'I lost everything:' Homelessness surges in Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> https://apnews.com/9309128222ab4c4f92b0d0022e1ec133/In-shadow-of-tech-boom,-the-working-homeless-sleep-in-cars <comment><USER2> There are easier locations to live on $15/hr in California and the USA than Silicon Valley. Some of the people featured in the article have vehicles which implies mobility. I wish the article focused more on the reasons people choose to stay in a place with a ridiculous cost of living that they can't afford. That seems like the real story to me. I'm sure there are valid reasons like family or other things but it's not mentioned at all.

<comment><USER3> Those locations don't pay $15/hr. if you can find a job, and you probably can't. Employment is rising in densely populated areas and not so much in rural areas. This is a little different on the east coast, but that's a more significant moving investment.

Other services like healthcare in rural areas has eroded to barely existent. I can speak from experience in Oregon.

Moving costs money, something they don't have.

Finding a new job costs time and money. They've got neither.

<comment><USER4> Unskilled labor in Houston may not get $15/hour, but jobs are pretty easy to come across. I know multiple people who really aren't good at their job (one's a waitress, one works in retail) but they frequently get new jobs when they lose the old (and sometimes have more than one at once). It's not hard to find a $700 apartment here either.

<comment><USER5> Interesting that you bring up Houston. As someone who lives in Austin and frequents Houston (and have friends living in Houston), I really really liked the city for its great housing at affordable prices, amazing food and nightlife (even though one has to drive fucking everywhere with inhumanly aggressive drivers). Has your opinion changed after the recent Hurricane?

<comment><USER4> I live in an area where I was unaffected (north of Houston). It really only affects where I'd buy a house in the future, as I'd ensure I'm not near a bayou or creek (my current home, a lease, is outside of that danger zone). If you're open to where you live, and aren't stuck on a certain hot spot, I still think it's a great (if hot with the traffic you mentioned) place to live.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Adding to the problem, the NIMBYs everywhere mean that no one builds new RV parks anywhere and the extant RV parks ramp up rents and regulations (your RV has to less than 10 years old) to push out the lower income people. This exact thing happened to me in Austin.

<comment><USER7> I hear the same argument on this site every time poverty and homelessness in Silicon Valley is brought up, but I really don't understand it. Massive capital concentration is leading to only a few cities in the country experiencing economic growth, and your solution is to just build more housing in those few areas?

Why not do something about the capital concentration? Why not do something to push some of those jobs into the Midwest? That would sure lower housing demand in those few cities, and would lead to a more equal country overall.

<comment><USER8> Massive capital concentration is one of the reasons the valley, SF, and to a lesser extent Seattle, Austin, and New York, are creating so much.

Capital concentration leads to higher pay, which leads to smart people coming, which leads to cool products, which leads to an increase in the economic productivity of a society.

I don't see why anybody should "push" jobs away. That would make both the jobs and their employers less desirable.

There are few instances where central government control of economic allocation led to innovation. Even China and Singapore generally is pretty laissez faire about who does what where. It's not like the Korean government is trying to push industry out of Seoul, even though real estate there is insane.

Free markets created the Bay Area and SF (arguably the lack of enforcement of non-competes did), but that's another example of the government backing off. It's not like Communist Russia was a hotbed of innovation.

<comment><USER7> The issue with this is that it's going to create massive political instability if there are a few megacities with massive poverty in every other state. There are already signs that our political system is already destabilizing. What makes you think this wouldn't amplify that?

<comment><USER8> The alternative is government mandated poverty. The government hardly ever creates wealth. They can create the conditions for wealth creation by getting the heck out of the way.

To be a bit dramatic, Venezuela, PRK, Sudan, and Cuba all have incredibly low wealth inequality. Except for the rich and corrupt, everybody else has just about the same as everybody else, which is nothing, based on government policies. Hong Kong is cutthroat with high levels of inequality, but it's also an engine of economic growth. Would you really rather like in Sub Saharan Africa than Hong Kong?

EDIT: And massive wealth and capital concentration brought us Amazon and Google. In exchange for newly minted millionaires being "equal" to us, would you rather live in a world without those technologies - next day shipping and Google Maps and Search?

<comment><USER9> "The government hardly ever creates wealth. They can create the conditions for wealth creation by getting the heck out of the way."

Yes, we're aware that's how it works in shitty novels about trains from the 1950's.

Here in the real world, every single technological innovation in the iPhone was created by the US Government, or with the assistance of US government- funded basic research. This book breaks the whole thing down: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entrepreneurial_State](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entrepreneurial_State)

Google Maps is a particularly terrible example. It wouldn't exist without GPS, a technology invented by the US government.

Hong Kong's government puts billions of dollars a year into technology research. That's not a good example, either. Furthermore, HK has lower income inequality than Nigeria, Rwanda, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Madagascar, Burundi, The Gambia, Swaziland, Botswana, CAR, Sierra Leone and Namibia: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality) . So your statement "everybody else has just about the same as everybody else" in sub-Saharan Africa is total bullshit.

Japan and Scandinavia have relatively low rates of income inequality (especially compared to sub-Saharan Africa). Are you saying those countries are less innovative than Namibia (highest income inequality in the world)?

Finally, the idea that the sole difference between "Sub Saharan Africa" (a region that encapsulates over a billion people and over 40 countries which you regard as a monolith) and Hong Kong is due to "government policies" is childishly ignorant. Africa is not a country.

<comment><USER8> I don't understnad your trains comment.

As for the government never creating wealth, most innovations that came out of government basic research came out of the DoD/partially NASA. Although mostly the DoD. Are you advocating for more defense funding, and then I'd be all behind you.

As for your income inequality chart, it shows exactly what I'm talking about. One of the highest "equality" ratings of the Gini coefficient is the Netherlands, where the Jante law holds sway. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante)

As I said, those are countries who seem like they're stagnating. Do you really want countries with low outcome equality vs. equality of opportunitity vs countries who actually let you excel and keep the fruits of your labour and skill? Outcome inequality is not a bad thing.

Also note that in your gini chart, most of the countries which are awful have no statistics. Are they equal or just a blank slate that you can project your own feelings on?

<comment><USER10> > Do you really want countries with low outcome equality vs. equality of > opportunitity

This is a commonly given argument, but does not apply to the US -- it's nowhere _near_ a country of equal opportunity. I'd be more open to the argument if you'd include items like no inheritance and no private schooling, to really give a more equal footing -- but I'm guessing these are not up for discussion. Thus, a certain amount of outcome equalizing is absolutely necessary.

<comment><USER8> Incorrect. One of the highest drives of most human peopls is to make sure that their efforts will benefit their offspring.

Once you take that away, whether through inheritance tax or forbidding of public schooling or even presence of more books in the household, what incentive are you giving them to produce? Do not equalize outcome.

<comment><USER10> I think we agree then that equal opportunity isn't realistic, and perhaps even shouldn't be attempted. Thus, please avoid making this kind of simple argument of opportunity vs. outcome, as that's not at all what is being suggested.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Part of me is empathetic with this whole story, obviously. But another part of me finds it strange that there is such a huge emphasis on the homelessness situation in SF. It's as if we're only paying attention to this because of the huge inequality density in the city. But the truth is, homelessness is a problem everywhere. It just doesn't feel like an efficient (from a utilitarian perspective) use of resources to focus efforts here instead of where the money can act as the biggest lever. It's as if we mostly care about reducing the visual appearance of the problem, than care about most effectively minimizing the problem in aggregate.

<comment><USER12> > It's as if we mostly care about reducing the visual appearance of the > problem

There are real public health consequences to high concentrations of people living without proper sanitation -- see the ongoing, major hepatitis outbreak in San Diego, for instance.

<comment><USER7> So it's only an issue when the public health of the rich is at risk? Because it seems to me that's what your comment is implying.

<comment><USER13> No, he's saying that homelessness in high population density areas has secondary effects that you don't see in low density areas.

<comment><USER7> Right, with the implication that only homelessness with those secondary effects is the only homelessness that should be addressed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Mountain View, a city of 80,000 which also is home to Mozilla and 23andMe, > has committed more than $1 million over two years for homeless services, > including money for an outreach case manager and a police officer to help > people who live in vehicles.

Why are local governments treating these people as dysfunctional when the dysfunction is in the government in its ability to provide an environment that is safe, stable, and affordable for otherwise functional members of society.

<comment><USER15> I don't get it. Is your premise is that every person making minimum should be able to live anywhere they want in the US, and if they can't the government is responsible?

<comment><USER16> This isn't really an abstract problem that requires reductio ad absurdum type arguments. I grew up in the UK and I visit the valley sometimes. There are several things you immediately notice:

1) Every building is incredibly short.

2) Every building is spaced very far apart.

3) Every road is incredibly wide.

Even fairly unimportant roads, the sort that have rinky dink little cafes on them, will often have three lanes _in each direction_ or more.

The Valley has a homelessness problem because the people who live there refuse to let anyone build tall, dense housing complexes. There's so much space here you could crush the homelessness and poverty problems instantly by just relaxing zoning rules, it wouldn't even take a social housing programme. But instead all the space is taken up with tiny low rise buildings surrounded by enormous parking lots.

<comment><USER15> Yes, but why should they? If a community likes wide roads, low traffic, short buildings, are they somehow obligated to knock down those buildings so that other people can live there?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is mostly the result of the severe underdevelopment of new housing in the last 20 or 30 years, due to neighborhoods preventing any sort of development to stymy gentrification. The situation is made worse by the disincentivisaiton of selling any property because of Prop 13. Why would you ever move if your property taxes would increase by an order of magnitude? All the market distortion has led to predictable outcomes, the new tech employees living in the old crappy housing for exorbitant rents, and the poor pushed onto the streets.

