Chkboot - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/grazzolini/chkboot <comment><USER2> This doesn't help if an attacker modifies the kernel to provide the correct data regardless of the actual filesytem contents. You really need either UEFI Secure Boot or a TPM-based measured boot to have confidence that /boot hasn't been tampered with.

<comment><USER3> Could you comment on my idea of slight extension of chkboot-style verification:

a) Use signatures instead of hashes and keep the "correct" signature secret. This would prevent attacker from hard-coding correct looking output into the tampered system.

b) Do not store the correct signature anywhere where the potentially tampered system could read it. I'm thinking using smartphone or possibly some usb module for verification, or maybe just rely on users memory (assisted with something akin to SSH randomart fingerprints)

c) Fill free space on /boot with random data and calculate the signature for the whole partition. This is to detect if attacker attempts to store backup copies of untampered files.

To me it's not immediately obvious how attacker could tamper with boot files without detection, presuming that their ability to tamper is restricted to the hard drive (i.e. no firmware attacks etc).

edit: for clarification, I'm talking only hypothetically here, I'm not considering this sort of system for personal use nor would I be recommending it to anyone else.

<comment><USER4> The attacker is not going to keep the SHA256 hashes, but the whole of the original /boot. (Where, you're asking? Anywhere you forgot _Ring 0_ could store data, and a few places you never even knew about.) Subsequently, he will intercept system calls to open(2) and friends, and serve the saved data. This is a fairly old technique: on the first page of a Google search[1], you can find a Phrack article from 2009[2]. In fact the seminal work I believe is _Reflections on Trusting Trust_ by Ken Thompson, set in print in 1984.

[1] [https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=rootkit+intercepting+open+...](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=rootkit+intercepting+open+calls)

[2] [http://phrack.org/issues/66/16.html](http://phrack.org/issues/66/16.html)

[3] [https://www.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/712.fall02/papers/p761-thomp...](https://www.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/712.fall02/papers/p761-thompson.pdf)

<comment><USER3> > Where, you're asking? Anywhere you forgot Ring 0 could store data, and a few > places you never even knew about

Could you be bit more specific about this?

<comment><USER5> The BIOS has some flash memory. Various devices have flashable firmware. If the machine is on the network, storage could be remote. Maybe the attacker plugged a flash drive into a USB port. Maybe the attacker left a bluetooth- accessible device nearby.

Or the attacker could just use the hard drive. Pick a random block. Chances are decent the corruption won't be noticed anytime soon, especially if the block is, say, at the end of the ext4 journal, which was probably clean at shutdown anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This doesn't provide additional security. If your bootloader is compromised, it could boot into a compromised kernel (bootkit) that will fake any syscalls that attempt to figure out if the system is compromised. No, signatures and hashes won't help (you can just return the old files, or store your changes to the files and return the file contents with your changes reverted).

It's the same problem as UEFI defining that a certain UEFI variable will be set if you booted securely -- but a malicious kernel could just fake that UEFI variable.

Instead, you should have authenticated encryption for both /boot and your root filesystem. GRUB has been able to boot from encrypted partitions for a while, we should push for that to be the default (I'm not sure if it's authenticated encryption though).

<comment><USER7> Good, I'm not the only one. I was waiting for the readme to mention how they'd solved the chicken / egg problem here: you can't guarantee integrity of boot until you've loaded the OS, and you can't load the OS until you've guaranteed the integrity of boot. I was thinking I'd missed something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This script is really hard to use. There are two invocations:

        # chkboot

Checks for changes (once) then updates the file list. If you run chkboot again, it will erase the changes list!

        $ chkboot-check

This basically just runs `cat` on a file made by chkboot.

Also, there's a long-standing bug where `chkboot -u` just doesn't work, making the mkinitcpio hook useless.

A better interface would be:

        # chkboot-update

Updates hashes.

        # chkboot-verify

Checks hashes and writes any failures to syslog/stderr/logfile. Return code tells you if it was successful.

Since you need root permissions to access many of the files in /boot, you really can't avoid running chkboot-verify as root.

</comment><comment><USER9> I looked into the options and the best I feel available is separate /boot on a USB key AND wrapping that key inside a tiny LUKS volume, so you need the key inside of it and a password, which is poor man's two-factor for booting full- disk crypto.

[https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1502651#p1502651](https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1502651#p1502651)

But as I know LUKS and other disk systems in Unix decrypt, and do not MAC then encrypt, I wonder if I am wasting even more of my time I do not have to begin with.

</comment><comment><USER10> It seems like most people do not know that grub can actually boot kernels from an encrypted boot partition. It does not protect the MBR or EFI partition, so a manipulated stage1 loader might be able to pull off some attack but i am always surprised how few people really use that...

</comment><comment><USER3> I agree with mjg59 that this sort of system does not provide true security. That said, I think it might be slightly more effective if the system verifies the whole /boot partition instead of just the files within, especially if free space is filled with random bytes.

edit: I also think it might be ever so slightly better to calculate signatures instead of plain hashes. That would make it bit more difficult for attacker to forge correct values.

</comment><comment><USER11> Look into [https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes- antievilmaid](https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-antievilmaid) and [https://github.com/mjg59/tpmtotp](https://github.com/mjg59/tpmtotp) for better attempts to provide an effective but still partial solution to this problem.</comment>


Regulators Need to Take It Easy on Bitcoin Startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/opinion/2014/03/safe-harbor-for-finance-startups-regulation/ <comment><USER2> I agree. Bitcoin exchanges should be free to lose and/or steal all the bitcoins they hold at any time with no repercussions. As a non-participant in bitcoin, lack of regulation makes the whole bitcoin economy so much more interesting to read about.

<comment><USER3> It's already illegal to steal bitcoins. And if an exchange represents that it takes certain measures to secure wallets when it really doesn't, that's fraud. Other than that, what is there to regulate?

<comment><USER4> Curious what you think about PCI Compliance and whether it should exist. After all, stealing credit card numbers is already illegal.

<comment><USER5> PCI Compliance is entirely private/free market, isn't it?

<comment><USER6> Yeah. But is this a conversation about "if you want to participate in system X, follow rules Y" or specifically anti-government sentiment?

As the Wired article talks about the cost of coming into compliance, I think it is reasonable for the parent poster to ignore the source of the rules. Unless you wanted to make a point about the source of rules impacting compliance costs or voice your other reason for such a government/private distinction. But now that I've already started arguing with myself I'm not going to go any further.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Jerry has a few things right here, but he's mostly wrong.

Regulators should do anything _but_ "take it easy" on Bitcoin startups. Bitcoin has proven to be in practical terms one of the most risky potentially legitimate investment classes known to man. I'm not discussing its potential use as a currency because it's in fact so risky that it hasn't even made it there yet. All of this means that regulators should be forcing Bitcoin startups to justify themselves.

I have proposed a bill to amend 18 U.S.C. § 1960 that I think would be a step in the right direction:

[http://www.plainsite.org/issues/index.html?id=2](http://www.plainsite.org/issues/index.html?id=2)

I think the notion of a proportionally and increasingly scaled premium paid to an FDIC-style insure is the right way to go (bigger institutions put slightly more in per dollar held in trust to account for systemic risk), but if you handle Bitcoin? Multiply the premium times 30.

<comment> mycroft-holmes Everybody has varying levels of comfort with the amount of risk they're willing to take. There's no need for regulation. Let the companies operate how they want to operate and let _people_ decide if they want to do business with them. We don't need bureaucrats telling us the level of risk we're allowed to get ourselves into.

<comment><USER8> Leaded gasoline. In my 70s-era car, I want to use it instead of unleaded, since it improves my fuel economy significantly. However, the total cost of the lead in the environment far outweighs the economic benefit. We needed regulation to fix this.

Thalidomide. Regulation prevented thousands of deformities in the US by imposing a proof-of-safety barrier before the drug was allowed to be sold. Other countries were not so lucky as to have that regulation in place.

More to the point... How, as an individual, am I supposed to make an informed judgement about the relative risks of MtGox vs Bitstamp, say? I have no inside information about how those companies operate. There's a huge information asymmetry problem that regulation alleviates.

<comment><USER9> > There's a huge information asymmetry problem that regulation alleviates.

How does regulation alleviate it?

<comment><USER10> By forcing companies to disclose the truth about their product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The bitcoin community needs to come together and prove that legitimate self- regulation and sufficient transparency can work. We need to shed the Mt. Gox's by choice, and choose firms that are willing to undergo third party audits (like Coinbase did recently).

I'm a firm believer that there are better avenues than regulation-at-gunpoint, and cryptocurrencies are looking like a big part of that, but the _community_ needs to prove this.

<comment><USER12> Money and self-regulation is never a good mix and it has not even been 10 years since the last time we have all suffered the result.

Of course, the point is not doing it too early to avoid chocking the potential of bitcoin, but eventually, as bitcoin grows, after the power has shifted from the original believer to greed-driven finance professional, you will need regulation to rein them in.

Of course, we can dream that communities will be strong enough. But let's be realistic - financial world has the money and it is their job to play with it, it would make no sense for them to ignore something as important as bitcoin is becoming.

<comment><USER13> >Money and self-regulation is never a good mix and it has not even been 10 years since the last time we have all suffered the result.

Unless you have unyielding cryptographic primitives to help.

