Poor Man's Explanation of Kalman Filtering [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://edge.rit.edu/content/P07106/public/Docs/Research/KalmanFilter/Poor_Mans_Explanation_of_Kalman_Filtering.pdf <comment><USER2> Wow, this is really well done. Everyone should go read this now!

Kalman filtering is one of these techniques that's used _everywhere_ and yet most engineers/developers don't even know it exists (let alone the math behind it, which is fairly straightforward undergrad level stuff.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome! I worked on the inertial navigation system for Insight Racing's entry into the 2nd DARPA Grand Challenge as my senior design project in college. We implemented a Kalman filter, but I'm not sure we got all the bugs out as it didn't work very well. I sure wish I had known about this little doc at the time!

<comment><USER3> Actually, I should probably clarify: _our senior design team_ couldn't get the inertial navigation system working very well. I'm pretty sure they took what we worked on and fixed it as they finished somewhere in the middle of the pack. It was easily the coolest project I've ever worked on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Dan Simon's 2001 article is just as good, if not better IMO. <http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~greenwd/kalman_overview.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER5> "Taygeta Scientific Incorporated, has acquired the rights to republish the report." <http://www.taygeta.com/kalman_book.html>

Has anyone bought a copy? I assume it is typeset rather than being a very difficult to read fifth generation photocopy scanned to PDF.

<comment><USER6> Offtopic: Why was kjhgfghjk's joke (this comment's sibling) killed?

It's funny, since the scan of the article is very 'noisy' and a Kalman filter is a possible solution to help clean it up (probably not the best, but still ...)

<comment><USER7> I would say that in more than half the cases where I see a dead comment, there is nothing obviously very wrong with the comment. Sometimes it's dead because the user who posted it is auto-dead-ified -- everything s/he posts is killed -- but in most of the (few) such cases where I've looked back over the user's comment history, I haven't found anything very awful that they got put in that state for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here is an open source Kalman filter (written for my iPhone app) by a very smart friend of mine: <http://github.com/lacker/ikalman>

It's in C.

</comment><comment><USER9> If you just want the equations, try:

<http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~byronyu/papers/derive_ks.pdf>

And for the EKF:

<http://www-npl.stanford.edu/~byronyu/papers/derive_eks.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER10> Welch and Bishop also have an excellent introduction: <http://www.cs.unc.edu/~welch/media/pdf/kalman_intro.pdf></comment>


Is NLP finally coming of age? - <AUTHOR> https://towardsdatascience.com/gpt-3-creative-potential-of-nlp-d5ccae16c1ab <comment><AUTHOR> What does this mean for the future of work?

</comment><comment><USER2> It's unlikely this article will get much traction here because it's behind a paywall.

<comment><USER3> I think it's a free signup. It might be part of Medium.

The entire thing is a bit frustrating because so many people publish using Medium as their blog these days.

<comment><USER2> Some posts on medium are not hidden. I think they only get paywalled if you monetize your blog.</comment></comment></comment>


JPMorgan cancels Twitter Q&A after receiving 'offensive' questions - <AUTHOR> http://rt.com/usa/jpmorgan-twitter-q&a-canceled-745/

<comment><USER2> _Tomorrow 's Q&A is cancelled. Bad Idea. Back to the drawing board._

What did they expect?</comment>


Basecamp/trix: A rich text editor for everyday writing - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/basecamp/trix <comment><USER2> I tried to use it with ActionText in my app but it's too limited. I ended up buying Imperavi Article editor and wow, what a difference. OK, maybe it's not fair to compare free with paid but still..

</comment><comment><USER3> I love how beautiful Trix especially used in Basecamp, but it doesn't support markdown as well.

I hate wysiwyg style since its not too ergonomics for me</comment>


Ingenious Hack by Facebook Spammers: Smoking Hot Bartenders - <AUTHOR> http://www.liquidrhymes.com/2010/08/25/smoking-hot-bartender-is-some-smoking-hot-facebook-spam/ <comment><USER2> It's clickjacking. That was 2008. This is clickjacking with a like button. I wrote about it in early June ( [http://www.h-i-r.net/2010/06/viral-like- jacking-on-facebook....](http://www.h-i-r.net/2010/06/viral-like-jacking-on- facebook.html) ) and it was already somewhat old-hat by then. In fact, I think I covered the same technical details this person did.

It's not really ingenious. It's just scammy behavior and yet another fine reason to run NoScript.

<comment><USER3> NoScript isn't a good solution and certainly not a scalable one - most people don't want to browse without js.

It'd be better for browser makers to simply detect clickjacking and block it.

If an element isn't visible to the user (either partially visible or behind other elements), that's probably a good sign it shouldn't be able to receive user actions such as clicks. _Especially_ if it's an iframe.

I hope firefox+chrome do some work on this soon.

<comment><USER4> NoScript is a specific Firefox extension, not general advice to turn off Javascript. NoScript lets you whitelist trusted Javascript, so when you visit that spam site, its Javascript doesn't run. Meanwhile, when you visit omg- animated-lolcats-yay.com, you notice that the lolcats aren't omg-animated, so you click one button to whitelist the Javascript, and then you get your omg- animated-lolcats forever. Yay!

<comment><USER3> >> "so you click one button to whitelist the Javascript"

It's amazing how quickly 'click one button to be able to view this website' would irritate the hell out of anyone.

It's certainly an option for geeks or security freakouts, but not really an option for normal people.

Also how would a 'normal' person decide if a website is 'safe' to enable js or not? If you're the kind of person fooled into clicking for 'hot bartenders' and filling out a survey to get access, you're probably not able to decide if you should enable js or not.

The solution isn't to shift responsibility to users, it's to fix the browser flaws that allow clickjacking to happen.

