Practicing self-control consumes real energy - <AUTHOR> http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2008/03/practicing_selfcontrol_consume.php <comment><USER2> This seems fairly obvious to me; self control involves doing something extra. For instance, take the Stroop test (where a color word is shown in another color, e.g. "red" in blue ink). When asked to read the word, you don't have to do anything extra (assuming you are an experienced reader); you kind of automatically just "know" what the word is, it is your strongest identification with the written text. Identifying the color isn't any harder than reading the word, but you have to override your automatic propensity to say what's written.

Thinking of it in programming terms, you're not just doing "sayColor()" instead of "sayText()"; you _always_ do "sayText()", but you also have to do "blockSayText()" and "sayColor()" in parallel.

</comment><comment><USER3> Personally, as a writer I have great difficulty writing when I'm trying to concentrate. It's actually quite unbelievable how much diet soda I go through, yet I write best (quality & quantity) when I'm chowing down on granola bars and candy. I think I drank an entire like uber-big gulp of coke in an hour and got out 2000 words, yet in the same amount of time I'm usually lucky if I get 500 words when I'm drinking Coke Zero.

</comment><comment><USER4> The research was published in 2007. And it has been discussed here before.

</comment><comment><USER5> That explains why Obama is so skinny.

<comment><USER6> ...how does obama have anything to do with self control? On numerous occasions he has lost his temper to the press, and that is just public stuff.

<comment><USER5> I am surprised you would say that. From what I've seen (I've followed him and other candidates a lot during the debates) he showed extreme self control, more so than any other candidate.

I tend to agree with the New York Times:

 _In the way Mr. Obama has trained himself for competition, he can sometimes seem as much athlete as politician. Even before he entered public life, he began honing not only his political skills, but also his mental and emotional ones. He developed a self-discipline so complete, friends and aides say, that he has established dominion over not only what he does but also how he feels. He does not easily exult, despair or anger: to do so would be an indulgence, a distraction from his goals. Instead, they say, he separates himself from the moment and assesses._

What were some examples of those numerous occasions where he's lost his temper?

<comment><USER6> The first one to pop up on google was this: [http://www.stoptheaclu.com/archives/2008/09/21/obama- yelling...](http://www.stoptheaclu.com/archives/2008/09/21/obama-yelling-at- and-scaring-senior-citizens/) There are plenty of examples, as soon as people stop relying on the left wing media to feed them what they think everyone should hear.

<comment><USER5> It really is fascinating how people's likes and dislikes color their perception. We look at the same video and you see screaming while I see a regular townhall meeting-type Q&A. I am not being argumentative here, I just really fail to see the screaming - he looks to be speaking loudly both before and after that question.

One thing I will say is that it's unfair to allow senior citizens to ask questions, but then say that Obama is scaring them when he answers. I doubt the specific lady in question would want to be treated differently than others just based on her age. If she thinks herself fit to attend a political debate, we should respect her decision.

Also, I am not sure why you presumed that I am being fed by the left wing media. Like I said, I watched the actual candidates' debates... so I really just saw them however they chose to present themselves.

<comment><USER3> I agree, it looks like any regular debate. He's talking over her, but every politician does that. She asked him what he'd do on terrorism and illegal immigrants, he went to answer and then she starts arguing in the middle of his reply.

How political debates are handled in the UK where I grew up and found my interest in politics are: you stand up, ask the question you've got, they reply and, I've seen this numerous times, the questioner will stand back up and say "that's not what I asked..." I remember it with Tony Blair, he did it 3 times in a row to the _same_ guy and it was like WTF you're showing everyone on national TV that you fully ignore people when they ask a question you don't like. I believe the question was on why we entered the Iraq war after it had come out that there weren't WMD's and that (IIRC) MI5 had declared they highly doubted the existence of any WMD's in Iraq months before the war. Tony Blair basically kept saying they did it because Saddam Hussein had WMD's.

Obama in that video was asked a question, but the woman tried to stop him from answering, obviously she'd already made up her mind that _whatever_ he said wasn't the answer she wanted because she never even listened.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


As Gawker learned, media corporations are't above the law - <AUTHOR> http://www.nationalreview.com/article/439157/gawker-hulk-hogan-lawsuit-press-isnt-exempt-privacy-laws <comment><USER2> Reminder for the 1000th time: this verdict was the product of venue shopping until they landed in front of an insane judge and a half dozen floridians. Earlier courts ruled in Gawkers favor and the eventual appeal will rule in Gawkers favor. The law is 100% on their side regardless of the frivolity of the post. It just turns out that given enough time and money you can buy the justice you want.

<comment><USER3> thank you.

Looks like 1000 is not enough though. Next 'reminder' maybe place between

; 'blink' tag might not hurt either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just as it should be. In the last few years or so, it seems there's been a steady push by journalists and media corporations to see how much they can get away with, ethics or newsworthiness be damned. And in a lot of cases, they got away with this purely because the people who were affected weren't rich enough to fight against the company's army of lawyers.

You can see this mindset quite fine in the answer to a question A.J. Daulerio (Gawker editor) was asked in court:

Interviewer: Can you imagine a situation where a celebrity sex tape would not be newsworthy?

Daulerio: If they were a child

Interviewer: Under what age?

Daulerio: Four

That's not edited. He actually said that was where Gawker would draw in regards to what the minimum age for a sex tape featured on their site was. And that sort of thing is a trend in modern tabloid journalism. The idea that anything goes, privacy and ethics be damned as long as it gets clicka/the person affected is someone we don't like. In some cases, even if that means encouraging violence towards political opponents and riots.

This lawsuit will hopefully teach the media that freedom of the press doesn't mean 'anything goes, laws be damned'. Maybe it'll also encourage journalists and editors to think about the consequences of their actions rather than just how many page views they'll get...

<comment><USER5> I mean, he's clearly joking if you read the transcript. He's an idiot for having even made that joke, but still.

I think that whole conversation is a perfect example of why you have to be extremely careful when making tasteless jokes, especially in situations we typically think of as fairly serious (e.g. court).

The jury probably didn't think highly of Gawker after that exchange, either.

<comment><USER6> He was under oath. Don't make jokes while under oath is a pretty good guide to life.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I agree. He was being an idiot.

I was just trying to point out that he didn't actually support sex tapes for 5 year olds.

He's a dumbass for trying to make a joke under oath, but not a dumbass who would post a 5 year-old's celebrity sex tape.

<comment><USER6> I quite agree he isn't that big of a dumbass to post and underage sex tape, but he really needed to accord himself better in that setting under those circumstances.

Plus, its an important lesson for people. When dealing with a situation where your words will be interpreted by people you don't know with harsh penalties for lying or just sounding disreputable, you need to be precise and respectful with your words.

<comment><USER5> Absolutely. Agreed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Even if you believe that Gawker was guilty of something in posting the Hogan sex tapes, I have a very hard time understanding how anyone can view the annihilation of the company as justice.

The other side on this case certainly wasn't out for justice, that seems clear. They were out for blood and revenge. And they got it.

Gawker fucked up a lot. But our media landscape is worse off without it.

<comment><USER8> Gawker is not being destroyed because they broke the law. Many companies, including media companies, do that on the regular. Gawker is being destroyed because a billionaire didn't like them, and decided to devote enough time & money to destroy them.

Regardless of your opinion of Gawker, the precedent is that news publishers can successfully be destroyed if they make powerful enemies. Many news sites are already hesitant to report on powerful individuals, and now they are being proven that they were right to do so. For someone like me who believes that a free press is an important check on power, this is bad precedent to set.

<comment><USER9> actually, it seems like gawker is being destroyed because it made powerful enemies AND broke the law.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As Torontonian, I want to thank Gawker for breaking the story "Rob Ford smoking crack" story.

<comment><USER11> As a regular dude who was thinking way too much about a former college girlfriend. I want to thank Gawker for showing me a picture of her in Cabo with at least 30 dudes.

I don't want to get into a debate. She was just a product of life/business circumstances? I just remember a girl who who suddenly got depressed when other pretty girls were around, at work, or wherever. She was on a company vacation, but seeing her with so many seemingly desperate dudes, jerked me back into realty pretty quick. I never wanted a Amish girlfriend, but I didn't want a canieving, opportunist then, nor now. And yes--I guess it's a bit sexist? I had to include that last sentence. Why--just because.

She was a statistics/accounting major in college. She was always gauging her odds for seemingly everything. When I heard she got tired of San Francisco, and still wasen't married, I just had a hunch she would go to a place that she thought would up her her social desirability. I figured she thought Silicon Valley would be the place--a lot of ambitious white guys.

That's where she ended up. It was probally business related move, but I was so glad I saw her in that publication years ago. I believe it was called The Valley Wag in the day. It saved a lot of speculation, or what's the phrase-- maybe regret over what could have been?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> They aren't... But it also showed that it takes being a billionaire to enforce the law.

