Anonymous takes control of North Korea's Twitter and Flickr accounts - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/asia/2013/04/04/anonymous-takes-control-of-north-koreas-twitter-and-flickr-accounts-defaces-websites/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+TheNextWeb+%28The+Next+Web+All+Stories%29

<comment><USER2> Most of the time the people who Anonymous give the stick to deserve it, but this type of petty schoolyard graffiti attack is questionable. Given the DPRK's sensitive ego, especially at this point in their international circus show when everyone's doing their best to diffuse the situation, injecting 'porn and kitten images' into their network is not helping the effort. At the very least, inject some propaganda or meaningful statement rather than self- glorifying "I wuz here" junk.

The DPRK is a horribly repressed, poverty ridden hell-hole where the only way out is death. I have nothing but pity for their every day suffering. A small part of me wants things like this to tip the balance of a short-lived war that ends in an open and free Korea. Why wait another 10 years where nothing's changed except their childish tantrums and nuclear capability?

<comment><USER3> "Most of the time the people who Anonymous give the stick to"

I _really_ think it's important to our online discourse to unpack the proper noun 'Anonymous'. "Anonymous" isn't akin to The Junta of NK, the Department of State's actions on behalf of the Secretary of State, the UK Foreign Office or whatever. It's ostensibly actions by actors outside the beauracratic system performing anarchic acts. That's a pretty huge umbrella to use to simplistically label the actors as 'Anonymous'.

<comment><USER4> Certain details about the images on the photostream at [http://cdn.thenextweb.com/wp- content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/...](http://cdn.thenextweb.com/wp- content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/04/flickraccount.jpg) , such as the image that reads "We are Anonymous", leads me to believe that "Anonymous" is, in fact, the culprit in this case.

<comment><USER5> Or someone claiming to be Anonymous. That's the whole point...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm really tired of the people shouting " _THIS TIME_ Anonymous took it too far!". It reminds me of an interview with Jon Stewart where he talked about people telling him (paraphrasing): "I really like your comedy, but then you talked about global warming and that's a really serious issue, so now I don't like you anymore".

Look. "Anonymous" is a like force of nature. It is simply the current collection of idiots with an axe to grind attacking whatever seems cool and sensationalist. Some of them have skills, some of them don't. Most of the time, what they do is childish. What they don't have is an agenda that you could _argue_ with.

Yelling at them whenever they're on the part of your lawn that you care about makes about as much sense as yelling at the rain for making the part of your lawn wet that might rot from it. (Wow, that sure makes a contender for todays price for most quickly tortured metaphor.)

The reason why "Anonymous does X"? "Because X is possible". Nothing more and nothing less.

<comment><USER7> You can state that something has been taken too far without the expectation that that sentiment will change anything. Those are two separate issues.

I think it is perfectly reasonable to say that the risk/reward ratio here is quite a bit different than many of Anon's previous targets. As much as we deride North Korea's military ability, they still have the potential to inflict a great deal of harm to a large number of people. That risk hasn't really been present to this level in many of the things Anon has been involved in before as far as I know.

<comment><USER6> > You can state that something has been taken too far without the expectation > that that sentiment will change anything.

Agreed. It does make the sometimes a bit excessive complaining rather pointless, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This made me smile.

I mean, sure, it's undeniably petty, and if it accomplishes anything then it'll be to inflame the DPRK's temper. Maybe that's the point; maybe highlighting the empty nature of their posturing with insults rather than listening to their threats with prudent concern is a way to bring them into line.

I don't really think that's the case, and I doubt the people who did this thought that either.

But this made me smile. It's irreverent, questionably legal and of dubious value. That's what Anonymous stands for, and I have to admit that I'm glad that they're there to pull pranks like this.

<comment><USER9> _This made me smile._

You realize that lower level people within NK will likely be punished, perhaps brutally because of the embarrassment? The people punished may not even have been responsible for the security lapse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm really getting tired of 'Anonymous'. They are simply internet thugs under the guise of doing something important. But they don't do anything important, they actually create that fear the causes governments to enact stupid laws to prevent 'hackers'. So the result is an erosion of your freedoms.

<comment><AUTHOR> Anonymous raises the public's awareness for the weeknesses of internet security. Whether they intend to do so or not: I think it is a good way to educate people...

<comment><USER9> Just like breaking into peoples' cars raises awareness of automobile security?

Thanks a bunch for raising my awareness that my head has a weakness to blunt trauma by hitting me in the skull with a hammer!

<comment><AUTHOR> Anon has no commercial reasons for their actions. Your head cannot be protected by setting strong passwords - most exploits Anon provides are caused by things that are easy to prevent (e.g. bad passwords, sql injection weaknesses...)...

<comment><USER9> It doesn't matter whether or not Anon has a commercial interest or they're just being assholes. Their behavior is still unethical.

Additionally, it doesn't matter if self-protection is easy as in setting strong passwords or easy as in putting a helmet on my head or locking my door at night.

The ethical lapse is in the person breaking into the server, hitting me on the head with the hammer, or opening the door to my unlocked home.

Don't blame victims.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's just too bad the country's intranet is (supposedly) airgapped from the internet. So they can't actually deliver any propaganda to North Korean subjects without assistance from someone on the inside.

<comment><USER12> > they can't actually deliver any propaganda to North Korean subjects

if they could, they would be liberated with a tweet, democracy in 140 chars or less.

<comment><USER11> Which 140 chars, though?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Can even Flickr keep open an account made by the North Korean govt? Isn't that sanctioned by the US Govt?

<comment><USER14> Flickr's terms refer one to you Yahoo ID terms[1] which, in section 8 say:

 _"You agree to comply with all applicable export and import laws and regulations[…] and sanctions control programs"_

The US / North Korea sanctions[2] don't specifically talk about services, but under the export of goods has this to say:

 _Treasury prohibitions on exporting goods to North Korea specifically relate to sales involving parties whose property and interests in property are blocked under E.O. 13551. Otherwise, there are no Treasury prohibitions on exporting goods to North Korea. Depending on the goods involved (e.g., luxury goods), the export may be subject to other U.S. export controls, such as those administered by the U.S. Department of Commerce._

So I think they're be OK as long as it's the press and not the government that's running it.

[1] <http://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/utos/utos-173.html>

[2] [http://www.treasury.gov/resource- center/sanctions/Programs/D...](http://www.treasury.gov/resource- center/sanctions/Programs/Documents/nkorea.txt)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is very immature and very irresponsible IMHO. Poking fun of NK on the internet is only going to aggravate the situation, because I'm _very_ sure NK will end up interpreting it as "US doing", rather than some random individuals.

<comment><USER16> I'd be surprised if the US Govt wasn't behind this.

Remember Lulzsec? aka the FBI?

<comment><USER15> But what could possibly accomplish doing this? I can't picture the rationale behind it if it really were the US Govt itself.

<comment><USER16> discredit the NK government by showing a bunch of kids can hack them.

enable the masses in NK to access the real internet.. create dissent.. initiate homegrown civil war.

<comment><USER15> That... makes sense. To some extent. I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> nice flickr uploads... [http://cdn.thenextweb.com/wp- content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/...](http://cdn.thenextweb.com/wp- content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/04/flickraccount.jpg)

<comment><USER17> Can someone confirm these are safe for work?

<comment><USER18> It's just a flag, should be SFW. Edit: Oh and a goofy poster. Nothing crazy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "They are promising to 'inject' porn and kitten images into the network as further proof of their level of access."

Lol? I guess?

Jokes aside, this seems - at least - irresponsible to me.

</comment><comment><USER20> I hope this won't be what makes this whole thing blow up...

</comment><comment><USER21> Go home, you are drunk!

</comment><comment><USER22> They could at least upload something genuinely funny.

</comment><comment><USER23> What if somebody gets beheaded for this?

<comment><USER24> The beheaders would be primarily responsible for it, not the Anons.

<comment><USER25> The hackers would be indirectly responsible for it too.

Edit: I'm not saying they're guilty and should be put in jail for it or something. Not that kind of responsibility. However, they do bear some indirect responsibility that would cause most normal people to feel somewhat guilty.

An analogous type of guilt would be if, for example, I mistakenly dropped something while on top of a tall building and it cracked someone's windshield in the street below, caused an accident, and 3 people died. I didn't kill those people directly, and I definitely did not intend for anything bad to happen, and probably it was also the fault of the driver who let himself be distracted enough by something cracking his windshield to then proceed to have a major accident. It's hard to blame myself for those deaths, but I most certainly will, because I was involved in a critical part of the chain of cause and effect that made these three people die.

Now imagine if you dropped that penny from a tall building, and it caused 100'000 people to die. Some guilt trip that would be...

<comment><USER24> Yes, and also the victim's employer because they they hired him. Also Twitter because they certainly could have make it harder to hack someone's account even if the account holder makes mistakes. Thounsands of people would be indirectly responsible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think this is extremely stupid. Usually I like anon plans, but this one is poking a tiger with a short stick.

<comment><AUTHOR> Poking a tiger with a short stick is extremly dangerous - what danger do you see in Anon's actions?

<comment><USER27> NK could interpret it as US actions rather than Anonymous.

<comment><USER28> My first thought was "these are US or SK actions". On further thought it doesn't seem likely, but still, everyone can hide behind the Anonymous flag for plausible denyability.

<comment><AUTHOR> For what reason should US or SK do such a thing. If they are capable of hacking NK they don't need to deny that.

