Congolese Rocketeer's Personal Space Race Turns Vermin into Astronauts - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/one-africans-personal-space-race-turns-vermin-into-astronauts-1446239060 <comment><USER2> Here is wiki article about his rockets: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troposphere_%28rocket_family%2...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troposphere_%28rocket_family%29)

I am rooting so much for this guy, his determination just made my day. Also all his quotes and paraphrases are hilarious.

"Despite Troposphere 5 being equipped with an escape chute, Kavira(rat) was never found and was officially reported to have died in the name of science."

</comment><comment><USER3> Here is a good report on Troposphere V launch (in french): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrlKWtkce5I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrlKWtkce5I)

<comment><USER4> Clear footage of the Troposphere V launch can be seen at 2:17 - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrlKWtkce5I&t=137](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrlKWtkce5I&t=137)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Putting a rat into space in a Ovaltine can is some serious "Zefram Cochrane" level sh#t right there. Where can I donate?

</comment><comment><USER6> > _"I will do my utmost to bring that rat back alive," he says. "But if not, > there's a lot of rats in Kinshasa."_

<comment><USER7> And to be honest: good riddance if a few of them disappear while doing something useful for a change ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Meanwhile US is getting to the state of calling out SWAT teams if a kid is even thinking of making a model rocket.

<comment><USER9> The Wikipedia article list a few projects in USA: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_rocketry#Notable_event...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_rocketry#Notable_events)

But they look like organized by a small team, not by a single man like in this article. (Perhaps he has some helpers but the article didn't mention them to simplify the story.)

<comment><AUTHOR> The article mentions his hiring college graduates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's always a pity to see wasted talent. Being able to make what he did in that environment is really impressive.

<comment><USER11> Von Braun wouldn't have gotten anywhere if he didn't have the backing and financing of Nazi Germany.

<comment><USER12> To be fair, he did much more interesting (and ethical) stuff when he had the backing of the US afterwards.

<comment><USER13> Was there really a big difference - in the technology ? just the natural evolution of past efforts, technologically speaking.

<comment><USER12> I don't know how much different the fundamental technology was, but the results were vastly better because of the far greater resources and much better goals he had with the US. Building advanced rockets on a shoestring with slave labor isn't really a recipe for great success.

<comment><USER11> Prior to Kennedy's promise to land a man on the moon by the end of the 60s, the budget he was getting from the US wasn't all that great either. Dwight D Eisenhower hated Von Braun because he had a tendency to overspend, and was always begging for more funding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What a great story! Sure he will inspire so many kids to get interested in science.

Also wondering: why does the headline say "African"? Africa is not a country. I don't think the WSJ says "European" when they mean "French" or "North American" when they write about somebody in Texas.

<comment><USER15> Not to be offensive or anything, but for quite a lot of people, that's the extent of knowledge they have of "Africa" as a concept. Even ones that do know, they essentially clump all the individual countries into one bucket, and use that for basing their assumptions/opinions. It's gotten better over the years, but I've also gotten used to it. Also, I do my best to correct any misconceptions they have about the place I've called home for quite a bit of my life.

<comment><USER14> Sure, and they'll continue to have limited knowledge as long as the media continues treating the continent like a monolith. WSJ readers are more sophisticated than the average, I would imagine they could handle it.</comment></comment></comment>


The day the e-books stopped working - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-48829661 <comment><USER2> Pretty much the same thing: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20318852](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20318852)

<comment><USER3> Also [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20297331](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20297331).</comment></comment>


StackExchange allows discussion of techniques for removing DRM. - <AUTHOR> http://meta.superuser.com/questions/2212/is-discussion-of-techniques-for-removing-drm-permitted <comment><USER2> The United States is founded on illegal behavior (sedition and treason). If the founders of the country have taught us anything it should be that great things come from those willing to break the law in furtherance of mankind.

<comment><USER3> But not necessarily so. It's an inappropriate generalization, what illegal behavior is good, all of it?

<comment><USER4> Whether behavior is good or bad is independent of the law.

<comment><USER3> Certainly, but what I opposed was the generalization "great things come from those willing to break the law". It's an attempt to create an association with something that is generally agreed upon being something good, and law breaking in general. It's an association that does not exist, logically.

<comment><USER5> In his defense, the full quote was that "great things come from those willing to break the law _in furtherance of mankind_ ," which I think excludes a large chunk of illegal behavior.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, but the problem is whose definition of furtherance we should use, certainly it could fit into almost any agenda depending on who you ask. I think it's highly probable that these founding fathers would actually stand up and defend a mans right to protect his property. But we will never know their thoughts on DRM, which is another reason the argument is more of an appeal to emotion than reason. To be fair though, you see this type of argument all the time, especially in politics and news reporting. But the argument is rhetorical, the conclusion does not follow by logic necessity from the premise. And the issue of being independent from England and be able to influence how to govern the state, is different from just opposing the means in which a private company decide to protect their investment in R&D and so on.

<comment><USER2> Actually Thomas Jefferson wrote a fair deal (no pun intended) on copyright and ultimately he was ambivalent as to it's benefits, but he certainly recognized that copyright's ultimate aim was to enrich the public domain and was not intended to give ownership to ideas.

"Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."

Also, copyright is a legal claim, so almost any argument about it will be rhetorical. (Rhetoricians and Sophists were basically the first lawyers) Copyright itself does not logically stem as a necessity of the conditions. With regard to rhetoric logos is one of the rhetorical appeals so even an argument based purely in logic can be rhetorical in nature.

<comment><USER3> Yes, but we are not discussing copyright, and I'm not making a case either against or for DRM. DRM is just a technical means used to prevent someone from making a copy, or use something in a manner not intended.

My only point is, that neither the tea party, french revolution or the peoples uprise in Egypt tells us anything about the dos and don'ts related to breaking DRM protection mechanisms. Never mind.

BTW, logic can't prove the truth of your first premise. But given the premise you can draw logical conclusions that follows from the premise by necessity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well, good...for those still affected by DRM.

I've managed to avoid DRM in an even simpler way: I consume far less content than I used to. And I have only the DRM-using companies to thank for that. When I finally took stock of my free time and realized what a waste it was to sit on my ass for 2 hours to passively absorb even one stupid movie, I basically stopped. Sure I watch things now and then, but nowhere _near_ as much as before. I can pretty much guarantee that had there been no ridiculous roadblocks making it painful to consume content, I'd still be buying more than I do now. I wouldn't have seen a reason to change. So, thank you media companies; your intense desire to not be in business has helped me free up some time.

<comment><USER7> As geeks I think we often don't pay enough value and respect for the arts.

Sitting on your ass for 2hrs to passively absorb a 'stupid movie' is just that, stupid.

Sitting on your ass to watch something engaging, thought provoking, something that makes you reassess the world around you, etc, can only be positive.

It comes down to what you are spending your time watching.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's a brave new world when thinking/discussing certain topics is illegal.

<comment><USER2> Thoughtcrime is one of the cornerstones of the justice system, it's not new at all. For pretty much any charge if you've considered or planned that action you'll pickup an additional conspiracy charge whether or not you actually carried out the plan. Libel/Slander are pure expression liabilities. As well mens rea or 'guilty mind' is an essential part of most prosecutions.

