Nimrod: C + Macros + GC - <AUTHOR> http://nimrod-code.org/index.html <comment><USER2> This is the closest to my ideal language I've ever seen. Elegant and expressive syntax of Python, statically typed with automatic type inference, compiled to native code, garbage collected, macros, AST manipulation, very comprehensive "batteries included" standard library. Definitely worth a closer look!

</comment><comment><USER3> This reminds me a lot of D. It's low-level, GCed, essentially intended as a nicer C/C++.

But I think it suffers from the same fatal flaw that D does: you have to semi- manually translate C headers that you want to use. Like D, it provides an automated tool to help, but the translated headers will inevitably lag their original counterparts.

As another commenter below noted, the var and proc thing is also redundant and annoying. However, the ability to compile to C (and, as a result, to easily cross-compile) is really nice.

<comment><USER4> > But I think it suffers from the same fatal flaw that D does: you have to > semi-manually translate C headers that you want to use. Like D, it provides > an automated tool to help, but the translated headers will inevitably lag > their original counterparts.

I can't think of a better alternative. Can you suggest one? The fact that Nimrod compiles to C already is a huge plus, it makes wrapping C code very easy.

<comment><USER5> If the language has "A real package system" why not allow for packages written in other languages? If a C build system can look at a .h and a .lib and figure out what symbols are exported and use them then I seen no reason why a compiler for xyz could not also do that. If you reused OSS projects like Clang it may not even be a monumental effort.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nimrod looks a _lot_ like someone took Borland's ObjectPascal and removed the begin/end block semantics in favour of whitespace indentation.

For example, they use the "var: type" syntax; the syntax for declaring classes is nearly identical; "case [value] of" is right out of Pascal, as is the "0..2" range syntax. They refer to "procedures" as opposed to functions. They even use naming conventions from ObjectPascal: "T" as a prefix for types (eg., TChannel), "P" for the Nimrod equivalent to pointers (eg., PChannel is a "ref TChannel"), "F" for class members.

I would not be surprised if the author was an old Turbo Pascal/Delphi hand.

<comment><USER7> On first sight it resembled Python, while a second look revealed lots of Pascal legacy... Really what's the deal-maker?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What's really amazing about this language is that until only recently it has been developed solely by one person in his spare time no less. It is competing with the likes of Rust and Go which have pretty big companies behind them.

<comment><USER8> There are quite a few very performant languages like that. I would like to list two, ATS and Felix. I commented on Felix today at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6274322](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6274322)

A good HN day for language enthusiasts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > The Nimrod Compiler can also generate C++ or Objective C for easier > interfacing.

This really is an inconvenient time for the weekend to be ending.

</comment><comment><USER10> This looks good. However according to the web framework benchmark its performance looks pretty underwhelming, below that of Python and Ruby:

[http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r6&hw=i7...](http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r6&hw=i7&test=json)

Has anyone used this in production?

<comment><USER4> Hey, guy behind Jester here (The web framework being benchmarked). Please don't let these results deter you from Nimrod. Not only is Jester alpha-grade software, but when I submitted these benchmarks I did not have much time to properly utilize Nimrod's concurrency features (I was in the middle of exams). My first submission was not parallel at all and I quickly corrected it so that multiple processes were simply spawned (with no regard to the amount of CPU cores) which is definitely not ideal and the results show this. So please don't blame Nimrod for this, blame me instead.

For better evidence of Nimrod's power take a look at these benchmarks: [http://togototo.wordpress.com/2013/08/23/benchmarks-round- tw...](http://togototo.wordpress.com/2013/08/23/benchmarks-round-two-parallel- go-rust-d-scala-and-nimrod/)

<comment><USER11> Hi dom96. Thanks again for contributing the Jester tests! I hope you get some time to continue your work on Jester. We'd like to have Nimrod represented properly in the results.

Are there other Nimrod web frameworks (and importantly, domain experts with those frameworks) that could be contributed for Round 7?

<comment><USER4> No problem! Thanks for accepting my contributions! I hope so too, but maybe with Nimrod's recent surge in popularity someone can give me a hand :)

Sadly, I am not aware of any other web frameworks. Speaking of Round 7, do you have an ETA for it?

<comment><USER11> Not yet, we've been busy with other projects. But I want us to aim for mid- September.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I actually discovered this yesterday and spent Saturday morning learning about it. I really like most of the syntax, especially the "var/const/let" distinction together with "if/when". I'm sort of wish that Rust and Go would just copy that. The semantics seemed to be up to par with this generation of potential C replacements, but not any better than the others.

<comment><USER13> Rust has let mut, let and static which seem to correspond fairly closely to var, let and const.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I hate that this language looks so good. Fast benchmarks, good library, readable code, documentation. I don't want to learn another language! Now I have to …

</comment><comment><USER15> Just when i started reading tutorials about Rust this comes up... Looks nice, but does it also have concurrency built in (Rust tasks, Erlangs processes, message passing, etc.)?

<comment><USER16> From the second paragraph on the linked page:

> Beneath a nice infix/indentation based syntax with a powerful (AST based, > hygienic) macro system lies a semantic model that supports a soft realtime > GC on thread local heaps. Asynchronous message passing is used between > threads, so no "stop the world" mechanism is necessary.

<comment><USER15> Yes, so not. I've found the actor module, but it's based on threads so no "lightweigth" and not as powerful as the networked, lightweight erlang processes. I'd really love to see that in a new language, especially since Rust and Nimrod are the first ones in a while i really like from the syntax point of view..

<comment><USER17> Erlang seems to pay a small performance penalty for that ability though. The VM is not allowed to run more than a few thousand instructions without checking for a signal to task switch.

But if that kind of guaranteed cooperation isn't needed, I'd expect that lightweight threads could be added to a language like this in a straightforward way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder what other wonderful languages I've never heard of. Really, please share!

<comment><USER19> Kitten, a statically typed, globally type-inferred, GC-less functional stack language, with opt-in layout-based syntax and an effect system to separate pure and impure operations.

Disclaimer: I wrote this; it's nowhere near complete, but not bad to play around with. We're working toward a release in a few weeks, to include some missing language features and a new x86_64 runtime.

[https://github.com/evincarofautumn/kitten](https://github.com/evincarofautumn/kitten)

[http://kittenlang.org/](http://kittenlang.org/)

<comment><USER20> Can I ask you one thing: why did you decide to write a stack-based programming language?

I'm really curious, as I personally see nothing good with them. The same kind of non-mathematical syntax as LISP (`1 2 +` as opposed to `+ 1 2`), without any of the goodness (code is data).

<comment><USER19> In Factor, code _is_ data. Remember, though, that there are many sources of goodness in a language. As for your actual question, I decided to write a stack-based language because:

• They can be implemented very efficiently on real hardware. The stack-based VM is well established as an implementation technique for non–stack-based languages.

• Like in Lisp, the simple structure makes them suitable for useful visualisations beyond the program text. Static typing creates even more cool possibilities for such analysis.

• There is fertile ground for new research, and applying existing theory to these languages for the first time—particularly type and effect systems.

• It's just a lot of fun. :)

<comment><USER20> I agree with all of those, to me is just seems like transformation into stack- based language should be made as part of the compilation process, not written down by the programmer. Maybe it's just me, I totally admit that I'm not used to thinking in concatenative languages as I've never used one, but mathematics, with named variables and control- and data-flow denoted by functions or sequential lines of operations, seems the most natural notation to read, write and think in.

<comment><USER19> I totally understand. In fact, Kitten has named variables for that reason. You can write code that looks imperative, expressiony, or dataflowy, according to taste. Here's a silly example:

        // Implicitly thread state between functions.
        def promptInt:
          ": " cat prompt
          readInt
          fromSome

        // Write stacky code if you want.
        def squareDiff:
          - dup *

        // Use locals as much as you need to.
        "x0" promptInt ->x0
        "y0" promptInt ->y0
        "x" promptInt ->x
        "y" promptInt ->y

        x0 x squareDiff ->a
        y0 y squareDiff ->b

        a b + sayInt

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Reading the tutorial is indeed very pleasant. I have to say however, that from such a new language I would ask for more correct string handling as opposed to the let-me-sidestep-encoding-issues-and-still-call-it-UTF8 that's going on.

Defining characters as 8 bit is not quite correct (you will get char variables holding a fraction of a character), treating strings as arrays of characters by conversion also isn't (now you have an array of partial characters) and ignoring the encoding (just assuming UTF8) is a sure cause for annoying bugs - something the rest of the language goes great lengths to avoid.

I've only read the tutorial so far. Maybe the library fixes some of the issues - we'll see. The thing is just that if you start adding metadata to your sting types (they do encode the length (in what? Characters? Partial characters? Bytes?)), then why not also at least add an encoding (to help programmers not to mix strings of different encodings)? Why do everything right and then weasel out when you get to strings?

Sorry. I'm totally obsessive what string encodings is concerned :-)

<comment><USER22> Sounds like you'd be a great person to join the team as chief string theorist. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> As anyone tried it for embedded code on microcontrollers ?

It looks usable for soft realtime, almost keeping speed and control of C and adding ease (and fun) of coding.

GC is tunable and there are compilation options for embedded systems ([http://nimrod-code.org/nimrodc.html#nimrod-for-embedded- syst...](http://nimrod-code.org/nimrodc.html#nimrod-for-embedded-systems)).

<comment><USER24> I haven't tried this, but I see that the Nimrod 0.9.0 release notes (from about a year ago) include this item:

> The stdlib can now be avoided to a point where C code generation for 16bit > micro controllers is feasible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've been tempted by this one several times. I may have to play around with it and SDL2.

One thing that gets me, though, is the var keyword in a statically typed language. Why say "var thing: string" instead of "string thing"?

I think that consistent, explicit declaration of types is much cleaner and easier to read than this recurring mixture of type inference and annotation.

