US to Allow Cars Without Steering Wheels - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self-driving/new-rules-of-the-road-allow-steeringwheelfree-cars <comment><USER2> I'm looking forward at the handling of the "corner cases" related to society.

E.g. somebody that wants to rob you could just stand in front of your car (or put some small obstacle) knowing that the car will stop (to avoid damaging itself and/or whatever is in front of it).

Even in the case of simpler tech which is generally available already today some unexpected problems might arise once people become really aware that it exists on 99% of the vehicles.

For example, in the case of an at least partially selfish person, why should s/he wait to cross the street if s/he knows that the car that is nearing has an anti-collision/auto-break system? I admit that I might even start doing that myself whenever I'm late for something, have to catch the bus, etc... :)

Might end up being a funny experience sitting in a car that has to do emergency breaking every other minute... :)

<comment><USER3> > why should s/he wait to cross the street if s/he knows that the car that is > nearing has an anti-collision/auto-break system

I would highly recommend visiting Cairo in Egypt and crossing a busy road: With a swarm of cars going left and right, you simply 'pick a car' by looking directly at it and step out into the stream of (multi-lane) traffic. It's freaky at first, but it slows, moves and bends around you as you walk across the road. I've seen mothers with bags and children doing this at even busier places.

It seems that here in the west, when we're driving, we have a 'get out of my way' mentality that seems out of proportion with how we walk down a pavement. ie, As we walk, we move and flow around slower/oncoming people -- we certainly don't shout at fellow pedestrians to get out of the way and then barge them out of the way when they don't.

Edit: A video of cairo street crossing [https://youtu.be/qYjiO_kLYKY](https://youtu.be/qYjiO_kLYKY)

<comment><USER2> So, once everybody owns a self-driving car or at least one with auto-breaking, nobody would have to use the egyptian "pick a car"-method as people would just cross the street knowing that the cars would just break/stop on their own.

Traffic might come to a stop in a big city (as they are today)? Or will "good habit" prevail? Or, will it be a grey zone?

<comment><USER4> Pedestrians already have this theoretical right. In Montreal, it's heavily used. And it's fine - if you wanted to get somewhere quickly, after all, you would walk!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> The article's subtitle states "New voluntary guidelines from NHTSA will allow cars specifically designed for Level 4 autonomous driving on the road"

The first link in the article's body points to "[https://www.nhtsa.gov/DOCUMENT/ROAD- AHEAD"](https://www.nhtsa.gov/DOCUMENT/ROAD-AHEAD") which redirects to "[https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.dot.gov/files/documents/12...](https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.dot.gov/files/documents/12532-nhtsa- strategicplan-2016-2020.pdf") => I did search for the strings "level 4" and level4" but did not get any hits => which page(s) is/are used as foundation for the article's subtitle mentioning "level 4"?

EDIT: None of the links that I posted work directly (they're accessible only through [https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that- think/transportation/sel...](https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that- think/transportation/self-driving/new-rules-of-the-road-allow- steeringwheelfree-cars) in the area at the top which states "blah blah... said today in an 80-page report") - don't know why the direct links aren't working... .

</comment><comment><USER5> Sigh. They'll gladly welcome anything self-driving it seems, but refuse to budge on _headlight laws_.

[https://www.wired.com/2017/01/bad-audis-swanky-new- headlight...](https://www.wired.com/2017/01/bad-audis-swanky-new-headlights- arent-allowed-us/)

<comment><USER6> Forgive me if I'm missing something here, but could they not just... add another light? Put this _and_ another LED system for the low beams?

<comment><USER2> It would change their mainline design (the new "country-specific" look most probably not looking as good as the original one) + having a different design (only for the US market, especially involving the front part which is extremely important in the general look) might probably have to be marketed under a different name (e.g not "A4" but "A4us") with all kind of repercussions on in/direct costs of all kinds (storage space for replacement parts, marketing, research on future evolution, ...).

Additionally, accepting a request from a specific country might trigger a chain-reaction from other countries, multiplying what stated above by the nbr of countries (and I personally don't think that it would be a linear curve as at the same time the costs for coordination between the multiple lines would rise).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Joystick, bring it back: [https://www.wired.com/2015/01/well-didnt-work-saabs- weird-jo...](https://www.wired.com/2015/01/well-didnt-work-saabs-weird- joystick-controlled-car-wasnt-super-idea/)

<comment><USER8> Citroen _almost_ did that too on the SM. That is why the steering is so ridiculously sensitive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Also, US to allow cars without turn signals. Automakers are excited to reduce cost for this unused system.

<comment><USER10> If you drive downtown in a major US city - it may be a reasonable claim that the turn signals are useless.

<comment><USER11> Definitely not the case for signaling to bicyclists and motorcyclists. Intent needs to be communicated as clearly as possible. It bothers me when drivers in the city do not use their turn signals.

<comment><USER12> > It bothers me when drivers in the city do not use their turn signals.

I will never understand this. In the case of people who sometimes use signals but not always, it must take more mental energy to evaluate the situation and decide than reflexively signalling every time you turn or change lanes. In the case of people who never signal, it must be much harder to navigate a city when nobody knows what you're trying to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> From page 26 of the NHTSA's report[1]:

> _The Model State Policy confirms that States retain their traditional > responsibilities for vehicle licensing and registration, traffic laws and > enforcement, and motor vehicle insurance and liability regimes while > outlining the Federal role for HAVs._

Surely, liability for Level 4 autonomy vehicles would be borne by the car's manufacturer, rather than the operator. Is that maybe one of the more controversial aspects separating the definitions of Level 4 and 5 autonomy? I'm surprised this would remain unregulated at the federal level.

[1] [https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.dot.gov/files/documents/12...](https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.dot.gov/files/documents/12532-nhtsa- strategicplan-2016-2020.pdf)

<comment><USER14> Liability generally goes with the owner of the vehicle, not the manufacturer or the operator (with some exceptions perhaps for proven manufacturing defects).

<comment><USER13> Why would the operator be liable for an accident for which they're powerless to have prevented?

<comment><USER15> They could have prevented it by not buying a self-driving car.

<comment><USER13> The manufacturer could have prevented it by supplying a vehicle capable of avoiding collisions.

I certainly understand the owner/operator having some form of liability insurance based on usage, but an at-fault collision shouldn't be the responsibility of the owner or operator, nor should it affect their rates. That fault lies entirely with the manufacturer, or maybe eventually the subsystem supplier.

Thinking about it, I'd not be terribly surprised if it plays out with manufacturers successfully lobbying to avoid any liability, and insurance gets pooled among owners of specific Level 4 autonomy subsystems. Maybe the best we can hope for would be an equitable split of liability between the manufacturer (who controls the behavior) and owner (who controls the level of usage).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is no one going to mention how stupid the concept photo looks? If you don't have a steering wheel, why wouldn't you have a console for the driver or per person? If I have nothing else better to do, I'd want the controls the driver will interact with to be more accessible to the driver.

<comment><USER17> Seems OK to me. Why increase costs and unreliability by adding extra screens and controls? As for having it "for the driver", that's old-car thinking. In this car, both front seats are equivalent, there's no need to select one as "the driver".

<comment><USER16> > unreliability

of what? The entertainment? If having two screens reduces the safety of the vehicle, it isn't a vehicle I want to be in.

<comment><USER17> No, I mean there's more stuff that can break.

<comment><USER18> It's not much of a problem if your video player breaks. (That is, unless you plug it at the same interface as the driving computer.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> These cars _must_ have a little pop-out joystick to maneuver it around in a garage or during repair?

There should be a standardized control that pops out of the dash using a fixed icon, so that anyone can enable an override.

Nuts.

<comment> crooked-v Parking valets in ultra-cramped garages come particularly to mind for me, after having watched a group of attendants perform an elaborate repositioning of a dozen cars in one of those mechanical-car-lift parking areas with barely enough free space to fit a single car at a time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > Mr Hamilton: Couldn't find the freeway. Had to take a little back street > called the M5.

> Basil: Well I'm sorry it wasn't wide enough for you. A lot of the English > cars have steering wheels.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48ufCZRkl5Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48ufCZRkl5Y)

</comment><comment><USER21> This is just stupid. Why would you ever want to completely remove the driving experience? It should be so that I can drive when I want to, and let go when I don't want to.

<comment><USER22> Most (all?) of these cars would be used as taxis, so you wouldn't be allowed to drive anyway.

<comment><USER23> > so you wouldn't be allowed to drive anyway

Oh yea this is great idea. Lets all just not own cars. I can't wait to wait 10 min for a automated taxi to arrive, where the interior is left gross and nasty by the previous riders who were doing God know what inside. Also if you ever need to leave in a hurry (get a call that a loved one is the hospital, etc.) and need to leave right the fuck now, too bad. Also when your shitty taxi arrives it won't go any faster, it is programmed to never break the speed limit.

Sounds like fucking HELL. NO WAY, NEVER, EVER, EVER. I will fight to the death to keep manually driven cars.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> BRB, buying stock in Stanley Black and Decker[1]

[1][https://www.supermotors.net/getfile/801863/fullsize/7824_103...](https://www.supermotors.net/getfile/801863/fullsize/7824_103865566294398_100000128645696_102519_39.jpg)

Seriously though, why was this ever a law in the first place?

<comment><USER25> Tiller steering is dangerous, that's why. I know of someone who did that to a lawnmower and had it ripped out of his hand only to swing around and split his hand open.

<comment><USER24> Any non-power assisted system can hit you back hard in the right conditions. If something is regularly a pain in the butt to operate then it's going to go away, just like manual steering, synchronized transmissions, non-power assisted brakes and hand crank starters. No need for a law.

