modern games on a CRT monitor – results are phenomenal - <AUTHOR> https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2019-modern-games-look-beautiful-on-crt-monitors <comment><USER2> In many aspects you can't beat CRT image quality, though getting close enough. Also many other aspects, like latency, tearing, scaling....work in the CRT's favour.

However, big, heavy and less easier on the eye over time as well as electricity usage all weighed down it's demise. Though like many, I still have a few CRT's for the odd moments and photo's just look a whole other level on them. But for many tasks - panel screens are more than good enough.

Equally, I recently heard that good CRT monitors are going up in price second hand and kinda like the old IBM model M keyboards - may well overtake their initial sales price. A quick look on ebay and for my monitor - it's now worth more now than when I brought it - tech like that is rare.

</comment><comment><USER3> With the introduction of backlight strobing the last advantage of CRTs over LCDs that remains is the support of arbitrary resolutions.</comment>


Focus versus Goals : An aspiring mimimalist's dilemma - <AUTHOR> http://okal.tumblr.com/post/10650651699/focus-versus-goals-an-aspiring-minimalists-dilemma

<comment><USER2> Does anybody knows the efficacy of the pomodoro technique in a scientific context? It's one thing to proclaim that it help you overcome arisaka, it's another to have it proven in a rigorous scientific experiment.

Meanwhile, I am sticking to culling useful self improvement advice from self help books that have scientific grounding(citation, written by neuroscientist/psychologist, etc).

Also, don't forget to use a spaced repetition system software to learn useful content like scientific self-help books.

<comment><USER3> _it's another to have it proven in a rigorous scientific experiment_

Y'know, I don't think there can ever be a rigorous scientific experiment which will show, definitively, that running a pomodoro timer is more effective than not running a pomodoro timer, generalizable across all people, times and situations. But why the hell would you want that anyway?

If you're curious about the pomodoro technique, try it out. Get a timer, sit down and do some work, take a break. At the end of the day, see whether you've had an unusually productive day. If you have, then super, try it again tomorrow! Eventually you might return to normal as the novelty wears off. Or you won't.

It's pointless to wait for someone to do a fancy-pants study on a thousand people, when all you really care about is whether it works on you. This isn't an AIDS vaccine, here -- it's okay to do the science on yourself.

PS. I feel the same way about diets.</comment></comment>


Building C++: Build Systems and Build Performance Optimization Resources - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/MattPD/cpplinks/blob/master/building.md <comment><USER2> Another resource to check out is IncrediBuild. It's a dedicated solution to reduce C++ build times. You can learn a lot about it on our website. I'm sharing the link to our blog (it's new, so there should be a lot more content added in the future) where we post content exactly about that: [https://www.incredibuild.com/blog?utm_source=hackernews&utm_...](https://www.incredibuild.com/blog?utm_source=hackernews&utm_medium=question&utm_campaign=answer&utm_content=blog_lobby)</comment>


The New Face of American Unemployment - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2017-new-unemployment/?cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&utm_content=politics&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&cmpid%253D=socialflow-twitter-politics <comment><USER2> The manager of the wire mill in Scottsdale, Pennsylvania (pop. 4200 and dropping, 98% white, median income $32K, "archetypal Rust Belt town") says "We'll just about hire anybody that we can get our hands on if the person comes in drug-free and they show up for work on time." They still have problems finding people. Who would move there?

This is the plight of small-town America.

<comment><USER3> Well perhaps they should consider paying better wages or offering better working conditions if they truly have problems finding people.

<comment><USER4> I live in a small town myself, which has its own struggles finding enough people for all the jobs. The biggest thing I've noticed when having conversations with out-of-towners is that those people do not believe the jobs exist at all, at any price point. Somehow we've collectively built up this idea that there are simply no jobs to be found outside of the cities, period. With that, nobody outside the local region even thinks to see what jobs are available in these places while on the job hunt.

I have a feeling this idea of no jobs really was, more or less, true at one point in time and the preconceived notions simply haven't kept up with the ever changing landscape of the world. This isn't the only example of where information seems to severely lag reality.

<comment><USER5> > hose people do not believe the jobs exist at all, at any price point.

I used to live in a small town rural area. There were 4 employers of software engineers. I worked for one large one (~500? sw engineers), the other two were universities with poor pay and uninteresting tech prospects, and the fourth had 30 people total. I believe there's a fifth company now.

If I wanted to do more things with my career than work for one company for the next 20 years, I had to move. Remote jobs aren't very good for people without connections (because connections typically form through personal contact, something difficult in rural areas), and freelancing/consulting at the _junior_ end is excellent for someone who excels in marketing themselves and building webapps.

Moving to a city lets me do things with my career as _I_ want, not what the sole company wants. If the company crashes, my career is not in disarray and I don't _have_ to move.

I simply can _not_ recommend to anyone who is looking to make something of themselves to move to a rural area. The connections, niches, specialties, opportunities are just not found in rural areas. You have to build them up manually and it's simply not possible without deploying tremendous effort just to _tread water_ in relation to the you-that-moved-to-a-city.

It's of course plausible that a senior person with a lifetime of connections and a deep specialty can live in Nowhere, USA, and have a solid life. But those simply don't hold true for junior/midlevel people.

<comment><USER4> A software developer does not exactly seem representative of the general population though, and especially not representative of the population that are in need of work! If we're just talking about what careers we have, then as a farmer, I imagine the employment prospects in the city are downright horrible for someone like me.

<comment><USER5> Employment prospects for farmers are dismal, as automation and modern methods make possible more land farmed under fewer people.

There are just more jobs in cities. this is why housing is such a terrible crunch in cities... crap regulations on housing development, but zillions of jobs and people crowding in for them.

<comment><USER4> _> Employment prospects for farmers are dismal_

You might be surprised, especially if you have the necessary skills. There is a farm labour shortage going on. I feel like you are just echoing my point here: That people don't even realize what jobs exist when they are outside the city.

 _> There are just more jobs in cities._

Well, of course there are. There are more people. However, the unemployment rate where I am is more than half that of the nearest large city (and population isn't decreasing). If you don't already have a job, rural areas are increasingly more likely to provide you one.

 _> this is why housing is such a terrible crunch in cities..._

Not really, because when housing becomes expensive, your profitability from your job decreases to the point where it is no longer worth even doing. Sure, if you are software developer making six figures in SF, you are still okay (although possibly still selling yourself short[1]). But someone making minimum wage in SF? They're paying to have a job!

In truth, people want to be in cities for the lifestyle, especially for the large dating pool. Rural areas definitely fall short on those aspects.

[1] [https://hired.com/state-of-salaries-2017](https://hired.com/state-of- salaries-2017)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash 1: Single-payer health care. Employer health care is a huge headache for any company that wants to scale. The costs are also too high for individuals and it depresses the economy as a whole. This really should be a no-brainer.

2: Bring back the WPA. Dismantling it was one of the biggest stupid mistakes in American history. Just pay people to show up and work. It doesn't matter if a private contractor is more efficient or if the work can be done more effectively with expensive machines, just pay people to show up and work.

Here in Ithaca, NY, many of our beautiful gorge trails were built under the WPA. They have lasted for nearly 100 years, and aside from the occasional falling rock landslide, I bet they could last for 100 more.

I don't know about you, but I would be far more comfortable with the idea of starting companies if my backup plan included a state guarantee of work and health care. I may be a software developer but nobody is above picking up a shovel and doing honest work for honest pay.