</comment><comment><USER13> Rightfully so. Gawker was one the most obnoxious "news organisation" out there. But what is more shocking to me is how other news org are still defending Gawker, under the excuse of "free speech". I mean, one would think that the last thing all these prominent orgs would want is to be associated with Gawker in anyway, but no, they actually defended that rag and its owners.

<comment><USER6> I would imagine they are a bit worried because they have been pretty immune from lawsuits because of cost and court ruling protecting newspapers from even spreading false statements. When people who can crush others with just words on a page lose their immunity, they get very, very nervous of all the stuff they have written in haste over the years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There is going to be 40 others that pop up in its place and you can bet that they'll be more prepared to withstand justice shopping efforts.

<comment><USER13> > There is going to be 40 others that pop up in its place and you can bet that > they'll be more prepared to withstand justice shopping efforts.

What does that mean "justice shopping" ? are you implying that Hulk Hogan lawsuit was frivolous or he somehow bought judges with Thiel's money ? can you be more specific ?

<comment><USER14> First off Hulk Hogan was washed up before this incident. 100million+ dollars was way over the top. Secondly, Hulk Hogan didn't lose any money from it. Where is the damage other than it gave him publicity.

People have had medical procedures go wrong and been unlawfully murdered by law enforcement and gotten far and away less money.

The reason I use the term justice shopping is because Peter Theil had been unsuccessful at attempts to get back a Gawker for outing him in previous law suits. TBQH he's a hypocrite on the issue of gay rights.

Peter should stop making his sexuality everyone else's problem. So what someone said you were gay and you are gay. Big f-n deal. I'm gay myself.

Hulk Hogan made a movie and is mad it got released. If you don't want your movie released, you don't make it in the first place. He is a celebrity and knows the risks. This isn't some non-public figure.

I don't like the implications here that if the media reports on something you don't like, jamming up the court system with law suit after law suit is a viable option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Anyone want to join me in pooling in some money to web scrape Gawker.com along with the comments for future archiving? Once it's gone it's gone. (and no Archive.org doesn't grab everything, especially if it's hiding behind "click to load more" links)

I'm thinking of doing the same with all of NPR's comments before they get deleted on Aug 23.

<comment><USER16> I'll be frank, I would rather give you money to just let it die. Gawker isn't what the world needs.

<comment><USER15> Gawker is evil and that's why it needs to be preserved as a valuable lesson in propaganda for future generations. So one day when kids ask "show me an example of far left liberal extremist propaganda" you can show them the Gawker Archives.

<comment><USER16> We have many extant examples of shitty gossip sites. the politics of said sites aren't really important in any way I can imagine. Beyond that, gawker isn't even far left. It's just populist. We have many extant examples of shitty populist sites as well.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to set better deadlines for side projects? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
I'm working on a lot of side projects but when estimating time and setting a deadline for side projects I often miss them despite being on time with regular work.
I noticed that my side project work often involves a lot more learning and using skills that I don't already have so it becomes difficult for me to plan ahead and be able to estimate how long creating something using a new skill will take me (for example creating something using a library that I need to learn). This isn't necessarily an issue except when I keep missing my own self imposed deadline a project that I only wanted to spend a month on blows up to a year as I keep going down a rabbit hole to learn new things.
How can I better set deadlines and goals in side projects? <comment><USER2> >> that I only wanted to spend a month on blows up to a year as I keep going down a rabbit hole to learn new things.

And the fact that you are learning new things, those in themselves are new side projects. So I don't really see you being bad at estimating but the fact that you didn't have all the skills/tech required to pull off the side project.

So for the upcoming and existing side projects, why not spend a day or two just coming up with all necessary skills/tech reuqired and re-estimate?

\- So you have not wasted time as you have still gone ahead and learnt new skills

\- As others have pointed out, unless there are tangible outcomes you are looking at (new job, revenue, leading to startup) etc, what you are doing it right. Just go with the flow, learn new skills as that or sharpening existing skills are great use cases for side projects!

Btw, keep up the great work and it's inspiring to see fellow engineers pursue side projects with dedication.

</comment><comment><USER3> A deadline is useful only if there are tangible incentives attached to it, and it's rare that you can self-impose these kinds of incentives in a way that isn't self-flagellating. My advice is to let go of timeboxing and let your sense of wonder, exploration, and discovery guide your progress.

</comment><comment><USER4> "...that I only wanted to spend a month on blows up to a year as I keep going down a rabbit hole to learn new things."

As long as it does not impact family time and such, how is this a problem? You're passionate and driven enough to keep working on side projects and learn new things all along, that's just awesome!!

</comment><comment><USER5> A good way to stick to deadlines is to tell people that you have something to show them on a specific date, then you feel obliged to meet that deadline (to avoid embarrassment). It also forces you to accept trade-offs in technologies and stops you falling down rabbit holes...</comment>


AI and Blockchain: An Introduction - <AUTHOR> http://mattturck.com/ai-blockchain/ <comment><USER2> I'm curious as to what incentive people would have to provide their data to a public network. If they don't, the premise of the article sort of falls apart.

I personally think that you'll end up disappointed if you're investing in decentralization. I see blockchain being applied at companies like Maersk, but it's not really decentralized because it's mainly operated by Maersk and the only people they let on the nodes are their partners.

ML is it's own thing, the thing about ML is that it's not really new. We've been doing manual data analytics since the birth of data, and all ML really does is digitize the analytic department. Right now it's too expensive, too hard to utilize and requires data sets that are too huge for it to work, but eventually, it'll automate much of your analytics department, because one data scientist will be able to do the work of x old school analysts, making it more efficient in terms of money.

I think the reason only AI and Blockchain were ever put together was to sell snake oil, because why on earth would you use a terrible database to run ML? Even today we don't run our analytics on live data, instead we construct separate data warehouses on database structures build for analytics.

Good luck with your investments though, I personally put my "risky" investments into a robotics company called Odico and tripled the value.

I think the truth about blockchain is that the fad is over. It's been 9 years. At one point I could buy coffee with bitcoin, today I can't even turn my remaining crypto into fiat.

<comment><USER3> > I'm curious as to what incentive people would have to provide their data to > a public network.

When people talk about combining AI and Blockchain that's very often the exact problem they think Blockchain can tackle: programmatic transfer of value, so as to systematically compensate the data providers, in ways and quantities that'd be inconvenient to deal with otherwise. I won't bother finding a buyer for my car's windshield data if all that brings me is 50 cents a month. But if data from all my various devices can get me 100 bucks a month, and the set up and maintenance for the system is automated and trivial, I'm very likely to take the free money.

The second aspect is that you don't need to provide your data to the whole network, simply to those who compensate you. Not everything needs to be on the blockchain.

Thirdly, efforts are made into developing techniques that allow users to provide data for training, while keeping the identifying aspects, or even the whole data, private, either with simple k-anonymization or techniques that distribute the AI training part (Enigma does this iirc).

Don't get stuck on the "blockchain as a database" part. What people are excited about is a whole field of cryptography and trustless decentralized networks.

<comment><USER2> I get that, I just think the assumption that people are willing to sell their privacy data for petty cash is flawed. It's not like traditional advertising haven't tried similar approaches, and failed, largely because petty cash is a terrible motivator for most people.

I guess you could argue that it's different with crypto because your data is safer, but facebook has a billion users, and the people who've been doing the whole #deletefacebook thing, just signed up for Instagram instead. People really don't care.

Would you sell your data for $5 a month? Maybe $15? I wouldn't, especially not if it took time to setup and maintain, and I have a gmail account.

<comment><USER3> If I didn't have to worry about security, yes. So a system that sold my data for me while keeping it private, I would use. Same deal with AI assistants or Facebook-like social networks, I would use them if there was a way to check that they don't leak data. I believe cryptography will open these advances to huge untapped demographics.

<comment><USER2> You can already sell your data though, and almost nobody bothers to do so. I don't think it's the privacy bit that's stopping people, at least not at large, I think it's time. $5 is a drop in the ocean to me, I'd just never bother giving you my data for that little, even if my data were safe.

The reason I willingly give my data to google by using gmail is that they give me an easy to use cloud mail with decent spamfilters. Or in other words, they are saving me time.

Maybe you could offer me something other than money? Like financial statistics on how I use my money? Sure, but those apps are already here, and people are willingly giving away their data without privacy in those.

So you see, it's not that I don't think you can't convince people to give up their data, I absolutely do think that you can, I just don't think petty cash and privacy are good motivators.

<comment><USER3> Maybe you have a bias because of your favorable financial situation (which is normal in here). For most people in the world, a reliable $10/month to cover their Netflix subscription or buy them a meal would be something they'd be very happy about.

Also I think the reason you willingly give data to Google for Gmail is that you don't have a choice. It's take-it-all, the spam filters and the data mining, or leave it and use ProtonMail, no in-between.