<comment><USER26> One point in favor of inference is that it gives you less to read, and what the compiler can infer, the reader usually can, too. On the other side, you could say you shouldn't _have_ to infer while you read and having types in front of you reduces cognitive load.

I bet the folks building these languages with inference probably and wouldn't mind having fewer annotations (and being more consistent, in a sense) if they could. It's just that to get rid of some of these annotations you have to make deep changes to the language, like OCaml's polymorphic functions, and that may be inconsistent with their design goals or just hard.

Obviously folks won't agree on whether inference is a great thing or not. Whatever one's used to usually seems easier to read. I've worked more in dynamically typed langauges than statically, and (so) languages with inference feel more like home.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> There was something similar to this about two weeks ago here, with vars and lambdas in c99. It was less of a full blown language and more just functions and preprocessor definitions to be used in C. I am having trouble finding it now. Does anyone remember the name of this other project? I'd like to check these both out.

<comment><USER28> [https://github.com/orangeduck/libCello](https://github.com/orangeduck/libCello)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Unfortunately the documentation still states that at this point I can choose either threads or a dynamically linked run time library. For an embedded system, static linking isn't much of an option because there are real memory constraints.

It's a shame that a lot of these new languages focus on creating a really great language, but don't seem to give as much time to the practical usage of the language (for example, GHC did not support cross-compilation at all until very recently).

Ironing some of those fundamental issues out before adding some of the fancier features could probably really boost interest in the language and programmer uptake.

</comment><comment><USER30> They ported the Erlang scheduler model to a C based language, nice.

</comment><comment><USER31> On the Clay thread a while back, people liked my list of systems-oriented languages that I've been compiling for a while. I can't go a good copy-paste and edit job on my iPad, so I'll just link to the thread here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6117456](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6117456) . A bunch of other people came in with updates and other entries for the list. Included were of course Clay, Nimrod, Rust, and D, but also Deca, BitC, ATS, Habit (a Haskell dialect), and others.

<comment><USER32> I don't know anything about systems languages, but it seems that there is _a lot_ of effort getting put into C/C++ alternatives, and many bold efforts at that. But maybe that is just a historical bias, because so few remembers the failed (popularity vice) systems languages efforts of yesteryear?

<comment><USER31> I'm only 21, but I definitely get the impression things have picked up in that area in the last few years.

<comment><USER33> Before C became mainstream, Modula-2 and many Pascal dialects like Apple and Turbo Pascal could already fulfil the same role with better type safety and Go compile times in 16 bit systems.

However they lacked the bundling to a commercial OS like UNIX, hence C grew in importance, because developers tend to use the languages supported by the OS vendors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Can someone explain why is this so much better than c++?

<comment><USER35> Nobody can explain to a dedicated C++ programmer why a new language is better than C++. I have tried for more than a decade many times and all I have ever gotten across has apparently been a "wah wah wah" noise like the adults in Peanuts.

Because C++ is multi-paradigm, all paradigms are possible within it (although they may not be syntactically easy or have reasonable error messages, etc etc). Therefore, either C++ is the obviously the best language (to its partisans) or it is a hellish agglomeration of mutually contradictory confusing crap that takes years to begin to understand (to its detractors). Unfortunately, those two camps each find their position obvious, and seem to be unable to communicate with one another.

std::cout << "This does what??!" << endl;

<comment><USER36> I dunno - I have about 15 years C++ experience, and if anything the better I have become at the language the less I like it...

Having said that any language with a GC is unlikely to supplant C++. I would have thought that anything that could get away with using GC is already not using C++. Ergo what will finally kill C++ in all its final domains is IMO some sort of better C. Maybe Rust, if they sort out their non-mandatory GC.

<comment><USER33> Having used GC enabled systems languages already in the 90's, I am the opinion it is more a generation issue.

Technology changes fast, but humans take generations to be convinced of something.

Sometimes the only way for something to get adopted is when the luddites no longer have a word to say.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Ugh, the community is barely alive and it's an unwieldy collection of non- orthogonal constructs. Generics and a few whiz-bang features doesn't paper over the sins upon sins. I see this project cutting back features or dying under the weight of crushing unmaintainability. (sad.)

<comment><USER38> >> ...unwieldy collection of non-orthogonal constructs...

>> ...doesn't paper over the sins upon sins...

Please elaborate. I didn't see any of that and honestly don't know what "non- orthogonal constructs" means. I'm no language design expert but would like to know what, to you, are the obvious deficiencies.

<comment><USER37> Non-orthogonality: Multiple features that accomplish nearly the same result in different ways.

For a language maintainer, this is another piece that will have to be supported, troubleshooted and documented.

The other problem for users is that it gives a sense of confusion and uncertainty (Paradox of Choice) about the correctness of a program that may lead to multiple refactorings that don't add any value. Also, more features require more learning and makes programs harder to understand.

The goals of any good language should be correctness and understandability. Arguably, Python learned the lessons from Perl. But there are many different languages, and some are better in different instances.

What Nimrod turns into will be hard to say, but Go and Erlang need more competition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I don't understand why Nimrod has to mostly look like Python, but then make all kinds of innovations in syntax and formatting which have nothing to do with performance.

<comment><USER7> And I find these "innovation" mostly solving problems that didn't have to exist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I know exactly what I'm going to be doing next week!

</comment><comment><USER41> Now if only it would offer immutability and lightweight threads (like Erlang's processes)...

</comment><comment><USER42> I wonder how good this would be as a game engine.

</comment><comment><USER43> My favorite example from their tutorial:

      if yes("Should I delete all your important files?"):
        echo("I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.")
      else:
        echo("I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.")

</comment><comment><USER44> What would be really killer is if it could have bindings to Java. Then one could take advantage of the JVM being present everywhere w/o having to do a separate compilation for every platform.

<comment><USER45> Note that nimrod compiles to C, and your JVM may be implemented in C or C++. So for the measly gain of not having to run a command on the destination platform (nimrod c name.nim) you are bringing in the runtime performance drawbacks of the whole JVM and requiring a further layer of abstraction.

Plus bytecode doesn't mean a program will run at all, look at all the java programs which run on android without modification, oh, wait...

<comment><USER44> I'm in CompBio and the sense I get is that it's a lot easier to get someone to try your tool if all you have to do is provide them the jar which they just have to click on and it runs. Whereas with compilation, you first have to make sure you have all the platforms covered and then force the potential user to select the right executable for the platform.

<comment><USER46> Just distribute the source.

I'm in CompBio too and actively avoid software distributed as just jar files. Give me the source so I can fix your (probably) broken software.

(Yes, I have a low opinion of the quality of software in my field.)

<comment><USER44> I don't think forcing potential users to compile a program is going lower the barrier much. A lot of the users could be biologists and they would likely not know how to compile the source. I do agree that the software should be open source.

<comment><USER46> > A lot of the users could be biologists

In my experience, biologists are allergic to the command line. They need web interfaces.

In the case where they don't mind using the command line, providing Linux x64 binaries (along with the source) is plenty sufficient.

Note that I'm not saying they _shouldn 't_ distribute the jar if that's the kind of game they want to play. I'm saying they shouldn't restrict themselves to distributing a jar.

> I do agree that the software should be open source.

Me too. But it's not an ideological point. I wasn't kidding when I said that, in all probability, I'll have to fix whatever software I'm using. Or at the very least, read the source code to understand what it is that they've implemented. (You'd think it'd be clear from the methods section in their paper...)

/rant

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Dear everyone, please stop using C as a compile target. Thanks.

<comment><USER48> why?

<comment><USER49> One good argument I can think of would be compile time. C compiles slowly compared to almost every other language not C++. And of course you get the C compile time on top of the compile to C time, so I expect the Nimrod compile chain to be quite slow.

Doesn't mean that I am generally opposed to compiling to C, it's often a good trade-off.

<comment><USER50> A good solution to this is to go with a language like C-- (if you are too scared of LLVM).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Recipes for Digital Boondocking? - <AUTHOR>

In the United States, the Department of Interior is said to maintain vast amounts of public land which is free for use by citizens prepared to survive outside the infrastructure the majority depend on.
I want to know:
Who has succeeded in living on this public land for 30-90 days at a stretch, while still conducting full-capacity F/OSS development and/or business operations based purely on the internet?
Where ( roughly ) did you do this? When is the best season there, and what are the main weather or terrain concerns to be aware of?
It seems like 4G or 4G LTE access would be key to this. I can't see satellite being that workable. Right? I'm looking for areas which have a strong enough signal, while still being remote... ideally 50-100 miles from the nearest major city.
What type of vehicle(s) or dwellings worked best for this, and what type of computer and networking equipment?
How did you produce or obtain energy, food, and water? <comment><USER2> I've heard you can camp in national parks/forests for weeks at a time but must move periodically.

<comment><AUTHOR> So far, per the Bureau of Land Management, at least in the New Mexico/Texas/Oklahoma/Kansas territory ( for example ), it seems the law is one may occupy some/most undeveloped zones for 14 days at a stretch ( within one 28-day period, whether in one shot or split up over the 28 days ) but then must move 25 miles away after that before returning. Presumably 28 days later. There are other stipulations like no less than 800 feet from a water source, no less than 300 feet from an established road. Etc.

Actually all these figures, except the number of days, seem to vary from source to source. It'd be nice if there's someone who has experience who knows... and where 4G LTE access is still intact in these dispersed camping territories.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Where can I find more information about this?

</comment><comment><USER4> Why would one do that?

<comment><AUTHOR> "why?" is a preferential or motivation diagnosing question, which is subjective. But "why not?" is nearly rhetorical here.

