I stood there, an American citizen, sexually assaulted by a government official - <AUTHOR> http://www.ourlittlechatterboxes.com/2010/11/tsa-sexual-assault.html <comment><USER2> The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution explicitly protects the people from unreasonable searches.

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

One might say that you submit to this as part of the deal to get on the plane. But if that were true, it would be between you and the airline, not the government. That means it really should be the airlines that decide how intrusive searches should be. And you would be free to choose an airline whose policies you agree with. And the airline would be free to reject you as a passenger.

The government has hijacked the relationship between you and the people you've hired to get you from point A to point B. Just because of previous lapses in their intelligence efforts enabled some people to do something terrible doesn't mean you lose your rights.

<comment><USER3> I looked this up the other day and came across the following on TSA.gov:

"Even prior to the passage of ATSA and the Federalization of the screening work force, Federal courts upheld warrantless searches of carry-on luggage at airports. Courts characterize the routine administrative search conducted at a security checkpoint as a warrantless search, subject to the reasonableness requirements of the Fourth Amendment. Such a warrantless search, also known as an administrative search, is valid under the Fourth Amendment if it is "no more intrusive or intensive than necessary, in light of current technology, to detect weapons or explosives, " confined in good faith to that purpose," and passengers may avoid the search by electing not to fly. [See United States v. Davis, 482 F.2d 893, 908 (9th Cir. 1973)].

While the searches at the airport will be conducted by private screening companies, such searches will continue to be subject to the Fourth Amendment requirements of reasonableness because they are conducted at the instigation of the federal Government and under the authority of federal statutes and regulations governing air passenger screening." \--<http://www.tsa.gov/what_we_do/optout/spp_faqs.shtm> (search for "amendment")

<comment><USER2> and searches of you on the street can be avoided by electing not to leave your home.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The thing that sets this post apart from others of the same category is the fact that the author was not given a choice in the search. This is exactly what a lot of discussion around here has been about (though admittedly the opposite of the expected outcome). The fact that it was a pat down, not a pat down _or_ a scan is new. In most situations, the TSA could claim the the pat down is a choice, but here that is obviously not possible.

As for the assault claims, I am not surprised. I can't imagine TSA agents always remember to explain exactly what is going to happen. Pat downs are invasive and uncomfortable, but unexpected invasion must be much worse.

<comment><USER5> >I can't imagine TSA agents always remember to explain exactly what is going to happen.

Flight attendants are required by law to run through a pre flight safety instructional for every flight - even though we have all heard it many times. Police officers are required to read you your miranda rights.

TSA agents should be very well versed in all options afforded passengers under the law and be very well capable of relaying that information to any passenger without being prompted.

If the flying public is expected to be treated like terrorists you better believe I expect TSA agents to know _exactly_ what they are doing.

<comment><USER4> I'm not saying they shouldn't be expected to follow SOP, I am saying that I'm not surprised that it doesn't always happen. By no means should this be excused. People make mistakes. It just happens to be the case that this mistake is worse than others and may result in sexual assault charges.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Every day America looks a less attractive place to visit or do business with.

<comment><USER7> Two stories:

1) Last week I got a wedding invitation from my cousin in Connecticut (well, a "Save The Date" technically. That seems to be a purely American invention, but seems roughly comparable to a wedding invitation in my Canadian eyes). This was on the same day I found out about these new "enhanced" patdowns.

2) My dad loves NASCAR, and his birthday is in February, right around the running of the Daytona 500. For years, I've wanted to take him there for his birthday. It's a whole week of different races, and I'm sure he'd love it. It appears I've waited too long / didn't get the money in time.

Two scenarios where I'd really like to visit the States, mostly for my dad. With these new "security" measures in place, however, there is _no way_ I'm going to subject myself to such an ordeal just for a vacation. It might not necessarily be the sexual assault some people claim, but if my only option is to be either photographed nude or have some agent grabbing my junk, I'd rather just stay home.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've argued that the correct way to do airline safety is the way ElAl does it. The most salient argument against that is that the ElAl system will not scale. So let me get this straight, privacy stripping full body scanners and an army of ill-trained TSA agents is a more scalable solution?

The current situation is untenable. I am incredibly concerned by the latest round of rights and liberty infringing actions by the government in the name of "security". If it is not "security" it is "children". What remains to be seen is whether or not the current solution is scaleable in the face of tremendous public outcry.

<comment><USER8> It should also be noted, that when ElAl does decide to do a pat down as part of their security policy, it is not gentle. I know a couple people (men) who've gone through it, and even though they knew it was a possibility, they still came out of it quite shaken - it is the equivalent of a full-on civilian police search, and bears only a passing resemblance to what the TSA is doing.

The difference is, of course, the TSA is subjecting everyone who opts out of the back scatter machine to their pat-down, whereas ElAl does so only to those they find suspicious.

<comment><USER5> Oh yes, oh yes indeed. My quarrel is not so much with invasive searching but rather with blanket invasive searching of all citizens. If according to specific rules and specific guidelines a trained agent and her superior were to determine there was due cause for further screening then so be it.

Abuse can be weeded out and consequent repercussions meted out by simple analytics on reports gathered on every 'enhanced' screening.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm flying cross country in December and fully intend to opt out of the naked scanner, even if it means the 'enhanced patdown'.

I liken it to Ali choosing jail over Vietnam, and other instances when people protested government coercion by intentionally choosing the worse alternative to what the govt wanted them to do.

Hopefully the national outrage gets the policy changed before then, but I'm preparing to sack up and do it nonetheless.

</comment><comment><USER10> I associate this with the previous discussion about response to bullying in school. The argument then was, should we teach our children to withstand physical abuse and report it to authorities after the fact? Or should we teach them to respond immediately as it happens and loudly, physically if need be, protest?

In this case, the TSA agent obviously broke protocol. I can't see it as mandatory for the victom of the breach to stick to her part of the protocol by keeping still and silently enduring the abuse.

However, it is clear that her lack of immediate response was not a concious decision. I'm very familiar with the paralysis of mind and body that occurred. As a martial arts instructor, I see this happen a lot especially in the beginner's classes. With an opponent just holding your arm or making any kind of physical contact in a fashion you're not accustomed to, your mind can very easily go blank and you fail to move at all. A lot of self defense training is directed to just overcoming the paralysis induced by fear and/or shock.

It is clear that the author post-poned all reactions until after the fact. Perhaps from a legal standpoint this was the best course of action. But from a human standpoint, it is my view that the trauma incurred would have been far less damaging if she had reacted immediately to what was happening.

To get to my point: for anyone that want to explore your own reactions to similar situations, it is both very affordable and illuminating to try out a few self defense or martial arts classes. Read up on what is available in your area and just try it out.

With just a few classes, you can learn to react to abusive physical contact with a sharp, verbal NO!! instead of freezing into silent paralysis during the abuse and bearing the resulting trauma. You even react to verbal abuse or just plain criticism from other people in a different way if you practice martial arts. It is beneficial to everyday situations a lot less dramatic than in the post above.

<comment> X-Istence The issue is that even if she did shout NO during this whole frisking business she might have caused much more trouble.

<comment><USER10> That might be. And it might have been worth her while (IANAL)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've been watching these stories trickle by on HN for a few days now wondering if I should say what I'm about to say. I'm going to put up an opinion that I'm quite certain is going to be unpopular. At length, I think the potential karma burn is worth speaking out. If you choose to downvote me, please drop in a reasonable reply as well:

 _We ought not to call these incidents sexual assault. It sounds too much like hyperbole._

I freely acknowledge that they bear many (most?) of the characteristics of sexual assault, but there are many circumstances in life where we must suffer the same indignities which are not considered assault. A visit to the doctor for example. The situation and the intent of the "perpetrator" seem inexorably tied up in it. _(1)_

Consider how we talk about air travel already: "I got to the airport and was _corralled_ and _herded_ through metal gates. I was _unconstitutionally interrogated_ by some TSA goon and then _sexually assaulted_ at security, _prodded_ into the _cattle car_ and then _held hostage_ for over an hour on the tarmac. When the flight finally took off, they _fleeced_ us for every penny during the flight for snacks and even pillows! Its _highway robbery_ I tell you."

One of the things in the above list is a disgusting violation of our basics rights, the rest are minor inconveniences by comparison. Could an outside observer tell which one?

I'm afraid that the seriousness will be lost in the other airport security theatrics, that it makes the victims sound like the crazy ones. I'm afraid that the terrorists not only won, but handed us our asses. Mostly I'm afraid of what might happen to my wife.

You see, when she was very young, she was sexually assaulted. _(2)_ I'm genuinely afraid _(3)_ of this befalling her, of what wound it might reopen. I don't want to hear Leno joke about how the TSA fondled his balls, or how maybe they should take us to dinner and a movie first. I just want this shit to stop. I'd rather take my chances on the bomb.