<comment><USER28> One reason I can think of would be because it's "not done" in international diplomacy to publicly admit of hacking. I don't think any country ever openly admitted to building Stuxnet and other "cyberwar" botnets either. Or maybe they did eventually (not sure), but only after very long suspicions. They could still tell NK of it privately, threaten them in an indirect way.

Note that I'm not saying they did this, or have good reason to. It's just that I'm a bit suspicious of anything Anonymous related after the Sabu/Lulzsec story, especially when it relates to propaganda like this.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tell HN: PicDigest launched yesterday! How'd it go? - <AUTHOR> http://picdigest.tumblr.com/post/34838097089/picdigest-launched-yesterday-howd-it-go

<comment><USER2> I saw PicDigest yesterday and think it's great (I didn't chime in though). Regarding the tech blog coverage, it may be too early to tell - they may be still "getting around to it". Nonetheless, I'd start hitting up blogs directly. PicDigest is something that would be right up MakeUseOf's alley for example.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks flexx! I didn't hit that one, but I'll try it now.</comment></comment>


Controversies over the term Engineer - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_over_the_term_Engineer <comment><USER2> I passed the EIT exam, worked under professional engineers for four years, and obtained letters of recommendation from them, all so that I had the right to sit for the professional engineering exam. I then took that exam and passed it. I pay $200 per year to maintain my registered professional engineer status in my state. All this gives me the right to stamp legal documents as an engineer ... and be held legally accountable for designs that cause injury to others, either physical or financial. I wear a stainless steel ring on the little finger of my right hand that was given to me to remind me as I sign off on designs, that the safety of others is in my hands.

I am allowed to put on my business card, my website, and my consulting advertisements that I am an engineer. Theoretically, you are not, if you haven't done these things, and a case could be made that you should not be able to, just like you don't get to call yourself a doctor or a lawyer.

The term engineer has undergone serious deflation over the years, which is a shame. I don't see this trend suddenly reversing, so I don't lose sleep over it, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't feel a little regretful over it's demise.

<comment><USER3> _The term engineer has undergone serious deflation over the years_

So, do railway engineers (as they are known in the USA and Canada) take the oath and wear the little ring? Or did that "serious deflation" you refer to start sometime around the birth of the railroad? ;)

I think the culprit here is not deflation of the language -- the language has always been ambiguous -- but rather inflation of the scope of engineering education. It's not just for P.E.s anymore. If you believe the term _engineer_ should be restricted to P.E.s you should start by explaining that to every academic engineering department I've ever seen, all of which are happy to hand out "engineering degrees" to graduating "engineering students" who tend to be called "engineers" for short, whether or not they go on to get a P.E. (which, as you point out, is a lot more effort and a rather impressive accomplishment).

I literally _had a Ph.D. in EE_ before I even _heard the term_ "Professional Engineer". [1] Not because my school was training people to practice without a license, but because they're training people in skills -- like my old field, semiconductor laser engineering -- that don't require P.E. certification. Of every EE Ph.D. I know, I know of exactly _one_ who actually got a P.E. certification.

And, only slightly off the subject, need I point out that quite a few Ph.Ds have "Doctor" as part of their name? It's quite common in many countries, including the USA. I don't do this, because I don't work in academia, and outside the academy one tends to get confused with an M.D., but according to this fun article:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_(title)>

you are _required_ to use your academic title in certain legal situations in Austria, and German Ph.D.s tend to use the title all of the time.

\---

[1] Because my undergraduate degree was in physics. I presume that if I'd studied undergrad EE someone would have mentioned along the way that my B.S. wouldn't actually qualify me to design a commercially-available table lamp without adult supervision.

<comment><USER4> _[1] Because my undergraduate degree was in physics. I presume that if I'd studied undergrad EE someone would have mentioned along the way that my B.S. wouldn't actually qualify me to design a commercially-available table lamp without adult supervision._

Some schools are probably better, but I left my university after learning from graduated students that the dream course I was looking forward to, where all of the requirements would make sense and I would finally be told what I can do with my newfound knowledge, didn't exist. One friend of mine said that his BSEE degree entirely drained his confidence to accomplish anything in the real world. One could argue that a university degree should be purely academic, but this school's program wasn't too helpful there, either.

To sum up, the only ways I know of to realize that you are or aren't qualified to do something are to try it until you get rich or get sued, or work with someone else who already has.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I use the title "Programmer". I think it's much more accurate than "Software Engineer", which brings to mind a bunch of guys with slide-rules and pocket protectors making a UML diagram for some offshore Java developers to "implement".

Remember that Knuth's book is called "The Art of Computer Programming", not "The Art of Software Engineering".

<comment><USER6> That's because Engineering isn't Art. It's not Craftsmanship either. If you're really practicing Engineering, then you're using a lot of math and a lot of well-understood design principles to design whatever it is you're creating before you create it. You're able to prove, based solely on the design, that when you get around to actually building it the thing is going to meet all applicable requirements. The PE signs off on that design as a guarantee that it's going to be good. And /then/ you build it.

Artists and Craftsmen just forge ahead into creating with little more than a general idea of what they're making. The design evolves as they go. Programming is almost always like this, because it's just too damn hard, time- consuming, and expensive to document the design in sufficient detail ahead of time. No requirements documentation is as detailed as the final source code, when it comes to describing precisely how the software must behave.

That, I think, is why software development will always be Art or Craftsmanship rather than a true Engineering discipline. If you're designing a bridge, it's much cheaper and faster to design it on paper than with steel, because paper drawings and specifications are able to capture all of the details that matter. If designing a bridge required specifying the exact position of every iron atom, no one would bother trying to do it on paper first. With software, there is no advantage to doing more than a high level design on paper first because every byte in the source code is significant. You get one wrong, and the software doesn't work. You can't capture that in the design without actually writing the source code, so we skip that level of design. We're craftsmen instead, designing as we go.

<comment><USER7> "Artists and Craftsmen just forge ahead into creating with little more than a general idea of what they're making. The design evolves as they go."

Interesting. Any woodworkers here? I've been under the impression that furniture makers would first work out the design, careful cut the pieces, then assemble them.

Likewise, many painters will do several sketches, then carefully build up the final piece when working on canvas.

Of course there are artists who make stuff up as they go, but the suggestion that artists and craftsmen do not, as a rule, employ careful planning and detailed steps in the creation of their work is false.

There's an art to engineering, and there's engineering in art.

"If designing a bridge required specifying the exact position of every iron atom, no one would bother trying to do it on paper first. With software, there is no advantage to doing more than a high level design on paper first because every byte in the source code is significant. You get one wrong, and the software doesn't work. You can't capture that in the design without actually writing the source code, so we skip that level of design."

        Blueprints :: High-level source code

        Construction of physical bridge ::Compiler/interpreter

Discuss. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've learned long ago (before I ever touched a computer) not to give the term "Engineer" too much weight, since it was explained to me that the janitors in my grandfather's office were called "Sanitation Engineers".

<comment><USER9> > I've learned long ago (before I ever touched a computer)

Phrases like this give me a strong sense of history.

<comment><USER7> I nearly knocked my Arduino Lilypad into the trash the other day, and while straightening up, moved a G1 and two Sansa MP3 players.

It occurred to me that I have a perhaps a dozen computers in my house.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A great-grandfather was listed in the 1900 census as a "stationary engineer"; the next two show him as "machinist", and I'm guessing he had not changed trades. I doubt his schooling went beyond about 8th grade, for his father was a farmer in northern Germany.

</comment><comment><USER11> Controversies like this are, I think, just another indicator of the changing face of careers. Here in NYC web developers are called everything from "software engineers" to "developers" to "coders" to "presentation layer engineers." And that doesn't taken into account the front- vs back-end issue.

That being said, I appreciate that many certifications (MCSE, ZCSE) use the term "certified engineer" as, I do believe that the term engineer should qualify someone with a more developer skillset.

</comment><comment><USER12> I have two engineering degrees (Mechanical and Electrical), but make my living from my startup and web-development consultancy. Needless to say I encounter the misuse of the term engineer quite often and cringe everytime. In fact, one of my good friends started to refer to himself as an Information Engineer, not having any formal degree, and when I asked him about it, he said he hadn't even really given it a thought and changed his title right then and there.

I know people don't do it maliciously, and many even do it tongue-in-cheek (e.g. "Sanitation Engineer", "Happiness Engineer", and many others I've encountered). So, like cryptnoob, I don't lose any sleep over it and really don't take it too personally. But I'd be lying if I said it didn't bother me. I kind of wish the term "Engineer" were regulated in the US (not just P.E.), but that's life. And I'm sure someone with a Masters in Engineering would be bothered that I can describe myself as an Engineer, having only a couple of B.S.'s.

</comment><comment><USER13> I like how us "true" engineers in Canada are given an iron ring. It's like we have our own little secret club :)

<comment><USER14> Sorry to correct you on that, but the iron ring doesn't make you an engineer in Canada. At least not in Quebec, where I'm from. They make that quite clear during the ceremony.

The iron ring has moral implications, while the title of engineer has legal ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The article is incomplete. You can't use the title "Engineer" in Texas without a P.E.

