SparkFun CryptoShield - <AUTHOR> https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13183?utm_source=SparkFun+Customer+Newsletter&utm_campaign=ca1c346c50-April24_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fa5287abaf-ca1c346c50-61391981

<comment><USER2> The CryptoShield contains an ATAES132 ([https://cdn.sparkfun.com/datasheets/Dev/Beagle/Atmel-8760-Cr...](https://cdn.sparkfun.com/datasheets/Dev/Beagle/Atmel-8760-CryptoAuth- ATAES132-Datasheet.pdf)). I spent 10min reading the datasheet and this chip makes zero sense to me.

It supports features like "encrypted writes" where the host microcontroller encrypts data, sends the ciphertext on the SPI link, ATAES132 decrypts it, and stores the plaintext in internal EEPROM. Later the host can do "encrypted reads" where ATAES132 reads the plaintext from internal EEPROM, encrypts it (possibly with a different key), sends it on the SPI link, and the host decrypts the ciphertext.

Firstly, there is no mechanism in place for the host to securely share a key with ATAES132. The key would have to be pre-shared during manufacturing. Secondly, if the host has to have the key and has to do encryption/decryption by itself, why not just read/write encrypted data on a standard SPI EEPROM? Thirdly, if I am misunderstanding things and in fact plaintext or keys are exchanged on the SPI link, then nothing stops an attacker from sniffing the SPI link or doing active MitM attacks.

This whole chip smells like it was invented to satisfy PHBs who demand crypto but who have no understanding how to implement crypto correctly.

<comment><USER3> The EncWrite command looks to be a way to write new crypto keys into the chip's memory. You have to encrypt the key on the host side with the master key for the device, and it authenticates that data to not allow writes of random data. The chip has ways to write master keys into it, then blow fuses preventing those keys from being modified -- I would expect you'd use these in pairs during your device manufacturing to setup a shared secret that wasn't available from the host CPU.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have no doubt that a few people will buy this device, but it costs $60. Add to an Arduino for like $20 and you're fast heading towards $100 for a device that can do very little. If your project is actually so complicated that you need strong crypto, why not just use a Raspberry Pi?

Power usage approaches Raspberry Pi anyway; the RTC in this device uses between 0.75 and 1W

<comment><USER5> Really? 0.75-1W for an RTC that has a standby mode based on a coin cell? That sounds crazy! It's an SO8 package - can that even dissipate that much power?! Sounds double-crazy!!

Oh, wait, datasheet says its 0.0015mW max. [https://cdn.sparkfun.com/datasheets/Dev/Beagle/DS3231M.pdf](https://cdn.sparkfun.com/datasheets/Dev/Beagle/DS3231M.pdf) And 1 Watt would make the part run at 120˚C above ambient.

<comment><USER6> > Oh, wait, datasheet says its 0.0015mW max

I think you mean 1.5mW.

<comment><USER5> Whoops, thanks. I actually meant 0.0015 W to keep the units the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For practical uses, it's probably better to get a $50 YubiKey Neo and plug it into the USB port of a Raspberry Pi ($25 if you get the Model A).

Crypto is easy to get wrong in every corner - and using a Neo+GPG it's more likely to actually work (plus, it's FIPS-140 certified)

For learning, this seems cool - although I don't see the ways in which it is more educating than software only crypto.

</comment><comment><USER8> Why wouldn't you just use a small FPGA as crypto-processor, or does that defeat the purpose of the device using cypto-in-silicon?

<comment><USER9> FPGA for $60..??

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why can't this be shipped outside America?

</comment><comment><USER11> Interesting. I assume the ECDSA module is to allow people to sign Bitcoin transactions.

<comment><USER12> I don't think that Atmel part supports the right curve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Maybe I missed it, but I don't see ROT13 or base64 anywhere in the features. How can they call this a crypto chip?</comment>


Animation of gravitational lensing (artist's impression) - <AUTHOR> https://spacetelescope.org/videos/hubblecast70c/ <comment><AUTHOR> I was always curious to see what one would look like animated. Here's the article about the newly discovered sunburnt arc:

[https://spacetelescope.org/news/heic1920/](https://spacetelescope.org/news/heic1920/)</comment>


Using a Request Factory in Pyramid to write a little less code - <AUTHOR> http://ratchet.io/blog/post/2012/09/07/using-pyramid-request-factory-to-write-less-code/

<comment><USER2> We did the same thing to put our authenticated user on the request object, but I still didn't like passing the request around everywhere, so eventually I made some middleware that attached the request as a threadlocal variable, so clients could just refer to the variable if they needed it.

The caveat, of course, is that if you are using anything other than a vanilla CGI-type gateway, you need to make sure to clear out the threadlocal variable at the end of the request. Don't want it getting reused by somebody else. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> What did you attach the request to? Pyramid _does_ provide a way to get the current request:

        pyramid.threadlocal.get_current_request()

<comment><USER2> I created my own variable, which I did for two reasons:

First, I didn't want dependencies on Pyramid imports in certain sections of my code.

Second, this comment in the Pyramid docs: _This function should be used extremely sparingly, usually only in unit testing code. it's almost always usually a mistake to use get_current_request outside a testing context because its usage makes it possible to write code that can be neither easily tested nor scripted._

That made me think that they might not have done the due diligence in making sure that my code was safe (which is completely reasonable since they made it explicitly clear _they_ felt that way). Since I knew exactly how I was deploying, I could make it safe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm not a fluent pythonist, but wouldn't you achieve the same result by renaming your "request" argument to "self" ?

Before: > def flash_success(request, body, title=''): > request.session.flash({'body': body, 'title': title'})

After: > def flash_success(self, body, title=''): > self.session.flash({'body': body, 'title': title'})

<comment><USER4> I believe the point was to unify request.session.flash(…) with things like helpers.flash_success(request,…) such that both flash and flash_success _can_ be methods on the request object.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, this is correct.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> See the disqus comment on set_request_property as well.

</comment><comment><USER6> very cool!</comment>


Developer Manifesto – You Are an Artisan, Not an Engineer - <AUTHOR> https://content.nanobox.io/the-developer-manifesto/ <comment><USER3> This reminded me of something written by noted surgeon (and Rhodes Scholar and MacArthur Fellow) Atul Gawande [0]:

<blockquote>

 _If medicine is a craft_ , then you focus on teaching obstetricians to acquire a set of _artisanal skills_ —the Woods corkscrew maneuver … , the Lovset maneuver …, the feel of a forceps for a baby whose head is too big. … _You accept that things will not always work out in everyone's hands_.

 _But if medicine is an industry_ , responsible for the safest possible delivery of some four million babies a year in the United States alone, then a new understanding is required. The focus shifts. _You seek reliability._

You begin to wonder whether forty-two thousand obstetricians in the Unites [sic] States could really safely master all those techniques. You notice the steady reports of terrible forceps injuries to babies and mothers, despite all the training that clinicians received.

After Apgar, obstetricians decided they needed a simpler, more predictable way to intervene when a laboring mother ran into trouble. They found it in the Cesarean section.

</blockquote>

Atul Gawande, _Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance_ , at 192 (Henry Holt & Co. 2007) (emphasis and extra paragraphing added).

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

<comment><USER4> That is one of the most subtly disturbing snippets I've ever read about the state of the medical "system" in the USA.

<comment><USER5> Can you elaborate on what you find disturbing? The implication of high failure rate, or the shift of focus to reliability?

<comment><USER6> If I had wrote that, it would have been about how it led to the development of the Cesarean section operation. In the US, and many other places, the prevalence is much higher than the medical need. When there is no medical need for a C-section, there really isn't any benefit over the risks to the mother and child. Also--and this will probably sound quite hand-wavy or too woo-woo for most of HN's demographic (I assume)--there is great emotional benefit from a baby passing through the vagina.

<comment><USER7> And once a mother has a c-section, most (all?) future births are via c-sections as well.

There is a cost to the mother - major surgery - to the benefit of children. Modern society considers this a worthwhile trade, but it would have meant the death of the mother not even a century ago.

I have no real way to tie this back to programming; other than perhaps to note that we're likely still in the dark ages of programming; the programming equivalent of a cesarean section is likely still years away.

<comment><USER8> Well, not really.

Look at HTTP, WebSockets, NodeJS, JS! Docker!

Churning out "apps" and delivering deliverables is the focus, not engineering. Ticking off boxes for enterprise is more important than product feel and user satisfaction. And so on.

And once you got hooked on docker and nodejs (with typescript and VS Code) why would you go back to hacking perl scripts that invoke long forgotten binaries written in the darkest C dialects, darker than void* itself, even if that damn docker image is 600MB, the runtime memory cost is not much less, and it's managed by kubernetes which needs gigabytes of RAM just to run an apiserver and scheduler and a kubelet (node/server manager).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was expecting an article focussing on how making software is not engineering said to myself, "not this again."

But the article isn't arguing that, the article seems to be arguing we are something more than engineers.

There is a subtle implication that engineers are hyper pragmatic and the only thing that is important is that it works. My wife who is a biomedical engineer and makes robots might disagree. In fact, I don't know many good engineers of any kind that stop at "just working."

I think this artisan argument could also be applied to other types of engineering as well.

However, the title is slightly off, it should probably be "You Are an Artisan, Not JUST an Engineer" \--- the two aren't mutually exclusive and the author even acknowledges that in the first paragraph.

<comment><USER10> > But the article isn't arguing that, the article seems to be arguing we are > something more than engineers.

But we are _not even_ engineers, let alone more.

There are some people active in the production of software that would qualify as engineers but that's a tiny fraction and they're not going to be found too far from medical devices and aerospace.