<comment><USER3> I'm not very familiar with Prop 13, but can speak for situations in Oregon which seem quite different. Maybe prop 13 is why.

Quickly surging economies create active markets which encourage owners to sell, renovations to happen, and old tenants to be removed for the purpose of raising rent. In Portland in the past 3-4 years, there were quite a few studies done on how this happens and how it is especially risky in places with less families because those left without housing suddenly often have no place to run to.

Going back to your point about Prop 13, the Portland issues I just described seem to be recovering by a lot in the last 6 months. I am pretty sure it wasn't necessarily because of new building though, because the new building in Portland is nearly all luxury condos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> In my town, not Silicon Valley, the biggest complaint about new buildings is the increase in traffic. Traffic in my area is already horrendous.

I do think some NIMBYs would be less NIMBY if improvements in transportation took place at the same time as new buildings.

<comment><USER19> Automobile infrastructure simply does not scale. Roads and parking are a massive waste of space and ongoing maintenance. Gas stations are superfund sites waiting to happen.

The entire car-culture and the industries that profit from that culture would need to be fought to improve transportation along with new buildout, and to the large extent, car culture has won (parking is part of local building codes, and a large part of state/federal funding for roads).

I'd like to hear how transport could be improved without transitions to mass- transit and increased walkability.

<comment><USER20> What I see as a major part of the problem is zoning laws that require commercial buildings to be grouped away from residential areas. So you have a large number of people commuting to the same area every day and none of them are able to live within walking/cycling distance. If US zoning were more like Japan, where the intended use is a "maximum" limit not an exclusive limit. So you'll see houses and commercial buildings mixed together, so it's possible to live close to work, reducing the number of cars on the road.

[http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese- zoning.html](http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > serving the very people whose sky-high net worth is the reason housing has > become unaffordable for so many.

Well, that and decades upon decades of meager housing construction.

</comment><comment><USER21> This nightmare has been building for 4 decades and it's finally reaching a breaking point.

Here's my recommendation:

\- Work with builders to remove all regulations that prevent building.

\- Zone much more residential areas

\- Remove all height restrictions

\- invite builders to build and offer them legal protection from NIMBYs

\- dezone some of non-residential zoning, if needed: In places where there's limited space, we need to move those companies to locations that can handle the influx of workers

\- declare certain areas as innovation building zones: Remove all building regulations and let start ups build whatever residential areas in any way they can. Let innovation blossom without hamstringing it with countless regulations.

There are good reasons why this trillion dollar PROBLEM/pain point/industry has been completely ignored by venture capitalists and entrepreneurs. We need to understand those reasons and mitigate those concerns.

<comment><USER22> "\- Work with builders to remove all regulations that prevent building."

This would end disastrously. "All those earthquake safety regulations, those are really preventing me from building." "Those environmental regulations, the ones that stop me from polluting everywhere, those are really preventing me from building."

"\- declare certain areas as innovation building zones: Remove all building regulations and let start ups build whatever residential areas in any way they can. Let innovation blossom without hamstringing it with countless regulations."

See above. Most of those regulations were put into place for a reason. Also, this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Oakland_warehouse_fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Oakland_warehouse_fire)

<comment><USER21> We can't simply assume that removing those regulations will result in a disaster. Look at the actual data. Find, the regulations which limit the most building - maybe they're not even safety related. many parts of CEQA for instance does nothing to help the environment but has prevented huge amounts of housing. And for those that are safety related, maybe there's a way to alter them or at least get rid of them just temporarily until the homeless emergency has been mitigated. Anything is better than leaving people out on the street - in any case, that's not a decision you or i should make, but rather the people it affects.

<comment><USER22> "We can't simply assume that removing those regulations will result in a disaster. "

Yes, we absolutely can. If business can get around it, they will. And then when an earthquake hits, all that housing is destroyed.

<comment><USER16> It's not impossible to build taller buildings than what you get in the valley that are still earthquake safe. Even just burying parking lots underground would probably 1.5x the amount of space available for building.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The main problem is population growth. Even if housing is built specifically for poorer and lower income individuals, middle class families looking for hosuing will inevitable trickle in causing demand and prices to rise naturally. Once again poor individuals will be on the street. The same cycle keeps occurring in cities across America. Properties designed for the poor end up getting bought by middle and upper class individuals, seen this in Washington D.C. and New york firsthand.

<comment><USER24> That's why low-income housing is an oxymoron and any project for "below market rate" housing is a political stunt.

You can't cheat supply and demand.

<comment> Harvey-Specter You just have to keep building. At some point there is enough housing to meet demand at reasonable prices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> America the lousily-organised.</comment>


I've got a question for the world. What would we say? - <AUTHOR>

But most importantly I'm asking you. And my personal apologies for the profanity for those of you who were offended. I just have a quick question about retirement... somethingorother. Nah, mostly I just wanted to chat. Isn't that cool? Me, capturing my words and my thoughts in an easily searchable, infinitely adaptable, and cheaply produced medium and leaving a piece of my opinion for all to see, for (potentially) all of time. So while I've got you here, and hopefully started you thinking, let me ask you a question.
What if we've been doing it wrong this whole time?
What if the game of life isn't played to win, and isn't measured in success, or victory, or glory? What if our success was measured by the size of the contribution we made to cultural improvement? And what if that definition was decided by us? And most importantly, what if we finally agree that people are people, and will always be different, but always equal. Each person gets one vote. Everyone has the facts, everyone has the data. Everything else we'll figure out as we go. All are welcome, none are required, everyone has equal opportunity for a chance to contribute. Its time we woke up and realized the differences we can make if we find the right connections. I'm willing to start over, trip the reset and begin a new life in which everyone can sit in and vote on the same discussion, and my worth is based upon the value I add to the world. I'm ready, I just can't do it alone. Feel like taking a leap? <comment><USER2> Sure these ideas sound pretty good (though I don't fully know what you mean by "cultural improvement" or "right connections"). Thousands/millions of people around the world are working towards a lot of these ideals. I'm not fully sure what you're offering here?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Ok, that definitely came across way more grandiose/insane than I had originally intended. My main point I want to make is this: Right now, because of the technological advances created by others for your use, you have just as much ability for influence on this stage as every other person on the planet. So why don't we talk about where we want to go heading into the future?

My idea: An open-source platform on the internet where everything you contribute is gathered and stored for the use of others. Where your "value" to the community is simply a representation of how much the community values you. Odd? Yes, but tell me why it wouldn't work. And then lets try and figure out a way to fix things the way we want to. Together.</comment>


The Tower of Babel and the Fighter Plane (2013) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://melconway.com/keynote/Presentation.pdf <comment><USER2> Great read!

Complexity is evil evil evil (my take on it: [http://www.embeddedrelated.com/showarticle/132.php](http://www.embeddedrelated.com/showarticle/132.php))

<quote from Conway's article>

Incidentally, today's automobiles share this problem of a massive amount of on-board code and the bugginess that accompanies it. A few years ago, some Mercedes owners found that when they pushed a certain button on the navigation system the driver's seat moved.

</quote>

I have this sinking feeling that my death is going to occur because of some interaction between software/firmware design and an unexpected situation (e.g. stuck in an elevator between floors because the firmware is expecting internet packets from Twitter or something). Hope I'm wrong, but the complexity of electronics seems to be increasing fast enough for system reliability to decrease.

<comment><USER3> I doubt that scenario you mentioned will cause your death. The firemen will get you out.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, it'll probably be a car crash or a hospital equipment failure :/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is the Mel Conway of "Conway's Law" named by Fred Brooks in _The Mythical Man Month_. Don't skip it just because it seems to be about the F-35; it isn't. It's about complexity, concurrency (the risk thereof) and---at the very end---about abstractions for fitting huge systems into your head.

<comment><USER5> Seconding this recommendation. It's not bashing the F-35 as an aircraft, but taking aim at the program. Sadly, as he points out, it's happened plenty of times before. The F-35 program just happens to be egregious because it started out so big.

Highly recommend this read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The key to making strong systems is to make each component do one thing, and do it well, the Unix way. Each plane does one thing, does it the best. When the leader deploys each plane to do that job, he can count on it. The last time we tried to make one plane do it all we got the F-111, which also didn't do anything the best, except the FB-111 made a fine bomber. Past, repeat, etc. Don't build the complexity into a component; build it into the overall system, the whole computer, not the individual plane or program.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm having trouble accessing this - quick copy-paste link of Google cache for anyone else with the same trouble: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:WYm78Yt...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:WYm78YtsiR0J:melconway.com/keynote/Presentation.pdf+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

</comment><comment><USER8> Weird: strong start, leading up to a tantalizing claim, and then ... it just ended.</comment>


A harassment campaign on Goodreads - <AUTHOR> https://www.patreon.com/posts/32921860 <comment><USER2> > Not all of these fake reviews are one stars – some give five star or other > highly rated ratings. The catch with these highly rated reviews is many of > them are created to give the false appearance that they were written by > Tomlinson to raise his own Goodreads ratings, spoofing his name and photo > and sometimes even using his own copyrighted writings.

Wow, that's devious. I wonder if any of the fake product reviews I've seen are obvious fake endorsements placed there by the competition.

<comment><USER3> This problem isn't one born with the internet. Think about all those "WE BUY HOUSES 4 CASH" signs you see at stop lights. Why can't the city simply look up the phone number on them and convict the business owner for breaking advertisement laws? Because there is no proof he put the sign there. It could be the competition trying to frame him! Thus, the signs are simply thrown out... and he can put new ones out tomorrow.

