Ephemeral is developing tattoo ink designed to disappear after a year - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/09/ephemeral-tattoos/ <comment><USER2> Long long ago I was a tattoo artist. With very careful needle adjustments, color choices, and a steady hand, this is already possible with conventional inks. Simple example: white ink is titanium oxide, basically sunscreen, and breaks down rapidly with exposure to UV.

But you are still gonna have scarring and roughening. If you're gonna get ink, be prepared to have it for life.

Also, testing on pigs? Like, live pigs? I'd pay money to see that. :)

<comment><USER3> > Also, testing on pigs? Like, live pigs? I'd pay money to see that. :)

Disgusting and shameful behavior, I can't believe that attitudes like this still exist.

<comment><USER4> Can't blame someone for finding pigs getting tattoos quite amusing. :-) You know full well that it's not a big deal and you're just making edgy comments for the sake of edgy comments.

For fuck sake dude, it's a pig. If you actually care about living things, do something about the slave labor used to source raw materials for the computer you wrote that on. I'm going to guess your conviction is about living creatures in pain, not about pigs in particular. One of these is much more disgusting than the other. Honestly who gives a flying fuck about a pig getting a tattoo.

<comment><USER5> > If you actually care about living things, do something about the slave labor > used to source raw materials for the computer you wrote that on.

This translates to "if you can't save everybody 100%, then you shouldn't help anybody." It's a self-defeating attitude that if something can't be done 100% perfect that it shouldn't be done at all.

Would you tell someone that devotes their lives to working in soup kitchens and helping the poor in first-world countries that they "aren't doing enough" because there are people that "have it worse" than the first-world poor somewhere else in the world?

<comment><USER6> > If you actually care about living things, do something about the slave labor

The above would contradict that maxim. A better fit would be "don't waste resources on less important things, over more important things".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You would probably still want to be selective about which tattoos you get and where they are placed. Each session can create scar tissue which could be noticeable even if the ink fades completely, and it can be harder to tattoo over scar tissue as well.

Scarring isn't guaranteed, and to a large extent depends on the artist knowing what they're doing, but still something to consider.

<comment><USER8> Yup. The prevalence of scars is also fairly unknown because, well, the tattoos are covering them up.

<comment><USER9> Wouldn't the scars show up after laser removal, effectively making laser removal moot?

<comment><USER10> Scars are skin color though, not pigment color. Also they're not nearly as fine as the original tattoo was. What had bene an easily discernible intricate design in a high contrast color will end up as an indiscernible mush of near- skin-tone scar tissue, like a low degree burn that's healed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm torn. On one hand, this invention will keep a lot of people from making the very common mistake of getting ink they don't like and can't remove.

On the other hand, a beautiful part of this art form is that it is basically permanent. To my mind, a tattoo loses a lot of its value of it's only temporary.

<comment><USER12> I agree, all of my tattoo's were carefully planned, expensive, and constant reminders of some very good memories.

If it is temporary how is it any different than a hair cut?

<comment><USER13> A temporary tattoo is like dating somebody. A permanent tattoo is like marrying somebody. To me it's completely logical that you might want to try a tattoo on for a while and, if you like it enough, you can commit for life and make it permanent. Otherwise, if you jump straight into tattoo marriage and you don't like it, you're looking at a laser divorce.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If they really have a solution that is safe and they prove it, they will really disrupt the tattoo market. Losing the fear with a solution like this one will make people want more tattoos for sure !

<comment><USER15> Safety is definitely the number 1 concern. I'm not sure how long trials will need to run before they can confirm there is no increased cancer risk.

Also a concern. If it's gone in a year, what does it look like in 6 months? Are you going to look like you have a nasty blob-bruise for 6 months as the definition fades and the ink migrates?

<comment><USER16> There is absolutely no way that they can take enough statistics to prove that there's no increased cancer risk. i don't think we even know whether _regular_ tattoos increase cancer risks.

<comment><USER17> How common is cancer in Australia?

 _In 2016, it is estimated that the risk of an individual being diagnosed with cancer by their 85th birthday will be 1 in 2 (1 in 2 males and 1 in 3 females)._ [1]

According to at least one source[2] 14.5% of Australians have a tattoo.

I'm going to go with tattoo ink _not_ being a major cause of cancer. If it were you would expect to see more skin cancers local to the tattoo, or some other particular type of cancer more common among those with tattoos.

I think we've got bigger problems than any potential cancer risk form tattoos. Bigger problems like alcohol, cigarettes, benzene in petrol, vehicle exhaust, combustion of coal for electricity, consumption of processed meats - these are all _known_ carcinogens[3].

