Cold-war-style suspicion of Chinese-American and Chinese academics - <AUTHOR> https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3016267/chinese-scientists-guilty-researching-while <comment><USER2> All: the theme is divisive, but this is a substantive and interesting article and therefore on topic for HN. If you comment, take care to do so in the spirit of the site: thoughtfully and curiously. And if you haven't lately, would you mind reviewing the site guidelines to get a refresher? We've raised the bar a notch or two. [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

I hate to post these admonitions, but there has been an uptick of nationalistic flamewar everywhere, and that's a problem for HN. It's unwelcome here, unnecessary regardless of your views, and we ban accounts that post it, so please don't.

</comment><comment><USER3> As I noted in another comment, state actors change the scale of incentives and disincentives in academic and corporate IP and data theft. A large corporation is a fearsome opponent. It never sleeps. It can avoid being tired for many decades at at time. It can hire an entire squad of private detectives to find you, and spending tons of money on lawyers is just normal operations for it. These also apply to large academic institutions, and often the IP and data are involved with academic/private consortiums. For these reasons, individuals are usually strongly deterred from such theft.

Add in state actors, however, and the potential cost/benefit equations change. A strong state actor has the power to shield a person from a multinational's wrath. It's not hard to steal such information. What's hard is getting away with it indefinitely.

Disclosure: I'm Asian and my wife was once a Chinese born academic in the US.

<comment><USER4> It is far more then that. State actor has people working for it who will serve as honey pots, it has people working for it who Will drug you stuff you in a box and send you back to the country. It has a huge capacity for physical violence of all kinds. Corps are innocent toddlers compared to nation states.

It is a dual approach, we can shield you and also you parents house will not burn down "accidentally" plus lenience for that wayward cousin who will get couple years in comfy prison instead of 9mm to the back of the head.

<comment><USER3> Replace most instances of "9mm to the back of the head" with a longer jail sentence at a more violent prison for the cousin, and you'd also have the US and other western powers.

<comment> King-Aaron Well I'd be fairly sure that there some cases of "X attended a meeting and then suddenly had a mysterious heart attack on the way home" which do happen within western powers...

<comment><USER5> Emigration tells the whole story here. There's no need to quibble about who kills more of their citizens, or who is more repressive.

People are moving west, corporations with low moral standards are moving east.

<comment><USER6> The story is long and complex. I dont know anything about the Chinese side, but we in the US have amassed the largest prison population on earth, by percent and absolute numbers.

100 years from now, my kid's kid's will be embarrassed that their grandfather didn't do more to stop the oppression.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In an April speech in New York, FBI director Christopher Wray described the reason for the scrutiny of ethnic Chinese scientists. "China has pioneered a societal approach to stealing innovation in any way it can from a wide array of businesses, universities and organisations," he told the Council on Foreign Relations. Everyone's in on it, Wray said: China's intelligence services; its state-owned and what he called "ostensibly" private enterprises; and the 130,000 Chinese graduate students and researchers who work and study in the US every year. "Put plainly, China seems determined to steal its way up the economic ladder at our expense."

This has been going since long before the Trump administration, probably all the way back to the Clinton one.

<comment><USER8> The whole point of a research collaboration on global disease to "Yes! Please! Learn from, use, and improve our ideas!" The FBI framing this as a quasi-spy role is damaging human welfare for political purposes, which is their traditional role going back to their founding under Hoover. The environment in this country is getting progressively scarier.

<comment><USER9> There's also the broader question of whether it's morally right to push the US drug patent regime upon the rest of the world - in this case, before the patents or IP ever kick in from a legal perspective.

This isn't just a US-vs-China thing. It's also a US-pharma-companies-vs-sick- people-everywhere thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qian_Xuesen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qian_Xuesen)

This man wanted to stay in the United States, was kicked out for fear of national security, and later kickstarted the Chinese space program.

I realize immigration policies are complicated and obviously political, but the US seems to be going about it in a pretty stupid manner.

<comment><USER11> Yes! When people want to come to your country to study advanced topics, it's asinine not to provide the easiest path to citizenship possible for them.

If they stay, you win. If obtain citizenship but return home, they now have a tie to your country. If they decline citizenship, you've lost nothing.

And from an economic perspective, they're more likely to create opportunities for those without advanced education.

Yet the historical "Are you willing to become American?" has turned into "Are you American enough to be American?"

<comment><USER12> That analysis assumes that supply for academic opportunity is elastic. Is that a sound assumption?

Because otherwise, it's not fair to say you've lost nothing when a college graduate leaves your country.

 _Edit: Response to deleted comment_ : I didn't say anybody would leave the country because getting citizenship was too easy, that's ridiculous and not a very charitable read of my comment. I was addressing this in particular:

>If obtain citizenship but return home, they now have a tie to your country. If they decline citizenship, you've lost nothing.

In the scenario where somebody obtains _or declines_ a citizenship and returns home, then you've lost something. Whether they take or pass up the citizenship isn't the matter. _Whatever_ their motivation happens to be for accepting or declining the citizenship, in _either_ case you've lost something if they leave the country.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I feel like the problem is just the way power is distributed to nation-states with money. We've got to start working towards a world where nation-states aren't forced to compete with each other economically--instead where they are incentivized to work together economically and compete over citizens. Nation- states serve a purpose, as religion did/does. But the scope of that control must change as civilization does. I feel in a couple years they may look back on this age as we do now with the crusades.

</comment><comment><USER14> "A month after resigning, she left her husband and two children in the US and took a job as dean of a school of public health in Shanghai."

Where does her family now live? This seems to say she got a divorce and moved to China?

<comment><USER15> I'm pretty sure this just means she moved to China but her family didn't. It's a bit of an awkward phrasing as it includes "she left her husband" but adding "in the US" means she just left him behind rather than divorcing him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The distinction that is muddied up in the article as well as by many anti- Trump voices is that, while research in academia is published and open and supposed to be shared, there is a gray area that spills over into commercial research into applications of scientific discoveries where the IP is no longer destined to be openly available, and this research constitutes trades secrets that could be stolen and monetized by foreign entities at the expense of the United States. It is this research that has to be protected, and because of the gray area, many scientists have access to both types of research. It is very unfortunate that the lines are blurred in the interest of attacking a president that wants to keep our country's edge in technological advancements. The article went as far as claiming that Trump's administration might round up Chinese Americans and Chinese aliens as the Japanese were rounded up and sent to internment camps during WW2. The whole point is to make Trump into Hitler at every step, and although this was a more well-written hit piece, it is still click bait and attacks on the Trump administration. I hate that this political climate spills over into scientific articles now. The Chinese have been watched and accused of theft of IP for more than two decades, but it's only now open season on the current administration because the media loves to hate Trump. I'm sick and tired of it. The Chinese have stolen plans for fighter jets, been banned from buying Xeon processors, have been accused of directly copying the AMD Zen chips via masks instead of producing copies based on specs like AMD intended during the sale, and many other such things which either happened or started to happen before Trump took office. To claim that the increased enforcement of laws and regulations against economic espionage as a matter of discrimination against Asians which could eventually lead to WW2-style detention of Chinese nationals and Chinese Americans is purely incendiary nonsense aimed at attacking a President that aims to secure our worldwide economic and technological leadership. Anyone who believes this ought to be ashamed of themselves for falling for this garbage sensationalist journalism.

<comment><USER17> If this research takes public funding, why the hell are it's proceeds not public?

Why am I paying tax dollars to fund the competitive advantage of private firms?

<comment><USER18> So, if a research project takes $3M in funding, and a private company takes that primary research and spends $300M to produce a derivative product and takes it to market they should not profit? The National Renewable Energy Lab has an entire portfolio it is begging private companies to productize.

Taking a product to market is very difficult and raw research is not usable by the populace in most cases.

<comment><USER19> This is fine, so long as the $3M funded research is still open and available to anyone to productionise.

Is that how it works or are private companies funding some of the 'open' research phase to then privatise (i.e. make secret) the outcomes?

<comment><USER5> If you spend 300$ million in secret research you can realize 1.5 billion in profit.

The numbers for research where you're forced to make the production research public mean your competitors can get to market faster and it may mean an investment of even 3 million isn't worth it.

There are some medicines/procedures/devices where this is the only way to make the numbers work to sell it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Also discussed 17 days ago, when this article appeared in Bloomberg Businessweek (I guess SCMP has a sharing agreement with them?): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20178100](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20178100)

<comment><USER21> There was also a Science Magazine news story

[https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/06/nih-probe-foreign- ti...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/06/nih-probe-foreign-ties-has-led- undisclosed-firings-and-refunds-institutions)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Talk about throwing the baby out with the bath water. With all the advanced data collection and analysis, can't American intelligence agencies distinguish spies? Why not leave it to them rather than repeating the same historical mistakes?

<comment><USER23> American intelligence agencies can't reliably distinguish spies, especially not without doing the kind of rigorous background check required for a security clearance. The FBI and NSA aren't omnipotent.

<comment><USER24> Also to add to this, it's kinda hard to detect if someone was indoctrinated and trained in their home country and then sent here with crystal clear, mid to long-term, instructions on what to do and how to report back.

To report back they don't even necessarily need to transmit data or meet someone in front of 37 security cameras with a big envelope that says "secret stolen plans" in screaming red letters. They can slowly lift data over the course of weeks, months or years from whatever they are here to learn about and use a dead drop... go to the Goodwill a mile from their apartment and leave an SD card behind the third row of records between 2 and 2:05pm, or upload encrypted fragments via a different public WiFi once a week, or mail an SD card to a series of memorized addresses disguised as eBay purchases.