<comment><USER5> I would like to see the WPA redone - we have a lot of infrastructure to work on - the American Civil Engineering Society gives the US a D+ grade on our infrastructure ([http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/](http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/)). Since it's a public benefit, having people in public service to do that would be pretty grand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> My heart is broken by individual stories like this one, but I have a hard time sympathizing with these overwhelmingly conservative areas who lectured us "tax and spend liberals" about welfare queens and bootstraps when times were good for them. They were offered retraining and reeducation by the Clinton campaign and overwhelmingly rejected it. I'm happy to help these net-entitlement- consumers via my taxes, but their plight is hardly a priority given that they seem to have no interest in taking proactive steps to fix it.

<comment><USER7> Possibly these people don't want help and retraining from the Clinton campaign.

What they want is tariffs to rise and immigration to be restricted to the point their labor is worth something again.

Will this happen? And if it does will they be able to step in and fill the jobs? I'm not confident but I think that's what is desired. Not government programs.

<comment><USER8> > What they want is tariffs to rise and immigration to be restricted to the > point their labor is worth something again.

No, what they want is time to rewind to where it was when they were doing well. They've been sold the lie that immigration restrictions and tariffs will achieve (or at least approximate) that.

> Will this happen?

No. In fact, rising tariffs will (indirectly) make their labor worth _less_.

<comment><USER7> "the lie"

debatable.

<comment><USER8> You are free to present your argument.

<comment><USER7> That is my argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The first chart is a good example of why a pie chart is usually not the correct choice for data visualization. Pie charts are usually quite hard to read, but this one is particularly bad as it has an animation looping through different years' data; it's impossible to discern the actual trends at a glance.

Much better would be a simple line graph with the trends for each series. More fancy, and perhaps a slightly better way to emphasize the narrative of the article, would be plotting the relative change from the first year (2007) for each series.

<comment><USER10> +1 I was thinking the same thing myself. Pie charts are for elementary school kids.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Nearly half of U.S. children now have at least one parent with a criminal record." That's somewhat dystopian.

<comment><USER12> They're including everything from traffic violations to felonies. I guess it wouldn't be as interesting of a statistic if they explained what it actually was.

<comment><USER13> Traffic violations now count as "criminal record"? According to what definition of "criminal"?

I mean, I'm not saying you're wrong, but this is so intuitively wrong that I wonder if you (or the article) is using a non-standard definition of "criminal". If not, is this a change? Has it always been defined this way?

<comment><USER14> There are two types of crimes: criminal and civil. In most states, traffic violations are covered by criminal law. This is why many forms that ask about a criminal record say 'excluding traffic violations', or something to that effect.

<comment><USER11> Even a speeding ticket?

<comment><USER14> Yes.

Kind of. Speeding tickets are generally under criminal law. However, they are in a procedural limbo where they are treated in many respects as civil. There is a concern that things like speeding cameras would not hold up under criminal law if they were significantly challenged, but to my knowledge, that has not happened at a high enough level yet.

[http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2017/01/18093/](http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2017/01/18093/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Note one of the white elephants in the room. Ageism.

<comment><USER16> Scares the hell out of me to be frank...

<comment><USER17> Scares the hell out of me too. I think the ageism problem will eventually get solved. But my concern is will it get solved in time for me?

In the meantime, I try to think up things I can do to combat it and I pretty much completely draw blanks. I'm seriously considering exploring small bootstrapped start ups in my free time for no other reason than to hopefully have an income stream I can use should I find myself out of a job due to age.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't understand. Are those five stories suppose to be representative of today's unemployment problems?

Because if they are. We need more social programs to help these people. Not more "job creators".

<comment><USER19> Social programs aren't self-sustaining. You can't count on them to exist for longer than an election cycle. Setting up some businesses would make a medium- to-long term difference, and people wouldn't have to constantly worry about their benefits being cut.

Edit: I don't mean that concentrating capital and picking winners is good either. Helping individuals start their own small businesses would be better, and it would probably lead to less inequality than dumping cash into a single big "job-creating"... thing.

<comment><USER20> This is exactly right. I would also add that culturally, living on "benefits" is highly frowned upon in American society today so this probably has psychological effects on the recipients as well. Conversely, the ability to get a job and keep it is the source of much pride and admiration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Seen from that optics, the war on drugs makes all its' sense.</comment>


Glibc and the kernel user-space API - <AUTHOR> http://lwn.net/Articles/534682/ <comment><USER2> Classic drepper.

 _Theres a syscall here that maybe the layer between OS and program should expose_

\- _Never_

<comment><USER3> Didn't Ulrich Drepper retire from glibc development quite a while ago?

<comment><USER2> Yes, but I wasn't so much conjuring up his response, I'm quoting him directly from the linked bug report :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I always wanted to say that lwn's effort to write good articles (like this one) is shadowed by their weak website. There isn't for example an index of similar articles like this one or introductions to various kernel modules/structures. Maybe everyone but me can find them.

<comment><USER5> LWN kernel index at <https://lwn.net/Kernel/Index/>

Yes, the LWN site needs a lot of work. It's just hard to take the time to do that at the expense of the content itself, but some things are in the works...slowly...

<comment><USER4> ok, thanks for the answer. btw, which kernel development book are you currently suggesting??

<comment><USER5> Linux Device Drivers, of course!

Love's "Linux Kernel Development" is less obsolete currently, but I do still think that LDD has a lot of useful information not found elsewhere. Available in all the usual places or downloadable from <http://lwn.net/Kernel/LDD3/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like the idea of a header file with macros distributed with the kernel for providing basic syscall functions. Is there any reason that couldn't work?

<comment><USER7> Type-safety is hard with macros; you can't use a macro as a function pointer, for the obvious reason that it's not a function; such macros would tend to trample all over libc functionality, and glibc is not the only libc; the kernel and userland should arguably be separate.

It wouldn't be too hard to create (generate) a "libwrapsyscall" that just provided syscalls; if this is worth doing, it's worth doing properly.

<comment> throwaway54-762 How about 'static inline' functions distributed along with the libc header files? You get type / number of arguments correctness and no ABI bloat, at the cost of having (minimal) code in header files and per-object code duplication (possibly solved by an intelligent cc/ld).</comment></comment></comment>


U.S. Lacks Ammo for Next Economic Crisis - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-lacks-ammo-for-next-economic-crisis-1439865442

<comment><USER2> Americans buy 10B rounds of ammunition every year. I doubt the problem during the next collapse will be lack of ammo.

</comment><comment><USER3> Paywalled.</comment>


Ask HN: What's preventing us from achieving seamless video communication? - <AUTHOR> Better video compression? faster network speeds? alternative network protocols?
With all due respect to all the amazing folks working in the domain, as a person working outside the field, the quality of even 1:1 video communication still seems far from ideal.
Wanted to understand a bit what the main underlying hurdles are. Folks say there's less room for improvements with compression after H.264. I'm not sure how much network speeds are a factor given things can get botchy even with wired high bandwidth connections. The audio artifacts definitely impacts the perceived quality so not sure if there's room for improvement here technically. <comment><USER2> Low-latency packet video _can_ work incredibly well over a dependable network connection (with a known constant throughput and no jitter), low end-to-end per-packet latency, and good isolation between everybody's microphone and speaker. This was mostly solved in the 1990s.

A lot of what makes Skype/Facetime/WebRTC/Chrome suck are the compromises and complexity inherent in trying to do the best you can do for when these things don't hold -- and sometimes, those techniques end up adding latency even when you _do_ have a great network connection.

Receiver-side dejitter buffers add latency. Sender-side pacing and congestion control adds latency. In-network queueing (when the sender sends more than the network can accommodate, and packets wait in line at a bottleneck) adds latency. Waiting for retransmissions adds latency. Low frame rates add latency. Encoders that can't accurately hit a target frame size on an individual frame basis add latency. Networks that decrease their available throughput (either because another flow is now competing for the same bottleneck, or the bottleneck link capacity itself deteriorated) cause previously sustainable bitrates to start building up in-network queues, add latency.

