Apple A6 SoC outperforms Intel Atom in JavaScript test - <AUTHOR> http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/09/19/apple_a6_soc_outperforms_intel_atom_in_javascript_test

<comment><USER2> actual article [http://www.anandtech.com/show/6309/iphone-5a6-sunspider- perf...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/6309/iphone-5a6-sunspider-performance)

</comment><comment><USER3> Very interesting and I look forward to a more detailed analysis of the new cpu in the iP5.

I'd be interested in how they handle memory managment/interface and suspect they have done alot of work on that front which would benifit graphics as well as general processing. Might of added a large cache onchip and that in itself will make alot of benchmarks whcih dont have much else running go alot faster than you would expect. This may be the case, we just don't know.

Either way you look at it this has to be unique as far as apple phone releases go with lots of people expecting lots and then still falling in love with what is released and with this new one the general press are starting to lose the glaze in there eye's and in parts poo pooing the new iPhone, which is funny as this does actualy appear to be a good product release with perhaps alot of understated features which do more than back up the claim of 2x faster. This in a world were people are expecting any claim of x amount faster to be backed up with small print outlining the conditions that claim is true. but from what it appears as a whole this 2x claim is a very solid claim in many area's of there new phone.

I'm not so sure apple have as some are indicating redesigned a whole ARM core, but they certainly could of very easily replaced parts of it and expanded other area's and in that adding cache is one area were mobile phone chips will happily accept and get a good return. Also when you write the OS and have a chip like ARM which you haeve more control to add and change things then optimizing for your operating system by adding a few extra instructions of tweaking the area's your profiling tools have identified as bottle necks and you start to get something realy nice.

I'm more a Android chap and never owned a Apple product but this does not stop me appreceiting there finer works of art and for me the iPhone5 has that gut feeling of being a good solid design. OK so it has no NFC but Apple don't do there own credit card, do they, currently - watch this space.

I noticied a few comments saying the A6 is dual and this intel is single core, well there be quad cores and they still aint betean it, be looking forward to some more hands on tests with details - especialy the memory interface and amount of cache memory on that chip.

</comment><comment><USER4> Brand new chip outperforms slow chip from 10 months ago!

The Z2460 was launched back in January [1], though phones with it have been very slow to appear.

1 - [http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/10/2697790/intel-details- new-...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/10/2697790/intel-details-new-medfield- atom-processor-announces-added-android-app)

<comment><USER5> A6 still outperforms the new one:

[http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/18/motorolas-razr-i- benchmar...](http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/18/motorolas-razr-i-benchmarks- intel-2ghz-medfield/)

Also, it's important to note that JS engine optimizations play a huge role in this test, so it's not all just hardware performance, but that doesn't necessarily mean Intel has a disadvantage here. I believe Intel has been working just as heavily to tweak the JS performance in the phones that shipped with their processor.

Also, Intel is being misleading about having a "2 Ghz processor". The thing is it will use that frequency when it's doing the benchmark, so you'll be like "wow, great performance from this chip", but then in 99% of the situations, you'll be using it at its "real frequency" of 1.6 Ghz (Anand says it's still 1.3 Ghz, Engadget may be in error there), so the real performance is probably much worse than the benchmakrs make it look.

<comment><USER6> > Also, it's important to note that JS engine optimizations play a huge role > in this test

Running the bench on a 4S running iOS6 should fix that.

According to the article (and the original source on anandtech), the actual insight provided by SunSpider is its stressing of the memory interface (this was apparently Intel's original explanation for why Atom crushed A9-based SoC in SunSpider even though the raw processing power was pretty similar), and is a datapoint in support of the hypothesis that Apple's custom core design put a high emphasis on on improving the memory subsystem (and much higher than the stock ARM designs).

<comment><USER7> On my iPhone 4, iOS 6 is about 10% faster in the SunSpider test than iOS 5.1.

<comment><USER6> So around 2000ms? I think we can pretty safely discount the improvements to the JS engine for the 914ms of the iphone 5 then.

<comment><USER8> Not quite, although your "probably" right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is also JSC vs V8 (and V8's x86 backend is very mature and well optimized; JSC's ARMv7 backend is pretty good, but nobody's ARM backend has had the same time and effort poured into it as their x86 backends).

</comment><comment><USER10> The title is misleading because the Intel Atom is Medfield, which is a chip (hurriedly) designed for mobile use from a laptop chip by Intel and hence low power. Anyone know how it would do with a real laptop Atom processor?

<comment><USER11> Also the medfield in the Lava XOLO X900(w/HT) is a single core processor and not a dual core like the A6

<comment><USER12> Never mind that Sunspider tests the JS engine (which isn't identical on either device) just as much as the processor. Testing JS->engine->OS->processor is a poor method of gauging performance of the processor itself.

That said, I'm surprised no one's attempted a port of Nitro to Android/NDK for benchmarking purposes, to remedy this somewhat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The article fails to mention that there are at least two contributing factors in the technology stack, raw CPU speed and efficiency of the JS engine.

<comment><USER14> It baffles me that AnandTech, which is so good on so many of these tech topics commits the double flaw of a) using the sunspider benchmark at all (as it's the least meaningful of the various Javascript benchmarks) and b) continually using it to compare devices running different javascript engines (or different versions of the same engine over time) and implying it measures hardware differences.

<comment><USER15> For your second point, the same benchmark on a 4s with ios6 would serve as a control for hardware. Also, considering smartphones are used for web browsing, javascript performance is a valid thing to measure.

<comment><USER6> According to Weiran, iOS6 on a 4S gets about 2000ms (applying a ~10% improvement to the chart's 2200ms 4S score): <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4543358></comment></comment></comment></comment>


MongoDB at Etsy - <AUTHOR> http://codeascraft.etsy.com/2010/05/19/mongodb-at-etsy/

<comment><USER2> Personally, I would still put some caching in front of a document db. Either something in the application (memcache), or something in front of the web service (varnish, squid)

<comment><USER3> From the article:

>Caching at many levels is of course still a part of our application, but so far we've not found any reason to cache a single MongoDB document retrieved by primary key in an external cache like memcached, a practice that is currently common for us when we use relational databases.

I'm not quite sure what they are actually caching as I can not find any valuable info in server headers at all, for example relating to varnish etc.</comment></comment>


Media:  The Truth - Most Accurate Overview of The Current Ad Market (w. Video) - <AUTHOR> http://online.barrons.com/article/SB124786946519160351.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that Print is not dead... glad to hear someone else seconds it.</comment>


Examining the file requests made by the top 100 Alexa sites - <AUTHOR> http://dangoldin.com/2014/03/09/examining-the-requests-made-by-the-top-100-sites/

<comment><USER2> Do the sizes of different types of file have any impact? For example, does a 50kb image have more impact than a 50kb JavaScript file? (I'm guessing yes, since the js file will tend to be compressed for sending, whereas the image is already compressed)

How about the use of cdn for common files? Is there a correlation between, say, the use of Google's jQuery cdn service and faster/slower sites? What about distinct domain lookups for multiple files? Is rakuten loading all those files from a single domain, while Google spread the 10 requests around a pile of specialist static file servers?

It's interesting data though!

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't get a chance to pull this info but should be pretty easy to do. I also expect different types of content to load at different speeds (images need to be rendered, JS needs to be evaluated, ..)

I published the code on GitHub and you can take a stab at it =)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Foremost conclusion: Fast load times depends on you serving everything yourself, ideally in as few files as possible. Google and wikipedia do this.

Sounds obvious, but funny how often we forget this -- most sites download scripts and resources from multiple domains.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep pretty much. I think the problem is that many sites now rely on 3rd party resources which slow everything down.</comment></comment>


Django tip: Caching and two-phased template rendering - <AUTHOR> http://www.holovaty.com/writing/django-two-phased-rendering/

<comment><USER2> We do something like this -- we call it "partial currying" .. if you think of a partial (in Rails) as a function of a number of parameters, you can render and cache the intermediate rendering of a subset of those parameters (curry them.) Subsequent calls can then specify the values for the rest.

The mechanism we use for this is to do some ruby metaprogramming to kludge in some placeholder values for the uncurried values, and then gsub them in in the subsequent passes. (So, the first pass is the only pass that runs the HAML/ERB file, the rest are gsub's) This works for us, since things after the first pass are not changing layout, etc, and need to be high performance. The first pass is a heavyweight rendering at a coarse granularity (and cached), subsequent curries are lightweight gsubs at fine grain.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is it possible to do the same thing in PHP? Authenticated users performance is one of the areas Drupal could be improved, and this looks like it could help a lot.

<comment><USER4> The quick-and-dirty way is to do it like Smarty does: compile what you want to cache and write that as a .php file that includes the user-dependent data to disk.