To have the talents and capabilities of the digital world, able to immerse in any culture, be all but completely self-contained without any geodependency and without any real reason to be built on presuppositions of the world we naturally replace/displace... is a perspective and place of objectivity we really cannot afford to let pass by en masse. Not to tangent on this part: but we talk about cryptocurrencies, but most of the time that's just being converted into a pre-existing form of exchange and with it, continuation of a pre-determined end-result context. The world isn't going to change because we never step out of it completely... we still fit within most of the trappings somewhere along the way.

True, some roles need brick & mortar, but how many of us sit behind a desk when we could just as easily be out in a field or sitting in the very center of whatever our focus is: on site with the very people we're developing for, or operating on behalf of, etc...

There is a "participatory anthropology" piece here, definitely an agile methodology multiplier by exposure to the domain... both with removal of insulation and a closing of the gap between the environment we actually do exist in, and our otherwise parallel universe of artificial ( and for that reason highly precarious and/or compromising ) contexts?

This is a very long conversation, I only said the above so saying "why not" wouldn't be interpreted as curt or flippant... but really, "why not"? How easy is it to loose touch with the real plot from within our silos? Are the water- tight ( or only semi-permeable ) compartments between various people and communities worth it, or are they mostly a liability? Why not be mostly self- determinate by default, able to do whatever we want to do on our own steam... and then receive and carry out a task. So often the task comes in first, then on the way to our "end" the "means" is just bolted on from not precedent but assumption and norm, which is the very thing we most disrupt by introducing digital systems and thought into an already moving organic world, not to mention one with history already in progress, and disproportionate clumping together of people purely because that's where electricity, sewer, water, and now internet access and creature comforts are already setup. We can even keep most of the amenities! I'm just saying, how are people currently carrying out this digital nomad way of living while still remaining completely on the edge of their field, meaning: completely equipped, not lacking anything we had in our cubicles and office complexes... except dependency, pre-determination of what the "form" of our organizations and products and cultures will be, even a little bit.</comment></comment>


Netgear Zero-Day Allows Full Takeover of Dozens of Router Models - <AUTHOR> https://threatpost.com/netgear-zero-day-takeover-routers/156744/ <comment><USER2> Damn, I was excited but sadly mine isn't on the list. :( It would be so nice if I could have root on devices I buy.</comment>


Russian hackers targeted Ukrainian company at center of impeachment storm: cybe - <AUTHOR> http://feeds.reuters.com/~r/reuters/topNews/~3/G16GGQTDvsY/russian-hackers-targeted-ukrainian-company-at-center-of-impeachment-storm-cybersecurity-firm-idUSKBN1ZD0EX <comment><USER2> Could you please not truncate titles in this way, leaving unreadable bits at the end? You've submitted a lot of these, and the idea on HN is for titles to be well-formed.

<comment><USER3> If it's named like a bot and posts like a bot, it might actually _be_ a bot.</comment></comment>


Peruvian Mummies and the World's Columbian Exposition of Chicago, 1893 - <AUTHOR> http://histanthro.org/fair-necropolis-the-peruvian-dead-the-first-american-ph-d-in-anthropology-and-the-worlds-columbian-exposition-of-chicago-1893/ <comment><USER2> The most recent episode of Timeless took place at this World's Fair. It was a bit educational on the time period. Along with some random trivia that was mentioned, these historical people were portrayed:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._H._Holmes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._H._Holmes) \- Serial killer - Also mentioned in the 2nd episode of Sherlock this season

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_Hayden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_Hayden) \- First female architect graduate from MIT

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Houdini](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Houdini) \- Needs no intro?

I wish more history could be worked into regular television shows.</comment>


Memes strike back: Gerbils, gay blood elves, and Glenn Beck - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/09/memes-strike-back-gerbils-gay-blood-elves-and-glenn-beck.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss

<comment><USER2> It was worth it just for the discovery of this legal principle: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_moron_in_a_hurry></comment>


Zoho Remotely free for remote workers - <AUTHOR> https://www.zoho.com/remotely/ <comment><AUTHOR> Free until July 1, 2020. Available only in the US.</comment>


Show HN: LSTMs for deep neural sentiment analysis, running in your browser - <AUTHOR> http://dracula.sentimentron.co.uk/sentiment-demo/ <comment><AUTHOR> Now also available as a Node.js module: [https://www.npmjs.com/package/dracula- sentiment](https://www.npmjs.com/package/dracula-sentiment)

Feedback welcome!

</comment><comment><USER2> Are u planning chrome extension of this anytime soon.. If it can read content of a link and show sentiment emoji or symbol for Google search or Facebook feed

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not on my radar at the moment but it might be a fun experiment! I've often thought that sentiment might be useful in the context of parental controls: whether you could de-emphasise links or messages which might contain distressing content.

<comment><USER2> I see you have not used any standard libs to do NLP, Deep learning like tensorflow, theano etc! What linear algebra and stats skills came into play to come up with your own ML code. Im new to ML and learning pre-requisites for it right now - curious to know.

<comment><AUTHOR> To answer the spirit of your question: the really interesting thing about deep models is that once you've developed and trained them the forward pass is really easy to deploy. The forward-only version I did here relies on numeric.js[1] for the basic matrix operations (addition/dot-product etc). The really useful and amazing thing about both TensorFlow/Theano is that they can automatically differentiate the model so that training becomes tractable, meaning the actual linear algebra concepts aren't too hard to grasp. Aside from that, you'll need lots of time, a bit of money, and patience: I first started adapting Dracula from a tutorial[2] (although the structure of the model is different) about a year ago, but things didn't really get started until November last year after I'd bought a decent GPU (a GTX 980). Happy to answer any more questions :D

[1] [http://numericjs.com](http://numericjs.com)

[2] [http://deeplearning.net/tutorial/lstm.html](http://deeplearning.net/tutorial/lstm.html)

<comment><USER2> Really appreciate your answer. :)

how much was performance difference b/w cpu vs gpu ? what is kind of insight you gained from this experience ? Say for eg - a newbie like me would do sentiment analysis using say IBM watson api ? So doing this by yourself must have helped in some ways - a blog post kind of thing will help newbies. Thank you.

<comment><AUTHOR> The performance difference between CPU vs GPU is very substantial: the consumer-class Nvidia GTX 980 I use can deliver about 4612 GFLOPS [1] of raw performance, whereas the i7-6700k CPU I've got can only deliver about 113 GFLOPS. Whilst those numbers aren't really comparable (and hence the difference is not as large in practice) you still get a substantial speedup, maybe 10x-15x (this is only especially important during the training phase). The insight I've gained is that the kinds of APIs that Google/Microsoft/IBM give you are definitely not magic and they _can_ be replicated + tweaked to a reasonable degree, and actually I think the concentration of natural language understanding / visual recognition / machine learning and the datasets needed to make them work into the hands of a few very well-financed corporations is both a good thing (because it lets you get up and running quickly and the predictions are continuously updated) and a bit of a bad thing (since these types of applications are going to become a more essential part of computing, and for reasons of cost, performance and customisability). I've also written a bit about my experiences with Theano versus TensorFlow[3].

[1] [http://techgage.com/article/intels-skylake- core-i7-6700k-a-p...](http://techgage.com/article/intels-skylake- core-i7-6700k-a-performance-look/)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_900_series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_900_series)

[3] [https://medium.com/@sentimentron/faceoff-theano-vs- tensorflo...](https://medium.com/@sentimentron/faceoff-theano-vs- tensorflow-e25648c31800)

<comment><USER2> Thank you - this interaction will help me as I move further in ML.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Pentagon to Consider Cyberattacks Acts of War - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/01/us/politics/01cyber.html?_r=0

<comment><USER2> Then judging by this:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6755471](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6755471)

The US government by its own definition is now at war with its own people.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great. So if US does cyberattacks, that's an act of war, too, right? Or is it one just when others do it against US?</comment>


Did Apple Ban Best Buy from selling the iPad 2? - <AUTHOR> http://www.edibleapple.com/did-apple-ban-best-buy-from-selling-the-ipad-2/

<comment><USER2> no. bad rumor.</comment>


Carrier pigeons are faster than rural broadband [2010] - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/8007897/Carrier-pigeons-are-faster-than-rural-broadband.html

<comment><USER2> ...if only ATT would introduce carrier pigeons; I'd finally have data throughput in the mission with my iPhone! ....But then again, it might end up being a +$20 option; and you d'have to sign-up for a 2y carrier-pigeon plan ;)</comment>


Reverse Engineering Ahmed Mohamed's Clock and Ourselves - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.artvoice.com/techvoice/2015/09/17/reverse-engineering-ahmed-mohameds-clock-and-ourselves/ <comment><USER2> Oh boy Ahmed's Clock reminds me when I brought the (working) guts of a transistor radio to school in 3rd or 4th grade. The teachers proclaimed that I made a radio and had me show it to everyone. I ascribe this to the fact that most people have not ever seen the insides of any electronic device.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm more than a little bothered by this.

Repackaging things is totally a classic and valid thing to do. People do that with everything from custom cars, audio equipment, to yes clocks. Kid you not there is a whole smallish subculture of making clocks of things.

<comment><USER4> _I 'm more than a little bothered by this._

I'm way more bothered by the way everyone has just assumed that Ahmed's teacher and all the police are clearly racist idiots refusing to back down in the face of supposedly obvious misunderstanding, which seems FAR less obvious the more evidence comes out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't think it has much bearing on the reaction to bringing the clock to his school, but man it really bothered me when I saw a picture of it - who adds a 9v connector like that to what would almost certainly be a first or second shot at an electronics project? (If it were only powered by 9v, like a small headphone amp, sure, but who's that concerned with backup power on a learning project?)

<comment><USER6> So he found a wrecked clock in the kerbside junk, got it running, then tidied it up by stuffing it into an old pencil case.

Maybe he even wrecked it himself some time earlier.

Sounds like a reasonable project for a teenager. Why are you making such a fuss?

