF posts. As it stands it like eavesdropping on bar talk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's good to see Gruber trying to be a bit more classy in his handling of the talk show situation. Now if only we knew what "business reasons" him and Dan disagreed on. I'm assuming Gruber wanted a larger cut of sponsor money or something, but who knows...

<comment><USER14> I have a feeling the "business reasons" had to do with non-sponsorship revenue shares. In particular, rev share from t-shirts may have been the last straw for Gruber, especially based on the t-shirt talk on the last 5by5 episode and Dan's blog post regarding t-shirts (<http://blog.5by5.tv/2012/5/22/t-shirt- status-update>) where he explicitly mentions that hosts will get 50% of the profits from their show's shirts.

<comment><USER3> In the end, I don't think the "business reasons" really matter. Gruber was well within his rights to end the podcasting relationship if he was unhappy. It just would have been polite to the audience to give them a head's up.</comment></comment></comment>


Executives' Good Luck in Trading Own Stock - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444100404577641463717344178.html

<comment><USER2> [http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&#...
Google link circumventing paywall

</comment><comment><USER3> Straight to a paywall.</comment>


Beyond breaking firewalls: how to fight net-censorship - <AUTHOR> http://www.boingboing.net/2010/03/08/beyond-breaking-fire.html

<comment><USER2> Interesting paper on this subject, mentioned in the article: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rnc1/ignoring.pdf>

<comment><USER3> Yes, that _is_ interesting. Recommended.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Gentle – A tool to recover Bitcoin funds witn nlocktime - <AUTHOR> https://greenaddress.github.io/gentle

<comment><AUTHOR> Also note that GreenAddress.it is an implementation of a proposal made by Gavin Andresen back in 2013 [https://gist.github.com/gavinandresen/5616606](https://gist.github.com/gavinandresen/5616606) with nlocktime to unlock your funds.</comment>


Nvidia's demo of real-time object recognition using deep learning [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsVsUvx8ieo <comment><USER2> The CEO butting in all the time was really annoying, had a business partner that did this in meetings all the time - its fucking annoying and rude. On the surface I have no idea if this is ground breaking or not, my first thought was ahh nVidia using Linux!

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately these are the ones that make it to the top and are named CEO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks great! Can anyone with more knowledge about deep learning say whether this is an exceptional achievement in the field ?

<comment><USER5> As far as state-of-the-art classification goes, this is not terribly impressive. See the recent results in something like:

[http://cs.stanford.edu/people/karpathy/deepimagesent/](http://cs.stanford.edu/people/karpathy/deepimagesent/)

I think the impressive thing here is that the GPU is presumably doing GIANT matrix multiplications in real time. A prediction from a neural net is just a series of matrix multiplications, and matrix multiplications are about n^2.8 in complexity, so you can see how matrix multiplications with thousands of rows/columns (often what these sorts of deep image classifiers involve) are hugely computationally expensive.

So it's definitely important for real time machine learning systems to have access to this kind of linear algebra power, but the actual machine learning techniques demonstrated are not super impressive. The hardware is. Which makes sense since this is an Nvidia demo.

<comment><USER6> From what i can understand what's even more impressive is that it was running on a beefed up version of their latest mobile SOC and not on some 5000$ compute GPU card. Which means that this application can be both very affordable and very practical since people won't put a 300W GPU in their car.

<comment><USER5> Definitely agreed. When well-maintained and easy to use machine learning libraries meet very powerful, highly embeddable GPUs (or other dedicated linear algebra sort of hardware), I think we'll see a big revolution in the whole "smart object" field.

Right now you have iPhones and whatnot doing touch ID with fingerprints, but imagine if your phone could recognize you just by quickly analyzing the gyro data as you raise your phone and comparing it against the other thousand times you've pulled your phone out of your pocket, combined with the slight pressure readings near the touchscreen's edge because it's learned where you're fingers fall on the case.

^ contrived example I just thought of, but you get the idea.

<comment><USER7> Intel 'realsense' drone demo was, and I'm not into the smart/IoT trend, somehow impressive. A flying electromechanical bug on stage at a mainstream show, to me that was a small but real inflection point.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gn83Psbv61I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gn83Psbv61I)

ps: I'm not sure it was fully real-time though, the door avoidance restart seemed a little too nicely cued.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's how to do the street sign part of this yourself: [https://gist.github.com/iandees/f773749c47d088705199](https://gist.github.com/iandees/f773749c47d088705199)

</comment><comment><USER9> Cool demo but I still wonder if fundamentally this is just a brute-force approach. Wouldn't it be better to do some traditional preprocessing (e.g. recognizing rectangles, circles, etc.) and feeding higher-level descriptors into the classifier?

If the net learns based on pixels you still have to somehow solve rotation and scale invariance. Or is there something new in deep-learning vs. old-school neural nets that fixes the issues that bedeviled neural nets the first time they were popular?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think they used the methods described in [http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~rbg/papers/r-cnn- cvpr.pdf](http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~rbg/papers/r-cnn-cvpr.pdf)

<comment><USER9> Thanks, interesting paper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> video shows demo happening in ubuntu --- at least the video playback

</comment><comment><USER11> @10:08

on the right merc sls classified as SUV

on the left one SUV classified as two VANs

Their algorithm works at about 1Hz rate when doing signs. This is ~state of the art from 20 years ago, but running on small mobile SoC at a slow rate.

<comment><USER12> Please show a paper where fine-grained vehicle classification in unconstrained images is anywhere near this performance from 20 years ago. You will not be able to, because it wasn't.

<comment><USER11> state of the art classification accuracy/range, not speed.</comment></comment></comment>


Three ways you can develop a Ron Paul-type movement in your own company - <AUTHOR> http://www.usnews.com/blogs/outside-voices-careers/2008/8/12/what-ron-paul-knows-that-your-company-doesnt.html <comment><USER2> There is a whole entire book about this concept, and it was written in 1971, so you won't have to endure Ron Paul to learn the ideas in it. It's "Rules for Radicals" by Saul Alinsky. Alinsky is a famous leftist, but he was also a South Side community organizer in Chicago, 15 years before Obama was.

The book is unabashedly leftist in ways that are almost quaint, but it's also front-to-back pragmatic and filled with advice. It's my favorite marketing book ever.

</comment><comment><USER3> This article was obviously written by someone who saw the support for the Paul campaign, but didn't understand the message and wrote it off as a transient meme. (While concluding that the enthusiasm could be bottled and marketed)

In reality, it's about having integrity and being principled in your words and actions over time, regardless of who is listening. Ron Paul has it. Dennis Kucinich has it. Mcbama, Occain, and Barr don't have it.

In technology, these qualities translate into openness and transparency. Allmydata has it. Wuala does not. Openmoko kind of has it. The iPhone doesn't. Openmoko is certainly clunky (probably how many describe Ron Paul), but so was Linux in the 1.2.13 days.

</comment><comment><USER4> My experiences on digg make me cringe at upvoting anything that says "Ron Paul", but this really isn't bad.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think the Ron Paul movement can be explained simpler than that. There are two subconscious factors:

0\. People want to complain about the status quo (to feel smart) 1\. People want to support the esoteric underdog (to feel non-mainstream)

Simply, supporting a Republican who is against the war and for drug legalization is totally hip and unexpected.

</comment><comment><USER6> I agree with this comment on that article: "when a man of true integrity comes along, he doesn't need to motivate people."

How can a start up have true integrity? Easy to say, hard to do: Make something people want -- that they really want to use. And never forget that you're a company of people, not people of a company.

</comment><comment><USER7> Only 3 points? I was hoping for a little more content. But Ron Pauls campaign was inspiring and relevant to underdog start-up founders.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is that really a noble goal to change people from rational thinkers to 'belivers'.

</comment><comment><USER9> First article with "Ron Paul" in the title that I've upvoted.

Iteresting question. I know I'd be crazy happy if I had a few Paulites as customers.

