I've Listened to Loud Rock Music All My Life. Now My Hearing Is Paying the Price - <AUTHOR> https://www.wbur.org/artery/2019/03/08/loud-rock-music-hearing-loss/ <comment><USER2> Protect your hearing before it's too late. We often think that the worse that will happen is that you'll lose a bit of hearing and be hard of hearing when you get older. If that's all you get, consider yourself lucky.

What could happen to you is that your hearing apparatus gets damaged to the point of getting permanent severe tinnitus and hyperacusis. These are not mild conditions - they are life changing conditions that bring people to the brink of suicide.

To give you an idea of how serious it is, it is just second to Chronic Pain in terms of suicide ideation in the population, and higher than Parkinsons', Insomnia, and advanced cancer. See [https://journals.lww.com/thehearingjournal/Fulltext/2016/070...](https://journals.lww.com/thehearingjournal/Fulltext/2016/07000/Suicidal_Ideation_Among_Patients_with_Chronic.6.aspx)

Tinnitus has no cure and no viable treatment other than mind-related techniques to help you cope: there is no way to lessen the symptoms. It is a terrible predicament to be put in, and if you are unlucky enough to suffer from a severe version of it, it can easily take away your ability to think, socialize, and sometimes perform basic tasks.

Unfortunately, protecting your hearing isn't sufficient to dodge tinnitus & hyperacusis: there are other ways that can lead to it, such as ototoxic medications, ear infections or other ear conditions such as otosclerosis, cholesteatoma, etc. Still, it's your best line of defense, as one of the biggest causes for Tinnitus is noise induced hearing loss. Please take it seriously.

<comment><USER3> another one is sudden hearing loss. I wish google searches for sudden hearing loss would have an explicit warning to get to an ER immediately.

it seems most gps don't know about the condition, and on their advice I waited until about a week after. Now I'm permanently deaf in one ear, with severe tinnitus.

<comment><USER2> Indeed, I did forget SSNHL. Sorry that you were victim of that.

At one week after onset you were still in the treatment window, but unfortunately it doesn't always work (and obviously, the sooner the better - but my surgeon told me he's seen cases as late as 2 months recover after treatment).

I imagine you got steroids prescribed? Oral or intratympanic?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> One comment to add from someone who _didn't_ lose all his hearing and can still eavesdrop on things. I worked in a plastic factory for ten years. They issued free earplugs and free headphones to wear over the earplugs if you wanted. They trained repeatedly on proper earplug insertion (pull up the top of your ear so your ear canal is straight, insert till flush with pinna, wait for foam to expand). They had a hearing acuity screen every six months and gave everyone a break to go sit in the van.

Expecting young people to make individually good decisions based on advice from old people has limited reach. It's no substitute for a culture and regulations that make hearing protection easy and normative in the contexts where it's most needed. I don't know if we could create that culture for loud music concerts, but it would be a good cause.

</comment><comment><USER5> Worked as a roady for a band in high school. Worked in the holds of ships and in engine rooms and around other very loud equipment as a young adult. Never wore hearing protection nor did anyone ever suggest I wear it. At 58 I now have pretty constant tinitus in both ears. Fortunately it doesn't really bother me much. If you're young and work around loud equipment wear the plugs. And brush your teeth and floss twice a day :).

<comment><USER6> I'd say hearing protection is more important than brushing your teeth. You can get artificial teeth that look and function just like real ones, but not ears.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's funny that this popped up because I just got home from watching Captain Marvel. I know I have at least some tinnitus because my world sounds like the descriptions of it, but it's not so bad that it really affects my hearing. That said, I have noticed that some movies--particularly Marvel explosion ones in IMAX--sound much louder to me in my mid-30s. The higher sounds come across to me as sharp or shrill.

One nice thing about going everywhere with a backpack is I'm used to having earbuds with me so now, I just don't take them out of my ears when I get to a movie. I still hear everything and it doesn't sound muffled, merely...turned down, I guess, to a "good" volume.

I first hit on this when I forgot to take my earbuds out prior to, of all things, a Weird Al concert (his "Vanity" tour at The Moore in Seattle). I'd ridden the bus down there and had VIP tickets for the pre-show stuff so I sat and watched it with my earbuds in for listening to his music during the lulls in the pre-show activities. When Emo Phillips started, I forgot to take them out and realized after the show that my ears weren't ringing (louder than usual) and I didn't have the beginnings of a headache.

<comment><USER8> One nice thing about going everywhere with a backpack is I'm used to having earbuds with me.

For anyone else that doesn't want to carry a backpack, a set of earplugs fits great in the coin pouch of a wallet, or attached as a keychain.

<comment><USER6> A good set of concert earplugs are like $15, everyone should have them. I also find occasionally if I'm in a loud restaurant, they help drown out the people talking obnoxiously loudly and I can actually hear the people I want to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My hearing isn't terrible, but in noisy restaurants I have a hard time following conversations. I get tinnitus regularly (not constant) now too.

I've listened to a bunch of concerts and nightclubs, but I think its sitting behind the computer for 40 hours/week with headphones on that really killed my hearing. It doesn't have to be so loud, just combined with lots of hours each day isn't good.

I've started getting regular hearing tests and cut back headphones to a few hours a week, but I miss the music.

Don't overdo the headphones!!

<comment><USER6> Concert earplugs might help a bit in noisy restaurants. I have a set of Etymotics that I like.

<comment> toper-centage But then how can you follow conversations? Do they somehow only block background noise?

<comment><USER6> Concert earplugs are designed to reduce the sound level, but without muffling any frequency ranges like foam earplugs do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Somewhat related but I've always been curious about this: Why is music more pleasurable to many of us when played at a level that could damage our hearing? If I listen to my death metal playlists at only half volume I don't find it nearly as enjoyable, and I've never totally understood why.

<comment><USER11> I have recently read a pretty resourceful thread on music mixing and recording ([https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=29283](https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=29283)).

A related piece of info from there is that rock/metal music is supposed to be loud: drums blasting away, amps cranked up. But when recording and mixing you take all that loud sound and energy and put it into an audio file that will most likely be played back with lower volumes on all kinds of devices.

This is one of the main problems of mixing this kind of music: making music that is supposed to be LOUD sound good at low volumes. So probably if that goal isn't achieved in a perfect way then cranking the volume up will make it sound better.

Another important thing I learned from that thread is that in general for us humans "louder" is perceived as "better". Good example, a demonstration of a compressor plugin: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6D9WvwMNr8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6D9WvwMNr8)

Plugin quality aside, you can easily hear that "on" parts are all louder than "off" parts, and that really makes the demo "unfair" in that they sound better simply by being louder.

And a related theory I've read long ago (sorry, don't remember where) is that experiencing music at damaging volumes gives us some kind of masochistic pleasure. This is why there are always people hanging right next to speakers at loud shows, be it rock or EDM.

<comment><USER10> > gives us some kind of masochistic pleasure

I could see this being the case, sort of like how some people (me) enjoy torturing themselves with extremely spicy peppers and foods.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I remember going to a rock festival in Sweden around 2001 and telling people they were being stupid for wearing earplugs. Enjoy the moment, I told people. Listen to the music raw and unfiltered. This is rock music!

I was young, stupid and wrong.

I'm 40 now and I have pretty much continuous tinnitus.

Protect your ears, people.

<comment><USER13> Same here, but playing in a band instead of just going to see them. Heavy metal, small practice space. Heavy-handed drummer. I too thought earplugs were "lame", but eventually got sick of not being able to hear for 4 hours after band practice.

Today, my right ear "cringes" (only word I can use to describe the feeling) when anything loud like a restroom hand-dryer goes off for more than a few seconds.

I wear earplugs to all concerts now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm 29 and have mild tinnitus. In my case, I'm fortunate that it's only noticeable in a nearly silent room. Even a fan is enough to make it disappear.

That said, it's still scared me. I'm convinced it came from years of listening to music loudly on headphones. I discovered quality headphones as a teenager, probably when I was 16 or so, and remember being blown away by the fidelity of the sound.

Late last year I decided to invest in a more expensive speaker setup for my home PC, and I've tried to commit myself to using it over headphones and only at a reasonable volume. The latter I find is self-enforced easily by my being in an apartment complex. I went with the Audioengine A5+ speakers and their associated subwoofer. Combined, it was more than twice what I'd paid for headphones in the past, but overall I've been extremely impressed. The speakers produce a clarity that is similar to what I'm used to with headphones, and they're actually much better at producing a wide sound stage.

</comment><comment><USER15> Yeah, I'm in my 50s and the audiologist describes my hearing loss as "severe to profound," depending on the frequency range. I suspect that much of that was at one particular concert after which my ears rang for three days. I definitely lost a lot that time, but there was a lot of other loud music over the years, too.