I'm at the Austin Bitcoin conference right now listening to a talk about Open Transactions and cryptographic exchange auditing. It sounds like exchange theft is pretty much a solved problem. Using crypto, we now have ways to make theft or coin loss pretty much a problem of the past, because we can make operating a fractional reserve exchange impossible and make stealing coins very, very hard. It seems like cryptographic regulation is drastically more effective than government regulation.

<comment><USER14> So, a prediction - stealing coins will always happen. Maybe no one will break your cryptography, but you will never close off all side channel attacks.

<comment><USER15> So should we give up now?

<comment><USER14> Of course not - but don't expect to be able to throw away lines of defense, like regulation and state enforcement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> No they don't.

<comment><USER15> Thank you for your valuable insight.</comment></comment>


TensorFlow r1.4 - <AUTHOR> https://developers.googleblog.com/2017/11/announcing-tensorflow-r14.html <comment><USER2> Still, the old issue persists, just issue a "import tensorflow as tf" with python3 you got:

        ~tensorflow/lib/python3.6/importlib/_bootstrap.py:219:
        RuntimeWarning: compiletime version 3.5 of module
        'tensorflow.python.framework.fast_tensor_util' does not
        match runtime version 3.6

        return f(*args, **kwds)

This does not prevent me from running short code, however who knows what this potentially means, better fixing that before the release. It obviously said the runtime was built with 3.5 instead of 3.6.

[https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/issues/14182](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/issues/14182)

<comment><USER3> It's just a small Cython-compiled utility throwing the warning, it works fine. Everything else is pure Python and so doesn't care about 3.5 vs 3.6. We will fix the warning, though (disclaimer: I work on TF and added fast_tensor_utils --sorry!).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How do you import Keras from TensorFlow instead of from the Keras standalone itself? Just substitute tf.keras where appropriate?

<comment><USER5> From tensorflow import keras

Trivially simple example here: [https://www.kaggle.com/dansbecker/transfer- learning-scratch-...](https://www.kaggle.com/dansbecker/transfer-learning- scratch-space/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6>
        # Use pip for Python 2.7
        # Use pip3 instead of pip for Python 3.x

Why would Google help to prolong the life of Python 2.x? They usually seem so interested in pushing technologies forward.

<comment><USER7> Internally Google still uses Python 2.7 only.

<comment><USER8> From my understanding this is because the new projects use golang or java.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/3cak9z/why_does_goo...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/3cak9z/why_does_google_cloud_platform_use_python_27_when/csum9uz/)

<comment><USER7> Those information is not accurate. First, Google has been trying to migrate to Python 3 for years, but the implementation of the plan has been delayed all the time. Maybe this year certain internal codes will finally be migrated fully. Second, many new projects are still in Python. Even if some Googlers hate Python, they have no other choice if they want to do AI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was sad to see `tf.contrib.data.get_single_element()` didn't make it in :(

Keep building TF Serving from source until the next release :(</comment>


Webhooks, upload notifications and background image processing - <AUTHOR> http://cloudinary.com/blog/webhooks_upload_notifications_and_background_image_processing

<comment><AUTHOR> This blog post details how you can use Cloudinary to perform asynchronous background image processing in the cloud and receive web notifications when uploading and image manipulation are completed. Sample code in PHP, Python & Django and Ruby on Rails is included.</comment>


The Book of Esther and the Jewish Festival Purim - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.bl.uk/asian-and-african/2017/03/the-book-of-esther-and-the-jewish-festival-purim.html <comment><USER2> > As God's name is not explicitly mentioned in the Book of Esther, it was > considered permissible to illustrate it.

Wow. Does anybody have some good info abut this aspect of Judaism, wikipedia doesn't have much. Specifically I'd like to know the historical reliable sources about it, not the qoutes from the Bible, that is, I'm interested in the evidence for and against the use of illustrations among the Jews.

<comment><USER3> In Judaism, G-d has no physical form nor image, so there would be no way to illustrate G-d:

[http://www.jewfaq.org/human.htm#Image](http://www.jewfaq.org/human.htm#Image) and [http://www.jewfaq.org/g-d.htm](http://www.jewfaq.org/g-d.htm)

This may be the wikipedia page you're looking for:

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

<comment><USER4> Due to this belief you get some interesting Jewish thoughts. Such as Atheist Jews who do not believe a supernatural being exists. But that G-d is the spirit / will / empathy of the people in aggregate. For example a Jewish Atheist would say it was not some super natural being's doing that saved the Jews from the holocaust, but the good nature of people in aggregate. And it was that good nature that represents G-d.

Finally as the joke goes in Judaism. You've got 2 Jews in a room and 5 conflicting opinions.

<comment><USER5> They way I remember it, it was 10 conflicting opinions...

<comment><USER6> binary 10 ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7>
      Some scholars have contended that given the striking resemblance between the names Esther and
      Mordecai to the Babylonian deities Marduk and Ishtar, the story was rooted in
      Babylonian worship practices...

They really just left that there, without any hint as to whether there's anything in common besides the names? The Wikipedia pages for Marduk and Ishtar don't give any hints AFAICT.

<comment><USER8> It's normal to have names based on divinities. E.g., Venus Williams. Or Jesus in Spanish names. It does not mean that the person _is_ the god.

<comment><USER7> Sure, but that's sort of why it's odd that TFA seemed to be suggesting that the _story_ was based on Babylonian religious practice, citing no evidence other than the similar names.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >references to Purim do not feature in the Jewish literature before the 1st century CE.

> the festival had long been established by the 2nd century CE as evidenced in > the tractate Megilah of the Mishnah (corpus of the oral tradition of Jewish > law).

I'm confused by this.

<comment><USER10> It's perfectly consistent with it being established in, say, the early 1st century CE and spreading rapidly; a century is plenty long enough for a festival to be "long established", which it was (per the quote) by the second century CE, despite being absent from the literature before the 1st century CE.</comment></comment>


Apple Weighs Letting Users Switch Default iPhone Apps to Rivals - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-20/apple-weighs-loosening-restrictions-on-rival-iphone-music-apps <comment><USER2> Please! I can't believe that if I click an address, the only thing my iPad says is 'do you want to open the app store and download Maps?'

Wow

<comment><USER3> Seriously. I run into this problem constantly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Doesn't mean shit (to me) unless they allow alternate browser engines. I want Firefox.

<comment><USER5> Because having a default mail app, music app, etc is not big enough itself?

<comment><USER6> Being able to change the default applications is a tiny "feature" that every other platform has done for years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> While I consider this to be a good thing in general, I do fear it may cement Chrome's browser monoculture dominance further (even if on iOS it does still use WebKit instead of Blink).

<comment><USER8> It'd make Firefox Sync between my Mac, iPhone, and iPad useful. Sure, it technically exists already, but Firefox on iOS is an annoying proposition since links can't open it.

<comment><USER9> Not completely related but I use the iCloud extensions for Windows for both Firefox and Chrome.

My bookmarks stay synced between all three browsers on my computer and phone.

<comment><USER7> I too almost found iCloud sync to be the be-all end-all solution of browser syncing, then I discovered that the same iCloud sync on Mac does NOT support Firefox/Chrome - only Safari.

I'm relying on Xbrowsersync for now but it's still not the optimal "everything everywhere" solution, as it does not support syncing to Safari (and from reading their website, its developer appears to be ideologically opposed to implementing it).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> About time, to be honest. Potential antitrust crackdowns probably scared them into it.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is better than nothing but they really need to step up their handling of files in a general way.

Even on the Mac it is ridiculous that for decades the Unix "file" command (installed on the Mac!!) knows more about files than the graphical OSes do when opening them. Why is it so hard to recognize text as something openable and previewable without a specific file extension, for instance?

So yes, please improve options for handling links but let's not pretend they aren't still years behind where they should be.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm more excited about the discussion to allow apple music to be streamed on other platforms, and other platforms to be streamed on homepod.

<comment><USER9> As far as Apple Music

Android:

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apple.andr...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apple.android.music&hl=en_US)

Alexa:

[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209250](https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT209250)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Remember when Microsoft had to pay $794m for bundling a web browser with their OS?

I'm kind of surprised Apple has gotten away with this for so long.

<comment><USER13> I also remember Windows having at one point a market share of 95%.

And the issue wasn't just the bundling but that they used that market share to strong arm OEMs into making IE the default browser and preventing Netscape deals. Monopolies can be legal and tolerated provided you aren't going out of your way to extinguish what's left of the competition.

<comment><USER14> You can't have a successful mobile app business without being on the iPhone. So, I say Apple has just as effective control over the market as a straight monopoly.

As a matter of fact in the US you do not strictly need greater than a 50% market share to even be considered a monopoly. You just need to have market control.However Apple's iPhone is hovering just around 50% in the United States.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't understand why Google was effectively forced to do allow choice for search but Apple isn't for a whole host of things.

<comment><USER13> Pretty simple.

Google Search has a market share of 92%. iPhone has a market share of 11%.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Honestly this is my biggest gripe with ios.

</comment><comment><USER17> While this is a good move for users, it can also be a bad one.

Imagine all the chat/calling apps that will try to replace your default Phone/messaging/etc. apps and the amount of spam/inconsistent behaviour this will bring.

Hopefully Apple will make sure only top notch apps can replace the default apps.

<comment><USER18> Are they considering letting you change the default calling app? That would seem very odd. Mail and browser, and perhaps messaging (only for the purpose of "Siri, send a message to Joe saying blah").