<comment><USER10> One of our heaviest users and occasional buyer scolded me for supporting Ron Paul on my personal blog. pg also couldn't resist a couple of jabs on primary day when I wore my Ron Paul shirt to a YC event that evening.

I find it amusing that people think Ron Paul supporters are mindless automatons who'll buy anything their cult-leader is selling. Your comment seems reflective of that belief. I'll just point out that herding libertarians is not an easy task, and the coalition that is the Ron Paul revolution is already mostly fallen apart. I wish it would stick around...but libertarians just aren't very strong on the collective effort front. It was a pretty fragile coalition to start with...many of Ron Paul's supporters had one or more serious concerns about his positions (some touchy subjects: abortion, immigration, gold standard, church/state separation).

<comment><USER9> I misspoke.

I would love to have people as excited about my products as the Ron Paulians (Paulites? Paulonians?) were about Ron Paul.

I don't think it's an easy thing. Heck -- I think it is downright impossible.

Sure would be great to have that kind of excited customer base though.

<comment><USER10> I agree. 26 million dollars raised by a far outside the mainstream candidate is pretty heady stuff. No big names, no PAC support, and no Republican Party support. So, yes, we all definitely want that kind of passionate user. In fact, I think Apple and Ron Paul have a lot in common, with regard to their "customers". Both pay more (Paul supporters tend to be far less wealthy than Clinton or McCain supporters, so $500 is a lot more money relatively speaking), and get less (we all knew the odds of electing Paul were practically nil, and we certainly knew we weren't going to get any political favors from him if he did get elected), but they're still generally more excited than customers of other "products".

Guy Kawasaki's best (IMHO) writings cover this very topic. He's not the first, and he's not the last, as Seth Godin treads the same ground, but I found _Selling the Dream_ and _Rules for Revolutionaries_ at least as good as _Art of the Start_ (which is also pretty damned good). It's mostly motivation, rather than anything particularly visionary, but it's the motivation that an introverted nerd like me needs to really go the extra mile on outward facing work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> from <http://www.paulgraham.com/mit.html>:

> You know from an early age that you'll have some sort of job, because > everyone asks what you're going to "be" when you grow up. What they don't > tell you is that as a kid you're sitting on the shoulders of someone else > who's treading water, and that starting working means you get thrown into > the water on your own, and have to start treading water yourself or sink. > "Being" something is incidental; the immediate problem is not to drown.

> The relationship between work and money tends to dawn on you only gradually. > At least it did for me. One's first thought tends to be simply "This sucks. > I'm in debt. Plus I have to get up on monday and go to work." Gradually you > realize that these two things are as tightly connected as only a market can > make them.

> So the most important advantage 24 year old founders have over 20 year old > founders is that they know what they're trying to avoid. To the average > undergrad the idea of getting rich translates into buying Ferraris, or being > admired. To someone who has learned from experience about the relationship > between money and work, it translates to something way more important: it > means you get to opt out of the brutal equation that governs the lives of > 99.9% of people. Getting rich means you can stop treading water.

Paul Graham is popular because he points out that if you go to work for someone else, you're likely to have a decent lifestyle, but unlikely to ever be able to save enough money to be able to stop working and still live decently, because the principal beneficiary of your hard work and ingenuity will be your employer. Paul recommends that you start your own high-tech company and thereby drastically increase your chances to be free. This message is attractive to smart young men who value freedom.

Ron Paul is popular because he points out that if you go to work in the United States, you're likely to have a decent lifestyle, but unlikely to ever be able to save enough money to be able to stop working and still live decently, because the principal beneficiary of your hard work and ingenuity will be your government. Government will take an increasingly large percentage of your income as you earn more and it will devalue the money you do manage to save. Furthermore it will tempt you to borrow money in order to make you indebted. All of three of these methods (income tax, inflation, and artificial easy credit) are designed to encourage you to work steadily for the government for life. Paul recommends that you fire your existing politician and elect someone who will end the income tax, inflation, and the federal reserve and thereby drastically increase your chances to be free. This message is attractive to smart young men who value freedom but also to a lot of other people who can't realistically found their own high-tech startup but still want to be free.</comment>


New drug could cure nearly any viral infection - <AUTHOR> http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/antiviral-0810.html

<comment><USER2> Let's just kill any cells we think are infected by a virus. What could possibly go wrong?

I'm curious especially about things like chickenpox/shingles that stay dormant in nerve cells for years. Kill them!

</comment><comment><USER3> According to Wikipedia, dsRNA viruses are but one type of viruses, but DRACO claims to work on "nearly all" viruses. Can a biologist shed some light on this issue?

</comment><comment><USER4> Here is the question that this immediately raises in my mind: if this drug can cure any viral infection, then why haven't any species evolved to produce the drug in their own bodies?

<comment><USER5> Because the universe of good things that you can imagine vastly outnumbers those which were selected for.</comment></comment>


App Store Review Guideline updates now available - <AUTHOR> https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=xqk627qu <comment><USER2> Mostly a bunch of pretty-reasonable clarifications, but there's also a few that seemed aimed at Epic Games and co. Changes from previous guidelines in italics:

> 2.3.1: Don't include any hidden, dormant, or undocumented features in your > app; your app's functionality should be clear to end users and App Review. > _All new features, functionality, and product changes must be described with > specificity in the Notes for Review section of App Store Connect (generic > descriptions will be rejected) and accessible for review._

> 3.1.3 [...] _Apps [allowed to use payment methods other than IAP] cannot, > either within the app or through communications sent to points of contact > obtained from account registration within the app (like email or text), > encourage users to use a purchasing method other than in-app purchase._ > [previous: You must not directly or indirectly target iOS users to use a > purchasing method other than in-app purchase, and your general > communications about other purchasing methods must not discourage use of in- > app purchase.]</comment>


Death and Taxes: Where your money goes - <AUTHOR> http://www.thebudgetgraph.com/site/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1&zenid=33d7e0195b0d496cd27200e35a271a79

<comment><USER2> Offtopic, this is not news for hackers. This should go on Digg, not here.

<comment><USER3> I thought it was interesting. News for hackers doesn't mean only news about computers.

<comment><USER2> Well, it's not my news site, but...

Your country's budget doesn't affect me a whole lot, and stories like heralded the end of the good days of Reddit. Besides, it was already popular on Reddit a month ago and has been submitted to Digg 4 times. There's no need for duplication.</comment></comment></comment>


Hacking while homeless? - <AUTHOR>

Do you guys know of any successful startup founders or successful hackers or famous people in the tech world who are or were basically homeless?<p>I've been reading a lot of history books and the stories of various famous mathematicians, artists, and scientists can end up being a pure tragedy in some cases.  I'm wondering about modern day stories on creating success out of tragedy.  I'm also wondering about why these people succeeded while so many others did the normal thing ("Woe is me"). <comment><USER2> While I was in college there was this kid in grad school who was living in the lab. All the other grad students made fun of him. Our school's graduate program pretty much made education free. He moved on to become a prof in the electrical engineering department, which in my opinion is a huge success, especially given with he had to deal with.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not sure about homelessness particularly, but if your flip through some Forbes lists that contain short bios, many of the wealthiest people in the world had difficult upbringings, often revolving around a lost parent at an early age and/or rough childhood.

If you go beyond the tech world and into hip-hop (quite entrepreneurial, in fact), then absolutely. Jay Z and P Diddy were raised in housing projects in New York and are now worth around $400 million apiece, I believe. If that doesn't inspire you, I don't know what does.

</comment><comment><USER4> There's a story about Hans Moravec living in the suspended ceiling at the Stanford AI lab when he was in grad school.

</comment><comment><USER5> Besides what rick888 said about Richard Stallman, I don't know of anybody. I assume that finding somewhere to live is a more pressing concern for a homeless person than hacking would be.

That doesn't mean they don't exist, but I guess none of them were successful enough for us to hear about.