My hearing when I was a kid was as good as my mom's. She's a musician and has always protected her hearing. She's in her 80s and has _far_ better hearing than me.

You will never regret taking a bit of extra effort to protect your hearing. It's never too late to start, either.

</comment><comment><USER16> I frequently go to stupid loud EDM shows.. I'm very curious what will happen to my generation since even with earplugs my ears can be funny after shows, probably from all the sub bass (which is much more prominent than at rock shows).

I try to compensate by pretty much never listening to music otherwise, but I feel like I'm going to be struggling in 20 years.

<comment><USER17> You will feel dumb, not because of the music, that of course, but also, you will feel dumb as you have to keep asking people to repeat themselves, as you realize you're the one smiling and nodding without understanding, as you're watching movies with the closed captioning on, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I was born with bad hearing and tinnitus. When I tell people, some are quick to blame attending loud concerts, but I don't think I've attended more than a couple concerts and none were particularly loud. Plus, I had both problems well before the earliest concern I can recall attending.

Some advice: How loud flying is doesn't seem to be appreciated. I don't see any mention of it in the comments here, and when I fly I am one of the few with any hearing protection as far as I can tell. I wear both earplugs and earmuffs. Don't laugh too hard. I've found both to be noticeably better than either alone. I used to fly with nothing, but my tinnitus would be amplified for days after flying. Aside from some people on the plane thinking that I'm weird, I once had a TSA guy ask me if I intended to go shooting when he saw my earmuffs.

I think I've accepted my tinnitus and bad hearing for the most part. It rarely bothers me, and to be honest I sometimes find the tinnitus to be soothing. I think that's because I never knew any different. Tinnitus is the sound of silence to me. I speculate that others who develop these conditions later might feel some loss that I don't.

<comment><USER19> Someone on a flight once explained to me that the noise on an airplane is a large factor of why flying makes you tired: your brain is constantly processing all that background noise and looking for patterns in it. Since then I've always worn earplugs on flights, and usually also big over-the-ear headphones over them (just turn the volume up slightly higher). It's been a big improvement in flying comfort.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I totally understand, I've got hearing damage and can't hear in a room with multiple conversations ongoing (i.e. a restaurant).

In my case, it was operating a stump grinder that did it. I was so eager to operate this cool power equipment that I didn't take a few minutes to get hearing protection. Big, big mistake.

Please take care of your hearing.

</comment><comment><USER21> Somehow I got tinnitus in one ear, and I didn't even go to any concerts. Maybe headphones on too loud. None the less, a friend got me to try on a set of Nuraphones, which I think are supposed to gauge how responsive your nervous system is to sound, and surely enough I had lost a fair bit of high frequency sensitivity.

<comment><USER22> A word of caution on this - I too have some tinnitus, and I asked Lauren Dragan (she does all of Wirecutter's headphone reviews) on Twitter if she was going to review these headphones. She responded[1]:

> I've tested a few pairs of those kinds of headphones already, actually. > Even, Beyerdynamic, Nuraphone, MEE... if you have ok hearing, they aren't > worth it, and possibly problematic if you already have hearing damage.

> I'd spoken to an audiologist who is an expert in noise induced hearing loss, > and he said that with no AMA oversight, there is no way of knowing if the > raised frequency ranges could cause more damage on top of existing. The > accuracy of the tests and programs on these vary wildly.

In other words, by boosting the volume of the ranges you're having difficulty hearing, it might actually increase your hearing loss in those ranges. I'm not an audiologist, but that makes a lot of sense. I'm steering clear of this class of headphones until there's more known about them.

[1] [https://mobile.twitter.com/larrywright/status/10048423527777...](https://mobile.twitter.com/larrywright/status/1004842352777756674)

<comment><USER21> When I tried the adjusted volume version of the higher frequencies, I didn't like it anyway heh.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Damn that's sad. I have found that if you keep headphones at the same volume, your hearing does not suffer. Always fix the noise isolation of the headphones or change your surroundings before just turning up the volume.

</comment><comment><USER24> Lots of comments about ear-plugs for concerts and such. I'd like to remind every motorcycle rider to buy them too! Especially if you're riding a naked bike. Going moderately high speed on a highway for two hours made my ears ring for another couple of hours after I reached the destination.

There are special ear plugs for riders too, that would cut out the wind noise, while you're still able to hear your engine, other occupants of the road and comms inside helmet if you do ride with intercom.

</comment><comment><USER25> As an aging guitarist, I've become more serious about my hearing after I learned that I've lost everything above 12.5k. I've switched to an IEM system live, using a Kemper full-time for my "cranked amp" sound, and always having earplugs and backups in the truck and at concerts. Nothing's worth losing any more frequencies. I hardly break 80-85db anymore.

</comment><comment><USER26> Yes. Take steps to protect your ears. I played drums for years as a kid without them and I have permanent tinnitus. Fortunately it's not a dominating presence, but I can always hear when it's quiet around me. It has stayed at same level for 15+ years because I started managing it - basically wearing ear plugs to concerts / playing drums and keeping my ear phones to lowest level possible.

</comment><comment><USER27> Does anyone know which frequencies are the worst for your ears? I'm under the assumption that mid and high level frequencies do the most damage, with low frequencies doing the least. I would like to know the answer and stand corrected.

</comment><comment><USER28> When I was 13, I used to wear a shirt that said "If it's too loud, you're too old!"

...lol, yeah well now I take care of my ears. 13 year old me played Slipknot as loud as possible and thought I was impressing everyone around me.

cringecringe yeahyeah

<comment><USER29> I sometimes I play music with rock stars in their 70s. They are freekin deaf. Now I think "if it's not loud enough, you're not old enough".

<comment><USER30> I guess that's why Lars thinks Death Magnetic sounds just fine and can't hear all the horrible clipping.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm 26 and I already have some tinnitus and I feel like some hearing loss. I've listened to loud music since high school every day.

Is it too late for me? Would my hearing recorder if I gave it a break?

</comment><comment><USER32> Going deep in the woods and being able to hear the smallest details all around is more important to me than appearing tough to at a loud concert.

</comment><comment><USER33> If you get tinnitus and hearing loss in your 20s, is it possible to reverse any of the damage, or is it permanent?

<comment><USER34> I think its permanent. I'm not aware of tinnitus ever getting better for people.

<comment><USER35> There -may- be improvement through notched listening.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4797223/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4797223/)

> TMNMT affected tinnitus loudness after 6 months but it was shown to be > superior to the placebo condition after 12 months.

> Taken together, our results display a positive effect of three months of > TMNMT on the subjective tinnitus perception, especially concerning tinnitus > loudness.

But it's one of those things that definitely needs more study.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The Capitals in The Title Give a Rather Ironic Impression of Loudness

</comment><comment><USER37> > _I always come prepared, with custom-made ear plugs that filter highs and > lows equally. Protective preparation be damned, they played for 75 minutes > and my ears rang for days._

That's what you get for using boutique plugs instead of the good old cheap foam ones that do -30 dB.

Flat frequency attenuation ... for a rock concert?

Okay, first of all, due to the Fletcher Munson curves, the perception of bass versus treble is affected by volume. If you want to hear the proper amount of bass that you're supposed to hear at concert volume, but at a lower volume, you in fact need to attenuate the highs more; certainly not flat attenuation.

Why not use wine corks for ear plugs; then you can literally do cork sniffing before putting them in.

<comment><USER38> I have worn all types of earplugs at concerts, playing music etc. and the flat attenuation 'botique' moulded ones sound so much better for any situation, it's not even close. If the concert really is loud enough that 25dB isn't enough attenuation maybe it's not worth going. If something is loud enough, no earplugs will make it safe.

<comment><USER37> You're not making a _level-matched_ A/B comparison. That's like mistake #1 of audio engineering. Louder sounds better; plugs that attenuate -25 dB will sound better than -32 dB.

<comment><USER38> No, I am comparing cheaper types of plugs with the more expensive ones, with similar levels of attenuation. You are thinking of a quite subtle effect which can lead you to think louder sounds are better, when they are actually the same apart from the volume. The difference between the sound of different types of earplugs is _massive_. There is no mistaking the difference.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is There Trouble in Paradise for the Airbus A380? - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelgoldstein/2018/10/16/is-there-trouble-in-paradise-for-the-airbus-a380/#759ef95f72b7 <comment><USER2> The future of the industry is moving towards designs like the upcoming Boeing 797. This airplane seeks to fill the highly coveted niche between the 787's fuel economy thanks to its large high bypass turbofans, and the 737s versitility in being able to be economical on shorter routes.</comment>


Scientists make rare achievement in study of antimatter - <AUTHOR> https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/scientists-make-rare-achievement-in-study-of-antimatter <comment><USER2> > "According to our understanding of the Standard Model [of particle physics], > the Big Bang should have created exactly the same amount of matter and > antimatter, but [for the most part] only matter remains," says BASE > Spokesperson Stefan Ulmer. This is strange because when matter and > antimatter meet, they annihilate one another. Scientists want to know how > matter came to dominate our universe.

