Generating Good Syntax Errors - <AUTHOR> http://research.swtch.com/2010/01/generating-good-syntax-errors.html <comment><USER2> I thought most of these errors could be handled with the error construct in Bison? I suppose most errors tend to get written as "Unexpected TOKEN, expected OTHER_TOKEN."

If you're willing to complicate your grammar a bit you can add productions for a lot of the erroneous situations which could arrise with nice error messages, such as:

for_init := ... | var error { error("var not allowed in for initializer."); }

My syntax is a bit off, but can't all syntax errors be expressed with the CFG and be given errors as semantic actions?

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm teaching CS1 right now, and am daily reminded about just how utterly _awful_ compiler messages are if you don't already understand how compilers work. Not only is this a good idea in general, it also adapts nicely to the educational case: the likely use-case to trigger a particular parser error state might be different for a beginner, and thus require a different error message, but it sounds like it would be easy to swap out one (state,nexttok)->errmsg mapping for another.

</comment><comment><USER4> The little gem in the middle is fantastic: using a data set of newbie errors to train the parser with friendly error messages. This step is done after the parser is generated, but _before_ it's distributed.</comment>


A game of chance became anything but (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/10/16/a_game_of_chance_became_anything_but/?page=full

<comment><USER2> _[I]n August 2010 ... a group led by a 2007 MIT graduate named Yuran Lu found a way to win virtually all the prizes themselves. ... During a four-day stretch between Aug. 13 and Aug. 16, 2010, Lu and his MIT classmate James Harvey ... bought nearly $1.4 million in tickets._

Yuran Lu and James Harvey are co-founders of QuicklyChat (YC S12 - [http://www.quicklychat.com/about.html](http://www.quicklychat.com/about.html)) [http://blog.ycombinator.com/quicklychat-yc-s12-brings- push-t...](http://blog.ycombinator.com/quicklychat-yc-s12-brings-push-to-talk- video)

I guess they had no trouble with question 3 on the YC application: _Please tell us about the time you most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage._

</comment><comment><USER3> Perhaps more interesting is the actual report this article is based off of: [http://www.mass.gov/ig/publications/reports-and- recommendati...](http://www.mass.gov/ig/publications/reports-and- recommendations/2012/lottery-cash-winfall-letter-july-2012.pdf)

<comment><USER4> > Every time Random Strategies turned in a batch of winning tickets, the > Lottery generated a W-2G for every member of the group. Even small investors > in the MIT group -– for example, someone who won $800 over the course of a > year -– would get dozens of W-2Gs every year and have to spend hours > accounting for their winnings on their tax returns. The hassle prompted some > people to cash out and leave the investment pool

Why couldn't the group invest in tickets under its own name and distribute earnings to investors in a slightly less paperwork-heavy fashion?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This reminds me of [1], where scratch-off games were founded to be using PRNG output improperly, allowing winning tickets to be identified without playing them.

[1]: [http://www.wired.com/2011/01/ff_lottery/](http://www.wired.com/2011/01/ff_lottery/)

<comment><USER6> That incident was quickly referenced in the article.

 _"One would have to be brain-dead not to notice that the avalanche [in sales] had begun in the days leading up to the August 16th draw,'' said Mohan Srivastava, a Canadian statistician who gained fame in gambling circles when he found a flaw in a Canadian instant game, allowing him to accurately pick winning tickets 90 percent of the time._

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's a nice explanation of the game and the exploitation in the book How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking.</comment>


MIT camera uses laser technology to peek around corners - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/mit-camera-user-laser-technology-peek-around-corners

<comment><USER2> Discussion over here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3733850></comment>


Revised estimates of the share of national income going to top earners - <AUTHOR> https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/rising-income-inequality-usa-piketty-study <comment><USER2> People continue to focus on income inequality and ignore wealth inequality. Income is a terrible way understand inequality and also not a good way to compare how inequality is changing, since the really rich people increase their wealth in ways other than income.

The bizarre focus on income means that we set our sights on a weird slice of upper middle class professionals (doctors, lawyers, etc.) while ignoring totally the real rich people.

<comment><USER3> Capital without income is not particularly useful. The problem is we use the IRS definition of income ignoring unrealized gains which distorts the income perspective for the top 1% / 0.01%.

<comment><USER2> Yes, exactly. Rich people increase their wealth primarily through unrealized capital gains. It's very safe for Warren Buffet to proclaim he wants tax rates increased because this barely affects him at all.

<comment><USER4> Buffet realizes millions of dollars in income each year and gives much of it to charity. He gives billions more to charity not in the form of income.[0]

> "My 2015 return shows adjusted gross income of $11,563,931," he revealed. > "My deductions totaled $5,477,694." About two-thirds of those represented > charitable contributions, he said. Most of the rest were related to Mr. > Buffett's state income tax payments.

> As it turns out, the charitable contributions that Mr. Buffett did deduct > from his income make up just a tiny portion of the more than $2.85 billion > he donated to charity last year, he said.

[0]: [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/11/business/buffett-calls- tru...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/11/business/buffett-calls-trumps-bluff- and-releases-his-tax-return.html)

<comment><USER5> He is also, along with Bill Gates, a founder of the Giving Pledge, "a campaign to encourage the wealthy people of the world to contribute their wealth to philanthropic causes."[0]

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The question articles like this never get around to asking is: What would "fair" look like?

The data is never going to be flat. That would mean the top earners and the lowest earners had identical incomes. Call that what you want but that's not a free economy.

<comment><USER7> Picketty's book does at least attempt to address this. He proposes a switch from income tax to wealth tax. He shows that most inequality is a result of the growth of existing wealth (most of which was inherited). Taxing wealth instead of income can help reverse, or at least stop the increasing levels of inequality. A very small percentage of wealth would need to be taxed to accomplish this.

<comment><USER8> Such a wealth tax existed in Nordic countries in the late 20th century, at least.

Wealth taxes in Sweden and Finland were eliminated around 2005 because capital gains tax was considered more equitable to various wealth classes and more easily administrated. The wealth tax laws had become a nest of loopholes that brought in relatively little income in the end.

It would be interesting to see a new wealth tax designed for the digital era.

<comment><USER7> There are still a few countries with wealth taxes[0]. I'm not sure if they work well or not for these countries. Picketty doesn't spend to much time on the subject of existing wealth taxes. He is more focused on a global wealth tax, which is much more ambitious. Something that would need to be designed for the digital era indeed.

Amusing find from the linked article: Back in 1999 Trump proposed a one time wealth tax of 14.25% for individuals worth more than 10 million.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Am I the only one a little frustrated by the groupings here? I'd prefer that it was in raw percentiles rather than something like average of percentiles. Seems like the very lowest incomes drag the bottom 50% down and the highest incomes inflate the averages of the upper percentiles.

Not to say that I don't think the current state of income and wealth inequality aren't troublesome, it's just that in this case when they say, e.g., "top 10%", what they really mean is something closer to "95th percentile".

<comment><USER10> It makes the results much more striking, even more at the top than the bottom, but not necessarily in a bad way. Raw percentiles aren't representative (e.g, knowing that the bottom 50% makes $50K and lower doesn't tell the full picture). I do think that using "median" rather than "average" would be better (though a bit trivial, median of "top 10%" is the raw 95th percentile). Also, by using "average" it is possible to match them directly to the "share of total wealth" numbers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Heard for the first time in a while, the other day: "Health is wealth."

The U.S. economy has far more wealth than needed to provide everyone in the country (at least, everyone who elects to participate) basic, quality healthcare. Not necessarily advanced-age end-of-life spendorama experiences, but far enhanced opportunity to remain or regain health and related quality of life during the majority of living years.

There could still be plenty of economic inequality. But we could vastly diminish an unnecessary suffering as well as the economic stress of health burdens.

If we can't go that far. If we can't, in action, live up to the basic morals most of us claim to have...

These people do not need nor, in my opinion, deserve to get any richer, until we've solved this.

We don't all have to be billionaires, to have quality of life. But we do need health. And THAT is something we can fix, right now. If we have the will.

</comment><comment><USER12> I wish they'd just put the data online for us to look at.

<comment><USER13> Have you checked here? [http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/en/capital21c2](http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/en/capital21c2)

Not sure if that gets you what you are looking for.

<comment><USER12> Good call. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment> aaron-lebo For the paper:

[http://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/PSZ2016.pdf](http://gabriel- zucman.eu/files/PSZ2016.pdf)

I'd like to see coverage of it from a more neutral source.

</comment><comment><USER14> Please stop using means when describing percentile data. I understand the desire to demonize a catchy sounding demographic, but the vast majority of the "top 1%" don't have an annual income anywhere approaching 1m/yr.

</comment><comment><USER15> So the share of income going to the top 1% has increased to new heights during the Obama presidency, yet the election of Trump - as opposed to his rival who was expected to continue Obama's policies - is seen as irrational?

<comment><USER2> No this article talks only about taxable income. Wealth inequality is far more important and for some reason nobody talks about it.

<comment><USER16> It is far easier to get data about income (through tax records) than it is to get data about wealth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> >top _earners_

Kinda ironic.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'd like Prof. Gordon to break down the skyrocketing 1% incomes by profession. Wasn't most of it due to high tech?

His chart shows the disparity dramatically widening starting in the mid-80s, which is precisely when the microcomputer revolution was accelerating. The 1990s saw a booming stock market and the minting of thousands of new millionaires and dozens of billionaires as well.