<comment><USER12> You should help complete it then... it's Wikipedia :-)</comment></comment>


Mac botnet grows to 600,000, 274 of them in Cupertino - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/125019-mac-botnet-grows-to-600000-274-of-them-in-cupertino

<comment><USER2> Just how many "extremetech" articles do you plan on posting today? Someone was just remarking to you about how you're spamming: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3798987>

<comment><AUTHOR> As many as I think would be of interest to HN :)</comment></comment>


How to use Fizz Buzz - <AUTHOR>

So, I received this email...
Subject: Very incredible software and web dev
Body:
I am good at what I do I can code in 15 different languages. I just moved to (city) from America where I was running a successful start up company. What can I do to get in better contact with you to pursue the possibility of us working together to make magic.
- xxx
wow, this sounds great!  Hmmm...15 languages?  This sounds like a perfect place for the old fizz buzz test
Subject: re: Very incredible software and web dev
Body:
Hey,
to begin with, for quality assurance could you please complete the following exercise in any one of the fifteen programming languages.
Write a program that prints the numbers from 1 to 100. But for multiples of three print "Toot" instead of the number and for the multiples of five print "Tweet". For numbers which are multiples of both three and five print "TootTweet".
This should not take you long and I will get back to you soon as reviewing your work.
Best,
(me)
early the next day
Subject: re: re: Very incredible software and web dev
Body:
What would you want this written in? what development do you do? You want a app in ios objecive c or just any java c++ etc?
whoa, this is not looking very good...  Still, benefit of the doubt and all...
Subject: re: re: re: Very incredible software and web dev
Body:
Hi,
objective c, java, c++, or any other language of your choice.  You can pick any language.  You don't have to create a complete app, just a function, and I will review what you send me.
this is a quality assurance test so I can determine your ability to code.  if you are unable to complete this task in any language, please indicate this as I might still have other work to do with you.
Best, yy
unfortunately, I never heard from them again. This is exactly how fizzbuzz is supposed to work.  It's a negative test! <comment><USER2> What's even worse is that he could have _at least_ faked it with a quick google search. Shows absolutely no effort on his behalf.

<comment><USER3> Searching for TootTweet or any combination of the words won't yield the same results as searching for FizzBuzz, not until Google crawls this post.

Only then, a test with the words "Toot" "Tweet" will be burned forever for the fakers advantage :)

Not searching for the question or not being able to parse it logically into a program is far more aggravating to me.

There are a lot of people who do this, but there are also many recruiters who are good in their jobs by spotting this self-deluded cockiness.

What amazes me is how far someone can go by in life, asserting their supposed skills, while not being able to parse a simple question related to their profession.

Have any of you HN'ers seen this in other professions? Meaning, have you ever seen someone claim to be a carpenter but having no idea how to cut a piece of wood or use the right nail?

Or you think this can be attributed to someone trying to scam gullible persons into paying in advance for a website that will never be created?

Anyway, I give the guy the benefit of the doubt because I don't know how much time has passed since OP's last e-mail.

<comment><AUTHOR> 12 days :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The original mail has a very scamish tone anyway.</comment>


Singaporean government bureaucracy effectively closes news site - <AUTHOR> http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/top-stories/234307/singaporean-government-bureaucracy-effectively-closes-news-site/

<comment><USER2> I don't really understand the tone of this article. As anybody who has been in Singapore for more than a few months realizes, the regime here strictly controls the social and media environs. Surely the BN didn't think that they would be able to continue without adhering to Government Regulations?

Another part of the article I found odd was this sentence, "It was in this world that veteran Singaporean journalist Bertha Henson launched Breakfast Network, less than a year after leaving her high-level editor job at The Straits Times, Singapore's leading daily newspaper. "

The Straits Times is outreach propaganda for the Singapore Government. It's a painfully structured document, that each day typically has one article about someone who broke the law, and how they got punished, another article about how wonderful singapore is in terms of Food/Shelter/Laws/etc... Typically another article about something bad that happened in another country that would never have happened in Singapore, and often an article promoting social harmony between the cultures/religions/races.

There are a few traditional "news" stories mixed in, but in general, the Straits Times is strict government propaganda - it would never be allowed to do real reporting that conflicted with the Powers that Be.

Why the "high-level editor" thought she could get away with "free press" in singapore, is beyond me.

Don't get me wrong - I love this country - it's warm, clean, safe, harmonious (recent Little India riot excepting) - but I am not confused as to where the lines are drawn as to what is allowed.

<comment><USER3> Are you saying there should be no outrage over this because "they should've known better"? Let's not forget the website is a victim of an oppressive government, ultimately.

You're also implying, people shouldn't try to do "free press" in an oppressive country. By that logic, nobody should've thought freely in communist countries either. They would've just gotten themselves into trouble. And yet, that's exactly how a society evolves - by having more and more people try to think and talk freely, _despite_ knowing the government won't like it.

<comment><USER2> Sorry - I did a poor job of communicating my critique here. What I really found surprising was the (apparent) naivety from the perspective of both writers. I've only been in Singapore for six month, but, from talking with my colleagues who have grown up here, there seems to be a universal understanding of what the policies and rules are, both written and unwritten.

I'm not suggesting that people shouldn't try to do "free press" in Singapore - but when they do it, realize that these are going to be the obstacles they will face, and go into it with their eyes wide open.

With that said, some topics, which could be written about in the united states, are off limits (in fact, illegal) in Singapore, but I don't think there was any difficulty understanding that on the part of the writers (in fact, one of them cited that the issue was not the content, but the process of opening up a new newspaper that had some bureaucracy involved)

<comment><USER4> "What I really found surprising was the (apparent) naivety from the perspective of both writers."

Singaporean here. I'm guessing that it's mostly a rhetorical device rather than genuine ignorance. Sometimes you want to go into an obstacle head on- like that guy who filmed himself riding his bicycle into things on the bike lane, or that guy who got himself arrested to prove a point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Dear Mr Cherian George,

1\. We refer to your 10 December commentary, "Online freedom: time to revise the Singapore report card".

2\. The Breakfast Network was asked to register because it had ceased to be a personal blog or website, but had incorporated itself as the Breakfast Network Pte Ltd (BNPL). As a corporate entity, Breakfast Network Pte Ltd has a greater possibility of coming under foreign influence via foreign funding. This registration requirement is simply to ensure that Breakfast Network will not receive foreign funding.

3\. You declare that The Breakfast Network shut down due to "red tape" and "unnecessarily onerous registration". We would like to clarify that this is not so. The Breakfast Network shut down because its editor and owner chose not to register, as required by MDA. Ms Henson claimed the requirements were onerous, citing the need to register volunteer contributors to her site. MDA issued a statement on 13 Dec 2013, refuting her claim. At no point was Ms Henson told that contributors needed to also register. She was only told that editors, including pro bono editors, had to register. As for the reporting of sources of revenue, MDA informed Ms Henson that she could suggest alternative ways of providing the required information.

4\. Secondly, nothing has changed for Internet Content Providers. They continue to operate and publish under the existing class licence framework which has been in place since 1996. Under this framework, certain groups such as political associations and political websites have always been required to register with the MDA. However, up until now, the registration requirement did not come with an undertaking not to receive foreign funds. This is because up until now, the political websites which had to register were also gazetted as political associations, which meant that they were already prohibited from receiving foreign funds under the Political Donations Act.

5\. You also characterise the registration process as an exercise for the Breakfast Network to "persuade regulators they deserve the right to publish before they are allowed to do so". This is an astounding description. The registration merely requires the provision of names of persons involved in the provision, management and/or operation of the Breakfast Network, and an undertaking by them not to receive foreign funding.

6\. Our internet regulations have not changed. Neither has our long standing principle that politics should remain a matter for Singaporeans and Singapore only."

\- [http://blog.freedomfromthepress.info/2013/12/10/online- freed...](http://blog.freedomfromthepress.info/2013/12/10/online-freedom-time- to-revise-the-singapore-report-card/)

<comment><USER5> While the whole thing does seem somewhat heavy handed, it would seem like double checking what regulations your industry comes under would be something you'd want to do _before_ registering a company for what was previously a hobby.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> While countries like China (rightfully) get the bad rap for being a harsh place for journalists and independent media, Singapore tends to get away. Its media control laws are amongst the most rigorous and draconian among modern democracies, and naturally, its media the least critical of the state.

Unfortunately I don't think that's going to change, because its citizens (and the rest of the world) seem to have accepted that loss of press freedom is an acceptable price for economic prosperity and unbridled consumerism.

<comment><USER7> "Amongst modern democracies"? Singapore is not a democracy - it's a one- man/one-party system with racist undertones.</comment></comment>


Microsoft's 'iPhone Killer' Secret Prototype Stolen in Barcelona - <AUTHOR> http://www.macblogz.com/2009/02/19/microsofts-iphone-killer-secret-prototype-stolen-in-barcelona/

<comment><USER2> Well, just keep an eye on ebay and they'll be able to buy it back for a song.

I don't know why Barcelona should be 'known for having the best pick-pocketing thieves in the world', but if this one plays his cards right he could be the wealthiest pick pocket.

On the whole I think it rates as 'pretty stupid' to have your pre-production samples out in the open like that, there is not much 'secret' about them anymore when relations of relations are walking around with them (and now, of course, pick pockets).</comment>


What happens behind the scenes when we type www.google.com in a browser? (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vasanthk/how-web-works <comment><USER2> I worked with the guy who wrote this repo. He's one of the smartest, nicest, and genuinely curious guys I know.

He also ran teams and his leadership style was very humble and encouraging in a workplace that was, at times, the opposite.

So glad to see he's still publishing awesome content like this.

Be sure to check out some of his other popular repos, great stuff!