<comment><USER4> _For most people in the world, a reliable $10 /month to cover their Netflix subscription or buy them a meal would be something they'd be very happy about._

Your personal data has a cash value _only_ because it can be used to influence future purchasing decisions. It's a simple equation, $x worth of personal data has a y% chance of generating sales worth >$x. It therefore stands to reason that the market value of the personal data of a person who doesn't have as much purchasing power will be less, and may not even cover the cost of stealing and then processing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why are we sticking these two concepts together, are they not two fundamentally different things?

What is the synergy by talking about them together other than they are the flavor of the month buzz words?

Good God people, the second or third slide in the article has "AI(ML,data science, big data)"

All of which are literally just applied statistics.

<comment><USER6> Big data isn't just applied statistics, big data is just data.

<comment><USER4> ... and often not especially big, just too big for Excel

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a very interesting insight into how AI and blockchain are seen by VCs. I agree with IoT and AI being the next big things, but I fail to see how the blockchain fits into the picture.

The author linked the "blockchain is the worst possible database" idea, but this is a consequence of the design requirements, so making a "better performing" blockchain database won't solve the problem.

The ideas about a decentralized market for AI training data are interesting as well, but we have a hard time securing our local databases. If followed through, this will end up with malicious actors and buying up our personal data from these markets in bulk, and to blackmail us.

Maybe the tech will be developed in the next decades, allowing a remote AI to be trained on my data without exposing it to third parties, but I'm sceptical about the technical feasibility, and this will require significant up-front resources to get there.

<comment><USER8> There is some interesting work done with federated learning [https://ai.googleblog.com/2017/04/federated-learning- collabo...](https://ai.googleblog.com/2017/04/federated-learning- collaborative.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ok, so 99.5% of the time anything about Blockchain and AI is going to be nonsense. (Aside - this is an interesting application of Bayes law!)

One thing that wasn't, and was actual machine learning and was actual blockchain was the Algorithmia competition[1]. It's pretty interesting how it works, and wasn't an entirely stupid idea (faint praise I know, but most ideas in both AI and blockchain are).

[1] [https://blog.algorithmia.com/trustless-machine-learning- cont...](https://blog.algorithmia.com/trustless-machine-learning-contracts- danku/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Slightly off-topic, but I was rather hoping for something on the distributed training of neural networks via the blockchain: make the "work" in "proof-of- work" involve backpropagation. Like SETI@home [1] but for training neural networks.

Here's a StackExchange question about this:

[https://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/86364/distributing- ne...](https://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/86364/distributing-neural- network-training-world-wide-using-blockchain)

Which links to this startup:

[https://www.deepbrainchain.org/](https://www.deepbrainchain.org/)

A quick skim of their white paper [2] leaves me skeptical.

[1] [https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/](https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/)

[2] [https://dlc0uvc36o5o6.cloudfront.net/assets/whitepapers/Deep...](https://dlc0uvc36o5o6.cloudfront.net/assets/whitepapers/DeepBrainChainWhitepaper_en.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER11> I've been contemplating this idea for a few years now. If you have fully digital currencies that are completely unregulated and can be used programmatically, it seems obvious that the missing puzzle piece to a valuable product is a standardized API economy that can transact via this currency. But I've been talking about this up and down the Blockchain space but I'm still waiting for a proper solution to this.

There is nothing I can put in front of my Rest API that it starts earning me money, no marketplace to advertise that my API accepts WhateverCoin for the calls..

Once that is done, you wouldn't even need AI mostly, it would be sufficient to even just speed up the normal API economy.

<comment><USER12> [https://ost.com/](https://ost.com/) could of some interest to you... As it will allow companies to create their own branded token and offer everything needed to manage it through a REST API, a wallet... They are currently on alpha phase III focusing on the wallet [https://medium.com/ostdotcom/announcing-ost-kit-alpha- phase-...](https://medium.com/ostdotcom/announcing-ost-kit-alpha-phase-iii- embedded-wallet-lite-challenge-4a67ea214971)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Personalized AI agents seem promising. They could data-mine user choices and make suggestions for new issues to vote on, along with predicted user vote. If the mining is done before submission to the database the user has a chance to review the implications of the vote before committing.

This could for example suggest research papers for scientists to read, and not suffer from tunnel vision.

</comment><comment><USER14> People are always sleeping on the originators of the AI + Blockchain movement: Synapse AI ([https://synapse.ai/](https://synapse.ai/)) -- they (along with many others like Goog, Seti, MS, etc) even spoke at the Decentralized AI Summit in Feb. ([https://decentralized-ai.com/](https://decentralized- ai.com/))

This team even launched their own wallet application like two days ago. They're killing it.

Check out the yellowpaper, it has some really good stuff in it: [https://synapse.ai/yellowpaper](https://synapse.ai/yellowpaper)

</comment><comment><USER15> ... blockchain as the coded constitution for a future AI world: [http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2016/10/computational-law- sym...](http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2016/10/computational-law-symbolic- discourse-and-the-ai-constitution/)

</comment><comment><USER16> is this numerai ? because basically they are pretty much using homomorphic encryption to create AI-compatible data and store it on blockchain.

<comment><USER17> Their data isn't on the blockchain, is it? I think their ERC20 token (NMR) is logically orthogonal to their homomorphically-encrypted data; they use NMR to incentivize you to do what they want with those datasets, but there's no more fundamental relation between the two.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Every time I think I've seen peak HN someone takes it to the next level</comment>


Islam Web Portal - The No Excuse List for Islam - <AUTHOR> http://www.islamwebportal.com

<comment><USER2> It's sad to see how much support religions still get :\</comment>


Pie – Proving, Interpolating and Eliminating on the Basis of First-Order Logic - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.11137 <comment><USER2> I suspect this is a botthat posts scraped papers from arxiv based on submission history, and no original comments, though happy to be proven wrong and retract if the submitter responds.

</comment><comment><USER3> Read the paper. Meh, cool, I guess? I appreciate the work that must have gone into it. However, doesn't really add anything to the state of the art, nor improve the usability of any of the popular theorem provers like Isabelle, Coq, lean, acl2, etc.</comment>


MacRumors live feed hacked during keynote - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumorslive.com/

<comment><USER2> Thread in 4Chan where it was "hacked": <http://www.webcitation.org/5dd9iJFVY>

Pretty interesting to watch it unfold. The first SQL the guy posts is a SQL injection waiting to happen:

$query = "select * from sms_users where authentication='".$_GET["auth"]."'";

Edit: Changed link to use webcitation because 4chan link went down. Original link was at: <http://zip.4chan.org/g/res/3118906.html>

<comment><USER3> The 4chan page is gone, FYI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks like they had an admin update panel that was "secured" through obfuscation:

[http://img.skitch.com/20090106-p2dughwb2yujxdutfh55ixxajn.pn...](http://img.skitch.com/20090106-p2dughwb2yujxdutfh55ixxajn.png)

<comment><USER2> After seeing that the feed had been hijacked I poked around to see how easy it was.

My ___first_ __guess was<http://macrumorslive.com/admin> which contained the full source code and password hashes to everything on the site.

They must have had a strange configuration because their .php files were showing as plain text files. This revealed their master DB username/password along with many other ways to exploit the site.

There's a reason security through obscurity doesn't work. Unfortunately MacRumors had to find out on what was probably their biggest day of the year.

<comment><USER5> _There's a reason security through obscurity doesn't work_

The even worse part is, it isn't even _obscure_! The path is _/admin/_ not _/walrus/_ or something. And why would they have plain-text php files at that URL? It's like shooting yourself in the foot and lighting yourself on fire in a bear pit at the same time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The MacRumorsLive feed was compromised as described. The cause of the security breach is best described as "user error" due to admin files being inadvertantly mirrored across multipe server instances with incorrect permissions. This allowed php code to be displayed rather than executed, which was clearly a "bad thing". Our actual admin panel is password protected, of course.

</comment><comment><USER7> They took it offline, but here's a screenshot. <http://i39.tinypic.com/apdatw.png>

May I guess unprotected admin panel, like Tumblr and Twitter?

</comment><comment><USER8> Screenshot here: [http://richardlemon.com/2009/01/macrumorslivecom-hacked- duri...](http://richardlemon.com/2009/01/macrumorslivecom-hacked-during-live- coverage-of-macworld-keynote-speech/)

</comment><comment><USER9> [http://www.flickr.com/photos/35309500@N00/3173797487/sizes/o...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/35309500@N00/3173797487/sizes/o/)

another screen shot.

</comment><comment><USER10> Are they using twitter? ;)

</comment><comment><USER11> Linking to a hacked site is not so nice, to be honest. What if the hackers put up some malware on the site?

<comment><AUTHOR> The static portion of the site wasn't hacked, just the live feed. In either event it doesn't matter since the DNS is no longer resolving.

According to #macrumorschat, some 4chan kids figured out that going to macrumorslive.com/admin showed the source code, and that's how they figured out how to inject their own text.