Old school tradecraft makes you effectively invisible in a digital world as long as you are cautious in how you collect data and get around any security measures at the school/employer you are attempting to steal data from. If you're in a position to be accessing the data as a student/researcher/employee, especially if you are in a position to actively manipulate that data as part of your role, unless you are being stripped searched and all USB ports have been rendered inert, if you're patient you can take all the data you want and unless you go telling people, you're probably not going to get caught, especially by some federal agency that can't read your mind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> If you were a young Chinese person, why would you study in an American university?

Under normal circumstances you would want to see America. You would want to be with the best to get a bit of paper at the end from a top notch place. The world would then be your oyster. You would know people, you would know what America is like and how nice American people are (under normal circumstances).

But what happens if you know you won't be welcomed? What if you had got wind of this hysteria going on?

You go somewhere else.

It might not be America but at least you could do your degree without people muttering 'Chinese Whispers' (!) about how you are there just to harvest people's IP and steal their state organs.

If English is the language to learn then there are plenty of universities in England that will gladly take Chinese money. The hysteria hasn't sullied the atmosphere in the UK yet. Then there are Scandinavian countries, Germany and other places where you get English going on in science subjects. Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada are good options too.

Then there are the non-English speaking countries that roll the red carpet out for China. Anything belt and road. Russia. There are plenty of places. Now there are options and the idea of studying in the U.S. is not really looking that exciting. Plus, the more you look into it there can be better places to get a particular degree than one of the Ivy League big names.

This could precipitate a serious decline in the international standing of U.S. universities. If departments are not getting the big bucks coming in from Chinese admissions they will have to get students from elsewhere. The bar gets lowered in the process and it becomes a downward spiral.

The only American cars of interest internationally are the ones by Tesla. Nobody wants an American car. In Europe we used to imitate American cars albeit cut down to cheap size. But, nowadays, Tesla aside, nobody in Europe would consider an American car as a serious proposition. And there isn't anything Detroit can do to change that.

If American academia gets to go in a similar downward spiral then there is no way back out of it. American universities could become the preserve of American rich kids with no intake from Asia or elsewhere. Then the ambitious U.S. students would have to be studying in Europe to get an education that was a cut above, or, even in China!

This is a slippery slope that we are on, all because of a minority that want to forego hospitality, trust, warmth and international spirit and succumb to fear, nationalism, hysteria and rumour-mongering.

<comment><USER26> For undergraduate studies, it would be very surprising if American universities would begin to jeopardize the cash cow of udnergraduate Chinese students over IP concerns, considering their refusal to do so over student integrity violations. For their professors and administration, American universities have a serious problem with conflicts of interest. From what it sounds like in the article, Wu Xifeng was already working for someone else, and collecting a paycheck from MD Anderson by the time she left.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This reminds me of Nazi era exodus of Jews. Strategically, it's not smart to marginalize or eliminate a large portion of your engineering/scientist class. It certainly contributed to Germany losing the war. Escaped German and European European scientists and engineers were crucial to the Manhattan project and later to ICMB and NASA rocket development. Indeed, without their Jewish and non-Aryan scientists, German nuclear efforts were almost comically bad. We couldn't have done it without the Nazis...

Discrimination of Chinese scientists could have the exact opposite effect of preventing supposed Chinese IP theft. It risks pushing out top Chinese talent who will return to China and develop atomic bomb- level breakthroughs.

Much better alternative - offer them top jobs with excellent pay and recruit from top Chinese university programs.

<comment><USER28> Wernher von Braun and the 1600 Germans who were taken out of Germany by the US in Operation Paperclip to do 'ICMB and NASA rocket development' were also (and it seems you're implying exclusively) 'Jewish and non-Aryan scientists'? That's not what I'm seeing in the wiki, correct if it's wrong instead of downvoting please.

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

<comment><USER29> You shouldn't be getting downvoted as it's the much more accurate representation of the history that led to the rocket programmes.

As near as damn it the whole Nazi V2 team, equipment and production was shipped to the US. Wernher von Braun, the scientists and engineers, and hundreds of train wagons filled with everything they could carry; engines, components, fuel, tools, you name it.

Japan's Unit 731 got the outrageous end of war deal to get some information to the US though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The actual title is "Chinese scientists guilty of 'researching while Asian' in Trump's America". It was also submitted with that title. Pretty slimy of the admins to change it just to rationalize keeping the submission up. The title is obvious bullshit because no one in Trump's administration would have a problem with Japanese scientists "researching while Asian", because Japan is our ally. Fronald Toompf destroyed yet again, right guys? Stop fucking turning this site into reddit please.

<comment><USER2> We changed the title to the subtitle. That is routine moderation when titles are baity, as they frequently are.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20subtitle&sort=byDate...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20subtitle&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> It's not like it's hard to see either, there's routinely news of Chinese scientists and engineers caught with some kind of industrial secret stolen from their employer trying to go back to China in a hurry. Every time it's mentioned people on HN react like some grand conspiracy theory was unveiled while it takes 15 seconds on google to find examples like:

[https://www.biospace.com/article/-jc1n-second-scientist- plea...](https://www.biospace.com/article/-jc1n-second-scientist-pleads- guilty-to-stealing-glaxosmithkline-trade-secrets/)

or

[https://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/ex-coca- col...](https://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/ex-coca-cola- engineer-charged-with-stealing-secrets-for-chinese-firm)

it's pervasive and it's stupid to think it will stop on its own. China has been at war with us for quite a while, we just failed to recognize it because it is convenient for many not to do so, but we should behave accordingly.

Edit: since my comment was called "inflammatory and nationalistic" I'm going to add a link to a book that explains the war ongoing between China and the US, from an author that's very much not either of those things:

[https://www.amazon.com/Cool-War-United-States- Competition/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Cool-War-United-States- Competition/dp/081298255X)

<comment><USER2> This is inflammatory and snarky and exaggerated ("China has been at war with us") enough to count as nationalistic flamebait. As I said above, we don't want that here. Please make your substantive points without it.

<comment><USER31> That's your opinion, you're free to have it but calling mine "inflammatory and nationalistic" doesn't make your better.

I happen to believe (and most of our intelligence does too) that China has been studiously and purposefully stolen everything they could get their hands on for the last 20 years or so with the clear objective of gaining a military advantage. That's what a war is, and it's a very well substantiated position.

Also pretty funny you call me a nationalist, I wasn't even born in the US.

<comment><USER32> > I happen to believe (and most of our intelligence does too) that China has > been studiously and purposefully stolen everything they could get their > hands on for the last 20 years or so with the clear objective of gaining a > military advantage

The US (NSA) has been stealing secrets from a significant percentage of the world population for years. Snowden showed us that. China stealing from a few corporations makes them angels in comparison. Further, the US slaughters hundreds of thousands in ACTUAL wars in the middle east over the past 20yrs to gain a military and economic advantage over the rest of the world.

Stop making it seem like China is some big bogeyman when the US has been the bogeyman all along.

<comment><USER33> From a US perspective, US misdeeds don't make China any less of a threat. Is the US supposed to react as "Oh they're waging a bit of a trade war on us, but we've sinned as well, so lets let them keep it up"?

<comment><USER32> No, of course not. I'm not talking about how the US govt should react. I'm saying that armchair critics on the sidelines (referring to the grandparent) painting China as evil for some corporate espionage is pretty naive given that the US is guilty of far worse.

<comment><USER31> China is "evil" for a whole series of different reasons, its blatant disregard for human rights and life on a massive scale is a good start.

I have my gripes with US policies (may I remind you I'm not even a citizen by birth?) and we're definitely seeing a slide towards an even more overt fascism than ever before, but it's still an avoidable risk compared to the very present danger a stronger China poses to all democracies.

To be blunt, I don't want to live in a world where China has any more power than it has right now, because we're MUCH better off in any version of what we have in the west than anything China has to offer.

I like my civil liberties, I like to be able to express dissent and to protest without being ground into a pulp by a tank, and I like to express politically antagonistic opinions without having my organs harvested after a summary execution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This seems to be a relatively simple case of tit-for-tat. Chinese scholars were welcomed in the US, but a significant minority of them have abused their welcome (defected). It is not all of them, but it was systemic enough to lose a lot of the US technological edge. In order to cut its losses, the US is now defecting on educating those students and researchers. You may say this is very unfair to the students, but in Chinese culture it is not uncommon to punish the family members for crimes of their relative.

<comment><USER34> Actually, having read the Science Advances article, it seems simpler than this. Institutions are being asked to warn their foreign researchers (not just Chinese) to be open about other contracts and commitments,and firing those who are deceitful. Seems to be a very clear case of breach of contract being remedied.</comment></comment>


Is this how news.ycombinator.com runs? (Ctrl+F for "Closures Simulate Subroutines") - <AUTHOR> http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/paulgraham/bbnexcerpts.txt <comment><USER2> I always assumed it was, and that the closures are stored in the user's session (in memory, on the server). You notice that if you leave a comment reply box up on the screen long enough, you'll get "Unknown or expired session" when you try to submit, and have to back up to the main comment page before you can try again?

<comment><USER3> For calls that don't need to know about more state than their arguments, we just use an ordinary url with arguments. Otherwise we make a closure and store it in a hash table in memory, and make the url be x?fnid= where the argument is the hash key. When an http request comes in, we call the corresponding closure. Sometimes what to do next after following a link generated by the closure (e.g. what to do after logging in when you're not logged in and you submit a link through the bookmarklet) is part of the state of the closure; in that case it's a bit like a continuation.

We keep only the most recently generated 20,000 closures. When you click on a link that says it has expired, that means either it has been purged from the closure table, or that we've restarted the server.

