Multiplayer Game 'Eve Online' Cultivates a Most Devoted Following - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-04-18/multiplayer-game-eve-online-cultivates-a-most-devoted-following <comment><USER2> These are just the latest breed of these types of people for eve.

My eve history is beta, and on and off for years. I have 2 chars, my baby she was born on release day just shy of 90milion now(yes yes i un-subbed for years at a time) and a secondary of 40 million who is the transport/mining hauling alt.

Now I was lucky, like really lucky. I found a group in beta, there was 10 of us, by release we were 8 but within 6 weeks we had our own BPOs and running a high sec manufacturing chain. We did alright but it was dull so we moved to Fountain, and were part of the group that originally found FA. Funny the original corp ended up being a front for BoB for years ran by the bob manufacturing team.

Anyway FA at the start, m0o invaded, FA defended as best we could, my corp got invited to merge with Evol (who never recruited) and so started what I like to think of as the first step towards bob.

The organizational involved to get BoB up and running and running for 3-4 years was massive. Never under estimate what molly and co were able to pull off. They were the first big alliance for me personally. Not that i am taking away from the people in this news bit, but i do think they are just redoing what we did originally in the day. The difference is they saw how we did it and done it better, we had to do it from scratch, and by doing so we made some amazing bonds and were the force for years. Also remember BoB did the BoB BBQ which is where they would rent a camp site somewhere in EU and everyone from BoB was invited, really bob was all about building a close team and i was sad when it got removed from the game like it did but meh a game is a game.

Anyway I is off, Eve is awesome but only play if you have time to play, it will eat years off you

<comment><USER3> ex-TEST director reporting in. It is, indeed, supremely impressive when looking at the infrastructure required to support an alliance of 5000 people; in TEST, for example, we have our own software developers and an ops team that keeps systems like voice chat, forums, wikis, killboards, and more running 24/7.

And then there's the management / organizational side - juggling 20+ corporations, each with their own cultures, leadership, and focuses, and herding the cats towards battles. (BoB forced members to join battles, TEST incentivized battles, two methods with the same end goal.) In my tenure as Director of Training, we set up systems where brand-new characters could get free ships, equipment, and skill books and a channel for asking questions. It was nearly a full time job just managing the influx of new players. Ultimately, it fell to the wayside once I moved across the country, and come to think of it, I've been paying for a subscription I haven't actually used in many months...

<comment><USER4> Heh, I've most likely played with you (Dreddit member since day 1 - for non- Eve players, TEST was started by Reddit players and is now one of the largest alliances in the game). I haven't played in almost two years, but watching a single corp grow from nothing to an entity that changed an entire game universe has been incredible.

The truly fascinating part was seeing first-hand which forms of organization and motivation work, and which ones don't. Specifically, how a laissez-faire organization with relatively few rules in a very hostile game world managed not only to avoid falling apart, but rise to be a superpower against established entities with much more defined and rigid structures.

I think TEST's biggest advantages were a shared identity and relatively strong culture (for better or worse) that emphasizes fun over winning , and practically non-existant standards for accepting new players combined with very strong training and bootstrapping (as opposed to more picky corps who either didn't want to bother with newbies or were afraid of spies). And maybe a bit of manifest destiny. Throw in support from a very similar but much more experienced and established ally, a lot of propaganda, and you have something that's very tough to beat in the long term.

I can ramble forever about it, I really am fascinated by how much complexity Eve allows. That game has to be a sociologist's or organizational behaviourist's dream come true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > The company employs close to 600 people, or 0.2 percent of Iceland's > population. (An equivalent U.S. company would have about 626,000 employees.)

Last time I heard foreigners made up 30-40% of the staff in Iceland.

> Just down the road from the CCP headquarters, the Harpa, a giant glass opera > house, glows in different colors at night. It symbolized Iceland's banking > boom. Now it may have to be torn down, because it's too expensive for the > country to maintain.

It's definitely bleeding money but nobody is talking about tearing it down.

<comment><USER6> The article contains many such mistakes, for example there are not 500.000 players, that's the number of accounts. CCP never discloses the number of actual players and the game practically mandates the use of several accounts for more advanced gameplay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really enjoy EVE's sandbox. It's a great game to lose yourself in. The developers release expansions regularly and really listen to their player's feedback.

One thing I find interesting is that most dedicated EVE players pay for two subscriptions. This allows you to have two characters that are both active and training skills.

A popular setup is to have a subscription for a law-abiding citizen that can pass through all Solar Systems and make a lot of in-game currency through mining, mission running, transportation of goods, or any other means. The second subscription would most likely be used to engage other players, whether their victims are up for the challenge or not. If an EVE player is engaged illegally, the attacker becomes red-flagged, and if they keep it up, eventually won't be able to traverse high security solar systems without being pursued by a Faction Navy or CONCORD(EVE in-game police). Running from CONCORD is a bannable offense - as in, banned from the game.

EVE is a wonderful world of capitalism, piracy, industry, and exploration, but I do wish CCP had a way of counting the number of players instead of subscriptions.

<comment><USER8> So you get banned if you engage in too much pvp? I thought this game was all about pvp.

<comment><USER9> From what I understand, it's if you do too much pvp on players who don't want to pvp. I guess there's some sort of flag to turn on if you want to pvp, a little like World of Warcraft.

<comment> Tuna-Fish No. The most important principle of EVE is that someone can _always_ kill you. Only having consensual PVP makes games boring, as it removes risk.

In some areas of space, killing people has consequences, specifically, losing your ship. Which just means that you should fit it for firepower/cost when you go shooting random people in highsec. Various parties have honed this to an art, for example: _miniluv_ (Goonswarm Ministry of Love).

Their handiwork: <http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/28640>

Choice quote: "There's just something special about building 15,000 spaceships and loading their guns with 1 round of ammo to shoot. And doing it right in front of the police."

<comment><USER9> Well, that's what I understand from the post I replied. Thanks for correcting me though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The timing for this post is hilarious. They just massively pissed off a large chunk of their third party developers, and an even larger chunk of the players that depend on third party apps: [https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=2266...](https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=226648&p=14)

</comment><comment><USER11> I feel the same way about Eve that I feel about Dwarf Fortress. I love reading about it and find the surrounding community fascinating, but I just don't have the time to devote to properly playing it.

<comment><USER12> I feel the exact same way. I especially enjoyed reading one article a few years back about a real-world Eve scam. Not sure how to find it anymore but it was very well written as are a lot of Eve stories.

I did not know CCP bought White Wolf Studios and will be looking forward to what they do with those creative brands. Will they dominate the sci-fi and horror genre?

<comment><USER13> Do you mean this story? [http://www.computerandvideogames.com/180867/features/murder-...](http://www.computerandvideogames.com/180867/features/murder- incorporated/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> EVE has done one truly innovative trick, which I suspect is going to be template for many mass unit virtual battles in future - time dilation.

Not everyone can just throw hard ware at a problem, Time dilation is one of the coolest things that have happened to make the Massively part MMO feel massive.

<comment><USER15> I was curious so I googled it.

<http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Time_Dilation>

Basically, EVE Online's universe spans a bunch of server nodes. When a node is under a lot of stress (large battles, high volume), the node's game speed slows down so that it can handle the load of player actions.

<comment><USER16> I'm not an Eve player. Is snaring opponents in a dilated node in order to get ahead of them time-wise a used strategy?

<comment><USER17> I suspect it's very difficult to actually pull it off, but I wouldn't be surprised if it has happened once or twice.

My impression is that chasing people across several different systems is a relatively rare practice, since you're basically blind to what might be waiting for you when you jump after. Worse, you'd have to be giving the other player an impression that you're going to a specific destination and they'd have to notice that there's a faster route to begin with.

Plus, if someone jumps into a dilated node, they've managed to put themselves inside the crossfire of at least two very large fleets anyways.

Basically, the level of mind game necessary to even open the possibility of doing this makes it impractical at best.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Single page link: [http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/110598-multipla...](http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/110598-multiplayer- game-eve-online-cultivates-a-most-devoted-following)</comment>


Hawaiian Style: The Roots of the Aloha Shirt - <AUTHOR> https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/an-interview-with-aloha-shirt-author-and-scholar-linda-arthur/ <comment><USER2> My husband lives and works in nothing but Reyn Spooners and jeans -- has a 40 year old "collection" (every year the company produces several new designs that are emblematic for that year). He says they're made of the original Hawaiian Fabric and are the most comfortable and certainly most long lasting -- they turn the fabric inside out so wear is just part of the look. They are beautiful classic shirts and I never get tired of seeing him in them.

<comment><USER3> I was looking to pick up a couple of Reyn Spooner shirts while on the big island last month, but I realized they all had collar buttons. My mind cannot reconcile aloha shirts and collar buttons existing in the same universe so I went with Tommy Bahama instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are different grades of Aloha type shirts. I once had a business meeting in Hawaii. There is a business casual grade for lack of a better term. Everyone at this business looked so stylish and classy yet with a tropical sort of flair. It was great!

<comment><USER5> So true. I love Aloha shirts (I grew up on Oahu). The best thing about them is that they are multi-purpose. Need to wear something to a wedding in Hawaii? Aloha shirt with slacks. Funeral? Aloha shirt, totally acceptable. Fancy restaurant? Again, Aloha shirt. Business attire? Totally acceptable (it's really the norm for business people if you're 'dressing up').

Where else can you get away with wearing such a comfortable, fun shirt in so many different contexts.

