Ask HN: Resources to cover an Electrical Engineering degree curriculum? - <AUTHOR> I recently developed interest in Electrical/Computer Engineering, but since I have a full-time job now, I can't sacrifice the time to pursue a full-time bachelor's degree. I have a background in mathematics and Software Engineering. What online courses/books/blogs/kits would you recommend to match an Engineering bachelor's degree curriculum? <comment> barry-cotter EdX are going to launch a Master's degree in EE sometime in the next few months.

[https://www.edx.org/masters/electrical- engineering](https://www.edx.org/masters/electrical-engineering)

MIT's OCW courses from CS&EE [https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical- engineering-and-compu...](https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering- and-computer-science/)

Circuits and Electronics 1 (there are three)

[https://www.edx.org/course/circuits-electronics-1-basic- circ...](https://www.edx.org/course/circuits-electronics-1-basic-circuit- mitx-6-002-1x-0)</comment>


SpaceX's Falcon Heavy center booster lacked ignition fluid to re-light engines - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-spacex-falcon-heavy-core-20180212-story.html <comment><USER2> They'll learn and move on. All told it was a very successful mission and they got the money shot of the two other boosters landing back at the space center + putting the car in orbit. Very impressed with everything they've accomplished and can't wait to see what's next.

</comment><comment><USER3> I bet it didn't randomly lack fluid due to some stupid miscalculation. It's probably more like: "Due to unforeseen circumstances it needed more fluid than expected. But we adjust our numbers and next time we expect more (in the hopes that it will be enough, which it will probably be)."

<comment><USER4> It says right there in the article that it used up the fuel while attempting to re-lights the engines (without success).

<comment><USER5> Sure, but that system was in place for all the Falcon 9 relights as well. Presumably there's something different about the FH - minor architectural differences, flight profile, etc. - that caused this previously reliable system to run out.

<comment><USER6> The center core has a different structural design than the side boosters, which are stock F9 stages AFAIK.

<comment><USER7> Both of the side boosters were re-used for the Falcon Heavy launch. So stock F9s to some extent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like hearing that the problem is something as (relatively) trivial to solve as this. I know carrying more fuel with the rocket isn't exactly an easy thing to do, but far easier than finding out there's something fundamentally wrong with the design.

SpaceX is amazing and I'm glad they're doing the hard stuff.

<comment><USER9> It apparently ran out of TEA-TEB ignition fluid, not fuel:

[https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/15403/why-is- tea-t...](https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/15403/why-is-tea-teb- chemical-ignition-used-instead-of-spark-ignition)

I can't find any info on how much TEA-TEB is carried on-board, only that it's ground supplied for initial launch with the on-board TEA-TEB being used only for restarts.

(I'm not even an amateur rocket scientist: I just googled all this.)

<comment><USER10> If I'm not mistaken, the SR-71 and A12 had enough TEB for 15 restarts. After doing an aerial refueling, they had to use TEB to get back to afterburner.

<comment><USER11> They also had to use TEB to re-light after an unstart [1]. I think 15 is abount right but it seems like a very small margin to deal with considering how common unstarts were.

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

<comment><USER12> Once they learned about that they worked around unstarts with software to control the engine spikes to keep the shockwave inside.

<comment><USER11> Yes, unstarts became less common but they still happened.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > about 328 feet from the floating platform

Someone doesn't understand precision.

(That's 100 meters, so "about 300 feet".)

<comment><USER14> I think it's not exactly 328 feet, so it's about 328 feet.

<comment><USER15> Equally well could have said "about 328.084 feet".

<comment><USER14> Hm, I don't know of a rule that specifies how to use the word "about".

To me at least, "about 328 feet" seems okay. It gives you more precision than "about 300 feet" while still letting you know that it's not exactly 328 feet.

<comment><USER16> The point is that extra precision is unwarranted. We only know that it missed by somewhere between 50 and 149 meters, so it's not appropriate to imply that we know it more precisely.

<comment><USER14> Ah, didn't notice that. Thanks for clarifying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> He also announced the 3rd drone ship's name on twitter as "A Shortfall of Gravitas".

<comment><USER18> Going all in on the Culture ship names. I'd be happy if he just made 100(ish) more just to name them after every ship that Iain M. Banks named. They don't need to catch rockets, they can just link up and make a floating utopia.

<comment><USER19> _They don 't need to catch rockets, they can just link up and make a floating utopia._

Well for that, you'd want to change the hull type from a barge to a spar buoy. Given that, there's no reason why they couldn't do both.

[http://www.technip.com/sites/default/files/technip/illustrat...](http://www.technip.com/sites/default/files/technip/illustrations/page/spar_comparison_graphic_11-15-12_0.jpg)

(Permanent structures in the ocean need to be spar buoys, or some other architecture that are largely immune to Rogue Waves.)

<comment><USER20> Got any more cool info on permanent ocean structures. Or large ocean structure engineering in general?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is why we compare hard problems to rocket science. It's so hard to recover from failure of even the smallest sources.

<comment><USER22> but the hip programming tips these days are to move fast and break things!

a rocket certainly moves fast...

<comment><USER23> It would have broken a bunch of things if it weren't "about 328 feet" off target, too.

When they said they lost the core, I've been envisioning a barge with a big, round hole in the center...

<comment><USER24> They intentionally aim off-target, and have the final engine burn steer them back into the landing.

If an engine relight doesn't happen, they won't hit the barge.

I think the biggest danger to the barge is a final engine relight without enough fuel, or with a guidance and nav systems failure or error.

<comment><USER25> -OT, but related - for the same reason, offshore vessels set their autopilot targets say, half a mile off the oil rig/whatever they are headed for - just in case someone doesn't pay attention as they approach.

I once saw a nice enamelled sign on a bridge stating 'Whoever programs a target on target will be promoted to figurehead prior to arrival at said target.'

(And, in that position, being the first to regret their sloppiness. Plus, they will somewhat soften the impact. Cough.)

<comment><USER24> Super interesting. Something I wouldn't have ever thought about, but makes perfect sense.

The world is just frighteningly complex, sometimes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Obviously one of the things you don't want "too much of" is a pyrophoric fluid that you need to dump before you can let people near :-). Have they ever published their safeing procedure? I'm wondering if they recover more volattiles than the old shuttle did after it landed.

<comment><USER27> It doesn't have as much nasty as Shuttle. The TEA-TEB takes care of itself by combusting when vented, but that's the only hazardous material. Shuttle had hypergolics on board which F9 doesn't use (just kerosene, oxygen, nitrogen, and helium.)

The rest of the passivation will mostly be purging the engines, closing valves, and releasing pressure in the various tanks and vessels. LOX venting might take a while as it all boils off.

<comment><USER28> Man, TEA-TEB is a hypergolic pair

<comment><USER27> No, it is not. It's a pyrophoric mixture. It is hypergolic with oxygen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> > The fix, he said, was "pretty obvious."

I've said the same before many software bugs or family computer problems that ended up being all nighters on :P

But I'm sure SpaceX will get through this,,,

</comment><comment><USER30> Perhaps some rocket scientist can explain why this seemingly-obvious error even happened? Shouldn't it be possible to calculate the precise amount of fuel used, and therefore required?

<comment><USER27> They probably used a simple model (and experience) to determine the needed amount. But the model was wrong because, well, it encountered the real world. So they'll adjust in the future. Probably they could have analyzed the heck out of it for years, and gotten it right, but then that would take years and cost buckets.

<comment><USER31> This reminds me of a phrase: "All models are wrong; Some models are useful". [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_models_are_wrong](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_models_are_wrong)

<comment><USER32> Or to quote a Prussian general:

"No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Has anyone seen any updates on how their fairing recovery attempt went?

They had the ship done and seemingly ready back in December - [https://imgur.com/gallery/MQcEE](https://imgur.com/gallery/MQcEE)

<comment><USER34> Isn't the fairing just a simple pair of metal casings. Why bother to recover it?

<comment><USER35> Wonder why they dont just leave them in space, could make a good chassis or building block for building bigger space stations

<comment><USER36> The fairing doesn't get carried to orbit. It's dumped as soon as aerodynamic loads are negligible.

