GrubHub Drivers Ruled Contractors - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-08/grubhub-drivers-are-contractors-judge-rules-in-bellwether-suit <comment><USER2> Drivers are on all of the ride sharing apps, simultaneously. A driver sees two ride requests - one from Lyft and one from Uber - and selects the one paying more.

At that point, I don't understand how could anyone argue they are an employee (in the traditional sense of the word) of either company.

<comment><USER3> I believe both Uber and Lyft avoid revealing the destination until a ride is accepted, to stop drivers from cherrypicking the most profitable rides. Therefore there is no way to tell which of the two rides will be paying more.

Uber will warn the driver if a ride is especially long and allow them to decline those, but overall the driver is kept in the dark as to which rides are more profitable.

Additionally, until recently, Uber punished drivers who declined too many rides, either by deprioritizing them, or dropping them altogether.

<comment><USER4> Valid, but the premise still stands. The driver can sit there on both apps, and just take the first one that pops up. They aren't "working" for either company until they voluntarily choose to take a "contract" (maybe not actually a contract, almost definitely not legally a contract in some technical sense I would understand, but colloquially).

I do support worker's rights heavily in most cases, I just really feel like these rideshare cases (and other similar industries, carefully curated) should be exceptional. It is hard for me to feel like the lack of structure that the driver's operate under is enough to demand full employment rights.

I'm sure that somewhere in their algorithms, there is a way (or a potential way) to discriminate/penalize less active or lapsed drivers when they return to business. But that relatively minor power being said, Uber/Lyft can literally only control their worker's schedules and availability and hours using positive profit reinforcement. Like, are you really an "employee" if you can, without warning or consequence, just not work for a months and then return just as suddenly? I don't know if "contractor" is the right word, maybe this should be considered something new like "micro-contractor" or something, but it operates in a way that is economically and operationally fundamentally different from traditional employers, including taxi companies.

<comment><USER5> >Uber/Lyft can literally only control their worker's schedules and availability and hours using positive profit reinforcement.

This isn't an acceptable situation because the workers aren't employees. Uber and Lyft can offer below minimum wage to contractors who don't get their "positive profit reinforcement". The contractors will then self-enforce employee-like behaviours in order to get a better wage that _still_ doesn't have to be above minimum wage.

<comment><USER4> And then a large portion of drivers who only drive as a secondary or supplementary income don't drive, and there is a supply shortage, meaning prices surge.

<comment><USER5> Minimum wage is the acknowledgement that supply/demand is not sufficient for wage control. Your argument seems more like an argument against minimum wage in general.

<comment><USER4> Yes, I also don't think that Uber/Lyft should necessarily be considered a means of primary employment.

<comment><USER6> You should tell that to the majoroty of (my Seattle) Lyft drivers that bought a Prius just so it could be their primary form of employment. From my personal experience it is only in the Bay Area that people use ride share as a supplemental income.

<comment><USER7> Also anecdotal, I've used uber in DC many times, and many, many, many times in Toronto. Almost every driver I have has was supplementing their income.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> From the ruling by the court:

Other dishonest conduct during this lawsuit further supports the Court's finding that Mr. Lawson intentionally manipulated the app to get paid for not working. During discovery he produced a resume that falsely represents that he attended a Loyola Marymount University Master of Fine Arts program from August 2012 to May 2015, and even lists a specific grade point average; however, Mr. Lawson was only enrolled in the program for one year and did not graduate. When confronted at trial with this misrepresentation, Mr. Lawson testified that he listed all three years because he was "still involved in various activities" and he felt "still part of [the Loyola Marymount] community." (Dkt. No. 208 at 48:13-16.) This explanation is not credible.

<comment><USER9> Is it really material - except in the loosest sense - that a food delivery driver lied about a Fine Arts course?

That aside, reading the linked court documents that contract has major problems. It requires deliverers to sign up for a weekly block and to be available (except under extenuating circumstances) for work, and not refuse work, during that time. That sounds like being a part-time employee to me, regardless of the preceding prose specifically disclaiming employee-employer status (why would they need that I wonder!), and saying the driver was free to work other gigs. If you're free to work other gigs how can you not often have to refuse jobs?

I'm not saying Lawson's been harmed, I didn't read enough to know, but that contract looks like it's demanding exclusive employment for a particular company within a given time range; that looks terrible for GrubHub from where I'm sitting.

<comment><USER10> > that contract looks like it's demanding exclusive employment for a > particular company within a given time range

The ruling specifically says that this is not the case:

"The driver is not precluded from doing business with others and Grubhub does not have the right to restrict the driver from being concurrently or subsequently engaged in performing delivery services for other companies, even those that compete with Grubhub."

I am actually pretty impressed with the efforts Grubhub was making for compliance here.

"The driver may (1) lease insulated delivery bags from Grubhub in exchange for wearing Grubhub t-shirts and hats"

Since requiring someone to wear a uniform or use your logo is a strong sign of an employment relationship they make wearing the uniform consideration for a separate contract. Clever.

<comment><USER11> It's sort of generous to call the imaginary "second" relationship an effort at compliance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As a (former) lawyer, I know that magistrate decisions do not necessarily carry the weight of a typical federal judge. And even a district court decision would not be binding on any other district court. Until an appellate court weighs in on this, it seems that the issue is very much up for grabs.

I would welcome the more nuanced view of a litigator — I was a transactional lawyer and am just remembering my law school lessons about precedential authority.

Edit: corrected an autocorrect.

</comment><comment><USER13> > Charlotte Garden, an associate law professor at Seattle University, said > [U.S. Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Scott] Corley's decision is a "doubly big" > win for GrubHub due to California's relatively high standard for > establishing workers as independent contractors.

Would someone familiar with the California standards summarize the contractor/employee test? The article doesn't make specific reference to the criteria. (I'll hunt the internet now myself, and report back.)

edit: From the California Tax Service Center...

> Does the principal (you) have the right to control the manner and means in > which the worker carries out the job? The right of direction and control, > whether or not exercised, is the most important factor in determining an > employment relationship. The right to discharge a worker at will and without > cause is strong evidence for the right of direction and control. When it is > not clear whether you have the right to direct and control the worker, you > must look further into the actual working relationship by weighing the ten > secondary factors.

There are secondary tests as well.

[http://www.taxes.ca.gov/iCorE.bus.shtml](http://www.taxes.ca.gov/iCorE.bus.shtml)

<comment><USER14> This is the strangest part of California labor law:

> The right to discharge a worker at will and without cause is strong evidence > for the right of direction and control

One usually thinks of a contract worker as being totally de facto dischargeable (contract says you do N jobs, if I don't like you the N+1th job doesn't get contracted), whereas an employee as being entirely nondischargeable due to union agreements or labor laws, but the law itself says the reverse elsewhere.

P & !P => Q

<comment><USER15> > One usually thinks of a contract worker as being totally de facto > dischargeable (contract says you do N jobs, if I don't like you the N+1th > job doesn't get contracted)

That's not dischargeable at will, that's an option to not renew after a set point.

> whereas an employee as being entirely nondischargeable due to union > agreements or labor laws

"At will" employment makes employees dischargeable at will (hence the name). Labor laws add specific _prohibited_ bases, but still make discharge less restricted than a contract. A union contract is a special case, a contract on top of general labor laws that covers people who are otherwise regular employees.

<comment><USER14> >That's not dischargeable at will, that's an option to not renew after a set point.

What if N == 1

<comment><USER15> Its still not dischargeable at will, which allows discharging even with a task incomplete/in-progress.

<comment><USER14> Hence why I said de facto. Especially in the case of ride-sharing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> We have a round hole and a triangle hole, and we're telling the courts to decide which one to put the square peg in.

Sooner or later our legislatures are going to have to deal with this issue.

<comment><USER17> I think that's a very good point. My personal opinion is that considering drivers "employees" in these scenarios is ridiculous, but it's possible that "contractor" (as defined by law) isn't a great fit, either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks like he's also trying to sue Amazon for the same thing.

[https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/4537667/rittmann-v- amaz...](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/4537667/rittmann-v-amazoncom- inc/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Am I in the minority to be appalled by the actions of Lawson (and people like him)? Clearly, you are not a full-time employee if you are employed on an as- needed basis.

<comment><USER19> That doesn't follow at all. I think you're confusing "contractor vs. employee" with "full-time vs. part-time". Plenty of retail employees are deployed as- needed, and none of them are contractors.

<comment><USER20> None of those retail employers can clock in and out as they please. "as- needed" is the wrong phrase for sure because it indicates the choice is in the hand of the employer. "as-desired" would be better.

<comment><USER19> It's a weighting of factors argument, right? It's probably not simple (or these cases would all be finished by now). Counting against the contractor definition: single, longstanding continuous relationship.

<comment><USER21> But most of the driving-giggers that I know do _not_ have single relationships, they're working with both Uber and Lyft, or GrubHub, Seamless, Doordash, etc, as each one rises and falls in profitability for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Obviously this is bad for workers in the short-term.

The judge notes however that under California law, you're either an employee or contractor, there is no in-between, and she presumably wants to see that fixed.