These stock-rich technology entrepreneurs should be seen not as an exploitative class to be feared and countered, but rather as a sign of successful capitalism at its finest, brilliant new ideas that have changed the world and vastly expanded the major Western economies with new modalities for doing our work, communicating, and nearly everything else.

<comment><USER19> One of the points Piketty makes in his book is that the rich generally aren't the heroic creative geniuses of Ayn Rand's imagination.

Most wealth is inherited. Wealth grows faster than the economy at large. The rich get richer. They spend their money lobbying for lower tax rates, and they get them. They lobby for privatization, and they get them. They lobby for monopolies and patents and bailouts, and they get them.

Interesting to note that half the population are no richer than they were almost 50 years ago.

<comment><USER18> Gates, Jobs, Ellison, Zuck et al didn't inherit their wealth.

<comment><USER20> _One of the points Piketty makes in his book is that the rich_ generally _aren 't the heroic creative geniuses of Ayn Rand's imagination._

1\. There are always going to be outliers, but most people are going to be closer to the middle of a normal distribution.

2\. The examples you mention were all excellent entrepreneurs, but they were also a bit lucky with timing and social position; Jobs' adoptive parents were blue-collar workers but none of these future industrialists grew up in poverty. If we could reduce the latter a bit we might have even more of the former.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Schneier on Security: WikiLeaks - <AUTHOR> http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/12/wikileaks_1.html <comment><USER2> I listen to talk radio from time to time, and it still gets me how uninformed some people can be at times. I heard one host talking about how Wikileaks hacked the US government, and sperading fear in the way of saying that the US could be hacked at any moment and we are screwed. Of course, the US Government and infrastructure could be (and probably has been, in the the past) hacked, but the Wikileaks problem is one of a LEAK from someone who had ACCESS to the cables.

I still don't know how I feel about the cable leaks and the war logs leaks, but I do know that the media is spinning this in the wrong direction, with some calling to have Assange arrested for espionage. If they are going to prosecute anyone, it should be the person who gave teh cables to WikiLeaks, as WikiLeaks is the medium that the cables were distributed. As Schneier points out, years ago, the newspaper would have leaked the information. Would the US gov't go after the NY Times if they were the ones leaking the cables?

<comment><USER3> "Would the US gov't go after the NY Times if they were the ones leaking the cables?"

They did with the Pentagon Papers.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers#Legal_case>

<comment><USER2> Ok, I take back my point about the NY Times

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> * the government is learning what the music and movie industries were forced to learn years ago: it's easy to copy and distribute digital files. That's what's different between the 1970s and today. Amassing and releasing that many documents was hard in the paper and photocopier era; it's trivial in the Internet era. *

Great point.

If you're interested in 'how the internet/computers change things that were impossible/hard', then I recommend _Here Comes Everybody_ by Clay Shirkey.

</comment><comment><USER5> Could not be any more right. Right now the media (fox) and many shitty government officials are on a witchhunt. At the moment its wikileaks. But fear not my young friends, if the information in wikileaks was to be nicely piled into a BT download complete with a UI which is download and read, then it would be bittorrent -- the unamerican enemy. They just want to pin the blame.</comment>


Ask HN: moving to US - <AUTHOR>

Am based in India and working at the startup. Startup culture in India is lot different that in US. Efforts/Returns ratio is inadequate. Also I feel; am not the founder material yet and I no longer want to work at big firms. Its bizarre and I couldn't manage to get returns on the work I had done there despite performing well. I want to move to US to work for any of the good startups. What I need to do to achieve this? Am bit confused and onsite/H1-B job I want to do is not what most of the folks from India do at big firms there.<p>am sure I'll get genuine answers here. thanks for reading this. <comment><USER4> If I were you, I'd stay exactly where I was, open a small business selling software on the Internet to rich Westerners, quit my dayjob as soon as I covered my previous salary, and then expand your little sideline into something as big as you want to go.

You may feel you are not founder material yet. Break that down into exactly what you don't have going for you. Then, learn it as you go. Marketing, for example, really isn't black magic. Pricing is not black magic.

(If I can make a quick comment based on my previous professional dealings with Indian companies: "We're the cheapest possible price!" is a terrible, terrible way to position yourself. However, the fact that you have the cheapest possible living standards among similarly situated software firms means you will hit ramen profitability, or curry profitability if you'd rather, much faster than the rest of us will when charging the same price. That is sort of nice.)

Take this and all other advice (including the advice you're relying on to make your determination that you are not founder material) with a grain of salt.

<comment><USER5> why was this downvoted to zero? This is great advice! (I am Indian have lived in the USA , have no plans to move back on an H1 - the long waiting period for the GC isn't worth it - but if I were, this advice makes a lot of sense as an alternative)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This image enumerates all the possibilities: [http://www.reason.com/images/07cf533ddb1d06350cf1ddb5942ef5a...](http://www.reason.com/images/07cf533ddb1d06350cf1ddb5942ef5ad.jpg)

Chances are that you'll have to go the H1B route. Which ain't pretty, because most employers automatically ignore job applications with those dreaded letters.

You'll save yourself a bunch of time and trouble by researching the companies that do employ on H1B. Meebo is one: [http://gigaom.com/2008/07/05/meebos-jen- how-to-find-hard-to-...](http://gigaom.com/2008/07/05/meebos-jen-how-to-find- hard-to-find-talent/) .

Also, mention the need for H1B as early as possible in the application process (cover letter is a good place), so that you don't ace the interviews only to get rejected for that reason. Another possibility is to offer to pay the legal costs of H1B applications (in the region of US$5000).

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks the image helps

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think I can somewhat relate to where you are coming from. I did my Bachelor's in Engg from Mumbai in 2001 and then went to the US - did my MS there, dabbled in Google SoC, worked in a Sunnyvale startup, lived in SF for three years and have just returned back for good to Mumbai last week after living away from here for eight years.

The plan for returning here was to start something of own.

One of my key reasons for returning was the cumbersome H1B/GC process. After living in the US for five+ years I was still three years away from getting a GC. And this is hugely limiting if you want to work for a real early-stage startup which is where the real excitement is.. and they can rarely sponsor H1Bs.

There is an article by Paul Graham on Founders Visa - <http://www.paulgraham.com/foundervisa.html>. Honestly, until this becomes are reality I would say that having a H1B and looking for work with a real YC kind of startup is not really feasible and rarely works out.

I do not have answers for the questions you have asked above. But I can share some of my experiences of working full-time in Mumbai, Bangalore and the SF Bay Area.

One thing you have got right for the startup mindset is your desire not to work in the kind of onsite/services jobs that the "big" IT firms from India provide. If you feel you would like to explore some creative/innovative technology start-up type of work there is a good chance you'll have to form your own team and take the leap. While I agree with you that the start-up culture in India is different - I'm not sure I can completely grasp what you mean by efforts/returns ratio is inadequate. "Returns" is very subjective.

I think if you work on some of the strengths of having a start-up in India but with global reach and applications - then there is no reason why you would not be able to get adequate returns as well as the kind of satisfaction.. if that is also something that you are looking for.

I'm available on email to discuss this further..

<comment><USER8> "I think if you work on some of the strengths of having a start-up in India but with global reach and applications ..." - Can you please elaborate on these strengths of having a start-up in India (apart from lower costs of living)?

<comment><USER7> well - for one 1\. You (the founder of a startup in India) would have a better understanding of the Indian technology consumer market and the application of your idea to the Indian scenario than a tech company which is originated elsewhere. 2\. You are in the same time-zone as 1 billion other people. If you have ways or means of crowd-sourcing any tasks needed for your startup - <USER2> better to crowd-source than here (of course this depends on how effective are you at crowd-sourcing) 3\. If you can spot an opportunity in a crisis - <USER3> this place offers you the ideal basecamp to look for those crisis/opportunities.

I could go on.

I guess at the end of the day it all depends on the problem you are looking to solve or the "big idea". For e.g. If your startup is about making it easier for suburban residents to interact with their neighbors or promote neighborhood activities - Mumbai would be the wrong place to start that startup. But if you are looking at implementing infrastructure technologies for dense urban setups than Napa Valley, CA wouldn't be ideal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Funny, a little ways below is a thread about people moving _out_ of the US in order to start a startup so they can decrease their cost of living...

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=751742>

</comment><comment><USER10> If I were you I'd take advantage of the fact that you're in India to start a local start-up. As others mentioned, your costs will be lower. Not only that, but you may be able to spot opportunities which have already been filled in the US, and "port" those solutions to India successfully.

At the very least, you should be able to make yourself enough money that you can then move to the US without worrying about getting a job.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think patio11 has some excellent advice. On top of that, why not partner with someone who is already in US? That way you can have benefits of (one co- founder) being in India and benefits of (other co-founder) being in US. I live in US and I would love to explore options to partner someone in India. Being Indian myself, I know that there are some business models which have very good potential and require presence in India and US both. e.g. selling westerns clothes (with traditional india designs) made in india over web. I have other ideas too, some geeky, some not-so-geeky. If you are interested, send me a one liner on 'my HN user name' at gmail dot com. we can share some ideas and may be collaborate if we hit it off.

</comment><comment><USER12> You can try for an E5 Visa (investor) -- the companies here are not exactly high tech but you need $500k

[http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2009/smallbusiness/0907/galle...](http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2009/smallbusiness/0907/gallery.eb_5_visa_cash_without_borders.smb/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> How about O1 visas (emporary workers and trainees: extraordinary ability or achievement)? Any experience on how hard is to get one?

<comment><USER14> The only person I'm aware of in the tech field (though I'm sure there are _many_ ) who got into the US on an O-1 visa is David Heinemeier Hansson (Rails / 37signals).