The example given here should be a textbook easy to fix bug in browsers. It's a browser issue which should be high priority.

An iframe which isn't visible to the user, should not be able to receive input from the user.

<comment><USER5> > It's amazing how quickly 'click one button to be able to view this website' > would irritate the hell out of anyone.

Back when I experimented with manually authorizing cookies on all websites I visited, it was surprising how quickly the number of cookie prompts dropped to near-zero. There really aren't that many websites that you visit.

<comment><USER6> What software did you use for this? I have tried a few cookie blocking extensions for Firefox but haven't found a good one.

Also I notice you say "Back when I experimented.." -- was there a reason it didn't work out in the end?

<comment><USER5> I was using Konqueror then. The experiment ended when I got another computer or something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> tangentially related: I do not know if people have figured this out yet: liking something gives them permission to write to your status feed. I think after that gets widely understood people will be less promiscuous with the thumbs up, because it will be associated with being spammed to heck.

I have done this to myself, incidentally, because I did not believe the doc tha said it was possible.

 _If you include Open Graph tags on your Web page, your page becomes equivalent to a Facebook page. This means when a user clicks a Like button on your page, a connection is made between your page and the user. Your page will appear in the "Likes and Interests" section of the user's profile, and you have the ability to publish updates to the user. Your page will show up in same places that Facebook pages show up around the site (e.g. search), and you can target ads to people who like your content._

<comment><USER8> Worse yet, if your friends like something or run an app, they can get to your personal information because your friend has endorsed something.

This means either cutting your friends out of your private data, selecting your friends based on their computer savvy, or being as vulnerable as the most insecure of them.

I say again: Facebook is the devil. It's a brilliant platform that should continue to grow for years. It uses your own friends to make you do things you would not normally do (like join). As a platform it has no other goal than total domination of the net.

<comment><USER9> Simply liking something does not let a developer get access to your friend list. You will have to give the app at least basic permission (aka "run/install", which will share your friend names and uids) or extended permissions will get you friend's feed, statuses,birthdays, contact details etc. But extended perms have really poor conversions, so most spammers don't go that far.

Only a matter of time before that gets clickjacked though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ever since a facebook widget showed the names of a bunch of people I know on the right-hand side of an unrelated website I've stopped going there. I logged out of facebook and I haven't logged in since then. I'd much prefer it if they stayed within their 'boundaries of expected online territory', and to see them popping up on sites that I normally visit but that I do not associate with facebook at all was enough to push me over the edge.

I'm sure that plenty of people couldn't care less, but I think it's a creepy thing.

</comment><comment><USER11> Clickjacking (the name of this exploit) is one reason many sites have frame- busting JavaScript.

Of course the whole point of the Facebook "Like" button is to be embedded on other websites, so frame busting is out of the question. I'm not sure if there's a quick fix for this. Browsers need to disallow clicking of transparent iframes.

</comment><comment><USER12> I got p0wned earlier today by the same sort of chat-bot/spam exploit I've been seeing from some of my friends.

As a Chrome user on Linux, and a pretty much lifelong user of Linux on the desktop, I am rather unaccustomed to being the victim of such exploits, so I didn't immediately know what to do. This one appears to be purely browser/JS- based and/or perhaps exploits some weakness in the Facebook API.

It started when a (presumably "infected") friend of mine posted on my wall. It looked to be just text, but presumably contained a trigger for this exploit. Anyway, within seconds, somehow, unbeknownst to me, I was apparently initiating chat conversations with every friend who was online "asking," "Do you have a second?" When they would reply "yes?", I would blast them with some bullshit quiz/test site link, which I can only assume is a phishing farm.

Anyway, this continued relentlessly so long as I was logged into the site (and possibly when I wasn't, never definitively established that) until it occurred to me to change my Facebook account password, after which it - knock on wood - seems to have stopped.

Does anyone have any idea how this exploit works? It caught me rather off- guard because I expected that sort of thing to be the work of viruses and/or malware on Windows. I would guess that my password was somehow phished out, after which some foreign agent logged into the Facebook messenger as me externally (quite possible to do, numerous IM clients now support the Facebook messenger protocol) and went nuts, but I can't be sure.

<comment><USER13> It sounds like a script injection, but that would be a pretty big flaw in FB and 1) Would spread pretty fast 2) Would be picked up by FB pretty quickly as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> We've seen this kind of scammy stuff before, where people overlay a transparent div on top of another div. This is the first time that I've seen them attach to the cursor and follow it around.

Other than keeping your browser logged out of facebook at all times, what's the protection against this?

<comment><USER15> The only possible protection that I can think of would be for Facebook to require confirmation when someone likes a page. Essentially it would redirect the user to Facebook where they would see a page that says "Are you sure you want to like ______?" Then, after they agreed, it would redirect them back to the original site. However, this would be highly undesirable for people who use the Facebook like button, because it could siphon away potentially valuable visitors who appreciated the site enough to like it.

Another option might be for Facebook to ban likes on a domain basis. If a domain is using spammy techniques like this then ban it from being liked by anyone. Of course that means more overhead and moderation.

I don't think there is a good solution to this, only work arounds.

<comment><USER16> What about forcing embedding sites to load a FB JS file, such that a standard Facebook confirm dialog pops up? This way the user doesn't navigate away from the site but some level of confirmation is made.

<comment><USER17> If the dialog pops up and is not within an <iframe>, then the page can simulate a click on the confirm button. Even if the JS library uses an <iframe>, it can always be reverse engineered to not use one, and the user won't know because iframes are not obvious to the user. The way above, where a new page is opened with the Facebook URL clearly displayed in the browser address bar, is the only way for Facebook to ensure that likes are legit short of putting CAPTCHA's next to the like buttons. Oh, and users never check the address bar anyway.