<comment><USER19> I doubt this since they already have CallKit which is used for global call answering similar to the Phone app. Maybe the extent is being able to set a default for what app is used to call phone numbers when you click them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This would make me reconsider iPhone, this would also be a boon for Microsoft, Amazon and Google.

</comment><comment><USER21> [https://archive.md/Idtvs](https://archive.md/Idtvs)

</comment><comment><USER22> Safari on iOS 13 is broken and getting worse. Bring it on.

<comment><USER23> How is it broken? (Legitimate question, I haven't had any issues with it)

<comment><USER22> iPhone 11 Pro, iOS 13.3.1.

Pages will render blank, scrolling shows content but then gets wiped blank. Once the app loses its mind it needs to be force quit before it works again. I'll try a screen recording sometime. I can't be the only one seeing this.

<comment><USER24> Happens daily for me too iOS 13 on iPhone 8. Force quitting is the only fix

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Cost of Antitrust settlement 12 years after doing what you wanted?

Cost of software patch for inconsequential issue?

HMMMMMMM</comment>


Quadratic Voting - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadratic_voting <comment><USER3> One key principle that a lot of people miss is that quadratic voting doesn't work with real money because people don't value wealth in a linear fashion. $5 is worth much more for a homeless person than for a millionaire. Proof of this can be seen in preference surveys or other studies of human behavior. This fact breaks the key assumption of quadratic voting and causes skewed results in that people with more money can buy more votes even with "weaker" preferences.

<comment><USER4> This is addressed in the Wikipedia page under "Criticisms of quadratic voting mechanisms".

Potential solutions include giving everyone the same amount of starting artificial "money", using one-person-one-vote when issues are polarized along wealth-lines, or making votes more expensive for the wealthy.

To me, the first option of delegating everyone the same starting votes seems the most reasonable. However, I think allocating vote prices based on wealth could create some interesting incentives and resulting politics.

<comment><USER5> What the wikipedia criticism doesn't mention issue flooding/packing. Quadratic voting works, on paper, when applied to set piece issues. It doesn't address the reality of legislatures, that "issues" are not fixed pieces on a chessboard. Issues can be split across multiple referendums. Whoever is in control can use splits to dilute votes, causing voters to spend their votes repeatedly winning a minor issue until their are depleted. Then those who 'lost' the first rounds now have the votes to win the last round. Giving everyone equal footing on every vote stops this.

<comment><USER6> I had the same thought. This system does not account for the introduction of legislation that can be voted on. Who decides which legislation to consider. Surely the party in power could sway the outcome by stacking the decions against each other.

This is equivalent to gerrymandering political districts. Spread out the votes on the issues based on the electors in favor of a predtermined outcome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If I care strongly about an issue, but I also know it's likely to win, isn't the best tactic for me to not vote for it to save my credits for more marginal issues?

If everyone votes tacitcally, it seems like a lot of votes would be won with slim majorities. But that risks random upsets, even on issues which everyone basically agrees on!

<comment><USER8> Principles of game theory come into play at that time isnt it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What frustrates me most about Quadratic Voting, and in general a lot of ideas promoted by Glen Weyl and his coterie, is that arguments in its favour almost completely ignore the significant additional cognitive burden it places on the populace. American Voters barely understand the difference between the popular vote and the electoral college -- to ask them to view the results of QV votes as fair and legitimate would be a bridge too far. Hell, I know a fair bit of math and CS, and I would feel uncomfortable quickly deciding how to divide my votes across issues, let alone advising other people on what to do.

<comment><USER10> > American Voters barely understand the difference between the popular vote > and the electoral college -- to ask them to view the results of QV votes as > fair and legitimate would be a bridge too far.

It is not like simpler voting methods are without subtleties (and I certainly wouldn't call electoral college simple!), but these subtleties are well-known and everybody is kind of accustomed to them. Again, immediately abandoning ordinary voting and switching to QV on the level of countries would be stupid, but I don't think they are advocating that.

> Hell, I know a fair bit of math and CS, and I would feel uncomfortable > quickly deciding how to divide my votes across issues, let alone advising > other people on what to do.

This can probably be less of a problem with sufficiently good UI. Imagine that you can play with some sliders and immediately see the consequences of your actions. After some fiddling you will probably get pretty close to what you want. Some friction can even be beneficial, encouraging people to be more thoughtful about issues. There was a study (link: [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2755844](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2755844)) where they used QV in opinion polls and were able to get more information about relative preferences of participants because they were forced to think about correctly allocating their credits instead of blindly answering "strongly agree"/"strongly disagree" even if they didn't really care about a particular issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Actually, I think what would be more useful is the ability to vote directly on all things and delegate your vote on specific topics or in general when you want not every 4 years. We can have the technology to enable this and it would effectively kill a full time politician as a job. That think would instead be done by retirees in their spare time. And if things were not going to work in the right direction, you can vote immediately, any time. If, on the other hand you don't care or don't know enough about the subject, you can delegate your vote and that person can also delegate your and her vote too.

<comment><USER12> Who sets the questions?

In a parliamentary democracy, the full-time politicians decide what is debated; what is up for debate; what is possible to change through a vote (and what is not possible to change by not putting it up for a vote).

They also decide what civil servants act upon - and what they don't. What is researched and evidenced - and what is not.

Deciding what direction you want to vote on a particular single issue is relatively late in the process of democracy (and conveys relatively little power).

The power to elect a representative is thus much greater, fairer, and more desirable, than the power to flex your vote on single issues.

<comment><USER13> A liquid democracy would have to be much closer to direct democracy than representative democracy in this regard.

In California you need to collect a certain percentage of the population's signatures to get something on the ballot, and I imagine it'd have to work the same way. You could increase the frequency to yearly, or even quarterly, and build a system where you can endorse anything you want to be added to a ballot, then once a quarter you can vote on the issues you care about, and give the rest of your voting power to any other citizen, who can do the same for any other issues.

<comment><USER12> Parliaments set the agenda on a _daily_ basis.

How do you cope with coronavirus by making decisions on a quarterly basis?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > For example, a voter with a budget of 16 vote credits can apply 1 vote > credit to each of the 16 issues. However, if the individual has a stronger > passion or sentiment on an issue, they could allocate 4 votes, at the cost > of 16 credits, to the singular issue, effectively using up their entire > budget.

It would be better for this individual "A" to find another one "B" who feels strongly about another issue, and agree to both use 2 votes each on A's cause in exchange for both using 2 votes each on B's cause. That way they each pay only 2^2+2^2 = 8 instead of 16, for the same outcome. This assumes some amount of trust between A and B in case they cannot provide each other with evidence of how they voted.

</comment><comment><USER15> > Under various sets of conditions, quadratic voting has been shown to be much > more efficient than one-person-one-vote in aligning collective decisions > with doing the most good for the most people.

That's a severe misunderstanding. We don't have elections to make collective decisions that yield "the most good for the most people". We have elections because the alternatives to not having elections are worse.

Moreover, "the most good for the most people" is subjective -- any objective measures of that that you come up with will be subjectively chosen. Some will say that maximizing the health of the environment does the most good for the most people, while others will say that maximizing GDP per-capita does -- if those two are in conflict, who's right? Elections sidestep the matter: it's not about being right, but about what people want.

Sometimes people want things they really really shouldn't, and they may try to get their way via elections. For that we have institutions (e.g., constitutions, courts, separation of powers, etc.) that keep them from getting those things for some time. The alternative to all that is absolute monarchy, caudillos, dictatorship, war, anarchy (for a while until you get a strongman) -- all bad things.

If you manage to impose a technocracy not headed by a strongman, soon it will be, and either way may well lead to revolt, possibly civil war.

I too would like a better system, because "democracy is the worst system of governance, except for all the others", but like Churchill, I'm skeptical that there is something better than a constitutional, democratic republican form of government.

Utopia peddling seems very commonplace nowadays. That's a bit worrisome.

<comment><USER16> I think research into voting systems like this shouldn't be read as coming from a point of view of "we have the correct objective function we prove that our system is unequivocably optimal under this objective function". Rather the objective function is a "toy model" which we understand does not capture all of reality, but hopefully captures enough of it to provide some interesting insight.

I mean, obviously policies and outcomes at stake in any voting system are subjective, so that's an objection that can be levelled against any objective function, but that includes anything you choose as well. E.g. if you say that your objective function will be to minimize the risk of participants getting dissatisfied enough to violently go out of the system (i.e. revolt / civil war), well, one-person-one-vote can fail like that too; who's to say that that system is really optimal with respect to this objective function?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why not simply allocate weights of preference between choices so they sum up to 1 (100%)?

If you require that some peoples votes are of higher weight, run the same thing but on population that votes - assigning weight to every individual - <USER2> it sums up to 1 (100%) as well.

With problem defined in this way you have this intuitive tool to easily compose/merge or compare outcomes, ie. voting run for shareholders (weighted on shares) can be merged with votes of ie. employees (could be weighted on salary and/or time spent in the company) - all those can be merged givig weight to each vote run.

This can be extended with more exotic things like votes (at any level) attached to probablity of some yet unknown "fact" or time or any arbirary input which is an output of any DAG created by this voting rule. This makes the whole setup dynamic. Complexity always collapses into simple, intuitive values that can be interpreted (and used as input for other voting-like decisions).

Weighted voting all the way down.