The criteria for O-1 are particularly tough - after all, you have to prove you're extraordinary and world class in your field. I suspect David's application was based significantly around him being the Google/O'Reilly Hacker of the Year 2005. You need to be at the top of your industry (or be talked about as if you were) to get one of those babies..

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've only heard of mid to large sized companies sponsoring H1Bs, but startups rarely. Maybe they don't have time for the red tape?

<comment><USER16> I don't know much about the details of H1Bs or implications. But when I was working in the United States (2005 to 2007) I was holding a J1 then "upgraded" to an H1B.

To move to the United States the J1 is the best, in my opinion : nearly no taxes, affordable (~$1,000). But it's limited to 18 months, once in your life.

As for H1B, two problems (for startups) :

\- you need a lawyer, and it's a bit expensive. Count at least k$2~3 in legals.

\- you need to pay a decent wage. For a software engineer I don't think you can go anywhere below $5,400 a month (it depends on the state, that's in NY...). Anyway it's nowhere in the "surviving on ramen" ballpark.

<comment><USER17> What happens if you are working for a startup on an H1B and it goes out of business?

<comment><USER16> You have around 1 month to find a new job, or you go back home.

This is often cited as the main reason why H1B holders can't negociate wages as high as permanent residents, and end up being paid much less : they can't quit easily without taking quite huge risks, and their bosses knows it...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> hii, i am also based in india. i wonder have you considered working in good US firms(google, amazon et. al.)in india itself. the reason i am asking is why one has to move to US if those companies have a presence here(hoping same culture,work as done in US ).

<comment><USER8> Work culture in India sure is way different and sadly not quite entrepreneurial in nature in fact non-professional to some extent :( I am not talking about some particular company but the general work culture here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> You know, my friend....one thing you could do is marry an american girl? haha</comment>


Read deleted comments on Reddit - <AUTHOR> http://decomment.com/ <comment><USER2> An alternative solution which I regularly use: [http://uneddit.com](http://uneddit.com)

It has a bookmarklet and activating on any Reddit thread will load the deleted/removed comments.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very little information on the site -- how does this work? Presumably by storing the contents of every Reddit comment made since Decomment's creation and serving them up on demand? I imagine once you delete a comment on Reddit it's no longer available via the API or by scraping the site, but I was hoping something more interesting was going on than just storing comments in a separate database before they are deleted.

<comment><USER4> That's exactly what goes on.

<comment><AUTHOR> yes, exactly

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Reddit comments are owned by their owners, no (at least, that's how copyright works in the USA)?

How do undelete sites fly under the radar? Is it just that no one has been effected enough yet to warrant the hammer? It appears decomment.com is hosted on OVH servers in the EU (France possibly?). Aren't they keen on their "right to be forgotten" law?

</comment><comment><USER5> It should be called "undelete". Decomment sounds like it is deleting comments.

<comment><AUTHOR> yes... but i think its sounds good

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You've posted this same site here three times in the last two weeks.

<comment><USER7> A small number of reposts is ok if an article hasn't had significant attention yet. Otherwise too many good stories languish unnoticed on the /newest page.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

<comment><USER8> I'd think, personally, a bit less so if he signed up specifically to post that one thing, and contribute absolutely nothing else..</comment></comment></comment>


The Free Fall Of A Startup Entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> http://mattreport.com/2011/10/the-free-fall-of-a-startup-entrepreneur/

<comment><USER2> I like this new recent meme around building a company differently with a real problem and even in a location that is not trendy. Seems like there has been too much group think among tech community over last couple years spurred by popularity of techcrunch and mashable. Different and better usually wins. Period.</comment>


How LinkedIn Gets TWENTY Times More Money Per User Than Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/linked-revenue-facebook-2012-7

<comment><USER2> They actually charge money to use the (pro versions of the) service!</comment>


Initial Impressions of WSL 2 - <AUTHOR> https://daverupert.com/2020/05/initial-impressions-of-wsl-2/ <comment><USER2> No free lunch, of course. Faster file access with WSL2 (vs WSL1), if you stay in the Linux world. But if you point it at Windows files (/mnt/c, etc), it's pretty slow.

WSL2 just moved the slowness from one side to the other. Accessing the Linux FS from Windows (\\\wsl$\\) is also slow.

That said, I am a fan, and get a lot of use out of WSL1. Since I don't use the Windows interop much, WSL2 should be a performance win for me.

<comment><USER3> I'm sure I'm missing something but I don't get this problem with filesystem access performance. It seems the obvious way to do this was to have SMB mounts on either side and optimize the hell out of the already existing SMB implementations on both OSes to get the performance close enough to disk. Maybe have a dedicated virtual network interface exposed only to the VMs and not to the LAN to avoid security issues.

It probably wouldn't get exactly up to native high-end SSD performance but I'd wager you can get it close enough that people wouldn't care.

Meanwhile, try to do a "git status" right now in Linux in WSL2 on a sizable repo in your /mnt/c and feel yourself slowly die inside.

It seems like a bunch of people thought it would be a great science project to write custom kernel drivers for Linux and Windows and learn some stuff along the way. So now they're stuck supporting two complicated software implementations for god knows how long, because neither of them does the job on its own.

Like I said, I'm probably missing something. I'm a network guy, so maybe to me everything can be solved by the network stack.

(edited last line)

<comment><USER4> SMB to/from a linux VM is pretty slow, I've spent time trying to optimize it. The performance hits bottlenecks in a few places including (if enabled) transport encryption. You'll have similar problems if you try to shuffle a few gigs across an ssh tunnel locally too (if you're sufficiently clever and willing to wield a compiler in anger, you can disable transport encryption entirely for a nice speed boost).

For reference I had a situation where I needed to pull/push 1-2gb blobs across the VM boundary on a regular basis, so it ended up mattering a lot - sub-1-minute times vs 5-10 minute copies.

<comment><USER5> I really don't understand why they disable the NULL cipher. If I want to take the risk and transfer data cleartext over my LAN I don't see why I need to custom compile ssh/scp to do so (and miss out on security updates since its no longer a tracked package).

I still want my auth credentials encrypted so no telnet and other older tools are not a replacement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I must say WSL2 has genuinely been huge for me, to the point where I've finally been able to ditch macOS for a desktop with a Ryzen CPU.

Honestly it's mindblowing how far Windows has come - if I were Apple I'd genuinely be scared of losing a large proportion of power-users as Windows becomes an increasingly viable platform for development.

<comment><USER7> How does it compare to real Linux distributions? Does it have a package manager? Is it like Debian? What are the limitations?

<comment><USER8> WSL2 is a full blown emulator / virtualization solution, so it runs a real linux kernel / distribution. The largest downside to me is no gpu passthrough from the host.

<comment><USER2> They say GPU passthrough is on the backlog in their post build FAQ. [https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/wsl-2-post- build-...](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/wsl-2-post-build-faq/)

<comment><USER8> I've been tracking that. Almost certainly AMD exclusive since, AFAIK, NVIDIA prohibits GPU passthrough on their consumer cards so VPNs are forced into purchasing 'professional' grade GPUs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Those pain points were solved in WSL 2 by embedding a whole first-party > Linux VM inside Windows

Wait so now it's just a regular Linux virtual machine? I thought it was a thin translation layer between the kernels? Kinda not as impressive now.

<comment><USER10> Yeah don't get too excited, it's just a VM. The disk usage doesn't automatically shrink with usage, and I'm not sure if RAM does either (interested in knowing if they've done anything related to that), which were what I found most useful about WSL1. I wish they'd instead put all their effort from this into legitimately fixing the issues in WSL1 instead.

<comment><USER11> The disk issue was probably going to be difficult to solve even with the WSL1 model if they wanted good IO performance. Using a proper Linux filesystem underneath is a decent compromise IMO.

The RAM issue is a clear setback, and makes it annoying trying to do large compile jobs on the Linux side, though it's been a while since I've tried it. In theory it could be possible to handle coorporation between the Linux and Windows RAM usage patterns since they're running a very heavily modified kernel. I'd be very interrested in knowing if anything is hapenning on that front.

<comment><USER12> Isn't Linux already capable of handing unused memory back to an underlying hypervisor? I vaguely remember that MS contributed code to support that kind of interaction with HyperV. Am I wrong?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Just a reminder that enabling Hyper-V (needed for WSL2) will make your computer boot your current Windows install inside a VM too. This might makes a slight performance impact.

And you might also encounter issues with Type 2 virtualization software such as VirtualBox or VMWare Workstation.

(I will still stick to WSL 1 because of that).

<comment><USER14> _Just a reminder that enabling Hyper-V (needed for WSL2) will make your computer boot your current Windows install inside a VM too. This might makes a slight performance impact._

That doesn't sound right. Hyper-V is a Type-1 hypervisor, so by definition the Windows installation would not be running in its own VM (for some definition of VM).

And its pretty much exactly the same for Qemu/KVM on Linux, where Intel VT-x or AMD SVM hardware extensions are used to implement Type-1 virtualisation.

<comment><USER13> Unless I'm terribly wrong, when Hyper-V is enabled, it converts the current host Windows to a "Parent partition". This is what it's described here: [https://superuser.com/questions/836116/hyper-v-appears-to- ru...](https://superuser.com/questions/836116/hyper-v-appears-to-runs-on-top- of-the-host-os-so-why-is-it-considered-a-native)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As a long time free software and linux supporter I am a little bit afraid of this.