<comment><USER13> I don't see how reverse engineering to not use an iframe would help. Presumably Facebook would have some type of check on the iframed like page that ensures that the request is actually coming from FB. How would an attacker recreate an iframed page they don't have access to?

<comment><USER18> Subdomains and DNS mods with a proxy?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's because of crap like this that I only browse sites like Facebook from a secondary browser, Chrome in my case. On Firefox, I'm not even logged in to Facebook, to minimize the amount they can learn about me with their Like stuff.

<comment><USER20> Likewise, I only check Facbeook on my phone. There are some exceptions but I always use Incognito mode for those.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The question I have is how do these guys plan to make money off this scam? There doesn't seem to be any ads on this page or any affiliate pages.

<comment><USER21> lol no one knows? that's fishy

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This has been a known vulnerability since at least July 13. Interactive demos: <http://erickerr.com/like-clickjacking>

This would appear to be (among?) the first malicious use of the like-jacking vulnerability.

<comment><USER10> If that matches your definition of malicious you've led a protected life style!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> A few of these have been floating around for at least the past couple months. One of my friends clicked through and ended up "liking" some picture of a stupid tattoo, and earned an educational lecture from me as his reward.

</comment><comment><USER24> I actually clicked on the page, following my girlfriend Facebook.

But I was protected due to the ever useful Adblock extension. Probably the best plugin out there, the easiest method to fire and forget about annoying web elements.

<comment><USER25> Agree there! When the like button started spawning everywhere, I consulted the internal annoy-o-meter and determined that the best solution would be to block the button.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I avoid this by keeping my core apps in Chrome/Chromium and by browsing everything else with Firefox+NoScript+ABP.

</comment><comment><USER27> And the slippery slope begins...</comment>


Dictionary of Numbers - <AUTHOR> http://blog.xkcd.com/2013/05/15/dictionary-of-numbers/ <comment><USER2> I really like the idea, but it seems like it would become pretty intrusive injecting text after every large number on the page. It's especially uncool with headings and titles (<http://i.imgur.com/T3yj1ZD.png>), I think in those instances it should support a hover+click to expand so it doesn't ruin the look and feel.</comment>


Color e-reader uses butterfly-based technology to save power - <AUTHOR> http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/02/15/color-e-reader-uses-butterfly-based-technology-to-save-power/

<comment><USER2> I wonder if she's holding an real prototype or if it is just a nice high- density lcd.</comment>


The Case for Going to Bed at 2:30AM - <AUTHOR> With all the talk about waking up at 4AM or 5AM like super human productive freaks, it's refreshing to find an article about someone who sleep at 2:30AM. As a hardcore night-owl, this article makes more sense.<p>http://www.vox.com/first-person/2017/2/27/14726418/delayed-sleep-late-bedtime <comment><USER2> Just some personal observations here.

I have read that most software breakthroughs occur around 1:00 AM and have found this to be true in my personal experience.

In the military I worked in a shop which was manned 24/7\. Normally the shifts were 8:00 AM - 4:00 PM, 4:00 PM - midnight, and midnight - 8:00 AM. One month they changed to two shifts, 8:00 AM - 8:00 PM and 8:00 PM - 8:00 AM. The next month they moved everybody to the other shift. I worked each of the 3 normal shifts for several months each. For me the most difficult was midnight - 8:00 AM because of the difficulty sleeping in the daytime in a noisy barracks. I found that for me the best way to cope with this was to work a shift, stay up all day, and work another shift, after which I would sleep for 12 hours.

In civilian life I worked normal 8-5 jobs and it has always been difficult for me to get to sleep and wake up early. One time I worked a normal shift, worked through the night with no interruptions, and worked the next shift. I was able to accomplish more in that time than I normally would have in two weeks.

Now that I am retired I go to sleep when I am tired and get up when I wake. There is no discernible pattern to it.

It is much easier to stay up later than it is to get to sleep earlier. The easiest way to adjust to a new sleep pattern is to stay up later, delaying sleep until it has moved to the desired time. You can move it by two to four hours a night this way. Trying to sleep earlier you can only alter your sleep cycle by about half an hour a night.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Night owls aren't the lazy, distracted weirdos the early crowd makes us out to be. When the rest of the world winds down, we work, create, and tinker on our own schedules. Each evening, I watch the typical bedtimes pass by and wait for that jolt of energy and inspiration that comes well past twilight." I think there is a misconception of night-owls being lazy. Why are only early risers praised [http://getliner.com/NRKBZ?hacker=true](http://getliner.com/NRKBZ?hacker=true)</comment>


The Secret History of Silicon Valley (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://steveblank.com/secret-history/ <comment><USER2> I'm sure Steve Blank has his own hypothesis about what could possibly shake things up and restart the cycle of innovation in SV, would love to hear it. (that's the question he poses at the end of the lecture).

My mind wondered towards the influence of open source software, and open solutions, across all that is tech today (ok fine, all software at least). Technologies developed in secret were thoroughly featured in the history covered, but today for example we have the linux kernel, an open collaborative effort, underpinning most of what's being built for profit in the valley.

Can open source type efforts (maker movement/oss and other nicknames) change the pace of innovation? i.e. restart the valley's cycle of innovation? Is the valley not are the forefront any more? Is innovation in the valley being stifled by attempts to control IP? [0]

What will shake things up?

[0] [http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297](http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297)

<comment><USER3> "Is the valley not are the forefront any more? Is innovation in the valley being stifled by attempts to control IP? "

No, I don't think SV is "The forefront", but it remains one of the _forefronts_ , simply because of the remnant culture and money flow. That being said, I do think it has stagnated mostly do to your rightly referenced attempts to control IP.

