Why Can't Apes Talk? - <AUTHOR> https://www.sapiens.org/language/primate-speech/ <comment><USER2> I read this book not long ago:

[https://www.amazon.co.uk/Next-Kin-Conversations- Chimpanzees-...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Next-Kin-Conversations-Chimpanzees- Intelligence/dp/0718141717/ref=la_B000APTUHE_1_1)

And in it the author (who spent decades working with and teaching chimps) concludes that chimps have the intelligence to talk but not the vocal chords. They can understand humans talking (in the same way that a dog can understand verbal commands) but they cannot do much besides grunt or hoot back.

However when you change the conversation method to something else (such as sign languge) chimps can talk back exceedingly well. In the book mentioned above the author has video proof that the chimps can talk to humans (and each other) at the level of a two to four year old child.

This is the main chimp in the book:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washoe_(chimpanzee)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washoe_\(chimpanzee\))

This doesn't seem to just apply to chimps either. Gorillas (and other large apes) can do the same.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koko_(gorilla)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koko_\(gorilla\))

<comment><USER3> That kind of work was very poor methodologically and its results are best explained as the Clever Hans effect, as the animals generating random strings unconnected to a current context, or simply as over-zealous efforts to assign meaning to the animals' signing, by their handlers.

See for example this article regarding the work of Francine Patterson with Koko:

 _On the Evidence for Linguistic Abilities in Signing Apes_

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0093934X79...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0093934X79900476)

From which I quote (since it's Elsevier-walled):

>> One of the major problems with Patterson's study is that it presents very little data. While several large corpora of the utterances of children have been published (e.g. Bloom, 1973), there is as yet no corpus of any ape's signing behavior. That is, Patterson fails to provide a substantial number of transcribed utterances. Rather, she relies upon individual examples to support her interpretations. In the absence of a corpus of utterances, however, these examples are impossible to interpret. One cannot determine whether they have the functions wich Patterson attributes to them, or whether they resulted from the ape acting as a "random sign generator" which happened to emit sequences that could be selectively chosen to illustrate particular points. This sampling problem vitiates Patterson's claim that certain combinations demonstrated that Koko possessed the ability to creatively combine signs into novel utterances. Those who assert that apes have shown linguistic abilities have invariably relied upon examples such as Washoe's signing _water bird_ for duck. In the absence of a large corpus, however, these examples are subject to multiple interpretations. Patterson's claim that _cookie rock_ was a creative description of a stale sweet roll loses much of its force if Koko also produced utterances such as _cookie tickle_ , _cookie hat_ , and _toothbrush cookie_ in similar contexts. The largest corpus of utterances from any signing ape, that of Terrace, Pettito and Bever (1967a,b) shows that their subject, a chimpanzee named Nim Chimpsky, did in fact combine each vocabulary sign with a large number of other signs. Although each of the resulting combinations could be interpreted metaphorically, a simpler interpretation is that he merely combined signs randomly. The correct interpretation depends on other information--an accounting of the frequencies with which signs occurred in combination with one another, the contexts in which combinations occurred, the content of the teachers' signing--which Patterson fails to provide. Without this information, the importance of her examples cannot be ascertained.

>> Patterson's discussion of her _cookie rock_ example provides some measure of this problem. She states, "Although Koko has produced uninterpretable strings (as do some children), most of her utterances are appropriate to the situation and some are strikingly apt" (p. 88). She then cites some "interpretable" examples, including _cookie rock_ ; the "uninterpretable" strings are not described. It is the case that only "interpretable" sequences are ever documented in the reports on ape signing. Only by presenting an unedited corpus of responses, however, could Patterson's assertion be validated.

Note also that one of the two authors in the quoted paper is Laura A. Pettito, one of the researchers that worked with Nim Chimpsky.

<comment><USER2> > That kind of work was very poor methodologically and its results are best > explained as the Clever Hans effect

I think you might be overreaching here! Roger Fouts was (and still is) an expert and I fear you may just be regurgitating information from a study that is nearly forty years old.

The book I mentioned earlier was written twenty years after the linked article and explicitly mentions the bias he experienced in an entire chapter alone. It counters and logically explains away a lot of the conclusions that they falsely arrived at. If I remember correctly one of the main reasons that studies in the 70s and 80s liked to play down the intelligence of chimps is that it allowed the "for profit" chimp research centers to continue operating. A lot of these studies were published and financed by people who would lose out if they had to provide better (and therefore more costly) conditions for their "dumb testing subjects".

As for the clever hans effect, Roger was extremely careful to not to selectively extract words and interpret them during his research. He even invited officials from the ASL institute to verify his findings first hand.

The clever hans effect also cannot explain away why chimps started signing to each other (when no humans were present and the chimps were being monitored by video) or why sometimes the chimps would sign to themselves (much in the same way that humans occasionally mumble to themselves).

I implore you (if you have the time) to read Roger's book. It really is an eye opener and very well written!

<comment><USER3> The tone of your comment is unpleasantly aggressive- I'm "regurgitating" information, you "implore" me to read a book, etc? Could you please keep the tone down, from now on? I will not continue this communication otherwise.

In any case, the article is old because the research it refers to is old and that research is old because the majority of interested scientists consider the question about great apes' language answered, and in the negative. A few holdouts, of course, will always refuse to give up their preferred theories. That doesn't mean they're right.

>> The clever hans effect also cannot explain away why chimps started signing to each other (when no humans were present and the chimps were being monitored by video) or why sometimes the chimps would sign to themselves (much in the same way that humans occasionally mumble to themselves).

Sure, but there's nothing stopping the apes from signing to each other, or to themselves, at random, without the signing actually meaning anything.

The point of the article I cite is that there is no way to know that because of the shoddy methodology followed in most such experiments.

As to the Clever Hans effect, this is what Noam Chomsky has to say:

>> CHOMSKY: Interesting story about poor Nim. The experiment was carried out by a very serious experimental psychologist, Herbert Terrace. A convinced Skinnerian [student of Behaviorist, B.F Skinner], he expected that if an ape was brought up just like a human it would be a little human. He had some very fine assistants, including some excellent former students of ours, and others who went on to be leading figures in the field. The experimentation was done with meticulous care. There's a book, called Nim, which describes it, with great enthusiasm, claiming at the end that it was a grand success and the ape is ready to go on to great things. Then comes the epilogue. When the experiment was over, a grad student working on a thesis did a frame-by-frame analysis of the training, and found that the ape was no dope. If he wanted a banana, he'd produce a sequence of irrelevant signs and throw in the sign for banana randomly, figuring that he'd brainwashed the experimenters sufficiently so that they'd think he was saying "give me a banana." And he was able to pick out subtle motions by which the experimenters indicated what they'd hope he'd do. Final result? Exactly what any sane biologist would have assumed: zero.

[https://chomsky.info/2007____/](https://chomsky.info/2007____/)

Another commenter in the parent thread also posted a link to a video where Chomsky discusses the Clever Hans effect in the Nim Chimpsky research in more detail.

>> If I remember correctly one of the main reasons that studies in the 70s and 80s liked to play down the intelligence of chimps is that it allowed the "for profit" chimp research centers to continue operating. A lot of these studies were published and financed by people who would lose out if they had to provide better (and therefore more costly) conditions for their "dumb testing subjects".

Those are very strong allegations of scientific misconduct, which of course we're not going to resolve on HN. However, I note that the people who published great ape language studies would benefit even more financially if they had managed to show that great apes can learn sign language.

In fact, the amount of money one would imagine them making would positively dwarf any expenses to improve the conditions of their subjects.

<comment><USER4> I didn't perceive the comment you replied to as aggressive or confrontational. I use implore very neutral manner, and interpret the comment as disagreeing with you, but without aggression. Given tone of voice is lost in text only communication, it's often wise to adopt the principle of charity in Interpretation.

<comment><USER3> I agree, but I did respond to the comment- I hope that shows good faith.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Chomsky gives some clues: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2-nLuUrdJQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2-nLuUrdJQ)

</comment><comment><USER6> From the tagline: _A recent study suggests they've got the voice but not the brains._

As pointed out early in the article, I had always read it was the other way around; their brains are advanced enough for rudimentary speech, but they lacked the vocal "hardware" that humans developed over time.

The fact that they can learn to sign and show true understanding of a non- verbal language seems to contradict the article's gist.

<comment><USER7> The article says that apes can't talk because of limitations in the part of the brain that controls the muscles of the mouth. Their ability to sign shows they do have the mental capacity to learn to communicate but with their hands. This may not extend to speech specifically for the reasons discussed in the article.

<comment><USER8> > because of limitations in the part of the brain that controls the muscles of > the mouth

That makes it sound like it might be feasible to "fix" this. Maybe by implanting electrodes to stimulate these specific muscles and have the electrodes controlled by unrelated moto-neurons (or maybe capture the sign language and apply the correct stimulus).

How far are we from this, are there any research team working on this? Is it ethical to do it? Is it ethical not to do it if we have the means?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hindus believes apes did talk at some point, or atleast one species existed that did talk. They were called Vanara. They no longer exist but this literature might point to some species that are now extinct, no fossilised evidence though would be hard to guage from fossils.