1\. [https://canceraustralia.gov.au/affected-cancer/what- cancer/c...](https://canceraustralia.gov.au/affected-cancer/what- cancer/cancer-australia-statistics)

2\. [http://www.disappearink.com.au/post/tattoo-statistics- austra...](http://www.disappearink.com.au/post/tattoo-statistics-australia/)

3\. [http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancercauses/othercarcinogens/g...](http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancercauses/othercarcinogens/generalinformationaboutcarcinogens/known- and-probable-human-carcinogens)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> One interesting use for this would be to get a tattoo you think you want to be permanent, and then when it fades, decide if you liked it enough to get it redone with permanent ink.

<comment> k-mcgrady Your doubling the cost of a tattoo though and they're already pretty expensive. Wouldn't it make more sense to just be certain you want one before you get it and save hundreds of dollars?

<comment><USER18> > Wouldn't it make more sense to just be certain you want one before you get > it and save hundreds of dollars?

Sure. But how can you be certain? I have no idea what it's like to have a tattoo, or whether I'd regret it. Would I be too self-conscious about having it? Or would I enjoy seeing it in the dark?

I've had one specific one in mind for most of my life, but I don't know if I want it. If I were able to get a fading one, I'd be way more likely to jump on it. The increased cost is nothing compared to being able to decide if I actually like the damn thing.

<comment><USER19> Just get a henna tattoo of what you are wanting. If you don't miss it after it's gone, then don't get the tattoo. Pretty straight forward and shorter waiting period for evaluation.

I jumped the gun and got mine having been in the same predicament and don't regret it. Having thought about it for years, it was easy with just a little nudge.

<comment><USER20> But note some people are allergic to [black|] henna and some people get left with permanent markings/scarring.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Now I'm picturing National Security Letter canary tattoos for technical activists.

<comment><USER22> It's all fun and games until you get a court order to have it redone every year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I am very skeptical about this, because when tattoo ink fades, it accumulates inside the lymphatic system, it is not flushed out of the body.

Black ink, for example, colors the lymph nodes within the area of the tatoo completely black. Black ink is made out of soot which often contains polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, a carzinogen.

So if they say their product is "designed to break down after a year" and "By using smaller molecules, we've encapsulated them inside this spherical structure that's big enough that your immune system doesn't take it away. But when you remove it, it essentially eats away one of the components and the dye molecules are flushed out", i really wonder if this could quickly develop into a real health problem.

Smaller molecules really sound like nano particles and since tattoo dye is not flushed out of your body, i tend to assume those nano particles will accumulate inside the lymphatic system. And what about that "spherical structure" stuff, what is it made of? And that "removal solution" they talk about on their website, the symbol next to it looks like its also tattoed into the skin.

</comment><comment><USER24> If this really works, getting a tattoo will be no more edgy than getting your hair dyed. Tattoos will rapidly fall out of fashion.

<comment><USER25> Tattoos will fall out of fashion no matter what happens.

<comment><USER26> Well, 5000 years and counting.

<comment><USER25> I think tattoos are even older than this. Tattoos will continue to exist, but they won't be fashionable.

<comment><USER27> > I think tattoos are even older than this.

Ötzi is the oldest tattooed body we have and thus the oldest hard evidence of that practice.

While there is peripheral evidence of probable earlier tattooing (Cucuteni- Trypillian sculptures, and how wide-spread confirmed tattooing practices are circa 1000~2000BCE), we don't have anything hard before Ötzi (circa 3000BCE).

Incidentally, Ötzi's tattoos seem to be therapeutic rather than artistic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady $50-100 for an average sized tattoo. So that's the price before you even pay the artist to do the work. Quite a big premium. I'd say the 'average' sized tattoo (something large on your bicep but not fully covering it or wrapping around it) is probably $300 and most of that cost is labour. Add the price of this expensive ink and you're paying $350-400 - for something that's going to disappear after a year.

<comment><USER28> Not to nitpick but $50-100 buys you typically an extremely small, single-color tattoo in many places. My last tattoo was a simple flag about 2x3" with 3 colors and a geometric design and cost around $120. Not sure what an "average" size tattoo is, but you're already looking at $350-400 for say, a 3x6" full color tattoo of any appreciable complexity.

<comment> k-mcgrady As scott_s pointer out $50-100 was just the price of this special ink. So for the extremely small tattoo price you're quoting this ink doubles the total cost and only lasts 1 year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> About ten years ago, I remember an article about a special tattoo ink that was encased in laser-sensitive capsules. When irradiated, the capsules burst and the ink was absorbed virtually completely. The thing that outraged me was that they were having a hard time selling it, as tattoo "artists" were refusing to have their "creations" be removed at the user's behest. Most artists were even refusing to tell their customers that removable ink was an option.