</comment><comment><USER6> I know there are some legendary stories about Richard Stallman living in his office. Does that count?

</comment><comment><USER7> I was pretty much homeless 18 months ago in San Francisco, and now my startup.is taking off. My email is in my profile if you want to chat.

</comment><comment><USER8> What do you consider successful? I've been homeless twice involuntarily and once voluntarily.

How does one rise up from homelessness? Pure force of will and creativity.

<comment><USER9> Could you elaborate on this story? I'm very interested.

<comment><USER8> Sure. A lot of it is covered in a book I'm writing (working title: The Minglewood Blues)...

Things were tough all over in 2000, and the company I worked for held out longer than most. But it died too. And I found myself looking for work at a very bad time to be looking for work. For months I scored a fair amount of contract work - not a lot - but enough to get by.

Around August of 2001 it didn't look like things were going to improve any time soon where I was so I developed a plan: we were going to head to the bay area because the bay area always bounces back from a recession faster than anywhere else. We sold off everything except my computer, my VW bus ("Minglewood") and the absolute necessities we needed to live out of Minglewood for a few weeks until I had a paycheck coming in.

Two big things happened in September that year and one of those things is that I took a huge gamble and headed to california to look for work. By the time we got to San Francisco we were down to some small amount of money (I don't remember how much) and there weren't any computer jobs anyway.

And as luck would have it, Minglewood broke down right after we got there.

Oh yeah, and it turns out that San Francisco isn't even in Silicon Valley. Go figure.

I ended up doing day labor when I could get it, begging when I couldn't -- constantly scamming for wifi to look for _real_ work.

The scary thing about being homeless is that it really sucks to be invisible and that (at least in SF) the way most people deal with the suckitude is with meth or heroin. And most of our friends on the street were junkies.

Oh yeah, and heroin is dirt cheap. Dirt, dirt cheap. Cheap enough than $10 will buy you enough to stay high for a week, whiledeveloping a productive heroin addiction.

Eventually I figured out how to escape San Francisco: I saved money to take the SF taxi driver course and got a gig driving a taxi - which btw was harder work than day labor and paid about the same. What I did was to save what money I could until I had enough to put Minglewood in storage and buy greyhound tickets back to Arizona.

By this time we had moved out of Minglewood and were living in hotels around union square. On escape day, I checked out an ADA taxi (a van) so I could haul all our stuff from the hotel room out to Minglewood. I got everything moved, called for the tow truck and got Minglewood put in storage.

I turned in the taxi, met my gf at the greyhound station and left for Phoenix where we at least had friends with homes. And without heroin.

Total time in San Francisco: about 10 months.

In Phoenix I went to truck driving school and got a gig driving an 18-wheeler. That only lasted 10 days though because I finally scored an interview for a sysadmin gig at ASU.

I abandoned the truck in Kansas City and hitched to the greyhound station and had my girlfriend wire me a ticket back home. Another huge gamble and she was not pleased, but this time the gamble paid off with a sysadmin gig that allowed me to participate in NASA and ESA missions.

<comment><USER5> Thanks! That was really interesting.

I take it "we" was you and your gf?

<comment><USER8> Yes - "we" was me and my gf.

<comment><USER10> Was your gf working also? Looking? Student? Just curious, trying to fill out the story.

<comment><USER8> Not at first.

At first she was pissed at me for getting us into such a predicament so I left her to hang out in golden gate park while I went out to scrounge for food, money and a job.

Once I had proven to her that I'd eventually get us off the streets, she quickly bored of smoking weed on hippie hill and got a gig as a waitress at Lori's Diner which is how we got into the hotel.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lessons from a 91-Year-Old Entrepreneur That Are Still Relevant Today - <AUTHOR> http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/250525 <comment><USER2> wow! i hope i could go this far! so amazing</comment>


Audible commit messages with CommitBot - <AUTHOR> http://blog.gleitzman.com/post/1216562825

<comment><USER2> Very nice idea.</comment>


How Saddam gave us ISIS - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/23/opinion/how-saddam-hussein-gave-us-isis.html <comment><USER2> There isn't a "single" thing that gave rise to ISIS, it's a complex amalgamation of a lot of different things that led to this mess.

This is a documentary that only scratches the surface of this complex history but it's interesting altogether:

Adam Curtis - Bitter Lake: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvyeWaVMDrI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvyeWaVMDrI)

</comment><comment><USER3> personally I thought bush gave ISIS to us....</comment>


Google Lens is coming to Image search results - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2018/09/24/google-lens-images-web-results/ <comment><AUTHOR> Interesting highlight: Google is trying to become Pinterest

\-- There will also be tags on each image result, indicating if it's a product that you can buy. If it is, Google will also pull information like price and store name in a card for each item. You can also create Collections of pictures you've found, and Google will recommend that you set them up too. Then, when you search again for something similar, the system will remind you that you have an existing collection that you might want to add to or revisit.

\-- On Google Images results, a new Lens button will appear at the bottom of each picture. Tapping on that will show you what it thinks are interesting parts of each photo, and show you similar products.

Other highlights

\-- \-- Featured Videos will show animated previews of relevant results within the feed. Say you're looking for the Eiffel Tower, for example, and Google knows there's a really good, high-quality video featuring attractions in France. The system can pick out just the footage on the tower itself, leaving out other bits like the Arc de Triomphe, for instance.

\-- Starting today, AMP Stories will also be more deeply integrated in the results, and show up near the top of the page.

\--Google also overhauled the ranking algorithm on Image results to take into consideration not just the quality and relevance of the picture itself, but also of the page where the photo lives.</comment>


Show HN: LevelStory – Manage remodel projects from start to finish - <AUTHOR> https://levelstory.com <comment><AUTHOR> After going through two remodels that lived up to the old adage of 50% over time and 50% over budget, my wife and I decided that there had to be a better way. We created LevelStory to provide more transparency in the process for clients while at the same time reducing mistakes and increasing margins for contractors.

I've learned a lot from these forums over the years and am excited to finally be able to do our own Show HN. Happy to answer any questions about what it's like doing a startup with your wife, our somewhat unusual tech stack (we bet on Neo4j early), or advice on how to make sure you end up with a good contractor for your next project.</comment>


Automating Formal Proofs for Reactive Systems - <AUTHOR> http://goto.ucsd.edu/reflex/

<comment><USER2> Hoping to read in detail later, but very interesting at first glance thanks!

Have thought for awhile that many systems would benefit from one or more "guard" components for which we have formal proofs that no bad things can happen - e.g. you write an equity trading application in Python, but route all the trades through a checker that ensures you aren't trading too much or too often [1].

[1] See Knight Capital 2012, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_Capital_Group#2012_stock...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_Capital_Group#2012_stock_trading_disruption)

<comment><USER3> First, "no bad things can happen" is a very nebulous requirement. And you eventually just get into a "who watches the watchmen" kind of game.

I think the problem with a lot of ideas around making a "safe" algorithm for money matters, is that you basically just wind up defining the game that your "opponents" will now be playing against. That is, if you have your rules in the open, but they don't, then they are the ones controlling the game.

Consider, it is relatively easy to make money off of a casino. They just don't let you use the strategies that work. Which is fine if you can just boot off actors that you think aren't "playing well." Not so easy otherwise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So one builds a model in Reflex based on the requirements, then tests that model. Even when the requirements are complete (which often they are not), the real life implementation afterwards may still bring zillions of problems (my own bugs, using a bad framework, whatever) which this model testing cannot catch... eh.

<comment><USER5> 1) The code that users write in Reflex is the code that actually runs. This means that any guarantee about a Reflex program is a guarantee about the real life implementation of that program.

2) Reflex does not use testing to verify a user's code. Instead, Reflex automatically produces fully machine checkable proofs that user-provided code satisfies user-provided specifications. Machine checkable proofs (in a proof assistant) provide the strongest possible guarantee about one's code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting approach, I can see this being of great use, I will definitely take a closer look. also, nice video- especially the soccer references.</comment>


Mind Management, Not Time Management (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/mind-management-intro/

<comment><USER2> This post was on HN six months ago[1] but I'm glad it was posted again because I missed it on the first go-around.