</comment><comment><USER18> Prussia had a three tiered voting system, which allotted electors by dividing the tax income per district in three parts and awarding equal numbers of electors to each of the subpopulations (4.7%, 12.7%, 82.6% of the population in 1849). That it was applied per district had the interesting consequence that even wealthy people could easily be in the lowest of these three brackets ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_three- class_franchise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_three- class_franchise))

</comment><comment><USER19> So, for this to work \- you need a reasonably large set of decisions to be decided in one big election, \- rational agents, even though the topics is emotional.

And how do they reach the conclusion that "the system will be predisposed to dominance by special interest groups with strong, concentrated interests"? That might be in some limit towards infinity case, but in practice? And why that would be a good thing, is beyond me.

<comment><USER20> And who decides what the issues are that get voted on? This is an important flaw IMO against multi issue voting with this system.

If the people making the list of issues are biased they can make one big issue for all the stuff they care about, and a thousand little issues for the stuff other people care about.

Every issue needs equal footing to overcome this, meaning each issue needs to be its own independent election, effectively making QV useless.

<comment><USER19> I too think it's totally possible to rig such elections. E.g., if there's something group A wants, but you don't, you add something group A is totally against, so all their votes will go to the latter issue, and the status quo is kept as far as group A is concerned. Meanwhile, their votes are lost for other issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I really like the idea of this assuming it's some kind of vote credit rather than money, and the vote credits are distributed equally per person. However, it doesn't take into account that the number of things to vote on might not be fixed (or even finite). As more things to vote on are added, do people get more votes? How are they distributed? This would create a whole new variable to gerrymander.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is the voting mechanism used in the game "Civilization VI" (Gathering Storm expansion), if you are interested in checking it out

</comment><comment><USER23> Odd that they didn't mention Arrow's impossibility theorem:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow's_impossibility_theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow's_impossibility_theorem)

[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arrows- theorem](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arrows-theorem)

<comment><USER24> Arrow's theorem is an interesting result on its own, but its practical applicability is kind of undermined by the fact that the dictatorship criterion is actually pretty rarely interesting (and is almost totally irrelevant to a ballot).

<comment><USER25> You do realise that the dictatorship criterion simply replicates the vote of one particular voter _no matter what_? [1]

In most realistic implementations this is likely either the first or the last voter. Surely we can agree that those wouldn't really be desirable?

[1]: See here for a somewhat easy to follow proof: [https://www.math.ucla.edu/~tao/arrow.pdf](https://www.math.ucla.edu/~tao/arrow.pdf)

<comment><USER24> The dictatorship criterion is slightly more wide-reaching than that specific construction which makes it sound silly (though, honestly, not really tremendously unfair). Your link gives a decent enough definition:

> (No dictators) If a single voter prefers X to Y, but all other voters > disagree, then the voting system should override the wishes of that single > voter and rank Y higher than X.

<comment><USER25> The problem is that that criterion combined with the other conditions becomes equivalent to there being no 1-man quorums. As the rest of the proof shows the negation of this implies that there is a dictator, who completely determines the result for all votes.

I guess in a ballot system it might be pretty tricky to figure out who this person is, but in the end it just boils down to the order in which the votes are put into the sorting system.

No while sortition has it's advantages it goes against most people's intuition of what a fair voting system is. And technically arrow's definition of voting systems is deterministic, although you could always shuffle the votes beforehand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Quadratic Election Law (great article) [https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/quadratic-election- law](https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/quadratic-election-law)

</comment><comment><USER27> I wonder how it would work on popular TV shows like American Idol. Maybe it is not in the interest of the broadcaster that the voters get less frustrated/angry with the outcome?

</comment><comment><USER28> Nice to see this here, I spent the last weekend reading about quadratic voting/funding. The core idea is that in order to decide how much "endorsement" each project amongst many receives, you take the square root of how much each person gave to that project, sum that, then square it to decide how much of a matching contribution to be given.

It has a couple interesting properties that make it appealing for the funding of "public goods" (such as software) via grant matching mechanisms. The main ones:

\- Projects with distinct supporter bases will receive more funding if they join forces as a single project with more supporters

\- Projects with few supporters that give a lot of money/endorsement will receive very little boost from this

\- You can also implement the possibility of "negative votes/funding" that allow people to "short" the projects that they consider a net negative

Over the past year a grant matching mechanism using quadratic funding has been trialed in a platform called Gitcoin, which supports crowdfunding Ethereum development projects: [https://gitcoin.co/blog/everything-you-need-to-know- about-gi...](https://gitcoin.co/blog/everything-you-need-to-know-about- gitcoin/)

A post by Vitalik Buterin describing quadratic funding is here: [https://vitalik.ca/general/2019/12/07/quadratic.html](https://vitalik.ca/general/2019/12/07/quadratic.html)

Vitalik also wrote about the last 3 rounds of this funding on Gitcoin, they've been making tweaks and the results are extremely promising:

[https://vitalik.ca/general/2020/04/30/round5.html](https://vitalik.ca/general/2020/04/30/round5.html) [https://vitalik.ca/general/2020/01/28/round4.html](https://vitalik.ca/general/2020/01/28/round4.html) [https://vitalik.ca/general/2019/10/24/gitcoin.html](https://vitalik.ca/general/2019/10/24/gitcoin.html)

The idea of quadratic funding came from quadratic voting, which was discussed in the 2018 book Radical Markets: [https://vitalik.ca/general/2018/04/20/radical_markets.html](https://vitalik.ca/general/2018/04/20/radical_markets.html)

In september 2018 Vitalik together with one of the book authors and another person put out a preprint describing their ideas for quadratic funding, which is very interestingly written: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1809.06421.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1809.06421.pdf)

The broader field under which this fits is called "mechanism design", which means inverse game theory: instead of specifying the rules and seeing what the outcome is, you decide which outcome you want and try to design a game that leads to it...a very enticing idea.

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

</comment><comment><USER29> If you like this, you'll probably be interested in STAR[0]. It has a really high voter satisfaction efficiency[1]. Pretty much it is the best if you want to account for strategic voting[2] (Condorcet methods don't handle these as well, but do have a higher VSE when it isn't accounted for, but we're talking pretty close anyways).

So why Cardinal systems? They are a lot easier than ranked systems. You like two people equally? You hate two people equally? No worries, just give them the same number. You basically have all the advantages in this case (I'll mention that Gibbard's[3] is an extension of Arrow's and it applies here). But why we would want this system is because it makes for the best of both worlds between the "we need parties" and "fuck parties" groups.

Let's take an example: Pick your favorite outside candidate: Bernie, Tulsi, Warren, Yang. If the general election was using STAR it wouldn't matter who the Dems pushed. You could still vote for these candidates and it wouldn't help you're candidate win. So I'd imagine a HN ballot could look something like this

Biden: 5

Gabbard: 7

Sanders: 10

Trump: 3

Warren: 9

Yang: 8

If Bernie, Tulsi, Warren, and Yang did not get enough votes to win, it would still be like the same election where we are choosing Biden v Trump, even though Biden wasn't your first choice. This means you can vote honestly (i.e. which candidate is closest to your opinion and not which candidate you think can win). It entirely removes the "electibility" question.

Why cardinal over ranked? One simple answer is that when cardinal breaks down it turns into approval voting. Approval voting is "I like this candidate" vs "I dislike this candidate". It is essentially the way we pick where to eat with friends. Everyone says "I don't know". So you start listing off places and once enough people say "sure", you pick that. It doesn't get you the best place to eat, but no one is really unhappy either. What STAR does is basically give you the options: "Hate it", "no", "ehhh", "I guess", "fine", "yes", "hell fucking yeah" (that'd be STAR06).

STAR is simple to understand, leads to high voter satisfaction, removes the electibility issue, let's parties exist without parties dominating (i.e. other parties can actually compete), easy to pick a winner, and more qualities we like in voting systems (if you're trying to make a fair system where people get representatives that represent their ideals). Of course, this does not fix the issues of money in politics, people lying, and all that.

This is just one component, but I think an essential component that will have huge effects on any democratically elected system and I think it is something that we really should fight for. It is also easy to sell the idea because everyone wants a more fair voting system.

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

[1][https://electionscience.github.io/vse- sim/VSE/](https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/VSE/)

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

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbard%27s_theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbard%27s_theorem)

<comment><USER24> What's the appeal over straight approval voting, which can be explained and justified in about three sentences, and almost self-evidently produces good- enough results?

<comment><USER29> There's more finesse in STAR. Because you are better able to specify __how much you approve__ this leads to higher voter satisfaction.

<comment><USER13> Is there any hard evidence for this? I'm sure there would be higher voter satisfaction among the types of folks that study alternative election systems and don't mind reading about every candidate on their ballot, but more convoluted systems generally lead to lower voter satisfaction because they're required to do more work/studying up front to maximize their voting power, and the results are more difficult to interpret.

Most voters walk into a polling place with 1 or 2 people they like, 1 or 2 people they don't like, and a bunch of people they don't care about, which is perfectly fine, and it should be taken into account with any proposed voting system.

<comment><USER29> What do you mean hard evidence? In all the sims (which you can find many more and much more detailed ones than what I listed, STAR's website has many itself[0]) it yields better satisfaction than approval. This should be obvious that it is.

> the results are more difficult to interpret.

Are you concerned about it being complicated? I'm sorry, but I just don't buy this argument. These types of scales are in questionnaires everywhere. I don't buy that people are so stupid that they can't just score a candidate. Even if they just ranked them it wouldn't have a large effect on the outcome. In fact, this can fix accidents with ranked choice where people accidentally rank candidates the same rank.