It really sucks for the MacRumors guys since this is probably their biggest ad revenue day of the year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> MacRumors is down for me. Here's another liveblog: <http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2009/01/liveblog-macwor.html>

edit: I see, MacRumors was hacked. n/m then.

</comment><comment><USER13> PSA: /g/ is the worst board on 4chan. Neither funny nor interesting, and with no entertaining trolls. It is also more obsessed with Apple than even MacRumors itself.

</comment><comment><USER14> The whole source code was visible by appending "/admin/" to the url. You could then read through the PHP files and gain access to the backend.

</comment><comment><USER15> Commenter on TechCrunch says it was due to MacRumors leaving the control panel for the live feed open (not password protected).

<comment><USER16> Well the control panel was and but the source code wasn't and the .htpasswd wasn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> _NSFW_

<comment><USER18> If your boss walks in and fires you because of that, then you probably didn't want to work there anyway.

<comment><USER15> Towards the end of it I think the hijackers were posting fairly disgusting images (in the vein of 4chan). Could've been what the NSFW tag was.

<comment><USER18> Ah, gotcha. From the screenshot, I didn't realize they were able to inject images as well as text.

<comment><USER15> I didn't either- luckily!! Just read about it on TechCrunch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> On a tangent: Gdgt's liveblog (their first this year but it's run by the folks that sorta started the liveblog trend) was the worst in that it kept dying. Meanwhile Engadget had the best coverage and Gizmodo the fastest. VentureBeat had the most innovative by integrating FriendFeed.

<comment><USER20> They were using the Mosso cloud too and the problems seemed to happen at the Mosso end which is rather disappointing.

<comment><USER19> should have gotten a sponsorship from mediatemple</comment></comment></comment>


Claude Shannon demonstrates Theseus, a magnetic maze-solving mouse [video] - <AUTHOR> http://techchannel.att.com/play-video.cfm/2010/3/16/In-Their-Own-Words-Claude-Shannon-Demonstrates-Machine-Learning <comment><USER2> He's a legend. For further reading on Claude Shannon check out the following books.

Fortune's Formula by William Poundstone ([http://goo.gl/VrBMUW](http://goo.gl/VrBMUW))

The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood by James Gleick ([http://goo.gl/Q5tzCW](http://goo.gl/Q5tzCW))

<comment><USER3> I also heartily recommend The Information. Such a great book, such a terrible title.

<comment><USER4> Also some wonderful color on Shannon's early life, career at Bell Labs and in academia in The Idea Factory (a fantastic read for any Hacker News reader).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> very cool.

check this out for a modern example: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExW_rxKdNJE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExW_rxKdNJE)

For those interested -- people are still interested in building maze solving robots, still called "micromouse". Here is one amazin micromouse that can traverse a maze and remember the solution very, very quickly. These days, its as much a mechanical problem (i.e. building a mouse that is robust, and has accurate sensors) as it is algorithmic.

<comment><USER6> Do you know the rules of the micromouse races? In all the videos I see, the mouse appears to go directly from start to finish without any maze finding going on.

My best guess is that they get earlier runs to "learn" the maze, then go for a speed run, is that right?

<comment><USER7> Yes, there is a learning phase and a timed run.

<comment><USER6> I am guessing the learning phase plays into the score somehow, otherwise they may as well be pre-programmed, right? It seems unlikely there are mice that would be unable to figure out the mazes at this point.

<comment><USER8> It looks like there's something of an art to how they handle corners and diagonals. At sub 10 second run times I think the agility is really the hard part of the programming, not the actual maze solving algorithm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I wish he were alive and working today. The fact that Alzheimer's prevented him from seeing the increasingly amazing results of his life's work is one of history's small but powerful tragedies.

</comment><comment><USER9> Fantastic video. Even just the sound of Theseus's operation is fun to hear.

 _" This is a bank of relays: telephone relays."_

On a tangential note: just the other day I was having a conversation with a friend who felt that "phone" was an inaccurate and perhaps inappropriately diminutive term for the pocket computers that so many people carry now. I argued contrarily from a language-evolution standpoint, but if I were to find myself in a similar discussion again I think I might instead point toward what a tremendous role telephone systems and the people like Shannon who built them played in the development of what we now call computers. Smartphones are descendants of telephones but they're equally descendants of telephone _systems_.

</comment><comment><USER10> For people without flashplayer:

      rtmpdump -r 'rtmp://cp262207.edgefcs.net/ondemand/techchannel/10385/videos/OW10002.Claude_Shannon-FL8_550x310_700K' -o Claude_Shannon_Demonstrates_Machine_Learning.flv

<comment><USER11> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPKkXibQXGA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPKkXibQXGA) I made sure it plays without Flash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I remember reading about this and his work at Bell in The Idea Factory [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11797471-the-idea- factory](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11797471-the-idea-factory) It's awesome and strange in the same time.

He was basically fooling around "instead of work", creating such amazing things, while all the more people fooling around "instead of work" I see these days are at max creating high scores for Candy Crush...

Lot to learn. :)

<comment><USER13> The Idea Factory is a great book, it totally shatters the myths so often propagated today.

It demonstrates without doubt that innovation can happen at a very large scale in very large, monopolistic, noncompetitive organizations. In fact, there's reason to believe that innovation might require a very large organization, because small companies don't have the funds needed to do research, and are likely to be unable to capture the market even if their research does bear fruit.

<comment><USER14> > innovation might require a very large organization,

Like, you know, nations?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "We must beware of invalid 'implications' in the discussion of nervous systems, brains and machinery. Are there men who would deny the meaning of ethics, of aesthetics, of religion, on the strength of a mechanical tortoise? Absurdly enough, there are." \- Stafford Beer, 'Cybernetics and Management' 1959.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm the only one that reading Theseus thought about this: [http://continuum.wikia.com/wiki/Julian_Randol](http://continuum.wikia.com/wiki/Julian_Randol) ?

<comment><USER17> It crossed my mind yes, but the robotic mouse and the TV character were named after the Greek myth for different reasons:

1) Theseus escaped from the Minotaur's Labyrinth, hence a maze-running robot.

2) First paragraph of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theseus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theseus) says:

"""Theseus was a founder-hero, like Perseus, Cadmus, or Heracles, all of whom battled and overcame foes that were identified with an archaic religious and social order.[2] As Heracles was the Dorian hero, Theseus was a founding hero, considered by Athenians as their own great reformer (...)"""

Which meshes nicely with the _Continuum_ character. Possibly for even more reasons, but I'm not super familiar with the Greek Theseus myth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is fantastic. Why hasn't this been posted before?

</comment><comment><USER19> Must have been a tough choice between Theseus and Algernon.

<comment><USER18> This was 8–9 years before Flowers for Algernon was published.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Old datacenter & cabling porn, too :)</comment>


Venture Capital Returns Dip Below Zero - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/02/venture-capital-returns-dip-below-zero/

<comment><USER2> Though an interesting data point in terms of specific numbers, I also am not very surprised that VCs are losing money at the moment. What I did find somewhat refreshing was the fairly limited discussion of how this is an indicator that venture capital is dead and Silicon Valley innovation has come to a grinding fault. I think the days of needing millions of dollars to build a web app might be over. I think its possible to start a company with less capital now. But... there are still plenty of capital-intensive and innovative companies for VCs to invest in for the big payoff.

</comment><comment><USER3> I noticed from the last 'downturn' (so to speak) that the VC backed companies that failed did so in a way that opened a new market. A few years later companies moved into that same space and was able to succeed because the companies that failed opened people up to the idea but were just too far ahead of the public's willingness to adopt.

</comment><comment><USER4> just when my new startup is starting to look for capital :-)

</comment><comment><USER5> " _Short-term returns_ are so low because of there were fewer ways to exit the investments. With the public markets in turmoil, venture investors have simply been unable to take their portfolio companies public, and acquisitions last year were down 28 percent from 2007.

Poor returns have led some investors to _question whether venture capital is still a profitable model_."

Emphasis mine. Looks like instead of getting acquired, VC-funded companies will have to just do it the old fashioned way and make some profit. The good news is that cashflow and profits are awesome, and owning a portfolio of companies generating positive returns for investors and growing is not a bad thing. Positive profits combined with growth typically sells well, though it does mess with the time horizon.