<comment><USER11> Aerospace software engineer here. :-)

I feel perfectly content to deem my work as "engineering". I can understand why someone quickly whipping up a small web application (which is not to imply that _all_ web applications are quickly whipped up, nor that _all_ web applications are small) might reasonably feel that their work is _not_ engineering.

So since I've also done quick little web applications, what do I think the difference is?

The aerospace work includes precise operational requirements. It includes formal verification tests which demonstrate that the requirements are met. Code is reviewed; documents are reviewed; reviews are reviewed (not joking, though typically only a sampling subset). Code is subject to formal coding standards; code repositories are subject to formal standards; tools for testing software are subject for formal standards (and documented/reviewed/etc. in their own right). Software that goes onto aircraft is tested in simulations; tested in limited on-ground hardware scenarios; tested in extensive on-ground hardware scenarios; tested on board flying aircraft. The entire process (and the following of process) is reviewed. The end product is signed off on, and, for example, in the case of U.S. commercial aerospace, certified by FAA representatives.

Sounds nothing at all like developing web applications!

Or does it?

A consumer-facing startup web application might have little or no requirements. Testing may be ad hoc. Nothing is reviewed. Coding standards don't exist. Does the software seem to do what is intended? Ship it!

But what about web applications for banking? I've never worked in banking, but I suspect the requirements are fairly robust. (And if in fact they are not, they easily could be.) I suspect that tests are comprehensives, traced back to the requirements. (And if in fact they are not, they easily could be.) I suspect that the software goes through several rounds of testing, that code is reviewed, that coding standards are adhered to. Maybe not to the same level as aerospace, but probably pretty solid.

So what?

Is financial software engineered? I would imagine so. Maybe not as strictly as aerospace -- or maybe stricter! I honestly don't know. But I can easily imagine comparable scenarios.

So if we can engineer financial software, can we not engineer productivity software? We sure could! How about social media software? You bet! Even games? Why not?

I think that _all_ software _could_ be engineered. But in fact it probably shouldn't be. If you want to make a change on software on an aircraft, it might be five minutes editing code in Emacs, surrounded by a year of paperwork and process. That'd be ridiculous for an iPhone game. It'd probably be excessive for a financial application, but maybe some measure of that would be appropriate.

Perhaps there is (or should be) a spectrum of software engineering. At one end, we take extreme measures to ensure quality and process, because (literally) lives depend on it. At the other end, we can hack out whatever we want and it doesn't matter. Most software lies somewhere in between. Maybe some of it should consider moving more toward one end or the other. :-)

[Incidentally, it's common to repeat the phrase, "never roll your own cryptography software". I think it would be totally fair to say "never roll your own flight control software" too. But the people actually writing flight control software aren't necessarily top-tier 0.000000001% brilliant developers. They are, though, surrounded by sufficient process and review that their work is nearly guaranteed to be solid by the time it takes to the air. We could probably do something similar with cryptography software, if there were a model in place (and, I reckon, funding in place) for all of the surrounding infrastructure to engineer it properly.]

<comment><USER7> Personally, I've never even had to really consider working around issues like those that are presented here:

[https://c3.nasa.gov/dashlink/static/media/other/ObservedFail...](https://c3.nasa.gov/dashlink/static/media/other/ObservedFailures1.html)

I also don't really consider myself an engineer: I'm self taught, I don't have a degree, I've never had to formally prove my software, and the most failures in my software can cause is some potential loss in revenue.

<comment><USER10> That's a fantastic link, thank you for posting. I spent an hour reading that.

<comment><USER7> For your enjoyment (there's a couple of other good links in the discussion): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14765868](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14765868)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Oh my god this is such pompous article. None of these things are specific to software developers, and 90% of the things it says are platitudes that mean nothing.

There are even some that are just wrong, like the 'throw it away' section.

"It's not the code that is valuable. It's the understanding you've gained from building it."

What? Maybe at some places, but where I work, the software I write is NEEDED.

And this:

"Never be afraid to throw something away and do it again. It will almost always be faster to build and much better the second (or third, or Nth) time around."

Has he never heard of the second system effect?

<comment><USER13> > throw something away and do it again.

This jumped out at me too. This is such a HUGE fallacy. If what you have written is core to or is the product you're selling, you can't just rewrite it! Software evolves over time, and it can become difficult to replace it when it gains features and bug fixes for random edge conditions.

Properly replacing existing software requires having a consistent API against which you are developing and can test to make sure that it continues to work. And then having the ability to potentially dark launch new software next to old to see that it works properly. Even doing all of that, replacement projects often fail, why? Simply because most organizations can't afford to have a team that is not contributing to the bottom line of delivering features to customers.

Doing a replacement project should never be started without a significant amount of thought and attention. Software always takes longer to develop than you think, I even underestimate "Hello World!" most of the time.

<comment><USER12> For sure - when writing upgrades to existing systems these days, 90% of the work goes into the transition; how do you start using the new system without breaking the thousands of people who rely on the old one?

But yeah, I kinda have a feeling I know where he is coming from with some of his thoughts... my first few jobs were at startups that never went anywhere. We made great software, but never gained any customers because there was no real market for what we made.

After a while, you get REALLY focused on the craft of your code, because it is all you have. You can throw out old stuff and rewrite it, because it doesn't matter, you don't have customers depending on you. You already made what is needed by the business, the problem is there IS no business.

My current job is with a large CDN, serving a huge number of actual real customers with real demands. I don't have time to treat every piece of code I write as a piece of art. It is simply a tool to further the business.

Personally, I much prefer my current job. I would rather create things that actually matter, rather than amazing art that no one uses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> No, an _artisan_ is an artisan. A developer is developer. That's not to say some developers aren't artisans, but a lot of people are developers because it pays the bills: they build things, and are good at building things, because they see it as a means to an end. Some do it as a means of expression: it is their medium for creation. Both modes of operation, and everything in between, are equally viable and valid.

I guess my point is, it's fine to write code and NOT be an artisan. I'd argue that most people who code are not as interested in the creation aspect of is as much as "doing cool stuff" or making money...and that's fine.

But let's not paint all developers with an artisan brush.

<comment><USER15> > No, an artisan is an artisan. A developer is developer. That's not to say > some developers aren't artisans, but a lot of people are developers because > it pays the bills

That's the norm for artisans (which is just a skilled worker in a trade involved in making things, especially by hand), not a distinction. _Artists_ may be a different story, but artists aren't the same thing as artisans.

<comment><USER16> I'd argue the diff between artisan & artist is semantics. Conceptually they both yearn for the elevation that comes along with your output being considered an art.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The term _artisan_ always makes me think of pizza. How about referring to ourselves as smiths instead? Imagine upon being asked what do you do for a living and responding that you're a codesmith!

<comment><USER18> I like the term craftsman

<comment><USER12> I prefer the term 'code monkey'

<comment><USER19> "IT guy"

<comment><USER12> I have personally been pushing for the title of "HerpDerpgineer"

<comment><USER20> My official job title is Software Guy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> While the article may be considered a bit trite, and people argue over the word "artisan", there were a couple of points that brought salient anecdotes to mind.

Own Up to Failure

I've worked in quite a few places where arse covering was a full-time activity. Where, "I don't want to make a decision because then I can't change my mind later," is and actual quote during requirements gathering.

For some reason, I've never been bothered being honest when I've screwed up. I distinctly remember one time when one of the client's staff came to me about a problem, loaded for bear, fully expecting a fight on their hands. About one minute into the discussion, having got my head around the problem I said, "Yeah, that was my stuff up. I'll get that fixed."

There was a palpable sense of shock, followed by delight and relief.

...and that leads in to...

Trust is Earned

Where I was brought into high-level management meeting with the same client about some important issue, and my opening remark was, "That's not a bug, it's a feature," as which point my project manager nearly had kittens on the spot. But I then explained through the details of what was going on, agreed on a couple of minor adjustments that would make things clearer in the future, and everyone came away satisfied.

Don't know if I could have gotten away with that if I hadn't already had the reputation for being straight with people and owning my own mistakes.

</comment><comment><USER22> I don't think this manifesto adds any kind of value to developers. The word that come to my mind is "shallow". Pretentious, pompous. Of course "coders" will love it.

Perhaps UI and UX design is an art, but at the end software requires engineering.

The only manifesto i'd recommend is this one:

[http://programming-motherfucker.com/](http://programming-motherfucker.com/)

<comment><USER23> Upvote for Zed's link. I was pleased to see that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Our field may be grounded by solid engineering and conceptual foundations, but we have much more in common with the medieval blacksmith than we do a modern machinist.

For example: Given a bog-standard relational database and the requirement to be able to create, read, update, and delete rows in the database, what is the _best_ way to present that via an HTTP API? What language will be used? What will the API look like? What edge cases will be considered? How long will it take?

You'll probably get a unique answer for every dev you ask, even though they'll all consider it to be a trivial task. You'll probably also get fairly unique clarification questions about the spec from each one as well.

I'm not sure, when we can put the same task to 100 people and get 100 unique results (and few (if any) would agree to monetary penalties for failures), that we're strongly positioned within the engineering discipline.

</comment><comment><USER24> > Writing stable code and being available to fix your bugs, even sometimes > after hours.

Nah I'd rather be available during hours to fix my bugs. Call me old fashioned, but does anyone not believe your work should not follow you home? I love what France is doing with the "right to disconnect"

<comment><USER25> Hear, hear!

The inabilty of the young folk to disconnect from their work is disasterous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> > "Walking the trail of tears with each other..."

I know the historical reference but I'm not sure I understand what the author is actually talking about here.