Look at what the Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI found in just one two man office: over 40% of the documents concerned monitoring of political groups.

It's not armed groups that are dangerous, it's ideas. This is why people REALLY don't like Wikileaks, it exposes the truth and provides it for the people to judge in its raw and unadulterated form. Wikileaks poses only a threat to those whose power derives from deceiving the people.

<comment><USER9> Your example laws are all against thinking about doing something bad _and_ then doing it. That's a bit different from criminalizing the thought in isolation.

<comment><USER2> That's a moot point as there is no way short of admission to prove a thought occurred in isolation. Freedom of thought is useless with out freedom of expression. Somethings certainly should be illegal to express but that doesn't make it not thoughtcrime. I'm glad people can't plan my murder with out charge, but lets not pretend it isn't thoughtcrime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting that Spolsky didn't just post that himself instead of giving a blurb to Attwood to post.</comment>


Ask HN: Dear Hackers, care to join for beta testing and feedback? - <AUTHOR>

Dear Hackers, I'm about to enter the public beta with my service http://www.gmbhnews.com/make-mobile-site/ a mobile site making service. Simply put, it uses your rss feed to generate a mobile optimized version of a publisher's content, the publisher can also monetize it with advertisement.
I'm looking for some beta tester, the ideal profile: you have a significant mobile traffic on your site , from many devices: androi, iOs, Palm, symbiane....etc. I'll also be glad to receive any feedback.
Thank you. <comment><USER2> Happy to help... are you just looking or is this an invitation to be a tester, hit the URL, and post feedback here?

In which case some feedback:

(1) You need to pay more attention to the sign-up form. It doesn't show the full text I entered when its right-aligned. The height isn't enough when you focus on it.

(2) The form "Mobilize now!" button click state isn't too great.

(3) After submission I get hit with a PayPal window before I've had a chance to even get an idea of what the end result will be. In other words, I have no idea what I am paying for or if I will be happy with it.

Best of luck

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the great feedback donohoe, it's a call for beta testers, I have your url in the back end and will update everything manually.

hmm, to (1) I will try some A/B testing on the signup to find what works best.

I couldn't come up with a better call to action for the mobilize Now button, so I'll probably have to experiment around with it, all other Buttons I tried look weird on the design.

Sorry for the paypal paywall, my bad, I should say the datas are stored when you hit the Mobilize Now button.

For beta testing subscriptions, I just set a new page:

[http://www.gmbhnews.com/make-mobile-site/mobilize/beta- teste...](http://www.gmbhnews.com/make-mobile-site/mobilize/beta-tester)</comment></comment>


The Dawn of a New Command Line Interface (2017) - commons-tragedy https://arcan-fe.com/2017/07/12/the-dawn-of-a-new-command-line-interface/ <comment><AUTHOR> Those who don't understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.

<comment><USER2> I'd agree in general, but why think that the Arcan dev doesn't understand Unix? There's nothing in the Unix philosophy that says we have to wed ourselves to the specific weirdnesses of old DEC terminals forever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have been looking for something like jupyter notebooks or matplotlib interactive mode that works in the terminal. Meaning I type in a command and if output is an image or video or interactive graph it shows up in the terminal itself. How much time would it take to create something like that with arcan? Or something like that already available?

<comment><USER4> Wolfram Mathematica is what Jupyter Notebooks probably came from. Their notebooks allow you to do all sorts of command line stuff as well as neural nets, image processing, graphs, 3D image visualization, optimization, symbolic math, natural language parsing ..etc. It also has a command line shell.

Unfortunately, it is commercial, closed source, and not exactly cheap. The language is nice for a lot of things (kind of lisp like) though and although I love open source languages and tools, Mathematica is really impressive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think in order to understand this properly you have to build and try out Arcan for yourself. It took me a little while to understand the LuaJIT application structure but without that in mind this seems like- "a terminal with graphics attached" which it most certainly is not. This is more of a solution to the vast amount of protocols used to shovel data to the user in the UI message pump in a fairly static way. Shmif allows sharing this data between apps without all the translation, stubs, and overhead that normally comes with the territory: [https://github.com/letoram/arcan/wiki/Shmif](https://github.com/letoram/arcan/wiki/Shmif)

</comment><comment><USER6> The idea of "let's show pictures directly in the terminal" is as old as terminals themselves.

It never works, because abstracting away from visual distraction is the very point of terminals in the first place.

<comment><USER7> It doesn't work because it breaks the concept of an addressable grid of cursor positions for individual fixed fonts. How do you mix bitmaps in cleanly?

Plan 9 did away with that dichotomy by making it graphical first called /dev/draw. A console device, /dev/cons, handles textual i/o and renders it to the /dev/draw device. You can bypass that and open /dev/draw and render your own text using the same library /dev/cons uses. If one needs a unix compatible virtual terminal with addressable cursor and proper copy/paste then the vt program is used. vt then opens /dev/cons and interprets shell escape sequences written by the program and pokes at the /dev/cons buffer. So the rc shell in plan 9 doesn't do escapes or colors or anything. It just reads and interprets commands from stdin and writes its output to stdout in the most simplistic manner possible. pretty much a serial console that keeps scrolling. There is no cursor.

<comment><USER7> Just realized I made a mistake, vt doesn't write text to cons, it renders the text itself though grabs keyboard input from cons. It's a graphical program in that sense as it has to also handle color text in xterm mode in addition to providing an addressable cursor.</comment></comment></comment>


U.K. to Probe Facebook Emotion Study - T-A http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/07/01/uk-to-probe-facebook-emotion-study/

<comment><AUTHOR> Just my 2 cents, but I'm going to wager that facebook didn't sufficiently anonymize the data. I'm basing this on the fact that facebook merely skewed the existing data.

I wish government officials would at least get with the 1990's. I'm guessing this was little different than switching between the 'hot' and 'controversial' tabs on a reddit page. No data was changed or modified, just the way it was displayed.

It was AB testing with winks and frownie faces.

<comment><USER2> The technical complexity is at the level of AB testing, but the effect is emotional manipulation.

This is ethically murky as people don't sign up to be emotionally manipulated by FB for $. People assume that they would be shown all the good and the bad from their friends.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_subject_research_legislat...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_subject_research_legislation_in_the_United_States)

<comment><USER3> Isn't everything in the media designed to manipulate our emotions? I mean, those commercials to sponsor children in Africa, trying to make you feel guilty, and how for just the price of your morning coffee you can keep Timmy off the streets, and eating well?

You can argue FB relies on user content, but then I can compare that to reality TV shows, and how they'll take real-life footage, and manipulate it to trigger emotions.

For example, American Idol will paint a picture of someone struggling their whole life, and how this is their one opportunity for success after being fired from McDonalds and having their cat pass away. Then just as you're feeling sorry, they light up the stage, and you rejoice. Meanwhile, they forgot to tell you that person had professional training twice a week for the past 10 years, they won two other singing competitions earlier in the year, and live in a beautiful neighborhood, but that doesn't play into the emotions they want you to feel, and that doesn't get you to watch next week.

Or a show like Survivor, and how they'll take footage, and try to fabricate relationships and drama out of thin air. This way you become angry towards one character that'll be in the finale, and are likely to tune in to ensure they don't win.

Why can't Facebook do the same? Why can't they analyze and manipulate user emotions to increase business?