This is an old issue that goes way back to Microsoft hiring contractors and treating them really well like employees, until the IRS discovered they were also doing it to not pay payroll taxes :(

Afterwards, Microsoft had to significantly dock contractor benefits to show there was a real distinction and it was not an accounting gimmick.

Like a lot of labor and tax law, these were all put in place 60+ years ago and have pretty much been stretched to the maximum. Ironically, this makes me see people going to Law School as in a really cool spot for the future. I thought I'd never say this, but I can imagine us needing more lawyers in the future to hammer all these things out for whatever the next de facto American System is.

<comment><USER23> Didn't those contractors have to pay payroll taxes through self employment tax then? The govt gets the same amount of tax in the end AFAIK.

So those contractors basically have ~%8 less pay because they pay the employer part of the tax, unless MSFT paid them more to compensate.

So what is the incentive for MSFT to do that in the first place? Is it just to fool the people who don't realize they might be paid less in a complicated way?

<comment><USER24> Contractors have to pay the "employer" half of FICA (social security and medicare) themselves, true.

But there are things other than FICA that employers have to pay for employees but not contractors. The most obvious one is unemployment insurance, both state and federal. There are likely others, in various location-dependent ways. Obviously contractors effectively self-insure for unemployment; this is a major reason why contractors are typically paid more on a nominal basis than employees are.

In addition to that, there are compliance costs with employees (having to do tax withholding, pay reporting requirements to states and the IRS, etc) that are somewhat lower with contractors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> My current company specifically chooses to do employment and not contracts for drive related services. The thought model is that an employee would be a better representative for spreading the brand, would have more dedication to customer happiness, and the available supply of drivers would result in consistent ETAs.

</comment><comment><USER26> I wonder if the plaintiff's, Lawson, case was weakened by the fact that he was attempting to work as an actor simultaneously and lied on his resume. Additionally, does the weakness of his case and the precedent that was established from this verdict affect future cases about contractors vs employees? If so, I'd be pissed at Lawson if I were a gig worker

<comment><USER15> > Additionally, does the weakness of his case and the precedent that was > established from this verdict affect future cases about contractors vs > employees?

A trial court ruling isn't binding authority even on the same court, much less others, and unless it is (unlikely) a published decision, it won't, IIRC, even be citable as _persuasive_ authority in other cases.

Now, if it gets appealed and an appeals court rules on the case, things change...

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Why don't these companies like GrubHub and Uber just hire the people as employees but with 100% commission based salary? What risk do they take?

<comment><USER28> Providing minimum wage? Overhead costs? Paid sick leave? Probably pay for health care insurance?

<comment><USER17> Also payroll taxes, extra FICA/Medicare taxes, unemployment insurance...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Is there any way to see the actual ruling? Not finding on search.

<comment><USER8> [https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/4182349/221/lawson-v- gr...](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/4182349/221/lawson-v-grubhub-inc/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The judge basically punted the issue to the CA legislature. If enough drivers get together and lobby, I think the legislature may clear up the drivers' ambiguous position.

</comment><comment><USER31> The main thing the so called gig-economy brings to the table is a regression in workers rights and benefits. That's the core. That's the profits. I can't understand why people are wilfully accepting that this is somehow the inevitable result of some smartphone app having been created.

<comment><USER32> It's an exchange. The freedom of the gig economy vs. the loss of rights and benefits. If it's worth it for you take it, if not, don't.

<comment><USER33> Sure. It's an exchange. It's an exchange designed to consign the poor into being ever poorer. But hey--you get your food delivered for two bucks and you never have to talk to a person. So that's great.

The "gig economy" is designed to _break employment_. It's designed to turn people who already are living hand-to-mouth or worse into always-available scutworkers for the upper class and the (smaller than one would expect) middle class that serves them in ways the participants in that "gig economy" cannot. But you can choose to not do it! And when, obviously and inexorably, _that becomes the game in town available to vast swaths of the working poor_ , what then? There aren't even any workhouses anymore. Scrooge can't even offer that whatabout.

Most people may not have much of a choice about feeding themselves (ourselves) or their (our) kids into the thresher, but the people who do can have the minimal decency not to oh-but-it's-fine about it. And that includes most people on HN.

<comment><USER34> Let's think about money for a minute. Money itself of course has no meaning. But we apply meaning to it. It essentially works as a proxy for the value we assign to labor and materials - both of which are finite in reality. So obviously you'd prefer drivers make more money, so they could live a better life. Well how much? I imagine you think a ballpark for a 'fair' wage would be somewhere around $15/ride. Now let's consider your person that relies on taxi type services for transportation. We'll say they go out and return to their house once a day. And every other day they also go in/out again for entertainment, essentials, and so on. For a 30 day month that's a total of 30 x 2 + (30/2) x 2 = 90 trips. And 90 x 15 = $1350. On a yearly basis that's 365.25 x 3 x 15 = $16,436.

Well that's a lot of money. Of course I expect you'd probably say that that's because the 'bourgeois' are holding back the 'proletariat.' Okay. Let's go full on social system economics. Let's just pretend the entire GDP in the US is spread completely evenly between each and every person. And that's quite unreasonable as our GDP would decrease dramatically under such a system, but for arguments sake I'll give you that. Okay, that's easy. That's the GDP/capita or $52k. The total value of all annual goods and services in the US produced works out to $52k/person/year. But we can't forget about taxes now. To sustain our social utopia we'd need quite a high tax rate. But again, I'm going to let you have that and we'll just maintain current taxes. So we're each taking home about $42k. I'm also going to pretend that state and other taxes don't exist.

Now look at your $15/ride. If somebody was going to depend on that, they'd end up spending nearly 40% of their entire income just getting around even with a perfectly fair share of all income generated nationwide! And I gave you several unreasonably optimistic assumptions that makes that number a real lowball. The point here is that even in what I assume is your idealized system, this would not be a sustainable industry. It's very easy to see things through the lens of a victim complex because of the apparent inequality of our society. But these optics are in large part caused by inconceivably large population numbers. Imagine you earned just $1 from each person on this Earth. You'd be the 65th richest person in the world! Far from a 1%er, you'd be a 0.000000001%er. Earn $12 and you'd be the single richest person alive. Even if we just consider the USA. Imagine you took every penny Bill Gates, currently the richest person in the world, is worth and equally distributed it to each and every person in the US. That'd be a total of $275. Maybe you would say well do that to them all! By the time you're down to the 100 richest person you're only getting $17/person, and again that's for the US population only.

<comment><USER35> Yes, it's unsustainable to be privately chauffeured around everywhere if you're not wealthy. Is this controversial? It's also ecologically and infrastructurally unsustainable so it's not something anyone actually wants.

Most people in places where wages are livable walk, bike, ride a bus or train or drive themselves around. For the infirm there are subsidized transportation services.

<comment><USER34> It's 'controversial' only in the sense that most people don't understand this. Many people seem to think that the only reason companies aren't giving great salaries to people, and 'letting' everybody earn a very good living doing most of anything, is greed. The person I was responding to went so far as to call these companies "villains." Or look at the other poster's response to this very topic. In reality, what people want is impossible, and but very few understand that. And I think the nature of this fact is often met with cognitive dissonance of some sort or another, which is sad. We are definitely becoming a nation that has an increasingly tenuous relationship with facts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This sux. Gig economy workers are on their own now. I expect a decline in wages. I thought technology was supposed to help us all.

</comment><comment><USER37> A win for contract rights, which is a basic human right.

</comment><comment><USER38> You know what they say:

Bad case, bad case law.

</comment><comment><USER39> > Lawson claimed the company violated California labor laws by not reimbursing > his expenses, paying him less than minimum wage and failing to pay overtime.

I have also failed to do all of those things for Mr. Lawson, fortunately like GrubHub I did not tell him I ever would.

<comment><USER40> This case aside - if I exclude legally mandated terms when I hire somebody and they accept the offered terms that doesn't mean I'm exempt from the law.

</comment></comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash I think it's pretty reasonable to state that gig economy employees are contractors, for the most part. If you set your own hours, then you're your own boss.

The problem - in America, at least - is that contractors are denied benefits like health insurance and pensions/401k plans. But the issue of an inadequate social safety net is separate and much deeper than a mere employee/contractor distinction. Otherwise it remains a game of IRS musical chairs.

<comment><USER41> >contractors are denied benefits like health insurance and pensions/401k plans

As their own employers, independent contractors can (and probably should) set up one-participant 401k plans for themselves. This can have significant advantages, since the "employer" gets to select the terms for the 401k, and employer-sponsored plans often drop terms that cost less than the value it'd provide you (eg, in-service Roth conversion + after-tax contributions).

<comment><USER42> They totally should on those sweet less-than-minimum contract wages.

The lives of a high-flying contractor doing skilled work are very, very different than someone who faces a the "gig" contracts.

<comment><USER43> Totally separate issue. An employment contract with a beautiful, perfect 401k setup could also pay too little for you to save anything.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What was your worst Work From Home mistake? - <AUTHOR> When I started working from home in 2011, I got it all wrong. Work/life balance was all over the place, and I didn't have any delineation between the two. Everything suffered. I've learned the hard way that there's more to working from home than rolling out of bed and sitting at a computer for 8 or 10 hours. What was your worst WFH mistake, and how did you fix it? <comment><USER2> I've only been working from home for 5 months. So far my worst mistakes are

1) continuing to work 30-90 minutes longer than I'm "supposed to" 2) not going outside for days at a time

I'm still working on fixing both of these, I don't have any tips for #1, for me I just have to do it. For #2 I'm going to hack together a desk outside.