<comment><USER3> I roger that. His name is `Vasanth Krishnamoorthy`. I still have the good fortune of working with him in `WalmartLabs`. Extremely talented, multi- faceted, curious and above all a wonderful human being. I have learnt plenty through my interactions with him and am still learning from him :-). I am serendipitously lucky to have met him in my life.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Another similar context:

[https://github.com/alex/what-happens-when](https://github.com/alex/what- happens-when)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8902105](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8902105)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9189096](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9189096)

</comment><comment><USER4> The main problem with these kinds of exposition topics is that the steps involved are quite dense. By that I mean something like density of real numbers; between any two real numbers there are any number of real numbers. Then, the writer just chooses to expand on those steps that they are comfortable with, or the ones that get more eyeballs. I mean, why not explain how signal travels across various media like air, underwater cables, to and from satellite etc?

Now, don't get me wrong, I am not saying this is useless. I am just saying that if one chooses to give a 30k feet perspective, they had better stay there and not bounce between 40K and 10K.

<comment><USER5> I'm not seeing not sticking to 30k is really detrimental to how most people would likely consume a doc like this, which would probably be to sample various parts to find what they're interested in and then dig in.

<comment><USER6> I would most politely wish to note that one is tended to _read_ documents. One should rarely consume them unless in the spirit of espionage.

Equally, in the comfort of one's own parlour, one may _listen_ to one's wireless. Not 'consume', as was once heard.

The butler informs me on this occasion that I am correct. I bow to him in this. Uncommonly sharp fellow.

And so to the Drone's Club, where literature, wireless nor dolly birds are permitted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love a good reductionist deep dive into things we use everyday. This is a great overview to a wide range of topics.

I wrote something similar a couple of years ago[0] which skips the keyboard and display but goes further into the world of IP packet transmission (and HTTP/2). The parent link is better written though.

[0] [https://sheep.horse/2017/10/how_you_are_reading_this_page.ht...](https://sheep.horse/2017/10/how_you_are_reading_this_page.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> The most amazing part about this is that regardless of how much more details one would want to put into it, it is probably practically infeasible to make it complete. It's a wonderful example to demonstrate the importance of the concept of abstraction in CS.

</comment><comment><USER9> I would've liked to see ps/2 keyboards gone over. I still use one.

<comment><USER10> Do you plug it into a USB port or a ps/2 port on motherboard?

<comment><USER9> The motherboard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In the TLS handshake: "The server generates its own hash, and then decrypts the client-sent hash to verify that it matches"

The server decrypts a hash? But thats not how hashes work.

<comment><USER12> The client encrypts its hash before sending it to the server. Thus the server must decrypt it to compare it to the one it generated.

<comment><USER13> Hashes are one-way, so cannot be decrypted. The server can _compare_ the results of a hash (by doing the hash itself, and comparing the results), though.

<comment><USER12> You and turtles are suffering from the cryptographic equivalent of a hypercorrection, in the same way that well-intentioned people insist on the propriety of the grammatically impossible phrase "between you and I" (which should be "between you and me," because prepositions take objects, not subjects.) The two of you have had the irreversibility of one-way hashes drilled into your heads, just as many of us were taught when young not to say "me and Susie were playing on the swingset." And you have an allergic reaction to anyone using "decrypt" and "hash" in the same sentence, which can lead to that allergy triggering a false positive. In this case that's what's happening.

Cryptographic hashes are irreversible. That's the point of such a device. But there is nothing stopping someone from taking the _result_ of a cryptographic hash and then encrypting it, and then that someone or someone else decrypting that ciphertext to recover the hash result. E(H(S), k) leads to an encrypted hash, and D(E(H(S), k), k) recovers the hash. It's computationally infeasible to retrieve S. But nobody wanted to do that; they just wanted to know H(S).

You are correct that the server compares the result of the hash (which in context can also be called a "hash," such as "I used SHA-256 on my term paper, and then I spray-painted the hash on the face of the town clock tower, thus proving the existence of my term paper before the class deadline"). Nobody's arguing that. But how did it obtain the thing it's comparing its own result to, without M also obtaining that thing?

(I'm actually not sure whether TLS sends the actual hash or bases subsequent computations on the assumption that both sides can independently derive it. But if it does the former, it's totally fine to say "it decrypts the hash," which is the objection of the parent of this thread.)

<comment><USER13> Thanks, TIL :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think this would be better if it had more details about font rendering and layout engines.

<comment><USER15> I agree. We should fork it, flesh out those details and submit a pull request. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's amazing how detailed this is, and yet there are still steps missing!

</comment><comment><USER17> Of course, google in particular is behind a very complex distributed network. Distributed DBs are mentioned, but it would be cool to know more about how web requests are distributed and routed in this system.

<comment><USER18> I did this years ago so it might be different now, but I blocked google.com and some subdomains at the firewall, found a document hosted on google docs (google.com domain) link in google.co.uk search result, clicked it and instead of the link failing due to it being blocked at the firewall, a google.se (swedish) server started sending the ip traffic for the blocked document to come down. I never tried blocking google.se and then repeating to see what other google domain would send the document next, but its clear Google have written their own routing to get information around some restrictions beit deliberate or misconfigured. Its also an excellent way to probe what servers have blocks in place or not, ie censorship. Its also pretty much instant rerouting ie subsecond, so their ability to pass instructions to other servers in a timely manner is obvious. I wonder if their servers are using swarm intelligence in area's or not? They did custom build their own machines, which would have given them the opportunity to tear up the rule book some what.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Very comprehensive. However, it is missing how the client machine will ARP the gateway for the MAC address if it is not in its tables.

<comment><USER20> Perhaps you should submit a PR on the repo?

<comment><USER19> I should and I will

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I remember an interview where I answered a similarly in-depth question about what happens when you load a file, from file system traversal, down to the heads moving across the platter (because almost no one used SSDs in 2009).

</comment><comment><USER22> I used to work with some guys from Taos Consulting. They asked a similar interview question. "What happens when you ping Google". Your answer was expected to take at least 3 hours.

<comment><USER23> I also got asked a similar question in a an interview (as a programmer) and I answered it well and they hired me. But I think it's an absolutely terrible question for judging whether a person will be a good hire.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Do you find this an useful interview question in 2019? What is or isn't useful about the answer from candidates?

<comment><USER25> This question is now burnt. Nobody should be using it. (In reality, it was burnt a long time ago, but it's crispy and black now.)

If you do use it, you're merely selecting for people who have read posts like this on HN and reddit. Candidates who have memorized any of this will look vastly superior to those who haven't.

It's telling that there are already two sibling comments who are arguing that this is a good question - explains a lot about why technical interviews suck.

<comment><USER26> Just the fact those people are interested enough to read HN/Reddit for their own sake can't be a bad thing though.

I'm not an employer but I know I'd rather my workmates were the kind of people who are actually interested in computers enough to read about them for pleasure, not just those "straight by the book" types.

<comment><USER27> The problem with this question is if someone gives a good answer, it can be hard to tell if they studied it or they actually know. Maybe you can suss this out with follow ups.

If they don't give a good answer, maybe they haven't looked into networking details and debugging for some reason -- a lot of junior people haven't, but they may have the aptitude to learn and be great at it, but just don't have the knowledge base yet. Although it depends on exactly what you're hiring for, too. If you need the person like me, who will find and fix your weird problems with networking, maybe they should know this, or be able to make fairly plausible guesses; but most people on my team don't need to do that (although it's always nice to have more).

<comment><USER28> "it can be hard to tell if they studied it or they actually know."

What is the difference? If they studied it, they now know?

Is it because as an interviewer, you are looking for knowledge by experience, not via book-learning?

<comment><USER27> The difference is if they studied the answer, but didn't grasp the material, they got information to pass the test (maybe), but probably didn't get useful information.

I guess if you stop at each point and ask 'what could go wrong here, and how would you debug it' and they answer that well, then they've gotten the information enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> relevant - [https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/?fg=1](https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/?fg=1)

<comment><USER30> A lot is written about the algorithms and search results from Google but I haven't seen much on crawling and indexing. I imagine there are multiple teams in Google who help maintain the integrity and completeness of their indexes but would love to know more about it considering it might be the largest single repository of knowledge.

<comment><USER31> I believe email is significantly larger than the web. Wouldn't that be your largest repo of knowledge, in aggregate?

<comment><USER30> Yes, I agree. I just meant the Google index is probably the largest centralized collection of knowledge. Maybe not though, just a guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is almost the same open-ended interview questions I've used for many years, works a charm because it filters the engineers from the chaff (who just copy-pastes code from the internet w/o understanding why)

<comment><USER33> Me too. This gives a quick insight into what the applicant knows and what they are interested in.

This is usually one of the three questions I require as part of an application.

The other two are a technical question tailored for the position and the third a 'throwaway' that the applicant answer as they see fit. In the past it's been things like "What is the airspeed of an unladen swallow? (European or African)"

<comment><USER34> > "What is the airspeed of an unladen swallow? (European or African)"

What are you expecting to get from something like that?

<comment><USER33> Either they get the reference and say something funny in response, they don't get the reference and google it, or they ask a question like "what are you expecting from something like that?"

In any case, it's a chance to show themselves as a person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> If only we knew!

</comment><comment><USER36> i invented this question circa 2009. i have to assume, one of many that independently invented it.

in my version, it's not "what is behind the scenes ", it's "tell me everything you can in as much detail as you like, what has to happen to visit www.google.com". of course in 2009 google had only just become google.com.