We don't have any evidence that matter DOES dominate the universe. Distant galaxies could easily be composed of antimatter. Since the Big Bang should have created equal amounts of both, you would expect that in the vast majority of cases they would annihilate one another, leading to a universe overwhelmingly dominated by (wait for it) empty space.

We have tons of evidence that matter dominates our neck of the woods. Regions where one form is dominant over the other may be in the minority, but you would have to enter such a region to find stars, planets, and galaxies. The fact that we're here means that this must be an area where one type is everywhere and the other is almost completely absent. But as best we can tell, the fact that we're all made of matter rather than antimatter is the result of a very old coin flip. The probability that all of the galaxies we can see landed on the matter side of the coin is infinitesimal.

<comment><USER3> I'm pretty sure they have very compelling reasons to believe that distant galaxies are NOT made of anti-matter.

Here is one I found in a quick search:

The boundary between any group of anti-matter galaxies and the region of space where matter is dominant should emit gamma rays, as the intergalactic wind pushes dust particles made of regular matter into one of the anti-matter galaxies. We don't see such gamma ray emissions in our observations of the cosmos.

Source: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/briankoberlein/2016/12/27/could...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/briankoberlein/2016/12/27/could- some-distant-galaxies-be-made-of-antimatter/)

<comment><USER4> What if all the antimatter-dominated regions are outside our cosmological horizon and are no longer in causal contact with matter-dominated regions?

<comment><USER5> That just creates the same questions for why this region of space is so dominated by 'matter' while adding a new one that another vast region of space is dominated by 'anti-matter'.

If you can come up with some compelling mechanism for it then sure it may be possible, but currently that seems to be more complex and fails to provide any support of any kind.

<comment><USER4> It's pure speculation, but I am suggesting that instead of some sort of annihilation imbalance, the mechanism might be a sorting process that causes antimatter and matter to collect into horizon-shaped pockets.

If there were such a sorting process that was inherently linked to cosmological horizons, it could explain both where the antimatter went, and why we don't see an annihilation zone where the boundaries meet.

<comment><USER5> The problem is your sorting process is identical to your original statement. It's like saying "why is the sky blue" > "air is blue". You need to make predictions that are different from your observations.

On the other hand if you say something like "Air becomes blue when it's colder." Then you can actually test what's going on and falsify the statement which may lead to progress.

Suppose you suggest the output of this experiment will change over time. Now, waiting a billion years is not going to happen but adding even more digits of accuracy may be possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> tl;dr "The results confirm that the [proton and antiproton] behave exactly the same, as the laws of physics would predict. So the mystery of the imbalance between matter and antimatter remains."

<comment><USER7> alternate TL;DR: Science was done, no new data was generated that couldn't have been predicted from existing laws, existing mysteries remain.

Basically this is the "boring" science, not the exciting "hmm, that's odd" science. It's very important science of course, the sort that you need for science to actually work, but it is rather boring from the perspective of someone outside looking in on the process.

<comment><USER8> Something I'm rather curious about. Are you disinterested in it, because of its nature? Similarly, are you excited by the day in day out 'hot' studies? And by 'hot', I mean things like 'researchers discover amazing new way to destroy cancer cells' given what you know to expect of such a study.

It seems to me that so often we apply, in completely good faith, base characteristics to others when considering them as a group, yet simultaneously it seems like few would ever say those characteristics actually apply to themselves.

Mostly just a random thought that occurred when reading your post. It's interesting to consider things like all movies becoming explosions and CG because 'everybody else loves that stuff' even though ticket sales have declined by 30% since 2002 (gross receipts are up thanks to substantial increases in price). Or similarly at the same time everybody focuses on 'hot' science, trust and arguably (and paradoxically) even interest seems to be rapidly declining.

<comment><USER7> Well, mostly disinterested in that it's really just a more precise measurement. The "breakthrough" in this case is a ridiculously precise measurement, which is very impressive, and is a huge step forward for particle physics as a science because it opens the door to measure even more stuff, but in this particular case it hasn't contributed anything "new" in terms of data.

There's a famous quote out there that goes something like 'the most exciting words in science aren't "Eureka", they're "that's odd"', and I feel that's highly applicable in this case. There's no "that's odd" event here, everything is exactly as expected, it all worked perfectly and produced exactly the result that was expected. That's great for affirming that all our theories are correct, and as I said this is a breakthrough in the quality of measurements we can achieve, but it's not a new mystery to explore, or an unexpected result that we can use to refine or develop new theories. Basically everything we didn't know before this experiment we still don't know, and we don't have any new data points except for having eliminated an area of uncertainty that new interesting data might have been hiding in.

<comment><USER5> I would argue that it is odd. We assume there must be something separating matter and anti-matter, but the list of possibilities is getting really short.

Sort of like a murder misery where everyone at a party has a reliable alibi. Suggesting something even odder must be going on.

<comment><USER9> Sure, but it give you no leads...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Possibly relevant[0]: What is the difference between Accuracy and Precision?(video)

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

</comment><comment><USER11> Storing the anti-protons for 400 days; reminds me of the magnetic bottle in Star Trek. Has anti-hydrogen been created?

<comment><USER12> It sure has: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antihydrogen#Experimental_hist...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antihydrogen#Experimental_history)</comment></comment>


It's 2020 and You're in the Future - <AUTHOR> https://waitbutwhy.com/2020/01/its-2020-and-youre-in-the-future.html <comment><USER2> What I'm surprised wasn't mentioned is that the year 2020 seemed really futuristic to most of the people who are now reading this -- but from now on, the year 2020 will start being in the past.

</comment><comment><USER3> > _But the weirdest thing about kids today: most of them will live to see the > 2100s._

If they don't starve when civilization collapses in 2030 or 2040. Or 2060 or 2080. (Opinions differ on when, and how many.)

<comment><USER4> Intrigued how your comment seems to imply that civilization will collapse no matter what before 2100. Am I reading that right?

You truly believe there is an extremely high probability that the world will starve in the next 80 years?

<comment><USER3> It looks increasingly likely.

My go-to scenario is mass migration out of the tropics, as they become (literally) uninhabitable, drives fascist governments into power in temperate countries, which leads directly to world war, thence to thermonuclear devastation. We already see the beginnings of this scenario unfolding.

The species will certainly survive.

I hope it does not go this way, but I don't know how to prevent it. Ideas welcome. Downvoting me will certainly not help.

<comment><USER5> There's the basic fact that almost no hard data of any kind exists to back up your apocalyptic claim. If anything, by all major metrics, human well-being is dramatically improving, not just in the north but also in these supposedly infernal tropics. And data indicates that this will in most ways continue, in terms of reductions in the population explosion, better access to technology, better health and welfare and even better environmental practices becoming more common in the developing world, just as they did in the developed world over previous decades.

You remind me of people like Paul Ehrlich back in the 70's. Predicting doom and disaster because it was fashionable, extrapolating without good supporting evidence or consideration for human development and innovation, then later just shrugging off their nonsense when it proves to have been totally, absurdly wrong.

The climate change crisis is a serious problem for our species and societies, but it too has possible solutions that are already in development. It's not simply a pre-ordained act of god.

<comment><USER6> That is a belief, an opinion of yours. Another opinionon could be that the development and innovation you are speaking of was in the ever more clever externalizing of environmental cost to 'somewhere else' like in a giant pyramid scheme, and thereby oversaturing several interconnected systems up to their tipping points.

Where the 70ies doomsayers were wrong was the lack of anticipating those pyramid schemes, and their superficial covering up of bad things 'gonna happen.

Welcome to the Idiocracy, maybe in the Wall-E fanedit.

<comment><USER6> errr ... oversaturATing</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Souptime.net - Simple Uptime Monitoring - Suggestions? - K-Zodron http://www.souptime.net

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that you could use some better logo, and also, I would suggest you to offer some free premium accounts for the start-up.

<comment> K-Zodron Logo updated. Free prem at start would result in lots of multiaccounts, I'd think.</comment></comment>


Bed sharing 'drains men's brains' - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/5197440.stm

<comment><USER2> That's not all it drains, am I right? Am I right? Come on, high five!

