How much deposit do you need for a home loan in America? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Traditionally, banks required so-called "down payments" of 20% of the purchase price of the house (i.e. they were willing to finance up to 80% of the purchase price of the house, no more). At the height of the bubble, it was not uncommon to get mortgages with "no money down", i.e. with no down-payment (and 100% -- or more! -- of the purchase price of the house lent by the bank).

These days norms are in a bit of flux: many banks will accept a nominal down payment (at, say, 5% of price) and charge an extra fee for private mortgage insurance (PMI) until your equity in the property exceeds 20% of the purchase price (that will take a number of years, typically, if you pay mortgages on the agreed-upon schedules). This insurance protects the bank in the event of your default.

This is all negotiable (though some banks are more willing to negotiate than others).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the info. I missed out on the no down-payment loans here in Australia. 20% seems to be around the same as here now.

The reason I'm looking at American property is you can buy homes in SF for significantly less than here.

For example $350 for this: [http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/450-London- St-94112/h...](http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/450-London- St-94112/home/1934372)

Compared to $550 for this: [http://www.realestate.com.au/property-house-qld- albion-10686...](http://www.realestate.com.au/property-house-qld- albion-106861333)

In Sydney a property like that would be +$700k

<comment><USER3> That house is tiny, looks to be in poor repair, and is in one of the worst neighborhoods in San Francisco (Excelsior, adjacent to Bayview, which _is_ the worst neighborhood in San Francisco; I lived there for a few months).

The median home sale price in Excelsior _is_ $550k; and again, that's in one of the less desirable neighborhoods in San Francisco.

If you can buy a house anywhere in the world, or even anywhere in the United States, for god's sake don't buy a crappy house in one of the most inflated real estate markets in the entire world.

(FWIW, we put --- I believe --- 10% down on our house, 5 years ago).</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which Ruby on Rails Book? - <AUTHOR>

Obviously there are great online resources, but I'd like to crack the spine and smell the pages of an actual book.
-I'm new to Ruby, but a fast learner.
-I've had enough of PHP.
-I understand object orientated coding and MVC design principles.
-I want something that gets me up to speed on the idiosyncrasies of Ruby and the Rails framework.
Any tips would be greatly appreciated. Thanks :)
Edit: Formatting <comment><USER2> Last Fall I bought Agile Web Development with Rails ([http://pragprog.com/titles/rails3/agile-web-development- with...](http://pragprog.com/titles/rails3/agile-web-development-with-rails- third-edition)) and found it to be very helpful in transitioning from .Net to Rails. Based on how you describe your experience, you would do fine with this book.

There are a few more basic books, however, I didn't want to read 500 pages just to learn how to build a blog.

I also recommend watching some of the Peep Code videos as they go more into depth on specific topics.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. This looks great. It's exactly the sort of thing I am looking for as I too don't want waste time re-learning the basics!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/55574/learning-ruby-on- ra...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/55574/learning-ruby-on-rails)

<http://stackoverflow.com/questions/83784/rails-books>

</comment><comment><USER4> In all honesty, read through _why's (poignant) guide to ruby first to understand the basics of Ruby and read some cool comics along the way.

Once you're happy you've got a good footing in Ruby (will only take an afternoon+evening to read and try the examples) you can go for one of the many "Rails" books that are likely to be recommended here.

<http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/>

Crunchy Bacon!

<comment><AUTHOR> This guide is excellent. Reading it now!

Thanks for the tip!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is the single most impressive item you've seen on a resume? - <AUTHOR>

Hopefully there are some interviewers here on HN who can tell some educational and entertaining stories without violating anyone's privacy. I'd also be happy to hear from individuals who have great resumes themselves. <comment><USER2> I'm impressed if it appears that the resume was rewritten for the specific job I am hiring for. That's what I do.

What this mainly means is editing and accentuating.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your approach has the added benefit of making it more likely that your resume will make it through HR recruiter screening. I know that having a biochemistry degree instead of a computer science degree has made some HR employees immediately reject my resume -- once I reach a technical interview I do well, but if I don't personally know the hiring manager it can be difficult to reach the technical interview in companies that have a large number of applicants.</comment></comment>


Quantum cryptography is unbreakable. So is human ingenuity - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/ideas/quantum-cryptography-is-unbreakable-so-is-human-ingenuity <comment><USER2> I'm not really sure what the point of this was. First of all, it's titular claim is incorrect - quantum cryptography is not "unbreakable" (and nor does that claim entirely make sense given how mature entire quantum cryptosystems are)[1]. Components like quantum key distribution are reasonably well-studied and do provide an information-theoretically secure solution for _key exchange_...but that is one component of successfully secured communication.

The article starts off pretty strong with a reasonably accurate exploration into how public-key crypto was invented in the 70s, and how quantum computers could eliminate the RSA problem. But then it veers into this weird territory about the government wanting to control crypto, and proceeds to talk about criminals and terrorists typically misusing otherwise strong crypto. I'm not sure how we ended up there...

It goes on like that, then just sort of ends with this vague point about human ingenuity. It seems like Aeon just wanted to write a headline with the words "quantum" and "cryptography." It's really short and didn't make any interesting point, in my opinion.

_____________

1\. Scott Aaronson is a reasonable place to start reading about quantum information theory/computing, and its implications for quantum cryptography in general. Try [http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2673](http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2673) instead of breathless reporting.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, the article feels like someone had a rambling conversation with a crypto nerd in a coffee house, ranging from how things work to recent crypto- politics, and then tossed off an article later.

I say that because I've had those conversations myself - it is hard to explain much crypto-related without getting in to politics, because politics has shaped modern crypto. But then you've just explained a lot of dense history, politics and math in a bundle, and confused the heck out of someone. Not only because it is dense, but because far more people think they understand something about crypto than actually do. (This includes me.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have tried to withhold negativity online generally, to good effect, however I have to make an exception in this case: This article is somewhat fluffy and of limited value.

I make an exception because I _really like Aeon_ , and whenever a fluffy article makes it to the front page invariably it leads to commentators criticizing Aeon as "pseudo-intellectual", etc. To offset this I've submitted a fantastic recent article on "Our Quantum Problem" \- [https://aeon.co/essays/what-really-happens-in- schrodinger-s-...](https://aeon.co/essays/what-really-happens-in-schrodinger- s-box)

<comment><USER5> "Value" these days is calculated by social media and search engine algorithms. The article hits all the right topics, even if they don't cohere.

<comment><USER2> I usually shy away from saying things like this, but what you speak of is a really great way to ensure class rulership. An educated elite that manufactures information algorithmically tuned to get views with no regard for the accuracy of the information. What a sad feedback loop.

<comment><USER5> I did not say it was a good thing. Just explanatory. Now we get word salad from the president, and 40% of the people are fine with that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Quantum cryptography is not unbreakable. See, for example: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1106.3224.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1106.3224.pdf)

(Insert usual quote about the difference between theory and practice.)

<comment><USER2> It's really disheartening to see the media proclaim things like "quantum cryptography is unbreakable" with fundamental misunderstandings about what it even is, how it works and what its limitations are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What's interesting is that we have finally pushed "unbreakable" cryptography into a curious situation: _either_ quantum cryptography is truly unbreakable _or_ our understanding of physics is wrong in some drastically fundamental way (okay... or the less likely third scenario that the proof of unbreakability is flawed in some subtle way).

Regardless of whether option 1 or 2 is the case, it's incredibly exciting either way. Eventually we'll have unbreakable crypto or a new paradigm shift in physics.

<comment><USER2> The less likely scenario you speak of is the actual scenario.</comment></comment>


Deutsche Telekom pays malware blackmailers - <AUTHOR> https://translate.google.de/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.deutschlandfunk.de%2Fcyber-attacken-krieg-der-hacker.724.de.html%3Fdram%3Aarticle_id%3D322503&edit-text=

<comment><USER2> Here is the relevant part:

> _Any company that operates on the Internet, experienced this blackmail. With > us, of Deutsche Telekom, is the last one, I think four weeks ago. > Incidentally, we have paid. We had no other option._

That passage was removed from the text-version of the article for several days for "editorial reasons". Presumably the Deutsche Telekom asked to have the passage removed.</comment>


An Android port for the Touchpad has just started development - <AUTHOR> http://www.touch-droid.com/ <comment><USER2> I'm all for hey-why-not geek cred, but the reason for getting a Touchpad is WebOS. There is nothing intrinsically special about the hardware that deserves Android (except that it is cheap right now).

I'd be more impressed with figuring a way to get WebOS onto other devices.

<comment><USER3> just picked up one this weekend, some reasons are:

1\. WebOS international support is terrible. This is a huge reason to get Android on it. They've completely ignored it.

2\. The browser while good, the card system is slow when trying to use it as a tabbed browser. Opening a new link in a new card is quite slow. I don't care for app support because their browser is good, but if you are going to rely on the browser at least have a decent tabbed browser. Look at Dolphin browser on Android to see how a mobile browser should be done. Also another limitation seems to be I can't download files from the browser ex dropbox.

3\. Overall the system feels sluggish. Android has multitasking right, WebOS doesn't. After the Android team optimizes and overclocks this hardware, I imagine its going to be pretty good.

4\. Lack of Customization, I can't even make a picture fullscreen wallpaper on the background. And since you can't place anything on the desktop/wall area.. a nice big picture would look good.

Overall its solid and feels polished, but WebOS is overall really lacking and compared to Honeycomb I don't see it as better. The best thing is flash support works great, and I can watch all the media I want from streaming flash sites. The biggest benefit is getting honeycomb/Ice cream sandwich on a solid tablet for $100.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I picked up two TouchPads this weekend for my wife and I (but also spent half my weekend tracking them down). I really like the hardware and webOS for browsing, facebook and email but the app selection is severely lacking.