<comment><USER4> _Why are you making such a fuss?_

He's not making a fuss, the fuss was already made! Even the President tweeted about it. Accusing someone of fussing for asking a reasonable question is hostile and dishonest rhetoric. Indeed, seeking out and offering relevant evidence to question the sensational outrage narrative is doing what _EVERY responsible journalist_ covering this story should have done in the first place.

Ahmed's clock looked suspicious and he was told by another teacher not to show it to anyone else. But he did anyway. His responses in the interview are rather odd and don't offer the sort of simple factual explanations like " _I found a wrecked clock in the kerbside junk, got it running, then tidied it up by stuffing it into an old pencil case_ ". He didn't say anything about _why_ he chose that particular pencil case, just that it's a common thing you can buy off of Amazon. The police report said his behavior was suspicious. Normally I'd discount a police report as being lies, especially with blatantly subjective words like "suspicious", but in this case that just happens to fit in with all the other facts that I've seen, which ARE suspicious. The final fact being that somehow, CAIR was right there immediately to promote the religious persecution and bigotry angle.

I'm not saying this sort of circumstantial evidence is enough to prove that Ahmed intended to commit a bomb hoax, but it's more than enough to demolish the outrageous and sensational media narrative of a poor precocious tinkerer who is being oppressed by the evil bigots in bigot-filled Texas who are too bigoted to recognize genius that is so plainly obvious to Mark Zuckerberg, President Obama, and all the rest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Dunno about others, but I think an alarm clock the shape of a scale model time bomb is kind of cool (even more so if it looked like something right out of a video game). I don't see it as particularly dangerous -- it's more on the same level as painting Nerf guns green and black to make them look more realistic.

<comment><USER4> > I don't see it as particularly dangerous

Well, you weren't in the classroom where he set the alarm to go off, were you? So it's not like you're in a position to reasonably judge the reaction.

Suppose he did just take apart an old clock and piece it back together for fun, and didn't specifically try to make it look like a bomb. What was the purpose?

If it had been me, I would have been eager to explain why I chose that particular case. Like maybe-- look "how portable this is" or "look how you can hang this on the wall now" or something like that. Or maybe even just-- "well I was messing around and just happened to have the case so that's why I chose it." I also would have been up front about the fact that all I'd done was dismantled and re-assembled an old clock. I wouldn't have tried to pass it off as an original circuit-board project of my own.

There's nothing like that in this interview: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mW4w0Y1OXE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mW4w0Y1OXE)

Also, as the OP notes, Ahmed makes a comment about using a cable to fasten it shut to make it look less suspicious. OP wonders why would he have been thinking something like that, if he did not know that a suitcase would in fact be suspicious? Sure, such a comment might have been made as some sort of back- rationalization after the whole thing blew up, but along with the other red flags it's a suspicious statement.

And if he did deliberately try to make it look like a bomb and did nothing to assure his teacher and fellow classmates that it was not real, then it's perfectly fair to call it a hoax.</comment></comment>


The Personal Airplane Is Taking Off - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/forget-flying-commercial-the-personal-airplane-is-taking-off-1444330932 <comment><USER2> If you're interested in the concept of personal airplanes replacing commercial flight, I highly recommend "Free Flight" by James Fallows.

There's a lot of things working against the concept. Weather constraints and sport pilot restrictions are logistical issues, but by far the #1 issue is cost. The Transition, Terrefugia, and A5 aren't doing much to solve this by selling for $190-300k, so they definitely won't be changing how the general public travels.

Regardless, I couldn't be happier with my Sport License. For now I can only afford to rent, and not much at that. Were it not for the LSA category though, flying would still just be a wish.

<comment><USER3> It's very difficult to beat the cost, safety and reliability of commercial airlines. If you have $250k burning a hole in your pocket, something like a Cirrus or Corvalis is probably a more useful option for trips up to about 1000nm.

<comment><USER4> That's quite a short trip.

<comment><USER5> Guessing that's Nautical Miles and not Nano Meters.

<comment><USER3> Yes. nm is the standard abbreviation for nautical miles in the aviation world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 2 deaths per hundred thousand hours is really a lot.

So if you're a hobbyist, and you fly a light sport aircraft six hours a week for thirty years, you've got a 20% chance of it killing you. (Right? I haven't had coffee yet.)

<comment><USER7> That's in the ballpark, but 300 hours per year is way, way over the average. Anything over 100 is on the high-end of the range.

Several issues though:

The risk is far from linear. Infrequent pilots have much higher risk per hour.

The number of hours for part 91 (most private flying) flights cannot be reliably determined.

About 75% to 95% of risk is under the control or strong influence of the pilot. Weather, fuel, crew readiness, pre-flight planning and related issues are much more under pilot control (if you're willing to cancel or delay flights) than in comparable car trips. It's extremely rare for another pilot to kill you.

I came up with 9% if you assume two fatals per accident.

Light sport is restricted to day VFR, which is lower risk, other things being equal. Unfortunately, that also saps some utility and pushes you towards taking a late day flight rather than waiting for better night weather. I don't think LSA is viable for transportation, which makes it all the more unusual for someone to fly 300 hours per year.

(Context: I fly about 150-200 hours per year, which is 80+% of our vacation travel. I also read every NTSB fatal report.)

<comment><USER3> If you look at the stats (e.g. the Nall report on AOPA's website), the fatal accidents mainly boil down to two categories: pushing the weather, and low altitude stall/spins, and both of these are mostly down to the pilot.

So if you remove the "accident waiting to happen" category of pilots, the fatal accident rate will likely be much lower. I've heard it said that GA has a similar accident rate to riding motorbikes, which is another activity where the risk mostly depends on the rider.

The type of pilot who is most dangerous is the type-A business owner who feels they have to get to their meeting no matter what the weather. Unfortunately these are the people who will have $250k in their pocket and want to use a plane for transportation. Perhaps the only solution is to have self-flying planes, similar to google's cars. (And of course, they would need to be hacker-proof!)

<comment><USER8> The advice I was given is that, as a private pilot, you should never put yourself in a position where you can't wait out the weather. Making it to your job on Monday or your meeting or whatever is less important than your life and the lives of your passengers. You don't have to go up, but you do have to come down, as the saying goes.

<comment><USER7> Couldn't agree more.

Just this prior weekend, we _had_ to be in Columbus, OH for my inlaw grandparents' 70th wedding anniversary and then I had to be back to head out to Re-invent in Vegas. With the hurricane possibility, we cancelled our plans to use our airplane and booked 3 day advance purchase trips on one carrier to Cleveland (to avoid connections on the east coast), then drive to Columbus, then fly out of Columbus on a different carrier.

Was expensive on its face (4 people, late notice direct flights), but cheaper than risking killing my whole family tangling with weather. Of course, the bad weather didn't end up materializing, but you have to be willing to make those calls frequently to use general aviation for travel to take the "get-there- itis" pressure off.

If you're going to sweat the money for commercial tix/hotels/cabs or are not willing to sit in the FBO weather room and pilots' lounge if you're caught in weather in the middle of a trip, your risk is going to be way higher than it needs to be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What I want is an Airfish ekranoplan [1]. It's got to be much cheaper to run, and the risk of dying is far, far lower. You could probably use if for distance travel if you followed rivers or coasts.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAfm0YtETSE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAfm0YtETSE)</comment>


Frail Older Patients Struggle After Even Minor Operations - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/13/health/frail-elderly-surgery.html <comment><USER2> The way we care for the elderly in hospitals is not working and cannot continue as the population ages. Issues like the one raised are just the surface. We are spending an ever increasing fortune to keep elderly patients alive for just weeks or months, often with poor quality of life.

What this and the article is pointing towards, is that we need to get better at assessing when it's time to move from curative medicine to palliative care. This is not just about advancing medicine, but about our culture and attitude towards the (current) inevitability of death.

<comment><USER3> I did a rotation at a wealthy Bay Area hospital where they routinely put stents in patients in their 80s. Thought of reporting them to medicaid for overbilling but most of the pts were private pay. Hospital has over $4 million dollars worth of art on the walls and a $500k koi pond in the lobby.

<comment><USER4> "Hospital has over $4 million dollars worth of art on the walls and a $500k koi pond in the lobby."

That's one thing I ave noticed in a lot of US hospitals and doctor offices. Everything is very shiny and new and costs a lot of money.

<comment><USER5> It's the invisible hand of the market at work. Obviously, patients are preferring to pay premium for treatment hospitals with expensive art and swanky facilities.

<comment><USER4> I wonder if they preferred it less if they had a way to find out how much the hospital costs before treatment.

<comment> kube-system That would make sense, at least for the people paying the costs themselves.

The economics change with insurance coverage. Once I hit my deductible, why do I care how expensive it is? At that point, might as well get my money's worth out of my insurance company.

The last time I need non-routine care, the only thing I cared about was:

1\. Is this doctor good?

2\. Is this doctor/hospital in-network?

<comment><USER6> "The economics change with insurance coverage. Once I hit my deductible, why do I care how expensive it is? At that point, might as well get my money's worth out of my insurance company"

The money doesn't come from nowhere. If everybody thinks like this, your insurance costs more money.

If you don't pay for your insurance personally, how about just straight up being paid more by your company?

<comment> kube-system Many people do think like that, and it is likely a significant contributing factor to the cost of health insurance.

I do pay for my insurance personally. Health insurance law is somewhat different than most other forms of insurance in that the premium cannot be increased no matter my frequency or magnitude of previous claims. [0]

My marginal use is a merely a rounding error in the context of my health insurer's outlays. Nothing I could do would personally affect my rate. The aggregate of many thousands of people's use determines my rate, and for that, the tragedy of the commons is fully in charge.