...

Hmm... I should probably have more karma before making that joke.

<comment><USER3> ^ not married.

...

hmm, it seems that hacker news is skipping over the reddit and digg phases of social sites, and going straight to /b/

<comment><USER2> :) Serious comments for serious stories. Bad pop science deserves to be mocked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> ""Historically, we have never been meant to sleep in the same bed as each other. It is a bizarre thing to do. "

...what??? Where did that idea come from? Sleeping with other people is as old as humankind. _Beds_ are unnatural, and having nearly enough space and resources to have one bed per person even more so.

<comment><USER5> I think you're correct -- but the original sentence is actually very carefully worded so as to include your interpretation.

Never bet against a scientist in a cagey-wording competition. When they're focused on the task, they're almost as bad as lawyers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Also to note, the couples who were tested knew that they were sleeping alone because of a test, safe with the comfort that their significant other still loved them. It's a different case when you're sleeping alone and lonely.

</comment><comment><USER7> Though sex probably has the opposite effect. For example Schrodinger took a vacation with his mistress to work on the wave equation, which he did between lovemaking sessions.

<comment><USER8> Counter-anecdote: Erdos.

<comment><USER9> But Erdos was always on drugs so he might not count.

<comment><USER10> Not always. There was this one month he lost to a bet.

<comment><USER9> Always minus a month is still always in this kind of context. Otherwise, I would have also meant that Erdös was also on drugs when he was a baby and during his childhood, and I guess it's easy to deduce from context that wasn't the case. I already knew about the one month anecdote but didn't thought it was relevant for my reply.

<comment><USER10> Yes, it was not relevant. But since we are talking about anecdotes anyway..

<comment><USER9> You are right, sorry for taking it too seriously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> They hide the punchline at the very end.

"If they have shared their bed with their partner for a long time they miss them and that will disturb sleep."

In other words, its temporary.

</comment><comment><USER12> a sample only ten couples makes me suspect of the results...

<comment><USER13> It says _eight_ couples, over ten days.

I'm not usually one to reflexively write off studies, but this sounds like a group of scientists collectively whining about their spouses hogging the blankets.

<comment><USER14> I agree. You've got only 8 couples over only 10 nights. That's short and a small sample. Also there's no detail on what they did when they slept apart. For example, perhaps the men went off slept in a 5 star hotel and pampered themselves.

Also, this news is from 2006. But it gets worse. If you go find the paper you'll find this abstract:

"Introduction: So far only a few studies (e. g. Meadows et al 2005) have focused on the interrelationship between bedpartners and its effect on sleep and sleep quality. Previous studies were either restricted to women's perceptions and experiences of sleep (Hislop et al 2003) or to interaction between parents and children. Method: The current investigation examined how sleep and sleep quality is influenced by the presence and absence of the bedpartner over a period of four weeks. Couples were young unmarried students (mean age: 25; range: 22 - 26) with no children and no history of sleep disturbances. All subjects filled in the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), a standardized sleep anamnesis inventory as well as the MEQ- questionnaire to evaluate morning- or evening- chronotypes. Sleep-wake patterns were continuously monitored by wrist-worn actigraphs and all subjects completed a sleep diary including a standardized self-rating scale for subjective sleep and awakening quality every morning. During the investigation period subjects were instructed to spend at least 10 nights together and 10 separately. Results: Preliminary results from three couples (out of 10) show a significant reduction of subjective sleep and awakening quality in the co- sleeping condition as compared to the nights slept alone. This tendency was observed in females as well as in males. Co-sleeping also reduced objective (calculated by actigraphs) and subjective sleep efficiency (sleep log data) with a more pronounced reduction in females. When sleeping alone women have more sleep epochs associated with movements than men. In nights spent together in both females and males the mean activity score increased but the changes were not significant. Discussion: The current investigation examines both gender differences during sleep/wakefulness and the physiological and psychological impact each partner has on the other during sleep."

Key phrase: Preliminary results from three couples (out of 10) show a significant reduction of subjective sleep and awakening quality in the co- sleeping condition as compared to the nights slept alone.

So this is based on just three couples in fact.

<comment><USER10> For 10$ you should be able to hire around a thousand mturkers in the name of science.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Futons on tatami solve that problem. You're sharing the same space but you aren't disturbed by your partner's movements.

<comment><USER16> And now you no longer have a proper mattress and your knees hurt when you fuck her.

Leave your futon back in 1995 when people ignored its ridiculous impracticalities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> emailed this to my wife.

Her response: The couch is always open...

<comment><USER18> my wife responded with "not happening"- I've wanted separate beds (mostly jokingly) for awhile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Solution: 1 bed, two comforters.

</comment><comment><USER20> The quality of the bed has to be a major factor here. How large is the bed? Is the mattress designed so that one person can toss and turn without disturbing the other? (Most aren't.)

</comment><comment><USER21> My girlfriend will not be a fan of this article.

</comment><comment><USER22> Seems this article gives weight to the following argument/joke.

 _"Men were born with a brain and penis and only enough blood to run one at a time"_</comment>


Unsigned apps on High Sierra can programmatically dump and exfil keychain - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/patrickwardle/status/912254053849079808 <comment><USER2> So.. is this specific to macOS 10.13? Or is 10.12.6 also vulnerable?

<comment><USER3> "other versions of macOS are vulnerable too" the author confirmed it on twitter

[https://twitter.com/patrickwardle/status/912392633909047296](https://twitter.com/patrickwardle/status/912392633909047296)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Patrick Wardle (the source of this video) is on a roll today: [https://www.synack.com/2017/09/08/high-sierras-secure- kernel...](https://www.synack.com/2017/09/08/high-sierras-secure-kernel- extension-loading-is-broken/)

<comment><USER4> This makes me wonder if the vector for this exploit is a kernel extension that subverts the keychain service. Except that the kernel loading exploit appears to require root privileges.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is there actually any external verification that this can be done?

<comment><USER6> On the screencast it appear that the dialog box have been reworked to be less constraining than in Sierra where you needed to go to Preferences>Gatekeeper to allow execution of unsigned app.

I haven't tested the beta so this struck me, can someone confirm?

<comment><USER7> Right-clicking an app and selecting "Open" has always given you the ability to bypass Gatekeeper. It's been that way since Gatekeeper was introduced.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is scary if accurate.

For people unfamiliar with Keychain, the problem as I understand it is _not_ that unsigned apps can do this per se (though I don't think this is a good idea), it's that they can do this without user intervention.

The normal flow for Keychain is that when an app wants access to a keychain item that was not created by that app, it has to ask for user permission to allow once or always allow access. It sounds like this isn't happening in this case.

(Aside: it used to be possible to trivially access all website passwords in Safari too (which I dutifully reported as a bug, because it was a terrible design choice), but Apple thankfully changed this to require authentication in new versions of Safari.)

</comment><comment><USER9> From a security perspective, I would assume that signed binaries should not have additional restrictions that are also not in place for unsigned binaries. Would this exploit also work with a signed app as well, but avoiding the user confirmation?

<comment><USER4> There is no difference between a signed and unsigned app once it has been allowed to launch the first time. The permission model is the same for both. Normally you would have expected to see a system dialog asking if you would like to grant an app permission to access the keychain once or permanently.

EDIT: As another commenter pointed out, an app is also only granted access to one key at a time, each requiring an independent confirmation (with password). There is no way (normally) to grant cart-blanche access to the entire keychain.

<comment><USER10> False. Signed apps can have entitlements, unsigned apps cannot. Some entitlements grant access to keychain items.

<comment><USER4> Completely wrong. Entitlements are for sandboxed apps, and grant a sandboxed application access to other parts of the system. Unsigned apps are by definition, not sandboxed, and have no such restrictions. They are granted access, not by a sandbox entitlement, but by the Keychain API.

<comment><USER11> There are both sandbox and non-sandbox entitlements. iCloud storage and push notifications are examples of the latter.

<comment><USER4> Granted. In any case it is not relevant in the context of this discussion. Access to the local keychain does not require an entitlement. Even the "keychain-access-groups" entitlement only applies to the iCloud keychain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Unsigned" apps, I'd recommend a headline update to provide a bit of nuance.

How safe are unsigned apps anyway? I can imagine it's "all bets are off" level software.

<comment><USER11> Keychain is supposed to require user authorization before returning any data. Unless you're running as root, it's certainly not "all bets are off." Even if you are, the keychain is supposed to use crypto which would prevent reading it without the user's consent.

<comment><USER13> It's debatable.