What I am seeing is that many of the companies the best poised for the future are those that are fully embracing FOSS but have learned how to adapt a business model to still profit while supporting that FOSS. Otherwise you end up with a company trying to go _Apple_ and fork something open and then shove the user into a prison.

My observation is that businesses have only put up with this because the companies that did it tended to offer support as a prereq for prison sentencing, and companies love support as a backup. As more FOSS friendly companies move away from user-prisons and towards _user-freedom but pay us for support if you are a business_ model, I think more and more the old guards in the industry are headed for a shake up.

I don't work in SV but I have friends who do, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

Regarding the origins of SV, the talks he gives are very interesting variations on the _war refinement produces enhancements in tech_ line of thinking, which I think will continue to be relatively true. Follow the war money to find out where innovation is going on.

For example, the last time I talked to Mudge he was really stoked about all the stuff DARPA was doing, and with programs like cyber-fast track, I think less and less of that money is geographically limited to a single center of innovation like SV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Been posted before, but up voted anyway since there are too many who are ignorant of the valley's roots.

</comment><comment><USER5> how is this not an epub? Here it is, with all images, 26MB: [http://cl.ly/3L202v3T3i0J](http://cl.ly/3L202v3T3i0J)

made w/ nokogiri and pandoc

</comment><comment><USER6> This is one of my favorite (if not my absolute favorite) computer history lectures. It's pretty ironic watching all the anti-government comments on this site while most people here are ignorant about where Silicon Valley came from. See, for example, the comments on this thread currently on the front page: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8978922](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8978922) or this out-of-context rando: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8980306](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8980306)

Know your history! Check out more videos like this at the Computer History Museum. If you're looking for a great followup, check out this Q&A with Dan Kaufman of DARPA that talks about some of their current technology investments (kind of a "where are they now" compared to Steve Blank's lecture):

* [https://www.youtube.com/user/ComputerHistory/videos?flow=gri...](https://www.youtube.com/user/ComputerHistory/videos?flow=grid&view=0&sort=p)

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ny6xDCFU4nI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ny6xDCFU4nI)

<comment><USER7> "It's pretty ironic watching all the anti-government comments on this site while most people here are ignorant about where Silicon Valley came from."

The fact that one of the biggest investment of resources of all time created silicon valley, or the nuclear bomb, does not mean that if a similar amount of resources have been spent privately a bigger advance could be made.

In fact, the fact that the nuclear research was directed to the creation of a bomb, and not towards energy creation, is a huge problem today, when alternative fuel research that did not created plutonium were severed.

The creation of Silicon Valley has more to do with the emergency of the situation that with being public or private.

In peace it is very difficult both for public or private institutions to agree on a single place to centralize everything.

Only China have done it, in Shenzhen, because it is a dictatorship, but when Germany wants to do it in Berlin, France wants to do it in Paris, and UK in London. They could not agree on a single place to centralize everything for all Europe. The same happens in South America with Chile, Brasil, Argentina, Ecuador, they all going on their own makes them weak.

<comment><USER8> I think the difference between private and public capital is that 1) public capital is far larger and 2) private capital needs quick turn around. I can't see private industry inventing the nuclear bomb. Any time you conceive of a start up, the mantra is always MVP, fastest time to positive ROI. It's hard to do research like that.

I think I could accept that you could have motivated a sufficient number of brilliant people to work on nuclear energy instead of the bomb, but the economics are still suspicious. There are a few fusion startups in the valley, but the common question is why they think they can create something salable in a reasonable amount of time, which I assume in turn injures the amount of talent they can pull.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Don't we have any news other than Apple, Facebook or Google?  - <AUTHOR>

Nowadays HN has news only related to fb, Apple and GOOG. Don't we have news on other innovative startups anymore? Please list down your startups here and what do you do? I want some fresh air. <comment><USER2> I've been working on <http://shortreviews.net> recently - an entertainment review site.

Our emphasis is on allowing groups of friends to sign up and influence the entertainment choices of their peers. To support this many sections of the sites allow you to view only your friends reviews, if you wish - and signups with social networks automatically associate you with any members you are friends with.

Right now we support Facebook/Myspace/Twitter logins, with the ability to post your reviews back to your social networks if you wish. We are almost finished adding Netflix support, to enable users to automatically retrieve a list of movies and TV shows they've watched.

Any suggestions are appreciated - we plan to keep adding features and evolving the site in useful ways while our user base grows.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi,

The webpage looks cluttered. I didn't get the message immediately. Probably something you guys can work on

<comment><USER2> Thanks, I agree. It helps to have a set of fresh eyes - your comment made me rework the design so it's a bit cleaner. The revised version should be on the live site in a day or two.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Just started working on apsurd - a collaborative network for school clubs/organizations.

<http://apsurd.com/>

I'll be entering this into the <http://refresheverything.com> contest May 1 because I believe it will have a positive impact on students and their neighborhoods.

<comment><USER4> Super cool! I was /just thinking/ about a project like Apsurd in class today. I guess you beat me to it!

I'm part of a lot of student orgs on my campus; I'll try it out some time soon.

<comment><USER3> Hey thanks, glad you can identify with the need. You mind dropping me an email, as there's no contact info in your profile. I'd like to get in touch with you when it launches.

Implementation is everything so I can definitely use some feedback! Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Working on web publishing for professional photographers.

<http://www.shotblox.com/home/>

Nothing groundbreaking, just making it easy on one really specific market.