<comment><USER12> Me either, but it is pretty offensive to compare whatever it is a developer does to an act of genocide.

<comment><USER10> Too busy changing the world to read up on Native American history. Think of it as artisanal license...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Artisan? I wish. For the most part a plumber would be more appropriate. I'd like to see a plumber marketing themselves as an artisan.

</comment><comment><USER27> What about just calling them developers, crazy idea.

</comment><comment><USER28> Artisan? As in artisan breads? I'm not so sure that's the best fit. Yes, I rise. But I don't want to be sliced and buttered :)

Ultimately, the issue for me is when people use the wrong title (?) to describe their level of experience, skill and overall sweet spot.

For example, a programmer is not a developer, and a developer is not an engineer. So when a programmer describes themselves as an engineer - <USER2> someone who has no idea what the difference is - that just ruins it for everyone. Not to point fingers in a negative way but the WordPress community is notorious for such shenanigans.

</comment><comment><USER16> Hearing the word "artisan" is just a flag letting me know I need to switch mental registers if I hadn't already:

if (inputStr == "artisan") { ENV = "MARKETING" };

</comment><comment> UK-AL I feel this is dismissing engineers. Most i know engineers also care about elegance and asethetics.

You may not like it, but engineer is probably the closest match to an existing profession.

</comment><comment><USER29> The engineering debate aside, I don't even like how programmers fancy themselves as "developers", which is very non descriptive, considering that around half of all human jobs are about "developing" something. People who write programs should just call themselves "programmers" for the sake of clarity.

</comment><comment><USER30> Of course, the original comparison between coders and artists was made by Paul Graham in Hackers and Painters:

[https://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Painters-Big-Ideas- Computer/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Painters-Big-Ideas- Computer/dp/1449389554)

<comment><USER10> And then there was this:

[http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm](http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm)

<comment><USER30> Thanks for that, good find. Pretty eye opening.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'd think reality is more like tradesman or software builder rather than engineer. Most devs aren't doing anything new or different. There are probably guys in the building next door probably doing something similar.

<comment><USER9> Engineers of any kind usually aren't doing something radically different.

Even if you are building a robot, which is undoubtedly engineering, you probably have a team down the road building something similar.

In fact, most software engineers I know are very interested in the cutting edge and research pieces. You can make a living as a mechanical engineer without using an equation newer than a few hundred years.

<comment><USER32> _You can make a living as a mechanical engineer without using an equation newer than a few hundred years._

Have you seen what's happened to control theory in the last 15 years? There's so much new math that new PhDs are having trouble deciding which parts to learn. Control theory has imported much of machine learning in addition to all the classic control theory, and they want bounds so they know the machine learning parts won't do something stupid.

<comment><USER9> Sorry, that came out wrong.

I am absolutely not implying that there have been no advancements in mechanical engineering. Just that it is possible to find a job where you will not encounter them. I am confident you are right that PhDs are doing great cutting edge stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is all over the place and reads like a collection of random pieces of advice.

Why not stop at "An engineer makes something work. You are more than that. You are an artisan." and present a reasonable line of argument?

</comment><comment><USER34> This whole discussion is about the meaning of the words "artisan" and "engineer" far more than it's about programming or anyone's professional role.

</comment><comment><USER35> reminds me of this: [http://manifesto.softwarecraftsmanship.org/](http://manifesto.softwarecraftsmanship.org/)

</comment><comment><USER36> This is why I never touched Laravel, 'The PHP Framework For Web Artisans'. I'm not an 'artisan'. I just code.

<comment><USER6> See other comments in this thread clarifying that `artist !== artisan`</comment></comment>


A cold, rotating disk galaxy 1.5B years after the Big Bang - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2276-y <comment><USER2> Preprint at: [https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.09661](https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.09661)

They found evidence of a cold disk galaxy at z = 4.26 using ALMA observations of [C II].

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the link.

They identified the galaxy they're studying because it happens to be backlit by an even more-distant quasar. Galaxies identified this way are not "special" in the sense that highly-luminous galaxies are. (That is, this selection method avoids the obvious bias of just studying really bright high-z galaxies.)

As a small aside, it's really impressive how routine tailored MCMC analysis has become in astrophysics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Project code at github

[https://github.com/mneeleman/qubefit](https://github.com/mneeleman/qubefit)

<comment><USER5> 1) I enjoy seeing this software online! 2) What would it take to get "science" to write idiomatic code?

Like, we could fork it, clean it up, and create a PR... but this is after the fact.

<comment><USER6> 1) hard: destroy publishing. 2) harder: destroy the culture surrounding academic advancement (read advancement as not falling behind) 3) easy: have recognition go to those who write idiomatic code</comment></comment></comment>


A Common Lisp REPL on Android - <AUTHOR> http://kvardek-du.kerno.org/2017/12/a-lisp-repl-in-your-pocket.html <comment><USER2> I have been using Termux and ECL. I'll have to look at this one. Another sort of REPL is installing Maxima on Android[1]. It is running on ECL. You get a Lisp-based Mathematica-like environment with a Lisp REPL of sorts.

      [1]  https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.yhonda&hl=en

</comment><comment><USER3> Very cool. This is based on ECL (Embeddable CL), which is one of the best and useful CL implementations.

</comment><comment><USER4> BTW, Android already had Terminal IDE and Termux for years, two console emulators with prepackaged applications. In Termux you can install Picolisp via 1 command and all other options are buildable with either gcc (the hard way) or ecj + dx + dalvikvm (java toolchain, easy way). Written some small programs in JScheme using vim there, it was an ok experience.

</comment><comment><USER5> Can you connect SLIME to this (or other) CL running on Android?

<comment><USER6> I don't see why not, so long as ECL on Android supports sockets. I'd be very, very, _very_ careful about the security I used with it, though … you _really_ don't want anyone on the Internet to get a Lisp REPL on your phone.

<comment><USER7> There are 2 ways to connect from Slime, see:

[https://gitlab.com/eql/EQL5-Android/blob/master/examples/REP...](https://gitlab.com/eql/EQL5-Android/blob/master/examples/REPL/README-2-SLIME.md)

If you use the 2nd one (requires an SSH app), you should be fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sweet! As an otherwise happy iOS user, it continues to frustrate me that I can't get interpreters for my phone.

Well I can, I just have to compile and install them myself, which isn't a huge burden. But I have to write all the glue code myself.

<comment><USER9> Not Common Lisp, but there is a Shen interpreter on iOS.

[https://chatolab.wordpress.com/2017/07/10/shen- programming-l...](https://chatolab.wordpress.com/2017/07/10/shen-programming- language-for-ios/)

<comment><USER10> Thanks for this - I've just installed it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Look to clojure if you want a lisp on Android

<comment><USER5> But it starts slowly, doesn't it?

Also it's not as orthodoxal as CL :)

<comment><USER11> so? it's the same workflow and way of thinking.

<comment><USER12> Clojure has a very different workflow and way of thinking to CL, both technically and culturally.

I like both, but they take very different approaches to a lot of things (the most obvious of which is mutability).

<comment><USER11> you're splitting hairs. that is irrelevant.

<comment><USER12> Using vectors for grouping and lists for function/macro invocations vs. traditional s-expressions is irrelevant. Pretty much all the other differences between Clojure and CL are significant.

<comment><USER11> again, you're splitting hairs. that is almost irrelevant for someone that has never touched a lisp.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Test Faster, Fix More – Property Based Testing with Hypothesis - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKf6KfdTems <comment><AUTHOR> This is a talk I presented at this years PyCon SE.

Slides are available here: [https://slides.com/hultner/pycon- se-2019](https://slides.com/hultner/pycon-se-2019)

More details and example code at: [https://github.com/Hultner/Test-faster-fix- more](https://github.com/Hultner/Test-faster-fix-more)

Please give me any feedback you may have!</comment>


Toy Time in Space: (1985) Discovery Astronauts Play with Slinky, Yo-Yo and Jacks - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/1985/04/16/science/toy-time-in-space.html <comment><AUTHOR> The history of the Slink is pretty interesting. Its origin:

"In 1943, Richard James, a naval mechanical engineer stationed at the William Cramp and Sons shipyards in Philadelphia, was developing springs that could support and stabilize sensitive instruments aboard ships in rough seas. James accidentally knocked one of the springs from a shelf, and watched as the spring "stepped" in a series of arcs to a stack of books, to a tabletop, and to the floor, where it re-coiled itself and stood upright." [1.]

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

<comment><USER2> Please don't use four spaces to quote blocks of text.</comment></comment>


9 Habits to help you write a book - <AUTHOR> http://www.dumblittleman.com/2007/09/complete-your-first-book-with-these-9.html <comment><USER2> Anyone who has always wanted to write a novel should consider doing National Novel Writing Month (<http://www.nanowrimo.org/>). I did it last year, and even though my novel was pretty terrible I still had fun and learned a lot from writing it.

<comment><USER3> I did NaNoWriMo a couple of years ago, as well. It's an awesome experience. It definitely teaches you about writers block and the only guaranteed way to prevent it (write every day, no matter what...kind of a don't break the chain kind of thing).

I'll definitely do it again sometime, when I have more free time. (It does consume a lot of time. If you've got a startup, you don't have time to spare.)</comment></comment>


Multi-processor support coming for Firefox - <AUTHOR> http://mozillalinks.org/wp/2009/05/multi-processor-support-coming-for-firefox/ <comment><USER2> So does this mean that Firefox will now consume 100% of my available CPU cores now, as well as 100% of my memory?

<comment><USER3> Only when running Flash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Should be "multi-process", not "multi-processor".

<comment><USER5> A single (classic) process can use a single processor; multiple processes can use multiple processors.

