Inside Tumblr's teen suicide epidemic - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/02/24/inside-tumblrs-teen-suicide-epidemic/ <comment><USER2> Is three teens in two months really an epidemic? If these notes were passed around on paper, would they be blaming paper?

I think all the effort of this misguided article would be much better spent tackling transphobia rather than advocating we curtail free speech.

<comment><USER3> The generic problem on Tumblr still exists. Like those posts about romanticizing her suicide. Hate & Shame posts are still happen regularly, and people seeing gender issues in everything is something why people outside tumblr make fun of it.

Its not only about transphobia, its about how youngsters use tumblr.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you wish to prevent teen suicide, your task really isn't as difficult as you might think. You might be totally unwilling to do it, though.

How about making it so teens lives don't suck ass? How about helping them instead of actively trying to hurt them with good intentions? It's not like adolescence is some new thing that just popped up, but society has gotten progressively worse at dealing with it for a long time. We know that in cultures that empower adolescents and expect them to join the adult world, there is no such creature as the 'angsty teen'. We create that creature when we insist on treating them like children simply because we don't know what else to do with them with our current social structure - a structure derived from the needs of factory owners around the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and little-changed since.

Do you want to stop teen suicide if it means respecting them as human beings? What if you have to let them make the decisions that control their lives instead of you? Are you willing to admit that you have talked about adolescents the way racists used to talk about minorities, and the way men used to talk about women? Are you ready to admit that you've wronged a part of humanity, even though you had to pass through that class yourself? What you want and what needs to be done to accomplish it are not always things you can live with. Demanding that you should be able to have your desires met without having to pay the price is very immature. If you want teen suicide to go away but you still get to rob them of their autonomy and denigrate them, you are doing exactly this.

<comment><USER5> This issue with letting a teen do whatever he or she wants is that a parent is legally responsible for them. If my teenager son destroys thousands of dollars worth of property, guess who pays for it? There needs to be a some level of control over teenagers, and the level needs to be less than that given to an adult.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What is it about Tumblr that makes it so appealing to radical subcultures? And what is it that makes those subcultures thrive so well in that community?

<comment><USER7> Being trans is not a 'radical subculture'

<comment><USER8> I think he's referring to "people who commit suicide virally" not just Transgenders.

<comment><USER9> Which is also not a radical subculture.

<comment><USER3> This is not true. On tumblr, you can get bubbled with everything you say/do/are. And posts glorifying self-harm and suicide are still happening.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Shouldn't this have a trigger warning on it?

In all seriousness, many communities on Tumblr exist to find stuff on the internet to get outraged about. "The constantly outraged are locked in a desperate struggle to find meaning in things that do not impact their lives."

Tumblr communities also seems to idolize victimhood. Nothing demonstrates your level of victimhood quite like suicide. So, if you take generally marginalized groups (body size, sexuality, etc), run around searching for things to get angry about, and celebrate their status as societies scapegoats and victims it does not surprise me that Tumblr would have high suicide rates.

</comment><comment><USER11> [https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...](https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/278119/Annual_Report_FINAL_revised.pdf)

The national suicide prevention strategy has recognised social media as something to be aware of. This concern is reflected in some local strategies - it's possibly going to be in Gloucestershire's suicide prevention strategy.

People worked hard to get media outlets to develop guidelines that balance freedom of speech with reducing harm. The national union of journalists has pretty good guidelines.

[https://www.nuj.org.uk/news/guidelines-on-reporting-on- menta...](https://www.nuj.org.uk/news/guidelines-on-reporting-on-mental- health-suicide/)

Perhaps the social media industry could set up some meta group to draw up guidelines around social responsibility? Many sites have rules that ban pro- anorexia information.

<comment><USER12> Is there a similar document for US-news (Covering responsible reporting for situations like this)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Maybe focus on addressing critical societal issues instead of blaming a blog platform? This narrative is insane.

<comment><USER14> When there is a mass shooting and the media covers it extensively and gratuitously they significantly increase the chance of additional shootings in the following weeks.

When someone commits suicide and it gets a lot of attention there is an increase in suicides in the following weeks.

That's worth talking about.

<comment><USER12> Ok, so if mainstream news still hasn't figured out how to handle this why do we expect Tumblr to be on top of it? Mainstream news sets a TERRIBLE example of how to handle tragedies like this. I agree with briandoll, let's stop blaming Tumblr for doing nothing wrong (They aren't using this in marketing or as a way to get more users/eyeballs) and focus on the flaws in society that lead to these kids taking their lives.

When the news covers shoots (or stories like this) they ARE trying to attract more viewer, it's a very different thing IMHO to just leaving up posts and allowing users to share. I see Tumblr taking down posts extremely disrespectful to the deceased. Let's not pretend a blogging platform is to blame, instead let's blame the real people at fault: the parents and the communities that drove these kids to what they saw as their only option.

<comment><USER11> Some social media sites will restrict information that is directly harmful -- you can't create a subreddit to share methods of suicide for example -- so they may want to consider whether they've drawn the line in the right place.

If a site bans pro-anorexic content they've already said they're happy to restrict free speech if there's a strong enough protective need.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Tumblr is mostly about nice looking pictures. Architecture, food, fashion etc. People don't really talk or socialize on there too much. I feel like it's just by correlation that tumblr users might be more likely to have or express issues. It seems like "blogging" platforms always had that demographic. Most people would just use them as digital diaries. So unsuprisingly you'd find diaries of depressed people. Because, well, some people just are. Tumblr is just the latest, most mainstream iteration of the phenomenon.

</comment><comment> james-bronze As some who is in the thick of the "social justice" part of tumblr, or whatever you want to call it, I thought I'd put my two cents in. I actually saw this article on Tumblr, I follow the Hacker News bot. This article was ignorant, jumped to conclusions, and not very well informed in general. It quoted a bunch of "experts" who didn't seam to understand what tumblr is. They think that by talking about Leehla and Zander we are glorifying them, and therefor suicide, as appose to remembering them for who they wanted to be, and trying to make a safe and excepting environment for trans* kids.

I guess I'm just tired of adults reading one or two things and thinking they know better simply because of seniority. The reporter, the white, middle aged Caitlin Dewey, has a reputation for being facile and provocative. She's probably never been on Tumblr. They expert's she quotes, while educated, are still probably out of their depth. While some glorifying type blogs do exist (you can't generalize tumblr; there are more than 221 million blogs) the majority of blogs about mental illness, feminism, minority rights, etc, are based on trying to educate people and provide them with resources and a safe, understanding place. How about adults stop pointing fingers at the big scary internet and put time and effort into, I don't know, making safe spaces for teens so they aren't suicidal in the first place? That's what people on tumblr are trying to do when they "martyrize" Leehla Alcorn. They're putting a face on their movement. Not a movement to glorify suicide. A movement to outlaw trans* conversion therapy, and get proper sex ed in schools. A movement to try and stop teen's lives from being a living hell, a movement to stop teens from being pushed to suicide. A movement that many adults can't seem to be bothered with--but oh no! The teenagers are obviously trying to get each other to kill themselves because it's "cool".

</comment><comment><USER16> Is there really an epidemic? Are there any stats on this?</comment>


Bjarne Stroustrup (creator of C++) doing an AMA in /r/Denmark - vive-la-liberte https://www.reddit.com/r/Denmark/comments/41ud0w/jeg_er_bjarne_stroustrup_datalog_designer_af_c/ <comment><AUTHOR> Came here to post the same, literally at the same time. Even though it's in /r/denmark, Bjarne writes that he's been living in the US for a long time, and he should be perfectly comfortable with doing it in english.</comment>


August browser stats: Safari dominates mobile browsing - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2011/09/august-browser-stats-mobile-safari-on-top.ars <comment><USER2> The rather large discrepancy between these numbers and Statcounter's mobile numbers is explained by the first comment. Statcounter doesn't put tablets in with mobile, Net Market Share do.

[http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_browser-ww- monthly-201108-...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_browser-ww- monthly-201108-201108-bar)</comment>


Latest Twins: The oldest photo of New York & the oldest photo of London - <AUTHOR> http://blog.metrotwin.com/?p=1018

<comment><AUTHOR> Old photos are recreated using Google Streetview.</comment>


Duck Duck Go written in Perl - <AUTHOR> https://duckduckgo.com/faq.html <comment><USER2> How can he use Bing as a backend? I read their API's terms of service and it forbides you from changing search results in any way.

"(c) modify, filter, obscure, or replace the text, images, or other content of Bing results, including by changing the order in which Bing results appear (but this limitation will not apply to Bing results of type "Web"), intermixing Bing results with search results from other sources, or intermixing with Bing results any other content so that the other content appears to be part of Bing results;"

I was quite interested in using Bing API myself but that does seem too restrictive. I hope you can prove me wrong!

<comment><USER3> > but this limitation will not apply to Bing results of type "Web")

Isn't this what he is using?

<comment><USER4> That parenthetical only applies to the clause about result ordering. if you read the whole TOS, it's quite clear that Bing doesn't want you to do what DDG appears to be doing. In particular, mixing results from different services is a no-no in most search APIs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> And here are the HN comments on that Duck Duck Go architecture post: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=525048>

</comment><comment><USER6> The perl code isn't a full search engine though. He uses Yahoo! Build Your Own Search Service, so that perl code is just taking the results from there and throwing results out, reordering results, getting the zero-click info, etc. Yahoo does all the crawling.

<comment><USER7> Searching is not the same as indexing. DDG will give different results from Bing search, even though they use the same index.

Edit: DDG does some crawling in addition to using the Bing index.