This is the part of a good criticism where the proposed alternative solution is supposed to go. I haven't got one. But the line of people, some who are genuinely hurt (like the author) and the many who say it with a half-smirk all calling it "sexual assault" isn't really working for me. I don't know what we should call whats going on but wrong.

(1) And to be perfectly fair, the willing consent of the "victim".

(2) The fact that I'm inclined to put "the real kind" right here is part of the problem I'm having with this whole thing. I don't want to be insensitive to the victims, but I just can't quite make it cohere.

(3) Not the "I'm afraid for the direction our country is taking" afraid, the kind where my chest hurts and I can't breathe right afraid.

Edit: I'm going to go ahead and drop this in while I've still got the edit. It seems I set up a bit of a lightning rod with the "doctor" analogy. I was not trying to argue that a TSA patdown == exam at the doctor. I was grasping for the most benign example I could think of where similar actions could take place, in order to establish the idea of a specturm (based on the intents of the actors, and the consent of the acted upon, together with circumstances) with sexual assault at one end and acceptable behavior on the other. I'm sorry if this was unclear and detracted from the argument.

<comment><USER12> _> >but there are many circumstances in life where we must suffer the same indignities which are not considered assault. A visit to the doctor for example. _

This analogy makes very little sense.

The doctor cannot stop me from visiting a different doctor (who may not insist on the same tests) and the doctor cannot compel me to cancel a trip across the Atlantic if I refuse to submit to the tests. The government can.

The doctor has to convince the patient that the test is necessary. The TSA agent can ignore any evidence of the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of patdowns and doesn't need to obtain your consent.

<comment><USER13> "The doctor cannot compel me to cancel a trip across the Atlantic if I refuse to submit to the tests"

I'd suggest that failing to discover a fatal disease would be slightly worse than failing to travel somewhere.

What you _mean_ to say is that it's OK for a doctor to do it because in that case the recipient believes he is doing it for a good reason. If everyone going through an airport fully believed that these checks are an efficient way to ensure our safety in the air, far less people would have a problem.

<comment><USER14> I think the problem is that the 'pat down' is the most ineffective security measure used in the airport. The real reason for the pat down is actually to find drugs concealed on a persons body.

Why on earth do they believe they'll find a razor blade on a persons body? They don't, because they're not looking for weapons because every real weapon known to man is detectable from a metal detector, and the majority of improvised weapons still use metal detectable parts.

Considering I've walked through a metal detector with literally a fistful of change and it hasn't gone off, I question the usability of all airport screening. I frequently have like $10 in small change on me.

<comment><USER15> _because every real weapon known to man is detectable from a metal detector, and the majority of improvised weapons still use metal detectable parts._

Lets not get hyperbolic. I found a real weapon with less metal than my jeans in about 2 minutes with google.

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/isotope/492829645/>

(Presumably a terrorist could do it with no metal, but a prisoner has limitations on materials available.)

<comment><USER16> The right type of wood can also make for quite an effective weapon, especially in the right hands.

<comment><USER14> I'd say most people would be far less afraid of someone with a wooden weapon than someone with a steel knife, when a wooden weapon would be far more harmful.

A wooden mallet with tapered ends could easily crack a skull or break joints and limbs if used properly and would be easily concealable compared to a high density knife blade.

Considering that a war hammer is still likely the most dangerous weapon to an armored soldier today, there are worlds of weapons that are not routinely used or thought of that could be deadly in the right circumstances.

<comment><USER16> It doesn't even need tapered ends, as long as it's sturdy.

Heck, a well-trained person's hands can be quite deadly to someone not wearing armor... and if you know what you're doing, armor won't stop you from ripping someone's arm apart and spiking them into the ground with their own weight + that of the armor -- and yours, if you're feeling particularly aggressive :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I like the implication that it'd be ok if she wasn't an American citizen.

<comment><USER18> American citizens have a lot of protections under Constitutional and federal law. Visitors have a lot fewer protections. Her citizenship didn't make the crime, it just made it worse.

<comment> X-Istence Not only American citizens; as a green-card holder I have almost all of the same rights, the only right I don't have is the right to vote. I have the exact same constitutional rights as everyone else, even though I am a resident alien in this country.

<comment><USER18> A citizen can't be deported for any reason, ever. And I'm sure there are other differences.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> According to the TSA, <http://bit.ly/b133H4> , "there is no fondling, squeezing, groping, or any sort of sexual assault taking place at airports. You have a professional workforce carrying out procedures they were trained to perform to keep aviation security safe."

Does this mean my government lying to me?? Well I'll be damned!

</comment><comment><USER12> The TSA policy concerns me.

The only silver lining I see is that they may be responsive to the public outcry and figure out a better way to screen people. Perhaps, we should get the Israelis to train our TSA folks

<http://blog.tsa.gov/2010/08/enhanced-pat-downs.html> offers one reason to be optimistic. A number of critical comments talk about "molesting", "groping", "assault" etc. and these comments haven't been censored. The fact that the govt is permitting an open discussion may well mean that they'll take all the feedback into consideration.

<comment><USER5> > The fact that the govt is permitting an open discussion

We may well be on a slippery slope but I don't recall the government issuing permits for open discussions - yet. Or even a group of people needing said permit to conduct said open discussion.

Although I agree with you about the Israel thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> TSA is pushing forward sexual revolution -- there is no place for sexual shyness in the new world.

If you think about it: TSA pisses off both Liberals and Conservatives now. I wonder how long would it last.

</comment><comment><USER21> In absence of a better term for this, 'Sexual Assault' does convey the emotional experience of being abused in this way.

Yes, it is clearly not about sexuality, but it is a situation where there is a massive imbalance of power. Who is there to verify that your human rights are being upheld?

It is not a situation in which you can complain, even if there was abuse - because you'll miss your flight and look like a terrorist. Then there is the social pressure to conform in front of a large audience of people who you will delay if you do complain. Not to mention the number of uniformed and armed guards present.

</comment><comment><USER22> I think this matter has been conversated enough in HN.

I don't believe this subject is gratifying majority's intellectual curiosity.

It might be provoking lots of feelings, but this is not Feelings News nor Moral News but Hacker News.

I'm not saying anyone has been posting badly. I'm just saying that I've seen these "TSA sexual assault" twice now, and I don't think any new ideas will come along third time.

</comment><comment><USER23> For all the understandable outrage, this seems like a genie that will be very hard to put back in the bottle.

What politician is going to risk canning a security protocol when there's a not-unreasonable chance of a civilian airplane being blown up in the next few years? Who wants to be the politician that has to explain, after several hundred people died, why they canned any device or protocol which may have helped stopped the attack, however remote the likelihood?

I'm not saying it's rational or appropriate, I'm saying it's politically untenable, regardless of the horror stories like the one posted.

Perhaps airlines should offer 'enhanced' or 'standard' security flights, and people can choose whether they fly on a plane where everyone has pat downs or scans, or whether they don't. At least that way there would be a choice...

<comment><USER24> I cannot recall a similar issue sparking as much across-the-board outrage since the "war on terrorism" began. However taboo it may be to discuss relaxing security requirements, that may turn out to be the lesser of two political evils.

<comment><USER25> I agree. I think any politician could reasonably trot out a counter to the "he took out our line of defense" with a "I stopped your kids from being x-rayed or groped by getting rid of something that would have been ineffective in stopping this attack".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> A couple of links that mention the Ohio laws: <http://definitions.uslegal.com/s/sexual-imposition/> [http://kittywampus.wordpress.com/2010/11/11/tsa-enhanced- pat...](http://kittywampus.wordpress.com/2010/11/11/tsa-enhanced-patdown-a- form-of-sexual-assault/) <http://www.legislature.state.oh.us/bills.cfm?ID=128_HB_333>

Doesn't really matter what words a person thinks are appropriate, it really matters what laws might have been violated and what the incident would be called under the law.

</comment><comment><USER27> Just a thought.

Fight fire with fire. Sue the TSA and all its agents who performed the perceived insanity. A thousand (or million) court proceedings speaking against this would surely give the TSA a lot of headaches, that they would actually think of implementing something better in providing security for air travel.

I feel sorry for the Mom, who had to go through the ordeal and have to live with it everyday from this day forward. Though I feel more sorry for the kids who have been and who would be subjected to such grave abuse of authority.

</comment><comment><USER28> Maybe it's be better if people stated it as they would like it to be 'stop treating us like terrorists'.

That's essentially what has happened. The government has decided that everybody is a terrorist unless proven otherwise. Any high ranking official who does not believe this idea is 'supporting terrorists'.

Will there be metal detectors at supermarkets if something happens at a supermarket. Would that be so strange? Some high schools already have metal detectors. Where does it end?

</comment><comment><USER29> There's a Senate TSA Oversight Hearing on Wed, 11/17.