And automatic echo cancellation can make audio incomprehensible, no matter how good the compression is (but the alternative is feedback, or making you use a telephone handset).

Another problem is that the systems in place are just incredibly complex. The WebRTC.org codebase (used in Chrome and elsewhere) is something like a half million lines of code, plus another half million of vendored third-party dependencies. The WebRTC.org rate controller (the thing that tries to tune the video encoder to match the network capacity) is very complicated and stateful and has a bunch of special cases and is written in a really general way that makes it hard to reason about.

And the fact that the video encoder and the network transport protocol are usually implemented separately, by separate entities (and the encoder is designed as a plug-in component to serve many masters, of which low-latency video is only one, and often baked into hardware), and each has its own control loop running at similar timescales also makes things suck. Things would work better if the encoder and transport protocol were purpose-designed for each other and maybe with a richer interface between them (I'm not talking about changing the compressed video format itself; just the encoder implementation), BUT, then you probably wouldn't have access to such a competitive market of pluggable H.264 encoders you could slot in to your videoconferencing program, and it wouldn't be so easy for you to swap out H.264 for H.265 or AV1 when those come along. And if you care about the encoder being power-efficient (and implemented in hardware), making your own better encoder isn't easy, even for an already-specified compression format.

Our research group has some results on trying to do this better (and also simpler) in a principled way, and we have a pretty good demo video: [https://snr.stanford.edu/salsify](https://snr.stanford.edu/salsify) . But there's a lot of practical/business reasons why you're using WebRTC or FaceTime and not this.

<comment><USER3> I remember good old Skype from like 3, 4 years ago that didn't use to suck at this so much, at least on the audio side. When the network connection was really bad, it used something like phone quality, when it was good, the quality was closer to Face Time. You could hear the quality shift dynamically when network conditions were changing (i.e. someone starting a download). I really enjoyed talking on Skype back then, I knew I could depend on it and get the best I could, whatever the conditions were. Now it's much worse, the quality is average, it doesn't handle bad connections well and it doesn't fully utilize the good ones. I don't think we have anything as good now as we had back then. There's Team Talk which is amazing for audio, but much more cumbersome to set up.

<comment><USER4> Why do you believe the quality is going backwards? Is there something they are optimizing for the compromise in quality?

<comment><USER3> not sure myself, I'm way out of my depth here, but a friend who knows much more about this sort of stuff, told me it's probably something to do with mobile connections. Apparently slow landline connections and bad cellular connections like 3G are unreliable in different ways. Also most mobile phones, definitely all iPhones, not sure about Android, can't go higher than 16kHz when it comes to audio calls, so anything better is pointless. Maybe it's just M$ and trying to save some pennies on the infra, especially that they're not p2p any more (also b/c mobile connections and restrictive NATS). I know They're supposedly not that bad any more, but considering what they've done to Skype's other aspects, I wouldn't be surprised really.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Zoom and Facetime are pretty decent, but you are completely right. The fundamental problem is we have a huge stack of technologies that just barely work. It runs from USB to video drivers, to operating systems, to videoconferencing software to Wi-Fi to home/office routers to cable modems to cable infrastructure to TCP/IP to backbone network capacity, and back. Everything is pushed to the limit. It's basically the Richard Gabriel worse is better problem, compounded. Everyone gets their part to something like 99% reliability.

If you're depending on 20 things, each having 99% reliability, the system has 82% reliability. Roughly speaking, that's what's happening. There is no silver bullet to fix this. Bringing one layer from 99% to 100% brings the system from 82% to 83%.

<comment><USER6> Seems like we would do well to find a way to implement some kind of certification process, like we do with engineers. [1]

If you lose your certification if you write low-quality code, then (hopefully, if the certifiers have the processes in place) you'd not write the code. In that way, we could finally compare the importance of quality in writing a device driver to the importance of quality in designing a bridge.

[1] [https://www.nspe.org/resources/licensure/what- pe](https://www.nspe.org/resources/licensure/what-pe)

<comment><USER7> The public have consistently chosen the cheaper but slightly worse option for decades of technology. This, more so than engineer skill, puts an upper constraint on reliability.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Let's start by getting seamless audio communication.

It's too much focus on video, when deficient audio has a greater impact on rapport. Even an old school land line phone gives a more fluid conversation than modern video conferencing.

The trouble is, mainstream conferencing solutions are challenged by customers who expect great audio out of poorly spec'd rooms and microphones. The result is too much 'masking' poor inputs with software that now we all feel totally disconnected with why the system as a whole just isn't working well.

(A small plug for my own focus on audio; cleanfeed.net, which is WebRTC-based with some additional magic)

<comment><USER9> The microphones and speakers in an analog landline phone are not high end either, but they still sound amazing compared to Zoom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I used to work in this field several years ago. It's gotten way better over time but there's room for continuing improvement.

Personally I think it's a bit of everything:

There's almost no standardization in signaling protocols. Things like FaceTime and WhatsApp don't interoperate.

NAT hole punching remains a complex problem. It's not easy to solve.

Bandwidth is often not stable for long periods of time. Bandwidth drops, latency spikes, packets get lost or retransmitted. WiFi connections are sketchy. Wired connections are better but still packet switched. Cellular wireless systems are overloaded and suffer from multipath fading.

Encoders are insanely complicated to build. Hardware acceleration isn't easy to implement either. Configuring an encoders parameters for a connection environment is hard and remains a craft and not a science.

The human eye seems to be much more sensitive to artifacts than the human ear. Cameras are hard to tune and expensive. Auto focus white balance etc effect call quality quite badly. Camera placement is still a challenge. Minor changes to lighting and colors can make huge shifts in quality.

This is why video from dedicated conference rooms is way better than video calls from phones or laptops. The state of the art under controlled conditions is really unbelievably amazing.

</comment><comment><USER11> Here's my question: why is video conferencing designed such that when the video drops out or lags, _so does the audio_? I never (or very less often) have problems with simple VOIP. Why not make a video chat client that treats the audio as a first class citizen, and then displays the video if it happens to be coming through clearly? Is re-syncing the streams too hard? This seems like a fix that would make the experience so much better without having to put more data through any network.

<comment><USER12> Probably because crappy audio is received better than audio out of synch from the video. Having the "bad international languge dub" effect on conferencing is distracting as hell.

For what it's worth voice over IP is essentially solved; tools like Mumble can have 1000s of people with top tier quality. I'm not sold at all on why you'd even want video, 90% of most business meetings (in my experience) are screen shares that could be communicated by just sending a link anyway. For personal calls use direct connect peer'd connection; in my experience all of the problems of video calling is going through the enabling server.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Someone needs to design vidconf hardware where (somehow) the camera is in the middle of the screen so you are looking directly into each other's eyes.

<comment><USER10> This exists in several forms ranging from TelePrompTer style settings to cameras embedded in the screen. They're currently expensive but I'd expect to see them hitting the market in the next 5-10 years.

There are also software/post-processing implementations of this out there which try to emulate eye contact. The ones I saw 4-5 years ago were definitely uncanny valley but there may be more happening there of late.

This gets even more interesting in multi party situations where there may be 3+ locations with more than one person at each location

<comment><USER14> > cameras embedded in the screen

Seems like a privacy nightmare. You can't have a hardware toggle to close the camera nor cover it with a piece of tape.

<comment><USER15> The Librem guys are making hardware with power switches for camera, GPS, etc. [1]

1: [https://puri.sm/posts/lockdown-mode-on-the- librem-5-beyond-h...](https://puri.sm/posts/lockdown-mode-on-the- librem-5-beyond-hardware-kill-switches/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Today, there are N video-conferencing solutions on the market, all of them rather "enterprise" in their quality. Most meetings start with a good 5-10 minutes of "Can you hear me now?".