It seems like a very smart move from Microsoft. They get rid of the abysmal performance of windows's file system and spawning new processes by using... linux! Provide also an excellent terminal so that developers have the best experience with command line tools, all this without leaving the convenience of Windows!

Not surprising since they dominate the desktop market since forever being smart at strategy.

The only weak point of WSL 2 to my point of view is that you say goodbye to development of native Windows application because you are effectively on Linux. It means you either setup cross-compilation which can be annoying either you go with Visual Studio, the old MS way.

For the moment I will stay with MSYS2 plus Mingw64, they are both excellent and provide a good experience to develop native applications on Windows. At home I will keep using Ubuntu, of course.

For the introduction of WSL 2, I think many of the people using Mac OS X may switch to Windows. They never fully embraced the free-software philosophy and chose Mac OS X because of the high-quality hardware and software and the good terminal experience with unix-like environment. They will easily switch to Windows now.

The small group of people using Linux will probably stay on Linux because of dislike for Microsoft practices and the fondness for free software.

Bad news for free software, good news for Microsoft shareholders!

<comment><USER16> My view is that WSL2 will help developers who are stuck on Windows (many enterprises force Windows on users).

I don't think Linux will be affected as much. Moreover, Linux is better than ever:

\- you can buy laptop with Linux from two companies: Dell and System76, soon from Lenovo

\- performance can't be beat (especially for development, with native docker and kvm for virtualization)

\- amazing package managers, with fwupd you can even update firmware

\- graphics stack is really good and getting better, firefox on wayland with video decoding support, wayland with great hidpi support

\- work on chromium on wayland in progress (beta already available), we will have electron apps with hidpi support

\- no bloatware (candy crush, 100s of processes...)

\- gaming with Proton is miles better than gaming on macOS, still behind Windows for known reasons

Obviously if you need Adobe/Office, Linux loses many points :)

<comment><USER17> In reality enterprise users on have _zero_ chances seeing WSL2 on their PCs in foreseeable future. Last two banks I worked for ran windows builds 1703 and 1803 respectively, more progressive of the two announced plans to update to 1903 not too long ago (yes, two first digits is year).

Oh, and WSL1 was banned, of course, on the grounds of being "too expensive and uncertain to support". You could have a Linux VM though, with approved distro, same as what prod machines run.

So really WSL is still confined to a small domain of switchers tired of MBP keyboards, Linux is safe for now :)

<comment><USER16> You are right that enterprises are lagging 1-2 years behind current windows build, but in many of them WSL is seen as major improvement for developers. Fortunately I am allowed to run Linux, so I don't care :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What I haven't seen mentioned is that WSL 1 nor 2 work with the modern Machine Learning GPU acceleration.

From what I understand, WSL 1 doesn't have proper access to GPU, and for WSL 2 / Hyper-V, GPU pass-through isn't a thing for cards such as the 1080TI.

On Windows, Conda / Anaconda is quite buggy, and dealing with a regular python install through the CMD command line isn't too pleasant either.

Looks like the modern macbooks don't have any CUDA-capable GPUs. What do folks use for their ML projects? AWS?

<comment><USER19> +1 For graphics acceleration work it is also a problem.

I'd suggest avoiding MacBooks if you are in the ML field, or having a dedicated desktop machine somewhere that you connect to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > When you compile the whole gotdanged planet on every file save, you do a lot > of disk writes and stat calls on tens of thousands of files.

What kind of bizarre twisted hellscape do we live in where we just accept this as normal -- for a web page.

</comment><comment><USER21> For the past couple years I've developed on macOS, and the few years before that in a different role, on windows. On both machines I ended up resorting to a Linux VM to avoid frustrating differences between my dev environment and my prod environment.

Windows was totally off, macOS nearly just worked but every now and then an update would kill my dev environment and I would have to spend a day fixing it.

WSL1 was totally insufficient, and a few months ago I would say that I strongly prefer macOS to windows. Having toyed with WSL2, however, the speed and seamlessness has impressed me. I haven't tried it for full time work, but I'm getting the impression that it's superior to my current workflows with Parallels on macOS.

That said I'd just prefer a high quality full-Linux-dev environment. Going to just lobby for a Thinkpad instead of a MacBook on my coming machine refresh.

<comment><USER22> I recent switched to a Linux desktop after doing the VM dance on MacOS for a few years and I can't believe I didn't do it sooner.

<comment><USER23> I am now doing the opposite: When I need to dev for Windows or something (usually for a contract), I spin a Win10 VM on QEMU-KVM.

If you guys have been virtualizing on VMWare or Virtualbox, try KVM. It's blistering fast and the whole SPICE protocol is amazing. You can actually get a usable, snappy 2+ desktop with dynamic resizing, audio redirection and USB redirection (which is SO good i was able to test using a USB soundcard and I got sound to play without underruns! quite a feat)

Do it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > there was a glimmer of hope that Web Development on Windows would be viable.

I wonder if the success of WSL this will risk making some tooling that is already less-than-stellar on windows (Git, for example) even worse when the group that actually has to work on windows proper shrinks.

<comment><USER19> Microsoft has been putting a lot of resources on Git for a while, improving and contributing back to the original project.

I expect the Windows Git will keep improving if they keep this Windows+Linux trend.

<comment><USER25> Plus, the Windows team itself uses git day-to-day now and it would be silly for Windows developers to spin up Linux VMs to git commit on the Windows Kernel. (Windows being source controlled in git has contributed directly and indirectly to a lot of git performance upgrades/tweaks in the last couple of years, including and especially to git running well natively on Windows.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Jekyll is the only thing I don't run in Docker and it's nice to see he went from 8s to half a second.

Full builds for my site (almost 300 posts) takes like 20 full seconds, but incremental builds when actively writing to see changes takes about 3 seconds.

So if that 3 seconds ends up being half a second or less that would be a pretty big quality of life improvement.

For Docker related projects (Flask, Rails, Phoenix, Webpack, whatever), WSL 1 is quite speedy already since the mount is happening in the Linux VM running Docker Desktop, not the WSL mount. I wonder if this will end up being any faster with a WSL 2 back-end for Docker Desktop. I'll have to wait until WSL 2 hits Windows stable to try it out.

</comment><comment><USER27> > get a proper, functioning, fast Linux environment up and running on my beefy > gaming computer

Since I didn't see it mentioned in this thread - if all one needs is Ubuntu VMs, i.e., for common web development setup, Multipass is a simple and easy tool:

[https://multipass.run/](https://multipass.run/)

Made by Canonical, runs on Hyper-V (or equivalent), cross-platform support. I have not compared it with WSL 1 or 2, but it's been a smooth user experience.

</comment><comment><USER28> > you do a lot of disk writes and stat calls on tens of thousands of files.

Found the root problem right there. What the fuck is going on in modern web dev.

</comment><comment><USER29> WSL2 is great but there are still some very annoying bugs, like when the host sleeps/hibernates and the clock drifts [1], or windows detach from the x server and can't be brought back.

[1] [https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4114](https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4114)

</comment><comment><USER30> Big fan of WSL, get power of Windows and the full power of Linux combined. Can easily switch between gaming and development.

<comment><USER31> I've been using Steam on (Debian) Linux for quite a while and haven't really run into issues. I mostly play Dota 2 and Stellaris, which come Linux native, but also a bunch of other stuff including quite a few Windows native / Proton-"translated" games.

All this on AMD graphics with standard open source drivers btw, did not install either proprietary drivers or "special" open source versions.

(Card is this in case anyone cares:)

      0c:00.0 VGA … [AMD/ATI] Baffin [Radeon RX 550 640SP / RX 560/560X] (rev cf)
      OpenGL renderer string: Radeon RX 560 Series (POLARIS11, DRM 3.36.0, 5.6.2+, LLVM 9.0.1)
      OpenGL core profile version string: 4.6 (Core Profile) Mesa 20.0.2

Then again for lack of a Windows installation I wouldn't know if I'm losing performance. It is however what I expect of the card's age and price segment (mediocre in both I'd say.)

<comment><USER32> I think I tried Imperator: Rome on Fedora and it didn't work. But I don't recall. Everything else from Steam has worked for me.

With Lutris I've been able to get every other game working that I've wanted to play - including Blizzard games, other MMOs like FFXIV, and Path of Exile. But there definitely are some quirks and other things you might need to deal with.

Like to play FFXIV, the first play worked. The second didn't - it failed with some network error. Eventually I figured out that if I deleted a folder the first run created (some web cache/settings folder) it would usually work. That included settings for storing my login information, so I wasn't able to have the game remember that. This workaround also didn't always work. So sometimes I would have to delete the folder, start the application. Close it down, delete the folder, restart the application. It usually worked the first try.

Another annoyance I eventually found out: the error I was getting was the same as what you would get when their servers were down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> What are some use cases that would cause a person to choose Windows as their primary OS, but require WSL? At what point do you just move to a *nix OS and virtualize Windows on the rare occasion that it's truly needed?

<comment><USER34> Developing linux software on windows is actually pretty painful.

Actually, running any linux software in general such as middleman or Jekyll is pretty painful on Windows- I recently had a horrible time trying to get git- crypt working for a colleague of mine who was using Windows..

There's a lot of value in being able to just run "linux" (with bash, grep, sed, awk, gcc, python) while being able to access your normal files on a Windows desktop.

You _can_ do this with VirtualBox but it's janky, slow, buggy and generally awkward.

<comment><USER33> Why not just move to Linux?

<comment><USER35> The GUI isn't as great as Windows and it's often buggy. Let's face it.