</comment><comment><USER3> Something I would recommend for concentration is: Time recording. I don't do it, it is painful, but I can imagine it could be a game changer for tracking what one is doing.</comment>


Emacs gets Google Maps support. - <AUTHOR> http://julien.danjou.info/blog/2010.html#M%2Dx%20google%2Dmaps

<comment><USER2> That's no text editor - it's a space station!

</comment><comment><USER3> That rainbow mode also looks useful.

<http://julien.danjou.info/rainbow-mode.html>

<comment><USER4> I immediate tried to find to find a script for Vim that does this, I found this: <http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2150>

<comment><USER5> That script is in need of some serious optimization, it reduces load times for anything with CSS in it (read: any HTML page) to a 5-second plus wait.

Try it on a large HTML file.

<comment><USER4> You may be right but I haven't noticed any delays. Large files load pretty much instantly for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I discovered this gem in HN, but allow me anyway refer to it, as it's most appropriate: <http://xkcd.com/378/>

</comment><comment><USER7> I was hoping it would look like Dwarf Fortress. :(

</comment><comment><USER8> Each time I see a post about Emacs, I get jealous because I prefer Vi's text editing.

If only there existed a good modal editor with a good scripting language behind it...

I keep hoping that Yi (<http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Yi>) goes somewhere, but it doesn't seem too active.

<comment><USER9> Have you considered viper-mode?

<comment><USER8> Aye. I've used both Vim and Emacs (Emacs less so, but it was my main editor for a few months, so I feel comfortable if not proficient with it), and once I realized neither was what I wanted, I switched to Viper mode.

But, somehow, I never really adjusted to it and now switch between Vim and when necessary Xcode.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Now all it needs is a text editor and it's done.

</comment><comment><USER11> In the context of org-mode, that's actually quite useful. Did anyone ever hack some kind of canvas for emacs? Would probably work either by hackishly including changed images in the buffer or by embedding another X window.

</comment><comment><USER12> That's really cool!

</comment><comment><USER13> There. _Now_ it's a kitchen sink!

</comment><comment><USER14> Too awesome. Really, too awesome.

<comment><USER14> BTW, I installed it and it runs with Aquamacs or the latest GNU emacs distribution, but not for the command line emacs that ships with OS X. Fun stuff.</comment></comment>


If Money Doesn't Make You Happy, Consider Time - <AUTHOR> http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/research/aaker_happiness_2011.html <comment><USER3> After I figured out my priorities (took years of challenging myself and introspection) I figured out how to spend my time.

Now I do what's important and don't waste my time with other things. I don't try to "life-hack" or make myself as efficient as possible because if I'm only working on my most important things I know I'm spending my time well.

I cut my working hours down to one or sometimes two days a week, sometimes more when they need me more. I don't need more money than that -- and I live in Manhattan (no kids).

And my life is better than ever.

Nothing special about me. Anyone could do it.

(I recently had an idea I'm passionate about and may put in long hours for it, which will be following my passions. Making your time your own lets you.)

EDIT: to dragons' question of what I do, I work at the company I founded. My compensation is no higher than anyone else's. Working one-fifth time gives me one-fifth pay.

The more valuable question is how low are my expenses. _I've found much more freedom in needing less than in having more_. Cutting out what doesn't add joy to my life creates freedom and joy. That's what I meant by nothing special about me. Anyone can cut waste. Not many seem to.

<comment><USER4> You say to want less; do you have specific examples of how you apply this?

<comment><USER3> Here are some examples.

Having less stuff: <http://joshuaspodek.com/less_please>. By this point I cringe when someone gives me a material gift, knowing I'll want to get rid of it soon. Most friends have learned I prefer a bottle of wine or scotch as a gift to anything to stick on a shelf.

My exercise regiment has me in as good physical shape as I've ever been (including when I ran marathons and competed at Nationals level in Ultimate Frisbee). Here's how I work out every day with no gym membership, cost, or equipment, enjoying it: <http://joshuaspodek.com/how-begin-workout-routine> and <http://joshuaspodek.com/knew-minute-day-workout>

Personal development for free, the equal of any multi-thousand-dollar seminar: <http://joshuaspodek.com/vipassana-meditation>

Lots of other examples if you dig through my blog.

<comment><USER5> Buying consumables instead of durable isn't really having less, it's keeping less. It's not necessarily less expensive.

<comment><USER6> Sometimes there is a mental expense associated with having more physical items in your life. I find minimalism very relaxing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What about introverted people? The majority of people are extroverted, so this studies result make sense, but a significant number of people are introverted. A simplified definition of introversion is a person whose energy is drained after spending time with people. So the recipe for happiness for an introverted person doesn't necessarily follow the same pattern.

After all, the number one piece of advice was "spend time with the right people". But maybe it applies for introverted people too. For me, top of the list for right people is my wife. We can be "alone together". Perhaps curled up together on the couch reading.

And introverted doesn't mean that we don't enjoy the company of good friends -- it just means that we need some alone time after to regain our energy. Good friends are often significantly energy draining but are significantly happiness increasing.

</comment><comment><USER8> You have two ways to value yourself - time and money. I worked in NYC and had a +3 hour rountrip commute. Moving to Boulder, my roundtrip is 10 minutes. I regained 3 hours per day. That's 750 hours per year or 31 days. IMO, nobody sits on their death bed wishing they worked more or made more money - they all wish for more time with their family and friends. Glad I realized that at 26.

<comment><USER9> Here's the thing, what about all those people who sit on their death bed thinking "If only I had devoted more time to the projects I loved. Then maybe I could have been a somebody"

<comment><USER10> This is a very very good point

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am 60 and for almost my entire life I have only worked 32 hours per week, first for large companies (e.g., SAIC) then for a few smaller companies, and for the last 13 years as a consultant. Lately I have been trying to cut back and partially retire but that is tough since I usually enjoy my work.

I have friends and business associates who thrive on long work hours.

We all need to figure out what we need out of life.

<comment><USER11> One more thing: I have a general problem with not having enough time for everything that I want to do. I find that cutting way back on TV and stop watching movies or reading books that I decide just aren't worth the time helps a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Faster, better, more happiness! Must optimize time/happiness ratio. Less wasting time. Time lost in the past must be justified. Time in the future must be planned for. Optimal usage is the goal !! (Have you tried sitting on the grass lately? Maybe take a nap in the sun..)

</comment><comment><USER13> It seems fit to point out that this is the sort of cheese-paring reframed optimization that is only undertaken by people who don't have access to as a great enough level of happiness, money, or span of life as they would like ... and well know it.

To think in terms of "well, at least it was _quality_ time" is to admit that we in fact suffer from a poverty of time. In a world where we had enough time to satiate demand, we genuinely would not care whether we spent it well.

Ditto for happiness. This may not be the forum for a consideration of the Hedonistic Imperative, but you might give a few moments of thought for the serious vision aimed at optimizing some measure of happiness and pleasure, rather than some measure of wealth or a count of seconds.

<http://www.hedweb.com/hedab.htm>

"This manifesto outlines a strategy to eradicate suffering in all sentient life. The abolitionist project is ambitious, implausible, but technically feasible. It is defended here on ethical utilitarian grounds. Genetic engineering and nanotechnology allow Homo sapiens to discard the legacy- wetware of our evolutionary past. Our post-human successors will rewrite the vertebrate genome, redesign the global ecosystem, and abolish suffering throughout the living world."

\-----

Though it has to be said that I'm firmly in the count of seconds camp - <USER2> you get a decent supply of those queued and flowing in a pipeline, you're burning your candle at both ends. Crazy to be playing the game like it's ten to midnight on Doomsday when you could instead be helping to fund ways to turn back the clock though biotechnology:

[http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2008/02/what-is- wealth.ph...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2008/02/what-is-wealth.php)

In short, debating the value of time spent is the mark of humans who are gnawed inside by the knowledge of their own lack of time. Those humans should give more of their money to the SENS Foundation - that would be the unbendingly rational thing to do.

[http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2010/10/the-rational- use-...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2010/10/the-rational-use-for- excess-money-is-longevity-science.php)

<comment><USER14> It's unlikely that significant life extension techniques will be developed in our lifetime. In fact all evidence that I've seen is that aging is one of those "classically hard" problems, similar to strong a.i., fluent/human like machine translation, cost-efficient robots with the flexibility of humans, etc. While potentially possible with advanced technology, it's clear that we are not very close at all. It's _extremely_ unlikely that any of those "classically hard" problems will be solved in our lifetime. Even though they would likely be revolutionary if they were.

Better to be realistic and expect that we probably will die, instead of constantly worrying about death and hoping for some miracle cure(IMO).