And if a significant amount of people are that dumb, well it still works out. Leaving an entry blank counts as a score of 0. You can score only a single candidate if you want, that's fine.

> but more convoluted systems generally lead to lower voter satisfaction > because they're required to do more work/studying up front to maximize their > voting power

You aren't required to do anything. And honestly, a lot of people do look into multiple candidates. Hell, the entire primaries are essentially people doing background research on candidates. But if they don't, sure, that's just called dishonest voting, which STAR handles better than ranked.

I honestly don't understand this type of criticism. It hinges on the idea that the average voter is dumber than a rock.

> Most voters walk into a polling place with 1 or 2 people they like, 1 or 2 > people they don't like, and a bunch of people they don't care about, which > is perfectly fine, and it should be taken into account with any proposed > voting system.

You do realize that STAR accounts for this, right? You don't have to vote for everyone. If you just liked Biden you could just give him any number greater than 0 and your vote would be for him. At WORST STAR is identical approval.

[0] [https://www.starvoting.us/](https://www.starvoting.us/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >> Using this anonymous ballot system provides identity protection from vote buying or trading since these exchanges cannot be verified by the buyer or trader.

I'm really split on that one. I'm not sure that anonymity does much to curb vote buying. I think it allows vote buying to fly under the radar. If we know how a politician votes we can then compare that to fundraising and lobbying records. With anonymous voting we are blind.

A modern lobbyist doesn't care about verifying individual votes. They lobby multiple people, entire parties, to shift trends. If they fail on an issue that only means the people they were lobbying don't have control of their party. The lobbyists move to other people for the next round. Eventually they work out where to send their money and start winning regardless. At least with non-anonymous voting outsiders have some hope of tracking what is going on.

<comment><USER30> Lobbying is very different from vote buying. Vote buying is saying to someone, "I'll buy your vote for $X". If votes are anonymous, then there's no way to verify that you actually got what you paid for.

<comment><USER31> Presumably there are reliable votes on either side that are well known : subtract those from the result and you may have a fair idea whther your puppet obeyed his master. It might not be easy to confidently disobey.

<comment><USER32> Votes by people in elections are what's being contemplated as being bought, not votes by a much smaller group of representatives on specific legislation.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The topology of impossible spaces - <AUTHOR> http://www.ams.org/publicoutreach/feature-column/fc-2014-10 <comment><AUTHOR> Cohomology is one of the major ideas of modern mathematics. Not just an abstruse technical device for proving other abstruse technical facts, it's beginning to see use data analysis as well. Cohomological ideas can be found in surprising places. If you liked this article, you might also like this one, which explains how carrying in digit arithmetic is a cocycle: [http://www.math.wayne.edu/~isaksen/Expository/carrying.pdf](http://www.math.wayne.edu/~isaksen/Expository/carrying.pdf)

<comment><USER2> I consider topology an important branch of mathematics. Morse theory[1] is very powerful to prove existence or non existence of solutions in other spaces of mathematics. I saw it applied to robot motion planning [2] (and could use that to prove to an engineer friend that the sort of algorithm he was looking for cannot exist), so yes it has practical real world applications.

On the other hand I would be surprised to see data scientists apply cohomology in their daily work (citations?).

Also while a short glimpse at your digit arithmetic gives me fun (i'm far from fully getting it that fast) I don't see any deeper insight we get from it at this stage. I would be careful to propose to someone to learn cohomology if they were interested in data science or arithmetic. Most likely the time could be used in a better way.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_theory](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_theory) [2] [https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0111197](https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0111197)

<comment><AUTHOR> (Co)homological methods in data science fall under the umbrella of topological data analysis, which is quite a new approach relative to more standard ones. In particular, persistent (co)homology is the applicable theory here, because it computes homology at varying spatial resolutions.

> so while a short glimpse at your digit arithmetic gives me fun

The fun is the point of it :) It's easy to get discouraged by very abstract, very powerful mathematical ideas, so having fun little toy examples is nice.</comment></comment></comment>


Without net neutrality in Portugal, the internet is bundled like a cable package - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1114690/why-is-net-neutrality-important-look-to-portugal-and-spain-to-understand/ <comment><USER2> And Portuguese hardly care. Most are happy with youtube, facebook and whatsapp available at unlimited bandwidth.

For the common folks, Internet isn't that interesting. What they care is knowing about their friends, some entertainment and be able to communicate.

Things like innovation, self-education and other topics are more in the realm of geeks, exactly as it as always been.</comment>


Audio processing in TensorFlow - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/towards-data-science/audio-processing-in-tensorflow-208f1a4103aa <comment><USER2> Anyone interested in machine learning for audio (or any other signals) should keep a close eye on tf.contrib.signal. I just checked in some code to do efficient framing, windowing and overlap-add. In a day or so I'll be checking in an STFT and inverse STFT with GPU and gradient support, so you can make an STFT part of learning (not just an input pre-processing step). Please file bugs / feature requests and feel free to CC me (also rryan on github).

<comment><USER3> Just to confirm, this is being developed in the main TensorFlow repo?

<comment><USER2> Yup! The code is here: [https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/tree/master/tensorf...](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/tree/master/tensorflow/contrib/signal)

<comment><USER3> Awesome, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been looking for something like this - I want to do some serious research into my cats meowing. One of them will walk into a room, make eye contact then emit a complicated sequence of meows, chirrups and squeaks. She is obviously trying to say _something_ and it's my job to find out what.

</comment><comment><USER5> I find it perplexing that people are still using a serial text-based IDE to write code for something called 'Tensor _Flow_ '. It's worth looking into Reaktor and CoreDSP from Native Instruments to see how audio processing tasks (and indeed neural nets) can be handled in a flow-based IDE.

The landing page is aimed at musicians but if you dig down there's extensive documentation on how to do low-level DSP processing. [https://www.native- instruments.com/en/products/komplete/synt...](https://www.native- instruments.com/en/products/komplete/synths/reaktor-6/) and [https://www.native- instruments.com/fileadmin/ni_media/downlo...](https://www.native- instruments.com/fileadmin/ni_media/downloads/manuals/REAKTOR_6_Building_in_Core_English_2015_11.pdf)

Yes, there's a learning curve to flow-based programming. But this is what all IDEs will eventually look like. You shouldn't be writing everything in code for the same reasons you shouldn't be writing your whole project in assembler: your reinvention of the wheel is probably not as great as you think; every time you forsake a standard modular component in favor of your own way of doing it, you're creating technical debt for whoever has parse your code later; A lot of the actual work in coding is syntax, glue, and scope checking, and those jobs are _better done by a computer_ \- making people type out all that stuff by hand is a distraction from the domain-specific problem to be solved.

Music software may seem like a toy to non-musicians/sound engineers but for them it's mission-critical real-time software with an extremely demanding user base that frequently has advanced domain knowledge of its own. Tools like Reaktor are built on the foundations of earlier tools like pd and supercollider, which in turn were built on text-based languages like CSound. People have been building neural nets and suchlike on these platforms for over a decade already.

<comment><USER6> Do you think such tools are mature enough for wide adoption yet? How does, for instance, version control and collaborative development fit into these flow- based tools?

> every time you forsake a standard modular component in favor of your own way > of doing it, you're creating technical debt for whoever has parse your code > later

I don't disagree that you shouldn't re-invent the wheel whenever possible, but modularity is absolutely not unique to flow-based programming. Well designed libraries should provide good levels of abstraction and be highly modular. Flow-based programming might stop people from shooting themselves in the foot, but I'm not sure if the cost to flexibility makes it worth it in every case.

<comment><USER5> Yes, look into Flowstone or NoFlow. Tools like this are very common in many niche domains; it takes some mental effort to pull back and see the limitations of path dependency in general purpose programming, and frankly an awful lot of people are ego-invested in their current way of doing things with no thought to the long term accessibility and maintainability issues.</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft Preps Mango Update With Zune 4.8 - <AUTHOR> http://www.conceivablytech.com/9046/business/microsoft-preps-mango-update-with-zune-4-8

<comment><USER2> Has Microsoft completely ditched their plan of OTA updates? I've been grabbing the pre-releases, so have never gone through the regular update process.</comment>


Scientists Help Movie Writers Make Films 'Plausible-Ish' - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/scientists-help-movie-writers-make-films-plausible-ish-1452473839 <comment><USER3> This is actually a decent route for a kind of supplementary education: it would be pretty valuable to expose a broad audience to the way scientists/engineers really think about problems—and the opportunity is generally wasted, preferring to convey that scientists/engineers just have some magical ability that the audience does not.

It's a little difficult to say exactly what it is that could be communicated, but I guess I'd call it 'intuition'; and the value of trying to convey it in a movie is that if you tell the average person, "I'm now going to give you some examples of how scientists think about things"—they're going to become nervous and less efficient at absorbing the info.

I was recently impressed by "Ex Machina" for being 'plausable-ish' and showing realistic, intelligent thought processes, as an example. The t.v. show "House" is also sometimes good about it.

<comment><USER4> I'd like movies to go more for a kind of "social proof". Part of the reason Star Trek, especially TNG, raised a generation of scientists and engineers is because science and engineering there is normal. Not mundane, but normal. Every protagonist and background character in this world is highly educated; no one is surprised by it, nobody boasts about it - it's just how everyone are. Even that dirty Klinon thug knows more science and engineering than your average university graduate. It's just _normal_ , and I think it reflects on the audience.