But, if I'm not mistaken, Drupal with users is slow because pretty much any function in the system is allowed to change its output depending on the logged in user, right? And that's pretty tricky to cache.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> While I've not used it yet myself, 'edge-side includes' seem really appropriate for such problems -- offloading the caching of the large, unchanging part to a very efficient raw HTTP cache, only passing through customization hits for a tiny subset of the page (and even allowing those to be cached and invalidated separately). See:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_Side_Includes>

</comment><comment><USER6> caching in asp.net web controls is insanely easy. ironic that in mvc land (asp.net mvc included) it is so difficult.</comment>


The rational exuberance of 5G - <AUTHOR> https://www.bell-labs.com/var/articles/rational-exuberance-5G/ <comment><USER2> 4G is fast enough for me right now. My problem is the ridiculous pricing of wireless data. In ideal circumstances, I can hit nearly 75mb/s over LTE... but that just means that I could burn up my entire 3GB allotment in under 6 minutes. At $15 for the next 3 gigs, my marginal cost is nearly $1/minute for full-speed 4G data.

<comment><USER3> I doubt wireless data will get really cheap give than wireless bandwidth has a physical limit. There is only so much capacity and the infrastructure is not cheap so providers need enough customer to subscribe to pay for it. That means oversubscribing customers or throttling in some manner. Ask yourself if you would prefer 75mb/s for burst use vs 75kb/s sustained use?

<comment> norea-armozel The reality is the scarcity of bandwidth is minimal because the infrastructure itself gets cheaper the more customers you have. So adding a new tower or just adding more hardware to existing towers is a fixed cost which it's effects go down with the number of paying customers. This is classic economies of scale working in the favor of the Telcos they just don't want to admit it.

<comment><USER4> "Economies of scale" means that your per-customer costs go down as you get more customers.[1]

Cellular deployment has almost no economies of scale. Deploying a new cell tower costs the same whether you already have 10 towers or 100. Meanwhile, just a handful of users can saturate a tower and/or its backhaul, so more customers requires smaller cells and more towers.

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

<comment><USER5> Most towers peak below 50% utilization as bandwidth decreases with range. So, your average cost drops.

Put another way, to have good coverage and 1 customer would be ridiculously expensive. There are always going to be areas with few customers. You add towers in areas with lot's of customers.

<comment><USER4> Your average cost only drops over a relatively narrow range: from where N towers is enough to support your users to where N+1 towers are necessary. After N is big enough to cover your area, cost still goes up basically linearly with the number of users (just in a saw-tooth fashion rather than a straight line).

It's totally unlike the costs of any service with real economics of scale, such as software.

<comment><USER5> Your thinking in terms of a small coverage area. Networks needs to be nationwide and users are not limited to a single tower.

As density increases infrastructure can more closely map to usage.

Net effect if 50 million people take X towers then 100 million people take less than 2x towers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't buy this hype about so much demand and applications. Why ?

1\. It won't really reduce costs. Why? Because 3-5ghz 5G offer similar spectrum efficiency to current methods while on the other hand mmWave(20+ghz), which do offer tons of spectrum, don't penetrate building, and attenuate rapidly in air, so you'll need more base stations.

2\. Users have shown they aren't willing to pay more wireless. And for most things consumers do like VR and 360 video etc, wifi is fine and cheaper.

3.There are other good methods for the internet of things, and 5G is too late for that anyway.

So that leaves the realistic use cases as cars(but isn't it too early? ). and maybe VR(although we're very far from appealing VR services which users will pay $60+/month for, and we probably need for wifi confined AR to be a thing first ).

And on top of that the question remains - could we improve 4G enough, without needing to deploy all new hardware?

<comment><USER7> On top of all of that 4G is still so data-restricted you cannot do anything with it that the speed was meant for. The cost of streaming a blu-ray quality film over 4G on many carriers can cost you tens of dollars alone.

I agree, and would rather see ubiquitous and cheap 4G before anyone talks about 5G. I think 4G already has the potential to eliminate the vast majority of wired to the home cable Internet service given its rates, the only downside is the extreme spectrum crunch and the lack of viable open bands to use to provide Internet to everyone.

<comment><USER8> > _The cost of streaming a blu-ray quality film over 4G on many carriers can > cost you tens of dollars alone._

In the UK this is simply not the case. I have unlimited 4g connection, and I had unlimited 3g before that. In fact, the 3g was my _only_ internet for a long time via tethering. It was good enough to play TF2, and could easily download 20gig games overnight via steam etc.

I assume somewhere there is a fair use policy - but if i've never hit it I reckon it's doing a pretty good job of only hitting abusive use.

5g isn't going to solve the problem of US pricing being shit.

<comment><USER9> These deals don't exist any more. Trust me, I've looked!

<comment><USER10> They definitely do - I signed up to one the other week.

Three do "all-you-can-eat" 4G data + 200 minutes = £23/month (50% off first 6 months)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Off topic, but I thought AT&T still owned Bell Labs. It seems I missed the last 20 years in that regard:

In 1996, AT&T spun off Bell Laboratories, along with most of its equipment manufacturing business, into a new company named Lucent Technologies.

In April 2006, Bell Laboratories' parent company, Lucent Technologies, signed a merger agreement with Alcatel.

On April 15, 2015, Nokia agreed to acquire Alcatel-Lucent, the Bell Labs' parent company, in a share exchange worth $16.6 billion.

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

<comment><USER12> Yeah this was the most interesting part of the blog post -- knowing that Nokia owns Bell Labs! :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have one question regarding the statement:

 _" the cloud infrastructure cannot be more than 100km from the end device consuming the application, due to the finite speed of light, which can only traverse ~100km (round trip) in the 1 ms that is available for the networking portion ..."_

Since light would traverse ~299km in 1ms, would the max distance of the cloud architecture be ~149.9km - assuming we do not take into account any additional processing and response times?

Edit: The author was using the speed of light in current-day fibre-optics as an estimation (~213km in 1ms, a reduction of about 30% from vacuum). Relevant - [http://www.nature.com/nphoton/journal/v7/n4/full/nphoton.201...](http://www.nature.com/nphoton/journal/v7/n4/full/nphoton.2013.45.html)

<comment><USER14> Typically the speed of light in copper/fibre is about 2/3rds of lights speed in a vacuum. Hence the discrepancy.

<comment><USER15> _Typically the speed of light in copper /fibre is about 2/3rds of lights speed in a vacuum_

Does light travel through copper?

<comment><USER16> Both light (air, fiber) and electricity (copper) lead to a propagating electromagnetic field.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "In conclusion, our analysis of past, current and future trends in technology and network evolution, suggests that the increased momentum we are seeing around 5G network deployments relative to prior eras is the result of a coincidence of prevailing winds of both technological and business (human) value, and is therefore a case of 'rational exuberance' about the future."

I can't agree more! Awesome analysis.

</comment><comment><USER18> Great, now there will be an even faster standard to not use because of the price. A price set by thieving, skiving, miserable, lying monopolists.

</comment><comment><USER19> I have a 22.5 GB data plan and I burn through the whole thing every month on LTE, without really watching movies or anything over wireless data (I don't turn on WiFi at any time, because my LTE latency and bandwidth is better than my home and work WiFi). The speed of the network isn't my constraint.

</comment><comment><USER20> I would like to see more 4G build out first. As others have mentioned, some carriers still have data caps at the 4G level.

So we are not really seeing the full potential of 4G at this point.

</comment><comment><USER21> Still missing: any kind of technical protocol spec for 5G. It is still just a mad scramble to claim the name.

<comment><USER22> 3GPP (not to be confused with the old tech 3G, this is a consortium sort of like the W3C for the web or the ISO for ...tons of stuff) are the defacto group who meets up and agrees on what gets done. They meet up and agree upon standards every so often as described here[1] (release 8 and 9 delineating LTE, LTE-A, and the transitional 3G -> LTE stuff, along with tons of other stuff).

Releases 13 and 14 standardized 5G[2] earlier this year. Here's the set of documents that I'm pretty sure shouldn't be public (you typically have to be a member to get access). Bad sysadmins, disable DirectoryIndexes ! The R13 and R14 zips have quite a bit of descriptive content. Here's the marketing mumbojumbo stuff, for completeness[3].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_(telecommunication)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_\(telecommunication\))

[2] [http://www.3gpp.org/ftp/Information/WORK_PLAN/Description_Re...](http://www.3gpp.org/ftp/Information/WORK_PLAN/Description_Releases/)

[3] [http://www.4gamericas.org/files/3714/4224/8256/Executive_Sum...](http://www.4gamericas.org/files/3714/4224/8256/Executive_Summary_3GPP_Release_13_final.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> At least in terms of its effects on network speed, latency and reliability to mobile devices, I don't expect 5G to deliver anything like the hype it's getting.