<comment><USER4> "Hello, I saw a sign that says you buy houses for cash, can I set up a meeting?"

"Yes, when are you available?"

> Ladies and gentlemen, we got him.

Surely can't be that hard to find out if the business owner set up that sign, right?

<comment><USER5> Let's say you buy houses for cash and I put up a sign with your number on it. The police call you and find out that you do, indeed, buy houses for cash. They throw you in jail and I snicker, knowing that by breaking the advertising law myself but with your name I have put you out of business.

While I'm at it, I leave your business card at the scene of a heist.

<comment><USER6> > _" Let's say you buy houses for cash and I put up a sign with your number on > it. The police call you and find out that you do, indeed, buy houses for > cash."_

Suppose I were operating such a business with _legal_ advertisements only and the detective asked me _" Hey I saw a sign on a telephone pole saying you buy houses for cash, is that right?"_ why would I answer in the affirmative?

> _" No, it's weird that you saw that. I don't post signs on any telephone > poles, this is a highly reputable business._

They'd only say that if they're smart. Many of them probably aren't, and their guard will be down if the detective can do a passable _" desperate alcoholic"_ impression over the phone. But regardless, I agree that false negatives are more likely than false positives.

<comment><USER7> If you're advertising on a telephone pole and a potential customer (or police officer) contacts you, here's how that conversation goes:

"No, it's weird that you saw that. I don't post signs on any telephone poles, this is a highly reputable business. However, as long as you're here, I definitely do buy houses for cash, and it sounds like you're interested in that."

<comment><USER8> If I were a cop, I'd go full on Dexter Morgan and DNA, fingerprint the flyer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Situations like this make me think that public educational systems should experiment with some form of "digital literacy" courses / exercises for young children with the goal of humanizing the processes of online communication. Teaching standards for how to treat others (and how to respond to observed and experienced abuses) may provide some reduction in the number of individuals that seem to be finding their ways to toxic online communities. From a lay perspective it really does seem that people who participate in extremely toxic online communities are exhibiting signs of serious personality deformations; since the internet acts as a significant force multiplier on an individual's ability to spread their perspective, and since the problem of policing online speech without creating a locked-down surveillance nightmare seems unlikely to be solved any time soon, perhaps one of the better options would be to arm adolescents with a proper mentality for handling online harassment under the assumption that it is likely to occur.

<comment><USER10> There is definitely value to gain from Digital Literacy as well as Digital Etiquette, but I'd take your suggestion a step forward and teach more people how to handle the mind games that stem from toxic internet cultures with lessons on Digital Fortitude.

A lot of people who grew up with the internet wised up and learned to tolerate/ignore troll behavior. This mostly comes with age, but we can do a better job teaching young internet users that the racist commenter is just looking for attention and should be ignored, that the 200 messages could be coming from a single anti-social person, and that a slew of 1-star reviews may not be coming from a reputable source. This would also involve warnings on the repercussions of handling a hostile situation the wrong way (by engaging in a troll and showing obvious signs of stress or by blithely trusting a DM who appears to be on your side) and more effective ways to cope.

<comment><USER11> So long as your lessons include the information that this advice only works when you're dealing with low-level harassment. It fails catastrophically when you're dealing with a mob. It's like the advice to "eat healthy foods" \- while it's probably right for a random person, when you share that advice with someone who has cancer, you are an insensitive ignorant dick. So if you share it as "basic approaches to normal life", fine, but when you hear "x hasn't been well", maybe you should avoid responding with this helpful simplistic nonsense.

edit: a more complete article on this [https://the-cauldron.com/you-can-t- just-ignore-the-trolls-8f...](https://the-cauldron.com/you-can-t-just-ignore- the-trolls-8fbee3391349)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There are plenty of communities that mitigate this problem through earned privileges. Real users who are participating in the community are able to do more than someone that just signed up with a throwaway address. Stackoverflow seems like an okay model... recent moderator issues aside.

Also, the ability to whitelist an author or book for extra moderation seems like a no-brainer. After there is evidence of harassment then all user content needs to be approved before it is made public. Enable trusted moderators from the community to help with this if paid moderators cannot keep up.

This seems like it could get so so much worse than it currently is. The target of harassment seems to be taking it well but what happens on a platform like this to someone that isn't as prepared to deal with it?

<comment><USER13> _There are plenty of communities that mitigate this problem through earned privileges. Real users who are participating in the community are able to do more than someone that just signed up with a throwaway address. Stackoverflow seems like an okay model... recent moderator issues aside._

I'm scanning my memory banks and Stackoverflow is the only "earned privilege" community that comes to mind and my experience with it has been uniformly unpleasant, let's say "bordering on toxic". If anything, automatically earned privilege creates competition which makes everything worst and nastier.

In contrast, I moderate a medium sized FB group in a topic that often has trolling. We eliminate it entirely through hand-picked moderators and a zero tolerance statement. There's no competition to be a moderator and there's actually little for the moderators to do since making things clear mostly works. So there's no competition for anything and people spend their time discussing issues instead.

HN seems to be closer to that situation also - with karma hidden, competition is pretty limited. And anonymous posters can make fine contributions here.

<comment><USER14> > _I 'm scanning my memory banks and Stackoverflow is the only "earned > privilege" community that comes to mind_

As far as "positive earned privilege examples", some come to mind:

      * HN, where downvoting requires a certain amount of karma (although there's plenty of human moderation too)

      * MetaFilter [1], which has a reputation of good content due to their one-time $5 charge for signing up.

      * The /r/AskHistorians subreddit, where you only get to answer once you have in-depth knowledge of a specific topic.

[1] [https://www.metafilter.com/](https://www.metafilter.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Instagram is another site with this problem. Someone supplied my email address when creating an account in late 2018. I only know this because I started receiving emails to confirm my email address. Then I started to get a bunch of emails telling me about new posts from other users. Gmail account history only showed logins from my browser and IP address, so I don't believe my account was compromised.

I finally got tired of the emails, so I told the site I forgot the password, changed the password to something long and random, then deleted all the content. I remember having to do something unusual to delete the content, like spoof my useragent to pretend to be a mobile device, or something like that. I've never used Instagram before or since, but it really annoyed me that I have a problem due to their lax controls.

Instagram never should have activated the account and allowed any activity until the email address was verified, which I never did. If a big site like Instagram can't get this right, it doesn't surprise me that a small site like Goodreads can't either.

<comment><USER16> _Instagram never should have activated the account and allowed any activity until the email address was verified_

Essentially zero services on the internet operate this way because it increases the friction to signing up & getting started with the service.

Some services do somewhat better by including a "this wasn't me" link in the email verification email to make it as easy as possible to remove your email from the account in question. IMHO, this is a fine way to handle the problem.

<comment><USER17> Except that users are (or should be) trained NOT to click on any links in spurious e-mails they receive.

No, dear sites, kindly deal with a little bit of sign-up friction and stop offloading to others the fallout from people abusing your services.

<comment><USER16> It's not just the sites you are asking to deal with that friction, but also every single individual user who ever signs up for anything on the internet.

That's a lot of friction. Too much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The original title, "Lax Security and Moderation at Goodreads Allows Trolls to Spoof People, Harass Authors" seemed pretty straightforward to me.

How is it misleading or "linkbait"?

<comment><USER19> In my observation of the edit patterns being used by moderators, titles are frequently edited when they contain emotionally charged words ("spoof" "trolls" "harass" in this one) to create bland, boring titles no matter what the source article is titled (not violating guidelines).

<comment><USER20> One person's idea of making titles more boring is probably another person's idea of removing bias. Bland might not necessarily be bad in these cases.

<comment><USER21> People who read the article will be exposed to this "bias" anyway. Leaving the title as-is would then be more informative.

Here, the change is okay. Other times, the change rendered the title nonsensical: "XYZ is now closed source" -> "XYZ Changelog".

I would default to a much stronger preference for the original article-the author/editor probably put more thought into the title, and destroying their creative work shouldn't be routine.

And what's with the bias-paranoia? People, including journalists, are allowed to have opinions and emotions. They do not have to equivocate: "The sanitary situation in the camp is becoming dangerous" does not require "...but someone on YouTube believes germ theory is a hoax, so who is to say if sleeping in feces isn't just a good way to stay warm".

<comment><USER20> > I would default to a much stronger preference for the original article-the > author/editor probably put more thought into the title, and destroying their > creative work shouldn't be routine.

And what's routine? How often are titles changed? How often is this viewed as beneficial to the majority, and how often is it viewed as detrimental?

If you're looking for a set of rules that result in the best solution every time, you're going to be disappointed. Whatever solution you come up with, even if it perfectly matched your sensibilities, would be misapplied in some instances because people are responsible for applying it.

The real question is how good of a job is being done on editorializing the submission titles already, and going off what we can remember of past instances is IMO worse than useless, it's likely rife with multiple forms of cognitive bias.

There's probably a good discussion to be had as to how well the title editorializing is here, but it rarely happens in response to someone posting about a specific title. If I had to guess, the discussion resulting from the post in the recent past about the site that tracked all HN submission name changes (which I never got a chance to read closely) might have some good discussions (as that data set is probably a good base to explore this topic usefully).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Well, goodreads _is_ owned by Amazon. I'm not at all surprised that their lackadaisical attitude toward abuse cuts across the whole business.