<comment><USER2> Watching a show and getting emotional is something that we do of our own will.

In my lab, a PhD student had to get permission from the IRB to conduct a simple study that looked at how good people were at critical thinking. There are reasons why this is regulated.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_review_board](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_review_board)

<comment><USER3> We do at our own will? So if I'm watching a movie and everyone in the theater is in tears, it has nothing to do with the director trying to create a sense of emotion and sadness, but it was just our own choice?

I'd think Facebook has even less control, and more difficultly predicting emotions. For example, if Facebook displays a post about Jane having a bad day and losing her job, that's bad news. However, it's difficult to determine how I'll react. It might be comforting for me to know someone else is having a bad day, it might make me angry that Jane lost her job, when I lost my job at the same business the week prior, it might make me happy because Jane is always bragging about her job, and I no longer have to hear about it.

When it comes to a movie, I think there's a lot more control since you write the script and characters from start to finish. Every person in the audience has the same relationship with those characters, and knows them for their entirety. You also have fine grain control over the visuals, combined with carefully selected music. As I said earlier, all of this can lead to a room full of people leaving the theater in tears, so I don't see the difference.

Or, when you say we do at our own will, you mean we make the choice to visit the theater in the first place? That would be no different than making the choice to visit Facebook. If anything, you should be questioning every advertising campaign in existence. They're carefully crafted to evoke a certain emotion, and they work specifically because they can manipulate people. At the same time, people have no choice to view them, they're constantly exposed to these manipulations just by walking outdoors or visiting the store to buy groceries.

<comment><USER2> Going to the theater is our choice. We want our emotions to be changed when we go to a movie. In Facebook, I want the raw feed from my friends, not some emotionally filtered feed. I don't want to get into a debate on free will. Do you think laws on human experimentation should be removed?

You argument is basically a milder analog of _" Humans die from all kinds of causes so let us let murderers walk free."_

<comment><USER3> Right, _you_ want the raw feed, but it's up to Facebook whether or not to provide it, and it's up to you whether or not to consume it.

This is no different than a television series like I mentioned earlier. You can argue you want the raw footage from a reality television show, and not the heavily edited version designed to manipulate your emotions, but that's not your choice.

<comment><USER2> Facebook promises the raw feed, but supplies something else. Nowhere in their contract they say they do emotional filtering.

<comment><USER3> Where does it say they provide the raw feed? Everywhere I look in the Facebook help, terms and privacy policy it mentions how they use algorithms to determine what stories appear, and how they use information provided by users to pick stories. They also mention using user information for internal testing and analysis.

They seem to be following those terms, they were choosing positive and negative stories for feeds, and then analyzing the data to see if users then posted more positive or negative posts in return.

1\. '...we may make friend suggestions, pick stories for your News Feed, or suggest people to tag in photos...'

2\. 'The News Feed algorithm uses several factors to determine top stories...'

3\. 'How we use the information we receive... for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research and service improvement.'

<comment><USER2> Then why is the UK pursuing them?

You did not answer my other question. Here is a more direct question.

Should Facebook be exempt from laws on human experimentation?

<comment><USER3> The UK is free to look into the Facebook experiment and to pursue the case. That alone doesn't make Facebook guilty of anything. They didn't go to a court of law, Facebook wasn't proven guilty of breaking the UK Data Protection Act, they're just investigating whether proper precautions were taken.

Facebook should obviously be bound to the same laws as everyone else. Which human experimentation laws did they break? Users registered on Facebook and agreed to the terms of service, and how Facebook will choose which stories they view, and analyze their response.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In this case, punishing Facebook is less likely to halt this kind of experimentation than it is to halt publication of the experiments.

</comment><comment><USER5> $10 the UK drops any investigation as the US Department of Defense was behind the research:

      http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-01/was-department-defense-behind-facebook%E2%80%99s-controversial-manipulation-study</comment>


Revisiting the West's view of China internet censorship - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/18/world/asia/china-internet.html <comment><USER2> I think they make a good point about how the laxness of China's intellectual property laws is a boon to consumers, and maybe innovation.

<comment><USER3> Why make anything if someone is going to just steal it?

<comment><USER4> Because them stealing it doesn't entirely deprive you of it since it's IP

<comment><USER5> Yes, it does. IP has value.

You create IP to generate value from it. When someone steals IP you lose value that you should have derived from it.

Theft is theft, whether of IP or otherwise. And a thief is a thief, whether of tangible product or IP.

<comment><USER6> You're literally wrong. Intellectual property can't be stolen by definition. You're probably referring to _copyright infringement_ which is a completely different thing from theft, whose application is completely different from country to country and is not sentenced the same way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Eric Shcmidt made some bold forecast echoing some of this sentiment in a September private VC event.[1]

[1]: [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/20/eric-schmidt-ex-google- ceo-p...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/20/eric-schmidt-ex-google-ceo-predicts- internet-split-china.html)

<comment><USER8> There are two distinct internets already, getting bandwidth to move data in and out of China is an expensive proposition, combined with the Great Firewall makes it such that domestic companies have significant advantages compared to overseas competitors.

Those domestic companies seem to be starting to innovate on their own, though there is quite a bit of back and forth between US researchers and their counterparts in China. Whether or not this will translate to commercial success outside the protective walled garden is questionable, thus far we haven't seen Baidu or others break into major markets outside China and keep its apps, websites, etc popular for more than brief blips.

<comment><USER9> > _Whether or not this will translate to commercial success outside the > protective walled garden is questionable..._

Is that something the party cares about? (The Communist Party I mean).

Serious question.

How interested are they in having Americans or Bolivians or whatever engage in the daily use of Chinese internet sites and apps? My sense is that they don't really care about that. It seems that it's more a priority that we, on our part, _assume_ the party has. I honestly wonder if they care?

<comment><USER10> Well if you want to make money from those other people, or have easier access to whats happening in the world globally, yes.

<comment><USER9> > _Well if you want to make money from those other people, or have easier > access to whats happening in the world globally..._

Here's the thing though, those people can buy tires or pants made in China, _WITHOUT_ using Chinese websites.

I seriously don't think they care if we use Baidu or not. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the party would _PREFER_ that we _NOT_ use Baidu.

<comment><USER11> > I seriously don't think they care if we use Baidu or not. In fact, I > wouldn't be surprised if the party would PREFER that we NOT use Baidu.

If the world used Baidu, it would be a propaganda coup for the CCP. They'd have the ability to disappear information they want to suppress (like criticism of the camps in Xinjiang), and freely push propaganda and disinformation (a la [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Infektion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Infektion)).

Think about it: if the web existing in the 1980s and the Soviets controlled the world's main search engine, the top results for "AIDS" would be disinformation articles about how the US government created it.

So, I'm sure the CCP would like the world to use Baidu, but it might not be high on their list of priorities to push right now.

<comment><USER8> > if the web existing in the 1980s and the Soviets controlled the world's main > search engine, the top results for "AIDS" would be disinformation articles > about how the US government created it.

Soviets tended to play up the bad points in their propaganda, so it would likely be pushing images and videos of people suffering with AIDS, captioned with "American pigs aren't researching or treating this mass epidemic ripping through their capitalist stronghold".