[0]: [https://www.healthcare.gov/how-plans-set-your- premiums/](https://www.healthcare.gov/how-plans-set-your-premiums/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> 2 years ago, I had major abdominal surgery. I'd had a similar one in the 80s

They really wanted me out of bed to walk a bit within 12 hours. That first walk, I made it half way to the door of the room.

They focused on getting me out of bed and walking regularly (with a frame for support), no matter how short, and breathing into a device to measure lung capacity (which is almost zero with big hole in your side)

It sucked! A lot! But this was a key part of the recovery process. Being vertical is important for many bodily functions, and the less you can be vertical, the longer the recovery will be

I can't imagine having to do this in another 30 years

<comment><USER8> Hopefully in another 30 years, a machine/robot will gently raise you to a standing position in a way that's optimal for recovery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I once overheard a doctor say something which has always stayed with me, along the lines that after a certain age then once you're off your feet for any length of time, then that in itself puts you in big trouble.

<comment><USER10> Same. I heard something from an RN like "If you break a bone after this age, you have 6 months to live"

Every. Single. Time. since then this has been true in my anecdotal experience. Sometimes I've really regretted mentioning it because I've mentioned it to coworkers sort of casually and then, sure enough, their parent was dead within 6 months of the break.

After the first few came true I said it more seriously like, "Listen, you need to prepare for their death..."

<comment><USER11> At some point your frankness at work is going to come back to bite you. Honestly smarter to just stay quiet. "Your mom's gonna croak by Christmas" tends to not go over well with everyone.

<comment><USER12> Seriously.

The only appropriate thing to see say to a co-worker in that situation is a polite "I'm so sorry to hear about that, I hope your mom feels better soon." Keep the prepare for death conversations for close friends and family. Even if in was a close friend you happened to work with, the workplace is not an appropriate place for such a conversation.

<comment><USER13> Why is it not an appropriate place? What is an appropriate place? Do you get to spend over 2/3 of waking time there?

If you do not wish to discuss it with coworkers, some of whom may or may not be friends, it's your choice to raise them or not. Focusing the attention on important matters could be done tactfully, which is very different from not talking about things.

If it's by fiat, there is an ulterior motive of "think happy thoughts, preferably shallow". There are such workspaces. There are also those that keep grave silence by fiat or unspoken convention.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Now that I'm over 70, I won't be having prostate surgery. Or surgery for anything else that won't likely kill me within a few years.

Edit: If you would, in my circumstances, please share why.

<comment><USER15> Hm, I just looked into this after my friend's father-in-law was found to have advanced prostate cancer. It is, in general, very slow acting.

Current standards for treatment are based on how advanced the cancer is and what the patient's life expectancy would be in the absence of cancer.

For a small cancer, because of the slow pace of the cancer, it's common to do nothing ("watchful waiting") or take androgen suppressants. For a cancer large enough to be viewed as threatening in the more short-to-middle term, you'd usually go for radiation therapy if you expect the patient to die within 10 years, and surgery if you expect the patient to last longer than that.

The reason for the radiation-surgery divide is that the very unpleasant side effects of the radiation generally show up about 10 years after treatment. (Whereas the side effects of surgery show up immediately and, hopefully, get better over time.)

The father-in-law in question is in his late 60s, but would be expected to live into his 80s if he were otherwise healthy. His father reached the age of 95. So I can understand why everyone recommended surgery in his case.

No real bottom line here, but I hope this was helpful to someone.

<comment><USER14> Thanks, that's pretty much my perspective.

Although I'd likely opt out of androgen suppressants. In my experience, life without testosterone was unpleasant. My arthritis was worse, and I was prone to tendonitis. I lost muscle mass, and got fatter. I became borderline diabetic. My acne got much worse. And I lost all interest in sex.

Testosterone supplementation reversed all of that.

<comment><USER15> Yes, I am uncomfortable with androgen suppressants for the same reasons -- they have quite far-reaching effects, including some dramatic personality effects. However, doctors tend to view them as minimally invasive (which I agree with) and harmless (which I don't).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There really is no such thing as a minor operation. And anything requiring general anesthesia is a serious whack to the system. When you're older this is a much larger factor than when you are younger. Just breaking a hip, arm or leg, a fall or a minor infection can easily be fatal to an older person because of the reduced efficiency of the immune system, and their general lack of resilience.

<comment><USER17> I remember when I was in my 20s and rather fit I had some surgery planned that was made up of 4 separate procedures and originally the surgeon suggested doing the work in 2 operations - for some reason I talked him round to doing everything at the same time even though he did warn me that I would feel like I had been "hit by a bus" (his exact words).

I did indeed feel pretty awful after - was off work for six weeks. Now I am a good bit older I'd be pretty reluctant to undergo surgery requiring general anaesthesia unless it was really required.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Ironically, some of the newer value based initiatives, such as BPCI, along with changes to the post acute skilled nursing reimbursement, is actually decreasing the amount of time and care some of these elderly could benefit from post operatively to enhance their recovery. If we allowed our elderly Medicare patients to go into a rehab unit for the amount of days they need, without requiring a 3 night hospital stay first, I wonder the impact this would have on morbidity and mortality, especially after minor operations.

</comment><comment><USER19> To surgeons, surgery is the solution regardless of patient outcomes. That is why you should always get a second opinion to hear about non-surgical options.

<comment><USER20> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_instrument](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_instrument) _" I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail."_

Then, there's the financial side: they have bills to pay so, so, at least, they lean on side of surgery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It seems to me that there's something wrong with medicine, but I haven't quite figured it out yet.

My recent submission [0] was about how the system defaults to expensive treatments that are marginally effective, and that doctors frequently have no ability to provide what patients actually need.

My one grandfather died soon after his pacemaker was replaced - the wounds from his IVs became infected. I like to say that when he heard the doctor ask him if wanted his pacemaker replaced, he said to himself "this is my chance": If not for the surgery he certainly would have lived many more months while the battery gave out...

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21728864](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21728864)

<comment><USER22> A thread to pull on: How does medicine work outside of developed countries?

<comment><USER23> Yep I'm always astonished at how these things are taken for granted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I guess it's easier said than done, but at some point we gotta understand that we don't have "x disease or ailment," we just have old age. And accept that. Things start to break down

</comment><comment><USER24> > "If you want to change communications, you probably have to work on the > surgeons" more than the patients, Dr. Schwarze concluded.

I find it harder and harder to believe that Insurance is the Bad Guy in US healthcare, as insurance companies make fairly normal level insurance industry margins (like, less than car insurance). The magnitude of total spend is the real problem, and that's a provider-side problem, not a payer side problem, but its hard to talk about doctors and pharmacy benefit managers being the potentially evil ones. People can't stomach the thought that its not a faceless insurance company, and that it might be doctors, in aggregate, over- prescribing and over-practicing well beyond actual need. (And proponents of EU style healthcare costs never mention EU style doctor salaries, and the difference w.r.t. those and the USA).

It sure would be terrible if tons and tons of these interventions done on frail people had no real medical use, and hundreds of them were found to be ineffective (not budging mortality, etc), and surgeons just wanted to get paid. Totally terrible if journals had meta-analyses of that.

[https://elifesciences.org/for-the- press/94d42de3/almost-400-...](https://elifesciences.org/for-the- press/94d42de3/almost-400-medical-practices-found-ineffective-in-analysis- of-3-000-studies)

</comment><comment><USER25> If this article interests you, I'd highly recommend the book Being Mortal by Atul Gawande:

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

I found it to be thought provoking, moreso as I've gotten older.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is one of the _key_ benefits of the all the new generation of health care sensors, particularly as they mature and hit clinical/FDA approved levels. Obviously, you heal worse as you get older. But as noted in another comment, just being bedbound can be deadly. But further, hospital acquired infections are a huge problem. Getting people back into their homes and routines will benefit patients in a number of ways beyond those described in this article.

</comment><comment><USER27> Non-paywalled: [http://archive.is/i9UUp](http://archive.is/i9UUp)

<comment><USER11> This works, too:

[https://www.nytimes.com/subscription](https://www.nytimes.com/subscription)

<comment><USER14> I bet that they don't accept Bitcoin, Monero, etc.

Or even cash by mail.

<comment><USER20> Yeah, that is stopping 99.99% of people from subscribing /supporting great journalism.

<comment><USER14> I subscribed once, in meatspace.

It took over a year to get rid of them, after they kept jacking up the price.

I will never again give them a card number.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Whyte Notation - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whyte_notation <comment><USER2> Great. Now I want to figure out a way of building an asymmetric locomotive to break the notation's underlying assumptions (and have odd numbers).</comment>


India 2.0 - <AUTHOR> http://s.telegraph.co.uk/graphics/india2.0/part-one/index.html

<comment><USER2> This page is pretty well designed. I liked the way of putting information bits with scrolls. But sometime you can miss them if you go fast.</comment>


Check out this insanely huge yet empty platform - <AUTHOR> https://montoma.net/

<comment><AUTHOR> Found this today, now I am trying to understand why it is so empty there. Looks like it's unfinished and abandoned.</comment>


Show HN: I packed 161,000 most common passwords into a 1MB file - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/robsheldon/bad-passwords-index <comment><AUTHOR> A while back a dump of 10 million usernames and passwords was released and got some comments on HN ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9024751](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9024751)).

I thought it would be neat to use that dump to create a file that services could use to improve their users' password security. This turned into a fun side project that I chipped away at ten minutes at a time here and there.

Just do a case-insensitive string search against the file to filter out common passwords during user signup.

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately, this is made mostly redundant by any sane modern password rules.

<comment><USER3> Password rules? Do you mind explaining? Specifically which ones you consider to be "sane".

<comment><USER2> 8 character minimum; atleast 1 lowercase, atleast 1 uppercase, atleast 1 number, atleast 1 symbol.