Since criminals don't have resumes, tattoos used to be their signaling mechanisms. As suburban kids began to make that signalling useless, a few years ago I read that criminals had moved on to painful eyelid tattoos. A quick Google search shows that didn't slow the posers down very much. I wonder how criminals signal how badass they are these days?

</comment><comment><USER30> It would be really helpful to tattoo the current year on my arm each NYE!

<comment><USER31> If indeed it's gone one year to the day later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> The only thing stopping me from getting an arm sleeve is knowing it will be there forever, and during future times when I can't have one.

Though if it lasts 12 months, by month 8 will I have a half-faded looking thing that I either have to retouch, or deal with until it fades completely?

<comment><USER12> If you are worried that you won't like your tattoo in 20 years, then you are correct in not getting one.

If you are getting a tattoo because it looks cool right now, save your money and just get a better wardrobe.

<comment><USER6> Clothes are petty expensive tho

<comment><USER12> nowhere near as expensive as a well designed and executed tattoo.

<comment><USER6> It takes multiple items of clothing for a single outfit, so I'm not so sure about that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I guess the market is there but I bet there are better applications than tattooing. Disappearing ink probably isn't worth the discomfort for many tattoos. But hey, tattoo ink isn't exactly the most innovative space so it's cool to see a fresh idea

</comment><comment><USER34> It has been fun to watch this previously considered so dangerous become so mainstream. Something like this and you'll have tween girls having tattoo parties.

<comment><USER12> If it didn't leave scar tissue I could see people getting tattoos that evolve over time, where an artist re-works a patch of skin every year.

Imagine fashion week 2050 where models are rocking temp tattoos designed to last the season. Could be rad, could also be really obnoxious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> It would be interesting to see all the failed non-disappearing tattoo prototypes.

</comment><comment><USER36> This sucks for everyone with the old permanent model

<comment><USER37> I don't see how at all.

Everyone (including myself) that has been tattooed KNOWS they were going to be permanent before they got them. If they wanted a removable option they wouldn't have got them in the first place.

A lot of the appeal of tattoos is because of their permanence and the commitment that resembles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Oh good, _even more_ barbed wire biceps, carp sleeves, black fore-arm stars, "tribal" patterns on white dudes, spiderwebs, hummingbirds, infinity symbols, and other ways for people to show how eager they are to express their "individuality"!

Edit: Down-vote me if I offend your tattooed rebellious self-image, it's fine, but there's a real point to be made. This technology will lead to a lot more tattoos, and a lot more homogeneity and poor designs. I know people with tattoos that most people would actually call legitimate "art", and I know some of them wouldn't be particularly thrilled by the further "watering down" of what they consider an important part of their identity.

<comment><USER39> The downvotes are because your comment added nothing to the discussion beyond expressing your distaste for people who dare decorate their body in a way that indicates membership in a group you personally have distaste for.

<comment><USER38> Yes, and the up-votes were because the up-voters understand nuance.

<comment><USER33> Nah, they are probably salty folk like yourself that got a chuckle from your open mic night tattoo joke because you typed what they were thinking but chose not to comment because it little to do with the actual article or because your complaint was a complete work and they felt they could add nothing and echoing the sentiment would be ironic in this context. With that said, you articulated one of the most clichéd reactions to fad tattoo designs.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The fallacy of white privilege – and how it's corroding society - <AUTHOR> https://nypost.com/2020/07/11/the-fallacy-of-white-privilege-and-how-its-corroding-society/ <comment><USER2> As a non-American I was pretty amazed at some of the statistics in the article and how the current narrative in the media and social media is almost completely contrary to what he's published.

</comment><comment><USER3> Pretty obvious conservative slant here by a wealthy immigrant who considers himself "self-made" and can't understand why all those poors don't just pull themselves up by their bootstraps... And racism? Just more fake news.

<comment><USER4> The fact that you supposedly read the article and, instead of engaging with any of the statistics or actual information presented in it to offer a rebuttal, immediately went for sarcasm and ad hominem against the author supports his opinion a hell of a lot more than yours. It also speaks volumes about one of the points the author makes early on - contrarian opinions, regardless of veracity, get attacked by people like you out of hand. This is not the level of comment that belongs on HN.</comment></comment>


Scientists create matter that can dent diamonds - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/wire-news/106597047/scientists-create-new-form-of-matter-that-can-dent-diamonds.html <comment><USER2> Let's see what the actual journal article says.