Since the fairing has the same energy requirement as the payload (in energy/kg), it's important to get rid of it the moment it's unnecessary. If they took it to orbit (so they could leave in space), it would drastically cut down payload mass.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> So, I wonder why the side boosters won't be used again? Was that explained. I'm curious, but I barely have internet on this hill.

<comment><USER38> I believe the two boosters were previously flown and were of an older block/generation (block 3 and 4 if memory serves me) where they are focusing on block 5 as the final revision and all future Falcon rockets would be this same standard. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9#Block_5](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9#Block_5)

<comment><USER39> Whoa, so not only were the boosters landed, they were actually reused from previous launches! That's doubly awesome.

<comment><USER37> Yeah. I'd say even more than double awesome. The falcon heavy launch was super important for Space-X, PR and investment wise. Trusting two used rockets for THAT launch shows real confidence in the re-usability of their rocket tech. Bravo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Is that also why the video feed was not working? SpaceX commentators said it was possibly due to vibration.

<comment><USER41> The video feed didn't stop working, or if it did, it was only for a brief moment.

If you watch this part of the YouTube stream, after it cuts back to the two hosts there is a monitor at the far right center of the video that shows the continuing camera feed of the drone ship landing pad. Only part of the monitor is visible, but after the smoke clears over the next few minutes you can see the empty pad:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbSwFU6tY1c&t=30m33s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbSwFU6tY1c&t=30m33s)

You can also see the surprised reactions of the hosts during these few minutes, and how relieved they were when John Insprucker joined them to wrap things up. It would have been interesting to be a fly buzzing around their earpieces to hear what the producers were telling them!

People have speculated that with everything else in the mission being so spectacularly successful, they wanted the initial news reports to be about that success instead of the one core that failed to land.

Knowing how the news works - "Here's what's wrong with the world today!" \- I can sympathize with that.

<comment><USER42> Although I understand why they would have done that for click-bait news outlets, it did really bother me that they were so slow in revealing what happened. What I like about SpaceX is that they're always been very open about their failures, even compiling that great video of their failures. Being able to seeing the full result would have been nice, and I spent a fair bit of time for the following hours refreshing Twitter.

<comment><USER43> They weren't only slow about revealing it, they straight-up lied.

Smoke on deck clears, no core visible, deck empty. Both go "oh." and after a pause, while looking at the empty deck: "we're waiting to hear what happens. [...] we'll let you know as soon as we find out" and "we'll [...] know [...] whether it's standing". All while looking at the empty pad.

They saw it didn't land, they found out immediately and didn't let "us" know. Instead they claimed it might be possible it is standing despite seeing the empty deck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I'm someone who doesn't follow a lot about current aerospace capabilities and technologies. Can someone explain why the work SpaceX is doing is so much more exciting than that of United Launch Alliance or Khrunichev or similar systems?

<comment><USER45> SpaceX is still the only company to land a real first-stage booster, and the Falcon Heavy was the largest rocket (in terms of payload capacity) to fly since the Saturn V.

<comment><USER46> false! The energia and the N-1 flow before and they was more powerful that the Falcon Heavy.

<comment><USER47> Did the N-1 rocket really "fly"?

<comment><AUTHOR> It flew all the way to the scene of the crash.

<comment><USER32> Ah, the Chuck Yeager school of flying:

"If you can walk away from a landing, it's a good landing. If you use the airplane the next day, it's an outstanding landing"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> That engine uses tetraethyl borane (TEB), right? Do they have to first ignite the turbopump and then ignite the main engine?

<comment><USER49> This is not a definitive answer (a quick googling failed to turn up a solid source), but presumably they have to ignite both the gas generator (that powers the turbopump) as well as the main combustion chamber. You certainly see the green flash of TEA/TEB lighting underneath the rocket (inside the combustion chambers) just before liftoff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> > Those two boosters, which were used in previous launches of SpaceX's > workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, will not be reused again, Musk said in a post- > launch news conference last week.

Why did SpaceX spend resources to get them to safe landing then? I presume, they rather maintain their routine and maintain the success of landing the booster. It would probably be expensive to change their standard procedure.

Does any know how many times a booster can be resued? What dictates its lifetime?

<comment><USER51> The current version of the rocket is called "block 5". Those two boosters weren't block 5 boosters. Presumably the reason to spend resources to get them to safe landing was to learn things that will be useful in future launches; for example, those two boosters had enough ignition fluid to land successfully this time, but the main first stage did not.

<comment><USER50> That make sense. In that case, wouldn't these boosters be useful in future Falcon Heavy launches? Why can't they be resued?

<comment><USER52> At this point they're historic artifacts worthy of preservation. Retire them to a museum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> The good news is it seems like a fairly easy thing to fix going forward. Not really an engineering problem as such, but rather a miscalculation

</comment><comment><USER54> What is ignition fluid, exactly?

</comment><comment><USER55>
      The fix, he said, was "pretty obvious."

I mean, it's not rocket science, is it? >_>

</comment><comment><USER56> This is one of the reasons why space travel will never be 'routine'.

A million and one things can go wrong, and any one of them can destroy the spacecraft. Compare that to commercial air travel - where a number of unlikely events have to happen, to down an airplane.

Some time ago, there was a HN discussion about traveling from continent to continent in minutes, using a sub-orbital hop. I don't know about anyone else, but I'll pass on being strapped to a skyscraper filled with LOX and RP-1.

<comment><USER11> An airliner is on a building scale and carries a slightly less refined petroleum fuel. RP-1 and Jet Fuel are both refined petroleum fuels. Rockets only carry LOX because they go into space where there is no atmospheric oxygen to burn the fuel.

Airliners are fully capable of turning themselves into fireballs. It doesn't happen often because we have a lot of experience operating them. The same safety levels are possible with rockets over time.

<comment><USER56> > An airliner is on a building scale and carries a slightly less refined > petroleum fuel. RP-1 and Jet Fuel are both refined petroleum fuels. Rockets > only carry LOX because they go into space where there is no atmospheric > oxygen to burn the fuel.

That's true, but a 747 does not burn its weight in fuel in 397 seconds. A Falcon 9 does. It's the difference between igniting a gas barbecue in your back yard, and igniting the propane tank that feeds it. One of those things is something I do on the 4th of July. For the other, I'd prefer to be taking cover in a foxhole.

> Airliners are fully capable of turning themselves into fireballs. It doesn't > happen often because we have a lot of experience operating them. The same > safety levels are possible with rockets over time.

It's also because the possible margins for safety with airplanes are much higher. You can engineer redundant systems, and overbuild, because you aren't fighting the tyrrany of the rocket equation.

There is no one thing that can go wrong on a 747 that will down the aircraft. The dozen SpaceX launch/landing failures were almost all due to 'one thing went wrong, there went $60-100m USD.'

Incidentally, most other catastrophic launch failures (Including ones that claimed lives) were also due to 'one particular thing went wrong, everyone died.'

Rocket engineers aren't stupid, there's a reason that rockets don't have the amount of rendunancy and capability for failure recovery that a commercial airliner does.

<comment><USER5> > There is no one thing that can go wrong on a 747 that will down the > aircraft.

C'mon, that's demonstrably false.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Airlines_Flight_981](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Airlines_Flight_981) involved a poorly sealing latch.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Airlines_Flight_123](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Airlines_Flight_123) involved a single poorly repaired bulkhead.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Flight_800](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Flight_800) may have been a spark in the fuel tank.

Plenty of other examples on [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Airliner_accidents_an...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Airliner_accidents_and_incidents_caused_by_mechanical_failure)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


HN: please fix hotel search in Australia - <AUTHOR>

Why can't I search for hotel deals within X kilometers from a specific location? <comment><USER2> Doesn't google maps do this well enough? They seem to have pretty much everything now.</comment>


Node9 – Inferno-Like Hosted OS Using LuaJIT - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jvburnes/node9

<comment><USER2> This was posted very recently: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9704517](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9704517) (from 3 days ago).