Besides thinking, there's a huge value in portraying accurate science and technology. Even if it's background, not core of the plot. Pretty much everyone in the West learns stuff from TV and cinema, whether they like it or not. Especially if one doesn't know about something beforehand, the movie will set baseline expectations about that thing. Think how most people seem to believe that people will explode when exposed to vacuum - thanks to decades of movies that told them exactly that. If people are going to learn from TV, they may as well learn the correct stuff.

<comment><USER5> I think about this too sometimes.. TNG in particular had scientifically literate characters and that sort of depth was considered normal, there was no fuss about the big ideas and the knowledge, they just applied it. It is easy to get used to a mature baseline of thought like that as a viewer. Most of the newer apocalyptic themed sci-fi just seems silly in comparison.

As a side note, I really like some of the comic books written by Jonathan Hickman, for example his S.H.I.E.L.D. or FF runs. He seems to be a fan of science.

<comment><USER4> TNG is a thing that comes back as a topic almost whenever I have a longer discussion with my mother and brother. It's those discussions that made me realize that there are two things that Star Trek world had, that I miss in the real one:

1) High level of baseline literacy we were talking about. Contrast to our world, when many people shy from learning new things, and those who do learn are often labeled as nerds and warned about dangers of having too high self- esteem. I really long for the world where this sort of anti-intellectualism is not something to be proud of, and where the social pressure is encouraging self-development, rather than discouraging it.

2) Expectation of competency. It's visible on all levels - from civilian vs. Starfleet interactions, through teamwork of starship crews, to the inner workings of big bureaucracies like the United Federation of Planets. Everyone is assumed competent until proven otherwise. Characters in Star Trek know they're working with others who are as smart as they are, and so they trust each other and trust the system. Contrast with the real world, where we often assume our coworkers are incompetent, and the predominant narrative in society is that bureaucracies are stupid and evil.

I only now realize how much my expectations of humans are different thank to Star Trek, and that a big part of my life is trying to form an area around myself, where 1) and 2) would hold.

There's also point 3), but that may be a particular quirk of my personality - I prefer stories where not individuals, but _organizations_ are heroes. That's another reason why I love Star Trek, and that's also why S.H.I.E.L.D. was always my favourite part of the Marvel Multiverse. A magical mutated flying superhero is boring. A _Helicarrier_ \- now that's interesting. :).

<comment><USER5> Fully agree with 1) in a sense that the sciences and the humanities are all around us, in front of us, and it's not 'geek' impulse to try exploring both, it's part of being a rational, fulfilled human being.

As for 2), that's an interesting point. Perhaps it speaks to a level of maturity and mutual trust that we have not achieved yet. Maybe it manifests naturally as a result of progress with 1). It'd be interesting to read some lengthier discourse on this.. I feel it relates to government, market forces, social perception, culture and more..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Do they really? At the risk of letting my inner hipster movie snob out in force, I've found modern sci fi movies to be bottom of the barrel as far as any sort of plausibility/immersion goes. (As an example, I was screaming at the screen for the better part of The Martian, if only for the behavior and attitudes of the acting "astronauts" when compared to actual astronauts in critical situations)

Moon stands out to me as one of the few beacons of recent "hard sci fi", whereas many of the movies that got a lot of acclaim for having staff- scientists (gravity, the martian, interstellar to a lesser degree) just made me grumpy.

I've found modern movies play the same tricks as they always did, pick up on buzzwords and massage them enough such that the average joe can't tell the difference. Perhaps that's what the article means by "plausible-ISH", and I felt like they touched on this thrust in the "ten years ago everything was ElectroMagnetic Pulses" (not verbatim), nowadays we just have different tropes; I don't believe things have gotten any more sophisticated aside from that the internet forces the tropes to be "more correct" one or two levels deeper.

A lot of my bitterness is rooted in a combination of two things. One, the final sentence of the article hits the nail on the head. "You can only make so realistic a film where someone jumps over buildings"; Fine, but if you concede that, don't try and paint a thin veneer of half-assed realism over the whole thing. I will forgive just about anything in a more fantasy-directed sci fi, but if you start trying to be "hard", I'll hold a different standard. Second, the correctness seems to often play second fiddle to whatever set pieces or plot is desired. I understand this may be a pragmatic necessity, but it's very obvious when the two start to generate friction against each other (scientific realism and plot) and I long for this to be balanced elegantly, with the science as a more integral component (truly "leading the story" as the article likes to suggest they are attempting) rather than the stucco you paint on after the fact, disguising up a weak skeleton against only the most peripheral examination.

<comment><USER7> I didn't notice any glaring problems in Ex Machina, but it's definitely an exception.

<comment><USER8> I while watching Ex Machina, I was caught up in the story and characters. Immediately afterwards, I realized how ridiculously contrived a few parts were.

(Spoilers follow.)

The most glaring oversight was the lack of an emergency shutdown for Ava. The story should have ended with Nathan pulling out a remote, pressing a button, and Ava collapsing. The prospect of a robot going berserk was known to him. Heck, it'd already happened before. One scene shows footage of a prototype smashing itself to bits on the wall. The movie expects us to believe that after that incident, Nathan thought, "No need to add failsafes. Just let these AIs destroy my carefully-crafted robot bodies on this glass partition." I don't buy it.

<comment><USER9> (Spoilers too) The thing that stood out for me was Ava leaving the compound without any explanation for how she would inductively charge herself afterwards.

<comment><USER8> I assumed the induction panels were repurposed commodity gear. Typical use would be to charge phones, tablets, laptops, roombas, etc… and Ava could top- up at an airport or coffee shop. That conclusion makes more sense than Nathan inventing his own wireless charging standard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The science isn't often the most implausible part, it's the actual demeanor of supposed scientists / engineers / astronauts / etc.

Alien & Primer are excellent counterexamples.

<comment><USER11> > Alien & Primer are excellent counterexamples.

Oddly, Prometheus was an excellent _example_. It's like Ridley Scott documented all the different ways you can make a character totally uninteresting and loathsome, and made sure to include at least one example of each in that movie. What a turd.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sometimes this seems to make it worse. I've observed I tend to get most frustrated when the movie is plausible throughout until an implausible climax. I understand that this is where the friction between plot and science will be strongest, but it feels like they're changing the rules where it most matters!

<comment><USER4> They need to stop hiring scientists just to make technobabble plausible - <USER2> creative writers need to start treating them seriously instead, and consulting them on the story flow. Like in Interstellar, when Nolan would tell Kip Thorne that he needs something for his plot, Thorne would outline the necessary physical conditions and developments, and then the two would argue over it until they could figure out a path for the story that reaches the creative goal while staying within the constraints of science.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Accordingly, the poet should prefer probable impossibilities to improbable possibilities."

[http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/poetics.mb.txt](http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/poetics.mb.txt)

</comment><comment><USER14> It's a interesting question, are anti-science movies like Interstellar, which also make science look cool, better for science or worse.

<comment><USER4>
      > anti-science
      > Interstellar

... what? Care to elaborate?</comment></comment>


How I changed the world in 2013 - <AUTHOR> http://planscope.io/blog/how-i-changed-the-world-in-2013/

<comment><USER2> > As an example, today my admin dashboard popped up with a notice that Fred > had closed an estimate for about $30k. I tabbed over to GMail and wrote Fred > a quick congratulatory note and asked him if there was anything I could do > to help him close future estimates faster and with less resistance.

I don't know how this application works, but is there an option to opt out of this? This seems like it could be a serious problem. Fred seemed happy, but there are a lot of other businesses which I'm sure wouldn't be too pleased to have their business activity popping up on Brennan's dashboard.

I hate to hit a negative note because I think his articles are helpful and its great that he is out there building something and making things work.

<comment><USER3> (Brennan here)

I've thought about this a lot too, especially since I'm pretty much a stickler about asking permission to jump into a project before checking out a bug or something for a user.

I've made sure to sanitize my dashboard to just show first initial milestones. For instance, when someone invites a client and they first sign in, I get a notification saying "Bob's first client just accepted an invitation", which will have me then go and say "Hey Bob, saw your client joined. Let me know if they need any help in getting setup..."

Based on your comment above, I think it might make sense to just notify me with "Bob closed an estimate", and that's it. Bear in mind, I only get this notification the first time one of these milestones is reached.

Good comment though, and great food for thought.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the info Brennan. As you may recall, there was a bit of a stink over 37Signals posting that X picture uploaded was "cat.jpg". This seems similar, so that's certainly something to keep in mind.

As I say, I hate to bring any negativity about what you are doing. You are obviously of great help to people and your post is inspiring.

You were providing value above and beyond by offering more help, which is great. In this day of privacy concerns, that may be a dangerous road. One important reason that I bring this up is that I'm more hesitant these days to sign up for "cloud services" due to the possibility that someone might possibly have the permissions to look through things that I wouldn't want open.

In any case, continue kicking tail. I love reading your posts and I may give your service a test drive in the future.

<comment><USER3> Thanks! And I totally agree. While I like to think project tasks that say "make the logo bigger" aren't as sensitive as, like, bank statement data, I definitely understand the concern.

So far, I've had 0 pushback to these little notes I send, and the good (helping them close more deals = more money = less chance of going out of business) has outweighed the thus far non-existant bad, but it's still something to think about even if it hasn't become a problem (yet?)