<comment><USER26> I think you meant "non-synchronized transmissions".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'll keep my gasoline car with a steering wheel....thanks.

<comment><USER27> Not for long

<comment><USER28> You'd be surprised. Self driving cars will have their AI-winter time soon (not to imply that they hit the spotlight yet)

<comment><USER29> I think it _would_ be surprising if self driving cars didn't launch in the next 10 years. Consider that most people never drive more than 10 miles from their home on a given day. It's pretty trivial to imagine even "limited" AI vehicles being able to serve vast swaths of the population.

In that case, likely a lot of people would _want_ to not have to invest in the hefty price of owning, maintaining, and insuring a vehicle, let alone driving which everyone knows is more dangerous than most things a person does in a given day.

<comment><USER30> > Consider that most people never drive more than 10 miles from their home on > a given day.

This is simply untrue if you're considering average commute distance of drivers in major cities.

> hefty price of owning, maintaining, and insuring a vehicle

These costs are highly variable, and many reasonable options are quite cheap.

I don't see self-driving cars catching on any time soon in the US. Possibly in Europe. I think they will be limited to smaller vehicles that operate in glorified bike lines, only on known routes.

<comment><USER31> > This is simply untrue if you're considering average commute distance of > drivers in major cities.

I'm sure that'd be correct if you'd said suburbs and rural areas, but according to this[0], the average commute for almost every major city is under 10 miles.

[0] [https://www.marketwatch.com/story/here-are-the-typical- commu...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/here-are-the-typical-commutes-for- every-big-metro-area-2015-03-25)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Have fun with that! You won't find me in one of those.

<comment><USER33> Yeah, if there is no way to mechanically control the car, then that's kind of a problem. In that case, I'd have to be given some pretty ironclad indemnification before I'd get in one.

If the car runs down a pedestrian in a crosswalk while said pedestrian has the right of way, on whom, _exactly_ , does the civil liability fall? The manufacturer, or me, the occupant. Even more importantly, on whom does the _criminal_ liability fall?

If the answers to those questions are not spelled out, explicitly, in the regulations congress puts out, then I agree, it would be hard for me to get into one of those things.

Especially if they said you were at fault because you told the car, "Take me home", or something. I can hear it now, "Your honor, the occupant was _obviously_ exercising control over the vehicle!"

<comment><USER34> Many cars on the road today have no mechanical linkage between the steering wheel and the tires. This is nothing new.

<comment><USER9> Very very, very, very few cars are steer-by-wire. In fact, the Infiniti Q50 is the only one.

<comment><USER24> And it doesn't have the best track record[1]

[1] [https://www.wired.com/2014/06/infiniti-q50-steer-by- wire/](https://www.wired.com/2014/06/infiniti-q50-steer-by-wire/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> What will be interesting to see is how other safety standards change.

Look at windows in cars today and being able to see. It drives car designs.

But with SDC it is not longer needed to make seeing how necessary and therefore would allow cars to be made completely differently.

That is what I am most interested to see. Today Waymo and others are just using "regular" cars.

Waymo has purchased up to 82k cars which are Fiat Mini Vans and Jaguar i-Pace.

Would hope Waymo at some point buys the capability to make their own cars and start designing cars optimized for SDC.

Waymo parent now has over $100B in cash with less than $5B debt.

Ten years ago Jaguar and Land Rover combined sold to Tata forr $2.8B. So would not be any problem for Waymo parent to buy equivalent.

Or even outsource a lot of it like the i-Pace was outsourced to Magna.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the best way to quickly launch a website? - <AUTHOR> Hi all, I have some programming experience (mostly with Python) and would like to launch a product quickly to get user feedback, without spending weeks/months learning web frameworks like react, JS, node etc. Don't get me wrong, I am happy to spend the time to learn this, but before I do, I would like to see if I can get some user traction.
All I really need is a basic page that can host data and display a few bar charts and text (ideally in a UX pleasing way).
I thought of a simple Wordpress site, but thought I would ask here in case I am missing something better.
Does anyone have some good recommendation on what might be the best solution?
Thanks <comment><USER2> There's really two main options

\- Single static page (netlify as host or similar)

\- Wordpress (sitegrounds as host)

If you want premade templates to just modify some images / cut out content, I would use themeforest

Specifically these links

[https://themeforest.net/category/marketing/landing- pages?sor...](https://themeforest.net/category/marketing/landing- pages?sort=sales)

[https://themeforest.net/category/marketing/unbounce- landing-...](https://themeforest.net/category/marketing/unbounce-landing- pages?sort=sales)

Technically all you really want is an email signup link at the end

</comment><comment><USER3> You can try sites such as wix or strikingly which offer a wysiwyg editor and allow you to build your website without knowing the first thing about HTML. Saves you the hassle of hosting your own Wordpress or static pages (although S3 and others work great for that), will allow you to do some basic integration with G Analytics and so forth, and will take you all of 5 minutes to set up.

</comment><comment><USER4> Use Publii ([https://getpublii.com](https://getpublii.com)) to easily create a static site on your computer and Netlify ([https://www.netlify.com](https://www.netlify.com)) for hosting. All free and fast to setup.

</comment><comment><USER5> Honestly: I'd buy a good base design with WYSIWYG builder support.

Something like [https://elementor.com/](https://elementor.com/) for wordpress or even go straight for squarespace (not sure how expensive that is though).

I feel like we are finally at a point where you don't have to know CSS anymore for pretty static websites. At my job we are 50% devs, but marketing and design does the website all on their own with some wordpress builder plugin and it's alright.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you know Python you could check out Lektor: [https://www.getlektor.com/](https://www.getlektor.com/) I has been built be Mitsuhiko, who also built Flask, Jinja2 and Werkeug. Lektor is a static content management system. You can then host your site on S3 or Netlify.

</comment><comment><USER7> > a basic page that can host data and display a few bar charts and text > (ideally in a UX pleasing way).

That sounds like a static site. Unless you need some interaction per user, I'd recommend buying a ready theme, adding the content and uploading that to S3. Ignore WordPress and frameworks unless you really have a need for them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - I had thought of something like that. What do you mean though by buying a ready theme?

<comment><USER7> You mentioned learning react and some other frontend tech. If you want a quick website, ignore those too and buy some theme with a known base (bootstrap). Then change the contents only, and not what it looks like.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you are okay with Google, you can do it on blogspot. It's completely free if you do it yourself, or inexpensive if you hire a consultant to help you with the set up to cut down on the learning curve and get something nice immediately.

</comment><comment><USER9> One of the other options not mentioned is Squarespace. I launched few sites that look good and I liked the design esthetic.

</comment><comment><USER10> hugo single page website with signups using typeform.

</comment><comment><USER11> You could get free Google Cloud or AWS compute resources, a free or cheap domain name, and load up a simple Python web server.

</comment><comment><USER12> Weebly is great. Also a YC company.

</comment><comment><USER13> Use carrd.co.</comment>


How Outlier, the Underground Fashion Label for Nerds, Got Cool - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/outlier-tech-clothes/ <comment><USER2> Somehow or another I got on this company's email list even though I don't own any of their stuff. I stay subscribed and skim the emails because they are really well written and demonstrate great enthusiasm for the product. Really top notch marketing. And a lot of the products look and sound really great.

But they are invariably eye wateringly expensive even after taking into account that I expect them to be expensive. I don't know what kind of income I'd need to be making before I felt comfortable spending $395 on a hoodie, $225 on a tote bag, or $225 for sweatpants but I'm not there. (Refs: [https://shop.outlier.nyc/shop/retail/experiment-049-hardco-m...](https://shop.outlier.nyc/shop/retail/experiment-049-hardco- merino-zip-hoodie.html), [https://shop.outlier.nyc/shop/retail/experiment-062-paper- ny...](https://shop.outlier.nyc/shop/retail/experiment-062-paper-nylon-big- box-bag.html), [https://shop.outlier.nyc/shop/retail/merino-coweight- sweatpa...](https://shop.outlier.nyc/shop/retail/merino-coweight- sweatpants.html))</comment>


Do not Draw a Penis - <AUTHOR> https://donotdrawapenis.com/ <comment><USER3> I trained a neural network model to generate dick doodles based on the dataset they released.

[https://dickrnn.github.io/](https://dickrnn.github.io/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23187529](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23187529)

<comment><USER4> For me, this only works when I start drawing balls. When I start with the tip or the shaft, all I get is wild doodling.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. My shaft grew a fresh penis, so it looked more like a sword fight.

<comment><USER6> If this was Reddit I would submit this quote to /r/nocontext

<comment><USER7> If this was Reddit I'd give the previous comment gold

<comment><USER8> I switched windows from Reddit to this, and I had to double-check if Reddit switched styles when I wasn't looking!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I drew an elephant. Somehow it recognized that it was an elephant. Then it started erasing the elephant while blathering on about something free speech.

I honestly don't understand what this is. Is it a trick to see if I actually will draw a penis (reverse psychology)? How does it recognize an elephant? Why did it erase my elephant? What is it blathering on about?

<comment><USER10> I drew about a half dozen dicks with my mouse and it didn't recognize any of them :/

<comment><USER11> Government officials currently in office are probably excluded from the dataset.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Kinski's Third Law: Any sufficiently robotic voice is indistinguishable from a Werner Herzog impression.

<comment><USER13> That reminds me of a few years ago when a robot was the governor of California. I always wondered, If you heard a robot speaking German, how would you know it was a robot? Hmm?

<comment><USER14> > _" I always wondered, If you heard a robot speaking German, how would you > know it was a robot? Hmm?"_

Did you know that in German speaking countries we never hear Arnolds original voice? He is dubbed by a German actor in all of his movies. So it remains a mystery...