I would LOVE to put Android on it for the apps but have doubts that it will come to fruition. There's an influx of new TouchPad users but it's reached it's peak and can only go down from here.

</comment><comment><USER5> I am a little puzzled by this project because: a) there was a recent post on techcrunch about how webos runs twice as fast on a hacked ipad, how the hardware isn't that great at all and how this was a pretty widespread belief in the HP team b) android hardware is evolving very very fast These two observations would suggest that by the time android is ported to the touchpad it will be an obviously obsolete piece of unsupported hardware

</comment><comment><USER6> Just picked up my own Touchpad from Barnes and Noble ($100, 16GB) and look forward to hacking around with it.

<comment><USER7> Have you got yours? If I go to 'my account' there it says 'unable to process order'.

<comment><USER8> I ordered mine (without using a B&N account) an hour ago, and it went fine: Email receipts and everything! Check with your bank to make sure it's not a problem on your side.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wish there was a port to ExoPC. I have one laying around, completely useless.

<comment><USER10> Why is it useless? According to the specs you should be able to run Windows 7 on it. Of course, maybe that's exactly why it's useless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Their first blog post is far, far, far from hope inspiring. <http://www.touch- droid.com/2011/08/21/who-we-are/> (Edit) And indeed the sight of a certain username causes me to be very unsurprised.

<comment><USER10> I'm curious to know how they will deal with all the hardware drivers for the Touchpad-specific hardware. I'm not keeping my hopes up. I'd be more interested in people making tweaked/customized WebOS ROMs for it.

<comment><USER11> I assumed with the kernel sources available and access to the drivers available on current Touchpad ROMs, that that wouldn't be the hardest part of it, but I don't know what work it takes to get those drivers and kernel to work with Android.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Obviously fueled by HP's deep price cut, hope the momentum keeps going after HP runs out of the stock.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'd be more impressed getting linux to run on all of the above. Touchpad, android phones, toasters, etc.

why have a dumbed down version where you must either a) have no control to menial tasks like editing /etc/hosts or _gasp_ opening an ssh session; b) let any app do as it whish with your data

I used to run linux with window maker on a 386 compaq portable. 1/100 of the cpu of my phone. 1/3 of the screen pixel of my nexus one.

get away with those toy OSes. Enough is enough.

<comment><USER14> I think you don't know what are you talking about: Android is linux and you can edit /etc/hosts as you wish.

You can even get in an ssh session as simple as an app...

And for b) : what an app can do is stated before install. "English, _my friend_. Do you speak it?" (Or any other language fyi)

<comment><USER13> in another thread i'm downvoted when people says that multiuser is essential for a desktop and i call it a minor annoyance for 99% of the setups.

here i'm downvoted because i want multiused on my mobile stuff.

And if you blindly trust android control model, i'm sorry. The non-rooted ROMs google distribute over the air has some sandboxing control but then your launcher and every other program is boxed out of basic functionality, such as editing /etc/hosts and running ssh or loading a tun driver. If you allow your stuff to run 'as root' then you can't believe any app until you coded it yourself --which is fine with me, this worked well on the PC.

<comment><USER14> you can edit hosts without root with adb, if you don't want to root. If you want to live in a post-pc world you can simply grant root privileges to one single app for one single session...

I bet that if you don't trust any app on the market, you can simply write one for yourself, pay someone to write one or find one that is open source (and pay someone to audit it) and build it+sideload that app on your phone. Too complicated? Sure it is. Make your trade off</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How do you open files with a . in front of it? - <AUTHOR>

I'm on a Mac and just started learning rails via railstut.org, I see examples of files with a period in front of the file name such as this '.gitignore'. I can't see these files in their folders, am I doing something wrong? Help is much appreciated. <comment><USER2> Open up Terminal and run the following command defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE

They should also show up just fine in terminal without having to run that command if you just do an ls.

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://www.joshklein.net/how-to-show-hidden-files-in-mac- os-...](http://www.joshklein.net/how-to-show-hidden-files-in-mac-os-x-lion)

</comment><comment><USER4> Hidden config files. You should be able to open them using a text editor if you really want to. <http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/explain-linux-unix-dot- files/> <http://help.github.com/ignore-files/></comment>


Show HN: Hoist – Zapier for Developers (scripting done in Node.js) - <AUTHOR> http://hoist.io/ <comment><USER2> I added Twitter, clicking the expand arrow to the right of twitter in 'Your Connectors' opens a new blank tab. (Firefox)

This looks cool though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! I'll check it out now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why do you autopick user slug to be "<first-name><last-name><user-id>"?!

<comment><USER4> it's not user id but actually just a random number. it's unrelated to your ID (which are actually more complex than just integers). The random number is there just to ensure we don't get collisions on slugs.

<comment><USER3> This is a pretty bad practice. You should use hashids [0] for this, instead!

[0] [http://hashids.org/](http://hashids.org/)

<comment><USER4> thanks for the link, I agree it's bad practice if there's any kind of lookup/security based on the slug. We have a few other mitigations against looking up anything security wise from the slug itself. but will take it into consideration as I agree it increases guess-ability of the slugs and could leave us open in future.

<comment><USER3> It's just an eyesore. If I see some random ID, I won't be bothered, but to see my name with some suffix to it - it's ugly and not a common practice anyway. There are better ways to generate unique IDs and hashids make them pretty short as well (shorter than their numerical counterparts, I mean).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It wiped my database clean?? WHY?? WHY??

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure what you mean by "your database" and what was wiped clean?</comment></comment>


Pkg.go.dev is more concerned with Google's interests than good engineering - <AUTHOR> https://drewdevault.com/2020/08/01/pkg-go-dev-sucks.html <comment><USER2> > Go is a pretty good programming language. I have long held that this is not > attributable to Google's stewardship, but rather to a small number of > language designers and a clear line of influences which is drawn entirely > from outside of Google — mostly from Bell Labs. pkg.go.dev provides renewed > support for my argument: it has all the hallmarks of Google crapware and > none of the deliberate, good engineering work that went into Go's design.

Putting aside the criticisms, I think a new word is needed to describe anti- Google sentiment of this flavor. The idea that Google is incapable of doing anything positive, so anything "good" coming out of Google must be attributable to influences outside of Google.

I'd like to think about it as a "no true Googler" argument. The Go team are not true Googlers, because they produce something useful. When they built that module proxy however, they were clearly so doing as Googlers. (As someone who works at Google, I can humorously imagine that when I'm acting as a true Googler, my only goal is to foist new crapware onto the world, get promoted, and kill it off.)

Or maybe we recognize that companies are collections of individuals, and all individuals bring their own history and influences. The culture shapes them and they shape it back. Playing semantic games to divide and attribute isn't useful.

<comment><USER3> This is not a "no true Googler" argument, but a factual statement supported by the history of Go. The design of Go is _heavily_ inspired by Plan 9, Inferno, and Limbo, none of which came from within Google. In fact - name any of the flagship features of Go and I'll draw a line for you from that feature into the historical influences. Goroutines, channels, garbage collection, GOPATH... none of these were invented by Go.

<comment><USER2> Right, but Go itself, which _builds_ on those ideas was built within Google. I have no objection to attributing ideas, but you seem to want to attribute some general "quality of engineering" attributes to "not Google".

The people doing things you like are just as much Googlers as all the people doing things you don't like, and they all have an influence on the company and vice versa. In many cases, it's even the same people.

So the distinctions you are trying to draw are silly. Just let the criticisms stand on their own.

<comment><USER4> FWIW, Drew's position on Go is hardly even unique. Someone who is quite fond of Go was telling me last week about how I should consider learning it despite it being from Google, because it is not very Google-like of a project. And that wasn't the first time I'd heard it either.

(Myself, I am usually just trying to build stuff people wrote in Go, and I usually end up fighting the tooling for a while and getting mystified by the error messages and having no idea where to look to solve them.)

<comment><USER5> I avoided Go for years because it was from Google until I quite accidentally landed a Go job several years ago, and I haven't looked back. Amusingly, I am now using Go to build a competitor for Google Analytics. Heh.

It was an important lesson in a way, as it taught me that Google – or indeed, any organisation comprised of thousands of people – is not a single monolithic entity.

Also, feel free to drop me a line if you've got problems with a specific error, and I can perhaps point you in the right direction.

<comment><USER4> I did get the thing last week to build! :) My Go-recommending friend seemed to think the script I was using was pulling in Go 1.11 where modules were not as well supported as they are now? But I got around it.

It was just that the error message I got really gave me nothing useful to search for. Literally was a "permission denied" error... while "go build"ing stuff with effective superuser. It wasn't really pointing me at what it didn't have permission to do or how I would go about getting it.

<comment><USER5> "Permission denied" usually happens when it tries to build stuff in "GOROOT", that is, the standard library installed in /usr/lib/go or some such. This normally shouldn't happen, so there's probably something wrong with your installation or setup. Hard to be 100% sure though, that's just the usual cause in my experience.

I think Debian ships with Go 1.11 in current stable (and by extension, Ubuntu too, I assume?). The entire GOPATH to modules switch is messy, ugly, broke a lot of stuff, and is confusing for newcomers, even though modules is clearly better. I think we're finally nearing the end of it though.

You probably want to just use Go 1.14 (the latest version) if you can. The language itself is very stable (just not the surrounding tooling).

<comment><USER4> I can definitely say it's the tooling that throws me every time. And I do think we pull from Debian for that script currently, though we're going to update it soon. (I think I was told 1.15 was near anyways?)