</comment><comment><USER6> Plagued by Lawsuits, McAfee Founder Hunts for Cures in Belize - <http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/145/fantasy-island.html>

</comment><comment><USER7> www.niblink.com

we help private golf members connect and exchange guest invitations.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Since nobody has added their startups yet. Here is ours:

Tonido allows you to share your personal digital assets (Files,Photos, Music) with friends and family without going through third party services. Quite opposite to what fb and goog do.

common guys. add yours !

<comment><USER8> Here is mine: www.examprofessor.com

It's an assessment engine that allows you to embed your exams anywhere you please.

<comment><AUTHOR> it looks really great.the concept is awesome. but the website seems to be really slow.

<comment><USER8> I looked at load times and you are right, we should work on optimizing our pages a bit. Thanks!

56K = 61.65 seconds ISDN 128K = 24.02 seconds T1 1.44Mbps = 8.84 seconds

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I also like yc 2010 zencoder.

Easy-to-use, blazing fast video encoding for your app</comment>


Do computers know what music genres are? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@easternblot/do-computers-know-what-music-genres-are-7cf77913cc9d <comment><USER2> My mind went directly to the Music Genome Project.

The article seems a little like a subset of 'Can machines duplicate arbitrary human categories'. Well, yea, if we program them to. But why would you want to? It's all already very well labeled.

I think a more interesting question would be "How would a naive ML network classify various clouds of music types across time?"</comment>


Why Spammers Spam - <AUTHOR> http://nerdr.com/why-spammers-spam/

<comment><USER2> "If it was not of value, it would not be profitable and hence, would not exist."

Thievery, blackmail, extortion, etc. are all profitable, and yet, I would argue not of value. So is legally tricking people into paying for services they do not want. This is a terrible sentiment that can be used to justify any number of shady dealings. But it's also housed in an incoherent paragraph where the author briefly argues both sides, so I have no idea whether he actually agrees with the above statement or not.

<comment><AUTHOR> Playing devil's advocate for a moment, No property or person is being harmed with spam. Time is wasted, yes. But no crime is being committed in the normal sense of the word. To compare spam to thievery, blackmail and extortion (where their is a removal of property of threats to a person) is not a very good analogy and I think taking things a bit too far. It's closer to aggresively handing out flyers on the street and possibly a case of harrassment.

<comment><USER3> I would disagree. Phishing spam exists in an effort to steal or otherwise harm the recipients who are tricked into responding. Prescription drug spam can tempt those who may have a moment of weakness into breaking the law, and they could possibly purchase counterfeit goods that can directly harm the person. Money is spent by companies who have to either self maintain or pay a service to maintain a spam filter. I occasionally miss important emails that are incorrectly filtered as spam, one was an offer for a side job that would have paid me real money.

Spam is harmful, plain and simple.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "As I said above, I don't have the luxury of ethics at this stage."

Ethics is not a luxury. Properly defined and applied, what is ethical is what is needed to survive _as a human_ (which means going by reason), _long term_. This is totally at odds with what spammers do, which is to defraud people, violate contracts, etc. Running or using a bot network is _trespass and theft_. In this context, everyone, including the spammer, knows where the botnet came from.

Yes, this guy might get _some_ money, _for a while_ , just like any other common criminal can (while constantly worrying about getting caught, long after the crime was committed). But compare that pathetic psychological state and the small, ephemeral trickle of income to what someone doing honest work can earn (a successful startup, for example), and you will see that the immoral _is_ the impractical.

<comment><USER5> In our cushy rich modern societies, there's a lot of room between survival and ethical behaviour.

<comment><USER4> If "survival" only means continued metabolism and respiration, yes.

But I submit that "survival" means more than just that. We're _human beings_ , so for us, survival requires independent thought, art, science, honesty, self- esteem, productive work, and a whole lot more.

<comment><USER5> I'd call that "independent thought, art, science, honesty, self-esteem, productive work", and keep the definition of survival close to something like "You're heart's still beating.".

<comment><USER4> But the problem with your definition is that if we go by it, human survival in the long-term is not included.

Your mind's independent thought is ultimately _the thing_ that ensures that your heart keeps beating. Without it, there will come a point where you can't keep making the things you need to stay alive physically.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I get the feeling spamming is often the work of people who can ignore the fact that some economic activities are harmful or bothersome to the people they are trying to reach, and to their own brand (beyond the erectile dysfunction category, which is a whole other league).

I was once acquainted with a company that sent unsolicited mail (travel related) through one of those gazillion email databases. When I asked why were they doing it, their response was a blank stare—Well, it gives us a 10 to 1 return on investment each time we do it, why should we stop?.

It's the same reason why it's so difficult to cancel your cable plan, companies notice that if they ask their customers to fax in their contract, cancellation rates diminish to a fraction. Profit!

</comment><comment><USER7> "With all that said and done... (and with this "good" blog now blocked by both Reddit AND Hacker News) i'm turning to the dark side."

I'm a little confused by that statement. It doesn't seem like it is blocked.

<comment><USER8> <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=xnerdr>

It appears his old username is/was.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It must work, because I'd wager that there are more spam blogs/sites than good blogs/sites. God help you if you try to find legitimate information on health or insurance.

<comment><USER10> The volume of spam blogs compared to non-spam blogs isn't an indicator of working. The volume is based on two factors:

* Automation at the high-end of spamming * Creating a wide a net as possible to pull in visitors

Much like the volume of spam emails is there because the conversion rate is so poor, so many emails get filtered. By using volume as a vector, despite the diminishing returns, spammers aim to get a decent return on their investment.

The marginal cost of email or a new spamblog is low (though email is still by far cheaper). That's the basis for them being so many of them. I know the conversion rate for email is miniscule (but multiplying that by millions can generate a decent sum). No idea about the conversion rate of spam blogs.