I reckon it'll mean less investors looking into IPO/acquisition for a huge score on a small percent of their companies, and more investors looking for solid, rapidly profitable and clearly useful companies.</comment>


SenseNews (from hakia): Latest innovation in stock analysis - <AUTHOR> http://abhishekmehta.com/sensenews-latest-innovation-in-stock-analysis/

<comment><USER2> _"SenseNews has invented a new curve, what they call 'News Effect' curve. They have devised a mechanism to relate the breaking news and social media blurbs to the stock price impact... It is a new indicator for stock and bonds. It computes value and position of a stock based on, the breaking news and social media blurbs."_

This might be the first commercial service based on such an analysis, but it's hardly new. See, for instance:

Financial Analysis Using News Data:

<http://www2.cs.sunysb.edu/~wbzhang/papers/RPE_final.pdf>

Trading strategies to exploit news sentiment:

<http://ftp.cs.sunysb.edu/~wbzhang/papers/stock.pdf>

Text Mining Systems for Predicting Market Response to News:

<http://www.iadis.net/dl/final_uploads/200708C025.pdf>

Newscats: A news categorization and trading system

<http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=4053143>

Trading Strategies To Exploit Blog and News Sentiment

[http://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM10/paper/downlo...](http://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM10/paper/download/1529/1904)

SOPS: Stock Prediction Using Web Sentiment

[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.114...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.114.3669&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

News and Trading Rules

[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.72....](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.72.4530&rep=rep1&type=ps)

Modelling the Stock Market using Twitter

<http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/miles/msc-projects/wolfram.pdf>

etc, etc, etc.. the research papers in this field just go on and on and on.

Everything from mainstream news, to blogs, to stock message boards, and even stock-themed spam has been analyzed and used to devise trading rules and predict market conditions.

</comment><comment><USER3> cewl stuff...</comment>


US Navy's Railgun Now Undergoing Tests in New Mexico - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/28669/navys-railgun-now-undergoing-tests-in-new-mexico-could-deploy-on-ship-in-northwest <comment><USER3> I find the physics of rail guns pretty fascinating. For something nominally invented in world war 1 (1918) which is now "only a few years" away from possible deployment. We are talking literally a 100 years later. We went from powered flight to flying in orbit in less time, think about that.

Is it a compelling weapons concept? Of course it is, you don't need explosives to shoot things that is pretty huge. Are wars bad? Of course they are.

That said, the concept has been around for a hundred years, so people _are_ going to work on making a practical weapon out of it. Which means that at some point its going to be a component of a military action. And not having one of your own, will change the calculus of what you can and cannot do.

<comment><USER4> The concept is the same for any projectile weapon: I'm going to convert stored energy into kinetic energy.

Bow and arrow? Stored energy in the bow turned into kinetic energy in the arrow. Handgun/cannon/musket? Stored chemical energy in some compound, quickly converted into kinetic energy in the bullet via exploding.

A rail gun isn't much different- it's just a different means to store the energy (in electrical storage) and a different means to apply the energy to the projectile (magnets). The real problem is that these two changes require a lot of overhead in terms of gear to make it work. It's only worthwhile to do it if you intend to really, _really_ add a lot of kinetic energy to something.

It's the same reason the electric car has taken 100 years to finally be worthwhile- chemical energy is much more dense and easy to convert into kinetic energy. Battery tech is only now catching up to the point that it's worth doing.

<comment><USER5> You put it well. The problem of of putting energy into projectiles caused a move from kenetic to chemical weapons (missiles).

But delivering chemicals to a target is expensive and at some point scaling it up becomes politically dangerous (you cannot just lauch even a conventional icbm without all sorts of risks).

Scaling up kenetic weapons ended up with huge battleship guns that did almost as much damage to the ship itself as the target (OK, a bit of an overstatement but I doubt any of those sailors left the navy with hearing intact). They were slow to fire, extremely heavy, and required a lot of dangerous chemicals to be stored. One mistake and the ship would blow up.

This allows deep penetrating weapons containing huge amounts of energy to pierce bunkers from way over the horizon.

This is the kind of weapon the Navy will want if the Korean peninsula ever heats up to a boil.

Edit: I suspect I am being downvoted because I am discussing weapon systems. There is a difference between advocating for weapons/war and discussing them. It is better weapons are discussed in the open, than developed in secret where the public cannot weigh in. Truly horrifying things are born in the dark.

<comment><USER6> > ...huge battleship guns ... were slow to fire ...

I was curious about how fast battleships could actually fire, so I googled around and found a couple stats.

On an Iowa class battleship:

\- Armed with nine 16"/50 caliber Mark 7 guns [1]

\- Each 16" gun is quoted as having a firing rate of 2 rounds per minute [2]

\- Each shell weighed between 1900lbs / 865kg and 2700lbs / 1225kg pounds [3]

So math says 2 rounds/minute * 9 guns is 18 shells/minute. That is 34_200 lbs (18 * 1900) and 48_200 lbs (18 * 2700) of ordinance per minute. I would not want to be on the receiving end of that!

EDIT: fixed some numbers I goofed after @CapricornNoble was kind enough to point them out. Thanks!

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iowa- class_battleship#Main_bat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iowa- class_battleship#Main_battery)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16%22/50_caliber_Mark_7_gun#Se...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16%22/50_caliber_Mark_7_gun#Service_history)

[3] [https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/wikispeedia/wpcd/wp/i/Iowa_c...](https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/wikispeedia/wpcd/wp/i/Iowa_class_battleship.htm)

<comment><USER5> Interesting but I don't think that's sustained fire.

You see crazy him rpm for firearms. The rate of fire is restricted by the magazine size (ship guns do have magazines) and how fast the gun can cool.

The US Army changed the barrel of the M4 Carbine (automatic rifle) after some troops during a sustained defense of some hill had barrels failing after glowing white hot. Machine guns often have barrels that can be replaced during prolonged engagements.

A hot naval gun could detonate the charge if it overheats. It has happened although I don't remember how long ago.

<comment><USER7> The Maxim gun (1880s - WWI-era) and M1917 Browning machine gun machine guns were water-cooled.

Barrel heating is indeed a problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> 1) " _The system charges for two minutes..._ " One shot per two minutes is pretty bad; the current 5" gun shoots 16-20 rounds per minute.

2) "...at speeds up to Mach 6." One of the issues with old school, large caliber naval guns was that the blast from the guns would damage or destroy equipment near the muzzle. (I was just reading _Pursuit_ by Ludovic Kennedy, about the British pursuit of the Bismark, and (IIRC) one ship (the Prince of Wales?) had its bridge windows blown out when firing the B turret "over its shoulder".) Is the shockwave from a railgun going to be similarly dangerous?

<comment><USER9> No because "chemical" guns accelerate their loads by putting enormously high pressure gases behind them. Obviously, then, once the load is off the gases spew out the end (and make a really, really loud bang noise). Railguns, IIRC, use a chemical charge to get the first couple of mach but then the magnets to pull the load to full speed so it's not followed out the barrel by a mountain of hot gas.

The flames you see coming out the end are chemical charge and/or bits of the sled melting and it travels down the barrel. (people who know better, please feel free to correct me)

<comment><USER10> Thanks, that answers a question I had about the flames/discharge after the round exits. I expected to see nothing other than the round.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Does anyone know why there is a flash of light and a puff of smoke when the gun fires? Since it's electromagnetic, you'd think you wouldn't see anything.

<comment><USER12> A combination of three things: 1) The flash is air in contact with the super- hot rail ionizing instantaneously from the heat, and becoming plasma. 2) Friction (From the projectile against both the rail itself, and air) producing vast amounts of heat, which then a) causes water vapor in the air to flash to steam b) produces smoke from burning metal

I am not sure how much of the smoke is from 2)b), because I'm assuming the surface materials are designed to minimize friction and therefore surface burning.

[1] [https://www.quora.com/When-a-railgun-is-fired-where-does- the...](https://www.quora.com/When-a-railgun-is-fired-where-does-the-muzzle- flame-fire-explosion-come-from?share=1)

<comment> semi-extrinsic Nitpick on 2 a): you can't turn water vapor into steam, water vapor _is steam_.

<comment><USER9> No, it's water vapour. Steam is a gas.

<comment> semi-extrinsic Water vapour is steam, i.e. it is the gaseous phase of water mixed with other gases (N2, O2, etc). Just like liquid water is still water if you mix it with alcohol. There is no possibility for a phase transition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Get the projectile up to mach 33 and it can shoot satellites out of orbit from the ground.

<comment><USER14> It's going to be interesting to see non-state actors get their hands on a railgun. Possibly handed by a state actor, of course.

<comment><USER15> Same applies to nukes, and now I'm scared

<comment><USER16> Yeah there's been several scifi books written where the ease of access to things like diy-bio and manufacturing being miniaturized pose a huge threat by letting more and more people have access to the ability to make a new plague or bombs. Rainbow's End by Vernor Vinge is one I'm fond of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Some forgotten limitations of railguns: There is a maximum speed for projectiles in naval warfare. Earth is round. So anything moving too fast (~8000m/s) simply cannot hit distant targets. If fired horizontally, the shell will climb up as the earth curves away. This causes all sorts of difficulties if trying to attack another ship. At best, your shells will hit horizontally, far _above_ the waterline. You would need a shell that could either fly itself downwards, bleeding speed, limiting penetration, and defeating the point of using a railgun.

<comment><USER18> Article references a goal of achieving a 100 mile range? How do they plan on doing that then?