The "Is there something I can do to get myself into the right mental state?" section resonated with me, particularly where the author argues that specific environments can get you in the right mental state for different kinds of work.

The author references a study from the Journal of Consumer Research[2] that explores the relationship between ceiling height and thought processing. The gist of the study is higher ceilings help stimulate creative thinking processes while lower ceilings help stimulate thinking in terms of item- specific data.

I'm studying/cramming for finals now, so I'll test this hypothesis by studying for a memorization-heavy exam in a low-ceiling classroom while encouraging my classmates to study in a high-ceiling study hall :)

[1] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4661747> [2] <http://www.csom.umn.edu/assets/71190.pdf>

<comment><USER3> > This post was on HN six months ago[1] but I'm glad it was posted again > because I missed it on the first go-around.

If you missed it, how did you know it was posted before? Do you just check for reposts even if you haven't seen the post before??

<comment><USER2> I noticed that the description of the article said '(2012)' so I figured it might have been posted around the time it was written.

I searched for 'mind management' on HNSearch and found the original posting on the first page of results.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Awesome way of rephrasing time management. Every time I recommend meditation I get the same answer, that it is a waste of time but if we talk in terms of mind management this would be an investment to the mind.

<comment><USER5> Suggesting that meditation is a "waste of time"... Wow, that's hard to imagine thinking that way if you do creative work!

<comment><USER6> Well, when you consider that most people (at least in my experience) likely don't have actual exposure to it or an understanding of what it is and its intended practical benefits, that's a fairly common point of view. It's often not malicious, it's just that meditation is so often lumped in with alternative-medicine-type highly-suspect concepts.

<comment><USER7> I think as North Americans we've let it become all too common to associate 'turning off' with vegetating in front of a screen of some sort. We're likely guilty of this here around HN as well -- instead of actually taking the time to disconnect and replenish ourselves through meditation or whatever activity suits your brain & body's fancy.

And on that note, time to disconnect! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A Scheduled Weekend Activity: Huge re-charger for me (I have people over ever Sunday night)</comment>


FBI's search for 'Mo' highlights use of malware for surveillance - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/2013/12/06/352ba174-5397-11e3-9e2c-e1d01116fd98_story.html <comment><AUTHOR> A little more concerning to me: "The FBI has been able to covertly activate a computer's camera — without triggering the light that lets users know it is recording"

</comment><comment><USER2> It freaks me out! I have many same attributes as this so called Mo!

       - I have a name that starts with "Mo"
       - I am from Iran
       - I am twenty something
       - I have the same skin color

I am kind of sure that they stole my information. I feel tribble right now

</comment><comment><USER3> Question: I assume it uses various zero-days and known exploits to work. But what if I'm doing all of this through a Linux VM? The guy in question is "savvy" enough to use a proper proxy, and his OPSEC is good enough to get away with things thus far...

<comment><USER4> If you want to remain anonymous, a virtual machine is your only option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> frankly its fine that they do this, as long as it is regulated and is not abused. Today's criminals are harder to catch and to be blunt if the NSA had not broken laws and crossed the lines they had crossed stories like these would be fine and would not even have media relevancy.

<comment><USER6> Of course, it's just fine if we all get kidnapped (or raped, whatever punishment seems fair by them) by the government if we someday fit in the ever-changing definition of "criminal" and "terrorists".

And it's completely irrelevant that the government is gigantic in comparison with all the tiny teams of wrong-doers is trying to stop.</comment></comment>


Unit 731 - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731 <comment><USER2> The descriptions of what went down there are almost too much to read, this is some straight up dr. Mengele shit.

Most interestingly:

 _The researchers involved in Unit 731 were secretly given immunity by the U.S. in exchange for the data they gathered through human experimentation_... More reading at [0]

While further down the linked article is written:

 _There was consensus among U.S researchers in the postwar period that the human experimentation data gained was of little value to the development of American biological weapons and medicine. Postwar reports have generally regarded the data as "crude and ineffective", with one expert even deeming it "amateurish"._

[0] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_cover- up_of_Japanes...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_cover- up_of_Japanese_war_crimes)

<comment><USER3> I once read similar sentiment regarding the nazi efforts. I was curious, because I saw, probably like the U.S. did when they agreed to the exchange, that experimenting on humans like we did on animals could not possibly fail to give insights that would be almost impossible to get otherwise.

Reading what they did, however, it really looked like the valued cruelty over science. The people they hired for that were not qualified (heh, turns out that sociopathic biologists who bought into nazi racist theories were not the brightest) and disregarded any kind of scientific method.

Also one of their goal was to prove the inferiority of some races. Many experiments only had this goal in mind.

I thought they experimented on humans like we do on animals. Animal experimentation may be cruel but cruelty is not the point, actually stress can impact the result in a big way.

I remember they made experiment to see what temperatures the human body can handle. So they subject prisoners to various extreme conditions and... do not even note the time they were exposed to it. It was THAT amateurish. I really feel it was just torture renamed. "Hey, let's burn some Jews! We'll call it science!" "Ok, I'm in." Experiment result: the untermenschen died.

<comment><USER4> > I really feel it was just torture renamed. "Hey, let's burn some Jews! We'll > call it science!" "Ok, I'm in." Experiment result: the untermenschen died.

In most cases they were doing actual science, just divorced from any recognizable morality. I'm less familiar with the Japanese case, but many of the Germans who did similar things were respected scientists (Carl Clauberg is an example). The desire to say "that's not real science" is emotional, but it's not accurate.

The truth is that these kinds of studies used to be not all that rare. The most famous is the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, but there are others. In The US, in the 1920s, at least 800 prisoners were infected with Malaria. Joseph Goldberger similarly experimented on prisoners in attempt to understand pellagra (and refused to let them drop out when their symptoms became unbearable). Richard Strong famously injected people with plague. In some of these cases, subjects signed a waiver, but in others they didn't. Internees in camps could have been induced to sign a waiver if the Germans or Japanese had cared about that.

Morality constrains science. That's a good thing. But it requires us to admit that we could learn more and more quickly if we had no morality. Understanding how radiation affects human reproductive systems or what the human body can withstand is valuable information. It just isn't information that we can obtain while staying with the guidelines of our morality.

<comment><USER3> "The desire to say "that's not real science" is emotional, but it's not accurate."

I thought that. I was like "OK, no one wants to touch this and they are right, but there has to be some valuable insights!" IIRC the only thing that they learnt was that the human body can survive longer than they thought in very cold water, but even that was hinted by tons of anecdotal evidence.

Really, the lack of protocols and basic measurements looks like it was sub- highschool level. Go read some of the reports, it was mostly about cruelty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From what I gathered talking to Chinese fellas I worked with (in Canada), this is one of the main reasons why Chinese still strongly dislike Japanese people. In a stereotype sort of way.

They also really don't like discussing this topic and will answer with much hesitation and only if pressed. So it appears to be a wound that didn't quite heal yet.

<comment><USER6> It should be no surprise that it's a wound that hasn't quite healed yet.

Comfort women [0] is another one. Before I immigrated as a kid, HK victims were still trying to sort that out with Japan. South Korea is also a victim, among other SE Asian countries.

I don't dislike the people. I dislike the successive administration that wants to ignore what their country have done to many different groups around that time.

And seeing how the West is complicit, is it that hard to understand there's still mistrust there?

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm a big fan of Jocko's podcast, there are great episodes that talk about Unit 731 ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mizmXTWDf-4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mizmXTWDf-4)) and the Rape of Nanjing ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uylTcj5yDOM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uylTcj5yDOM)) that are worth the time if you're interested in learning about the darker side of history.