<comment><USER8> I wonder if DDG could benefit from <http://www.80legs.com/> ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> From some early discussion (and their current job listing), search engine startup Blekko also has a significant Perl component:

<http://blekko.com/jobs.html>

<comment><USER5> Probably the biggest profile Perl (and Catalyst) public app in last few years would be the BBC iPlayer: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2008/12/iplayer_day_p...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2008/12/iplayer_day_performance_tricks.html)

<comment><USER10> Actually, YouPorn is powered by Perl and Catalyst and regularly makes the top 25 domains. Not sure if it beats the BBC main site though.

<comment><USER5> Yep! <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1501063> :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That's cool. I've used DDG a few times in the past and generally like so far. I had no idea it was done in perl though. It's nice to see new perl apps getting some press.

I wonder if they use any of the newer CPAN libs like Moose and family in the architecture?

<comment><USER12> As for Moose, he (DDG author) answered this here

[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/bbqw7/i_am_the_founder...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/bbqw7/i_am_the_founder_of_a_search_engine_duck_duck_go/)

Having written an indexer in Perl for my current startup product, I really can't see the need for using something like Moose. I'm biased though, as I'm not a big fan of OO programming. I gave it a try in Perl years ago but it really sucked. OO programming that is, but I guess Moose was designed to fix this, but it's a little too late for me. I was taught C in school and I've learned to live without OO.

<comment><USER11> I can't say I disagree with him on the dislike for OO. However if you are going to do OO in perl Moose is the way to do it.

<comment><USER13> If you agree with the design decisions. It's rather expressive, but not exactly a minimalistic approach to OO.

Did they ever improve the rather steep performance penalty? (esp. startup)

<comment><USER14> Runtime is fast, startup is not as fast.

I am not sure why anyone cares about startup time. I start my apps about once a month. 1 second instead of .1 second doesn't really matter. It's like saying, "C++ has an unacceptable performance penalty" because you have to compile your code before you use it. Yeah, you do. You can pay a million times at runtime or you can pay once at compile time.

For desktop apps, start them when you log in and connect to them via App::Persistent.

<comment><USER15> It's certainly worth thinking about if the app is a command line app. No one wants "ls" to have a 5 second startup time.

<comment><USER14> I agree. Please contribute your fix to Moose.

<comment><USER16> I believe he was responding to your "I am not sure why anyone cares about startup time." While you may have been referring specifically to Moose, it's possible to interpret that as a blanket statement for all programs and languages, even in context.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Thanks. Good Post. This is great example that good application and complex systems can be written in perl as well.

On a side note, i saw the previous post on DDG, where discussion was about how DDG does not store any private information. It makes sense in the context, that since he leverages upon other search engines , his cost of running is low. So he can afford to ignore user information otherwise used for commercial purpose by others.

<comment><USER18> >This is great example that good application and complex systems can be written in perl as well.

You could write "good application and complex systems" in machine language if you work hard enough. What are you trying to say?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> i had pictured something elegant like Lisp. but no it was just hacked together in Perl? Somebody needs to link to the famous XKCD strip. :)

<comment><USER20> You mean this one? :)

<http://xkcd.com/224/>

<comment><USER21> Interestingly, a search for "ostensibly xkcd" shows the comic in the first link:

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ostensibly+xkcd&v=](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ostensibly+xkcd&v=)</comment></comment></comment>


Mozilla's Manifest v3 FAQ - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2019/09/03/mozillas-manifest-v3-faq/ <comment><USER2> The tone of this post concerns me.

What comes across is that Google is not collaborating with Mozilla over the Manifest v3 changes.

Instead of using and appreciating the engaged Firefox developer ecosystem we have PM conference rooms in Google mandating huge changes based on... well they've been shady so far about their choices on Manifest v3.

The other thing that keeps bugging me about this is -

We need a tiered App store for browsers. Part of the lockdown Google wants to do isn't wrong but its driven by having WAY too many bad actors and shoddy developers in their Chrome store.

If you have an opensource web extension, a reasonable community and with reproducible builds? You can use more powerful API versions.

If you are jrando bizplan #2000283 you get the kinda trusted tier.

Frankly if Debian had a web browser extension "store" with 20 things in it, I'd use that exclusively and turn off both the Chrome and the Firefox store 100%.

<comment><USER3> > Frankly if Debian had a web browser extension "store" with 20 things in it, > I'd use that exclusively and turn off both the Chrome and the Firefox store > 100%.

There are a handful of extensions for Firefox and Chrome in the Debian repositories: [https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=webext-&searchon...](https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=webext-&searchon=names&suite=stable&section=all)

<comment><USER2> WOW that's awesome!

It's actually pretty close... no Vimium but ublock origin/matrix, tree style tab, privacy badger, browserpass

<3

Here is what's in Sid -

[https://packages.debian.org/search?suite=sid&searchon=names&...](https://packages.debian.org/search?suite=sid&searchon=names&keywords=webext-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > In the absence of a true standard for browser extensions, maintaining > compatibility with Chrome is important for Firefox developers and users.

About as close as Mozilla can come to outright saying, "Chrome is big enough and we're small enough that what they do _is_ the standard."

Still, it's encouraging to see that they're not removing the blocking API for now. I kind of hope this does push a few adblocker extensions to abandon Chrome.

<comment><USER5> I find it rather discouraging to hear they are not removing the blocking API _for now_. It's basically an empty statement, not reassurance. They still may or may not remove the API, they don't want to promise anything or show any commitment to users' needs and priorities.

<comment><USER6> It's basically the same as what happened two months ago with Firefox for Android being EOL'd pending a major re-write that may or may not support extensions. Mozilla is not willing to publicly commit to keeping their key features alive, and they keep hinting at the possibility that they will be leaving users behind in an attempt to be more like Chrome.

<comment><USER7> A rewrite that is faster than Chrome for Android.

<comment><USER8> It may be faster than Chrome on Android, but it's certainly not faster than Firefox on Android with adblockers. Not loading/parsing multi-megabytes of Javascript and images is huge. Loads of ads these days incorporate entire JS framework toolchains resulting in a binary bigger than the page they're being injected into. Eliminating a few ads and the rest of your browser could be a lot less efficient and still perform well. That's all before discussing how adblockers also reduce who is tracking you everywhere.

<comment><USER9> In my experience and limited testing, even with warmed-up caches, Chrome (without Adblocker) was faster than Firefox (with or without Adblocker), sadly.

I still use Firefox due to the security benefits of ad blocking, but I don't find the experience particularly enjoyable (although, thinking of it, it may have either significantly improved in the past ~half a year, or I just don't notice because of a more powerful CPU in my new phone).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > We have no immediate plans to remove blocking webRequest

> _immediate_

We know exactly what this kind of talk means. Don't blow smoke up our ass, Mozilla, just give it to use straight: We'll have `blocking webRequest` for as long as Google allows it.

<comment><USER11> And in case anyone from Mozilla is listening, this could well be existential for you. Right now, your pro-privacy stance is a principal factor in users choosing Firefox over Chrome.

Follow Google - and all its shady practices - and you will lose a large chunk of those users. Many of them, to use current terminology, are "key influencers": technically savvy people who advise family and friends what to do. Lose them and the outlook is, I suspect, pretty grim.

You're clever people. You'll know this. Google has a good few smart folk too (even if their motivation is questionable). It's easy to see this is difficult for you: Google is your primary funding source. Fail to comply with their wishes, and that funding might well disappear.

As has been noted in other threads, the tension between privacy principles and funding is a huge threat.

For the good of the open web, I desperately want a successful Mozilla, and a technically excellent Firefox at the forefront of a pro-privacy, anti- surveillance re-balancing of the internet.

I don't doubt the difficulty in filling a $300M funding hole. I'd gladly pay $30 per year for a pro-privacy Firefox. Another 9,999,999 is a tall order. On the other hand, you have c250M users...

<comment><USER12> This tech people influencing friends and family lore has been disproven many times. No non tech user is using duck duck go.

<comment><USER10> Where are you getting this information? Plenty of "tech" people influence their friends and family with respect to what software/hardware to consider. My entire immediate family uses DuckDuckGo as their search. All of their (Mozilla) browsers have DDG set as the default. Not a complaint from anybody; DDG does a damn fine job.

<comment><USER12> One data point doesn't change the fact that HN hasn't mass converted the world to use DDG. They may also be telling you they use DDG while they use !g or Google.

<comment><USER4> But similarly, one data point that DDG hasn't overtaken Google doesn't mean that tech people's preferences don't influence ordinary people.

I thought it was generally well-accepted that developers mass-moving friends and family off of IE 11 was part of the reason why other browsers ended up beating it.

Similarly, I thought it was mostly accepted that part of the reason so much of the web was optimized for Chrome was because Chrome had genuinely better developer tools, and developers preferred to optimize first in Chrome and second in other browsers.

Maybe there's more disagreement on those points than I realized.

Even on the subject of DuckDuckGo, which is probably not going to be mass- adopted any time soon (if at all), actual usage numbers are increasing faster than any other major search provider, including Google[0]. Whether or not those numbers are coming from ordinary people or tech people, clearly somebody is being convinced to use DDG. Is it going to be a revolution? Probably not. But it's not nothing.

I really wish people would stop defining success as a monopoly. Even in the browser space, the goal isn't to make Chrome vanish. We just want Firefox to have a big enough user-base across enough markets that it can't be ignored. Even 20-30% would probably do it. Mozilla doesn't have to kill Chrome.

Similarly, if every non-tech user keeps searching on Google, and DuckDuckGo just becomes a great search engine that every programmer prefers, that's a pretty big win. I would not call that a loss.

[0]: [https://duckduckgo.com/traffic](https://duckduckgo.com/traffic) (of course saturation does play a role here)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This points to the disturbing truth of how incredibly complete Google's monopoly is: Even browsers not based on Chrome are strongly pushed to implement Chrome's platform changes anyways.