<comment><USER6> When I tell people that only lawyers wear suits in Hawaii they don't believe me. Don't know if still going on but the legislature was pushing the courts to discourage the use of suits as well.

On top of all your reasons, it's just too hot and humid year round in Hawaii to wear a suit regularly. Must be pure misery for the people who have to.

<comment><USER7> I grew up in Hawaii and my Dad was a federal agent, he previously worked in DC and Philly before we moved there, he still wore aloha shirts to work because it was just the normal thing to do there.

Can't help but agree with it either, its _always_ nice. Why tie yourself down with a suit? (pun intended)

<comment><USER8> I don't know, New York in August makes it pretty unpleasant to wear a suit. Actually it's unpleasant just to try and breathe... it's like huffing hummus. Of course Florida in August is downright fatal. I think fashion just doesn't care.

<comment><USER9> > New York in August makes it pretty unpleasant to wear a suit.

As Neal Stephenson has observed, the three-piece wool suit makes perfect sense if you're in a place where the year-round temperature is a constant 50 degrees F, indoors and out.

Basically, the British Isles before modern central heating, and nowhere else.

<comment><USER7> Its also hard to deny that a well-fitted suit just looks good though.

<comment><USER10> I think they look antiquated. I'd prefer never to wear clothing that needs to be treated with harsh chemicals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nothing says Officially Sanctioned Fun like Hawaiian shirt Friday...

<comment><USER3> A previous co-worker recently took a job with one of the big consulting firms in DC. They have "jeans Fridays" but you have to pay $5.00 to participate each week.

<comment><USER12> Man, having a job on the East Coast seems like a fate worse than death. You'll pry my jeans and T-shirt from my cold, dead fingers.

<comment><USER13> I'm glad I work in tech. Shorts and flip flops are the first questions I ask any recruiter that contacts me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'd like to know how Hawaiian shirts became the official attire of US Federal Air Marshals

<comment><USER15> A few years ago I had to get some paperwork stamped returning to the US (equipment travelling on a carnet). I had to go through passport control in an area far from most travelers. While talking to the CBP agent, a motley group of 8 gregarious people can down the hall and skipped the passport control. The CBP agent I was working with said "there goes the Air Marshals". The group was mixed gender, mixed ages, mixed build, mixed style. I would not have pegged any of them as Air Marshals. One girl had dyed punk hair and a biker jacket. One guy looked like a middle aged dad. One girl looked like a European fashion model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Fascinating. I have a pretty solid collection of Aloha shirts myself, but I always thought they were a mainland invention and that the Hawaiians just sort of adopted them.

It makes me happy to know that they actually create the idea and is a positive part of their culture, and not just another adoption of their colonizer's culture.

</comment><comment><USER17> I have some Sig Zane shirts. Love them. They are proper Aloha shirts. Bought them in Hilo, when my wife and I were on vacation a couple of years ago to the big island.

I also have some shirts with much bolder fluorescent colors and more garish styling, many of which I bought at Hilo Hattie's, which ironically does not exist in Hilo. I bought mine on Maui, during that same trip.

The latter are what I would call "Hawaiian Shirts", with quotes intact. Only suitable for tourists to wear. No local would be caught dead in them.

Here on the mainland, I wear my "Hawaiian Shirts" every day, and on days with hot weather, I also wear cargo shorts and Keen sandals. I wouldn't want to work any place that would not allow me to wear the clothes that make me feel comfortable.

</comment><comment><USER18> Archive: [http://archive.today/2018.07.11-134734/https://www.collector...](http://archive.today/2018.07.11-134734/https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/an- interview-with-aloha-shirt-author-and-scholar-linda-arthur/)

</comment><comment><USER19> In Fiji, they wear bula shirts, which are more or less the same (bula == aloha in Fijian).

I wonder if they're a separate parallel development, or if they were introduced at some point.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm curious. much of South East Asia has the Batik shirts. The higher end ones are considered formalwear. Is there any connection?

<comment><USER9> Then there are those embroidered shirts from the Philippines.

Those are awesome -- they don't seem to be as common now, but you still sometimes see older Filipino gentlemen wearing them on "dress-up" occasions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Any good brands? I saw a mention of Reyn Spooners.

Usually I made do with Tommy Bahamas.

<comment><USER22> Nordstrom and Nordstrom Rack are usually good places to find good brands and deals inc Reyn Spooner and Tommy Bahamas

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Just got two of them in today. I love this type of shirt.

</comment><comment><USER6> People, please stop calling them Hawaiian shirts. Thank you.

<comment><USER24> OH, they're definitely Hawaiian shirts. They're not Estonian, for instance. Nor Japanese. Pure Hawaiian. There are also Hawaiian pants, and skirts etc.

<comment><USER25> The article's a fun read, and indicates that the originals were a product of Chinese tailors using Japanese kimono fabric in a hybrid Filipino/European style at the request of middle-class Hawaiian school boys.

<comment><USER24> ...and made in Hawaii. By Hawaiians. To local taste. As genuinely Hawaiian as any designer dress is the designer's product, regardless of the tailor or fabric origin.

<comment><USER26> Hawaiian is primarily used as an ethnonym, so saying the Aloha shirt is a 'Hawaiian Shirt' is implying the shirt as part of native Hawaiian culture. What you say is technically true at a certain level, people who live in Hawaii do have the demonym of 'Hawaiian', but that term is reserved for the indigenous Polynesian people of Hawaii. It would seem odd to say for someone to say they enjoy native American food as a means of expressing their like of hamburgers and french fries.

<comment><USER27> Anyone reading this article or talking about Hawaiian shirts is using Hawaiian colloquially. Maybe you live in a milieu where a distinction is necessary but for most people it just comes off as word policing.

<comment><USER26> The distinction of Hawaiian as a colloquial reference to anything from the state of Hawaii is made only outside of the state itself.

I can't change the way English itself works so there will always be that meaning, but to anyone from Hawaii, that distinction reminds us that native Hawaiians are distinct from the people of Hawaii today.

The Hawaiian culture has had its fair share of erasure and suppression. To make the distinction is an attempt to honor and remember the unique identity of native Hawaiians.

<comment><USER28> _> Hawaiian is primarily used as an ethnonym, so saying the Aloha shirt is a 'Hawaiian Shirt' is implying the shirt as part of native Hawaiian culture._

I'm not sure people outside of Hawaii mistakenly link the "Hawaiian shirt" to _native_ Hawaiian culture. (The _" native"_ modifier is key here for clear discussion.)

Instead, "Hawaiian shirt" is more innocently used as "a shirt common in the geographical place of Hawaii". If you really tried to get outsiders to picture a __native_ Hawaiian culture_ , they might imagine shirtless Polynesian people like these images.[1] Those people are not wearing the touristy floral printed shirts that are sold as "Hawaiian shirts".

 _> The Hawaiian culture has had its fair share of erasure and suppression. To make the distinction is an attempt to honor and remember the unique identity of native Hawaiians._

I'm still confused why the label "Hawaiian shirt" is erasing _native_ Hawaiian culture.

If Europeans choose to label what USA citizens call "football" as _" American football"_, they do not imply that everybody links these images[2] to _native_ American culture. No matter how many times Europeans repeat the phrase "American football", these images of native Americans[3] will always be a separate and preserved concept in their minds.

[1] [https://www.google.com/search?q=polynesian+people&source=lnm...](https://www.google.com/search?q=polynesian+people&source=lnms&tbm=isch)

[2] [https://www.google.com/search?q=nfl+football&source=lnms&tbm...](https://www.google.com/search?q=nfl+football&source=lnms&tbm=isch)

[3] [https://www.google.com/search?q=native+americans&source=lnms...](https://www.google.com/search?q=native+americans&source=lnms&tbm=isch)

<comment><USER26> Yeah, its tough to understand how people think of a word on a case to case basis. Everyone will have different connotations. There is murkiness that exists as part of its use as a noun or an adjective.

My point of erasure relates to making the use of Hawaiian as a noun specifically relating to anything native Hawaiian.

The football thing doesn't feel entirely on point for me, an analogy of Europeans seeing Tex-Mex and calling it Mexican food seems closer to the idea. It is technically right, but some people from Mexico would disagree with that being _real_ Mexican food.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Fixing Facebook's Font Size Frustration - <AUTHOR> http://arnab.org/blog/fixing-facebooks-font-size-frustration

<comment><USER2> Is this actually a problem for people or just a case of something new being considered bad? I find the new slightly smaller font to be cleaner and make the layout nicer. I think it hardly causes anything near eye strain and that if you weren't strained before the difference is unlikely to change that.

<comment><USER3> Yes this is a real problem and it's not just Facebook. Designers are often young and typically have very, very good eyesight, much better than the average population.

Out in the real world, the average young person probably has good eyesight and the average middle aged person has so-so eyesight and older people generally have crappy eyesight.

But then there are lots of people of all ages who have poor vision, weird quirks, colour blindness, tunnel vision, or clinical blindness.

Arbitrarily reducing a font from small to teeny is basically a slap in the face to anyone with less than perfect eyesight.