<comment><USER36> Do you find the microsoft gui great? Honest question, because I have a desktop with windows and I find its gui a clusterfuck of randomness, especially since it seems two or three different ui "languages" are constantly fighting each other since w8.

<comment><USER35> I'm not talking about the desktop UI/UX philosophy but the system itself. It is much more stable than Linux, especially where there's ongoing chaos regarding Wayland.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> X410 is an X server that works so far very well with my WSL (1).

</comment><comment><USER38> Ive been using Docker Desktop with WSL2 and vscode for the past couple of weeks and its been pretty seamless so far. The performance has been great (on a ryzen 3600x PC and on my surface laptop 3), and was really easy to set up. I'm forced to use a Mac at work, and have generally dual booted to linux at home, but havent needed to so far.

</comment><comment><USER39> I have been using a VM on a Windows 10 and I have to say, it's been great! On a dual monitor setup, I have the VM on one screen and have a windows browser on the other, and the performance is very much close to 1:1. I don't think I would ever need to install a dual boot system now.

</comment><comment><USER40> That's great news, thinking about replacing my Ubuntu Linux install for Windows and having WSL2 if these changes and performance improvements are accurate. Windows Terminal looks pretty cool too, reminds me of Terminal.app on macOS with blurred backgrounds and theming too.

Very cool blog post!

<comment><USER41> I've done exactly that. I had some issues with WSL but WSL2 does what I need it to do. Specifically what I need it to do is cross-compile the linux kernel (among other things) for embedded devices. This works flawlessly.

Almost all my work has moved to WSL - the remaining bit (like UART and JTAG access) could be done with better USB support. So I'm definitely hoping for that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> > It's still weird to say it, but Windows Terminal is hands-down the best > terminal on Windows.

Windows terminal is pretty good, but no, it's not yet the best terminal on windows.

cmder is.

It has panel split, quake mode, git integration...

Now the read map of Windows Terminal is pretty convincing, so let's see how it plays out.

<comment><USER43> Surely the git integration is in the shell, not the terminal?

<comment><USER42> Technically yes, but practically, cmder configures each shell it embeds (windows cmd, powershell, cygwing bash) to work with git automatically. So for the end user, ~=.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Wow, per the block chart of how this works [https://i.redd.it/po98dksksjx21.png](https://i.redd.it/po98dksksjx21.png)

It's using the 9P Filesystem to sync the two between systems... that's interesting.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h > It's using the 9P Filesystem to sync the two between systems... that's > interesting.

Not rare; qemu/libvirt does the same thing (well, as one option; qemu also supports smb).

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Since this is based on Hyper-V, I guess it is a Windows 10 Professional-only feature ? Or did they enable a trim down version of Hyper-V which can be used on Home licenses ?

<comment><USER46> The latter

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Have they gotten networking transparency working to the degree that it was on WSL1 yet? I tried an earlier preview of WSL2 and ran into a bunch of issues here.

<comment><USER48> It's still an issue afaik. But, might be because my install is old and it doesn't update that by itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> > Smoother web development

Last I heard networking/sharing ports didn't work, has that been fixed or is there now a solution?

<comment><USER6> Yup - all works now. If I start rails server I can access localhost:3000 from Firefox on windows, for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I would keep using native linux.

</comment><comment><USER51> Bonus is that now Docker will work on Windows Home.</comment>


Ask HN: Concept for a call anonymization setup similar to TOR - <AUTHOR>

I've been tossing around an idea tonight about a service that could anonymize phone calls in sort of the same way that TOR anonymizes internet traffic. The basic set up would involve a lot of asterisk boxes hosted all over the world that would blindly route phone calls to other asterisk boxes before eventually completing the call. Only the first box would know both the original calling number and the number to be called and I'm sure there's a way to make it so that only the last box in the chain would know the number to be called without informing any of the other intermediary boxes in the chain. You could clear the call logs of all the boxes at very short intervals say every 10 minutes or even as soon as the call is passed on to the next box in the chain. Your local phone service would only be able to track your call to the first hop in the chain so it would be basically impossible to tell who you were really calling. I could see this being useful for leakers, hackers, and of course criminals would eventually find plenty of use for it. That's not really any of my concern. Something like this wouldn't even be that expensive with VoIP prices what they are these days.
Do you think this is a reasonable/viable concept? Do you think people would pay for a service like this? Can you think of ways to improve this setup?
If anyone is interested in talking about this further, beyond just HN comments, you can email firstname.lastname@example.com
This is all sort of back of the napkin stuff guys, so please try to keep criticism/critique civil. It's early and I legitimately had this idea in a dream. <comment><USER2> Possibly interesting: [1]

[1] [http://torfone.org/](http://torfone.org/)

</comment><comment><USER3> you can voip over tor btw

<comment><USER4> Yeah this seems like the path of least resistance.</comment></comment>


Samsung: Exynos 4 processors are vulnerable to serious attack - <AUTHOR> http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/smartphones/samsung-exynos-4-processors-are-vulnerable-to-serious-attack/6134?tag=nl.e019&s_cid=e019

<comment><USER2> This was already discussed on HN in various threads, eg:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4931944>

Also the headline is misleading, suggesting the processor has a hardware security flaw when it is really an OS file permission problem in the Android distribution that devices using this chip run.</comment>


Microsoft's Ray Ozzie To Step Down As Chief Software Architect - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/18/microsofts-ray-ozzie-to-step-down-as-chief-software-architect/ <comment><USER2> Microsoft should just invest 10% of its revenue in a YC-like fund that produces independently operated but partly MS-owned companies that join their ecosystem. The brain drain over there is ridiculous - how are they ever going to produce anything competitive now?

<comment><USER3> I've suggested this to some relevant people inside the company on a few occasions. The likelihood of this is 'a snowball's chance in hell.'

<comment><USER2> Watching this all play out has been an object lesson in management killing innovation.

<comment><USER4> Totally, MSFT is a completely fear driven company. They haven't led on ideas in years, I can't think of the last great new MSFT endeavor.

As a side note, I have an uncle who worked there very high up for over a decade and when he put in his resignation letter leaving for Apple they had security guards escort him out within 15-30 minutes of turning it in. Plus, if you met the guy you'd realize how unnecessary it was--his dad's a pastor and he's the most honest and religious person I personally know--goes to church every Sunday, prays before every meal, and always defers that "God rewarded and blessed him." I'm not religious at all, but the way MSFT treated him made me realize how arrogant and ruthless they are, but that also that they are heartless to their employees they worked with for years and years.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


So do Ethernet cables have their own sound? - <AUTHOR> http://www.the-ear.net/review-hardware/audioquest-ethernet-cables-pt2-ethernet-cable

<comment><USER2> I went back to part 1 and looked at his conclusion...it's painful to read. Here's an excerpt:

"Beats me why music files differ, but they do! The only explanation I can come up with is that the zero and one values represent a lower and higher voltage in the cable and in the sender or receiver. This is actually an analogue signal when we look at it on a scope. We audiophiles agree that cables sound different with analogue signals, so why not with Ethernet data? Next, any interface for Ethernet has a correction circuit for errors. With many errors this interface has to work hard, that will result in a greater need for current from the power supply and the processor heating up. A bad cable, or one that easily picks up interference, introduces a lot of errors so that might be the cause of a change in sound quality. "

An audiophile and his money are soon parted it seems.

</comment><comment><USER3> Oddly enough I've heard of location sound guys using CAT5 cable to carry analogue mic signals back to the sound recorder, largely because it's cheap and readily available on location. Their impression was that it was basically fine, so long as you have decent transformers at each end.

The audiophile folks would pass out cold if they ever learned about all the things that the signal goes through before it reaches their precious enclave...

<comment><AUTHOR> Using CAT5 as analogue cable is fine, it's a cheap, high-quality, low impedance cable. But this article is talking about TCP transmission, sadly enough :(

<comment><USER3> Right, though for a lot of audio guys it's a bit unnerving to be working with unshielded cable.

<comment><USER4> It's worth to note that with balanced signals, many problems (hum, some kinds of induced EMI...) that tend to be attributed by audio guys to poor shielding would not exist if there were no shielding at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for bringing the topic up again, but this might be the 'ultimate' article.

"So do Ethernet cables have their own sound? This is no longer a question but a statement. The cable between switches is less important than the ones connected to the end points (NAS and/or streaming device), but a decent type like the AudioQuest Carbon is certainly worth the price in high end systems."

<comment><USER5> My favorite bit (talking about a setup where your music server sound card is plugged directly into your DAC): "In that case only commands are send over the LAN and access to the internet is limited to metadata and covers. A decent CAT-5 like Pearl will be fine"

So the author is at least willing to concede that spending much more than £30 for a 1.5 meter network cable doesn't add much to the vibrance, color and quality of the downloaded album covers and metadata.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is this a particular strain of satire that I'm not in on or is this supposed to be serious? Genuinely can't tell.

</comment><comment><USER7> Sorry to say, but that is complete BS from the technical point of view.

May he should have talked to an electrical engineer first, before writing this BS.

There are 2 things the quality of an Ethernet cable has an influence: jitter on the cable and signal quality in terms of that the Ethernet frame may be recognized as corrupted has to be repeated, which again comes down to jitter. Jitter is also introduced by the communication that goes on in parallel. As the Ethernet cable has no influence on the data itself (bit flips are covered by the CRC) there can be no influence at the higher layers at. If that would be the case you couldn't trust any communication at all.

<comment><USER8> You're preaching to the choir, mate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Those are some beautiful cables. Perhaps nice cables make your music sound better the same way stickers make your car faster.