</comment><comment><USER3> The name makes me think of an OS written in JS. And since absolutely everything is being rewritten in JS, that's also only a matter of time. And calling that an "inferno" would be very much appropriate.</comment>


Live Webcast: SpaceX AsiaSat 8 Launch - <AUTHOR> http://www.spacex.com/webcast/

<comment><AUTHOR> They had an abort at less than 1 minute to launch. They have recycled back to T-13m and holding.

The abort appears to have been right after they started to fully pressurize the tanks.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> They picked up again, planning for 0800 UTC, T-12.</comment>


The CIA's human experiments with mind control (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.history.com/mkultra-operation-midnight-climax-cia-lsd-experiments <comment><USER2> Visiting the Stasi museum in Berlin is a nice eye opener for how subtle some intelligence work can be. You can see files describing acts like surrounding a specific person with potential dates that ghost him or "friends" that will treat him badly just to make the the person depressed and reduce their will to be politically active.

Lots of what you see there would be considered delusions of a paranoid person if someone claimed to be the target of it nowadays.

I'm convinced the only reason it stands out is that it's relatively weird to see a fallen government's intelligent files, since one that's still standing would never let you see them.

<comment><USER3> Are these files describing tactics of the Stasi also available online?

<comment><USER2> I found some interesting information available for free in a link from the museum's website. Check the "english publications" section at the bottom, the second link in particular is quite interesting:

[https://www.bstu.de/en/education/publications/](https://www.bstu.de/en/education/publications/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Something that should be, but isn't, essential high school curriculum:

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

I remember seeing the faces of incredulity on fellow (college) students during a presentation of this, that is, until they were challenged with compelling citation. Then things changed a bit.

To relegate such activity to a permanent place in the past assumes a very hokey fundamental change in human nature, or, commits a very naive faith to regulation and transparency.

</comment><comment><USER5> We really know only what they have chosen to let us know; and much of what we think we know is false. Getting people to believe falsehoods about the programs was a big part of them, and it worked way better that they had hoped.

Jon Ronson's book _Men Who Stare at Goats_ is a terrifying exploration of what these programs were really about.

Make no mistake, these programs were prototypes for still-ongoing attacks on the American public.

<comment><USER6> "these programs were prototypes for still-ongoing attacks on the American public."

Needs evidence.

<comment><USER7> One of many examples [1]. These tactics would be familiar to the Romans. They are as old as the hills.

They are apparently common enough that HBGary proposed a collaboration with Palantir to use them against Glenn Greenwald [2].

[1] [https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig- manipulation/](https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/)

[2] [https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110209/22340513034/leake...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110209/22340513034/leaked- hbgary-documents-show-plan-to-spread-wikileaks-propaganda-bofa-attack-glenn- greenwald.shtml)

<comment><USER8> These aren't mind control at all!

Saying "the intelligence community is horrible" isn't the same as "these programs were prototypes for still-ongoing [mind control] attacks on the American public."

<comment><USER7> We don't really know what took place in the "mind control" program, as the records were systematically destroyed [1].

One plausible interpretation is that these were mainly efforts in _coercive_ control, rather than Hollywood style "mind control". We have extensive records of comparable efforts in East Germany [2], and it is reasonable to suspect that the American programs followed a similar thread of "research". Why wouldn't they? The tactics were apparently very successful.

If you buy that argument, then the cited examples are logical successors. It is very easy to dismiss "mind control" programs as a weird vestige of a bygone era, but I think it is unlikely that institutions drew no durable lessons from them.

[1] [https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of- intellig...](https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of- intelligence/kent-csi/vol44no4/html/v44i4a07p_0021.htm)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWjzT2l5C34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWjzT2l5C34)

<comment><USER8> The article was specifically about MK-Ultra style mind control.

Saying there are _other_ ways to try to get people to do what they want - especially at a population level as the OP claimed - is a completely different proposition.

I've linked elsewhere to IARPA SHARP which is the closest thing to actual mind control.

Do I think intelligence agencies try to manipulate public opinion by methods similar to advertising agencies? Yes absolutely! Do I think this this is mind control or anything resembling that? No, and I think it's important to note that despite all the leaks (Snowden, Wikileaks, etc etc) there is no hints that I'm wrong about this.

<comment><USER7> The whole point of the comment is that we don't know what "MK-Ultra style mind control" means because the records were destroyed. We can only make educated guesses about what is likely to have survived the program.

If you think the guess is bad, that's fair. It's another thing to get hung up on the semantics of "mind control".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Though the MK-Ultra directors tried to convince the CIA's independent audit > board that the research should continue, the Inspector General insisted the > agency follow new research ethics guidelines and bring all the programs on > non-consenting volunteers to an end.

I would like to believe that CIA collectively found their moral compass, learned their lesson, and that was just a dark page in its history. But given its history afterwards, say what they did in South America, the torture programs, etc., I just can't come to that conclusion.

So assuming their morality stayed at about the same level as before. How could have they continued the programs if they wanted to?

1) Rename everything and not use MK-ULTRA label anymore. Find a way to transfer all the useful stuff to a new program and file it under a different label. Anyone looking for MK-ULTRA should not find anything if they went searching later.

2) Next, just like with torture programs, maybe migrate overseas?. Pay some brutal dictator somewhere, maybe blackmail him if there is any dirt on them, borrow some facilities, buy all the local police chiefs and so on.

3) Another avenue is contractors. There is a whole world of "contractors" which do all the dirty and illegal stuff the official intelligence agencies don't want to do. Give the programs some generic sounding names, outsource everything, and then through the back-channels tell the "researchers" what really to work on. Once results come in, file them as something else, compartmentalized so only a few people have access to them.

</comment><comment><USER10> Link redirects to a local front-page for me.

</comment><comment><USER3> Watch the documentary "State of mind" [https://youtube.com/watch?v=g2sJPSzG4fw](https://youtube.com/watch?v=g2sJPSzG4fw)

</comment><comment><USER11> Allen Dulles was a rare nutjob, it was only thanks to the chaos of interwar period he got such prominence

<comment><USER12> Well, that and Operation Paperclip...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Did anyone catch the JRE podcast with Tom O'Neill [1], he was there detailing his findings and research on his book on Charles Manson and the Family and subsequently finding many of the associated links between Intelligence and Military agencies and personnel that were involved with MK ULTRA and other programs.

Its quite the rabbit hole; I personally couldn't care less about the Manson family cult, as a kid I heard all about the scary hippy acid BS only to see them buying houses with their NIMBY tactics and driving gas guzzling SUVS in the 21st Century. Neither extremes turned out to be be true about those boomers, and instead all we got was a bland and trite form of entrenched entitlement in this country.

However, being a proponent of psychedelic use for medicinal and therapeutic purposes for many current epidemics, I wanted to hear what he had to say.

I ended up getting the audiobook, but haven't started it yet as I'm finishing a final project for one of my classes.

But what was said so far on the podcast has been intriguing. Especially as the CIA released the redacted files in common limited hangout fashion, but what Tom did was go even deeper over the course of 20 YEARS and managed to get files that revealed how Graduate students, police and military men were used in a wide-spread network in clandestine operations to either conduct, observe, monitor the experiments of test subjects in their targeted studies/experiments or be experimented on in order to refine a technique to achieve a desired result.

Its not clear to me if Manson and his crazy murders were intended to be used to solely discredit the psychedelic, anti-war or black movements of that period, but given what we saw with the Occupy Movement it is most definitely an effective tool in their arsenal to quell dissent that can be used if/when needed.

Either way, the tarnished reputation of psychedelics and its legitimate psychologists/researchers has been a bane for Humanity but a successful boon for Big Pharma. So inexorably tying LSD to Manson makes sense if you want to outlaw a currently researched substance with positive clinical trials, especially when Tom's research reveals he may have been a subject himself as he had a series of unwarranted releases from arrest or jail and state appointed relationships with MK Ultra program operatives.

I'm just MAPS has been able to reignite the legitimacy and utility of these class of drugs again after all these years.

1: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J36xPWBLcG8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J36xPWBLcG8)

<comment><USER14> >> but given what we saw with the Occupy Movement

Care to elaborate?