<comment><USER14> Mozilla abandoning their much more powerful XUL-based extension system for Chrome's inferior WebExtensions wasn't already an indicator towards that?

<comment><USER15> It's been known since around 2010 or 2011 that the full extension system was too powerful for effective maintenance of Gecko. Going through XPCOM for everything prevents effective optimization within the codebase, and generally ensures that the APIs have to become less ergonomic compared to modern C++ (or JS, for that matter). Furthermore, multiprocess content tabs was heavily delayed because turning it on would break practically every extension (since you could no longer have synchronous access to content).

Moving away from that was definitely the right approach for Mozilla, but the timetable and effort into bringing up a non-XUL/XPCOM-based extension mechanism definitely left something to be desired.

<comment><USER16> Pretty much as soon as they added multi processor support they had to start throttling background tabs anyway, same as chrome. It's not at all clear that going multi process was a win. And years after they change their are still a bunch of things extensions did that don't work anymore. I was never a huge fan of XUL or any non-native UI, but it did it's job for years and it's replacement doesn't.

And due to their follow google nature of monthly updates there's no stable version to fall back on.

<comment><USER17> Multiprocess was and is a huge win for performance, stability and security. In the post-Spectre world it's essential.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Chrome's June 2019 statement about Manifest v3 in which they tell us all how much they really care about users and this totes isn't to weaken ad blocking(which directly affects their revenue - that's just a coincidence - pinky promise!):

[https://blog.chromium.org/2019/06/web-request-and- declarativ...](https://blog.chromium.org/2019/06/web-request-and-declarative- net-request.html)

<comment><USER19> Here's an interesting thought experiment: what would it take to convince you that this change really _is_ being made for performance and security reasons, and not to hurt ad blocking?

Given the level of cynicism directed at Google by the HN community, is it even possible for Chrome to lock down extension permissions in a way which _wouldn 't_ be seen as some sort of aggressive move against ad blocking? Keep in mind that secure, user-friendly permissions systems _do_ have to be somewhat restrictive in order to be effective (see Android, iOS, etc), and that ad blocking extensions will necessarily be impacted as a result.

<comment><USER20> #1: They would have to give a rationale for the change which actually makes sense. The privacy explanation does not make sense because the observational capabilities of the API are explicitly not being removed. Therefore there is no benefit to user's privacy as a result of the changes. The performance explanation also doesn't make sense if we look at the numbers that adblocker vendors have been publishing in response to these changes.

#2: In light of the backlash to the proposal they would have to actually consider not implementing the change or at least consider some alternative implementations. So far all they have done is say "we've heard your concerns, and we're just going to do it anyway". Many interesting ways have been proposed to achieve the same supposed benefits as what Google claims manifest v3 will provide. But they have not responded to any of those ideas and are blindly persisting with their proposed model with all its downsides. So why even act like this is some kind of open process which involves real developers?

#3: They would need to demonstrate that they are actually concerned about the ability of adblocker vendors to deliver good products. They could have created a transition window from the old API to the new API to see in practice how adblocker vendors choose to use it and what limitations they face. But they haven't done that, instead they announce they're killing the old API the same moment they introduce the new one. That to me demonstrates that they don't really care if it's sufficient for those vendors or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I hope the ad blockers completely abandon Chrome when this change gets pushed through, rather than attempting to work around it.

Google is using a slow-frog-boil approach to re-desensitize their users to ads, and it's working. The only thing that will work here is a big splash of cold water to the face.

Maybe Chrome losing all of its ad-blockers overnight will finally start making a dent.

<comment><USER22> Unfortunately the owners of the most popular adblocker have successfully created a revenue generating business out of adblocking and aren't about to abandon Chrome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> In the absence of a true standard for browser extensions, perhaps Mozilla should consider trying to form one by leading with a strong example instead of weakly implying that they will eventually probably cave to the monopolist.

It's also quite disappointing how there is seemingly no one from Mozilla here, engaging with us on this topic. Instead, the only communication we get is one- sided corporate speak, with no real ability to respond.

If anyone from Mozilla is reading, who do you think will spread Firefox among non-technical users if not the type of crowd that frequents HN?

<comment><USER24> > In the absence of a true standard for browser extensions, perhaps Mozilla > should consider trying to form one by leading with a strong example instead > of weakly implying that they will eventually probably cave to the > monopolist.

That's exactly what they've tried to do. Firefox exposes a `chrome` namespace object to extensions which is intended to be more or less API compatible with what Chrome provides and added the `browser` namespace object where improvements to the base compatibility are added (e.g. switching from callback based APIs to Promise based APIs). See the bit from the wiki below and the link to the browserext spec:

> Mozilla has worked with Microsoft and Opera to implement browser extensions > so that developers can write extensions that work across multiple browsers. > The preliminary specification[1] matches what Google has implemented in > Chrome so that extensions will work on Chrome, Edge, Opera and Firefox.[2]

[1]: [https://browserext.github.io/browserext/](https://browserext.github.io/browserext/)

[2]: [https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebExtensions/Spec](https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebExtensions/Spec)

<comment><USER23> Well, it's not enough to try, unfortunately. They have to persist and this talk about the importance of keeping compatibility with Chrome in the context of blocking webRequest removal is not very encouraging.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is disappointing. Mozilla can't seem to make up their mind if they want to offer a different product from google or just "Chrome, but for nerds"

</comment><comment><USER26> > Cross-origin communication: In Manifest v3, content scripts will have the > same permissions as the page they are injected in. We are planning to > implement this change.

What will this mean for GM.xmlHttpRequest in userscripts? Adding content from several different sites with userscripts can be very powerful.

<comment><USER27> Was wondering about that too - but this seems to be just a Spectre defense, not a change in what extensions can do.

The change[1] only affects _content scripts_ because they run in the same process as the website. You're still able to fetch arbitrary origins in a background page. So GM has to move the fetch to the background page, then send the content to the script via message passing.

[1] [https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-security/extension- co...](https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-security/extension-content- script-fetches) .

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Mozilla really needs to get that if they compete with Google on Google's terms, they're rapidly heading toward extinction.

Mozilla ought to be the browser for a private and usable web, but it seems they have occasional sneezes where you question what they're doing (this, pocket in recent memory).

<comment><USER29> I'm extremely worried that once Google disables ad blockers in Chrome, websites will wholesale block any and all non-Chrome browsers. Be it through user agent sniffing, feature detection, or fingerprinting, Firefox simply won't work anymore.

The future of the web where Google is in complete control is straight up nightmare fuel. Microsoft in the early 2000s never scared me as much as the future we're headed into does.

This won't be IE versus Netscape since websites are no longer served as plain old HTML. They're messy, thick, and impenetrable javascript blobs--not documents. We're not arguing about websites simply not rendering correctly in the less popular browser. This is a battle for the absolute control over information distribution.

What do we do to prevent what's happening?

Google already shot down XHTML, which was rich with semantics. That was a web written for documents and tools that could query those documents for meaning.

Whatever Google has become needs to be dismantled. The ad company can't be the browser company and phone company. It's a perverse alignment of incentives.

<comment><USER30> > This won't be IE versus Netscape since...

Well, also since Chrome if open source, cross platform, and standards compliant, and IE was none of those.

And Google (unlike Apple) allows competing browsers, based on modified Chrome code, or entirely different engines.

Soon we will have a good, cross platform Edge browser, thanks to Google, and a menu of browser options in Europe thanks to the EU. (Maybe other countries should push for the same.)

But Chrome if no IE.

And I believe that in Europe they will soon be

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> perhaps a more optimistic take on "no immediate plans": there could eventually be an alternate standard for webrequest that addresses Chrome Devs' (perhaps legitimate) privacy concerns around most extensions being able to sniff, modify, and log all of your traffic on the entire web with a single, unobtrusive modal click. There is room to make the web platform more secure without stripping power from the user-agent, surely, or giving bad actors a trivial foothold. Frankly, my concerns around the webrequest API are numerous, the only reason IMO that Chrome isn't deprecating webrequest in Enterprise builds is for corporate spyware.

At the very least a new webrequest spec that is more ergonomic and more safe than the webrequest API (without neuturing adblock) could show whether the emperor has no clothes, vis a vis "Google Adtech is directly influencing Chrome and web platform development" plots

</comment><comment><USER32> "no _immediate_ plans to remove blocking webRequest" ... yikes

</comment><comment><USER33> Really interesting what the new Edge is going to do in this regard...

</comment><comment><USER34> I dont like the idea of extensions being able to inject data in either direction.

On top of that, I'm not in favor of extensions doing anything to improve security - I want that in the base browser.

</comment><comment><USER35> It seems I'm in a minority here, but I was never comfortable installing any adblock extension because the existing request blocking API means that the extension would see all web traffic generated by me (including private URLs that are otherwise not known to anybody but me).

I personally feel that now with manifest 3, I can actually install adblockers since the newer APIs do not share all my web traffic with the extensions.

Can somebody explain why removing blocking API was overall a bad decision by Chrome?

<comment><USER36> > the newer APIs do not share all my web traffic with the extensions

The webRequest API can observe the URLs you visit without needing blocking permission.

And so does the webNavigation API, the tabs API, history API, content scripts, possibly cookies API and whatever else does not come to my mind.

<comment><USER37> Shouldn't those be visible in the permissions prompt, prior to installing the extension?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> A humble proposal: A build of firefox that initially differs from Mozillas in that

\- it has a different default search engine selection that can be sold in the same way that Mozilla sells this same feature to google presently

\- no ads on new tab page

\- bundled with ublock origin

The goal being to increase the value of selling the search engine selection while decreasing the value of mozillas in effect siphoning off some of the value of mozillas primary revenue stream.