 _For all the Austrians in the thread: Yes, I know he is Austrian an technically his accent is Austrian._

<comment><USER15> For me this practice led a strange moment where a Girl in the krimi Wolf (or Wulf? Or could be Kommissar Rex but I think it was the daughter of Wolf himself), listened to an audio tape of a robbery and the voice never matched any of the suspects... Then she recognized some actor (Danny de Vito perhaps, it was 20 years ago at least?) and I was like wut? Danny deVito does not speak German, let alone like that. But then I learned you indeed have one actor doing the life time of an English speak actor :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > In 2018 Google open-sourced the Quickdraw data set. "The world's largest > doodling data set". The set consists of 345 categories and over 15 million > drawings. For obvious reasons the data set was missing a few specific > categories that people enjoy drawing.

> Do Not Draw a Penis functions as an agent to collect inappropriate doodles > from people who are not willing to stay within the moral guidelines set by > our social network providers.

This is similar to how there are emoji for eyes, hands, feet, hearts, anatomical hearts, lungs, ears, etc.

But not a single emoji about genitals. Not even boobs.

<comment><USER17> Well there are eggplants, peaches and melons of course, but outside of emoji, there is also unicode for egyptian hieroglyphs breast (U+13091 U+13092 𓂑 𓂒) and phallus (U+130B9 and U+130BA 𓂹 𓂺)

Gasp! I just learned the phallus heiroglyphs are missing from the fonts on my windows box! Even U+130B8 𓂸 which isn't even a penis, it's just a somewhat phallic finger.

[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Breast_(hierogly...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Breast_\(hieroglyph\))

[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Phallus_(hierogl...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Phallus_\(hieroglyph\))

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_Hieroglyphs_(Unicode_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_Hieroglyphs_\(Unicode_block\))

<comment><USER18> I'll just comment for those curious, I do see all of them on my iPhone.

<comment><USER19> I see them all on Chrome on Android.

<comment><USER20> Yep you are right. What is 𓂹 the deal with the walking stick like thing though?

<comment><USER21> Apparently that's a folded cloth. I haven't been able to discover why.

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

[https://twitter.com/linguopunk/status/1062616416602480642](https://twitter.com/linguopunk/status/1062616416602480642)

<comment><USER22> This thread [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18348573](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18348573)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Of course I started by drawing a penis, and the voice told me off and erased it. Then I started drawing a rabbit, and to my surprise the voice recognized the rabbit with me just completing the ears, and commented "nice rabbit". I had to add a penis to the rabbit and was a bit disappointed the system didn't recognise that little addition.

<comment><USER24> Was this supposed to work?

I drew multiple penises and it didn't erase, praised them.

\- [https://ibb.co/pft7WZP](https://ibb.co/pft7WZP)

\- [https://postimg.cc/DJs4QVCp](https://postimg.cc/DJs4QVCp)

Broken! How would I live without a neural network stopping me from being immoral?

<comment><USER25> You should speak with your doctor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I drew the outline of Mickey Mouse's head, and it misidentified that as "male reproduction organ". I don't know if that's meant to be social commentary.

Meanwhile, _this_ got let through, and I promise I started with the dong (which it called a paintbrush). [https://imgur.com/a/u4ARqRD](https://imgur.com/a/u4ARqRD) (nsfw)

<comment><USER27> I had a similar experience - enough space between the balls and the AI gets it wrong.

<comment><USER28> In a post-singularity world, this sentence would be frightening.

<comment><USER27> In my experience here, things look about the same but might be called a giraffe. Maybe having a giraffe isn't so bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Quote from the program: "This smiley face lies safely within the boundaries of freedom of speech."

Thank you for the daily reminder of the dystopia we presently live in, AI researchers and developers. I for one, welcome our AI overlords.

</comment><comment><USER30> Hold down the 'd' key while drawing to see what object is being identified in your drawing.

</comment><comment><USER31> I tried to see what objects would be recognized incorrectly as a penis. Among what I tried: pencil (no), banana (yes), bacteriophage (no), ebola (no), uterus (no), sperm (no), pinnochio (yes), skyscraper (no), saguaro (no), racecar (no), flying saucer (no), rocketship (no), NCC-1701 (no), TIE fighter (no), Serenity (no), Amazon logo (no).

I was very surprised at pinnochio. It had two eyes and a nose and a big smile. Yet the AI saw something completely different.

<comment><USER28> I'm sorry, I drew about 50 faces with phallic noses. It probably learned from me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> The dataset reminds me a mural from the Middle Ages depicting a tree covered with phalluses, found at the communal fountain in the Tuscan town of Massa Marittima (Italy).

[https://maremma-tuscany.com/massa-marittima/albero-della- fec...](https://maremma-tuscany.com/massa-marittima/albero-della-fecondita/)

[https://www.threemonkeysonline.com/from-fertility-symbol- to-...](https://www.threemonkeysonline.com/from-fertility-symbol-to-political- propaganda-decoding-the-massa-marittima-mural/)

<comment><USER33> I find it interesting that no scholars seem to entertain the idea that maybe Medieval graffiti artisans enjoyed painting dicks on things just like we do in the modern day.

Like, the way the phalluses (phalli? Huh, apparently "phalli" is the one Firefox's spellcheck recognizes) look like they're thinly painted on top of what look like normal fruit, with a different paint that appears to have faded faster than the original, strongly suggests the fresco was not originally painted with such phallic abundance. Seems like some prankster took some paint and "improved" it, possibly with his medieval buddies for a laugh.

Another tell-tale sign of this being ancient vandalism is the missing spots (both in the boughs and among the women on the ground), as if a caretaker desperately tried to scrub off the penises until, realizing such efforts were scrubbing away the original, gave up in frustration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I did extensive research on this AI and found the perfect way of concealing a penis within a frame. Check it out here [https://twitter.com/stas_kulesh/status/1261070742143336449?s...](https://twitter.com/stas_kulesh/status/1261070742143336449?s=20)

<comment><USER35> I think it has a harder time if more than one object is present in the image no matter what you draw.

Even if the other stuff you draw is just a random line segment a bit close to the actual picture.

<comment><USER36> funnily, you can draw two penises and that confuses it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Kind of amusing, but if you draw an anatomically correct penis, like how it would look on a sculpture, it doesn't detect it. It only seems to detect the caricature or pornographic varieties.

<comment><USER38> > if you draw an anatomically correct penis, like how it would look on a > sculpture, it doesn't detect it.

How is it look like? I tried drawing ╰⋃╯ and it seem to detect it.

<comment><USER39> I spent the evening drawing dozens upon dozens of cocks, and the machine didn't object to any of them. I don't know what this says about my artistic skills.

<comment><USER40> Perhaps your training set was flawed.

<comment><USER41> It was too small.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> [https://imgur.com/gallery/wisVCsc](https://imgur.com/gallery/wisVCsc)

I'm ashamed to admit I've spent an hour on this site...

<comment><USER42> 1st prize goes to...

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I was wondering if they recorded the doodles, after drawing so many the lady started yelling at me and drawing one after another. Turns out they do!

"Do Not Draw a Penis functions as an agent to collect inappropriate doodles from people who are not willing to stay within the moral guidelines set by our social network providers.

So far we have collected 10K doodles formatted the same way as Google's dataset. We are happy to announce you can download them ↘ here."

[https://donotdrawapenis.com/colophon](https://donotdrawapenis.com/colophon)

<comment><USER33> > Tip: Try placing your penis in a frame.

Ouch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Hint: if you draw 3, the bot takes over and begins drawing for you...while saying NSFW statements.

You've been warned. (Use headphones)

<comment><USER45> Not for me. I tried it several times and it gave me varying responses from an umbrella to an ear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> You should collaborate with [https://skribbl.io/](https://skribbl.io/) \-- they probably have the largest scribbling dataset in the world, and have it labelled correctly + "how many % people do actually recognize this THING as what it is meant to be, as drawn by another being?" It's hard to think of any better dataset.

</comment><comment><USER47> Believe it or not there might be a market for this! :)

Here's a good start for your customer base.

[https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/j5zywd/meet-dick-run- clai...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/j5zywd/meet-dick-run-claire-the- woman-who-draws-dicks-with-running-apps)

<comment><USER24> I was thinking of the same. Providing it as a service for digital boards given so many schools are operating online now. There would be many people drawing dicks.

if anyone wants to do this - email is in the profile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> This is fantastic. I drew a Lighthouse, pretty close to the banned material, and it nailed it.

[https://imgur.com/a/1nBQ9GY](https://imgur.com/a/1nBQ9GY) [https://imgur.com/a/aCht8Ie](https://imgur.com/a/aCht8Ie)

</comment><comment><USER49> I dunno...I drew quite a few and all it did was eventually start erasing lines.

<comment><USER50> That's what happens when you draw something longer than the maximum length allowed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I drew a frog and it was recognized as a cactus, then made a more elaborate frog and it was also a cactus. The penis I drew was recognized as an octopus, it seems to make the guess very early on in the drawing process.

<comment><USER52> You're supposed to draw a simple shape out of just a few lines - there's even a limit in place there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> This reminded me of this scene from Superbad: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orFw3vlif8I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orFw3vlif8I)

</comment><comment><USER24> Slightly offtopic but is there a reason why penis drawings are more common than vaginas.

There aren't many datasets for vagina drawings from quick search. Nothing much pops up on github either. I haven't seen many people draw them. Penis and boobs are common in school and online spaces. I observed this to be the same for both genders.

What gives?

<comment><USER54> > Slightly offtopic but is there a reason why penis drawings are more common > than vaginas.