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

<comment><USER10> Under the aegis of, Narendra "Ganesha is proof Hindus knew plastic surgery in vedic times" Modi, many self appointed spokesperson of what Hindu's believe in, have come out of the woodwork.

They are the western analogue of humans riding on flying dinosaurs. Its the same phenomena. Now, we have our own Ku Klux Klan -- the cow rakshak's who are on a murderous spree with an implicit promise from the government that they will be insulated from justice.

Here's a partial list for HN's entertainment.

[https://www.altnews.in/bjp-science-ganeshas-plastic- surgery-...](https://www.altnews.in/bjp-science-ganeshas-plastic-surgery-yoga- can-cure-cancer/) a collection of youtube videos of the Prime Minister of India making such claims and videos of some other assorted jokers who are running the country.

<comment><USER11> It seems around the world being unscientific and plain stupid is a great asset for winning democratic elections. We will be horrified if a well know professional speaks such rubbish but somehow okay with the facts that such people can handle countries with multi-trillion dollar economy

<comment><USER10> I used to find some comfort in the fact that Indian politicians were in some ways better than the types of Michelle Bachman. They knew enough not to flaunt their ignorance and knew when they were out of their depth. Apparently no more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Who is to say the other non-sapient apes won't be able to talk in the next few hundred thousand to a million years if they don't go extinct?

</comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if multiple talking species can possibly coexist, or if one of them inevitably ends up destroying it's competitors.

<comment><USER14> Given the problems between human _races_ , I'd say the latter.

<comment><USER15> Humans aren't divided into races.

<comment><USER16> Of course we do: car races, bike races, but also human races yes. You may be confusing _race_ and _(sub)species_.

<comment><USER8> > You may be confusing race and (sub)species

There is a stigma with the word race and in many places (i.e. Europe) we learn that there is only one Human race, and only one Human species, as opposed to several "ethnic groups". Although the difference between race and ethnic group is vague. I've always wondered if it was just a taboo or not.

<comment><USER16> Race is indeed an ambiguous term in general, as there are overlaps. But I have to wonder whether it's the stigma associated to the word especially post WW2 and Nazi eugenics that made some anthropologists reconsider and say "most differences are cultural". There are obvious aesthetic (not functional) differences between populations. These are enough to distinguish between races within other species so I'm having a hard time finding an authoritative explanation for why it would be different for humans.

I find no challenge in treating people as equals without the need to think they are the same race so such an argument based on sociology is not as convincing as a biological one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This makes me ponder the affects of a device such as Elon Musk's Neuralink on other species. Will we be able to make animals smarter, not just humans?

<comment><USER8> This is usually called "uplift" in science fiction. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uplift_(science_fiction)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uplift_\(science_fiction\))

Obligatory video of a Chimpanzee playing in VR. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yD4KQGZUs4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yD4KQGZUs4)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> My theory -> they're too smart! Maybe they realize that if they ever started talking back to us humans, we'd put them to work (more than we already do)</comment>


Thinking Journeys rather than Estimates - <AUTHOR> https://riskfirst.org/estimating/Journeys <comment><USER2> > Eventually, I decide I've done enough planning. How? I stop at the point > where I'm happy with the risks I'm taking, or unable to mitigate them > further.

There are other important places to stop. An important one that planning-eager folks neglect is complexity.

The high-level estimation needs to be light enough that you will redo it, perhaps entirely, if the facts on the ground change. You will need to assign _some_ risk to the plan itself since it will cost some time, energy, money, communication bandwidth, political capital, etc. to change the plan.

How much planning risk depends on a few things, but how much the details of the plan are exposed is an important thing to factor in. If you've signed contracts with 1000 people promising that you will complete step M on exactly the week of April 8 and it will be entirely free, you have made it hard on yourself to change many things in your plan.

<comment><USER3> If the prevailing culture interprets estimates as plans and interprets plans as commitments written in blood, nobody will actually be making estimates or plans.

I do agree that estimation comes at a cost, but I suspect that tool support could make that go down a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The last sentence of this article rings true. Do the riskiest parts first, essentially. The rest feels prescriptive and way too rigid and I have a hard time believing teams would want to or get a benefit from sticking to it.

Eliminating risk is awesome though and even that practice is compatible with estimates if thats what your team is doing. Simply asking the question "whats the riskiest part?" prompts some healthy discussion.

<comment><USER5> I would qualify that idea.

Momentum is important and you can lose it by tackling risk too late or too early.

When a new team or project is forming, doing the riskiest thing first can become a self fulfilling prophecy. I suspect that's a big part of why so many of us get wedged trying to start personal projects or businesses. We go toward the risk too quickly in an effort to save time and then we save loads of it by giving up.

You do want to build toward the risky things, both as a team and individual contributors. Some teams fail to thrive because the senior members continue to take on the bulk of the risk, while new or younger members are forever stuck at mid-level until they quit and join another team.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wish as an industry we practiced quantitative risk management more. I run a small training workshop about producing better estimates, and the single idea that I want people to take away is that a single-valued estimate is a really terrible shorthand for describing a probability distribution.

If you describe estimates as ranges or distributions, a whole world of risk analysis tools open up - PERT, Monte Carlo, etc. More crucially, it allows you to start communicating and managing risk openly with everyone involved, instead of pretending it doesn't exist.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well I'm not going to disagree, obviously. The hard part is figuring out what these distributions look like.

For example, in the summer I got an intern to build an app. It demoed well and people naturally asked when it would be in production.

Working in quite a regulated environment, I knew this wouldn't be as simple as just firing up a couple of EC2 instances, so I said a couple of months to get it live on the 'internal cloud'.

It still isn't live. Maybe someone more experienced than me could have predicted that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The smaller the team (by team I mean everyone in the project not just programmers) the easier the estimation can be done and the more thought you can put into it. When you get into projects as big as the two (simultaneous) I am in the more the estimation becomes random guesswork. In one project they defined 1400 or so user stories, a portion of which I had to estimate in less than a day which is basically dice throwing. But this is a huge company, and the ultimate money involved is also huge in both cost and revenue. I wish we could spend more time thinking of it as a journey instead of launching off a cliff.

<comment><USER3> At the scale of 1400 stories, using Little's Law as an estimation tool would become tractable. As you proceed through the stories you would have an average latency and throughput. When multiplied these give the total of all stories either in the backlog or in-flight. Then you solve for when that number reaches zero and you have a fairly decent estimate of the 50% completion time.

What you couldn't do well is say when particular stories would be completed, or what the 80%/90% etc times would be. You'd need to use something more sophisticated.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think I understand Little's Law, but I'm struggling to see how it works here - are you saying the backlog size would be predictable?

<comment><USER3> More that since you know the backlog size, you can use figures on either average latency or average throughput to calculate when the backlog will be drained.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Serious question, what is the difference between software development and alchemy?

<comment><USER9> Quite a lot of difference. Alchemy is science and software development is art

<comment><USER10> From my dictionary:

Alchemy: the medieval forerunner of chemistry, concerned with the transmutation of matter, in particular with attempts to convert base metals into gold or find a universal elixir.

<comment><USER9> Cool, so alchemy was like medieval chemistry! But I guess the motive was to make a quick buck by making gold! :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Draft revision of ISO 8601-201x with EDTF extended date/time formats - <AUTHOR> https://www.loc.gov/standards/datetime/ <comment><USER2>
      ?  uncertain
      ~  approximate
      %  uncertain and approximate

      YYYY-MM-DD?
      YYYY-MM-DD~
      YYYY-MM-DD%

Interesting and perhaps useful. Databases have had null for "I don't know", but we don't have halfway between "I don't know" and "it was 1985-12-23 for sure."

But couldn't the same thing be useful for other data types, like integers? "I think it was about 7 oranges." Or even strings. "I think his name was Bill."

      7~
      Bill?</comment>


Why was the first compiler written before the first interpreter? - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/11/why-was-the-first-compiler-written-before-the-first-interpreter/ <comment><USER2> Grace Murray Hopper's A-0 compiler was not a "compiler" in the modern sense of the word. LISP was not the first interpreter. Most early programming systems used a mix of compilation to hardware machine code and interpretation. Emulation, a variety of interpretation, was used to allow old code to run on newer, faster machines. There is a large and helpful literature on the history of programming languages. Wikipedia has useful condensed information.

</comment><comment><USER3> "the infamous Altair 8800"

Seeing that this was the machine that fired up the "home computer" revolution and was a direct ancestor to the everyday PC, I can't understand the 'infamous' epithet. In my opinion, that line should read "the famous Altair 8800".</comment>


Torbit – Making Websites Faster - <AUTHOR> http://jonefox.com/blog/2010/11/16/torbit-making-websites-faster/ <comment><USER2> " but many of these are still not done because they're annoying and tedious to do and developers are often focused on other things. "

To me, that situation always meant I'd find (or code) a tool to make that happen automatically. Having the right tools for the job always means things go better, both for the developer and the client.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think Google has a similar tool freely available, although I can't find it right now. Does anybody know?

<comment><USER4> They released an open source apache module called mod_pagespeed. We actually set up a proxy for it so you can see what it would do to your site without having to install anything: <http://torbit.com/proxy>

One reason people may prefer a cloud solution is there is no other infrastructure to set up. It turns out mod_pagespeed is both CPU and cache intensive which means rolling this out on your servers requires beefing up your server infrastructure.