Once the user has installed unauthorized software, the attacker can simply sit and wait for the user to expose more goodies (logins, bank data, 1password access, etc). In many ways, it is game over. If the attacker can leverage that to get your admin password, prompts are not going to save you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Proves me once again that the best password vault is sitting on my shoulders.

<comment><USER15> How does that work? With Keychain I literally have a different password on every single site I visit. If someone hacks Facebook they'll have... my Facebook password (and whatever sites use OAuth and won't let me opt out of it). Does your brain consistently handle that level of password diversification, because that's the best defense against password theft.

<comment><USER16> For many years now I've used an algorithm for password generation that I keep in my head. It's pretty simple, I have a memorized string (like a traditional password), and a memorized set of rules. For example, I might have a rule where I take my password, replace the first character with the first character of the product (a for Amazon), and replace the last letter with the type of product I'm using (s for shopping).

I have a significantly more complex algorithm than that, but you get the idea.

Every password I have is different, but they're all trivial to remember. This isn't super hardcore security, but it helps me have like 40 passwords that are all different.

<comment><USER17> So your password has a root password and probably 2-4 pseudo random characters appended/prepended/replaced? That means once it has been leaked in 1 breach, your 'true' algorithmic password is only 2-4 characters long. Which should take a few minutes to crack on other sites. And the more breaches you are included in, the easier it would be to work out your algorithm, reducing the number of attempts further.

But they aren't going to target me specifically? They won't. They just find everyone whose password across multiple breaches is similar (Levenshtein distance or something) and brute force the differences.

<comment><USER18> > But they aren't going to target me specifically? They won't. They just find > everyone whose password across multiple breaches is similar (Levenshtein > distance or something) and brute force the differences.

Is this possible when the leaked passwords are all only salted hashes?

<comment><USER17> You mean like LinkedIn (SHA1 hashes without salt), Adobe (Poor Crypto), Dropbox (half of them SHA1), etc., etc.

[1] [https://haveibeenpwned.com/PwnedWebsites#LinkedIn](https://haveibeenpwned.com/PwnedWebsites#LinkedIn)

[2] [https://haveibeenpwned.com/PwnedWebsites#Adobe](https://haveibeenpwned.com/PwnedWebsites#Adobe)

[3] [https://haveibeenpwned.com/PwnedWebsites#Dropbox](https://haveibeenpwned.com/PwnedWebsites#Dropbox)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Isn't this how keychain works?

This is clearly not remotely executable, it needs to be run on the device that is signed in.

Say you visit facebook.com, your password is in the keychain, so the keychain must be decrypted to return the plaintext password so it can be passed in the password field to facebook.com

This is how keychain works isn't it??

You can view your entire password list in Safari Preferences - it does the same thing.

So this is nothing? Someone has written a command line version of this same tool.

Am I missing something, this seems to be normal functionality of the OS for a signed in user.

<comment><USER4> No. Application access to the keychain is restricted via an API with a (supposedly) robust security model behind it, for precisely this reason. Applications must explicitly be granted access to the keychain. There should have been a prompt requesting keychain access.

<comment><USER11> Furthermore, it's supposed to ask about each item the app wants to access. You can see this in Keychain Access. Pick a password, inspect it, click the Show Password box, and a prompt will appear asking you to authorize it before it'll show you anything. That's part of the Keychain API, not something special to Keychain Access.

<comment><USER20> Also visible with the built-in CLI tool security(1):

      $ security find-internet-password -s www.facebook.com -g

<comment><USER21> Didn't work for me on today's release of macOS High Sierra.

<comment><USER4> Works for me on HS.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


TellThem: MySpace Kills Another Startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/30/tellthem-myspace-kills-another-startup/

<comment><USER2> Umm, they were asking for people's MySpace password and proxying their connx. This is the sureest way to train MySpace users to accept Phishing.

Of course they cut them off. Any rational site would have.

</comment><comment><USER3> This article is obviously poorly researched and the writing is extremely sloppy.</comment>


Ask HN: Google Street View USPS - <AUTHOR>

Why doesn't google place street view cameras on USPS trucks? They literally drive by almost every house in america every day. This would give them daily updated street views. <comment><USER2> In addition to the fact that like smeyer mentioned that many USPS vehicles just stop and deliver through an area, or only go to community boxes now, using USPS vechicles would likely come with significant legal issues. The USPS is (in part) funded by the US Govt, it is essentially a government owned and operated division. So if you start jamming 65MP camera's with highly accurate GPS and inertia sensors etc on them may cause peoples heads to explode with conspiracy theories.

I would see a more likely partnership being the trucking/shipping industry (like FedEx/UPS etc). While the technology would have to change some to get the right angles etc, it would seem like an easy way to cover significant territory. But then again, it wouldn't be contiguous areas at the same time so they would likely have to mash old and new images at a much more frequent pace which may not provide as good a consumer experience.

</comment><comment><USER3> There isn't a ton of value add in having daily updates to street views (things don't change that frequently), but there would be a huge increase in expense. I don't know the exact number of google street view cars, but there are way, way, way fewer than there are USPS trucks. Outfitting lots of USPS would add a ton of expense to the equation.

As a side note, I am curious what fraction of houses they actually drive by each day. In many residential areas it seems common for drivers to park the delivery car while they walk around the block with the mail. Still, it seems clear the coverage is pretty substantial.

Edit: this post indicates an October 2012 number of around 250 cars, just to give a sense of scale.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Yeah it may make more sense to go private with fedex etc. but the USPS is always hurting for money too :). I can't think of another industry besides parcel delivery that covers the area as often.

</comment><comment><USER4> I always assumed they had to drive street view vehicles at a specific speed to get good series of images.</comment>


Oticon Opn 1 Reviewed by a Software Engineer - <AUTHOR> https://www.hearingtracker.com/blog/oticon-opn-1-reviewed-by-a-techie-software-engineer/ <comment><USER2> I take my hearing aid out when I'm at the barber, because he sprays my hair with water, and I don't want him to snip my hearing aid with the scissors. I thought everyone with these hearing aids took them out, but the author mentioned being able to hear his hairdresser, and I'm like... wait, what?

Do other people with hearing aids wear them during hair cuts? Taking mine out leaves me deaf for the duration of the session. I don't like it, and I always feel like I'm missing out on some common social engagement. Everyone else seems to enjoy talking to their hairdresser, but since I can't hear, I have to sit there silently and listen.

A bit baffled, but wondering if I should just start leaving them in.

<comment><USER3> Coincidentally, I also own a pair of the Oticon Opn 1, and I pretty much agree with the blog piece. My biggest gripe is how short the battery life is when on bluetooth. And my 2nd biggest gripe is that there is no way to 'lock' the Opn into Loop mode when wearing headphones. If the headphones move a bit, the Opn no longer detects the magnetic coil and disengages loop mode. I would like to be able to use the iPhone app to lock them into loop mode until I manually change the mode...

Oh, and yeah, I ALWAYS take my hearing aids out when I am at the barber! The idea of leaving them in... shudder!!

<comment><USER2> Nice name :D

I never use the telecoil, but I totally know what you mean about losing connection. One thing that drives me absolutely bonkers is when an app steals my connection because it has an audio component, and even worse is when it steals the connection even after I've muted the app! (Looking at you, FB Messenger!)

<comment><USER4> Hahaha ... for me, it's my iPad stealing the connection from my iPhone.

My wife would be on the iPad in one room turning on her music on through Slackr Radio or iTunes. When she hears nothing, she starts cranking up the volume and then she hears me yelling at her from another room to turn it down!! It's happened a number of times ... " _" face palm"_"</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A new algorithm can mimic your voice with just snippets of audio - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/610386/a-new-algorithm-can-mimic-your-voice-with-just-snippets-of-audio/ <comment><USER2> ... fooling voice recognition systems, not humans. So more of a security result than an audio result I'd say.

Some time ago I read biometrics should be used as a username, not a password, which seems to make sense to me.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the best CS program for Masters in Germany - <AUTHOR> Hey HN,<p>What is the best CS program for Masters in Germany, preferably which is research oriented towards Machine Learning, Computer vision and Artificial Intelligence in general. And which of these offer all english programs.? <comment><USER2> Probably the Hasso-Plattner Institute: [http://hpi.de/en.html](http://hpi.de/en.html)

Hard to get in there and i think the deadline just passed.

It is "IT Systems Engineering" not directly CS.</comment>


The Silicon Valley of Transylvania - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/04/06/the-silicon-valley-of-transylvania/ <comment><USER3> This is a nice summary of what's going on - to get to the gist of it, Romania has great technical talent, coming out of decent technical schools.