<comment><USER15> A couple examples below. The key thing is that they won: The occupy movement was effectively neutered.

      https://www.globalresearch.ca/infiltration-of-occupy-part-i-infiltration-to-disrupt-divide-and-mis-direct-are-widespread-in-occupy/29493
      https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy

<comment><USER13> > A couple examples below. The key thing is that they won: The occupy movement > was effectively neutered.

That's just what was documented, I did a project with one of the more active and vocal members of Occupy LA, he pulled a few of the major occupations that got him in quite a bit of trouble. And on TV in one of the spectacles, but ultimately left him disillusioned in the end.

Anyhow, he had stories about how they had a few 'squats' throughout where they would stay to plan things out, both for LA as well as NY, and they had to stop letting people in because so many were turning out to be CI for the police. The survailence economy was also starting to become widespread as Wifi enabled phones were also starting to become common, but here is another article detailing the FBI's tactics [1] in dragnet surveillance as well as brazen overt tactics. Hell, the damn Federal Reserve even had a hand in the surveillance program against Occupy at one point!

When confronted what some accepted in return for it many said the police would give them drugs or alcohol, or cash which if you're a severally depressed millennial with 10-100ks of student debt and no job prospects, and recently evicted out of your home, living on the street/car (with now deep psychological trauma) the why/hows become pretty obvious. On a Human level, that's just incredibly sad and exploitative behaviour of people in vulnerable positions.

Personally, I never liked the Occupy movement; initially it seemed to show promise (coordinated bank runs) but then it severally stagnated in the demonstration phase and squandered its resources until it became irrelevant-- while many of its supporters mistook it for an extended Spring Break and livecasting was in its infancy and becoming quite popular around that period too--JustinTV was starting to get the attention of Google to become Twitch around that time, too. In retrospect I wonder how much of that contributed to the 'influencer' model we see now.

The Occupy movement could have done so much good if they took those motivated people into places like Detroit and bought up sky scrapers or entire neighborhood blocks to renovate and house them, and then participated in the Urban gardening revolution and local economic resurgence and commerce that took place with all the funds they had. I know this because I suggested it to them as I hung out in their chat rooms back then and saw what was happening as food deserts were becoming even more ubiquitous and saw the writing on the wall. My personal transition into Environmentalism and Activism was occurring at that time, too, so I recall it quite vividly.

My conclusions was that they simply had no plan and wanted to vent their anger, which was well intended, but then it became a reason to just have fun at night partying and not really mobilize for actual change.

Also, they were totally against my staunch (especially back then) An- Cap/Crypto-Anarchist position, and I was probably seen as just another 'capitalist shill' so I'm not an apologist for them at all.

I was just highlighting the State's MO and how Tom's work details how some of it was done in relation in his 20 years researching the Manson case and how it related to a 'political' movement in recent History.

1: [https://www.huffpost.com/entry/fbi-occupy-wall- street_n_2410...](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/fbi-occupy-wall- street_n_2410783)

<comment><USER16> If Mr. Robot was about Occupy, what do you think the serie Home Coming was about?

After reading Anna Jacobson books I wonder if it actually reflect reality.

<comment><USER13> > Mr. Robot was about Occupy

I'm a Mr. Robot fan, and a real fan of Kor's influence (an ex security guy at Toyota!) on the show but I likely took a very different perspective from it than most as I'm a crypto nerd.

To me the series was like a dramatization of Naomi Campbell's Shock Doctrine [1] with very well portrayed hacks and exploits (I'm not a pen tester but some OPESEC stuff was quite accurate). And their crypto stuff was actually well developed and researched. And some hero vs villeins characters to keep things going.

SPOILER ALLERT

The occupy overtones felt like a distraction, and a tired trope to me; the masks were an obvious nod to the Guy Faux maskes representing Anonymous, but beyond that I think it was rather lacking any real substance--Season 3's riot at E-corp showed how quickly things escalate to violent mob-rule even against the supposed protagonists. The redistribution of wealth via a hack against the 1%'s seemed forced and cobbled together because Sam wanted the ending to fit that narrative and quite frankly it felt forcefully coaxed; whereas the mental health, loneliness and substance abuse plot was very well paced and fleshed out throughout the series.

I wasn't really satisfied with how that last hack drove the series end and how the last 'hack' saved the World was rather ridiculous to me as result--and this is from perhaps one of the most anti-nuclear voices on HN! And he survived to see his plan triumph, because reasons we cannot and will not explain beyond some far fetched off scene make-believe you will just have to accept.

I've never seen Homeland; to be honest I don't really watch TV much as popular shows feel boring to things that happen in the many sub-cultures and communities I'm involved in. That guy from Occupy I mentioned before got me into Mr. Robot at the end of season 1 but I didn't get into it much until the E-Coin vs Bitcoin plot development in S2 and binged most of it until that part.

Even during this lockdown I've been mainly re-watching/listening to old races, concerts and DJ sets while I study and do stuff. I have like 5 audio books I'm waiting to sink my teeth into so I'm afraid I won't get to see Home Coming anytime, either. I'll check out the trailer, but that's rather glib representation I imagine.

1: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGmB63TIHLY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGmB63TIHLY)

Edit: Saw trailer: eh, Black Mirror's Men Against Fire did that plot brilliantly, and this seems like an elongated version of it. And what is Sam's obsession with fish tanks?

PS: I don't think I've clarified my position with the Shock Doctrine; I agree with Campbell's premise, but not her conclusion(s), as Free Market Capitalism is not what is inserted in the 'window of operation' from the disaster/shock to the system, but rather a very parasitic corporate plutocracy emerges in the way Mussolini defined Fascism (the merging of State and Corporate power) is what inserts itself in practice. Even Pricenton has defined the US as an Oligarchy.

<comment><USER16> I also thought the ending was subpar compared to the genius narrative twists in the first two seasons of Mr Robot. I agree with your take on the system, Eric Weinstein's latest podcast has some pretty interesting remarks about it. The youtube video is not up yet so link to the specific portal episode

[https://podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/the- portal/id146999956...](https://podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/the- portal/id1469999563?l=en&i=1000471686956)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Elm 0.12.3 – Hardware accelerated 3D rendering with WebGL - <AUTHOR> http://elm-lang.org/blog/announce/0.12.3.elm

<comment><USER2> This release makes me very happy. I never really took a look at Elm but yesterday I've receive a bug report on a very old library of mine to parse GLSL. The author of Elm told me it was used in their WebGL work and pointed to that Thwomp example. I didn't know that library was actually used by anyone!

<comment><USER3> John here. Having language-glsl available on hackage was a boon for the features in this release. Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Elm hackers continue to impress me. FRP, the interactive timeline debugger, and now functional 3D graphics. Functional game programming is a big interest of mine, and I've taken a lot of inspiration from Elm in my own personal project to create a 2D game engine for Guile Scheme.

</comment><comment><USER5> I still think first of a terminal mail program when I read "elm". Same for "pine".

</comment><comment><USER6> Loading this page insta-kills my Browser.

FF 29.0.1 on 3.10.39-1-MANJARO x86_64 with lots of plugins (HTTPSEverywhere, Ghostery, FlashBlock...)

It does not recognize the crash and does not offer a crash report on restart.

<comment> TD-Linux Works for me on 3.14 with the nvidia blob driver. Definitely sounds like a video driver issue. File a bug report?

<comment><USER6> Will do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm curious, why isn't type inference used in the examples? For example:

[http://elm-lang.org/edit/examples/WebGL/Triangle.elm](http://elm- lang.org/edit/examples/WebGL/Triangle.elm)

Edit: ok, the language has full type inference, but not the webgl examples.

<comment><AUTHOR> Type inference works on all Elm programs, but it's best practice to add type annotations.

In the WebGL examples, I felt it made things a bit clearer since folks are probably not familiar with how WebGL works. Once you get comfortable reading types, it helps you see how things fit together, and they definitely helped me learn John's API when I was new to it :)

But if you don't need/want type annotations, you can totally take them all away and they'll be inferred! How did having them effect your experience of looking at the examples?