Yes, a user can adjust their browser settings to enlarge the fonts but when you do that to Facebook, for example, it makes _all_ the text larger and the whole thing looks like shite.</comment></comment>


How to Become a Lucid Dreamer - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190503-how-to-become-a-lucid-dreamer <comment><USER2> The article links to another about Mary Arnold-Forster, considered a pioneer in lucid dreaming. She wrote a book titled "Studies in dreams", available on archive.org:

[https://archive.org/details/studiesindreams00arnogoog](https://archive.org/details/studiesindreams00arnogoog)</comment>


SilverStripe - Open Source CMS, Has Support From Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/silverstripe_open_source_cms_google_summer_of_code.php <comment><USER2> You could say that to every single open source project that is submitted to Google Summer of Code.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. Including several Drupal and Joomla projects.

Summer of Code is pretty much indescriminant about the projects it'll fund. If it's a reasonably popular OSS project, and there's a core team developer willing to mentor the recipient of the award, it'll get the nod. (It's awesome, of course, but having a SoC supported project is really saying, "we had an intern work on the project this summer, and Google was nice enough to pay him/her", rather than "supported by Google".)</comment></comment>


The Automatic Rule-Based Time Tracker - <AUTHOR> http://www.joachim-breitner.de/blog/archives/336-The-Automatic-Rule-Based-Time-Tracker.html

<comment><USER2> Looks like a local version of RescueTime.

<comment><USER3> Or <http://www.timesnapper.com/>

<comment><USER4> For Mac, Slife seems like an alternative.

<http://www.slifelabs.com/></comment></comment></comment>


The challenge of convincing white men they're not as meritorious as they think - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailylife.com.au/news-and-views/dl-opinion/the-challenge-of-convincing-white-men-theyre-not-as-meritorious-as-they-think-20160808-gqnv8q.html <comment><USER2> This propaganda piece assumes its conclusions (you're white and male therefore have privilege; this claim has _never_ been supported by any credible source, nor is it here). It further asserts that you are obligated to use this privilege (whose existence is not established) to the benefit of others based solely on the colour of their skin, their genitalia, etc.

It goes on, again without any support whatsoever, to claim that the opposition to Hillary and anyone else that's female is based on their genitalia, rather than the factual issues with these candidates.

It seems to be the usual racism and sexism of lowered expectations for anyone not white and male, and the villainization of anyone who is white and / or male.

This piece has no merit whatsoever. It could very well be course material for a gender studies course given the assumed conclusions and clear agenda, without any actual facts present.

</comment><comment><USER3> Please don't post racist material on HN.</comment>


How to Partition a Billion-Node Graph [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Partition.pdf <comment><USER2> That looks like a pre-print or review copy, and is missing the authors' names and other citation information.

The paper is: L. Wang, Y. Xiao, B. Shao and H. Wang, "How to partition a billion-node graph," _2014 IEEE 30th International Conference on Data Engineering_ , Chicago, IL, 2014, pp. 568-579. doi: 10.1109/ICDE.2014.6816682

Here's the (potentially paywalled) link to IEEExplore: [http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6816682/](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6816682/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's a direct link to the ICDE Conference version: [https://www.graphengine.io/downloads/papers/Trinity.Partitio...](https://www.graphengine.io/downloads/papers/Trinity.Partition.pdf)

<comment><USER2> Even better!

Mods, maybe swap the links?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This paper by Fabio Checconi and Fabrizio Petrini of IBM Watson is a rare look into design details:

Traversing Trillions of Edges in Real-time: Graph Exploration on Large-scale Parallel Machines

[http://www.odbms.org/wp- content/uploads/2014/05/g500-ipdps14...](http://www.odbms.org/wp- content/uploads/2014/05/g500-ipdps14.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> OK now I'd like to see this run on a VLSI ASIC place-and-route system.

Originally these graph partitioning algorithms were largely designed to solve that problem.

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra Can't download it.

What's the problem? Machines with 32G RAM are commonplace, you can probably just fit it all into memory. The important bits at least.

<comment><USER4> The examples mentioned are the web (50B nodes, 1000B links) and the Facebook social graph (0.8B nodes, 100B links).

You might fit quite a bit into a beefy 3TB RAM server, but it might not be the best ram-to-cpu ratio for graph algorithms.

<comment><USER5> You can compute non-trivial statistics about the entire web-graph (roughly |V|=3B, |E|=100B)on a single high-end server these days. Speaking from personal experience, a machine with > 64 cores and 1TB of RAM can compute connectivity, MSTs, and partition this graph in minutes. Are there graphs out there (with the exception of Facebook and Google's private graphs) that are so large as to be intractable without resorting to external-memory/distributed computing?

<comment><USER6> LinkedIn + Outlook + Dynamics?

<comment><USER5> Sorry, I should clarify: publicly accessible graphs. The hyperlink graphs are the largest I've found.

[http://webdatacommons.org/hyperlinkgraph/index.html#toc1](http://webdatacommons.org/hyperlinkgraph/index.html#toc1)

<comment><AUTHOR> Also see [https://snap.stanford.edu/data/](https://snap.stanford.edu/data/)

<comment><USER2> Extrapolating from a few data sets at that link, the road network for the entire US is probably on the order of 100M nodes and around 250-500M edges.

I would imagine real biological data isn't quite there yet, but it's certainly not for want of trying. Simulations might get pretty close. Blue Brain was aiming for 100M neurons and (presumably) a few orders of magnitude more connections and I think there's another simulation floating around with 10^11 neurons (but presumably less biophysical accuracy).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Dinosaurs Among Us: The archaic protocol at the heart of secure wireless - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@SecureW2/dinosaurs-among-us-2ffbfee4b547

<comment><USER2> >Bruce Schneider (Schneier)

>depreciated protocols (deprecated)

>security-conscience VPNs (security-conscious)

How diligent were SecureW2 when writing their code if they can't be bothered to proofread?</comment>


Tech Monopolies Are the Reason the US Now Has a TikTok Problem - <AUTHOR> https://promarket.org/2020/08/07/tech-monopolies-are-the-reason-the-us-now-has-a-tiktok-problem/ <comment><USER2> Huh? I completely disagree with the premise of the article.

I will start by saying that monopolies are bad and we could do away with them. That said, current actions have little to do with their legal and market position, but rather geopolitical place US is in today.

There is a clear indication that US executive branch decided to go after China. And if history is an any kind of teacher, the rest of the government will eventually fall in line ( especially since it is hard to argue that China is a benevolent dictatorship ).

US does not have a TikTok problem, because of tech monopolies. Monopolies just may end up benefiting from US foreign policy.

<comment><USER3> > There is a clear indication that US executive branch decided to go after > China.

No.

The US executive branch didn't decide that. The machine decided that, during the Obama Administration (not Obama's decision either), and they have been thinking about - plotting about - this confrontation as far back as the early 1990s at least. Four-star general Wesley Clark talked publicly about that the Pentagon has been expecting to have to confront China for ~25+ years.

There are countless article you can dig up on this, through much of the Obama Administration years. Here is a good one:

FAS (Federation of American Scientists) 2012:

"Pivot to the Pacific? The Obama Administration's "Rebalancing" Toward Asia"

[https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R42448.pdf](https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R42448.pdf)

"In the fall of 2011, the Obama Administration issued a series of announcements indicating that the United States would be expanding and intensifying its already significant role in the Asia-Pacific, particularly in the southern part of the region. The fundamental goal underpinning the shift is to devote more effort to influencing the development of the Asia-Pacific's norms and rules, particularly as China emerges as an ever-more influential regional power."

Pivot aka confront China.

Read the section called "Areas of Continuity" where they discuss how Obama's pivot was actually just furthering policies began during the prior Bush Administration. It's a system in action, spanning administrations.

They're doing it in a gradual multi-part rotation. They called it the "pivot to Asia" during the Obama years. That pivot was about dealing with the rising China. Each cycle gets more aggressive and with more resources devoted toward it. With Trump it's called the confrontation with China. They're escalating as they go. The media, as part of the machine, also does its propaganda part as they get their marching orders in part from the military industrial complex: during the Obama years the media called the strategy the pivot to Asia; during the Trump years, they like to use "confrontation" in their news titles; they're providing the cultural atmosphere for what the machine is trying to steer us toward.

The machine, as I'm half-jokingly calling it, is the system of government and power that exists administration to administration and sets continuity policy. It includes structures of power like the Pentagon. That's how the Cold War was operated for example, they didn't entirely flip flop every administration with how the USSR was broadly handled. Most of the government continues from one administration to the next. There are occasionally large, animating ideas that propel the US superpower into action, challenging the USSR was one of those, and China today is another. Nearly the whole of the US system has recognized it can't co-exist with China as previously hoped, most of those pieces that make up the multi-headed power of the US are in agreement to confront China now, spanning from the FBI to the intel community to the US military to the executive branch to almost all of Congress (mostly only varying by degree now).

<comment><USER2> I think you are conflating various parties and ignore the simple fact that we are explicitly not in Obama administration ( the "machine" comment notwithstanding ). If there is one thing, one should have learned from the past three years, that executive powers has been largely consolidated in the hands of one person.

Now, I do think you have a point about entrenched bureaucracy and China 'planners' ( but the same is true for Iran, Venezuela, Cuba and a number of other advisors trying to push their pet agenda ); they may be a part of the branch, but the president, for better or worse, is its head ).

In a sense, US has gotten really 'lucky' with Covid. Here is a good propaganda reason to get people and the world against China. And yet, notice how varied the reaction was to the president's approach ( also for varying reasons ).

To say it is all part of a long term strategy is to ignore how chaotic it has been thus far.

<comment><USER4> I think you meant to say clearly that the current US administration has a chaotic approach to China. Which is true.