The Rape of Nanjing episode is particularly interesting since he goes over the book "The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II" by Iris Chang in the first part, following that up with readings from "The Woman Who Could Not Forget" by, Dr. Ying Ying Chang which goes over how researching the Nanjing Massacre affected her daughter Iris deeply enough to the point of ending her own life.

Usually this is stuff that people avoid, but I feel that knowing what people are capable of doing gives some perspective in my life.

<comment><USER8> We should never forget.

Any speculative fiction about the horrors of runaway AI or the supernatural or some form of extraterrestrial life pale in comparison to what our species has done to itself over the years.

Any horror you could possibly imagine, some wanker has probably already done it to someone else for real.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Some light Saturday reading

<comment> rm_-rf_slash Between this and the MKUltra post also on the front page today, I have to wonder if OP spent their Friday night watching Adam Curtis documentaries.

<comment><USER10> Curtis is a great story teller, and I'm yet to find a factual inaccuracy in his storytelling style of reporting. Full recommendation on anything by this guy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That Wikipedia article is a train wreck in shock journalism.

As documented as the material is, the current state is basically just a pile of descriptions of attrocities committed. With many duplicated.

Compare to [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust)

I'd guess because no one wants to spend their time reading primary sources about something so terrible, and straightening it out.

</comment><comment><USER12> Lots of Wikipedia articles today lol pretty interesting, especially all the groups working on human experimentation.

<comment><USER13> and from the same poster…</comment></comment>


What's Our Duty to the People Globalization Leaves Behind? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/26/opinion/whats-our-duty-to-the-people-globalization-leaves-behind.html <comment><USER2> The reality is that people who are less well-off often do not have the "liquidity" to rebalance their assets (educational, experiential, financial, etc.) to take advantage of changes in the global economy.

On a macro level, society benefits from globalization, but on a micro level, there are often very high personal costs. If you have spent all of your life developing skills in one area, and that suddenly falls apart, it's going to be very difficult to drop everything and start over.

As a society, we have the capability to use some of the gains to smooth out the costs for the people that lose out here, whether it's through basic income and welfare, or education and retraining.

<comment><USER3> I am a strong supporter of globalization, but pessimistic about government's ability to help the people who you describe as being left behind. Retraining has the worst record of the programs you describe, and 'education' usually does little (probably because of signalling). I am most vigorously opposed to government-backed 'education loans', which do little more than drive up tuition. I am generally opposed to welfare, because is does little to ameliorate the human issues related to joblessness, and basic income is little better, though BI can give people some flexibility to make their own choices. A globalization 'bonus' or temporary boost in BI might be worth considering (and testing), but we should also encourage people to adapt to the new world instead of building up resentment while refusing to change.

It also seems that we should each take some personal responsibility, and help whomever we can. It is too often that we pawn off our responsibilities and moral duties on society.

<comment><USER4> >It also seems that we should each take some personal responsibility, and help whomever we can. It is too often that we pawn off our responsibilities and moral duties on society.<

So very true...the single most important thing a person can do to strengthen a community--interpret community as broadly as you like--is to spend time helping those in your immediate vicinity...I'm prescribing this because of it's accessibility; it's a course of action available to anyone, usually costs little, and leaves you feeling pretty darned good...

First-hand case in point: A boy who lives a couple of miles away from me started dropping by occasionally to visit...he'd pedal by on his bicycle and stop to chat if I was out in the yard...

During our visits I learned about his circumstances...his father, a drug user, committed suicide in the shower of their home when he was 6 years old...his mother had had a series of boyfriends, and there were 3 partial families--14 people--living in his house, a 3 bedroom trailer...

As we got to know each other a bit better he asked me one day,"Hey, everyone around here calls you the computer man; how could I learn about computers?"

I told him I could teach him a few things, and did...he would drop by when my schedule permitted and was willing to sit for as long I was willing to teach him things...just basics, a few tricks...

I could tell that he had a quick grasp of the material, and asked him how school was going, his grades, etc...turned out he had around a 3.7 GPA, and admitted that he never studied outside of school...

I told him one day that he should consider college...the next day he said he had mentioned what I said to his mom and she flatly told him,"We can't afford something like that".

To make a long story short, the state that I live in offers a program that essentially pays (combined with grants, and college scholarships) for those below a certain income level to attend 5 years of in-state college...I spent several days gathering information, presented it to him, and told him I thought he could do it...he just needed to sign up in the program right away, and keep his grades up...

Rather predictably, his mother was initially skeptical, so at his invitation I visited with her and explained how this would work...

I'll leave the story here...he's a junior in high school now and is on track to enter college in 2017...he would have never become aware of the opportunity if I hadn't mentioned it to him, and all it cost me was about 2 days of research and another day helping him apply... we'll see how it goes...

<comment><USER5> From someone who was in a similar situation in high school: thank you. The person who helped me out singlehandedly changed my life, I hope it works out just as well for y'all

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's worth pointing out that Rattner ISN'T calling for brakes on globalization or free trade. He's calling for a stronger social safety net, in order to better help those who aren't benefiting from the economic wealth that globalization generates. This is a position that we can all get behind. Regardless of the precise causes of income inequality, whether it's due to globalization, labor automation, or industry cycles, there will always be people who find themselves left out in the cold due to unfortunate circumstances. As long as our society keeps getting richer, we should do more to help those who aren't benefiting from the same changes that have benefited the rest of us.

<comment><USER7> Why? Our resources aren't infinite. Why is there any should about who gets to live and who gets to die? We can't help everyone live without eventually hitting resource constraints, can we?

<comment><USER8> One selfish, and therefore easily understandable reason for helping those less fortunate is because, left unchecked, there might be some tipping point for these less-fortunate to rebel in the societal sense, out of necessity for _their survival_. That's a problem for all of us.

<comment><USER9> An even easier argument to make for the selfish and empathy-challenged is the link between inequality and violent crime [1]. The more money and resources you have to spend on walls and security guards the less you have for investment and consumption on useful things.

[1] [http://web.worldbank.org/archive/website01241/WEB/IMAGES/INE...](http://web.worldbank.org/archive/website01241/WEB/IMAGES/INEQUALI.PDF)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The only sane answer is "Don't to put any roadblocks between them and catching up." or in a more positive spin, "Make available, without constraint, any resources they would need to catch up."

And it really does come down to morality, social and personal.

I am certainly in the "teach a person to fish" category of fixing societal ills. But I get it when previous choices have left someone "stuck" and unable to succeed.

Back in the early 2000's before we had all sorts of data[1] to back it up, I could see that single parents were in a world of hurt. Married couples had a much better shot at getting by. But you couldn't really fix that by demanding people find some soul mate/life partner to marry in order to get out of poverty. I suggested to my representatives and others we really could use an institution that had the same benefits of marriage but was more contractual than spiritual. If two single parents, regardless of sex, could enter into a contract to work together to raise their children, it would encourage them to do so. And by institution I mean the whole thing, rights of survivorship, community property, shared health care information, joint filing status with respect to taxation.

In my way of thinking that is removing a structural roadblock in the way of those people stuck in poverty by their past choices.

At the same time, I have also met people who don't put any investment into getting out of their circumstances. I realized there can be a learned helplessness element here, but for folks who just don't want to, I don't feel any guilt or remorse for them as they slide down the slope.

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/04/10/the-r...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/04/10/the- relationship-between-single-mothers-and-poverty-is-not-as-simple-as-it-seems/)

<comment><USER11> > The only sane answer is "Don't to put any roadblocks between them and > catching up."

I like to phrase of it in terms of designing feedback loops and augmenting existing ones when they aren't strong enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The problem is with the consistent hand-waving between economically efficient - on average we've got more wealth - and we _all_ have more wealth.