Aspiring youths see this market ripe for disruption, and next year there are N+1 video-conferencing solutions, all of them rather shit.

The biggest challenge doesn't seem to lie in the actual video quality. The problem is in getting the damn call up in the first place, with all participants seeing and hearing all other participants.

</comment><comment><USER17> That people don't really want it.

As far I can see it is possible and good enough today with Skype, FaceTime and so on plus a good internet connection; yet people prefer email, chat, telephone ... I think that is what is holding it back and because of the lack of demand there is not really big investment in create hardware and software to support it.

<comment><USER18> I believe it's a chicken and egg problem. I know I would rely on video way more if my first sentence in every video call didn't have to be "can you hear me?"

<comment><USER17> The eggs have been there for a long time and plenty of chickens has been hatched; but noone is eating them.

I am pretty sure that I can do a high quality FaceTime call with a number of people.

Yet still I prefer doing a regular phone call. As so does just about everyone else. The question you should ask is: Why is that?

It is not a technical problem.

<comment><USER18> > I am pretty sure that I can do a high quality FaceTime call with a number of > people.

A number of people that could afford $1000+ to be able to use that platform.

I personally wouldn't consider this problem to be technically-solved until an Android that can barely be considered as a mid-ranger can do it.

<comment><USER19> I wouldn't expect a mid-ranger phone to be fast and completely reliable. That's why it's just a mid-ranger. The price is a compromise; you get shitty radio hardware and shitty software so you get shitty videoconferencing.

<comment><USER20> Is a mid-range phone today worse than a high end phone 5 years ago? Because the hardware at the high end 5 years ago could handle it decently iirc. Though it really depended on your internet connection, latency and other issues much more than the hardware on the device really.

For the most part, given the margins at the high end, it's not significantly better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Latency SLAs are what's missing: "No packets shall be lost, and latency shall not fluctuate".

Classical phone lines worked so well because there is never latency. You might get static, but we're adapted for listening through static. But you never get timing disruptions.

Videoconferencing is a black art of trying to smooth over tiny latencies that the human brain is wired to be extraordinarily sensitive to. People read too much into a single lost packet.

This same problem applies to VR - if the latency is not rigorously consistent, people vomit.

It is possible to design a network that connects two people reliably and with predictable latency - last century's landline phone network stands as proof. Until someone builds a network that offers the same level of service for videoconferencing, it will continue to be a tool of last resort.

<comment><USER9> That technology is circuit switching, i.e. the antithesis of computer networking.

<comment><USER21> Dolphin used fiberoptic interconnects to provide either maximum bandwidth or minimum latency, with a cross-connection grid that could easily be tuned with a software switch to provide narrowly-predictable extremely low latency with an SLA.

To say that this is circuit switching may or not be correct, but it's wrong to say that it's the antithesis of computer networking.

EDIT: See also Cloudflare's ultra-predictable, low-jitter backbone: [https://blog.cloudflare.com/argo-and-the-cloudflare- global-p...](https://blog.cloudflare.com/argo-and-the-cloudflare-global- private-backbone/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The biggest problem with videoconferencing is using movie video codecs (designed for maximizing compression, and not for multicast latency control) tuned/tweaked for the worst client. So the typical video conference server uses a hand tuned gstreamer and a mechanism for requesting key frames at the pace of the slowest client. That work okish for up to few hundreds of connections in the case of all peers having quality connections (fiber). Scalable video conference, with e.g. thousands of concurrent clients require a different problem approach, being solved eventually because of specialized video hardware acceleration in the video conference gateway server, changes in the network infrastructure, and also low latency devices at client side.

</comment><comment><USER23> The lack of circuit switching and bandwidth.

<comment><USER24> Exactly.

ISDN was a 64kb/s circuit switched channel end to end, rigidly clocked. Every bit came in on schedule. Voice with no jitter. A friend of mine in Switzerland had ISDN home phones until last month, when Swisscom discontinued it in favor of a VoIP system with worse voice quality.

If there had been a video successor to ISDN, say a 10mb/s circuit, we'd have real time HDTV video chat with no jitter.

Voice and video over IP only work because of horrible kludges to deal with jitter and lag.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> How about this:

$ ping google.com.au PING google.com.au (220.127.116.11) 56(84) bytes of data.

64 bytes from syd15s04-in-f3.1e100.net (220.127.116.11): icmp_seq=1 ttl=51 time=3239 ms

64 bytes from syd15s04-in-f3.1e100.net (220.127.116.11): icmp_seq=2 ttl=51 time=4524 ms

64 bytes from syd15s04-in-f3.1e100.net (126.96.36.199): icmp_seq=3 ttl=51 time=4434 ms

64 bytes from syd15s04-in-f3.1e100.net (126.96.36.199): icmp_seq=4 ttl=51 time=3622 ms

64 bytes from syd15s04-in-f3.1e100.net (18.104.22.168): icmp_seq=5 ttl=51 time=1022 ms

64 bytes from syd15s04-in-f3.1e100.net (22.214.171.124): icmp_seq=6 ttl=51 time=849 ms

64 bytes from syd15s04-in-f3.1e100.net (22.214.171.124): icmp_seq=7 ttl=51 time=1030 ms

64 bytes from syd15s04-in-f3.1e100.net (220.127.116.11): icmp_seq=8 ttl=51 time=974 ms

64 bytes from syd15s04-in-f3.1e100.net (18.104.22.168): icmp_seq=9 ttl=51 time=897 ms

64 bytes from syd15s04-in-f3.1e100.net (184.108.40.206): icmp_seq=10 ttl=51 time=1022 ms

64 bytes from syd15s04-in-f3.1e100.net (18.104.22.168): icmp_seq=11 ttl=51 time=1008 ms

64 bytes from syd15s04-in-f3.1e100.net (220.127.116.11): icmp_seq=12 ttl=51 time=949 ms

64 bytes from syd15s04-in-f3.1e100.net (188.8.131.52): icmp_seq=13 ttl=51 time=871 ms

64 bytes from syd15s04-in-f3.1e100.net (220.127.116.11): icmp_seq=15 ttl=51 time=1103 ms

64 bytes from syd15s04-in-f3.1e100.net (188.8.131.52): icmp_seq=16 ttl=51 time=1005 ms

64 bytes from syd15s04-in-f3.1e100.net (184.108.40.206): icmp_seq=17 ttl=51 time=830 ms

64 bytes from syd15s04-in-f3.1e100.net (22.214.171.124): icmp_seq=18 ttl=51 time=752 ms

64 bytes from syd15s04-in-f3.1e100.net (220.127.116.11): icmp_seq=19 ttl=51 time=703 ms

64 bytes from syd15s04-in-f3.1e100.net (220.127.116.11): icmp_seq=20 ttl=51 time=899 ms

64 bytes from syd15s04-in-f3.1e100.net (22.214.171.124): icmp_seq=21 ttl=51 time=821 ms

Does this answer the question? =)

</comment><comment><USER26> You need deterministic performance. There is a standard for that named AVB[0] but it requires avb compliant switches/hubs. It's used in pro, live, home audio and corporate environments with great success. In a perfect world the internet(at least the wired internet) would be avb compliant.

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

</comment><comment><USER27> Can we send two parallel streams of video and audio and then at the receiver, pick each packet selectively? If a new packet arrives in either of the streams, pick it if it is the latest, and discard it if we already got one with the same id..Something one the lines of adding redundancy to compensate for the poor connection?