If you ever sign up in the future, drop me a note and I can run you through how Planscope can work for your business over Skype or something :-)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: IPFS, DHTs, torrents, blockchains, oh my: best books/papers to catch up? - <AUTHOR> Hi, so I've been playing with IPFS / Bitcoin, read the whitepaper, but there's a lot to absorb to fully understand the current landscape of decentralized networking.<p>What would be your go-to books/papers/talks that can help me catch up? <comment><USER2> [https://gnunet.org/bibliography](https://gnunet.org/bibliography)</comment>


Sailor kissing woman in iconic VJ Day photo at Times Square dies at 95 - <AUTHOR> https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/02/18/sailor-kissing-woman-vj-day-photo-times-square-dies/2904579002/ <comment><USER2> Imagine the shitshow if he did that today.</comment>


What not to buy on Black Friday: Windows 8 PCs and laptops - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/what-not-to-buy-on-black-friday-windows-8-pcs-and-laptops-7000007557/

<comment><USER2> I am not a Win8 user. I was in a Sams Club the other day and saw it for the first time. I can now really see why there's such a negativity against Win8. Personally, it seems that Microsoft has just put a wrapper around Win7 and have eliminated the Start button. Otherwise, it took a few clicks to get out of the Apps wrapper to go back to the usual desktop where everything looks as same as Windows 7.

It doesn't feel like any type of useful innovation at all.

</comment><comment><USER3> ...whaaaat a neckbeard. really, what sane commentator says unequivocally to not buy something because of (present, yes, and bothersome, yes) but niggling issues that really don't interfere with the core functionalities of an operating system?

</comment><comment><USER4> Ouch!</comment>


Scientists develop thermal camouflage that can fool infrared cameras - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/jun/27/scientists-develop-thermal-camouflage-that-can-fool-infrared-cameras <comment><USER2> A very cool development, but . . .

I wonder about its long term potential as camouflage. By reducing its infrared emissivity, it can make a hot object look cooler, but might it not also prevent that hot object from shedding heat thereby causing its temperature to go up? Invisible soldiers aren't much good if they literally cook to death.

<comment><USER3> It has nothing to do with the thermal qualities of the object and everything to do with being able to alter emissivity. Thermal cameras are only accurate for a given emissivity and high end thermal cameras allow you to tune emissivity to get accurate readings [1]. By altering the emissivity of the material at will, you can camouflage your object against a camera assuming constant emissivity.

[1] [http://en-us.fluke.com/training/training- library/measurement...](http://en-us.fluke.com/training/training- library/measurements/thermography/how-emissivity-affects-thermal-images.html)

<comment><USER4> That's a great page! I only recently started learning about black body radiation namely due to investigating lighting for my house and photography lighting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _> The approach involves using electricity to alter the properties of the film, so that it changes from acting more like a "black body" – which absorbs and emits electromagnetic radiation but does not reflect it – to becoming more like a metal, which reflects radiation but is not good at absorbing or emitting it._

Could this be used for thermal management? E.g. reflect during the day, radiate during night?

<comment><USER6> For that you just need to make sure your emissivity is low below the black body wavelength at the temperature it should have at night. This is already in use/testing to serve as a kind of A/C in some locations, but iirc. it requires a clear sky to dump the heat into space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I imagine this can be used for home inspection fraud when inspectors use infrared cameras to detect problems.

</comment><comment><USER8> I thought I had already seen it in the original Deus Ex as nanocanister. :D</comment>


Stripe Atlas is not for everyone. Caveats based on my experience. - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@cbkrish/stripe-atlas-is-not-for-everyone-caveats-based-on-my-experience-2735a226df8a?source=linkShare-74c1c17cc6f2-1473574176 <comment><USER2> Basically this article is saying "Maybe you don't need a Delaware C corp for your business needs. Think about it?"

It's not knocking Atlas at all.

<comment><USER3> I wrote that post. You are right. Just because it's easier now as a package, folks are blindly following it.

Stripe and AWS are great services that brought down the barriers to entry significantly for everyone.

Because Stripe Atlas is so easy, low cost and comes highly recommended, a lot of early stage founders are blindly choosing it. But we need to remember that we are dealing with governments across borders and tax obligations that we need to understand well. Even if you don't file certain documents regularly you could get into a lot of trouble. So my recommendation is to consider the pros and cons and choose the option wisely.</comment></comment>


Simple tools for EC2 reserved instances cost analysis - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/balanced-ops/ec2-cost-tools

<comment><USER2> Found a $200k mistake with this. Thanks. :(

<comment><USER2> Ahhhh, I freaked out because I forgot this edge case: VPC vs Classic reservations don't affect whether you get a price cut or not, they only affect the capacity portion of the reservations -- being guaranteed to launch an instance of that size in that Region+AZ.</comment></comment>


Mind-controlled hearing aid allows the wearer to focus on particular voices - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/may/15/scientists-create-mind-controlled-hearing-aid <comment><USER2> Making it work as a selective sound cancellation device would be amazing in open office environments.

I have a few people in my office whose voices I would love to tune out on a regular basis -- Screambo Braydonkey, the Exuberant Yellboy and the Tedious Lizard are some examples.

This tech works by amplifying what the wearer's mind focuses on -- could the opposite work (canceling out what the listener is focused on), or would that create a peculiar feedback loop, forcing the listener's attention to switch between different voices as they're tuned out in turn?

<comment><AUTHOR> _Making it work as a selective sound cancellation device would be amazing in open office environments._

Then again - this would be a perfect of example of bleeding edge technology being used to "fix" a certain situation -- namely (1) toxic "open plan" office environments created by managers who (2) either have no clue or basically don't give a fuck -- whose root causes are far more mundane, and (in principle) can be treated at the source.

That is - by simply getting enough co-workers to get together and letting management know that you simply won't be having any of it.

<comment><USER3> >Then again - this would be a perfect of example of bleeding edge technology being used to "fix" a certain situation

Great!

>That is - by simply getting enough co-workers to get together and letting management know that you simply won't be having any of it.

Because _no-one_ likes open plan offices, right?

You can show me study after study of how inefficient something might be, but your solution of gathering co-workers and talking to management presupposes that everyone is on board. That's not usually the case. Some folks may join your cause to avoid upsetting coworkers. Some may actually enjoy the setup and feel pressured to conform to their coworkers plans.

The technology solution in this case is an individual fix that doesn't affect others -- and while it may continue to allow the atrocity of open-office- planning to exist, it won't interrupt the lives of others' on a whim that everyone shares the same feelings towards something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >"One of the reasons people struggle is that they often wait a long time before getting a hearing aid and in that time the brain forgets how to filter out the noise and focus on the speech," she said. "This is really interesting research and I'd love to see the real world impacts of it."<

As a hearing-aid dispenser for over 10 years that was my biggest hurdle to get my clients to overcome.

Yu must work hard at hearing better, it is not enough to just hear more. Most people were shocked that the (expensive) device would not allow them to hear only what/who they wanted. {How could the device even what you wanted?}

Those that kept going to noisy places and kept exercising there hearing system were successful. Most gave up when faced with the reality that they needed to work harder.

Technology like is discussed in the OP would be revolutionary.

</comment><comment><USER5> Amazing, and I need one of these!

I damaged my hearing years ago (operating a stump grinder without protection. Doh!) I can hear things perfectly well in most environments, but a crowded room is terrible for me. I can be looking right at the person I'm talking to and won't be able to distinguish their voice from the background noise.

I really hope these become widely commercialized. I'd like one.

<comment><USER6> > but a crowded room is terrible for me.

I'm in the same boat. Too many Motorhead gigs in the 80's have taken their toll :). I can hear a pin drop in my house, but as soon as I'm in an environment with background noise - a pub, a busy street or even a restaurant (though I think restaurants may be problem for many folks[0]) - I find it difficult to hear people speaking to me. Semi-jokingly, I've often thought about taking up a pal's suggestion that I should give in and get myself an ear-trumpet :)

[0]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17629497](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17629497)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> before yall get too ahead of yourselves:

"The current version of the hearing aid, which involved direct implants into the brain, would be unsuitable for mainstream use"

</comment><comment><USER8> I always wonder if hearing aid has military applications, or for non-hearing- disabled people. Is it possible to have an above average hearing with this?

<comment><USER4> Hearing aid technology is used in milatary and police aplpications, mostly as small discrete communication devices.

I warn against using devices to make it easier to hear - when you have no hearing loss - as it could make your hearing system "lazy".

Just like physiotherapists now advise against overuse of knee and neck braces. Better to strengthen the muscles needed to do the function rather than supplement with an aid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I would like a device which can reliably only record my own voice. This would allow one to create a verbal record of what is happening in emergencies, which could be very useful if combined with a video record. Also, such a device could simply remain on all the time. Only recording one's own voice would allow continual use of the device in two party recording consent states.

</comment><comment><USER10> This would be a game-changer for me if this works well.

</comment><comment><USER11> I wonder if an equivalent technology for cochlear implant users is in the works...

</comment><comment><USER12> I see a great potential for the people suffering from Misophonia

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't understand. I thought the brain does the isolation of single voices from an audio stream, not the ear drum.

</comment><comment><USER14> Hearing enhancement for everyone is easy with current tech.

But people won't do it because it looks like you're disabled.

But once enough people do it, it'll no longer look that way and be cool like sunglasses. But they are not. So we don't.

Strange world.

<comment><USER15> Counterpoint: AirPods are pretty "cool" and can serve as assistive hearing aids through Live Listen.