<comment><USER5> Overall I find that the tooling is actually really nice, and better than anything I've worked with previously. It's just this weird "old method vs. new method" schism that makes it hard :-/ It's restricted to just tooling, but kind of Go's Python 3 moment.

And yeah, I believe Go 1.15 should be released in August. rc1 was released last week or so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> These two points alone are honestly just bad news for Golang on the whole

>> pkg.go.dev fetches the list of modules from proxy.golang.org: a closed- source proxy through which all of your go module fetches are being routed and tracked

>> pkg.go.dev hard-codes a list of centralized git hosting services [that are the only allowed ones]

<comment><USER7> _> > pkg.go.dev hard-codes a list of centralized git hosting services [that are the only allowed ones]_

So how in the world did git.lukeshu.com get to be on that list?

[https://pkg.go.dev/git.lukeshu.com/go/libfastimport](https://pkg.go.dev/git.lukeshu.com/go/libfastimport)

<comment><USER3> Note that some features are absent here. You can't click on any of the declarations to view their source, for example. This is the degraded view for unknown hosts.

<comment><USER8> That does not work in the old godoc.org either:

[https://godoc.org/git.lukeshu.com/go/libfastimport](https://godoc.org/git.lukeshu.com/go/libfastimport)

So that's not against pkg.dev. Did somebody look into why?

Anyway it seems that the repo was not added to pkg.dev automatically:

[https://github.com/golang/go/issues/38326](https://github.com/golang/go/issues/38326)

and the automatic fetching should work now:

[https://github.com/golang/go/issues/37002](https://github.com/golang/go/issues/37002)

<comment><USER3> See my comment here which explains how "go-source" works:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24024130](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24024130)

It doesn't work on godoc.org not because they don't recognize your domain, but because cgit doesn't have go-source meta tags.

<comment><USER8> There was a proposal to add a new go-source-2 meta tag, but that was abandoned because a lot of code hosting sites would not have been supported yet:

[https://github.com/golang/go/issues/39559](https://github.com/golang/go/issues/39559)

[https://github.com/golang/go/issues/40477](https://github.com/golang/go/issues/40477)

That is why they decided to turn it into an internal/source package inside pkgsite first to have test cases for a later go-source-2. If your site does not show source links on pkg.go.dev then add a comment to issue 40477 above and an exception will be added.

\- internal/source: [https://github.com/golang/pkgsite/blob/master/internal/sourc...](https://github.com/golang/pkgsite/blob/master/internal/source/source.go)

Note1: Maybe mention this on your website because that took a little to find. It does not fit into the narrative though.

Note2: Requiring frontends to offer meta tags is the only way to make code discoverable with the url alone. cgit not offering this is on cgit and not on Go/pkgsite (haven't checked whether they do)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> These are fair criticisms. Still though, there are some pretty sweeping generalizations about Google being made here. The company is as big as a city. Not all of their engineering culture is like this.

Take what I'm saying with a grain of salt; slightly biased since I worked there for a bit in the past.

<comment><USER10> >Not all of their engineering culture is like this.

Sure. I'll grant you Junio; he seems like a cool guy.

The rest of google though? Google's engineering culture is by and for google. They're not doing the rest of us any favors.

Googlers need to admit that. Not to me, but to themselves.

<comment><USER11> I'm seriously astonished by the depth of these Freudian analyses of the dark underbelly that is Google's "engineering culture", and how everything bad with the world can be linked to ...

... a meaningless decision to have a transparent proxy in some network path some free code takes on its way to you?

<comment><USER10> >a meaningless decision

If it's so meaningless, now that Drew has complained they can just make the alterative the default for their software right? Right? It is MEANINGLESS afterall.

When faced with a decision, someone chose the option that took extra operational expenses to keep services online. If you're going to call that a meaningless, then you've either a huckster or have got quite a lot to learn my friend.

<comment><USER11> Exactly! It's so meaningless they shrugged and flipped a switch when asked to do so in a single blog post. Try that feat with any policy decision google actually does care about!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One of the reasons that despite Go's several advantages, I still prefer an open language like C++ for native programming. Go is Google's language and people should _never_ forget it.

</comment><comment><USER13> Probably another instance of someone making a new shiny to get promoted, after which it will be abondoned.

</comment><comment><USER14> Remember, Go is MIT-licensed. If things become too bound to Google, it can and will be forked. People thought it was the end of the world when multiple Java SDKs arose didn't they? (Not to say that didn't hurt Java, but the language survived).

<comment><USER15> Is anyone forking it to remove the Google taint?

I'm aware of TinyGo, but not any other forks

<comment><USER5> What Google taint is there in the Go compiler/command?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There is some complexity here. Go is one of the few programming languages with a fully-decentralized module system. I can upload a module to example.com, and you can use a module from example.com with no centralized coordination. This is very different from systems like Node/npm or Perl/CPAN, where if you want to write a module, you have to beg them for permission first. (This is a moneymaking opportunity, too. You can charge people for your package system if they want to keep their code private. And npm does! With Go, you can have private modules for free!)

There end up being some problems with this model. Popular modules might be hosted on some server that can't stand the load, and if you can't pull dependencies, the entire module system breaks down. So, you probably actually want the modules on a CDN, because high availability is important for CI systems. Before Go automatically pulled from Google's module proxy, I had my own. I had to, because Github rate-limited our pulls (and when it wasn't rate- limiting us, it was slow). Setting that up was a few hours I had to spend for no good reason -- it didn't make my product better, except by making some incidental step between idea and deployment slightly faster. You can of course vendor your modules (now your git clone is slow), or add caching to your builds (go's caching is very good, but doesn't play well with Docker). All of them take your time and mental energy to do something unimportant. So, Google made a module proxy that Go pulls from by default. It works every time. It probably costs them almost nothing. There is no business value in it. Google doesn't need Go for anything. They just have some employees that want to improve the lives of average programmers. You can turn it off. You can host your own -- go/x has an example proxy, and there are full-fledged open source projects that add more features (Athens). It's actually a very good situation. You can be as centralized or as decentralized as you desire.

Going back to centralized package databases, they do have some really useful features. The main one I use is looking at users of a package that I'm reading documentation for. No example code in the repository? No problem. You can go see how other people are using it. The problem there is getting a list of all possible packages. You can poll common repository hosts for them. You can convince everyone to use a certain proxy that gets the names of the modules you are using so you can go index them. That's what Google does, and the user experience is great. You trade Google the information "the IP address 220.127.116.11 uses github.com/foo/bar" to get the knowledge of every Go module in the world. Seems like a good trade. And you can easily fork go and tell it to use your proxy, and make your own package database. The code is open. The license allows it. Go for it!

Would it make more sense for Go to be owned by something like the CNCF instead of Google? Sure. But they did make it, so it's kind of their choice. It is pointless for a large company to make a brand new programming language, but they did it anyway, and it's nice that we have it. They give us lots of free stuff and ask for nothing in return. The fact that your CI system pulled a Go module is not something that advertisers are salivating over. If you want to hurt Google because you don't like them, ask your lawmakers to make advertising illegal. That would show them! But caching Go modules is not a big moneymaker for Google, it's just kind of a nice thing they do because a few employees thought it would be good. I appreciate it. If you don't, set up Athens and forget about them. I am sure you can render godoc just as nicely as pkg.go.dev with only a few hours of work. The thing is, it's boring and nobody would care.

<comment><USER17> You can install node packages from any git host or tarball url.

[https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/install](https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/install)

You can also use any registry you want.

[https://docs.npmjs.com/using-npm/registry.html](https://docs.npmjs.com/using- npm/registry.html)

<comment><USER16> True! This does exist, however: [https://www.npmjs.com/products](https://www.npmjs.com/products)

<comment><USER18> So they do offer private package hosting as a business like GitHub offers private git repos side by side with public plans? I'm not seeing what you're trying to point out. They've built something and they're charging money for it. You're welcome to use any other private npm registry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is anyone aware of any third-party project which attempts to audit sum.golang.org (and/or sum.golang.google.cn)?

Its design is similar to that of certificate transparency, in that changes or deletions (e.g. DMCA takedowns or FISA warrants) are supposed to be detectable; see:

[https://go.googlesource.com/proposal/+/master/design/25530-s...](https://go.googlesource.com/proposal/+/master/design/25530-sumdb.md)

I'm curious if anyone has actually tried to audit it.

</comment><comment><USER20> A little off-topic. I like Go but haven't used it in a while.

While offline I remember a couple go command operations were surprisingly giving me proxy.golang.org or network unavailable errors. In the sense that it had no reason to touch the network. Can you refresh my memory what they were? Or if they are still present? I can't for the life of me find or remember the answer.

It was what made me discover some of the things the article mentions, like the package index.

<comment><USER21> If you download a package that supports go mod and try to build it, it'll automatically try to fetch dependencies through proxy.golang.org

You can override the proxy, and there are open source implementations of the module datastore[1], but it's not made clear front and centre to the end user that building software will call a Google owned service.

It was a source of contention for some when the default toolchain moved in this direction.[2]

[1] [https://github.com/gomods/athens](https://github.com/gomods/athens)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20870264](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20870264)

<comment><USER15> also, you can choose not to use the module system entirely, and just `go get` packages the old-skool way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Not surprised at all, what did you expect? it's Google after all.

If it were me (or my company), I would refuse to use a programming language created by a surveillance capitalist like Google.

What's next? telemetry in the Go language?

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm thankful they open sourced pkg.dev and that they continue to bring it on par with godoc.org. Keep up the good work!