<comment><USER6> But we have had processes with multiple threads that enable concurrent calculation in a single process for quite some time now, haven't we?

<comment><USER7> Very true on all modern OS's. Has anyone here looked into the firefox source to see if they are using threads in a parallel way?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> chrome and Chrome? They need to change the name of their UI.

<comment><USER9> Maybe Chrome needs to change the name of their browser.</comment></comment>


The Thirty-Seven Basic Plots, According to a Screenwriter of the Silent Film Era - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2015/10/27/history_of_screenwriting_a_master_book_of_plots.html <comment><USER5> One movie I've always had a hard time categorizing is Groundhog Day. I went through the 37 plots listed and still don't see a good match. Does achieving enlightenment count as a plot?

<comment><USER6> A second reply, because this is about the movie _Groundhog Day_ and not the topic at hand.

Something that really bugs me about most people's references to the movie is that they grossly miss the point. When most people reference it they refer to something about their dull repetitive life, or being stuck in a rut. But that's not what happens in the movie.

He literally experiences the same thing for hundreds of days to hundreds of years (depending on interpretation). But something happens, he realizes the numerous opportunities present in this same, repeated, "uneventful" day. Sure, the daily grind of wake, commute, work, commute, dinner, TV, sleep, repeat is dull and repetitive. But unlike Phil, we don't have an infinite number of times to do this before we learn our lesson and change our approach. We get 100 years on the outside, 60 productive years for most of us. Even if you're doing the same thing each day, how do you spend the rest of your time? If it's living for the weekend, that's 5 evenings a week you've wasted. Fill it with time with family, friends, learning, hobbies, something. Become the best person you can be, because one day the repetition will end.

What will you have to show for it? Will you have just worked yourself to death and memorized every line of Star Wars, or will you be making ice sculptures with a chainsaw?

<comment> david-given Why do I need to show anything for it?

That's a serious question; if I like working and enjoy memorising Star Wars, why shouldn't I do that? Why can't I focus my life around the things _I_ enjoy doing, rather than concentrating on all the things which I _could_ be doing (but can't do, because of any number of reasons) and end up miserable and feeling like I'm wasting my life?

<comment><USER6> If that's what you enjoy, that's fine. But many people don't really enjoy their work, it's just work. What they enjoy is done on the weekends or holidays. How many people waste 2 or 3 hours commuting each day, time away from the family they ostensibly want to be with, for work, and then lament, when their children are grown, missing out on those years?

If Star Wars and your job are the things you _want_ to be doing, do them. That's fantastic. If dancing or drawing or rebuilding a jeep are what you want to do, but can't because of work, find some other job or some better way to do your current job.

And don't feel beholden to others to do things or enjoy things because that's what they expect of you. I fucking hate the Star * franchises (or, more accurately, what they've become and their fanbases). But I work with people who love them (in their current incarnations). But in this field (computer programming), everyone thinks I'm weird. Same with video games, I enjoy them to an extent, but I've played them enough to know that I want to do other things. OTOH, don't listen to me if that's what you enjoy and I tell you to stop. If it's what you want to do, do it. But if it's what you want to do, and something in your life is holding you back that you want to change (as opposed to certain obligations, like an SO, that you shouldn't or don't want to change), then find a way to get that time back.

EDIT: Hell. If your work and Star Wars memorization are what you really want. Make that commute work for you. Ride a train and get more work done. Or listen to the movies on your drive. I'm doing that with my current attempt at learning Italian. That's one of the ways people miss the point. The time is there for you to do many (though not all) of the things you want to do now, you just have to realize it and take it back.

EDIT Further: And I guess, with regard to having something to "show" for it. At the end of your life, do you think that you will be happy with how you led it? Did you achieve all, most or even some of your goals? It's not just a result to show to others, but also an internal understanding of where you are and what you have achieved (or not) and why. If I get married and have kids, I probably won't achieve most of the travel I want to in this lifetime. But I'll probably be happy to have made that trade. But if I can't achieve that goal because I decided to work until I was 70, then, for me, that will have been a failure. So I've set myself on a course to avoid that.

<comment><USER7> > But many people don't really enjoy their work, it's just work.

That's because the threat in our economy is "If you don't work, you don't eat and you will go homeless." And that's a strong motivator to put up with shit at the workplace. Most people aren't wealthy.

<comment><USER8> Well, that's been more or less the situation for everyone since the beginning of history excepting a very small slice of the population born into or married into a privileged elite class--and not even all of them.

<comment><USER9> Just because this has been the norm since beginning of civilization, doesn't mean it has to be like that forever. We really do have the technology now to relieve everyone of that burden; we only need more social will (and less referring to Idiocracy, Wall-E and "oh all those people who will be drinking their UBI in front of the TV") and a path through the phase-space of economy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If I understand this right then these 37 'situations' are to be composed into specific 'plots' by mixing and matching.

This would be in contrast with the '7 basic plots'[1] and would yield much more specific results.

I wonder if they can be combined at random.. almost seems like they can be for pairs.

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

<comment><USER11> There's a whole body of work that I think could be categorized as "1 basic plot". Joseph Campbell I think did a lot about this idea, but Dan Harmon[1] always explained it best for me.

[1]: [http://channel101.wikia.com/wiki/Story_Structure_101:_Super_...](http://channel101.wikia.com/wiki/Story_Structure_101:_Super_Basic_Shit)

<comment><USER12> thanks for this I think Dan Harmon is a creative genius really enjoying this explanation of story structure

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> And, according to Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon's screenwriting book, a successful movie should abide by a very simple 3 Act formula (paraphrased):

Act 1: Introduce Nice Guy

Act 2: Get Nice Guy stuck in a tree, throw rocks at him

Act 3: Get him down from the tree

Or, in other words, just watch _Die Hard_ enough to get the idea.

<comment><USER14> Channeling the other comment tree, Groundhog Day never introduces any Nice Guy. The idea is that Phil develops into one over the course of the movie, although it's only apparent in the last (!) scene.

<comment><USER15> "Nice guy" just means "person the audience can relate to". Phil isn't nice, but he's definitely relatable (if that's a word).

This struck me in particular with Gilliam's _The Zero Theorem_ which I saw recently. I generally really like Gilliam films, but I struggled with _Zero Theorem_ precisely because the main character was so unrelatable.

<comment><USER14> People differ. I tried to watch the Sopranos on the strength of many glowing reviews along the lines of "the apex of television".

That failed. I can't stand the show because it has no sympathetic characters. Everyone is horrible to everyone else and in general.

I agree about Phil though.

<comment><USER8> My general impression, based on the success of shows like The Sopranos (and Breaking Bad--although that's more complicated) is that at least a significant slice of the US audience is more willing to tolerate unsympathetic protagonists than was historically the case. Films have always been more varied but they don't require the ongoing commitment that a TV series does.

<comment><USER16> Aristotle said that the basis of interesting writing is conflict, and writers have been copying him ever since.

A plausible character with believable internal conflict is more interesting than a plausible character with external conflict - although ideally you want plenty of both.

Audiences like a certain amount of ambiguity, especially if they sympathise with the challenges a character faces.

But the old formulaic plot books are largely nonsense. I have a version from the late 19th century which predates silent movies by a few decades, but still claims to reduce drama to the same tropes.

It doesn't work - except maybe as light entertainment. The book is full of references to plays that have been almost entirely forgotten now.

Really good writing - Shakespeare, ancient Greek comedy/tragedy, a few more modern examples - works on a much deeper level than a trivial plot taxonomy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I am thinking someone should do a similar list for technology news. For instance:

\- A renowned researcher gives hope to solve a long-standing problem.

\- A famous hacker releases some cool software (or hardware blueprints) as an open source project.

\- Please take a minute to pay homage to somebody who accomplished great things.

\- A pressing social problem became even more pressing.

\- A noble individual gains a legal victory over a faceless institution.

\- A corporation announces structural changes.

..and so on. And then perhaps somebody could write categorization software based on the list.

<comment><USER18> Renowned researcher [asgard1024] gives hope to solve a long-standing problem in [technology news].

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> These interpretations are so silly. You can classify plots into any number of anything based on any merit. Will it be of any value though? Meh.

I understand the natural human desire to figure out how stories work, but this is _not_ how it's done.

On that topic, the best explanation I have ever read is the book "Story" by Robert McKee. I recommend it to everyone who is interested in the subject. It may still be imperfect, but he is very good at explaining things that are actually practically useful for writers and make a lot of sense.

</comment><comment><USER20> See also "Plotto: The Master Book of All Plots."

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11454870-plotto](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11454870-plotto)

[http://www.npr.org/2012/02/19/146941343/plotto-an-algebra- bo...](http://www.npr.org/2012/02/19/146941343/plotto-an-algebra-book-for- fiction-writing)

</comment><comment><USER21> I've heard people talk about there being two basic plots:

        - stranger comes to town
        - stranger leaves town

You could similarly say that there are two basic plots:

        - <USER2>
        - <USER3>

Or even:

        - love/hate
        - <USER4>

This is all very silly. Why not say that there is only one basic plot: \- something happens (or not)

There are no classifications that are both neutral and useful. A useful classification corroborates a thesis, and, in this case, asserts an ordering or structuring of some set of objects.

We could pick any arbitrary, discrete attribute and classify plots by each gradation of this attribute, like the above. Putting items in this classification is fun, but it doesn't generate knowledge if the classification does not convey some additional meaning.

A phylogenetic tree or a periodic table impute some ordering on the natural world that allows us to make meaningful predictions about undiscovered animals and chemical elements. They also support scientific theses about evolutionary biology and modern chemistry. They are not neutral (purely descriptive) classifications.