[http://commerce.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=Hearings&C...](http://commerce.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=Hearings&ContentRecord_id=9ad9e372-c415-4758-805a-4b4a295ccb8b&ContentType_id=14f995b9-dfa5-407a-9d35-56cc7152a7ed&Group_id=b2afa036-c20d-49ae-9211-b5ef8d7ea62d)

Call or Write your senators, especially if they're on the committee.

</comment><comment><USER30> I am starting to wonder if perhaps there is something wrong with me, for I am not outraged as everyone else seems to be. So long as there's no _groping_ etc going on, I'm inclined to just shrug and say to the agent, "well, you gotta do what you gotta do".

I am sorry HN, but I find myself lacking the desire to board this bandwagon.

<comment><USER31> "So long as there's no groping etc going on"

That is precisely the issue at hand. A woman's libia & vagina were touched in this particular case. In other accounts, various forms of fondling and groping occurred to men, women and children of various ages from 9 years (youngest stories I can recall) to senor citizens.

I have a sister who needs to fly from time to time. I'm outraged at the possibility that she may have to endue this at some point. I am outraged that I may have to submit to letting someone who I don't want near me feeling me up in my private parts.

Today these are happening to a select few. Tomorrow these will become common security practices. It's not an acceptable tactic.

<comment><USER30> wait, did you just say contact = groping?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I commented on the blog about how she was overreacting and told her to think about how the TSA agent must have felt (having to do that several times per day). My comment got deleted.

</comment><comment><USER33> There are a lot of smart people here who are apparently outraged at this. But I wonder if any of them are going to do anything about it other than type in this thread.

</comment><comment><USER34> America spends more than twice as much on the TSA's unconstitutional security theater than it spends on all FBI counter-terrorism activities.

</comment><comment><USER35> I hate to admit that I was expecting the Fresh Prince of Bel-Aire theme song after her description of this event.

</comment><comment><USER36> Whilst it appears there was a pretty serious of protocol, the author's hysteria verges on trivialising real sexual assault.

<comment><USER37> Lack of consent - check (Nor even a warning, for that matter.) Touching of genitals by a stranger - check. What else needs to be there so that it constitutes real sexual assault?

<comment><USER36> Gratification? A sexual motive?

Can the people downvoting me honestly not see the difference between a person performing an act of gratuitous violence on another person to satisfy their own urges and a person doing their job badly?

<comment><USER38> At the minimum it is sexual battery [1] and sexual imposition [2] and it could be argued that it was gross sexual imposition [3]. Ohio doesn't even use the phrase "sexual assault" in its laws about sex offenses [4]. The point is, quibbling about terminology is silly. Any reasonable human being understands what the author of the blog post is getting at. She was touched in a sexual way without her consent, without any foreknowledge of the event, and under some duress. Whatever you want to term the event is irrelevant.

[1] <http://codes.ohio.gov/orc/2907.03>

[2] <http://codes.ohio.gov/orc/2907.06>

[3] <http://codes.ohio.gov/orc/2907.05>

[4] <http://codes.ohio.gov/orc/2907>

<comment><USER36> "Quibbling about terminology" isn't "silly" when someone is making a public accusation of a sex crime. Neither of us are lawers, but right there in the statutes you've posted is the line "Sexual contact means any touching of an erogenous zone of another, including without limitation the thigh, genitals, buttock, pubic region, or, if the person is a female, a breast, _for the purpose of sexually arousing or gratifying either person._ " [emphasis mine].

I don't think that brushing up against erogenous zones as part of a search procedure constitues "sexual contact" _even though I agree that the TSA employee appears to have failed to give adequate warning and shown a lack of discretion in singling out a new mother in the first place_. I don't doubt the indignity of her experience may have been shocking and upsetting, but it stopped well short of sexual abuse.

As other people have pointed out in this thread with rather more eloquence than me, the semantics actually are important here (i) because sexual assault is a very serious crime with significant consequences for both victim and perpetrator (ii) because hyperbole detracts from serious scrutiny of the boundaries of acceptability.

<comment><USER38> The funny thing about your line of argument is that she didn't make a "public accusation of a sex crime" because "sexual assault" is not a sex crime that is defined in Ohio. If we're going to try to be pedantic here, let's actually be correct.

What definition of sexual assault are you using exactly? Your original contention is that the author is trivializing "real" sexual assault by using the phrase "sexual assault" in an inappropriate way, yet in Ohio no such a thing exists. So it's inappropriate according to what definition? What you're actually doing is inventing in your own mind what you think sexual assault should be and then getting angry at the author for violating your contrived definition.

Do you see why it's stupid to be pedantic about the specific phrase "sexual assault"? The author used the phrase sexual assault not to conform to a definition, but because she was touched in a sexual way and felt assaulted. In my opinion such feelings are perfectly reasonable in this situation. I would have felt assaulted had I not been given a warning.

Anyone who is quibbling about terminology in this thread is guilty of the phenomena that happens when nerds meet reality: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1880553>.

<comment><USER36> Slightly against my better judgment (good link btw) I'm going to post again...

I don't think there's anything novel or "contrived" about assuming the phrase "sexual assault" implies some form of illegal gratuitous behaviour with a sexual motivation, regardless of what jurisdiction you live in (sexual assault _is_ a crime where I live, and the Ohio state government appears to use the term frequently with respect to supporting abuse victims). I also interpreted the author's repetition of the phrase in conjunction with other carefully selected terms like "incident" as a conscious attempt to draw parallels between her experience and that of the victims of sex crimes.

I don't doubt that she's drawing those parallels because she's sincerely upset, but I do think there's a dangerous line being crossed when we start equivocating intentional assaults and incidental contact, and leave it up to the accuser to define whether conduct was abusive or sexual. I also think it would be doing a disservice to people who've been wilfully abused for others' gratification to suggest that their treatment is akin to what some people experience going through airport security. I hope that clarifies the original intent of my comments.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


My startup's secret recipe - <AUTHOR> http://eisokant.com/2008/07/26/my-startups-secret-recipe/

<comment><USER2> I am sorry. I think this is a dumb idea that will set you up for failure.

This makes one person the bottleneck, and the startup very rigid and inflexible.

Just go get a real team, convince great coders of your idea--people you can trust--and share everything with each other.

Its hard enough to do a startup as it is.

<comment><USER3> Plus you will find many other typical problems with remote and distributed teams (cross-communication, misunderstanding, less bouncing of ideas, bonding, agility/speed of change, etc.) to be other big bottlenecks once/if things get moving.

Being in the same place, at the same time, and working closely together with people you respect and trust is essential to creating a fast moving startup less likely to die or stagnate.

There are reasons why the most successful ones were two guys _in a garage_.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you - I absolutely agree. It's also the reason why I am considering moving out to SF or India. I haven't been able to find that team yet here in The Netherlands and I think that if I am in a place where technology is booming I have a much larger pond to fish in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> my father told a similar story. his friend, a camera man, wanted to assemble a film camera from scratch. This is Soviet union in the 1960s. cameras were pretty impossible to "own". Studios owned by the State owned cameras. But he had access to the cameras at the studio. He was not a machinist, but could take them apart and service them. If he went to a machinist to copy the camera privately it would cost him a lot of money. possibly a year's salary. So he would take a part at a time. he went to different ones and told them that it is apart that broke on his movie studio camera and that getting a part from the factory would stall the production. So they did it sometimes free of charge and sometimes he paid them with money, they would charge him about a worth of a quarter for a small part.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure I understand entirely - it sounds like MVC architecture to me. I'm not sure what layers he's handling, but seems like he's at least abstracting the database away into some simpler calls. As long as he separates everything in a reasonable way, it could even help the stability of his program. The part I don't quite understand is how it adds any significant amount of "protection" from his code being stolen. Programmers forced to stick to a documented API would be able to reverse engineer it, more or less. If he has a secret algorithm in his secret sauce, it's possible that his workers wouldn't be able to duplicate it, but as he's not a passionate programmer, I have my doubts. That said, it seems very closed to me, and I would feel a bit nervous working for him. But it's all just a perception from a single blog post, so I could be way off-base.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your comment. It's a simple system that doesn't have its power in thousands of lines of code but instead in the combination of components. Right now I am working with freelancers to get me up and running and once I am settled in a location I want to find that team.

In life it is hard though to find people who you truly connect with and can trust. I do know that when you meet them you recognize them straight away. I haven't been able to find these developers yet, most likely because I am in a location where there is almost no startup scene. However I am determined to find them and build an amazing startup as a team with no secrecy.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I just posted this comment on my blog in response to another developer/entrepreneur with their doubts about my strategy:

Thank you. Your comment summarizes the response I've had from a lot of developers and you are right. However there are a few details I should have but didn't explain. For me it's only temporary to get the foundation ready - the startup itself will have a full team. I am also doing this to give myself time to continue to talk to possible investors and decide where I want to locate.

Will I then throw away all the code and start over?