What severely lacks in Romania, in my view:

a). the business environment; the internal demand isn't enough to support starting and growing business on the local market; building products for external markets from get-go is difficult. This leads to:

b). the business talent; the number of big companies (in the sense of growing into an international market) founded in Romania and managed by Romanian business people can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Leading to:

c). the product talent; since there is no big demand for products in the local market, there is no way to grow local product designers - the people that can and want to design and build a product just find it easier to emigrate, depleting the already small pool of available talent.

All of this leads to companies coming into the country just for technical talent, which is easily employed as outsourcing contractors, and keep the self-perpetuating circle of the tech scene being driven by outsourcing. And this effect is also visible at startup level, where the Romanian-funded startups often have the headquarters, and product designers in US or Canada, and the technical talent in Bucharest or Cluj.

I have no idea how to fix this problem, of even if it is a problem in the first place - I feel that as the local economy matures, niches for specific targeted products will appear, facilitating the development of locally- designed products built by local companies. But starting startups based in Romania targeting foreign markets is still an uphill battle versus companies local to those foreign markets.

<comment><USER4> Very good points! c) goes hand in hand with two other things: many managers are former programmers with little or no appreciation for good product and good UX. And second, romanian designers are still pretty much artists, drawing candy stuff. I know some very good designers with good UX skills, but they are a minority.

Only where you have good managers, good devs, and good designers thinking solely about the people using the product, you'll have a community that gives birth to real software professionals. We're still in the age of Angular v React, Dawn of Outsourcing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Since I'm from that part of the world and traveling a lot there, here is my take on this:

\- All eastern European countries have a great talent but that talent is created during socialist area (free education, focus on math, etc.). However, quality of new talent is not so great. If somebody is good, they go to work in Germany / Austria / Switzerland.

\- Work and business habits are terrible. It seems like they always try to scam you.

\- Society really looks down on entrepreneurship. To be honest, societies in Montenegro, Hercegovina, Romania and Albania are a little more open to entrepreneurship than others but..

\- Laws are very unfriendly for small business / entrepreneurship. Basically, one needs to break the law in order to run the business.

In short, I'm not so optimistic :(

<comment><USER6> For multinational companies, Belarus has been a solid country for sourcing technical talent. (Some work remote while others get visas... being flexible as an employer retains the best people longer.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I worked +10 years in Redmond, WA as a microsoftie and came back to Romania in 2012. Since March 2016 I quit Microsoft and focused 100% on my startup, DBHistory.com. I now rent space and work at a local tech incubator www.techhub.com. I wanted to start with this to to put my opinion in perspective. While the article is bubble-gum and is clear PR, the point it makes is a valid one. Compared even to US, today Romania has a very active entrepreneurship mindset. Small businesses are created all the time, some thrive, some go under. Despite the locals skepticism, I see the economy here as effervescent, with a growth rate still north of 3% (for Europe, this is not bad). The overwhelming majority of this entrepreneurship is _not_ in IT.

But this article is specific to IT, and I do not see the Romanian IT anywhere near its potential. This is because the local IT is almost entirely focused on outsourcing, not on original development. Big companies have significant presence here (Electronic Arts, Adobe, Intel, Microsoft each have ~200,300 dev offices here, although not everything is core R&D ). Original Romania IT has a very strong presence in anti-virus (for some reason it seems a lot of local IT youth are experts on exploits...). Many young IT Romanians choose to go abroad (in Microsoft Romanians are the 4th largest foreign community, after Indians/Chinese/Russians).

Since I've returned I've been approached several times by US/Western Europe based entrepreneurs who desired to move development to Romania and open office here, solely for cost reasons. Purely for outsourcing, this is my 2c:

\- Romania has significant talent pool

\- EU membership (with all tax/export/legislation alignment that entails)

\- Good spoken English is pretty much universal, German/French are common

\- Political stability (governing parties rotated power several times in past 20 years, peacefully)

\- Cost is higher than one would expect. Bucharest/Cluj/Timisoara all have high cost (office) and salaries are higher than some neighbors. If the outsourcing decision is purely cost driven then Ukraine has a better deal for you, with a similar talent pool.

But I would like to see a lot more IT original development coming out from Romania. The article gives some examples, like LiveRail, but overall I see a _lot_ more outsourcing done here than original development. I'm glad projects like cloudhero.io originate here.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, you can register your startup with RomanianStartups.com :). It's free.

<comment><USER7> Thanks, I will

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Like other eastern european countries, Romanians suffer greatly with poor branding and "western-centrism".

While in Germany, I watched clear demonstrations of discrimination towards Romanians in a tech startup. They really had to prove themselves. Although extremelly talented, "jokes" would always fly around the "gypsy stereotype".

That being said, as a startup founder, I'd assume it'd be much harder to raise money from an UK VC firm.

<comment><USER6> Yup. One person's stupidity is another wise, entrepreneur's money-making opportunity... hire LGBTQ, disabled, ex-cons, neurodiversity, anyone whom typical businesses "reject," not just for PR reasons but to win bigger with untapped capabilities others cannot see or manage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "the local higher education system is plagued by corruption" "Education is underfunded and affected by a profound brain drain." (notalaser)

This is so true, sadly! I can imagine the reason Tech Crunch is trying to light the stage in rose colors but it's good to keep your expectations realistic. Don't get me wrong, the Romanian higher education was very self- exigent and managed to spit out high quality specialists for quite a while even after the fall of the Iron Curtain. The good teachers however, were being hunted like crazy. Only in those several years of my Computer Engineering study I've had to witness the departure of half of the professor assistants that were teaching me at one point or another. The good half. On graduation only a small minority of my fellow student colleagues enjoyed meaningful support from their mentors. For most of us the mentorship was only a protocolar procedure, and the quality of our licence projects were being dictated only by our auto-didactic abilities - very far from what I heard University to be once upon a time!

</comment><comment><USER10> I am from Cluj, Romania and I am a developer for some years now. I really know how things are in the IT sector in Cluj and I really know how my country stacks up against others. The article is not accurate and highlights mostly positive aspects.

The programmers are decent and hard working, but nothing spectacular going on. They might not be your first pick when you want innovation. We are mostly self-taught ( thanks DoD for the Internet), and contrast the poor courses that are held at the Romanian universities. There are programmers that range from mediocre to good. Comparing to colleagues from London, or the US, we are not as good. They know more things and are more specialized. They work at a faster pace and work on hard problems. We make decent work though, but nothing mind blowing. If you want guys that can innovate, better look elsewhere like: the US, UK, Finland, Holland and other Nordic countries.

Here is the factual truth about Romania. It is a country of huge contrast. It has really good results in math and compute science Olympiads, but it is at the very bottom at math performance for the population at large. See PISA test results. 40 % of Romanians do not know basic and simple concepts from math. 40 % also are functional illiterates. This is much worse than the US. At the peak level We seem to be very good at IT, yet there is virtually not an algorithm or an innovation that bears a Romanian's name. You learn about Dijkstra, Turing, Fermat and Leibniz, but not Popescu or Iliescu. You hear about how good we are, but no Romanian University is within the top 500 at the computer science section. There is a lot of impostors in our universities and plagiarism is high. The dean of the Technical University of Cluj plagiarized courses from Berkeley and presents them as his own.

Romania has one of the largest internet speed, but only half of the country is connected. And within those that do use it, the vast majority are on Facebook and Youtube. Telekom just published that Romania has the poorest internet usage when it comes to business related activity.

Half of the population still lives in the rural areas, and the conditions are horrible. Over half of Romanian schools do not have running tap water or a decent toilet with flushing water. Mostly are again in the rural areas. But also in the surrounding regions of Cluj, and other major cities, there are entire neighborhoods that do not have access to the sewage network. And they are part of the city of Cluj, not other entities.

Romania is featured as a poor country by World Vision, which needs western support. It is listed among Albania, Georgia and a host of African countries. The orphanage footage of Romania in the 90' comes to mind.

And the list shocking contrast goes on and on.

<comment><USER11> > You learn about Dijkstra, Turing, Fermat and Leibniz, but not Popescu or > Iliescu

Andrei Alexandrescu pops into my head and I'm sure I could find a few more if I thought about it.

> And within those that do use it, the vast majority are on Facebook and > Youtube

As opposed to the west where everyone is using the Internet for maximizing their productivity.

> There is a lot of impostors in our universities and plagiarism is high. The > dean of the Technical University of Cluj plagiarized courses from Berkeley > and presents them as his own.

That is true, I've also been at UT, hehe.

Overall I kinda agree with you though. We are poor and the government won't or can't help us increase innovation rate. The talent is here though, anyone looking to create products does have a good opportunity if they choose to start a business here. In the process the native folk might learn a thing or two about what it takes to create a product and sell it.