Having witnessed the roll-out of 2G, 3G and 4G over the last 15 years in the UK, with each one being as disappointing, over-promised and patchy as the one before it, I'm hoping to be surprised. But I'm not holding my breath.

I have a phone that has been downgraded to 3G only because my provider's 4G is actually slower.

<comment><USER24> UK is infamous for its overcrowded networks and sloppy telecoms, so that's not a problem of the technology itself. I have seen better Internet/cell networks in some 3rd world countries than UK.. In my country, there's a pretty big difference between 3G and 4G (and currently used 4.5G), where ~350 Mbps is an actual speed.

<comment><USER25> English people are infamous for grumbling...

Akamai's State of the Internet, released yesterday, puts the UK in the lead for mobile data speeds with an average speed of 28Mb/s, followed by Belgium, with 19Mb/s.

[http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/29/12056760/uk-fastest- mobile...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/29/12056760/uk-fastest-mobile- internet-us-lags-behind-akamai-report)

[https://www.akamai.com/us/en/our-thinking/state-of-the- inter...](https://www.akamai.com/us/en/our-thinking/state-of-the-internet- report/) (Downloading requires an email, but it wasn't verified.)

<comment><USER24> Somewhat strange methodology is used there:

 _" speeds can be altered by mobile networks' use of proxies, meaning that the speeds recorded will be between those proxies and Akamai's servers, rather than between the servers and the actual mobile devices themselves."_

For users end mile usually matters the most and this table doesn't count for that, so it doesn't reflect the actual user experience. Sounds more like PR stuff than an actual test.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Could Musk et al's satellite Internet plans [1] ever compete with terrestrial Internet?

[1] [http://motherboard.vice.com/read/elon-musk-admits- satellite-...](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/elon-musk-admits-satellite- internet-plan-could-over-extend-spacex)

<comment><USER27> Latency will always be inferior in satellite links.

<comment><USER28> You're thinking of traditional large satellites in geosynchronous orbit, which is 35 km above the surface (ping time of about 250 ms). SpaceX's plan is to put 4,000 small satellites in low-earth orbit, 625 km up. That gives a ping time of about 4 ms to the satellite.

SpaceX can do this far cheaper than others because they can launch the satellites for "free" as part of launches that are happening anyway.

<comment><USER29> > which is 35 km above the surface (ping time of about 250 ms)

Surely you mean 35000 km?

<comment><USER30> Actually, they are planning on a low-Earth orbit at around 1100 km, which will require a constellation of satellites to maintain ubiquitous coverage. That will cut latency -- particularly on long routes since it will cut the number hops between hosts, see: [http://cis471.blogspot.com/2014/11/elon-musk-and- greg-wylers...](http://cis471.blogspot.com/2014/11/elon-musk-and-greg-wylers- plan-for.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> As someone still only dreaming of gigabit speeds, I'm having a hard time conceptualizing what that kind of speed can enable. Higher resolution video/VR, sure, but is there more? Is there a game changing use case that opens up when that kind of speed is available everywhere?

<comment><USER29> When you have connectivity at home you can keep all of your data at your fingertips at all time. Even if it's more than you can feasibly store in consumer cloud services.

You can VPN home and use remote desktop at near local performance.

You don't need to plan your data usage. Worry whether you have the files with you.

At least that's what it means for me.

<comment><USER32> We've already got plenty of bandwidth for remote desktop, latency is usually the remaining problem.

<comment><USER29> Yeah, latency is the issue.

I have fiber at home. About 50/50 Mbps goodput and 15 ms latency to home VPN using 4G. Remote desktop is pretty fluid. While I can notice the extra latency, it's not a problem in any way. For example Bluetooth mouse latency is worse.

Even full screen WebGL/CSS3/whatever web apps and full screen web video work well.

Some tips: Don't use _any_ TCP based tunneling or VPN solution, like ssh or OpenVPN over TCP. They're bad for interactive use.

Measure, mobile devices have different 4G performance profiles, and that includes latency. You can have up to about 5 ms latency difference between a new flagship model and some low end 4G phone.

Desktop applications other than the browser tend to be less demanding.

Although games are not my thing, playing PS4 games remotely works also very nicely on a Macbook over 4G. Just need to have a PS4 controller and a USB cable. It just works. Very near to local performance. There's some kind of NAT traversal, so you don't necessarily even need to use VPN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'd say that, in the US, exuberance for 5G _is_ irrational since the pricing for cellular internet is ridiculous. In the mean time, we have T-Mobile's CEO calling his customers "data thieves" for rebelling against unfair rates.

</comment><comment><USER34> Yep speeds on Cellphones can be crazy fast, I was testing a WIFI connection speed with a cellphone. Data was quite consistent ... until I noticed I was on 4G. Only to get lower results when I turned 4G off (the WIFI there is slower).

<comment><USER35> Same experience as well, 4G has consistently been better then my WiFi connection. And even if i had perfect WiFi Connection i was still limited by Internet connection speed. Which most WiFi Connection spot, even at home, are slower then 4G.

<comment><USER36> I must say I have had the opposite experience. My home wifi provides a consistent ~100Mbps unless I go to the other end of my apartment. 4G, where the signal is good, goes up to ~20Mbps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Offtopic, but the header of the page makes doc hard to read.

</comment><comment><USER38> What many people who criticize the high data fees that carriers charge often forget, esp. in Germany: in contrast to highly rural US (where you need LOTS of towers to serve few people) it's not about the infrastructure costs in Germany, and it's also not about the profits of shareholders, at least not much.

Problem was when former finance minister Hans Eichel decided to reduce the German state debts in 2000... he did so by auctioning off the UMTS frequencies, for in total 50.000.000.000 €. That's 625€ per German citizen that first have to be paid off before the network provider makes a profit on that user. Also, the provider has to pay interest on the debts (ECB interbank rate at the time was 4.5%), and the infrastructure had to be built, maintained and upgraded (electricity costs, networking termination fees, personnel, construction workers, materials, ...); this in turn moves the "profitability point" per customer waaay behind.

In essence, Eichel screwed over us Germans by selling us "reduced state debt" when all we got was a debt-shift from the state to private entities, and we still suffer to this day from the highest data prices in Europe.

</comment><comment><USER39> If only 5G brought end-to-end encrypted calls and texts, too. We're going to live through another decade of poorly encrypted wireless communications.

<comment><USER40> Seeing as 5G (and 4G before it) are both packet switched networks, you can encrypt the things you do however you want.

<comment><USER41> Seeing as we've been encrypting calls with circuit switched technologies for years, it wouldn't really matter one way or the other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I'm going to do that lazy contribution thing you do on HN, where you ignore the thrust of the piece and instead complain about the web experience.

[https://imgur.com/kfbbZo2](https://imgur.com/kfbbZo2)

Bell labs are you for real?

<comment><USER43> Firefox reader mode. It fixes the web, and it makes me slightly sad.

<comment><USER44> I am seriously thinking of making a small web that parses HN and shows the links in a decent way and when clicking something it opens it with automatic styles like Firefox reader mode. The % of decent (as in readable) articles / articles in HN is too low, and Firefox reader mode fixes them all (so far 100% correct for me after years).

<comment><USER45> Someone already beat you to it: [https://hn.premii.com](https://hn.premii.com)

<comment><USER44> That is... awesome! thank you so much

<comment><USER46> The content loads from his API rather than the website itself, and also there is an Android app made by him.

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.premii.hn](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.premii.hn)

I have noticed that some websites are actively obfuscating the content on their page to prevent it being loaded by content-viewers (like the website or the app).

I've had to email him to fix an issue in the app and he pushed a change to the Play store fairly quickly.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: FriendlyCaptcha – a privacy friendly proof-of-work based CAPTCHA - <AUTHOR> https://friendlycaptcha.com/# <comment><AUTHOR> I built FriendlyCaptcha over the past 2 months because I was tired of there being no good alternatives to Google's reCAPTCHA and the like that your users won't hate you for. FriendlyCaptcha is based on proof-of-work (think hashcash): instead the user labeling fire hydrants in images, they commit their device to doing computations for at least a couple of seconds. The idea is that the cost of an attack is not so different for a spammer: instead of running a ML model to label the images (or solve the audio challenge) they would need to solve the proof-of-work challenge. That's probably good enough for most if not all websites, and compares favorably against ReCAPTCHA which has many issues (privacy, accessibility, bundle size & bandwidth, menial tasks, customizability, closed-source).

The attacker shouldn't be able to use much more optimized code, which is where WebAssembly comes in: the FriendlyCaptcha solver is WASM based (with JS fallback) which achieves close to native speeds. The solver [0] and widget [1] are all open source so you can play with it or customize it for your website.