No and this is why: I have two user interfaces, one for the web and one as a browser extension, in any case they would have been developed by different people. They're two completely independent parts. As last I have the backend, a complex database structure but is setup to only accept a few easy and standard queries. The rest of the queries are handled on database level.

Looking at one of these parts you can't find out my completive advantage, looking at them all together you have my startup. I am incredibly aware of the risks I take with this and especially if I switch developers the problems that can (probably will) come up. I find it harder to read other people's code then to start from scratch and make it myself. Therefore all the complicated parts occur on database level, the code I wrote myself. So no matter what happens there will always be someone in the team (myself) who can work on that, or explain it to others.

</comment><comment><USER6> This screams naivete to me (but maybe perhaps I'm naive myself ...). I can't imagine how this system would possibly scale or how integration with all the small parts would work. Software is unique in the world of engineering. People know how to build bridges. We, for whatever reason, just don't know how to build software on that scale at the same reliability and with the same consistency that we build bridges.

Software is not made up of interchangeable parts in the sense that you can't outsource each individual function in a giant library and hope for seamless integration. This guy's working at a lesser granularity than that, but I'm just waiting for the day when some unexpected behavior from his controller causes massive failure in his backend and no one knows how to fix it because no one understands the whole system (or at least a big enough chunk of it).

Edit: Just saw his response:

 _Am doing this to give myself time to continue to talk to possible investors and decide where I want to locate._

If you're prototyping for investors, that may be reasonable, as long as you throw it away and start with a fresh coherent team at some point.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I messed up and I updated my post saying so: <http://eisokant.com/2008/07/26/my-startups-secret-recipe/></comment>


Show HN: Board Engine to run your own/companies Job Board - <AUTHOR> https://www.boardengine.io <comment><USER2> Poorly phrased tagline: boardengine.io can be the engine for your Job Board or the service, where we handler your Job Board for you: "All Inclusive"

"handler" -> "handle" "All Inclusive" -> kind of out of the loop

Consider rephrasing the tagline to something more succinct.

Other than that looks good!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback, I did some changes based on it.</comment></comment>


AMD Releases Radeon Pro Software for Vega - <AUTHOR> http://www.anandtech.com/show/11682/amd-releases-radeon-pro-software-crimson-relive-edition-vega <comment><USER2> Someone in AMD marketing department should be fired for this slide: [http://images.anandtech.com/doci/11682/rps_vega_22.png](http://images.anandtech.com/doci/11682/rps_vega_22.png)

We need more information about "radeon" "pro" and (tm) !!!

<comment><USER3> I think it's usual problem with all slides I see from AMD™

Same on their AMDGPU-stack slides and many more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Am I the only one who believes the title "AMD Releases Radeon Pro Software for Vega: Crimson ReLive Edition Vega Pro" doesn't really roll off the tongue?

</comment><comment><USER5> The article doesn't mention what the software does. What is it?

<comment><USER6> Judging by this: [http://images.anandtech.com/doci/11682/rps_vega_5.png](http://images.anandtech.com/doci/11682/rps_vega_5.png), a 3D renderer plugin optimized for the Vega chipset.

Although there are 3 "Pro" app listed there.</comment></comment>


Johanna Blakley: Lessons from fashion's free culture - <AUTHOR> http://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion_s_free_culture.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Minor nitpick: Linux is copyright protected, much like most of open-source. It's the copyright that keeps GPL products GPL'ed and open.</comment>


For the first time in the music industry, digital sales surpass physical sales - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/media/2012/01/05/for-the-first-time-in-the-music-industry-digital-sales-surpass-physical-sales/

<comment><USER2> Frankly, I'm shocked it took this long.</comment>


Why Are Humans Long-Lived? - <AUTHOR> http://www.fightaging.org/archives/001682.php

<comment><USER2> The evolutionary consequence of a species ceasing to age is that it also ceases to replicate. Replication is needed to replace the older generation. If no replacement is needed, no replication is needed.

In simpler terms, the trade off here is that if you want to end aging, you also have to end sex. Christians would love that, I know, but the rest of us might have some qualms about that.</comment>


Refactoring the FreeBSD Kernel with Checked C [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.cs.rochester.edu/u/jzhou41/papers/freebsd_checkedc.pdf <comment><USER2> This seems to be an evolution of a bachelor's thesis, which provides some snippets: [https://github.com/Duaiden/bachelor- thesis/tree/master/code](https://github.com/Duaiden/bachelor- thesis/tree/master/code) (first author). And this looks to be some test code and results, as well as possibly their kernel image: [https://github.com/2000jedi/checkedc- tests/blob/master/kerne...](https://github.com/2000jedi/checkedc- tests/blob/master/kernel) (2nd first author). I have not found any other code related to the paper.

</comment><comment><USER3> Checked c is interesting, but the syntax is quite ugly. I wish it had done what cyclone did and used different symbols for different types of pointers (e.g. it used @ instead of * for fat pointers).

</comment><comment><USER4> Why not Rust? :D

> Microsoft has developed an extension to the C language named Checked C which > provides new source language constructs that allow the compiler to prevent > NULL pointer dereferences and spatial memory safety errors through static > analysis and run-time check insertion.

I thought static analysis/fuzzing/unit tests were supposed to catch these kinds of things?

<comment><USER5> It might be interesting to support these "new language constructs" in c2rust.

<comment><USER6> That is actually a really good idea!</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is the worst you poured over your keyboard? - <AUTHOR> Really. Want some good mood for your almost-weekend-Friday?
Facebook mode on: I just poured my breakfast egg over my keyboard, and it sucks.
Because first, I cannot get that egg-yolk out, but second, it reminded me how much more it sucked when that colleague poured orange juice all over my laptop few year ago. The laptop still works I think, but with an external keyboard only. And the smell is just as amazing as the whole experience.
Think about that today, when something goes wrong. 1st Its Friday. 2nd: someone else out there has now egg in his keyboard.
Have a great end of the week everyone.
This was probably the most useless thing you are going to read today :D <comment><USER2> There is a certain type of front-end work that's really hard on keyboards, I find. CSS nudging where the thing wants to either stick in place or jump at least 10 pixels, but no amount of tweaking, negative margins or padding will do the trick, all to fit a silly design mandated by a bad freelance client for a project you've already checked out on.

I used to get these odd fist-shaped dents around the JKL area when doing stuff like that. I've mentioned them to the Dell on-site guy when replacing them under warranty, but he didn't have a good explanation either.

They happen a lot less often now that I'm working on my own projects.

</comment><comment><USER3> Soylent. Laptop was unrepairable after that. Needless to say, I quit Soylent.

<comment><USER4> You do realize that this has nothing to do with Soylent, right?

<comment><USER5> We'd need more information. Maybe his lack of coordination was a result of the radical sudden change in his diet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Gin. Like people, laptops also behave stupidly after drinking gin.

<comment><AUTHOR> OMG. I hope it was just Gordons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> A flight attendant dumped an entire screwdriver on my 2 day old macbook pro at the start of an 8 hour flight. Entirely accidental, but a pretty rare mistake for BA cabin crew to make. We got towels on it immediately and aside from a few sticky keys around the top left it worked pretty well for the flight and continues to be fine 4 years later. I took it as a sign that I shouldn't be drinking vodka at 7am and ordered a cup of tea to replace it.

<comment><USER8> Took me a second to realize that actual screwdrivers don't cause sticky keys.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Was the egg raw, or cooked? That makes a great deal of difference in how I think about how awful your experience was.

Not a keyboard, but: Many years ago, I worked for a company that was using microwaves on living tissue. They used salt water (saline solution) to simulate blood - it has a similar thermal reaction to microwaves. We had this VMEbus rack with various circuit boards in it. The top card in the rack was the graphics cards. And we had this VMEbus rack without the top on in the lab, so we could get oscilloscope probes onto the circuit boards...

I happened to be looking at the monitor when the tub of salt water got dumped onto the graphics card. I suspect it looked something like an acid trip (don't have any actual experience to go by).

They turned off the power, rinsed the graphics card with distilled water, then dried it in an oven at about 150 F to dry it out thoroughly. It worked after that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've seen whole data centers still working completely flooded with water. Crazy.

The egg was a soft cooked one. Nice and yellowish egg yolk running between the keys.

Btw: The keyboard works, cleaned it thoroughly with just water and tissues. Took a while, but its worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Coca-Cola, except it missed my keyboard and went straight into the desktop computer cabinet. The cabinet door was open at the time. Amazingly it missed all of the components and the coke gathered at the bottom.

On another occasion I spilled a whole cup of coffee over my keyboard though. Some buttons stopped working. I _would_ open it and wash the circuit board, but it presented a good excuse to get a new keyboard instead :)

</comment><comment><USER11> [http://www.qdb.us/29152](http://www.qdb.us/29152) <\-- I don't know why, I remember spreading my coke all around the desktop reading this... I totally spit my coke laughing/choking when I got to the point where the guy spit his lemonade.