We may end up using their technology & contributing to the project at some point, but right now it's very alpha and breaks a lot of sites (including Google's own!).

They're also missing most of the browser-specific optimizations that we're doing, specifically around mobile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hi bmelton,

Looks like you were active around the TC Disrupt time, which was very busy for us (we've added two datacenters since then). We generally make websites about 30% faster on average.

<comment><USER6> You know that you can reply directly to his comment, right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can't tell how similar this is to CloudFlare, but it looks close.

That said, CloudFlare actually increased latency by a non-trivial amount, which caused me to abandon it. It may be better now, or it may have worked better on much larger sites, but my 256M slice & Django blog was faster without it.

<comment><USER4> The big difference is Torbit's focus on the other front end optimizations besides moving resources to a CDN. We compress CSS & JavaScript. Reduce HTTP requests. Optimize images. Preload content. And lots more.

CloudFlare as I understand are focused on being a really good and easy to use CDN.

And yes, the cloud approach means that we add about 200-300ms to every non- cacheable request. We think it's a decent trade-off since we usually shave off 10 times that when all our optimizations are applied.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> So it's SaaS?

<comment><USER9> Yeah. It looks like it's basically an almost-no-setup proxy kind of thing.

<comment><USER4> Exactly</comment></comment></comment>


Genetically speaking, mammals are more like their fathers - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150302123253.htm

<comment><USER2> Original article: [http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ng.3222....](http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ng.3222.html)</comment>


Exporting an Indie Unity Game to WebVR - <AUTHOR> https://hacks.mozilla.org/2016/05/exporting-an-indie-unity-game-to-webvr/ <comment><USER2> "We're building a multi-platform digital game subscription service called Boondogl that delivers native web games to desktop, mobile, console, and VR devices, and we've bet our entire business on native web technologies – HTML5, WebGL, JS, and soon WebAssembly."

What exactly is "native web"?</comment>


Apple vs Nokia, the patents involved listed - <AUTHOR>

Five of the patents relate to wireless data:
5802465 - Data transmission in a radio telephone network
6359904 - Data transfer in a mobile telephone network
6694135 - Measurement report transmission in a telecommunications system
6775548 - Access channel for reduced access delay in a telecommunications system
7092672 - Reporting cell measurement results in a cellular communication system
Two of the patents relate to speech coding:
5862178 - Method and apparatus for speech transmission in a mobile communications system
5946651 - Speech synthesizer employing post-processing for enhancing the quality of the synthesized speech
Three of the patents relate to security and encryption. The first two relate to UMTS, while the last relates to UMTS and GSM:
6882727 - Method of ciphering data transmission in a radio system
7009940 - Integrity check in a communication system
7403621 - System for ensuring encrypted communication after handover <comment><AUTHOR> clickable links to the texts of the patents:

<http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5802465/fulltext.html>

<http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6359904/fulltext.html>

<http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6694135/fulltext.html>

<http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6775548/fulltext.html>

<http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/7092672/fulltext.html>

<http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5862178/fulltext.html>

<http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5946651/fulltext.html>

<http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6882727/fulltext.html>

<http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/7009940/fulltext.html>

<http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/7403621/fulltext.html>

</comment><comment><USER2> The point of patents is to enable licensing, and to hang litigation on. That's whats happening, no surprise.</comment>


This Augmented Reality Future Looks Like a Living Hell - <AUTHOR> http://sploid.gizmodo.com/this-augmented-reality-future-looks-like-a-living-hell-1777595401 <comment><USER2> >You can at least close your browser or look away from your laptop when it all gets too overwhelming, but as Keiichi Matsuda reveals in this brilliant Hyper- Reality short film, one day there might not be any escape from ads.

There's no escape from real life ads _now_. So in the future we can just take off our augmented reality specs? Sounds like a distinct _improvement_.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was actually was discussing this today in regards to violent video games with a friend. How much father can video games be pushed to reflect reality as a whole based on thing like the reactions of the carhacters and the environment around us</comment>


Google denies changing app review policy - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/21/google-denies-reports-of-unannounced-changes-to-android-app-review-process/ <comment><AUTHOR> I have had a developer account for almost 3 years and was also subjected to the extended wait time. Not sure how google can deny this....</comment>


Ask HN: What is the most hacker friendly drone kit available? - <AUTHOR> I really want to get into building my own drone over the winter break and I'm looking for recommendations.<p>I have some hardware programming experience from my college days so I'm not afraid to work with raw hardware that I have to code from the ground up. <comment><USER2> The CrazyFlie series runs open-source software and has an exposed expandable circuitboard. Haven't looked at them in a while though.

<comment><USER3> Seconded. There is some soldering involved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> neat article on building your own flight controller.

[http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-ARDUINO-FLIGHT- CONTROLLE...](http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-ARDUINO-FLIGHT-CONTROLLER/)</comment>


Boeing 777-300 for sale - <AUTHOR> https://vietnam.craigslist.org/for/4372477162.html For sale in Vietnam now. <comment><USER2> Too bad the missing plane is a 777-200.</comment>


Windows 10 0day exploit goes wild, and so do Microsoft marketers - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/security/2017/02/op-ed-when-marketers-drive-microsofts-0day-exploit-communications-we-all-lose/ <comment><USER2> The researcher disclosed the bug one week before Microsoft is scheduled to patch it. I'm sure MS isn't thrilled, but they did drag their feet:

"I decided to release this bug one week before the patch is released, because it is not the first time Microsoft sits on my bugs. I'm doing free work here with them (I'm not paid in anyways for that) with the goal of helping their users. When they sit on a bug like this one, they're not helping their users but doing marketing damage control, and opportunistic patch release."

<comment><USER3> The researcher sounds really petty. They're patching it, but not on this person's schedule so he's causing microsoft and USERS problems they didn't have before.

If they weren't patching, I'd understand, but this isn't the right way to get attention in my book.

<comment><USER4> There are very competent people on this planet who make a very good buck out of zero-days (not to mention remotely control users' machines, and steal data). IMO the researcher didn't want that particular vulnerability to dwell on somebody's todo list for several years.

It definitely puts pressure on MS but I don't think that's bad. Corporations have demonstrated time and again that the only way to get them to move is a PR hype.

If they want researchers to stop doing preliminary public disclosures, they should prioritize security higher than PR damage control.

<comment><USER5> Just because there are other people who act totally unethically doesn't mean you get bonus points for doing kinda the right thing.

<comment><USER6> MS is acting 'totally unethically' by not patching this bug immediately and rewarding the researcher.

<comment><USER7> Meh. The bug requires you to connect Windows to a malicious SMB server.

Now that everybody knows that, if anybody is really concerned, they can stop SMB connections from LAN to WAN by blocking TCP 139, 445 and UDP 137, 138.

<comment><USER6> > Now that everybody knows that

Wait, when did everyone become aware of that? I'm willing to bet the vast majority of windows users have no idea. _Some_ people only know _because_ he released the bug.

<comment><USER8> I'm now aware, and I was able to block connections in my organizations firewall that protects a few thousand users. Not every single user needs to be aware for it to be effective.

<comment><USER6> Yes, but the point is you wouldn't be aware unless he released the info. He gave individual users an option to protect themselves in the absence of a patch from MS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> He asked a PR person, probably one with little security background (how many security people do you know who went into PR?) gave the stock answer which does happen to actually be good security advice: run the latest supported version with patches.

The reporter was just butthurt about not getting a scoop and decided to write an article complaining about PR practices in place of an actual story.

Really like the click bait title though, it's a nice touch. /s

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a rant about PR bullshit, specifically this:

>Windows is the only platform with a customer commitment to investigate reported security issues and proactively update impacted devices as soon as possible,

EDIT and this

>The time has come for Microsoft vulnerability disclosure communications to mute the marketers and let the security engineers do the talking instead.

I found it funny to be honest

<comment><USER10> Microsoft always seems to prefer going on offense rather than playing defense. They are one of the least self-aware companies I can think of. For example, this absolutely insane "funeral march" for iPhone and Blackberry they held in 2010 to celebrate the launch of Windows Phone 7 [1]. What other company would even consider this?

[1] [https://www.engadget.com/2010/09/10/microsoft-celebrates- win...](https://www.engadget.com/2010/09/10/microsoft-celebrates-windows- phone-7-rtm-with-funeral-parade-for/)

<comment><USER11> _They are one of the least self-aware companies I can think of._

That was Uncle Fester's Microsoft. That behavior was an extension of Ballmer's pugilistic personality.

Today's Microsoft is just as tone-deaf, but in a different respect. For the life of me I can't understand why Nadella thinks that their recent behavior wrt. Win 10 is a good idea. E.g. rebooting user's machines during presentations, having spyware that it's not possible to disable, advertising in the OS, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> tl;dr: a null deref in windows kernel when you connect to a malicious SMB share

<comment><USER13> That's not what this article is about though really

<comment><USER14> Sure, but the main question I had when reading the headline was if I should go into "Oh shit!" mode.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does anybody know how many days it would take from when a critical security bug is discovered in Windows and assuming that the fix is just a few lines of code and not a component rewrite and marketing is not in the way, I am wondering how many steps are from when a fix is created until is released.(I imagine that there may some QA and some managers that need to approve it but I have no idea)

<comment><USER16> Disclosure: I work at MS but not on the kernel or anything related to this security bug. Opinions are my own.