The question is if this is what people want for their website, or maybe what the world needs is just a less evil reCAPTCHA?

In case you missed it on the main website, there is a demo here [2].

[0]: [https://github.com/gzuidhof/friendly- pow](https://github.com/gzuidhof/friendly-pow)

[1]: [https://github.com/gzuidhof/friendly- challenge](https://github.com/gzuidhof/friendly-challenge)

[2]: [https://friendlycaptcha.com/demo](https://friendlycaptcha.com/demo)</comment>


Project Oasis: Voice Terrarium - <AUTHOR> http://www.instructables.com/id/Project-Oasis-Voice-Terrarium <comment><USER2> I didn't see a link to a video in the article, but here's one: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyjN_ZwJr8Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyjN_ZwJr8Y)

<comment><USER3> Came to ask for this. Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pretty cool, I love it!</comment>


Bonfire of the Vanities - <AUTHOR> http://steveblank.com/2011/08/05/bonfire-of-the-vanities/

<comment><USER2> Ah, finally an explanation of why marketing material is total crap and I have to talk to a clueless idiot who doesn't know any technical details, or will make incorrect technical promises.

Thanks "funnel". I hate you.

Sincerely, Every Sysadmin who ever had to buy anything.

<comment><USER3> As someone with both technical knowledge and purchasing power, I've run into this frustration as well.

It's always pretty easy though to say "we like your product, but we want more information as to integration possibilities. Can you put us in touch with someone on your technical staff so we can ask these questions?"

Everyone company I've run into will at least give you an email contact, and all of the smaller ones (less than 20 persons employed) will just transfer you to the tech department directly.

I've done this with everything from hardware purchases to $7000/per cpu database software.

<comment><USER4> As someone with technical knowledge and _no_ purchasing power, I dislike talking to salespeople and technical people. I just want the name of a product that I can recommend to my boss. I want that datasheet.

I recently tried to recommend a great product to my boss. I had used it in a past job, and I knew what company made it, but I had no idea what the actual product was called. I didn't want to waste my boss's time, so I tried to do the research on my own and figure out what specific product I was looking for.

Their website wasn't very helpful, it was filled with generic product names and an amalgamation of SEO-friendly keywords and the word "solution". I emailed them to find out which product I was looking for, and next thing I knew I was on a sales call. Then I was on a sales conference call. Then they popped in for a sales meeting, even though I never told them my company's address.

I came away with a vague idea that their products were both nameless and probably very good. I explained it all to my boss; he took a pass.

I could've saved everyone a lot of time if I just had that comprehensive datasheet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Summary: A marketing guy accidentally made an advertisement too informative, which made the useless, overpaid sales staff unhappy. A couple years later, the _entire market segment_ died, because their crappy products couldn't compete with personal computers.

<comment><USER6> Wrong. If you read carefully, it said (and I believe it's true) that the datasheet will not sell the product. Also true, it will actually be more likely to lose customers because some detail doesn't match the customer's goals.

For products above $100K, having a sales person who can actually listen to what the customer wants, and tailor their pitch appropriately, is worth millions. No "useless, overpaid sales staff".

Of course, your mileage varies greatly in sales :-)

<comment><USER7> I would have thought a customer not purchasing the product because it doesn't meet their requirements (or some part of their requirements) is a net win. If the OP was correct that his technical specifications were exhaustive and accurate, a prospective purchaser would be in a good position to make the purchasing decision.

Are we now encouraging sales through obfuscation and sales-person trickery?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have also heard sales vs marketing explained in the context of a company that sells retail items, such as batteries:

"The job of Sales is to get the product on the shelves. The job of Marketing is to make sure they don't stay there."

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't see any evidence in this article that the VP of Sales' intuition about the datasheet was actually _correct_. So this anecdote isn't all that useful-- we're just learning what some suit's best guess is.

</comment><comment><USER10> This article really made me question the way we are doing things in our startup. Our product is relatively complex and I have written a lot of looong technical explanations for it.

In any event, this article made me wonder whether I am saying too much. I wonder whether all the long explanations I am writing are somehow turning people off, and if we would be better off having a short explanation and asking people to contact us.

In any event, just in case you are wondering, here is our cite:

extremetcp.com

Note this site is only a mockup we made. We have not officially launched yet and are still having a proper web designer and graphic artist design a proper website for us.

<comment><USER11> 1\. Your site looks great. It's a technical site, nothing more is really needed. I'd encourage you not to waste your resources on making it look nice. Launch instead. Your audience isn't buying eye candy. 2\. Don't just describe your service and technical solutions, show it. Show it graphically, show it with video. Make the data clearer. 3\. Don't listen to this marketing mess. It will be technical people who are evaluating your service, provide them with the information that they need to make an informed decision. 4\. Talk to your potential clients. Ask them what they need to determine your value, and provide that. Then charge appropriately. If your cost to them exceed your value to them, then you are in the wrong business. If not, be clear and straight forward and you'll do fine.

<comment><USER10> Thanks, I appreciate the detailed response. Actually I have been thinking how to show an internet TCP connection that goes through several routers with video.

<comment><USER11> This works well for a material solution.

[http://wn.com/Polartec%C2%AE_NeoShell%C2%AE_Technical_Animat...](http://wn.com/Polartec%C2%AE_NeoShell%C2%AE_Technical_Animation)

Clear and simple technical explanation.

Good luck with it. Let me/us know when you are launched.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As someone who makes technology purchasing decisions, this article infuriates me. Datasheets and a pricing structure are fundamentally more efficient than sales snowjobs. The fact that this approach is apparently effective makes me weep for the intelligence of other technical decision makers.

To this day, I refuse to do business with companies like rackspace who spam website visitors with marketing materials and chat windows instead of giving me rapid access to network, datacenter, hardware, and pricing data.

<comment><USER13> The dirty secret is: it isn't effective. It's just that the funnel is the only channel incumbent sales and marketing people allow to exists (hence the bonfire), so for lack of alternatives it just seems effective.

Basically the author is describing how to construct and maintain a self- fulfilling prophecy.

The fact that this whole funnel is completely superfluous for almost anything but bespoke services has been proven by the internet for while now. Anything from online shopping, booking vacations to self-service advertising works just fine without hordes of salespeople.</comment></comment>


A solution for designers who don't know Wordpress - <AUTHOR> http://bckmn.com/naked-wordpress/ <comment><USER3> I remember when I first tried to learn the WordPress Codex. It was way more difficult than it had any right to be, not only because of the strange format of WordPress themes (Why would you call a function to start a loop?) but also because WordPress didn't ship with any theme that could serve as a good example.

The default theme was, and still is, too bloated for learners to wrap their heads around. It has too many features, too many branches, and too many sub- templates extending the main template, due to the fact that it also needs to serve as a showcase for all of WordPress's features. I resorted to downloading the most minimalistic third-party theme that I could find, cleaned it up some more, and used it as a base for all the themes I've written since then.

I'm glad that someone finally made an open-source theme specifically for the purpose of being a rock-solid base for other themes. This is something that should have been done by the core developers 10 years ago. I don't know how much longer we'll have to suffer the sprawling spaghetti monster that WordPress is, but since a lot of us are stuck with it anyway, why not make our lives easier for the time being!

P.S. Please add a link to the GitHub repository, too. Some of us prefer git clones to tarballs.

<comment><USER4> The excellent Automattic-published starter theme Underscores [1] has been around for over a year now, and it's precursor, Toolbox [2], has been around since at least mid-2010. Both were designed by the core developers to be open- source bases for other themes, and indeed have been the base for all the official themes for three years now. There are also other base themes like Bones [3] and Roots [4] which are very popular, but are too heavy for my liking.

[1]: <http://underscores.me/> [2]: <http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/toolbox> [3]: <http://themble.com/bones/> [4]: <http://www.rootstheme.com/>

Also, I'm getting nitpicky here, but you also don't exactly call a function to start a loop. You call a function to fetch the posts in an object. You then use a pretty bog-standard while loop to loop through that object. You do call a method of said post object to determine whether or not the loop should continue - is that considered bad practise generally?

I understand why a lot of people think the WP loop is badly constructed. The start of a typical loop in WP is this:

        if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post();

which is essentially shorthand for this:

        if (have_posts()) {
        	while (have_posts()) {
        		the_post();
        	}
        }

I think the cause for some misgivings is that people might not realised that _have_posts()_ is actually doing this:

        return $wp_query->have_posts();

So you're actually just running a method on the global post object. You'll make similar post objects for custom queries, and interact with them in an identical fashion.