[http://www.sciencemag.org/content/337/6096/825.abstract?sid=...](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/337/6096/825.abstract?sid=3a702736-97a6-49eb-9c8f-c13b229a2350)

Long-Range Ordered Carbon Clusters: A Crystalline Material with Amorphous Building Blocks Lin Wang, Bingbing Liu, Hui Li, Wenge Yang, Yang Ding, Stanislav V. Sinogeikin, Yue Meng, Zhenxian Liu, Xiao Cheng Zeng, and Wendy L. Mao Science 17 August 2012: 337 (6096), 825-828. [DOI:10.1126/science.1220522]

The Science editors also solicited a commentary

<http://www.sciencemag.org/content/337/6096/812.summary>

on the article.

AFTER EDIT:

As I read through the full-text article, it seems that the kind of nanoscale observations being reported in the article might be consistent with the "new" material simply being local, small-scale diamonds (the substrate material was carbon molecules, after all, before they were subjected to high pressure), being "as incompressible as diamond," as reported, for the unremarkable reason that it is diamond. But I will defer to someone who is more knowledgeable than I in materials science to see what other interpretation of the published article might make more sense.

<comment><USER3> Materials Scientist here.

There are no small-scale diamonds present in the material. On the small scale, the material is a carbon glass (an unordered, or amorphous solid), distinct from diamond, which is an ordered crystal. Typically, high density glasses are stronger than crystals made from the same elements, so the strength of the material isn't particularly surprising, rather it's the processing of the new material that is novel.

It's also worth noting that this isn't even the first carbon-based material stronger than diamond. Lonsdaleite is a closely related structure that is significantly stronger. It is much less common, however, naturally occurring only in meteorites.

<comment><AUTHOR> Any idea as to which one is actually harder, the new material, or Lonsdaleite? I see from this journal that Lonsdaleite has 58% higher indentation strength than diamond: <http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v102/i5/e055503> but I couldn't find figures for the new material.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Diamond is only the hardest known _naturally occurring_ material.

For the hardest known material, take a look at this paper from 2005: <http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2005ApPhL..87h3106D>

Or the Wikipedia article for a more general treatment: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aggregated_diamond_nanorod>

<comment><USER5> Not even that, quite. There are two known naturally occurring minerals that are harder than diamond: wurtzite boron nitride, and lonsdaleite (another carbon allotrope). They just don't occur in very large quantities.

Ref: [http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16610-diamond-no- longe...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16610-diamond-no-longer- natures-hardest-material.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Actually, the title isn't wrong, it's just misleading. When you read "new form of matter", your first thought was probably liquid, gas, solid, plasma, (something new here?). However, those refer to the "state" or "phase" of matter.

Form: the shape of a thing or person.

Basically, they have "formed" a new type of matter, which is simply the way in which the atoms are arranged in thermodynamic equilibrium. They are not referring to discovering a new "state" or "phase".

</comment><comment><USER7> Note, not a new form of matter, yet another form of carbon (of which there are bazillions) Cool result though.

</comment><comment><USER8> From the paper's abstract:

 _Solid-state materials can be categorized by their structures into crystalline (having periodic translation symmetry), amorphous (no periodic and orientational symmetry), and quasi-crystalline (having orientational but not periodic translation symmetry) phases. Hybridization of crystalline and amorphous structures at the atomic level has not been experimentally observed. We report the discovery of a long-range ordered material constructed from units of amorphous carbon clusters that was synthesized by compressing solvated fullerenes._

So not a new type of matter, a new type of solid-state material, right? Or are different solid-state materials considered different forms of matter?

</comment><comment><USER9> Scientific journalism at its worst.

Really, this is fucking ridiculous.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> EDIT:

In light of some controversy over the title of this article I have taken the liberty of removing what I see as being some of the more potentially misleading terms.

The word "create" is rather obviously a misnomer based on Newtons laws, but I'm trying to stay true to the text of the original article, while keeping the discussion on the scientific merit of the subject.

Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER10> adamantium? _cheers_</comment>


mythbusting: Craig Newmark, filthy rich on eBay's millions - <AUTHOR> http://valleywag.com/tech/mythbusting/craig-newmark-filthy-rich-on-ebays-millions-283002.php

<comment><AUTHOR> shows that if not honest about your business, your users will find the truth out for themselves...</comment>


Jeb Bush uploads every email from his governorship - <AUTHOR> http://jebbushemails.com/email/search

<comment><USER2> While I applaud the effort, the usability is horrible. I have never seen a clearer case for continuos scroll. To set everything up as a calendar, when not many people are going to see date's sent as the highest value data organization point, is not well thought out. The site would be more fluid as a vertical ledger with dates as milestones in a scrolling sidebar. Also it would be nice to have the ability to filter based on sender/recipent which are the data points I think most people would be interest in:

e.g what correspondence did he have with his brother.