What additional knowledge do any of these story plot classifications give us?

<comment><USER22> >What additional knowledge do any of these story plot classifications give us?

Well, at the very least, it's a nice store of writing prompts.

What I would say is that it's less of a classification and more of a map. Out of the vast space of _possible_ stories, here are the sections of story space which tend to get told again and again. Why? Because these are the sorts of stories are of interest to our silly human brains.

Here's a story. One day a man bought a newspaper. Then he saw a giraffe, and he threw the newspaper into a river. The Queen of Denmark bought a trombone. Was that a good story? No, it was dull, incoherent and meaningless, just a sequence of actions. We can't identify with them at all.

Here is another story. One day a man met a woman. But the Queen of Denmark kidnapped the woman. So the man went and rescued her. Now that's a _much_ better story! It needs a bit of fleshing out, but it's precisely the sort of sequence of actions that humans like being told about, over and over again.

It's somewhat bizarre that humans should enjoy hearing lies about stuff that never actually happened, but we do -- only very specific types of lies about very specific types of stuff. This list is a vague attempt to map out the specific types of stuff that people like hearing about, and from that we can get insight into our own psychology.

<comment><USER21> I agree. A list of common story structures can be effectively used as a heuristic in synthesizing new stories from these structures, and this list does an extremely terse list of common themes.

It's definitely fatiguing to generate these repetitive stories, and I would argue that there are literary traditions (still alive today on television, in film, in music!) where your surreal, absurd, existentially nihilistic story about giraffes, the Queen of Denmark, and the law-man beating up the wrong guy would fit in nicely!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The basic of all plots is the story.

A story is a series of events centred on the actions of one character.

A story is about the character facing a difficulty, and demonstrating which action the character took to overcome that difficulty.

Sometimes some of the first attempts at action fail, causing further difficulties.

Stories are an innate part of how humans think. There is a lot of solid research suggesting that there is a part of our brain that automatically transforms times series of events into stories, automatically, and without our knowing it.

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

The story is the basic organizing principle of our memory, our justice system, pretty much all of society.

See also: [http://bigthink.com/overthinking-everything-with-jason- gots/...](http://bigthink.com/overthinking-everything-with-jason-gots/your- storytelling-brain)

If I had to describe humans to aliens I'd say: "Creatures with a loss aversion that create stories."

</comment><comment><USER24> 1919's condensed version of [http://tvtropes.org/](http://tvtropes.org/).

</comment><comment><USER9> Good that this topic came up now - in two days, another NaNoWriMo starts[0]. Even better, there's a lot of useful things for amateur storywriters in the comments here! Bookmarked!

[0] - [http://nanowrimo.org/](http://nanowrimo.org/)

</comment><comment><USER25> David Mamet breaks storing telling down into.

Who wants what from whom? What happens if they don't get it? Why now?

</comment><comment><USER26> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Basic_Plots](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Basic_Plots)

<comment><USER27> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thirty- Six_Dramatic_Situat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thirty- Six_Dramatic_Situations)

<comment><USER14> Your link is better -- Wycliff Aber Hill was obviously reporting the same list. Hill has added his #3, "miracle of god". He's also mangled the names of some situations; "falling prey" is totally opaque, while "falling prey to cruelty/misfortune" isn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Donnie Darko is, what six or seven of these?

</comment><comment><USER29> This is a fun read. Whatever plot, the end then comes only between (1) Fair (2) Not Fair ending.

</comment><comment><USER30> There's 38: Memento.</comment>


Sanity level: Nintendo gaming patent - <AUTHOR> http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6935954.PN.&OS=PN/6935954&RS=PN/6935954 <comment><USER2> I believe this relates to the gameplay from Eternal Darkness:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_Darkness:_Sanity%27s_R...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_Darkness:_Sanity%27s_Requiem)</comment>


An Irish novel that became a sensation in the USSR - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20170119-the-irish-novel-that-seduced-the-ussr <comment><USER2> BTW, while interesting on its own, the article provides us with this little tidbit about the novel's author, Ethel Voynich, which is sure to be of interest to HN-ers (my emphasis added):

 _The melodrama of Voynich's novel is matched by the extraordinary story of her own life. Ethel was born in Cork to parents_ George Boole, an eminent mathematician _and the philosopher Mary Everest, whose uncle gave his name to the world's highest mountain._

(And, yes, it really is that George Boole:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Boole#Family](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Boole#Family) )

<comment><USER3> Ethel Voynich also inherited the misterious Voynich manuscript[1] which is one of the most studied texts in the history of cryptography: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript)

[1] "In 1930, the manuscript was inherited after Wilfrid's death by his widow Ethel Voynich, author of the novel The Gadfly and daughter of mathematician George Boole. She died in 1960 and left the manuscript to her close friend Anne Nill" \- from the Wikipedia page linked above.

<comment><USER4> Oh great, I've never heard of the Voynich manuscript now I've spent the last hour reading Wikipedia and watching this doc [https://youtu.be/awGN5NApDy4](https://youtu.be/awGN5NApDy4)

This is why I try avoid HN. But none the less, very interesting! ;)

<comment><USER3> I just wanted to follow up on this, last night I watched that doco and I found it very enjoyable, thanks for the link!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's "Ovod" in Russian.

It was a part of the mandatory school cirriculum at some point, and a gadfly is one nasty insect, so the name sticks really well. Even if not everyone is Soviet Union read the book, pretty much everyone know about it. But it'd be pushing it to say it was a genuienly _popular_ book. It was just a mandatory reading material, because ... you know ... it's about revolutionaries.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's on Gutenberg: [http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3431](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3431).

I think that articles like this really should include a link to a copy.

</comment><comment><USER7> For any one interested in reading, the kindle version is free on amazon as of now. [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0082RG1LU/ref=docs-os- doi_0](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0082RG1LU/ref=docs-os-doi_0)

</comment><comment><USER8> I read the book in Russian. Great story</comment>


Judge decides torrent user's IP address is an identifier - <AUTHOR> http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2016/08/judge-locke-denies-motion-to-quash-in.html <comment><USER2> Not the case mentioned in the OP, but a similar one: [https://www.scribd.com/document/319728448/NJD-15-Cv-02250-KM...](https://www.scribd.com/document/319728448/NJD-15-Cv-02250-KM- MAH-Document-17)

> 'Absent any evidence to the contrary, it is generally true that "the > Defendant's failure to answer evinces the Defendant's culpability in [the] > default." _Id._ Here, there is some doubt as to whether the person named as > defendant is indeed the culpable party. He is identified essentially as the > person who corresponds to a certain IP address. Electronically, of course, > an IP address connects to a device, not a person, and it is impossible to > tell from subscriber information who the device user was. It could be, for > example, that someone else in the household (or for that matter someone > pirating wireless service) is the actual infringer. That said, there seems > to be a good faith basis for naming the particular individual ... The named > defendant could have responded with a denial but defaulted instead."

At least in the case above, the question of who was the likely user has been considered and the defendant's (in)action found relevant.

<comment><USER3> It sounds like the judge was more annoyed that the defendant didn't answer, and any use of this case as precedent would have to take that into account.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What front-end JavaScript library - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
I am a bit confused by the sheer number of front-end JS library existing and claiming to be the best ones. Anyone got some metrics showing a good comparison (extensive one, possibly with benchmarks) with clear argumentation? I know the standard answer is: "use what you are comfortable to use", but I am just starting with front-end development, so I don't have any prejudice for or against any specific framework/lib. I am quite appealed by something rather small in size, that would allow me to query an api easily and would take off the hassle of dealing directly with DOM.
Thanks. <comment><USER2> As cliché as it sounds, only you know the true answer to this. Pick a small project and build it using a few different frameworks. This should give you insight into what's most appropriate for your needs.</comment>


IPad 3 will have 4G LTE networking - <AUTHOR> http://www.imore.com/2012/03/05/ipad-3-4g-lte-networking/

<comment><USER2> This is a really important issue; Data Caps.

I have a MyTouch 4G on Tmobile that I am paying $100 a month for. It sits in the drawer and I NEVER use it.

I have an iPhone 4 which is my work and primary phone.

The reason the MyTouch doesnt get used: Data caps. I'll use my bandwidth limit on it in about 3 days. Then Tmobile caps the speed to useless (56K) e.g. they set the latest and greatest technology back to 1998 speeds after you hit your cap.

The iPad, I can imagine, would be capping out all the time.

As it is - my daughter was streaming netflix to the iPhone over 3G as we drove around this weekend. She was watching Judy Moody.

What an awesome time we live in where my 7 year old streams movies on demand to my phone while driving 70 mph on the freeway!

Every executive at every mobile carrier who thinks that data caps are a good thing, or a potential revenue target, should be shot!</comment>


Ask HN: Are there any security issues when connecting linux to ActiveDirectory? - <AUTHOR> I work in an institute of a university in Germany, where I do mainly research. Since the institute is too large, they developed an IT-infrastructure which is independent from the rest of the university. The people of other institutes can normally choose which OS they want to have in their computer, but that is not a option for us. We have to use Windows, since all the servers are Windows (crazy, isn't it?) and all what the sysadmins have ever known is Windows. This makes me lose incredible amounts of productive time that I have to put into making things work, which in Linux would be very easy (like compiling some python libraries or automating some simple processes).
I can agree that most people can be happy with Windows, but in research you need to have some freedom to explore different things and not have to lose 3 hours before giving up with the compilation of some cool library you want to try because you were not able to make gcc work correctly in Windows.
Of course I have asked numerous times whether it would be possible to let me install a Linux distribution in my work computer, but they always come with some vague answer about security or that they just don't do Linux. My understanding is that I could not do any more damage that the one I could do with the Windows computer, since the user rights remain the same.
I know that you can connect a Linux computer to a the ActiveDirectory so you can have the same user as in Windows and to access the shared drives and get Email working as well. So my question is the following: is there really a security problem if I do install a Linux distribution and connect it to the ActiveDirectory? And if so, how big is the problem and what would it take to solve it?
Thanks!
(Edit: small typo) <comment><USER2> Commercial products exist for this purpose, such as Power Broker:

[https://www.beyondtrust.com/products/powerbroker-identity- se...](https://www.beyondtrust.com/products/powerbroker-identity-services-ad- bridge/)

In addition, it's involved but possible for an experienced user to set up AD authentication on Linux.