<comment><USER10> Yes, there are a few, like Alexandrescu or Mihai Pătrașcu. Don't get me wrong. They are exceptionally smart and hard working. I admire them. But their success, like that of most who participate in Olympiads, is the result of their exceptional hard work and that of a handful of dedicated teachers. It is not the merit of the education system. But you should also know that there are hundreds other like Pătrașcu, from all over the globe. We don't stand out from the crowd. And another thing. I know a single example of a person in Romania who grew up in Romania and became recognized for his work in Romania. Almost all of them had to flew to other universities in the West and there they managed to make great contributions. That is a great contrast as well. The educational environment is so corrupt and unfair that people of genuine value just don't want to work there. Most of them that stay are opportunists. Not all of them, but well over 80%.

:)), yes about the internet usage. The vast majority of people in the west also use it for Facebook or Youtube. Don't get me wrong; I doubt people in Holland skip Facebook and study Dijkstra work :) But a disproportionately higher number of people from those countries use the Internet for more noble purposes. Not just entertainment. As for companies there are a number of statistics that show how they use it for increased productivity. And Romania, as in most statistics, sits at the bottom.

But fair points, nonetheless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm from Cluj! :) I'm working on We Heart Swift - a site dedicated to Swift - over 50.000 people visit it every month. Our main product teaches you how to code in one month. Its similar to codecademy but in the form of mac app [https://www.weheartswift.com/swift-programming- scratch-100-e...](https://www.weheartswift.com/swift-programming- scratch-100-exercises/)

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm from Romania and i run a product business in the western part of the country (Oradea). The article is a pr piece, but one that the .ro tech industry deserves. There's definitely good momentum and we need to use it. The biggest long term risk imho is the outsourcing industry and it's effects.

We started out in outsourcing too but shifted to product in 2008 and managed to build a profitable business selling globally. I'm seeing more and more people interested in making the shift or jumping right into product, however we lack good product managers, marketing and funding. Overall i'm optimistic and i think we have lots to show if we focus our energies in the right direction.

</comment><comment><USER14> > The labor market research firm Brainspotting reports that Romania, with just > 20 million people, ranks in the top 10 globally in number of certified IT > specialists

What exactly is a "certified IT specialist"?

<comment><USER15> Presumably someone who has a BS in Computer Science or related field.

<comment><USER16> No, in this context it means Microsoft/Cisco etc certifications. Unfortunately people with these tend to be worse than the people without them so I'm not sure why this is even brought up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wish people would stop using that phrasing: "The Silicon Valley of" whatever.

</comment><comment><USER18> In light of the actions of the US over the last decade regarding interception of communication, undermining of encryption, intellectual property laws, and promiscuous prosecutions, I don't see any way for it to be the next hotbed of technological innovation.

</comment><comment><USER19> anecdote: my SaaS has about 50 customers, 2 of which are from Romania. That's quite a high representation!

</comment><comment><USER20> Looks like Techcrunch needs new opportunities to empty founders pockets with its "conferences", Romania here they come ...

</comment><comment><USER21> This is so bubble-written it's not funny.

Romania is a country where a large chunk of the populace get around by cart and donkey, where post-communist corruption is rife, where decades on they still can't decide what to do with the half built palace that occupies half of Bucharest, where gangsters run most of the hospitality industry and god knows what else.

It's a chicken and egg problem, of course, as enterprise will bring wealth (in theory) which in turn will solve some of Romania's more immediate woes, but it's still a tiny tiny niche in a very poor country.

Their only saving psychological grace is that Moldova are next door, and they make anyone look rich.

Edit: on a Re-read, this comes across as horribly negative. I'm a big fan of Romania and its prospects - what I failed to mention is that I met a lot of intelligent, interesting and passionate younger people - and they will be the ones that drag Romania solidly into a functioning state - but the reality is that there's a lot of work to do.

<comment><USER22> I live in Romania.

For potential readers: this comment's content is a gross overstatement and does not reflect reality.

For example, over 50% of the population lives in an urban environment (see the CIA Romania Factbook which is very up to date). Even so, it would be wrong to assume that just because some of the country's citizens live in the countryside, they 'get around by cart and donkey'. Also, for the sake of accuracy, where such transportation is used, horses would be much more common as opposed to donkeys.

As for the 'half built palace that occupies half of Bucharest', I presume you're referring to the Palace of the Parliament, with an area of 365000 m2. The urban area of Bucharest occupies 228 km2, or 228000000 m2, significantly more than the area of the building you mentioned.

Edit: I double checked some data in regards to the Palace of the Parliament, the FLOOR AREA is indeed 365000 m2, but since the building has multiple floors, the actual occupied area is smaller. Check the Technical Details on [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_the_Parliament](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_the_Parliament)

<comment><USER21> To be fair, I was last there six years ago, spent most of my time travelling through the the countryside, a few weeks in Cluj, visited friends in Sibiu, and got robbed when I went through Bucharest on my way to Moldova.

So yes, my view is far less accurate than yours, as it's from about six weeks six years ago - but the only place I saw comparable levels of overt corruption was Kyrgyzstan, and I've visited most of the ex-ussr and associated states. This is no judgment on the Romanian or Kyrgyz peoples - this is a sad fact of life after economic oppression - corruption becomes a way of life.

<comment><USER23> I'm sorry for your personal experience, but you should be able to realize that traumatic personal experiences can cloud your opinion about a very complex topic such as a __whole __country.

I visited the US and I wasn't really impressed, for example. But I wouldn't judge the US based on just what I saw in a couple of weeks, considering what I've read and seen about it.

Oh, and regarding corruption: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Anticorruption_Dire...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Anticorruption_Directorate)

<comment><USER21> Oh, I don't have a dim view of Romania though, I loved my time there, I fell in love with Sibiu - actually, a big chunk of what I said/think comes from a buddy from Cluj who I've known 25 years or so - and I hadn't heard about the anticorruption initiative, that's good news.

I had a knife stuck in my back at a cafe and had my camera stolen, and the police officer I found then took my passport and wanted (and got) a bribe to return it. Not a unique experience, I've been held up and hijacked variously around the planet, but it did go to reinforce the Cluj guy's "don't bother with Bucharest, you'll get mugged" anecdotes!

Oh, and driving around rural Romania on single track roads, I guess the donkey carts kinda stick out, as you get a nice long view of the back of them! Selection bias...

Anyway, cheers for the education.

<comment><USER23> Sorry for that :(

Romania actually has a lower crime rate than the US, so you were unlucky.

The cop part is what they're working on with the whole anti corruption initiative.

<comment><USER24> That would heavily depend on what type of crime you're talking about.

For example, corruption is a very serious form of crime. Romania ranks #58 (below Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Croatia, and Greece) on Transparency International's corruption index, compared to the US at #16.

With Romania having such extreme corruption, how can you be certain its crime stats are worth taking seriously? How under-reported is crime - rape, theft, violent crime etc - likely to be in a nation with corruption problems that are that bad? From other countries with even worse corruption (eg Venezuela or Brazil), what we do know is that there tends to be a direct correlation - <USER2> extremely obvious reasons - between high levels of corruption and poor crime reporting.

<comment><USER23> I'm not sure that the police reward system is based on crime stats over here. I.e. the police chief gets more money if he reports fewer crimes. Considering the way people in our public sector think, it's more likely that the police chief would want to report more crimes, since he can hire more people, get more resources and likely more bribes.

And my anecdotal evidence says that Romania is truly a safe country. I probably know 1000+ Romanians and I know 1 that has been robbed while being threatened with a knife and several that have had things stolen from them. This feeling of safety is one of the few things that's reported constantly by people I know, either in rural areas or in urban areas: violence is not wide spread. We even have a proverb that says: "mamaliga explodeaza greu" ("it takes a long tine for mamaliga to explode": mamaliga is a local dish, a sort of corn porridge; the meaning of the expression is that we don't get aggravated quickly; we do talk a lot, curse and threaten and whatever but we tend to not actually fight that much... maybe we're cowards :) ). Most people over here would find the US gung-ho mentality quite threatening ("don't take my guns", "stand your ground").

What does happen constantly, and what the agency I posted above tries to fight, is wide spread practice of asking for bribes for any kind of service performed by a public servant. Which has a huge negative impact on small businesses, especially.

<comment><USER21> Interesting point you make re: small businesses - my friend runs a web development shop, and he was telling me about how they keep accounts, and "accounts", because declaring a profit is a good way to ensure a tax inspector will arrive and won't leave until you bribe him to go away.

Interestingly, this phenomenon isn't limited to Romania - a Latvian friend running a furniture company does the same thing for the same reason - for the first two years of his business he filed genuine books - the first year, they came asking for a bribe, he refused - the second year, they raided him and took all the machine tools - so now he just "makes a loss" every year and they don't bother him.