<comment><USER7> The main effect was that I thought "why is this ML-style language not using type inference!". :) But now that you have explained why you've annotated the examples, I can see that it would be educational to see the types when the reader wouldn't have seen the library before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> >We switched away from Hue-Saturation-Value (HSV) because Value is a bit more confusing than Lightness.

That's funny to me because I've always found HSV colors and color choosers to be a lot more intuitive.

</comment><comment><USER9> Does it only support Triangles? What about buffers? Rendering individual triangles is not efficient if you have anything more than a simple scene.

<comment><USER3> The API expects triangles, but it is implemented to always use buffers under the hood. Basically, mesh data of 10 triangles with 4 attributes per vertex is converted to 4 buffers, each of length 30.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> elm was my daily-use email client at work twelve years ago. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elm_(email_client)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elm_\(email_client\))</comment>


Apple's Flash policy is a breach of Postel's Law - <AUTHOR> http://scripting.com/stories/2010/07/25/applesFlashPolicyIsABreach.html <comment><USER2> If Flash were standing on the same RFC-based ground that TCP is (Jon Postel was speaking of a principle that implementations of TCP should do) then Dave might have a point.

Heck, I'll be generous and say that Dave might have a point if he were referring to an independent implementation of Flash, and what it ought do.

But mobile Safari is not a flash runtime, it's a web browser, and so its duty to the robustness principle is to be strict about what it sends (HTTP GETs and POSTs) and permissive about what it receives (HTTP responses, HTML/CSS/Javascript documents). It is no more obligated to include a Flash plugin than it is to have a plugin for Iterated Fractal Systems image compressor.

I think it's worth noting that there's an important class of software that needs to be strict about what they receive — compilers — and I often find myself wishing that browsers were more like compilers. But that's just when I get sour thinking about the excessive permissiveness of IE.

<comment><USER3> Comparing the scope, history, and benefits of Flash to a fractal compressor is childish. It's posts like this than make HN look like a bunch of techno- babbling trolls.

"Supporting plug-ins" is clearly a well-tested and marketed phrase to divert attention from the real issue: a business blockade. Only the weakest (or most biased) of programmers fall for it.

<comment><USER2> That's a lot to digest: childish && (week || biased) && troll? Is this subject really worth that much vitriol?

On what basis is a browser author obligated to support any plugin system whatsoever? I don't want an answer as to why Apple must...I want to know why any arbitrary browser vendor, in your world, should not be free to make that product decision.

Edit: I submit that if you cannot answer that question, having removed Apple from the equation, that it is not me who is biased.

<comment><USER3> It's not your terminology that I found childish & trollish; it was the comparison of Flash to a fractal generator along with an all-too-obvious deviation from the original point, i.e. a straw man*

It's not a lack of plugin support that prevents Flash from working on iOS. It's strictly business rules (which was the point of the article). Your first comment makes hay over the former and your second comment dismisses the latter.

* <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strawman>

"A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position. To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially similar yet weaker proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> By Winer's logic, shouldn't the iPad also support Java, Silverlight, Realplayer, Shockwave, Windows Media Player and Quicktime? There's definitely useful information locked into each of those formats as well.

Arguing that browsers should support plugins because they might be necessary to display useful information is a _really_ slippery slope, and would be a wonderful way for Apple to get stuck in business relationships with notoriously incompetent companies like Adobe for little to no actual benefit. I'm not convinced that there are a significant number of people who would let the lack of Flash influence their decision to buy an iPad--certainly not a significant enough number of people for Apple to cede a portion of control over their platform to a company that has repeatedly demonstrated a complete inability to make Flash work on mobile (or really, any) platforms.

<comment><USER5> The iPad need not support Java, Silverlight, Realplayer, Shockwave, or Windows Media Player by default; I believe that Quicktime is supported through the Video player. But it should be allowed to be made to support Java, Silverlight, Realplayer, Shockwave, and Windows Media files if desired.

"... cede a portion of control over their platform ..." I can't help thinking that if Microsoft had restricted Quicktime from Windows machines, with the excuse that it's utter crap and no good, there would be an intense amount of lawsuits pending from Apple already.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The brilliant Jon Postel was speaking of the implementation and design of open standards. Flash may be ubiquitous, but it would never be called a standard by anyone subscribing to the IETF rules-of-the-road.

BTW, Apple also does not implement Wordstar and WordPerfect readers, nor do they accept TARGA images. As much as I do wish 1) Adobe had a version of Flash that didn't suck; 2) Apple supported it, let's not attempt to invoke Jon's memory for this kind of stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're wrong. Postel's Law is a principle of software design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> We could spark a whole discussion about whether Postel's "law" is a universal good thing (it makes more sense in early-stage standardization efforts than it does in software design), but do we really need to dignify the asinine argument that Postel meant browsers must support specific plugins?

<comment><USER3> Of course we should dignify the argument: the Flash plug-in is a standard used billions of times a day by millions of people.

It's only asinine to pretend it's not a modern standard by reducing it to "just a plug-in" because it's unpopular (and virulently _envied_?) on _this_ forum.

<comment><USER8> "A standard technology" is not the same as "a standard". Flash is not a (public) standard, however standard it may be.

<comment><USER3> I <3 HN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Invoking Jon Postel does not make a wrong argument right. The only thing that makes apple 'wrong' in this case is that they restrict the deployment of browsers that would support flash.

</comment><comment><USER10> I realize it makes me a pompous ass, but being a pure mathematics student has caused me to recoil whenever anyone quotes a "law" of the soft sciences and uses it as proof.

I am quite glad to be in a field where deductive logic is used; these sorts of tirades where its up for debate whether or not what you're saying applies (or was even correct in the first place) don't really happen.

<comment><USER11> Forgive us compsci folks our lack of rigor and correctness here. We're emboldened by the likes of Moore who, through remarkable intuition, created predictions that match the facts with startling accuracy.

I agree with you wholeheartedly, though. Calling everything a "law" is a nasty habit that has crept into compsci's pop literature over the last decade.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Let's imagine Postel's law applies. Postel's law would say that if MobileSafari had a plugin system (or one extensible by third parties anyway), Flash should not be refused.

Well, MobileSafari doesn't have a plugin system available to third parties. Thus solving the issue: Postel's Law applies exactly nowhere in this case.

</comment><comment><USER13> The comparison between Apple's business decisions and Postel's comments on a protocol implementation is invalid.

Other people might invoke Postel's name to amplify their own message, but that's just not what he was talking about.

Furthermore, if you believe for a second that Jon Postel would have been a supporter of Adobe Flash, then I assert that you weren't alive when he was. I imagine he'd have equally strong objections to Apple, but that's neither here nor there.

</comment><comment><USER14> Whether or not that was headed anywhere compelling, he ruined it when he insinuated that market cap is comparable to market share.

<comment><USER9> For me he ruined it when he tried to use Jon Postel to further his agenda. It's a not very veiled attempt at using Jon Postel and his reputation to 'trump' the reputation of Steve Jobs, which you might be able to apply if Apple decided to come up with a non-standard version of HTML tomorrow morning but has no place in the 'should the ipad/iphone/somegadget built in browser' support flash, yes or no.

And I actually think it should (simply because that would be a convenience, if flash is to be replaced it can happen without resorting to user inconvenience as a means of applying pressure).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The whole flash discussion is purely hypothetical: Whether Apple would/should allow some of Adobe's vaporware, might it one day be realized, on the iOS platform?

And this is not even considering that the iOS version of Safari (afaik) doesn't even have a plugin infrastructure to support 3d party plugins.

Personally I don't think Adobe can actually make a stable, efficient, full implementation of the flash plugin for a iphone/ipad style mobile device? After years of trying they still can't make one for any full power Mac, so why should anyone assume that they can for much slower mobile-devices?