They also make USB cables, and Best Buy will sell you a $125 iPod (30 pin) cable if you are interested. Really though: if someone makes 20x as much as I do each month, then why shouldn't they spend 20x as much on a cable. Isn't that the American Dream? This review is providing a service: helping to keep the 1% from feeling like idiots while they figure out what to do with their disposable income. Deep down they know it just looks nicer, but this lets them justify it. You know, like fine wine, or a Porsche (pronounced with an 'Ah' at the end).

</comment><comment><USER10> When I first read the article I was thinking that analog audio was send over those cables. I could not believe the article is about digital signals.

It's amazing how some people are fooling themselves.

</comment><comment><USER11> Can't trust a word of this unless we can be sure that the reviewer is using proper Audiophile-grade Ethernet switches. I hope they review some of those soon. :)

Actually, surely the presence of two switches in the network has already fatally compromised the ease and sonic presence of the soundstage... Or other such bollocks.

</comment><comment><USER12> Reminds me of: [http://www.amazon.com/Denon-AKDL1-Dedicated-Cable- Version/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Denon-AKDL1-Dedicated-Cable- Version/dp/B000I1X6PM)

It's now discontinued, it used to be $1000 then $500. The reviews are priceless.

</comment><comment><USER13> Notice the prices at the bottom of the article. This seems to be the product page for the most expensive one: [http://www.audioquest.com/ethernet/diamond](http://www.audioquest.com/ethernet/diamond)

</comment><comment><USER14> It would sound even better if he freezes the cable first :)

Seriously though, i would have expected the author to have some basic knowledge of digital signals. Audiophiles are are different breed of people I guess.

</comment><comment><USER15> love the racism(?) at the end - "We should have expected a famous cable manufacturer to make its best sounding cable the most expensive, but this is not always the case I can assure you. Sometimes cables are made more and more expensive for export markets and the increased price has nothing to do with sound quality."

because only those dumb foreigners buy cables because they are expensive...

<comment><USER16> "Foreigners" are not necessarily of a different race.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> > _AudioQuest proved to me that we still have honest manufacturers around the > globe._

That's got to be my favorite.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm glad to see all of the comments here. I briefly thought this article was written specifically to troll me personally.

</comment><comment><USER19> Let's create a class on Coursera: Analog and Digital signals for Audiophiles</comment>


MIT Develops Cheap Smartphone Clip-On to Detect Cataracts - <AUTHOR> http://bostinnovation.com/2011/07/06/mit-develops-cheap-smartphone-clip-on-to-detect-cataracts/

<comment><USER2> I love the idea of clip on technology, like the project for turning your smartphone's camera in to a high powered microscope. There's a whole world of possibilities out there, especially for the hardware hackers, now that so many of us have high powered computers in our pockets.</comment>


A Study That Bolsters the Lead-Crime Hypothesis - <AUTHOR> http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/06/powerful-study-lead-crime-hypothesis <comment><USER2> It's a really strong study. N= ~1500, the cost-benefit ratio from remediation in improved education outcomes and lower social costs of crime is 1.8. Probably 1 million children across the US have been impacted by elevated blood lead levels over the last 20 years. there is no good reason to postpone acting on this problem, which is well understood by now.

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/07z65p9a5wdppfl/LifeAfterLead_AEJ_...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/07z65p9a5wdppfl/LifeAfterLead_AEJ_Revision_3_16_17.pdf?dl=0)

<comment><USER3> Wow. Those are some remarkable results.

I've hypothesized for a while now that the Black Lives Matter movement might be distracting us from what might be the true cause of the problems they seek to address. Blaming the problem on "racist" cops by default instead of performing a root cause analysis is leading us to overlook the likelihood that poorer communities, that are often predominantly black, are more likely to be exposed to lead.

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/07/13/black-children- at-r...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/07/13/black-children-at-risk-for- lead-poisoning-_n_7672920.html)

<comment><USER4> > I've hypothesized for a while now that the Black Lives Matter movement might > be distracting us from what might be the true cause of the problems they > seek to address. Blaming the problem on "racist" cops by default

Since BLM focuses on a wide array of social, political, and economic, and environmental issues (including interplay between issues in the various domains) involved in the social dismissal of the value of black lives, and not "racist cops by default" (indeed, the motivating event for BLM's formation wasn't even a law-enforcement killing), I think your complaint is misdirected and should instead be directed at whatever media channels you consume that give you this distorted view of BLM.

<comment><USER3> My sources here aren't media channels, but every single BLM member or supporter I've engaged in debate with (n>100) until this comment (probably because this is the first venue I've raised this where lead poisoning is the primary topic of conversation). To date, not a single supporter or member I've engaged with has acknowledged lead poisoning as a potential culprit when I try to raise it (probably because acknowledging lead poisoning as a cause requires one to also acknowledge the higher incidence of violent crime committed by black men, which is inconvenient to the racist police narrative they are pushing).

In these debates, I usually point to this table of FBI statistics, which shows a significantly higher level of crime committed by both men (all races) and black men in particular on a per capita basis as an explanation for the disproportionate number of men and in particular black men shot by cops.

[https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in- the-u.s.-...](https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in- the-u.s.-2014/tables/table-43)

Cops are more aggressive with black people but don't actually kill them at a greater rate relative to the number of violent crimes committed. Here is Roland G. Fryer's research showing this: [https://www.nber.org/papers/w22399](https://www.nber.org/papers/w22399)

I'm not discounting that black lives matter. I'm supportive of it. My point is that if we really care about fixing the problems that result in increased mortality in that demographic, we should instead be focusing on likely root causes such as lead poisoning. Lead should be getting so much more attention in the BLM debate, but it does not. Why?

<comment><USER5> BLMers will scream "murder" and "hands up don't shoot" at the top of their lungs at every chance they get, but when confronted with the evidence that the alleged victim of a police shooting was in fact a violent criminal living in violent neighborhood, suddenly the movement is about social issues and body cameras...until the next shooting and the cycle repeats.

A movement genuinely pushing for reasonable police reform and replacing lead pipes (for all people of all colors) would be much better received. But the problem is the movement is self-evidently not about actually solving problems. It's about pushing racial narratives. I suspect responses to your comment will further affirm this.

<comment><USER6> It doesn't matter whether they're violent criminals. Our country has a court system. The role of judge, jury and executioner does not belong to police officers.

<comment><USER5> That's delusional. When a criminal reaches for a gun, or aims it at a person, or even tackles an armed cop, cops absolutely have the right and the obligation to shoot. And when BLM lies about criminals in the act of threatening cops, they endanger both cops and the very communities which they pretend to save.

<comment><USER6> I was just speaking to the part about being a "violent criminal living in a violent neighborhood" \-- that doesn't justify shooting someone.

Typically in these cases the victim wasn't threatening the police officer's life in any way. Walter Scott was shot while running away. Freddie Gray was already safely in police custody. Eric Garner was selling loose cigarettes, not attacking anyone. Tamir Rice was a 12 year old playing with a toy gun.

<comment><USER7> Sandra Bland was an unarmed woman frustrated by a traffic stop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The lead-violence correlation is very, very interesting. What always makes me wonder is how much historical effect environmental factors like this must have had. Lead used to be ubiquitous, between paint, pipes, roofing, glass, solder - the Romans even cooked in lead vessels at times.

There's probably no way of ever teasing out all the different factors, but when you read accounts of what daily life was like in, say 18th century London, and a.) violence was quite common-place, and b.) virtually everyone kept themselves inebriated enough to fail a breathalyzer at all times. Probably b.) contributed a good deal to a.), but if everybody is also suffering from low-level chronic lead poisoning...

<comment><USER9> Crime and violence has been falling steadily over the past century too. Makes you wonder if this significant social change isn't because of better education, social programs, etc., but simply because of other factors like this that we're simply unaware of.

<comment><USER10> No one disputes that other factors are important. For instance cultural attitudes about violence are important. As is the reach of civil government. Not to mention that in the US violence is a particular problem because of ready access to handguns.

My take having read about this theory for about ten years now it looks like the preponderance of the evidence says that lead exposure is at least as significant as the above. Meaning it's not just this study, it's all the other ones as well. With the lead thoery you have the following.

1\. A known mechanism. Lead cause brain damage with poor impulse control. 2\. Dose response correlation between lead exposure and violent crime.

Thing that freaks me out is what did exposure to lead and resulting poor impulse control do to politics in the US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Scary that airplanes are still allowed to use leaded fuel.

Somehow society is stuck between the information age and the stupid age.

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lead-in- aviation-...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lead-in-aviation- fuel/)

<comment><USER12> A quick check on wikipedia quotes:

"Current aircraft engines feature valve gear components which are designed for compatibility with the leaded ASTM D910 fuels. In such fuels, the lead acts as a lubricant, coating the contact areas between the valve, guide, and seat. The use of unleaded auto fuels with engines designed for leaded fuels can result in excessive exhaust valve seat wear due to the lack of lead. The result can be remarkable, with cylinder performance deteriorating to unacceptable levels in under 10 hours."

[https://web.archive.org/web/20120413123438/http://www.tcmlin...](https://web.archive.org/web/20120413123438/http://www.tcmlink.com:80/visitors/carenfeed/engoperhdr.cfm)

Also lead is an anti-knock agent so it is used to get to the very high octane ratings in Avgas.

And it seems the problem may be solved soon!

"By May 2012, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA Unleaded Avgas Transition rulemaking committee) had put together a plan in conjunction with industry to replace leaded avgas with an unleaded alternative within 11 years. Given the progress already made on 100SF and G100UL, the replacement time might be shorter than that 2023 estimate."