The only systems that don't/can't follow that are legacy systems which likely have other issues and where the list would not be that much help.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think I make a fair point against those password rules in [http://www.robsheldon.com/index-of-bad- passwords/](http://www.robsheldon.com/index-of-bad-passwords/) (linked from the Github repo's readme file) -- what users typically do is take their really weak password and then add the minimum amount of effort necessary to meet the password rule requirements. Meanwhile, there are lots of perfectly good passwords that don't meet those requirements.

edit: To further make the case, I just ran your password requirements against the input file. The most popular password that meets your requirements is some variation of "p@ssw0rd" \-- usually "P@ssw0rd", but "P@ssw0rd123", "P@ssw0rd$", and so on are all popular too. Direct variations of "p@ssw0rd" (where the user only changed the capitalization of one letter) occur 47 times in the input file. For comparison, the index file contains every password that occurs at least 5 times...

Other popular combinations that meet your requirements are l58jkdjp!(46 times), !qaz2wsx (39), 1qaz!qaz (37), 1qaz@wsx (18), !qazxsw2 (16), zaq!2wsx (15), nick1234-rem936 (12), xxpa33bq.adna (11), !qaz1qaz (11), g00dpa$$w0rd (11), jhon@ta2011 (10), nloq_010101 (9), 1qazzaq! (9), pa$$w0rd (8)...

Meanwhile a nice long passphrase, which doesn't occur at all in the input file, is not allowed according to your requirements unless the user also throws in a special character and a number and an uppercase letter and a lowercase letter.

<comment><USER4> what makes "l58jkdjp!" such a popular password? Is that something in a language other than english?

<comment><AUTHOR> It appears to be a popular password for French users. Beyond that, I've no idea.

I suspect that the input file I used from the security researcher's 10m dump has a lot of duplicate entries. The researcher's site is down now, but IIRC, he compiled it from a bunch of different publicly-available sources, so the same users might have shown up several times in the file.

Once I start mixing in the other data files I have anomalies like that should get sifted out.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Book Summary: Don't Shoot the Dog - <AUTHOR> http://fiddlemath.net/2013/08/07/dont-shoot-the-dog/ <comment><USER2> I haven't read that particular book, but have read others by Karen and clicker trained my last three dogs.

It's absolutely transformative, especially if you do "free shaping" where you have a goal in mind and gently nudge the dog towards it. It's remarkable watching the dog think, and figure it out for himself. The dogs all adored it, going nuts whenever the clicker came out.

Dogs taught to growl - play, growl - threat, bark - nice, bark - threat, open door, close door, climb in cardboard box and close lid, watch threat, climb on stool and sit, and on. Some things I'd have had no clue how to train by other, more traditional, means.

You do end up with a smart-arse dog mind you. :)

You also see the same principles at work with people, and parents with their children.

Have to include a link to the driving dogs: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRN_L3nTlLQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRN_L3nTlLQ)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Reading the book (on operant conditioning, with particular emphasis on how it can be used to train dogs) was transformative for me. Operant conditioning is such a major force in shaping our behaviour. I learnt an awful lot of things from this book which should have been taught in school; I see the principles around me in action every day, but they're just not the kind of thing one habitually pays attention to.

<comment><USER3> > _I learnt an awful lot of things from this book which should have been > taught in school_

Fascinating. What are some?

<comment><AUTHOR> The main plot summary is listed in the article, but here's a few of my own personal take. (I should point out that I have never trained an animal and have never had children, so it remains to be seen whether this is any use to me, but it's partly down to this book that I tend towards "identify the incentives" rather than "impose my will" when trying to get something to happen.)

* Ruling through fear makes for a broken and grudgingly-obeying dog. Once I'd grokked this, I realised that the best teachers at school for discipline were not the ones who ruled with an iron fist, but the ones who "went with the flow", guided what was happening rather than enforcing something different.

* Having heard of a particular pair of parents who were having problems with their children's behaviour, I could identify specific things they were doing which were strongly counter to the principles of this book. For example, setting lots and lots of rules about minutiae, without enforcing them consistently and without positively reinforcing the act of obeying those rules, but merely negatively reinforcing failure to follow them; this has a tendency to demotivate the act of rule-following. All kinds of things which are sort of obvious once they're pointed out, but which it seems rather rare for people (including me) to notice independently. When my own parents talk to me about parenting techniques, their techniques match up almost perfectly with these dog-training techniques (with the exception that they didn't use a clicker), and they had two children who - ahem - were uncannily well-behaved.

* Humans and animals like to be trained, if it's done correctly. Cookie Clicker is operant conditioning in action, and people do it to themselves! Regular tiny rewards for pressing this button. Having read the book, I could go back through my memory and identify what it feels like to be trained. The feeling of "good! I've done what was expected of me!" is fairly distinctive for me, but it took until I'd read this book before I really grokked what the feeling was.

<comment><USER2> I don't think many parenting tips or guides ever speak in terms of _training_ or god forbid compare and contrast with animal training. They should, as in many respects we're not so different.

So many parents end up accidentally training their children into bad habits, whilst trying to be a good parent. A really simple and obvious example is "how to teach your kids to whinge".

Go shopping. Tell kid no chocolate. Kid whinges a bit. Mum keeps telling kid "no choc, now stop whining". "behave nicely". "do you want me to tell dad?" "do you want to go sit in the car?", and on. Eventually mum has had enough "OK here, now be quiet" and hands child the smallest item on the shelf. Well done, you've reinforced that kids need to be _really persistent_ in their whinging for it to work. Cool, they can do that.

I will say it's a lot harder to successfully apply with kids than with animals, especially the alien species known as the teen. But it can, and does, work and was very helpful. The difficulty for me was knowing how to apply the principles to a particular human situation. Simple stuff like flush the toilet after use, easy. Complex inter-sibling stuff, not so much. Probably room for quite a few books and guides there. :)

As for animals, I credit dogs with _far_ more intelligence than is commonly believed. Clicker training really does allow them to demonstrate using their brain. Pausing to think, experimenting with different random actions to see what gets the click, the happiness when they think they've "got it". You can train most dog actions in a single 5-10 minute session each. Reinforce it a few times over the week. Done. I'm amazed any other animal training method still survives, especially as the dogs seem to thrive and become more interactive and less of just a dumb pet. None of the bullshit of showing you're the alpha pack leader, or shock collars, or slowly dominating a dog into compliance.

I completely agree that this topic should be taught to everyone in school, and in parenting classes. It's a fascinating field.

<comment><USER4> > I don't think many parenting tips or guides ever speak in terms of training

Some of the sleep training for tiny infants is pretty brutal!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Association of Pet Dog Trainers (APDT) has a decent reading list too

[https://apdt.com/trainers/career/resources/](https://apdt.com/trainers/career/resources/)

"Don't Shoot the Dog" is on it, because its classic :)

</comment><comment><USER6> I learned so much while training my dog; wish I'd known that stuff before becoming a parent.

(no sarcasm or joking intended).

</comment><comment><USER7> It is a useful book for training other mammals and birds, even some big bipedal apes, too!

<comment><USER8> Golf instructors and diving coaches would probably agree with you. And Dr. Gregory House, if you have all of the episodes memorized.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Comress Data with JPEGs and Steganography - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/LabunskyA/f5ar <comment><USER2> This is just _RarJpeg_ feature or something more?</comment>


Musk slammed one of Tesla's founders by calling him the worst - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tesla-cofounder-worst-person-hes-worked-with-2020-2 <comment><AUTHOR> What's funny is that people that have worked with Musk complain about him too.</comment>


The meaning of life in a world without work - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/08/virtual-reality-religion-robots-sapiens-book <comment><USER2> Amazing line of thought.</comment>


Sarah Kessler attacks Steve Yegge over so-called privilege - <AUTHOR> http://www.smashcompany.com/business/sarah-kessler-attacks-steve-yegge <comment><AUTHOR> It is odd that Kessler seems to think no one will be interested in Yegge's thoughts. She writes:

" _Yegge seems to be writing because he believes people will find his career move interesting._ "

the response:

 _Obviously some of us will find his essay interesting. Many of us were fascinated when we read his previous criticism of Amazon, where he worked for 6 years. Within the tech world, I believe his essay continues to be the most influential in terms of how we think about the relationship between Jeff Bezo's and the computer programmers who work for Bezo. His discussion of Amazon's early commitment to SOA (Service Oriented Architecture), and therefore well-defined interfaces, is fascinating, if you are into tech at all. When my mom asks me why Amazon seems to be beating all of its competitors, I try to summarize Yegge's essay in a way that my mom can understand. Because I think Yegge's explanation is one of the best one's that we, the public, have available to us._

</comment><comment><USER2> To be honest? I found Yegge's leaving-Google post to be one of his most underwhelming to date. Even if you don't agree, _it 's a bloody blog post on the internet_. It's not calling people out. It's not advancing a cause. It's someone talking about changing jobs; it could as well be a personal journal entry.

Spending as much time on it as Kessler did seems like a waste of time. Spending as much time as Krubner did on a _rebuttal_ to Kessler seems doubly so. It's the height of making mountains of molehills.

<comment><USER3> It reminds me of what Auberon Waugh [0] called the "chattering class". Much ado about little, and a certain class feels an obligation to weigh in regardless.

[0] [http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/01/26/1075087954617.html](http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/01/26/1075087954617.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> No one can rant like Yegge. Rant on!</comment>


Pompeii Walking Tour in 4K - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/gaJPcKLyXLQ <comment><USER2> Surprised to see this here. Did not expect to see it here. Did this "Walk" during lockdown - on my treadmill.</comment>


Google Stadia Should've Used Windows Instead of Linux - <AUTHOR> http://ajit.dhiwal.com/2020/01/google-stadia-shouldve-used-windows.html <comment><USER2> As someone who had worked on cloud gaming for a few years, I think using Linux is the right thing to do.