Suppose my neighbor has a plot of land that he's not really using - it's mostly idle, he's just got a little garden on it. I know that if I get it, I could produce much more wealth - maybe I'm a skilled farmer and I could grow high-value crops on it. It would be more economically efficient for me to own the farm. We'd produce more wealth collectively that way. But there are several ways to get to that more efficient state: 1) I could buy the land from my neighbor for a fair price. He gets the money from the land, which is worth more than he made from his garden. I get the land and produce lots of wealth, minus the money I paid my neighbor. We're both better off, huzzah! 2) I could steal the land from my neighbor. He's worse off - he no longer has his garden at all. I'm much better off - I get the land and I don't have to pay for it anymore!

Economically efficient moves by definition mean that there's enough wealth to compensate everyone who loses. A lot of the anger about globalization is people being pissed because they're losing - their job or their benefits or whatever - and the folks who are winning respond by telling them that it's economically efficient so they'll just have to suck it up. It's one thing to say "Hey, change is inevitable, but at least we're all getting wealthier!". It's another thing to say "Hey, change is inevitable, and we're getting way more than you're losing!"

</comment><comment><USER13> There is the local (domestic) perspective and the global perspective.

Globalization results in a move towards global equilibrium so that locales with low cost workers will see improved financials and economics for their workforce, locales with high cost medium skills workers will see a decline in economic and financial outlook.

The question, is what's best overall for the global workforce versus what's best for the local/domestic workforce.

Does the EU, Japan and the US among others "owe" third world nations offshoring ensuring they, emerging econs, kick start their economies?

The first world could form a cartel of sorts keep all progress to themselves, ensuring third work countries remain poor but also ensuring their own progress is stunted perhaps net negative.

Could or should the first world and advanced economies provide some work insurance to their low and medium skill workforce? If they can afford it, why not?

</comment><comment><USER14> We have a somewhat relevant announcement to this tomorrow...

<comment><USER15> Nice little teaser that got buried here! I'm curious to see what gets posted tomorrow...

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> While I have considerable empathy for people whose lives are being disrupted by globalization, and I am not particularly happy about how globalization is being pursued, we should recognize that anyone who, by accident of birth, is allowed to live in a liberal, technologically-advanced and stable nation, is the beneficiary of a considerable privilege.

</comment><comment><USER17> What is often forgotten or ignored are all of the people globalization helps lift up

</comment><comment><USER18> None. The system will find balance on its own, as always. So, a big chunk of US workers are left behind b/c their jobs are now in Mexico, China, etc. So, capital owners have found ultra efficiency producing goods and services thanks (in part) to Globalization. But now fewer people with stable jobs can buy them goods and services. Oops! Ok. Let's give them credit cards. Ok that works for a while but now they can't pay back. Boom! The system adjusts itself.

Whats next? Who knows. Maybe universal minimum wage. Maybe resource-based economy. Maybe modern socialism. Who knows. But something WILL happen. Meanwhile, our duty is with our own.

<comment><USER19> That's silly though. It's like saying, well, even if we nuke the earth and kill all humans that live on it, the radiation will eventually disperse and something new will evolve. Yes, that's fundamentally true on a birds-eye level, but that doesn't mean it's a sane or moral choice. If we know dynamic systems with feedback loops and delays tend towards overshoot and collapse, and collapse will really suck for a lot of people, we should try to build other feedback loops that make that collapse less likely, etc. Saying there is a self-correcting system in place doesn't mean that we should let all current trends just continue because they will eventually somehow correct. Violent revolutions are also a correction of sorts...

Also, not sure with "our duty is worth our own" \- who is "our own" and what social fiction is it built on? Family? Community? City? Nation-State? Race? Favorite board game? I think widening the empathy gap until you can view the people that grow your coffee as "your own brothers and sisters" is the name of the game for human evolution at the moment.

<comment><USER18> By our own I meant family, I do not think it is a social fiction as human beings are born helpless and would just die if there is no family to take care of them. I do not mean family from a cultural perspective, I mean family from a biological perspective.

Now, my comment may sound silly to you because we are comparing apples to floppy disks.

Have you read GED? One interesting understanding I gather from that book is the concept of "levels of meaning". His example goes along these lines: an ant colony seems to act with intelligence from our point of view but such interpretation is out grasp from an ant's perspective; though a smart ant could imagine the colony viewed from above! Therefore, what you call social fictions have a meaning in the layer we all call society and if such layer was our only reality I would definitely agree with any moral argument against Globalization and Capitalism. But if you just move one layer above, if you switch your perspective a bit higher and see our species interacting with millions of other species in a planet with a certain expiration date: morality has no meaning. In that layer of meaning, the goal of each and all species is one: survival. This ecosystem couldn't care less if we leave the economically poor behind.

In conclusion, I was commenting from a layer above, you replied from a layer below. If we both speak on the same layer most likely we would agree. If we speak from different layers (perspectives) time is lost.

Now, speaking from my perspective, my best guess is that we humans are evolving from bio to bit. We know now the planet will be gone and at some point we would want to leave looking for a new home. These bodies are not the ideal spaceship. A computer is a good alternative. The drive to evolve and develop the technologies that will make this space trip happen may be out of the control of ourselves and our consciousness. It may be genes programmed to do so. It may be bacteria in our guts driving us to do so. I do not know. However, it seems that whatever the social system we invent on the layer below in order to keep us ruled and moving forward, that invented system simply responds to a higher drive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Poverty is the natural state of things. Those that exist in a state of poverty exist in the natural state of things. It is only through globalization and development that some people free themselves from this natural order. This phenomenon is the only known on record to lift people out of poverty, and it so happens that this phenomenon allocates this wealth unequally. No alternative method has ever succeeded in both creating wealth and allocating it equally.

If all the effort expended on arguing about this magical "other path" to prosperity was spent on actually generating prosperity, I think we would find that many of our former grievances would resolve themselves..

<comment> rm_-rf_slash If you study the behaviors of pre-agricultural societies, you will find that, although life was less comfortable for hunter-gatherers, they tended to be far more egalitarian than agriculturists or anyone beyond.

Poverty is NOT the natural state of things. The adoption of agriculture enabled property ownership which led to the owner-worker dynamic that persists to this day.

In fact, examinations of certain agricultural civilizations, like in the ancient Indus Valley, show a distinct lack of poverty. Perhaps instead of calling poverty "natural" we can examine it for what it really is: cheaper for the owners than broad prosperity.

<comment> awinter-py And if you look back even farther than that, the atmosphere was made out of lava for about a billion years. If we're voting I'd just as soon not go back to the natural state. In the cretaceous high concentrations of oxygen produced giant insects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think for each person who doesn't want to constantly move with the times, there is another person somewhere else that does, so we just swap those two people and call it good.

<comment><USER22> Calling actions and decisions of humans "the times" does not make them a force of nature.

<comment><USER21> things move forward; like it or not. Some people spend their entire lives trying to live the same moment over and over because that's what they know. The factory you worked at shutdown; you need to move on, and if that means moving to another town to find work, then do that. Don't just hunker down and demand everyone help you. (unless you are asking for help to move and find a job.)

<comment><USER23> > The factory you worked at shutdown; you need to move on, and if that means > moving to another town to find work, then do that.

Therein lies a big part of the problem. You're asking families who've lived somewhere to abandon the place they've called home and established for decades when the only big employer in their small town closes. This is a big problem when you have an entire region of a country that is nothing but small towns with only one (now no) big factory in them. Michigan says hi.

<comment><USER24> I think this is a flaw in human nature -- continuing to put too much weight on the past and one's roots when the future is harmed by doing so.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Using Capsicum For Sandboxing - <AUTHOR> http://www.links.org/?p=1242 <comment><USER2> I wonder how this (seemingly fragile) setup of forking and juggling globals compares to a ptrace-based sandbox on Linux.

It's quite easy to fork a child, ptrace it, and have the child execve the actual program you'd like to sandbox.

<comment><USER3> ptrace is dog slow.