It was somewhere between 2001-2003. I still find it funny, can't tell why.

</comment><comment><USER12> I have had two pouring incidents in the last ~20 years or so. They both happened within a week and in both times it was tea. Still laughing, especially for the second time ;D

At the time I was a student so probably had really, really bad sleep- deprivation (=really jumpy or something) from too much of anime and hobby coding. Oh those were the times :D

</comment><comment><USER13> I poured a whole cup of tea. The whole thing.

It stopped working immediately, so I just shut it off, but left it to dry upside-down (something I read online that would apparently help).

I went and bought a new laptop right away, knowing that I wouldn't be able to work otherwise.

3 days later, I turned the tea-tainted laptop on & it worked fine.

Now I lug two laptops around with me :/

<comment><USER14> I feel your pain. The same thing happened to me about two months ago, but sadly my laptop never recovered. When the tea hit the laptop there was a load of buzzing, and that was the last of that laptop...

Luckily, the hard drive survived, so I moved my files over to a new machine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I "strained" a big red solo cup filled to the brim with iced tea and crushed ice all over the keyboard (seeping out through the other side onto my desk) with the ice remaining on top of the keys like I was sifting gold. Somehow nothing broke and the keys were a bit sticky for a day, but that's it.

</comment><comment><USER16> A 300 ml mixture of sugars, proteins, water and salts: COFFEE.

Disassembled the entire notebook into small parts, washed it with destilled water, isopropanol, destilled water, let it dry for a week or so, re-assembled it (don't forget to make pictures).. et voila, it worked!

</comment><comment><USER17> When I was a kid, I spilled an entire glass of milk into my Acorn Electron. I guess the electronics were protected somehow from they keyboard above, as I don't recall any ill effects. It didn't even turn off.

</comment><comment><USER18> Vanilla ice cream, real strawberries and strawberry syrup on a keyboard. Wasn't the same afterwards even though turned it inside out and I cleaned it.

</comment><comment><USER19> Was eating milk and cookies and put the bowl on top of the monitor (big old crt monitors) for a moment. The bowl leaked and fried the monitor.

</comment><comment><USER20> Ranch dressing all over my Kindle. I've been able to remove the most of it from the keyboard with plastic collar stays.

</comment><comment><USER21> I am sure if you post this on reddit, you will get some different answers (sometimes, more creative).

</comment><comment><USER22> Deliberately: Thinner

<comment><AUTHOR> Thinner? ... Deliberately? ... but why?

<comment><USER9> Wanted a lower-profile keyboard?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Instant Glue and my keyboard was no more since then</comment>


Mind the Secret Bunker - <AUTHOR> https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/mind-secret-bunker <comment><USER2> I've found a bunch of secretish bunkers and tunnels in San Francisco. They're all over the place starting at ocean beach and going towards GG Bridge.

</comment><comment><USER3> London Transport Museum do tours of Down Street and a few of the other disused stations. Weill worth a visit is you can

[https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/whats-on/hidden-london/down- stree...](https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/whats-on/hidden-london/down-street)

Another interesting station is Chancery Lane and the kingsway exchange

[https://www.subbrit.org.uk/sites/kingsway-telephone- exchange...](https://www.subbrit.org.uk/sites/kingsway-telephone-exchange/)

Other closed stations

[http://www.abandonedstations.org.uk/](http://www.abandonedstations.org.uk/)

</comment><comment><USER4> this reminds me of a story from Jason Scott's podcast about a hidden garage for high end motorcycles that appears outwardly to be a residential apartment, where he muses about how many other interesting things must be hidden in our cities

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=g3TOirIFh4s](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=g3TOirIFh4s)

</comment><comment><USER5> Didn't know that the Cabinet War Rooms only came into operation after the Blitz; I'd always assumed all those underground scenes we see in war movies like the recent Gary Oldman Churchill movie were set in the War Rooms.</comment>


How to Use Kickstarter to Launch a Business - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/guides/2010/04/using-kickstarter-for-business.html

<comment><USER2> When I first heard about Kickstarter, I thought it was meant for bands to get money from friends and fans to record an album in the studio or for other types of artists. Since disapora, it has been shown to be a way to get funding for a business that others believe in, in exchange for giving something other than equity.</comment>


How do i make 1M friends who always respond to my messages within 1 min - user-on1 <comment><AUTHOR> Become a country-changing leader. Brazilian ex-president Lula has 100 milion friends (and other 100 milion enemies). Both sides would answer him in 1 minute.

</comment><comment><USER2> If you a few hundred trillion friends and at least a million will respond in the first minute. Either that or you need to make friends with a million robots

</comment><comment><USER3> A web based fire alert system can help. The system becomes responsive by broadcasting a Help message to the million friends if one of them raises an alarm.

</comment><comment><USER4> Offer them only what will benefit them in the short and long term, be they words thoughts or deeds, and eventually people will lovingly rely on your language, words, and presence because you have been thinking so much of how to be of aid to them.

</comment><comment><USER5> build 1M bot and host them on aws. now, you have 1M bot friends. simple.

</comment><comment><USER6> Sounds like you were asked a ridiculous interview question.

</comment><comment><USER7> You won't make 1M friends, but for any given much lower N number of friends, to get them to respond within 1 min, increase the signal-to-noise ratio of your messages, and message them infrequently.

Better yet, ask yourself: why do I need (or feel the need for) people to respond to my messages within 1 min? What is wrong with my outlook and time management?

</comment><comment><USER8> Since friendship is a mutual relationship and you also need to consider them friends, how are you going to go above your Dunbar's number? (see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number))

Also, I think given how little quality time you can give to each friend, you need to have very convincing qualities that may not be achieved by technology alone (if you're thinking about automation of relationship management).

</comment><comment> ng-user Why 1M and not 1B? Why 1 minute and not 10 seconds?

Both sets of values seem unobtainable to the average "random Joe".

Perhaps you can divulge why you require such arbitrary values?

</comment><comment><USER9> Hire 1M Friends.

</comment><comment><USER10> Build an army.

</comment><comment><USER11> Contact 1 million people and tell them you will transfer $1000 to them as long as they respond within one minute. Do a test. Probably 10% will respond so pay them the $100 billion. Repeat the exercise until you find 1 million reliable people probably after 10 tries or so. This will only cost you about $1 trillion.

<comment><USER12> $100 or even $50 or mabye even $10 might work too if you need to save on cost

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is probably one of the weirdest questions I've seen on HN, but I'll bite anyways:

Without spoiling the plot of a certain film, you'd want to be an AI or augmented human capable of maintaining one million relationships simultaneously. Simple.

<comment><USER14> The response time requirement is even easier if the friends are also AI.

Tom from Myspace probably has a shot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> you would need to be really famous.

<comment> user-on1 hi @sharemywin, that's a good point. and i really mean friends and not fans.

<comment><USER16> Maybe the more fundamental question is "how do I make one million friends," in which case the answer is "you can't."</comment></comment></comment>


No place like home: America's eviction epidemic - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/feb/12/americas-eviction-epidemic-matthew-desmond-housing-crisis <comment><USER2> Why is it an "eviction" epidemic? Isn't that just a symptom of them being unable to pay their rent? It seems like a more accurate term would be "insolvency epidemic". It seems disingenuous also to cast people who carry out evictions in such a poor light - they're simply doing their job, and an important one at that unless you'd like to argue that landlords have no right to expect payment from their tenants.

<comment><USER3> Also seems weird to talk about the epidemic now vs 2008.

I guess the economic cycle moved this way: housing got cheap -> everybody got adjustable-rate mortgages with balloon payments -> rents got cheap -> ARM rates increased or balloon payments came due -> massive foreclosures, former buyers moved to renting -> rents got expensive.</comment></comment>


The Effects of Computers - <AUTHOR> http://theprogrammersparadox.blogspot.com/2010/12/effects-of-computers.html

<comment><USER2> Typo:

       "This has been the dominate effect of computers ..."

There's being a lot written about WikiLeaks and the profound and deep-reaching changes that will be wrought by the entirely new ideal of no secrets. I can't say I don't care, because I do. I can't say I'm uninterested, or disinterested, because I am both interested and interested.

But there's an awfl lot of personal opinion floating around from people who, quite frankly, I have no idea about.

Why should I bother to listen to this person instead of that person? I certainly can't listen to all of them, and any selection appears to be completely arbitrary. I'm completely drowning in an excess of opinion, some of which might be useful, some of which might be important, some of which might be relevant, some of which might be informed, some of which might be insightful, ...

I can't let myself care.

I'll just go back to building stuff. It'll all work itself out without me adding to the all-prevasive, low-level noise.