We used windows, and it was a disaster. Windows is not a multi-user system. User isolation is so difficult. Without user isolation, user A can access user B's data or login information, and it's difficult to clean up a seat's state without a slow reboot. We did lots of ugly hacks to make it work, as the OS is not open-sourced. Also, existing windows games don't support multi-users, the same CD key can only be used by one user. All these issues made virtual machine sharing difficult and hence resulted in very high cost.

The one thing done right by google is moving to linux and developing games specifically for cloud.

<comment><AUTHOR> But microsoft has now launched support for DirectX in docker containers. So it is possible to containerize games on Windows now. That should take away a lot of the pain points around user isolation.

<comment><USER3> Running games on Linux is trivial at this point, Valve has made WINE so easy to use that all my games from Windows work without me lifting a finger. Civ 5? No problem. Random Indie Game that only ever worked on Windows 7? Works great.

Google did not put sufficient resources towards building a broad platform. If they had, then the Stadia catalog would have many more titles. Instead the AAA rabbit hole has consumed the resources spent on Stadia, and players still get a crummy experience.

<comment><USER4> > Running games on Linux is trivial at this point

Running most things on Linux is trivial if you're lucky enough to run the right hardware and software configuration.

I'm not one of the lucky ones and even on my otherwise pretty compatible desktop more than 50% of my Steam games don't even start with Wine/Proton. Not to mention games from other distributors where you have to get both the launcher and the game to run at the same time. Lutris helps but may still need a lot of fiddling if it doesn't run on first try.

On average it's simply not comparable to Windows where a game not running well is a rare exception.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> you could have said the same thing about the google office suite. just run the existing windows programs. doing it in linux lets google go vertical. they can own and manipulate the entire stack. and not pay for windows licenses. now the games are the hurdle. get a critical mass, and then the studios would build for Stadia as a prime target.

<comment><AUTHOR> Google's office suite is a collection of tools made by Google which run in the browser. It doesn't need to run any third party software which wasn't designed as a plugin. Stadia on the other hand needs to run third party software which wasn't originally built to run on it

<comment><USER5> i agree. but if Stadia had enough market penetration the game studios would target it instead of windows.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's like a chicken and egg problem. Stadia isn't getting many users cause it doesn't have many games and studios aren't porting games cause of too few users</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Exploding iPhones Are Latest Headache for Apple - <AUTHOR> http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Exploding-iPhones-Are-Latest-Headache-for-Apple-618978/

<comment><USER2> Wow, rough month for Apple. I almost feel bad for them.... almost</comment>


Sassy – A portable assembler for x86 processors written in R5RS Scheme (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://sassy.sourceforge.net/

<comment><USER2> This is used by the Larceny Scheme compiler, which recently had a release:

[http://larcenists.org/download.html](http://larcenists.org/download.html)

And it's apparently generating some pretty fast code:

[http://larcenists.org/benchmarksGenuineR7Linux.html](http://larcenists.org/benchmarksGenuineR7Linux.html)</comment>


John Schappert, Zynga COO, Resigns - <AUTHOR> http://edgar.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1439404/000119312512344267/d393776d8k.htm

<comment><USER2> Schappert successfully dumped (at least) $3.9 million in stock earlier this year. Last week he was stripped of responsibility for overseeing new games. Sounds like as good a time as any to leave.

[http://venturebeat.com/2012/08/01/zynga-more-lawuits-coo- dem...](http://venturebeat.com/2012/08/01/zynga-more-lawuits-coo-demoted/)

<comment><USER3> Yup, probably got to keep half of it after taxes, and of course once you're no longer an insider it becomes easier to sell any remaining holdings without triggering SEC rules.

I think he is still named in a couple of the class action suits though, so its not like he will have a lot of free time. I am morbidly curious about how lawyer's fees are handled. Normally if you're being sued in connection with something you did for the company, the company hires a lawyer to represent you, but how does that work if you're not working the company any more?

<comment><USER4> Half of it? Is he not in the US? Isn't US capital gains tax 15%? Surely that means he kept 85% after taxes.

<comment><USER3> He held it less than a year, it is ordinary income, so 38% to the fed and 11% to the state (49% total) and with that amount of income on the adjusted gross income line he gets no deductions.

<comment><USER4> If I only got to keep 2 million of my four, I'd cry all the way the bank. Thanks for the correction. I don't do Schedule D stuff anymore, so I'm not hip to the lingo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> And not even two weeks ago he was talking up Zynga's prospects in the wake of their horrendous last quarter: [http://allthingsd.com/20120727/zyngas-john- schappert-talks-u...](http://allthingsd.com/20120727/zyngas-john-schappert- talks-up-opportunities-after-a-shocking-quarter/)

Anyone know if this language in the 8-K is essentially boilerplate? "The Company further noted that Mr. Schappert leaves as a friend of the Company and it wishes him all the best."

<comment><USER6> Yes that is standard. It should be illegal. They said his resignation, _effective immediately_ , had nothing to do with any disagreement over company operations. It had everything to do with that. He was probably fired or quit in anger over his demotion, due to his (perceived) poor performance.

How they can get away with lying to the SEC and their investors like that boggles the mind - but it is how every company handles it. Firings are all resignations and they never have anything to do with the company or the former employees job performance. Everybody leaves as friends that have the upmost respect for one another and can't wait to work together again blah blah they just want to spend time with their kids. That they just drove their company into the ground is a complete coincidence.

<comment><USER7> "Effective immediately" is common for VP and CxO level positions. Remember Marissa Mayer quit Google and started at Yahoo! _the next day_.

You're right though that "everybody is still friends" is boiler plate and doesn't actually mean anything. Especially given how horribly Zynga is doing right now, it seem unlikely that things are going great for the CxOs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Don't worry, they have an exact clone of him ready to step in.

<comment><USER9> Oddly, the clone is modeled after a COO from another company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Schappert was also mentioned in the EA lawsuit. He was COO of EA before he left for Zynga, and according to the filing, "Mr. Shappert was then the most senior executive responsible for EA's online social gaming business. The online social gaming business divisions reported directly to Mr. Schappert, and he was directly responsible for designing and implementing EA's competitive strategies in the market. As such, Mr. Schappert had detailed, internal strategic plans and development information related to EA's effort to bring The Sims franchise to Facebook with The Sims Social."

</comment><comment><USER11> He used to talk exclusively to my boobs. good riddance.

<comment><USER12> Ugh.

I hate the "bros" that inhabit many startup companies these days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Coincidentally, I started receding spam from OMGPOP today.

I simply replied: "F*ck Zynga"

<comment><USER14> _I simply replied: "F_ ck Zynga"

If you want to block out offensive words, you should be writing "Fuck Z*nga".</comment></comment>


Tips to improve PC performance in Windows 10 - <AUTHOR> https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4002019/windows-10-improve-pc-performance <comment><USER2> A lesson I learned in life is to look a entire problem in a whole, and then look for ways to sidestep the entire problem.

The root cause is windows 10. So the side step is to not use windows 10 to avoid all the associated issues.

So I suggest installing Linux to have better performance on Your hardware.

</comment><comment><USER3> shouldn't that be tips to improve Windows 10 performance on PC?

</comment><comment><USER4> useless</comment>


Ask HN: Artist's colony for hackers? - <AUTHOR>

I have released two iOS apps. I have planned a third app, but it's more complex than the others, and I'd like to develop it in (relative) isolation.
I applied to an artist's colony. They promise a distraction-free workspace, with meals brought to your door, etc. Sadly, they did not select me to be a resident. The app will be an artistic tool (processing incoming sounds, and composing musical phrases) but I fear that app development isn't recognized as an artform yet.
Should I:
1). Apply to other art colonies?
2). Ask other types of organizations for help? Are there "hacker colonies" anywhere in the world?
3). Make my own isolation -- rent a beach house, or remote cabin, for a couple months?
Any advice is appreciated. <comment><USER2> Fast internet connection might be expensive in Borneo if that is required for your work. Not an issue in Malaysian mainland/ peninsula, but isolated place in Borneo might be different.

This is a great idea though. Creating hacker colony in some low-cost, but internet connected place. 3-month and longer sessions available.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good to know. A fast internet connection would be nice, but 3G is acceptable.

What amenities should a hacker colony have? I'm thinking: fast internet, quiet cabins, food delivered to your door, remote area that is good for walking & exploring, easy access to a nearby town (maybe via shuttle).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd rent a beach house in Malaysian Borneo. Parts of it are a paradise, hardly any tourists compared to somewhere like Thailand and many speak English so you can get by. It's also pretty cheap.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Since it's cheap, I could eat out more often, and spend less time on cooking & cleaning...

<comment><USER3> No worries. I spent four months backpacking through six countries and Borneo was the highlight for me. You could probably live quite comfortably for $6-7k/year.</comment></comment></comment>


US police force pay Bitcoin ransom in Cryptolocker malware scam - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/21/us-police-force-pay-bitcoin-ransom-in-cryptolocker-malware-scam <comment><USER2> "[Police] insisted that the Massachusetts police systems were now clear of infection, and that essential operational computers were not affected, nor was there any data stolen."

How the hell would they even know?

<comment><USER3> According to every article I've read on the Internet, you can't steal data, only copy it. It's not stealing if the owner is not deprived of the original copy. Therefore, it's correct to say that no data was stolen.

<comment><USER4> I know i am replying to a troll comment, but here it is.

It is very easy to steal data. Copy the data, and then delete the original. However, the goal of this malware is to neither delete nor copy the data. It simply sabotage the data, after which the computer user has to pay in order for getting the data restored.

<comment><USER5> Sarcastic. You are replying to an _sarcastic_ comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It is kind of ridiculous how the police manage to damage their computers. As people in positions of power, they really need better training on security and handling equipment. I've seen Toughbooks with severe physical damage... and those things are REALLY hard to damage. At the very least, they need to be taught not to open email attachments from people they don't know.