The source of income isn't adsense, it's affiliate products, and in those areas. Porn and pills are the one that are profitable.

And yes, spam blogs do work, they work well enough that when Google finds a blog farm and drops them out of the index, spammers take some time to figure out how they got spotted, adjust their approach or make a suitable correction, and start again. The methods of creating spam sites and blogs differ over time, but the general approach is still a core spam technique.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Spam is really a theft of someone elses time. Because they only steal a little time from every victim, spammers may see it as a "small" theft. Shoplifters use a similar rationalization when stealing from a large store.

My revenge fantasy is to have spammers serve prison time equal to amount of time they have stolen from their victims i.e. ten seconds a day per victim * 1 million victims sounds about right.

<comment><USER12> Well, you could use the same rational for bad articles on HN...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Do we really have to be so imprecise in our language that now "spam" in a headline can refer to "blog spam"? How about "comment spam" as well? What else is there? How about I write an article titled "spam is now illegal" and by the fifth paragraph you find out I'm talking about unsolicited faxes? To 99% of readers out there the last thing they think of when they read "spam" is blog spam.

</comment><comment><USER14> We wrote a blogpost that touched on some of this as well: <http://kymalabs.blogspot.com/2011/03/kymalabs-on-spam.html>

</comment><comment><USER15> What exactly is a spam blog? Is it the same with arbitrage? How does it know what content to display (as the author says it should be automated)?

<comment><USER10> Some spam blogfarms play the arbitrage game with Adsense, but it's more profitable for them to use GoogleAds to pull traffic in and push visitors towards their affiliate links.

Content tends to be scraped content, sometimes Markov chained or other spinning methods. The content to display is based on keywords.

Depending on the spam website solution, the automation is done on a number of levels (depending on the blogfarm technique):

* WordpressMU with wildcard subdomains based on a spreadsheet of keywords * Automated set up of Blogger blogs (either using Captcha breakers, Mechanical turk, or just asking the user to solve captchas 10 at a time) * Automated publishing of content via XMLRPC (for wordpress and/or blogger), or other interfaces. Then almost always ping-servers are pinged. * Automated creation of websites given a template and a heap of content - sometimes Markoved sometimes spun. Grabbing content either through screen scraping, RSS, text files, anything they can get their hands on. (They tried wikipedia for a while, last time I looked, they were dabbling with Yahoo answers for both content and inbound links) * automated link building. Basically finding fingerprints of known no-rel-follow tools - like Pligg, Wordpress on edu/gov domains etc. Includes automated comment spam to build inbound links.

It does surprise me the lengths the successful spammers go to in blogspam and spam websites. They figure out this is still more profitable than building real long-term value and writing interesting content. Sometimes I think it's one of those "beat Google at it's own game", and the rush of earning quick money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It seems karma may have sent him a DDOS attack, as I can't access his site right now.

</comment><comment><USER17> Spamming works and so AirBnB is here

</comment><comment><USER18> Google will punish bad spam blogs eventually. But they're also have a tendency to punish good blogs accidentally as well. If the probability of being punished for being good was near zero, I bet there'd be less spammers</comment>


Jeff Jarvis: What the Internet Has Not Killed - <AUTHOR> http://thefastertimes.com/mediaandtech/2010/12/12/things-the-internet-has-not-killed/

<comment><USER2> The car killed the horse buggy, the light bulb killed the gas lamp, who morns for those?</comment>


Coronavirus patients with even mild cases are taking months to recover - <AUTHOR> https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-19/covid-fatigue-one-of-worst-symptons-patients-say/12252602 <comment><USER2> A better title: A very very tiny subset of the patients have complications after having Coronavirus just like with any other disease.

<comment><USER3> I'd like to see some data on this. There have been reports of clotting problems, lung, kidney and liver damage, destruction of lung function, and more. Yet there are no estimates I've seen of the duration or prevalence of these. There are anecdotal reports of people taking months to recover, but again little public data. Death is not the only bad outcome of this virus and without documented these other effects the true harm of the virus can't be known.

<comment><USER2> That's because they amount of people who get these is miniscule. It's a Coronavirus. It's a purely respiratory virus. These issues are most like from some obscure genetic susceptibility to the virus or from some pre existing conditions the patient had.</comment></comment></comment>


Berkeley CS189 Machine Learning: Complete Lecture Notes [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~jrs/papers/machlearn.pdf <comment><USER2> +1, these are a really nice overview. I think CS189 would fit nicely as an advanced class in the UCB Data Science curriculum, [http://data.berkeley.edu/courses](http://data.berkeley.edu/courses).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've been taking CS189 this semester, and I think our lecture notes are an excellent resource on ML techniques that you all would appreciate.</comment>


The Promise of 5G - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/15/the-promise-of-5g/

<comment><USER2> I skimmed through the article and saw hyperbolic statements like, "Now with the leap to 5G networks, we can start to completely reshape entire industries, and rethink how we run our cities and manage critical national infrastructures." I thought to myself, "Ugh, who is writing this crap?" then scrolled up and saw it was "Hossein Moiin is executive vice president and CTO of Nokia Networks."

I never thought I would long for the good old days when Mike Arrington would just write about companies he invested in instead of cutting out the middle man and letting companies write their own articles.

<comment><USER3> Same with the prosthetics story. Increased bandwidth over mobile networks could enable them to print more arms? This is only solvable with 5G?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What a load of nonsense. The idea that faster and faster wired and wireless broadband open up huge new opportunities just doesn't make any sense to me. 4G just gives me webpages a bit faster, it's not even especially noticeable most of the time. I can already stream 720p video to my phone which is more or less indistinguishable from 1080p at that size. What other massive fast downloads do you need on a mobile device while data caps are still in the low gigabytes?