Such funds could be donated back to Mozilla or used to maintain a fork that doesn't ruin adblocking. Their choice.</comment>


Help us find an international name for our startup - <AUTHOR>

Hi everyone,
We're at a loss to find an internationally viable name for our online menu app, StamSted.
In Danish, StamSted means your 'haunt', 'that local place down on the corner' and that's what we're all about. Local menus, you can order directly from.
We're not sure if the the StamSted will be catchy/memorable in english.
We considered stuff along the lines of 'patronify.com' - but patronize is probably more about being condesending, than being a patron these days!
Cheers if you have any thoughts or ideas! :)
stoffr from StamSted.com, Denmark. <comment><USER2> I find the key in naming is that it's memorable. Everything else, including the meaning, is secondary.

Here are some random ideas:

dishdrum.com

menubowl.com

plumplate.com

tastytango.com

menulia.com

foodflava.com

menusandwich.com

fooduppa.com

tastyrelish.com

tastytricks.com

You can tell I like alliteration ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> cheers, I can tell you do! Thanks.

<comment><USER2> If you want to use the word menu, then these are also available:

menuli.com

menulio.com and menul.io

menulix.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Try <http://namestation.com> \--> go over there & start a name contest. It's kinda like crowd sourced name picking. You might get 20-30 odd names, but other than that the participation isn't great. For instance, people don't seem to vote on name ideas given by others & are more interested in posting their own ideas.

But FWIW I think that StamSted is quiet good, and homestead means a persons home, so I can see the connection there. In fact, if you don't use it, I might commandeer the domain :P

<comment><AUTHOR> OK that's great to hear. Thanks elssar.

would StamStead be better?

<comment><USER3> Well, both are very similar & since StamSted is in Danish, I'd say go with it. Could even mention that on your site, maybe made to look like a Danish-English dictionary entry. At least that's how I'd do it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> StamSted isn't horrible to me, but it is a bit awkward because it's two harsh syllables together.

I'm fond of somewhat memorable made-up names (the better ones being long gone), over two dictionary words concatenated. I think most people don't care if the name connotes what the site is about. For example, I like Spotify better than RadioSave.

How about including some part of "local" or "menu" in the name? Give me an address to mail an idea for one that's not taken (email@example.com?).

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi genwin,

Thank you for your comments :)

I agree that something with local in it would be good. I'm thinking there might be a good word for those 'hidden' places that only the locals know.

Anyways: You're welcome to write us at firstname.lastname@example.com

Best,

Kristoffer (@stoffr)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> One of the sites that helped me find great name suggestions was <http://www.squadhelp.com>. I got 400+ business and startup name suggestions in 2 days. They engage people across the world who submit ideas – and the best idea wins the award amount. It sure beats the time and energy I would have spent myself to come up with names. You might want to check them out

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't see any problem with going with StamSted.

Google did not mean "search the web" until a company by that name improved search. America did not have an English word for glastnost until the Russians gave us their word for it. For the international market, I would just make an effort to adequately convey the concept. You might find that some countries don't really have a word for it because they don't really have it as a practice. In the U.S., that idea is kind of old fashioned and not the way most Americans think of their lives. To my American ears, it sounds like a delightful practice found elsewhere or that might have been around when I was growing up with my pet dinosaur and rotary phone. It sounds attractive but it doesn't sound like something we really have currently. I would be thrilled to have some foreign company teach my country such things.

Best of luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your, comment Mz. I find it really insightful as to how Danish words are understood in foreign ears. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> try <http://domaintyper.com>

Very fast domain availability check and gives you suggestions for names based on partial input.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! That site is really cool.</comment></comment>


Fast Fibonacci numbers using Monoids - <AUTHOR> http://www.haskellforall.com/2020/04/blazing-fast-fibonacci-numbers-using.html <comment><USER2> Exponentiation-by-squaring is usually phrased as the problem of computing X^n, but its actually usually more natural to ask about X^n Y. Unlike finding X^n directly, this reduces directly to another instance of the same problem.

      X^n Y = (X^2)^(n/2) Y if n is even
      X^n Y = X^(n-1) (XY) if n is odd

So you don't really need to take a full matrix-matrix product; you only need to square a matrix, X^2, and take a matrix-vector product, XY.

In the case of Fibonacci matrices, they can be represented with their first column only since they have the form

      A  B
      B A+B

so these are just

      square (A, B) = (AA+BB, 2AB+BB)
      mulVec (A, B) (u, v) = (Au+Bv, Av+B(u+v))

</comment><comment><USER3> > You can more easily generalize this solution to other arithmetic sequences.

Fun trick, if you ever find yourself in a situation like this - instead of calculating the matrix by hand (a tedious chore), you can use an algorithm called Berlekamp Massey on the terms of your sequence and then find the k-th term in O(N log N log K) time instead of O(N^3 log K) time (like matrix exponentiation would).

<comment><USER4> Here's a nice blog post about the algorithm [https://codeforces.com/blog/entry/61306](https://codeforces.com/blog/entry/61306) .

It definitely makes sense, recurrence relation does have its own polynomial. Even the naive polynomial multiplication is very fast.

Now, what I'm wondering is if this is possible to do with adjacency matrices of graphs.

Recently I was calculating the number of paths of a knight going from one position to another in K moves. Ended up doing O(N^6 log K) (N is the chessboard dimension) which was fast enough for a small chessboard but maybe there's a way to turn that adjacency matrix to a polynomial and do the same.

<comment><USER3> Yes you can.

Cayley Hamilton theorem gives a linear relation between A^N and the terms less than that.

So for your problem, you can calculate the number of paths from A->B of length k in k*N^2 time, you need O(N^3) to compute enough terms for Berlekamp Massey, O(N^2) to compute Berlekamp Massey, and then O(n log n log k) to compute the k-th linear recurrence term with FFT.

I've actually considered writing a blog post about this :) It's a cool example of how much further you can go with a problem where many people only know the O(NK)DP solution.

<comment><USER5> Please write a blog post!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _… in fact, you can easily compute up to f(10^8) in a couple of seconds using this code (not shown, because the result takes far longer to print than to compute)._

Is this actually this fast or did the author get fooled by lazy evaluation or something along that line? For the fun of it I tried to come up with an algorithm in C# that works more or less like the matrix exponentiation one but without explicitly using matrix exponentiation. When finished it failed to terminate for large numbers and I eventually estimated that it would take about six hours to find the 100 millionth Fibonacci number with this code on my laptop. I don't see why this would be so much slower than a straight forward implementation of the matrix exponentiation algorithm, where is the big difference if any? Or is the .NET big integer implementation that slow? Or did the author get fooled after all?

      private static BigInteger Fibonacci(UInt32 n)
      {
        if (n == 0)
        {
          return BigInteger.Zero;
        }
        else
        {
          var (a, b) = (BigInteger.Zero, BigInteger.One);

          var mask = 1u << (Int32)Math.Floor(Math.Log(n, 2));

          while ((mask >>= 1) != 0)
          {
              var s = a + b;

              var (a2, b2, s2) = (a * a, b * b, s * s);

              (a, b) = ((n & mask) == 0) ? (a2 + b2, s2 - a2) : (s2 - a2, s2 + b2);
          }

          return b;
        }
      }

<comment><USER2> I transcribed your code into Python and it took about 90s to do fib(10[star][star]8) on my T420. Language doesn't matter of course, this is just an exercise of the bignum library.

Nice idea to use s.

<comment><USER6> Okay, so the .NET big integer implementation is like two orders of magnitude slower than it could be? I will have a look into that, I always assumed that all big integer libraries are more or less comparable in performance. Thanks for the hint.

EDIT: I found an issue [1] concerning .NET big integer performance, it seems it is only using pretty basic and relatively slow algorithms, especially for multiplication which is the relevant operation here.

[1] [https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/issues/14407](https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/issues/14407)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The blog post author abandons the closed form solution of (φ^n - ψ^n) / (φ - ψ) citing loss of accuracy to demonstrate the pretty neat matrix solution.

The closed form solution is not quite a dead end. The floating point errors can be avoided if one works in the field of number of the form a + b √5 where a and b are rational.

All one needs to is to maintain the numbers a and b separately. The same doubling trick applies for exponentiation.

<comment><USER8> This is equivalent to the matrix solution. The matrix has eigenvalues φ and ψ, so working with linear combinations of powers of the matrix is the same as working over Q(φ, ψ) = Q(√5). This is not just an equivalence abstractly mathematically, but computationally the solutions are identical and run within a constant factor of each other.

<comment><USER9> I believe it's equivalent to working in a basis that diagonalizes the matrix rather than working in the standard one. Much easier to work with.

<comment><USER10> Indeed (φ^n - ψ^n) / (φ - ψ) is what you'd get if you diagonalize the matrix.

However the _field_ you'd be working over is Q[√5], although really we're interested in the subring Z[φ] here. And since φ is (trivially) an eigenvalue of the matrix, let's call it M, this is equivalent to calculating in Z[M] by the Cayley-Hamilton theorem.

Of course some of these constructions might be easier to work with, and certainly something like Z[x]/(x^2-x-1) allows for fairly straightforward calculation, but you're still doing the same multiplications essentially.

And if you're working in a convenient ring you don't really need the ψ^n term, since you can just use that φ^n = F_{n-1} + F_{n} φ.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Very neat. Picking up the exponentiation by squaring algorithm for free by implementing Semigroup is a really nice touch.

Since you're defining your own custom Matrix2x2 class and <> operation anyway, you can save a little space and computation by relying on the fact that every Fibonacci matrix is of the form: [ a+b, a; a, b ]. Thus only two member variables are needed, and <> can be implemented with fewer multiplications.