But keep in mind, a revolution is chaotic. And it is a revolution because this administration was the first in US and world to stand up visibily against China. Via tariffs. Via bans. Via sanctions. Via communique. Until the rest of the world recognized the danger and followed.

So I would cut this administration some slack. Just like you would for a startup that's trying to change the status quo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What exactly is the problem? AFAICS its just a potential problem - there is a social media platform that is not controlled by an American company. Now you know how the rest of the world feels.

<comment><USER6> > Now you know how the rest of the world feels.

A lot of Americans have a tendency to think of their country as naturally owning the internet. I personally find it quite alarming.

<comment><USER7> Depends on what you mean by owning it. I personally accept it as depending on locality and trying to legislate outside your borders just makes you look like inssne, an unironic King Canute telling the tides to go back.

I do acknowledge that the US throws its weight around diplomatically and tries to impose its laws as an international standard.

<comment><USER6> Hmmm. It is difficult to put what I've observed into words but as an example: look at the way people are reacting to TikTok _hypothetically_ enforcing Chinese norms and laws on the rest of the globe. Then look at the way people pretty much just shrug and make excuses when it comes to US companies _actually_ enforcing US norms and laws on everybody else (e.g. Github banning people that are from countries the US doesn't like without pretty much no warning, or that time that Tumblr was blocking LGBT content from showing up in search because of the SESTA/FOSTA thing).

On a pervasive level, it's in the way a lot of Americans on social media tend to assume that all content is necessarily intended for or addressed to them somehow. For instance many people I know have had an American hate train jump on their tweets that were talking about one issue or the other from a local lens - as though we should be constantly filtering ourselves and our language to cater to America's sensibilities. I've never seen quite that level of arrogance from anyone else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I find very interesting the fact that Facebook had no problem crushing Vine while massively selling Tiktok ads in exchange for potential business in China.

<comment><USER8> You probably don't know that Google and FB's ads businesses in China are kinda huge, they never left despite the ban, in fact you can still access a special version of Google Maps, their Analytics and Ads both are fine in China.

Chinese apps, games and e-commerce have always been their customers.

As for Tiktok, it was spending like crazy on big platforms at the time, and the product didn't seem popular back then, so why not take that sweet money as much as you can.

<comment><USER9> I remember about 1.5 years ago I think 90+% of my youtube ads were TikTok. I thought it was my user demographics as my youtube viewing habits probably skewed towards a low-ish age. But maybe Tiktok were just buying a lot of youtube ads.

Probably both

<comment><USER8> I was closely monitoring Twitter reactions to the product at the time, your are not alone, there were plenty of people puzzled by why they were seeing those weird ads everywhere and repeatedly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > But their history shows tech giants are structurally unable to defend > American interests and should never be trusted with that task.

That sounds suspiciously like the tech giants are private enterprises in name (and profit) only, and are essentially part of the state, tasked with advancing the country's/state's interests on the digital front. It's rarely explicitly laid out by a proponent (who's just disappointed that it allegedly didn't work). It's usually marxists criticizing it as stamocap while everyone else says that it's completely baseless, private enterprises etc etc.</comment>


The sorry state of OpenSSL usability (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://jameshfisher.com/2017/12/02/the-sorry-state-of-openssl-usability/ <comment><USER2> > Unfortunately, [http://www.libressl.org/](http://www.libressl.org/) won't > help you either, because there literally isn't any documentation of > LibreSSL.

This is untrue. The front page contains links to the documentation inline, OpenBSD/LibreSSL converted all of OpenSSL's awful perlpod documentation to semantic mdoc(5) markup, and even wrote new man pages for functions completely undocumented by OpenSSL.

See Ingo Schwarze' EuroBSDCon 2018 talk "Better documentation - on the web and for LibreSSL"

[https://www.openbsd.org/papers/eurobsdcon2018-mandoc.pdf](https://www.openbsd.org/papers/eurobsdcon2018-mandoc.pdf)

[https://youtu.be/jwfN7S1-fRA](https://youtu.be/jwfN7S1-fRA)

And earlier writeups from 2016.

[https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article;sid=20161215221715](https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article;sid=20161215221715)

It's been a long road to improve the documentation, and it's substantially better than OpenSSL.

<comment><USER3> You're not wrong, but there's a big middleground here. To a user without some curiosity this:

      LibreSSL releases contain several parts:

      libcrypto: a library of cryptography fundamentals

      libssl: a TLS library

      libtls: a new TLS library, designed to make it easier to write foolproof applications

      Various utilities such as openssl(1), nc(1), and ocspcheck(8).

With libcrypto, libssl, libtls, openssl, nc, and ocspcheck all links pointing to man.openbsd.org/x does not scream documentation. The words 'documentation' or 'manual' appear nowhere on the libressl home page.

They are undoubtedly _present_ , but unless you click around assuming those aren't links to individual components, you wouldn't think so at a glance.

<comment><USER4> So what your saying the issue is libressl should put a link to the documentation on their front page?

Sounds like a fair request. Perhaps someone should send them an email to let them know.

That being said, you put a finger on the main issue most security and privacy tool have: user friendliness.

<comment><USER5> It _is_ linked to in their front page. The article is complaining about not finding documentation for the openssl command while literally linking to the front page that contains a link to said the documentation. They don't even have to Google, just read!

<comment><USER6> I do think it would be a good idea for the libressl.org site to put a link on the left "sidebar" with the text "Documentation" (which shows a page of links at minimum), just to make it obvious where to find it.

That was the first thing I looked for, and it took me a while to realize that the links "libcrypto", "libssl", etc on the main page were links to the documentation for each command. In fact, the only reason I found them was the fact that your post said "It _is_ linked to in their front page.", so I went back to find them.

Yeah, if I'd needed it right now, I would have figured it out eventually, but I think making it a bit more explicit (for lack of a better term) would be a good thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > And stop forking OpenSSL; you're just making things worse.

Yeah no. OpenBSD developers did a really good job by improving the codebase of OpenSSL. See also some of their presentations: [https://www.libressl.org/papers.html](https://www.libressl.org/papers.html)

<comment><USER8> > by improving the codebase of OpenSSL

Just to clarify: LibreSSL forked OpenSSL [1]. By definition they did not improve the codebase of OpenSSL.

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

<comment><USER9> Didnt most of their changes get merged back?

<comment><USER10> Most of the LibreSSL changes were removing features or platform support so I don't know how many of their changes were desired or applicable to OpenSSL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you think the _user_ interface is bad, try the _programmer_ interface. OMG. Layer upon layer of nonsensical objects to initialize and chain together, each with a bazillion options and no decent documentation about which few are secure. No decent interface for getting the specifics about an error. Not thread-safe unless you create your own array of locking functions (which must meet barely-documented requirements) and pass them in for the library to call at random times. Weird WANT_READ/WANT_WRITE nonsense that makes integration with a bog-standard poll/select loop more difficult. It's like the OpenSSL developers think SSL is the main thing your program should be doing and you're lucky they let any other functionality exist in the same program. The phrase "fractal of bad design" was originally invented for PHP but applies to OpenSSL just as much.

<comment><USER12> The developer interface is _much_ worse than the user interface. At least the user interface had shell completions to guide your guess work. As you suggested, having to initialise a bunch of things in some undisclosed order is bordering on meddling with the dark arts, good luck tearing it all down again safely. Then let's say you want to streaming-encrypt something on the fly, good luck understanding the correct way to chain BIOs and what exactly the behaviour for seeking, buffering, writing, closing, opening, decrypting, reading, popping BIOs and then working with the remainder of the chain, before pushing a BIO back on is.

I wrote a steaming data encryptor a little while back using openssl, just in C, it works fine now but the majority of my reading was existing implementations on the web and some out-of-date blogs coupled with some, sometimes-correct documentation and just pain trial-and-error paired with my good old friend Valgrind.

Unfortunately, in some industries it's go-FIPS-or-go-home, so we don't even have the choice of using a fork or an alternative at times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> A lot of comments here about LibreSSL and Apple vs OpenSSL. Which is fine, that was my immediate reaction. But do the criticisms re:weak defaults, unlabeled deprecated commands, and uninformative output apply? Because I'll admit - every time I have to use (some version of) openSSL I google for the command I need and blindly use it. The commands are cryptic and meaningless.

If this is true outside of LibreSSL, that definitely sounds like Apple is NOT the problem in this case (though certainly not helping)

<comment><USER14> As someone who actually understands what is going on here I only partly agree.

The commands aren't meaningless, but OpenSSL approaches the problem from a perspective that isn't what any ordinary user will want. Imagine you want to post a package to Brazil. You see a shop selling postage stamps - perfect. But of course such a shop is for stamp collectors.

They've got lots of Brazilian stamps (you don't need those at all). They've got stamps from every decade (you need current stamps). They have rare stamps (you don't want to pay extra!) and they have lots of used stamps (no longer valid).

Until relatively recently OpenSSL would default to creating CSRs by urging you to fill out largely irrelevant X.500 Distinguished Name and not even mention SAN dnsNames even though most users who want a CSR want it for a TLS server (e.g. web server) where the former is unimportant and the latter is vital.

When it comes to writing TLS client software you probably know the name of the server you want to talk to. A sane API would let you tell the library this once and do all the rest for you. But OpenSSL reflects the interesting (to stamp collectors) half dozen different places that server names are involved in different versions of the protocols, not this sane but boring API.

If you are a student of cryptographic history OpenSSL is great. If you are a application developer it's... poor. If you're a regular end user it's awful.