</comment><comment><USER23> I understand the complaints, but Go is Google's language just like Ruby on Rails is Basecamp's framework. This is not a secret! Also, I think this is fine? If your interests align with the owners, then you can really benefit. If not, then you are better off choosing a different solution.

</comment><comment><USER24> This article names, what I have had as a feeling for a long time: "Oh it created by Google … ah this will suck." Take whatever you want. GMail, YouTube, Google Search, Google's online office products (they are sooo soo basic, so that even the most basic used can handle it, with no way to unlock great functionality), Google Hangout, you name it. It all sucks. You are the product, a used and not a user.

Mostly the reason is probably, that this kind of software is only written with the most basic and common used in mind, not with the one, who wants to customize everything to their own personalized needs or a user, who does not require big corp to tell them "what they want". Google targets another group of people.

So I think the wording "crapware" pretty much covers it.

Of course ethical questions like the ones raised in the article … I guess they don't usually even enter the equation at Google.</comment>


The origin story of robots.txt - <AUTHOR> http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/06/how_i_got_here_in_the_end_part_3.html

<comment><USER2> This passage caught my eye:

"I eyeballed the Wyse terminal in the office behind her. "I thought you said you had Microsoft Word running on that?" I asked. "My handwriting's not very good ... mind if I use it?"

I'm just wondering, do you, fellow typists, suffer from a similar atrophy of handwriting skills? I was never any good to begin with, even when they used to drill us pretty hard about penmanship back in grade school. Let's just say things have only gone downhill from there.

<comment><USER3> Clarification:

I'm left-handed, write somewhat crabbily at the best of times, and was suffering somewhat from mild RSI at the time. Half an hour isn't very long; I can type a lot faster than I can hand-write, so to make even a token stab at the task I needed a keyboard.

I'm just startled that nobody else ever asked the obvious question ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would have called this "a story about the fall of SCO", rather that "The origin story of robots.txt".Robots.txt is really just mentioned in a passer-by sentence in the middle of whole thing.

That being said, it was a interesting enough read.</comment>


AVA: A Finely Labeled Video Dataset for Human Action Understanding - <AUTHOR> https://research.googleblog.com/2017/10/announcing-ava-finely-labeled-video.html <comment><USER2> From the download page:

> The AVA dataset contains 192 videos split into 154 training and 38 test > videos. Each video has 15 minutes annotated in 3 second intervals, resulting > in 300 annotated segments.

So basically this is a couple of CSV files annotating 192 videos, which are hosted on YouTube. ava_train_v1.0.csv is about 7 MB.

<comment><USER3> > basically this is a couple of..

I would prefer accuracy over complexity any day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> the most interesting thing i found was "We use movies as the source of AVA".

while the datasets will only grow, movies are not realistic - they are by design faked, acted, well lit etc. While that is probably the best thing to do with a starting set i am waiting for the CNN/RNN to start saying (much like the early black female standford researcher who was not identified as human face) that person is not walking - i know walking, it's just like John Cleese.

<comment><USER5> this is what makes this dataset poor. other datasets mentioned in the blog are based off youtube which is more realistic. movie based datasets have perfect lighting, center the subject are almost never useful (e.g. HMDB)

<comment><USER6> YouTube/Flickr/etc are far from ideal data sources. Do dogs drive cars? Flickr has tons of photos of dogs driving cars, eating ice cream, and doing tons of other rare-for-dogs things. Ultimately whatever the raw data source is what matters is how well is it curated, and that's always going to be a highly labor intensive job that can be done well or poorly regardless of the source of the images being curated.

<comment><USER5> these are not random, raw youtube video datasets. they are hand curated dataset in specific classes (like using mechanical turk). youtube has really diverse videos with different lighting, and real world scenarios which makes it an excellent dataset. Movie clips look great but models trained on them are useless in real world.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


House Keys copyable from 200 ft away via camera - <AUTHOR> http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/news/news_releases/release.sfe?id=791 <comment><USER2> This is perhaps an unintentional demonstration that "insecure against absurdly complex and specific attacks" does not always mean "insecure."

For a web system that is under attack 24/7 from 255^4 different attack vectors, you need "secure against even absurdly complex attacks" to be "secure."

But for my house? Your average thief isn't going to spend the time to take a high-res photo of my keys. Instead, they're just going to beat me until I give them my keys (the original "rubber-hose crytography") or just take a crowbar to the door. It's just not worth it to use such a complex attack.

(Yes, I can see uses for being able to break in without giving away the fact of the breakin, and I'd be surprised if the CIA/NSA/etc hadn't already used a similar technique, but for everyday life it's just a cool theoretical hack that would make a great plot point in a Neil Stephenson novel.)

<comment><USER3> This still seems like a valid low-tech hacking technique. Simply take photos of anyones keys (easy to do if you are planning it out) and run some software. This seems like a potentially big problem for any facility secured by only lock and key (schools, homes, safety deposit boxes, PO boxes, cars, storage, etc.).

<comment><USER4> Any facility secured by only lock and key is vulnerable to anyone with a pickgun or a lock pick set and a little skill anyway. Security isn't reliant on locks, it's reliant on behavior.

<comment><USER5> If you make a fake key, then you can walk in with people all around without looking suspicious. You can even act like the owner whilst in a group of non- conspirators. Even with a great picking kit, it's going to look different to anyone looking somewhat closely.

Depending on the level of physical security surrounding the lock itself, this difference could be as extreme as the difference between knowing the password and having a great rainbow table. In the former case, you can log in as the owner without arousing any suspicion. In the latter case, you have to have some time when nobody is looking (download the hashed password database).

<comment><USER6> So get a big bright "ABC Locksmithing" shirt printed up and carry a toolbox while commiting crimes. Odds are good nobody will notice you then. Or just change the lock and come back later for the theft, now that you have a key.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How often do people leave their keys out in the open like that? Mine are in my pocket until I am at the door (actually, most of my doors are RF or keypad, I use very few metal keys).

This is really nothing new thought if you have studied locks at all. All the common keylocks (eg: standard house locks, most vehicles, etc.) have a fixed/known set of tumblers, and a fixed/known set of pin codes. When I was more interested in physical lock mechanisms about 18 years ago I had the GM tumbler height elevations pretty well memorized, plus a good stock of blanks and templates. I could look at most GM keys, "read" the code (like 5,4,4,3,1) and then go off and make a key that would work 90% of the time. Same thing for Ford locks. It was fun to move a friends vehicle in the high school parking lot, but the novelty wore off quickly. This article seems to be the same thing, except rather than having to say something like "cool keychain, can I see it?", you have to take a high-res pic of their key from 300 feet.

<comment><USER8> Well, would you notice somebody sitting in a car 100ft away, taking a picture at the moment you put your key into the lock? A picture of a key on a table is useless anyway, since you (most likely) don't know what lock it fits with. With a van with a computer and a small key-making tool in the back, you can sit somewhere until the residents come home, take a picture and have the key made by the time the residents go out again and then you can enter without breaking anything.

Of course the camera can be hidden so that nobody would even see a guy in a van taking pictures, just a guy eating a sandwich who could push a button to take the picture unnoticed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> British television broadcasters now routinely blur images of keys for this reason. If you have access to BBC iPlayer, you can see this in action on BBC Three's "Kids Behind Bars". I have seen a number of locations in London with frosted glass privacy screens from mid-thigh to chest height, whose only obvious purpose is to defend against this attack.

If you've ever seen Barry Wels at work, you'll understand that this is anything but a far-fetched attack. Someone is unlikely to burgle a house using this technique, but it's a very practical method for determined attackers against otherwise hardened targets. With the prevalence of master and sub- master keying systems, the leak of a single key could potentially give access to dozens or hundreds of locks. Unlike a leak due to loss or theft of a key, there is no way of knowing of a breach in security until an attack is attempted. That's just about the worst case scenario.

</comment><comment><USER4> House locks pickable from 0ft away via $15 lock pick set. Or, you know, a crowbar.

A lock keeps out casual thieves, nothing more.

<comment><USER10> I was going to say, a weekend studying lock picking (which is definitely a fun thing to learn) and you can probably pick open a great majority of the houses out there in very little time... however, even if not practical this research is pretty interesting

<comment><USER11> Any recommendation on the best way to learn lock picking?

<comment><USER10> Sure! I'm very much a novice but: I started with 'Visual Guide to Lockpicking' [1] although 'MIT Guide to Lock Picking' [2] is very good and also free. After you get the basic mechanics of locks and lock-picking down you really just need to practice. Get yourself a set of lock-picks online (also look at your state laws for lock-picks, in many states only a licensed locksmith can carry them around so it may be a good idea to keep them at home, and avoid doing things like leaving them in your car/pocket. I believe some US states make it out right illegal to possess them, so just be aware).

Some places will sell practice locks with pins removed, but do not buy them, they are way overpriced and if you really want to understand the mechanics of locks it will serve you well to bust one open. So go to a hardware store and pick up an inexpensive but not cheap lock, crack it open and remove some of the pins (even all but one), add/remove/reorder the pins until you are really good, and then buy more locks.

Also do keep the law in mind, when I looked it up it's illegal in most if not all states to pick locks that you do not own if you are a not a locksmith (even with the owners permission), which can include obviously the locks on your apartment and locks of friends. You could probably get away with this, but the hacker interest in learning things like lock-picking is not universally seen as benevolent, and it would be stupid to get in legal trouble for a hobby

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Visual-Guide-Lock-Picking- Third/dp/097...](http://www.amazon.com/Visual-Guide-Lock-Picking- Third/dp/0970978863/)

[2] <http://www.lysator.liu.se/mit-guide/mit-guide.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The quote "We built our key duplication software system to show people that their keys are not inherently secret" is interesting. Do the public and the authorities have a different attitude when you do this with physical security vs. electronic? Sometimes people have been threatened or even arrested for demonstrating vulnerabilities, as we know.