</comment><comment><USER12> The essence of using Exponentiation by Squaring to calculate Fibonacci sequences in log(N) time is also covered in SICP exercise 1.19.

The elegance of the Haskell solution is that you only need to define a Monoid, and then you get exponentiation by squaring for free. This is a great example of abstraction done right.

</comment><comment><USER13> I see monoids more and more everyday. A bit outside the topic but does anyone have a good introduction-level resource to learning monoids?

<comment><USER14> It depends on what you mean by introduction. I think the Typeclassopedia entry on Semigroups and Monoids is pretty good, if you are familiar with basic Haskell syntax.

[https://wiki.haskell.org/Typeclassopedia#Semigroup](https://wiki.haskell.org/Typeclassopedia#Semigroup)

<comment><USER13> Thanks for the link.

I am not good with Haskell but I meant in general mathematical / algebraic introduction, explanation or a lecture.

<comment><USER15> Try this online book by Bartosz Milewski:

[https://bartoszmilewski.com/2014/10/28/category-theory- for-p...](https://bartoszmilewski.com/2014/10/28/category-theory-for- programmers-the-preface/)

<comment><USER14> He also has lectures on YouTube which are great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > You can more easily generalize this solution to other arithmetic sequences.

The closed form as sums of exponents also easily generalizes. You can find the roots of an associated polynomial, and the those roots are the numbers you take powers of. This is explained on Wikipedia here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurrence_relation#Solving_ho...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurrence_relation#Solving_homogeneous_linear_recurrence_relations_with_constant_coefficients).

<comment><USER12> As an aside, a lovely (freely available) book on using generating functions to calculate closed form solutions to such problems by the late Herbert Wilf: [https://www.math.upenn.edu/~wilf/DownldGF.html](https://www.math.upenn.edu/~wilf/DownldGF.html)

One of the more enjoyable maths texts I've read.

<comment><USER17> Nothing to add to this except to say that Generatingfunctionology is an awesome book. Although I haven't read it, another in the same space is A=B, also co-authored by Wilf ([https://www.math.upenn.edu/~wilf/AeqB.html](https://www.math.upenn.edu/~wilf/AeqB.html)) (another co-author is Zeilberger, whose name anyone interested in computational discrete math will recognise).

<comment><USER12> I've spent some time on A = B as well. Very pleased to find someone else interested in these things on here!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Several years ago I hacked together a little tool for exploring integer sequences that can be generated via matrix-vector products:

[http://dpw.me/clear-the-deck/](http://dpw.me/clear-the-deck/)

Sadly it's not as functional as it once was (sequences are supposed to continue generating as you scroll down the page). If anyone's interested in lending a hand to get it working properly again, I'd love to hear from you! My email is in my profile.

<comment><USER18> I wrote a blog post about it here at the time:

[https://aperiodical.com/2014/06/discovering-integer- sequence...](https://aperiodical.com/2014/06/discovering-integer-sequences-by- dealing-cards/)</comment></comment>


Just wrote my first ebook about using Ionic for cross-platform app development - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/Full-Stack-Mobile-Ionic-Framework-ebook/dp/B00QF1H380/

<comment><AUTHOR> For those who are big fans of Ionic Framework, I am also providing full preview version of the book at [http://www.innovie.com/](http://www.innovie.com/). Code at [https://github.com/innovieco/ionic-ebook](https://github.com/innovieco/ionic- ebook)

</comment><comment><USER2> Just purchased it, looking forward to going through it. Why did you choose an e-book over screencasts or other methods of teaching? Also, what are your thoughts on supersonic?

<comment><AUTHOR> I am planning to do some version of screencasts in the future. It's just I need a partner to do the voice (I am not native English speaker). As far as Supersonic, it's still not a fully web app, meaning you still have to use some sort of native code mixed in Steroid. I am not sure how it works when you have larger app with lots of plugins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is there any other good resources but your book?</comment>


Building a Flask Single Page Application – Part 2 - <AUTHOR>

Video: http://youtu.be/9bum8TDd8Ag
Part 2 of a 4 Part Series on building a Flask Single Page Application.
Purchase the Real Python at http://realpython.com courses to be part of the next session!
We're building a Tinder for finding pair programmers! :) <comment><AUTHOR> clickable links:

[http://youtu.be/9bum8TDd8Ag](http://youtu.be/9bum8TDd8Ag)

and

[http://realpython.com](http://realpython.com)</comment>


Crayon Physics Deluxe released - <AUTHOR> http://www.crayonphysics.com/

<comment><USER2> How about an even awesomer game for free: <http://www.phunland.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> This looks like an awesome game for 20 bucks.</comment>


Dumbo: CIA system to take over webcams, microphones - <AUTHOR> https://wikileaks.org/vault7/#Dumbo <comment><USER2> "...is run by the field agent directly from an USB stick; it requires administrator privileges..."

So?

This just in - people with physical and administrative access to a machine can install monitoring software - news at 11. Be sure to tell every MSP or Enterprise IT group to tune in.

<comment><USER3> Just because a threat vector is well known and not cutting edge does not make the SPECIFIC information of its existence, implementation, and capability completely worthless

<comment><USER4> Just very very close to worthless. Other than CIA and security cams, I'm straining to figure out what is worthful about this story. Can you help us out?

<comment><USER5> Confirmation that this is something real and not a theoretical risk. Similarly to Snowden, it wasn't newsworthy because it was possible and probably done, it was newsworthy because it existed and was currently done. (obviously the scope of this news is much more reduced)

If you are a US citizen, that tells you how you tax money is being spent. If you are a foreigner, you may have a few more ammunitions to get the funding for whatever security project you are working on.

Even on HN very few front page items are really worthy of anything more than procrastination material and it succeeded perfectly well at that: both you and I had better things to do than comment on this article.

That's a very blasé attitude btw, reminds me of the first time I have seen a wild tortoise, my family just commented: "yeah I see them all the time on TV, what's the interest?"

<comment><USER4> Here's an article about hacking security cameras from 2012. It was the first hit on my google search.

[https://www.wired.com/2012/05/cctv-hack/](https://www.wired.com/2012/05/cctv- hack/)

This was public then and you can expect the black hats knew this years before. So again, what is new about this other than CIA? Yes, the CIA does these things; they wear black hats and that's also something we've known for quite some time.

Perhaps a more enlightening article would have been a wiki dump of manufacturers and distributors of these 'security' cameras not giving a shit about this problem.

But hey, Snowden.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't have a real problem with this - physically accessing target systems to install spyware is exactly the way they should be doing things, as opposed to finding exploits that affect us all and keeping quiet about it.

<comment><USER7> With a warrant, oversight, and a lack of coordination with foreign governments.

<comment><USER8> Frankly, I think this is an unrealistic expectation. The whole point of spying/intelligence is that you operate in foreign environments without their knowledge with the assumption they may have a hostile response if you're discovered. The point is to get the unvarnished truth, not the information filtered through a foreign government which has its own objectives.

You also don't need a warrant for breaking into the systems of a non-citizen outside the borders of country initiating the hack.

As long as the various intelligence agencies are not operating within the borders of their own countries, targeting their own citizens or sharing information in totality with foreign agencies as quid-pro-quo to achieve the same (Five Eyes), I have no moral issue with intelligence agencies doing what they're supposed to do.

<comment><USER9> > As long as the various intelligence agencies are not operating within the > borders of their own countries, targeting their own citizens or sharing > information in totality with foreign agencies as quid-pro-quo to achieve the > same (Five Eyes)

You mean the U.S. wholesale spying on the British _for_ the British to circumvent British privacy laws and the British doing the same for the U.S.?

In a situation like this, there's little point in saying that intelligence agencies can't spy on Americans, because they're doing it anyway, they're just using a proxy to do so to bypass American laws.

<comment><USER10> There remains no evidence of this happening, despite countless leaks from the intelligence communities of all involved countries. The members of Five Eyes, formerly BRUSA, explicitly _don 't_ spy on each other according to the agreement. [http://www.bbc.com/news/world- europe-24715168](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-24715168)

<comment><USER11> Everyone believes this myth now apparently, it is best not to bother pointing out the fact that there is no proof.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I fancy these sophisticated spy tools which only require physical and admin access to a target machine...

<comment><USER13> ...maybe these are just 'decoys' to make everyone else think "their tools are pathetic"?

maybe they have stuff like james bond watches that can burn stuff with lasers & stuff.

<comment><USER14> I would assume they have their ways of obtaining admin access. Probably those auth-bypass tools have a separate codename.

Dumbo itself needs admin access, but nobody said they don't use multiple tools in combination.

<comment><USER15> With the various NSA leaks, we've seen that this is exactly the process. One suite of tools to compromise different types of hardware, and another suite of tools to be loaded depending on what outcomes are desired.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If the CIA didn't have this they really wouldn't be doing their job... The question, of course, is whether they have proper oversight.

</comment><comment><USER17> We really need more companies like Purism. [https://puri.sm/](https://puri.sm/)

<comment><USER18> What's so interesting/secure about this hardware? How is this more secure than me installing linux myself?

<comment><USER19> It has hardware switches for the camera and microphone, and it comes with an unfused CPU, allowing to disable Intel ME.

[https://puri.sm/learn/hardware-kill- switches/](https://puri.sm/learn/hardware-kill-switches/)

[https://puri.sm/learn/intel-me/](https://puri.sm/learn/intel-me/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Can we get a wikileaks reveal on Julian Assanges finances?

<comment><USER21> Or Putin's finances, now that would be a bombshell.