</comment><comment><USER23> Right, another online group of people conducting orchestrated campaigns of harassment. They seem to come together with highly tenuous pretexts (eg some random radio show that isn't even on the air any more) yet the members are highly motivated and resourceful. It is a very strange phenomenon, like a cult worshipping nastiness as the supreme expression of existence. These groups seem particularly against art and creativity, their targets are often novelists, artists and performers. I suppose if you are deeply unhappy and disempowered then any form of art must seem like an affront. Only if all creative acts are stupid may you feel good about your own life chewing cud on a forum somewhere.

The more online everyone and everything becomes the more prevalent these generalised and distributed lynch mobs are likely to be. The also function with impunity (eg kiwi farms).

<comment><USER21> Was Gamergate the index case, or merely the first time people outside the intel community took notice?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Goodreads is desperately in need of a strong competitor.

<comment><USER25> Aside from the spoofing issues what are the main drawbacks and benefits of GoodReads from your perspective - what's the worst of times, what's the best of times?

<comment><USER26> The ratings are useless - any author with a devoted following gets endless 5 star reviews and YA books are stuffed with 5 star reviews. The website is clunky beyond belief and never seems to get improvements. The recommendation engine is terrible. The search facilities are weak and inconsistent. It could be so much better, but it never improves.

<comment><USER27> How would you fix the ratings issue? That's a common issue with ratings systems in general (that they reflect popularity instead of quality).

<comment><USER28> You start by allowing people to rate the ratings. For instance, flag individual titles or tags 'not interested' such as on Steam. Even just a way to hide individual titles would make a system like Netflix much better to use, and bring product customers are more likely to pay for to the foreground. And then you can feed the data to the recommendation engines, which might start to learn about what demographics are using the system rather than relying on assumptions. My personal belief (as someone with zero actual experience here), is that dislikes and disinterest would be much better for generating recommendations over likes and interest. 'likes' just gives you what is popular in your familiar genres. 'dislikes' expresses your tastes.

<comment><USER27> If you allow people to rate the ratings, you come back to the original issue that people are unreliable raters.

Dislikes over likes does sound interesting though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It's absurd that pre-release reviews are available to the general public. This should be easy to fix, if GR cared to do so.

<comment><USER30> Goodreads is owned by Amazon, who is incentivized by the pre-release purchases that these reviews drive. They're not going to put a lock on pre-release reviews (nor should they) to solve a trolling/bad actor issue.

<comment><USER31> Why shouldn't they? I think it's ridiculous to be able to review something which you have not experienced and I don't see a good reason why they should be allowed. The lockout should be until at least one person (ideally more) have experienced the fully released product.

<comment><USER30> Authors and publishers ship pre-release advance copies to popular reviewers, as part a part of the promotion leading up to launch, like movies do with prescreenings. Goodreads is notorious for having these types of reviewers, in fact, it's one of the carrots that serial reviewers go after.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm not familiar with the backend of Goodreads but perhaps one tiny step forward would be for the book page to not open for ratings/comments prior to review copy distribution. And because review copy users already have to on- board (in some way) to get those copies, Goodreads could provide an integration point for authors to plug that reader list in and only let those folks respond initially, with restrictions lifting at launch.

Anyway, I wish them best of luck. This problem is widespread, see: Amazon, Metacritic, Rotten Tomatoes, et al.

<comment><USER33> My solution:

"Thanks for posting your review on goodreads! As a final step, please enter the fourth word on page 93 of the book you've just reviewed"

<comment><USER34> Page 93 of the Kindle version? The hardback? the paperback? or the large print version?

<comment><USER35> Maybe something like "The last sentence in Chapter 8" "Fourth sentence in chapter 9" and so on.

<comment><USER34> I still think GoodReads would have issues there.

The first thing Goodreads asks you to do when you create a new account is to list and rate a bunch of books you've read and either liked or hated. This is important, because they (ostensibly) want to recommend other books to you.

When I first created an account, I quickly rated maybe 50 books on a 1-5 scale I had read over the years. I didn't have most of them handy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I read with some surprise his claims that Amazon wouldn't take down a fake review (which posted fake anti-Semitic quotes, even when the publisher sent them the pages the quotes were supposed to be from). So I checked Amazon myself, and sure enough there is the number one review[1] claiming _this tome continues the unfortunate slide of Patrick S. Tomlinson into an alt-right provocateur with blatant anti-Semitic tropes and characters littered throughout the book._

Ironically, most of the other one star reviews claim the book is full of "thinly-veiled, progressive tropes"

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Starship-Repo-Patrick-S- Tomlinson/dp/...](https://www.amazon.com/Starship-Repo-Patrick-S- Tomlinson/dp/1250302714)

</comment><comment><USER37> How does [https://www.librarything.com/](https://www.librarything.com/) compare these days?

</comment><comment><USER38> I can't imagine how frustrating this is for business owners. There are a bunch of obviously fake reviews by people in India on the local GNC branch. If you just look at the star rating, you'll think "Wow, that place must suck!". Then you read the reviews and it's from people who have never set foot in the United States never mind GNC. Reviews are basically useless.

</comment><comment><USER39> In Neal Stephenson's "Fall, or Dodge in Hell", a woman becomes a victim of organized online harassment. The harassers keep repeating the same accusation. She has a rich tech friend who invents "Organized Proxies for Execration" or APEs that overwhelm the internet with huge volumes of contradictory messages. As the inventor says: "-why, even the most credulous user will be inoculated with so many differing, and in many cases contradictory, characterizations as to raise doubts in their minds as to the veracity of any one characterization, and hence the reliability of the Miasma as a whole." Here "Miasma" is Stephenson's word for the cesspool that is social networks. The strategy works more or less for the victim, but (spoiler) has unintended consequences.

</comment><comment><USER40> This definitely seems to cross the line from troll to criminal:

>Many of the spoofed accounts use the identities of Tomlinson's friends and peers in the author community, creating the illusion that people he knows are giving one-star reviews and saying bad things about him. Dozens of authors have been spoofed in this manner, including the entire board of directors of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

>Not all of these fake reviews are one stars – some give five star or other highly rated ratings. The catch with these highly rated reviews is many of them are created to give the false appearance that they were written by Tomlinson to raise his own Goodreads ratings, spoofing his name and photo and sometimes even using his own copyrighted writings. These spoofed reviews often also show Tomlinson falsely saying things which would hurt his own reputation.

>Gareth L. Powell and Beth Cato were among the authors spoofed, with their photos and names used to create fake accounts to attack Tomlinson's books.

I think calling these "trolls" doesn't go far enough. I am sure this crosses criminal lines, or at the very least probably several laws.

The victims should sue or the government should pursue actions that rise to this level. It's not just "trolling" to do this, in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER41> This has been a problem on Goodreads for a few years now.

</comment><comment><USER42> The pests are at it again, classic O&A fans.

</comment><comment><USER43> I find topics like this very interesting.

Fake reviews on Amazon, vote bombing on youtube, fake upvotes on reddit, fake likes on facebook. I'd even extend this tangentially to cyber squatting DNS records, email spam, and robo callers.

It's a matter of trust. We think we can just make a big polling station somewhere and get the communities opinion on something, one person one vote. "Here's the big central aggregate, take the law of averages and you have a good sense of how good something is". But on the internet the Sybil attack reigns supreme. This assumption doesn't hold.

Whenever I read articles on problems like these the topic of "Why it's happening and how to fix it" invariable drifts to "We need better moderation". I _never_ think that. I think "Stop trusting Sybil". Not even THAT! Stop asking me to trust random people I don't trust!

What if instead of having an single aggregate review, we "web of trust" it instead? Here's the system as I imagine it, and it's not fully thought out at this point, please chime in with criticisms if you have them.

The jist: Every user has their own list of ratings for books in the system, and a list of people they "trust". The rated list of books you see the average rating of the people you trust, recursing out through the web of trust. The ratings are calculated live, on demand. With the only thing held in constant being each individuals personal ratings.

I'm leaving a lot undefined right now, but an example of how I imagine such a system to work:

Lets say you know Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is the perfect book. You go to the books page and review the ratings. Your rate is obviously 5. You see lots of other people in your list who have rated it 5 (naturally). But you also see that there are some 3's in there. You can click on the 3's and see how they reached you through the web of trust. It turns out a bunch of 3's are coming from your someone named Bob, Bob trusts Alice, and Alice has trusted a bunch of people from some kind of Harry Potter hating cabal of philistines. You could blacklist the cabal, but there's too many of them, so instead you blacklist Alice. All the 3's are gone, and so are all the other reviews from the cabal. Your list of reviews now more accurately reflects views that you would trust.

In this way, your effort to moderate away the opinions of people you don't trust has done double duty, it has cleared views you disagree with and do not trust, and it has also done so for the people who trust you as well.

It is decentralized moderation.

There's some challenges here, for example, how to bootstrap the system for new users? What is the best way to calculate the average reviews in a timely manner? How much weight should be applied to a friend of a friend of a friend? What kind of feedback could we give to users to incentivize them against trusting people like the philistine cabal? etc.

I have some thoughts on this, I'll spare you.

Like any decentralized system, it's more work, it's more complex, and it has some surprising and ugly edge cases. I also don't think I'm some genius for coming up for this, it's just an application of Web of Trust. But I have not seen a system such as this in practice. Nor do I ever seem to see people talk about it when the topic of moderation and spam come up. If you know of any such case studies, let me know!

<comment><USER44> Generally the problem with systems like this is that you need a critical mass of users to rate books for a site to have any value. If the only ratings you see are from people you trust, this becomes a lot worse. Once you add UI friction, adoption drops even more. Generally because of network effects, sites that use dark patterns and prioritize engagement over trustworthiness will tend to thrive. Just look at the history of social media.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Don't forget that it may be an ad campaign to promote a book, though.