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Can anyone explain to me why the group that had high exposure but an intervention that reduced their exposure to about 5 on the graph, has much lower violent crime levels than the group that had an exposure of around 5 and no intervention?

<comment><USER14> That does seem like an issue with the study, from the pdf:

 _" Two primary channels emerge through which intervention affects antisocial behavior and cognitive outcomes. First, intervention may dramatically reduce the amount of continued childhood exposure to the dangerous neurotoxin by directly reducing exposure risks within the home environment. Second, long- term benefits may occur through improvements in early-life health unrelated to any changes in lead exposure. [11] ...

[11] The elevated BLL intervention package includes treatments previously demonstrated to impact later-life outcomes such as: visits from health workers; increased medical care; nutritional assessments and dietary modifications; and referral to the Special Supplemental, Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). Prior research documents long-term benefits from programs similar to each of these elements ..."_

Why didn't they control for the other intervention treatments? One where they reduce BLL + other treatments, and one where they didn't reduce BLL but still gave the other treatments?

<comment><USER15> This is a reasonable question which has some very good answers.

The data is from a program that aimed to mitigate problems from high lead. The program's primary aim wasn't to allow papers to be published about their research goal many years later. You make the best use that you can of the data that you've got. And don't insist on the perfect data that you don't have.

But even if this had been designed as a pure research program, the design that you suggest would never be approved on ethical grounds. We accumulated enough data many years ago on the negative impact of lead that we cannot in good conscience withhold treatment for the sake of collecting better data. Review the history of the Tuskegee Study for an example of why such ethical guidelines were put in place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This still affects a lot of communities in California. [1] (And, of course elsewhere across the country.)

[1] [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-lead-california- exclus...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-lead-california-exclusive- idUSKBN16T18Y)

</comment><comment><USER17> Efforts to reduce lead exposure in the 1980s arguably were behind much of the lower crime rates in the 1990s and 2000's that we've seen. There are other studies cited in relevant wikipedia articles like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States#cit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States#cite_note-13)

And yes, crime rates are significantly lower adjusting for population, though that's not always conveyed accurately by those in authority and the news media.

</comment><comment><USER18> Wow, yes, could be very true!! Could be related to higher crime rates by certain minority groups that may tend to live in old homes with lead paint.

Historically, the great great great painter Caravaggio was quite violent/irritable and died sadly so so young (30 something) and many theories are that he was quite irritable/violent because of lead poisoning (he was prolific, working all the time with lead points).

<comment><USER2> Definitely true. Nowadays painters use bleached titanium to get a brilliant white, but until the late 19th century lead salts were the norm. Basically you hammer out ingots of lead into flat strips, roll them up into a cylinder, and seal them in ceramic jars full of vinegar for 6 months. When you take them out the lead has turned white and is them ground up into powder and mixed with oil.

You can still get this from a few specialty suppliers and it's reasonably safe to use as long as you wear gloves paint slowly enough that you don't get it all over your skin. Ingested lead is much more dangerous than skin contact, and of course the process of grinding the treated strips of lead into powder was a respiratory and gastric disaster - although people were not completely clueless and apprentices in art studios would often cover their lower face with a wet cloth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Considering it's the basis of the entire hypothesis, here's the nature of the intervention:

All cases with two BLL tests exceeding the alert threshold (10 ug/dL) trigger eligibility for an intervention which includes the following actions: education for caregivers (which includes nutritional advice and information about reducing exposure in the home); a voluntary home environment investigation; and a referral to lead remediation services. A more intensive intervention can be triggered by tests over 15 ug/dL or 20 ug/dL. In addition to educating caregivers and providing a referral to remediation services, the intensive intervention typically includes: a mandatory home environment investigation; nutritional assessment; medical evaluation; developmental assessment; and a referral to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)

</comment><comment><USER20> From the article: "The statistical significance of the drop is extremely strong"

I haven't read the source paper yet, but the way this is phrased makes me skeptical of the strength of these findings. Having worked briefly on a lead remediation project for a city government who has been in the news recently for lead, I can tell you that this is a really tough question and the confounding factors are huge. The political consequences mean that folks have incentive to seriously overstate (or understate) the importance and validity of a study like this.

<comment><USER21> There have been several studies over the years and the evidence is strong.

Crime rates seem to drop with 20 year lag after TEL phaseout in gasoline starts. Different countries banned TEL at different times and it's very hard to deny connection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's sad how deterministic our lives really are.

</comment><comment><USER23> Chicago needs to fix this.

</comment><comment><USER24> The article title on the original site was changed from "... Confirms the Lead-Crime Hypothesis" to "... _Bolsters_ the Lead-Crime Hypothesis", since "It's a good study, but it's still just one more study." Title here should be changed likewise.

<comment><USER25> Thank you, we've updated the headline here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Isn't this just a roundabout way of saying that people with lower IQs are more prone to criminal activity?

<comment><USER23> No.

Look at people with Down-Syndrome, they are extremely thoughtful and nice. Least likely to commit a violent act or partake in criminal activity.

<comment><USER27> there's a sweet spot, obviously if you go too low you're talking about barely autonomous people

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> comment deleted

<comment><USER29> If only there were some kind of service where one could type in queries like this and receive answers...

<comment><USER30> There are! I Googled for "online query answerer" and there were 131,000 results.</comment></comment></comment>


Official Google Research Blog: Julia meets HTML 5 - <AUTHOR> http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2011/01/julia-meets-html-5.html <comment><USER2> It would be interesting if the results from the clients are cached, as it would speed up rendering for _everyone_. Something like MapRejuice.

But yes, figuring out whether the client output can be trusted is an interesting problem in itself. :-)

<comment><USER3> I've actually gone down this path before, but I gave up when I asked this question:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3644614/what-might-be- the...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3644614/what-might-be-the-best- method-of-storing-mandelbrot-values-in-a-database)

Client input cannot reasonably well be verified, of course, but perhaps more importantly, once you get down to a certain zoom level, the advantages of caching the information almost disappears as the number of possible X, Y, and zoom levels starts increasing rapidly toward infinity.

The other problem is that JavaScript has issues with very precise floating points and very high integers. Check out this Mandelbrot viewer that I made:

<http://janhartigan.com/creations/fractaljs>

(please be kind...my site is still under construction [where's my gif??])

It might take a little while to render, but if you keep zooming in (and upping the iteration value in the input box), you'll find that eventually things just start getting pixelated once JS reaches its maximum level of floating point precision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I keep zooming in, but it's just more of the same...

</comment><comment><USER5> Where's street view? ;)</comment>


Ask HN: What does a QA analyst do? - <AUTHOR>

Can someone expound on what a QA analyst does day-to-day in detail (tools used, skills required, etc.)? Does it differ if you are a QA analyst for a gaming company versus an analytics company? <comment><USER2> I assume you mean QA Analyst, as opposed to QA Engineer. To me the main difference is that QA Analysts don't write code, where QA Engineers do write code. If you enjoy writing code, you should try for a QA Engineering position.

I was a Quality Assurance Analyst at a large financial services company for a few years. I can't say how different a gaming or analytics company would be, but I think most large software companies will be similar. Personally, I'd stay away from QA positions at large companies, as I found I was trapped in a specialized testing area that limited my ability to learn new skills.

QA's need good analytical skills, to know where to look for bugs, and judgement to know how severe a defect is. Good communication skills, particularly writing skills are critical. By writing skills I mean the ability to write clear descriptions for developers, and clear steps for them to reproduce issues. I ask specific questions in interviews to find out if a candidate for a QA position can clearly explain a 5 step process.

QA's typically write short descriptions of their test strategy for the code they're testing and discuss the plan with the developer who wrote the code and other QA's. It's better when these docs are clear and understandable. Non- agile teams usually require QA's to write documents listing all of the tests they plan to run, even if they never check that you actually run them. Agile teams usually eliminate this kind of busy work.

As a QA I spent a lot of time explaining the app and functionality to the rest of the company, including managers, directors and VP's.

QA's need good soft skills, they need to learn about other parts of the business to understand the customer the company's trying to reach. Often the design given to developers is missing requirements, a good QA can find those requirements early and save the team time reworking code later. Often QA's need to coordinate testing with other QA teams, integration points are where software always breaks!

QA Analysts on my team spend the majority of their time either running manual tests, or using software that permits them to automate my company's application. We have a team of automation engineers, Quality Engineers officially, who write and maintain tools and testing frameworks that allow non-engineers to create automated tests. Our automation team wrote a scripting language for Selenium WebDriver to permit easier automation of browser controls.

Since my company's application is a web app, many of the tools they use allow viewing and tweaking web requests. Here's some tools the QA's use daily:

 _HTTP Analyzers and Javascript consoles_

* Chrome and Safari Developer Tools

* IE HTTP Analyzer

* Firebug

 _Monitoring Software_

* Computer Associates APM (Server Monitoring)

* Splunk (Log Monitoring)

 _Test Case Management_

* SilkCentral (I hated this app, slow and inflexible)

* Microsoft Excel (for writing tests)

 _Agile Management /Bug Tracking_

* Rally or Jira

The QA's on my team who could manipulate the Linux command line, create simple Bash scripts managed deployments to QA and Performance environments, and tested some of the application's backend components.

I took programming classes at night, and as quickly as I could I found a QA Engineering position at the same company. Since I had little programming experience, my experience as a QA Analyst was key to getting a QA Engineer position. A QA Engineer with a solid understanding of what and where to test is very valuable to any company.