<comment><USER13> > You see a shop selling postage stamps - perfect. But of course such a shop > is for stamp collectors.

That is a fantastic analogy and I'm stealing it for my own uses!

Thanks for the great breakdown.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think this should be retitled to "The sorry state of OpenSSL usability [on macOS]", because the author is using the built-in OpenSSL on macOS (which, as is eventually discovered, isn't actually OpenSSL).

If you want to use OpenSSL on macOS, I suggest using the OpenSSL provided either in Brew or in MacPorts. That will give you a fully-functional setup (including help and man pages).

<comment><USER16> Outside of the man page issue all of the complaints from the author apply to all platforms that have openssl.

<comment><USER17> > Users matter: try doing some usability testing. Try adding some help text > and man pages, instead of hijacking the wiki webpage of a different SSL > project. And stop forking OpenSSL; you're just making things worse.

1\. Apple is not usability testing this 3 year old version of a fork of openssl, because they're not supporting it at all.

2\. help text not available because its an apple supplied fork. openssl does tell you to use 'help'

3\. man pages do exist. Just not installed by apple like author expected

4\. and stop forking OpenSSL; BSD project forked it and Apple wants BSD over anything else because they can put the software in their closed platforms. Even if libressl were on the up and up, Apple's still got a version from 2016 installed.

Those are all Apple problems, not openssl problems.

<comment><USER16> 1\. The OpenSSL API hasn't changed, and if Apple changed it on their own that would break more things

2\. The issue the author complained about was `openssl --help` not working, and it doesn't work on any platform (because he got the command wrong). `openssl help` does work on OSX (I literally just tested it).

3\. Yeah, that's the one issue we agree is an Apple issue.

4\. Apple didn't make LibreSSL. Other systems besides Apple use LibreSSL, and the authors complaints about their lack of documentation are relevant regardless of what Apple does.

<comment><USER18> > 4\. Apple didn't make LibreSSL. Other systems besides Apple use LibreSSL, > and the authors complaints about their lack of documentation are relevant > regardless of what Apple does.

No, this is specifically Apple's fuck up. The documentation is right there on OpenBSD! It pretty much always was. I have a live system running OpenBSD older than this rant, and the man pages are there. The default modulus is 2048 too.

<comment><USER19> > I have a live system running OpenBSD older than this rant, and the man pages > are there. The default modulus is 2048 too.

That's pretty hilarious if Apple changed the default from 2048 to 512!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The Go crypto package is really a treat. I found it scary and incomprehensible to do anything with certificates using the OpenSSL command line, convenience wrappers notwithstanding. Adam Langley's work shows what a reasonably ergonomic and approachable interface for this domain could look like. Turns out that issuing certificates doesn't have to be dark magic.

</comment><comment><USER21> > OpenSSL decided to use a "512 bit long modulus", the default. We're told: > "don't roll your own crypto; instead trust standard tools like OpenSSL". The > modulus length is a good example of why: a wrong value results in a > trivially breakable key, and you the user shouldn't need to know what the > right value is. So OpenSSL chooses a sensible modulus length for you.

Checking the OpenBSD man page for the LibreSSL genrsa, it does seem to generate 2048-bit RSA keys by default[1].

Perhaps Apple just stuck with an older default (for backwards compat) or perhaps this wasn't changed yet in the old version of LibreSSL that Apple uses?

[1] [https://man.openbsd.org/openssl#GENRSA](https://man.openbsd.org/openssl#GENRSA)

<comment><USER22> 2.2.7 came out in May 2016. The switch to 2048 bits was in May 2014.

* [https://github.com/libressl-portable/openbsd/commit/30eb68d7...](https://github.com/libressl-portable/openbsd/commit/30eb68d7caa1f7d4cf5dafa69d294567f5213500#diff-a249ba52ce01b7d5770a4e6f88d10640)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> `openssl help` ... the macos version hides the `Invalid command '\--help'; type "help" for a list.` message.

<comment><USER24> that's kind of annoying. at the same time, this also underscores the issue of usability. why not alias "\--help" to "help"?

yes, i know even critical open source projects are extremely underfunded. perversely, the lack of funding meant that there weren't enough people to review code, which meant contributing was difficult - at least according to this article from 2014 shortly after heartbleed: [https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2014/04/tech-...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2014/04/tech-giants-chastened-by-heartbleed-finally-agree-to-fund- openssl/)

<comment><USER22> Note that part of the problem is the erroneous assumption that "\--help" is ubiquitous. It isn't, in practice. It's a GNUism that one does not find very often in the BSD world.

<comment><USER24> fair enough, but still: how much effort would it be to support both?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> libressl has documentation. it's an OpenBSD project so you use the man pages.

[http://man.openbsd.org/openssl](http://man.openbsd.org/openssl)

<comment><USER26> Unfortunately, libressl is not FIPS 140-2 compliant, so you can't leverage it for open source development of secure applications for the US government (though this is more to do with the certification headache than a fault of libressl itself)

<comment><USER27> This is not a priority at all for the OpenBSD developers. Most of them are Canadian anyway, as I understand it.

<comment><USER28> That is actually understating it. The libressl developers purged the code base of the FIPS stuff as part of a policy. From here:

* [https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=139819485423701&w=2](https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=139819485423701&w=2)

"Note that FIPS mode isn't just worthless, it's actively harmful."

<comment><USER29> Unfortunately if you work with the US Government, there are situations where FIPS mode is _required_. This is why RHEL and CentOS still use OpenSSL...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Just tried openssl genrsa on my Mac:

openssl genrsa Generating RSA private key, 2048 bit long modulus

openssl version LibreSSL 2.6.5

So maybe install Mac updates?

<comment><USER22> As pointed out in this discussion elsewhere, this is an article written in 2017 and never updated.

* [https://github.com/jameshfisher/jameshfisher.com/commits/mas...](https://github.com/jameshfisher/jameshfisher.com/commits/master/_posts/2017-12-02-the-sorry-state-of-openssl-usability.md)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> All of these complaints are MacOS problems. On my Debian laptop, "openssl --help" actually displays some help (despite --help not being a real flag), "man openssl" works as expected, and "openssl genrsa" uses a 2048-bit modulus... and "openssl verison" confirms it's actually openssl.

</comment><comment><USER32> manpages for openssl (`man openssl`) exist on Linux + Solaris + BSD, this seems like a mac usability issue to me...

<comment><USER15> Apple deprecated OpenSSL in macOS some time ago, directing people to their Core Crypto framework instead.

See [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7406946/why-is-apple- depr...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7406946/why-is-apple-deprecating- openssl-in-macos-10-7-lion) for more info and links

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> My question is: Why are you trying to use RSA at all?

It's 2019! I can't think of anyone who seriously recommends RSA anymore. Switch to elliptic curve cryptography, where footbullets like a 512-bit RSA key offer aren't even on the table.

<comment><USER34> > Why are you trying to use RSA at all?

Probably because you have to use _something_ , and it's not obvious which things have footbullets and which don't.

<comment><USER33> [https://latacora.micro.blog/2018/04/03/cryptographic- right-a...](https://latacora.micro.blog/2018/04/03/cryptographic-right- answers.html)

[https://paragonie.com/blog/2017/06/libsodium-quick- reference...](https://paragonie.com/blog/2017/06/libsodium-quick-reference- quick-comparison-similar-functions-and-which-one-use)

[https://libsodium.gitbook.io/doc/bindings_for_other_language...](https://libsodium.gitbook.io/doc/bindings_for_other_languages)

It's a lot easier in 2019 than it was years ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> If on macOS openSSL is replaced by LibreSSL isn't OpenSSL's fault, and I also think that the title "The sorry state of OpenSSL usability" isn't right since it's actually talking about LibreSSL. By the way I've just ran "man openssl" on a Linux box and got the manual for OpenSSL, so I'm thinking that this could be more a problem of macOS than OpenSSL. Of course I agree that the online docs should say if something is deprecated or is using a default value that is no longer safe, but the rest of the article doesn't seem well made to me

</comment><comment><USER36> Sure, the commands are difficult to digest. Where it gets truly awful, though, is trying to write a program that uses the openssl library.

</comment><comment><USER37> Use Noise then:

[https://noiseprotocol.org/](https://noiseprotocol.org/)

[https://github.com/mcginty/snow](https://github.com/mcginty/snow)</comment>


Ask HN: Should I take the 2% employee stock options or Leave? - <AUTHOR> So I will be given a 2% employee stock option and have to stay in the company for another 2 years (I already stayed for 2 years). We don't generate any revenue yet for the new product (launched for 6 months). But our competitor has 20,000 users with $10 pricing per user.
I don't have any plan after I leave while I feel I can't learn much as I want If I stay in the current SaaS startup. I'm 28 years old.
Did you experience this? Should I stay or leave? What's your advice? <comment><USER2> Well, you can start to plan and then leave, you probably don't have to leave on the spot. Do you have any faith that the product will do good? Having competition is not necessarily a bad thing, it just means that there is a market for whatever you are doing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. Usually, I care more about learning so I have a strong intention to leave. You may be right. I can plan and leave.</comment></comment>


From GAN to WGAN (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://lilianweng.github.io/lil-log/2017/08/20/from-GAN-to-WGAN.html <comment><USER2> If anyone is looking for a good project, alternate Wasserstein distance/EMD solvers would be a good place to start.