I think Adobe's strategy is to make as much noise about the relevance of flash, keep promising an implementation of Flash "really soon now", while they'll wait until the hardware of mobile devices has become fast enough to handle flash without draining the battery.</comment>


Today's Police Put on a Gun and a Camera - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/28/us/todays-police-put-on-a-gun-and-a-camera.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Minnesota's requirement, since early in the 1990s, that all custodial interrogations by police be recorded on videotape felt like a disaster to police departments when it was first proposed, but now it is generally liked by all participants in the criminal justice system here.[1] On the whole, expecting any confession to a crime to be on videotape is just normal life here now, and everyone has gotten used to how the system works. There will be legal issues to decide if body cameras become commonplace about whether those are turned on by default, and how discoverable (and by whom) the videotaped records are, as the article submitted here reports, but this is just the kind of issue that courts and legislatures are equipped to deal with, especially if you the citizen make your point of view known. What's new here is a technical means that for the first time can massively reduce the he-said, she-said disputes that have come up in complaints about police conduct. Having more evidence to evaluate according to the law of evidence and in light of other legal rights of citizens and responsibilities of the police seems like a generally good idea.

[1] [http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/Recording_Interrogations.pdf](http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/Recording_Interrogations.pdf)

[http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/index.cfm?fuseac...](http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/index.cfm?fuseaction=display_arch&article_id=855&issue_id=42006)

[http://webster.utahbar.org/barjournal/2006/10/crimes_truth_a...](http://webster.utahbar.org/barjournal/2006/10/crimes_truth_and_videotape_man.html)

</comment><comment><USER2> This may be a dumb idea, but how hard would it be to put a camera on the gun, and activate it via the trigger. It seems like even a few low res photos of what the gun was aiming at could go a long way in investigating office involved shootings.

<comment><USER3> This technology exists. The camera starts recording the moment the safety is off. It's not been deployed yet because of complaints that it reduces accuracy - which, last I checked the attachment was fairly big (no idea why - a modern cellphone camera + battery would be tiny).

But we absolutely should have this. Ideally a police-issue firearm which had it milled right into the chassis.

<comment><USER4> So, perhaps the popularity of the safety-less Glock is the reason why this hasn't taken off?

<comment><USER5> As my shooting instructor always says "Your number one safety is your finger" meaning leave it off the trigger until you have something in your sights.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. And FWIW, I'm not suggesting you change the design of the Glocks (though I vastly prefer the palm trigger on the 1911s), but thinking it through, I don't know if a camera that activated at the moment the trigger pulled would be all that worthwhile.

Perhaps it would (assuming that the timing meant that it was able to capture more than the flash of the bullet) in certain situations, but I think that the shoulder-mounted cameras that are always-on provide far more consistent value in protecting all parties involved to merit serious consideration of trigger cameras.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So, on the one hand, I think that it should be obvious that all officers on duty should have cameras running all the time--there should be no reason to _ever_ need manual on/off of cameras.

That said, there's a lot of trouble there. Consider the recording of normal daily banter, of normal procedures, or of just really heinous shit at an accident site. Maybe we don't actually want all of this available.

The big problem is: what happens when a cop comes out on a call and there is clear photographic evidence of a crime being committed (very likely, considering the sheer number of things that are technically illegal)? When there is clear video evidence of, say, possession of paraphernalia, assault, public intoxication, or whatever else, it suddenly becomes a lot easier to pick on citizens.

In turn, why would anyone want to interact with cops, ever? They're recording everything, and it's trivial to go after these minor issues.

I suspect that the deal going to be presented is "Okay, you want us on camera all the time? Fine. You get what you want--and we're going to handle 'evidence' collected in that way differently than normal." Recalling, of course, how expensive it is to defend yourself against the state in such matters, I expect this to be yet another massive push in favor of police power unless managed very, very carefully.

Also, consider that the desire to film the cops may go away if it is common knowledge that they're already filming--nevermind that, perhaps, the cameras or videos are mysteriously corrupted when it comes time to review them. It's really a great way of defusing suspicion without having to risk actually changing procedures.

And, to tinfoil further: how long until all these video feeds are being run, in real-time, through some sort of computer-vision system (much as license plates are today in some places)? Are we really wanting that?

<comment><USER7> _> >The big problem is: what happens when a cop comes out on a call and there is clear photographic evidence of a crime being committed (very likely, considering the sheer number of things that are technically illegal)? When there is clear video evidence of, say, possession of paraphernalia, assault, public intoxication, or whatever else, it suddenly becomes a lot easier to pick on citizens._

I think this highlights a bigger issue with the justice system in general. Those minor things shouldn't be illegal to begin with. Or at least, not wreck your life with an insane fine or criminal record. Those issues should just be some kind of $50 - $100 fine, maybe an evening in a single person cell, and that's it. e.g., BART(www.bart.gov) does not want people eating/drinking on their trains or within paid-areas of the stations or you risk a $250 fine. I break that rule from time to time because... whatever. A bunch of people break that rule in fact. No law should be absolute in its application or punishment. They should be evaluated in case by case basis and context of the situation.

If it's July 4th, people are partying and one of drunk party-goers happens to run into a cop after stumbling too far from the beach... he/she doesn't deserve their life to be ruined.

Major sporting event, 2 people from opposite teams get into heated argument. Both people continued to escalate the situation until eventually a fight breaks out, I don't think their lives need to be ruined with assault charges.

Our legal definition of "paraphernalia" is messed up, so I won't get into that. I'll just say that a person who isn't a major drug-lord or drug-pusher on the corner shouldn't be wrecked by the legal system. Some young person just experimenting with a small amount of a controlled substance probably just needs a night in a cell and mandatory drug education class for a week or something.

<comment><USER3> $50-$100 fines _are_ life wreckers. Doesn't take too many of those to wipe out someone's weekly paycheck.

But this isn't a problem: because the police can (and do) do this to people _now_ , but it's also why we have procedure as a valid defense. Cameras wouldn't make that worse, they'd make it better. It would mean the procedure is plain to see. The only policy needed to ensure this is to ban fishing- expeditions with the footage (which would protect police and citizen alike). If the police don't write a ticket then and there, then it's illegal to go through the footage after the fact if it's not relevant to an ongoing investigation (and make it illegal to file charges for say, non-felonies found peripheral to that).

Most of this sort of stuff has been put through case law in various guises at different times already - it's likely it would extend to police cameras by simple precedent in the courts, if not by explicit policy in advance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> And when something is the police's fault, the camera mysteriously "malfunctions".

<comment><USER9> And when the camera actually malfunctions, it must be a conspiracy.

<comment><USER8> And when the cameras malfunction several orders of magnitude more often than statistically observed, people who point out such discrepancies are called "conspiracy theorists" by the "skeptics"...

<comment><USER9> Conspiracy theorists wouldn't take statistics into account, unless those statistics could be interpreted in their favor. They would insist the video we can't see is clear evidence of a cover-up, while the video we can see has probably been doctored or manufactured.

<comment><USER8> The definition of "Conspiracy Theorist" changes to suit the person who imposes that label on someone else. It's a flexible & emotionally appealing ad hominem strategy. Marketers love it because it makes their position appear "realistic" and "normal" while those who oppose their position are "fringe" and "kooky".

And maybe I'm lucky, but I've never had a camera malfunction on me.

<comment><USER9> I think the definition of 'conspiracy theorist' is pretty generally held - someone who holds to their belief in a conspiracy regardless of evidence to the contrary, or who dismisses such evidence as being, itself, part of the conspiracy.

Although you're right that the label is used to malign and dismiss people who believe in conspiracies which actually exist, that doesn't mean trying to examine such things objectively isn't justified, or warranted.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


When to Sell Your Company - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/on-startups/6a25c0cbd358

<comment><USER2> He missed one other reason, which may not be the sort of thing you want to discuss with your Board/Shareholders, but: "Opportunity Cost" - It may be that you are happy running the company, that you have no imminent threat, and the offer doesn't really capture all of your upside, but - the resources/team might be better suited doing something with a greater return-on-investment.

<comment><USER3> I think that fits under personal choice. How can the team be dedicated and "happy running the company" if they feel like they are missing an opportunity elsewhere or being under utilized? I would say that is the number one reason why founders get burned out and are "done". We all fear missed opportunity and wasted potential.

<comment><USER2> There are lots of scenarios where people have found the job, culture, and coworkers that they love, but are not yielding the greatest ROI of their skills/knowledge/experience and connections.