<comment> 52-6F-62 As a supplement, I highly recommend (to anyone) watching William Browder's testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

[https://www.c-span.org/video/?431852-1/william-browder- overt...](https://www.c-span.org/video/?431852-1/william-browder-overturning- magnitsky-act-putins-top-priority)

edit: I was having trouble with the C-Span player recently, so here's a youtube cap. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-RsAGjUXtg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-RsAGjUXtg)

One of the senators put it well when they said something like 'it plays out like a novel nobody would buy'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> You know, the CIA could probably avoid a little public push-back simply by not naming their system penetration components like the demented 1984 creeps that they are.

"The Brutal Kangaroo project consists of the following components: Drifting Deadline is the thumbdrive infection tool, Shattered Assurance is a server tool that handles automated infection of thumbdrives (as the primary mode of propagation for the Brutal Kangaroo suite), Broken Promise is the Brutal Kangaroo postprocessor (to evaluate collected information) and Shadow is the primary persistence mechanism [...]"

<comment><USER23> They use a perl script for naming. In WWII some nazi radar systems had badly picked codenames.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The title is misleading. This tool is to mute all the speakers, disable all the cameras and network adapter. I think it's required for a meeting etc. A better program maybe just pull the power off.

</comment><comment><USER25> 64-bit XP is MOST CERTAINLY supported by this attack - it's the same kernel/codebase as Server 2K3 and Server 2K3 is indeed attackable with Dumbo since it's the same Vista kernel and codebase.

And if 32-bit XP is supported, you can almost guarantee that Windows 2000 is supported by this attack as well, since XP is literally built on the 2K kernel.

Well, never could say I trusted Wikileaks with 100% accurate information.

</comment><comment><USER26> Since the purpose of the software is to "disable webcams, microphones" (the "takeover" part is not implied in the text) using a USB stick one my assume it more efficient to use the power switch instead...

</comment><comment><USER27> With every new publication Wikileaks just confirms it's now just an agency of the Russian Goverment whose purpose it's to undermine the confidence of the american people in their institutions.

</comment><comment><USER28> Can webcams and microphones be turned on without turning on the hardware indicator lights by someone who doesn't have physical access to the device in question?

</comment><comment><USER29> seems like it requires admin access to be useful.

<comment><USER30> And none of their other leaked tools have the ability to grant elevated permissions? Getting elevated permissions is one of the easier things to do.

<comment><USER29> Not on Windows 7+ it isn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> It's a shame that when I see "Wikileaks reveals CIA" I'm thinking "Hmm, I wonder what's happening today RE Russia" instead of being concerned with the actual release.

<comment><USER32> It's really sad that this is what Wikileaks has turned into.

Regardless of the authenticity of the information, they clearly only release information when it is politically beneficial for their(?) motives.

<comment><USER33> Right - it seemed like they supported "the people" in the early days. They exposed Bush and Obama when they had things worth exposing.

Then came the promises of damning Bank of America leaks that never materialized, holding on to Guantanamo docs until NYT scooped them, the 2010 insurance file that was never cracked, the 2016 insurance file that was never cracked, ...

<comment><USER34> > Right - it seemed like they supported "the people" in the early days. They > exposed Bush and Obama when they had things worth exposing.

Well they're still supporting "the people", just not the ones you align with. Which of course means they've lost all credibility and we should ignore them now, right?

<comment><USER32> That's a really dishonest argument.

How are they supporting the people? How does this benefit society? All this does is attempt to take away the spotlight from other shit happening in our country. Every major country develops hacking software. This isn't news. This isn't even surprising or ground-breaking. It's not even that invasive, it requires physical access AND an admin account!

This is just a distraction. Society is no better off with this information being public.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Spy agency has spy tools. I am shocked.

</comment><comment><USER36> Requires admin access and physically inserting a USB drive.

Wikileaks will next reveal water is wet. Why does anyone pay attention to these charlatans?

</comment><comment><USER37> russialeaks

</comment><comment><USER38> Wikileaks is a tool of the KGB. Why are we sharing their disinformation here?</comment>


Google: The World's Frenemy - <AUTHOR> http://www.theage.com.au/technology/biz-tech/google-the-worlds-frenemy-20091118-im8z.html <comment><USER2> My theory of newspapers (and magazines, but focusing on newspapers).

Lets back up a century or three. Many years ago newspapers sold _news_ , printed on paper (see Benjamin Franklin <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin>). They charged a lot of customers a small amount each for that news, and made a business out of aggregating lots of pennies. They also could sell advertisements and notices because they were a conduit to a relatively wide audience.

Google [http://images.google.com/images?q=benjamin+franklin+newspape...](http://images.google.com/images?q=benjamin+franklin+newspaper)

Front page: [http://www.ndsu.nodak.edu/instruct/rcollins/436history/pictu...](http://www.ndsu.nodak.edu/instruct/rcollins/436history/pictures/franklin.jpg)

Example advertisements: [http://mitchellarchives.com/wp- content/uploads/2007/11/1748-...](http://mitchellarchives.com/wp- content/uploads/2007/11/1748-franklin-ship-ad-and-pay-up.jpg) and <http://www.earlyamerica.com/image/earlyamerica/past/past.jpg>

Over time, newspapers and magazines reduced their reliance on aggregating lots of "pennies" subscribers paid and increased their reliance on advertisements. From a business point of view, this made lots of sense because aggregating pennies is much more difficult that getting large chunks of money from advertisers... and they could.

What newspapers ended up doing was outsourcing the bulk of their news gathering to news aggregation companies like the Associated Press (AP). The up-side was it was cheaper to buy news from AP than create it independently. It was also much more efficient, obviously, since only one source could feed many, many papers. The down-side was that the papers became dependent on the outsourced news feeds and advertisement money. The dark side is that we can have hundreds of papers all feeding the same news source - it looks like there is independence in the news reporting, but it is a mirage.

The result is that newspapers became more and more an intermediary broker ("middleman") and generated less and less actual content. They brokered their local eyeballs to advertisers and outsourced the creation of the product the eyeballs were looking for (news) to aggregation companies.

This made/makes newspapers very vulnerable to disruption by Google, Craigslist, and bloggers/tweeters because they (Google et. al.) are able to use the internet to bypass the local newspapers, to cut out the middleman: the newspapers no longer control access to (local) eyeballs. As a result, they lost their ability to broker eyeballs (acquired by outsourced news stories) for advertisements.

Just to aggrevate the problem for newspapers, the internet is a _MUCH_ more efficient path to eyeballs. The cost of the medium is small compared to physical products (well, internet access is pretty expensive, but it is already purchased by the eyeballs so the incremental cost to layer news on top of the internet is nearly zero). Couple that with the internet-based advertisement to be able to target specific classes of eyeballs, and you have a compelling case for lots of advertisement dollars to switch from printed medium to internet medium.

News aggregation companies are also suffering as a "knock-on" effect. The internet cut deeply into the primary funding source of newspapers - advertisers. As a side effect, this "cuts off the oxygen supply" to news aggregation companies.

Moral of the story? You can make a _lot_ more money as a middleman than as a company that produces a product, but it also makes you _very_ vulnerable to disruption by companies that are more efficient (or more hungry) brokers.

</comment><comment><USER3> I see Google as a biggest disruptor nowadays. Since they have two huge cash cows (Adsense+Adwords), they can basically offer any software service (Gmail, Office, Photo storage, Maps, GPS, webhosting, etc. etc...) for free or very cheap, since their advertising clients can pay for that. More specialized services often cannot compete, since they don't have such ads money. And this I see is a potential danger, that Google will totally crush a lot of competition in several IT-related industries, and what's more, collect a lot of personal data of all their users in the process.

Microsoft was often criticized for their monopolistic behavior, and rightfully so, but it is nothing comparing to what Google does (or plan to do).

Just to clarify: I don't want to bash Google, I am also their user and their products are usually good, but what I want to say is just the strategy they choose is very disruptive.

<comment><USER4> There is a very obvious solution to that problem. Don't use Google services. I have seen that people who usually criticize Google the most (not saying there is anything wrong with criticizing) are also one of their bigest users.

There are a lot of reasons to not like MSFT's monopolistic business, they pulled (and still does) all types of dirty tricks, including buying out government official in third world countries so that they can sell MSFT's powered notebooks to children and one up "One laptop per child project". That's probably one of the least evil thing they did.

If you can provide just one example of Google doing anything remotely sinister like that I would love to listen to it.*

Google, in most cases, provides the best possible service with the best possible price (often free). Some of these services in all likelihood probably is not even profitable by any margin anytime soon - or if at all, ever. This causes companies that do provide similar services at a cost to improve what they do; otherwise they would do nothing and stay content with the way things are.

Google drives innovations to their competition.

IE9 and its improvements would not happen if there was no Chrome.

Firefox would not rethink its approach (their next release concept looks almost like chrome) and improve in performance at the pace they are now.

MSFT would not aggressively improve their OS performance with windows 7 to be functional on a netbook. (Some of us knew about Google OS way before it was officially announced, in all likelihood MSFT did too).

Bing would not exist.

While there are real concerns about privacy, in the days of online applications and services, privacy never existed in first place, regardless whose service you are using.

I think Google contribution far outweighs its negative points. However I can understand why some HN crowd can feel threatened by them.

\</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

* There was one incident in China I can remember.

<comment><USER3> I was only commenting about a global effect I see Google is causing to the IT industry. I personally do not have a problem with them, nor do i feel threatened. It's not about me, but the Tech industry in general.

[This causes companies that do provide similar services at a cost to improve what they do; otherwise they would do nothing and stay content with the way things are.]

I agree in a general sense, but in reality, in some sectors you are just not able to compete with free. Google can offer it for free, just because they pay it with the money they earned from another service (online ads). But, I don't say this is inherently evil or monopolistic, I just wanted to express my observation that this strategy causes disruption.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> ""The evidence was now visible that Google was attracting more internet advertising than anyone else, and these dollars were being siphoned from traditional media," we read."