<comment><USER31> I've noticed that when anyone claims to have invented something on HN, they get voted down. But I have no reason to doubt it. Please tell us more about how you came to use this question, and why you think it wasn't in circulation before that. I know someone asked me this in an interview in 2010, so it was in wider use by then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Doesn't it depend on the browser? Does Google Chrome still do that thing where if you fire the browser up and then type www.google.com in it, it actually _searches Google for that string_ and returns a results page, instead of just browsing there?

<comment><USER38> The behaviour of the URL bar is modifiable in most modern browsers. The default on most is automatic detection of URLs - if something looks like an URL, it's treated like one and if it doesn't, it searches your search engine of choice.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How did you find your co-founder? - <AUTHOR> Currently trying to find a co-founder for a product that I've built and brought traffic to.<p>Struggling to find a co-founder especially considering all the work and money I've invested in it already. Aka: I'd have a hard time giving up half equity to. <comment><USER2> Some advice about splitting equity when one person has already put time and money into it: [https://blog.ycombinator.com/splitting-equity-among- founders...](https://blog.ycombinator.com/splitting-equity-among-founders/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Angelist was how my co-founder found me. It came via an email. No idea if it cost money. She'd been looking for a few months for a technical co-founder to take the idea from PowerPoint/manual prototype to MVP.

There was a vetting process (on both sides, it's like getting married!) including a technical interview.

Equity was a difficult conversation, but better to set it out at the beginning. Lots of calculators out there via Google that can help provide perspective. Make sure you vest over years. (We did a 6 month/6 month/every month for 36 months schedule.)

Also, why do you need a cofounder? What are they going to bring to the table?

</comment><comment><USER4> I bought a business ebook from a guy. He added me on Facebook. He was really smart. He brought in a lot of trading experience. I had startup experience which he was interested in. We clicked well.

I still did a lot of the hard work and money, gave him only a minority share. He was okay with that. Later on, I added a much larger share when he proved he could commit.

We made good, ambitious progress. I'm surprised he stuck with me through it all, especially since I didn't really know him that well. There were times he canceled his health insurance and slept on the office floor to keep things going.

Personally, I think partners who are strangers work better than good friends but YMMV.

</comment><comment><USER5> I have no problem getting <40% if you have traction and a great idea. I bring a loooooot of experience and great things. I also believe there is a bunch of people here that wouldn't mind and think the same way.

Is it a problem really with 50% equity, or your idea/product?

You can as well be meeting the wrong people.

</comment><comment><USER6> Who said you had to give half?

<comment><AUTHOR> No one, but I'd anticipate most would request close to that.

<comment><USER3> Have you actually proven this hypothesis. I know of at least two instances where a co-founder got less than half when joining at a very early stage.

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you recommend? I've built the site from scratch and spent almost 20k on content creation.

<comment><USER3> I think you have to find a couple of possible co-founders, evaluate who you want and who wants to join, and have a frank discussion with them about an equity split.

It's really hard to recommend in the general because you might find a co- founder who brings so much to the table (money, skills, relationships, experience) that they deserve 50% or more) and you might find one that only brings technical skills in which case the amount might be much much less (15-35%).

It's really all a negotiation, but you can't figure it out until you know who is interested in joining. Maybe no one will be and all this discussion will be for naught.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the insight! Reached out to an old friend and I'm now shilling him. Wish me luck ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What are you offering exactly?

<comment><AUTHOR> I mean I built the entire product, paid for content creation and continue to do so, and continue to add features. But I'd like to have a co-founder as someone to bounce ideas off of and generally be around to help grow the business.

<comment><USER7> Well, if you expect them to work for free, on your idea, then I personally would not agree to anything less than 50%. Almost all startups fail, so I'd be buying a (very expensive) lottery ticket. Keep in mind that I could be working on my own idea instead if I could afford it. Very few ideas are attractive enough to persuade me to join.

But if you're ready to offer some salary (even if just 50% of the market rate), then of course 50% equity would be too generous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why do you need a co-founder?

<comment><AUTHOR> To kick ideas off of, mainly.

<comment><USER3> Pay a coach. That'll be much cheaper.

<comment><USER4> I've had both. Coaches are great - the main reason we hit PMF within 2 weeks.

But sometimes you need someone emotionally invested in it. Cofounders are much better. They don't necessarily have to have 50% share. I'd be happy to take on someone whose sole purpose is to be the customer surrogate and give them a 20% share.

My cofounder helped to keep a leash on me doing really dumb things. All good entrepreneurs are relentless, and a cofounder helps to keep it in perspective. Also a cofounder adds their network, and my minority share co-founder landed the acquisition.

<comment><USER3> Totally get that co-founders and coaches provide different levels of perspective. But if, as the parent of my comment said, all you are looking for is "[t]o kick ideas off of" someone, just get a coach or a mentor. Co-founders should help with everything, including execution.

<comment><AUTHOR> Guess I need a few co-founders. A designer/product person and perhaps another engineer so I can focus more on operations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Join YC startup school</comment>


Ask HN: Review our PDF/Web form startup - www.doculicious.com - <AUTHOR>

www.doculicious.com is a web application that lets people design/format a PDF file using a browser based WYSIWYG tool,
then embed some code onto their website so that the PDF can be edited directly on their site, similar to a
web form, but looking just like the WYSIWYG design. On submitting the form, whoever filled it in can download the
completed PDF. The owner of the form can set a range of options to save the entries, style the web form to look different than the resulting PDF,
add notifications, download entries as csv and pdf etc.<p>We just launched after a couple of months private beta testing, and would love to hear your opinions and ideas. <comment><USER2> I like it, a lot actually. And I don't mind the name at all.

The site is very simple to navigate, the home page explains the service well and the examples pick up the pieces.

I did browse the terms but perhaps you can elaborate quickly - how secure is the data and how long do you store it? I know an NPO (art school) that would likely love a few simple PDF registration forms on its site without having to pay a developer...

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comments zacharye. BTW, you wouldn't believe how long I spent coming up with that name ;)

All the forms can use SSL, so the submission of data is secure. On form completion, the data is stored in our database for creating the PDF and to save multi-page forms. If the template owner has not opted to store the entry, this data is deleted after 2 days. If they opt to store the entry, it will stay in the system until deleted by them. If they delete it, the data is removed completely, leaving only stats on when it was downloaded, IP address of downloader etc

Access to stored entries is only available to the template owners account through an entries search facility. All this is behind SSL too.

I should elaborate on this more in the TOS, but is that what you wanted to know?

<comment><USER2> That's exactly what I wanted to know, thanks carpo. And yes, despite the other comment I think that the name is creative, memorable and spelled logically. ie: If I pronounced the name to someone suggesting that (s)he should check it out, (s)he will likely have no problem remembering it or getting there.

Yes, that's exactly what I wanted to know thanks. And I like the answer as well - I'll be showing this to a few people I know as a possible solution, no question.

Last question(s) - is it possible for the form creator to omit "store" as an option when creating the form? How about an option to have each form submission automatically stored?

<comment><AUTHOR> Cheers, thanks zacharye.

Entry storage is always up to the doculicious member who embeds a template on their site, never the public person who fills it in (is that what you were getting at, or am I off the mark?). Setting a template to save entries will automatically save all entries by anyone who fills it in and submits it. If the doculicious member who embeds the template turns off auto entry saving, the person filling in the form just gets the PDF, and only stats like date downloaded, IP address etc are saved for the member to view. (We are in the process of writing a more advanced reporting system for this).

We use a concept of "activating" templates, allowing members to create multiple templates, but only have some active, and in the future, to activate a template created by someone else. When you activate a template you then get to define it's web form settings - things like automatically saving entries, disabling pdf download (making it work just like a standard web form), adding notification emails and stuff like that. Currently, only doculicious staff can create shareable templates - but I think I need to defined the term "form creator" better .. as later this could mean someone other than yourself or doculicious.

<comment><USER2> Yessir - that answers my question precisely. It's also the answer I was hoping for. ;)

Great work and I'll definitely be showing your service to a few people...

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool. Glad that's what was needed. Feel free to pass on my email to anyone you mention it to, if they have any questions at all - chris [at] digitalcarpenter [dot] com [dot] au

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think it looks great, and there aren't enough good PDF editing tools. It reminds me a little bit of PDFEscape, so you might want to check them out if you haven't already. Best of luck! -Chris

<comment><AUTHOR> Cheers, thanks Chris. Doculicious could definitely be used just to create PDF's, without using the web form stuff. Especially if what you really need is a template that needs filling out consistently. I have a bunch of templates in my account I use directly from the site that never get embedded.

Yeah, I've seen that site before. Probably time to have a look around the 'net again to see what's out there :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not a fan of the name...

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the name can be a little polarizing. I've had people laugh and say "That's terrible" and others burst out laughing and say "I love it, that's great". I like laughing, so it's all good :)</comment></comment>


Estonia's e-residency program expands abroad - <AUTHOR> https://e-estonia.com/e-residents/apply-2/

<comment><USER2> I recently applied for an Estonian e-residency. Heres what I did:

The first thing to know is that you have to physically be there to apply. I went to Estonia and applied at the local police station. I know that sounds weird but thats how you do it. In Estonia, this is where you go to renew driver's licenses and a lot of governmental things.

It was relatively painless. I didn't need to make an appointment. It's just like a DMV. You take a ticket and wait. The woman behind the counter asks some questions, for your passport, biometrics (photo and finger prints) and 50 euros. You then you wait to hear a response within two weeks.