I've seen one-line bug fixes introduce many other bugs.

Adding a null check is always suspicious. Is the system in an invalid state? Should it fail fast instead of swallowing the error?

Maybe the code wasn't touched in several years. Maybe the person that wrote it no longer works there. Maybe the code in question doesn't have good test coverage or documentation. There are so many variables to consider when assessing risk of code changes.

<comment><USER17> _Maybe the person that wrote it no longer works there. Maybe the code in question doesn 't have good test coverage or documentation_

These are not valid excuses for a company the size of Microsoft.

<comment><USER18> These are the kind of consideration only companies the size of Microsoft are likely to have.

<comment><USER19> Touché!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > What is the threshold where you decide to release a bug description?

Absolute minimum: 1 month after patch.

Also: Leave 1 month, as an absolute minimum, to publish a patch.

Why that? Because it takes time to track a bug and fix it and test the fix and ship it to 1 billion consumers in 150 countries and languages.

Welcome to the world of real users where things take time to happen.

Of course, one may think that he's an idealistic enthusiast pressuring the evil big companies when giving them less time. But nope, the only thing one may truly accomplish is being an unrealistic asshole putting millions of computers and people at risk. Think twice before you disclose. There will also be your mom's computer on the other end of that 0-day ;)</comment>


Ask HN: Is there any company like TripleByte in India? - <AUTHOR> I'm aware of the tech recruitment platform Beyond, but was wondering if there's any startup in India using a test, interview and matching approach similar to TripleByte. <comment><AUTHOR> OP here, so I know there's also companies like Hacker Earth, that allow recruiting companies to host coding competitions that lead to interviews with the company, however, they leave the marketing aspect of getting candidates to participate in the competition largely to the company itself, which is a big problem in its own.

So do we have a company that handles the headache of recruiting engineers like Triplebyte does?</comment>


Torrent Site Founder, Moderator and Users Receive Prison Sentences - <AUTHOR> https://torrentfreak.com/torrent-site-founder-moderator-users-receive-prison-sentences-160915/ <comment><USER2> That they jail and fine the founders is somewhat understandable, if only for tax evasion and for making money off other people's IP, but jailing regular users is going too far. There aren't making any profit from watching films, and since we don't know if they'd be ready to pay for that content, it's not clear at all that the film industry is losing anything.

<comment> brian-armstrong Jailing them does seem like going too far, but I can see where it makes sense to at least fine the top users. The top users pay monthly to run seedboxes. They are investing in the infrastructure of the site in a measurable way. That does make them seem involved in its operations, at least to an extent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Copyright law is too draconian.

At this point, the US should repeal the law completely, and let the chips fall where they may. Hollywood says we'll see a loss of culture (fewer movies, songs, books).

Let's find out.

<comment><USER4> Copyright and IP (and probably real estate) are pretty much the only way for capitalists to make money the more things like internet, 3D printing, AI, robotics and so on are available to the masses. To me it's the only way to keep the current power structures intact so for a lot of powerful people copyright laws are probably the most important laws. They don't need the state for personal protection (they can pay for security guards instead of police) but they need the state for protecting their livelihood.

<comment><USER5> > They don't need the state for personal protection

"The Hamptons is not a defensible position."

~ Mark Blyth (prof. of Political Economy at Brown), on the recent rise in populism rejection of traditional politics (e.g. Trump, brexit, etc)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zzl4B3mrKQE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zzl4B3mrKQE)

<comment><USER4> That's why there is a call for more military while cutting everything else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> After studying copyright law for music business classes in college, I think that most conversations about piracy could be enhanced by a common understanding of some concepts that current (US) copyright law is based on.

The most important, I think, is an understanding of the first-sale doctrine[1], and how it differs from reproduction and distribution rights.

Many advocates for piracy argue that distributing copyrighted materials on the Internet is no different than reselling a DVD they previously bought. However, the distinction becomes more clear when we consider that by distributing a movie or song through the Internet, we are also making a copy of it. Modern computers have made it incredibly easy to make a copy of a work, to the point that it doesn't even feel like we're copying something. Because of this, it doesn't feel wrong to share a song or movie.

The actual amount of lost sales is immaterial when addressing the binary question of whether or not someone should be allowed to share a movie publicly on the Internet. The right to reproduce and distribute a copyrighted work to the public is solely that of the copyright holder - whether your doing so results in them losing money or not.

The question of appropriate penalties, though, is much less clear, and I think it's a shame that prosecutors and rights-holders have pursued defendants as viciously as they have. In many of these cases the judgments are unfairly strict (or at least appear that way), which just makes the MPAA and RIAA look more evil, and hurts everyone in the long run.

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First- sale_doctrine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine)

<comment><USER7> The public library doesn't seem to care about your theories.

They've been lending books, mags, cds, movies, etc. for longer than I've been alive

<comment><USER8> And the first-sale doctrine is why libraries are legal. (I imagine that book publishers once waged an MPAA-style war against libraries.) But libraries really have nothing to do with P2P piracy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Every time there is a copyright law debate I think about this: [https://github.com/philipl/pifs](https://github.com/philipl/pifs).

As far as we understand the number pi, every single combination of digit is part of it at some point. So technically Pi already contains a copy of any of your work and your future work even before you think of making it!

Doesn't that make digital copyright laws completely obsolete?

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating pro-piracy or anything. I just think that our laws made in the 17-18-1900's and monkey-patched to these days are not prepared to handle digital matters. We should reboot our legal system. At least it's digital-matter version.

<comment><USER10> We don't know whether Pi is a normal number. We assume so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> And the site is back up; but the odds of it being a honeypot are high.

What happens in France when you are fined damages far in excess of your wealth, do they garnish future wages?

<comment><USER12> An "unknown third-party" has it back up as a public torrent index. I think it's a honeypot too. Don't use this service ever. Many people will still use it though..

<comment><USER13> What is the danger if you connect through a VPN?

<comment><USER14> Technically speaking they could target VPN users by infecting uploaded files with a simple trojan that pings home to a server, I assume you disable VPN after the download is complete.

<comment><USER13> It's been a few years since I've downloaded a torrent. Spotify and Netflix are more convenient for me. My own routine was a VM purely for running a client in a VPN-only environment, tables to drop all non-VPN traffic and file transfers using shared folders. The VM was "virgin" to prevent any identifable info leaking out. It is possible that this is slightly more hardened that a "typical" use if a VPN. I was thinking in this context when I posed the question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I find the entire law on this to be pretty nebulous. Torrent sites inherently don't host the files people are stealing.

<comment><USER16> The law is clear: complicity in copyright violation, for profit. It became a criminal offence across Europe in the last decade. This puts costs for prosecution on the state, not rights holders, and it allows for jail time. Whether the law is fair or right, that's a different question. Many people lobbied hard against criminalisation of copyright and patent violations, and lost. The movie industry is just too powerful and had too many friends.

But it's not nebulous. Help others commit a crime, you are an accessory and you are liable for fines and prison.

<comment><USER17> I can understand (but don't agree with) jail time for the site owner.

I don't know if I understand that for the mods, unless they got some money from the site.

I really don't understand it for the users, unless again they got money from the site.

As I understand it copyright infringement is only criminal if it's part of trade.

The article describes those users as downloaders, which to me means the rights holders can sue for damages as a civil action, but not that the state can prosecute as a criminal case.

<comment><USER18> They charged them with receiving stolen goods. How this relates to French Law I'm not aware tho.

<comment><USER19> Can we not charge all of the ISPs involved with transporting stolen goods?

<comment><USER20> the mods knew what they were doing. difference between someone who builds a road and someone who drives a truck full of drugs on that road.

<comment><USER21> But is copying a copyrighted movie "stealing" in that it deprives the owner (who still has the movie) of profits of that movie?

Yes, potentially some people will go out to see the movie if they cannot pirate it. But not all. And it's hard to prove either way.

That's not the same as "stealing a car".

<comment><USER20> didnt say anything about stealing a car?

<comment><USER19> I think he is referencing this old anti-piracy ad that used to air in movie theaters.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The non sequiturs rationalizing piracy (most likely as a proxy for rationalizing their own) in the comments is amusing, to say the least.

<comment><USER23> Can you point me to a few of these "non sequiturs rationalizing piracy"? I can't find them, and I'm just reading people criticizing the state of the law and its penalties.

<comment><USER24> The arrested guy's spoutings are quite funny because they're _exactly_ what the people on the receiving end of piracy tend to say:

 _"To all the [anti-piracy groups and authorities]: You are a lot of vile shit, destroying lives of people who are already struggling to pay their rent, their food, their bills," he said._

Right, it's only pirates who have bills to pay. The people who make content get their homes for free!

 _"Why all this? Because they wanted to watch and because they didn't necessarily have the capabilities to buy a DVD / BluRay or go to the theaters."_

If you own a computer and an internet connection good enough to torrent blurays then you can afford a DVD and a cheap player, certainly a theatre ticket. "Didn't necessary have the capabilities" is pure rationalisation - it's a fantasy entirely divorced from reality, intended to let him tell himself that he's a good person really.

<comment><USER25> Just a thought: what if I only ever buy secondhand DVDs. I can only afford (read: justify the expense of) secondhand DVDs and CDs.