That's just not true. Much of Google's ads come from sources that simply would not have advertised in traditional media, at least not in the same way. Performance marketing, which isn't really possible in a magazine, is a humongous share of their revenue.

I know of people who make a load of money selling things like obscure electronics or truck parts through Google. They pay dearly for those ads, and were never going to be placing them in the New York Times.

</comment><comment><USER6> "Is it a friend to the fourth estate, on which democracy depends, or an enemy?"

Just.. wow. Suddenly changing the business landscape for an industry(hastening the change, really) becomes a political issue?

<comment><USER7> Sadly, it is typical of journalists to see themselves in this way, and to see anything that threatens the system that gives them so much love in a negative light.

Ironically, after how they covered the Iraq war, it seems it it is the fourth estate that has sold their soul.

<comment><USER8> > Ironically, after how they covered the Iraq war, it seems it it is the > fourth estate that has sold their soul.

You seem to think that coverage of the Iraq war was special/different. How cute.

Journalism and journalists haven't changed recently. Your awareness of them has. (I like to say that there was a change in the mid 70s, but that's probably my awareness changing.)

<comment><USER7> > How cute.

would you say that to my face?

<comment><USER8> > would you say that to my face?

Why not? Are you a thug?

<comment><USER7> because it's quite rude to be so condescending.

journalism has changed in the past 30 to 40 years with the rise of the 24/7 news cycle and consolidation of TV news organizations under corporate control.

<comment><USER8> > because it's quite rude to be so condescending.

So? I'm occasionally rude.

The changes in journalism are distribution and a perception of who is pulling the strings. However, strings were always being pulled.

And, the perception of who is pulling the strings hasn't actually changed. Folks have been complaining about big biz, "outside agents", etc for as long as news has existed. They wouldn't have called it "big rail", but ....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wonder if there is much in this book different to The Google Story, sounds like another rehash of the same story.</comment>


Ask HN: Hiring Dilemma - <AUTHOR>

Is it good to hire a fresh undergraduate who doesn't have any professional experience, but finds you (your company) while looking for the work of his interest, or is it better to hire someone from job portal looking for a change with 1-2 years of experience?<p>I know it also depends on lots of other factors (e.g. technical & communication skills), but do you think it is worth to hire someone who is interested in your work and give them some time to learn? <comment><USER2> If the amount of training they will both need and their intelligence is relatively equal, I would go for the one who found me and is interested. Passion goes along way in making up for talent. If he is smart and passionate, chances are he is going to be a good employee. Passion cannot be taught, if someone is just not interest or mildly interested, there is not much you (an external force) can do about it. They can if they chose to, become interested and passionate, but that takes internal action on their part. Again, others factors short of experience being equal, I would go for the guy that already shows the interest, because it is an indicator of possible passion for the subject domain.

</comment><comment><USER3> Having no experience is definitely detrimental to the candidate, but I would say, if the undergrad is extremely excited about what you are building and the challenges they will be working on then the experience can be overlooked. You can gauge motivation of the undergrad through side projects, its hard to be a student (at least from my experience) without being exposed to subjects that are so interesting that you simply can't resist building stuff.

</comment><comment><USER4> Like many people I was very fast to pick up programming, but it still took a couple of years of programming full time before I made the transition to being a very productive programmer. As a programmer who hired other programmers, I was concerned about the skill level of programmers who had just graduated college. As a rule the most productive people I hired had a few years of full time experience.

</comment><comment><USER5> all else equal, the fresh undergrad is a tabula rasa, generally untainted by the habits from working for another employer. You have a real opportunity to train them and instill good practices.

in my experience, its very difficult to correct certain really nasty habits (e.g. style) but its easy to train new people in how to do things the right way.

though it should be said that it requires much more day-to-day intervention to deal with the kid, so its an investment

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't know that 1-2 years experience is that big a deal. I would probably go with the kid...</comment>


Why do matter particles come in threes? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-do-matter-particles-come-in-threes-a-physics-titan-weighs-in-20200330/ <comment> GuB-42 Unlike what the title lead me to believe, it is not the number 3 that is special. It could have been 2 or 42, the question would have remained the same.

The real question is "why are there N copies of each fundamental matter particles?", where N is a seemingly arbitrary number that happens to be 3.

<comment><USER2> Hmm. I dunno, I think there's something to three specifically. One is singular; AFAIK two (and any even number) has a symmetry; so three is the smallest number of things you can have in a set and have it be a set, instead of a unity or symmetry.

<comment><USER3> > so three is the smallest number of things you can have in a set and have it > be a set, instead of a unity or symmetry.

Three is the smallest number of things you can have in a [non-empty] set and have it not be a set of one or a set of two? You don't say. :)

<comment><USER2> Okay, I'll try again.

AFAIK, the number 1 shows up in nature, it actually represents either an everything (this entire atom) or a 0-1 continuum.

When the number 2 shows up in nature, it's always balanced opposing somethings. Newton's third law, matter / antimatter, negative/positive electric charge, n/s on a magnet.

When the number 3 shows up in nature, you actually get a set of things. Proton, neutrons, electrons; and perhaps this theory now runs into a problem because I'm not thinking of another trinity.

So, if you have two things, and they're not opposites, they imply more things in the category. If you have one thing in a category, and it's not an everything or a spectrum (of the everything), it implies more things in the category. If you have three things in a category, they only imply more things if two of them have a symmetrical relationship (resistors, inductors, capacitors). The category may still have more things. but it's not otherwise implied.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's unfathomable to me that anything about the universe would be pinned at some integer value.

My intuition is that particles come in infinite numbers of "generations" and we just so happen to be only able to measure three of them right now.

<comment><USER5> _Everything_ in the universe is pinned at integer values. That's the reason quantum mechanics is called what it is.

<comment><USER6> _Our model_ for everything in the universe is pinned at integer values. I think that's gp's point.

<comment><USER5> No, the _physical evidence_ shows that everything in the universe is pinned at integer values in point of actual physical fact. It's not just our models. It goes all the way back to blackbody radiation and the ultraviolet catastrophe of the late 19th century. The evidence for QM is overwhelming. It's not just an artifact of our modeling.

<comment><USER7> The ultraviolet catastrophe is for sure a good example of this phenomenon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is common trick in designing reliable systems out of unreliable components: replicating the unreliable component 3 times. When one of the three behaves differently from the other two, it's declared faulty and replaced. This wouldn't work with 2 copies as it wouldn't be possible to say which copy is faulty. So roughly speaking, for an outsider, the HN website appears as a single entity, but under the hood it's 3 replicas. This is an analogy to a proton that consist of 3 quarks.

<comment><USER9> But not a good analogy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Could it be that just like having extra neutrons in an atom make it more massive, but still have nearly the same reactive properties - that the particles themselves are made up of something else that can have extra "higgs" that make them more massive?

<comment><USER11> If that were the case you would expect there to be some change in how upper particles behave compared to lower ones, but as best as anyone can tell they act identical other than being heavier.

<comment><USER12> Well, identical except for weak force interactions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The rule of three is also a decorating rule. You should always clump picture, vases, etc. in clumps of three. The reason always given is balance. Three esthetically produces the best visual balance. Maybe the universe has an esthetic sense?

<comment><USER14> I question the universality of this rule. What makes two vases on a table less "balanced" than three? What about a single vase? Four? Five? Symmetry in physics isn't really about aesthetics.

<comment><USER15> > What makes two vases on a table less "balanced" than three?

Perhaps two points create an implied line that cuts across the table, where as three or more create a polygon that fits -within- the table with some balanced amount of space between the polygon sides and the table sides.

Alternatively (but perhaps similarly), it's the same reason why two-legged tables don't really exist.

<comment><USER16> Two-legged tables don't exist because the minimum number of points to define a plane is 3.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> An entertaining introduction into the zoo of subatomic particles: [http://enwp.org/Atom_%28Asimov_book%29](http://enwp.org/Atom_%28Asimov_book%29)

</comment><comment><USER18> It's because of the 3 Fates.

j/k

More seriously, this is an interesting coincidence.

<comment><USER19> Perhaps we are on track to implementing the three seashells.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> In related news, the existence of biscuits and triscuits hints at a third food known as monosquits.

<comment><USER21> I read somewhere that the origin of the name 'triscuit' is because they were originally baked "with electricity" from turbines in/near Niagara Falls.

They had a picture of some period promotional material with the "baked with electricity" line, but who knows, in this era of deepfakes it easily could have been just a photoshop job done for fun amidst pandemic boredom.

Snopes [0], which is for the most part what passes for fact these days, says it's legit.

[0] [https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/triscuits-electric- biscuit...](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/triscuits-electric-biscuits/)

<comment><USER22> [https://twitter.com/sageboggs/status/1242968530250870786](https://twitter.com/sageboggs/status/1242968530250870786) is a Twitter timeline thread of an investigation into this.

[https://twitter.com/TheRealTriscuit/status/12431774024921620...](https://twitter.com/TheRealTriscuit/status/1243177402492162049?s=20) is Nabisco's response through the brand account.

[https://twitter.com/TheRealTriscuit](https://twitter.com/TheRealTriscuit) currently says "elecTRIcity biSCUIT…but you can just call us Triscuit #ifykyk High voltage sign" in the bio field.

Other theories have been that the original recipe has only three ingredients, but Nabisco quashed that, and that it's named for triticum since it's a wheat snack.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> As though a) we actually know that particle flavors come in threes and b) any human being's opinion on this is worth more than that of the schizophrenic on the corner who at least believes he is talking to God.

<comment><USER24> " _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something._"

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

<comment><USER23> Yes, I think I was in a particularly bad mood when I wrote this.