An annoying part is that you have to show up again in two weeks to pick it up in person. Mine is still waiting for me in Estonia as I've not been back yet and I can't have a friend pick it up for me (it has to be me!).

Be prepared to spend two weeks in Tallinn, therefore, which isn't bad as the prices are quite reasonable and the food is good.

<comment><USER3> From the linked website, it seems that they expanded applications to overseas embassies a few days ago, so visiting in person might no longer be necessary.

Out of curiosity, what was your motivation for applying? It seems to me that the only obvious use-case for e-residency is to run a company registered in Estonia while living elsewhere.

<comment><USER2> Yes it seems like it'll be easier now. Exciting really. I bet a lot of people will now take advantage of it.

My motivation is eventual real residency. This just makes it easier.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure there is any path, now or planned for the future, for moving from e-residency to 'real residency'. Probably you've seen this information, but if not: [http://www.investinestonia.com/en/investment-guide/coming- to...](http://www.investinestonia.com/en/investment-guide/coming-to-estonia)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Estonian system is incredibly insecure. Not only because of legal and procedural errors, but also because of technical issues.

Some references: [https://jhalderm.com/pub/papers/ivoting- ccs14.pdf](https://jhalderm.com/pub/papers/ivoting-ccs14.pdf) ( Lookup the ID- card part. ) [http://www.wassenaar.org/](http://www.wassenaar.org/) ( Crypto is defined as a "dual use" weapon. )

The worst aspect of the estonian ID-card is simply the fact that your private key is not private, and stored in the card itself. You as a user, can not revoke or resign it. At the same time however, it holds full legal status and dominion over your identity.

<comment><USER6> Rather read [http://estonianworld.com/security/attacks-estonias-e- voting-...](http://estonianworld.com/security/attacks-estonias-e-voting- political-rather-technical/) and [https://www.ria.ee/e-voting-is-too- secure/](https://www.ria.ee/e-voting-is-too-secure/)

<comment><USER7> Two sources with absolutely no pro-Estonian bias. </sarc>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I thought of a simple solution to the verifiability problem, what do you think ?

\- When voting, each voter receive a receipt with a random number assigned to his vote

\- All the votes are published with the random numbers alongside them

\- Each voter can verify that his vote was correctly saved by looking at his assigned number in the list

It's not perfect but relying on a central server is far worse I think (like the paper said)

<comment><USER9> Unfortunately this enables someone to coerce or bribe you into voting for a certain candidate, since the coercer would be able to demand to see your receipt and verify you complied.

Here's a rather long but very interesting tech talk about electronic voting schemes which maintain the secret ballot property: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDnShu5V99s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDnShu5V99s)

<comment><USER8> Thanks, I looked a bit at the Helios voting system and thought it was a complicated mess but this video explains everything really well!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What is the advantage of e-residency in estonia?

<comment><USER11> I double that. Honestly, I expected that somebody already explained it in comments. Before reading so detailed and in-depth explanation on "how?" I would expect broad and self-selling explanation of "why?".

<comment><USER12> The program appears to be oriented towards people who regularly visit Estonia or do business with Estonians. The Estonian ID card is used for authentication to many (perhaps all) Estonian government services and some private services, so it would be inconvenient to e.g. owe taxes there and not have an Estonian e-ID.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Could someone expalin _why_ this is needed? so much hustles for such thing.

<comment><USER2> It makes it easier to start a business, open a bank account, and things like that in Estonia. That's important because it's an EU country with a reasonable tax system, stable government and an overall ease of doing business. Being part of the EU makes a lot of things easier in dealings with other countries depending on your line of work.

That's the theory anyway. We'll see if it pans out.

Personally, it's an important step for me in getting a real residency beyond one tied to a company that isn't my own in the EU.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Interesting, would it be possible to create a Google Play Store merchant account with this? Estonia is in the list of supported countries for merchants.

</comment><comment><USER15> Does anyone know what obligations the e-residency program you have to submit to?

<comment><USER16> I couldn't find any obligations. Its probably a good idea to keep your PIN secure to reduce the probability of ID fraud. As far as I can tell its a state backed digital signature and authentication system so wouldn't confer any obligations.

However, there is some discussion about whether its a completely new legal status which would do things like make you liable for double taxation. Personally I find that highly unlikely, but IANAL, YMMV etc.

<comment><USER15> > However, there is some discussion about whether its a completely new legal > status which would do things like make you liable for double ta

Yeah, that was the type of obligation I was referring to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> fyi, how to apply: 1.april Estonia opened foreign embassies where you can give paper application. But from May Estonia opens online application where you can pay by credit card. And once you got accepted then you need to physically go and collect the card from your chosen foreign embassy. everything here [https://e-estonia.com/e-residents/about/](https://e-estonia.com/e-residents/about/)

Why one should? yes, access to EU market, access to good services (google, paypal, soon stripe etc), access to e-banking, and generally digital signature gives hassle-free business environment (signing contracts with partners, filling e-tax declarations, administrating business on a business portal).

Why Estonia is doing it - to increase its economic reach / gain more customers / PR

</comment><comment><USER18> has anyone found a translation of the application document?

[https://www.politsei.ee/dotAsset/204085.pdf](https://www.politsei.ee/dotAsset/204085.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER19> Can someone fix the title? It should be residency (like in the website)</comment>


Voice to text service is actually humans live transcribing messages - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8163511.stm <comment><USER2> wouldn't they go bankrupt eventually? what were they thinking</comment>


Google reveals secret test of AI bot to beat top Go players - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/google-reveals-secret-test-of-ai-bot-to-beat-top-go-players-1.21253 <comment><USER2> One thing that isn't made clear in this writeup is that Master plays in a very nonhuman style, as opposed to the version of AlphaGo that beat Lee Sedol, which mostly played like a strong human except for a few surprising moves. My first guess when I saw Master's games was that it was a program like AlphaGo that had its policy network trained from scratch rather than being bootstrapped by being given the goal of imitating the moves of strong humans. I'm eager to find out whether that was the case or whether it just moved away from human-like play during a very long self-play phase.

It really is a bit scary to see. I would not have guessed that human strategy was that deficient. Computer chess programs still tend to play with human-like strategy (partially because humans have coded their evaluation functions!) but godlike tactics. Master is not really playing like a human at all.

<comment><USER3> As computers are able to evaluate positions faster (and therefore deeper), the "godlike" tactics are dominating over human-style strategy. It used to be that computers played "computer-like" moves because they didn't understand the position. Now, they play computer-like moves because "understanding" the position isn't as important as just being able to see 25+ moves ahead.

In a nutshell, positional play in chess is simply heuristics we humans use to be able to evaluate a position in lieu of being able to calculate deep non- forced lines. Computers do use this to an extent (as you point out, we coded their evaluation functions) but positional play matters less when you see all the outcomes of every possible tactic with 100% accuracy. So computers tend to play reasonably human-like in the openings, but by the time you reach the middle game they'll happily enter lines where their pawn structures are shattered, pieces appear superficially to have little coordination, and where their king safety appears compromised (all things humans rarely intentionally do), all because they've seen that it works out 25+ moves in advance.

<comment><USER4> > Now, they play computer-like moves because "understanding" the position > isn't as important as just being able to see 25+ moves ahead.

I don't think you can "see 25+ moves ahead" in Go. The branchout factor is just too big.

<comment><USER2> Well, stouset is talking about chess, but in Go, Monte Carlo Tree Search plays out all the way to the end of the game; it just does so in a much less exhaustive way, for exactly the reason you mention.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting reddit discussion before reveal. Assesses bot identity and gameplay: [https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments/5l3l7e/chinese_ai_cr...](https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments/5l3l7e/chinese_ai_crushing_pros_on_fox_server/)

<comment><USER6> The reddit thread also links to more interesting discussion on the board lifein19x19:

[http://lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&p=215117#p21...](http://lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&p=215117#p215117)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> We know that Master can figure out what it would play. We also know that its predecessor had a model for what moves a human professional would be likely to play.

What I would find truly fascinating is if Master could divide moves that it plays, which professionals wouldn't, into groups based on a similar internal categorization of the moves. And then see if human minds can look at any of groups and come up with a human understandable principle that humans had been missing about the game.

The point here is not so much to improve human play (though it presumably would do so), but as a step towards having an AI that can break down its internal model into principles that can be used to train another AI to learn those principles. Just like how a human expert can learn to turn expertise into something that can be taught to other humans.

This has several potential benefits. The first is that human experience suggests that this type of introspection tends to improve our own competency. The second is that we could have a single AI trained by multiple specialist AIs to get a compact "generalist". And the third is that this is a path towards having AIs that can discover things then teach them to humans.

The whole idea might fail horribly. But I'd like to see it given a shot.

<comment><USER8> Your described method of understanding his moves might work for some moves, but there will inevitably be moves that are just a sum of so many different probabilities that are so far down the road that even looking at the result nobody would be able to actually recognize such a move on slightly different board.

At some point, if this method would be used, it would probably require a second AI that would help understand the main AI, because the primary "explanation" would still be too complex and/or subtle for us to comprehend.

<comment><USER7> Obviously "automatically extract the principles in an understandable format" is a long term and probably unachievable goal.

However there is hope that cluster analysis on data about the internal reasoning process can successfully identify groups of positions that "seem to share a common principle". Success in that is a first step towards lots of interesting things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This seems like the beginnings of the plot of an anime I'd want to watch. Season two would probably start with the developer's getting complacent and a Chinese AI entering the scene.