The sad part is such propaganda would be fairly accurate, for most of the 1970s and 1980s our government stood by and let people die of AIDS, not funding research or pushing safe sex education, feeding the epidemic.

<comment><USER11> > Soviets tended to play up the bad points in their propaganda, so it would > likely be pushing images and videos of people suffering with AIDS

Soviets tended to play up the bad points in their propaganda, so it would likely be pushing images and videos of people suffering with AIDS, captioned with "American pigs aren't researching or treating this mass epidemic ripping through their capitalist stronghold".

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Non paywall version here [0], I have to think some Western governments are looking again at China's internet policies for inspiration. Tim Cook, for one, seems [1] to be encouraging it.

[0]: [https://outline.com/8LNkuq](https://outline.com/8LNkuq) [1]: [https://www.siliconrepublic.com/companies/apple-tim-cook- tec...](https://www.siliconrepublic.com/companies/apple-tim-cook-tech- regulation)

<comment><USER12> China's internet policies are an inspiration for GDPR-style privacy regulation? I don't understand.

<comment><USER8> No, many neoliberals & center right supporting people like Tim Cook have taken to this idea that we should censor certain views after the defeat of Hillary.

Its a weak argument responding to the expression of the dropping standard of living for the poorest among us here in America, and it was a massive blindspot that Hillary's data science team didn't pick up on: [https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/9sy7g1/di_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/9sy7g1/di_work_under_a_famous_researcher_in_a_big/e8slexw)

Edit: People of Tim Cook's beliefs, eg: the Gay Log Cabin Republicans mostly died out during the AIDS crisis. A very similar strain of political ideology was heralded by Hillary in this past electoral cycle. Basically a "Fuck you, got mine. Don't you have magical bootstraps? Oh, here is a tiny, useless smidgen of help".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> NYTimes is going overdrive cranking out favorable coverage on China the past couple of days. Perhaps NYTimes editors got some reminder from Wall Street that China again needs to be _sold_ to the American public. Since Wall Street dismantled the American workers 30 years ago with NAFTA and China/WTO, it probably felt like it can do it again with the incoming $250B tariff on Chinese imports.

Problem is, US is winning, big - China Is Paying for Most of Trump's Trade War, Research Says. [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-19/china- is-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-19/china-is-paying- for-most-of-trump-s-trade-war-research-says)</comment>


How Samsung's VR Headset Convinced John Carmack to Join Oculus VR - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2014/09/04/samsung-gear-vr-john-carmack/ <comment><USER3> "And I had argued for it a long time. I wrote so many of these multi-page emails about how important it was. But once we had it so people could see and see that it really does work, then Samsung went and wrote a proper interface for it."

Wow, I really have to admire his patience. While reading this I was even thinking "They are arguing with John Carmack about what he needs to get the graphics right? Who do they think they are?!" and I am not him. I would never have the patience for this. That must be like my grandma arguing with me about programming.

<comment><USER4> It's good to know that even John Carmack has to deal with this sort of thing though. It's not just us lowly programmers, even the legends get hassled.

<comment><USER5> He is also by his own admission still learning about programming:

 _On the software development side, you know there was an interesting thing at E3, one of the interviews I gave, I had mentioned something about how I've been learning a whole lot, and I'm a better programmer now than I was a year ago and the interviewer expressed a lot of surprise at that, you know after 20 years and going through all of this that you'd have it all figured out by now, but I actually have been learning quite a bit about software development, both on the personal craftsman level but also paying more attention by what it means on the team dynamics side of things._

[https://blogs.uw.edu/ajko/2012/08/22/john-carmack- discusses-...](https://blogs.uw.edu/ajko/2012/08/22/john-carmack-discusses- the-art-and-science-of-software-engineering/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Gear VR's been in development for around 1.5 years now

Wow. That puts it not too long after the Oculus Rift kickstarter, which was in October 2012. I wonder how the Gear project came to start. Were there some graphics enthusiasts with moving power at Samsung that went "this. we need to get on this"?

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm confused. I know Carmack joined Oculus, but what's this about Samsung? I take it they're working together now? It's still two different pieces of hardware, right? This article is leaving out some crucial context here.

<comment><USER8> "but what's this about Samsung?"

It is called "the screen". Samsumg manufactures(mass produces) the best screens in the world. Their OLED screens are the best quality, simple, lightweight and extremely fast response.

Oculus needs Samsung screens. Samsumg needs oculus talent, so they are partners.

<comment><USER7> Sure, I'm not saying it didn't make sense, just that the article didn't bother to explain it at all. If you start off by saying someone works for one company, then start going on about his doing stuff for another company, you ought to explain what the two of the have to do with each other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So, I've been working on making it easy to make WebGL VR demos: [https://github.com/capnmidnight/VR](https://github.com/capnmidnight/VR)

</comment><comment><USER10> I truly do not understand this. Why would you want to dilute presence? Why would you want to create an expensive phone accessory when the hardware changes constantly and the software is extremely fragmented? There are plenty of scenarios where I can see usinga Rift, but very very few where I am 'mobile' and want to experience VR. Of those cases I can't see any where a dedicated and occasionally updated set of hardware isn't a better development experience than trying to deal with VR hassles on top of all the standard android ones. Please someone point out what Carmack gets here that eludes me.

<comment><USER11> It is simple. The target Carmack is aiming for is mobile VR. Tethered experience is a necessary middle step. Oculus will release their version in the future and Gear allows him to develop the tech.

<comment><USER12> You could say mobile VR is a necessary step towards AR (augmented reality).

[http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/why-you-wont-see- hard-...](http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/why-you-wont-see-hard-ar- anytime-soon/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> 2014 and there are still websites that auto start videos? At the bottom of the page no less? I pretty much ctrl+q out of fear at this point. Autoplaying videos = virus/phishing website in my head.

<comment><USER14> You should enable click-to-play for Flash content in your browser. It both improves security and prevents auto starting videos.

<comment><USER13> Nice, didn't know that existed. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why do we need to tether to a desktop for the extra power? Can't we create a wireless video standard to drive the VR headset?

<comment><USER16> I believe latency would not be acceptable with current wireless technology.

<comment><USER17> Wireless video can have approximately one millisecond latency today, I'm not sure how bad that would be wrt to things like nausea but it seems pretty short to me.

<comment><USER18> Your eyes are only made for a certain frame rate. Any more and your eyes will ignore it, but your brain will need to piece it back together (ie nausea). Any less and it will seem choppy. It's a very very thin line at which it goes from nausea too choppy/laggy.

Not that a few milliseconds of latency really matter, but if you don't care about 2 milliseconds here and another 2 there, they start adding up. It's much better to try your best to have the lowest possible latency.

<comment><USER19> Eyes don't have a framerate. Fighter pilots have been tested and can identify the type of plane in an image with just one frame at 255 fps.

Noticing a flash of light can go into the 1000 fps territory.

[http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm](http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm)

<comment><USER20> While it's true that a biological eye doesn't really have a defined "framerate" like video sensors do, the examples you're providing don't really show that. Sensitivity to very short stimuli doesn't prove temporal resolution in the sense that's applied here; what you want to be looking at is flicker fusion instead. As a cheeky example -- still pictures have approximately zero frames per second temporal resolution but would be able to pick up that 2.5ms plane if their sensitivity was sufficiently high...