<comment><USER15> Actually, these aren't "hard" problems in the sense that physics disallows them. We have existence proofs of them. It's is just a search problem. You have to set up robotic systems that search the space. So the problem is really one of collective stupidity ie. most people are dumbasses debating they value of time and spending it family/friends, or whether gays should be married, when instead they should be demanding mass industrialization of scientific discovery, or building they it (surplus labor is instead going to youtube/wikipedia/tv watching/novel reading etc.).

Most people think science is done with eureka moments by geniuses, but actually what is needed is a "systematic" exploration.

<comment><USER16> > _Actually, these aren't "hard" problems in the sense that physics disallows > them. We have existence proofs of them. It's is just a search problem. You > have to set up robotic systems that search the space. So the problem is > really one of collective stupidity ie. most people are dumbasses debating > they value of time and spending it family/friends, or whether gays should be > married, when instead they should be demanding mass industrialization of > scientific discovery, or building they it (surplus labor is instead going to > youtube/wikipedia/tv watching/novel reading etc.)_

People in the deathbed are worried they didn't demand enough "mass industrialization of scientific discovery"?

Talk about a dumbass idea, especially in an era where 99% of our life is colonized by the industrialization of scientific discoveries.

<comment><USER15> So you're saying people should give up on the idea of living to a millions years old and just suck it in by spending more time with the families/friends in the few years they have?

Death is a solvable problem. There are species and cell types that are essentially immortal. It exists in nature. We have the capability to manipulate things at the cell/molecule level.

I'm not sure what you mean by "colonized by industrialization". If you think things are too industrialized, maybe you should give up the laptop you're writing from and go live in the jungle without any plastics r metal. I'm sure after a day or so you'll come to realize the error of your thoughts.

<comment><USER17> "Death is a solvable problem"

Really? Last time I checked, the statistics were pretty clear. 1 out of every 1 people die. That seems to be pretty damning evidence. :)

<comment><USER15> solv-able, not solv-ed yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _They discuss how happiness is indeed a consequence of the choices people make._

I completely disagree. Happiness is a consequence of your outlook on life. It has very little to do with choices, and everything to do with how you perceive yourself, and whether you believe that you should be happy.

This TED talk by Brené Brown on the topic is particularly relevant:

<http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html>

<comment><USER19> Thank you for this link. I think a lot of HNers with the "life is an optimization problem, I just need to find the correct parameters" mindset can learn from it. It certainly made me uncomfortable for the amount I identified with the speaker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I bet a dozen of so developers are reading this, trying to figure out how it can be used in a productivity web app of some kind.

<comment><USER21> The app would be a calendaring app where your friends can schedule time to hang out with you, and it locks your phone for the duration of hangout time.

Basically it would force you to hang out with people you know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Here is an excellent paper written about a similar premise:

[http://dunn.psych.ubc.ca/files/2010/12/If-Money-Doesnt- make-...](http://dunn.psych.ubc.ca/files/2010/12/If-Money-Doesnt-make-you- happy.Nov-12-20101.pdf)

HN discussion here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3922794>

</comment><comment><USER23> I can't remember where I saw the quote, but I am constantly reminded of it in my too-busy life:

 _Time is the ultimate luxury_

</comment><comment><USER24> The author of the paper that this article refers to did one of the best Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Stanford lectures in my opinion.

It's an hour but well worth a listen/watch

<http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2574>

</comment><comment><USER25> I've always valued my time more than whatever salary I collected. I designed my life so that my financial and social responsibilities have little effect on the type of job I have to take in order to support that lifestyle. I had to make a conscious choice to get this outcome though.

<comment><USER9> One good way of optimizing for time is increasing one's hourly rate to as much as the clients can bare.

It's what I try to do and it's really awesome because it gives you both plenty of free-ish time and plenty of money to enjoy that free-ish time with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder how Hacker News fits in here. I suspect that a lot of people frequent this place because having a great conversation is probably one of the best ways of spending time vis-a-vis this article.

But is Hacker News an empty subsitute? It pushes the same buttons, but is missing many of the components that are only available in face to face conversation.

</comment><comment><USER26> Also of note: Your health.

Your time isn't worth so much, if poor health precludes you from doing what you want/enjoy.

</comment><comment><USER27> Pleasure, power and peace. The phases of happiness that change every thirty years, in that order.

</comment><comment><USER28> Yeah.. i did a speed read(aka skimming or reading sample lines from each paragraph). Told myself i'll write an article If money/time doesn't make you happy, try awareness/presence in the moment... Unfortunately that kind of article writing seems to make me unhappy..:-)</comment>


Mixergy: Bootstrapping a $30k profit/month company from our internship earnings - <AUTHOR> http://www.fiplab.com/mixergy/

<comment><USER2> This was a great in depth interview that had a lot of great gems in it. Definitely worth watching for anyone that is/wants to build a software company!

</comment><comment><USER3> The last 5 minutes are fantastic!

Thanks for the great interview guys.

</comment><comment><USER4> good stuff any iPhone dev should know.

</comment><comment><USER5> Rarely an hour wasted on Mixergy..</comment>


Windows is a Ghetto - <AUTHOR> http://brandonbyars.com/blog/articles/2008/10/19/windows-is-a-ghetto <comment><USER2> Ironically, his writing is mostly about an _easy_ kind of Windows development. Web apps behind IIS? Not that hard, really.

Try building an installable desktop software for Windows. That's where real fun begins. It is quite common for teams doing Windows work to dedicate as much as 20% of available manpower to the installer alone (!). I've been coding Windows desktop in C++ since graduation in 98 and has always looked down on web programmers since they had it so easy. But once I got older I realized that all my Windows-fighting instincts and in-memory database of gotchas are nothing to be proud of: most of my career I was boxing against the platform I was working on, while some were having fun building the actual software.

The irony of it is that once upon a time Microsoft was kinda cool. I was a teenager but I still remember those "good&old" days of snobby IBM/Sun/Oracle salespeople with their super-expensive software, hardware, development tools and even documentation (you could sell your car for a full copy of OS/2 SDK). And then there was Microsoft and Borland, giving their tools and docs basically for free.

<comment><USER3> Building an installer isn't so difficult anymore. NSIS and similar installer builders are really easy to learn and very stable. Windows has many flaws, but the whole install/uninstall system works remarkably well in practice.

It's far more difficult to create RedHat RPM packages and Debian packages and so forth.

But 20% of all manpower? That seems a bit much.

<comment><USER4> I don't know about the percentage but Carl Franklin said that Visual Studio has over 50 people on the installer team. Granted, that's probably one of the heaviest installs out there.

<comment><USER5> Do you remember where he said this? I'm looking for the reference but can't find it on his blog. (Thanks in advance.)

<comment><USER4> It was in an episode of .Net Rocks! but I can't remember which one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I spent several years writing ASP applications and administering dozens of Windows servers running IIS (amongst other things). I had many of the same problems as the author such as:

"I have absolutely no clue what error 0×00001ad59add means, and I am the goddamned system administrator I'm supposed to contact"

It sucked the life out of me.

</comment><comment><USER7> Well, to defend windows, it's a very complex system that's used on a wide variety of hardware and for a wide variety of purposes. Most parts of it are required by someone or the other. If you don't need it, ignore it.

.NET is the clean-up of windows, I suppose.

<comment><USER8> Someone should have told them that sewer water is no good for cleaning up a house.

<comment><USER7> .NET is a pretty good framework. Better than any framework linux has to offer.

<comment><USER9> That statement doesn't even make any sense. Linux is a kernel. .NET programs are run in userspace. The two cannot, as far as I can tell, be even tangentially related, unless you're trying to call .NET some sort of kernel API?

Or is this that definition of "Linux" that people love these days, which is "whatever free software operating system distribution I happen to be most annoyed with this week"?

<comment><USER10> "Linux" is used here as "a linux distro" (which was pretty clear). Is there a runtime for a linux distro that is better than .NET?

<comment><USER11> java virtual machine?

<comment><USER10> How is it better? (Genuine question, I mostly do web programming.)

<comment><USER12> The .NET is better then the JVM because it was designed to run on windows only, so no run anywhere stuff needed to be designed.

I was doing Win32 development for 5 years and concluded the .NET development is the best way to go (Only if you can convince the marketing guy to include the 20MB runtime installer in the package)

<comment><USER13> Silverlight 2.0 runs C# code (any MSIL compiled code, really) on OS X quite well... It also includes a significant portion of the base class libraries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _...registry hives..._

A great piece of MS terminology, apparently the result of inter-developer conflict...

[http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2003/08/08/54618.a...](http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2003/08/08/54618.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER15> Sometime back I wrote content management plugins for iPlanet, Apache and IIS web-servers.

I had to write lots of irrational workaround wrapper code for iPlanet and IIS plugins because they are proprietary.

And debugging this code was a big PITA.

With Apache there were no issues because I could always step-into Apache code with GDB.

</comment><comment><USER16> Zed Shaw, is that you?

<comment><USER17> Not nearly enough cursing to qualify as Zed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Windows is the most used operating system, so to call it a Ghetto is wrong by definition, IMHO. In my experience, Visual Studio 2008 with .NET libraries and MSDN is very good development platform.

</comment><comment><USER19> "Windows, was all about the GUI. Their command line was terrible, and it is terrible still. "

So, he doesn't know about PowerShell.