<comment><USER5> The reason that many people think the WP loop is badly constructed is because it entirely works by side effects. A (very simple) WP loop looks like this:

        <?php while (have_posts()) : the_post() ?>

<?php the_title() ?>

          <?php the_content() ?>
        <?php endwhile ?>

There are four unique functions there. All of them depend on non-obvious global state and three of them are used specifically to produce side effects. the_post() invisibly overwrites a global and changes an iterator. It not only mutates global state, but it does something different if you accidentally call it twice. And WP's the_whatever() functions echo something and return nothing?! Want to do some filtering on the title before you print it? Better use get_the_whatever() instead. WTF?! Heres how it _should_ work:

        <?php foreach ($post in $wpdb->get_posts() : ?>

<?= $post->title ?>

          <?= $post->content ?>
        <?php endforeach ?>

<comment><USER4> You're completely right on that, and I couldn't agree more; the mystery of the global states _is_ frustrating to a new WP developer.

Additionally, Wordpress has tons and tons of bad functions. If so many themes weren't dependent on them, I'd advocate for entirely stripping out a good chunk of them. Someone needs to write _Wordpress: The Good Parts_ , or at least a really canonical good practise guide. I guess it could be a good weekend project.

For the functions you mention, you're actually not too far off what they really do. _the_title()_ [1] is just slightly formatting get_the_title [2], which is mostly just returning _$post- >post_title_.

Unfortunately, skipping the built-in functions means also skipping the slightly obtuse but powerful filter system. However, if you're not interested in the built in WP stuff, then there's no harm in outputting the titles directly.

Btw, yes, I realise this is mostly academic in the context we're talking about.

[1]: [http://core.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tags/3.5.1/wp- include...](http://core.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tags/3.5.1/wp- includes/post-template.php#L71) [2]: [http://core.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tags/3.5.1/wp- include...](http://core.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tags/3.5.1/wp- includes/post-template.php#L102)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This could be useful as a starter theme for people who are still learning wordpress. Thanks!

EDIT: I often have to teach other developers the basics of Wordpress - <USER2> pointing someone to the Codex sometimes isn't good enough, especially on a tight deadline. This theme can really help out.

And seriously, enough with the negative comments about Wordpress. Love it or hate it, it's there to stay, and it's in our best interests to educate developers how to theme it correctly.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is one of the better things to come across Hacker News recently. People will hate on Wordpress all they want, but at the end of the day I still have to support a bunch of clients that use it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, and I completely agree with you about clients.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If your job is to make Wordpress websites and you don't know how to make Wordpress websites, then you should not be making Wordpress websites.

<comment><USER9> This isn't aimed at people whose job it is to write Wordpress themes. It's aimed at people who want to _learn_ to write Wordpress themes, for fun or profit.

No need to hate on new, useful teaching aids. Everyone needs to start somewhere!

<comment><USER10> Fixed it: If your _desire_ is to have a job making Wordpress websites and you don't know how to make Wordpress websites, then you should be making Wordpress websites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There is also <http://underscores.me/> which is very well maintained and popular (Github here <https://github.com/automattic/_s> ).

</comment><comment><USER12> Bones is a similar project based on HTML5 Boilerplate, source is on GitHub: <https://github.com/eddiemachado/bones>

</comment><comment><USER13> I wouldn't think the primary problem with a non-coder working with wordpress would be an inability to look up a function in the docs. Once you've gotten to that point, the actual looking up is trivial. There are a lot of other steps you need to follow first, and knowing how to do them or _that they even need to be done_ would seem to me a greater impediment: setting up a local server, creating a database for the install, getting the wp-config.php file, configuring said file (knowing the database credentials), knowing what a theme is and why you need one, understanding the theme files and hierarchy, being able to read php well enough to understand a functions is even being called, etc.

None of these things are particularly difficult, and they all have good documentation and tutorials, but I would think someone who was resistant to looking up a function signature would probably get bogged down and give up somewhere higher up on the list.

Now, this could still be useful for learners, I just don't know that the target is designers who can't be bothered to learn.

<comment><USER6> Not sure about the designer part myself, but in the consultation agency where I work, we often do custom themes for clients. Installing wordpress and configuring it is easy enough, even for new developers - but getting them to understand the intricacies of theme development can be a bit tricky.

The themes included with wordpress, twenty-eleven and twenty-twelve can be too complex, and have a lot of cruft we don't need. So we usually start with a skeleton theme, like this one - although this one is a particularly well documented skeleton theme.

Sometimes it takes an example theme like this to make things 'click' for a new developer. For that reason alone, it can be very useful.

<comment><USER13> Yes, for a new developer. But for a designer who doesn't have time to learn the codex?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was hoping the solution would include something other than WordPress.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is cool! but this presentation has one of the worst examples of chrome's windows font rendering issues i've seen.. chrome: <http://i.imgur.com/DT6qDKg.jpg> ff: <http://i.imgur.com/bUG6sxi.jpg>

</comment><comment><USER15> "many designers don't have the time to learn the WordPress Codex. It's huge. It's intimidating. It's confusing." — maybe it's just because I know Wordpress quite well, but the documentation I found when learning years ago (it's even better now) wasn't difficult at all. The Wordpress community is so big that you can Google solutions to most problems, find solutions and learn at the same time.

Of course being a designer and not a developer, you're going to struggle learning syntax and convention (that goes for any language or application like Wordpress). Stick with it, the Codex is great.

It's true the Twenty Ten and Twenty Eleven default Wordpress themes were bloated and if you were trying to use them as a base or learn, you'd probably be overwhelmed by the kitchen sink approach the core team took when creating those themes. Having said that, if you want a clean starting base for a theme, try using the bundled Twenty Twelve: <http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/twentytwelve> — which is arguably the best default theme ever to grace Wordpress. Most naked themes you encounter for Wordpress aren't naked at all (Bones especially abstracting an already abstracted CMS even more).

Having said that, this naked theme looks good. It's actually naked and well commented but not naked to the point it's really any less simple than Twenty Twelve (just less files). The benefit of considering a default theme as a starting base is that you get to see how the experts develop a Wordpress theme and the added bonus of how to use the custom background functionality and the Theme Customization API as well.

This kind of reminds me of my Actual Barebones HTML5 Github: <https://github.com/Vheissu/Actually-Barebones-HTML5-Template> — It's literally a HTML file that gives you a HTML5 structure without assuming you want jQuery or anything of the sorts. The term naked and barebones seems to have lost a lot of meaning in the web world.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is a good, simple theme, at least in PHP terms, and is certainly well commented.

However, I think it heavily falls down in it's ambition of being a good general-purpose starter theme by making some strongly opinionated decisions out of the box. There's far too much grid code in the CSS. It also bizarrely bundles fittext and fitvid, two excellent libraries which have nothing to do with Wordpress.

I would also argue that _anyone_ building a Wordpress theme should be looking things up on the Codex. You don't have to "learn" the Codex any more than you have to "learn" the dictionary. It's there as a reliable and canonical reference, and telling people not to use it will result in bad code and confused developers.

<comment><USER10> I never sat down to "learn" the WP Codex either. I began with the most simple and bare-bones WP template there was, and slowly built up on my foundation as I needed the features.

A quick Google search usually brings up the most relevant Codex page and while their code examples aren't always the best, the web usually provides enough user-written tutorials to get my the solution I need.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I appreciate you making this and have downloaded a copy to learn from. While I usually develop websites using Rails, more and more of my clients are asking about WordPress. I cringe a little each time (yes, I'm one of the ones who would rather not build sites with WordPress), but at the end of the day, I am in the business of helping clients get their stuff done online—if that means doing it with WordPress, then I'll dig in and get it done. To that end, this will be a helpful resource for me. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER17> I do believe this approach to commenting a basic theme could drastically help Wordpress theming beginners. I would go one step further, however, and also try to add links back to the documentation for the function calls, hooks, filters, etc.

For those interested, this would add a significant amount of reading material so they could have a better understanding.

<comment><AUTHOR> True. It had occurred to me, but I thought it might gum up the readability quite a bit with URLs in the comments. Probably a good idea, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is pretty great. I've been developing on WordPress for 7 years now. Can write my own plugins and functions and the like, but it's all self taught. I'll be giving this a once-over to see if I can learn something (or more likely learn something I already know, but learn it the "right" way). I'm sure I can.

</comment><comment><USER19> Looking forward to having a proper look at this.

I mostly use Starkers as a totally bare bones template starting point. If anyone is interested: <http://viewportindustries.com/products/starkers/>

<comment><USER20> Starkers is good for barebones, but I don't think it's filling the same void as this theme.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Don't know wordpress? lucky bastards.

<comment><USER22> Tell your client you don't work with WP unless they sign forms indemnifying you in the event their site gets owned and everything they have stored electronically stolen. Which will happen eventually, because WordPress. When I explain this to clients, they become open to other solutions that don't involve WP. To me, WP is like jQuery: A useful tool in the right situation, but far too often used because a developer is either lazy or lacking the technical skill to use something more appropriate.