</comment><comment><USER13> This reminds me of the story from a few years ago when Diebold got itself in trouble for showing pictures of their voting machine keys online: <http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4066#more-4066>

This also has me thinking about the "Light Field" story from two days ago. ( <http://www.hackerne.ws/item?id=2681554> ) If that technology becomes common, and camera resolutions continue to improve, I bet you could lift people's thumbprints from photos of them waving on Flickr. That sucks if you use a biometric thumb lock like they do in the shared office space I work out of.

Your thumbprint is like a password which you can never change. If your thumbprint appears in a single photo of you ever, there's no locksmith that can help you get that JPEG back from Lulzsec! :-)

<comment><USER14> Thumbprints are for casual identification, NOT for security. Biometrics are a hash, and like your garage-door opener, millions of people have the same thumbprint biometric as you have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is way more complicated than just bumping the lock. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xkkS2p7SuQ>

</comment><comment><USER16> Wow. It doesn't help that 'blanks' are standard and the number of pins in the lock is knowable. It is a nice piece of work, I expect to see it get re-used on all the cop shows :-)

</comment><comment><USER17> Great to see UC San Diego research on the front page again :)

a similar technology has been commercialized: <http://dittokey.com/>

also similar but relatively unrelated: [http://eclecti.cc/hardware/physical- keygen-duplicating-house...](http://eclecti.cc/hardware/physical-keygen- duplicating-house-keys-on-a-3d-printer)

These efforts are unaffiliated with the authors but provide a far more tangible result.

<comment><USER18> Handy. So I only need to make a pic of the key, and then send it to an online service, wait a day, and go wild in someone's house/company. Which by the way, won't be covered by insurance because there are no signs of burglary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> 2008 -- I thought this was familiar.

I speculate that within another generation or two of fabricators, people will have something trivially useful to plug the data into -- if they are of a mind. (Automated lathes and whatnot being pricier and eventually less common.)

<comment><USER20> Plastic printers...

they're still pretty expensive, but arguing you're in a fairly high rent neighborhood with basic security systems (no keypad requirements, but alarms blare if you force a lock or break a window...Is that even a system on the market?) Anyhow, if you've a van, that's a good five thousand dollars at least. Grab a printer, say another 10k...I dunno how many robberies you need to pay that off, but assuming you intend to make a go of this life of crime, being a guy with the key helps a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is old news (2008 or earlier), but still very interesting and I bet a lot of HN people still haven't seen it yet.

</comment><comment><USER22> An auto retractable design for a key, like one of those usb flash drives might help. [http://www.usbmemorysticks.net/wp-content/gallery/sandisk- cr...](http://www.usbmemorysticks.net/wp-content/gallery/sandisk-cruzer-blade- and-slice/sandisk-cruzer-edge.jpg)

By default, the key will be hidden inside it's case. When the user wishes to open the lock, he can just place the key on the keyhole and start inserting it. :)

</comment><comment><USER23> Hrmph. With that sort of house key, it's a lot less trouble just to rake the lock. You don't need a key at all.

</comment><comment><USER24> Not that this kind of attack is likely unless you leave your keys sitting out in public, but it might be a good case for Lockitron if you're paranoid: <https://lockitron.com>

<comment><USER25> Then guys like LulzSec set up a hack and toggle everyone's locks every 5 seconds. It's safer to roll your own than use a service like this...

<comment><USER24> The answer to potential security vulnerabilities is not to avoid using technology, it's to improve your security.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wonder if this also works for the Abloy locks which are the most common type here in Finland: <http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_tumbler_lock>

<comment><USER27> Not sure about Abloy, but there definitively exist some keys that would require multiple pics from different sides. One example here: [http://www.kluczserwis.com.pl/gerda/stars/drzwi_pliki/starsk...](http://www.kluczserwis.com.pl/gerda/stars/drzwi_pliki/starsklucz.jpg)

As opposed to the standard pin tumbler lock where there's a single row of pins, the pins in this lock surround the key from all sides, therefore the protrusions on the key are also all around it.

<comment><USER28> Abloys (newer) keys look like this <http://www.abloy.fi/Abloy/FI/Products/Images/SENTOavain2.jpg>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sounds perfect for a RepRap :D

<comment><USER29> [http://www.makerbot.com/blog/2011/06/20/3d-printer-key- dupli...](http://www.makerbot.com/blog/2011/06/20/3d-printer-key-duplication- with-nrp/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Hey UCSD, see this: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Don%27t_stuff_beans_u...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Don%27t_stuff_beans_up_your_nose)

I know you're not responsible for other people's actions, but releasing this story may do more harm than good.

<comment><USER31> Amusingly enough, according to Wikipedia, the concept of full disclosure (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_disclosure>) originated with locksmiths in the 1800s.

And even back then, _they got it right_ :

        > It cannot be too earnestly urged that an acquaintance
        > with real facts will, in the end, be better for all parties.

(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_disclosure#History>)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Calligraphr – Convert your calligraphy into a vector font - <AUTHOR> https://www.calligraphr.com/ <comment><USER2> Great idea! I remember doing this 10 years ago following a tutorial which had a form to fill out, and then downloading a shareware font editor. I'll bookmark this site for my next personal font project.

This might be a little morbid, but I had an idea which would fit this site well. Promoting your site to those who would like to preserve a very personal aspect of their lost loved one. Was thinking about this because my next font project involves me going through my mother's letters and scrapbooks for lettering samples. I lost her two years ago and think a font of her writing would be one of the best ways of remembering. I think a lot of other people would feel the same.

</comment><comment><USER3> This looks great! However, I find the pricing odd. Is this really the kind of thing someone is going to pay monthly for, as in see consistent usage? I think a more appropriate pricing structure would be either pay per user or pay for credits, which could then be used.

<comment><USER4> Not sure I understand either. At the top of the pricing page, "pro" is advertised at "$6.90/month" however at the bottom of that page they state:

"We do not offer subscriptions as most of our users do use Calligraphr.com as a one-off activity and we don't want to charge you just because you have forgotten to cancel our subscription."

<comment><USER5> Agree, confusing. I interpreted it to mean $6.90 gets you access for one month. They do not automatically charged you at the end of the month, you have to buy it again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Back in the day I used Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP Tablet PC Edition My Font Tool to create a font from my handwriting. I couldn't find a link to download it from Microsoft these days but some of the semi-sketchy download sites claim to have it.

Internet Archive to the rescue: [http://web.archive.org/web/20051223202032/http://www.microso...](http://web.archive.org/web/20051223202032/http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/tabletpc.mspx)

</comment><comment><USER7> These projects are neat.

What I really want is a custom font of my handwriting that wiggles each character just a little bit, to better simulate my own handwriting.

I've poked at this problem a few times. I couldn't figure out how to encode the variations in the font.

Ages ago, there was an AutoCAD plot driver (from Autodesk dealer McNeel & Associates) with a hand plot feature. It'd fudge lines so they'd look like they were hand drawn. So maybe the trick for a hand written font is to post process the vectors.

<comment><USER8>
        > What I really want is a custom
        > font of my handwriting that wiggles
        > each character just a little bit

About an hour ago, I replied to this with "You can use ligatures for that". Then I thought about it and thought "I'd better explain what I mean". And I was thinking of a system where you use characters near another character - even those up to two or three characters away, to essentially act as a random seed for the selection of a given character, using a very large number of pre- generated ligatures.

Then I thought: huh, that's pretty clever. I should look at patents for that.

Anyway: someone else got there first: read this:

[http://www.underware.nl/case-studies/random-vs- clever/](http://www.underware.nl/case-studies/random-vs-clever/)

<comment><AUTHOR> An interesting fact of the history of self modifying fonts is that one of the first of those fonts, the FF Beowolf, was created by Just van Rossum and Erik van Blokland. And Just van Rossum is the brother of Guido van Rossum.

Some more details from FontFont: "FF Beowolf was born at the end of the dark and murky 1980s when Just van Rossum and Erik van Blokland found a way to change the programming in PostScript fonts. When printed, each point in each letter in every word on the page would move randomly, giving the letters a shaken, distraught appearance."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is neat! I recently worked on something similar (on a much smaller scale!) for a low resolution bitmap font. The code is a hack but basically takes pixels in a GIMP file, converts them to vectors, and eventually spits out a TrueType font file. Of course, this result is primitive and has none of the cool features listed on your page!

[https://github.com/rndmem/mem-font](https://github.com/rndmem/mem-font)

<comment><USER6> This software doesn't split up the grid for you, but rather requires each letter be input completely separately:

[https://github.com/aizenbit/Scribbler/wiki/User- manual](https://github.com/aizenbit/Scribbler/wiki/User-manual)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Free alternative: [http://www.myscriptfont.com/](http://www.myscriptfont.com/)

Althoug I had to edit my scan in Gimp several times before a decent and usable font came out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Calligraphr has a free plan also. And a much better image processing, images taken with a camera are usually good enough, you don't need a scanner anymore. You also can edit characters after importing if there should be some artifacts. Myscriptfont also doesn't support Ligatures or character randomization and only a very restricted character set. Disclaimer: Myscriptfont is also a project of mine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is it possible to do this with any other/all languages?

I'd love to see some persian calligraphy done this way but I cant imagine how hard it would be to map all of the characters properly...