Measuring ERGs (electro-retinogrammes) indicates that our photoreceptors can't really resolve luminance fluctuations above, at the very limit, 70-80Hz. Even Drosophila's high speed cascade doesn't really modulate beyond 200-250Hz. I'm really doubtful about those claims.

<comment><USER21> Indeed, flicker fusion for humans pretty much tops out at 80Hz, but you're underestimating the effects of smooth pursuit eye movement. For example, if you animate a fast-moving object at 80Hz on a 160Hz display, and follow it with your eyes, you will see two copies of the object. There's really no upper limit for this effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Is there, currently, a way to put positional headtracking into a wireless device (without using a fixed camera)?

<comment><USER23> Using the device camera together with Microsoft Photosynth technology would be viable. Maybe not in the time required to be confortable for the wearer of tbe VR set.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> so how do I create content for this thing? unity3d -> export to Android - <USER2> something else?

</comment><comment><USER25> engadget is not a credible source for any news...

<comment><USER26> I have no affiliation with Engadget (in fact, I've spent over a decade working at _competitors_ to Engadget). But I've found that it makes sense to evaluate news organizations' output on an article-by-article basis. Even the best news organizations can screw things up on occasion, and even excellent reporters can be assigned derivative stories by their editors.

The article-by-article approach is what [http://recent.io/](http://recent.io/) uses in its pipeline, which is working very well in testing so far.

More to the point, this looks like a perfectly decent story and an engaging read. The writer even managed to avoid being snarky about Samsung trying (sigh) to second-guess John Carmack!</comment></comment>


ATS-Analytical Trouble Shooting, formal problem solving - <AUTHOR> http://www.itsmsolutions.com/newsletters/DITYvol6iss19.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> When I was at Sun as part of the Solaris testing team we all did Kepner Tregoe (SGRT) Sun Global Resolution Troubleshooting training, which was a formalised method of troubleshooting and analysis.

I've found it very useful when trying to find the cause of failures and bugs, maybe you will too.

Pay particular attention to WHAAT,WHERE,WHEN,and EXTENT.</comment>


DCMA Jailbreaking Exemption Riding Into the Sunset - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/policy/2012/1/26/2736202/eff-legal-phone-tablet-jailbreaking-dmca-exemption-extension

<comment><USER2> I know that "public comment" (like whitehouse.gov petitions or wherever) gets a lot of flack, but administrative agencies are legally required to consider your comments on pending rule changes and the like. The Copyright Office is such an entity.

From having friends work on these online implementations of commenting systems in the past, I know that useful, well thought out comments are taken seriously. So, feel free: <http://www.copyright.gov/1201/comment-forms/></comment>


Research Suggests YouTube Aids Flat Earth Conspiracy Theorists - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47279253 <comment><USER2> Well duh. Any platform that allows people who hold fringe beliefs to connect and form community will do that. I'm not sure why thats either surprising or bad

</comment><comment><USER3> Just note though that the sample size here is "The study involved interviews with 30 attendees at two conferences. "

</comment><comment><USER4> This article is just part of a coordinated media cavalcade, accelerating in the last few days, to attempt to justify, and promote censorship by the state - to shut down dissenting opinions. See it for what it is, a crude propaganda effort, by those in power, who feel threatened by alternative media.

<comment><USER5> Buddy, it ain't state censorship if YouTube isn't government owned. It's actually not even censorship at all when the videos in question can still be linked to or found via the search bar.

Removing a video from the "Recommended" sidebar does not represent a crisis of free expression.

<comment><USER6> Free speech is being able to say what you want (as long as it isn't screaming fire in a crowded theater or yelling in a library or such like these) without consequences. A society where every website bans you for believing X but yhe government doesn't throw you in jail might respect the first amendment, but it doesn't respect free speech.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to move up in career in mid 30s? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
I am hoping to tap into wisdom of all brilliant people here. I am mid 30s male. I work for FAANG but not compensated well enough to call myself upper middle class by any means.
What has happened over last three years is truly phenomenal and sad at the same time. If you look at Blind app, where people discuss compensation and offer numbers, I feel I am way behind. It took me 10+ years to cross 200k mark. My post tax comp. is still below 200k. Now, most people get 200k with  4-5 years of experience. Here at FAANG and at start-up alike, 200k or more is very very common.
A typical household TC is well above 350k or more in Seattle metro and in Bay area.
I feel stuck at my job. I can't jump immediately due to  visa uncertainties and algorithmic interview hell going on right now. It takes good 4-6 months of preparation. I don't know how others are able to do it so quickly. It's possible I have slowed down. Haha!
How to grow in career as male in mid 30s? On long term, I want to enter executive management. I don't think I have any mentors or anyone honest (without agenda) to help out. What do you suggest?
Edit - I am not a software engineer. I am managing a small team of 8 engineers. <comment><USER2> Along with income, have you thought about building your assets (e.g., stocks, relationships, things you make) to generate wealth?

Paul Graham's essay is useful: [http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html)

<comment><USER3> Wealth comes from owning things that become more valuable, rather than a stream of income. You can put effort into earning that $350k compensation. Or you can try to invest that effort into building or owning other things that get more valuable. A lot of things don't actually become more valuable passively, though stocks are an exception.

<comment><USER2> Totally agree, appreciating assets are useful for wealth. Land, oil, and minerals are good examples.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Oh boy, wish I could move to the U.S. and have something near your actual income. I'm on my thirthies, married with an almost over the minimum wage stuck web dev job on Brazil :/

</comment><comment><USER5> Being at a FAANG, I'd assume there is a career track and progression guide. Consult that. If not then that is really fantastic as you can work with others to make one. Manage up: talk with your manager and find how you can help them grow. Asked them how you can grow. These should be happening in regular one on ones. Are those not happening? Another opportunity to advance the org and yourself. Finding ways to work at the next level.

Also, as for salary, are you factoring in benefits and equity? Most who report over $200k are factoring those in. Have you had comp discussions with your manager? Also, it may appear that others are making more when they are not. Some people falsely report earning, either by inflating the numbers or by remaining silent. As a data point, I'm a principal developer at a fast growing publicly traded company and my base salary is under what you are reporting.

Also, algorithm questions for a manager interview? Really?

</comment><comment><USER6> > I don't think I have any mentors or anyone honest (without agenda) to help > out.

Self-awareness might be helpful. How are you perceived by the Higher-ups? What do you need to work on to get better?

What are you doing to mentor/develop/influence those junior to you?

</comment><comment><USER7> If you'd consider non fang, not all companies use algorithmic interviews. So you should definitely be interviewing elsewhere if that's what you want. Excluding visa issues.

Also seems strange you put your age in the title, mid 30s isn't exceptionally old at FAANG companies in my experience.

Also continually comparing yourself can be toxic so maybe take a break from blind.

</comment><comment><USER8> You tell us.</comment>


Why Good Programmers Are Lazy and Dumb - <AUTHOR> http://www.blogoscoped.com/archive/2005-08-24-n14.html <comment><USER2> I understand the sentiment, but this is stretching the definitions of "lazy" and "dumb" to the breaking point. "Lazy" does not mean doing less work in the long term. It means doing less work in the short term – often with resulting in _more_ work in the long term. The laziest thing a programmer can do is copy and paste code instead of making the code reusable.