AFAIK everyone (eg, pyemd, gensim, textacy) uses wrappers around the EMD solver from [http://ofirpele.droppages.com/](http://ofirpele.droppages.com/), which is a zip file from some time in 2008. The limits on performance mean it can't practically be used in things like interactive nearest neighbor calculations (FAISS, nmslib, annoy etc)

<comment><USER3> Looks like a complex topic, but the code is small enough to help remove the rust from my math gears. I guess everybody would want it ported to CUDA/OpenCL/Vulkan?</comment></comment>


Show HN: OverBoard, Like TensorBoard but with Native Python GUI, for PyTorch - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jotaf98/overboard <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I wasn't very happy with the existing options for managing/visualizing deep learning experiments, so (naturally) I rolled my own (and spent way too much time in the process).

Specifically, what I didn't like was: 1) The strange ritual of launching a terminal command and being told to open my browser in a local port always struck me as a bit clunky. 2) I want to visualize tensors and do arbitrary plots as I go, with MatPlotLib. (TensorBoard specifically can be restrictive in the plot types.)

So here's the result; a fully responsive app in PyQt. There's a GIF showcasing most features after the link!</comment>


How much memory does malloc(0) allocate? - <AUTHOR> http://prog21.dadgum.com/179.html <comment><USER2> > One side thinks that malloc(0) should return a null pointer and be done with > it, which sounds like a fine idea until you realize that you can't call free > or realloc on the same pointer.

Calling free(NULL); does nothing, as expected, and calling realloc(NULL, size_t) is the same as calling malloc(size_t), so it does not have that as a bad side effects.</comment>


Ask HN: Can you run a business "selling" an open source app? - vanilla-almond It seems surprisingly difficult.
Some possible options:
Dual licencing: a FOSS (free and open-source software) licence (GPL 3) for your app, or a commercial licence if you want to make source code modifications but don't want to release your changes publicly.
Open core: a FOSS or OSS licence for core or base functionality in your app. A closed-source layer on top of the core with additional features available to purchase.
Charge for support: a FOSS or OSS licence for your app, and the option to purchase support.
Charge for distribution of your app: a FOSS licence for your app, but charge users to obtain the source code. This is what the GNU foundation recommends but seems completely impractical today given the plethora of free hosting options.
What's missing? A simple licence that lets you publish your app with source code but stipulates that if you use it for commercial purposes, you must pay a fee. The source code remains open forever. I realise this would violate the principle of OSS which states that source code should not be charged for, but if you wanted to sell an app to customers and openly publish the source code, this is the most attractive option. It's also the option that doesn't exist. (Crazy?)
Which of the above options would you pick if you wanted to "sell" an open source app?
Edit to add: here is the Wikipedia page on business models for open source. It seems quite crazy that the option to charge for commercial use simply doesn't exist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_models_for_open-source_software <comment><AUTHOR> >A simple licence that lets you publish your app with source code but stipulates that if you use it for commercial purposes, you must pay a fee. The source code remains open forever. I realise this would violate the principle of OSS which states that source code should not be charged for

Who states this? It would violate the principle all right, but for completely different reasons (not being able to restrict purpose of use) but you can charge a gorillion to obtain source if that's what you want.

>It's also the option that doesn't exist. (Crazy?)

Why is it crazy when it contradicts the entire reason for the existance of FOSS?

The other problem with your idea is that it's very difficult to accurately define "commercial use". Enjoy paying all those lawyers you need to draft your commercial-restricted EULA.</comment>


ShowHN:Battery, display battery percentage on tmux/terminal under OS X - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Goles/Battery

<comment><USER2> Cool stuff! I don't use tmux but I might try it out just to see this :).

</comment><comment><USER3> Will try it out right now, useful for full screen terminal sessions !</comment>


The Computer Revolution Hasn't Happened yet [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://mprove.de/visionreality/media/kay-CRA2002.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> > Windows XP is "only an operating system" but has more than 60 million lines > of code. Here is an unfair comparison: Squeak is a late-bound dynamic OOP > personal computing system in which its OS, UI, development environments, and > its many applications (including email, DTP, presentation, network server, > sound and movie lab, etc.) require only about 220,000 lines of code in > total. This is because there is some "dynamic math" as part of Squeak's > metasystem and system that allows some of the important relationships to be > expressed more directly, simply and powerfully than in most systems. There > is so much more that could be done that what remains constitutes an exciting > edge of the art research project on its own. For example, the Squeak team is > pretty sure that the current 220,000 lines of code could be reduced to no > more than 40,000, and there is a good argument that the current system > should take no more than 10,000. Such a re-rendering of an entire system > would be a tremendous accomplishment in higher level programming and would > greatly increase a programmer's leverage on new problems.

Highlighted comment: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23542957#:~:text=Squeak...](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23542957#:~:text=Squeak,total&text=.%20There%20is,own&text=there%20is%20a%20good%20argument,problems)</comment>


MIT OpenCourseWare pilots study groups with OpenStudy - <AUTHOR> http://tofp.wordpress.com/2010/08/03/mit-opencourseware-pilots-study-groups-with-openstudy/ <comment><USER2> If they setup OpenStudy for 6.001 SICP, I wonder how many HNers would sign up? I'll raise my hand first.

<comment><USER3> By the way, I don't know if anyone mentioned this, but there is now a study group on OpenStudy for SICP at [http://openstudy.com/channels/MIT+6.001+Structure+and+Interp...](http://openstudy.com/channels/MIT+6.001+Structure+and+Interpretation+of+Computer+Programs%2C+Spring+2005) . Moreover, joining OpenStudy no longer requires an invite (it used to, though incoming links from MIT were automatically assigned invites).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is similar to a product that my cofounder and I are developing: <http://hootcourse.com/></comment>


Yested – A Component Based Web Framework for Kotlin - <AUTHOR> http://www.yested.net/

<comment><USER2> What is the point of kotlin over rust

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, for one, it's completely integrated with the jvm and its runtime, so it can make use of the rich ecosystem of java libraries.</comment></comment>


Wordpress.com serves 70k requests/second using Nginx - <AUTHOR> http://highscalability.com/blog/2012/9/26/wordpresscom-serves-70000-reqsec-and-over-15-gbitsec-of-traf.html <comment><USER2> I've been administering Wordpress blogs for almost a decade now; hosting for ... 5? 6 years? I'm not sure any more.

Anyhow. I started with Apache. Apache probably works fine if you load the mpm- oh-you-didnt-know-about-mpm-so-sorry module.

My next stop was lighttpd. A fine piece of software, with a persistent bug that caused it to drop into a 500 state if FastCGI instances were ever unavailable.

So now I'm on Nginx. And with some fancy footwork in the rewrite rules to support WP Super Cache, it can serve static files and gzipped HTML straight off disk.

Unsurprisingly, in this configuration, it runs like the clappers.[1][2]

One thing that always surprises me is seeing configurations where Nginx is merely a proxy or load balancer into a bunch of Apache instances. Are you nuts? Stop doing that. Just use Nginx and FastCGI -- thank me later.

[1] At least, it used to do this, until I updated everything and it silently stopped working the way it used to (which I only discovered while outlining my current config in comments below). I mean, thanks to memcached and closer servers and running Percona on a separate server it's _still_ pretty fast, but this change bugs me and you can bet I'll be fixing it later today after work.

[2] Two optimisations I've dropped are the MySQL query cache and a PHP opcode cache.

The query cache because I don't think it buys me enough versus using memcached (just a gut feel, I've got no hard numbers to back me up) and because it often turns into a contention point in read-heavy MySQL instances. Also, by dropping it I can free up more memory for InnoDB.

The opcode cache because they tend to be flaky. I've had bad experiences with all three major ones. If you ever pop Wordpress up on a profiled PHP instance you find that its time is spent overwhelmingly on waiting for MySQL, concatenating strings and then streaming it out to the webserver, for which proper on-disk/in-memory caching is the answer. Time spent loading and compiling .php is minimal by comparison, so why put up with the hassle?

I don't use varnish because the whole philosophy is to let the OS select what to cache in memory, and ... well I already do that. Plus getting ESI to work on frequently updated objects like "recent comment" widgets is a hairy pain in the arse and I just can't be bothered.

<comment><USER3> What's Percona's role in this environment?

<comment><USER2> It's slightly nicer than stock MySQL and I can more easily get Percona to help me if it goes bang (it has far more stats available than stock MySQL, for instance).

Some of my sites have sufficient write activity that using XtraDB (basically a slightly souped-up InnoDB) is a smarter option than MyISAM. For searching people can just use Google, it does a much better job than MySQL's inbuilt fulltext search.

I don't know if they've fixed it, but AFAIK tables with full text fields used to cause MyISAM joins to go to disk, even if the full text field isn't included in the query. As you can imagine, this sucks. Maybe that's been fixed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was one of the core engineers @ layeredtech who managed the servers and HA for wordpress.com when they launched in 2006.

If I remember correctly we were using DNS round robin and haproxy -> apache -> mysql all on freebsd systems wow have things come a long ways since then also it's incredible the sustained growth of Wordpress after all this time. good memories... congrats Matt on all your success.

<comment><USER5> WordPress.com hasn't run on FreeBSD since the TextDrive days which was way before Layered Tech, before me and before WordPress.com was open to the public. We are 100% Debian today, but have used Ubuntu in the past. We never really used HAProxy either. I posted about out load balancer choices back in 2008 - <http://barry.wordpress.com/2008/04/28/load-balancer-update/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Those must be cached pages from dozens of servers on the backend.