</comment><comment><USER28> 1\. Check out this recent comment thread from a few days ago for an entry point to learning about numerous performance bounds caused by both design limitations and extremely long standing feature gaps in the computer network protocols we nowadays use for global communications (I intentionally avoid the term "Internet" here, because, as one can hopefully gleam from the content linked to there, that name seems undeserving for our "global information superhighway"):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19864808](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19864808)

2\. Something important and very relevant to your question which I forgot to mention in that thread:

[https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/Workshops-and- Seminars/201807/D...](https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/Workshops-and- Seminars/201807/Documents/3_Richard%20Li.pdf)

This recent ITU slide deck by Richard Li (Huawei):

[https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/Workshops-and- Seminars/201807/D...](https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/Workshops-and- Seminars/201807/Documents/3_Richard%20Li.pdf)

From this recent ITU workshop: [https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/Workshops-and- Seminars/201807/P...](https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/Workshops-and- Seminars/201807/Pages/Programme.aspx)

The webcast of which you can find here:

[https://www.itu.int/webcast/archive/t2017075g#video](https://www.itu.int/webcast/archive/t2017075g#video) (third presentation in the video)

Naturally, given the information from point #1 on RINA, GNUnet & currently network technology issues combined with the fact that the plans presented above don't seem to really factor that information in, I dislike some of the directions the ITU & Huawei seem to go for there, BUT, _even so_ , this presentation basically exactly answers most of your questions (I think the other commenters already did a most excellent job answering what the presentation doesn't), even generalizing them to seemingly "far out"—yet apparently entirely feasible—ideas like 'Holographic Teleports' (think VR on steroids.)

<comment><USER28> The talk starts at around 42:32 in the fourth video.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Related question: why does Netflix provide a so much better video streaming service than a short-distance VoIP session? (I say short-distance because Netflix obviously uses a content distribution network of some kind; not taking this into account would make the comparison unfair).

<comment><USER30> Because having a VoIP call is like producing a Netflix movie .1 seconds before screening that movie.

E.g. you couldn't buffer 5 seconds.

<comment><USER29> Yes, this is probably the explanation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Just curious if you've tried Zoom. I recently switched from skype andor hangouts.

</comment><comment><USER32> Not enough IPv4 addresses.

<comment><USER32> The only reason (original) Skype existed was because there were, even at that time, not enough IPv4 addresses, so users who had public IPv4 address were tunneling data for users behind NAT. Small guy has no chance to create any kind of p2p communication app because he had no infrastructure like Skype. If everybody had public IPv4 address it would be trivial and also fast because of the direct connection. Video calls are hard but codec had nothing to do with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> The core issue is not technical but rather human. In 1960s Bell Labs poured in massive investment in trying to make video calls a reality. They solved virtually all technical issues - in 1960s - and had real system deployed in NYC and other places. Here was the issue it never took off: _people just don 't like others to see them although they like to see others._. This might feel funny little thing but it ultimately lead to pulling out video handsets from the market. No amount of network effect and marketting helped its adoption.

This experiment has been repeated in many forms by different companies in different settings with no real success. Everyone had solved tech issues, its just that screen resolution keeps increasing. The only area I can think of where video calls have minor success is corporate group meetings and talking to kids/parents but even in those cases people tend to be very selective when to do video calls vs voice-only calls.</comment>


Ask HN: How to find a good business idea? - <AUTHOR> how do you think a good business idea is found? I would appreciate if you can share books, videos and sites about this subject. thanks. <comment><USER2> I know how it's done.

Find a problem, solve it, charge for the solution.

All you have to do is fill in the blanks :)

It's not really tongue-in-cheek either, there are LOADS of books about this, but in the end it's all about finding a problem, providing a solution, and charging for it somehow (Time, licenses, platforms, whatever)

The best way to get there is to talk to people, don't ask them to think of products, just ask them how they go about their jobs and find out what the pain points are.

Where are they spending time on things that could be automated, or made simpler, or just eliminated by changing methodologies.

<comment><USER3> Couldn't agree more, go from problem to solution, not the other direction, or you will be a hammer in search of a nail. Even better if you personally feel the pain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ask yourself questions about the advances in technology. What would you do with a terabyte of flash memory in your phone? NVIDIA makes some incredible chips that currently cost about a thousand dollars; what would you use them for if they cost a hundred dollars or ten dollars? What would you do with a teraflop in your phone? Is there something you can do with AR/VR other than shooting and killing things? How can you implement remote work to make it practical and popular; is commuting to an office stupid? Talk to your parents and grandparents about their problems; can you solve them? What would you build for an Internet that is intermittent, not continuous? Can you build a gig economy that treats the workers fairly, not exploiting them?

Ask around for problems, figure out how to use technology.

</comment><comment><USER5> I would recommend reading Lean Customer Development:

[https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Customer-Development-Building- Cu...](https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Customer-Development-Building-Customers- ebook/dp/B07582F7BB)

</comment><comment><USER6> There's a good articles by PG on his blog, it speaks of doing things that people today will think of as dumb but folks from 3 decades + will find it absolutely normal</comment>


Can E15 Gasoline Really Damage Your Engine? - <AUTHOR> http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/alternative-fuel/biofuels/e15-gasoline-damage-engine?click=pp

<comment><USER2> the article seems alarmist. I live in Canada where we too use high concentrations of ethanol in our fuels.

There is such thing as anhydrous ethanol, which wikipedia points out is used as a fuel <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol>. Doesn't say if anhydrous ethanol is used as a fuel additive.</comment>


What's happening as University of California IT jobs are outsourced to India - <AUTHOR> https://it.slashdot.org/story/17/01/09/0222244/whats-happening-as-the-university-of-california-tries-to-outsource-it-jobs-to-india <comment><USER2> Time zone shift, worse service.</comment>


NET Core Open Source Update - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dotnet/archive/2015/02/26/net-core-open-source-update-february-26-2015.aspx <comment><USER2> It is very refreshing to see MSDN publishing a sentence like :

"The internal Microsoft team has been focussed on Linux support"

I've never been on the Microsoft side of the great computing divide, but this sort of work definitely reduces my (old) antagonism to the company.</comment>


Angry customer files class action suit against Theranos - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/25/11776186/theranos-edison-blood-test-results-class-action-lawsuit <comment><AUTHOR> Link to the complaint:

[https://www.scribd.com/doc/313828583/Theranos- Complaint](https://www.scribd.com/doc/313828583/Theranos-Complaint)</comment>


HTTP Observatory: analyze your website and review available methods to secure it - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mozilla/http-observatory <comment><USER2> Their description doesn't really match what they do:

"Observatory by Mozilla is a project designed to help developers, system administrators, and security professionals configure their sites safely and securely. "

All they check is if you have a few security headers and consider that "secure".

There is a LOT more to website security than adding a few extra headers and HTTPS to your site. Even if you get an A, it doesn't mean anything.

To give an example, Google gets a D, CloudFlare a D, Youtube a C+, etc..

<comment><USER3> > Google gets a D, CloudFlare a D, Youtube a C+

That is probably due to the non-trivial number of clients which don't support modern stuff (old browser, etc.).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Direct link to the live Observatory: [https://observatory.mozilla.org/](https://observatory.mozilla.org/)

Example run on addons.mozilla.org: [https://observatory.mozilla.org/analyze.html?host=addons.moz...](https://observatory.mozilla.org/analyze.html?host=addons.mozilla.org)

The Observatory measures site's compliance with the Web Security guidelines [1] and the Server Side TLS guidelines [2]. It's primarily meant as a helper for website developers and operators.

[1] [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Guidelines/Web_Security](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Guidelines/Web_Security)

[2] [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Server_Side_TLS](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Server_Side_TLS)

(disclaimer: I work on security at Mozilla)

<comment><USER5> Maybe it should be called it Https observatory?