The content makers / publishers / distributors never see a cent of the secondhand DVD market.

Downloading pirate films is similar in that sense.

Ok, the argument could be made that the secondhand market props up the primary market, but I don't buy it. I don't think people buy new DVDs with the thought of "I'll be able to sell this for $2 to the pawn shop after I've watched it" as a motivating factor.

And, there is no secondhand market for digital media. Media piracy _is_ the flea market of digital downloads. So an argument could be make that media piracy severs that sector of the market we would only buy secondhand DVDs anyway.

Also 2x adult theatre tickets, AUS25 each, costs as much as my monthly Internet connection bill. I know there are a lot of Australians who would not be able to justify that expense.

<comment><USER17> > The content makers / publishers / distributors never see a cent of the > secondhand DVD market

1) Japanese games publishers did want to prevent second hand sales, so your question isn't as bizarre to the rights holders.

2) They do see some of that money. I can afford to buy some new games, but only if I can sell my old games. I can only sell my old games if someone buys them.

I agree with you, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Is the industry winning the war against piracy? I know some people -cough- who told me -cough (damn what's wrong with my throat?)- that lately it's been extremely hard to find new stuff on bittorrent networks.

</comment><comment><USER27> People who actually understand information theory know why that argument is facile.

<comment><USER28> Really? Why not explain why this is wrong instead of just attacking. I could very well randomly generate material "owned" by someone. As the size increases the chance goes down to being very low of course.

<comment><USER29> if I understand the concept correctly, basically it's wrong because your index/seed values will be much more complex than the data you are supposedly extracting. So basically you have to already know the data you want in order to "find" it in pi.</comment></comment></comment>


How Facebook Envisions the Future of Our eLives And Why It's Not a Good Idea - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/111297306144520956414/posts/JLQogwzooYd?hl=en

<comment><USER2> I think we should just add this to the pile of "why the advertising supported model is one of the more dangerous systems in technology".

<comment><USER3> You can't get something for nothing, eventually we'll have to pay some price for these services and we're finally beginning to realize what that is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> the act of collecting information is not inherently bad. What is, though is the fact that no one knows exactly how companies treat your information now or in the future. Data collection has moved into a wild West phase. It is outpacing governmental regulation by leaps and bounds. What's even more harmful is the fact that most people do not know what they're giving up. The same information that a governmental agency would need a warrant to acquire the same information that people give up to social networks or other websites in general without a second thought.

<comment><USER5> Nothing is "inherently" bad. Badness is a human construct, a value judgement, and nobody is talking about a future where it is required to instantly forget everything learned.

 _The same information that a governmental agency would need a warrant to acquire the same information that people give up to social networks or other websites in general without a second thought_

And FB is a single-source for that warrant who likely has more informal processes for satisfying some requests without warrants. This is why the Carlyle Group (CIA) invested in Friendster (and probably FB too).</comment></comment>


Fab.com Goes Retail - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/3008995/most-innovative-companies-2013/fab-now-offers-made-to-order-products-a-physical-retail-store

<comment><USER2> Bespoke design products? Is this pivot the anti-Ikea of online shopping... Discuss.

<comment><USER3> Ikea's model seems better suited for a web business anyway. This idea matches more with the physical, custom retail experience. My question: Same day delivery? (Of course not, I know, but will they do better than the eternal wait times for other custom furniture shops?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Fab.com Goes Retail...expanding to 28 countries and about 600 employees along the way._

Fab.com Goes Bankrupt might follow.</comment>


Photography and racial bias - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/lens/sarah-lewis-racial-bias-photography.html <comment><AUTHOR> I posted this, and definitely wasn't thinking of it as clickbait, or even as controversial. As Dan says, I think this history is both intellectually interesting and relevant to my work as an engineer, today.

Over time, as the technology of photography was invented and iteratively improved, film formulations came to work better for taking photographs of light-skinned people than of dark-skinned people. Inventors and engineers didn't set out to disadvantage dark-skinned people specifically. But it happened anyway.

In the relatively short history of commercial "AI", we've already seen examples of machine learning systems that followed a similar development path. Non-representative data sets[0], replicating existing bias[1], over-fitting data sets to the point where the outcomes violate non-discrimination laws[2], etc.

One way to help avoid making these mistakes is to think about how they were made in the past, in other engineering contexts.

[0]-[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/04/the-u...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/04/the- underlying-bias-of-facial-recognition-systems/476991/) [1]-[https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/10/17958784/ai- recruiting-t...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/10/17958784/ai-recruiting- tool-bias-amazon-report) [2]-[https://www.vox.com/2019/3/21/18275746/facebook- settles-ad-d...](https://www.vox.com/2019/3/21/18275746/facebook-settles-ad- discrimination-lawsuits)

<comment><USER2> It is not just photography, even in real life under low light conditions it can be hard to read the facial expressions of dark skinned people.

<comment><USER3> True. So maybe skin darkening would be more practical than CV Dazzle, because it wouldn't be so unusual. Horrible legacy and PR, though.

Anyway, I suspect that was an evolutionary advantage. For hunting in forest and savannah, to hide in shadows. The human rootstock was black, I gather. And lighter skin evolved where soft UV was limiting for vitamin D synthesis.

But that's solvable with the right technology. Maybe something like getting overall color value, and then tweaking color contrast. If we can do it in astronomy, we can do it with people.

<comment><USER4> I would guess that the evolutionary advantage of black skin was not primarily camouflage. Tool-using humans of any colour can do that with mud and grass.

My bet is on UV tolerance. Black people have lower rates of skin cancer in the US compared to whites. [https://www.jaad.org/article/S0190-9622(05)02730-1/fulltext](https://www.jaad.org/article/S0190-9622\(05\)02730-1/fulltext) (Mortality is higher in blacks, but that's because it's diagnosed at later more severe stages.) The effect would have been far bigger when foraging and hunting all day every day under the equatorial sun.

<comment><USER5> Or perhaps light skin was an evolutionary development as humans moved to higher latitudes in order to obtain high enough levels of vitamin D. See [1]: The evolutionary significance of vitamin D, skin pigment, and ultraviolet light.

1\. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/1211435/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/1211435/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Dark-skinned faces are inherently more difficult to photograph. Dark skin is in the lowest range of values in most images, but the specular highlights of that skin can reach the highest range of values. Underexpose and you lose all shading; overexpose and you lose the geometric definition given by specular highlights.

Pale skin can be made easier to photograph in challenging lighting conditions by using a matte powder, which diffuses specular highlights and reduces the value range. This doesn't work well on dark skin, because subtle shadows are less visible and you lose the impression of shape; you need the specular highlights, but they greatly increase the value range.

The problem with early colour films wasn't really hue (all human skin falls into a remarkably narrow range of hues), but a lack of sensitivity and dynamic range compared to monochrome films. They coped with over-exposure reasonably well, but even slight under-exposure would obliterate the detail on dark skin. This limitation of chemistry was a constant problem in all forms of colour photography, but the social burden fell disproportionately on dark-skinned portraiture subjects. Later emulsions had far better rendition of lowlights and smooth compression of highlights, which vastly improved their performance with dark skin.

<comment><USER7> I just want to note that the technical causes you list here are, arguably, totally beside the point.

All technical systems have strengths and weaknesses. When systems are conceived and developed their goals are set through a culturally-created understanding of what the system "should" do. The lack of attention to darker faces (from chemical process selection to selection of people depicted in kodak's system calibration cards) explains how we got this particular set of technical limitations instead of one that, say, tended to over-expose easily.

> Dark-skinned faces are inherently more difficult to photograph

I would say that dark-skinned faces are inherently poorly captured by the photographic technology we have developed, which has focused on detail rather than dynamic range.

<comment><USER6> _> selection of people depicted in kodak's system calibration cards_

The choice of the model does reflect some amount of bias, but it doesn't cause bias in the printing process.

Precise calibration was done with a test chart and a densitometer. Shirley was just a quick reference used throughout the day, to check at a glance whether prints were unnaturally blue or purple or washed out due to changes in the developer chemistry. Fuji usually supplied test films and prints with Asian models, even in European markets; the motion picture industry originally used porcelain dolls. A multi-ethnic test image wouldn't have provided better accuracy.

 _> I would say that dark-skinned faces are inherently poorly captured by the photographic technology we have developed, which has focused on detail rather than dynamic range._

Except that the opposite was true for the entire duration of the film era. The photographic film industry was acutely aware of the fact that most consumer photographs were taken on compact cameras with mediocre lenses and usually printed at 6"x4". They were also aware that the main complaints from consumers and darkroom technicians were about exposure latitude and colour accuracy. Their development efforts and marketing materials reflected this awareness.

Most consumers had never even heard the word "resolution" until the megapixel wars. Ektar, the only Kodak colour negative film specifically marketed as being especially fine-grained and high-resolution, failed commercially and was discontinued after five years.

<comment><USER7> This is not the only argument that color films were developed in a way that excluded people of color[1]. I'm not an expert.

You're correct that the film ecosystem of photography was not developed with resolution in mind. I was thinking of the way in which digital sensors capture the most bit depth in the upper tones [2]. This would likely not have been pursued if test targets had subjects with darker skin colors than their surroundings.