<comment><AUTHOR> Calligraphr tries to support as much scripts/languages as possible. Persian/Arabian scripts are not supported currently as they are really complicated. At the moment we try to improve the support for Japanese.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Does anyone know if the opposite exists? That is, I have hundreds of semi- structured handwritten pages which I'd like to scan or photograph, and get decent text files out of.

<comment><USER13> You can try some OCR, and the DJVU format can handle text data linked to character positions in scanned text.

[http://djvu.org/resources/embedding_transcripts_in_handwritt...](http://djvu.org/resources/embedding_transcripts_in_handwritten_pages.php)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Neat! To convert more visitors you'll want to show more examples. I found myself thinking "but what does it look like?"</comment>


Plan 28 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jgc.org/2010/09/plan-28.html

<comment><USER2> It makes you wonder if there would even be enough space on the surface of the earth to replace Google's or Facebook's modern day servers with the equivalent computing power of these analytics engines - my guess is no.

<comment><USER3> According to the Wikipedia article on the Analytical Engine, some other chap called Ludgate designed a streamlined version which could do a 20-digit decimal multiply in about 6 seconds; its volume was about 230 litres. (He made detailed plans but never actually built it.)

20 decimal places is about 64 bits. One design for a 64x64->128 multiplier is described in <http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5912832/description.html> and takes about 33k gates to achieve a propagation delay of about 200 gates. I'm not sure what propagation delays are like on modern CPUs; let's suppose it's 20ps per gate, so that a modern-silicon multiplier can do a 4ns multiply in 33k gates. How much space should we think of that as taking up? Not just the volume of the gates themselves; we need some volume for circuit boards, cooling, power supply, etc., etc., etc. A small modern PC might be a litre in volume and contains maybe the equivalent of 200M gates (CPU, memory, whatever else). So 33k gates corresponds to maybe 1/600 of a litre. So, in volume per unit power, modern technology beats Ludgate's version of the analytical engine by maybe a factor of (230 x 6) / (1/600 x 4x10^-9) or about 2x10^14.

(Don't take this too seriously; there are a lot of very dubious assumptions in the above.)

Now, let's say Google has 10^5 machines occupying 1 litre each. The equivalent in analytical engines would be 2x10^19 litres, or 2x10^16m^3.

The radius of the earth is about 6.4 x 10^6 m, so its surface area is 4 pi r^2 ~= 5x10^14 m^2. About 1/3 of this is land, so let's say 2x10^14 m^2. So we'd need to cover the land area of the earth 100m deep in analytical engines.

Dubious assumptions or not, I think I agree with your guess.

<comment><USER4> Just made my guess before reading yours. Some of my assumptions are more generous than yours, but the conclusion is the same: not enough land area on earth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> From Wikipedia:

The analytical engine, an important step in the history of computers, was the design of a mechanical general-purpose computer by English mathematician Charles Babbage.</comment>


Show HN: Glitchatron – JavaScript Glitch Art Generator - <AUTHOR> http://glitchatron.com

<comment><AUTHOR> The code for this is on Github if anyone wants to have a look: [https://github.com/errozero/glitchatron/blob/master/glitchat...](https://github.com/errozero/glitchatron/blob/master/glitchatron.js)

</comment><comment><USER2> I wrote a glitch library some time ago too. :)

[http://akx.github.io/glitch/glitch_built.html](http://akx.github.io/glitch/glitch_built.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, that's really cool. Looks like you have thought of everything there.

I want to add some more features to mine at some point in the future, making use of the canvas pixel array.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice work! I don't know how this could ever be useful to me, but still, it works flawlessly. :-)</comment>


Serious About Your Software Career? Leave your job  - <AUTHOR> http://www.dzone.com/articles/serious-about-your-software <comment><USER2> This post really resonates with me. I've felt the same way about a career as an engineer and have left many jobs in the past because of hitting a ceiling in terms of technical growth and ability to learn new things. I really started gravitating towards startups and consulting instead of big companies because of this desire.

But today, I have two small children and simply can't put in the same amount of time towards work as I was able to before. That makes the corporate environments more attractive, but I find it really comes at odds with my hacker mentality of wanting to learn and grow.

Recently I've come across a few roles within certain large companies where you can continue to learn and grow, but maintain a more sustainable pace than in startups or consulting. These types of roles seem to help strike that balance between getting a sustainable pace for someone with a family while not stagnating technically in a typical corporate job. There aren't a ton of these roles and they can be pretty competitive to get into, but I think they're a good choice to explore.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you can't leave your job (like for instance, you live in an area with difficult employment prospects) you can always keep side projects.

It's not a real replacement with changing up how you work though.</comment>


Teaching SE: code as design - <AUTHOR> http://davec.org/2014/02/teaching-se-code-as-design/

<comment><USER2> I've been thinking about this a lot recently after discussing the merits of code review against design review for software. My opinion very much aligns with the article, and I've started drafting blog posts/essays describing my arguments just to get a clear understanding of what they are. I'll have to get them cleaned up and reviewed so I can contribute to the view...

</comment><comment><USER3> The problem with teaching it in college is that most students haven't been exposed to a project that requires engineering or even patterns to solve so they have trouble seeing the value or even engaging with the material

That being said being exposed to common patterns sounds way more helpful than learning UML</comment>


Could Alzheimer's Stem from Infections? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/26/health/alzheimers-disease-infection.html <comment><USER2> UTIs can cause symptoms exactly like Alzheimer's, so I'm sure that sparked the idea. My grandmother actually developed Alzheimer's, I can't help but feel it might have been set on by a long standing UTI that the Dr never caught or treated (her Doctor was an old quack from everything I know.) Then again, her sister also has it, so it could also just be genetic. I do hope they figure it out, it's too late for my grandmother, but it's a big drain on everyone and when my grandmother does "break through" briefly, she is basically begging to die. Wouldn't wish it on anyone.

<comment><USER3> just thinking out loud here, but since it seems that people with the disease can have a "break through", does that suggest that it's potentially reversible?

<comment><USER4> It's not reversible. The damage to the brain during the course of Alzheimer is destructive (causes your brain to shrink over time).

<comment><USER5> That's not true, it's been shown to be reversible with ultrasound dissolving the plaque build up. ( [http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/7/278/278ra33](http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/7/278/278ra33) )

The plague serves a primary purpose of regulating voltage between neurons like a buffer, but now according to this study it looks like it serves a secondary purpose like an immune reaction to disease but it gets out of control and causes alzheimers, so removing the plaque cures the alzheimers but that's not getting the underlying cause which this study says is the disease.

It's fantastic research and hopefully will provide a lot of hope to people and their familes suffering from it.

<comment><USER6> The study fulltext is free:

[http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/7/278/278ra33.full](http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/7/278/278ra33.full)

The mechanism claims to be that the SUS merely selectively opens the blood- brain barrier long enough for microbubbles to pass through, implying (as I read it) that their action is _mechanical_.

First ad campaign: " _Scrubbing Bubbles_ \-- not just for bathroom surfaces anymore!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Some previous discussion of an earlier paper that suggested a fungal infection may be to blame:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10401344](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10401344)

Very interesting to see more suggestive evidence from another group!

<comment><USER8> I've also read some autopsy reports that showed many patients had Lyme's disease.

<comment><USER9> [http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious- correlations](http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations)

It is best to assume "everything is correlated with everything else", rather than jump on every correlation. On the other hand it is important to encourage people to notice correlations and coincidences, but realize not every one can be followed up on, and most of these that are noticed will be only weakly involved in any solution.

Really all we know at this point is that Alzheimer's disease is associated with the presence of more stuff that stains with antibodies raised towards Amyloid-beta aggregates than usual. It isn't even clear whether these are a cause or a symptom, nor whether these stains are near 100% specific towards beta-Amyloid (ie as derived from Amyloid precursor protein) rather than other aggregations of beta-sheets (like any prion "infection").

<comment><USER9> What part of this triggered a downvote? Am I not up-to-date on the current status?

<comment><USER10> It's best to disregard early downvotes.

There was a mythical past when Hacker News was much smaller, when (early) downvotes meant something. But that's gone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > The proteins were traditionally thought to be garbage that accumulates in > the brain with age.

OK, but now:

> Not everyone who has had a brain infection develops Alzheimer's, though. Why > would some be more vulnerable than others? According to the new theory, it > probably has to do with the brain's ability to clear out the balls of beta > amyloid after they have killed microbes, Dr. Tanzi said. For example, it is > known that people with a gene called ApoE2 have brains that are good at > sweeping out plaque, and have a low risk of Alzheimer's in old age. Those > with a different version, ApoE4, are inefficient in removing plaque and have > a high risk of Alzheimer's.

"Clearing out" seems a lot like getting rid of garbage ;)

<comment><USER12> ApoE 3 has also been associated with decreased plaque clearing ability, though not as significantly as ApoE 4.

<comment><USER13> As I understood from a BBC documentary last night, ApoE3 is considered the baseline as it's most prevalent. Having ApoE2 decreases the risk of Alzheimer's, while ApoE4 increases it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> it looks like IMMUNOLOGY is going to rule them all (well, most) of the medicine: cardiovascular diseases, cancers, allergies, diabetes, and now Alzheimer's.

</comment><comment><USER15> I find it interesting that at one time, arterial "plaque" was also considered to be some sort of residue or trash. Analysis of the plaque revealed high levels of cholesterol, so the "trash" was obviously caused by the cholesterol, probably by eating too much of it. This message was no doubt approved by the tobacco industry, which produces a zero-cholesterol product that is nevertheless highly damaging to the arteries.

Now many doctors have changed their understanding: arterial plaques are scar tissue and scar tissue happens to contain a lot of cholesterol. Anything that causes scarring - like high blood pressure - leaves these plaques. So really the plaques are the by-product of an underlying pathology, which themselves create a secondary pathology.