Similarly, while it's hard to pin down a precise definition of "intelligence", self-awareness and a drive to learn would be on my shortlist of essential characteristics. Dumb people typically are not aware of their own competence and do not realize that there is always much more to learn (See Dunning-Kruger effect).

But I guess "Why Good Programmers are Efficient and Smart" wouldn't have been a very interesting headline.

</comment><comment><USER3> You see dull, repetitious work ahead of you. If you avoid it, you're lazy. If you feel too icky not to find a better way, then you're _constructively dissatisfied_. Your 4-year-old daughter demonstrates that what you're doing is needlessly complicated, arbitrary, or meaningless. Did she do it by being "dumb"? No. She did it by being _unassuming_ and asking simple questions, like "why?"—without fear of offending.

It's all about open-mindedness and a light touch, not stupidity and laziness. The sense is much better conveyed by koans[1] than this kind of blunt language. But of course, blunt language makes for eye-catching titles.

[1] <http://www.canonical.org/~kragen/tao-of-programming.html>

</comment><comment><USER4>
      Because if he's smart, and he knows he is smart, he will:

      a) stop learning
      b) stop being critical towards his own work

The logic here is quite flawed.

      Because he doesn't accept the parameters suggested to him
      that someone thinks make up the problem.

While there are cases when a programmer should simply answer the question (or solve the problem), those are exceptional. So, as said here, programmers (and others) should always ask questions; should always learn the reasoning behind things.

\---

I hate to distract from the content, however I found the article's use of semicolons to be incorrect throughout. (edit: disregard)

<comment><USER2> >I hate to distract from the content, however I found the article's use of semicolons to be incorrect throughout.

There are too many of them, but as far as I saw, none of them were incorrect in terms of grammar.

<comment><USER4> Ah, I see now. I was indeed mistaken, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Larry Wall's original is better: <http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?LazinessImpatienceHubris>

</comment><comment><USER6> This was a really stupid article.

Basically, by the use of the word "lazy" the author meant "not lazy" in certain areas and by "dumb" the author meant "not an asshole".

That was a 5 minutes of my life I won't ever reclaim...

<comment><USER7> Don't take words so binary. That's the big problem of most languages. That's something like that:

If I see I have so big job to do I have problem to start, procrasinate. What does it mean? Obviously I'm lazy, isn't it?

At the same time if I see nice way to make easier some complex stuff I do frequently I do it, find it exciting, enjoyable and I don't procrastinate. So? I'm unlazy at the same time. That's the effect of being inteligent and lazy at the same time.

Maybe he could have used better words to describe that, but It wouldn't tell the people that lazyness may be advantage as well, because such lazy code is so nice. Time saving is not only thing. Such lazy code tends to be so DRY, as he wrote and as code is DRYer it is more readable as well.

About dumb, it's very similar. Guy you ask so elementar questions. It's all so obvious. So many people would say he's dumb, even take it personaly.

If he doesn't use word dumb, that fact wouldn't be emphasized so nice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Isn`t this like "stay foolish stay hungry" ?</comment>


XSS is not a feature - <AUTHOR> http://evilpacket.net/2009/jul/9/basecamp-one-wrong-click/ <comment><USER2> They've also been accused of storing passwords in cleartext: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=589852>

</comment><comment><USER3> This was a bug and it has been fixed. We do not consider CRSF attacks to be a feature. This is completely different from allowing legit users to post HTML/JS from inside the application.

We now also have a dedicated email address and public key for reporting any similar issues. See <http://37signals.com/security>.

</comment><comment><USER4> What's visible of the "evil" URL, at 1:52, looks like: http;//andyet.basecamphq.com/search?global=true&scope=all&terms=%3Cscript+src%3d%22http;//evilsite.com/evil.js... (: replaced with ; so news.YC doesn't shorten link)

This is a lack of filtering of a search input on the search page, not the bug they submitted - that one included injecting HTML/JS by logged in users onto "internal" pages. Conflating the two is disingenuous, at best.

Good news is that a fix for this vulnerability -filtering the search box's inputs- will take about 30 seconds for someone familiar with the code base and ~5 minutes for a brand new intern.

<comment><USER5> it will fix that one particular blind xss vulnerability, but from 37signals' response ("[their] users find great value in it") it sounds like they are allowing arbitrary html and javascript to be run everywhere else on the site.

other vulnerabilities would probably require that one has a basecamp account to be able to post messages to the site or something, but they allow privilege escalation and need to be fixed just the same.

37signals' response that users should be trusted is just stupid. think of a customer logging into their vendor's basecamp site, being able to take over the vendor's account and then see all of their other customers.

users (and their input) should never be trusted. even if you trust the users, you can't always guarantee that the trusted user is the one in control of their web browser.

<comment><USER6> _think of a customer logging into their vendor's basecamp site, being able to take over the vendor's account and then see all of their other customers._

Sounds like a customer I don't want. Money is great and all, but if a customer is going to hack my Basecamp account, then I don't want to work for them anymore.

I don't think "your users should be trusted" is a ridiculous way to look at things. Technology can't solve some problems.

<comment><USER7> > Technology can't solve some problems.

It _can_ solve this one, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> 37signals is such a great company.. I really wish they would put a little thought and effort toward security.

<comment><USER9> I believe --- for a bunch of reasons --- that they do put thought and effort into security. I think they often come to the wrong conclusions. We still rely on them, but we're careful about how.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Force the user to supply a password to change email or other important information might help, but this XSS vulnerability is still pretty bad as you can make all kinds of phishing-style attacks.

</comment><comment><USER11> Samy is my hero.

</comment><comment><USER12> This looks like cross site request forgery to me. Not an xss issue which you notified 37 signals about.

<comment><USER13> From another site, he executed javascript on a basecamp account with an open session. Sounds pretty XSS to me.

<comment><USER12> Yes the javascript on a separate site the he controls made http requests acting as the logged in user. It has nothing to do with being able to write html and javascript on a basecamp page. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross- site_request_forgery> There are lots of sites that are vulnerable to this.

<comment><USER5> this is really a silly semantic discussion; either way the vulnerabilities should be fixed.

but this is xss, not csrf/xsrf. in the video he directs the user to a search page with a query containing javascript. the javascript runs in the basecamphq scope and changes the contents of the page to hide everything else and just show the image, which presumably has an onclick or something that pulls in the xsrf token and when clicked, forces the user to change his login data.

since rails has built-in xsrf protection i find it hard to imagine a 37signals site is still vulnerable to blind xsrf attacks. if they are still allowing arbitrary javascript to run and are putting the xsrf token in a javascript variable somewhere (which is commonly needed for ajax operations that post), then the protection doesn't do them much good. they need to stop allowing arbitrary javascript to be executed.

i can't think of a good reason why they need to allow the full set of html tags and javascript to run on their user sites. they should be sanitizing all of the output and only allowing a whitelist of tags and attributes that can't do any harm.

<comment><USER9> Without the XSRF, the "XSS" wouldn't be exploitable. Without the "XSS", the XSRF would still be exploitable. This is an XSRF attack.

It's not a silly discussion, but it is academic. The vulnerability should be fixed.