I run http only site, I installed everything from scratch and minimized all attack surfaces. I got F because I'm lacking https stuff.

But maybe I'm missing something. If you don't deal with user logins and no sessions. Do I need to get https?

Or is this site just assuming things?

<comment><USER4> You need https to guarantee data in transit is not being modified between your server and web clients. ISPs, for instance, have a bad tendency to inject tracking cookies in http traffic.

<comment><USER5> Ahhh. Okay. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> SecurityHeaders.io has been doing this well for years, and without pretending to be more than header analysis.

<comment><USER7> It actually includes a summary result for [https://securityheaders.io](https://securityheaders.io) on the page. That site, your suggestion, says "A scotthelme.co.uk project - CC-BY-SA 4.0" so I wouldn't be surprised given the similarity in presentation if Observatory was based in some way on SecurityHeaders.io.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> On itself: [https://observatory.mozilla.org/analyze.html?host=observator...](https://observatory.mozilla.org/analyze.html?host=observatory.mozilla.org)

> Score: 120/100

<comment><USER9> On mozilla.org: [https://observatory.mozilla.org/analyze.html?host=mozilla.or...](https://observatory.mozilla.org/analyze.html?host=mozilla.org)

>Score: 40/100

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Gives Google a D.

[https://observatory.mozilla.org/analyze.html?host=google.com](https://observatory.mozilla.org/analyze.html?host=google.com)

(Would take this rating with a grain of salt.)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12361568](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12361568)</comment>


Fighting Homelessness, One Smartphone at a Time - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/15/upshot/fighting-homelessness-one-smartphone-at-a-time.html

<comment><USER2> I live in New York City and every day on my way to work I pass a public library in midtown with a line of people waiting for it to open (~10 - 20 on most days). At the city gym I go to I also sometimes see shopping carts full of belongings parked outside while (presumably) the owners are inside showering and washing their clothing in the locker rooms.

In my (limited) experience, I found that those that live on the streets and the working poor are incredibly resilient and resourceful. Unfortunately, the ones that look a little rougher often appear to have some kind of mental problems that make helping them difficult.

NYC also has a cell phone give away program [0]. My impression is that these types of programs are used by those that are more resilient and self-reliant rather affecting their intended audience of the most vulnerable.

[0] [http://www.freegovernmentcellphones.net/states/new-york- gove...](http://www.freegovernmentcellphones.net/states/new-york-government- cell-phone-providers)

<comment><USER3> The thing is that the current economy throws a number of otherwise competent people onto the streets. And those people are indeed resourceful and able to deal with the situation.

The problem is that the experience of being homeless - lack of sleep, lack of privacy and lack of self-respect, will drive a substantial number of them insane and then things get harder.

The thing is, when there are relatively few jobs and many of those jobs pay marginal wages that keep people at the edge of homelessness, just spreading resources around more efficiently won't change the basic situation. Essentially you have a tread mill that encompasses more and more people despite these people's willingness and ability to take advantage of existing resources.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are so many obvious critiques to make here (as the article does, with august), but this initiative succeeds in at least one very important way: it treats people with innate dignity. It recognizes that even, yes even, homeless people may desire a small slice of "the good life", which is increasingly just part of functioning within society, not as an outsider looking in.

</comment><comment><USER5> I agree with this initiative and think anything that assists people in an often small step up from a tough situation, is something all communities than can do... should do.

The only concern that comes to mind however is one of perception, as demonstrated 3 years ago at SXSW - [http://www.wired.com/2012/03/the-damning- backstory-behind-ho...](http://www.wired.com/2012/03/the-damning-backstory- behind-homeless-hotspots-at-sxswi/)

I'm not passing opinion here on the right/wrong element of BBH Labs in this instance, more commenting that with vulnerable sections of society, trying something new can be so problematic and potentially brand damaging that it puts people off in taking a risk or trying something new. The comments here are all valid, I just think some consideration should be given to those brave enough to take the risk. The SXSW backlash caused many people / companies to 'back off' from these sorts of issues, which surely can't be a good thing.

</comment><comment><USER6> Where I life (smallish city in Western Europe) there are lots of shops offering computer with internet access for as little as 0.5€ per hour. Public libraries offer similar deals. It seems to me that investing in these kinds of offers would be more cost effective than donating smartphones, doing more good for the same money.

Not that I am complaining, I'm glad they are improving the lifes of people.

<comment><USER7> Here in my part of Australia, public libraries offer free internet access. But there can be queues to use the computers and I think there are time limits. I'm not sure you could guarantee they're malware free either.

Cellphones aren't just about internet access - it can be realtime notifications, like a text message if a room suddenly becomes available at a shelter. Or if you're applying for a casual job, they might need your cellphone number so they can call you to come into work (eg if someone's off sick and they need someone else to come and take their place). Without a cellphone you could miss those kinds of opportunities.

And the best way to learn how to use technology is to play with devices in your own time & practice. I would think most jobs now assume smartphone familiarity & wouldn't provide training, could be an intimidating hurdle to someone who isn't familiar with them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I thought of this problem from a different perspective. A lot of disadvantaged people, and middle class people in developing nations, already have 'dumbphones'. How could we allow people to do more with basic phones?

I built a little service that does translation over text. If you text "<language> <text to translate>" to (917) 832-1965 it'll reply with the text in the language you requested. You can read more about it here:

[http://smstranslate.divshot.io/](http://smstranslate.divshot.io/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Or just give them the money so they can buy what they think that they need the most?

<comment><USER10> It's probably easier to get a charity or a philanthropist to buy few thousand phones to give away to poor people than to convince someone to just give $200 each to the same number of people. In the first case, you are solving a specific problem(homeless people don't have phones, therefore they can't even start looking for a job, or shelter), while in the other case you would have a hard time convincing someone to do it. And even if you did, someone else would come along, just like you did, and ask - why not give this money to a shelter, which knows what is better for those people/can provide more food/beds, or whatever? The thing is - people will ALWAYS have a better idea what to do with someone's money, and I think we should appreciate all actions like this, even if we don't personally agree with them.

<comment><USER9> You are right that I should have been more nuanced in my critique, and you're probably right that it's easier to give away stuff than money.

But I think we should try to always show trust in people who are vulnerable due to the situation that they are in, and by giving money instead of things we show that we trust that they will do what is best for them with the money. By giving things we signal that we know better than they do.

The main reason why people are homeless is after all that we built a society where we accept that people don't have a place to live. We prioritized other things, and left these people on the streets, sleeping in cars, etc.

There's different solutions to this problem, but I don't believe that we should accept in 2015 that people in the EU, the US, etc. do not have a home.

<comment><USER11> I'm not really in vehement disagreement with you -- I like the way you're looking at it. But, once a person has no cell phone, address, home, facilities for personal hygiene, bank account, credit, or income, getting those things with money alone is tremendously difficult. Many of them require at least one of the others. You'd end up giving them a lot more money just to get the things they need anyway.

For example, cell phones: if you have no address to send a bill to, no bank account, and no credit, what kind of options do you have for service? You're a lot better off getting access to a service designed especially for your situation.

...and, much as I'd like to sidestep this point, the reality is that a lot of homeless people don't have the best financial judgement. That's not to say they're bad people or will spend money they can't afford on drugs or alcohol (I don't think either of those is as true as most people seem to think it is), but prolonged homelessness is rarely caused by a single bad decision or stroke of poor luck.

<comment><USER12> Humans as a species don't have the best financial judgement, which is one of the reasons we have homelessness to begin with.

Even if everyone had an ivy league degree, with a cell phone, and was physically healthy, we'd still have unemployment as our economy isn't producing enough jobs for humans.. And unemployment + time with no savings to burn through eventually equals homelessness.