Now let's see how quickly this gets downvoted into oblivion because WP.

<comment><USER23> A little dramatic? I don't think you do your clients any favors by scaring them with nonsense. What alternatives do you typically push? Are they better because they are more to your taste, or are they better for your clients?

<comment><USER22> It's not dramatic if you appreciate not having panicked clients calling you at 2am because Turkish hackers have swapped out the main page or worse, RBN is distributing BlackHole from their site. I am not particularly keen on pretending I'm a hosting provider (even if it's extremely profitable), because I don't want phone calls at 2am about problems from something I built six months ago. I'm old enough that I know what I want and what I don't want in life, and I am not ashamed of this.

I'm a developer, not a babysitter, and while I can stand guaranteeing a product I build, I cannot and will not try to guarantee a product that stands a very good chance of being hosed by some retarded exploit (relative to a custom product). Since I'm not in the babysitting business, "better" for my clients is a product that won't be the Turkish graffiti or BlackHole distribution engine in six months' time.

It also needs to be said that for some reason lately, clients have consulted developers who have put it into their heads that using WP automagically brings your price and development time down by half, regardless of the circumstances. That's absurd, but it's usually the first real question I field about the technology we use to build products and services. If a client really wants to know the specific reasons why we don't use WP, you can bet that I don't have a problem explaining this exactly as I've explained it to you, albeit perhaps with different terminology. Simply put, I don't use WP because it is too risky versus the custom product we build, and that whole mess is something I don't want to clean (for free, which is what they'll demand when it happens). Even if I "maximize" some profit margin using it, I still feel that I'd be doing a disservice to my client. I'm totally honest with my clients, and if they insist I use WP, I insist they go somewhere else. And at the end of the day, if you aren't honest with your clients, you're a bad developer and a bad person.

That's my opinion, and I realize other people feel very differently, and that's fine.

<comment><USER23> Well, I think you are pointing out issues with clients in general. A well maintained and well managed WordPress site is going to be more secure than something custom built. Having said that, if said clients installs all kinds of stuff willy nilly, that is an extra burden I can see that (you could lock that ability down though). If you can fully satisfy a clients needs with something custom and do it cost effectively all the better.

That certain clients have unrealistic expectations because WP should be cutting dev time in half etc, that's an interesting point. I think client education factors in here.

You can be running another CMS or something custom and run into security exploits all the same though, if not more so. Something custom doesn't get the same amount of eyeballs from developers to ensure everything is secure. And even static sites can be hacked and abused if a hacker gains access to the server.

<comment><USER22> You make a good point here, and it's true that I shop around for "the right kind" of client. I read an article some years ago (on HN) about firing terrible clients at the same time we were having trouble with one client in particular. I resolved to never even negotiate with a client that I think is going to cause problems for myself or my team. We haven't looked back, and it's been one of the best decisions I've ever made for the company. When a potential client starts insisting on this magic time/money saving thing called WordPress even after I explain my concerns, I know that they're probably not a good fit and start recommending other developers in the area that we know that do quality work with WordPress. And there is absolutely no shortage of those kinds of developers, so the client will end up getting what they want.

On security, the custom code we have written and deploy for our customers is stuff that I trust, because it's something we built ourselves and are extremely familiar with. Our products also come with a built-in automated "security service" that helps tremendously in keeping us from being the lowest-hanging fruit. Importantly, not even using WordPress immediately shuts down the near-constant traffic on the internet devoted to finding insecure WP deployments. While I completely agree that a WordPress deployment in the right hands can be as secure as anything out there, I don't trust the codebase in general, and certainly not as much as I trust my own code, despite there being a large number of coders sifting through WP. And all bets are always off if an attacker gains entry into the hosting provider.

As a specific example, WordPress doesn't use PDO at all, instead using the mysql_ functions (not even mysqli_). This is a pretty glaring problem from my point of view. The excuse WP core developers have used is that it's basically too tightly-coupled to use anything but MySQL (and specifically the mysql_ functions). That's a pretty big red flag to me, when a developer says that their product is too tightly-coupled to stop using functions that have been officially deprecated in the language for quite a long time. In fact, the feature request for PDO in WP is a kind of in-joke to outsiders (<http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/21663>).

Also (and importantly), I don't sell myself as a WordPress developer, but as a custom web and mobile applications developer. I have done this intentionally so that I won't succumb to the temptation to start rolling out quick and dirty WP deployments, but instead focusing on providing a custom-built, quality product that I can honestly say they can trust to function well and function securely for a long time to come.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> good job,

I just realised the theme is under GNU General Public License, does this means I have to share my modifications to the theme?, what if i want to build on it and sell it?

thanks

</comment><comment><USER25> Solution implies there is a problem.

<comment><USER22> Mui elegante, sir.</comment></comment>


An simple AES-based random number generator - <AUTHOR> http://www.caswenson.com/2015_04_26_an_simple_aesbased_random_number_generator

<comment><USER2> Using the AES-NI instructions seems like it should be more commonly used when you first think of it but the devil is in the details. I tried to use AES-NI for non-crypto hash functions and PRNG a few years ago and ultimately gave up on that approach even though it does work in principle.

The really short version: the AES instructions are too slow for the amount of usable randomness you get out of them. There are simple integer op sequences that exploit fast, multiple ALUs per core to consistently generate more usable randomness per clock cycle. The only "extension" instruction that generates efficient randomness per clock is the CRC instruction, though the output requires some additional processing since it is not intended to appear random.

That said, most popular hash functions can be greatly improved. For my own work I use a family of hash functions I invented a few years ago (really need to put these on github) that are 30-80% faster than Google's equivalent CityHash while having levels of robust randomness that look cryptographic when tested by SMHasher and similar test suites. My first attempts were actually based on AES, which is a cool way to do it and very efficient if you can make it work, but I could not get the required performance.

Though now that I am thinking about it again, I may have an idea on how to maybe fix the performance problem...

<comment><USER3> That's pretty close to doing a Fermat. :) Please post the code, if it's that good there's got to be some interest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Turns out that only clmul is needed to produce fast hash functions, even strongly universal ones.

[http://arxiv.org/abs/1202.4961](http://arxiv.org/abs/1202.4961)

</comment><comment><USER5> Is Go's AES-based hash function supposed to be a cryptographic hash? If so, did they use a standard transform (e.g. Davies-Meyer) for this task or roll their own?

</comment><comment><USER6> Why not use SHA-3 for hashing? I thought it can also use AES-NI extensions?</comment>


San Francisco retracts program to pay to reserve park's lawn areas amid outrage - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/24/san-francisco-dolores-park-reservation-policy-retracted <comment><USER2> I, personally,wouldn't want to live in a city where I have to have a reservation to sit on grass in a park - just on principal. That speaks volumes about the kind of thinking that is running government there and I would no parts of that. I, personally, prefer a more free-wheeling lifestyle.

Truth is, if people don't like this or other policies, you have to make your voices heard. Make sure you vote, especially in state and local elections. The people winning those elections ultimately have the most power to affect your daily lives.</comment>


The $24B Data Business That Telcos Don't Want to Talk About - <AUTHOR> http://adage.com/article/datadriven-marketing/24-billion-data-business-telcos-discuss/301058/ <comment><USER2> Many hedge funds have started to consume this type of data.

There is a piece in WSJ that discusses how one fund, two sigma, uses cell phone tracking data, as well as many other sources of data to build trading signals.

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-computers-trawl-a-sea-of- dat...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-computers-trawl-a-sea-of-data-for- stock-picks-1427941801)

In fact, I think the biggest funds are putting more effort into this type of big data exploration from funds than they are into trying to glean more information out of the time series data provided by the exchanges data feeds.

10 years ago, being able to scrape the web was a competitive advantage for funds, 5 years ago it was real time sentiment analysis of news reports.

Today, its being able to consume 100's of disparate data feeds and build alpha generating signals from it.

<comment><USER3> Are they tracking the CEOs of companies in which they invest, or what?

Tracking A, B, and C-level executives should be very profitable. Who meets with whom is valuable info. Especially when you also have their phone call metadata. The activity in advance of a merger should be quite visible.

Tracking elected officials should reveal who influences whom, and who's bribing whom. It may be possible to detect bribery to the level of establishing probable cause for an investigation in that way.

<comment><USER4> No, it's more about understanding consumer sentiment about a product category or company based on mining consumer information in aggregate. For example, a hedge fund could know how many people went inside a Wal-Mart over the last few months based on cellular location data. If there's an unfavorable downturn in store traffic, the hedge fund can shift its investments based on information that Wal-Mart won't report for another few months.