<comment><USER14> I see this as an XSS, not a CSRF. The search form is a GET form, and GET forms are /designed/ for cross-site requests - you can link to them to trigger an action, but it's not a forgery since there's no expectation that a GET request was initiated by the same site (people are expected to bookmark them, after all). The POST requests that manipulate the user's account are taking place from within the same domain, driven by the JavaScript that was injected using XSS. You could call them a forgery, but they're not a cross-site forgery since they originate on the same site.

All XSS holes are automatically CSRF holes, since XSS can be used to work around all forms of CSRF protection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Basecamp is not a bank.

<comment><USER16> That's ridiculous. People use Basecamp to run their businesses, which are the source of all their _future_ income, which, in most cases, is more valuable than your current bank account balance.

<comment><USER15> 'Twas a joke (I myself run a significant portion of by business through Basecamp so what you argue is pretty apparent). The "X is not a bank" thing is a joke about sites with cavalier attitudes toward security.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> it was for myspace</comment>


Infant Star's First Steps - <AUTHOR> http://www.eso.org/public/images/potw1545a/?lang <comment><USER2> It looks like a pretty messy eater.</comment>


Chrome 11 is such a hog - <AUTHOR> http://cubic-m.blogspot.com/2011/05/chrome-is-hog-switching-back-to-safari.html

<comment><USER2> Well my Chrome folder in C:\Users\simon\AppData\Local\Google is 1.66GB, the application being 323MB of it, so I suppose its a bit of a space hog.

But I don't see the problem with large memory use. Ideally, all of your memory should be put to use all of the time, otherwise it is _wasted,_ no? Shouldn't we be complaining that browsers aren't using more of our 4,6,8,12,16 gigs of RAM?

<comment><AUTHOR> It won't be a problem if Chrome is the _only_ app that you run.

In my case, its not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> 80M instead of 40M? When 24,000M costs $300, who gives a flying fuck about 40 megabytes?

(Yes, yes, this attitude has ruined the software industry. Fine, use your slow but conservative-of-nearly-infinite-resource browser.)

<comment><USER4> I think the real benchmark is still "which one is faster"? Typically, a faster program will use less memory. But, if Chrome is trading large memory usage for CPU cycles/cache coherency then its perfectly acceptable by me.. just don't slow me down

<comment><USER5> > Typically, a faster program will use less memory.

The "typical" time for space tradeoff says otherwise. Exceptions abound of course, but I haven't seen your assertion hold up over the vast majority of algorithms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So I had to try it on my machine with 4 GB RAM.

For context, I already had opened Thunderbird, Sunbird, IRC, Skype, Pidgin, a twitter client, Audacious, an OpenOffice document and a spreadsheet, GIMP with 4 large and scribbled on photos, and a good number of terms and gvims.

Then I opened Chrome 11. And started opening tabs. After opening 101 tabs (really) spanning 3 windows, I gave up. I had it down to 110 MB physical RAM remaining, but it was slow going. These were real web content tabs of all different pages, not empty tabs. The system in general was still completely responsive, though Chrome was taking about 0.5 seconds to switch tabs as opposed to the normally instantaneous response.

So... whether Chrome 11 is a hog really seems to be somewhat system dependent. I do grant it's a significant download compared to the other browsers.

I'm going to go out on a limb and speculate that Safari uses more native Apple libs than Chrome, and those libs are resident already for the most part. This might account for your differences.

</comment><comment><USER7> When Chrome updates it keeps the version you upgraded from in Google Chrome.app > Contents > Versions. I've been removing them whenever I've upgraded and found no problems with doing so.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right. Although there isn't a way to remove it from the screen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The last time I restarted Chrome for an upgrade, it freed up about 4 GB of swap. That's one large browser.

</comment><comment><USER9> Do anyone really care if a browser is 50mb or 200mb? Its not like you are having multiple installations of it. Every laptop you buy these days comes with about 250gb harddrives. Maybe delete some of your porn if you dont have 200mb for one of the best web browsers out there</comment>


The Era of the Drone Swarm Is Coming - <AUTHOR> https://mwi.usma.edu/era-drone-swarm-coming-need-ready/ <comment><USER2> I've brought up this eventuality countless times in the past couple of years (including recently mentioning this in my software company).

I don't think people are realizing the dangers to minitrization and ease of manufacturing small drones that could kill people. Either through mini bombs, or carrying diseases.

What are we doing about it? Seems like we aren't doing anything

<comment><USER3> Some people are doing things. There's an outfit at DIU (Defense Innovation Unit) called Rogue Squadron who's job it is to conduct counter-UAS research.

<comment><USER2> I'll check it out. I'm still trying to find a way we can protect ourselves though. The best I can come up with is (at home) a droppable net that covers your windows that has a current running through it. Maybe something similar for a personal device.

Beyond that, hacking into their WiFi or navigation signals. But how do you do that?

<comment><USER4> Why do you think someone would try to kill you in your home with a drone? Do you have a lot of mortal enemies?

<comment><USER2> Same thing has been said about guns. And data collection. And the government using data to spy on us.

It doesn't matter if you have mortal enemies, or if you aren't doing bad things, or if it matters if the government spies on you.

What matters is that it's possible. And it's a very real possibility.

<comment><USER4> All sorts of bad things are _possible_. So what. People with guns could shoot you through your windows today, but the reality is that almost never happens. Most firearm deaths in the home are due to suicide or domestic violence.

Watch out, maybe your wife will program a drone to kill you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm surprised there's no mention of the short film "Slaughterbots" on this exact topic:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HipTO_7mUOw&vl=en](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HipTO_7mUOw&vl=en)

It's very well done and has an HN vibe to it (with a dark twist, of course).

<comment><USER4> No need to panic. Just because the video has high production values doesn't mean it's an accurate prediction of the future, or that effective countermeasures won't be found.

<comment><USER2> I'm gonna have to say I disagree. We are already making tiny drones the size of bees. And you don't need that size to make a reliable, one shot bomb to kill someone.

Anyone with time, a bit of money, and a plan can make a swarm of drones to fly into a crowd automatically and blow themselves up remotely.

The fact that I hasn't happened already just surprises me.

<comment><USER6> I imagine Bill Gates' mosquito killing laser research is going to become a lot more popular soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> China is almost wholly dependent upon U.S. citizens for their economic growth and well-being, so the idea that China is itching to start a hot war with the U.S. is rather laughable, at least for the near future.

Remember, it's always bad business to kill your customers.

I think by far the more credible threat, of course, is from terrorists (foreign and perhaps even domestic, as horrific as that seems) and do hope that the superpowers of the world come up with some defense systems that are able to mitigate such attacks.

But to be honest...this new military-sponsored "killer robot" world we are barreling headlong into gives shudders to most sane, peace-loving citizens, no?

<comment><USER8> So on your world map it's only US and China?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I would encourage countries like China or Russia to develop cheap mass drone swarm systems that can deny access to airspace to any adversary. A country could sell this sort of service for hundreds of billions of dollars to another country like an insurance policy. Entire wars could be made impossible. It would be great progress for the world.

<comment><USER10> anti drone swarm drone: several dozen large-ish sized x8 hexacopters, capable of 2 hour flight time and carrying a 10kg load, with a gimbal mounted semiauto 12 gauge shotgun + large magazine of birdshot shells.

Drone swarms are possible, sure, but it's also quite possible to miniaturize existing concepts of antiaircraft missiles and guns, and automate those.