Likewise, perhaps, with Alzheimer's. The plaques in the brain are themselves a by-product of some other pathology. Solve the underlying pathology (or the body's response to it), and you solve Alzheimer's.

</comment><comment><USER16> Hypothesized awhile back, though the candidate is different. [http://isteve.com/Infectious_Causation_of_Disease.pdf](http://isteve.com/Infectious_Causation_of_Disease.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER17> How would this jibe with the type 3 diabetes idea? I wonder.</comment>


Ask HN: What Entrepreneur talks you have heard recently? - <AUTHOR>

I was searching for some video's for inspiration and stories by fellow Entrepreneur. I regularly follow Kevin's Foundation series, I would like to know if any other good inspiring videos you know. <comment><USER3> Pandomonthly, Stanford Entrepreneurial Series, drt.fm, This Week in Startups

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you for sharing. didn't know about these series.

<comment><USER3> Theres a whole bunch on Swell, the radio app.

But I think founder stories on Pandomonthly video is probably the best - <USER2> already covered a good diverse set of people from B2B, B2C, media, VCs, CEOs... etc</comment></comment></comment>


V8 hearts developers and their tools - <AUTHOR> https://v8project.blogspot.com/2017/11/web-tooling-benchmark.html <comment><USER2> I wish they had simply titled this "Web Tooling Benchmark".

</comment><comment><USER3> I heart V8 and node.</comment>


Who Can Name the Bigger Number? - <AUTHOR> https://www.scottaaronson.com/writings/bignumbers.html <comment><USER2> This essay was published in 1999. Reference: [https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3445](https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3445)

It inspired the "Biggest Number Duel" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=11&v=fy7_RkuQ4M0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=11&v=fy7_RkuQ4M0)

For anyone interested, the above video is from "Paradox and Infinity" on edX: [https://www.edx.org/course/paradox-infinity- mitx-24-118x-0](https://www.edx.org/course/paradox-infinity-mitx-24-118x-0)

</comment><comment><USER3> What about Graham's number?</comment>


Ask HN: Would you use an NLP interface on top of Mixpanel? - <AUTHOR>

I'm building a new analytics tool called VUE, http://vueanalytics.co and we're working on an NLP interface to your data.
Instead of building out entirely on our own we're looking for user's on Mixpanel, Flurry, etc. who would like to ask questions such as "how many users have used our app 4 out of the last 7 days" and much more, and get an answer back from our NLP engine.
Any of you on HN interested in trying it out? <comment><USER2> It sounds like a great product. However, leaning too much on other companies can get tricky if they decide to cut off the firehose. A previous startup that I worked at got burned by the Twitter Cards API. Perhaps carrying the same concept over to SQL/NOSQL databases (by no means trivial) could be the difficult problem to solve that goes from zero to one, to steal a line from Peter Thiel. That being said, I'd be interested in learning more.

<comment><AUTHOR> Email me firstname.lastname@example.com !</comment></comment>


Lindsey Graham wants ability to lock you up forever without trial - <AUTHOR> http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/11/senators-want-be-able-lock-you-forever-without-trial

<comment><USER2> I sometimes wonder if perhaps there should be criminal penalties associated with a government official drafting a bill or amendment or action or whathaveyou that clearly violates the Constitution.

I mean, Congress seems to want to try to attach a criminal penalty to everything else. Why not put them in prison for trying to violate the Constitution?

<comment><USER3> Everything is evolving, people should be able to amend the Constitution. What you're proposing would make that illegal.

<comment><USER4> There's a clearly defined procedure for amending the Constitution.

"Whatever some government official wants to do" isn't the criterion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I know this might be a borderline inappropriate comment for Hackernews, but sometimes I wonder whether having horrible, racially insensitive, biased, outdated ideas is the definition of being Republican.

<comment><USER6> It's not just inappropriate, it's bigoted and extraordinarily ignorant. You just slandered at least 100 million Americans.

Care to discuss all the scary laws and accepted practices Obama has ushered into existence the last four years? Let's talk about the indefinite detention, the torture ("enhanced interrogation"), the right to assassinate (murder) American citizens, the drone killings worldwide, the NDAA, the continued war in Afghanistan and killings that go with it, the extreme spying powers and general violations of civil liberties by the Obama admin that seems to have become the every day norm. What happened to the elected Democrats being the protectors of civil liberties?

And then let's talk about whether there are actually any differences between the Democrats in power vs the Republicans in power. All I see is an Obama Administration that is continuing where Bush left off.

<comment><USER5> Before I say anything, let me first mention that I'm not trying to defend my right to post comments like this. I shouldn't have said anything.

That said, if you're struggling to find differences between Obama's administration and Bush's, you're looking in the wrong places.

I assume when you mention "the right to assassinate American citizens," you're referring to the case of the Yemeni boy who was killed by the drone? If that's the case, trust me when I say I don't disagree with you here: it's a horrible thing. BUT, just because it's horrible doesn't mean it wasn't avoidable. The boy knew that his father was on the "kill list" as a known extremist. In choosing to go and visit him in Yemen anyway, he would have accepted the possibility that he would be put in harms way by association. It was an avoidable risk that he knowingly chose to take. I don't find that nearly as offensive as say, Guantanamo bay, which I might add was created by the Bush administration.

But international politics is a messy area, and I think it's safe to say that no matter who is president, horrible things are bound to happen as a result of global economic climate, and independent of who's in office. What REALLY offends me, though, are the things that happen here at home.

When I hear conservatives say things like "We don't need more trees! We need more jobs!" I'm immediately offended that someone so short-sighted could even consider running for office. When important officials are making claims about women's bodies rejecting fetuses that are the result of rape, and others are refusing to teach the theory of evolution, I'm offended. These ideas are not healthy: they're toxic. They hinder the advancement of society.

So frankly, if I had to pick one thing about the Obama Administration that I do "care to discuss," it's gotta be the fact that never have I ever heard him suggest any such toxic ideas. I can't say so much for the other team.</comment></comment></comment>


When Your Profiler Lies - <AUTHOR> https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2018/12/09/when-your-profiler-lies/ <comment><USER2> Is the laptop using the HPET for the QPC timer? (10MHz..) and the added latency[0] of calling into that is messing up the reported timings in the profiler?

[0][https://docs.microsoft.com/en- gb/windows/desktop/SysInfo/acq...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en- gb/windows/desktop/SysInfo/acquiring-high-resolution-time-stamps)

<comment><USER3> I haven't checked. My workstation has a 2.53 MHz QPC that is expensive to call and (after stepping in to the function) I found that:

1) The 2.53 MHz QPC is just the rdtsc frequency divided by 1,024 2) The slowdown is from calling ReadTimeStampCounterFromEmulator, which it seems to discard the results of

My laptop doesn't run at 10.24 GHz so it probably is using HPET rather than rdtsc/1024\. This makes QPC more expensive but I don't think it is messing up the reported timings - events are just outright being lost, as far as I can tell

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 'Why is QueryPerformanceCounter running at 10 MHz on my Lenovo P51 laptop?' Wild guess, Spectre mitigation ?

<comment><USER3> Native code that wants more precision can use rdtsc. JavaScript in the browser should have its timer precision reduced, to prevent timing attacks, but that should be done by the browser, not the OS.

The reduced precision isn't what really bothers me though - it's the cost. My measurements suggest that QPC is about 25x as expensive as rdtsc on this laptop - expensive enough to make calling it too frequently a problem.

This article explains some of the reasons why rdtsc might not be used to implement QPC, and I'm curious as to which one applies, and how machines this applies to:

[https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/desktop/SysInfo/acq...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/desktop/SysInfo/acquiring-high-resolution-time-stamps#direct-tsc- usage)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It would probably be a lot easier to deal with such problems if Windows was open source and you could just have a look what the system libraries are actually doing.

<comment><USER6> Really it doesn't.

Sure there are some times where having source access to other projects helps, but in most cases it really doesn't.

Essentially at best it turns "this function takes more time than I would expect" into the same thing with "... I think because of X".

You may think "I could fix it" but again in most cases any fix will require you knowing why certain trade offs were made. Designing around internal design also means you may end up having overly complex code that continues to exist if the library changes design to improve that case. It may even become slower, or worse if your software is important enough may _prevent future improvements_ that would benefit everyone.

So no, being open source does not magically make all bugs trivially fixable.

<comment><USER3> Not easy, but I agree that it would make it easier. I would have to have stepped through the process shutdown code in a debugger, walking through the code to understand when the lock was acquired, and maybe setting breakpoints to count how often it was acquired.

Then again, that would require kernel debugging and a second machine and there would be numerous logistical problems, so I might not have bothered.

I spent too much time trying to reconcile the discrepancy and I ultimately failed - maybe source code would have helped.</comment></comment></comment>


Satellites see Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Melt - <AUTHOR> http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-217

<comment><USER2> Near the very end:

"Ice cores from Summit show that melting events of this type occur about once every 150 years on average. With the last one happening in 1889, this event is right on time," said Lora Koenig, a Goddard glaciologist and a member of the research team analyzing the satellite data. "But if we continue to observe melting events like this in upcoming years, it will be worrisome."

Makes it a bit less scary. I think this is called burying the lede. ;-)

<comment><USER3> I wonder about the article title, too. How do they justify calling it "unprecedented" when they clearly state there's a precedent (melting events every 150 years on average)? Seems disingenuous at best.

<comment><USER4> Hard to say for sure with the information provided. While there is evidence that this has happened before, this degree of melting in such a short span of time is certainly "unprecedented" for as long as we've been observing, and it may well be a different kind of event than that which caused 1889's melting.