<comment><USER7> I wouldn't be so quick to judge their lack of ability - it seems pretty hard to prevent spearphising among a broad set of non-technical users.

Training would ideally involve the organization testing by spearphishing their own employees internally like a lot of security companies often do:

[http://www.darkreading.com/end-user/how-lockheed-martin- phis...](http://www.darkreading.com/end-user/how-lockheed-martin-phishes-its- own/240153683)

<comment><USER8> Cryptolocker spreads with a really stupid email message, and an attachment you have to extract and then execute. You have to be incredibly technically inept to get hit with it.

<comment><USER9> So lets say you have to be so inept with computers that literally 98% of the population is more competent on them than you. If you hire 40 people, you have a better than 50% chance of getting someone that inept.

<comment><USER10> This is only true if your hiring method is "select people at random and draft them into working for you". Suppose I chose any 40 people who were currently developing software for Microsoft. What are my chances of getting one person among those who is at or below the 2nd percentile of computer literacy?

Followup questions:

How does Microsoft avoid hiring people below the 2nd percentile in computer literacy? They have way more than 50 developers.

Should the police force screen applicants in any way?

Is using a computer part of a police officer's job?

Are the police even _able_ to compel randomly-chosen people to work for them? If not, the premise of your numbers is fatally flawed.

<comment><USER9> it's true, my numbers are flawed. Though I would ask, flawed in what way?

Is it more or less likely? The police don't hire on technical skill, presumably people of high skill in this area end up in different careers?

The accuracy of the numbers is, frankly, unimportant. What I was illustrating was the multiplicative effect, which remains relevant. I freely admit the numbers themselves were made up.

<comment><USER10> Well, you're right about how independent probabilities combine. But the situation you describe has so little relationship to hiring that I don't see how it's relevant to anything. In general, I don't expect to see someone at the 2nd percentile of ability holding down a job at all. Even very basic screening will keep them away with great reliability, because they're so far out of the norm. So I don't see this as a case of "sure, I made up figures that might be off by a factor of 10-100", I see this as you describing a situation utterly unrelated to any aspect of reality I'm familiar with. You can't just make some numeric tweaks to the model; the whole thing is fundamentally at odds with what you're trying to describe.

Now, it's definitely not true that you have to be below the second percentile to get phished: [http://www.locusmag.com/Perspectives/2010/05/cory- doctorow-p...](http://www.locusmag.com/Perspectives/2010/05/cory-doctorow- persistence-pays-parasites/)

But if it were true, phishing would be largely a nonissue for workforces (other than the police, who often _do_ set ultra-low thresholds for their screening).

<comment><USER9> >But if it were true, phishing would be largely a nonissue for workforces (other than the police, who often do set ultra-low thresholds for their screening).

I think you and I are on the same page.

I am curious on why you think I'm off the mark, even if people under the 2nd percentile are less likely to get hired, it doesn't really change the math, it's the same as saying: "but it's only people under the first percentile!"

Side note: I feel that 150 million people are employable in professions that don't require a competency with computers. At the very least I'm grateful that same property doesn't apply to carpentry or construction. As I'm easily in the first percentile for these trades, I'd NEVER get a job. I can't even hang a picture! Why does it always go wrong? T.T

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is actually the first report of Cryptolocker where "Windows" was mentioned. I find it strange that most reports of malware I ever read never mention Windows.

<comment><USER12> Fish do not know what water is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I worked with a company which was affected. They opened a phishing email which claimed to be within the company. We didn't pay any ransom because we recovered from Crashplan backups.

</comment><comment><USER14> I had though the Police is aiding and abetting a crime by paying ? In the (UK) not USA - paying a ransom is technically illegal.

</comment><comment><USER11> Isn't opening an email attachment a standard, right thing to do? Aren't email attachments supposed to be the main ways to send someone a non-text file, by design? If so, blaming people for doing it is wrong. It is Windows that is wrong. It is the way that Windows lets these executables run and do these things that is wrong.

<comment><USER15> Considering the Cryptolocker executable does absolutely nothing to elevate itself to admin or exploit the system in any other way, it sounds you're arguing in favor of a walled garden system where only preapproved binaries may run.

<comment><USER16> Not even preapproved binaries. No binaries at all should run by opening them from an email. It's simply a usability design decision by the developers of the email reader.

<comment><USER17> If I download a binary from the GMail web interface, the enterprise Outlook web interface, etc., how does Windows know the difference between that binary and a legitimate download received from my web browser? Sure, you get the "This program was downloaded from the Internet" popup (just like OSX), and group policy could dictate that _no_ binaries from the Internet may run, but how is Windows supposed to tell the difference between an email web client and any other file downloaded from the web?

<comment><USER18> I just saved an attachment from GMail. When I go into the Get Info box (OSX), I can see what URL it came from. I'm sure that Windows attaches similar metadata when it saves attachments.

Maybe something like this could serve as a basis for what you propose. The attachment I saved came from [https:///mail- attachment.googleusercontent.com](https:///mail- attachment.googleusercontent.com). Maybe the solution is as simple as webmail providers putting some standard hostname in their attachment URL that identifies it as an email attachment.

Unfortunately though, there are legitimate reasons to circumvent this (have you ever emailed yourself something so you could run it on another computer?), so it would only be a matter of time for attackers to figure out the social engineering required to convince people to jump through those hoops.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> anyone find it funny that the article warns about opening email attachments and at the bottom of the page is a signup form for a "zip file email." poor wording choice.

</comment><comment><USER20> Speechless...</comment>


Eight Ways to Get Users to Fill Out Their Profiles - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/eight_ways_to_get_users_to_fil.php <comment><AUTHOR> I have to say... LinkedIn made me fill out my entire profile.</comment>


Show HN: Flying Carpet – encrypted file transfer via ad-hoc WiFi, no AP required - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/spieglt/FlyingCarpet/releases <comment><AUTHOR> If you've ever been frustrated that you couldn't move a file over 2GB from Windows to Mac with a flash drive, or couldn't set up a file share because you didn't have WiFi, or find it stupid that we push files up to Dropbox or Drive just to move them 5 feet between laptops, this program is for you. It is encrypted file transfer that goes straight from wireless chip to wireless chip, over ad-hoc WiFi (or Wi-Fi Direct when necessary). Written mostly in Go.

I posted this a few months ago when it was just a command line tool, but it now has a GUI and is much more stable. Linux support still forthcoming. Please give it a try and let me know what you think. Thanks!</comment>


U.K. Riots: Website Raises £25k to Help 89-Year-Old Barber - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2011/08/12/u-k-riots-website-raises-25k-to-help-89-year-old-barber/

<comment><USER2> Last night about 40 of us (cyclists) went to a pizza parlour in Ealing that had been smashed and looted.

The hooligans smashed windows, stole an empty cash register, stole alcohol and the pizza toppings (!?).

We couldn't think of a better way to help out than to give them enough trade to fill their coffers to the point that they could fix the broken windows, replace things, and far more importantly feel the goodwill of the community.

The level of help being given is wonderful, and it's really small and personal stuff. That barber is an extreme example, but there is a real sense of people rallying around to protect their local small businesses and the people who run them.

The pizza place (if you're curious): <http://www.santamariapizzeria.com/>

The footage from their CCTV (if you're extremely curious): <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwLMAmlomQU>

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm in the US, but find myself in the UK for some time every few months. While I'm not opposed to donations, I'd also love to see a tourist/business traveler guide covering establishments that were affected and would benefit from additional traffic.

<comment><USER4> You could always check this incident map of the areas and visit the high street shops -

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/interactive/2011/aug...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/interactive/2011/aug/09/uk- riots-incident-map)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't seem to find the address of his shop. Is he on Tottenham High Street? I'm past due for a haircut.

<comment><USER6> Found in the Reddit post.

Gentlemens Hairdressing, 22 Scotland Green, Tottenham, Great London N17 9, UK

[http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/jcx89/aaron_bibe...](http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/jcx89/aaron_biber_89_stands_outside_his_shop_it_was/c2b59e5)

<comment><USER5> Thanks. I'll head over Monday morning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's quite a lot of impressively quick efforts to raise funds for people who are affected (I noticed <http://cravify.com> who were in the TC article about mapping riot locations have updated their map to allow donations by location), the difficult bit seems to be working out where to send the money, there aren't many charities which formally deal with helping local areas recover from something like this.

<comment><USER8> Yeah - lots of sites off of <http://delootlondon.co.uk/> have independent donations, but they don't provide ongoing support for the communities who were hurt by this, or the individuals who had their houses and belongings destroyed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think that article invoked Godwin's law.</comment>


The Samwer Brothers Find Global Internet Success - <AUTHOR> http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/the-samwer-brothers-are-germany-s-titans-of-internet-entrepreneurs-a-833374.html

<comment><USER2> "Samwer doesn't like the word clone. "It's a mistake to think that the idea is the decisive factor," he says. "Ideas are nothing special. There are thousands of ideas. But of thousands of ideas, only one succeeds. And that's the real point." He's got a point there, the only real assertion I could see is that the "ideas" they copy aren't things like hey, lets make an online shop, but rather completely hashed out business models that already have an application for reverse engineering, etc. But as dispicable as people might think they are for what they do, I think its about time companies started thinking globally quicker, living in the EU, I don't want to wait years before I can use a service and the Samwer's provide the services the people want to use.

<comment><AUTHOR> The question I came away asking, as someone in the United States, was _how_ can we launch quickly in other countries? It's hard enough launching in the US with the regulations here, but I'm at a complete loss as to how to launch internationally.

Is localization/internationalization enough? For my company, we work with/through VARs, which requires an in-person visit. We've barely got enough bandwidth to cover the US as it is today; expanding internationally would be pretty difficult.

I'm just not sure where to start!</comment></comment>