All AD really amounts to is a database; the endpoint (computer, server, whatever) performs a query, AD produces a response. That can be as a simple as 'is this username/password combination valid?' to 'where in the domain does this computer fit and what rights does it have?' AD allows for other nice features like Group Policy enforcing consistent configuration on every desktop. It also implements Kerberos-based authentication for better security.

Ergo, the only security issue I can foresee is that the query is done over unsecured means; AD uses LDAP as its primary protocol, which in its native form is plaintext. So your computer could conceivably send plaintext login information over the wire. However, most sysadmins will disable this and only support LDAP over SSL (LDAPS) which is encrypted. Most Linux LDAP implementations support running it over SSL.

A second concern is that the Linux machine does not implement Kerberos, and instead uses the fallback to NTLM authentication; if this is the case, your sysadmins should have disabled it. Kerberos is supported on Linux, and is a bit more involved when joining a machine manually, but has equivalent security to Windows.

A Linux machine joined to AD is no less secure than a Windows machine, and can in theory be more secure, since Linux has traditionally had much more strict separation of privileges, preventing ordinary users from making system-wide changes. On the other hand, other aspects of Windows security, especially in a network sense, don't translate especially well to Linux (e.g. Access Control Lists). This won't reduce security, in fact will more likely enforce it, but may make it inconvenient for the end user to work around some of these differences.

In short, there is no practical security risk in running a Linux machine on a Windows domain. Many sysadmins will push back on the idea mostly out of lack of experience with Linux, or the perception that they will need to support it. Obviously each organisation has their own policies, but from a security POV, there is no identifiable risk.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the detailed answer! I think now I could give better arguments for my cause of installing Linux. ;)

Edit: So, I would only need to configure realmd [0] do the trick?

[0] [https://www.freedesktop.org/software/realmd/docs/guide- activ...](https://www.freedesktop.org/software/realmd/docs/guide-active- directory.html)</comment></comment>


How to quickly localize your app for 300 dollars - <AUTHOR> http://blog.discofingers.com/blog/2014/10/18/app-store-optimization-how-to-localize-your-app-for-300-dollars <comment><USER2> "Localize your app" is a serious overstatement for what's covered by this article. To actually localize an app, automation is not an option, nor is just getting your keywords and descriptions done.

If your target audience is international but you can reasonably expect them to speak your language but to search in their native tongue, OK, this makes sense. But that's a large target for a small segment.

Localization is a process that involves your translator understanding your product, the terms it uses, the context in which it uses them, and how those terms can be transitioned into their target language. That's a far cry from keywords and descriptions, and it matters in many cases. Those cases _never_ stop at $300.

It's often worth doing (this is totally dependent on your goals, though) but in the case that it's worth doing for you, it's also worth deciding whether you want to _actually do it_ or whether just making sure people _find_ your app is OK or whether you want them to be able to use it in their native language. Huge difference.

<comment><AUTHOR> True enough, if you want to fully localize your app, you'd have to spend much more money and time.

However, I'd definitely not recommend people translating their entire apps without localizing it's metadata first to check your apps potential in various markets.

For a lot of apps, including our music making app, it's meaningful to reach out wide even though the language within the app is english, as it's not a very text based app.

The result will give us a good overview over which languages that has the most potential, which we later on can consider to localize fully for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've localized my apps exactly the way the post is and it's not so easy. Localizing is necessary and inevitable, but it's not so cheap as this article are saying. There are another costs the article are completely ignoring.

If you do iterative and lean development, localizing using freelancers website will really slow down your release cycle. This multiplies your fixed costs you spent running your small company.

Another point, you'll also need to pay others skilled translators to verify the quality o the localization.

In my case, after localizing it, the numbers of user increase just a few. If I would spent this money on marketing and development, I'm sure that I could get better results.

<comment><AUTHOR> What kind of app have you localized?

The increased downloads will allways be relative to the downloads you have in that spesific market before the localization.

It is true that you'll have to spend time doing it, which translates into money. However, I claim that you can do it using only three hours, plus the time it will take you to adjust the screenshots (it will normally be a design job in addition to just changing the text.)

These translators are good at their job. IMHO you won't need to double check their work with other translators.

"If you do iterative and lean development, localizing using freelancers website will really slow down your release cycle."

How come? Because it's freelancers you have reached through a website?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Unless you actually offer your application, and support it, in a particular language, "optimizing your conversions" from the app store by putting up lots of translated keywords amounts to spam.

Sure, you _may_ earn money from it, but it's not really helpful to your customers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Completely disagree. Let's take our app as an example, it's an music making app with just a few sentences in it, which aren't really relevant for the core experience.

If a russian person searches for делать музыку (make music), why is it spam that our app is there?

<comment><USER5> I think there is a major disconnect for you as an _English speaker_. Try picturing the situation in reverse - you go to the app store, search for "music making app" and click on result after result only to see a bunch of Chinese characters, or words that make no sense because they weren't translated by a human. I guarantee you will feel spammed, rather than: These words are not relevant to my "core experience"! I'll just deduce that "Toys" actually means "Play"!

Case in point: I am that "russian person". When I search in Russian, I am doing it because I want to get russian apps - that is, fully localized apps whose UI is natively Russian. I positively hate it that the app store is full of apps that were "search optimized" like you suggest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a common misconception of translation: the idea that you just need to "flip" words from language A to language B and you're done. This is quite naïve. In professional translation circles we talk about transcreation and localization. When you need to sell an English speaking book in a different country, you can't just convert the books' text strings from language A to language B. You need to RECREATE the book in the second language. There is one rule in quality publishing: the reader SHOULDN'T feel that what he/she is reading is a translation. The reading must feel natural. IT prose, on the other hand, is comparatively poor and is indeed subject to automation. It's a matter of quality. If you just want to "feel" that you are already "present" in the global market just because you did a cheap text conversion, a couple of dollars will do the job. If you really want to CREATE a product with different, same-quality versions for several cultures/languages/markets, you definitely need better informed strategy.

</comment><comment><USER7> Speaking of localization, this article is a fascinating look into the complexities of localizing the game "Papers, please": [http://dukope.tumblr.com/post/83177288060/localizing- papers-...](http://dukope.tumblr.com/post/83177288060/localizing-papers- please-papers-please-was)

<comment><AUTHOR> A very interesting article indeed. Thanks for sharing :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Localizing your app's metadata (keywords, description and screenshots) is > the easiest way to increase your downloads, and should be done as soon as > you have optimised your keywords. David Janner managed to 7x his downloads > by localizing his app.

Very interesting. Maybe anybody has figures like this on translated meta-data of 'ordinary' websites ? I mean not in particular for any downloads, but for the impact on the number of website visitors.

<comment><AUTHOR> Those kind of figures would be very interesting, indeed.

Google will most definitely crawl all your localised pages, so you'll at least get more local traffic.

Dont have any numbers though..

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> That seems like a small amount of money for 8 languages. Translation is usually priced on a per-word basis, so I would guess you were translating about 300-400 words?

How did you vet the translators that you found? Like you said, there are lots of poor translators out there (and even professional translators make mistakes). Without having a second translator review the translation, how can you be so confident that no mistakes were made?

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is how we tested them:

Language skills: I made an Odesk job for each language and got quite a few applications. THe first filering process consists of deleting those who have below 4,5 stars, and thos who have't worked at Odesk for quite a while. Ideally 1000+ hours.

The I sent a sample to the most promising candidates. These samples were all sent to professional translator, who picked their winners.

Marketing skills: I asked every single translator how they would research keywords in their local language. Their answers will easily give you an overview of how reflected they are in this field. Plus, I only chose people who had done similar tasks before. Not everybody had done app localisations, but at least localisations for web marketing purposes.

I can't be 100% sure that there are NO errors in the translations. But I can be 100% sure that this localisation will benefit my business, as it will increase downloads and revenue significantly. I know this from previous experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The majority of the population in Brazil won't say a word in english, so they would rather use a not so good app in portuguese than one in english... the refinement can come later as it grows in that market (and hopefully some users' feedback)

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you know wether people from Portugal react negatively on brazilian portuguese? I have sticked to brazilian portuguese, as we get much more downlads from Portugal than Brazil.

<comment><USER11> short answer: yes.

long answer: Most Portuguese users under 30 years old can read and write, at least, basic english, and would prefer to use the english version of your app instead of brazilian portuguese. This is the scenario that I experience with people around me, at least.

People who are not so comfortable with english will _endure_ the brazilian portuguese if you provide no alternative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> guard-of-terra It is also a good idea to provide language selector, not just always use OS default language. Especially if you put some human effort into translation. Some people use English system language because many translations are sub- optimal.

</comment><comment><USER12> Sceptical towards the quality of so cheap translation services, but i it all comes down to budget. I guess it is possible to do some QA before launching.

<comment><USER13> This might be a stupid idea, but maybe use pairs of translator to get the text translated forwards and then backwards to the original language, and compare how much of the message has been lost? I think this way you can also get a hint of how that native person would interpret the translated message.