<comment><USER11> Is your point that everyone has the same financial judgement, or that homeless people as a group have no better or worse financial judgement than anyone else? Or something else?

<comment><USER12> That our collective financial judgement has produced homelessness, more so than the "poor decisions" of any individual.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Errol Morris accuses Kuhn of being a bad philosopher and bad person - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/was-thomas-kuhn-evil/ <comment><USER2> Previous discussions of the review:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18049515](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18049515)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17238765](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17238765)

<comment><USER3> > Previous discussions of the review:

That's incorrect. Those are all different reviews of the same work by different people that (likely [1]) make different points.

[1] per general knowledge of reviews, I've only read the present one.

<comment><USER4> Fair point. However, they're prior discussions of Morris' campaign against Kuhn (I think it's fair to call it a campaign, since he's been doing it for years), so relevant links in this context.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Whether Kuhn's ideas support "far-right authoritarian" politics is an interesting question. As the author here points out, postmodernism is typically thought of as progressive. It's interesting to think about the alternative; perhaps the "might makes right" aspects of fascism that Morris sees as the result of Kuhn's paradigms.

<comment><USER6> Postmodernism is a toolset, and the thinkers who are bunched together under its umbrella, frequently unwillingly, point out the issues with late rationalist epistemology.

That is, the postmodernists are responsible for attempting to show the rest of the people that the boat has severe cracks. Fascists and right wing authoritarianism has already been exploiting the cracks forever.

Blaming postmodernism for anything is laughable. It's not a cause, it's a series of well informed observations.

[https://reallifemag.com/faked-out/](https://reallifemag.com/faked-out/)

<comment><USER7> "A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is 'merely relative,' is asking you not to believe him. So don't." ― Roger Scruton

<comment><USER6> Because epistemology is simple. /facepalm

Postmodernism posits a plurality of truths, as well as underscores the demarcation problem.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


New Groovy Website - <AUTHOR> http://beta.groovy-lang.org/

<comment><USER2> I presume this beta website was submitted eliciting feedback, so here goes:

Some more info on how each of those organizations "use Groovy" would be nice, whether it's a mere 20 lines in a Gradle build file, or for scripting on a Grails website, or gluing some Java apps together, or whatever. Maybe turn the organization's logo into a link to such info, or fill in the list below and put it one link away from the front page on your site. Also, _Energy Transfer_ is listed twice. Better work on those so site visitors won't be suspicious of unproven claims.

Netflix:

Cisco:

JPMorganChase:

Energy Transfer:

Mutual of Omaha:

Linkedin:

Sky:

National Cancer Institute:

Google:

Target:

Carriots:

Voyages-sncf.com:

Sony:

Nestle:

Credit Suisse:

Carfax Vehicle History Reports:

UBS:

SAS:

European Patent Office:

Amadeus:

MasterCard:

Walmart:

Commerzbank:

Roche:

IBM:

Vodafone:

Wells Fargo:

Paterson Institute of Cancer Research:

Thales:

Eads:

Oracle:

Hypoport - the Finance Integrator:

MTV Music Television:

SmartThings:

Fannie Mae:</comment>


Car Thief Foiled by Police, Nap, Power Door Locks - <AUTHOR> http://spdblotter.seattle.gov/2016/11/30/car-thief-foiled-by-police-nap-power-door-locks/ <comment><AUTHOR> > A car thief awoke from a sound slumber Sunday morning to find he had been > remotely locked inside a stolen BMW, just as Seattle police officers were > bearing down on him.

</comment><comment><USER2> How long until I can pay for access to a hacked BMW portal and do this to anyone?

Connected cars are as much a liability as an asset, maybe more so.</comment>


Ask HN: Does having a dog in the office help productivity? - <AUTHOR>

I work in the pet industry, we sometimes bring our dogs to work, it always seem like we get more done on those days. Does anyone else have similar experiences? <comment><USER2> "I work in the pet industry"

I think that is a key factor in your experience, I for one would feel the same way.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am just a developer though. I have friends in other industries that feel the same way.. I just figured I'd put it out there as I am curious how many people take dogs to work.</comment></comment>


API to detect toxic comments - <AUTHOR> https://www.perspectiveapi.com/#/ <comment><USER2> "Genocide is good" = 13% toxicity, "Genocide is bad" = 87% toxicity

Pure garbage.

</comment><comment><USER3> Although on a technical level I think it could prove an interesting challenge, I worry about it's implications on speech across the web. Besides potential fears about the creators bias training it, all I think this will do is create clever slang to get around the filter. There was a joke on 4chan a long time ago about starting to use the names of major companies as racial slurs because it would be harder to filter and I could easily see something like that happening here.</comment>


Did the U.S. Army Distribute Smallpox Blankets to Indians? - <AUTHOR> https://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/plag/5240451.0001.009/--did-the-us-army-distribute-smallpox-blankets-to-indians?rgn=main;view=fulltext <comment><USER2> Some context from 2009 at [https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/73909](https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/73909) :

> The University of Colorado fired Ward Churchill in 2007 for committing > repeated acts of research misconduct, including plagiarism, fabrication, > falsification, and self-citing articles he'd ghostwritten under other names. > Churchill retaliated with a lawsuit, alleging that CU violated his free > speech rights by firing him. The court case culminated last week with the > jury finding for Churchill, and awarding him one dollar in damages.

Further details from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Churchill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Churchill) :

> In July 2009, a District Court judge vacated the monetary award and declined > Churchill's request to order his reinstatement, deciding the university has > "quasi-judicial immunity". In February 2010, Churchill appealed the judge's > decision. In November 2010, the Colorado Court of Appeals upheld the lower- > court's ruling. On September 10, 2012, the Colorado Supreme Court upheld the > lower courts' decisions in favor of the University of Colorado. On April 1, > 2013, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

Also, this specifically concerns "the U.S. Army's alleged distribution of smallpox infested blankets to the Mandan Indians in 1837".

The British Army did use smallpox infested blankets at the Siege of Fort Pitt in 1763: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Fort_Pitt#Biological_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Fort_Pitt#Biological_warfare_involving_smallpox)</comment>


HN mods, can we please reinstate the "no politics" rule? - <AUTHOR> Dear mods: can we reinstate the no politics rule, please? I know I could just ignore threads with political content, but for some idiotic reason I can't seem to help myself from peering into and contributing to these pointless debates where everyone essentially preaches to the choir and comes out feeling frustrated and angry at the other side's stupidity/ignorance/dishonesty/corruption.
So I propose we, as a community, all agree to talk -- and argue! -- about the stuff which we all genuinely love. We love tech. We love programming languages. We love hardware. We love philosophy, as long as it's not too political. We love physics, and science more generally. We love music theory. Our interests are deep and diverse.
We are hackers -- not politicos! I say let's rally around that, and prove to the wider world that in at least one online community, we can step above the puerile name calling. The hacker community has attained a certain status, through our immense collective success. The world now watches what we do. Let's not blow it.
So let's practice some self-restraint. You, the mods, are the guardians of this community, and to date you've done a damn fine job. Be brave, and nip these corrosive political threads in the bud. <comment><USER2> I prefer a politics-lite HN but as was discussed during the previous experiment, it's sometimes difficult to draw a line between what is political and what is not. I think the mods would be in a no-win situation were the moratorium repeated.

However, perhaps there's another solution.

If a "flag as political" capability were added to HN, along with the ability for users to show/hide political-flagged threads, it seems to me that users and the community as a whole could do most of the heavy lifting.

I realize that this raises the possibility for _other_ flags (e.g. "can we have one just for X, so we don't have to see Y?") and with every supposedly simple modification there can be a legion of convoluted behind-the-scenes changes required; I hope I don't seem to be implying that such a change would be trivial. But perhaps in the interest of keeping the mods' workload down and discussions a tad more civil during what may be a particularly contentious next four years, it should be seriously considered.