<comment><USER19> Meanwhile, the Army is aiming for a 1000 mile range [1]

[1][https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.military.com/defensetech/20...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.military.com/defensetech/2018/09/14/army- eyeing-strategic-cannon-tech-1000-mile-range.html/amp)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It looks right. It looks like it could well be the ancestor of the MAC cannons from Halo.

EDIT: I said this to my coworkers a couple of weeks ago: I'm calling it now. Either 1) Naval Railguns also wind up being killer AA weapons and there aren't any game changers in submarine warfare or 2) Railguns are going to be the equivalent of WWII naval cannon -- They won't be nearly as important as something else.

<comment><USER21> "2) Railguns are going to be the equivalent of WWII naval cannon -- They won't be nearly as important as something else."

Railguns would completely surpass missiles for StS warfare, which can be intercepted by other missiles, whereas a railgun shot cannot at this time.

<comment><USER22> Except maybe not these hypersonic missiles, which were discussed here just the other day?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20227021](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20227021)

<comment><USER23> Sure, but missiles have to propel themselves, are very large compared to railgun projectiles, and are easier to break apart by putting a heavy wall of lead in the air.

Railgun projectiles have none of these disadvantages. They don't need propellant (or a warhead; the energy delivered upon impact is more than sufficient to break things without needing to explode), they're a solid projectile (and as such can't be as easily destroyed or knocked off course), and they're smaller than a missile is making them much more difficult to track.

To successfully defeat an incoming railgun projectile, it would both required sufficient detection technology coupled to a laser that would need to fully ablate it; where missiles require detection of a significantly larger object and can be defeated by shooting at them/more active protection measures.

<comment><USER24> Could you hit a railgun with a railgun? Why wouldn't countries build massive anti-ship railguns to prevent any such ship from getting even close to their naval facilities?

<comment><USER25> > Could you hit a railgun with a railgun?

"Smaller than a missile". You could, but it's harder.

<comment><USER26> Indeed, we don't typically resort to shooting bullets at bullets to defend incoming gunfire.

<comment><USER27> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophy_(countermeasure)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophy_\(countermeasure\))

(Granted, it's more anti-missile than anti-bullet)

<comment><USER28> Missiles are bigger (they carry their own engine and fuel), are in the sky longer due to their longer range, and shooting missiles from the sky has never been implemented with a high success rate in active combat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I've never quite understood why we need to change technologies so completely to get the projectile moving faster. As in, why couldn't we do the same thing by just making a bigger explosion in the barrel? I assume there's some point of diminishing returns or inefficiency that makes it impractical, but I haven't been able to find a source that gives the math to explain it.

<comment><USER30> To make a bigger explosion you need a bigger barrel and more powder charges.

Eventually you hit a limit where you simply can't create enough pressure to propel the projectile faster and not turn the barrel into a pipe bomb.

For the most part many guns have already hit their practical limit in this regard.

There is a good reason why battleships fell out of favor other than the US being the only blue water navy after WW2.

Those big guns are a bitch they are slow to reload and you can't be anywhere near the muzzle including good couple 100 yards of the bow of the ship when those fire.

Also powder takes up space and weight, takes time to reload and it can explode when ignited.

Having a gun with parts that don't explode intrinsically when set on fire is a pretty big advantage for any combat vehicle or vessel, not needing to carry propellant for your rounds is also a huge plus because you can carry more rounds or other munitions and supplies.

<comment><USER31> It isn't only that, with a powder charge you are pushing the projectile with an explosion. That explosion will also cause a disturbance on a ship, until you get to a pretty enormous size, you have to calculate that into your trajectories. With a railgun, you have a series of magnets pulling a projectile forward incrementally faster. It's a lot less energy wasted into the environment, meaning a lot less energy put back into the ship. These larger guns could be put on smaller ships and calculated with greater accuracy with greater ease due to less wasted energy put back into the ship and gun, I'm guessing.

<comment><USER32> What you are describing is a coilgun, a railgun uses a slightly different principle.

<comment><USER31> Oh. Ok, I'll have to look into that. New project to look into for the summer =)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Sadly, news these days involves a lot of "we've invented <X>, to kill people that disagree with us". Often the word "disagree" is replaced with "undermine" or "threaten". It's all the same human-life-ending bullshit. I don't feel at home in this world any more. When I was 18, I enlisted in the armed services and "did my part" as people often say. What a fucking mistake, I'm humiliated and embarrassed every single day to have played "my part" in any of this. The modern-day me wishes I could go back to the 18-year-old me and turn my weapon on my masters when they were all gathered to cheer us on. Unfortunately, I'm sure dozens would have stepped in to take their place as quickly as I ended them.

</comment><comment><USER34> You could rule a punkin chunkin contest with that if you could find a way not to pie :)

</comment><comment><USER35> Does the logo the navy use for railguns show it shooting intercontinental?

<comment><USER36> It's just a logo, I think the Railgun only can get to 100 miles or so (at the moment).

<comment><USER37> Someone a little better with aerodynamic drag computations could do a quick back-of-the-napkin to figure out the maximum range of something fired at sea- level going Mach 3,4,5,6,etc. The biggest issue I see is just vaporizing the projectile on launch, so there would be an upper bound on muzzle velocity based on projectile material properties.

<comment><AUTHOR> But the US Military uses depleted uranium (the hardest material) for tank rounds, so they could make pretty hardy railgun projectiles.

<comment><USER38> Not the hardest. Bit less than Tungsten so pretty hard but far from hardest. It is used because it is really really dense and hard enough. Perfect for piercing armor.

<comment><AUTHOR> So perfect for a railgun projectile? :)

What is the hardest man-made substance?

<comment><USER9> Artificial diamond? But it doesn't matter - you don't actually want something hard because you don't _actually_ want it to go all the way through and out the other side. You want it to dump all that lovely kinetic energy into whatever it's hit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, DU has an incendiary property along with a "self sharpening" property. It doesn't mushroom as much when used as a sabot round as tungsten. My platoon sergeant in the US Army was a former tanker and we learned all about it (I flew the Shadow 200 TUAV).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Why have coilguns not gotten the same amount of attention as railguns?

<comment><USER40> I'd guess the main reason is that it's an inherently more complicated design; if you don't sync the electromagnets perfectly you spend energy decelerating the round. it does have the advantage that the projectile doesn't need physical contact with an electified rail, so maybe it could be less damaging to the device itself.

<comment><USER41> These railguns also have synchronized pulsed power systems that are quite complex. The University of Texas has been researching this stuff for decades. Here's a simple paper I Googled up [https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a639371.pdf](https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a639371.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Is there any active research on this technology for non-rocket launch systems?

<comment><USER43> Do you mean like going to space? There's some research but after everyone figured it that all humans inside would be instantly squished they started researching other avenues. The g forces are pretty large and would damage a lot of cargo too.

<comment><USER44> > would be instantly squished

Not so. That's only for a very short launch. You would actually have a track a few miles long (probably up the side of a mountain) and launch using that. The g-forces would be very mild.

<comment><USER45> You need about 1200km to reach LEO from the equator with max acceleration of about 3G.

I did the math once, and a track from the Galapagos Islands to the peak of Chimborazo on the continent in Ecuador would do it.

<comment><USER44> I was a little shocked at that number, so I ran the math again, and wow.

Quite a bit longer than I expected.

Maybe a circular track till you build up speed, then switch over to the mountain track?

Of course the circular track would have g-forces due to that..... (Do you feel like doing more math?)

I guess it's more practical to use the track just for the initial boost above the atmosphere, then a rocket to add speed. Also a track that can handle something moving at km/s is .... not easy.

<comment><USER45> A circular track means you'd have to accelerate the vehicle inward proportional to the square of the velocity.

If target exit velocity is 11 km/s, and the acceleration of the straight portion of the track is insignificant compared to the circular portion, in order for the combined linear and centripetal accelerations to stay under 3G, I'd make each component 20.8 m/s^2.

So if 20.8 m/s^2 = (11000 m/s)^2/r, then r has to be 5800 km. Closing the ring at that radius makes the circumference larger than the distance needed for a linear track.

Untrained humans could not ride it up to Earth-escape velocity. LEO only needs about 8 km/s. So that requires a radius of 20.8 m/s^2 = (8000 m/s)^2/r, 3000 km. Still too big.

What if we bump the G threshold to 5G? Then centripetal portion of the acceleration should top out at 34.7 m/s^2, and required radius drops to 1850 km.

Okay, cargo only then, just to LEO. 25G max acceleration, 8000 m/s exit velocity. Radius 370 km, circumference 2300 km. Still more track than needed by a linear launcher.

It's always cheapest to put all the acceleration towards moving the vehicle in the direction you want it to go, instead of wasting some energy pushing it in different directions that ultimately cancel out.

You could use a spiral track, but the final leg of the spiral is going to have an effective radius so large it might as well just be straight the whole way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I wonder how durable these will be in combat

Seems vulnerable to damage during a battle. A couple stray bullets or shrapnel hitting those power cables would put it out of commission unless it was heavily armored.

where as they would just ping off an old-timey cannon harmlessly.