There is no way in heck it's realtime queries.

I can tell when authors are in the WP backend on the server just by looking at the server load because it's crippling.

The wordpress bottleneck is not nginx vs apache vs whatever, it's the problem of loading hundreds of files for any kind of page render (even to just authenticate for ajax, etc.) and over a hundred db queries in many cases.

A cache-miss in WP is a terrible, terrible thing.

<comment><USER7> Don't forget the version of Wordpress that you download is very different from the version that's on Wordpress.com

<comment><AUTHOR> It's actually not that different, and of course they make as much use of caching as possible.

So does my self-hosted wp blog, for that matter. If you are using WP Super Cache correctly, you can deal with significant amounts of traffic. I've seen peaks of hundreds of simultaneous users on my blog, with a server load < 1\. The server is a modest aws small instance.

<comment><USER6> Single author mini-blogs without logged in users are super easy to cache.

But multi-author blogs with thousands of logged in users is a nightmare with wp.

I suspect 90%+ of wp blogs are in the mini-blog category though.

<comment><USER8> Why would multiple authors make a difference?

<comment><USER6> Every time an article is created, saved or published, wp uses hundreds of non- cachable queries.

Every time an article is published, it causes the cache to be deleted for not only that article but related pages, which means all those pages have to be rendered again.

For one author, that can be managed. Many authors, the cache is constantly being defeated.

<comment><AUTHOR> What matters is the ratio of reads per write. Blogs with multiple authors have a higher ratio than blogs with single authors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Two takeaways - (1) The article is bumf wrt the Wordpress.com setup. NGINX plays a role, but the thousands of servers for http, db, memcache, load balancing etc is integral to this discussion (and not mentioned). A typical reader couldn't relate if it did. (2) Directed at a more typical reader, use NGINX for hosting your WP.org blogs, company sites etc. __Properly configured __, your performance to cost ratio will be terrific. Lastly, on a personal note, it pains me when caching plugins are mentioned as the main part of the solution. No need for these folks. Use the NGINX cache instead and never worry again about a buggy/outdated cache plugin (looking at you W3TC) again. Remove that dependency and you will be happier and possibly better looking.

</comment><comment><USER10> Article didn't mention that they also use a CDN (EdgeCast). Helps make the 70k requests/second a lot more bearable.

<comment><USER5> We serve about 150k req/sec from the CDN. That (obviously) isn't included in the 70k number from the article. The 70k is only what we are serving from the origin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Ability to reconfigure and upgrade NGINX instances on-the-fly, without dropping user requests."

\- how do you do this ?

<comment><USER12> SIGHUP

<comment><USER13> `service nginx reload` will do the trick as well.

<comment><USER14> Only for reloading the config, not for upgrading the binary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> And how many requests/sec per CPU?

They have like 300 servers and who knows how many cores.

What kind title is this? The target High Scalability reader must be presumed to be a complete fool.

<comment><USER16> According to the article they have 2 thousand servers. These are Dual Xeon 5620 4 core CPUs with hyper-threading.

So that averages out to: 70000 / (4 * 2000) = 8.75 requests per second per CPU.

That seems like quite a low number, I would presume that the load would be shared amongst less servers than this and the others would be used for replication/redundancy.

<comment><USER17> I don't think that is right, it says that automattic has 2000 servers but they also run things like gravitar, akismet, and vaultpress. Which makes me think that using that number is completely wrong. (Also these are just the load balancers not the back end, which could be taking up a large amount of that 2000 server count)

From the article it seems more like they have ~100, maybe less, for the load balancers which comes out to 175 requests/second per cpu which is getting a little more reasonable.

<comment><USER15> If this is just about load balancing, then they could probably get better performance from haproxy, right? Anyone should be able to exceed 200 req/s with haproxy. In fact, you should be able to get around double that or more.

The point is the title is useless. It tells you almost nothing. That blog is a joke.

<comment><USER17> Well it is average req/s so peak should be much higher, and they probably can average much more than what they are doing now in case of spikes and other such things.

But yeah the title is pretty much useless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This figure is _not_ from a single instance though. When running a single instance of WP I've always found it to be fantastically slow. The greatness in the described stack really lies in Nginx. It's really not WordPress serving 70k requests here, it's some decent load balancing that achieves the effect. The title is somewhat misleading.

<comment><USER19> Yea, I was trying to find some information on exactly how many servers are responsible for content generation. If this is about 100 machines then yes, 70k/s is pretty damn impressive. If it's 1000 machines, then I'm a little less impressed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> We dropped nginx because of no native support for session affinity. SSL support has been introduced in HAProxy very recently.

<comment><USER21> Is the ip_hash directive not good enough for what your looking for?

<comment><USER20> I was not aware of ip_hash. But as per documentation it uses first 3 octets as hashing key, this may not work for me.I want to use nginx on LAN. It will throw all clients to same backend server.

[http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_upstream_module.html#...](http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_upstream_module.html#ip_hash)

<comment><USER21> It should be fairly trivial to patch your copy of nginx to use the entire IP address as the hashing key.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> 1 instance of G-WAN serves 500k requests/second with an typical application using Oracle NoSQL (or Berkeley DB).</comment>


Hacker Says He Printed Anti-Semitic and Racist Fliers at Colleges Across U.S. - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/29/nyregion/hacker-weev-says-he-printed-anti-semitic-and-racist-fliers-at-colleges-across-us.html?module=WatchingPortal&region=c-column-middle-span-region&pgType=Homepage&action=click&mediaId=thumb_square&state=standard&contentPlacement=5&version=internal&contentCollection=www.nytimes.com&contentId=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2016%2F03%2F29%2Fnyregion%2Fhacker-weev-says-he-printed-anti-semitic-and-racist-fliers-at-colleges-across-us.html <comment><USER2> > "When it was happening to black students, it was a matter of free speech," > he said. "Now that it's happening to white, Jewish students, it's something > else. There seems to be no conflation of hate speech and free speech now."

While I disagree with the calls to remove signs of our past like the ridiculous calls "for the removal of President Woodrow Wilson's name from the campus because of his racist positions", I think that Asanni York has a point that free speech is free speech. The race/gender/whatever of the accused should not matter.

I'd like to draw attention to the "white only" sign on a bathroom door in SUNY. Because it was a black female who did it, it was called art. Had it been a white male, it would have been called hate crime. We can clearly do better than this.

As far as unauthorized use of campus resources, I think the university would be better served by suing AT&T for failing to adequately protect its network.

> Mr. Auernheimer said he did not hack into the printers, but activated them > using remote access.

Or maybe universities and organizations could teach their employees to handle network security better. I don't think this is grounds for a criminal case.

Oh, on what I hope is an unrelated note we should use this opportunity to voice our dissent against the CFAA and judicial reform especially when it comes to selectively overzealous prosecution.

<comment><USER3> >> Mr. Auernheimer said he did not hack into the printers, but activated them using remote access.

> Or maybe universities and organizations could teach their employees to > handle network security better. I don't think this is grounds for a criminal > case.

Actually it is. If you try my car/house door and it's unlocked it doesn't mean you can enter it.

That being said, a fine would be appropriate in this case since minimal harm was done.

<comment><USER4>
      > If you try my car/house door and it's unlocked it doesn't
      > mean you can enter it.

If you have a publicly available web server and I make a "GET /" request on it, am I hacking? If you have a publicly available print server and I make a "PRINT flyer.pdf" request to it, am I hacking?

<comment><USER5> Interestingly enough the person the article about was convinced and jailed for making GET requests on publicly available websites, because he knew he did not have permission to access them.

I think a print server at a university is pretty obviously not fair game. If you forget to lock up your business overnight and someone walks in and prints off a couple thousand pages using your printer it's definitely illegal.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I made an analogy 3 years ago when the Weev case came up: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6435092](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6435092) contrasting a publicly accessible web server with a librarian at a public library.

Your "forget to lock up your business overnight" scenario isn't a useful analogy since entering that business would be at least trespass and possibly breaking and entering (no physical breaking needs to occur), so anything after that obviously is a result of exceeding access.

Riffing off of my older analogy, if I entered a library and asked the librarian "Can you please print flyer.pdf?" and the librarian did so, is that "obviously not fair game"?

To be clear, I'm considering only the act of printing rather than the contents of the flyer; it could be a single pixel or the word "LOVE". I suspect that this is ultimately some sort of mischief since it's unlikely he had any plans to travel to each location to pick up the output, but I'm having a hard time seeing how this is hacking.

<comment><USER5> I think a better analogy would be if a library accidentally placed a paper copy of their members' records in the library alongside the books, you found it, and instead of informing the library of the horrible mistake you took it over to the library photocopy machine and made a copy for yourself and showed it to everyone to humiliate the library for their mistake.

Or if the printer was in a locked room in the back of a library, to be opened only with a keycard, and said "employees only" and you found out that the keycard didn't work quite right so you could walk right in and use it.

It doesn't matter how easy the hack is. If you use someone else's machine in a way that hasn't been made publicly available AND it is public common knowledge that what you are doing is against the wishes of the people who own the hardware then it's illegal and immoral. If a bank exposes monetary transfer functionality by way of a public http GET request it's very stupid but it's still very illegal to use it to steal money from people.