<comment><USER20> He specifically mentions PowerShell. Compared to what is available for UNIX- like systems PowerShell may very well be terrible (I haven't used it). There is more to the command line experience than the shell itself.

<comment><USER5> Emotions aside, PowerShell is definitely one of the most innovative shell adaptations in the past few years. Some group in MS tried really hard to take things to the next level.

Now whether that level is where people want to go-- well, that's hard to say. It's difficult to judge "success" for this sort of a thing. How much usage is because MS is pushing it and how much is because it scratches some itches?

For me, it's slow to start up, and not overly useful for my everyday tasks. Still, most of the demos are impressive and the idea of piping objects around rather than raw text/files seems like an idea with a lot of potential.

<comment><USER20> Again, the shell itself isn't really the issue. Can I SSH into a Windows box without third party software? How are the command line utilities for things like SQL Server? Are there any utilities included similar to common UNIX tools such as grep? Is there a command line file editor?

Object piping does sound interesting.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Outperforming Rust with Functional Programming - <AUTHOR> http://blog.vmchale.com/article/fast-functional <comment><USER2> > Here, we do something that is not possible to do in Rust or C - we safely > stack-allocate the intermediate value,

There's no heap allocation in the Rust nor C code.

I haven't looked into the codegen to see what's different here.

<comment><USER2> Some more details here, very interesting! [https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/7m99wo/outperforming_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/7m99wo/outperforming_rust_with_functional_programming/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> My understanding of how this shook out: [https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/7m99wo/outperforming_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/7m99wo/outperforming_rust_with_functional_programming/drt8ltq/)

tl;dr: the C and Rust versions had signed integers rather than unsigned like the ATS version, and if you make that change they end up more similar.

</comment><comment><USER4> probably going to sound stupid but what part of this was functional?

<comment><USER5> I'm a little lost as well. I only see recursion and while loops.</comment></comment>


Pendulum (Python datetimes made easy) reaches its first stable version - <AUTHOR> https://pendulum.eustace.io/blog/pendulum-1-0-0-is-out.html <comment><AUTHOR> For those of you who don't know, Pendulum is a library for Python to ease datetimes, timedeltas and timezones manipulation. It has come a long way since the early releases and has now reached its first stable version.

It provides objects and classes that directly inherits from the standard library ones so you can use them transparently (exceptions exist, see [https://github.com/sdispater/pendulum#limitations](https://github.com/sdispater/pendulum#limitations))

Basically, the Pendulum class is a replacement for the native datetime one with some useful and intuitive methods, the Interval class is intended to be a better timedelta class and the Period class is a datetime-aware timedelta. It also provides Date and Time classes (introduced in version 0.7.0).

Timezones are also easier to deal with: Pendulum will automatically normalize your datetime to handle DST transitions for you.

        import pendulum

        pendulum.create(2013, 3, 31, 2, 30, 0, 0, 'Europe/Paris')
        # 2:30 for the 31th of March 2013 does not exist
        # so pendulum will return the actual time which is 3:30+02:00
        '2013-03-31T03:30:00+02:00'

        dt = pendulum.create(2013, 3, 31, 1, 59, 59, 999999, 'Europe/Paris')
        '2013-03-31T01:59:59.999999+01:00'
        dt = dt.add(microseconds=1)
        '2013-03-31T03:00:00+02:00'
        dt.subtract(microseconds=1)
        '2013-03-31T01:59:59.999998+01:00'

Note that on creation, the normalization behavior is configurable (see [https://pendulum.eustace.io/docs/#timezones](https://pendulum.eustace.io/docs/#timezones) for more information).

To those wondering: yes I know Arrow ([http://crsmithdev.com/arrow/](http://crsmithdev.com/arrow/)) exists but its flaws and strange API (you can throw almost anything at get() and it will do its best to determine what you wanted, for instance) motivated me to start this project. You can check why I think Arrow is flawed here: [https://pendulum.eustace.io/faq/#why-not- arrow](https://pendulum.eustace.io/faq/#why-not-arrow) (or [https://github.com/sdispater/pendulum#why-not- arrow](https://github.com/sdispater/pendulum#why-not-arrow))

Link to the official documentation: [https://pendulum.eustace.io/docs/](https://pendulum.eustace.io/docs/)

Link to the github project: [https://github.com/sdispater/pendulum](https://github.com/sdispater/pendulum)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for this. Pendulum is, in my opinion, the most palatable datetime lib for Python. Things I'm looking for are:

\- a domain model that doesn't conflate unrelated concepts: a human-perceived 'calendar date' is not the same as a timestamp. The two are not inherently comparable, and should be modelled as distinct classes [1].

\- an API design that tries to adhere to the language's typical conventions, and cater to the mental model and needs of the language's users.

Unfortunately, Python has had a warped understanding of datetime from the very beginning, so these two are always at odds. But Pendulum does a better job than most, by normalizing stuff like .tomorrow() to midnight in the given timezone, by having sane defaults that tend to avoid common pitfalls, and by resisting Arrow's fast and loose way of dealing with datetime.

Delorean, a worthy alternative, makes slightly different design decisions, (e.g. about extending the datetime object, and how to treat naive datetimes) and I think a detailed comparison would benefit the community.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12364805](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12364805)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind words :-) I really appreciate it and I'm glad you find it useful.</comment></comment></comment>


First Round Capital to open NYC office - <AUTHOR> http://redeye.firstround.com/2009/10/i-believe-that-as-the-world-has-gotten-flatter-over-the-last-decade-its-created-a-big-opportunity-for-venture-in.html?awesm=frc.vc_8J&utm_campaign=firstroundcapital&utm_medium=frc.vc-twitter&utm_source=brizzly.com&utm_content=bookmarklet-twitter

<comment><USER2> I've always liked FRC.

In particular, Josh Kopelman (a managing partner) is very impressive:

<http://www.firstround.com/team/jkopelman.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> Lets all hold hands and start praying that more seed capital comes to NYC.</comment>


North Korea Lands First Ever Man On The Sun, Confirms Central News Agency - <AUTHOR> http://waterfordwhispersnews.com/2014/01/21/north-korea-lands-first-ever-man-on-the-sun-confirms-central-news-agency/

<comment><USER2> An Irish satire site repurposing an old ethnic joke. Next we'll be reading about subs with screen doors?</comment>


We've all faced rejection - <AUTHOR> https://rejected.us <comment><USER2> Despite the spectacular failures of hiring teams I don't think that recruitment process of those companies was entirely wrong. Of course there is a space for an improvement but big companies with big teams are looking for different people than small startups. A lot of people on that site did just that. They tried to go to big company and then they either went to small (at the time) startup or created their own. Their set of skill and ability to learn was perfect for inventing something new in small, agile team but was not suitable for huge, developed team where they would be just another cog in a machine.</comment>


A simple, but incredibly powerful pastebin service - <AUTHOR> https://ptpb.pw

<comment><AUTHOR> It has a max filesize of 60 MiB (larger than pomf), supports pygments highlighting (like ix/sprunge) and line numbering (without breaking copy/paste), supports arbitrary filetypes, supports on-the-fly rendering ReST pastes into HTML, deleting pastes, secret and vanity pastes and even URL shortening.

This is the most feature-complete and powerful pastebin I have ever come upon, and yet it remains incredibly simple to use.</comment>


Bell inequality violation finally done right - <AUTHOR> http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2464 <comment><USER2> Worth reading because it has an interesting, new (to me, at least) and approachable explanation of _local realism_.

Money quote:

        Perhaps the best way to explain local
        realism is that it's the thing you believe in,
        if you believe all the physicists babbling
        about "quantum entanglement" just
        missed something completely obvious.

<comment><USER3> Forget the realism part. Can we at least get the locality part?

In my mind, all the quantum observables are not real properties, therefor it's obvious/trivial that they don't exist until measured. That is, I have no problem accepting they are not "real".

What gets to me is the locality aspect of it.

Of course I'm not a physicist (read: I am layman).

<comment><USER4> Not a physicist either, but I think "local realism" is a conjunction of "local" and "realism". Bell inequality experiments show that "local realism" is false, and so we have to reject either "local" or "realism", but we don't necessarily have to reject both.

<comment><USER5> Best i can tell local realism basically means that if something blows up at the other side of the universe, it should not affect whatever is happening on this side until we can observe said event via the reception of energy/particles from said event.

<comment> norea-armozel Well that's the problem with local realism. All sorts of things do affect local conditions at a distance. If entanglement between particle pairs is not affected by any of the physical forces as described then whatever happens between them is just a matter of fact, but no where have I seen this mean we'll ever get ansibles or teleportation. It just means the universe as a substructure we're not fully able to grasp and that it may be just one of those things that connects everything despite the appearance of separation of objects and states.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Ono-Sendai Einstein et. al.'s original paper on the EPR paradox is very clear and understandable, I recommend it: [http://journals.aps.org/pr/pdf/10.1103/PhysRev.47.777](http://journals.aps.org/pr/pdf/10.1103/PhysRev.47.777)

</comment><comment><USER6> Locality (as opposed to non-locality) is a strange concept if you think about it. Because how would different points in space "know" to run the same set of equations? Hence all points have something in common, giving rise to the possibility (or non-weirdness) of non-locality. But of course, this is completely non-scientific :)

<comment><USER7> Actually it's the other way around. _Because_ of translation invariance we have the law of conservation of momentum. _Because_ of temporal invariance we have the law of conservation of energy. Every symmetry gives rise to a physical conservation law, from which forces can be derived.