</comment><comment><USER29> Some people are trying to battle against negative fake reviews by posting positive fake reviews. It's not clear to me that they are as morally superior as they evidently believe.

Edit: The solution is to fix the voting system, not to abuse it further because you believe you are virtuous.

<comment><USER46> I hope you see the difference between fake praise and harrassment.

"Both sides are wrong" doesn't mean they are equally bad.

<comment><USER47> It's not fake praise vs harassment, it's fake praise vs fake criticism.

In any case this will make for an excellent marketing campaign. I don't even know what the book is about (I assume something politically charged because of this campaign) but now I know the book!

<comment><USER6> It can be [and is] fake criticism and harassment at the same time. These are not mutually exclusive in the slightest.

<comment><USER6> Excerpt from the article: _" Jason: I saw one troll spoofing your name and picture post an extremely nasty, long-winded comment on Goodreads, discussing intimate details of your family life and making it sound like you want to kill yourself. None of this could be considered a review of your book by any conceivable means, yet Goodreads still hasn't removed it. What's going on here?"_

I'm really curious how anybody thinks this isn't harassment.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Favicon Cheatsheet - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/audreyr/favicon-cheat-sheet <comment><USER2> This collection of vendor-specific hacks is an excellent demonstration of the failure of the Web standards process.

<comment><USER3> Historically, the web standards process was theorized to work like:

1) vendor introduces new feature, tagged with vendor name to not pollute the namespace (e.g. -webkit-foo, or msapplication-TileColor from the OP)

2) once feature becomes popular enough to warrant its permanence, vendors agree on some new standard name for the agreed-upon behavior

3) ???

4) everyone uses the new standard name

The problem with this idea is that step 3 is missing. Browsers can't drop their -webkit CSS support because old pages rely on it, and new pages still use -webkit to work on old browsers. The original name is effectively permanent so there's little incentive to even take step 2, because all that produces is two names for the same thing (e.g. you use an attribute with "apple" in the name to choose the Android icon).

In recognition of the failure of this process, Blink (and other browsers) is using a different approach, where new features are not namespaced; instead, they'll require users to individually opt-in to nonstandard features, under the idea that it's hard for an idea to become permanent if it requires each user to individually configure their browser:

[http://www.chromium.org/blink#vendor- prefixes](http://www.chromium.org/blink#vendor-prefixes)

I am a little skeptical that this will only result in going too far the other way -- new features will wither because you can't experiment with them enough to get enough mass behind them to standardize them -- but at least it's not retreading the known broken path.

<comment><USER4> 5) wait another 7 years for IE to implement it, with their own "twist".

6) wait another 5 years for IE to properly implement it.

<comment><USER5> I haven't tested nor cared how something appears in IE in years. Since like 2009. I have worked on major frontends for a couple of big companies all this time and recently a startup. IE is the new opera. IE needs to make sure that everything works. It may have large marketshare, but it's the market that's irrelevant to anything I've worked on (IT and business related tools and control panels).

<comment><USER6> Lucky you. Investment banking compliance software here. IE8 and little else every-'king-were...

If I ever win the lottery I'm taking out full page ads in the national newspapers asking the general public if they know how stupidly out of date certain banks are internally and asking it it fills them with confidence or not!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For what its worth i made a tool a while back that takes a big image and makes a bunch of sizes for you as well as the code etc.

I've not touched it in over a year but it still gets used every now and again.

[http://allthefavicons.com/](http://allthefavicons.com/)

<comment><USER8> I remember this from the the original hacker news thread and still use it. Anything 'real' gets custom rendered icons for each size, but for side projects where the icon quality isn't critical it's very convenient.

<comment><USER9> For reference, the original HN thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4529963](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4529963)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hi, author of the cheatsheet here.

I'm thinking of changing the snippet under "The Basics" to be what's suggested in issue #3 ([https://github.com/audreyr/favicon-cheat- sheet/issues/3](https://github.com/audreyr/favicon-cheat-sheet/issues/3)). Any feedback before I make the change?

</comment><comment><USER11> "Forcing a Favicon Refresh ... For yourself and all site visitors: Append a query string. (TODO: find out if any browsers have problems with this.)"

Don't do this - it prevents the file from being cached by some proxies [1]. Instead, use a filename-based approach to 'cache busting' [2].

[1] [http://www.stevesouders.com/blog/2008/08/23/revving- filename...](http://www.stevesouders.com/blog/2008/08/23/revving-filenames- dont-use-querystring/) [2] [https://github.com/h5bp/server-configs- apache/blob/master/.h...](https://github.com/h5bp/server-configs- apache/blob/master/.htaccess#L500-514)

</comment><comment><USER12> Don't you always want your favicon at / regardless because everything that grabs favicons automatically will look there, and not parse your /index.html to figure out what the meta tag is?

Other than that, this seems very handy!

</comment><comment><USER13> I think I'm going to vomit if I see another web page written in the 21st century that condones the use of ICO format.

Please, please, please can we have some kind of multi image PNG format ?

How about multiple PNG images wrapped in a TIFF container ?

With cross browser support, pretty please.

Anything but ICO. ICO format is nasty.

<comment><USER10> That's what I thought too, until I did more research on ICO and couldn't come up with an answer for "Why use png in addition to ico?" in the FAQ (well, except for touch devices where ico isn't supported). Notice how that FAQ question is empty.

But if you could submit a pull request with a bulleted list of PNG advantages over ICO, I'd be happy to include it. Seriously.

<comment><USER13> PNG is a properly specified format with written documentation.

ICO has many undefined and assumed values.

The only reason you would use ICO for favicons instead of PNG is that it supports multiple images.

<comment><USER10> What's your GitHub username? I'd be very interested in hearing more specifics and possibly collaborating to adjust the recommendations if needed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> [http://www.jonathantneal.com/blog/understand-the- favicon/](http://www.jonathantneal.com/blog/understand-the-favicon/) this is really related and clear!

</comment><comment><USER15> Here's an idea for an app:

1\. Upload a large, centered image, and have it spit out all of these different sized, optimized favicon images for me.

The initial image should be large enough to accommodate all lower sizes.

Any takers? :)

<comment><USER8> [http://www.allthefavicons.com/](http://www.allthefavicons.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Could not believe we should be considering giving so many different favicon sizes from 195px (Opera Speed Dial) down to 16px. Wider SVG support in favicons would be welcome.

<comment><USER16> > Wider SVG support in favicons would be welcome.

I believe SVG still has no support for hinting (or not enough to be worth talking about).

Because of the resolution range, either extremely strong rasterizer hinting (supporting not only pixel-snapping but the complete addition or removal of features and the like) or multiple bitmaps is necessary to avoid getting either blocky output at "high" resolutions or a blurry and unusable mess at low ones. You can see the issue by comparing OSX's actual Pictures folder icons[0] with what you get just by scaling the biggest icon down[1] or the smallest one up[2]. [0] looks good and recognizable at all sizes, [1] is a blurry mess from 32px down and [2] looks terrible above 32px (and not too good at 32px either).

And even at constant resolution, different densities (and thus different physical sizes) require different levels of details: Opera puts 195px in up to 4.5~5cm (as far as I can see by opening Opera, maximizing it and looking at the speed dial screen) where an iPad puts 144px (152 in iOS7) in about 1cm (not measured as I don't have one, if somebody can provide the exact dimensions of app icons it would be great). You can't[3] put precise information in an iPad icon as most users will be unable to see it, whereas a huge icon and nothing else would be a waste of space on Speed Dial.

[0] [http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l456vgN8oa1qz50x3.png](http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l456vgN8oa1qz50x3.png)

[1] [http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lurpsf1owX1qz50x3.png](http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lurpsf1owX1qz50x3.png)

[2] [http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lurpyq9FPu1qz50x3.png](http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lurpyq9FPu1qz50x3.png)

[3] well you can, and it makes for great easter eggs, Apple's icon designers — amongst others — are known to have great fun with that[4], but I'm sure you get the point

[4] [http://gigaom.com/2009/07/27/a-closer-look-at-apples- icons-s...](http://gigaom.com/2009/07/27/a-closer-look-at-apples-icons-secret- messages-easter-eggs/)

<comment><USER17> SVG has a "shape-rendering:crispEdges" option that you can use to snap lines to pixels. See this blog post for more details: [http://simurai.com/post/19895985870/icon-sharpness- limbo](http://simurai.com/post/19895985870/icon-sharpness-limbo)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I declare 2013 as the year of Favicon Wars.

</comment><comment><USER19> There is also this: [http://favicon.io/](http://favicon.io/)

</comment><comment><USER20> This is so incredibly handy. I've been searching the internets for this page for years now.

</comment><comment><USER21> Why don't we have mipmapping on the web? I've never heard anyone suggest it before, but it seems like a good solution to this problem and all the other pixel ratio kinds of problems.

<comment><USER22> If you mean ability to supply several, potentially hand-crafted images for different sizes — that's exactly what .ico already offers.

If you stick to the precise definition of mippmapping, where they're exact downscalings of one texture, that solves a different problem — efficient downscaling, only sampling O(1) texture pixels per displayed pixel.

On the web CPU isn't the problem; there are 2 other reasons so serve several sizes:

(1) Tiny images (like favicons) don't scale well, you might want manual intervention. (2) Too large images waste bandwidth => you want negotiation, especially to transmit less to mobile devices.

.ico was a quite elegant solution to (1) actually. I guess all the mess comes from icon resolutions growing enough to turn the problem into (2)...