<comment><USER5> You are ignoring the fact that it's not just mobile devices that take advantage of fast mobile data connections. Being able to bring a LTE hotspot on long out-of-home stays is pretty nice, and while you may not want to do big downloads on your phone or watch 1080p videos on a screen with less vertical resolution than that, you may want to do so on your laptop.

If for you 4G is only slightly faster than 3G, then blame your service provider, because it's not supposed to. Where I live (Portugal) I get 2-7 Mbit/s speeds with 3G and 10-40 Mbit/s speeds with 4G. But most importantly, I was getting 100 ms pings with 3G while 4G pings are more like 20 ms. Or perhaps your service provider is limiting LTE usage to phones and forbidding tethering, which is silly too.

LTE is, right now, the only way to even get proper Internet connections on rural areas, where the alternative is DSL with speeds below 1 Mbit/s, and sometimes not even that. I believe it's also much cheaper for the network operators to cover those areas with wireless Internet than by laying copper, let alone fiber.

The main issue, that can't be stressed enough, is indeed the data caps. As things are now, higher speeds only lead to hitting the limits in less time. Worse, some sites now seem to detect faster connections and deliver more/heavier content over these ( _cough_ YouTube in auto quality mode _cough_ ), completely ignoring that a faster connection may still have caps. But I have no doubt there are uses for having fiber-like experiences over wireless broadband, especially if the latency is reduced (IMO more important than increasing the speed).

<comment><USER4> I'm not saying it has no uses, just that it's not going to bring some sort of revolution, especially with such low data caps. If the current networks aren't rolled out more widely then giving hot spots of very very high speed isn't going to lead to new services as there's not wide enough coverage.

I use my mobe for tethering on holiday and it's great but the only problems I have in that case are bad 3G coverage.

Yes of course the bump from 10mbit (which I get with HSDPA, top speeds on HSDPA here in Barcelona are over 15mbit) to something like 40 is useful if you're using it for your desktop/laptop but that's not really what this article is about.

The general assumption that higher and higher data rates will enable new uses just doesn't hold true to me. In the last few years my home connection has gone from 30mbit VDSL to 300mbit fiber and honestly it's only really noticeable in a few edge cases like downloading games on Steam. I see no radical new use cases taking any sort of advantages of these sorts of speeds, just as I haven't for 4g mobile networks.

<comment><USER6> This reminds me of the famous quote: "Everything that can be Invented has already been Invented".

But I agree with you that if you have a 10 GB monthly limit, higher bandwidth wont change much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Due to line contention / crosstalk, my 4G connection is now faster than my continuously degrading home VDSL2 connection (BT's "super fast broadband" fibre-to-the-cabinet offering).

However, it still doesn't mean a huge amount because data caps here in the UK seem pretty restrictive. It costs a small fortune to get a data package that might start to give you a landline-replacement service: A 20GB package is probably going to be £40 a month or more.

<comment><USER8> I regularly find my 4G is faster than friends' fixed broadband. It's often not worth connecting to the WiFi.

The one problem is contention. Mobile networks may give you full signal but they'll have under-provisioned the back-haul and won't connect you. Very annoying when this happens.

I used to have unlimited data on 3G but couldn't find a 4G package which offers this. I'm sure it isn't a technical limitation as it's available in the far east.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Somehow I made it through the whole article. I'd love to hear why the author thinks increasing bandwidth by 10x will cause such massive changes. Does 5g tech improve concurrency/crowded towers, range, latency? Will radios be simple and cheap enough for IoT? This report is so devoid of content I wonder if there is some marketing agenda behind it.

</comment><comment><USER10> More than the speed of 5G, I'm hoping for its capacity. If it offers 40x the capacity of 4G (within the same amount of spectrum), it could become a good contender to replace home broadband (and add a lot of competition). T-Mobile already offers 7GB for $50 and 40x that would be 280GB, plenty for most home users. Fixed broadband prices could be significantly cheaper than mobile broadband and installed antennas could offer better reliability and and speed than mobile devices.

It could create a much nicer and more competitive market for home broadband. With AT&T owning DirecTV and Dish owning a bunch of spectrum, there are two companies that could want to do installed, fixed home broadband in the 5G era to support a triple-play of wireless, tv, and home-broadband. Sprint is sitting on over 200MHz of spectrum in most areas with a lot of it being high frequency BRS and EBS spectrum (2.5GHz). Installed, fixed, directional antennas would work a lot nicer with that spectrum than mobile devices and it would offer up a new revenue stream for a company that has lost $50B since 2006.

If 5G really has a big boost in capacity, it could make a big impact against home-broadband monopolies. Wired might still offer a better experience for enthusiasts, but given that a lot of people I know want to save $20 a month and drop from 110Mbps to 25Mbps, the competition could have broad appeal for a lot of people.

<comment><USER11> > T-Mobile already offers 7GB for $50

Does that include tethering? I've noticed a lot of carriers offer a... well, not a large amount of data, but some amount that's on the better side of terrible, but if you tether, the limit is much lower.

<comment><USER12> Includes tethering, for me at least. I use the $30/month prepaid which has a similar data plan structure. As far as I know, T-Mobile let's you do whatever you want with your phone and data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What? Faster internet? Again? How 4G helped? 0. We need power efficient network, not faster one. It would be faster than what you get through fiber. Does that make sense? Shouldn't we focus on making the networks cheap, power efficient and with most possible coverage? This article screams bulshit to me.

<comment><USER14> Faster transfers means less time and less total power draw from the radio.

<comment><USER15> Why do you think it'll mean less total power draw? Didn't we see that devices consumed more energy when using 4G vs 3G? Why do you suspect 5G will be different?