See you out the other side.</comment>


Submit your ingenious unused domain names - <AUTHOR> http://valleyhunt.com/ <comment><USER2> you should setup a site with a month to month rental terms.</comment>


Show HN: Jodel Stats – View posts from all over the world on (YikYak like) Jodel - <AUTHOR> http://jodelstats.com <comment><AUTHOR> For anyone who is not familiar with the concept of Jodel: It's an anonymous social networking app. A post is only visible within a distance of 10 kilometers. This is where Jodel Stats jumps in: it lets you see the most popular posts from anywhere in the world. Built using Rails, Bootstrap and Google Maps API :)</comment>


Show HN: Esy – fast and simple package management for native ReasonML/OCaml - <AUTHOR> https://esy.sh <comment><AUTHOR> Hi,

I'm one of the developers of esy, would be happy to answer any questions about it.

I have background in JS ecosystem and always liked how npm/yarn allows you to have a set of dependencies installed per project which do not conflict with any other global installations. Then this goes even beyond runtime dependencies and you have tools like eslint/flow and others installed per project in node_modules.

Now enter native development and you won't find the same workflow there. This is what esy tries to solve. It focuses now on Reason programming language but conceptually it works with other platforms/tools too (for example some of our dependencies are C/C++ code and it works nicely with esy too).

Also I want to highlight the following points:

\- All dependencies (and devDependencies) are local to a project (like with npm/yarn)

\- The cache for built packages is shared between different projects - if you built OCaml 4.06.0 compiler once then the other project will just reuse it (this works similar to Nix package manager)

\- To execute some tool within the isolated project environment you prefix it with esy command: "esy ocaml", "esy vim", "esy code"

\- esy can install packages from npm, opam (package registry for OCaml ecosystem), github

\- esy allows you to develop multiple packages at once (see linking workflow in docs).

\- finally... we support Windows (besides Linux and macOS)!

<comment><USER2> Hi Andrey, can you tell me if this understanding is correct - ? I can use Esy to write native OCaml/Reason, but has no use in a compile-to-js environment - there it is npm/yarn. With Esy I will be using Dune as my build tool, but instead of the opam binary I can use Esy itself which can pull packages from the opam repository. It takes care of both packages and compiler environment just like opam.

The `link` directive is much more ergonomic than `npm link`. Nice.

Is there anything in Esy that would make porting native OCaml packages (like say [https://github.com/c-cube/qcheck](https://github.com/c-cube/qcheck)) to Bucklescript?

It would also be wonderful to see it in action through a short video tutorial.

<comment><AUTHOR> > I can use Esy to write native OCaml/Reason, but has no use in a compile-to- > js environment - there it is npm/yarn.

If you use js_of_ocaml (a compiler from OCaml/Reason to JS) then esy works with it very well (with the help from dune). With Bucklescript (another OCaml/Reason to JS compiler) it's more complicated (see below).

> With Esy I will be using Dune as my build tool, but instead of the opam > binary I can use Esy itself which can pull packages from the opam > repository. It takes care of both packages and compiler environment just > like opam.

This is correct!

But not necessarily dune (though this is a very good choice), you can use almost any build system you want.

> Is there anything in Esy that would make porting native OCaml packages (like > say [https://github.com/c-cube/qcheck](https://github.com/c-cube/qcheck)) to > Bucklescript?

Unfortunately not, esy works on level higher than build systems, it doesn't built code itself but rather calls an actual build system to do the workd (dune, make, cmake, ...). Bucklescript is unique as it tries to own the whole stack and thus you have to make code compatible with its build system (bsb) manually.

One thing which esy could help though right now with Bucklescript is providing native tools like ppx'es (preprocessors for Reason and OCaml code) or tools for editors like Merlin (autocompletion and etc.).

> It would also be wonderful to see it in action through a short video > tutorial.

Agreed. Hope to have something soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Just wanted to say thank you for all your work on this, Andrey!

I've been using for developing native projects with ReasonML / OCaml (on Windows!) - a framework called Revery [1] (a fast, native alternative to Electron) and a re-write for our Oni [2] text editor using this platform. It really wouldn't have been possible to pursue these paths without esy.

We're also starting to see other cross-platform Reason-native projects pop-up that I'm very excited about, like Brisk (native OSX UI w/ Reason/OCaml) [3] and Fastpack (native JS bundler - a faster webpack) [4].

Some of my favorite features are the following:

\- Esy gives the convenience of NPM / Yarn, but for native development. Importantly, it _works great cross-platform_ \- OSX/Linux/Windows. IMO The ease of cross-platform development is one of the JS+Node+NPM workflows greatest strengths, and esy provides this for native development.

\- Esy gets faster as you use it. It has smart caching for compiled artifacts - taking into account the full set of transitive dependencies.

\- The linking / resolution workflow is incredibly useful for native development. For Revery, we'd often need to try fixes across our GLFW/Fontkit stack, and the link feature made this simple.

I'm biased as I've contributed a little bit to the esy, but I've found the approach to development really interesting architecturally - esy is like a 'React' for dependency management - treating the dependency tree as a "pure function" of (dependency tree -> lock -> build environment) with "memoization" to re-use compiled artifacts.

These are tough problems to solve in native... and I'm really impressed with your work Andrey! Thank you!

\- [1] [https://github.com/revery-ui/revery](https://github.com/revery- ui/revery)

\- [2] [https://github.com/onivim/oni](https://github.com/onivim/oni)

\- [3] [https://github.com/briskml/brisk](https://github.com/briskml/brisk)

\- [4] [https://github.com/fastpack/fastpack](https://github.com/fastpack/fastpack)

<comment><AUTHOR> > I'm biased as I've contributed a little bit to the esy,

Well, Bryan is responsible for the Windows support in esy, not a bit!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This looks very nice! I wonder if it might be easy(ish) to wrap it as a plug- in for asdf? There's already an opam/ocaml plug-in - but from comments here it sounds like it might be possible to write a wrapper similar to the ruby plug- in that re-uses a lot of the tooling for rbenv/build. (as does the rust plug- in, and others)

[https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf](https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm having a hard time figuring out if esy supports reproducable builds, and package signing+verfication.

And if reproducable builds are supported, what format is used to store the build information so downloaded packages can be reproduced.

<comment><AUTHOR> esy tries hard to enable reproducible builds:

\- esy builds are happening in an isolated environment with only specified dependencies available

\- esy executes build processes under sandboxing (so builds can't write into arbitrary locations, we have some work to do here though)

\- esy has feature which allows to rewrite binaries to remove prefix paths from them.

As for package signing+verification (assuming you are talking about source code) we do only integrity checks now for packages downloaded from npm and via opam.

EDIT: wording

<comment><USER5> And how is the build env recorded for timestamps and env variables? Is all of this standardized?

>we do only integrity checks now for packages downloaded from npm and via opam

Which is fine, but esy should be capable of accepting signatures and checking them against a given key.

<comment><AUTHOR> > And how is the build env recorded for timestamps and env variables? Is all > of this standardized?

We do record the build env now in esy's own format, you run:

        esy build-plan PKG

to see the build plan (a-la Nix derivation) which is a JSON with build commands and environment.

As regarding timestamps we don't set SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH yet but we definitely plan to address that.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Would you eat Usain Bolt? - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.co.uk/article/lab-grown-human-meat-cannibalism <comment><AUTHOR> A bit too difficult to digest, I know. Would lab grown human meat have any other "applications"?

"Certain species of flatworm have been gradually taught to run a maze. If you grind them up and feed them to a second batch of flatworms, the second batch can run the maze on the first try." — Peter O'Toole, Phantoms (1998)

There have been successful experiments to show that some animals may be able to acquire knowledge (memory transfer) through cannibalism. [http://www.apa.org/monitor/2010/06/memory- transfer.aspx](http://www.apa.org/monitor/2010/06/memory-transfer.aspx)

You know, eat a cube of Steve Jobs to see calligraphy in a new light.</comment>


LimeWire Told to Shut - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303341904575577192244735152.html

<comment><USER2> for the time it took them to take out limewire, 100 brand new p2p networks emerged.

can the labels start looking to the future yet?

<comment><USER3> It seems that you slightly misunderstand the situation (and the article is certainly misleading on "Popular file-sharing website LimeWire" part). Limewire is _not_ a network, it is a piece of software, which provides access to networks using Gnutella and BitTorrent protocols.

As LimeWire is (was?) distributed under GNU GPL, I'm particularly curious about effects of this ruling on any forks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good riddance. I'd say two-thirds of the last few computers I've had to fix for friends or relatives involved malware from LimeWire.</comment>


Red Team's SIEM - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/outflanknl/RedELK <comment><USER2> It's interesting to see the development of Red team tooling over the last couple of years.

It's obviously necessary for red teamers to continue to advance to be able to cope with improving Blue team technology.

However Red Team tech. is, by it's nature, dual-use. It's equally useful for "real" attackers to have these capabilities as it is for people emulating real attackers. The nature of open source makes these capabilities quickly distributable.