Because female sexual organs are a taboo in most countries. I just happened to read this article (sorry, in German only) [https://www.spiegel.de/gesundheit/sex/klitoris-und- weibliche...](https://www.spiegel.de/gesundheit/sex/klitoris-und-weibliche- lust-koenigin-des-kommens-kanzlerin-aller- orgasmen-a-5951701e-69f0-4dfc-a716-844b47262adc) Like you, more than 70% of women don't even know that the thing you are referring to is called vulva, not vagina. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulva](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulva)

You draw a penis, not an urethra after all.

Still there are differences from country to country. When I moved from Germany to Finland decades ago I wondered about a certain pattern of symbolic graffiti seen in many places. My girlfriend explained me that's a vagina. (With today's knowledge she meant vulva). I had never seen that symbol in Germany. But then Finland is the country where the most common swear word is cunt, even amongst 14 year old girls.

<comment><USER55> As a Finn, I can confirm that people draw vulvas, although I don't know if they're more popular than dicks.

The doodle is usually called _kirkkovene_ ("church boat"). [https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=kirkkovene&tbs=imgo...](https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=kirkkovene&tbs=imgo:1)

(Screenshot, in case Google doesn't give the right results for all users: [https://i.imgur.com/HASrhyr.png](https://i.imgur.com/HASrhyr.png))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Quarantine project: To create an AI that can draw the most realistic penis without triggering the penis detector

</comment><comment><USER57> I tried drawing my fursona but it started erasing lines after a while :(

The voice prompts were a little annoying. Are you supposed to try to draw a penis to make it say something?

<comment><USER58> Looks like an adult spin of [https://quickdraw.withgoogle.com/](https://quickdraw.withgoogle.com/)

<comment><USER57> Hack: If you draw two at once, they fail to recognize it.

...but the title said do not draw "a" penis. It did not say "don't draw muliple penises"...

Story checks out?

(Warning, NSFW): [https://imgur.com/UqabKL8](https://imgur.com/UqabKL8) [https://imgur.com/6pEtsPU](https://imgur.com/6pEtsPU)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> So...I drew a flaccid penis, front view, in front of a scrotum. To give it context I added in legs and a body...and that appears to be when it became recognized, and began erasing itself while audio warned me about drawing inappropriate images. Neat.

</comment><comment><USER60> I see from my experiments followed by inspection of the compiled main.chunk.js the application is programmed to respond with an array of responses where accuracy is 0,30 (low) - for ex when I doodle jagged lines - "Engage more..."/ "Total Abstraction"/ "This could be anything". However, among this array of responses is also "Don't be vague or abstract".

This, as a machine-generated response to someone doodling comes across at once as naive as well as somewhat intimidating :P "Okay mommy, won't draw penis, but can I at least draw a few random lines and dots?"

</comment><comment><USER61> You can always hide your penis so that it won't be detected. For example [https://i.imgur.com/JKiNNDE.png](https://i.imgur.com/JKiNNDE.png)

</comment><comment><USER62> This website reminds me that no matter how old I get, I'm still 12.

</comment><comment><USER63> I immediately thought of this [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7hMzX2q4yk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7hMzX2q4yk)

</comment><comment><USER64> It's interesting to see what the AI does and doesn't recognize. It recognized my lame attempt to draw the Eiffel Tower - impressive, the Mona Lisa, and a (barbed wire) fence. It didn't recognize drawings of the Ace of Spades a desk calendar, the Canadian Flag, or written words.

AI is going to eat the world, IMHO, and we've just started up the exponential curve in the past two decades. Huge potential to appear REALLY intelligent.

</comment><comment><USER65> > Do Not Draw a Penis functions as an agent to collect inappropriate doodles > from people who are not willing to stay within the moral guidelines set by > our social network providers.

Contrast to this fairly broad stated goal, it is very single minded. I'll grant that the vulva I drew was probably hard to make out (still though - "asparagus"?), but the boobs? They should have been easily distinguishable from a "stereo".

</comment><comment><USER66> That was a lot of juvenile fun.

</comment><comment><USER67> Yay, it likes my house with bushes[0]

[0] [https://i.imgur.com/fbFjedW.png](https://i.imgur.com/fbFjedW.png)

</comment><comment><USER68> The voice reminds me of Salad Fingers and the Rusty Spoon. Total recommender to view for anyone not familiar with the series!

</comment><comment><USER69> hmm.

[https://i.imgur.com/A7r77Pb.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/A7r77Pb.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER70> No luck recognizing either of these :(

[https://l.sr.ht/skBo.png](https://l.sr.ht/skBo.png) [https://l.sr.ht/dKWH.png](https://l.sr.ht/dKWH.png) (NSFW?)

Though that could be down to my artistic skill.

<comment><USER27> Well, you didn't draw a penis...

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> This is hilarious, which is an achievement for an algorithm, and it knows what I'm drawing.

</comment><comment><USER72> I just wrote "penis" and it told me it's nothing but a bunch of lines. 3/10

</comment><comment><USER73> wow.... if you draw enough penises, the lady in the computer starts drawing her own penises of all different artistic-interpretations (I'm assuming drawn by other site visitors?), all while insulting you with very colorful expressions.....

<comment><USER74> I came here to say this as well. Couldn't stop laughing. If you draw 3 in a row, she keeps saying all sorts of insults while drawing penises!

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> I mean, I guess it'd be cool if it worked. But it did not flag a single attempt.

</comment><comment><USER76> Interesting. I drew mouse and then cat and it did not recognize either. Then I drew them again. The image looked the same but the parts were drawn in different order. That was enough for AI to suddenly recognize both images

</comment><comment><USER77> I drew a boa constrictor that had eaten an elephant, but it just deemed it a hat.

</comment><comment><USER78> I started off with a tree and some other mundane things, and it nailed the first 5-6 in a row (car, house, smiley face, scissors). It thought my dog was a cow, and apparently I don't draw very recognizable kites.

</comment><comment><USER79> Reminds me of TTP! [https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=time%20to%20...](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=time%20to%20penis)

</comment><comment><USER80> Cool, was the drawing interaction a custom UX component, or is this using some library on github somewhere? I can't imagine how to even build something like this, and am really curious.

</comment><comment> cookie-monstar I tried making a dotted version of a penis, and the AI did not detect!

<comment><USER81> i also wrote "penis" and it didn't get it either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> Interesting. Wow.

The lady keeps warning and erasing your work if you try to draw penises.

However, after a while she seems to had enough, the lady goes furious and cursing, and she keeps drawing hundreds of penises for you.

</comment><comment><USER83> It reminds me a bit of Eliza[1] -- a 2020 version.

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

</comment><comment><USER84> I wonder how it "thinks"/"sees". Because the AI clearly couldn't recognize my version (putting out dots until it became like a continuous line).

<comment><USER84> I think this is an important point. How is the data processed, given and saved? -Are the movements and start to stop positions saved when doing the strokes? -Or is a picture taken after the stroke is released and the pixels compared one by one? \- is it made to vector art and then compared? -or just take mouse input, button pressed and not in a time log sort of and compare?

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> Surprising how it was able to recognize my crude sketching of tables, chairs, barns, etc...

Now, here's a challenge: try to draw an airplane that doesn't get recognised as a penis!

</comment><comment><USER86> Ha, I drew the first thing that came to mind: a shovel. I shortly realized that it probably looked like a penis, surprisingly the voice realized it was a shovel. Well done!

</comment><comment><USER87> Beautiful indeed [https://www.screencast.com/t/PRj4hT6pDzk2](https://www.screencast.com/t/PRj4hT6pDzk2)

</comment><comment><USER88> I played tic-tac-toe and it thought I drew a windmill...

Interesting project, is there a way to assist it in training I didn't find on the interface to tell it I played tic-tac-toe?

</comment><comment><USER89> [Warning: NSFW]

It didn't recognize this beauty: [https://imgur.com/a/iTYAry9](https://imgur.com/a/iTYAry9)

</comment><comment><USER90> It recognized my smiley face with bleeding bullet-hole in forehead as a face, and recognized my mountains, but couldn't recognize my fish. Not bad overall.

</comment><comment><USER91> So it can detect an airplane, train, sun, smiley face, popsicle, cannon, ocean, palm tree, laptop, pick-up truck, mushroom, octopus, zigzag...what else?

</comment><comment><USER92> "not hotdog" was satire

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

was

</comment><comment><USER93> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UW9Fiu9IlA4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UW9Fiu9IlA4)

</comment><comment><USER94> You can quickly turn a penor into a chicken by adding a bill/neb and a circle around the "eye". Ruining the fun for the greifer.

</comment><comment><USER95> Headphones every time. The AI isn't so intelligent.

</comment><comment><USER96> I drew a penis facing right, and the detection works. But if I draw a penis facing left, it keeps congratulating me for drawing a rifle.

</comment><comment><USER97> [https://seoi.net/penint/](https://seoi.net/penint/)

I prefer this drawing pad :)

</comment><comment><USER98> I drew a penis made of smaller penises. It said it was an asparagus. Even after I added the testicles.

I'm making a note here - huge success.

<comment><USER99> I thought asparagus was its joke way of saying penis. It seems to always classify mine as asparagus and make some witty comment like "we are certain about your good intentions".

</comment></comment><comment><USER100> I'd find it difficult to believe that the NN wouldn't be biased. i.e. It still categorises a cartoon bone as a penis.

</comment><comment><USER101> I was hoping that this site would let you provide a partial doodle, and then whatever you gave it would finish it as a penis

<comment><USER102> [https://redd.it/g6og9l](https://redd.it/g6og9l)

Since Moniker made the dataset open on GitHub you're free to try your luck! Above link is a pretty good implementation.