But I also stand by the sentiment that a schizophrenic is in a better position than Weinberg because the schizophrenic hears God directly and so has reason for believing what he hears. Weinberg doesn't believe in God but somehow has convinced himself that his aesthetic preferences have something to do with the intrinsic nature of the universe.

Weinberg has been out of the physics game in and in the world of letters for my entire lifetime. He won a Nobel Prize (which is generally a tombstone for careers) before I was born. I don't want to say that his insights are completely worthless, but they're already conventional wisdom (so they don't add much to what we already commonly think) and he's just gotten so used to talking about the nature of the universe that he isn't trouble by the fact that he has nothing more than a hunch to back him up.

In this case, I have to be _ad hominem_ because there's nothing but the man to discuss. He has a hunch. His hunch is worth printing because he's a Great Physicist (or whatever the original title was). To point out that the hunch is just a hunch, I have to point out that the Great Physicist is just a person and the hunch has no grounding whatsoever.

<comment><USER24> This includes much more information and so is less shallow, and therefore much a much better post than upthread. There's an interesting phenomenon where people often reply to moderation comments with a post that says what they meant in the first place.

The personal aspect is arguably still a problem. But it's also true that critiquing celebrities isn't the same thing as garden-variety personal attack, since they represent more than just themselves individually, and you make it clear that the intention isn't personal.

There's at least one revision a comment like this could go through to get better: a little more information about what the specific ideas are. For example, which insights are already conventional wisdom? Readers who are not steeped in the field could learn something from that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> three-dimensional space => three particle families ;-)</comment>


Customer success for startups - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
There's going to be a special track for startups at the Customer Success Summit. http://www.customersuccesssummit.com
You can also use the follow discount code to register and get 20% off.
STARTUP <comment><USER3> I am attending and am looking forward to the startup track.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> nice, thanks for sharing!

<comment><USER4> and are there any conferences like this in NYC?

<comment><AUTHOR> We'll follow up with regional events later in the year. If you can come - <USER2> should, many folks will be there. In any case I encourage you to leave your details so you'll get the information

<comment><USER4> rodger that. i know some people in the olark SF office will be attending, but i'll be finishing up in austin post-sxsw at that point.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


3 New Ideas For Finding Lost Planes - <AUTHOR> http://www.popsci.com/article/technology/3-new-ideas-finding-lost-planes?dom=PSC&loc=poprail&lnk=10&con=3-new-ideas-for-finding-lost-planes

<comment><USER2> The second method listed is effectively the same as the U/AIS system that ships use[0]. The "U" stands for "Universal", from which we can deduce that actually only about 60% of ships actually use it.

The technology already exists, it just needs to be mandated for aircraft.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Identification_System](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Identification_System)</comment>


Obama could kill fossil fuels overnight with a nuclear dash for thorium - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/7970619/Obama-could-kill-fossil-fuels-overnight-with-a-nuclear-dash-for-thorium.html <comment><USER2> Thorium nuclear fuel is by its very nature small-scale, decentralized. Thorium reactions are only efficient if self-regulating. Not particularly appealing to any administration whose modus operandi is top-down control.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is Thorium really a viable fuel source? Can it be used to create large-scale reactors?

<comment><USER4> Yes and yes. Google the blog "Energy from Thorium" for more details.</comment></comment>


Hornet: High-Speed Onion Routing at the Network Layer - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1507.05724 <comment><AUTHOR> Analysis of HORNET (and Sphinx): [https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.13772](https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.13772)

<comment><USER2> Is there a way to find papers citing the original?

<comment><USER3> Google Scholar has a "Cited By" feature that is pretty good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have to admit I don't know much about Tor/Onion routing beyond "the dark web lives there" — where is a good starter guide to legitimate things to do/find on Onion routed sites (in the same vein that BitTorrent for distributing free/open source software is perfectly legitimate)?

<comment><USER5> Anything that needs a higher degree of anonymity - some legitimate uses may be whistle-blowing, protest organizing, preventing an oppressive govt from spying on you etc. Reporters or agents in foreign countries might find it useful as well.

I can't think of a legitimate casual use off the top of my head tho. It may change if hornet provides decent speeds as tor is notoriously slow for most things.

<comment><USER6> Legitimate use: ordering from an online pharmacy, something that that is legal in your own country, and legal in the source country, but not legal (or just prescription-only) in the US, so there are all sorts of import restrictions every other country enforces for the US's sake just in order to avoid being party to transshipment to the US.

(And, usually, you have to buy such things with cryptocurrency, too, even though they're perfectly legal both for you to buy and for them to sell; the product's scheduled status in the US translates to no payment processor [all US-based] being willing to work with the supplier.)

Try buying e.g. Russian-produced pharmaceuticals from Canada without Tor; I'll wait :)

<comment><USER7> Another legitimate use related to your usecase: check crypto conversion rates without disclosing your interest (as some people and some countries have a negative view about crypto): [http://4vhxreysjshbfrib.onion/](http://4vhxreysjshbfrib.onion/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> (2015)</comment>


Wikipedia goes down thanks to cut cables - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-19148151

<comment><AUTHOR> Quite amazing that a pair of cut cables can bring the wikipedia down...</comment>


SAAS GRC:comprehensive platform to effectively manage your compliance needs - <AUTHOR> http://fixnix.co <comment><USER2> We're trying to disrupt the GRC space dominated, done and dusted by leaders like RSA Archer, IBM openpages with a cloud based SaaS GRC offering.

Looking forward to take HN feedback. feel free to write to us @ firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER2> Thanks Vinoth for sharing this.</comment>


There are now more job openings than people unemployed - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/there-are-now-more-job-openings-than-people-unemployed-1528230845-012aaaf6-99eb-487a-974b-22e774b2f72b.html <comment><USER2> But that doesn't do the unemployed much good if all the openings are for chemical engineers with 20 years of experience, and the unemployed have no qualifications beyond a high school degree or a bachelors in English - or even if they all have PhDs in mechanical engineering.</comment>


The Eyeballing Game - <AUTHOR> http://woodgears.ca/eyeball/ <comment><AUTHOR> This site is great for the hackers out there that enjoy wood working, which I am finally getting into now that I have the space for a shop. He really approaches everything like an engineer and the quality shows.

Another great read is how he built his own bandsaw (out of wood): <http://woodgears.ca/bandsaw/build.html></comment>


The Story of the Pittburgh Samaritan (My social news startup's first user-prompted report) - <AUTHOR> http://www.windycitizen.com/news/04/14/2009/pittsburgh-samaritan-chicago

<comment><AUTHOR> I run a niche social news site where Chicagoans are sharing and rating links to local stuff. For some time now, the plan has been to publish original reporting that digs a little deeper into one of the most interesting submissions each week. This is the first such report. Someone shared a weird Youtube video, I hired a freelance journalist to investigate and she brought back the story linked here. Social news + Original content.

Everyone's talking about finding new ways to support original reporting on the web. This is my proposed solution: outsourcing my "tip line" through a social news app so we can focus on the reporting rather than the story-finding.

</comment><comment><USER2> According to one ancient belief system, the 8 levels of charity:

8\. When donations are given grudgingly.

7\. When one gives less than he should, but does so cheerfully.

6\. When one gives directly to the poor upon being asked.

5\. When one gives directly to the poor without being asked.

4\. When the recipient is aware of the donor's identity, but the donor does not know the identity of the recipient.

3\. When the donor is aware of the recipient's identity, but the recipient is unaware of the source.

2\. When the donor and recipient are unknown to each other.

1\. The highest form of charity is to help sustain a person before they become impoverished by offering a substantial gift in a dignified manner, or by extending a suitable loan, or by helping them find employment or establish themselves in business so as to make it unnecessary for them to become dependent on others.

Sounds like this guy has made it to #3. Good for him. I've made it to #6, got a ways to go.

I have a feeling a lot of people here aspire to #1.

</comment><comment><USER2> What, a Pittsburgh Steelers AFC North Division Champion sweatshirt? Why not a Super Bowl Champion t-shirt? You got 6 to choose from. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

<comment><AUTHOR> The Samaritan's a bit of an odd character. Who knows? I'm still not entirely convinced the whole thing's not an incredibly elaborate fraud, but my reporter stands by the story.

<comment><USER3> The "pay it forward" idea is quite old. Wikipedia claims the oldest source to be Benjamin Franklin. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_it_forward></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook: Updates to the Graph API - <AUTHOR> https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2012/08/30/updates-to-the-graph-api/

<comment><USER2> I wonder if they will address how this affects the current Graph API usage. It would be nice to know if I need to update my apps or not.

<comment><USER3> These changes do not break any existing functionality, Field Expansion is an addition to the API. Field Expansion is basically support for very simple joins.

Batch Request support has existed for some time and allowed similar result sets to be retrieved. Batch Requests are significantly more complex to construct and are not well supported by tools like Facebook's Developer Open Graph Explorer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Fantastic news, nested batched queries on the graph API were a total crapshoot in some circumstances last time I tried (FQL works much better). I may have to update some code now...

<comment><USER5> Is there an advantage to using the graph API over using FQL? It seemed to me like FQL was more flexible in that you could specify more complex and general queries using a unified interface; am I missing something? (I easily could be missing something: I find that the API changes so often it is difficult to keep up with.)

<comment><USER4> Mostly simplicity. "graph.facebook.com/id/photos" is easier than multiple round trips or nested queries, and in general it's easier to grasp for people who aren't familiar with SQL (not me, but lots and lots of people never have to touch the stuff).

Personally though, I find myself waffling between the two depending on which gives me the information I want, the most easily. Often that's the graph API, though speed can suffer immensely unless you only request the fields you need (e.g. counts add a lot of time to a request).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is great. The nested queries addition will be very useful.</comment>