<comment><USER4> Isn't there a risk, that someone can (accidentally or not) enter hash-code of someone else's "closure"?

<comment><USER5> One could avoid that problem by keeping track of the owner of each closure and ensuring the user is properly authenticated before calling the closure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Paul, could you enlighten us how well does this type of development (Lisp macro/closure based) integrate with JS and Ajax? I'm interested in asynchronicity of the Ajax... Ruby and Python with Protoype and Scriptaculous make this very easy indeed...

<comment><USER3> How much Ajax do you see on this site? (The answer is that I don't know, because I haven't tried.)</comment></comment>


US Recession Indicator: Google Trends - T-A https://datatrekresearch.com/us-recession-indicator-google-trends/ <comment><AUTHOR> Uh the coupon indicator... did you hear about groupon and living social...</comment>


Toilet paper is only available if you scan the train station QR code - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/Amy_23_Cheng/status/1185428129545740289 <comment><USER2> China typically does not provide toilet paper in public restrooms. In some of the international tourist spots, they tried giving away toilet paper and locals would steal it. So they put in facial recognition and QR codes to dispense it. Source:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np4OwQaJItY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np4OwQaJItY)

<comment><USER3> In rich & populated cities public restrooms are numerous, clean, more often than not 'occidental' (non-squat), and toilet paper is often provided w/o any special dispenser.

Source: I live in Shanghai.

<comment><USER4> I've traveled around China a few times and while my purpose was not to complete a comprehensive toilet census, I only ever found toilet paper in public restrooms in Shanghai (excluding restrooms of nice restaurants). Shanghai also felt like the most expensive city.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Toilet paper is generally not provided in public toilets in China. You should carry your own. So in a way, this is positive.

<comment><USER6> > You should carry your own.

Why don't they make paying toilets where you can have such services without the hassle of carrying stuff?

<comment><USER7> There used to be paid toilet back in the day, but disappeared somehow, maybe because nobody wants to be manning those toilets.

<comment><USER8> In the United States many areas passed laws banning them:

[https://psmag.com/economics/dont-pay-toilets-america- bathroo...](https://psmag.com/economics/dont-pay-toilets-america-bathroom- restroom-free-market-90683)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Isn't this just the high-tech version of for-customers-only restrooms, which is not such an uncommon thing AFAIK? For instance in McDonalds in Belgrade, Serbia you have to scan the barcode from the receipt to open the door of the toilet, which I always thought was a very neat solution.

<comment><USER10> I happen to be in Belgrade right now, and the McDonalds I've been today didn't have any barrier at the restroom. There was a keypad to enter a PIN, but the door opened without a PIN.

In Munich, there were human staff at the gate collecting 50 cents to use the toilet, and that's the weirdest McDonalds restroom I've been to so far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Do the Twitter TOS allow mandatory follows like this?

</comment><comment><USER12> As an aside: Toilet paper is an ancient, inefficient, and doubtfully hygienic way of cleaning your backside in the modern world.

Start using bidets instead of this nonsense. The TP can still be used for drying purposes.

<comment><USER13> I have bidets/washlets installed in my home, and the only problem has been that I now can't go back. Whenever I travel I now have to carry around wet wipes or I don't feel clean. But wet wipes are apparently horrible for the environment.

I can't win.

<comment><USER14> The problem with wet wipes is mostly that they should never, _absolutely never_ , be flushed. Wet wipes combine with fat in the sewers, and form the basis of an ever growing deposit of solid mass that will inevitably block the sewer (or pipes if you are unlucky and the stuff builds up at an earlier point).

When these deposits grow in size they are known as fatbergs. In London they have had to remove fatbergs the size of double-decker buses, but it's a global problem.

If you use wet wipes, the rule is simple: deposit them in the trash can — just like period products and nappies.

Don't bother believing the 'flushable' wipes lie: all wipes are flushable for sure, but they all contribute to the problem, and none disintegrate before they mix with fat to become a potentially very expensive problem.

<comment><USER15> Maybe plumbing needs a general upgrade from being simply gravity assisted, to something like this

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

which shreds anything to tiny pieces, which then again can flow freely, instead of being stuck somewhere?

What is more expensive? Cleaning out fatbergs, or have something like this installed at whichever 'layer' in the plumbing, or making bidets mandatory?

(Err...1st world problems while elsewhere many peoply shit who knows where...)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to test a localhost (desktop) from mobile? - <AUTHOR>

Any easy way to do this? I don't want to mess with router port forwarding <comment><USER2> If you're on the same lan it's as simple as going to the IP address of the local server on your phone.

I recently tried exactly this. Running MAMP on my MacBook pro, went to 192.168.0.5 (my MacBook's IP address) on my iPhone while connected to the same wifi as the MacBook and there was the MAMP localhost page.

The only problem is (as far as I know) there's no way to edit /etc/hosts on an iPhone (although I imagine you can do it on Android), so it has to be IP based.

<comment><AUTHOR> works like a charm

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you are using an iOS device and your server is on the same network, you can use Bonjour/ZeroConf to quickly access it. For OS X, you can set the hostname in System Preferences > Sharing. Then just access hostname.local from the iOS device.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> SHIM looks pretty promising, and runs on nodeJS <https://github.com/marstall/shim>

Any non-nodeJS alternatives?

</comment><comment><USER4> On the same network? Assuming you're running a server can't you just got to your local IP:port? (or bazookaBen.local:port on a Mac)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> also found Drive-In, which runs on Apache+PHP <https://github.com/scottjehl/Drive-In></comment>


Gmail Backup Archives Your Email Account - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/5075460/gmail-backup-archives-your-email-account

<comment><USER2> Too bad axod didn't see this about 7 days ago. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=354593></comment>


Ask HN: What are your sources for non-sensationalized news? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> The first thing you learn in data science is that everyone has biases.

I get most of my news from HN, Yahoo, and from what others post. These outlets give me many different sources to choose from. I tend to look for multiple sources, usually from competing outlets with different biases. So maybe I'll see an article that originated from Fox and then look at one from Huffpost. Then I can find what points they agreed on, since those are _likely_ true. Then I can see what info is conflicting, missing, or recieved more emphasis between the two.

At this point I might look up the subject that it talks about so that I can understand the information from a systems-thinking perspective. I might read scholarly articles/blogs/courses. I might look at studies to understand the data and see if the study is being misrepresented, like the gender page gap and BLS study (you may need different sources for these due to biases on polarising subjects like guns).

</comment><comment><USER3> Obviously there are no guarantees that all of the mentioned sources are completely free of bias or are non-sensationalized, but I find this list offers a good starting point.

[https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/center/](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/center/)

[https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/pro- science/](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/pro-science/)

Also, from the same group: [https://newsfactsnetwork.com/about/](https://newsfactsnetwork.com/about/)

</comment><comment><USER4> This will sound strange in an Americans ears but ... state sponsored news for one. Unlike the US news stations and state sponsored news that is poorly hidden propaganda, state sponsored news some places are very unbiased and not full of clickbait. Of course it is rare outside Scandinavia sadly.

<comment><USER5> As someone living in Sweden I somewhat agree. Our state-sponsored media is not too bad. But I also subscribe to two independent news papers and those are the ones I prefer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm involved with [https://spidr.today/](https://spidr.today/)

Coupled with Google Translate, it's also easy to get a grip on the major topics in other countries.

</comment><comment><USER7> Financial Times. It's a paid subscription, and worth the money if you care about world news with decent analysis and a lack of sensationalism.

<comment><AUTHOR> After a week's exposure to FT, I'm back to thank you for this recommendation. It's exactly what I've been looking for: news, not sensationalism. Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> For general news: WSJ, FT, and Reuters can't be beat imo.

They're the best news orgs in terms of both substance and level-headed delivery.

Just make sure to skip WSJ's op ed section. It's a dumpster fire, just like NYT's.

NPR is great too.

For more specific topics I subscribe to smaller media orgs.

These include:

1\. A few local news outlets that provide daily/weekly newsletters. I pay most attention to this as it has the proportionally largest impact on my daily life.

2\. A few newsletters on specific issues of interest to me: current affairs related to China, general finance industry stuff (Matt Levine's Money Stuff), SupChina, FP's weekly China Briefing.

As others have stated, while news does not need to be sensationalize, it will always have bias. I don't think it's worth fighting it. Just find people who have a track record of acting in good faith and listen to what they have to say.

</comment><comment><USER9> I use [https://knowherenews.com/](https://knowherenews.com/) they present both sides to most topics.

</comment><comment><USER10> For local news I subscribe to a daily email from a local TV news station. I also read voanews.com and asia.nikkei.com.

</comment><comment><USER11> I usually look at the "enemies" press and my own country's press, then subtract the difference and somewhere in there is perhaps some truth. Then I go to foreign policy/political and social/economic journal sites and search for papers on topics similar to get actual analysis and not just brief talking points.

For example I'll often watch the Ruptly Youtube channel but before you jump up and down screaming 'it's Russian propaganda' it is, but at the same time, all their videos are uncensored they will often take 4 hours footage of something news worthy with no pundits editing or screaming over top of it. As an example this silly story from Egypt about a robot waiter [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyuGnCZOwMo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyuGnCZOwMo) notice a few things, you can hear in the background what people are saying, this is almost always drowned out by a pundit yapping on our news. You can hear the guy talking in his native language with no questionable translations. By questionable translations I mean in my country I remember a long time some Egyptian protest, and the propaganda that passes for state news in my commonwealth country had edited out the voices of the crowd claiming they were shouting something different than what they really were shouting when I looked up the same unedited footage on Ruptly. So yes, it is 'evil state propaganda' but at least you get unedited footage, can hear what people are truly saying.