<comment><USER3> date sent does show as a good cross reference point. PLUS listing by date is a decent way to show that blocks of emails aren't missing basically the time stamp accounts for his whereabouts on any given day. That's what people look for. If there's a big issue and it's known that it was in the media on x date. Then people could take a look at all that correspondence and see what and who he was talking to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So,... Jeb Bush preparing to run for president then?

<comment><USER5> Not any more. By doing this, he violated Florida state law.

"Social security numbers held by an agency are confidential and exempt from s. 119.07(1) and s. 24(a), Art. I of the State Constitution. This exemption applies to social security numbers held by an agency before, on, or after the effective date of this exemption. This exemption does not supersede any federal law prohibiting the release of social security numbers or any other applicable public records exemption for social security numbers existing prior to May 13, 2002, or created thereafter."

I found someone's social security number within 2 minutes of knowing this site existed. They were applying to Governor Bush for a job.

<comment><USER2> I was surprised to see phone numbers and other identifying info in a non- redacted format as well. It is hard to imagine that nobody thought about privacy info before releasing this.</comment></comment></comment>


Charles Babbage - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage

<comment><USER2> If you like this stuff, I really, _really_ recommend _The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage_. It's a great half-comic-book half-historical scholarship. The second half is contained in footnotes and primary sources, which are about half the book, and it's delightfully _fun_.

</comment><comment><USER3> Dover Books printed an edition containing bits of _Passages from the Live of a Philosopher_ and with Lovelace's translation and amplification of Menabrea's paper on the Analytic Engine: [http://store.doverpublications.com/0486246914.html](http://store.doverpublications.com/0486246914.html) . I don't know what happened to my copy. You can get his _On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures_ at Gutenberg, [http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4238](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4238)

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates)

</comment><comment><USER5> fun story - cto of my old job had a mug with a picture of babage on it that he was given as a gift or an award or something.

he was very proud of it, so naturally we (tech team) stole it, hid it for a month or two, created the same image that was on the mug in photoshop and ordered a replica online.

We then created a fake email account and started sending him ransom emails ending with a video of the replica mug getting smashed. good times.

<comment><USER6> this sounds terribly cruel.</comment></comment>


How We Partitioned Airbnb's Main Database in Two Weeks - <AUTHOR> http://nerds.airbnb.com/how-we-partitioned-airbnbs-main-db/ <comment><USER2> This really shows the value of a few good engineers. I can easily see this taking a team of engineers much longer, but in this case a few engineers figured out the least painful solution and implemented it with minimal down time.

</comment><comment><USER3> RDS wouldn't be my first choice to run in a production environment like AirBNB...

<comment><USER4> RDS is just fine for production environments. Any tuning you need done can be done with parameters; your only limit might be that imposed on RDS for connections (based on instance size).

<comment><USER5> In my experience (a few years ago though, to be honest), RDS was absolutely terrible for high performance and/or latency sensitive write workloads. Due to how (again, at the time) replication was handled -- amazon apparently did (at the time? still does?) synchronous writes to each AZ, and only completes the transaction when both return. When one AZ/RDS-instance was slow or dropping packets (seemed oddly frequent at the time for cross-AZ traffic -- again about 3 years ago though), our production stack would catch fire and come to a crashing halt. Never again!

<comment><USER6> Hi, one of the Airbnb engineers involved in this op here. Yeah... that does sound a lot like 3 years ago. The situation has gotten a lot better, especially with 5.6 and PIOPS. These days, things work pretty smoothly (even as the volume of traffic and data has scaled massively).

<comment><USER5> Ah. That is great to hear! It was a special kind of hell having to deal with it with such regularity, at any and all hours (4am?! of course!). ;_;

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Those who forget Oracle are doomed to reinvent it.

<comment><USER8> Those who forget open source databases are doomed to pay per-processor licensing fees.</comment></comment>


SecurityTube - finally a YouTube dedictated to Hackers and Hacking   - <AUTHOR> http://securitytube.net/Default.aspx

<comment><USER2> Looks like they're just a front-end for other tube sites? Latest video is Vimeo, the cold boot attacks video is YouTube...

<comment><AUTHOR> they seem to have a mix of originals and embeds from other sites ... nevertheless there is some aggregation value ..

<comment><USER3> Security through obscurity is obviously crap, but I suspect some of that "aggregation value" == more script kiddies hammering my servers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> and a frontend made with microsoft software ? no hacker built this... thats for sure...</comment>


Why Are Our Most Important Teachers Paid the Least? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/09/magazine/why-are-our-most-important-teachers-paid-the-least.html <comment><USER2> Does anyone know what the tuition is for the Abbott preschool program that is mentioned in the article? My impression has always been that one of the reasons that teachers get paid so little is that class sizes are relatively small (e.g. 4 infants per teacher in NC). I personally think preschool teachers are not paid enough but I'm curious how Abbott is able to pay their teachers so much.</comment>


Estimating Delivery Times: A Case Study in Practical Machine Learning - <AUTHOR> http://engineering.postmates.com/Estimating-Delivery-Times/ <comment><USER2> Magic unveiled.</comment>


Apple's next major Mac revealed: the radically new 12-inch MacBook Air - <AUTHOR> http://9to5mac.com/2015/01/06/macbook-air-12-inch-redesign/ <comment><USER2> This seems almost "too" radical even for Apple. Which is to say I'm struggling to believe it.