> Tracking elected officials should reveal who influences whom, and who's > bribing whom. It may be possible to detect bribery to the level of > establishing probable cause for an investigation in that way.

The way political fundraising is done in the US, most bribes look like legitimate campaign finance money. In some states, it's even legal for a candidate to simply redirect whatever is in his campaign fund directly into his own bank account after the election. And even in states where that is illegal, 501(c)4 / SuperPACs allow politicians to do whatever they want with the money with no oversight.

With laws like that, why even bother to investigate bribery?

<comment><USER5> >> Are they tracking the CEOs of companies in which they invest, or what?

> No ...

How could you know that? I doubt anyone would reveal it, and I don't see why they wouldn't - for the unscrupulous (there are plenty of them), it could be very valuable. Remember the story about Uber tracking journalists, for example.

<comment><USER6> They _would_ track CEOs, if only they could. I'm guessing that even in the US, mobile networks only share aggregate or anonymized data about customer location, and don't allow for spying on specific individuals.

If you want to track CEOs, I'm guessing it would be much easier to track their private jets or the license plates of company cars.

<comment><USER7> they MAY only share aggregate but what's stopping, for example, VZW using the data to their own means? competitors use their towers, potential acquisitions, market/political threats or other interesting entities. Laws and morals? Hahaha!

<comment><USER4> Most telecoms won't do this because the potential reward simply isn't worth the liability they would have for insider trading (if they get caught spying on corporate execs, then the SEC will assume they spy on every corporate exec). In fact, most big telecoms have a secret "VIP" program that flags accounts of especially wealthy, influential or famous people and restricts access to them unless you're on the "VIP" customer service team.

I'm sure hedge funds track CEOs, but they're not using data from Verizon to do it.

<comment><USER7> They calculate risk:reward and do whatever nets the most profitable return. Fines and fees are only anathema when the costs exceed the gains gotten from illicit behavior. Otherwise, paying fines without admitting guilt is the corporate way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been trying to think of a practical, effective way for smartphone end users to protect their confidentiality. This is the simplest solution I've come up with, but I'd appreciate any feedback:

Hardware:

* Tablet, or smartphone with baseband disabled.

* Cellular-wifi router (i.e., wifi hotspot), prepaid so the provider doesn't need your personal info.

.

Software:

* Android with per-app permissions controlled by user (e.g., user can enable/disable access to location data for particular apps). This could be a fork of Android or maybe there is security software that could be installed, such as on a rooted phone.

* VOIP app on phone

* VPN

.

By decoupling the baseband from the handheld computer (i.e., by keeping the tablet and cellular connection on different devices), using the cellular service without providing identifying info, and sending only encrypted data over the cellular connection (via VPN), you would protect your confidentiality from the cellular provider.

Because your phone number is decoupled from your cellular service (because you use VOIP over a VPN), nobody can tie your phone number to your location.

Of course someone who is determined could track you down. Your identity needs to be tied to your phone number or nobody will know how to call you; and your VOIP vendor could point someone to your VPN provider, who could point them to your cellular provider, who could figure out which hotspot you use. But I think it does protect you from everyday mass surveillance.

Any thoughts on how practical or effective this would be?

<comment><USER8> The biggest problem with this I think is that it files in the face of the goals and incentives of all service providers. They want your personal data for marketing (not to mention engineering reasons like infrastructure optimizations), and they need your personal data because government.

Some commenters mentioned that you can still get burner SIMs in Europe, but last time I checked it was incredibly hard anywhere in the world (maybe I don't know where to look) - even in China they want your official documents to sell you a prepaid card. The reason I always been told, that sounds plausible to me, is that easy access to burner phones leads to too much mess with criminals using them for their criminal things, and with random pranksters calling in fake bomb alerts.

<comment><USER9> When I was in Europe and Latin America both, I could buy SIMs by writing down whatever number I concocted for my DNI. Now, I actually wrote my passport number down but nobody really looked. One time I used my CA drivers licence, which could have been a Boy Scout troop membership card for all anyone cared.

<comment><USER10> Note that document forgery is a "real crime" most everywhere - so if you were caught (perhaps due to some unrelated investigation) - it might not be the best idea.

I'm not saying you shouldn't break the law to preserver your anonymity (at your own discretion) -- I'm just saying it's something to take into consideration. If you for example fear that you might get dropped in a black site, fed polonium or pushed down some stairs over your on-line activities -- a little document forgery might be just the ticket.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would consider this illegal wire tapping. Just because the carrier has the location data as part of its operations doesn't mean it can use that data for any other reason besides providing service.

I am glad this story is out, I have seen airsage data and it is easy to deanonymize. This company shouldn't be in business.

<comment><USER12> It is illegal but cops don't care because they want the same data. Time for a massive class action lawsuit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I can understand that when people are using a free service, they are the product. But mobile contracts are by no mean free. I find that amazing that the TelCos would even contemplate charging their customers and at the same time using them as products.

<comment><USER14> Cable TV is also not free, but people put up with ads (at least in the US). In fact, I'm not sure people even remember that one of the original propositions of cable was that it was ad free.

I think a more accurate adage would be that if companies can get away with ads (or gathering and selling personal data), then they will do so. Unfortunately it would appear that giving money directly to service providers does not actually protect you from such things, and I suspect the reason is fairly straightforward: All companies are driven to increase margins as much as possible, and will eventually feel financial pressure to try such measures. Unless consumers object strongly (i.e.: leave the service in numbers large enough to offset the benefits of a measure under consideration), such measures will in general find their way into use.

So what we're really saying is consumers need to pay companies more than the money would get otherwise. If consumers aren't willing to pay that price (and it shouldn't surprise us if they aren't---this can be a lot of money), then we shouldn't be surprised if such things show up, regardless of whether the service is paid or not.

<comment><USER15> >In fact, I'm not sure people even remember that one of the original propositions of cable was that it was ad free.

That's mostly a myth. The original purpose of cable was to get TV signal in areas where broadcast didn't go. The first basic cable channels were TBS-- which had advertisements--and Christian Broadcast Network--which probably didn't. The unfiltered cable stations, for the most part, had advertisements.

You are likely remembering HBO, Cinemax, The Movie Channel advertisements. They didn't have advertisements because you had to pay per channel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's crazy. I was at a big data conference and had a sales person tell me that they are a broker for several of the large telcos and that you could use the real world data of the as a datapoint for your programmatic ad buys. His example was horrible—but he said that they found that diaper companies had a shot at advertising to dads and getting moms to try a new brand so they used cell data to look at porn usage, browsing patterns that show that they have a child to do programmatic buys. It's getting way too creepy for me.

<comment><USER17> What conference was that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> They are using public airwaves. "We" can regulate them. If there is any "we" remaining in our shitty excuse for democracy.

</comment><comment><USER18> I am always surprised that ad block users do not also refuse to use smartphones.

If you ask me, I'd rather Amazon retarget a bag of chips at me via a 300x250 display ad than Verizon sell my location breadcrumbs to some unknown entity.

<comment><USER19> Adblocking is available on mobile platforms.

<comment><USER20> Not really available on Android. Google is using the "not interfering with other apps" excuse to ban all adblockers from the store.

<comment><USER21> Ghosted has a _web browser_ for Android. Works great on 5.1.1.

<comment><USER21> $!#/# AutoCorrect... Ghostery has...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Yeah, privacy is dead and gone.

The other day I was in UK at a Tesco open doors event. They talked mainly about tribes and agile, but also demoed a couple of new technologies.

Turns out they have face tracking operational on all their petrol stations. And they have, in lab, cameras and software that does face recognition and eye tracking. They plan to send targeted ads and coupons, based on what shelve products caught customer's attention.

</comment><comment><USER23> Somewhat ironically, given many people's feelings about Google and tracking, Google's Project fi might be the best network for privacy. Yes, Google targets ads based on some portion of your profile, but they do not sell your data to 3rd parties like the carriers.

Edit: I got curious and it looks like fi excludes call data from being shared with other Google services. [https://support.google.com/fi/answer/6181037?hl=en](https://support.google.com/fi/answer/6181037?hl=en)

Disclaimer: I work for Google (not of fi) so take my opinion with whatever size gain of salt you feel is appropriate.

<comment><USER24> Fi traffic still traverses the telco's network. Unless Google has special privacy clauses in place, there does not appear to be anything blocking Sprint (et al) from implementing the 'what websites are users visiting while in your store' feature mentioned in the article.

<comment><USER25> Except Telcos cannot link (time, ip) with a paid account when traffic is only passing through them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm surprised that HN readers would find this surprising. It's well known that cellular providers track user locations, Internet usage, and probably other things. It's well known that a very widely used strategy is to collect as much information as possible about end users by businesses for targeted sales and marketing, and by governments for security/control (to varying degrees depending on where you live, but it's even spread to poor nations such as Sudan [1]).