<comment><USER47> old-timey cannons need a lot of systems to slew/aim/etc. And without these systems, they are useless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> As usual, I find the music in all of the linked videos delusional, as if this high-tech killing machine was created to astonish patriotic five-year-olds. For the sake of analogy, someone should overlay the same music to the engineering of a-bombs and gas chambers.

<comment><USER49> I agree on at least the first half of your statement. Although I'm not sure I'd say 'delusional' as much as - I don't know? - Jingoistic? Bombastic? I feel like I should be playing Command and Conquer to that sound track. At the end of the day, these are killing machines that are being designed to take human lives, and it does feel more than a bit inappropriate. I think that's what you're getting at with the latter half.

<comment><USER50> A friend overlaid an EDM track (Flux Pavilion if I recall) on the original test fire videos from several years ago when the prototype was located at the Virginia test site. I enjoyed the short piece of creative they remixed in the same way I enjoyed the Iron Man franchise. It's a killing machine, but the engineer in me still deeply appreciates the advanced technology these systems are based on (energy/thermal management, power control systems).

SpaceX vehicles are a firmware update away from being high precision ICBMs (and their CEO has said they'd take DoD work and build weapons systems). No one on here is calling for somber treatment of that kit and their YouTube launch streams. Condemn the action, not the tool.

<comment><USER51> >Condemn the action, not the tool.

So it's fine to stockpile chemical weapons as long as we don't use them because they're just a tool?

<comment><USER50> I am not foolish enough to predict the future, nor what said future will demand of us. Two nuclear weapons ended World War 2. Seconded guessing hard decisions is a privilege of existing in the future after those decisions were made, a privilege that one might not otherwise have had.

Do you feel better about using a nuclear weapon over a chemical weapon? Why or why not? Once death is assured, we're just arguing time and the experience.

War in general is terrible and merciless, and should be avoided at all costs. I can be a pacifist but still want to pull out all of the stops when the devil comes knocking.

<comment><USER33> > Seconded guessing hard decisions is a privilege of existing in the future > after those decisions were made, a privilege that one might not otherwise > have had

I dunno... I think a very _small_ percentage of people alive at the time of using nuclear weapons on Japan would have actually done so. My own opinion is that the same percentage today would advocate for using nuclear weapons on another populace. The problem is that the people in charge of these things aren't in the majority - they are psychopathic power-hungry war mongers. Have you ever heard of an instance where a pacifistic head of state ruled a nation, beyond Tibet? I have not - those types of people tend not to interested in becoming head of state in the first place. People who aspire to dominate a nation(ie presidents, prime ministers, emperors), don't have a huge moral leap to make(if any at all) before they are willing to murder another nation's people.

tldr; anyone who is capable of being made a leader of a nation, should never be allowed to do so. they tend to be willing to murder people to get what they want, and that's generally bad for the rest of us living on planet Earth.

<comment><USER52> > _I think a very small percentage of people alive at the time of using > nuclear weapons on Japan would have actually done so._

Ever talked to any older Asians from nations who were occupied by the Japanese before and during the war? They would have happily used as many as the United States was willing to provide.

It's amazing how many people forget the immense scale of the atrocities that the Japanese committed before and during WWII, eclipsing even that of the Germans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Am I supposed to celebrate the spending of untold billions on an unnecessary weapon of death while my Bridges and roads crumble, my health care system sucks and absolutely nothing is being done about, or to prepare for, climate change?? I'm not impressed

<comment><USER54> Is there a widespread lack of funding for bridges and roads infrastructure in the US?

The bridges and roads around me in middle TN are well maintained. These are funded by local government resources, right?

<comment> Tuna-Fish The reason there were such problems in this area until recently was congressional earmarks.

When people lobbied for their representatives to support their pet cause, traditionally the best way they had to do this was to issue an earmark as part of some bill. Earmarks are not heavily fought by other representative because they _do not give federal money to a state_ , rather they are the federal government forcing a state to spend some of their own money on something they wouldn't otherwise have done. The problem with this is that unless the local government decides to overbudget for this and run a surplus every year, this money comes from somewhere. Typically something boring that people don't care about, like infrastructure maintenance. That is, people don't care about it until it starts to actually fail...

Then congressional earmarks got banned. Only, things are actually worse now, because it turns out the political horse trading around earmarks was the only reason representatives have to compromise across party lines, instead of always holding a hard line on the issues their supporters want. This is the direct cause of the current political gridlock.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> No mention of China. I wonder if the revival of this is due to China's railgun developments.

<comment><USER56> I find this invention will solve our problems. Just point at China, fire the gun, and all problems solved.

Just kidding, seriously what do we point it at? And what problem will it solve after it's been fired?

Also why are we not competing on high speed rail technology? Why do we always have to beat a country with military technology given how completely useless most of it is.

<comment><USER57> > Also why are we not competing on high speed rail technology?

The US competes at the top in dozens of other categories, from aerospace to biotech to software to agriculture to semiconductors to spacetech to medtech. Why should we need to compete in high-speed rail technology?

It's the last problem the US has. There's no need to dominate everything - <USER2> no nation practically can anyway - just buy Japan's excellent high-speed rail tech. If the US were going to build a national high-speed rail network, it would be best served to buy that tech elsewhere rather than reinventing the wheel, so as to save money and time. The high-speed rail that gets built in Texas for example should probably use Japanese tech:

June 2019: "Japan's 'supreme' bullet train aims to impress Texas with speed"

"The real audience for the demonstration, however, was the stakeholders of a privately constructed high-speed rail line in the U.S. state of Texas connecting the cities of Dallas and Houston."

[https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Japan-s- supreme-b...](https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Japan-s-supreme- bullet-train-aims-to-impress-Texas-with-speed)

<comment><USER56> Three things.

1\. I'm talking about public government projects like the space race or international highway system. Not commercial business sectors like biotech, software or agriculture. Typically governments do projects for the good of society or to compete for prestige (which offers no tangible utility) with another country. I'm thinking kill two birds and instead of building a gun they will likely never fire, build a huge public bullet train system that actually benefites society and makes America not look like a giant car mono culture.

2\. My mistake, I meant the rail network infrastructure itself not the technology.

3\. Not only is there no need for the US to dominate every industry. There is no need for the US to dominate at all for the industry I'm talking about and that is government projects. The rail gun serves a single purpose. Prestige, that's it. With globalization taking over the world today, firing that rail gun at any country is just bad news for everybody and unlikely to happen at all so why build it at all.

Governments should serve utilitarian needs of the people. Governments should not build projects just to one up another country. Seriously who cares if China's GDP surpasses the US... It doesn't matter in the end.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Could the same technology be used to help the lift off of Falcon9-sized space rockets from a deep vertical tunnel ?

<comment><USER44> See here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_driver](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_driver)

You actually want horizontal velocity, not vertical. Getting "up" is easy (it's only a few miles), it's the horizontal speed that keeps you there.

The only reason rockets launch straight up is to avoid the thick air as quickly as possible, then they turn and accelerate sideways the rest of the way.

<comment><USER45> Or they do a gravity turn to round off the corner, largely in the same manner as that one math problem you probably did in school that involved finding the fastest path that includes running on the beach for some distance, then swimming at slower speed to a point in the water.

Also, different rocket designs have different efficiencies at different outside pressures due to overexpansion or underexpansion of the exhaust plume. Kicking a rocket out of the atmosphere--or at least up to a lower pressure altitude--with a big gun first stage changes the requirements a bit for the second stage rocket engine. It's slightly more efficient.

But the biggest advantage is that you aren't ever accelerating the fuel for the first stage along with the rest of the vehicle. The disadvantage is that you need a very long track if you don't want to reduce vehicle occupants to thin red paste with excessive acceleration. Also, you can evacuate the gun barrel and put one or more plasma windows at the end, so your initial acceleration doesn't have so much atmospheric drag.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> In South Africa, we are putting our weapons in art galleries, as relics.

The art of war days are over.

That Art of Peace struggle is gaining momentum.

<comment><USER60> that's not how the world works

<comment><USER59> How does it work, how should it work, and what are we doing about it?

<comment><USER61> How it works now is that some percentage of the humans want to become, and/or want to support authoritarian rule. Authoritarian rule always wants to expanad, and will treat both it's subjects and other people as objects.

How should it work? Like eradicating smallpox, we'll need to somehow engineer, or teach, or by some other method, eradicate from the entire human race the authoritarian impulse.

Until then, the choices are: 1) submit, or 2a) create systems of laws & institutions to ensure that power remains distributed and is difficult to hijack/co-opt/capture by any one person or group and 2b) (since all systems are hackable/fallible) be prepared to fight for your freedom and the freedom of others less fortunate.