<comment><USER16> Its very interesting that people are prepared to wear "cool" AirPods but still shy away from hearing aids because they don't want to look old or disabled. Hearing aid manufacturers are starting to catch on and market aids more as lifestyle accessories rather than medical devices that fix a disability, which will help a lot. Also, aids are much smaller and sleeker now, they look pretty cool, the tide will turn eventually and more people will start to accept them - i'm not sure they will become as cool as glasses but they'll at least become acceptable.

BTW: the live listen on Apple devices is a nice feature but it nowhere near being a hearing aid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Inclusive of voices in one's head?

</comment><comment><USER18> In Soviet Russia, hearing aid controls your mind.</comment>


When you want to quit because it's just not worth it  - <AUTHOR> http://www.clipboard.com/clip/LQqF9gOqzMaYa1LtHm75esGnpbWfLun8GUPe <comment><USER2> It's very easy to think if you don't hit it big after 3 months or even a year, you're doomed. But we often fail to recognize that the successful players have a 5-8 year head start sometimes.

<comment><USER3> Seemingly apropos: <http://www.paulgraham.com/die.html></comment></comment>


Selling your equity: $300K for 3% of your lifetime income - <AUTHOR> http://www.transcapitalist.com/transcapitalist/2010/1/18/investing-in-people-when-equity-means-sharing-an-individuals.html

<comment><USER2> Isn't this what's called a mortgage? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Well yes, except usually you aren't mortgaging yourself.

<comment><USER2> It's interesting, a $300k mortgague at, say, 3% apr would mean repayments of around $1150 per month for 35 years. So I guess you are effectively giving away a large proportion of your lifetime income. 3% of earnings would be a pretty god deal for most people :)</comment></comment></comment>


Apple Near $3.2 Billion Deal for Beats Electronics  - <AUTHOR> http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/report-apple-32-billion-deal-702466?mobile_redirect=false

<comment><USER2> Discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7717961](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7717961)

Other submissions, some have up-votes, some have comments:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7718020](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7718020)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7717995](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7717995)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7717980](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7717980)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7718106](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7718106)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7718133](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7718133)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7718138](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7718138)</comment>


VoltDB - in memory, ACID compliant, partitioned, SQL database - <AUTHOR> http://www.voltdb.com/product

<comment><USER2> Early adopter signup gives access to the source, which is licensed under GPLv3. However, there is a binding Beta agreement which states that I may not redistribute the code/application.

 _The VoltDB software is being published as open source software under the Gnu Public License V3. In other words, as Early Release program members, you now have access to the source files for VoltDB and the development tools for browsing the source code and the current issues lists.

Please note, however, that the Beta agreement is still in effect until VoltDB is officially available. So we ask that you not redistribute the source or binaries beyond your own use at this time._

Is this legally enforceable?

<comment><USER3> Legally, probably not. They aren't demanding that you not redistribute, just asking. And asking politely. They are banking on the good nature of people. Good for them! And us.

<comment><USER4> If they don't want people to redistribute the code, why on earth are they GPL'ing it?

<comment><USER5> I can't speak for them, but in our case we had major users who required open- source (mostly European govt. projects).

All our developers wanted to just post the source online and be done with it, but our boss had security concerns he wanted us to address first -- so in the meantime we gave people who needed it GPL'ed copies, and asked them politely not to redistribute until we were ready.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't understand how they could avoid locks. They say that each replica runs independently and hence that avoids locking; what about write updates to the same object from different clients? That would need locking of some form at some level.

They should also explicitly discuss the failure models for which they're guaranteeing Durability. If you're scaling to "web-scale", and running this db in a data-centre, then, a single failure would wipe out a rack of machines. Coordinated failures are not uncommon in data-centres. What about those?

<comment><USER7> From their whitepaper:

 _"Conventional databases experience disk and user stalls within transactions. Rather than let the CPU be idle during the stalls, those DBMSs interleave SQL execution from multiple transactions during the waits so the CPU is always busy. This is what requires much of the complex latching and locking overhead.

VoltDB doesn't experience user stalls (since transactions happen within stored procedures) or disk stalls (because VoltDB processes data in main memory). Therefore, it is able to eliminate the overhead associated with multi- threading (latching) and locking. Each VoltDB execution engine is single- threaded and contains a queue of transaction requests, which it executes sequentially—and exclusively—against its data. Elimination of stalls and the need for locking and latching overhead and allows typical VoltDB SQL operations to complete in microseconds.

For single-partition transactions, each VoltDB engine operates autonomously. For multi-partition transactions, one engine distributes and coordinates work plans for the other engines. VoltDB assumes that an application designer can construct a partitioning/cloning scheme and a transaction design that makes a large majority of the transactions local to a single virtual node. Many common applications such as order-fulfillment, software as a service (SaaS), Web 2.0 and trading systems have this property."_

[http://www.voltdb.com/_pdf/VoltDBTechnicalOverviewWhitePaper...](http://www.voltdb.com/_pdf/VoltDBTechnicalOverviewWhitePaper.pdf)

<comment><USER8> That still doesn't completely answer the question how it avoids race conditions and the likes without locking. Assume I'm executing multiple long- running transactions, each hitting and modifying a lot (millions) of different objects. How are race conditions avoided in this case ? One engine that distributes and coordinates work plans for the other engines sounds nice, but does this essentially mean that only one of these transactions is able to run at the same time, even when they could be running concurrently when using locking?

<comment><USER9> VoltDB is designed for short transactions that each touch one row, so you should expect pretty poor performance for long-running transactions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I guess in memory means that it never writes data to the disks. So what happens when the machine reboots?

<comment><USER11> In-memory DBs can take a lot of excellent shortcuts but I have to wonder if their usability is limited. After all, I'd think most interesting data sets end up quickly eclipsing the available RAM in most off the shelf/affordable servers.

<comment><USER12> Keep in mind that VoltDB targets the OLTP market, where datasets tend to be not that large. If you build a small cluster of 50 nodes with 256GB RAM each, you have about 4.3TB of storage (with a replication factor of 3).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Have to fill in a form to see a whitepaper. Yeah whatever.

<comment><USER14> They're just gauging interest and making sure to get emails they can push adoption to later, it's a classic sales technique. Don't hate.

Regardless, the links they send are open:

VoltDB product overview: <http://www.voltdb.com/_pdf/VoltDBOverview.pdf>

VoltDB Technical Architecture white paper: [http://www.voltdb.com/_pdf/VoltDBTechnicalOverviewWhitePaper...](http://www.voltdb.com/_pdf/VoltDBTechnicalOverviewWhitePaper.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> So, how fast does it run ALTER ?

</comment><comment><USER16> GPLv3, wonder what their business model is.</comment>


Tesla's response to Top Gear executive producer - <AUTHOR> http://www.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/how-we-see-it-top-gear-lawsuit

<comment><USER2> I'm starting to dislike Tesla very much even though I was excited about Tesla, even after the episode in question. I hope HN gets bored of this whole subject and stops writing about it.

Wilman's points are very clear and straight. Teslas response sounds like hysterical feeble attacks. This whole thing reminds of trolling attacks in online forums. Please settle it in court in a civilized manner and stop the trolling.

</comment><comment><USER3> This article is embarrassing to read. I hope Tesla stops saying things soon, they're making it all worse.

<comment><USER4> How so? What they're saying is true. Top Gear predetermined that the car "didn't work" and they fabricated a failure using fake engine sounds.

<comment><USER2> It wasn't like they were showing the failure with the sounds and the proclaimed that the car doesn't work. From what I remember, Jeremy said that car has overheated and has reduced power (then they showed car stopping at the side of the track with the sound, which sounded very much like sound-over effect instead of make-believe real sound). At the time I thought that stopping because of overheating is normal and can happen to any car on the race track.

The "does not work" came later, near the end of the segment, and it was clearly stated, that the car does not work in the real life (because of the charging times), not that it doesn't work literally.

<comment><USER4> Nope, you've got it wrong. Here's the clip: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXfV2hw_2Xo&t=4m45s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXfV2hw_2Xo&t=4m45s)

The parts in question is between 04:45 to 07:45

<comment><USER5> Yeah, particularly with the follow-up:

"An amazing technical achievement" ... "will get better as the price comes down" ... "and they work on reliability".

No wait, I don't see it. Tesla apologists can go home. If a company has to SUE over a bad review of their product, then that company doesn't deserve our business. EVERY product gets bad reviews, real, fake, whatever. Sueing the reviewer is the WORST path you can take.

I was so looking forward to owning a Tesla some time in the next 30 years. Now, I'll never give that company a dime.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How many reviewers will review the YC application? - <AUTHOR> Just wondering, once YC application is submitted, how many people will review the application before deciding on  possible rejection or acceptance? <comment><USER2> Most of us on this site don't work for YC. I suggest emailing them if you must know.

I'd imagine one person saying rejection would be enough, but more than one has to accept.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the response. I'll drop them a mail.</comment></comment>


SSD Drives Vulnerable to Attacks That Corrupt User Data - <AUTHOR> https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/hardware/ssd-drives-vulnerable-to-attacks-that-corrupt-user-data/ <comment><USER2> I've done SSD firmware development in the past and these kinds of vulnerabilities have been identified and mitigated for quite a while now.

</comment><comment><USER3> Presumably caching will tend to mitigate both of these issues.</comment>


Revery: Native ReasonML cross platform UI - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/revery-ui/revery <comment><USER2> Another attempt at making a GUI toolkit from scratch on top of bare OpenGL. But without a massive investment like Google did with Flutter. Good luck, I guess.</comment>