Why is this story a surprise? I assumed it has been happening for a long time.

[1] [http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2015/10/african- states-...](http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2015/10/african-states-hop- tech-surveillance-bandwagon/122876/)

<comment><USER26> I'm gonna try really hard to not go over the line of the recent rule about too much negativity, but this line of _questioning /reasoning_ really pisses me off. I see it quite a bit on reddit/twitter too. As a matter of fact, one time Jacob Appelbaum asked why people do it and my response was that it seems like a variation on the loaded question fallacy. Implies "you should have expected X", therefore attempting to avoid actual discussion, or shifting of the discussion via the overton window.

It's just such a useless statement. "Why is this a surprise?"

Well, first of all, I'm sure there are plenty of people who might not have had any idea cell data was being used this way and on this scale. Second, I'm willing to bet of the many who might have had a vague idea, this gives a more concrete background with rough numbers to solidify the idea. Third, It's not a surprise to those of us who have been paying attention, but the problem is when we have said something in the past it almost invariably has been ignored or dismissed as paranoid or crazy... At least until a good story or leak comes out and gets enough attention to grab enough media mindshare. Edward Snowden was a classic example of this at work. Sure, many of use knew about tempest and echelon and five-eyes, knew about cell tower metadata issues via watching ownership of said towers. Everytime with few exceptions though, publicly stating these things got us called "conspiracy theorists".

Maybe you just use this as a rhetorical and are one of us that have been paying attention, but this statement is not condusive whatsoever to intellectual discussion of a subject, and we need to address it's fallacy when we see it because it's too pervasive.

<comment><USER27> /choir

/agree

next instruction?

<comment><USER26> Next instruction is to vote out all incumbents in congress and instate term limits in order to shift the balance of power back to the people.

You left that pretty open so I took it where I wanted...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> One of my problems with this is how there is such a huge lack of alternatives for some people. I dropped having a cell for almost a year, and it was wonderful, in that I felt more secure about my privacy, but It also greatly affected my interaction, observation, and awareness of my surroundings. After meeting someone and getting a job that required on call though, it's now hard for me to imagine how I could go back to that again. To me, it's one more way that technology is evolving faster than people are keeping up with, but the kicker is that it's ripe for abuse by negarious entities. As Thomas Drake says, the Stasi's would have wet dreams about this tech today, and although you may not thing the $currentpower is so bad, what happens when the next guy uses the prescedent, forces the telcos to share, and dissapears anyone who disagrees about $policy? Oh, and now he has enough data to walk the cat back a few years and ex post facto you to $blacksite?

</comment><comment><USER28> Google gets into "fiber," which is a strategic threat to carriers.

Carriers get into analytics, which is a strategic threat to google.

The headline is misleading- I think the carriers have been pretty upfront with their shareholders about their intention to get into this space.

In a world with facebook, google, et.al., writing an article like this without that context is incredibly cynical.

</comment><comment><USER29> Deanonymization technology is very good. Does that still surprise anybody who's technically knowledgeable?

</comment><comment><USER30> [https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html...](https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html#bernstein)

DJB's hilarious talk on this topic. ("I _AM_ the man in the middle!")

</comment><comment><USER31> Telcos are using deep learning to cluster and classify users, and model and detect ab/normal behavior for everything from ads to fraud detection. Some are using us: [http://deeplearning4j.org](http://deeplearning4j.org)

</comment><comment><USER32> See this paper "Header Enrichment or ISP Enrichment? Emerging Privacy Threats in Mobile Networks": [http://conferences.sigcomm.org/sigcomm/2015/pdf/papers/hotmi...](http://conferences.sigcomm.org/sigcomm/2015/pdf/papers/hotmiddlebox/p25.pdf)

For example Orange in Jordan adds an HTTP header with the phone number of the client to every connection. And there are technical people out there still saying HTTPS/TLS should not be mandatory…

</comment><comment><USER33> This says "Telcos" and then lists specific names. Do we know for sure that any telcos (my concern is US-based) who do _not_ do this?

e.g.: T-mobile? I have less hopes for AT&T...

<comment><USER34> I wrote this story and spent months trying to get these guys to talk. As I note in the story, "Verizon and Sprint declined to comment for this story. AT&T and T-Mobile said they don't share consumer or location data with SAP, Sybase, AirSage or Vistar."

<comment><USER11> The data cannot for all intents and purposes be anonymized and still be useful. I have seen airsage data, they give the user a new unique identifier but it is consistent over a 30 day window. Very easy to deanonymize, the unique identifiers are only opaque to people who can't do math.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, data anonymization doesn't really work, except perhaps for highly aggregated data (eg: percentage of people out of work in a nation). It does provide a small barrier in the form that "if you don't look, you won't see" \-- so it might prevent _some_ inadvertent leaks of private information.

But it should rarely be considered a "security boundary" so to speak.

<comment><USER35> Why not? It's not hard to set up streaming filters that count how many people visit a certain mall in realtime without ever persisting the raw location stream.

<comment><USER10> Right. But when the data you have is detailed logs of individual movements, second by second, meter by meter - stepping down to "number of unique IMEIs in a 100 square km area" _is_ moving to "highly aggregated data". If that is what is seen as anonymization, the yeah. But then you've pretty much reduced a _dataset_ to _information_ that answers a specific question. Typically anonymization is (AFIK/IMNHO) taken to mean taka a dataset that can answer some questions, and transform it to a dataset that can _still_ answer some questions we haven't come up with, _but_ avoids answering questions that lead to identifying individuals. Eg: the problem with the NYC taxi driver data:

[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/06/poorly- anonymized...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/06/poorly-anonymized- logs-reveal-nyc-cab-drivers-detailed-whereabouts/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Sure, but it's short term. Calls and messages are dropping every month, even on developing markets. The raise of WhatsApp and similar messengers (FB, Hangouts) is exponential, no hyperbole.

Telcos are dead and they don't want to admit it. I'd bet my money on super cheap mobile ISPs raising soon. Based on a completely different technology and making better use of the mostly empty spectrum.

</comment><comment><USER37> If you're concerned about this, you should use an Android device with a no- contract plan you pay for with cash.

<comment><USER38> how would this circumvent the issue? you'd still have to get a plan with a carrier. they can still track your location and your habits through the data that you're sending through their network.

<comment><USER39> They can't correlate that behavior with you as an individual if you don't provide any personal information to the carrier. You could also just run your traffic through a VPN and avoid all of this.

<comment><USER40> do they really need us to provide personal information? they can get a +/\- 10m GPS lock on our home location.

<comment><USER39> Several dozen people live within a 10m radius of where I do. I'm not even a registered resident at that location, so they'll have a difficult time correlating "my" data to my personal information.

<comment><USER10> There's proably, over the last year of your movements, a point which you've made a purchase that can be linked to you. Maybe more than one, and those can be matched against your behavioural data. Or maybe they have parking information.

Perhaps you deal only in cash, and never give your name to a commercial entity (Hotel, gun retailer, car rental or seller...) -- but for most people that isn't true.

I also don't see why anyone would need your _exact_ address. The only use-case that comes to mind is to send you postal mail. If they have your SIM/IMEI/phone number/full name (see above) and behaviour patterns, if and when they want to approach you "in person" that would be easy?

[ed: come to think of it, pair this data with an archive of public web cams, and you could probably a) automatically pick out faces, and b) match recurring faces with location data, to c) pair faces with recorded data streams. Makes all those cameras in the UK seem even more creepy.]

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> How do telcos get GPS or wifi-level accurate location information? Are the phones sending that (easy enough to disable with software changes) or some other mechanism?

<comment><USER42> They get cell-tower-level accurate location information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> There are marketers out there who do ping your cell location so that they can use that to market items to you.

</comment><comment><USER44> I wonder where they get that number from.

</comment><comment><USER45> Was anyone super annoyed by the gigantic unnecessary top menu that moves with you as you scroll?</comment>


Show HN: This Domain Does Not Exist - <AUTHOR> http://thisdomaindoesnotexi.st <comment><AUTHOR> Built on top of Thomas Dimson's (@turtlesoupy) thisworddoesnotexist.com. I wanted to provide price listings for domain registrars but I couldn't get reliable pricing data from for example GoDaddy's API so I decided to leave it out completely. Still lots of features to add but thought it was at a stable (enough) state to show HN! All feedback appreciated :)

</comment><comment><USER2> You have reached the edge of the Internet. Please go back.

</comment><comment><USER3> skirlgrass.com is the only domain that I see even after refreshes, even opening in Incognito. Am I not supposed to see more?

<comment><AUTHOR> pushing a fix :)</comment></comment>