So these capabilities will help "real" attackers in the same way they help red teams...

 __Terminology - Red Team - Set of security professionals who emulate "real world" attackers in an attempt to find exploitable flaws in organizations systems. Blue Team - defensive security professionals who's job it is to detect and respond to attack from real atteckers and red teamers.

<comment><USER3> As someone who has spent their entire life on the blue team, I've used some of these red team tools to assess my effectiveness. I can remember using Metasploit to make as much noise as possible to test my team's responsiveness to our SIEM going crazy with alerts. We've used Burp and similar tools to perform security audits of the company's custom code, and audits of software we're doing a PoC with to ensure quality.

I've never once worried that the tools I'm using would end up in the hands of more sophisticated hackers. If anything, I'm glad for the basic red team tools because it makes script kiddies easier to find. They're not going to do custom exploits anymore when Metasploit exists. On the other side, it's almost always a safe bet that the actual bad guys are going to skip the off-the-shelf tools...

... assuming, of course, you have a decent enough security posture as-is. If script kiddies and ransomware and Zeus can get into your network unnoticed, you've got a much larger problem on your hands. Unfortunately, most companies still fall into this category because even companies that spend tens of millions of dollars on security don't take basic security seriously.

<comment><USER2> So as a Blue teamer your perspective makes sense, as presumably you only work in organizations who can afford dedicated blue teams :)

Where I think most of the re/mis-use of red team tools would be effective is in the many organizations who are not yet mature enough to staff a dedicated blue team capability...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Am I alone in seeing a trend of Corporations really tooling up their security? I realize that in the age of digital transformation, securing your digital infrastructure is critical. And you have to do it, or your business is at a serious risk... but it keeps getting bigger, additionally so much of security is also physical.

I guess my concern is if you combine this with the longer term trend of the dominance of corporations in our lives in that they seem to be increasingly becoming small nation states of their own. it just seems like we're a few steps away from corporations having their own standing armies, digital and physical... and all the potential problems associated with that.

<comment><USER3> I've spent a decade in information security and I've been working as a consultant from a security vendor for the past few years, and yeah there's been a big outpouring of cash for security. Unfortunately it's almost never spent right and most of it goes to waste. So you don't need to worry about a corporation having a standing army when it comes to information security, because that army doesn't have guns and isn't allowed to engage the enemy. An army, yes, but they're defending the Maginot Line [1]

I have a customer whose SIEM generates several hundred high severity alerts every month, and they've told me that those alerts are 90% accurate and it's a real actual high severity security incident on every true positive. We've tried to get them to put controls in place to prevent the activity rather than merely responding to the incident after it was detected, but doing so would cause a workflow change for some business units, and they can't do that. All they can do is detect and respond, not prevent. To compensate, they hired more security analysts to respond faster, and bought more tools to detect quicker... but they're still just responding after the fact. The security incident already happened. Millions of dollars per year wasted. And this isn't uncommon.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> ELI5 please. why should I care about this.

<comment><USER6> TLDR: highly sophisticated tools for cyber security analysts.

Yeah had the same reaction. It takes some background to get what they are taking about.

Red Team: A team that try to exploit an organisation to find weakness before black hackers find them. [1] Blue Team: A team that tries to protect the org from the red team and fix the exploits. [2] SIEM: Security Information and Event Management. Usually used by Blue teams. [3]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_team](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_team) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_team_(computer_security)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_team_\(computer_security\)) [3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_information_and_event...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_information_and_event_management)

PS: search skills are really important these days.

<comment><USER7> I did the searching you mention, and I found the info you mention. But the link sucks on its own, for it to the #1 on HN, in my opinion.

The page is written with the philosophy: if you don't know what all these terms are, you don't belong here. Which is fine for a random Github repo.

I'd be curious to know about HN's sorting algorithms, this topic seems such a niche thing that I'm amazed this page reached #1...

<comment><USER8> > _The page is written with the philosophy: if you don 't know what all these > terms are, you don't belong here. Which is fine for a random Github repo._

It's also fine for a page meant for a specific audience. It's not like they want to attract random developers working outside security.

Whenever someone says something akin to "Hey that project's page didn't explain/market their offering well enough for me!", an obvious counter question is "and who said their intention was to promote it to you?".

Sometimes the complain is legitimate (e.g. a programming language or project that wants wide adoption should explain what it is clearly and attractively in its webpage). Other times it's just that not everybody is the intended audience, and they explain what they do well already if you're the intended audience (in which case you know the terms the use, etc).

> _I 'd be curious to know about HN's sorting algorithms, this topic seems > such a niche thing that I'm amazed this page reached #1..._

Perhaps enough people know about this stuff already and voted it as soon as they saw it? I didn't know what Red/Blue teams are, but there are several security people here that do.

<comment><USER5> I actually assumed it was from the GitHub blog from the front page link, so assumed it was from former colleagues / friends (I worked at GH, and know many of the fine people there).

Then I realized it was just a random GH repo and some sort of security tools software. And even then, was full of its own jargon -- blue team / red team / white team. So I could only ask wtf is this even doing here. Like how does this particular security software impact my life as a generalist software developer, or even if I was just some random technologist person.

<comment><USER3> I work in information security and do you know the number of articles I see here on a daily basis that have their own jargon and doesn't help my life I wonder WTF is this doing here? This is a big forum with lots of people who do lots of things. This isn't "Rsanheim News", not everything needs to be custom tailored to your desires.

Since you work in the tech industry, you should be aware that Google exists and you can very quickly find out what a SIEM is (if you don't do log management you should look into it) and what a red team is (if you don't do security audits you should look into it) and hey, now you know what the subject is.

<comment><USER5> "rsanheim news" is all lowercase, btw</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


California v Texas: America's future - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13990207&source=hptextfeature

<comment><USER2> So the opposite of "Brainy and Sexy" is a Conservative Christian? I find that a bit offensive and I'm a Californian and an Agnostic.

The article itself is an undeserved defense of California. I love California and I do believe we have some of the most inventive people in the world but when you add the projected shortfall over the next couple years to our current debt you get a number that's getting close to Google's total market cap.

I don't know how you invent yourself out of a mess like that

<comment><USER3> (take this with a grain of salt...I'm one of the "earners")

You can't invent yourself out of a system of entitlements that has long since divorced itself from reality.

You have a (comparatively) small group of people making a large portion of the income with a much larger group of people making little to no income and demanding more and more help from the earners to support their philanthropic causes.

What makes it hard to swallow is that we see loads of money being thrown at things like education and helping the homeless but we see no improvement.

I'm all for helping educate people, and lending a hand to the less fortunate, but I expect a return on my investment. When you take this much from me and my return is children who can't read turning into violent criminals and the wonderful view of a homeless man crapping in a doorway on the way to work...I want a refund.

<comment><USER4> "loads of money being thrown at things like education"?

State funding for the University of California has decreased from 7% of the state of California's general fund in 1970 to 3.2% in 2008. Between 1990 and 2008, inflation-adjusted state support per UC student fell by 40%. As a result, the total inflation-adjusted education expenditure per UC student (including student fees and contributions from UC General Funds) decreased by 19%, while student costs rose by 138%.

That doesn't sound like money's being thrown at education, at least not higher ed.

(text lifted from this letter: [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/08/...](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/08/MN6218KIRQ.DTL))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wasn't it just a couple years ago that people here were saying California provided the model for the rest of the country, and that more people should adopt the Silicon Valley startup system?

I think the real issue is differing cultural attitudes toward risk. Californians embrace it, which probably results from the selection bias of having a state where the largest population centers are all _centered on an active fault-line_. Texans do their best to avoid it.

When times are good, people who take risks flourish, because most risks turn out well. But when times are bad, they get hurt much worse than people who play it safe. That's almost by definition: "good times" are those when most risks pan out, while "bad times" are those when most risks fail miserably. It's not surprising that California is doing worse than Texas now - they took on far more risk during the boom years.

People have short memories. I remember that at the first Startup School, one venture capitalist summed up the history of business in four words: "Boom. Bust. Boom. Bust." I think that was probably the truest thing said at the whole event.

<comment><USER6> You're overthinking it. Silicon Valley provides good models for building businesses. The state and local governments are masters of burning money and getting nothing from it.

As a taxpayer in California, I cannot track where most of my money goes. I can't ask my representative or either senator where it goes and get a straight answer. (Disclaimer: I still like Boxer.)

It's a little unfair to compare states, though. Texas, for instance, has lots of natural gas resources, oil production and refinement (especially along the gulf coast) among other things.

Take a look at these:

[http://img.skitch.com/20090710-x3sceq4i2pq4hwaemawtd5afrd.re...](http://img.skitch.com/20090710-x3sceq4i2pq4hwaemawtd5afrd.render.png)

[http://img.skitch.com/20090710-nsuaeu7ch7ayhci6fp5yemeb5x.re...](http://img.skitch.com/20090710-nsuaeu7ch7ayhci6fp5yemeb5x.render.png)

A lot of California land is reserved by the federal government. I think it's somewhere around 45%. In Texas, very little is reserved.