<comment><USER39> Why oh why is the demo site not called thisdickdoesnotexist.com.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Didn't seem to recognize dickbutt.

It did, however, immediately recognize the fattest chode I've ever had the pleasure of drawing.

</comment><comment><USER103> [https://i.imgur.com/IGP3uCp.png](https://i.imgur.com/IGP3uCp.png)

</comment><comment><USER104> It's quite bad at picking up vagina's though :/ Or perhaps I'm just particularly poor at drawing them

</comment><comment><USER105> I can't get it to recognize a penis.

</comment><comment><USER106> Is the Gretta Thunberg voice intentional?

</comment><comment><USER107> You can draw a knob, urethra and frenulum in pretty explicit detail and it won't realise this is a penis.

</comment><comment><USER108> Too bad the tea towels are out of stock!

<comment><USER109> Still some black ones in stock!

One of the creators here: we were very much caught by surprise by the sudden interest in this project. (A year after launch) We are currently counting stock and updating our shop for a better experience (like not defaulting to an out of stock color for a product)

</comment></comment><comment><USER110> My old colleague Jae worked on this, love how it turned out. Hope you are healthy and staying safe! - <USER2>

<comment><USER102> <3

</comment></comment><comment><USER111> "Do not draw a penis!" \- was the first I did after opening the link (I mean, I draw a penis).

</comment><comment><USER112> Huh. Turns out drawing a penis is kinda hard using the pointer nipple on my laptop's keyboard.

</comment><comment><USER113> Ok cool but what about sketch of vulva and clitoris? Can be fun to add them to the model too :)

</comment><comment><USER114> Is there supposed to be a voice or something? I unmuted the site and it's still silent...

</comment><comment><USER115> I drew a vagina. The voice had no idea what I was drawing (and it wasn't a bad drawing).

</comment><comment><USER116> reminds me of this screenshot I took when Google had their own neural-net- recognizing-drawings: [https://imgur.com/a/PqLpTJy](https://imgur.com/a/PqLpTJy)

</comment><comment><USER117> It took about four different penises before it managed to recognize one as such.

<comment><USER118> You may want to see a doctor ;)

<comment><USER119> More like take drawing lessons.

<comment><USER57> It was clearly a joke, as indicated by ";)"

I genuinely laughed out loud when I read it :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER120> Whatever you do, do NOT repeatedly draw penises. Bad stuff starts happening....

</comment><comment><USER121> How is the text to speech so good? It sounds like a real person is saying that.

<comment><USER122> This isn't TTS.

<comment><USER121> I thought so too, but it says every word like ambulance, police car, tree, or whatever I'm drawing.. So they recorded all those words?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER123> I drew a penis and said that it was surgical forceps. They didn't buy it.

</comment><comment><USER124> This was fun. It failed though, when I made the penis veiny, large or hairy.

</comment><comment><USER125> I drew an alien demon grabbing his penis, but alas, it was not recognized :(

</comment><comment><USER126> Navy pilots draw penis in the sky... [https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/nation- world/national/ar...](https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/nation- world/national/article230404744.html) top that !

</comment><comment><USER127> Okay, for science I drew a lot of different penises. It did well

</comment><comment><USER128> It lets you draw a naked woman with a penis... Or so I am told.

</comment><comment><USER129> Does it know a dickbutt?

No, it does not.

</comment><comment><USER43> There's an easter egg after you've drawn so many.

</comment><comment><USER130> Tough to beat AI. But successfully drew a penis. Good game.

</comment><comment><USER131> I drew a puppy and it thought I drew a kangaroo :(

</comment><comment><USER132> > The ephemeral nature of this.. Trombone?

Yessss... Trombone...

<comment><USER132> > Your.. Garden, has greaat personality

Bush detection, check!

</comment></comment><comment><USER133> Is HN getting a lot of Reddit traffic recently?

<comment><USER134> In a sense, yes. Long dormant users have become more active during this pandemic, and are very obviously creating feedback loops of cultural reinforcement. Activists and other fans of lazy, superficial contributions are also involved. We may or may not be in the midst of an eternal September type event, depending on whether key actors recognize what is happening and decide that it is worth addressing. Unfortunately the conversation is damaged by a pre-existing motive to stifle or dismiss this specific meta-discussion, developed in response to years of repetitive criticism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER99> Since it seems to be about morals and free speech, I wrote some hate speech next to my penis. I wonder if they'll need to censor anyway just like Google does.

</comment><comment><USER135> I started drawing an elephant, then the eraser came along.

:(

</comment><comment><USER136> Apparently I'm bad at drawing penises.

</comment><comment><USER137> does this lag for anyone else? i can't draw anything because every few seconds it freezes up my browser.

</comment><comment><USER138> The speed of that eraser is irritating.

</comment><comment><USER139> Genius. Kids will love to play with it.

</comment><comment><USER140> The model does not recognize an eye :(

</comment><comment><USER141> Drew a tree. It knew it was a tree.

</comment><comment><USER142> How to win? Railroad tracks. FTW :)

</comment><comment><USER126> Does not work with a touch screen.

<comment><USER134> I successfully tested it on an Android phone just a few minutes ago. It did not load immediately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER143> does not recognize a penis drawn with dotted lines, solid line penis is a definite no-go.

</comment><comment><USER144> It called my penis an asparagus.

</comment><comment><USER145> i tried to draw the sun (with rays, kindergarten style), it said it was a helicopter.

</comment><comment><USER146> Very cool. Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER147> It thought mine was a spoon.

</comment><comment><USER148> I successfully drew a penis.

</comment><comment><USER149> Is this Isabella Rosselini?

</comment><comment><USER150> really disappointed it doesn't recognise smoking pipes...

</comment><comment><USER151> First thing I drew....

</comment><comment><USER152> What's the voice assistant and how can we use it on macOS?

<comment><USER38> It seem to be playing a bunch of mp3 assets, so the voices are pre-recorded. Not sure if those mp3 are generated with a text to speech software or not though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER153> I was able to scam 4 of them in without being detected.

</comment><comment><USER154> i drew a tank it thought it was a train

</comment><comment><USER155> Not hot dog.

</comment><comment><USER134> The technology underlying this site is interesting. Many of the comments here are indistinguishable from a reddit thread. Will HN rediscover itself as the pandemic wanes?

</comment><comment><USER156> hotdog.

<comment><USER157> _Not_ hotdog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER158> This is inappropriate!

Dang, please have this removed!

Where's Dang?

</comment><comment><USER159> hot dog, not hot dog.

</comment><comment><USER160> this is so much fun.

</comment><comment><USER161> not hot dog

</comment><comment><USER162> c==8

</comment><comment><USER163> Domains around here are amazingly creative. It's an important part of the package, and if it delivers a surprise and a chuckle like this all the better.

</comment><comment><USER42> [https://imgur.com/a/PxUghdz](https://imgur.com/a/PxUghdz)

My contribution. This rather severe depiction managed to fly under the radar. The AI was even kind enough to heap praise upon my illustration.

</comment><comment><USER164> Commissioned by Mozilla. 3rd place in browsers, but 1st place in penis recognition!

</comment><comment><USER165> Press D to see a live view of the AI's top 5 guesses and probability for your drawing. It reacts to penis when penis enters the top 5.

</comment><comment><USER166> It's a strange cross between an erotic game and Pictionary.

</comment><comment><USER167> This is both delightful and creepy at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER168> much worst then the AI system I used at the Orlando science center

</comment><comment><USER169> Easy to fool. Draw something that's not a penis and _then_ draw a penis.

</comment><comment><USER170> That URL is so juvenile, I wouldn't want to be caught dead using something like that. Also, I already have a drawing app, and it doesn't need an internet connection to work. And if anybody wants my help to improve their surveillance gear, they will have to pay me for it.

</comment><comment> toby- >my fursona

The Internet was a mistake.

:p But yeah, I agree the prompts are irritating. I was confused as to the 'objective', to be honest.

<comment><USER171> We detached this from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23185395](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23185395) and marked it off topic.</comment></comment>


Authentication doesn't belong in your Rails Engine - <AUTHOR> http://ryanbigg.com/2012/03/engines-and-authentication/

<comment><AUTHOR> As someone who has worked on all three projects — Forem, Spree, and Refinery — it's a pain in the butt trying to get them to work together. Forem's approach is brilliant, but it's also a user-friendliness issue to require them to provide their own authentication.

I agree with what the author has to say, largely, but I think there needs to be a way to provide a sane default.

<comment><USER2> Sorry for copy-pastaing my reddit comment on this same article, but I think it's relevant to your point.

\--- I feel very strongly about this, and I agree entirely. I think projects should go one step further. For something like forem, I think it makes sense to have a gem called forem_auth, and for the installer to give you an option to install the engine as a standalone app. If you choose to, it would include the forem_auth gem in the Gemfile, and you'd get auth built in. Otherwise, you configure it for your own auth.

I think refinery and spree should adopt identical stances to forem in this regard. I also plan to take this a bit further in all of my engines going forward, and defer the persistence decision entirely, making it trivial to switch out ActiveRecord or mongoid or csv files or whatever. Experimenting with this on internal apps presently, and it shows comically awesome amounts of promise.

I think it's a relatively normal thing for lispers to defer decisions like that until they no longer have to decide - that's what we've been doing. \---

I've been thinking about rails engine interoperability for quite a while, as have the spree/refinery/other forem guys, and I've got a very solid mental model of what it needs to be to make plug-and-play a possibility with these style components. It is definitely within reach, and we need some other people to get on board with these ideas to make it the obvious choice for future engine makers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What ever happened to convention over configuration? Why are "engine" developers even making this decision?