<comment><USER3> Off topic articles should be treated as Off topic articles, and removed. There should not be any need to update any system or change anything, just enforce the rules. This website is called Hacker News for a reason. Not Political News.

<comment><USER2> An intersection of the political and the technical is not that unusual: PE Trump's meeting with industry leaders back in December is one such example. Likewise, the ongoing Manning & Snowden sagas tread ground in both territories. These are subjects that don't necessarily qualify as "off topic", but aren't as solidly technical as, say, announcement of a new Rust release or a disclosed software vulnerability.

<comment><USER3> Like everything else, not everything will be perfect and mistakes will happen. Fine line articles are of course a grey area for the "off topic" rule but at least give us some semblance of maintaining the rules. For example, the few weeks before the election were total chaos, we should strive to not reach that point of political take over again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can see it from both sides.

On one hand, it's nice to have a place where politics is less-commonly discussed and where the focus can be on tech.

On the other hand, some of the most in-depth, interesting comments I've seen on political situations and views, I've seen on HN, comments that have made me seriously think. When HNers remain civil and just have thorough discussion on a political topic, I enjoy it. The problem is not letting it turn into a flamewar, and politics is one of those subjects that attracts emotional responses.

Then, finally, is the difficulty in determining what constitutes "politics", as politics intersects with technology all the time.

HN mods will draw the line, and then all we'll do is argue about where the line should be. Problem will not be solved, just moved.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's easy to avoid the threads. More annoying is the passive-aggressive political comments on a story that has nothing to do with politics.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think the largest issue that tended to get in the way of this (because technically the rules still indicate politics is "off-topic") is the challenge of deciding where tech stops and politics begins, when topics like net neutrality and trade laws with copyright effects get involved. Or the difference between talk about solar startups and climate change deniers.

I personally don't think it's too hard to allow those grey areas a bit, but push away from political topics that don't have tech implications at all, but I think the moderators may have disagreed.

I did truly enjoy the political detox week. I'd like to see it back on occasion maybe. Especially right after elections.

<comment><USER3> I agree, the political detox week was fantastic. We went from a flood of political toxicity to a normal stream of tech/hacker related content again, revealing the stress of politics. I do not come to this website to read about what Trump said on twitter, or what Hillary had lied about. I come here to read about latest tech trends and "Hacker News", and that should be enforced to keep people like me returning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I couldn't agree more. The no-politics period was a breath of fresh air.

</comment><comment><USER8> One of the things I appreciate about this community is that occasionally a well informed post with links to relevant information will crop up, even in political topics. Just don't read them. If they're nothing more than click- bait intending to insight a flame war, then they tend to get flagged anyways. About the only bad thing is when a link seems to get upvoted based on title alone (by people who clearly haven't read it), but that's not isolated to political topics and articles.</comment>


Google employee shouts down San Francisco protester - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yc6z2oSPdQ

<comment><USER2> Not a Google employee at all, but rather a plant, as it turns out.

Fairly extensive discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6876397](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6876397)</comment>


Python library for 1990s AT&T Attendant Console - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/diamondman/att26a <comment><AUTHOR> I found this attendant console in a thrift store in San Francisco for $4. It is covered with LEDs and buttons, and has a very high build quality. I thought about how hard it would be to make something similar today (with just the cost of LEDs and buttons), and decided to pick it up for a later project.

This repository is the result of my reverse engineering of the ATT26A hardware/firmware and includes:

      * Documentation of the hardware.
      * Documentation of the wire protocol.
      * Python library for driving the panel.
      * Example programs for using the python library.

These Attendant Consoles can be found on ebay for around $25 (at the time of writing). If you are into unusual display interfaces, pick one up and see what you can do.

New examples, patches, and new language bindings welcome.

Happy hacking!</comment>


Interactive Apple iPhone 5S & iOS 7 Concept - <AUTHOR> http://recombu.com/mobile/interactive/iphone-5s-ios7-concept/ <comment><AUTHOR> How does this look on your iPhone btw? Should have parallax and use the accelerometer: [http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2220075/ios7/lax.html](http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2220075/ios7/lax.html) (didn't create this)</comment>


12 Red Flags in Clinton's Email Setup - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/soapbox-dc/12-red-flags-in-clintons-email-setup-da8966760f7d#.nf0knrcgv <comment><USER2> Interesting.

Many of the points made by this author relate to rigid government procurement rules: three bids, lowest bidder, hard walls between buyer and seller. The violations for which Mr. Pagliano has received immunity seem to be those sorts of things. The overhead of government rules creates both high costs and long delays. These rules are intended to defend the treasury against terabuck and gigabuck scams. But the server in question cost kilobucks at most, and was paid for with non-governmental funds.

The Feds are famous for obtaining convictions by twisting the words of people they interview to construe them as lies. Witness Scooter Libby of the VPOTUS's office, who was convicted for perjury -- lying to investigators -- rather than for concealing the truth about the Iraq regime's armaments.

The rules of evidence mean, as we all know, that anything we say can be used against us. Less well understood is that NOTHING we say in interviews with police can be used in our favor in court -- it's considered hearsay. If the federal police were interviewing you, your safest course of action would be to say nothing. That's what Mr. Pagliano is doing, according to this author.

One point in the article refers to the privacy and integrity of information on the server. Yes, a private server is vulnerable to intrusion and to advanced persistent threats of various stripes: of course. SO ARE GOVERNMENT SERVERS, notoriously. Secretary Clinton never said this, but there's a possibility she used non-governmental email because she didn't want her correspondence to end up on Wikileaks.

The server setup should have been behind an actively monitored firewall. I've never seen any description of this in the press. If the server and its file systems were vulnerable, that's a problem. But, still, we have to ask "compared to what?" Compared to the General Services Administration HR systems breach, clintonemail.com may have been relatively secure. Compared to the State Department archive that came out in Wikileaks, it WAS relatively secure.

Government political appointees are agents of change. Information tech is an area where large-scale institutional change is absolutely necessary. Why shouldn't some of the people pushing that change be political appointees?

Flap. Flap. Flap.

<comment><USER3> If I decide that my home-made contraption (email server) is more safe than a factory manufactured car seat and then drive your children around with it. Would that be acceptable? Furthermore what if I did so without your knowledge and there are explicit rules preventing me from doing so?

<comment><USER4> ummm did you really intend to say contraception?

<comment><USER3> Auto correct, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Please take this with a grain of salt. The author has spent a good deal of her time lately denouncing Hillary and endorsing Trump, which may imply bias. I make no claims about the content though, as I did not finish reading it due to the authors incessant use of sarcasm and open ended questions. I am sorry but a non-biased analytical article does not end paragraphs with "The logic of an innocent person at work, no doubt."

I am a little disappointed. I generally hold the HN community in the high esteem, and don't expect to see content like this. I would love to read up on this topic in an article without an overt agenda though.

<comment><USER5> _I would love to read up on this topic in an article without an overt agenda though._

I would highly suggest that you (and others) should read the Office of the Inspector General's recent report itself: [https://oig.state.gov/system/files/esp-16-03.pdf](https://oig.state.gov/system/files/esp-16-03.pdf)

Don't read just the out-of-context quotes that someone else has chosen --- read them in context so they can be discussed in context. Maybe a mod could even change the URL to this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why does this guy get immunity? If they aren't going to press charges against her then what's the end game?

</comment><comment><USER7> I was hoping this would be a technical analysis of the email infrastructure or something. But it's just a general rehash of some vague facts about how Clinton is hiding something from us all and must immediately be eliminated so the One True Bernie can legalize Reddit or whatever.</comment>