Otherwise there are journals you can read that will often have extensive in depth papers on whatever the socio-political situation of that country is like Oxford's Foreign Policy Analysis. Here's an example, let's say some new war breaks out in Africa again. Let's say there is pressure in all our countries to deploy a peacekeeping force and there is no independent news analysis, we just have tables of pundits yelling talking points framed in local politics. How do you know if 'peacekeeping' even works? Well that's when some of these journals step in to give you some non sensationalist analysis [https://academic.oup.com/fpa/article/16/3/251/5824326?search...](https://academic.oup.com/fpa/article/16/3/251/5824326?searchresult=1) which you would have to run through sci-hub to get access to unless you have unlimited access to these journals through university libraries or something.

So, tl;dr, what I usually do is my local news headlines are dominated by (event) which is always just framed in national political talking points so highly sensationalist and pushing talking points that benefit some political party. When you go looking for (event) in journals you will often find background and analysis nobody else has to help understand it, like say the political relationship between Germany and Russia and some kind of trade conflict breaks out between them. There is background for this in journals you can read yourself to see why everything is set up the way it is without being distorted by the talking heads pretending it isn't set up that way and their preferred candidate X can easily rearrange this agreement.

I have tried "slow news" sources, various state sources in Europe and commonwealth, commercial news, so-called 'independent' news like AP or Intercept all of it is inherently biased to frame every story in some kind of political talking points and stories that do not fit this bias are just not even reported, so you need to fill in the rest with the "enemies" news like say, a Chinese newspaper article or even Syrian or Iranian, or Venezuelan, or whatever 'enemy' news. Sometimes they have different perspectives you didn't even consider and then can directly research these things yourself if you really want. To avoid this being a F/T job, which sounds like it is, I just make an afternoon of going through some Oxford journal articles (and other universities of course, to avoid the one-sided cultural problem again) and without fail whenever (event) happens in my local news I remember an article I already read about this, dig it up and lo and behold I now understand (event) better than the screaming pundits.

Anybody who knows of a good university, foreign policy type analysis journal I'd be interested too, like a French or Russian one to counter all the British and American one's I read just to see things that are left out.</comment>


Who else has had a negative exepirence on these stack/overflow sites - <AUTHOR> Who else has had a negative experience on these stock/overflow sites?
You get down-voted for asking questions and no one bothers to answer the question. Here is one example http://quant.stackexchange.com/questions/30148/what-is-the-big-deal-about-american-put-options?
There are many more of examples people asking good questions and getting downvoted
What is the deal with these communities that bring out the worst in people <comment><USER2> I visit the quant stack exchange site and they try their best to keep the questions to a level that a practicing quant would expect. The math overflow stack exchange is another example of where they try to keep the questions to a higher level.

If you keep this in mind then things start to make more sense.

As an example consider a stack exchange called Advanced C++. If someone comes in and asks, what does the "class" key mean, then I think it would be more than fair to close that question.

Now back to the question at hand.

IMHO the question you link to is not a good question. It's not clear what they user is asking.

I mean it contains a couple of incorrect statements that people point out in the comments.

I'm a practicing quant and I can't make much sense of what the question is asking.

If the user is asking in what situations would you do early exercise of an American option then you can easily aruge that this should be closed as its a basic question that isn't up to the standard that a practicing quant would ask.

But again, I can't really make sense as to what the user wants to ask. I'm guessing this is why it was closed.

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't take it personally. People spending lots of time on SE sites see people repeating the same questions or asking things that cannot really be answered all the time. At some point you either have a boilerplate comment, or a favourite "this is a duplicate" link, or a just downvote them.

I don't know anything about the quant site, but if people with 1k+ reputation say "I don't know what you're asking.", and "So basically you stated (at least) 2 falsehoods right there in your question.", then you should just try to rewrite the question.

For programming questions it's easier. You just point people at some known post, like [https://codeblog.jonskeet.uk/2010/08/29/writing-the- perfect-...](https://codeblog.jonskeet.uk/2010/08/29/writing-the-perfect- question/) For other site it may be harder, but the process is probably similar. Separate your question from your assumptions. Ask a clear question that has a specific answer. If you're writing "so the Black Scholes model would be correct, no?", then your question should probably be titled "Is the Black Scholes model correct for american put options?" or something similar. (not "what's the deal with...")</comment>


Revealed: How a weather forecast in 1967 stopped nuclear war - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/08/10/1967_weather_forecast_stopped_nuclear_war/ <comment><AUTHOR> PDF of report is at [1]

[1] "The May 1967 Great Storm and Radio Disruption Event: Extreme Space Weather and Extraordinary Responses" [ [https://regmedia.co.uk/2016/08/10/swe20344.pdf](https://regmedia.co.uk/2016/08/10/swe20344.pdf) ]</comment>


What is humanity's "prime directive?" Hint: Star Trek has it wrong - <AUTHOR> http://www.futuristspeaker.com/2013/06/in-search-of-humanitys-prime-directive/

<comment><USER2> Like bittired, I also found Frey's Prime Directive not quite right, but for another reason. Thomas Frey criticize our current views regarding the future as being too dark and dangerous and for all that he comes up in the end with "preparing our resolve for struggles unimaginable", which is not (in my book) something put in a brighter note. A message having a little more hope and longing for the better (but not necessarily easier as I agree that life should not be easier), will be more appealing and more in place.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the prime directive stated is a little too long and lofty. Instead how about: "Love or die"?

</comment><comment><USER4> To not go extinct?

<comment><USER3> If that is the prime directive, we're doing a really poor job at it. We haven't even gotten off the planet and we already have started to deplete resources we rely on and either ignore or deride those that provide us with food while we live ridiculous lifestyles whose primary purpose is to consume and pretend to each other how great we are on a multitude of lit screens in unsustainably growing suburbs and cities.</comment></comment>


Does It Matter If The Future Isn't Available In Canada? - <AUTHOR> http://www.techvibes.com/blog/does-it-matter-if-the-future-isnt-available-in-canada

<comment><USER2> Some services/companies are very good at working internationally from the outset, some really aren't. As a Canadian, I get bit by this constantly. Amazon, Newegg, Grand Central (now Google Voice), pretty much all the big media video networks.. etc.

The funny thing is that American companies that engage in this kind of anti- cross-border behaviour may never realize just how much hostility they're brewing up against their products before they even finally arrive in Canada. By then there may be home-brewed alternatives. In the case of media, I think this will be particularly interesting because TV viewership amongst my demographic seems to collapsing in certain circles, yet people still want to jump online and view/share their clips. These are often blocked (or redirected to Canadian sites which have less content or use undesirable plugins/tech to show video).

So what's your alternative? Well, nothing! You go do something else. If the Big Media companies drag their asses on this issue I wouldn't be surprised if it had severe long term repercussions, causing people to switch to other forms of entertainment, brands, etc. One media market that never caved to idiotic lawyering (w.r.t US vs. Canada issues anyway) is video games. Perhaps we'll see that win out over time.

I find it hard to believe that a reasonably wealthy country with a population just under the size of California is ignored and blocked so systematically. It's actually the effort given to blocking our IPs that's the most surprising. I mean, don't Hulu's ad clients want me to buy their products up here too? .. Call it naive if you wish, I'll call it leaving money on the table.

<comment><USER3> > One media market that never caved to idiotic lawyering (w.r.t US vs. Canada > issues anyway) is video games.

Maybe because a reasonable chunk of the game industry is _in_ Canada, and an even more reasonable chunk is outside North America all together (so that releasing in Canada as well as US isn't that big of a hassle as the hassle of going international from domestic).

Compare to entertainment (Hulu), where Canadians tend to import a vast (and to some disturbing) majority of the "culture" from the United States. Entertainment is much, much more centralized, and it's centralized in the US. Which is why Canada has Canadian content regulations (does Hulu have to abide by those? and if so, how do you define 'airtime' when it's on-demand? and a million other questions I have no idea about), and indirectly why nothing is ever available in Quebec (overall the asinine Quebecois laws are there because that's the price Quebec is willing to pay to maintain its own cultural and political identity).

For small countries, there is therefore a certain plus side to partially giving up sovereignity to join an effective economic superstate like the EU. Cross-border penetration of cool gadgets is just one part of this. Sadly, the only economic superstate bordering Canada is the United States which Canadians are, let's say.. ambivalent about joining.

<comment><USER4> > Canadians tend to import a vast (and to some disturbing) majority of the > "culture" from the United States.

And the US imports a lot of Canadians to produce said "culture", so saying that US culture is different is somewhat strange. (No, Jennings, Shatner, and Pamela Anderson aren't the only ones.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What gets me aren't devices that may have phyisical limitations or regulations to overcome (e.g., Kindle net access is bound to a US provider, hence not available here), but the purely online services that there's no reason we can't access other than a paranoid legal team and a US-only registration form. Amazon's Mechanical Turk is one big example of that. Amazon FPS and Google Checkout are a couple others. Are we really that small of a market that we're not worth considering even after several years?

<comment><USER6> Probably the most glaringly bizarre and horrible example is the lack of Mint.com in Canada. This is strange and aggravating for two main reasons. Firstly because Mint.com has been around since 2006, which is a very, very long time in internet years and they should have expanded beyond the USA by now. Secondly, because many Canadian banks, for example TD Bank (TD = Toronto Dominion), have large presences in the USA and you can use Mint.com with them. The fact that you can use Mint.com in America with a Canadian bank but you can't use Mint.com in Canada (which only has like 6 banks) is so bizarre and arbitrary that it feels offensive.