If you don't want to code, Quality Analysts often move to Program Management, or become Scrum Masters or people managers.

You didn't say if you're applying for a Quality Analyst position. If you are, Good luck!:)

edit: cleaned up formatting</comment>


Net Sadness - <AUTHOR> http://netsadness.net

<comment><USER2> ok??

but in all seriousness i love this</comment>


How We Built GraphQL Subscriptions with Apollo - <AUTHOR> https://dev-blog.apollodata.com/how-we-used-apollo-to-build-graphql-subscriptions-ed5caa14d51b#.ljamodqy1 <comment><AUTHOR> www.scaphold.io</comment>


Anger at 'stolen' online courses on Udemy - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-34952382 <comment><USER2> I'd suggest an escrow system but their coupon system seems to make this problem nearly unfixable:

      It said no money had changed hands from the sale of
      Mr Hunt's course "as the fraudulent instructor had
      created coupon codes to allow students free access
      to the course".

I'm guessing those coupon codes were sold on some other platform (or perhaps used as bait to get traffic that was monetized in some other way) allowing the fraudster to profit directly without money ever flowing through Udemy's hands.

<comment><USER3> I think the Udemy coupons are generally used as a way to boost the ratings. Give out coupons and tell people to rate your course 5 stars, then people see the well-rated course and buy it for real.

Given the number of terribly produced courses I've seen on there with excellent ratings, it wouldn't surprise me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "The good news is, the good actors in the Udemy system are much greater than the bad. On average, over 15,000 courses are uploaded to Udemy per year. So far in 2015, we have received 125 DMCA notifications"

The fact that only 125 DMCA notification have been filed doesn't mean the number of copyright infringing videos is low. Most people never know their content has been stolen.

<comment><USER5> Given the large number of bogus DMCA requests that fly around, it doesn't seem that large to me. Nobody is required to act as the copyright police, nor can anyone other than the copyright holder reasonably be expected to.

Copyright relies on permission and the copyright holder is, in fact, the only entity which can determine who has and does not have their permission for a given work. And sometimes even they get it wrong. For example, in Viacom v. YouTube they listed videos Viacom itself had uploaded as "infringing" and were forced to withdraw those from their complaint. And they did that _twice_ because even after hundreds of hours spent on lawyers and legal research, they still couldn't get it right.

<comment><USER6> Do you think it matters if Udemy is getting 50% of the revenue from the sale of pirated material? Do you think that changes their responsibility in comparison to a company like Youtube?

<comment><USER5> Not in the slightest, because they have no way of reading copyright holder's minds to know who has given whom permission to use what.

<comment><USER6> They require a signature from the owner of the copyright when submitting a copyright complaint. Do you think they should require a signature from the owner of the copyright when submitting content?

<comment><USER5> They have no way of even knowing who the copyright holder _is_ barring copyright registration which is optional and uncommon, let alone who actually has permission from that person. There are already copyright penalties if someone wrongly claims to have permission. That's why it works the other way: because trying to do things backwards imposes impossible demands on people trying to follow the law.

EDIT: By way of example, there's substantial controversy over who owns a copyright as famous as _Happy Birthday_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can sympathize with companies that face the very difficult challenge of policing user-submitted content, but Udemy has always seemed really sketchy to me.

Earlier this year, I got inundated with Twitter spam from bots that were written to abuse Udemy's affiliate linking program. I made several attempts to bring the issue to Udemy's attention, but the company was totally ambivalent and didn't really care. I eventually configured my Twitter client to completely filter out any message that contains "Udemy" so that I wouldn't have to see a dozen or so obnoxious mentions directed at me every time I post a tweet with a programming-related keyword.

It doesn't surprise me much that their approach to addressing piracy is similarly lackadaisical. I doubt that they would have done anything at all beyond the bare minimum required by the DMCA if the issue hadn't escalated and produced widespread criticism.

<comment><USER8> I just get spam directly from Udemy in my inbox, saying things like "Last chance to get these courses, prices so low it's a STEAL!".

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Udemy's blog post linked from tfa:

[https://blog.udemy.com/maintaining-the-integrity-of-our- udem...](https://blog.udemy.com/maintaining-the-integrity-of-our-udemy- community/)

<comment><USER10> That's great they took down the content but they failed to mention compensating the content creators who in all likelihood generate income from the videos that have now been viewed (free or not) by Udemy users. Way to maintain integrity.

<comment><USER11> The whole purpose of the DMCA safe harbor is that if the DMCA process is complied with, there is no liability of the host to the content owner; the user submitting the content may still be liable, but that requires the copyright owner to take legal action against that user.

<comment><USER12> In order to qualify for DMCA safe harbor, the site has to 'have no direct financial benefit' from the content ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_Liability_Limitation_Act#Safe_harbor_provision_for_online_storage_-_.C2.A7_512.28c.29))

In the Napster case, the fact that the infringing content drew in more users was enough to prove it was financially benefiting from the content. Even if Udemy refunds all the class fees for the infringing classes, they would still get the benefit of bringing in new users to their platform because of the infringing content.

In other words, it might be hard for them to claim safe harbor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why is "stolen" in quotes? Is it because that is being questioned? Or just the it's sort of a direct quote?

<comment><USER14> Because copyright infringement is not the same as theft and they are quoting the accusers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Somehow, I imagine that Udemy is going to get a ton of emails from original content creators in the next few days.

I can already picture someone scraping, crawling, and contacting the owners of the original content.

<comment><USER16> If it was that easy to tell whether a course was pirated (yet alone determine the original owner), this whole mess probably wouldn't have happened. Udemy is in the best position to identify infringement since they have complete access to the courses, but it's anyone's guess whether they would go to such lengths. I would guess the best bet would take a few screens at random durations then perform an image search against a database of screens collected from courses on other marketplaces. Then use Mechanical Turk for final verification. I suppose you could perform facial recognition against profile photos of authors on other marketplaces as well (for the courses that actually include a headshot). I've used OpenBR to do similar things in the past but accuracy was too low to be useful in my case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> So does this mean that they believe that Udemy has safe harbor? I thought the consensus was that they do not. IANAL, but I don't think DMCA was meant for people directly selling IP for money and taking a cut and more for just content hosting providers.

<comment><USER12> It probably doesn't, since it has a "direct financial benefit" from the content ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_Liability_Limitation_Act#Safe_harbor_provision_for_online_storage_-_.C2.A7_512.28c.29))

However, if it refunds all the money from the infringing class and removes the video promptly, maybe it can successfully argue that it is not gaining financially from the infringing content?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why is the word stolen in quotes? Clearly they were stolen, no need to tiptoe around the subject.

</comment><comment> vezzy-fnord How can you steal something that is neither rivalrous nor excludable?

<comment><USER19> The same way the creator can own it.

"Steal" has more than one definition. In the context of copyrighted works, it means to distribute without permission, or to make an unauthorized copy of that work.

<comment><USER20> To be fair, though, given the non-excludable nature of digital goods, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to make it "stealing" in the first place. Pretty much by definition you can't really prevent access to it. Maybe it makes sense in the context of companies having a hand in the "theft" because they can more readily be made to comply.

<comment><USER19> When Bobby is accused of stealing Sally's idea for the Halloween costume contest, no one wrings their hands about the non-excludablility of an "idea". Nobody tells Sally, "Bobby didn't steal it, he committed idea-infringement, Sally."

In layman's terms, "steal" is perfectly acceptable. Everyone understands what it means in this context.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Native File System API: Simplifying Access to Local Files - <AUTHOR> https://web.dev/native-file-system/ <comment><USER2> This is great. Now web pages/apps read all files under My Documents/My Pictures and upload them to the server.

I can already see Facebook games prompting children and not savvy users:

To make your favorite Facebook game better, allow read only access to My Pictures folder. We respect you privacy!</comment>


New – Managed Databases for Amazon Lightsail - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-managed-databases-for-amazon-lightsail/ <comment><AUTHOR> I think Digital Ocean should have come up with RDS competitor a long time ago. A managed database is probably the most imp. criteria why I recommend AWS to my clients.</comment>


Show HN: Binb, a realtime multiplayer musical quiz - lupin-binb http://binb.nodejitsu.com Hello guys, this is my two week project with the aim of learning some node.js What do you think? <comment><AUTHOR> This is great!

<comment> lupin-binb Thank you, i have just deployed a new version with minor fixes and suggestions.</comment></comment>


Angela Merkel draws on science background in Covid-19 explainer - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/16/angela-merkel-draws-on-science-background-in-covid-19-explainer-lockdown-exit <comment><USER2> Kudos to Merkel. She does indeed sound like a scientist. But I fear that she has added to the confusion. An audiovisual approach is definitely better when trying to explain the spread of a communicable disease. If the explanation must be solely by means of spoken speech, then one must get to the main point much more quickly than she does.

</comment><comment><USER3> Germany lucked out to have such a background of experience as Merkel's to lead the country during such a crisis.

Science doesn't come easily to most leaders, unfortunately, as this crisis is proving around the world.</comment>


Amazon marketing gets aggressive, manages to make iPad look uncool. - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUjF8qPZrUg

<comment><USER2> Not a fan of the iPad in-general (why do you want a big iTouch- I want a real OS like OSX for something that big), but I think it'd be awesome if someone could show videos of iPads, Macbooks/Macbook Pros, iPhones, etc. by the pool with the best glare protection available attached to see how they match up to the Kindle 3 in terms of readability. I have spent minimal time with my (work) Macbook Pro outside because of the glare.</comment>