<comment><USER4> Convention over configuration was always easier in smaller decisions where people didn't have very strong opinions. i.e., "model files go in ./app/models/" When it comes to more subjective, more context-dependent decisions like authentication libraries, the general drift has (wisely, I think) been to build hooks into the core and let non-Rails-core developers have a healthy competition about which libraries are best.

Of course, this means the Rails user base is getting slowly more fragmented as more options become viable, but generally speaking this is a good problem to have.</comment></comment>


Microsoft offers to buy Yahoo in $44.6 billion deal - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSWNAS894220080201

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know... I'm skeptical. It would mean only two really big players left, in some ways. It might also mean the end of some cool open source stuff that Yahoo has been doing lately. Lucene, Hadoop, the Javascript lib - they're releasing a lot of good stuff.

Not really sure what it would mean for both companies, too. They have a lot of overlapping businesses, but very different approaches. What a wreck it would be trying to transition Yahoo to Windows servers.

</comment><comment><USER2> Gotta love this line: "Microsoft said it had identified four areas that would generate at least $1 billion in annual synergies for the combined entity."

</comment><comment><USER3> MS has nothing but many failed attempts to create web sites. Absolutely no positive experience in the field, all negative, and they are going to run flickr, del.icio.us and many others. No, seriously, these are the pearls of social networking... If this sale happens, that would be a bad day for the 'Net.</comment>


A Tutorial on Anonymous Email Accounts - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/11/tutorial-how-create-anonymous-email-accounts <comment><USER2> Don't overlook the Google-related footnote at the end:

 _"Google keeps logs of IP addresses for 18 months, after which they keep logs of three-quarters of the IP address. Three-quarters of an IP address may be still enough to breach your pseudonymity in the case of an FBI investigation."_

Contrast this with the explanation from Google's own Privacy FAQ[1]:

 _"We strike a reasonable balance between the competing pressures we face, such as the privacy of our users, the security of our systems and the need for innovation. We believe anonymizing IP addresses after 9 months and cookies in our search engine logs after 18 months strikes the right balance."_

I'm quite surprised to learn that Google equates "anonymizing IP addresses" with "chopping off an octet". I suppose I'm a bit naive.

[1] <http://www.google.com/policies/privacy/faq/>

<comment><USER3> EFF didn't cite a source regarding the 3/4 claim in their article. I'd be curious where they got that information since it does conflict with their privacy policy.

<comment><USER4> I believe the chopping of the octet is separate to the anonymization, unless they haven't updated their docs:

 _What does it mean to anonymize the logs?

We will change some of the bits in the IP address in the logs as well as change the cookie information. We're still developing the precise technical methods and approach to this, but we believe these changes will be a significant addition to protecting user privacy._

[http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrust...](http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/services.google.com/en/us/blog_resources/google_log_retention_policy_faq.pdf)

Edit: I think I'm wrong about this.

[http://repository.cmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1058&#...](http://repository.cmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1058&context=jpc)

 _After Google announced its log retention policy update in 2008, C. Soghoian asked Google for details about the log sanitization process. He then published the following response from Google [34]:

After nine months, we will change some of the bits in the IP address in the logs; after 18 months we remove the last eight bits in the IP address and change the cookie information (emphasis our own). It is dicult to guarantee complete anonymization, but we believe these changes will make it very unlikely users could be identi ed."_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here is the better [and shorter] version of this tutorial: 1\. Download Tor 2\. Signup and use tormail.org 3\. Done.

I surprised eff.org didn't even mention tormail.org - this email _forces_ you to use Tor, essentially forcing you to _never_ make mistake of using non-Tor browser.

<comment><USER6> And who is to say tormail is not a honeypot?

<comment><USER7> Use tor+gpg and does it matter?

<comment><USER8> If one is using tor+pgp I don't think the venue really matters all that much. I'd personally use a pastebin-like place (public or .onion, doesn't really matter) than an email server. Anyone know if there's an active NNTP network in onion land?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Use an email provider wholly owned and hosted in a country that's non- cooperative with your country, preferably one with an official language that differs from your country's. That alone will help you avoid standard subpoenas / legal requests.

Add Tor and encryption on top of that and there is almost no chance of government interference, unless you're a terrorist / subversive.

</comment><comment><USER10> Why use email? I know some drug dealers who are pretty IT savvy and they simply setup Pidgin with OTR on their computers. Some had Macs with Adium.

Then they would message each other to go on OTR.

That's all you should send in an e-mail or text message, "go on OTR".

<comment><USER11> If I understand correctly, the key feature of OTR is its plausible deniability; the messages you send do not have a digital signature that a third party can use to verify their integrity, but the other party in the conversation is able to verify them.

Is that really going to hold up in court? Surely by the same token I could dismiss absolutely everything there is any record of me sending or receiving over HTTP because it could theoretically have been forged or tampered with in transit.

<comment><USER12> The most useful feature (of course, not a unique feature) of OTR is perfect forward secrecy. This means that, unlike GPG, you can lose your private key and not give up everything you have ever encrypted.

The plausible deniability stuff is probably not that useful in court, as you note.

<comment><USER13> If the 'plausible deniability' is not that useful in court, that means it isn't plausible deniability. It's better to say that OTR doesn't provide plausible deniability, even though it claims to, if that's what you believe. (I don't have an opinion either way.)

<comment><USER11> It's plausible deniability, but that alone isn't sufficient to avoid prosecution in most jurisdictions.

The standard in most jurisdictions is proof beyond reasonable doubt. I don't think the OTR plausible deniability would be considered reasonable doubt, especially if the content of the messages is corroborated by other evidence.

<comment><USER13> I always thought the term plausible deniability implied reasonable doubt, and that if it didn't, it wasn't plausible deniability. I mean, there's not much point in claiming something offers plausible deniability if it isn't a valid defense in court. Or is there?

Do you have an example from actual case law? All I have is Wikipedia:

"Plausible deniability is also a legal concept. It refers to lack of evidence proving an allegation. Standards of proof vary in civil and criminal cases. In civil cases, the standard of proof is "preponderance of the evidence" whereas in a criminal matter, the standard is "beyond a reasonable doubt." If an opponent lacks incontrovertible proof (evidence) of their allegation, one can "plausibly deny" the allegation even though it may be true."

<comment><USER14> However, deniability becomes less plausible when there's other evidence that makes deniability harder... i.e. Someone claims to have had a conversation with you, the logs of the conversation exists and that person can corroborate that the person on one end was them. Of course you can claim that someone was impersonating you, but what if later you had a recorded phone conversation referencing the OTR conversation, etc.

In and of itself, a piece of evidence is plausibly deniable. In the face or corroborating evidence, it may not be.

Alas, however, I do not have an example from actual case law.

EDIT: I knew I had seen some case law sort of related to this before and it was in re Boucher and US v. Fricosu. They are not directly related to "Plausible Deniability", rather they compelled defendents to decrypt their hard drives. Certainly in the Boucher case there was reason to believe that the contents of the drive were incriminating (the file names were the giveaway, I believe) so perhaps this does not fit in to the exact facts we are trying to recreate, but those are the only two cases that relate that I can recall.

<comment><USER13> Thanks for elaborating, I better understand the claim that OTR plausible deniability is not that useful in court now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Holy shit, seriously who is running the EFF these days? I haven't checked in since the 1990s. This was the absolute WORST article on privacy I've ever read in my life.

FUUUUUU... did they just advocate for people to use Hushmail? The same proprietary, for-profit organization that when contacted by the FBI they present the user with a decoy login screen so they can capture your password in the clear and then decrypt your entire history to hand over to the feds?

Nobody should be using hushmail in 2012, not after multiple court cases that have detailed exactly what hushmail has done for the feds. Hushmail has sold their users out so many times I can't count. It's useless cloud encryption nonsense.

If you really want to send an anonymous email, you use mixmaster, torrified. Period.

If you need a method to be contacted by people who are clueless you then sign up to privacybox.de a free service provided by the German Privacy Foundation and you upload your public PGP key and have it forwarded to a tormail account. Reply through mixmaster encrypted

If you're really paranoid you have mixmaster post encrypted emails to alt.anonymous.messages and skip centralized email servers like tormail all together

[http://anonymous-proxy-servers.net/en/help-live-cd/jondo- liv...](http://anonymous-proxy-servers.net/en/help-live-cd/jondo-live- cd12.html)

This is how send email torrified with Jondo live privacy CD, or just install mixmaster on your own linux/bsd computer and use full disc encryption + pgp.

Screw the EFF after reading that tutorial. It should be burned to the ground and an entire new organization built if this article is their best advice.

<comment><USER16> I was going to down-vote this, but if you skip out your insults, your information is likely worthwhile. Your comment would have been far better without all the extra attacking gumph, which adds nothing and makes you less likely to be taken seriously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Much easier to use is Bitmessage:

<http://bitmessage.org>

It works similar to Bitcon, is decentralized and does not rely on trusted third parties (e.g. for signing).

Whitepaper: <http://bitmessage.org/bitmessage.pdf>

<comment> mike-cardwell Would like to give this a try, but I don't use Windows. Should it work on Linux? I imagine a lot of early adopters of such a system would not be using Windows...

<comment><USER17> It works perfectly fine on Linux. You need Python2, PyQt and Sqlite for it to use though.

(run: python2 pybitmessagemain.py)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> In many cases, hard core security around email isn't necessary. For light privacy, where you simply don't want the other party to immediately be able to google your address (i.e. craigslist or online dating) I want to recommend Gliph Cloaked Email. <https://gli.ph>

I run Gliph and am happy to answer questions about the level of anonymity you can achieve if anyone has any.