[1] [https://www.vox.com/2015/9/18/9348821/photography-race- bias](https://www.vox.com/2015/9/18/9348821/photography-race-bias) [2] [https://digital-photography-school.com/exposing-to-the- right...](https://digital-photography-school.com/exposing-to-the-right/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Fascinating. For about a decade my father owned a one-hour photo lab back in the eighties. I worked for him.

When he purchased the equipment for his lab, he didn't have a ton of money so the equipment was only semi automated. There were two machines, one to develop the color negative film and another to make prints.

I operated the printing machine. This involved sitting at a console and feeding each strip of negatives (typically 36 frames) one image at a time over a lamp which lit the negative from below. I then punched some buttons to make each print. I was assisted by a computer. But the computer was dumb. It looked at the negative and tried to average out the exposure so that the resulting print on average would be grey. 18% grey to be exact.

So my job was to look at this inverse negative that was 1" x 1.5", figure out what the scene actually was, then override the computer's exposure and color balance to get a correct print. 12 minutes later when the print had developed I'd know if I guessed correctly.

On a good day, I'd print about 100 rolls of film, 3600 prints, and maybe I'd have to redo about 36 of those.

Now this was in Miami and so I was printing picture of every subject and skin type under the sun.

And the funny thing is, I don't recall ever noticing, particularly, that there were any issues with prints of persons of color.

What I do remember distinctly is that my dad and I never agreed on blue/yellow color balance. I thought he made everyone look like Smurfs. I pleaded with him to look at the whites of people's eyes. Never won that battle. It was his shop.

Also, beach scenes. Snow scenes. Cameras and film often (counterintuitively) underexposed those.

But this was long ago and maybe I didn't notice or don't remember.

<comment><USER9> > Also, beach scenes. Snow scenes. Cameras and film often (counterintuitively) > underexposed those.

The snow being under-exposed is the camera is trying to balance out the image to 18% grey [usually]. This means in a scene with mainly bright white snow it will expose to make the scene grey, unless you override it. The camera can't [with current technology as far as I know] know that you are shooting snow. If you're shooting in snow then you probably want to adjust exposure by +2 as a starting point.

Photographers used to carry around a physical grey card and would use that to take a light meter reading from. That would give the base standard exposure for the ambient light so the scene should be correctly exposed. [ it's more complex due to dynamic range etc but that covers the basics ]

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> All: this post was flagged. But it is obviously intellectually interesting and therefore on topic here, regardless of one's views on race and other issues. It's full of fascinating detail, and even has a technical aspect for the less- curious among us who only find technical things interesting. I've turned off the flags and rolled back the timestamp on the post.

We can debait the title a bit, but a substantive article with a slightly baity title is not one that should be flagged. If the title is your issue, you're welcome to let us know at firstname.lastname@example.com, or suggest a better title in the thread, which we'll happily use if we see the suggestion.

One last thing: if you're going to comment on a thread like this, can you please top up on the site guidelines first? Especially this one: _Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive._ Remember that we're going for good conversation—respectful and two- sided—rather than ideological or political battle.

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

<comment><USER11> Thanks for resurrecting this post! I also appreciate the clear guidance that "a substantive article with a slightly baity title is not one that should be flagged". Maybe this could be added to the [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)?

I'm not sure, though, that it makes sense to focus on the idea that it was a "mistake" to flag this article. I think flagging is currently one of the weakest areas of the HN moderation system, in that it allows a minority to suppress discussion of otherwise good articles that they disagree with. Clearer guidelines can help, but I think you should also think hard about how the system can be changed to be more resilient to "mistakes".

Maybe flagging of articles with some minimum number of upvotes should act only as a "request for moderator review" rather than having any immediate visible effect?

Maybe there could be a way (either mandatory or optional) to explain why an article was flagged? I presume it would be easier to review a flag that says "Bad title, should be X" than just an opaque and universal flag.

Maybe there could be some better feedback for users who flag articles, to tell them if they are flagging articles "correctly"? As it is, I presume a lot of people persist in doing what they think is best, even if you think they are using the system incorrectly.

It's great that thanks to good moderation HN is still going strong after all these years. Obviously you are doing many things right! But I strongly feel that current flagging system needs to be rethought for this success to continue. Explanatory comments like the one you made here are helpful, but I think some deeper changes will also be necessary.

<comment><USER10> Ok I took out "That was a mistake." Fair point. Also, I looked at the history of the users who flagged it, and none of them had a history of flagging obviously good articles.

I don't know if the flagging system needs rethinking though. The way it works has been stable for years. I appreciate that such claims are a bit irritating, because they're based on a view of the site that not everybody gets to see. But the [flagged] marker is publicly visible, and if you or anyone sees an article in [flagged] state that ought not to be flagged—say, one whose signal/noise ratio is as high as the OP or better—then please tell us (firstname.lastname@example.com is best, because that way we're sure to see it). You especially, because we know how much and how sincerely and for how long you have cared about open discussion on this site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It is unclear to me why there is "inherited bias" in film/photography technology. Inherited bias implies that the biased film practices of the past have spilled over into the present, causing further racial bias in photography.

While it's true that photography in the past was racially biased, it is unclear why modern photography is still racially biased. It may just be genuinely harder to photograph dark skin, after all, the article even says that attempts have been made to fix racial bias in photography.

All of this being said, even if photography is not racially biased and the issue is more technological rather than social, the problem should still be fixed.

I could also be wrong about all of this, and in reality dark skin is just as easy to photograph as light skin, but the article did not give a modern example of the racially biased "Shirley card"\--except for facial recognition technology, but I didn't really consider that photography in the traditional sense.

Edit:

While modern photography may not be racially biased, Kwindla does make an excellent point that machine learning is replicating the past mistakes of photography.

<comment><USER13> > While it's true that photography in the past was racially biased, it is > unclear why modern photography is still racially biased. It may just be > genuinely harder to photograph dark skin

Perhaps if those with dark skin were a majority, far more R&D spending would go into dealing with dark skin tones than say, better zoom lenses or image processing speed. As a practical example, I suspect HDR would have arrived much faster than it did.

<comment><USER14> Camera companies have been competing on ISO/gain performance and dynamic range for as long as they've existed. It has little or nothing to do with skin color. There are _plenty_ of motivations for delivering high ISO and good dynamic range beyond capturing skin colors.

The idea that it was furniture companies and chocolate vendors that drove this development is absurd, that is probably just Kodak sales pitches backfiring on them 50 years later. Anyone that wanted to take a photo of a white person, let alone any subject, in a slightly darker environment wanted the same thing.

Or for an even better way to look at it: if you can photograph fast moving subjects twice as well, you can also photograph subjects twice as dark. Again, this is something _everyone_ that uses a camera wants, independent of race.

As for HDR: it is only relatively recently that digital sensors have started outperforming film's dynamic range, which was pretty good for a very long time. Digital camera vendors absolutely had massive financial incentive to fix this deficit. When they started to even come close, that's when the market exploded for movie production, and probably a lot of other commercial applications as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The 1995 Multicultural Shirley Card image in the article is beyond my skill, but I was a little confused by it, in a way that might be relevant to the article.

I'd expect it to let you calibrate for the black woman's hair detail without blowing out the white dress, but this image on my screen (print? scan?) doesn't seem to have done that.

It looks like the black woman's hair is almost lost in this image, yet it looks like the photographer put a hair light on the blonde woman, and not on the black woman.

(Lighting: In the reflections in their eyes, it looks like two studio lights. A narrow hair light for the blonde, from camera left, might be a third. Also looks like a backdrop light behind, which might also be doing that small hint of rear lighting on camera right of the black woman's hair, which emphasizes that the rest of the hair isn't lit as well as it could be.)

(Outfit exposure: The gray outfit might be Gray Card gray, and you can also compare it to the white outfit. The black dress looks hopeless for exposure, at least in this print/scan.)

(Focus: The blonde head looks in a bit softer focus, which might be accidental or glamorous.)

<comment><USER16> Thank you for sharing - not being familiar with calibration cards, I only paid attention to the features of faces (which seem well-rendered on the print), though the white dresses seemed to unnaturally lack shadow. I did not notice how the black hair texture on the women to the left and right was completely lost until you pointed it out.

<comment><USER15> With studio lighting (often powerful strobes, though this time it might just be continuous hot lights), it's pretty easy for something white to get blown out completely. If you also have something dark in the scene, you might need more light on that, at the same time that you're trying not to get too much light off the white. One tool in the studio is to use multiple light sources and modifiers. I don't know why that didn't seem to happen for the black woman's hair in this particular print. (The exposure of the white dress might be exactly as they intended, however -- almost an extreme, but the folds still detectable.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Can someone explain the following,

The author says: instead of seeking a solution, the technician had decided that my body was somehow unsuitable for the stage"

But the technician said: "We have a problem. Your jacket is lighter than your face, That's going to be a problem for lighting"

In what sense did the technician decide the author should be removed from the stage, and seek no other solution?

<comment><USER18> You can do an image search on your favorite search engine and look for someone like Donna Brazile, who has been in politics for a long time and understands appearing on TV.

Then you can look at the clothes she is wearing and realize that in every photo where she is wearing a lighter dress or jacket, the automatic exposure settings of the camera adjusted for the average lighting of the scene and underexposed her face.