There several efforts to solve this generally — google "Responsive Images", "srcset". I'd think progressive JPEG and PNG could have solved (2) well — just stop downloading when you had enough quality — but many people say that's not enough :-(

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Here is my solution to the "problem". In Nginx config:

location = /favicon.ico { return 204; access_log off; error_log off; }

<comment><USER24> Those of us who like to bookmark sites on our bookmarks toolbar without any text will find your suggestion very annoying.

<comment><USER25> This is exactly what I do, too. I've got the Bookmarks Toolbar in Firefox with just favicons all the way across. I don't need the text alongside and prefer to remove it to fit more icons instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> More favicon goodies: [http://pineapple.io/tags/favicons](http://pineapple.io/tags/favicons)

</comment><comment><USER27> Updated it as follows: 64x64 ... Safari Read Later sidebar in HiDPI/Retina

</comment><comment><USER28> pollute yo metadata with vendor crap. just like jpeg.</comment>


From Comcast to XFINITY? - <AUTHOR> http://www.fernstrategy.com/?p=349 <comment><AUTHOR> Can anyone with Comcast/XFINITY service comment on any changes that have taken place in service/support since the rebranding?

<comment><USER2> Well, I lost some TV channels (basic cable TV + Internet costs the same as standalone Internet, so I have basic cable TV -- a separate gripe re such "bundling") while my bill went up 14% . Oh, and my service has gone from being solid to flaking out every week or two.

Same cr*p, new name. (My location doesn't provide for any better alternatives at consumer prices.)

EDIT: I see, now that I've read (quickly -- sorry) through your article, that you have U-Verse. Care to reciprocate with a comparison from the perspective of your personal experience? I had Ameritech-->SBC (now AT&T) DSL back around the beginning of the decade, and it was a horrible experience. Even were it available to me at this location, I'd have strong hesitation about giving AT&T my business.</comment></comment>


Upside of Tesla's Autopilot - <AUTHOR> http://diamandis.com/tech-blog <comment><USER2> Link above leads to the homepage. This is the actual one: [http://www.diamandis.com/blog/upside-of-teslas- autopilot](http://www.diamandis.com/blog/upside-of-teslas-autopilot)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!</comment></comment>


JSNES: A Javascript NES emulator - <AUTHOR> http://benfirshman.com/projects/jsnes/ <comment><USER2> Very neat, but it's a shame that interpretation is used. With the speed of current Javascript implementations, dynamic recompilation (block-based recompilation to JS functions, specifically) is insanely fast.

A while back, <http://6502asm.com/> popped up with a web-based 6502 (chip used in the NES, Apple ][, and many others) emulator. I stumbled upon it and in a matter of hours, I patched it to become the first (to my knowledge) dynarec emulator in JS. You can see a live version here: <http://ironbabel.googlepages.com/6502.html>

This same technology could easily be applied to JSNES for considerable speedups.

<comment><USER3> Re <http://ironbabel.googlepages.com/6502.html>

Assemblers don't compile, they assemble.

Neat hack though!

<comment><USER4> Yes, but it's also correct to say that he wrote a compiler.

He is taking the assembly code you type in and translating it to machine code, then he's translating the machine code to JavaScript source, then executing that source directly.

Translating a program from one language to another is compilation, by definition. While the first translation step could also be considered assembling, the second cannot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I thought the Javascript CAPTCHA solver was insane. This takes the cake.

Next step, do like Cappuccino and "compile" the NES rom's back to native Javascript. At that point, I think my head might explode.

<comment><USER6> What javascript captcha solver?!

<comment><USER7> also -> <http://ejohn.org/blog/ocr-and-neural-nets-in-javascript/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ah, Javascript in browsers. Making things PCs did in 1999 seem wondrous once more.

<comment><USER9> I'm looking forward the day someone comes up with the brilliant idea of writing an OS in JavaScript.

<comment><USER10> That was done years ago: <http://www.masswerk.at/jsuix/>. Click on "terminal" at the top.

<comment><USER3> impressive!

JavaScript is one of the few languages where you keep being surprised with what can be done with it. For the longest time I saw it as pretty limited, then one day somone shows me an apple II emulator in javascript.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Awesome, but if I get deselected I can't get it to pick up keys again. In firefox couldn't even get it to pick up keys to start with.

</comment><comment><USER12> Very impressive, but performance sucks, even in google chrome. Keep in mind that the 486 is capable of fully emulating the NES. The truth is that javascript will simply never be appropriate for tasks such as this. It is too slow and no amount of magic fairy dust optimizations will make it come close to high performance languages.

Java on the other hand (as much as I hate java) can do high performance stuff. Here is a java applet NES emulator, with sound: <http://www.nescafeweb.com>

<comment><USER13> I heard an interview with Brendan Eich from last year where he says there are still many javascript optimizations that haven't been attacked yet, that there is still a lot of low-hanging fruit.

He also predicted speeds bordering on C within a few years.

[EDIT] Source: <http://perseus.franklins.net/hanselminutes_0130.pdf>

<comment><USER14> Yes, Java is a statically-typed language but remember how Java performed before JIT compilers? It was closer to Perl than C.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Did Nintendo officially give up on litigating for NES ROMs? I'm wondering how something like this stays on the internet while supplying ROMs.

<comment><USER16> I've heard (can't find a source) that Shigeru Miyamoto (creator of most Nintendo's hit titles) personally has a lighthearted stance to the whole emulator/ROM scene and basically thinks it is nice that people still play the games.

<comment><USER15> Sounds very plausible. It just seems odd that Nintendo would allow this to go on while still making all of these games available for purchase via the Wii store.

<comment><USER17> I don't think the Wii's target market really crosses much with the people who would really use ROMs on a PC as a substitute for the real thing...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder how far behind a n64 emulator is. Does anyone else remember when UltraHLE showed up in early 1999? Nobody expected the Nintendo64 would be emulated that soon (GameCube was still 2 years away at that point).

</comment><comment><USER19> I wonder if sound could be added via the HTML5 <audio> support?

You can actually use the data uri scheme for <audio> src. So if you generate WAV data on the fly via JavaScript, and encode it as Base64, you can play it immediately.

Here's an example of on-the-fly WAV generation w/ <embed>, but I just tried it in Firefox with <audio> and that works as well:

[http://sk89q.therisenrealm.com/2008/11/dynamically- generatin...](http://sk89q.therisenrealm.com/2008/11/dynamically-generating-a- wav-in-javascript/)

</comment><comment><USER20> Pretty much unplayable in Opera (10). Opera's key mappings override the game's mappings, and CPU usage is way up there.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is so cool. Props.

</comment><comment><USER22> I sure hope flashblock comes up with an optional canvas block because it all starts with fun and games until advertisers realize "ooh hey we can skip flash and write the content anywhere without filtering" and then you've got "hit the monkey" all over again.

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't be too concerned... The number of people using Flashblock is vanishingly small, and their eyeballs are worth less for many products. Also, Flash cookies are more advertiser-friendly than browser cookies.</comment></comment>


Chw00t: Breaking Unices' chroot solutions - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/phdays/chw00t-breaking-unices-chroot-solutions <comment><USER2> I think chroot _can_ be used as one piece in a defense-in-depth security scheme.

I think it is incorrect to make a blanket statement that chroot cannot be used to increase security at all.

Further, I think all of the "root needed" exploits (most of them) are irrelevant. If you have root, who cares about defeating a chroot on that system ? You're already root.

Finally, I note that the systems I use chroot on (FreeBSD) have almost zero vulnerability (see table on slide 27).

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting discussion:

[https://lwn.net/Articles/252794/](https://lwn.net/Articles/252794/)

which links to here:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20071011110715/http://kerneltrap....](http://web.archive.org/web/20071011110715/http://kerneltrap.org/Linux/Abusing_chroot)

which further makes the point that chroot is not now and has never been a member of the "security tool" universe.

AIUI, containers _are_ meant to be secure against processes (and, therefore, users) that want to get out, so if you care about that, use those, instead.

<comment><USER4> root is root.

containers that run as root are no more secure than chroot..

( see : docker )

<comment><USER5> is this true?

I understand that the attack surface of a cgroup based container is bigger than a VM, but saying that just running processes as root in contains is not more secure than chroot begs at least for some reference.

<comment><USER6> I believe that "root is root" is just shorthand for...

If you aren't using unprivileged containers, then the only approach you have for making the container more secure than chroot is a whack-a-mole style approach.

By whack-a-mole, I mean trying to map out the attack surface, and using a hodge podge of tools to try and close them (kernel cap-drops, apparmor, se- linux, firewall rules, overlay mounts for /proc, /sys, etc).

I think it's reasonable to say that the whack-a-mole approach isn't truly more secure. In the same way that having a vault door on the front of your house, next to an open window isn't any more secure than having the door wide open.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't know if I'm using this tool incorrectly or if Docker containers contain any measures against what it tries.

On a machine running Linux 4.2.7 and a container created with Docker 1.9.1, the tool either failed with an error or said it had broken out but the root was still inside the container.

Modes / Result:

* -0 / no error, root still inside container

* -1 / no error, root still inside container

* -2 / no error, root still inside container

* -3 / error, "error mounting chroot: Operation not permitted"

* -4 / error, "error creating block device: No such file or directory"

* -5 / error, "error creating $nestdir"

* -6 / not tested

* -7 / error, "error attaching process"

* -9 / no error, root still inside container

</comment><comment><USER8> Since Slideshare is completely broken, this is available in PDF form (along with more) at [https://github.com/earthquake/chw00t](https://github.com/earthquake/chw00t)

</comment><comment><USER9> Eh, this is sort of silly in some respects. chroot is not meant to be a security mechanism (yes, I know the presentation mentions this). The limitations are well known in the OS community. With that said, I agree that many developers mistake chroot's real purpose.