Or build swarms of disposable 2 meter wingspan size drones that can fly above a drone swarm, and drop chaff consisting of long lengths of fishing line. Tangle propellers.

Basically something like this, which is a bit smaller than the Zipline drones:

[https://www.banggood.com/Believer-1960mm-Wingspan-EPO- Portab...](https://www.banggood.com/Believer-1960mm-Wingspan-EPO-Portable- Aerial-Survey-Aircraft-RC-Airplane-KIT-p-1178800.html?cur_warehouse=CN)

<comment><USER11> anti anti drone swarm drone drone swarm: a swarm of those.

<comment><USER10> or, fly a C-17 sized aircraft at FL400 over the anti-anti-anti-droneswarm and drop many metric tons of unspooled fine gauge fishing line. More seriously though, if small drone swarms will be limited in the altitudes that they can reach (being limited by battery life, not enough motor runtime to ascend to FL200, travel laterally, and then down to a ground attack again, for instance), any modern air force that can establish air superiority over a battlefield... Will have a lot of different options to attack drone swarms from above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Just another step along the way towards this:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_on_Earth_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_on_Earth_\(novel\))

</comment><comment><USER13> "Start learning mandarin _now_ people!" — quote from a guy in my office who is only learning mandarin because he is sure Chinese will take over world in coming decade

<comment><USER14> Like Japan was supposed to in the 1990s.

<comment><USER4> Sure the concerns over Japan buying up US real estate and driving US companies out of business seem ridiculous now. But the difference is that at Japan's economic peak they had only about half the US population, whereas now China has about four times the current US population. That's a huge difference in scale.

<comment><USER14> I was concerned when Deng was in power, but not anymore. China always seem to get in their own way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Not mentioned in the article in the context of hardening is the use of electromagnetic pulse weapons as the basis for anti-drone swarm countermeasures. You don't need to jam their comms or disrupt their nav or hit them with shotgun pellets if you can glitch the unhardened control circuitry of their little motors.

<comment><USER4> Directional, reusable electromagnetic pulse weapons are still science fiction. Producing any significant EMP today requires a large explosion.

<comment><USER14> An EMP wirelessly overvolts circuits, burning them like a blown fuse. What kind of magnetic field would it take to induce too much current inside an Arduino?

<comment><USER4> It depends on the range. Due to the inverse square law, it would take a tremendously powerful magnetic field to induce enough current to damage even unshielded electronics at more than a few meters away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So this is mostly about drone-based warfare, which is uninteresting in the limit because nanotech and "Toner". (That's a "Diamond Age" reference.)

The challenge is securely coordinating your swarm so it can be controlled by you and not suborned by your enemies. _It can 't really be done_, basically you wind up recapitulating an immune system and that's the best you can do. I've been thinking about this for years and there's just no way truly be certain that all your hardware will actually follow _your_ order when the shit hits the fan.

Anyway, if you have the technology to make drone war then you also have the technology to make techno-utopia. So the real issue is for us to globally chill out and be excellent to each other. Otherwise all these machines are going to be a hazard, not a benefit. (That's a Bladerunner reference. Another scary tech is realistic beyond-the-Uncanny-Valley androids. Cf. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrogates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrogates) ...or same but small...)

</comment><comment><USER17> You just have to play some good rock music. See Star Trek Beyond.

</comment><comment><USER18> In the very short run, I think China wants to protect itself from what seems like a very adversarial, unpredictable and unreliable US.

Which automatically makes some military and defense people think how they could neuter their adversaries.

In this case, the US's biggest strength is the aircraft carriers. No other country, not even China has those many aircraft carriers.

How does one best neuter slow moving but dangerous targets? The best way is remotely causing enough damage on the hull that impedes progress.

Why will developing an equivalent swarm not help US in the short run? Because the China doesn't have such key large targets that the US could neuter. China literally doesn't have as many ships.

I think this whole uncertainty with Trump presidency is taking really ominous shape and I hope it's all ok at the end.

</comment><comment><USER19> we're so fucked</comment>


Ledger Goes Mobile – Ledger Live App Now Available for iOS and Android - <AUTHOR> https://www.ledger.fr/2019/01/28/ledger-goes-mobile-ledger-live-app-now-available-for-ios-and-android-smartphones/ <comment><USER2> Not to be confused with [https://www.ledger-cli.org/](https://www.ledger- cli.org/)</comment>


'Wealth creators' are robbing our most productive people - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/31/wealth-creators-klepto-rewards-bosses

<comment><USER2> Here's the money shot: "The perfect chief executive, from the point of view of shareholders, is a fully fledged sociopath."</comment>


Are you a mobile developer? We are looking for US apps - <AUTHOR> http://www.swelen.com/

<comment><USER2> looks like great deal</comment>


Ask HN: How does craigslist run its website with just 30 people? - <AUTHOR>

Employee # source: (4th question from the bottom) http://www.craigslist.org/about/factsheet <comment><USER2> Doesn't seem incredibly hard to pull off -- we also run a pretty large-scale network with a small team. Here's some thoughts:

\- They may not be counting support staff/abuse monitoring staff as employees (they might be contractors). Even if they do, it's possible that 10-15 people could do the job, depending on their support volume load.

\- Probably very little management overhead. This also increases productivity across the whole company, as there is a lot less communication overhead. Let's give them 4 management types, including Craig, Jim, a CFO and an engineering manager (if that's even necessary).

\- They don't do much feature development, so they might only have a few engineers. Let's be generous and say 5.

\- Running their network operations probably takes quite a few people, but with a relatively simple website, it can definitely be done with a small, efficient team. Let's say 3-5.

\- Let's throw in one office manager/executive administrator, to make everybody's lives easier.

That totals 30, even with support, but there's still some wiggle room. If support staff or abuse monitoring staff are contractors, there's more than enough room to work with.

<comment><USER3> You forgot the masseuse...

<http://www.linkedin.com/pub/anonor-cauldwell/24/ba1/146>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> They are not a leading innovator when it comes to technology - and they don't necessarily need to be. According to Newmark, the site is community driven and will respond to what the community wants - and in the end, what craigslist currently offers is obviously what they want. [1]

With the right number of engineers and system administrators, there is no need for a higher overhead when you already have a well oiled machine. Throwing man power at something doesn't make things more efficient. You just need the right talent and you can do bigger things with less people. [2]

So the question for you is, why would you expect or need more?

[1] [http://www.quora.com/Craigslist/Why-has-Craigslist- innovated...](http://www.quora.com/Craigslist/Why-has-Craigslist-innovated-so- little-with-its-product)

[2] [http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/04/database-war- stori...](http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/04/database-war- stories-5-craigsl.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> >So the question for you is, why would you expect or need more?

I don't think you need more. But why do many other companies have more?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> By not making anything new.</comment>


Ask HN: What are your thoughts on the HN scoring algorithm and penalty policy? - <AUTHOR>

I personally think that there is good content being missed and am annoyed when something gets randomly pushed down when it's obviously getting a lot of attention. Just curious what others think. <comment><USER2> Please clarify: Is your complaint that HN is too much like Reddit, or not enough?

<comment><AUTHOR> Neither, this wasn't a comparison to Reddit, tho I see why you would make that parallel.</comment></comment>