That is why, because Brazile has done countless TV appearances for decades ... in most of the photos you can see that she wears darker jackets or clothing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> For an illustration of how bad photography used to be, consider this photograph of the 1990-1991 Chicago Bulls: [https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/apr/20/craig- hodges-m...](https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/apr/20/craig-hodges- michael-jordan-nba-chicago-bulls#img-2)

You can barely make out Michael Jordan's facial features. _Michael Jordan_ , in a _team photograph of the 1990 /91 Chicago Bulls_.

The lesson here is to design technology so it works for everyone, not just people like you. Sometimes it's a matter of literal skin color, sometimes it's a question of physical size and shape or abilities.

<comment><USER20> That's a bad example, half the pic is white (white guys + white shirts), the other half is black (black guys + black suits and dark background). Even with today's tech it's easy to mess a picture like that. It also looks like it was badly scanned / digitalised., cameras in the 90s were way more capable than that.

There is no magic, photography is all about light, darker skin colors reflect less light, thus you need to ramp up the exposure or the sensitivity of the film, which destroys details/highlights. The only racial related thing here would be the photographer chosing to correctly expose one skin color over another.

That one is similar to your pic but even with the bad resolution you can tell it's much better : [https://usercontent1.hubstatic.com/13875852_f520.jpg](https://usercontent1.hubstatic.com/13875852_f520.jpg)

Idk what type of film was used for that particular pic but some films are made to better render white people's skin tones (kodak portra for example), while other are made for the asian markets, some are better for snowy/sandy landscapes, other for blueish/greenish scenes, &c.

On the other hand, black and white film works very well on black people: [https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article8111113.ece/ALT...](https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article8111113.ece/ALTERNATES/s810/Cassius- Clay-later-Muhammad-Ali.jpg)

<comment><USER19> I did specifically go looking for a more difficult photo; adjusting exposure can help to capture a single skin tone, so a diverse group of skin tones is going to be harder. MJ's skin tone in particular is pretty dark, though I remember it looking a shade or two lighter at times; I don't know if that's because the photographers and TV cameraman adjusted exposure so we could more clearly see him or just normal suntans (off-seasons back home in NC in the summer vs. winter in Chicago). Scottie Pippen, for example, looks relatively fine in the photo.

Although it's a harder photograph to get right in terms of technical difficulty, it's also more than a fair chance to the photographer since everyone is more or less sat down in a controlled environment. Maybe the Bulls didn't have the best equipment or photographers in the world, but it's not a total amateur operation, either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is interesting, I've always thought that makers of image capture equipment were striving to create technology to capture the world, as it is, without any bias towards any particular subject. Maybe, in a way they were, and they simply went for the lowest hanging fruit first? or maybe they simply put most effort where they believed that there would be most gain for least effort. The reason why they started at one point is not really important, the important thing is that they continue to strive to improve. Not because some group of people are excluded, but because, from a technical standpoint, they're not done before they can capture and display an accurate, neutral, non-biased, factual representation of reality. Same goes for audio, I'm sure getting voice right had priority over music, and that some styles of music had priority over others, but, we're not done before all SOUND, not just music, can be captured and represented accurately.

<comment><USER20> > I've always thought that makers of image capture equipment were striving to > create technology to capture the world, as it is, without any bias towards > any particular subject.

You'd be surprised, especially with pre-digital photo. Each film emulsion has its own characteristics. I won't go to much into details because it's explained all over the internet already, but here is a quick comparison of a few emulsions:

[https://www.thephoblographer.com/2017/11/27/quick- comparison...](https://www.thephoblographer.com/2017/11/27/quick-comparison- todays-favorite-iso-400-color-films/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> As fun of darker skin adult models, I always found it annoying how most adult videos mishandle dark skin. I always thought there must be something inherent in the technology that makes it not optimized for darker skins, especially in the hands of less skilled cameramen.

I hope no one will be offended by my comment, I mean it factually.

</comment><comment><USER23> Is there any way to read that not being logged in?

<comment><USER24> Switching to another browser might help; it's what I do when I've reached my free article limits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The people who invented the tech (US/Europe/Japan) optimised it for consumers around them.

If darker skinned people had invented it, or had been a richer consumer group things would have been different - to think otherwise you'd have to think greedy capitalists would give up piles of cash to be racist.

Why hate on inventors who create something cool just because it doesn't quite work as well for all groups of people?

Surely this also left a gap in the market - someone could have optimized film for darker skin tones and made a lot of money?

<comment><USER10> The article covers all of this closely, and I see nothing in it that can fairly be described as "hate on inventors". Would you mind reviewing the site guidelines at [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)? I think you'll notice that they require HN comments to be more substantive than this one here.

For one, there's this: " _Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that 's easier to criticize. Assume good faith._" The author of an article is someone.

Then there's this: " _Eschew flamebait._ " Taking an HN thread further into flamewar, which is the direction your comment points in and alas even moves a little into, definitely breaks that guideline. Keep in mind that once one person goes there, a lot of others are going to go there—for and against, bashing each other along the way—so the biggest responsibility is not to be first to go there. If we all avoid that, no flamewar.

There's also: " _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something._" It seems to me that the dismissals here were indeed shallow, reminiscent of instant objections that pop into one's mind when encountering what, for whatever reason, we dislike. That mechanism is hardly unique to you—it is active in 100% of us. But the HN guidelines have been carefully written to ask all of us to slow down and inhibit that mechanism—to be more reflective and less reflexive—because this is the only way to get good conversation on the internet.

There are two other guidelines that the comment breaks, but I'll leave them as an exercise for the curious.

<comment><USER25> The article does not cover at all why black people didn't invent their own film technology or were a sufficiently organised or attractive consumer group to spur someone else to (it was chocolate and furniture makers)

"Hating" is perhaps too strong a word, but the author makes multiple accusations of racism against companies, technicians etc - from my reading thinking things are far too intentional and getting angry/offended - where in reality it's a mix of money and physics - not racism against a people.

<comment><USER10> "Hating" is much too strong a word to describe the article—so much so that invoking it in a thread like this is a big upping of the flamewar ante. There's no need to do that, but it's hard to resist, when a topic stirs up powerful emotions. This creates a need for relief, and venting that energy in the form of extreme words is one way to get relief. Unfortunately, it doesn't relieve anything at a community level. It just tosses the hot potato around in a way that only makes the potato hotter and more painful to the one who catches it next. What provides relief at a community level is when people find ability in themselves to acknowledge truth in what the other is saying.

I would say there is more love in the article—consider the passages about the author's grandfather, whose humiliation she in a way dedicated her career to repairing—and later about her father. Note how she includes a moving (to me at least) moment of reconciliation at the end (" _Her eyes were glassy as she said goodbye. Mine were, too, grateful for her vulnerability._ "). How easy it would have been to shame the woman who made the faux pas instead. Such moments of acknowledgment are hard to come by, and are worth emulating. This is not someone who's just out to hate.

> _thinking things are far too intentional and getting angry /offended_

A more charitable interpretation of the article is that a series of omissions can compound into a bias, even without deliberate attempts to exclude. That's interesting, and I'm a bit puzzled by the aversion in some commenters to look at it. Yes, angry accusations have been made and still get made, but that leads us to hear them also when they're not really there. We need the ability to notice when they're not really there, so as to respond in kind. That would be a de-escalating movement.

> _the author makes multiple accusations of racism against companies, > technicians etc_

I'd urge you to read the article again and see whether those are really there, or if you haven't somehow filled those details in, perhaps because it felt that way while reading it. I just reread the whole thing myself, to see whether I had missed some accusation of racism against a company or a technician. I didn't find any. In fact, the second reading convinced me that the author must have taken great pains to restrain herself from doing that—since nothing would be easier for someone in her position to do.

The article does contain a lot of pain—the pain of being unseen, excluded. And she does do something difficult for the reader: she creates tension by never expressing the pain directly. It's there implicitly, which heightens the effect. That's a pretty effective device for making a point, and I wonder if that's really what people are reacting to: the discomfort we feel when something intense is present but not expressed. But there's also generosity in this. If someone holds back from expressing as much as they could, even when feelings are intense, it creates space for others to do the same. Those opportunities are worth noticing and acting on, because otherwise we all just repeat the cycle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Take a raking kind of light, and shine it on a beige to brown colored wall, so that the light will be stronger on one side and gradually fade in intensity (that is, less reflected light) across the field of view.

Now place a different shade of brown upholstered chair, in front of this wall.

Take a photo using the Hasselblad X1D, currently considered to have the most accurate color of mainstream cameras.

Now try to print it accurately, even with the best quality paper and a high end inkjet printer.

Even master printmakers will struggle with it.

Why?</comment>


How Often People in Various Countries Shower - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/02/how-often-people-in-various-countries-shower/385470/?single_page=true

<comment><USER2> I find it interesting that the author does not point out that the data in the first part of the article directly contradicts the data at the end. Specifically the first study suggests men shower more often than women whereas the later study says the oposite.</comment>


Apple, labels talk music in the cloud - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-10438375-261.html

<comment><USER2> Ok. So this could be uncomfortable news for the guys at Spotify. Anyone else find them selves still buying music from iTunes?</comment>


Sorry, kids: A real movement needs more than hurt feelings - <AUTHOR> http://nypost.com/2015/11/13/sorry-kids-a-real-movement-needs-more-than-hurt-feelings/ <comment><USER3> It's amazing how the same media outlets will play both sides for maximum views. Sometimes (though not this time) from the same author.