<comment><USER2> You'd only incur any sort of performance penalty when doing a syscall though. This article talks about sandboxing something like bzip2, which would do a few syscalls on startup and from there on only for I/O. Most of the execution time is spent doing computation, which wouldn't be affected by ptrace's performance overhead.</comment></comment></comment>


Node-Red, a tool for wiring together hardware devices, APIs and online services - <AUTHOR> http://nodered.org/

<comment><USER2> What even Is this? It doesn't do a good job at explaining itself!

<comment><USER3> It is an IBM-sponsored integration tool, with a focus on small IOT-type devices and REST APIs (though it doesn't preclude anything else you can write a JS connector for). It's based on Node.js and is intended to be run on- premise (or even embedded).

<comment><USER4> Like a more hardware focused IFTTT?

<comment><USER3> Well, the hardware focus is part of it, but the flow of data between the activity blocks can be as convoluted as you want, rather than simply "IF this THEN that" (granted I don't know IFTTT well enough to know how convoluted it can be).

Not sure if that helps. FWIW, I'm not associated with the project but I have had some exposure to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is just awesome! It reminds me of Yahoo Pipes, but a lot better, because, self-hosted and embeddable.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you request data from your client? - <AUTHOR>

For every project that my boss sells, we need some kind of template to request the data.
In 90% of the cases, he hasn't requested any of the data.. So we are left in blank on what the client needs and have to figure it out (which can take some time).
How do you create several templates to request data (eg. for a hotel, the pricing logic according to season, ammount of chambers and numbers, do they need phone logging and pricing, do they use booking.com, ...)
Some data should be requested in tables, some are just yes or no answers. And some need free-speech text as an answer.
I once saw a github project, but can't seem to find it.
What do you use to request data like this? <comment><AUTHOR> One option would be to use Google Forms ( [http://www.google.com/google- d-s/createforms.html](http://www.google.com/google-d-s/createforms.html) ), so the information would directly be inserted into a spreadsheet on your Google Drive</comment>


There is more to Fight Club than meets the eye - aps-sids http://www.jackdurden.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> David Fincher sure put lot of effort in every frame of this movie (apparently there supposed to be Starbucks cup in every shot!). However many thing in this article looks like author wants to see something when there might be nothing. "Official" list of facts are at IMDB: [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0137523/trivia](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0137523/trivia).

For the record, this movie had its share of bloopers and mistakes just like any other movies as well: [http://www.moviemistakes.com/film473](http://www.moviemistakes.com/film473).

</comment><comment><USER2> Re: baggage handlers being called throwers

> This is not a common term that is actually used,

At the time, it most certainly was. Specifically in Southern California @ John Wayne Airport and LAX. Today, it has been officially discouraged by the union due to potential and realized bad press.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baggage_handler](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baggage_handler)

</comment><comment><USER3> Well written article!!</comment>


I own a domain that a big corporation wants to sue me into acquiring. Help - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/kyde9/i_own_a_domain_that_a_big_corporation_wants_to/ <comment><USER2> Ugh, it hurts to read this kind of advice. Sue! Punitive damages! You can get costs! (btw, you probably can't get punitive damages, at least from the little info you've provided, and costs =/= attorney fees)

The best advice in that thread was to seek out on-campus legal aid. At the law school I went to, there were clinics that dealt specifically with entrepreneurship and IP. Look around, I'm sure other schools run similar clinics. You generally don't even need to attend these schools to utilize their services.

At the very least, if you can't find something like that, or the deal you're working on is a little above their pay grade, some professor on campus can point you to somebody that does good pro bono work or is willing to work on contingency.

If it just turns into a negotiation, you _could_ do this yourself, but, honestly, you're probably going to get taken to the cleaners, both financially and emotionally, if you end up negotiating against professionals. Get a lawyer. There's no shame in it. <http://www.ajkesslerblog.com/hired-guns/>

<comment><USER3> I think the best advice he got was to contact the EFF, who are getting together a list of lawyers who will help him pro bono.

<comment><USER2> Didn't see that advice, and don't know much about EFF, but yes, anything that puts him in touch with a lawyer who actually knows what he's doing is good advice.

I might also note that when hiring an attorney, you want to shop around, even if you're getting pro bono work. Check references and ask around (you can ask the lawyers you're interviewing about the other lawyers you've interviewed). Don't just settle on the first guy you come across that has a diploma hanging on his wall.

<comment><USER3> It's been auto-collapsed somewhere in the thread, direct link to the particular comment tree: [http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/kyde9/i_own_a_dom...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/kyde9/i_own_a_domain_that_a_big_corporation_wants_to/c2o9qmk?context=3)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Their initial offer was $150. I said no, that I had put way too much money into it for that low of a price. They came back with $250._

Anyone who's bickering about $150 vs $250 to acquire a domain is not a "big corporation". The OP is being bluffed.

<comment><USER5> I looked around the WIPO site and found an arbitration case that meets the facts the reddit poster claimed. Either he found a WIPO case and decided to make it a huge "AskReddit," or, yes, the OP is going up against a quite large company.

(Not linking here in an attempt to preserve privacy.)

<comment><USER6> Indeed, there is a case that seems to match all elements (domain starting with a w).

If that case is indeed the right one, the complainants have had a trademark on their mark since 1953, and yet they let the domain be first registered in 2005, and then bought by the current owner in 2011.

So, they could either have created the domain before 2005 or buy it between 2005 and 2011, but they chose to go against the current owner in June of this year only.

There should be laws against such carelessness.

<comment><USER6> In fact the domain in dispute is a .org, while the company already owns the .com; the .net belongs to a squatter.

I think what happened is, the company didn't care about other tlds than the .com; the .org was bought in January of this year by the current owner, legitimately, but, I presume, from a squatter (and that's why he says that buying the domain in the first place was expensive enough).

And suddenly the company decides they need other tlds; from their point of view they're all squatters; they're wrong, but their line of reasoning is not absurd.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Every time I see a story like this, I think about <http://nissan.com/>

<comment><USER8> how did they have so much money to fight the cases against nissan? Their website seems like it was stuck in 1998. Why didn't they try to sell it to nissan motors for like a mill or something?

<comment><USER9> What amuses me is that the prices are all current, so the site is clearly still being updated... maybe they're going for that "Classic Internet" look.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have some experience of a similar situation, having at one point run a web dev blog at ilovejackdaniels.com, before the JD legal team contacted me ... and I'm on a new domain now.

The problem, as explained to me by a lawyer (I am not a lawyer, so don't go taking this as legal advice, as I'm paraphrasing what I was told), is that legal departments for really big corporations just care about winning. It doesn't really matter whether they are in the right or not. What's going to make it difficult for you is that they have a huge amount of resources that you don't.

It sounds in your case like they have no actual case for cybersquatting or similar. But that doesn't mean they won't sue you. And if you can't afford to be sued, then that's an automatic win for them.

You also need to evaluate what level of stress and trouble you're prepared to go to to protect the domain. It may suck, but there will be a point at which it would be better for your sanity and your health to let them have the domain and get as much as you can out of them for it.

If I were in your shoes (and I was) I would first visit a lawyer. Get some proper advice.

<comment><USER11> > I have some experience of a similar situation, having at one point run a web > dev blog at ilovejackdaniels.com

it was awesome. Is that why the site died?

<comment><USER12> It's still around, just called Added Bytes (<http://www.addedbytes.com/>) now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> You can always file a USPTO TTAB opposition to any of that company's registered trademarks. Or several. It's when you do several that they tend to get our their checkbook--each opposition can cost mid-five-figures for a big firm to defend, or in some cases even six.

</comment><comment><USER14> He states "They've already tried going through WIPO and lost. Now they are telling me that if I don't accept a ridiculously undervalued offer they are going to file litigation against me. I am a college student and can't afford a lawyer. Can anyone give me advice? What should I do?"

Something is a little fishy about this. It doesn't make sense that he won the UDRP without an attorney but hasn't been able to figure out an attorney that can give him free legal advice on these issues. (Ref: reddit comments) (See <http://www.esqwire.com> who gives free advice and has probably won the most cases). In order to respond to the UDRP he would have had to do some research and would have turned up the obvious suspects in this industry (Berryhill, Goldberger etc.)