<comment><USER7> Mint is just a user-friendly wrapper on Yodlee, which integrates directly with the banks to get the data. The amount of data slurped is incredible -- basically, an RSS feed on your financial life.

Your government, in its infinite wisdom, has seen fit to protect you from unscrupulous American companies which could possibly record your data without complying with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. (Never heard of it? Your bank has.) This strengthened existing legislation, such as the Bank Act (never heard of it? Your bank has.), one section of which "requires banks to maintain and process in Canada any information or data relating to the preparation and maintenance of bank records, including customer account records".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Living in a small European country, you run into similar problems. Being in the EU helps with physical goods (except new mobile phones until the unlocked versions make their way to the retail channels), but online services are pretty happy to ignore the fact that you even exist.

It gets even worse with media: each country has its own cartel representing entertainment copyright holders, meaning it's essentially impossible that we'll ever get something like hulu.com in Austria unless something changes in a big way. Presumably the legal hassles of working out contracts for each country individually are ridiculous, and simply not worth it in less populous countries. As with almost every aspect of the entertainment media industry, _everyone_ loses: consumers, copyright holders and operator of the service.

</comment><comment><USER9> At least Canadians are starting to realize that "the future is here, just not evenly distributed". (W.Gibson)

Related:

      http://availableincanada.com/</comment>


12 must-attend IT conferences in fall 2015 - <AUTHOR> https://enterprisersproject.com/article/2015/7/12-must-attend-it-conferences-fall-2015

<comment><USER2> If I _must_ attend all of these it looks like I have to figure out how to be in Orlando, FL and Anaheim, CA at the same time. Even harder than figuring out how to clone myself, I have to explain to my boss why I'm only going to be in the office for a total of three days in October.</comment>


RIP the Broccoli Tree - <AUTHOR> https://kottke.org/17/09/rip-the-broccoli-tree <comment><USER2> There's so many examples of this it's just so sad.

Joshua Tree on U2 album cover destroyed: [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2971368/U2-fan- pilgr...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2971368/U2-fan-pilgrimaged- band-s-Joshua-Tree-outraged-finding-CHOPPED-California-desert.html)

Kids knock down 16 million year old rock formation: [https://military.id.me/news/idiots-ruin-18-million-year- old-...](https://military.id.me/news/idiots-ruin-18-million-year-old-american- treasure/)

One man accidentally killed the oldest tree ever: [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-one-man- accide...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-one-man-accidentally- killed-the-oldest-tree-ever-125764872/)

World's most isolated tree knocked down by drunk driver: [https://www.treehugger.com/natural-sciences/earths-most- isol...](https://www.treehugger.com/natural-sciences/earths-most-isolated- tree-only-one-around-250-miles-was-struck-and-killed-drunk-driver.html)

So sad how an act of stupidity by as few as one person can eliminate something of beauty that's been around longer than tens, hundreds, thousands of their lifetimes.

<comment><USER3> The lesson here, clearly, is: tall poppies get mowed. It is known. :-/

<comment><USER4> Who would mow their poppies? Other than the Dutch?

<comment><USER3> I learned it from an Australian. Go figure. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Note that it's a willow tree, so the vandal and workers may have "just" unintentionally coppiced it. Far from killing the tree, some of the oldest trees in the world are coppiced. Coppicing is supposed to happen in winter, but it's possible this tree could survive.

Looking at the "before" picture, the tree might itself be a spray formed when an older tree was cut.

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

<comment><USER6> The vandals don't care whether the tree lives or dies; they care that nobody enjoys the tree while they have to be aware of it.

<comment><USER7> I believe the OP was referencing the city workers who coppiced the tree, not the vandals who forced them to do so...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is tangentially related to something I've been struggling with for the last year. I began getting into photography about a year and as an attempt to surround myself with inspiration, I followed many of the top landscape photographers on Instagram. While their images are beautiful and they tend to position their photographs from the perspective of "environmentalism", I can't help but feel like they've done as much damage as anything else.

Two examples come to mind. Last year, the USFS extended the lottery permit season in the Enchantments by six weeks due to increasing popularity, no doubt fueled by the incredible pictures of it littered across Instagram. Iceland is a top destination for photographers (for good reason) and I traveled there two months ago, no doubt influenced by the pictures I've seen. But it felt like the country was beginning to get ruined by me and my fellow tourists.

It feels like we're beginning to lose the hidden gems as more and more photographers rush to be the first. But even the non-hidden gems are beginning to get exposed more and more often. But I see the same spots being visited by all photographers and I don't see how they'll handle the continued influx of people:

      * Banff NP
      * Dolomites
      * Iceland
      * Lofoten
      * Greenland

It's great that people are interested in seeing the world, but I'd say the set of people that love photographing amazing locations and preserving them is much smaller than the set of people that only care about the former. That said, I'm probably more of a contributor to this than I'd care to admit.

<comment><USER9> If you really like something, tell nobody. If you find beautiful waterfalls, don't tell anyone. A great fishing hole? Keep it to yourself. A great diner? Nary a soul should you tell.

I'm only slightly exaggerating.

In defiance of my above statement, I own this tree and it is my favorite tree. The forestry service cored it and it's at least 220 years old.

[https://imgur.com/a/c2AVd](https://imgur.com/a/c2AVd)

<comment><USER10> Living somewhere that's increasingly being overrun with disrespectful tourists, I've been making a point of keeping my travels a secret as well. I've found loads of beautiful spots and I take plenty of pictures, but those pictures are all for my own memories. I don't show them to anyone since I know I'd come back to a trashed location later. I recently went back to a small town that had almost zero tourism not long ago, only to find hordes of tourists and "X LOVES Y" messages carved into walls and trees everywhere.

<comment><USER9> I can relate. I live in Vacationland. The nearest village largely exists because of tourism. I'm a bit more remote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So many things about that are depressing, like, why would someone cut into a tree like that, and why would they decide that, if one of the trunks is gone, the whole thing needs to be decimated? Both are completely absurd.

<comment><USER12> since this entire topic seems philosophical, I'll go down this path --

someone is sitting at home, feeling worthless, like their life is pointless and they could disappear without anyone noticing.

but there's this tree everyone likes. people notice this tree. because you see lots of pictures of it, people must visit it often. it's a confluence.

if you were to, say, scratch your name into the bark, people would notice. you would have made some difference on the world, for better or worse.

if you were to cut a branch down, people would DEFINITELY notice. people would think about you, when no one would before. even if the thoughts aren't positive.

in other words, to not feel so small and meaningless.

<comment><USER13> Or rather 3 teenagers got drunk, and wanted to do something whats "breaking the law" or "pissing off hipsters" or "really punk". and cut the tree.

<comment><USER14> Which is really the same thing, if you think about it.

<comment><USER15>

<comment><USER16> Actually, yes. Some friends tend to magnify the insecurities that a lonely/insecure person might feel.

What is doing something on a dare besides a play to battle the insecurity of being labeled a "coward"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I honestly thought this was going to be about some sort of sorting algorithm I hadn't heard about until it was already outdated.

</comment><comment><USER18> Last year, in Death Valley National Park, in a place called the Racetrack Playa (home to the moving rocks), some excrement-brained jackasses, drove their vehicle onto the playa while it was wet from a recent storm. The tire tracks they left will be visible now for possibly centuries ruining for visitors what was a pristine environment. Staking their naked, honey-coated bodies on top of an army ant anthole might not be enough punishment.

</comment><comment><USER19> My most favorite hobby is taking long-distance off-road trips in my old Land Rover Defender with my buddies. We go to places far off the beaten path, taking the smallest and least-used doubletrack trails that we can find. I've written [1][2] about these on some of the popular forums for this stuff and post a lot of photos. People often ask for GPS coordinates of the great campsites that we discover but I never, ever give them out and I'm purposefully vague and sometimes deceptive about their actual location.

This story is why.

Like the saying goes, call something paradise and kiss it goodbye. I blame the people who publicize these places as much as I blame the people who fuck them up. The assholes of the world cannot be trusted with beauty. They will always defile it or love it to death.

[1] [http://forum.expeditionportal.com/threads/146545-The- Owyhee](http://forum.expeditionportal.com/threads/146545-The-Owyhee) [2] [http://forum.expeditionportal.com/threads/112686-Northwest-b...](http://forum.expeditionportal.com/threads/112686-Northwest- by-Ex-MOD)

<comment><USER20> > I blame the people who publicize these places as much as I blame the people > who fuck them up

I think that's a questionable apportionment of blame.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Lest we blame the internet, attacking beloved trees is nothing new:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_Oak_(Austin,_Texas)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_Oak_\(Austin,_Texas\))

<comment><USER22> I agree that the perpetrator needs a punishment, but nine years is a very, very long time. Around here few first-time murderers need to sit that long.

<comment><USER23> Agreed that nine years is probably (not knowing all the details) disproportionate.

But the Wikipedia article mentions the tree is sacred to the Comanche. Compared to what he would have endured at their hands hundreds of years ago, had he been caught by _them_ , he's lucky :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The thesis of the article seems to be summed up in the last paragraph:

> our collective attention and obsession, amplified by the speed and intensity > of the internet & social media, tends to ruin the things we love: authors, > musicians, restaurants, actors, beloved movies, vacation spots, artists, > democracies and even a tree that became too famous to live.