Solaris, in particular, offers a far superior solution with zones.

</comment><comment><USER10> When I clicked this link, apparently SlideShare did some automatic voodoo with my LinkedIn cookie and now there's a public slideshare profile page with my name on it that I cannot delete or unpublish :(

</comment><comment><USER11> 'unices' is the plural of unix? TIL.

<comment><USER12> ox -> oxen

unix -> unixen

emacs -> emacsen

<comment><USER13> Interestingly, I have never seen "emaces" suggested as a plural of emacs, despite emacs-era hackers' propensity to play with plurals (and other affixes).

<comment><USER14> [http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/plural.el](http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/plural.el)

        ("emacs" "emacsen")

<comment><USER15> I'm learning a lot about plurals there...Media is a plural of medium...This should have been obvious but I never thought about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> go go netbsd

<comment><USER17> Yes, very interesting. I assume I'm reading it correctly that NetBSD was immune to all tested faults (and Debian was susceptible to all)?</comment></comment>


The Growing Precariat: Why We Need a Universal Basic Income - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2015/03/30/the-growing-precariat-why-a-basic-income-is-needed/ <comment><USER2> I'm not very educated in this department, so be kind. These are my thoughts.

So what happens when inflation occurs (which it will) and offsets the "Universal Basic Income"?

Isn't this just socialism?

<comment><USER3> > Isn't this just socialism?

No. "Socialism is a social and economic system characterised by social ownership of the means of production and co-operative management of the economy, [...]" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism)</comment></comment>


RandInt:  For all your application random number needs... - <AUTHOR> http://randint.com

<comment><USER2> Awesome. I've been a longtime random.org user but have always complained about the lack of a Comic Sans interface. It seems my prayers have finally been answered:

<http://randint.com/labs/comicsans.php>

(My first Comic Sans number was 17 - it even _feels_ more random than the competition!)

<comment><USER3> Also useful:

<http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2001-10-25/>

<comment><USER2> Of course those digits are random, they're straight out of pi!

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does anyone know how these are generated?

Could anyone explain what this paragraph means from their FAQ:

"Since 1992 at least 24 companies have set out to solve the random integer problem. Most fail for obvious reasons. It is rumored that a few of our competitors may have a 1-5 algo that works approximately 40% of the time. Our 1-100 algo is rock solid. In short, there is a consumer need for a random integer but the problem isn't easy. Even Google is rumored to be 2 years away from a reliable 1-50 algo."

I'm probably being stupid but I don't understand what 'works approximately 40% of the time' means in this respect.

Also this is cool : <https://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/secure_generate.html>

<comment><USER5> > Could anyone explain what this paragraph means from their FAQ:

I think that's a joke.

<comment><USER4> Heh, I didn't even think about that. Doh. And also the 'fabled' '1-50' alg. they mention would easily be got using modulo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> And sometimes it takes a break... <http://i55.tinypic.com/1zr2743.png>

<comment><USER6> I guess nobody else took the time to keep refreshing the page to see the lolcat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Cool, but I think your API is too complicated ;)

</comment><comment><USER8> A command line version:

 _curl -silent randint.com | grep " </h1>" | sed 's/\<\/h1\>//'_

</comment><comment><USER9> I got 88 on my first try. That's not very random at all.

Seriously though, are these true random or pseudorandom? There's nothing to say how they're generated. I personally want a true quantum random number generator, so that I can use it to make decisions and be guaranteed that an alternate-universe counterpart of myself made the opposite decision. That way at least one of me is going to be right.

</comment><comment><USER10> <http://www.random.org/>

</comment><comment><USER11> Cool. Would be even cooler if you could specify a range.

</comment><comment><USER12> No JSONP?

<comment><USER13> JSONP coming soon!

-randint co-founder

<comment><USER14> Can we also get HTTPS?</comment></comment></comment>


White House Owes Response To Petition To Fire Prosecutor Of Aaron Swartz - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/02/11/white-house-owes-response-to-petition-to-fire-prosecutor-of-aaron-swartz-and-other-hackers/

<comment><USER2> I'm sorry, but this has to be said:

The White House doesn't owe you shit.

They set up this petition system to expand the illusion that somehow the system is working for its constituents. It is not, and it was not designed to. The system makes decisions so you don't have to. It's better this way.

The fact of the matter is that these prosecutors were doing their job, which is to apply as much pressure as needed to achieve a negotiated prison term (a win), and they did it a little too well for our comfort. The White House will not speak against these actions because these actions benefit the White House in the vast majority of cases.

If you want things to change, change the system. Lobby against the CFAA. Lobby for rules to enforce ethical use of prosecutorial discretion. Protest. Volunteer for candidates that oppose these practices. Don't think that clicking a "Like" button is going to change anything, because if the White House petition system actually changed anything, it wouldn't exist.

If you want to change the system, don't ask the system to change. Change it yourself.

<comment><USER3> Sorry, but this misses the point entirely.

The White House does in fact owe a _response_ to the petition. That's the deal they set up themselves. They owe it to the people to live up to it.

<comment><USER2> And that response will be as meaningless as most of the responses they've given. So what? What will it do or change? Will this response prevent another Aaron Swartz incident?

<comment><USER4> You miss the point.

Getting the law (or even policies on prosecutorial practices) changed to prevent another such incident is a VERY HARD task. Taking small steps toward that task is NOT "meaningless".

The victory to be celebrated here is NOT that the problem has been solved. It is not even that the White House now has to help work to solve the problem. The victory to be celebrated here is that the White House actually has to say something. (And they DO have to... if not, then the press coverage will increase until reporters demand an answer on their own. Heck, refusing to comment would be GREAT for our cause.)

Do you have any idea how difficult it is to make the White House at least make a statement about your issue? It is something powerful lawmakers and world- spanning corporations often find themselves unable to accomplish.

Now, that's not much: the White House's response may consist of meaningless blather. But it is not nothing: the White House has been forced to respond. And it helps to increase the momentum toward taking some kind of REAL action.

The petitions at WhiteHouse.org don't fix problems, but when something is NOT being discussed by lawmakers, this kind of thing can help get that conversation started. Belittling it isn't helping.

<comment><USER5> _And they DO have to... if not, then the press coverage will increase until reporters demand an answer on their own._

No, the media coverage will the same as it has always been since Obama announced his candidacy: fawning adoration, mixed with just enough mild skepticism to create the impression amongst themselves and others that they really do perform some sort of journalistic function and that what we see in the media really is "news" and not just propaganda.

Poke a Mainstream Media "reporter" deep enough and you'll always touch MSNBC.

<comment><USER6> What a skewed view of the world - I hardly think you will find MSNBC by poking FOX reporters, NYT reporters or Christian Science Monitor reporters (not to mention al-Jazeera, BBC, RT, etc.) And Obama has gotten plenty of bad press.

<comment><USER5> _I hardly think you will find MSNBC by poking... NYT reporters or Christian Science Monitor reporters (not to mention al-Jazeera, BBC, RT, etc.)_

I assume this is a joke, particularly the NYT. And I'm not seeing ABC, CBS, NBC (owned by GE, which has gotten massive "green energy" subsidies from Obama), PBS, the former Current TV, not to mention almost every newspaper in the US, anywhere in your list. Kinda lopsided, huh?

As for the _foreign_ media organs, the BBC, al-Jazeera, and RT are all famously anti-American. Obama still manages to get much better press that any Republican. They hate America and they like Obama. Odd.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >"Heymann saw Aaron as a scalp he could take," she wrote. "He thought he could lock Aaron up, get high-profile press coverage, and win high-fives from his fellow prosecutors in the lunchroom. Aaron was a way of reviving Heymann's fading career. Heymann had no interest in an honest assessment of whether Aaron deserved any of the hell he was being put through."

I get that this girl is upset and feeling vocal, but she's drawing these conclusions and painting this picture for a person about which she knows nothing. I feel like everyone is doing this a lot lately: talking about Aaron like he is a simple, sweet martyr, and about Heymann like he's the warden from Shawshank Redemption.

I'm really trying not to come off as contrarian for contrarian's sake, but this kind of demonizing seems really counterproductive to me. It goes without saying that the prosecutors of this case took it too far, and that the justice system is incredibly unbalanced. Why can't those facts alone be enough without turning the involved people into charicatures?

Everyone was playing their part, and it got messy. It's like Tommy Lee Jones responding to Harrison Ford's "I didn't do it!" in _The Fugitive_ : "I don't care." I doubt Heymann was sitting in his office cackling about "scalping" Aaron. It was just another case on his docket that he was trying to put to rest. The real problem is that his incentive is not to be fair or find truth, but to convict and incarcerate at all costs.

<comment><USER8> I am definitely going to have to sit down in front of a movie screen sometime soon. I've really missed out on how to think about stuff.

If I could only get someone to follow me around playing music, I'd have a soundtrack to help me feel stuff, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> One important distinction that this article misses completely is that Mr. Heymann is a civil service employee whereas Ms. Ortiz (his boss and supervisor) is a political appointee. The Executive branch is perfectly within it's rights to fire a political appointee at any time for any reason, but would have to show cause to terminate a civil servant. This system exists to prevent partisan patronage at the federal level from bringing the government down on a regular basis.

Paradoxically this means that any effort to remove Mr. Heymann is made more difficult by the existence of a qualified petition for his removal. He would have to have made overt and on the record declarations of ill intent and bad faith for the Obama administration to remove him at this point. Ms. Ortiz on the other hand, could be asked to depart at any point. Although it seems unlikely to happen before she testifies to congress, and is in any event unlikely to happen unless the Presidents political calculations suggest that her absence will allow him to access resources ( of political support ) that are necessary for him to achieve his agenda.