Hype up a 'movement' or protest until it is able to hit critical mass. Have nothing but encouraging words to share. Then when it is mostly self-sustaining and has a large group of people who have invested too much to back down, start fighting against the movement. Fan the flames to create two groups on both extremes ("pro-movement" and "grow up already") shouting over each other, not accomplishing anything and reaching no agreements.

Neutrality doesn't sell as well as extremism. This has happened with every protest/movement in recent memory. They jump from one movement to the next because as the fire dies out the clicks stop coming in.

<comment><AUTHOR> its a fair point though not sure its purposefully manipulative as many magazines like The Atlantic for example try to give voice to various sides of an issue, even before the internet and click-bait existed... then you have "extremists" like Slate who can spin every single story to their far-left wing schedule no matter what, even when it makes absolutely no sense

<comment><USER3> I feel there is a difference between giving both (or all) sides a voice and setting up a fire only to fan the flames.

1) Release 3-5 articles all supportive and encouraging and downtalking any other sides. Fire them off daily or weekly at the start of a movement.

2) Spin around a month or two later and post little positive coverage and _now_ post the other side(s) arguments while downtalking the movement. A complete tailspin from the first step.

If 1 & 2 don't have that month period between and happen at the same time - <USER2> see it as giving a voice to both sides. If 1 and 2 have a large time gap between them, it's setting up a fire then fanning the flames.

In recent memory, outside of "fringe" or "everyone discards it as a right wing nutjobs newspaper" (Breitbart) there has never been negative/critical coverage of any school "protests". All MSM has nothing but positive things to say until the movement is dying out/people are forgetting about it at which point they become highly critical, piss off those in the movement, and fan the flames a while longer.

It's something I see time and time again. It's the _timing_ that is suspicious. Not necessarily the articles themselves.</comment></comment></comment>


Oh-My-God particle - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh-My-God_particle <comment><USER2> I worked on the child and grandchild of this experiment, HiRes and Telescope Array as an undergraduate and a bit as a postgraduate at the University of Utah. Currently I work with the Fermi Gamma-Ray space telescope as a "science janitor".

The reason it's called the Oh-My-God particle is because it kind of smashed through the GZK limit ( [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greisen%E2%80%93Zatsepin%E2%80%...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greisen%E2%80%93Zatsepin%E2%80%93Kuzmin_limit) )

There's a few particles near this energy hitting the earth every day, the flux is just very, very low. This is why the follow up experiments to HiRes and AGASA, the Auger and Telescope Array experiments, are very, very large.

Most research has started to gravitate towards the lower energy cosmic rays, near 10^17 eV.

I can talk more about this but I got to go for now.

Experiments involved in UHECR research:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telescope_Array_Project](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telescope_Array_Project)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Resolution_Fly%27s_Eye_Cos...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Resolution_Fly%27s_Eye_Cosmic_Ray_Detector)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Auger_Observatory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Auger_Observatory)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akeno_Giant_Air_Shower_Array](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akeno_Giant_Air_Shower_Array)

Fun facts about Dugway, home of Fly's Eye and HiRes:

Some jets at Dugway once bombed a prototype detector.

One of the HiRes detectors was just past some German Village buildings, which was a mock-up of a German village in the Utah desert used for weapons research in WWII.

<comment><USER3> > I can talk more about this but I got to go for now.

please do...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The fact that the earth has seen these bombarding us regularly for millions of years does rather imply that the whole "OMG the LHC will make a black hole" panic was unfounded

<comment><USER5> while I agree with the general sentiment that the idea that the LHC will create a blackhole is silly, surely there is a difference between _creating_ such a particle and simply being in the trajectory of a particle that has already been created.

<comment><USER6> The idea that it would create a black hole isn't silly, it could well do. The silly bit is the thought that it would be dangerous if it did, given particle collisions at higher energies than the LHC happen regularly in the atmosphere and there is nothing particularly special about the LHC ones, bar the fact they are in a massive detector.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article kinda lackluster in regards to information. Is there any more information on where this type of particle originated(s) from? It says from space, but supernova, black hole, stars, aliens?

<comment><USER8> Considering it's practically the speed of light, one needs only to figure out the direction the particle was travelling in and point a telescope in the opposite direction. You will be able to see whatever it was that created it within 3 microseconds of the particle's creation.

EDIT: calculation error

<comment><USER9> On the other hand, if it was created in an ephemeral event you have an absolute maximum of 300 nanoseconds to point your telescope at it :) (taking your number on faith)

<comment><USER8> Oops, I did it wrong. I skipped a zero.

They state that the particle differs from light by 1 cm every 220,000 years. Considering the age of the universe is about 14 billion years, that works out to 63636 cm. It takes light 2210 nanoseconds to cover that distance.

[https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=light+over+%2814+billi...](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=light+over+%2814+billion+%2F220000%29+cm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My favorite particle: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oops- Leon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oops-Leon)

</comment><comment><USER11> Okay, so what kind of cosmic phenomena causes a particle _with mass_ to accelerate to such a ridiculous speed?

That seems like the more interesting point not touched by the article.

</comment><comment><USER12> What happens when two Oh-My-God particles collide?

<comment><USER13> If you could record the collision it could give you a glimpse into the string theory. Wouldn't that be something!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What would happen to someone if it hit their skin?

<comment><USER15> "kinetic energy equal to that of ... a 5-ounce (142 g) baseball traveling at about 100 kilometers per hour (60 mph)"

Probably wouldn't notice a thing. You're mostly empty space (on a subatomic level), odds are it wouldn't hit anything, and would just release no more energy than getting hit by a baseball if it did. Sure it's a stunning amount of energy _for such a small object_ , but not much on a human scale. Compare getting hit with a bullet: penetration is damaging only because of what it tears up in the process, when the energy involved (demonstrated by getting shot while wearing a bulletproof vest) is little more than a solid kick. A "hole" of subatomic width doesn't do much damage.

<comment><USER16> The energy content is significant, but it would have to be both _transferred_ and _absorbed_.

As you note, odds of it interacting with some bit of you are relatively low. I disagree with your baseball comparison, as _the result of the collision would be a cascade of secondary particles_. Each of which would likely have only a small chance of interacting with _yet another_ bit of you before exiting your body.

The net result would be something like firing a cannonball (or bullet) at a series of bead curtains. Most of the time, the bullet would miss. Occasionally it might strike one or more beads. Those then would also mostly miss the other beads within the curtain, though some might strike and cause secondary effects. Most of the energy would simply transit the curtain system as a whole. Or maybe even at sheets of laced (punched-out) tissue paper. The target simply doesn't have the capability to absorb the energy of the particle.

A more accurate answer would require some subatomic particle modeling, past my pay grade.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> so what happens when this particle collides? Can you access the 60mph baseball energy and take out a bird? Just extremely unlikely.

</comment><comment><USER18> Cool name!

</comment><comment><USER19> These are emanations from vulcan warpships travelling through our solar system.

<comment><USER20> Don't be silly. It's probably Romulan ships with a faulty waveguide around the artificial singularity core. Vulcan warp signatures look entirely different, and mostly radiate into subspace.</comment></comment>


Introducing Yascade - <AUTHOR> https://sourceforge.net/projects/yascade/

<comment><AUTHOR> This little open source project helps anyone manage huge document projects in a pretty quick way. Warehouse your info inside spreadsheets you can quickly navigate and then later export into HTML formatted documents that are ISO- friendly. Perfect for safety systems, legal contracts, documentation... etc. There is a tutorial video uploading right now so you might want to wait for that before playing around with this.</comment>


What John Locke Can Teach You About Software Development - <AUTHOR> http://www.mahdiyusuf.com/post/4139484609/what-john-locke-taught-me-about-software-development

<comment><USER2> Anyone else expecting the 17th century philosopher?

<comment><AUTHOR> haha i think you missing the point. It's good software development practices. Not who I can extract an allegory from.

<comment><USER3> Somehow I think a case could be made that radical empiricism is a useful model for software development...i.e. one's _a priori_ ideas about customers, markets, and the utility of software are not as useful as customer feedback:

 _And if our dreamer pleases to try whether the glowing heat of a glass furnace be barely a wandering imagination in a drowsy man's fancy, by putting his hand into it, he may perhaps be wakened into a certainty greater than he could wish_

[http://enlightenment.supersaturated.com/johnlocke/BOOKIVChap...](http://enlightenment.supersaturated.com/johnlocke/BOOKIVChapterXI.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> John Locke is a Cargo Cult programmer. He parrots the code without understanding it.

In the context of the series, John ran on faith, Jack on science. John ended up dead, and used as a pawn, without ever really having understood anything.

<comment><USER5> Not to split hairs but by the shows conclusion Jack is dead and I'd argue no closer to understanding anything either.

<comment><USER4> True, although I think the growth of Jack's character was written as a transition to a man of faith, so I'm not sure where that leaves us.

<comment><USER6> LOST was a nice ride, but writers failed to make sense of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> 6\. Nobody can tell you what you can't do.</comment>