I think this is an important point. Yes public attention and mass media existed before the internet but we all know that modern social media has changed the way notoriety and reputation work. I agree with the author because I think that, for example, in the world we had during the 80's or early 90's Justine Sacco would still have a job and the US Presidential campaign would have been different.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is only tangentially related, but the story of Kiidk'yaas, the Golden Spruce, cut down in 1997 as an act of protest, is fascinating:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiidk%27yaas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiidk%27yaas)

[https://thetyee.ca/Life/2005/08/03/GoldenSpruce/](https://thetyee.ca/Life/2005/08/03/GoldenSpruce/)

</comment><comment><USER26> This is an apt metaphor over how, when hegemonic, the cultural forces of Globalism cut away the branches of local culture, leaving a stump representing what the local culture once was.

Of course, if this were an act of coppicing, it's a renewal of sorts, and the tree will once again grow, more robust than ever, as the Phoenix rises from it's ashes.

</comment><comment><USER27> One more vandal ...

[http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2015/11/harvey_updyke_poiso...](http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2015/11/harvey_updyke_poisoned_toomers.html)

</comment><comment><USER28> If you're bummed about Broccoli Tree, you might want to make some quality time to spend with your favorite (extant) tree.

Nothing lasts forever, folks. It's all going to be over before you know it.

<comment> mark-r Most trees last far longer than people. But of course that's only on average.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Does anyone look at this from an economic standpoint? I think this is just an (unfair) form of taxation for being famous. Someone or something became too famous. People want a "cut" of the fame (in this case, it was literally the cut, ha ha). It's interesting to think how we can redistribute this type of "wealth" among people. I can think of Twitter replies or blog trackbacks as a primitive way to achieve it, but what can the society/government do?

edit: economical -> economic

<comment><USER30> That's an interesting question, and plays into some things I've been thinking about across a number of domains.

There's the role of fame itself, which is related to, but not the same so far as I see, as _power_. Both are ordinal -- it's a _lot_ better to be the _most_ famous vs, say, the 10th most famous, in ways that having only, say, $90 rather than $100 isn't. But there's something you're giving up for fame -- particularly privacy and autonomy. There's a _risk_ to it (and there are numerous artists, politicians, and businesspeople who've been attacked, kidnapped, or murdered).

In biological evolution, there was a stage at which the first carnivorous organisms appeared. Before that, it was pretty much OK to let it all hang out, and just sort of slime around on the seafloor, munching on plants. Afterward, defences (and some offences) like shells and pincers and teeth emerged. You needed to _protect_ yourself.

And while such defenses still exist, most animals now _don 't_ have heavy body armor. It's _too_ heavy, and _too_ cumbersome. There's hide and fur, tails to swat away annoying things. But also social habits -- the grooming behaviours of primates and other animals in particular. "I'll pick parasites off your back if you'll pick them off of mine." Standards and norms of behaviour.

The problem of _too much_ fame, _especially_ for lifeforms which aren't aware of the problem or cannot defend themselves (or move or hide, as with trees, hell, even rock formations), is one that's been around for a while. It definitely pre-dates the Internet as mulitiple posts here note. I've run across items about geotagged images of rhinoceroses, or of rare plants, or other treasures.

There's this item from a few days ago:

[http://e360.yale.edu/features/unnatural-surveillance-how- onl...](http://e360.yale.edu/features/unnatural-surveillance-how-online-data- is-putting-species-at-risk)

As for how to deal with the problem socially, I think that may be the role of taboo. That's taking the matter _beyond_ economics to an extent, as taboo puts an infinite cost or price to doing a thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> "Very soon after, it was decided by some authority that the vandalism meant the entire tree had to come down." Huh? Why?

</comment><comment><USER32> Just like The Giving Tree from Shel Silverstein realized. Sometimes we take things too far.

</comment><comment><USER33> Why would they bring down the whole tree if it's just vandalized?

</comment><comment><USER34> This looks to be intentional. I hope those vandals get caught.

</comment><comment><USER35> Prime example of the observer effect.

</comment><comment><USER36> Mother fucker.

</comment><comment><USER37> Why is this on Hacker News?

<comment><USER38> Before clicking I expected the link to be about a data structure.

<comment><USER39> .. and someone else thought hacker news was about the lumber industry.

Seriously though, even though not related, this was a good article. I guess it goes without saying that if you care about something then don't obsess over it publicly too much, since the ruiners /will/ come.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Reactive x react = xreact - <AUTHOR> https://xreact.oyanglul.us/ <comment><USER2> This is nice. I tried to work out with a home-baked version of that for a while, because it had to be done, basically it is Cycle.js without the "drivers" thing, which is annoying.

Then I moved to some hybrid approach with dreno[1].

But since there were some corner cases which the framework didn't cover, I've settled later with karet[2], but using it like I did with dreno, not treating state as semi-local as they do on the TodoMVC.

[1]: [https://github.com/fiatjaf/dreno/blob/master/docs/why.md](https://github.com/fiatjaf/dreno/blob/master/docs/why.md)

[2]: [https://github.com/calmm-js/karet](https://github.com/calmm-js/karet)

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting danmaku 23333333, is it also implemented in Xreact?

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, it's actually a example of xreact [https://xreact.oyanglul.us/examples/](https://xreact.oyanglul.us/examples/)</comment></comment>


When to Buy Your Own ISBNs - <AUTHOR> https://mwl.io/archives/3982 <comment><USER2> Fun fact: the 13 digit ISBNs are actually UPCs (aka bar codes) but with the country code set to "Bookland"

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

<comment><USER3> Does this scale? What are the country codes for Computerland, Phoneland, Chairland, Deskland?

<comment><USER4> There is a Musicland (979) but Bookland seems to "invaded" parts of its namespace!

These are hacks so that you only need one table rather than separate lists of ISBNs and EANs. Chairs (etc) didn't have a pre-existing registry so....no need Chairland.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article expended a lot of text and avoided the actual useful information.

\- 1 ISBN costs $125 \- 10 ISBNs cost $250 \- 100 ISBNs cost $575 \- 1000 ISBNs cost $1000

So if you are fairly sure to self-publish more than 8 books in your lifetime, of course you would buy a thousand of them.

<comment><USER6> Its an absolute scam that you have to pay $125 for a number. I can understand some small fee for keeping a system to track them running but anything more than a few dollars for a block is an outrage.

<comment><USER7> To be fair: We have more or less pretty much run out of them, so preventing their waste or misuse is worthwhile. (Much like with IPv4 addresses.) Yes, we've now grabbed 979 of the ISBN-13 space, in addition to the more or less full 978 space, but that merely doubles the ISBN space, since many of the other prefixes are used for other products in EAN.

Sure, we can always devise new solutions when these numbers run out as well, but there's a lot of order system overhead to such things.

<comment><USER6> Just add more digits to the number. Make it a uuid and put a qr code on the inside of the back cover for easy data entry.

<comment><USER7> "Just adding more digits" ignores the whole point of the problem: That ISBNs live _within_ (a subset of) the number space of EAN codes, which are used globally for all sorts of products: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Article_Number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Article_Number)

And that software systems all over the planet are built to handle specific numbers in specific formats. "Just add more digits" requires a global shift to a new format, which will take many, many years to accomplish. The shift from ISBN-10 to ISBN-13 took _years_ , and there are articles about "are you ready for ISBN-13?" out there. Like, this is a Y2K-type issue.

Sure, another expansion is inevitable, but if, like the author, your goal is to sell books in a lot of places right now, you need a number in a fairly limited scope of available numbers that work with distribution systems people actively have.

It'd be like if you told someone they didn't need an IPv4 address because IPv6 addresses were available. That's all fine and good unless you have customers on IPv4.

<comment><USER8> IPv6 people realised that technology enables exponential growth and made their space 79 billion billion billion times larger, unlike barcodes which only went 1000 times larger.

On the other hand people actually use 13 digit barcodes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I misread this as when to buy your own ICBM and was subsequently disappointed by the content

</comment><comment><USER10> (Just in case) they are free in Canada.

<comment><USER11> They are free I think everywhere outside of the US. Except for China, where it's well over $1000 to buy one from a state-owned publisher.

<comment><USER12> free or almost free. In Italy, for example, it's 50€ for a block of ten codes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The article mentions that he can't resell them, which begs the questions: Why and how?

What is stopping me and the author from publishing a book _we_ wrote on an ISBN _he_ bought?

I'm guessing nothing.

Assuming that, where do we draw the line between co-author, editor, publisher and "guy who resold an ISBN"?

</comment><comment><USER14> Maybe I'm naive, but the key takeaway from this for me was:

> the owner of the ISBN controls where the book can be printed.

I didn't realise this - that's the crucial "why" behind the "when".

</comment><comment><USER15> Would it be possible to create a system that's backwards compatible but costs something reasonable?

<comment><USER3> Probably not. I suspect all the library information systems have been hardcoded for a fixed number of digits. It resembles the Y2K problem, or the IPv4 problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Then don't sell your book as a "book", but as an "object".</comment>


XML Transform in Ruby with Elegant Dress - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/hayeah/dress

<comment><USER2> I was about to give up after the first paragraph or so of the README. Wasting time telling me how bad something is doesn't really help me understand your project if all you do is heap on empty hyperbole.

My bigger complaint is that after going through the whole README I still didn't know if this lib does everything that XSLT does.

I've written way more XSLT than I'd care to remember (though it was a good way to get familiar with functional programming), and my biggest issue was that most of the transforms I cared about were on large files of regular data.

Since then I started using Ruby, and found that rolling my own transformation code was pretty straightforward, but the key was using a pull parser so that I didn't have to slurp a giant XML file into memory. (I've written about this; the curious can google for the article).

I saw nothing in the README about handling large data or working with a pull parser.</comment>


Facebook and Zynga Enter Into Long-Term Relationship - <AUTHOR> http://www.facebook.com/press/releases.php?p=162172

<comment><USER2> Facebook really annihilated any meaning in their mission statement, and all the passive language indicates the leadership doesn't really embrace the new statement or take any ownership over it. Since when is Facebook about open and connected? Facebook connects me with my friends across the globe, in a private forum.