Similarly, a Lithuanian friend who used to run a telco found himself stuck in the middle of a lover's quarrel between the state telecoms regulator and another telco who had paid a bribe to win a tender, which he then bid for and made things awkward.

Corruption is no joke - I think many underestimate the chilling effect it has on everything from civil liberties to tourism to business to tax revenue collection - if your tax collectors are corrupt, you are well and truly on the road to hell.

Re: Romania feeling safe, you're right - which is in no small part why my experience in Bucharest was such a shock - it was at total odds with the Romania I'd experienced up to that point.

<comment><USER23> They've started sending doctors, cops, clerks, etc. to jail for taking bribes. They're encouraging people to organize stings when asked for money. It is a struggle but things are actually changing.

You have to remember that Romania wasn't all that "clean" even before Communists came and Communism is basically "the state as a criminal organization". Old habits die hard.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Neural network OCR in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mateogianolio/mlp-character-recognition

<comment><USER2> Someone needs to take this and build a captcha service like Google did with reCaptcha and release the results for free. That way we can actually have a free OCR that works very well.

<comment><USER3> You mean this [https://code.google.com/p/tesseract- ocr/](https://code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr/) ?

<comment><USER4> In typical Google fashion, most of their improvements to tesseract are now closed-source. It's barely been updated since 2012. It's also not a works-out- of-the-box kinda tool. You have to do a lot of training, which is pretty buggy and often not trivial. After struggling with it for weeks (undocumented bugs in training, mostly), I just went with a commercial solution with actual customer support.

<comment><USER5> What solution did you go with?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is so cool. I can't believe you don't have any tests; I'd be terrified of breaking something in that code.

<comment><USER7> Isn't it just one big test of success rate ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> awesome. Has anyone done OCR with Caffe btw?

</comment><comment><USER9> This looks great. How does the approach compare to Tesseract? Would it be possible to beat the accuracy of Tesseract with this? Are there any numbers on how long it would take to process an image once trained?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion to measure the image processing time, that could be interesting. To be honest I haven't yet tried Tesseract so I can't make any comparisons.

However, I do believe that converting the network input to character codes (output layer size 4 bits for digits, 8 bits for letters) instead of using a softmax layer (would need 10 bits for digits, 26 bits for letters) is a novel approach that really improves performance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hopefully not used to solve captchas.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there any grey hair counting app? - <AUTHOR> I am tried to see if grey hair count is improving or not.
But is there any app for this task?
Snap a pic, let it count then measure against a benchmark for normal grey hair. <comment><USER2> I believe the founder of Aviato has someone working on this in his incubator.

</comment><comment><USER3> What is "normal grey hair"?</comment>


What Programming Language to Learn (Next) - <AUTHOR> http://www.streamhead.com/what-programming-language-to-learn-next/

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure why you should learn ruby only if you do web things. Is it true ? Is ruby only useful in web projects ?

</comment><comment><USER3> Does this assume you already know C or that you shouldn't learn vanilla C?

<comment><USER4> (I am the creator of that graph) It sort of assumes that you already know C. Back when I started studying software development, C was the starter language, the one language that every one in engineering knew, even if you continued your studies in, for instance, chemistry. I suppose that is no longer the case, though.

There are many hidden assumptions in that graph, which is probably the reason why it stirred up so much discussion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's a really weird way to draw a decision graph.

<comment><USER4> I know, but it was the quickest way to create it. Do you have a good suggestion for an open source Visio-like program? I've tried numerous, but all their interfaces are terrible and their standard shapes and icons aren't very attractive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What's so adventurous about Go? Few libraries?

</comment><comment><USER7> This graphic is obviously wrong, since Scala is in it, and as we all know, Scala is like EJB2 and the next big language is going to be Fantom.

<comment><USER8> LOL</comment></comment>


Understanding current causes of women's underrepresentation in science - <AUTHOR> http://www.pnas.org/content/108/8/3157.full <comment><USER2> It's interesting that you never seem to hear complaints about the underrepresentation of women in the less glamorous/more dangerous professions, like fishing, mining, logging, commercial diving, cleaning out sewers and so on. Nor do you hear anything about how we can improve health and safety in these professions with the aim of reducing death and injury. Its seems like there is clear disregard for men's safety, and that the focus is not on achieving equality for women, but in fact ensuring them a privileged position where they have preferential access to the best careers, and the burden of unpleasant jobs falls squarely on men. I've heard it described as feminism until the life boats come out.</comment>


Tooling Up - <AUTHOR> https://design.google.com/articles/tooling-up/

<comment><USER2> Meta: about half of the page is covered by the header in Safari in landscape mode. This makes it challenging to read, unfortunately.</comment>


Free phone operating system - <AUTHOR> https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/free-phone <comment><USER2> I've been using Replicant since the early days. But I eventually gave up due to lack of updates to latest Android security patches. Unfortunately a free phone isn't useful if it is insecure.

<comment><USER3> I'm curious, I've never had an interest in a free operating system for a phone, I sort of was under the impression Android is free except that sometimes it's device specific eg. they'll stop updating your old model phone. I don't know though. Also if Linux is a free OS and Android is based on Linux?...

What made it insecure? You don't mean password security but what? Vulnerable like WiFi/internet packets? I don't understand. It's interesting though.

I mean when you "Flash a new ROM" or something on your Android device, what is that? You can't just grab a general Android OS and put it on a phone? Interesting stuff but again haven't looked into it before/had a reason to aside from the interest of like Virtual Boxing equivalent on a phone.

<comment><USER4> Not the GP, but it looks like significant number of Android vulnerabilities [1] are local privilege escalation (as in: install an app from a questionable source, app use vulnerability to silently gain root, app siphons off your data and/or wrecks havoc on the phone).

Hefty fraction of local privilege escalation vulnerabilities are in the Linux kernel, and pretty much every single Android device out there ships with its own, unique, outdated out-of-tree kernel with dependencies on a number of version-specific binary-only blobs. End result of all that is - even if underlying vulnerability is fixed in mainline kernel, phone's vendor still needs to repeat this exercise _for each and every phone_. Moreover, because of binary blobs, phone vendor oftentimes has to contact their SoC vendor, SoC vendor has to contact the vendor for that IP block they've shipped binary blob for, etc... All this process is extremely fragile, costly, and lengthy. Not exactly something you want to have in place for security updates. Google somehow manages to do half-decent job updating their Nexus/Pixel phones for few years after hardware hitting the market. Most other vendors drop the ball to some degree here, often completely.

Replicant took on a Sisyphean task of enabling blob-free (a.k.a. 100% free and open-source) firmware to some Android devices. Among other things, this could _eventually_ enable one to use mainline kernel and do security updates much more quickly and efficiently.

Current status however is far from that ideal. Latest "stable" Replicant (4.2) uses various versions of 5-year-old kernel 3.0.x branch [2,3], and didn't achieve fully blob-free status either. That said, you _can_ run blob-free, as long as you can do without 3D, WiFi, bluetooth, hardware-accelerated video and (depending on the hardware) without camera, GPS and NFC too [4].

[1] [https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability- list/vendor_id-1224...](https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability- list/vendor_id-1224/product_id-19997/Google-Android.html)

[2] [https://git.replicant.us/replicant/kernel_samsung_smdk4412/b...](https://git.replicant.us/replicant/kernel_samsung_smdk4412/blob/replicant-4.2/Makefile)

[3] [https://git.replicant.us/replicant/kernel_samsung_espresso10...](https://git.replicant.us/replicant/kernel_samsung_espresso10/blob/replicant-4.2/Makefile)

[4] [http://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/Replican...](http://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/ReplicantStatus#Replicant-42)

<comment><USER3> Wow thanks a lot for the information. Both of my phones are outdated/no longer updated. I guess I should be careful what I install. How would you even know that you're affected? One thing I was was you can have malware that won't go away even flashing I think. You had to do something, as some memory wasn't touched on reformat or something. Man that's crazy, thanks.

<comment><USER5> If a rouge app had root access, it could install a completely undetectable rootkit on the phone. That's why root access is very dangerous -- it means literally unrestricted access to everything on the phone, only limited by the hardware and nothing else.

<comment><USER3> How would you even know that you were compromised, I think even system logs might be wiped to prevent detection.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


It's a good time to go back to MP3's - <AUTHOR> https://write.as/misprints/nows-a-good-time-to-go-back-to-mp3s <comment><USER2> Somehow it reminded me of WinAmp

<comment><AUTHOR> Good ol winamp</comment></comment>