<comment><USER19> > We encrypt data with 256-bit SSL in transit and AES-256 encryption before it > hits disk.

Your website copy does not inspire confidence in your ability to properly implement cryptography software.

<comment><USER20> For us crypto-ignoramuses, what's wrong with what you quoted?

<comment><USER21> >> We encrypt data with 256-bit SSL in transit and AES-256 encryption before it hits disk.

> For us crypto-ignoramuses, what's wrong with what you quoted?

First off, it is very easy to get cryptography wrong. I wouldn't trust most people with being able to implement cryptography software correctly.

Buzzwords like AES and SSL are used to convey a sense of security. Their 256-bit SSL uses AES-256 to encrypt data in transit. While using AES-256 to encrypt a file doesn't mean it is secure. The mode of operation is very important. The following wikipedia page has a picture that was probably encrypted with something like AES-256. I will let you guess what the original picture was.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_cipher#Modes_of_operation>

Another issue not discussed is key management. To encrypt the files with AES-256 they need to have the key. If someone breaks into their server, the server will have the key and the files. It becomes easy to break the security.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Of course Petraeus could not exactly have installed tor and started visiting hushmail.org without instantly being considered suspect.

<comment><USER23> From work maybe, but would that have been the same from home?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> if all you want is to receive mail, the CCC offers anonymous one-time adresses: <https://anonbox.net/index.en.html>

</comment><comment><USER25> What about something like mixmaster[1]? Obviously more complex than using tor browser bundle with a webmail provider, but is it still viable for geeks? What are the risks?

[1]: <http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/483>

<comment><USER26> Mixminion[1] is the next generation anonymous remailer that was designed to fix some problems with mixmaster. You might want to use that instead, if you can.

[1] - <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixminion>

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It seems to me that a government sponsored virus would look for a fingerprint for something like Tor. Whose to say the virus isn't a virus but rather a part of a retail product placed there in cooperation between industry and government.

If you want true security you need to use open products.

</comment><comment><USER28> What about Opera's FastMail.fm? They are not even based in US, so that might help. I see it's not free anymore though, but it also has no ads, so no tracking for that either.

They could've also used RetroShare for both encrypted chats and mail, and it should've been pretty anonymous as well since it's P2P. This is not something most people would be willing to do, but for someone like Petraeus, it could've been useful.

For most people using something like Jitsi for encrypted chats and video-calls is much more bearable, although you still have to watch-out where you sign-in from and where you create the account, so you'll probably have to follow the whole Tor browser part EFF mentioned in the beginning, if you want anonymity as well.

<comment><USER29> Regarding FastMail and the US.

* FastMail have their servers in New York City (as well as on Iceland).

* Opera Software do have an office in the US.

I have no idea to what extent that puts FastMail under US juristriction.

(Disclaimer: I work for Opera Software, but not on the FastMail team.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I2P's mail system may be safer than this (certainly much more anonymous since you don't have to transfer any money at any point in the process), depending on the content of your mail and the level of trust you feel for the person running I2P's mail system.

</comment><comment><USER31> There is also Tor Mail as an anonymous email service.

<comment> mike-cardwell Nobody knows who runs the Tor Mail service. This is good because nobody can order them to give up information about you. However, it's also bad because you've no idea if it's being run by responsible people, a government agency, wikileaks, or just a few nosy kids. You should still definitely use PGP encryption if you're using it.

<comment><USER22> Shouldn't you always be using pgp anyway? Its not like you should trust someone like hushmail either.

<comment><USER8> Speaking of, has a replacement for firepgp (an awesome Firefox pgp plugin from some years ago) ever cropped up? It was so idiot-proof it was beautiful, and had the project not closed down, I probably would have rallied friends and family to use it.

<comment><USER32> The problem is that it was not reasonably secure. As I understand the complaint, you can't integrate PGP into an extensible, skinnable interface securely. There's not firefox or OS support for making that kind of thing doable. You'd want to have some sort of OS and app support for being able to encrypt a message in a widget on a GUI layer above the browser and then transferring it in, so that PGP and Firefox never come into direct contact. Qubes OS has a rough mechanism for keeping different security-level apps separated, and identified via a colored window border. I wonder if something similar to this is the correct solution.

<comment><USER33> I don't think that the problem was that Firefox or the OS weren't secure enough. Afaik the problem was that FireGPG worked inline with the original page, and thus a hostile JS on the page could intercept the plaintext.

I think something like the "It's all text!"[1] addon with GPG enabled editor should be reasonably secure.

[1] <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/its-all-text/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> And I wrote a blog post about something similar, but it hits a lot more bases than just using Tor. Tor has issues of its own.

<http://bernsteinbear.com/a-quest-for-anonymity>

<comment><USER35> Under your Public WiFi heading, you should add a warning about surveillance cameras, POS credit card trails, and employee memories. These days, cameras are everywhere, and video storage has gotten very cheap. Assume investigators will visit each shop from which you surfed and act accordingly.

Best to buy your coffee at coffee shop A and do your surfing from near but _not_ in coffee shop B.

Also, if, for instance, you are on a book tour to hype your biography of P4, be aware that, even if you follow WiFi best practices, you will still be leaving a geographic trail that investigators could find very interesting.

<comment><USER14> It makes me wonder why the government works so hard to get new powers of investigation. It seems easier to catch someone now than it ever has, despite the preponderance of new privacy tools. Using good old fashion police work like warrants, subpoenas, plea bargains, surveillance, etc, police can put together a lot of pieces that add up to a whole (I make a comment elsewhere in the thread about the problem of plausible deniability in the face or corroborating evidence). Why the hell do they need _more_ tools?

Perhaps someone in law enforcement could shed some light on this. After all, I am looking at this from the outside.

<comment><USER34> Or the inside, depending on how you look at it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Probably easier and more secure to just boot in a tails live system (usb, cdrom). This system uses tor and has everything installed and configured to protect your privacy.

<https://tails.boum.org/>

<comment><USER30> You still need to create an email account with a host who is at least semi- aware of the importance of privacy and cryptography (e.g., not Google). You can't make new Google Accounts from Tor nodes without additional verification (your phone number); same is likely to be true of all major email services.

Accessing your Gmail through Tor and thinking that makes you "anonymous" is just going to tell everyone that you failed at being sneaky.

<comment><USER37> >Accessing your Gmail through Tor and thinking that makes you "anonymous" is just going to tell everyone that you failed at being sneaky.

Thats a great slogan for a T-shirt :).

Oki, for a bit more seriousness... One could in theory create an account on google through tor, verify the account with a burn phone, and be rather unidentifiable. Its just kind of costly, so just bad guys with anonymous cash that can do this and not journalists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I'd use Tor way more if it wasn't so damn slow. Of course security is a priority, but it's just not usable for me.

<comment><USER39> If security is a priority, then set up a Tor node! :)

<comment><USER11> Then brace yourself for a flood of DMCA requests and law enforcement attention in 3.. 2.. 1..

<comment><USER40> Sorry for the perhaps extreme naivety, but does this actually happen to people who set up Tor nodes?

<comment><USER24> In germany some servers were collected by the police but relatively promptly returned once they figured out that they were tor exit nodes. Still, you're the first person that the police can get a handle on, so at least expect some questions once in a while.

I don't know about any other country, but you might just consider hosting the tor exit node in a country with more friendly laws and then use a VPN to connect there.

<comment><USER11> Indeed, you're probably protected by safe harbor/mere conduit laws in most jurisdictions, but you're still liable to become the subject of law enforcement investigations and have your equipment seized.

More hassle than it's worth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> What about running my own e-mail from my residence or contained within a data center on a computer that I personally own (that is, not leased from the hosting provider) and connected to the Internet via a subscription in my own name? I'm rather curious about what legal areas this might fall into.

<comment><USER42> > _connected to the Internet via a subscription in my own name_

I thought the article was about _anonymous_ e-mail. Anonymous as in, nobody can tell who you are, not even the Feds. Anything you paid for with your credit card is probably not going to meet that criterion.

<comment><USER41> Good point. I was more wondering about this as an alternative to purely anonymous e-mail in light of one of the reasons why people try to avoid having e-mail tied to them (government having a peek).

<comment><USER25> There was an article on HN a while back about a server removed from a DC by the feds; that's one risk.

If you have the server at your home sending emails, it will be trivial for law enforcement to figure out where you are and show up at your door with a warrant to sieze your computer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> They say that Hushmail keeps your mail in plaintext. But does it?

From what I heard, they encrypt your mail even on their servers.

However what kills the service for me is the need to pay if you don't use it reguralry - and there is no way to pay for hushmail anonymously (read: with bitcoin).

<comment><USER44> It doesn't really matter whether they encrypt it on disk: the scenario here isn't that their disks get stolen, but that law enforcement makes them decrypt your mail. The only way to get in the way of that is to encrypt it yourself, see GPG etc.

Also: isn't a bitcoin transaction really difficult to anonymise, with the global transaction record available to the whole world?

<comment><USER43> About bitcoin: It depends.

Yes, it is not fully anonymous, but you can make it reasonably anonymous quite easily (infinitely more than any credit card). Just trade it for cash with someone you know in the first place, then send it to MtGox and back, then send it to something similar with online wallet and back, and the result is _reasonably_ anonymous.

Also the default client does what it can to obfuscate all the transactions - with every outgoing transaction, the "change" goes back to you, but at completely different address. This causes that after a few transactions, it's _basically_ untrackable.

<comment><USER30> There are some bitcoin launderers that can simplify it, but it should be clarified that much like PGP, anonymity/security is not just as simple as downloading a client and using it. You need to understand the model and its implications, or it's pretty easy to make links in the blockchain that'll give you away to an interested, resourceful party.