While people have won UDRP's without a response (I've seen it happen) it is pretty rare.

</comment><comment><USER15> I had a similar experience with Catepillar. They wanted to buy a domain I owned for over 10 years, but was just parked at the time. They offered me $1000 for the domain, I vehemently told them no. They threatened to sue me and we settled before they took action at $5,000. I always thought the domain was worth more, but at least its being used for something now.

</comment><comment><USER16> On the converse of this, someone has been cybersquatting my last name for about 10 years. Any advice on how to get it?

Details: I own the .co.uk version, but not the .com. My dad has had a company registered (not in the US) with the name in it. The cybersquatter seems to have squatted a bunch of dutch last names and isn't associated with the name at all.

<comment><USER17> I'm on the same boat. In my case, I even attempted to contact using the "make an offer" form and never received a reply. Strange way to do business.

<comment><USER18> I would never do that. Domain squatters squat just waiting for someone to come around and ask for the domain, that's why they buy them in the first place, and then they try to sell at exorbitant rates ($15k-$20k in my experience). Doubtless some companies pay that, which makes squatting profitable.

If you express interest in a domain name, the squatter knows they should renew it forever because at some point when your company makes more money or whatever you'll buy them out for the asking price or something pretty close to it. If you don't express interest and no one else does either, and traffic is minimal, the squatter will drop the domain as unprofitable (no money from the ads on the parking page, no interested buyers = unprofitable domain).

<comment><USER17> I agree with you, but I did wait around a decade or so before I just got curious one day. It's a fairly uncommon last name and the domain would just be for personal use. Oh well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This site may provide some help. They sold licensed fabric items on eBay that contained Disney characters. Repeat, licensed. Disney tried to take them down using DMCA and other strongarm tactics. They won against Disney using DIY techniques--no lawyers involved! I know it's not the same situation but you would be well advised to visit their site at [http://www.tabberone.com/Trademarks/Articles/Tabberone/Fight...](http://www.tabberone.com/Trademarks/Articles/Tabberone/FightingBackAndWinning.shtml)

</comment><comment><USER20> The only mistake he made was asking Reddit instead of a lawyer who specializes in dealing with boneheaded corporate maneuvers.

Otherwise, I wish him luck.

<comment><USER21> Why was asking Reddit a mistake?

Put yourself in the OP's shoes. You're a college student and you get a notice like this handed to you. It's not like you have an IP lawyer on retainer or cash to run out and hire one instantly.

In fact, one helpful redditor pointed out that his college might have a law school that would be willing to help with his case as a teaching exercise. I bet the OP knew nothing about that, and that's worth the price of visiting reddit alone.

<comment><USER22> Simple. It was a mistake because it looks like the kid would accept the offer if it was larger. Go to an IP lawyer and watch dollar signs pop out of their eyes. In a case like this, they'll assist with negotiating a fair price on contingency. If the kid really doesn't want to sell, he can go to EFF or get a lawyer to do this pro-bono. They love this sort of David vs Goliath stuff.

<comment><USER23> You're suggesting an IP lawyer would take the case on a no-cure, no-pay basis? Why is your HN advice more credible than the Reddit advice? Are you a lawyer? Have you dealt with this situation? Or are you in fact armchair lawyering as much as the Reddit commenters?

<comment><USER22> I asked my wife, who is an IP lawyer. That was her advice. Of course, you would expect a lawyer to recommend to see another lawyer, but in this case, it makes sense since there's $$$ involved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Even going so far as entertaining an offer could screw him in court. He needs an IP lawyer familiar with this ASAP.

</comment><comment><USER25> This has just reminded me I need to put up a splash page with my contact information on my domain, which is myfirstmylast.com

Currently there is nothing there, but I use it for email every day - it'd be a shame to lose the domain because it looks like I'm not using it to outsiders.

<comment><USER26> There's no domain registration requirement for .com (that I'm aware of) for you to have a public web page on a domain.

<comment><USER27> Exactly. A domain can be used for many things, not just HTTP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> There's some good advice on the reddit thread and some poor. Making a counter offer to the company could be construed as intent to make a buck on the sale and end up muddying the water and causing him problems. Best thing in these cases is to refuse offers.

</comment><comment><USER29> If they are trying to muscle you out of something which is not rightfully theirs then level the playing field. Get as much publicity as you can from the media, shame them into backing off or making a decent offer if it is something they really want.

</comment><comment><USER30> The fact that they start with offering you money weakens their case considerably. That said, get yourself a really good lawyer if you want to hold on to it and you think you have a strong enough case, be prepared to pay them a lot of money.

</comment><comment><USER31> I hope he kicks their butt.

</comment><comment><USER32> Hire a lawyer on contingency and get the biggest payout you can, for goodness sake. Then set up a new domain for yourself and count your blessings...winning the lottery is very rare.

</comment><comment><USER33> What constitutes cybersquatting or having the rights to a domain you purchased? When can someone who feels they could better use the domain sue?

</comment><comment><USER34> Sell the domain name to their largest and/or most aggressive competitor.

<comment><USER35> Nobody would bite, as they would likely quickly lose the domain via UDRP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I have never sold a domain. I have given domains away for FREE to Open Source for 12 years, but I have been sued. It does not seem that the Big Corporation has any rights in your case, but they have Big Lawyers, who can sue you into the ground. Be VERY careful

</comment><comment><USER37> Good luck to him!

</comment><comment><USER38> sounds like a job for 4chan.</comment>


Amazon just started selling a prefab hospital room for $285K - <AUTHOR> https://www.medtechy.com/articles/2019/amazon-just-started-selling-a-prefab-hospital-room-for-285k <comment><USER2> I bought one, but it was stolen from my porch before I got home.</comment>


Ledger Nano X – A Bluetooth-enabled secure device that stores private keys - <AUTHOR> https://www.ledger.com/pages/ledger-nano-x <comment><USER2> Maybe not the best timing for a launch of a device that's basically the Nano S + Bluetooth after the 25C3 presentation which showed what security issues the Nano S is facing. I doubt they had time to address those.

I'd prefer the "old" model with USB connection because it doesn't give much up in terms of usability but has a considerable upside for security. With Bluetooth all that's needed is a firmware exploit (which is a realistic assumption, we've been there) and an attacker only has to be within range of a few meters. He wont be able to steal the private keys but he'll be able to completely empty any wallets.

Note: the following paragraph might not be true anymore, see below comments.

Keep in mind: all the bluetooth, screen and button IO goes through an unsecure processor which then asks the secure chip to sign something. So exploiting the unsecure part pretty much defeats the whole thing.

<comment><USER3> Disclosure: I'm a dev at Ledger working on the desktop and mobile apps. I'm not in the hardware team nor the security team.

> all the bluetooth, screen and button IO goes through an unsecure processor

On the new device, the screen and buttons are now directly wired to the ST33 secure element

<comment><USER2> This is great to hear. The website did not contain this information from what I could see. Just to clarify: does that mean that the screen and buttons are 100% controlled by the ST33 and do not go through the unsecure chip?

<comment><USER3> Absolutely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What happens when the battery is dead on this device? Why can't they make a simple USB C stick and focus an security instead of adding new potential entry points?

<comment><USER2> The FAQ says the battery can't be replaced. So you'll have a few years of life from it most likely. I totally agree that they should update the Nano S with the updated architecture for people who don't want the bluetooth attack vector.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> To safe you the click (unless you want to see a fantastically cringe-worthy advertisement video):

> The Ledger Nano X is a Bluetooth® enabled secure device that stores your > private keys. Make sure all your crypto assets are safe, wherever you go.

<comment><USER2> That's pretty much what the title already says.

<comment><USER5> It was edited some time after my post. Original title was "Ledger Nano X - Secure your crypto".

Please review [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)</comment></comment></comment>