<comment><USER4> A publicly accessible, internet-connected printer is almost directly analogous to a fax machine that you can phone, transmit a document, and have it print out on the other side. Maybe you intend the phone number to only be called by certain people, but the default behavior will be for the fax machine to accept calls from anybody in the world. So it is for a printer with a public IP address. Sending faxes in this manner (without prior business relationship; not respecting opt-out, etc.) is an FCC violation; it's not hacking. Why would printing be any different?

I agree with you on the ethics/morality of it all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wait, I'm confused...Maybe I'm not reading this right?

Some white kids perform in loin clothes and the university defends it as free speech.

Some dick prints a bunch of racist fliers, and the university takes action to block any more from being printed.

Then we get this: "When it was happening to black students, it was a matter of free speech," he said. "Now that it's happening to white, Jewish students, it's something else. There seems to be no conflation of hate speech and free speech now."

How is it racist for the school to stop neo-nazi fliers from being printed? What was "happening to black students" when some white guys danced in loin clothes? I hope I'm reading this wrong...I don't want the world to be this stupid.

<comment><USER7> Weev is a well-known white supremacist. I would take anything he says with a hefty portion of salt.

<comment><USER8> He claims to be a white nationalist not a supremacist. He's helped the daily stormer site before like when somebody jacked their domain.

<comment><USER9> The difference between a 'white nationalist' and a 'white supremacist' is as meaningful as the difference between a trilby and a fedora.

<comment><USER8> There's a difference, just like there is in Turk nationalist groups vs Turk supremacy groups (Grey Wolves). One believes they are genetically superior to all others and chosen to rule earth, and can excuse mass murder because they don't see anybody else as human. These groups are extremely dangerous and responsible for the holocaust and genocides in Africa. North Korean juche ideology is also supremist.

The other is a racist nationalist "pride" group that does not believe they are genetically superior like Weev, the Black Nationalist Panthers, ect. For the record I don't subscribe to either ideology but have met plenty of these groups unfortunately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> 1\. It's the administrator's responsibility to ensure that printers are not exposed to the public internet.

Not doing so is giving 'weev' and others like him a platform to cause mayhem and to further split people across racial lines. I don't know if that's what he's trying to achieve, but I suspect it is.

2\. If he's able to further agitate african-americans he is able to widen the gulf between people in racially diverse universities and create an environment prone to more and more hatred. And if he can entice law enforcement into prosecuting him he can then play the part of uber troll and free-speech martyr for his supporters.

The reactions so far play into his hand as high-scale racial aggravation sows discord that he may be able to capitalise on long-term.

I hope it's just trolling as if it is political terraforming it is worrying. What I just described is probably nothing to worry about as it is just one event and it's very likely impossible to orchestrate systemic changes in the way I described.

</comment><comment><USER11> It should be noted that what weev was doing is nothing new and is really just this:

$ cat payload.ps |netcat -q 0 $printer_ip 9100

This is what was originally posted:

[https://storify.com/weev/a-small-experiment- in](https://storify.com/weev/a-small-experiment-in)

<comment><USER12> Thanks, this is a much better link than the mostly content-free NYT article.

This guy is a real piece of work, sneaking offensive Nazi stuff into random places and then laughing when people get offended. It's basically the Internet version of throwing a punch at someone and then making fun of them for flinching, but with more wasted paper.

Edit: it seems he actually believes the offensive stuff he printed. I just assumed it was chosen because it would offend people the most. I don't know if that makes it better or worse.

<comment><USER13> I'd argue it's actually an IRL manifestation of some of the worst stuff that has been going on all over the web for a long time. As such, the content is really any different, but it's a lot more noticeable.

<comment><USER14> That's a pretty good point. A lot of people love to get online and join into 'divisive' stuff by way of anonymity. That's not the Weev style. He is, in my estimation, a textbook example of what was meant by the phrase "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" in the context of the US. The guy certainly knows how to test the bounds of what is or is not criminal, according to the current laws and whatnot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you don't feel like reading the article: the guy wasn't printing bigoted content just to bring attention to the lack of security on printers, he seems to actually believe in this stuff.

<comment><USER16> I skimmed the article, didnt see anything where he was mentioning that he endorsed the subject other than the implicit endorsement by sending it in the first place. The dudes a troll, of course nazi propaganda is going to create the urge for internet justice, which is probably one of few things that would get people tweeting about it from their high horses.

<comment><USER13> The article doesn't go into detail, but weev literally has a swastika tattoo on his chest:

[http://gawker.com/ipad-hacker-and-troll-weev-is-now-a- straig...](http://gawker.com/ipad-hacker-and-troll-weev-is-now-a-straight-up- white-1641763761)

If he's just trolling then he's really, really dedicated to the cause.

<comment><USER16> To be honest, I don't know or care enough about him to really research if he truly feels that way. From my semi informed viewpoint, I see where he could see it as a sort of Andy Kaufman style of trolling. He could be just picking a topic that he knows most "normal" people would be outraged about because if he wants to know how well his printer hack worked, a penis enlargement pill or public service announcement would get ignored by the recipients. The dude is toying with people's emotions for his own amusement, just narcissistic behavior.

<comment><USER13> But when the _only thing_ he trolls about is white supremacy, what do we have to back that up? All we can really do is look at things at face value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> At least it was Weev triggering campuses from his hideout in Sarajevo and not phony bank or other fishing printouts to steal money or identities.

Throw out the racist propaganda and close those accessible printer ports with a cheap OpenBSD $40 appliance firewall any first year student can set up. Media is just helping Weev spread his message and marketing for that dailystormer site.

<comment><USER17> >Media is just helping Weev spread his message

I feel like more attention should be brought to this, and a greater onus put on the media for "enabling" such behavior.

This thought first occurred to me when The Rolling Stone put a glamor shot of Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon terrorist bomber, on its cover.

In the click/eyes-driven world we live in, the line between fame and infamy is increasingly blurred

IMHO, more accountability needs to be placed on the media. Of course, a story needs to be "sold" to keep publications alive - so I wouldn't be opposed to putting a pseudonym attributed to the criminal that doesn't use his/her actual name in the print.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Rarely have I been so conflicted in my deep-seated love of watching rebelliousness towards authority and hegemonic institutions, and my utter dislike of Weev as a human being able to convey his thoughts to others. I'm pretty serious, in that I can tell he's got a legit point with a lot of his, um, 'activities' and yet the presentation is about as appetizing as ipecac. Or, as The Dude once noted about a close associate, "You're not wrong, Walter, you're just an asshole."

<comment><USER18> I'm not entirely sure white supremacism (and it seems to be earnest white supremacism) is actually rebelliousness towards authority / hegemony. Like, I'm no fan of authority, but I don't think I would have supported Robert E. Lee's fight against authority.

<comment><USER14> Oh I wasn't referencing that bit, the white supremacist stuff - I mean the exposing security flaws and basically pointing the finger at the victims for 'allowing' him to get access. That kind of flipping-off authority is interesting to me. The white supremacist stuff is definitely on the other side of the equation, in that his methods and beliefs are categorically opposed to nearly all of mine. I could see the merit in Aaron Schwartz's JSTOR anti- authority issue, Weev doesn't appear to ever get close to that kind/brand/vein of idealism, so to speak.

<comment><USER19> How is exposing security flaws "rebelliousness"? If an University forgets to lock the doors of its offices and some "troll" walks in and drops racist fliers, which specific hegemonic structure is being fought against?

<comment><USER18> Fight the power! Encourage people to set appropriate access controls on their printers! Stick it to the man and encourage him to use proper security!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Apparently if you leave a printer open on the Internet for anyone to print to, sometimes neo-Nazi propaganda will come out of it.

</comment><comment> mark-ruwt More on weev. This isn't new.

[http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/12/4693710/the-end-of- kindnes...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/12/4693710/the-end-of-kindness- weev-and-the-cult-of-the-angry-young-man)

</comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash Real shame. Every side of these issues has legitimate grievances, but when heavy-handed measures like this are taken, all it does is alienate the "other", stifle communication, and reduces discussion to echo chambers and simple stereotypes.

</comment><comment><USER21> If you have ad blockers you cannot read the article. If WIRED wants to hard code ads I will look at them and sometimes click. I don't want trackers, beacons and such and it is those items I am blocking; not their ads.

</comment><comment><USER22> Now that he's posted a confession, I'm sure prosecutors will be firing up their printers in the next few days. I'm not sure what it'll be: malicious mischief (for the paper), some kind of misappropriation of resources charge, or something else, but I'd be surprised if charges are not laid.

[Edited to add: Hadn't realized he'd left the U.S.]

<comment><USER23> A class-action lawsuit for $0.02 for each defendant and $6MM for the laywers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> With the "bad hacker" spotlight on him already, why would he do something like this?

<comment><USER25> Because he lives in an Eastern European country that would be hesitant to comply with an extradition request over something that doesn't even clear the bar of the CFAA?

<comment><USER26> weev would love nothing more than for some moron federal prosecutor to try that. They would surely lose, which would give him the lead, weev: 2, feds: 1. (Since he did go to prison, I count the first trial for the feds, even though the charges were ridiculous and the appeals court threw the whole thing out. The appeal, of course, counts for weev.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The shitty security on university printers was probably intentional. Paying for printing sucks, only lusers do that. Post printing instructions for the general student population that cause them to pay for their prints. If in addition one also leaves an obvious but plausibly deniable alternative like this, then all us 1337 haxxors can print for free.

</comment><comment><USER27> Sam Hyde and Weev are a gang of neonazi trolls who will stop at nothing to cause problems</comment>