See Noether's theorem.

<comment><USER8> * every _differentiable_ symmetry _of an action_

(Sorry to be nitpicky, but the asterisk is very important haha)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Thanks for this article, the previous description of the experiment I read omitted the 'discard the result unless a measurement show that the entanglement was successful' step, leaving me very confused.. I didn't know that this was possible, that said I still don't have any clue about HOW this is possible.

</comment><comment><USER10> Money quote: "if people had just understood and believed Bohr and Heisenberg back in 1925, there would've been no need for this whole tiresome discussion"

Prof. Aaronson is teaching a grad seminar this Fall at MIT on Computation and Physics. Here's hoping he makes the lecture notes public ;)

</comment><comment><USER11> This is a really good explanation... but I can personally only square most of this entanglement non-locality with a many-worlds interpretation. Which is itself hugely problematic.

<comment><USER12> What is problematic about the many-worlds interpretation. Even without non- locality, it solves the non-determinism problem, which seems far more problematic to me.

<comment><USER13> Well, the only one of the many-worlds that actually matters is this particular one, right here. What can we say/predict about this exact one. The others don't matter to me in the slightest...

EDIT: well that's not a great explanation of why I dislike the many-worlds hypothesis, let me try again. Like some other ideas, including the existence of God, it's not (yet?) falsifiable. Which doesn't make it false, of course. But it's a really extraordinary idea. It's not just many worlds, it's a fuck- ton. And what can we do with all of them? Are they for nothing? Does nothing that happens matter because it happened differently in a separate but equally real "world"?

I guess, I _can_ believe that "god plays dice with the universe", but I can _not_ believe that "god makes infinite copies of the whole universe and tries all possible quantum outcomes".

<comment><USER4> Do you believe god exists and has a psychology? I'm trying to understand if you have trouble believing because you don't think god would create such a universe, or if you have trouble believing because such a universe is innately unbelievable.

If the latter, then I would ask, "Do you believe the ocean is deep, even though you can only see the surface?"

<comment><USER13> The latter.

I don't really understand the ocean metaphor, since humans have seen below the surface, quite a distance with remote-controlled submersibles.

<comment><USER4> Perhaps a better analogy would be, do you believe that matter exists beyond the observable universe?

Because of the expansion of the universe, it is theoretically possible for me to get in a space ship and travel away from you at such a high speed that we would never be able to meet again, even if at some point we both decided to head back toward each other as fast as possible, and even if we were both immortal. Our light cones would no longer intersect.

Probably you would assume that I continue to exist, despite that for all intents and purposes I cannot affect your life in anyway and therefore "don't" exist.

Similarly if I crossed the event horizon of a black hole.

I believe that a qubit is in superposition (i.e. exists in multiple miniature "universes"), because that theory produces results that are consistent with experiment. When the qubit's universes de-cohere with mine, such that for all intents and purposes I can now only ever observe the qubit in one particular state, why should I assume that the other universes have ceased to exist? Decoherence is a continuous process, just like traveling outside of a light cone, so why treat them any differently. It's rather arbitrary to say that increased distance in space preserves existence, while increased distance in phase space does not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't have a problem with locality being violated. According to relativity, distance is relative and depends on the reference frame. There will always been some reference frame where their is no distance between points.

<comment><USER15> Noooooooooooooooo. No.

"distance is relative and depends on the reference frame." does not imply " There will always been some reference frame where their is no distance between points.". It just means that distances may be different.

Special relativity is a linear transformation, so a nonzero distance cannot become zero.

Relativity doesn't help locality violation, far from it. Relativity has issues (EPR) with locality violation.

<comment><USER14> What's the distance between two points when measured from a third reference frame moving at the speed C?

<comment><USER11> I don't think you can have a reference point moving at speed C, the universe throws a 'divide by zero' exception.

<comment><USER14> While true, I thought in QM you had to evaluate all probabilities, even those where the speed is > C.

<comment><USER15> Nope. In QM you have probabilities where energy conservation is violated for a little bit of time, or where a particle appeared to jump in a distance longer than allowed. This doesn't mean you can have reference frames moving at the speed of light.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Feynman on Great Men - <AUTHOR> http://www.brics.dk/~danvy/lafb.html

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure if Feynman intended it or not, and I wouldn't be surprised if he had, but this sounds like a sarcastic commentary on how even "great men" could be subject to appeals to authority (ie Compton).</comment>


Adblock Plus to Allow Independent Board to Decide Which Ads Are `Acceptable' - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/adblock-plus-to-allow-independent-board-to-decide-which-ads-are-acceptable-1443553201 <comment><AUTHOR> [https://acceptableads.org/](https://acceptableads.org/)</comment>


Ask HN: Current hourly rates for iOS Developers? - <AUTHOR>

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AlvwE_jC2EdDdFRGV1dPQjRZYWVBSWJSZFJtRkZtS3c&usp=sharing <comment><USER2> Is the experience in years or just a scale of 1-5?

<comment><AUTHOR> experience as in skill level

<comment><USER2> Can you put units on everything? For example, I'm assuming USD, but since I see Sydney on there...</comment></comment></comment>


Reimplementing Printk() - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/780556/9033277f8328f060/ <comment><USER2> Of course, Linus has some comments on this patch set:

[https://lwn.net/ml/linux- kernel/CAHk-=whToBNHN_X_BQkO4zSyhSB...](https://lwn.net/ml/linux- email@example.com/)

Ehehe.

</comment><comment><USER3> Page seems down. Archive: [https://web.archive.org/web/20190305032007/https://lwn.net/S...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190305032007/https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/780556/9033277f8328f060/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Is it actually OK to publish subscriber links here? The content is interesting though.

> Be aware that printk output is no longer time-sorted.

So does dmesg sort it?

<comment><USER5> I think LWN is fine with it, at least based on [https://lwn.net/op/FAQ.lwn#slinks](https://lwn.net/op/FAQ.lwn#slinks):

> Where is it appropriate to post a subscriber link?

> Almost anywhere. Private mail, messages to project mailing lists, and blog > entries are all appropriate. As long as people do not use subscriber links > as a way to defeat our attempts to gain subscribers, we are happy to see > them shared.</comment></comment>


Autonomous 'Pandemic Drones' Can Detect Coughing, Fever and More - <AUTHOR> https://petapixel.com/2020/03/27/these-autonomous-pandemic-drones-can-detect-coughing-fever-and-more/ <comment><USER2> It is to be hoped that people everywhere will physically attack, with stones, air rifles/pistols, catapults, laser pointers, slings and anything else that comes to hand if and when such drones intrude; I assume here that for temperature, heart-rate and similar checks, the drone would necessarily be within range of hand-thrown or air-powered weapons. Enough is enough.</comment>


The spreading of misinformation online (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://www.pnas.org/content/113/3/554.full <comment><USER4> To put it succinctly: most of the Internet exists due to advertising - <USER2> is - most of the time, misinformation and/or lies.

Given the competition out there, you just have to misrepresent, overemphasise, paint in favourable light or use a good old lie to sell your product.

We've long since accepted this as 'necessary evil' \- everywhere - on TV, in print, on the streets and online.

And so the 'mind-fucking' techniques have evolved over the decades - <USER3> 'facts' about products to emotional button-pressing voodoo, subliminal messages and click-baits.

The doors to 'bullshit' are wide open in our minds, even though we think we can filter facts from crap, there are techniques that get us too.

"The spread of misinformation" is not a new phenomena at all, in fact it's been here since before the dawn of the Internet.

What changed is the _object_ of bullshit, not the bullshit itself.

In other words, "Enlarge your penis" is coming to your social network news article about your local politician and you won't believe it till you see it!

<comment><USER5> This is simply wrong. Most of the top 100 websites that exist are probably advertising backed, but there are thousands and millions of sites that exist without it, not to mention the fact that the internet encompasses more than just websites, like an iceberg the under net/dark net lie underneath the tiny surface most people see. Its just sad to see this forgotten on HN of all places.

<comment><USER6> How do those sites make money (or otherwise stay in existence)? Serious question.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Digital misinformation has become so pervasive in online social media that > it has been listed by the WEF as one of the main threats to human society.

It might be a good time to bring back critical thinking to the education curriculum. I see that as the only real solution.

It would be interesting to know how the spread of this misinformation differs from other types of regular news.

<comment><USER8> > It might be a good time to bring back critical thinking to the education > curriculum. I see that as the only real solution

Contrary to the popular view, I don't think people in general lack critical thinking skills. When confronted with something that they don't want to believe, even the dullest and least educated among us are _great_ at finding every single flaw in the argument. It's only when they're confronted with something that they _want_ to believe that these skills fall apart.

What people are bad at is not critical thinking skills, but critical thinking _discipline_. It takes real discipline to apply the same standards to everything whether you want to believe it or not, and I don't know many people who are up to it. Unfortunately like most virtues it's not something easily taught.