<comment><USER14> I really hope it's not a stupid idea, because that's how we translate our product :) - [http://utalk.com](http://utalk.com)

We have a web app that two translators use initially independently to translate our entire corpus. The app then asks them to select the best option where there are mismatches (they can also enter a third alternative). There are a couple of rounds of this.

Finally an editor has access to all rounds of the translation in an editable table ([http://i.imgur.com/zPJp0sz.png](http://i.imgur.com/zPJp0sz.png)) where they can see who has inputted what, and wether things have been marked as 'acceptable' or 'completely wrong'.

This works well on most of our short/simple strings.

It also helps that we have two voice actors who are also native speakers come in and record the script, where any further errors or better translations can come up.

We do this because we're translating with different goals than the majority of translation purposes. We need to focus on translating for speech at relatively low volume and for those learning a non-native language. Most translation shops focus on written language for native speakers, high volume, speed and cost.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice, that tool looks like something more startups could use when translating their products. Have you built it yourself?

<comment><USER14> Yep, very much hacked together, but it works well for us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why not automate this and remove the human factor? Google probably has an API for Translate.

<comment><USER16> Don't overestimate automated translation. My girlfriend is a native Japanese speaker (and professional translator) and she laughs when she sees the results of Google Translate. Especially for a language like Japanese, nothing's going to beat a human being who takes pride in their work.

<comment><USER4> My native language is a germanic one, Swedish, which is globally speaking pretty much as close to the English family as it gets. I know for a fact that Google Translate butchers it completely and it's sometimes hard to even understand the results. I can only imagine what it would do to Japanese or Chinese, which are much, much farther from English.

If you want a hint of what Google Translate does to a language, do it full circle. Translate a text from English to for example French, and then input the result for translation back to English. The resulting experience is pretty close to what the French user would get.

(It also doubles as comedy.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> wow, yesterday I was taking about localization with my friend. I could not convince him to do it immediately. Now it should be easy. Thanks.

Will update with the data once done.

<comment><AUTHOR> Go for it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> How about South Korean?

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't tried it to be honest, as I have so little knowledge about that market.

But as David Janner says in the article linked to below, he did't get a lot of result from it. But if anybody knows any good translators to south korean, I'd be happy to include it in the article.

[http://makeappmag.com/iphone-app-localization- keywords/](http://makeappmag.com/iphone-app-localization-keywords/)

<comment><USER19> I am an South Korean iOS developer in college (well, now, "Korean American"). I am willing to take some translating work. As an intern, my best work was with Code 42, the makers of CrashPlan.</comment></comment></comment>


Democrats Propose 'Internet Bill of Rights' to Entice Voters Sick of Facebooks - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/democrats-drop-internet-bill-of-rights-to-entice-voters-1829559542 <comment><USER2> "Drop" is now the most difficult verb to interpret for me. My guess is for Gen X and up it tends to mean "abandon" and for millennials down it means something like "release" or "provide". Did the Democrats give up on the Internet Bill of Rights, or did they propose it?

("Go sideways" is my runner-up for this title. On the East Coast it mostly means "remain unchanged" and on the West Coast it mostly means "shit got crazy".)

<comment><USER3> I'm a millennial and drop means abandon to me except in the context of music.

<comment><USER4> Millennial here too and I agree. I want to add that "drop" is used only for music I don't listen to and that I never use the word drop to mean release in any context.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm sorry it's come to this. I'd really prefer a deregulated Internet. I'm not very knowledgeable about privacy tech, but could this be solved via technical controls? E.g., can't browsers prevent tracking cookies (without breaking other cookie uses, like sessions)?

<comment><USER6> > E.g., can't browsers prevent tracking cookies (without breaking other cookie > uses, like sessions)?

No, because tracking cookies don't necessarily advertise themselves as such. Browser extensions that block tracking cookies are blocking cookies that have been identified by humans to be tracking cookies. It's more reactive than proactive.

<comment><USER5> Don't tracking cookies work because cookies are forwarded across domains? If so, what would be the consequence of browsers only sending cookies to the domain that 'owns' them in the first place? If there is some reasonable functionality, perhaps these should be regarded as opt-in, for example: "foobar.com is requesting access to cookies from ads.google.com. foobar.com says it uses these cookies to enable feature X. Allow access? <Y/N>".

<comment><USER7> foobar.com never has access to cookies from google.com. when requests are sent to google.com, cookies are added. when you load google.com, JS can access the google.com cookies.

google analytics: google.com tracking cookie is to identify the user. the js in the page knows the current website and tells google "im here". the dominance of google analytics and adsense means users are tracked wherever they go (because google is always there and recording)

<comment><USER8> However, the browser can choose not to send any cookies to google.com when making requests to google from mycuteblog.com.

It's known as blocking third-party cookies, a setting in most browsers. It does sometimes break when auth flows use separate domains to hold auth cookies, and other valid use-cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd like to see how the end result allows use of data for political purposes.

Political organizations pioneered the big data movement. (One of the first big data companies, Acxiom, actually started out as a list-seller for political purposes.)

I somehow doubt that this legislation is going to hinder this usage.

</comment><comment><USER10> For those who find the title confusing, "drop" in this case means "reveal" or "announce"

</comment><comment><USER11> Lets see how many Democrats actually sign onto Ro Khanna's bill. I bet it won't be many unfortunately.

<comment><USER12> Let's see him actually introduce a bill first. (Nothing related shows up in Congress.gov).

When media talk about "a bill", if they don't state a bill number, don't believe that it actually exists.

<comment><USER11> That was clearly stated in the article I read.

>Laid out in a New York Times column Friday, Rep. Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, has proposed a series of 10 principals that, should his party reclaim control of the House of Representatives, he hopes to pass next year in the form of law.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you're sick of Facebook, get the government to regulate Facebook. Sounds pretty dumb to me.

How about, if you're sick of Facebook, don't use Facebook?

<comment><USER10> Facebook is powerful enough to harm non-users. See: Russian meddling in 2016 elections.</comment></comment>


Truly Decentralized BitTorrent Downloading Has Finally Arrived - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/truly-decentralized-bittorrent-downloading-has-finally-arrived-101208/ <comment><USER2> This is really great and you had better check it out below

[http://www.xilisoft.com/ipad- magic.html?utm_source=John%26We...](http://www.xilisoft.com/ipad- magic.html?utm_source=John%26Wei&utm_medium=Text%2Blink%2B&utm_campaign=iPad%2BMagic%2B
); [http://www.xilisoft.com/ipad- magic.html?utm_source=John%26We...](http://www.xilisoft.com/ipad- magic.html?utm_source=John%26Wei&utm_medium=Text%2Blink%2B&utm_campaign=iPad%2BMagic%2B
); [http://www.xilisoft.com/ipad- magic.html?utm_source=John%26We...](http://www.xilisoft.com/ipad- magic.html?utm_source=John%26Wei&utm_medium=Text%2Blink%2B&utm_campaign=iPad%2BMagic%2B) [http://www.xilisoft.com/ipad- magic.html?utm_source=John%26We...](http://www.xilisoft.com/ipad- magic.html?utm_source=John%26Wei&utm_medium=Text%2Blink%2B&utm_campaign=iPad%2BMagic%2B
); [http://www.xilisoft.com/ipad- magic.html?utm_source=John%26We...](http://www.xilisoft.com/ipad- magic.html?utm_source=John%26Wei&utm_medium=Text%2Blink%2B&utm_campaign=iPad%2BMagic%2B) [http://www.xilisoft.com/ipad- magic.html?utm_source=John%26We...](http://www.xilisoft.com/ipad- magic.html?utm_source=John%26Wei&utm_medium=Text%2Blink%2B&utm_campaign=iPad%2BMagic%2B
); [http://www.xilisoft.com/ipad- magic.html?utm_source=John%26We...](http://www.xilisoft.com/ipad- magic.html?utm_source=John%26Wei&utm_medium=Text%2Blink%2B&utm_campaign=iPad%2BMagic%2B
); [http://www.xilisoft.com/ipad- magic.html?utm_source=John%26We...](http://www.xilisoft.com/ipad- magic.html?utm_source=John%26Wei&utm_medium=Text%2Blink%2B&utm_campaign=iPad%2BMagic%2B
);

</comment><comment><USER3> How does this actually discover peers without any centralization?

<comment><USER4> You can bootstrap as soon as you have one peer. The software is distributed with the addresses of 4 existing servers which are run by the Tribler guys to make this easier but even if they go down people can still send invitations to their friends.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> 87Kb (more than 1800 lines) of license agreement. I prefer just to click Cancel during installation.

</comment><comment><USER6> It looks like it's only aspirationally multiplatform, not Win/Mac/Lin like the article says.

<comment><USER4> I've used it on both Windows 7 and Ubuntu. The Ubuntu version is a little fiddly to get working because Ubuntu ships with a crippled ECC library.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> How is it different from DC++ application wise?

<comment><USER4> From the other thread:

The core principle is similar. DC has centralized hubs which handle searches and upload files directly to users. Tribler has a distributed search engine which runs on every peer and uses bittorrent to share files. Effectively every single Tribler node behaves like a DC hub. As a result it is much harder to take down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sounds like an interesting application.

Anyone have any idea what protocol this uses?

The only thing I could figure was that it's written in python.

I'm sure there are plenty of efforts similar to this. Any others deserving of mention?