<comment><USER10> Really hope to see one machine against another. In future we'd probably have game tournament of AI machines. Example my tensorflow-build machine against your openai-build machine in a StarCraft game.

<comment><USER11> Corewars, where the program is written by a neural net.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is impressive. According to the article, the bot has not yet lost.

I think at the end of 2017, we may have to say that computers have conquered Go.

Interesting that the timing is 20 years after mastering chess.

<comment><USER13> The series is over with a score of 60-0.

You can find all the games at [http://tieba.baidu.com/p/4922688212?pn=1](http://tieba.baidu.com/p/4922688212?pn=1)

It's chinese but the pictures are universal and the comments don't really matter much.

By the way, Google Translate makes a pretty horrible work at translating those pages. I think they need to add some more DeepMind to it :-)

To be fair, they probably don't have much training data for the jargon of the game of go or of any other game.

<comment><USER14> How to know if Master is white or black in each game?

<comment><USER13> After the diagram there is the Sgf file with the moves. PB is player black and PW is player white. AlphaGo is Magister in the first 20 games and Master in the last 40. Two accounts on two different servers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It would be good to start experimenting with handicap stones to understand how many stones stronger the bot is.

[http://senseis.xmp.net/?Handicap](http://senseis.xmp.net/?Handicap)

Also experimenting with a new ranking system beyond 9 dan.

<comment><USER16> I would also like to see how the strength is affected by computing resources. For example, one server, versus 10 servers, versus a room full of servers, versus an entire datacenter. I wonder how close this is to playing a perfect game.

I would also like to know if two perfect players would always end up with a draw, or if they would each win 50% of the games.

<comment><USER17> Either the white player would win in 100% of matches, or the black player would win 100% of matches.

Go rules prevent draws by giving Black a non-integer score bonus (this is called Komi, [http://senseis.xmp.net/?Komi);](http://senseis.xmp.net/?Komi\);) By definition of "perfect play", a Black perfect player either always wins games, or a White perfect player always beats him.

<comment><USER13> Your reasoning is correct but the bonus score (komi) is given to white, which is second to move and is behind in the race at building territory (the thing that gets scored).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wonder when we will see AI tutors appear? Seems like there is a massive potential to train an AI super player then have it teach you. Does anyone know of such tools yet? Guess there are probably many AI augmented things we use all the time (Google Search) but just don't know it. Fascinating to think.

<comment><USER19> There was a recent post here about a new LiChess feature that identifies mistakes in your (or someone else's) games, prompts you to look for a better move, and tells you the best move if you can't figure it out. I think this is a form of AI tutoring.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13241669](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13241669)

<comment><USER20> The same feature has been in GNU Backgammon (and other programs, I guess) for a long time. Also, it allows you to request you or the AI get good or bad dice rolls, which is an interesting training option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It seems that AlphaGo has got even better since when it defeated Lee Sedol. This time, AlphaGo is undefeated against other top players. However, it also gives other players a chance to practice against AlphaGo and finds weaknesses in AlphaGo, which is super important for any competition.

<comment><USER22> It would be super-weird if AlphaGo became worse that the previous version.

<comment><USER23> Neural networks have a bad habit of regressing. When training continues they tend to replace earlier skill with newer skill.

<comment><USER22> The team would surely detect that. In the original paper they even mention this issue, and as a safe-guard they also test later networks against previous versions.

<comment><USER23> True, they are aware and monitor for it. Just pointing out that it's not a super weird thing to happen with a NN. In fact it's a super normal thing that has to be continuously monitored.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > Go is regarded as the most complex board game ever invented

I'm not sure that's an accurate statement.

<comment><USER7> How about the following statement?

"There is no widely played game for which an Elo rating system shows a larger measurable range of skill than Go."

This is a precise and measurable statement. The standard deviation of the Elo system used in Chess is 200, and the range from the best humans to rank amateurs is 14 times this standard deviation. When the Elo system was adapted to Go, the standard deviation was set to 100, and the range is 29 times the standard deviation.

The possible skill range, of course, measures something how complex the possible strategies are. And Go trounces every other game by this measure.

I think that gives Go a pretty defensible claim to "most complex strategy of any popular board game".

<comment><USER25> Complex is being used in a different context here though. You are meaning complex as in strategic complexity. The parent (I think) is using it in terms of the games rules. Go is pretty simple in principle: place stones on the board one at a time, and remove enemy pieces completely surrounded by your own. But it's fairly complex to know what exactly constitutes being surrounded. Chess has 6 different kinds of pieces that have different movements, and different kinds of rules depending on the state, and promotion at the end, castling, and en passant. Checkers is a much simpler game because there's only 2 kinds of pieces, and 2 kinds of moves. Strategically, Chess isn't leaps and bounds more complex than Checkers since Carlsen has an Elo rating of 2800 in Chess, and Tinsley had an Elo rating of 2700 in Checkers and I believe it's the same deviation of 200.

<comment><USER7> Checkers has adjusted its Elo system over time. I believe that it now matches chess except with a floor of a 1000 rating. From [http://icheckers.net/ratings/](http://icheckers.net/ratings/), the current ratings range goes from 1000 to 2297 among active players, and up to 2510 among inactive players.

Even if you use the larger range of inactive players, that's a range of 7.5 times the standard deviation. Which is considerably less than chess.

<comment><USER25> Tinsley isn't on that list, and I saw it claimed that his rating was 2700: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Tinsley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Tinsley)

Chess has a floor of 1200 for novices. So I'm not sure your point.

<comment><USER7> The Elo system for Checkers has changed over time. Tinsley had a rating around 2700, but he would not get that rating today.

Chess ratings from the USCF have a floor of 100. What you are thinking of is that they start people at a provisional rating of 1200 and then let them drift to where they belong. But a person who just knows how the pieces move will quickly head down towards that floor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The Master bot was discussed a bit in on Google Deepmind 2016 round up: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13312219#13314592](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13312219#13314592)

~60 wins atm.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'd like to see if a small team of the worlds best go players could beat AG.

<comment><USER28> How much stronger is a team of top players than its strongest member?

I wonder what the best way of coordination would be. Perhaps they can identify several promising lines and each player chooses one variation to calculate more deeply.

From my own experience playing (as a weak amateur), I feel I'm rarely able to think so systematically -- often ideas I discover while contemplating one line are tried in entirely different variations, so it would perhaps take some getting used to before a team can function optimally.

<comment><USER29> There's a very interesting book called The Go Consultants ([http://www.slateandshell.com/SSJF003.html](http://www.slateandshell.com/SSJF003.html)) which describes how professions have worked together during an extended time consultation game (2 v 2).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm pretty sure this[1] is the archives of the bot's play. You can download the SGF files of the matches from there and view them online at EidoGo[2]

[1] [http://www.gokgs.com/gameArchives.jsp?user=Master](http://www.gokgs.com/gameArchives.jsp?user=Master)

[2] [http://eidogo.com/upload](http://eidogo.com/upload)

<comment><USER31> Marcel Grünauer over on LifeIn19x19 has made a compilation of all 60 of Master's games. Found it just then! (A zip archive of 60 sgf[1] files) I _think_ that's all of them as of now.

[http://lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=13935](http://lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=13935)

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

ps: The Japanese term for a game record for the game of Go is kifu: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kifu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kifu)

Hence [http://gokifu.com/](http://gokifu.com/) which tracks all pro games (and then some, I think)

<comment><USER30> Ah! Thanks for your evidence in support of cunningham's law[1]. I'm delighted to have access to the real deal.

[1] [https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law](https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Did any team reproduce the AlphaGo technology yet?

<comment><USER33> Here is the facebook version: [https://github.com/facebookresearch/darkforestGo](https://github.com/facebookresearch/darkforestGo)

And here's another public attempt, not sure about the progress. [https://github.com/Rochester-NRT/RocAlphaGo](https://github.com/Rochester- NRT/RocAlphaGo)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> if their goal was to reveal what they were doing to the world, this is a fine way to go about it and build some anticipation and get a PR splash.

if their goal was to train the best go-bot, they could have had it play not to win but to go down to the wire with very strong players but frequently lose.* Experienced players might have identified it as a bot, but would have dismissed it as "not good enough yet"

*especially as per the recent story that children don't learn when they win, so trains yourself without training your opponents :)

</comment><comment><USER35> Can AI beat Fed?

</comment><comment><USER36> Anyone know the origin of the name they chose? Did they name their bot after the rapper Percy Miller?

<comment><USER22> I seriously doubt the Percy Miller connection.

AlphaGo is the best player in the world, so a name like Master fits it :)

They also probably didn't want to choose a human looking name which could mislead people, and instead chose one which could presumably be either of a human or an AI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> We will need a Kobayashi Maru exam for this.

</comment><comment><USER38> ..wonder when they're gonna "reveal" their secret orwellian its-all-for-the- good-of-humanity retina-scan-ml-trainingcamp(yes, reads almost like german) project from that UK-ish part of the world..</comment>


Time Warner Cable Shareholders Approve Sale to Comcast - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-09/time-warner-cable-shareholders-approve-sale-to-comcast.html <comment><USER2> I just spent 45 minutes on the phone with comcast yesterday for one the offices I manage. I didn't have the account number and the phones were down (voip). I gave them the address and phone number and they still needed the account number. After 45 minutes they just hung up on me. Must be nice to be a monopoly.

<comment><USER3> I have Comcast residential and went for 19 days without internet service in August. Took ~10 calls and 5 cancelled service rep trips (by them), before it got fixed.