Apple have always been after that smaller and lighter device, but the cost here seems too high: much worse keyboard (due to loss of spacing), losing all of the standard USB, losing the SD Card slot, losing Magsafe, etc only so the already super light Air can be even lighter?

I don't know if this is true, if it is true then it is a step backwards if you ask me. My Surface Pro 3 has one standard USB port, and that to me isn't enough, having effectively zero is just a non-starter.

If this is true (which again, I have my doubts) I wonder how much battery would have to be cut also. If you look in a current Macbook Air, it is largely just battery [0] internally.

PS - Apple's cooling is a little suspect in the last few years both from first hand experience and from other's first hand experiences. So let's hope they get it right with this machine.

[0] [https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Air+13-Inch+Early+2014+...](https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Air+13-Inch+Early+2014+Battery+Replacement/24738)

<comment><USER3> The keyboard part definitely doesn't make sense. The Macbook air 11 inch I'm typing on has 7/16" of flat part on both sides of the keyboard, so trimming the width by 1/4" would require no rearrangement at all. The escape key jumping to the other side makes no sense either, nor does increasing the width of the power key.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Apple is introducing a pretty big gap between their MacBook Pro line and the new MacBook Air if this is true.

The current MacBook Air 13" has 1.08kg while the current 13" MacBook Pro has 1.57kg. That's a pretty big difference if you carry a laptop almost all the time.

For me, losing both USB ports, the SD slot, and having to carry a USB adapter and converter would be just inconvenient.

If they really removed the SD slot, why wouldn't they instead replace it with a MicroSD slot? It seems like microSDs are very popular right now, have become insanely cheap, and fit into every camera with a normal SD slot through adapters.

Why would they drop the thunderbolt port? Again, if this is correct, Apple could of course be working on a Chromecast-esque thing you can carry around and put into the HDMI slot of the TV, connecting to it over 802.11ac WiFi or so.

No charging port? Ok, maybe Apple is developing a high-power wireless charging technique, but I have my doubts. Possibly the port is just on the back.

Eliminating all bezels on the sides of the keyboard for all models of the new MacBook Air (only one model, the 12" one) seems exaggerated. I would much rather have a slightly bigger MBA with some bezels (it is also comfortable to rest the hands on them) and a decent battery (the current MBA's is great).

My preferred solution would be for them to keep the current 13" MacBook Air, give it a retina display, USB 3.1, and maybe upgrade the processor.

</comment><comment><USER5> Revealed? Not really--the photos are "exclusive artist renditions" (i.e. made up).

<comment><USER6> Yeah exactly, these are artist renditions made by someone who doesn't even work for Apple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not really--the photos are "exclusive artist renditions" (i.e. made up).

</comment><comment><USER5> Not really--the photos are "exclusive artist renditions" (i.e. made up).

</comment><comment><USER5> Not really--the photos are "exclusive artist renditions" (i.e. made up).

</comment><comment><USER5> Not really--the photos are "exclusive artist renditions" (i.e. made up).

</comment><comment><USER5> Not really--the photos are "exclusive artist renditions" (i.e. made up).

</comment><comment><USER5> Not really--the photos are "exclusive artist renditions", i.e. made up.

</comment><comment><USER5> Not really--the photos are "exclusive artist renditions", i.e. made up.

</comment><comment><USER5> Not really--the photos are "exclusive artist renditions", i.e. made up.

</comment><comment><USER5> Not really--the photos are "exclusive artist renditions", i.e. made up.