</comment><comment><USER10> Author seems mistaken. Ortiz hit 25,000 before the White House raised the required amount to 100,000.

Since the Heymann petition didn't reach the mark before the cap was raised, there are another 75,000-or-so to go. Ortiz was grandfathered in.

edit: I thought only completed petitions were grandfathered in, but it appears I'm wrong and just having a petition started before the change is sufficient for grandfathered-status.

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe both petitions were grandfathered in. And the site does indicate the "fire Stephen Heymann" petition has met the requirement. [https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/fire-assistant- us-...](https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/fire-assistant-us-attorney- steve-heymann/RJKSY2nb) "Signatures needed by February 11, 2013 to reach goal of 25,000: 0"

So the Forbes author does not appear to be mistaken.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It will be very interesting to see the administration's response, which is, remember, all that's promised.

When they were in the early decision phase that resulted in the petitions website, they certainly would have realized that such a system would very quickly become overrun with pleas for Presidential Pardons, intercession in ongoing investigations/prosecutions, and, as in this case, for punishment of a government employee who is perceived to abuse their power. That's what the thresholds are for.

They knew this would happen; and they're already prepared. I predict the response will boil down to "we can't interfere with the machinery of Justice, etc." Their reply will give a lot of good points to support this, but will subtly rely on the people confusing prosecutors as being Judicial rather than Executive employees. Mr. Heymann and Ms. Ortiz will keep their jobs, though Heymann may no longer be put on "hacking" cases.

<comment><USER12> "Governments have generally not recognized the legitimacy of civil disobedience or viewed political objectives as an excuse for breaking the law." <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_disobedience>

I would like to believe we live in a time when there is some self-reflection and self-correction on the part of the machinery of justice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> No one killed Aaron Swartz. He killed himself. He could have become a political prisoner. He might have beat the charges. He would have gotten out eventually. The only cause he is a martyr to now is mental illness.

<comment><USER14> That's the Middle Ages mentality: in some religions where murder was not tolerated but people wanted to get rid of other people, they put them in a terrible position (buried alive, closed room with no food, daily torture) with some sort of fatal weapon. The poor person would usually suicide, and no murder would have been committed. These people were cheating God's system.

In modern societies, this kind of thing is fortunately not tolerated, and is usually punishable as murder or conspiracy to commit murder. So what you said is an invaid argument. It remains to be proved that Schwartz was punished unfairly and too much, given his psychological past.

<comment><USER15> Um...no. It doesn't remain to be seen. You will never be able to prove that and there is absolutely no way that they will consider it "murder" or "conspiracy to commit murder".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If all it does is provide a talking point to Ortiz' political campaign opponents, it's worth signing these petitions.

A signature on Heymann's petition contributes to undermining Ortiz' political aspirations, so it's worth it to sign this petition too.

No Ortiz political opponent will ignore this rock to throw.

</comment><comment><USER17> I remember reading sometime back that White House had increased the threshold to 100,000 signatures. The 'Fire Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Heymann' has got only 25,760 signatures as of now. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER18> The threshold doesn't apply retroactively.</comment></comment>


Is Quora the Next Red-Hot Web Start-Up? - <AUTHOR> http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2044521,00.html <comment><USER2> Quora is the most recent SV hyped start-up.</comment>


Lost Einsteins: The Innovations We're Missing - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/03/opinion/lost-einsteins-innovation-inequality.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> The fact they chose to reference Einstein as somebody who, implicitly, succeeded in part because of privilege is peculiar. He was a Jew born in Germany who ended up renouncing his citizenship when he was 17 to avoid compulsory military service - leaving him stateless at a time of growing across the world antisemitism. He also chose to drop out of high school, finding the curriculum restrictive and contrary to his views of education. He would then apply to university - and was rejected for poor score on the language section of the university's entrance examination - though he scored phenomenally on math/science. Back to high school.

After improving his language skills he was admitted to a university. Following graduation he was unable to find any teaching post at any university after searching for 2 years, leaving him working as an assistant patent examiner -- where he was passed over for promotions for perceived lack of competence. Interestingly enough his 'miracle year', where he would publish four groundbreaking papers, happened while he was still working at the patent office! And even then it would still be years before things really started to rapidly progress for him, turning him into the namesake that he is today.

Something else I find trite in these articles is the constant assumption that people have to be precisely demographically matched to function as role models. In a survey recently carried out in Russia on role models, Putin actually lost out to Elon Musk [1]. A soft spoken South African man who immigrated to American is now one of the biggest role models for Russians. And this article is talking about matching not only demographics, but down to the precise state somebody lives in!

And one final critique. The article basically says _" stop giving tax breaks to the wealthy, reinvest the money where it's needed."_ So where is it needed? Well, of course that's not at all discussed. There is 0 reason to think the failure of the American education system has anything whatsoever to do with money. We already spend vastly more per child than nearly anywhere in the world, yet our quantifiable educational performance continue to deteriorate by nearly all metrics compared to the rest of the world. [2]

[1] - [http://www.newsweek.com/putin-beaten-jesus-elon-musk-and- par...](http://www.newsweek.com/putin-beaten-jesus-elon-musk-and-parents- young-russians-top-role-model-702357)

[2] - [https://rossieronline.usc.edu/blog/u-s-education-versus- the-...](https://rossieronline.usc.edu/blog/u-s-education-versus-the-world- infographic/)</comment>


Ask HN: Setting up AWS cloud infrastructure too complicated? - <AUTHOR> As a front-end developer, I have more than enough tools and resources at my disposal to get started and complete my projects. The server setup is always a challenge, however. I recently discovered AWS CloudFormation templates but have found that I need a lot of upfront knowledge to get started. I would like to maintain control so Heroku and Parse are not good options. At the same time, I would like the process to setup and monitor my own infrastructure to be a lot easier. Any advice on what I can be doing to overcome these challenges? Am I alone or are do others face similar problems? <comment><USER2> If you really want to learn to do this stuff yourself, I would suggest starting simple. Take a configuration management tool (I would suggest Ansible, which is a lot easier to use than Puppet of Chef) and an EC2 instance. Create, configure, terminate, rinse and repeat.

The simple fact that you can pretty much screw up everything you like, throw the whole system away and start again where you left off in a matter of minutes helps increase confidence and speed up learning, plus the configuration gives you a 100% accurate documentation of what you actually did.

But just like development, it's easy to get started but it takes years to master it.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Server setup" is a bit vague.

You should start with something less ambitious and less complicated, like running your code on a single machine from e.g. Digital Ocean or linode. Managing a single machine setup is much easier than doing AWS and almost everything you learn will also apply to AWS setup.

AWS is appropriate for large deployments, where your service outgrows the capabilities of a single machine.

I run 2 websites on a single Digital Ocean $10/month server and there's plenty of room for more.

</comment><comment><USER4> 1\. As krs1 put it, you must learn. If you look at other IAAS vendors there is a lot to learn 2\. Devops revolution. Write scripts.</comment>


New Robot Makes Soldiers Obsolete - one-more-minute https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3RIHnK0_NE <comment><AUTHOR> This is fake.</comment>


Apple Stores use iBeacons (and so can you) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.xamarin.com/apple-stores-use-ibeacons-and-so-can-you/

<comment><USER2> Isn't this tech only one way broadcast? So is there a way to know from the ibeacon itself how many coupons it sent out?</comment>


US apologizes for infecting Guatemalans with STDs in the 1940s - <AUTHOR> http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/10/01/us.guatemala.apology/index.html?hpt=T1

<comment><USER2> When do I get my apology from Sally Phillips of Greenwich, London? :)</comment>


10Gbps Unmetered Guaranteed Managed Server from IBM / SoftLayer 2000USD? - <AUTHOR> http://wizzsolutions.com/

<comment><USER2> 100TB.com is run by SoftLayer, Wizz is not. I've had better luck with 100TB.com.

But I see you're a spammer so it doesn't matter</comment>


New Android Market for Phones - <AUTHOR> http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2011/07/new-android-market-for-phones.html

<comment><USER2> This is fairly huge. Embedded movie rentals (with offline downloading), book purchases, etc. This is a significant feature launch seemingly without a lot of fanfare. Perhaps I missed the early hype on this?

I hope for once 'select countries' means Canada. Please please, we want to be equal mobile web citizens!

<comment><USER3> The movie rentals were announced at IO, the book purchases were already there (just not Market integrated), and the redesign was shown off as well (though not at the keynote). The new stuff is more of a feature sync with 3.1 than anything else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The tiles remind me of WP7, I'll bet handset manufacturers have to shell out an additional $5 now

<comment><USER5> Everything about it reminds me of Windows Phone 7.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Unfortunately the video app doesn't work with my phone. Google Nexus S. Kinda crazy since this is Google's flagship phone.

<comment><USER7> Perhaps a new Nexus model is in the works?

<comment><USER8> Shouldn't the default assumption be that there's always a new nexus model in the works?

Android Movies doesn't work with rooted phones for DRM reasons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> how about a flexible search/filter/sort that doesn't suck balls?

how the hell does google fail at making a useful market search for so long. >:(

<comment><USER10> Agreed, Appbrain has a flexible search for a long time now. It is still much better than the Market.

<comment><USER11> appbrain is actually pretty relevant on alot of their results. +1

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Get it here: <http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1166152>

</comment><comment><USER11> for other developers on here....is the market search screwing up big time for your apps too?

it seems like search algorithm is broken and returning horrible spammy results or low quality apps when searching for exact name of a specific app.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is a big step to improving Android in general.</comment>