<comment><USER4> Most of the underlying protocols are described here, though it is a bit out of date:

[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.78....](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.78.4174&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

Essentially the core protocol is a gossip overlay. This generates random connections between peers in the overlay. Over these connections peers transmit information like recently seen torrents, recommendation lists, download/upload totals for other peers etc. Each peer proactively distributes known torrent files so that every peer builds up a database of torrents. Then search just works by broadcasting queries to nearby peers.

The algorithms used have dozens of applications outside of filesharing. I wrote my MSc dissertation on a similar subject:

<http://scattered-thoughts.net/one/1283/644001/538941>

The code for Tribler is naturally very specialised to their purpose. At some point I want to sit down and reimplement them in such a way that they can easily be reused and recombined for other applications. I have some vague ideas about building a prototype trust-based distributed database for dot-p2p.org based on similar principles.

<comment><USER8> That's pretty amazing, actually.

How hard would it be put this algorithm into a general-purpose library accessible by multiple applications?

<comment><USER4> I _think_ that if you just want to use the same setup as Tribler you can just directly use their code. What I'm interested in is separating and generalizing the various protocols involved rather than having them all knotted together.

<comment><USER8> Me too,

It seems like a logical part of that would be to have each protocol documented and encapsulated in a library.

Also, I'm working on a multi-protocol client which would aggregate a number of sources, so it would be especially nice to the have a library to call so that I could add one more source.

In any case, your work looks fabulous and I will spend some time digesting your links.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Wikileaks Is Running Out Of Cash - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/24/wikleaks-is-running-out-of-cash/ <comment><USER2> I'm impressed by the amount of comments here that point out some (perceived) hypocrisy in the actions of Wikileaks or Assange. This isn't the point.

I myself don't really know what to think of Wikileaks. I, however, do know that major banks and financial institutions find it perfectly okay for you to send money to all kinds of horrible organisations (say, the Ku Klux Klan, clubs that campaign for underage sex, Westboro Baptist Church, whatever you can come up with, and they probably have a bank account), but not to Wikileaks.

I can't imagine how Wikileaks can be considered a so much more evil organisation than Stormfront (<http://www.stormfront.org/forum/announcement.php?a=63>, all cards accepted) that the first needs to be blocked and the latter does not.

It can _only_ be that at least this part of what Wikileaks is saying is true: Major banks and businesses, a scarily small number of organisations that control a large part of the world's financial transactions, want to _control to who you give your money_. This means that they want to control _who gets money and what they do with it_. This shit is NONE of their business, and the fact that they can do this without serious legal issues scares the shit out of me.

I like to believe that western governments are out to serve their citizens and protect their freedoms, but I cannot explain how that fits with what these banks are doing and how the governments just let it happen. This has absolutely nothing to do with the nature of Wikileaks as an organisation.

Really, this fact alone makes me want to send money in an envelope to Wikileaks, despite how ridiculous I thought Cablegate was.

Edit: If Wikileaks were a terrorist organisation (blowing up buildings and people and whatnot), I'd understand governments to force a ban. Not banks banning them on their own initiatives, but governments forcing it. If you genuinely feel that Wikileaks is as bad as Al Qaeda and Hamas and the alikes, then I'll understand if you disagree with me, although even then I hope you agree that it should've been a government decree, and not banks solo-piloting their sense of morality. In all other cases, really, I can't wrap my mind around it.

<comment><USER3> I am just explaining the reasoning. Don't hate/downvote me for saying it ...

Silencing people's political opinions (even horrible evil people) is considered bad. This is why donations to these evil organizations is tolerated.

Wikileaks is being blacklisted not because of their political opinions, but because these organizations, rightly or wrongly, believe Wikileaks is threatening security of the nation, causing deaths of informers and collaborators in the Middle East. And last but not least, Wikileaks seems to be actively perusing leaks in banks and financial organizations. If you bite the hand that feeds you ...

<comment><USER4> I thought banks are only concerned with profit. Since when did they start defending the nation?

<comment><USER5> You can't very well make a healthy profit if the nation in question is burning down around your ears, now can you?

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately, you can. There is money in nearly any societal state. The ruination of a country just presents different opportunities, not necessarily fewer.

<comment><USER7> > There is money in nearly any societal state.

It'd be better to say that there is potential value (as opposed to 'money', which is a term with overloaded definitions), but yes - as long as there is scarcity, opportunities for trade will exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd be interested in Wikileaks providing a rundown on what they spend their money on.

Every cent might be in the direct pursuit of free information but I worry that isn't the case.

<comment><USER5> It's certainly ironic that they haven't released such information, considering their alleged function & goals.

<comment><USER9> It's not ironic, this was one of the points for me "writing them off". Wikileaks reponse to inquiry about their financial matters was basicaly "none of your business" and since then I see them as Assange's personal PR tool, nothing more, despite the claims.

<comment><USER5> So much for transparency.

<comment><USER10> ^ strawman

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It impresses me just how much combined effort is being put towards boycoting transparency, just on the grounds that the powers that be are embaressed by their ugly operations.

<comment><USER12> Also impresses me by how many posts here believe the media coverage of Assange. Just goes to show, Americans are the most naive consumers of commercial news on the planet, by a considerable margin.

All I want to know is where I can send a check.

Long live government transparency.

<comment><USER13> Here's their bitcoin address: 1HB5XMLmzFVj8ALj6mfBsbifRoD4miY36v

<comment><USER14> The problem with sending money via bitcoin at the moment is that it will likely be worth significantly less tomorrow than it is today, and less still the day after.

It would be nice to have a bitcoin alternative that was actually a viable currency; as of now I know of no such thing.

<comment><USER15> They just have to exchange them back into dollars today then. Why wait till tomorrow?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can someone explain why diplomatic cables should be free and open?

<comment><USER17> They shouldn't. Everyone seems to be ignoring that, so you get my upvote.

We should be aware that wikileaks actions are indeed crimes. That said, some cables put it crystal clear, some politicians are really corrupt and are using their privileged position to their own advantage.

Do the goals justify the means?

<comment><USER18> Provided that the goals are:

1) Exposing corrupt politicians. 2) Stop politicians from screwing millions of people over and over again.

And the downsides are: 1) Some politician loses his/her reputation, and the people of his/her country know who he/she really is. 2) Some frictions between countries, for example when an embassador is just a mean for creating a corporations' lobby.

I'd say yes, the means are well justified in this case. Truth can never be a bad thing.

<comment><USER9>
      > 1) Exposing corrupt politicians.

Were there any cables discussing how big a bribe should one bring?

      > 2) Stop politicians from screwing millions of people over and
      over again.

Common content of the diplomatic cables, for sure. I heard disclosing those cables let us know who do politicians nickname each other. I guess I can do without that info.

The thing is — if there is anything worth knowin in those cables it will become visible through the actions of the officials sooner or later. If it will not — I don't care.

<comment><USER19> "Employees of DynCorp, a US government contractor funded by US tax dollars, in Afghanistan paid for the services of underage "dancing boys", apparently a euphemistic reference to Bacha bazi, which is considered child prostitution.[22] The boys were auctioned off to be sexually abused by Afghan policemen, with some to be kept as sex slaves and participate in events funded by DynCorp"

"The U.S. bargained with other nations on moving prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay detention camp to other countries. In one case, U.S. officials allegedly offered Slovenia a meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama, if the country accepted one of the Guantanamo Bay detainees.[24][25] Offers to other countries include economic incentives or a visit from Obama"

"In 2009, the U.S. manipulated — via spying, threats, and bribes — the Copenhagen global climate change summit to coerce reticent participants into supporting the treaty. The U.S. punished countries such as Ecuador and Bolivia, which were deemed "unhelpful" for not signing the Copenhagen Accord, by cutting off millions of dollars in necessary funds;[27] while, the U.S. relieved Saudi Arabia, the world's second-biggest oil producer and one of the twenty-five-richest countries in the world, of any kind of obligation.[28] The U.S. used funds in millions of dollars to recruit the Maldives to sign the Copenhagen Accord, after it has relentlessly took a stand against it"

The above is a sliver of things I've personally learned, and am glad I know, from the leaks. It may not be pleasant or happy information, but I want to know what the Governments and corporations are doing. You may not care or want to know, but some of us do care what is happening.

(used wikipedia's listings to find what I was looking for, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contents_of_the_United_States_d...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contents_of_the_United_States_diplomatic_cables_leak_\(Region_%E2%80%94_Americas\)) )

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think it is good they split out: "WikiLeaks and Julian Assange Defence Fund"

As while I think many people want to support Wikileaks, they don't want to support his personal legal case, be it politically motivated or not.

</comment><comment><USER21> You know we've turned a very dangerous corner when the 'land of the free' is choking the free flow of information.

<http://www.wikileaks.org/support>

</comment><comment><USER22> Can Wikileaks simply release the leaks via BitTorrent? Sign the distribution with a crypto certificate and let BT take care of the distribution.

<comment><USER7> This is what I never understood - aside from the 'insurance' file that they released ~1 year ago, it seems they haven't really taken advantage of P2P networks as much as they could. It certainly would cut down on hosting costs, and it's not like the Wikileaks guys are unaware of encryption/signing.

Anybody know why they haven't gone this route?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> What is thhe status of WL mirror sites? I remember when WL went down for financial reasons, hardly any of the mirror sites seemed to function, never mind have most of the archives

<comment><USER24> Mine is up. The major ones I have checked are still up. Report any noticed downs in the Wikileaks IRC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is anyone getting 404 when clicking on donate link?

<http://shop.wikileaks.org/donate>

</comment><comment><USER26> Maybe they'd have fewer problems if they you know, actually released stuff?

<comment><USER27> Yup, I'm sure the banking blockade came about because the banks thought WikiLeaks was releasing too little information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> good thing cash is running out of time.</comment>