<comment><USER7> California has tons of oil offshore. We just decided as a state we dont want to drill it for environmental reasons.

<comment><USER6> You're right, I should have said that Texas chose to drill their oil.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article concludes by saying California should adopt Texas's "more welcoming attitude toward Mexico", even while admitting that there is "a "lost generation" of mostly Hispanic Texans with insufficient skills for the demands of the knowledge economy" and "Latinos [in Texas] may justly demand a bigger, more "Californian" state to educate them and provide them with decent health care." I really don't understand why right-libertarians turn their brains off when it comes to race and culture.

</comment><comment><USER9> "California and Texas, the nation's two biggest states, ..."

Alaska? _cough_

The two most populous states, sure, but who uses that adjective to describe population instead of area?

<comment><USER10> The default for "big" is population, not area, when one talks about countrys. That's the convention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> _Chief Executive magazine, to take just one example, has ranked California the very worst state to do business in for each of the past four years._

Not the rosy picture of California and the Bay Area that is usually talked about on this board.

<comment><USER12> Until you factor in education level of the populace, better-maintained roads, better electrical grid, better communications grid, and the population density (which makes deliveries cheaper by reducing fuel costs and delivery times). Also...Chief Executive magazine believed that Carly Fiona was a good executive. It supported the guys at Enron. It lauded the bank executives that played a large role in causing the current global mess. Take anything that mag says with a large ton of salt.

<comment><USER4> Ok, I love the Bay Area, but better electrical grid? Seriously?

I hope you have it better on the peninsula than we do in Santa Cruz, because here it's roughly equivalent to a 3rd world developing country. In Sweden, I ran my computer for years and never lost anything to a power glitch. Here, I won't even _plug in_ a computer without a ups because MTBF due to power issues is about a week.

<comment><USER13> Yep. Texas actually has a better grid within the state, but it has a very "it's all mine and I am not going to share" attitude when it comes to commecting to the regional/national grids; it does the bare minimum it can get away with according to federal statute and is effectively it's own little island for the purposes of power. This worked just great for them when a certain groups of assholes in Houston were raping California by rigging the power markets and for as long as their generation capacity exceeded demand, but now that the intra-state supply is falling short of demand this is not looking as good as it once appeared...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Texas is full. Please don't move here.

<comment><USER15> This carries more weight than the article. In the same direction. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> As a minor aside, I wonder how long it will be before certain counties in Cali start to talk about leaving the state.

<comment><USER17> Some counties in California have been talking about leaving the state for a long time: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Jefferson>

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Has the author ever spent time in both states? Why California?

A) Proximity to the beach / ocean / in-and-out. B) If you've ever spent a long weekend in texas you are probably qualified to be a Entomologist. I picked up a car in Dallas two years ago and discovered that June Bugs and Praying Mantises were not just illustrations in national geographic! C) California girls.

Most of the so-called "worst places to do business" polls are built on financial models, how the !%!@% does that translate!</comment>


Tell HN: Our iPhone app, Broadersheet, is now on sale [50% off] - <AUTHOR> http://iphone.broadersheet.com/2010/01/50-percent-off-broadersheet/

<comment><USER3> I'll be unpopular for saying this, but I really hate this web 2.0 marketing speak.

Starting sentences with "Hi" or "Hey", sentences like "Drop me an email", using unneccessary hyper words like "love", "excited", "we can't wait", "sneak peak".

Then this fake chuminess like "I'm nursing a hangover", "my cat typed this", "love to hear from you", smileys.

And then this self-deprecation: "it's really tough to know if we are on track", "our little app".

Guys, get this : this type of language no longer has the effect it had when it was used for the first time. This has become business speak - and real people don't talk that way.

I'm not a guy that likes referencing other people on this site, but take a look at the language that patio11 uses on his website. This is a normal way to talk to people.

Stop talking to people like they are a bit stupider than you, but to get to their level, you need to self-deprecate. It's not effective. That would be the gripe I have about your website. And apologies for being harsh, but my asthma is acting up.

<comment><USER4> In the context of a blog, I frankly think you are wrong. I think it's important to remember that the language in their blog doesn't match their marketing message at all - if their front page emulated the same tone, I would be with you 100%. But it doesn't.

I don't think broad claims of "effective" really make much sense either. It seems silly to view someone's blog message from an outsiders perspective and make claims to it's effect on sales. Did it turn you off to purchasing their product? Do you know how many people it turned off? Were those people even in the market to buy it in the first place?

Patrick also uses vastly different tones in his marketing messages and his blog. His blog is about programming & business topics + the occasional silly thing. His marketing is a rock-solid battle-worn message tested over hundreds of iterations. Do you think that's ineffective?

There is plenty of place in the world for companies that act like humans are running it. A blog is an appropriate channel for this to happen. Zappos has shown that a human-sounding company approach can work. You are welcome to your opinions - they very well may be right - but I would rather see the stimulation of discussion instead of brash opinions. Saying "this sucks, don't do it" doesn't get these guys any closer to a better business.

<comment><USER3> You're right in that I should not say it sucks. What I should say is that I dislike it. I don't speak this way in real life, and none of my friends do, so when I see this cheery chirpy LA girl tone, it annoys me to no end. It does not feel real.

I've read material that is humanized, but it sounds real. It sounds like someone really means what they are saying. Like what you wrote. Or what I am writing back to you. We are clearly human beings talking to each other. I would not reply to your statement with a collection of over-hyper adjectives : you would think I was strange.

I did not look at the frontpage, and my gripe is with the blog. It reads to me like a trend language. I see a lot of designers doing this on their blog - likely because other designers are doing it also. To me, it comes across as fake.

Maybe there are people who love being spoken to in that manner. I just don't know such people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We'd love feedback on the app or website. Here are some promo codes (US only): 7TA7TR33LNRL XXKT3P9JMAEM HAKMJHK6EF74

<comment><USER5> Just grabbed the last code. Syncing it over now, some impressions in a bit.

EDIT: My main complaint so far: No mobilized version of the article? I'm used to Byline and Instapaper, which both cache text-only versions of the page. If it went to the mobile version of the site, I'd be fine with that, or if it ran it through something like Instapaper's Mobileizer[1] that would be nice - <USER2> an option to view the original of course.

It also crashed on me once while reading a rather meaty article from Engadget[2], and didn't appear to save any of my read/favorite status.

I'm not sure there really needs to be the different ways of sorting the news that up-front (Date/Source/Topic), but it does mirror the iPod app and it'll take some using before I'm really sure - maybe I'll like it more than I think.

The article selection seems decent, although that'll really take a few days to learn my preferences I assume.

Overall I'd say a decent idea that's executed well - a few tweaks and bug fixes would seal the deal for me, I think.

[1] <http://www.instapaper.com/extras> [2] [http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/12/engadgets-gear-of- ces-201...](http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/12/engadgets-gear-of-ces-2010/)

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you.

we'll look into mobilizing content via instapaper. we really don't want to strip adverts out - wish more providers offered mobile versions of content. We've had _lots_ of feedback about how slow articles are to load, so we might be forced to optimize the content via instapaper or such.

thanks for the engadget link, we can totally fix that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not quite sure if this is a problem with only my computer - I assume that iPhone graphic on the right is supposed to play some sort of animation as when I scroll over it, it takes me through the frames, but at no time did it actually play on its own.

Safari 4.04 on Leopard

<comment><USER7> It's a QuickTime movie, so if you scroll over it, it actually scrubs through the file in Pause mode. To play it, you can click on it and press Space.

I think that if you let it load completely, it will start by itself. (which you can't know because the toolbar is absent)

I agree that it's a weird UX.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, that should change.

<comment><AUTHOR> weird. should stream using the default quicktime thing (eg: asap)

will fix - thanks for the heads up.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Bit of Context on Trump, NATO, and Germany - <AUTHOR> http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/01/bit-context-trump-nato.html <comment><USER2> The commenters rip into the author for putting his tribalism aside long enough to be sensible on one subject. That site is quite the cesspool.</comment>


Ask HN: Who knows a founder of Teamreporterapp? I want to buy this project - <AUTHOR> Hey. I'm looking to chat with a founder of http://www.teamreporterapp.com.
A couple of months ago he shut down the project. I was a customer and really liked the solution. As i know his name is Luke Davis. There is a twitter account he owns @lukedvs.
I tried to send emails to two addresses, tried to chat through Twitter, but nothing.
Does anyone know how to find him? Thanks. <comment><USER2> Make an offer to buy the domain from the Domain name provider, they'll also send them contact emails. Also, go through the wayback machine to find alternate phone numbers. [https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.teamreporterapp.com](https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.teamreporterapp.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for this ideas! I will try.</comment></comment>