<comment><USER4> Comcast Internet went out at my girlfriend's once. After several phone calls of BS it turns out Comcast came to service the apartment next to hers and decided to unplug the cable from the street that goes into her apartment. Their rationale was that it was unmarked so obviously it couldn't have been important.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> All I can say is No. If this is allowed to go forth without major concessions this is a travesty. My TWC is bad enough but Comcast is a whole new magnitude of hurt. I expect that I will be unable to access anything on the internet any more but what they want me to see and pay for. This type of merger is exactly why antitrust needs to exist.

<comment><USER6> I've moved around a lot and I've had both TWC and Comcast in several locations each. I actually found the service from Comcast to be far better than TWC. I mean, they're a loathsome company, but the actual quality of the service was quite good.

That said, I think this merger would be a terrible thing for all cable consumers in the US.

<comment><USER7> I have no experience with TWC, but moved from Cox to Comcast territory about 4 years ago and would put the quality of their service at about equal. Customer service is no comparison however. Cox wins that by a wide margin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think it would be fair for regulators to approve this merger if local municipalities and conpanies were afforded the same right to provide and compete with these titans

<comment><USER9> That would be a major concession. Comcast-TWC would need to immediately cease all lobbying efforts to prevent municipal broadband. Furthermore, they would be required to lobby _for_ municipal broadband whenever there was a push against it (lest they try to wiggle out by just funding opponents while not lobbying directly themselves).

[Note: I still don't think this would be a large enough concession to make the merger a net benefit to the public though.]

<comment><USER10> It's not actually possible to force someone to lobby for something. How could you be sure they were really trying? They could just hire really bad lobbyists or run really bad advertising, for instance.

<comment><USER11> It's very possible. They did it to the tobacco industry.

[http://www.thetruth.com/](http://www.thetruth.com/)

Essentially, as part of the Master Settlement Agreement, the government just said, "You have to put X dollars into this independent anti-smoking group."

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

<comment><USER9> This is slightly different because it's just a public campaign:

      TheTruth.com uses web, print and television promote
      its message.

Lobbying efforts are different. How do you know that Comcast-TWC wouldn't just put _more_ funding into a group that opposed municipal broadband than they put into the required pro-muni broadband group?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I would be flabbergasted if the regulators looked at the rest of the world and decided to allow this sale. If anything, the whole debacle should prompt immediate action to drastically increase the competitiveness of that market.

Anything less, and people need to start talking about jail time because someone is on the take.

<comment><USER13> I would never imagine that happened in Europe. Free market works if there is competition, but monopolies either natural or artificial need regulations to prevent from abusing their powers.

Personal story: I live in SF Bay Area and got Comcast. Net was working really slow and got outages few times each week. To get any support I had to wait 40m to hear basic advice like restarting router.

Switched to smaller provider Sonic.net. Everything works, just once got some problem (in last 3 months). My call was immediately connected to competent human which diagnosed the problem in less than 3m. Next day they proactively call to improve one more thing.

Contenders usually got so much more will to do things right than monopolies.

<comment><USER14> As a frequent employee in the past (I've worked there multiple times and in multiple positions), I'll second that it's a really great company (and frequently gets press for being on the forefront of privacy rights for it's users).

Unfortunately, when I bought my house, it was a new development and while it was pre-wired for Comcast and AT&T, those are the only options.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Of course they approve. Monopoly dividends!

<comment><USER16> Haha, yeah. "Shareholders vote to make money".

<comment><USER17> To make money in the short term at least.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Talk about the perfect monopolistic business.

As Thiel said, if they are a true monopoly they will lie and say they are part of a much bigger market.

</comment><comment><USER19> If this got approved, no chance to reduce the price of the broadband. I was shocked for the internet price when I moved to bay area last year, ~$70 for 16M/3M ( I use comcast business, residential may around $40~$50), but in my hometown, a mid-sized city near the east China coast, my father use a 300RMB ($50) / year service for 10M internet.

In my hometown, each apt may at least have two providers with similar bandwidth, but here we have few choices because comcast may hold most of the infrastructure and just no one can compete.

If this merge got approved, over half of US's residential internet infrastructure may under its control, I cannot imagine what will happen. The most expensive internet in the world? maybe.

<comment><USER20> wouldn't $50 USD have more buying power in china than $70 USD in the US?

<comment><USER19> $50/year service in China $70/month service in US

I don't think the buying power difference would be that large.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> If municipal broadband and other significant competition for broadband existed, this wouldn't be such a big deal, but the fact is in terms of TV you have like 2 major satellite TV providers and 1 cable company available in most areas. In terms of broadband internet you have 1 cable company and maybe 1 or 2 DSL providers available.

Realistically, there is basically never more than 1 cable company per city anymore that I can see. Fiber internet and television is all but nonexistant as an option for the vast majority of people.

Long story short, after this merger, Comcast will be an even bigger media conglomerate with almost no competition in their core business. Expect higher prices and worse service.

That's comcastic.

</comment><comment><USER22> Fuck TWC and Comcast

</comment><comment><USER23> Maybe it will be more time efficient to wait for them to send me a new 'rebranded' cablebox than wait in the line at time warner on 23rd street?

</comment><comment><USER2> Imagine if this monstrosity comes together and then later merges with Verizon. I think I read about that in the bible once.

</comment><comment><USER24> Someone on reddit asked why this isn't considered an Antitrust violation (akin to Microsoft). An anti-trust lawyer explained why, but better yet, provided more context around the merger. It appears that this will ultimately go through, given the climate of the current administration and the dynamics of the merger.

Here is the anti-trust lawyer's explanation:

 _Antitrust lawyer here._

 _For one, we 're talking about different antitrust issues. Broadly speaking, the antitrust laws prohibit (1) concerted action that harms competition, like price fixing cartels; (2) unilateral action by a monopolist that harms competition; and (3) mergers and acquisitions that significantly diminish competition._

 _Microsoft was alleged to have used its position as a monopolist to undermine competition. That 's (2) above. Typically, monopolization entails an element of foulplay. Achieving or maintaining a monopoly through normal, reasonable business practices is not illegal._

 _Comcast and TWC are proposing to merge. That 's (3) above. When evaluating a merger, the DOJ looks at whether the companies directly compete in any markets, and whether the merger is likely to reduce competition in those markets._

 _Comcast and TWC claim that they do not directly compete. That 's true, but there's more to the story. Comcast and TWC will point out that cable systems are "natural monopolies" \-- it costs a lot to lay cable, and where one company has already laid cable in a given area, it enjoys a huge cost advantage over other would-be competitors, who would have to lay their own cable to compete._

 _But on the other hand, Comcast and its rivals have also done some dubious stuff in the past that has led to the current competitive landscape. For example, Comcast, TWC, and others have engaged in a number of anticompetitive deals, such as geographic market allocation and customer swapping, to create large regional monopolies. These deals themselves arguably violate the antitrust laws -- see (1) above -- and indeed are the subject of ongoing litigation. But unfortunately, the DOJ most likely would not take this background into account when evaluating the likely effect of the merger on competition._

 _So when Comcast and TWC say that the merger will not reduce competition because they do not currently compete, that is in part due to the fact that they have already agreed not to compete. It 's like two members of a price fixing cartel saying that merging would not reduce competition because, hey, they aren't competing anyway._

 _We don 't know yet whether the DOJ will challenge the merger. The Obama DOJ has been decent in this area; they challenged the AT&T/T-Mobile merger and US Air/American Airlines merger. But neither of those cases played out -- the FCC killed AT&T/T-Mobile, and the DOJ caved once politicians began pressuring the agency to let US Air/American Airlines go through._

 _Given that Comcast is so well connected in Washington, and in light of the potential difficulties in establishing that the merger will actually reduce competition, I expect that the DOJ will approve the Comcast /TWC merger, subject to certain concessions._

 _Politics is a core issue when it comes to antitrust enforcement. In fact, I don 't think the Obama DOJ would sue Microsoft today. Clinton's DOJ was a bit more aggressive in this area._

 _Hope this helps._

[https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2h87ob/e...](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2h87ob/eli5_why_did_the_us_government_have_no_trouble/ckqdlo5)</comment>


"Return the Error Code" better than Excexptions - Joel Spolsky - <AUTHOR> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2003/10/13.html <comment><USER2> i love just about everything that comes out of Joel, but this seems like a sacrilegious blasphemy.

Speaking from a strongly typed managed environment, exceptions are a special citizen that can get across many abstractions, and provide great flexibility in who/what/where should handle them. They are not meant to be used to communicate an outcome of some task/procedure. They are meant to signal that something catastrophic has happened and current function/task/process needs to handle it or end its existence.

Few examples: a stream gets closed by the other endpoint, database write fails, memory gets corrupt, or if you're a creator of an api and you want to signal to your future subscribers that something is missing i.e. they are trying to read data w/out opening a connection.

A lot of them can be avoided with some foresight (checking if a connection is open before calling a read, checking for null before calling methods on it, checking if enum is defined before casting to it), but not all can be avoided.

The beauty of exceptions is that they are decoupled from the rest of the code. You can put a listener at any level of abstraction, anywhere in your code.

return codes is what i'd expect from old school developers that still put their business logic in stored procedures. I suppose there are times where they are appropriate but in no way do they replace exceptions. (again, speaking from a object oriented environment)

<comment><USER3> I think Joel is trolling to be honest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> FFS not again. Exceptions are more human friendly and provide more context than 102324323452. Even a NullPointerException explains more than that number.</comment>