Either way, could use plenty of clarification.

<comment><USER5> Still, the title is really misleading, even though it may be true in a very, very narrow sense. Tbh. I think someone just went overboard there. The problem of course is that we just don't know. We have our models, but they are all built on assumptions that can change any day. Some say that long term predictions are much more reliable than short term ones (aka. the weather forecast), yet still we are constantly surprised by climate events. The article itself is quite nice, so why fear mongering title (and I'm not even speaking about the HN title, that one is just completely misleading).

<comment><USER6> Yes, the title certainly is misleading based on that final paragraphs. However considering we have numerous alarming data points across the globe in 2012 related to climate ([http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global- warmings-te...](http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings- terrifying-new-math-20120719)) perhaps that context means events like this are viewed in a more pessimistic fashion.

The sentiment you express: that we don't know for sure, our models are not fool-proof etc is a very particular, unscientific line of reasoning pumped out to convince the layman that there is no real scientific consensus, which is simply false. There is scientific consensus, climate scientists never state that the test for scientific theories is 100% certainty, nor do they claim their models are completely accurate (every model is wrong to a degree, by definition!)

The climate scientists and meteorologists in my family have moved on from debating with people now, seeing it as about as valuable as arguing about gravity with someone.

It feels like the 'global warming conspiracy' is the '9/11 was an inside job conspiracy' for right-wingers: [http://whowhatwhy.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/02/395940_8421...](http://whowhatwhy.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/02/395940_842169154111_1010664_37712606_1688554057_n1.jpg) Both utterly absurd to the core.

<comment><USER7> "There is scientific consensus"...

No, there is not. Of you have been sleeping for a few years, then. Many scientists have come out in the recent past to stand against the "global warming" theory.

It is nothing like gravity where we can clearly experiment and it's predictable. Climate change is no way certain nor predictable, and anyone who pretends otherwise is either a fool or an ignorant. Climate models are based on so much data (standard variation is HUGE) that you cannot even draw a line without being laughed at by a statistician.

<comment><USER8> Yes there is.

Could you name one major scientific institution related to climate science that dispute anthropogenic climate change?

<comment><USER9> Major scientific institutions don't get funding for saying "Things seem to be going ok right now", they get funding for saying "Things are screwed up, here's why, and we think we can fix it". I say this as someone who works at a major scientific institution.

<comment><USER10> We have an Institute for Creation Research [1]. There is plenty of funding for anti-climate change research. It's just not producing anything. That should give a hint as to where reality lies amidst interests.

[1] <http://www.icr.org/>

<comment><USER11> I doubt that funding is even a tiny fraction of the research money from governments. And in addition it is money that might taint your reputation for future research funding rounds.

This is true in many areas of research. If you want funding there are certain opinions and buzzwords you should include when applying for funding.

<comment><USER10> The point is that if those idiots can get funding the claim that one must toe the party line to attract funds is seriously impaired.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Note that were are talking about _some_ degree of melting occurring over 97% of the surface of the ice sheet, not that 97% of the area previously covered in ice has melted, which is how I read the title.

From the article: "Nearly the entire ice cover of Greenland, from its thin, low-lying coastal edges to its 2-mile-thick (3.2-kilometer) center, experienced some degree of melting at its surface"

edit: poor grammar

</comment><comment><USER7> A NASA link with a graph without any reference/legend whatsoever (it's easy to manipulate data by playing with colors and putting a threshold in white and another in red, but if we dont know exactly what is means it's just like snake oil marketing), this is very disappointing for a agency that is supposed to produce science. This is tabloid level.

<comment><USER13> There is a legend.

'In the image, the areas classified as "probable melt" (light pink) correspond to those sites where at least one satellite detected surface melting. The areas classified as "melt" (dark pink) correspond to sites where two or three satellites detected surface melting.'

While I do feel that the use of the word "unprecedented" was not warranted (and should be criticized), the rest of the article is fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This news is a bit frightening. I believe this is the result of intense global warming.

</comment><comment><USER15> This scares me. I know it's only the surface that thawed, but what happens when more than the surface melts next time around? How long can people keep denying the Earth is warming before lower-level coastal regions start to flood?

<comment><USER16> Mission accomplished.

The article also states that this happens every 150 years or so and did so 150 years ago. Like winter comes every 12 months. Now it would be wonderful to understand the mechanism, we've only been watching via satellite for 30 years, so in another 150 years we'll have captured a full cycle on satellite and we will know a lot more. It would have been a much more reasonable article to say:

"For the first time NASA has captured a once in 150 year event on satellite images. ..." but you still might click the link but you wouldn't feel threatened.

<comment><USER17> _Ice cores from Summit show that melting events of this type occur about once every 150 years on average_

It's not a 150 year cycle, it's a random event with a low probability. AKA 0.66% per year ~ 10 events per 1500 years but 3 of them could have fallen within 10 years of each other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I believe there is climate change, there always is. The idea that we are the sole cause or that we have the power to stop it, seems a little absurd.

The best thing I've read on the topic:

<http://rps3.com/Pages/Burt_Rutan_on_Climate_Change.htm>

"Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) -Study the data and reach your own conclusions!"

<comment><USER19> >I believe there is climate change, there always is. The idea that we are the sole cause or that we have the power to stop it, seems a little absurd.

There are a lot of us, and we've been pumping a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere for a long time. Things like the ozone hole or the long-term deforestation of Europe show that humanity is very capable of making substantial changes to the global climate.

<comment><USER18> We've created a lot of problems, yes. We need more energy, more food, more clean water. We need to clean up our soils, we need to plant some new forests.

The focus on cutting CO2 emissions seems misplaced.

<comment><USER19> Have you any idea what the effects of a 10m rise in global sea levels would be? There are plenty of problems for humanity to deal with, but few more important or urgent than that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is this debate really happening on HN? Really guys?

</comment><comment><USER21> It's fascinating to see how supposedly objective institutions are invested in selling environmentalist panic. The greens have certainly won the PR battle.

<comment><USER6> Your sentiment seems to echo this: [http://whowhatwhy.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/02/395940_8421...](http://whowhatwhy.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/02/395940_842169154111_1010664_37712606_1688554057_n1.jpg)

<comment><USER22> Considering was called Greenland by the Vikings who also named Nova Scotia "Vinland" because grape vines grew there, would it be more likely to you that some alarmist scientists would defends their jobs and salaries by giving overperssimistic claims, and that the rest would have to follow the game or become irrelevant in the publish-or-perish world?

Just like a lemon market, except driven by fear?

I remember reading somewhere (Richard Feymann maybe?) about the initial mass or charge of some particle, an electron maybe, being far away from the truth and leading to a suppression of the publication of any "dissident" results - including a much better estimate that followed.

The scientific process took care of that by publishing revised estimates, just slightly lower and lower, until the number reached the initially conflicting estimation, but this took some time.

I do not claim to have any opinion on climate change - except to notice that a side is giving alarmist claims, which can not be disproved, or when they can and are, which are adjusted by an ad-hoc theory. From global freezing in the 70s to global warming, and now "climate change". And that the other side is giving different results and seems to be more cautious in its process, because it is facing an uphill battle like anyone who would have published a significantly lower mass.

That does not win merit points with what I know about epistemology.

<comment><USER23> Unlike oil company executives, zero climate scientist salaries depend on global warming being true. That's just not how or why academic researchers get paid. They push the "agenda" because that's the model the data supports.

<comment><USER24> > zero climate scientist salaries depend on global warming being true. That's > just not how or why academic researchers get paid. They push the "agenda" > because that's the model the data supports.

The ClimateGate e-mails show otherwise. They show the warmist mafia conspiring to spike publication of contrary research.

If you can't get published, you don't get very far in academia.

And then there's the whole "I won't share my data because they'll use it to try to prove me wrong" thing.

<comment><USER25> I skimmed through the rather extensive write-up at [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_co...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy) and could find _zero_ evidence to support your claims of a "warmist mafia" conspiring to "spike publication of contrary research".

The only conspiracy I _do_ see in that write-up consists of sensationalist self-proclaimed experts, scientifically illiterate pundits and talking heads providing an illusion of controversy where none exists so that people like you tune in to their message and generate ad revenues and fat bonus pay-checks.

 _Honestly_ which do you believe is more likely - a vast global conspiracy of climatologists are swindling the public, people who have to publish models and/or data to support their claims, with all it taking is one honest scientist to expose them as frauds (withholding data as you point out does happen, but this affects the support their claims receive)... or a bunch of charismatic talking heads with zero science education or interest are hyping things up because they know, as an absolute and incontrovertible fact, that doing so generates revenue, votes, etc. from the conspiracy crowd?

I doubt all scientists are honest, but the proportion of scientists that are honest vs. the proportion of talking heads that are honest makes it pretty obvious where to look for a real conspiracy. It takes one scientist to expose a fraud definitively, but no amount of evidence seems to persuade a talking head to shut up as long as there's enough conspiracy theorists paying their salary and their master's profits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Oops. I wonder if this pattern of heat domes will continue for the rest of the summer and what their frequency is. By the end of the year it might no longer be as unusual.

<comment><USER27> Per TFA, this isn't actually all that unusual. Core samples suggest it happens about every 150 years or so, with the last occurrence in the late 19th Century. Indeed, one of the scientists in the article says, "this event is right on time."

<comment><USER4> Still, I wish they'd provide a bit more information. Do we know what kind of event likely caused 1889's melting? Would it, similarly, have happened in such short a span of time, or due to a similar weather event? It's still hard to dismiss as "normal" when there are so many unanswered questions.</comment></comment></comment>