<comment><USER9> It appears to be deeper than that. I'll try to illustrate using a modern example.

In Australia, the media (and the overwhelming majority of feminists) refuse to acknowledge that Donestic Violence has female perpetrators or male victims. Mission Australia (a large charity organisation) even ran a smear campaign saying that men refuse to acknowlege it happens (a sleight of hand to redirect focus back on males). Some feminists even argued that domestic (of the home) violence only refers to female victims (I found that gem on ANC news). It even got worse when channel 9 and 1800 respect (a government department) took an aggressive gender based campaign that explicitly put the blame on young boys. "It's a boy thing" was one of the charming lines in the ads that saturated print time TV in 2016. Not one single feminist (not one that I could find) raised a single objection against any of this, despite it being a fundamental breach of human rights.

In case you are wondering, the Australian Bureau of Statistics identified that 1 in 3 victims of domestic violence in New South Wales (our largest state) was male. These statistics are totally ignored by government, the media and feminism.

You will see similar trends worldwide. For example, the majority of feminists in the U.K. Refuse to acknowledge many women were voting well before many men were and that women were running successful businesses long before they supposedly were according to the modern media ([http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens- politics/9933592/Wom...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens- politics/9933592/Women-voted-75-years-before-they-were-legally-allowed-to- in-1918.html)).

This doesn't come down to critical discipline, it comes down to blatant pathological lying and bullying on a mass scale. Places like The Verge (among many media outlets) have embraced and driven this prejudice.

The media is extremely manipulative. The bullying of little boys today by most media outlets and many businesses blows my mind. I can't imagine any period in the last 100 years has been so committed to such extreme sexism. Even educational material like Horrible Histories has joined in on the gendered attacks.

I'm not sure what to put this down to. I usually use terms like feminism and political correctness. However, it's also the apathy of most decent people. It's a collective social issue, not just of individuals. People desperately need to take a stand against feminism and political correctness.

This goes beyond critical discipline. This is a collective social disease.

<comment><USER10> > I can't imagine any period in the last 100 years has been

>so committed to such extreme sexism.

I guess the fact women couldn't vote in a number of western countries in the early and mid part of last century or there were almost no women in charge corporations or govt power until the last 30 years (with a very few exceptions) doesn't qualify as extreme sexism?

One can decry the overreach and excesses of some "social justice warriors" without going red pill extremist. Do some women commit domestic violence? of course. But how many men have killed women vs women who have killed men? Save the extremism for some outraged subreddit.

<comment><USER11> I'm not sure why you are being downvoted here. I found the post you are replying to as way too shrill myself.

The truth is, I've seen several articles in the past concerning female domestic violence against men. Such as here: [http://time.com/2921491/hope- solo-women-violence/](http://time.com/2921491/hope-solo-women-violence/) and here: [https://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/sep/05/men- victims-...](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/sep/05/men-victims- domestic-violence) So these articles do exist out there.

Generally speaking, I personally think there's a fairly easy biological explanation for the emotive difference in reporting and society: men are biologically stronger than women, and thus will have a greater tendency to injure / harm when they engage in domestic violence. This is noted in the Time article as well as several references in the Wikipedia article on domestic violence against men ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_violence_against_men#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_violence_against_men#Gender_symmetry)).

This is not to say that domestic violence against men should be ignored (on the contrary, it shows that there is a blind spot, contributed by certain social stereotypes driven by the biological fact that in general, men are stronger than women). But in my view, turning this into a tired "social justice warrior vs. men's right's activists" Internet argument is a great way to get this issue ignored. When this happens, activists tend to entrench in their circles and shout at each other, and the rest of the population ignores them and continues onward with their standard assumptions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I really take issue with these kinds of articles.

Misinformation, fake news, propaganda all pretty much the same thing and they've all been around for a long time.

Our media is a reflection of who we are. Confused, misled, naive and easily persuaded. Suspension of disbelief happens to even the smartest cookies, no one escapes.

Until a automatic reliable semantic fact checker comes along with 99% accuracy we're all in this swirling pile of garbage together.

<comment><USER13> The vast majority of news (even knowledge in general) isn't centred around clearly delineated falsifiable facts. The Trump "biggest inauguration crowd ever, period" statement is an outlier, a far one, because it's so easily falsifiable.

I enjoyed WaPos fact checking of the inauguration speech, here: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact- checker/wp/2017/01/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact- checker/wp/2017/01/20/fact-checking-president-trumps-inaugural-address/)

What they do, for each statement, is opaquely deciding on a falsifiable interpretation of the statement, then proving it wrong. It's a devil-reading- the-bible thing (not that Trumps speeches really bear any comparison to the bible). They do not make a rigorous attempt to tease out all (or even most, or even more than one) reasonable interpretations of the statement, and figuring out which are more or less true.

The first statement is illustrative. Trump said (abridged, see the link for the full quote) "Washington has gotten rich off the backs of the rest of the country". WaPo finds that growth in DC hasn't outpaced the rest of the country since 2006, and thus that there is _no empirical evidence_ to Trumps statement. That's it. In the process of reaching this very clear conclusion, they do state that household income is one of the highest in the country (not offering any explanation for this observation) -- directly falsifying their own conclusion. There is, evidently, _some_ empirical evidence of this.

This process, which is called _fact checking_ , by one of the most esteemed newspapers in the nation -- it's not some crank blogging -- is epistemologically dubious to the extreme.

Trump may very well have a very dubious relationship with the truth, but I have no faith that "fact checking" is going to save us.

<comment><USER14> > This process, which is called fact checking, by one of the most esteemed > newspapers in the nation... Trump may very well have a very dubious > relationship with the truth, but I have no faith that "fact checking" is > going to save us.

I'm torn on this. The truth, especially if it's from multiple sources, still matters. The challenge is to break through the partisan barrier and unfortunately I think that can only be done on a personal level. Personal credibility can break through partisanship far more effectively than any reposted article can.

<comment><USER13> Of course the truth matters. My argument is that fact checkers won't (can't) have a central role (they have a supporting one, sure) in working out the truth, as the GP posited.

A statement like "Washington has gotten rich off the backs of the rest of the country" can be both true and false, depending on which interpretations and assumptions you apply when evaluating it. WaPo decided on a (fairly lazy, IMO) false evaluation, but you can easily do the opposite: The federal government has grown, it's financed by taxes predominantly collected in the rest of the country and directly or indirectly, the federal government dominates employment in DC. There - 100% correct, verifiable facts that support the original statement.

But _why_ is this true of DC? Perhaps it's a good thing that we have highly paid professional management of the federal government, and that this is geographically concentrated? Perhaps everything is more effective, with better services and ultimately cheaper than if the same agencies had been geographically spread out, devolved to states or cities, or didn't exist at all? How do you decide _that_? There are decades of argument (roughly 25, to be exact) about the proper size and organisation of the federal government -- these are fundamental areas of disagreement between reasonable people and the best fact checker in the world won't get you closer to settling that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I appreciate the methodology of this study, especially using science news posts as the comparison against conspiracy and troll posts. I make it a point to remain friends with people who post conspiracy theories online, but I've long ago given up trying to engage them in meaningful dialogue. I simply find myself spinning and spinning in their circular rationalizations.

Instead, I try to share posts from HN and science news sites. This means that I am setting the topic and the tone. It also makes my identity and culture as a nerd public. In my extremely diverse network of online friends, this means I am ever so gently prodding the overall culture in that direction.

I think in a war of ideas, we have to make sure our empirically-supported fact-based beliefs need to be put out there in order to compete. We are playing a long-game here to influence our culture, and I believe that the majority of people will see over the long term the benefits of empiricism and healthy skepticism compared to the chaos and emotionalism of the conspiracy theorists and dogmatists.

<comment><USER16> > Instead, I try to share posts from HN and science news sites.

if you share on facebook, the feed algorithm probably hides it from them, which makes the problem worse.

echo chambers are profitable in the same sense being a drug dealer is profitable: you come for a fix that makes you feel good.

<comment><USER15> It has been my experience that my science posts get far fewer likes (and I assume fewer views) than the political posts my friends make.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The internet essentially turned news into a free market commodity. The Editor has been replaced with the Eigenvector in that good ol' recommendation algorithm everyone uses (I assume some variation of PageRank), to infer what's most relevant to the current user. By virtue of this alone, an echo chamber is being packaged and delivered to users on content platforms.

The seemingly insurmountable problem is to get people to consume content that challenges their preconceptions, as opposed to having them validated repeatedly in exchange for a dopamine hit.

<comment><USER16> > The seemingly insurmountable problem is to get people to consume content > that challenges their preconceptions, as opposed to having them validated > repeatedly in exchange for a dopamine hit.

very well put, sir. people are addicted to information that confirms their beliefs. very good observation indeed. well played, mr zuckerberg, well played.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> CCP Greys discussion about thought germs is extremely interesting look on how and why misinformation spreads. I much less rigirous look at the topic but very accessible.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc)

</comment><comment><USER19> The early internet couldn't verify identity.