Facebook's mission statement should honestly read "anything for another billion bucks," but instead some marketing stooge wrote this:

Founded in February 2004, Facebook's mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.

<comment><USER3> I too am somewhat put off by the various statements from the CEO that his mission is to 'change the world'. I can think of another 2-3 rather manipulative, drive, self-oriented business founders who insist this about themselves, too. "Anything for another billion bucks" would be a much more honest assessment of their personal motivations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's a lot of words for saying "Facebook and Zynga entered a 5-year agreement on using Facebook credits in Zynga games, but details of that are not disclosed".

Reading all those press releases, I'm wondering who is the target audience for them?

* Surely it's not an average Facebook user - she does not read press releases.

* Surely it's not a journalist or a technical person - they don't need all the marketing mumbo-jumbo.

* Surely it's not an (educated) investor, for the same reason.

My question is, who?

<comment><USER4> My conspiracy theory is that bigger firms are expected to have PR departments, and people working in PR departments are expected to write longer paragraphs to justify their existence.

<comment><USER5> Sounds like a regular non-conspiracy theory that is probably spot-on.

<comment><USER2> Having worked in PR, there are no length requirements or even people valuing wordiness.

What does exist is a stifling press release style that everyone loves to write and no one loves to read. It doesn't mater how long each thing is, but you need "about this company" and "about that company." You need garbage quotes from the execs (written by the PR guy of course), and you need everyone's statement of business in the first paragraph.

So, with all that crap, you already have a page of nonsense. Then, add in a few paragraphs on the actual announcement, and that is how the sausage is made. Some press release writers are better than others, but no one can write good press release.

Personally, I don't write press releases anymore. I write casual blog posts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sounds like Zynga got a discount on Facebook credits in return for staying committed to the FB platform. Of course, I could be horribly wrong

<comment><USER7> Seems more likely that any discounts would go the other way. Facebook provides Zynga with a massive installed and networked user base. What does Zynga offer Facebook that couldn't be replaced?

If I were Zynga, my biggest fear would be that Facebook would decide to compete with me. So I'm guessing this agreement prevents that from happening, at least for five years, and in return Facebook gets a bigger chunk of Zynga's revenue stream.

Disclaimer: I don't pay a ton of attention to this stuff, so let me know if I'm off base.

<comment><USER8> Much of recent FB growth, especially international, has been driven by gaming. FB has users, but Zynga has over 200M players. FB couldn't compete with Zynga in games without giving shady preferential platform features to their own games - even the other big, successful game companies aren't competing with Zynga.

<comment><USER9> Yep, I think people severely underestimate how much gaming is a contributor to technology adoption. Mac OSX could have gained a lot more market share had Steve not been so stubborn. Case in point, iPhone app popularity is heavily skewed toward games.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm a little disappointed... I was looking forward to an epic showdown. Also, this means fewer opportunities for the smaller app developers.

<comment><USER11> Not true. Zynga adopting FB credits for all of its games is very much a good thing for smaller developers on the FB platform. Having Zynga on board is a big step to having FB currency used as a standard for all FB games, which levels the playing field for small developers who can't build huge payment systems themselves.

<comment><USER12> Unless Zynga has 10% fees (my guess) and everybody else the usual 30%. I think they wouldn't sign the agreement otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There was once a time where the phrase 'innovative' had been used so much, you pretty much knew from the get go a company that touted it's success on being 'innovative' or 'forward' to be guilty of exactly the opposite. Same thing with the word 'proactive'. I learned the hard way that a supervisor who interviews you and makes it an explicit point to say 'I'm not a micromanager' is exactly that.

In 2010, the buzzword became 'open' and the theme was 'transparency'. I'm starting to learn that a company that calls itself 'open' and 'transparent' is either exactly the opposite, or has decided to redefine what 'open' and 'transparent' mean in order to fit their own archetype of rhetoric.

Oligarchies by way of Nielsen's Law.

<comment><USER14> I've come to the opinion that "if you have to say so, you aren't." If the tofu were really yummy and tasty, you wouldn't have to say so on the package. (I like tofu, btw)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> _Terms of the agreement between Facebook and Zynga were not disclosed._

Any guesses as to the terms? = ) I'm thinking ~0.00% instead of 30% fees for the credits.

Edit: I meant that I suspect it's much less than 30%, not really 0.00%

<comment><USER4> I don't think it's 0%. That would imply that Facebook has no negotiations power in this dispute. But I think quite the opposite is true: Zynga cannot really afford leaving Facebook platform _right now_ , so they don't have any credible threat, other than creating more bad publicity for Facebook.

Based on how things are evolving recently, it doesn't look like Facebook is paying too much attention to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I guess they negotiated most of that 30% facebook credit cut to themselves.

</comment><comment><USER17> 5 years is a long time on the internet. Who is to say it either Zynga or FB be relevant by then.

</comment><comment><USER18> Even if it's in writing it doesn't mean the bigger party can't screw the smaller party.

</comment><comment><USER19> So by strategic relationship, would that be a less than 30% cut?

</comment><comment><USER20> re: Zanga My impression is that they are making use of the user data they are able to collect when people start using the app. Is ther any evidence that they are selling that data or otherwise doing something uncouth with it?

<comment><USER21> I'm not sure how much you think "user data" is worth. I can assure you that Zynga makes more money playing virtual Monsanto than they ever would selling user data.

<comment><USER10> so Farmville and Fishville are the High Fructose Corn Syrup of the internet? :)</comment></comment></comment>


The Bipolar Lisp Programmer (an oldie but a goodie) - <AUTHOR> http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/bipolar.htm <comment><USER2> Wow. That's very close to home.

The author's other essays (<http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/index.htm>) are interesting, too. I particularly like "Why I am Not a Professor". After reading that one, I wonder if the BBM he rescued in "The Bipolar Lisp Programmer" is not himself?

</comment><comment><USER3> He seems to argue the problem with BBMs is their success. Their success, that is, at working alone. So much so that they seldom want to work with others, for when you work alone you are not forced to yield to oft highly unpleasant real-life situations, which dilute the purity and elegance of your original solution.

And more or less refusal to exposure your system to real-life situations--PC hardware via Lisp machines, the wants of the masses, etc--means you don't get the critical mass of acceptance needed for mainstream success. Without this mainstream success you don't get the cash, industry support or new developers needed for growth.

Nice theory.

</comment><comment><USER4> For those interested, I thought I'd provide an 'insider's view' of bipolar, since I have it. I go through manic phases followed by depressive phases. Sometimes mine are short (i.e. hours) but intense. Other times they last for months. I am obsessed with the problem of P vs NP, and thinking about it too much can lead me into manic phases, where I become convinced that I've solved the problem, and that others (i.e. teachers and friends) are out to steal my ideas. I become paranoid and write my name and the date on everything I write, in case someone claims my notes as their own. I become convinced that I am the reincarnation of Godel, Turing, John Nash, or other mathematicians. I converse with my "former selves" and tell them about my ideas. They respond with fascination and sometimes suggestions of their own. My mind spins and reels, and it feels sometimes like it becomes completely detached from my body.

It's true that while I'm manic, I can get abnormal amounts of work done. I also speak incredibly quickly, and develop a stutter because my mind moves too fast for my mouth to keep up. I call them 'cache misses' because my brain has to stop and go back to where it was just seconds ago, in order to 'fill in' the missing words. Because I think so quickly while manic, I become frustrated and irritated with anyone and anything that stops me from thinking as quickly as I'd like to. I have trouble sleeping at night, and when I do sleep, I dream of absurd mathematical problems that don't make any sense. Once I was skiing with some friends, and I had a dream wherein each ski route was assigned an integer value. It was up to me to make sure that the sum of the slopes traversed by my group was exactly zero. I had to keep convincing people to do different slopes in order to keep things balanced. When I have those dreams, I have a hard time waking up because I want to solve the problem so badly that I can't get out of bed. Additionally, when I'm manic, I drive more recklessly and take risks that I shouldn't. I'm much more likely to go home from a bar with a girl that I shouldn't. It seems like my sex appeal dramatically increases while I'm manic. This could be because I'm just thinking more highly of myself in general, but it could also be because i'm more aggressive, bold, and confident, all of which are appealing to girls.

The flip side of the mania is depression. When a manic phase ends, it usually leads to a depressive phase, when I realize i'm not a super genius capable of anything, and that my conversations with past mathematical figures are hallucinations. I think of myself as hopelessly stupid and doomed to live an unhappy life. It's not just being sad. It's a state of total hopelessness and despair. The only thing in the world that is remotely appealing is killing myself, which I dream of constantly. I've attempted suicide three times, each time getting closer to actually finishing the act. The last time I tried, I was standing on the 28th floor of a building in downtown Seattle, trying to work up the courage to jump off the ledge. If it weren't for some people who happened to come up the elevator as I was sitting on the ledge, I probably wouldn't be typing this today. I know that suicide is a terribly selfish thing to do, but until you've experienced the despair and hopelessness associated with bipolar depression, you can't begin to understand how much it makes sense. After my second attempt, I was taken against my will to a mental hospital, where I spent a few days. It was the worst experience of my life. All it impressed upon me was that, if I ever feel like suicide again, I shouldn't tell any medical professionals because they might take me back there. Even when I'm perfectly happy and level(i.e. no longer in a depressive or manic phase) I still occasionally think about killing myself. When I hear a story in the news about a plane crash or a celebrity dying, my first thouhgt is always to be envious of them. Just writing this post is making me want to kill myself.