[http://developer.att.com/application-resource- optimizer/docs...](http://developer.att.com/application-resource- optimizer/docs/best-practices/comparing-lte-and-3g-energy-consumption)

<comment><USER14> Thanks for the superb article, I'm basing my statements from testing in real world. I have some 3G/4G phones connected to large batteries, transfering 1MB to 100MB now and then, while they do run different kernels the 4G phones consistently draw less power.

YMMV!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> 5G? I'd be happy with reliable 3G coverage in the UK.

<comment><USER17> 3G coverage? I'd be even happy with reliable EDGE coverage. Half of my daily commute has no coverage at all. Location: one of the most economically powerful regions in Europe/West of Stuttgart/Böblingen in southern Germany.

The network coverage (with all three major networks) along railroads in Germany is a fucking joke.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> We need to hugely increase capacity. 4G Speed is fine, but it wasn't designed for these kind of intensive use we are doing today. We can do 20 - 30Mbps on most 4G network during normal use, when things go bad it stops loading. Dropping to mere 1 - 3 Mbps with high latency.

We need even lower latency, best case 4G is around 20 - 30ms. Most of the time it is 50+ to 90ms. That is much better then then 100s to 300ms in 3G. But 5G should bring even the worst case to 10ms max. Latency is important in Webpage / Apps loading speed.

And then hopefully 5G can do all these while using even less energy then 4G.

</comment><comment><USER19> One thing I would like is more tower capacity for dense events like sporting events and music festivals. Even with a strong 4g connection I often can't even reliably get a text to go through while tailgating at a football game.

<comment><USER20> That's usually a result of poor backhaul capacity. A lot of tower sites likely still running on copper (or PtP wireless) instead of fiber, so the capacity just isn't there for locations that only have a lot of connected devices "sometimes"

Many sporting venues, universities, college/corporate campuses have on-site cells or wifi offloading already built. But there are lots of them that don't. In the past, it's because the carriers won't pay for the capacity themselves, but want the location to do so. Which doesn't make sense, because if you owned a venue, how would you pick between ATT, Verizon, T-Mobile & Sprint? You're definitely not going to pay all of them to put in cells.

Wifi offloading makes it somewhat easier for the location to build-out capacity, but it's still not cheap. 100s of thousands of dollars...

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> One thing nobody seems to mention is NAT. When can we have end-to-end connectivity with phones? More bandwidth is nice but if the connection is still crippled what good is it for?

<comment><USER22> IPv6 resolves that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> For IoT you don't need higher speeds, you need lower power requirements. I am much more interested in things like LoRa networking. It allows upgrading base stations to receive sensor data directly from the sensor, while the sensor can run years on battery power. It allows retroactive upgrades of buildings with sensors without having to put in new cabling or figure out where to put bluetooth networking gear.

</comment><comment><USER24> The article at least mentions latency, which would provide measurable gains. I don't think the bandwidth of 4G is holding the network back in any way. Progress is nice of course, but better 3G coverage, affordable global roaming and higher data caps are more important.

</comment><comment><USER8> 5G hardware is still pretty bulky. It requires a motorised trolley. I'm sure that will be miniaturised though.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-30224853](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-30224853)

</comment><comment><USER25> VR websites will need this.

</comment><comment><USER26> Does 5G bring forward secrecy and strong end-to-end encryption for phone calls and texts? If not, why not? The likes of AT&T don't want to upset their spymasters?

<comment><USER27> the good thing is, that it's trivial to use alternative voice-apps over 4g. no one forces us to use the default one

with 5g it would be even more so</comment></comment>


Arq backs up to Google Drive storage - <AUTHOR> http://www.haystacksoftware.com/blog/2014/08/arq-backs-up-to-google-drive-storage/ <comment><USER2> I'm a huge fan of Arq. It's reliable, easy to use, inexpensive, and keeps getting better. I highly recommend it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Back up everything for $10/month? That's appealing.

<comment><USER4> For most people S3/Glacier hybrid zones are probably still cheaper. But gDrive is definitely more "noob" (or your mom and dad) friendly than AWS. Anything under 1TB is less expensive.

<comment><USER5> How is it more "noob?" Considering the esoteric file format Arq uses, I will not call backups with it to Google Drive simple. If anything, they might be very confusing.

I wonder is Stephan meant Google Storage instead...

UPDATE: Just read that is uses "appdata" directory. Mom and dad will not 'see' the data.

<comment><USER4> What's more confusing for a beginner/my mom, telling them to enter their gmail and password or having them log into AWS, create a new bucket, selecting the appropriate region, copy that super long unreadable ID and key, and take into account # of request and any delays during restore?

<comment><USER5> The second, for sure. You are right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How are you guys able to use these cloud backup solutions for more than a handful of documents?

I have 30Mbps down/.5Mbps up. It takes about a minute to upload one JPEG off my DSLR. I can't imagine how much time it would take to upload a ~100gb full disk backup.

I'd love to use Arq, but I think I'd have to live in a Google Fiber city.

<comment><USER4> My `daily` backup is actually nightly, at 2AM which happens to coincide nicely with when my ISP's network is quiet enough that my upload is higher (still a paltry 4mbit).

Amusingly, for the initial backup of my my home desktops I actually lugged them to work and plugged into our 10Gbit network. My homedirs are backed up nightly, but the delta is rarely over a a gig or two per machine. I have something like 7TB backed up over the course of a few years, a lot fo it on my pitiful 2-3mbit.</comment></comment>


Startup workers see sexual harassment on 'breathtaking' scale in Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/01/silicon-valley-sexual-harassment-startups <comment><USER2> The movement to find justice for abused female engineers and workers would do well to separate themselves from ellen pao. She is a victim to noone.</comment>