</comment><comment><USER5> Test</comment>


Ask HN: What is the best commit message you've seen? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> "fix"</comment>


Ask HN: What skills/background is needed to get a job as a Javascript developer? - <AUTHOR>

I want a career in software development, but currently have no formal experience or CS degree.  I'm interested in doing server-side development, but while I have some Python knowledge, I have a lot to learn before I would try to develop server-side web applications professionally. I do, however, know Javascript fairly well.  I've studied Javascript: The Definitive Guide and can use closures, recursion, object-oriented Javascript using prototypes, and jQuery.  I would have no problem whipping up a demonstration app.
Not personally knowing any web developers, I don't really have any idea what jobs are available or what skill sets companies require.  I know there are jobs for people who can do PHP, Django, Rails, SQL, etc. on the back-end, or on the other end, for people who can design the actual web page layout, look, and feel, but are their opportunities for people who have a solid grasp of Javascript and aren't interested or skilled in visual design?
I know I should learn Django and related technologies, and I'm working on it, but in the meantime, it would be great to start working in the industry instead of doing unskilled manual labor.  Also, people will probably suggest freelancing, but I would prefer to be in an environment where I could learn from peers and mentors.
TL;DR - What's the minimum skill set I need to demonstrate in order to be employable as a web developer without a degree or job experience? <comment><USER2> "I've studied Javascript: The Definitive Guide and can use closures, recursion, object-oriented Javascript using prototypes, and jQuery. I would have no problem whipping up a demonstration app."

I think you answered your own question.

<comment><AUTHOR> So there are javascript-intensive entry-level jobs that require little in the way of design chops?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Employers are going to have a bias against you for not having a CS degree. That doesn't mean it's a deal breaker, however.

The biggest thing you can do is have a portfolio ready. Show potential employers that you are capable with a great website. Examples of projects you've done, and what you are capable of are going to be absolutely imparitive.

As far as minimal skill set, you are going to want be very confident/comfortable with HTML/CSS as well as cross browser quirks. Familiarity with Photoshop is a definite asset, as you will be required to chop graphics at a lot of shops. I would go to major job search sites, and look at the qualifications for front-end web developers. See what employers are really looking for right now and focus on that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Photoshop is what I'm trying to avoid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Front end jobs don't always require server-side experience, as long as you can make user interfaces work cross-browser. So HTML, CSS and JS is probably the bare minimum.

Of course, you'll want to have working knowledge of whatever MVC framework is popular on your language, SQL and library-gluing skills in general if you want to do back-end work also.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's probably hard to be a Javascript developer without also knowing HTML/CSS. The positions are usually for front end developer or UI/UX developer, and that usually means a complete package.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's exactly my concern. I don't want to get side-tracked from programming.</comment></comment>


Linux 4.9 is out - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/Articles/708766/ <comment><USER2> For anyone wondering, 4.9 is expected to be the next LTS kernel:

[http://kroah.com/log/blog/2016/09/06/4-dot-9-equals- equals-n...](http://kroah.com/log/blog/2016/09/06/4-dot-9-equals-equals-next- lts-kernel/)

</comment><comment><USER3> kernel 4.9 is the first kernel with full dynamic tracing support built in (beyond the power of systemtap, etc) . We are soon going to see tools like dtrace being built right for Linux.

Im excited for thw future of application development and monitoring on Linux. Imagine a whole bunch of tools more powerful than NewRelic.

<comment><USER4> Interesting, I assume you're referring to some extension of eBPF that happened in the 4.9 pulls. AFAIK eBPF already is pretty functional in 4.8. What got added that allows full dynamic tracing? (And what is full dynamic tracing?).

EDIT: Parent is probably referring to something mentioned here: [http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2016-10-27/dtrace-for- linux...](http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2016-10-27/dtrace-for- linux-2016.html). Apparently timed sampling got added, I quote Brendan:

> Timed sampling was the final major piece, and it landed in Linux 4.9-rc1 > (patchset). Many thanks to Alexei Starovoitov (now working on BPF at > Facebook), the lead developer behind these BPF enhancements.

This is indeed something possible with DTrace that was difficult (or not very efficient) to do with eBPF before. I assume one could've hooked into one of the kernel interrupt/... functions and used that as a ghetto timer, but the gymastics to convert that to real time might've been daunting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The amount of times the word "updates" appears in the commits makes me feel much better at my difficulty of choosing succinct and unique commit messages.

<comment><USER6> Note that those aren't "change commits", but merge commits aggregating large swathes of other changes. And it's not even all merge commits, it's just the merges from Linus' "top lieutenants".

But I sympathize. I often spend more time on commit messages than the actual changes...

<comment><USER7> Writing long commit messages (especially for internal/private projects) often gives me a slightly forlorn feeling, knowing that these words will almost certainly never be read again by another person, and possibly even I might never see them again. I persist only because when they _do_ get read, they can be absolutely invaluable in explaining what on earth I was thinking at the time.

<comment><USER8> _I persist only because when they do get read, they can be absolutely invaluable in explaining what on earth I was thinking at the time._

I wish I could upvote this more than once.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I remember reading about bufferbloat related patches in 4.9 that would make network quite a lot more efficient. Curious to see in practice.