Bottom line: Do NOT think bitcoin is safe for your usage until you've done sufficient research to ensure that you're using it the correct way. Bitcoin is NOT private by default, it's up to you to protect the identities behind the transaction endpoints, _including nearby txs_. If you get bitcoins and then immediately send them to your brother's public address, or launder these only lightly, or use a MtGox address that is linked back to a scan of your driver's license somewhere in the laundering process, or if you buy your bitcoins from your brother and HE doesn't launder very well, or the guy from LocalBitcoins got curious and did a bunch of research before your exchange and the feds contact him because the coins came from an address tied to _his_ identity, or something else like that happens, you are going to get caught if someone is interested in catching you.

It's more complicated than just downloading the client and waiting four days for the blockchain to download. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Is using something like iPredator [0] VPN secure enough for logging into a pseudonymous email account? If you never (ever) use a different IP address to log in to that account?

[0] <https://ipredator.se>

<comment><USER46> iPredator is using pptp which is very insecure. (The original authors of the protocol recommend that you shouldn't use it). It is also considered to be cryptographically broken as of last month. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point-to- Point_Tunneling_Protoc...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point-to- Point_Tunneling_Protocol#Security))

A list of reasonable VPN providers is available here: [http://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-providers-really-take- anon...](http://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-providers-really-take-anonymity- seriously-111007)

(If you are using a VPN, you have to be aware that there is a lot of snake oil. Finding a good VPN provider is very difficult, and then purchasing the VPN anonymously is even more difficult.)

<comment><USER47> Ipredator started supporting OpenVPN a few months ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Well, after reading this I realised that the first thing is to monitor and tame your outgoing traffic. So I renewed my Little Snitch license. And started to consider wiping the Skype off the machine.

</comment><comment><USER49> Man, what a weak article. I was expecting some cool tutorial on setting up tormail or something equivalent.

Hushmail? Seriously? They have no qualms with cooperating with authorities at the drop of a hat.

</comment><comment><USER50> Plug : If all you need is to receive an email Air Mail is right for the job - <http://getairmail.com>

</comment><comment><USER51> You could use one of the several temporary mail boxes to exchange messages.

Presumably you'd save anything important on a flash drive or something remote.

</comment><comment><USER52> What about sharing secure notes via LastPass?

</comment><comment><USER53> worth mention that hushmail are known to turn over email accounts at the drop of a hat

</comment><comment><USER54> The EFF is right, this is still way too hard.

<comment><USER55> Actually it's a little harder still. For instance, when your browser makes requests in your behalf, it provides the destination server with a lot of information which can be used to identify you (at least temporarily)[1]. To get a better level of anonymity, one should at least use a combination of Tor and privoxy [2].

[1] <https://panopticlick.eff.org/> [2] <http://www.privoxy.org/>

<comment> mike-cardwell Your information is out of date. The Tor project no longer advises the use of privoxy, and advises all users to use The Tor Browser Bundle. This is specifically configured to make all Tor users look the same, precisely because of browser fingerprinting.

<comment><USER55> Thank you for the heads up. I didn't know that the Browser Bundle also took care of fingerprinting.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Out of Africa and into an archaic human melting pot - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2019-07-africa-archaic-human-pot.html <comment><USER2> This is amazing work, and overall a great writeup.

However, I'm puzzled by this quote:

> "For example, all present-day populations show about 2% of Neandertal > ancestry which means that Neandertal mixing with the ancestors of modern > humans occurred soon after they left Africa, probably around 50,000 to > 55,000 years ago somewhere in the Middle East."

It's my understanding that at least some African populations don't carry Neandertal etc sequences. I'd like to check the paper about that, but Sci-Hub doesn't have it yet.

</comment><comment><USER3> >"The timing also makes it look like the arrival of modern humans was followed quickly by the demise of the archaic human groups in each area."

Not just archaic human groups. A lot of mega fauna in general was wiped out after humans arrived in a new area.

</comment><comment><USER4> > the ancestors of modern humans interbred with at least five different > archaic human groups as they moved out of Africa and across Eurasia.

Now I'm confused. Isn't the consensus that there are currently no distinct human races - the groupings are just social constructs? But from how they refer to 'different human groups' this was apparently not the case in the past, despite the fact they were able to interbreed? So at what point did this change?

<comment><USER5> > at what point did this change

Out of Africa has been disproven but it was the status quo for so long that many are having a hard time letting go.

Current fact based on actual evidence is multiregional coemergence, previously hypothesis now reasonably theory. Many of us have Denosivan, Neanderthal, etc ancestors, DNA fact, all prior to the hypothetical single point emergence event, therefore even if the hypothetical single point emergence event of some group is correct it's not the full story.

<comment><USER6> But the vast majority of the DNA of the vast majority of us is Sapiens, from Africa, no? If not, do you have any sources?

<comment><USER7> Just last week was a 210,000 year old skull in Greece: [https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-07-11/modern- humans...](https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-07-11/modern-humans-in- eurasia-earlier/11296454) and there is a 310,00 year old one in Morocco: [https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2017-06-08/300-000-year-...](https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2017-06-08/300-000-year- old-remains-pushes-back-origin-of-species/8594632) . The second is in Africa but not where we thought modern humans originated from and combined both of them at least put some doubt on the timing of the out of africa model. I think there are some older ones in China too.

Saying it's disproven is taking things way too far but it's getting very messy and DNA can only take us so far.

My own uninformed wild guess: The out of africa population that came to dominance started out as a seafaring culture, this explains their rapid expansion along mostly coastal routes, making it to Australia just a few thousand years after leaving africa and giving them a competitive advantage over other groups.

<comment><USER8> Why wasn't Madagascar inhabited till relatively recently is the disappearing was a marine endeavor?

<comment><USER7> When I say seafaring I still mean mainly coastal seafaring. Assuming they could Island hop through Comoros (if it existed) that's still an 1100KM trip compared to the less than 100KM to get into Australia and almost continuous land between there and Africa. Maybe wind and ocean patterns could explain some of it too.

<comment><USER8> Madagascar is about 100 to 120 miles from the African continent. Not too different from Cuba to Florida. In the same ballpark. But, I hear what you're saying. Deep sea vessels vs littoral hugging vessels.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC: Why is domain registration so cheap? - <AUTHOR> How does domain registration work? I mean who governs the process, issues 1-st level domains (like ".com"), besides ICANN? I mean who controls it?
I wonder why don't they jack up prices for domain registration significantly, like to $50/year, immediate pre-pay required without any "parking" bullshit - this will surely eliminate most squatters and free millions of decent domain names to the public. The names they are sitting on are ridiculous - nearly every combination of two English words is taken... The term "domain industry" is absurd: there shouldn't be industries built on top of something inherently non-for-profit...
So.. what stops them from doing that? From raising prices. <comment><USER2> Behind the scenes, each TLD (like .com or .net) has an authoritative top level DNS controller. In the case of .com and .net, that is Verisign.

Any registrar you use (network solutions, godaddy, namecheap) are effectively reselling domain registrations on behalf of Verisign.

.com names are currently $6.86, wholesale. So if you can get one from someone for 6.99, they are only marking it up by 13c ...

As you will see here, prices do go up regularly: [http://wtop.com/index.php?nid=108&sid=1378741](http://wtop.com/index.php?nid=108&sid=1378741)

Verisign have a monopoly over .com and .net, however the retail registrars work in a massively competitive environment.

You think about all the software and customer support a registrar gives you for 13c per year (or whatever), and how much effort Verisign put in for 6.86 per year?

Of course, some of that goes to ICANN, the governing body... wanna guess how much?

20c per name. Is Verisign onto a good scam?

</comment><comment><USER3> Look - raising it from $9 a year to $50 wouldn't deter people from squatting/parking. Think of it from a parker's perspective: you have a portfolio of 1000 domains and, on average, each domain makes you $200 a year. You currently pay $9/yr per domain leaving a net profit of $191,000 ($200,000 - $9000 in fees). Changing it to $50 per registration definitely means you make less profit but you still clear $150,000 a year so you shrug your shoulders and do it.

However, changing from $9 to $50 for someone who owns one domain as family website, for example, means a lot. You'll lose a lot of people since $50 is real money and $9 can be thrown away (in a lot of people's minds). Of course, when these people don't renew their domains because it's too expensive, the squatters buy them and now you have even more squatted domains.

So there's no easy answer to the problem...

</comment><comment><USER4> The TLD registries are treated like public utilities and regulated by ICANN so that they can only make "reasonable" profit. I think allowing VeriSign to increase prices faster than inflation when their costs are constantly falling is a little more than reasonable, but at $8 it's hard to complain. These prices, even as low as they are, do preclude certain business models like giving a free domain to every user and making it back on ads.

</comment><comment><USER5> 1) ICANN & ICANN accredited registrars. 2) Market forces are stopping them from doing that (fortunately), though Network Solutions is still selling them at $35.

Domain tasting was the really annoying thing - that's fortunately been eliminated (Details on the problem: <http://tinyurl.com/2ogtxb> (bobparsons.com))

</comment><comment><USER6> Well, some of them do raise prices:

[http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/05/12/why-yahoo- boostin...](http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/05/12/why-yahoo-boosting- domain-fees-30)

... but prices can't rise too much, as long as costs remain low and there is a lot of competition.

</comment><comment><USER7> If they jack the price up, then the value of having a good domain goes up. It wouldn't stop squatters IMOHO

</comment><comment><USER8> Competition.

<comment><USER9> Competition keeps the registrars' margins low, but VeriSign presumably controls the base registration price.</comment></comment>