As if the hopelessness, despair, and suicidal idealization weren't bad enough, I lose my attention span, ability to focus, and ability to enjoy things. Activities that I once used to enjoy become boring. I don't enjoy hanging out with my friends as much, and I don't want to do anything but sleep. I try to read a book but I don't enjoy it. I try to watch some TV but it's boring. I try to play a video game, but it doesn't hold any appeal to me. I go to a park to take a walk in nature, but it's all boring and uninteresting.

Lately the past few months, I've been mostly good. I still live in fear of entering another depressive episode. I regularly visit a psychiatrist and therapist, and I take mood-stabilizing medication on a daily basis. If I go off of my medication, (I once went to visit my parents for two weeks, and left it at home) I become incredibly depressed. Alcohol, even in small amounts, can make me suicidal.

Am I hopeful about the future? It all depends upon when you ask me. Some days I feel like I've got the worst of it behind me, and as long as I follow my medications, avoid alcohol, stick to routines, and don't make drastic changes in my life, I'll be OK. Other days I realize that empirically, something like 20% of people with bipolar die of suicide, and your odds of dying of suicide increase dramatically if you've already attempted it. I really have no clue as to whether i'll die by natural means.

<comment><USER3> I experience something similar, but not to the same extent. Nevertheless, hopefully this will be helpful.

I have a desire to succeed, to invent, to solve highly difficult problems, much like you, and it becomes an obsession. And, too, this coincide with an over-estimation of my ability to perform such. I believe this is so I will continue to try to solve such lofty problems.

But eventually the steam which powered that over-estimation runs out. And then I hate, because of my lack of success, myself to the same extent as I over- estimated myself. And this is no way to live. And this whole process comes down to one thing: my initial desire to succeed, to solve such difficult problems.

The more I look at my thoughts, where they came from, I realise this desire to succeed comes from my belief others will only value me if I succeed in such a way. When I imagine solving such problems, I always imagine other people, telling other people I've done this, and gaining their approval.

I have only a vague idea when I started to believe that I would only be a valued human being if I solve these problems that no-one else has. But this is where my bipolar cycle started. And it will only end when I remove this pernicious idea from my mind, which will require a lot of introspection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow I feel like this is describing me verbatim, and then feel self-centred as though I don't deserve this description.

</comment><comment><USER6> One of the most touching things I've read in while..

The author evokes life's tragedies in simple but nuanced manner.

<comment><USER7> Touching, indeed.

I see this pattern all around me and a lot of it in myself - and, mind you, I only use Lisp to teach Emacs new tricks. The fact worse is better in this industry is a tragedy so huge we have not yet come to appreciate its magnitude.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Very good article.

But learning from the past, I am already afraid of seeing lots of articles on the HN front page devoted to discussing the BBM...

</comment><comment><USER9> Umm...analyzing self...Beep...Beep...Beep...Panic...Panic...Panic...... I have all the characteristics for a BBM, from top to bottom. Whats worse?I dont even ,know lisp!!!!!What do I do what do I do????!!!!!!!!1

<comment><AUTHOR> Start here: <http://clojure.org>

<comment><USER9> I dont know but your advice does not appeal to me, I mean clojure just doesnt cut it. And i dont wanna go into the hassel of anything java (it ate up my master high school end project, I rewrote it in ruby then). What about haskell I know its not totall Lisp but seems better than clojure

<comment><USER9> If I got down voted so many times just for this comment clojure sure must be a fine language.But I am still not going to learn it just because it targets the JVM. But maybe some day I will forget the 3 sleep less nights I spent rewriting the project in ruby or the A- I got where I had expected an A++, and try to look into clojure.

<comment><USER7> I think the fact it adresses the JVM is a nice thing that allows you to get away with writing Lisp code when your corporate overlords demand you to write Java code. ;-)

Now, more seriously, it seems a rather useful Lisp that somewhat deals with the problem of partial/buggy/worksforme library implementations by using the huge Java class library.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Naples, Rome, Milan, Zen 4: An Interview with AMD CTO, Mark Papermaster - <AUTHOR> https://www.anandtech.com/show/13578/naples-rome-milan-zen-4-an-interview-with-amd-cto-mark-papermaster <comment><AUTHOR> The big news to me is that while the FPU AVX doubled in size to 256-bits, they will NOT be downclocking like Intel currently does. That should offer a very significant performance advantage until Intel is able to fix their 10nm process.</comment>


Living up to our values and the Neutrino acquisition - <AUTHOR> https://blog.coinbase.com/living-up-to-our-values-and-the-neutrino-acquisition-ba98174cdcf6 <comment><USER2> "We had a gap in our diligence process". This is the most bullshit line in the entire statement. Like, you didn't Google top executives of the company you decided to buy (CEO, CTO, CRO) and read the first articles that popped up?

<comment><USER3> And in real business we spend up to millions in external legal advice to audit and enhance our compliance officers work. I am amazed that in this sector even the advisors don't seem to have M&A experience. This is basic vetting, or... a calculated risk with the expected outcome.

<comment><USER4> Everything in cryptocurrencies is like this. It's a recursive pyramid scheme of clowns selling nonsense to chumps all the way down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is good because it shows there are professional consequences to pay when you engage in unethical behavior on behalf of repressive regimes and against democratic foundations.

<comment><USER6> The reality is that Coinbase through their due diligence process had to have known about these ties and how they may have been perceived by the media/crypto community and yet proceeded to buy it anyway because they are desperate to list new tokens to shore up declining revenue.

The deal was already signed...Coinbase can't just back out because they miscalculated the backlash despite the background of the founders being well known. The acquired team probably just gets to vest immediately and leave Coinbase without having to work for them.

<comment><USER7> Agree with the criticism of the acquisition but neutrino isn't product that helps them list assets faster

<comment><USER6> It is because they need some blockchain analytics provider (in-house or external) for every chain they list as a compliance prerequisite. Chainalysis/Elliptic only have a few available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can anyone provide background on this? What is the Hacking Team and why were former members transitioned out?

<comment><USER9> Wikipedia explains it well: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacking_Team](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacking_Team)

HackingTeam is a Milan-based information technology company that sells offensive intrusion and surveillance capabilities to governments, law enforcement agencies and corporations. Its "Remote Control Systems" enable governments and corporations to monitor the communications of internet users, decipher their encrypted files and emails, record Skype and other Voice over IP communications, and remotely activate microphones and camera on target computers. The company has been criticized for providing these capabilities to governments with poor human rights records, though HackingTeam states that they have the ability to disable their software if it is used unethically.

<comment><USER10> What's their connection with Neutrino? Does it just so happen that some ex- members of HackingTeam worked there at that time? Was it founded by ex- HackingTeam people?

<comment><USER11> [https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/04/neutrino-employees-who- onc...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/04/neutrino-employees-who-once-worked- for-a-controversial-surveillance-tech-company-will-leave-coinbase/)

> Before launching Neutrino, CEO Giancarlo Russo, CTO Alberto Ornaghi and > chief research officer Marco Valleri, worked at Hacking Team, a security and > surveillance tech company that has been criticized for selling products to > governments with a history of human rights violations, including Egypt, > Kazakhstan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Turkey. As The Intercept > reported in 2015, Hacking Team's malware has also been found on the > computers of activists and journalists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The key part: "those who previously worked at Hacking Team (despite the fact that they have no current affiliation with Hacking Team), will transition out"

To earn a living, I suppose they will have to go back to hacking. Maybe they will end up as contractors somewhere in the Middle East, such as Dubai.

</comment><comment><USER13> Leaving or "transitioned out" are such BS ways to say you fired them. You kicked them to the curb, grow up and state it like someone who believes it was justified.

<comment><USER6> Actually, I'm interpreting it as "we're making this purposely ambiguous because we actually negotiated a sweetheart exit deal that allows them to continue vesting stock without working or staying on as a paid advisor/consultant."

<comment><USER14> "Arrest and vest"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Too bad they can't be "transitioned into" the Hague.

</comment><comment><USER16> TLDR: We bought a company but forgot to Google the founders and didn't realize they used to sell spying software to bad people, so now we asked them to leave quietly and don't want to say how much hush money we've paid them. Because values.

<comment><USER16> More realistically: we bought a company even though we knew full well the founders sold spy software, now that it probably becoming clear that Saudi Arabia used it for murder, we think it's best that said founders leave quietly with a good exit package because values.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Apparently, in the age of the internet your sins follow you forever. Humans are imperfect and do not always make sound decisions or decisions that everyone agrees with. We need to be able to respect this and work together rather than taking away people's livelihood.

<comment><USER18> In the early 2000s I worked for an early cloud company. We interviewed someone whose name I recognized as someone associated with a very well known person that had been convicted for computer crimes, and that this someone had testified to avoid prosecution himself. (Edit: he had plead guilty.)

Despite the someone's recognizeable name, at no point did he disclose this aspect of his past. We decided to pass on him.

<comment><USER19> Did you pass on this person because of the prior conviction that he chose not to volunteer, or because he flunked the interview and wasn't a good fit for the team?

Did you judge him better or worse because he cut a deal?

More importantly, if we take the implication that he was passed on because he didn't volunteer info to a question you didn't directly ask -- can you really blame him for not volunteering the details?

<comment><USER18> It's been more than 15 years and my memory is hazy. The part I remember is recognizing his name.

But I don't know. We were a company that provided cloud computing services and he had previously plead guilty to computer hacking crimes. With more life experience I wouldn't hold that against a person today but at the time I probably did. My thinking then was that it was relevant information that he should have disclosed.</comment></comment></comment></comment>