Thus, if someone said they were "18/f" we assumed they were 44/m. If they said anything younger than that, we assumed FBI. Everyone was bullshitting everyone because identity could not be proven. 56.6kb wasn't enough for rich media lifestreaming culture. It was only text and the occasional person who owned a scanner. You could call this version of the internet a Derrida paradise.

As internet speeds became better, identity still couldn't be proven, but it could take on characteristics that were more natural for our senses: faces, motions, and sound. Compared to pure text identification, this development is quite the relief for minds used to living in such identity paranoia.

Social media companies piggybacked off of this relief and built entire networks which incentivized positive identification, which was the core for the ad tech revolution. But, the problem with positive identity is that you will attract the very old, very battle-tested, and very entrenched wolves who know how to hack identity: the politicians, the social sciences, the charlatans, the trolls, mass media agents, the psyop engineers, the alphabets, and the rest of the industries who profit from poisoning the well of identity.

And now, here we are, accusing each other of engaging in genocidal racism because we've turned pixels into the inputs of a Skinner box of ideological signaling.

</comment><comment><USER20> I think the reality of the situation is that the 'consensus reality' as agreed up in the west wasn't decided upon by a bunch of intellectuals in ivory towers carefully considering available facts and using logic to derive universal truths. It was decided in a paroxysm of violence that engulfed the entire world and led to the deaths of millions of people, and left us on the brink of nuclear annihilation.

The liberal world order that Putin and Trump are in the middle of tearing apart was not stable, and now we're in a period like the 1840s or the interwar period where all of the questions that everyone had thought had been settled no longer seem as though they are, and there's really nobody left alive who remembers the cost of solving problems like this with bullets and bombs. So we're going to do it again.

It's going to be a rough few years coming up.

</comment><comment><USER21> "Our findings show that users mostly tend to select and share content according to a specific narrative and to ignore the rest. This suggests that the determinant for the formation of echo chambers is confirmation bias."

No news there. I wonder, though, if science needs to fight back with better guns against confirmation bias.

</comment><comment><USER22> Maybe you should just have answered the TSA's offensive questions? Sure beats having to live without your digital goodies.</comment>


Why the Linux kernel is hardly at risk - <AUTHOR> http://www.linux.com/news/featured-blogs/171-jonathan-corbet/491001-the-cracking-of-kernelorg

<comment><USER2> A large portion of people and distributions take the kernel from tarballs, not from the git.

So, this is very annoying for people who took kernels tarballs in the past from kernel.org.

Sure, they can regenerate all the tarballs from the git repositories, but this isn't the point for the past actions.

<comment><USER3> All tarbals are signed via linux kernel archives gpg key, which according to the kernel.org security breach announcement was not compromised. So I don't see a problem here.

<comment><USER4> Don't you see the problem with the server hosting both the tar balls and the signature being compromised?

<comment><USER5> The signature can be validated with a public key not available on the server.

<comment><USER4> "can be' is different from 'is'.

Since the attackers had root, what if they served up rootkitted kernels 1% of the time someone downloaded a tar ball?

<comment><USER5> The downloaders will have to be aware of the "no warranty" clause of the license Linux uses, and take responsibility for the software they bring into their environment. The kernel developers provide instructions[1] on how to cryptographically verify the authenticity of a downloaded kernel, including building a PGP "trust path" to their key.

1: <http://kernel.org/signature.html>

<comment><USER4> The signatures themselves are hosted on kernel.org...

<comment><USER5> So? An attacker's not going to have the private key they were created with, and probably won't have a private key that you have an existing trust relationship to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> this post assumes (if i have understood the argument correctly) SHA-1 is secure. it's isn't - it is well and truly broken. people don't use SHA-1 for security any more (well, they certainly shouldn't). is their any real analysis that shows that git is secure, given the weak nature of SHA-1?

[http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/02/sha1_broken.ht...](http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/02/sha1_broken.html)

<comment><USER7> It's not quite that simple. When cryptographic functions are broken, practical vulnerabilities are usually years away. A reduced SHA-1 collision time is certainly a good reason to move away from SHA-1, but it doesn't mean that an attacker can compromise an existing piece of code secured by a SHA-1 hash.

In this case, it is not merely sufficient to find a collision, but to find a collision that is also a valid Git commit, implements a vulnerability, and, ideally, is not immediately obvious at first glance it is a hack (i.e. having kilobytes of garbage data in the commit diff). This is much harder than just finding a random set of bytes that just happens to match the commit SHA-1.

Now, it could be that an organisation like the NSA is sufficiently ahead of public crypto technology that it is capable of not only finding a SHA-1 collision in feasible time, but is also able to craft a malicious Git commit with an identical SHA-1 to a legitimate commit. Inserting such a commit into the Linux source in an appropriate place might result in compromised kernels appearing in commercial products.

But... I kinda doubt anyone is _that_ far ahead, and in any case, it seems extremely risky to try to play such a high-value advantage in a public repository. If someone happens to spot your faked commit, suddenly everyone knows what you are capable of.

So whilst Git would be more secure using SHA-512 or an equivalent, it's currently very unlikely that anyone has the practical capability and will to compromise the kernel's commit log.

<comment><USER6> i am not saying git is insecure - i am saying someone needs to do exactly the analysis you are sketching. you can wave your hands and say that this is not a problem, but it's been 6 years since sha-1 was broken and that's an _awfully_ long time.

also, i find it absolutely typical of the place that HN has become that my original post asking a reasonable, informed question with reference is voted down. you're a bunch of mindless fucking morons.

<comment><USER7> Your comment was accurate, but somewhat combative, which may be why it was down-voted. I suspect if you had said the same thing, but had phrased it a little differently, it would have been up-voted.

That said, it was not an unreasonable question to ask, and so I've up-voted you.

What doesn't help is calling everyone "mindless fucking morons" after only one or two down-votes. It's not constructive, and won't get you anywhere. Also: chill. Just because one or two individuals didn't like the tone of your original comment, doesn't mean everyone on HN is out to get you. Well, at least not _before_ you insulted them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I guess the best an attacker could hope for would be to modify the git binaries on the server. Even that would amount to little it seems.

<comment><USER9> If they could slip something into the git source then from there, they could tamper with any git project undetected. But since git is presumably self- hosted, it would still be profoundly difficult to get everyone to upgrade to the evil git without noticing the attack. It would require some devilishly underhanded code: <http://underhanded.xcott.com/>

<comment><USER10> Given the number of changes coming in every release, and since some people rebase, a hash change might not be detected...

<comment><USER11> Speaking as a regular git user, I assure you that a hash change would be noticeable. Rebase would look for a common hash between your history and the remote history you just fetched and rebase your commits on top of it. When there is a mismatch, you experience a twilight zone where there are attempted merges of code that your changes had nothing to do with. At this point, it is apparent the remote history has changed, and in the process of trying to figure out how to rebase cleanly, your eyes will be on that foreign code.

Given the number of changes coming in every release, more twilight zone experiences increases the number of eyes on the discrepancy.

I am confident in the sanctity of the git-sourced code, thanks to there being multiple version of the same repository around that people are actively working on. I am more worried about all the stuff I might rely on that is not git-sourced.

<comment><USER10> If the history is tampered during a rebase how would you notice?

Suppose a tree well known for rebasing frequently is rebased on kernel.org, and the dev doing it works from the k.org servers (might be possible, since they give shell access).

Then downstream would just see it as yet another rebase, no?

<comment><USER11> Is this the hypothetical situation of someone doing an interactive rebase on public/published branches and making changes midway through? My current understanding is that, although it is possible, the community avoids doing that (policy: published code history set in stone). That style requires strong communication between developers. It makes people do extra investigation and work, and we all hate doing extra work, right? :)

I cannot speak for what they really do over at kernel.org, but if they do rebase their public repositories often (which will break people doing pushes and fetch/merges without some regular communication), yes, it is possible to sneak something in because the public rebase will not be as exceptional.

This is where you tell me that's what they do there and make me scared again. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What if they wanted to modify the source archives of some other project hosted there? Obviously the kernel is a big target, but it seems there are lots of other less-widespread things on there that would be useful to backdoor.

</comment><comment><USER13> The latest git SHA1 sum is not enough to check. The interesting part for intruders are "grafts":

"Graft points or grafts enable two otherwise different lines of development to be joined together. It works by letting users record fake ancestry information for commits." <https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/GraftPoint>

Still easy to check though. ;)

<comment><USER14> IIRC grafts are local and not propagated by clone/push/fetch. Replacements via git-replace(1) are, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> My reading of this article is that Linus's machine is the real target if you want to inject malware into the kernel undetected.

<comment><USER16> No - Linus' machine is still just another node. Git is fully distributed. Everything in that article still holds.

<comment><USER17> Linus, however, is not distributed. If a malicious commit was discreetly slipped into his repository as a seemingly Linus-sourced change, there is enough trust in him that the change would likely propagate.

<comment><USER18> Not without going through a quite extensive review process and then finally getting signed off (with a crypto signature) by several people.

It's not entirely impossible but there are far more easier ways of getting malware out there.

<comment><USER19> The ultimate goal might not be to simply get malware out there per se, but to discredit Linux's reputation as a secure OS.

If that is the case, going to extra trouble to infect Linux kernel source may well be worth it for the attackers.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>