The willingness to leave something you love, to go do something that will be much more profitable, is not so much personal choice as cold-hard economics.

A good example is how a lot of lawyers will do not-for-profit legal work, because they feel like they are making a difference, and improving the world. They are making a personal choice to do something that is important for them (or perhaps they are burned out in the corporate grind).

I've also seen lawyers leave the organizations that they love, because they also realize they need to make a lot of money - usually to pay off ludicrous college loans - but also just to leverage their position for some period of time.

At the end of the day, every decision is "personal" - but I think there is a difference between the emotive, "I chose to do this because I love doing it" verus the colder, "I chose to do this because it maximizes the risk-adjusted net-present-value of future earnings."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Slightly tangential, but I signed up for Medium five months ago and I still can't post. At this point Medium has a negative connotation in my mind, just like Svbtle.

</comment><comment><USER5> Perhaps these are the main reasons for hot shot startups and anything else that goes on in Silicon Valley, but the average small/medium-sized company might want to sell at some point due to the sentiment that the buyer can do a better job at running the company or has some required resources that are unobtainable (money, personnel) for the seller. Not a "personal" choice, but a strategic sale for the future of the company and its employees.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think many people would love to be in a position where this question is applicable to them. For the very few, the answer is: when someone wants or offers to buy your company.

It's sort of like asking "How do you become a supermodel?"

<comment><USER7> >For the very few, the answer is: when someone wants or offers to buy your company.

It seems that way from the perspective of having never received an offer, but my own experience makes me skeptical. I haven't been in that specific position, but I have had a possibly analogous experience.

For a few years, I developed and supported myself with a graphics-tablet targeted shareware drawing program (now sadly, due to changes in the Mac shareware ecosystem, one of my backburner projects). One of the "big breaks" I imagined might come my way would be if a tablet vendor wanted to bundle my software with their hardware.

And one day, toward the end, I got an offer for exactly such a deal. A small vendor wanted to include my program in a tablet bundle for a relatively small holiday run. They wanted to know what I would charge per-license. I did some research to find out what a typical OEM markdown would be and made them an offer based on what I found. It was a significant discount, but it was a fair price, and I'd have made reasonable money off of it. They responded saying that this was far too much and that they really couldn't go over $1 per license, which would have been more than a 95% markdown. I attempted to negotiate further with them, but they stopped responding to my emails shortly thereafter.

Should I have just taken them up on their initial offer? Well, as the cards finally fell, I would have probably made more money that way. And if I'd known that I would shortly be shifting my focus away from development of that program, I might have made a different choice. But whether or not I made the right choice given the information available to me is not the point. The point is that it wasn't an easy "yes".

When you aren't getting any offers, it seems like _any_ offer would be a coup. But that's not how the market works. If your company is worth $5000, there's somebody out there who would be happy to pay you $200 for it. You won't _see_ many offers like that because the number of businesses worth $5000 is large and the number of people who are willing to send out insulting offers is relatively small. But "say yes to every offer" isn't a winning strategy.

<comment><USER8> If they didn't write back, it's hard to imagine they were serious about the offer. How likely is it they were just testing the waters with various providers?

<comment><USER7> It's also very likely that they weren't very competent. If I recall correctly, they wanted this for a Christmas sale, and they contacted me about it in late November.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> On the same topic: _How to sell your company_ [1]

[1] <http://www.jacquesmattheij.com/How+To+Sell+Your+Company>

</comment><comment><USER10> Apparently, it's before an article like this is written...: [http://www.privco.com/livingsocial-receives- emergency-110m-c...](http://www.privco.com/livingsocial-receives- emergency-110m-cash-infusion-from-existing-investors-to-avoid-bankruptcy)

</comment><comment><USER11> This is really interesting. Seems like Snapchat would have fallen into the first two buckets (I can't see their upside being higher than an exit to somewhere like Facebook or Twitter, but I'd be happy if I were wrong).

</comment><comment><USER12> Aside: when did 20px become an acceptable font size for content text?

<comment><USER13> Yeah a little bigger would be better; it looks great at 24px. Afterall it's a page full of nothing but text, might as well make the text big. But I think they're still catering to folks with screens as small as 1280x1024.</comment></comment>


Cash Back Guarantee: The U.S. Redeems Damaged Bills Because Dollar Depends on It - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2019/08/11/749351330/cash-back-guarantee-the-u-s-redeems-damaged-bills-because-the-dollar-depends-on- <comment><USER2> What about bills that people wrote on? Where's George and political stuff. I don't want it on the bills I receive.</comment>


Ask HN: What happened to Pinboard? - <AUTHOR> Over the last year or so, pinboard.in's paid archiving service has become increasingly sporadic. The process used to be nearly instant, but bookmarks are crawled maybe once a month now and frequently fail to archive correctly or are skipped completely.
From Pinboard's Twitter mentions, I can see I'm not the only one who has been trying to contact Maciej for several months without success. A lot of former delicious users are also desperate to get an export of their data, which is still unavailable over a year and a half after Pinboard purchased and shut down the site.
Overall, it's left a pretty bad taste in my mouth. I decided in September to leave the service, but emailing is the only way to request a full download of archived bookmarks. I'd also like to get a refund on the next four years of my archival subscription - I paid for five years in advance because I was so happy with the site before now.
I know Maciej reads HN, and there seem to be a number of Pinboard users here (it's still mentioned just about anytime somebody posts about bookmarking). Has anybody else had any luck getting a refund and a copy of their data? What are the best Pinboard replacements, self-hosted or otherwise? <comment><USER2> From the FAQ of pinboard.in ([http://pinboard.in/faq/#anxieties](http://pinboard.in/faq/#anxieties)):

> What happens if the guy who runs Pinboard gets hit by a bus?

> The bus is likely to be fine. They don't go very fast and are designed with > passenger safety in mind.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is an odd coincidence, I just received an email today from one of my users (I run a Pinboard "competitor", [https://historio.us](https://historio.us)) that mentioned the same problems, namely emails having gone without response and an inability to get their data out.

I'm afraid I can't answer your first question, but I can answer your second one. historious has been around since 2009 and, while I don't give it amazing amounts of love, it works well enough that I use it myself. I am currently trying to modernize it a bit, but I don't have an ETA or roadmap on that. However, I think it's worth giving it a shot.

<comment><USER4> I loved your service when it was released. It does need a little modernization and I'm looking forward to when you get there!

The feature I miss most from pinboard is tag suggestions in the extension/bookmarklet, and perhaps a little popup that gives you a chance to change the title/description.

<comment><USER5> Thanks! You can already do that, there's an option in both the extension and the bookmarklet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I cancelled my subscription last year after similar problems with full text search.

I did get a download of my data, albeit it took a while, after requesting it from my settings page.

I've never had a reply to any of my emails to him. Alhough I did eventually get a reply on twitter, which said "Sorry for the terrible support" But then I heard nothing more, and got no replies to further emails either.

I think he's too busy being a celebrity. And it's a shame because he was kind of a figure head for independents doing a good job, and I was a bit of an evangelist. Oh well.

<comment><USER7> Being a celebrity?? I was thinking he must be ill in some way, is he in the news somehow?

<comment><USER6> He's very active on Twitter, and goes around giving talks about the impact of technology. I'd guess that doesn't stretch to the impact of lousy customer service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sad to read these comments. Like many others, I viewed pinboard as a rare gem of a service that just worked and had the perfect balance of features: minimalist UI, zero bloat, no ads, nice API, sustainable business model.

I've got thousands of carefully-tagged bookmarks in there, and add more every day. I dread the idea of having to switch to another service, and after evaluating several others—haven't found any that come close.

What are people here switching to? Or am I an out of touch old geezer for even thinking that saving bookmarks is a useful thing anymore...

<comment><USER4> I've been evaluating different services and for now, I'm liking [https://larder.io/](https://larder.io/)

It's not perfect, and no archiving yet, but it's in active development

<comment><USER9> Thanks for recommending Larder. I just moved over from Pinboard. I really like the ability to sync Github starred repos and Stack Overflow favorited questions as bookmarks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm also concerned about pinboard. I have a long-time archiving subscription and just recently extended it for the next 5 years. When my bookmarks didn't archive since October, I mailed support. No reply, but now all bookmarks are archived again. I'm not sure if something got fixed, or I just got lucky.