EDIT: add 2a

<comment><USER59> "Hi Drew/Glenda It is with great pleasure to see the project at this stage. We have yet once again proved the sceptics, nay sayers and persmists wrong. From a plain field to a sight commanding building that yields hope to drags of our society and the future itself. Despite of the hindrances we have encountered along the way, I am humbled, awed and jubilant to have been a part of such a gesture. In this money fueled life style I would also been delighted to have made myself a fortune in building such a building that is going to make a difference in many people's lives but the greatest fortune of all is the joy I find in knowing that these hands have built such a meaningful building. The project may have come to its end but the memory will linger in my heart forever. This hasn't only equipped me with skills but changed the way I view life. It is this reason that I would love the organisers to allow us to keep the tools we have used in building the hope and the future of our society so that we can continue putting bread on our tables and helping those in need of our assistance. My humble thanks to all those who selflessly opened their check books and offered with their hard earned cash to the project, and not forgetting those who could not offer funding but took it upon themselves and used their precious time to personally give a hand in this project. This project is a full proof that humanity/Ubuntu still exists. Regards Michael Dyasi"</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Rethinking Puppet Deployment - <AUTHOR> http://somethingsinistral.net/blog/rethinking-puppet-deployment/ <comment><USER2> How can you possibly make an argument for not caring about failed deployments? "Skip over", "do it again", "its fast".

You can't possibly be talking about deployment here. Deployment is the result of moving tested, proven, known working artifacts into an environment in which they can execute or be accessed by an executable environment.

There is no skip, retry or anything resembling failure in a deployment model that Im aware of. So Im not sure why I would use a tool assuming it would fail to do what its intended to do.</comment>


Review: Coders at Work by Peter Seibel - <AUTHOR> http://www.cloudknow.com/2009/08/review-coders-at-work-by-peter-seibel/

<comment><USER2> Joe Armstrong on OO: _Because the problem with object-oriented languages is they've got all this implicit environment that they carry around with them. You wanted a banana but what you got was a gorilla holding the banana and the entire jungle._

<comment><USER3> Down modded you by accident (is there an undo?), that's a great quote

<comment><USER4> Slightly offtopic: I _think_ it would be possible to implement downvotes on stories, and undoing of votes, through an FF extension. What you'd do is this: you would sign up for the extension, and it would implement your actions by _ignoring_ other people's actions. For example, user A wants to downvote a story. User B wants to upvote it. User A clicks the extension-added downvote button, and when User A clicks "upvote," the vote is discarded. Similarly, the system would undo your downvote by ignoring the _next_ downvote.

This is probably not an intended HN feature, though.

<comment><USER5> An easier way to do it would be the way the "undo send email" in gmail works: you don't actually take the action for a few seconds, during which time the user can change his mind.

My guess is that most accidental up/down votes are realized almost immediately, so this "grace period" would only need to be a few seconds.

<comment><USER4> That would handle accidental votes, but not votes that can't be made, e.g. downvotes. I think it would make more sense to have a single mechanism for all of these.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Superfish 2.0: Now Dell Is Breaking HTTPS - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/11/superfish-20-now-dell-breaking-https <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10614837](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10614837)

<comment><USER3> I think an article from the eff is more notable than a reddit anecdote and should be treated as such.

This is now gone off the main page, which is a shame.

<comment><USER4> Perhaps the URL is better, but this cluster of stories has had so many major discussions that the current submission is clearly a dupe by HN's standard.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=dell%20points%3E10&sort=byDate...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=dell%20points%3E10&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

We try to get the most substantive URL into the most prominent thread (and in fact are working on a system for users to be able to drive that) but it doesn't always work out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the info.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> And yet again I have to point out how this is an obvious case of Hanlon's Razor, where stupidity is confused for malice.

To install the root key is in no way an attempt at spoofing people since it would eventually be discovered and exploited by someone else. If Dell wanted to use this pre-installed cert they would not have installed the private key. And even then it would eventually be discovered much more easily than any number of backdoor methods they could have pre-installed in the BIOS or the OS when they control the entire deployment and shipping process.

<comment><USER6> The only malice that I can see being assumed is in your reading of that report. The EFF page very clearly outlines the problem but said nothing about Dell trying to abuse it, only that Dell's negligence left their users exposed to attackers which is a simple statement of fact.

<comment><USER7> Read the other comments on this page?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really don't want to sound elitist, but my choice to go full Macbook and keep my custom built PC at home has never looked better. How long until we hear about other manufacturers also doing this?

<comment><USER3> There's very little to be smug about:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotlight_(software)#Privacy_c...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotlight_\(software\)#Privacy_concerns)

<comment><USER9> I've had a macbook for 2 years and I've never used spotlight beyond the initial "what does this do?" moment. Besides, you can't really do search without knowing what is searched for and from where it is being searched.

<comment><USER10> Once you get used to cmd+space. It's so much easier to hit the key combo, type the first letters of the program you want and hit enter than clicking through a bunch of folders and scrolling around.. but after reading this wikipedia article, I think I may have to find an alternative.

<comment><USER8> Check out Alfred. I use the free version myself, you can un-assign command space from Spotlight in OS X first, then assign Command Space to that. It does basically the same thing minus the Internet connected stuff like location searching and whatnot.

Alfred can be setup to index folders, contents of text files, pictures, etc. and harder things like System Prefs screens too.

I myself keep Spotlight on Command Shift Space for the rare occasions when I want to take advantage of the Internet connected stuff, but keep using Alfred for everything else (less to do with privacy, more because Alfred is just quicker.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As I was walking by a pile of Dell laptops for sale today, I just had to wonder if the timing of this problem is just coincidence? Regardless, this kind of thing really helps out the FBI/CIA/NSA/etc get around encryption when targeting an individual. Malice intended or not.

<comment><USER12> I miss the days when I thought "Wow if this keep happening the law will surely get involved and put a stop to it." \- Now I just think "I bet the government LOVE this... they probably paid them to do it."

<comment><USER13> True. After the Snowden relevations you don't even have to guess.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Dell included that [private] key on all the affected laptops as well."

Was there any reason other than plain negligence to include the private key on every laptop?

<comment><USER15> Deniability? If the intention was to create a backdoor, and later it was found that e.g. NoSuchAdversary had _used_ that backdoor, a really good "we didn't _intend_ to create a backdoor and we especially didn't give the _key_ to that backdoor to the Adversary" defense would be the fact that actually Dell gave the key to everyone.

<comment><USER16> That's exactly my take on this whole thing. The incompetence you'd have to defend for the alternative to be real would damage Dell even more than the malice would.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> More and more it looks like it's time to go full Stallman in your computing environment:

[https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html](https://stallman.org/stallman- computing.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> I wonder how much similar (or worse) errors exist in the metric shitload of device drivers distributed by the ODMs, OEMs and the white-labelers.

Everyone adds their crap onto the device and then wraps it up for sale, with no one having real responsibility on what actually ends up being on the device.

Given common code quality I really wonder what nasties are hidden in stuff like Embedded Controller firmware, the drivers for stuff like "special keyboard hotkeys" and similar. All places to hide a nice kernel level exploit in (or in case of the EC, _full_ HW backdoor).

<comment><USER19> I have no idea how the dysfunctional wasteland that is the windows consumer ecosystem can survive. Microsoft has actually cleaned up it's act quite well and seems to be producing quality software compared to, says, the Win 98 days. But OEMs and their crapware...? I recently used someones new Lenovo notebook and you couldn't get work done for ten minutes without some sort of popup breaking your concentration. Not even the same, possibly important one, repeated over and over. No, there were 15 third-party items in the system tray vying for my attention with updates, warnings, status informations etc.

I seriously wonder how people can work for these companies. Not that they're terribly evil (b/c, after all, this rant is pretty much the definition of a First World Problem). But in that I couldn't spend the majority of my waking hours for an organization that has so little taste.

<comment><USER8> Speaking as one in the trenches, it survives by the sheer will and determination of the enthusiasts, and the slavishly hard work of various IT departments, as well as the Linux community by and large being arrogant and rude, and the fact that Mac's are expensive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It annoys me that this is being so directly compared to Superfish. Yes the technical aspect is similar but the intent is very different. Intent matters.

<comment><USER16> I haven't seen anything that really showed the intent of Dell, just a bunch of woolly corp-speak about improved customer service.

<comment><USER10> The intent is in the certificate. Superfish could create and sign any certificate, meaning it could impersonate websites. This certificate cannot sign other certificates, meaning it can't be used in the same way as superfish. Thus the logical intent seems to be bloatware, backdoors, etc.. not snooping on HTTPS connections.

This is the distinction the person you are replying to is trying to make, because although similar to superfish, it is not quite the same.

<comment><USER7> If the dell cert can't be used to impersonate websites, what's with all the test websites people set up to demonstrate it?

<comment><USER20> I think the problem is the private key is accessible AND machines were already setup to trust it (because of the cert). So what s_henry_paulson said is technically correct but it's conceptually wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I share the opinion of a friend of mine which is this will eventually come to all major hardware manufacturers.</comment>