It's obvious that Maciej has put all his attention into political campaigning over the last year - good on him! But the pinboard blog hasn't been updated since 18 months, and the quality of its minimal-by-design service starts eroding.

I really do hope he can clarify here or on his blog what's the future plan for pinboard. I always liked pinboard being very down to earth with the marketing, but that's no excuse for ignoring the paying customer base.

</comment><comment><USER11> Helpful to know I am not the only experiencing archiving pains. Most of my bookmarks didn't archive for over a month. About a 1/3 of my archived pages currently result in an internal "Forbidden" error. My support experience since end of October has been no response after sending to 2 email messages and a private twitter message. The rest of the site is so damn useful compared to its competitors that I'm willing to overlook this lack of professionalism. Currently the promises of support on [https://pinboard.in/tour/](https://pinboard.in/tour/) are misleading: "If you have an idea, or need help, you can bring it up directly with me and be sure of a prompt response." I hope he returns and gives the site some love.

</comment><comment><USER12> Pinboard also lost its Safari extension with no replacement in sight. The official Chrome extension also stopped working, but there are 3rd party Chrome extensions that work.

He never answered when I contacted him for pinboard support, leaving a very bad taste in my mouth.

Maciej seems to be more interested in discussing politics on Twitter rather than fixing his service, therefore I plan to leave his service once I find a good alternative.

<comment><USER13> I've been using the bookmarklet to pin bookmarks all along. No memory/CPU footprints like the extension and it's still working.

<comment><USER12> Thanks for the suggestion. Yes, it works for adding single items (although it's not as convenient for me, as I don't have the favorites bar visible), but there's still no way to save all pages in a tab set. I used this feature a lot with the old extension.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Maciej has been busy using Pinboard to fund political candidacies[1] and opining on character tests for CEOs[2].

I've voted Democrat in every election, this isn't a political thing. I'm embarrassed by his very public lack of self-awareness, and upset for people who trusted him.

[1] [https://twitter.com/Pinboard](https://twitter.com/Pinboard) [2] [https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1050583549164703744](https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1050583549164703744)

<comment><USER15> I don't see the problem with this. It's their business, and hence their right to do what they want with the funds and time that business allows him.

Besides the service being provided to customers, Maciej owes anyone feeling entitled to more nothing.

<comment><USER16> I think the problem is that people would rather their bookmarking service be more concerned with operating as a bookmarking service than tweeting about politics. As a paying customer, I am in this very non-partisan boat. I mean the guy can do what he wants, but so can I and I'm looking for alternatives after being a paying pinboard customer for 4 years now. The service seems more and more like abandonedware.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Not using the archive feature of the site so I can't comment on it, but the rest of the site works as it should.

I mainly use it for discovering new content via "popular" tab and my own hacky chrome extension to filter "recent" bookmarks and display those with N number of users who bookmarked the same link.

Sure it could use with some much needed updates to both the site and the api at some point once Maciej saves the American political system eventually.

</comment><comment><USER18> It's for this reason that I've come to view tech products as propositions for relations, and I've come to view the health or characteristics of the company as part of the value of its offering.

I've had good performance and uptime with Pinboard, but there have been a few moments that caused me to look outward for other options, but there I found that nobody else really focused on privacy the same way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Until the last year or so, I really felt like Pinboard was a model for how an online service should be run. Maciej's strong advocacy for privacy and ethical business models are the reason I was comfortable paying for another five years of archiving upfront - I made my account in 2011 and until now had never seen a reason to jump ship.

Nowadays, though, self-hosting is much more workable than it used to be and I feel more confident that I can manage my own data safely... or maybe I've just realized I'm _not_ confident that anybody else can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> After increasing problems with pinboard, I recently cancelled my subscription and moved to ggather.com. It's been pretty good so far.

<comment><USER18> What is their business model? It's so hard to find information about them on their site without creating an account.

<comment><USER20> pretty sure he makes money when folks pay him to have the site cache the pages you bookmark in case they go away. Also allows you to search the content of the bookmarked pages, not just the stuff you typed in when bookmarking it.

I don't check how quickly the cached copies are created after bookmarking. All i knows is that they're there when the site has disappeared. He's got about 7.8GB of stuff stored for me and i've been happy with the service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Maciej has been interested in campaigning lately, and I also feel he has neglected Pinboard.

Those archiving blackouts hit me regularly, every few months I sent him an email, he makes it work again (only for a while), and the cycle repeats itself.

I'm astonished he seems to have no form of monitoring, a canary account or whatever.

I'm not ready to jump ship, but yes, the service doesn't feel so dependable nowadays.

</comment><comment><USER22> I think he's in Antarctica...

<comment><USER23> Yeah, he posted a blog post about Antarctica a few days ago: [https://idlewords.com/2018/12/gluten_free_antarctica.htm](https://idlewords.com/2018/12/gluten_free_antarctica.htm)

<comment><USER24> That picks up immediately after a post from a couple years ago. [https://idlewords.com/2016/05/shuffleboard_at_mcmurdo.htm](https://idlewords.com/2016/05/shuffleboard_at_mcmurdo.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I signed up a month ago to the annual plan for easy mobile bookmarking via Pindroid. So far so good, but I haven't upgraded to the archiving service yet.

If I was to take a total guess I would say the archiving service might be getting abused for mass data scraping, and the archive servers are buckling under load. Scraping can use a fair amount of server resources.

<comment><USER26> Nah. It's always been like that, witness the amount of "oops, the API fell over two days ago, i just restarted it" twitter posts over the years. It's always been a pretty haphazard operation, but Maciej used to pay attention. Now it really looks like his primary activity is political organising and he's lost any interest in maintaining the site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> In the last month or so I'm pretty sure I lost a handful of recent bookmarks. I am in a bit of a pickle, since I have to decide whether to renew in about 3 weeks; at the moment, it's hard to justify the money. It's a shame, I liked everything he was trying to (not) do, but it looks like the last election cycle broke him or something.

</comment><comment><USER27> The owner was active 2 days ago on HN for the latest blog post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=idlewords](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=idlewords)

</comment><comment><USER28> Works great for me and I will continue to support him. The bookmarklet continues to be great as well as the API. Paying customer and will remain until I roll my own solution someday.

</comment><comment><USER29> I am using raindrop.io and I am pretty happy with it.

<comment><USER4> I liked that one the most, but development seems to have come to a halt. I've seen complaints about payment renewals etc so I'm not taking the risk.

It does seem like browser bookmarks is the safest bet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Luckily pinboard has worked fine for me (I don't use the archiving sites feature though). I would be lost if it did go away.

</comment><comment><USER31> Sad to watch such a great system lose focus...</comment>


Is there a site which catalogs startup ideas? - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone know of a site where people share ideas they have for startups and find out if other people are working on similar problems? <comment><USER2> There's also a subreddit you may be interested in <http://www.reddit.com/r/SomebodyMakeThis/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Ideabing is a website that aims to share ideas - <http://www.idea.ideabing.com/about/>

</comment><comment><USER4> news.ycombinator.com :)

</comment><comment><USER5> I was looking for something like this last week then decided to build leanthingy.com.

</comment><comment><USER6> CrunchBase.com

</comment><comment><USER7> sparkmuse.com is a growing interest.

</comment><comment><USER8> <http://www.ideaswatch.com> is a website where people share and discuss startup ideas.

<comment><USER9> got an error when i clicked on NEXT.. nice site btw, straightforward and informative :-)

<comment><USER8> The site isn't mine, I remember coming across it on KillerStartups a while ago.</comment></comment></comment>


Trump administration formally withdraws US from WHO - <AUTHOR> https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/506214-trump-administration-formally-withdraws-us-from-WHO- <comment><USER2> _"...The White House has officially moved to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization... Withdrawal requires a year's notice, so it will not go into effect until July 6, 2021, raising the possibility the decision could be reversed..."_

Bait. Meet Click.</comment>