<comment><USER10> BBR congestion control is amazing. You can read about it here: [http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3022184](http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3022184)

<comment><USER9> The team made a talk recently, I'll url it when I get back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Intel memory protection key support is nice. QEMU now also has support for emulation of pkeys, but naturally you can't use them with KVM/hw acceleration (because you don't have hardware to support them). This is generally enough for testing/designing, though. (The performance of memory protection keys will be important however, so it's not helpful to really determine that yet.)

That said, I'd suggest obviously building your own minimal kernel/chroot to do these tests, since the lack of KVM/available hardware makes emulation turn- around time fairly terrible for right now.

</comment><comment><USER12> Still no sign of NVMe "RAID" support: [http://marc.info/?t=147709622400002&r=1&w=2](http://marc.info/?t=147709622400002&r=1&w=2)

<comment><USER13> There's already a patch (due for 4.10) to detect and warn about this silliness. Since the Intel guy says that all the systems that shipped with this mode now have firmware updates to allow disabling it, there's very little reason for anyone to implement full support.

Hopefully in the future Intel will think twice before implementing ugly firmware-level hacks to aid in working around limitations of Microsoft's driver stack.

<comment><USER12> What real world impact does changing from (fake) RAID to AHCI have?

<comment><USER13> That's the firmware setting that disables the hack that hides NVMe devices behind the chipset's AHCI controller. Aside from making it possible for standards-compliant NVMe drivers to function as expected, not lying to the OS about the hardware topology also allows the OS to access the PCI configuration space (allowing for eg. ASPM support) and not unnecessarily share interrupts between two entirely separate devices.

<comment><USER12> So it'd be better for Linux to support this RAID/NVMe mode natively, right?

<comment><USER13> If it served a useful purpose in the first place, yes. And if it were properly documented and didn't cripple certain areas of functionality (and probably hurt performance a bit, but I don't yet have a system to measure this with).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The Kernel Newbies LinuxChanges page hasn't been updated yet, but when it is, it'll be at [https://kernelnewbies.org/LinuxChanges](https://kernelnewbies.org/LinuxChanges).

<comment><USER12> Should I be worried about Kernel Newbies? The forum is overrun by spam and it looks like the wiki wasn't updated for 4.8.

<comment><USER15> I've never read the forum but the kernel summaries are fantastic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder what "DRM updates" and "DRM fixes" include.

<comment><USER17> DRM there refers to Direct Rendering Manager[0].

A few days ago the author those changes are listed under (Dave Airlie) was on the HN frontpage for his comments on an AMD RFC[1].

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

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13136426](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13136426)

<comment><USER18> so when the AMD patch was refused, it was refused for this LTS version of the kernel? that's gotta be a huge blow against AMD, no?

<comment><USER13> The merge window for 4.9 closed long before this recent spate of publicity. The AMDGPU patch would have been on track for more like 4.11.

<comment><USER18> ah ok, thanks for the information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Now the corresponding Linux Kernel Newbies page takes ages to be updated and reflect the changes ;-(

</comment><comment><USER20> "make localmodconfig" in case you're compiling the kernel

</comment><comment><USER21> Why are Linux changelogs so unbelievably shitty? I read it and I have no idea what changed. But, hey, at least I know who fucking changed it, right?

<comment><USER7> The problem, as I understand it, is that these are summaries of summaries. The actual commit messages are incredibly detailed, then they get rolled up by the lieutenants into a single merge with one line per change, then Linus merges them in and adds to the final summary 'networking updates'. If you want to know what actually changed, then look at the commit logs, e.g.:

[https://github.com/torvalds/linux/compare/v4.9-rc8...v4.9](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/compare/v4.9-rc8...v4.9)</comment></comment>


Facebook is Dying - <AUTHOR> http://socialmediatoday.com/richard-conyard/655306/facebook-dying

<comment><USER2> I couldn't finish reading that, it was so badly written.

<comment><USER3> I finished reading it, in the same way one finishes watching a hilariously bad movie. :) It was all just grand rhetorics and little substance, to the very end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wonder if the article was auto-generated? "turnover and profits are down..." so at least turnover is down which sounds like it's actually good for the "once gargantuan beast".

<comment><USER5> Turnover is a trading term: <http://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/turnover.asp>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Headline should have been "Is facebook dying?"

<comment><USER7> So the answer would have been 'no'?

<comment><USER6> Sorry, I was referencing Betteridge's Law of Headlines which states that "Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no'". <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridges_Law_of_Headlines>

<comment><USER7> Actually I was referencing that too.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


It's not a phone, it's a radio - <AUTHOR> http://bademian.wordpress.com/2014/03/15/its-not-a-phone-its-a-radio/

<comment><USER2> It's not about being a radio, it's about analyzing big data, and just how invasive and creepy that can be while still pretending to be in your best interests.</comment>


Rethinking the Whiteboard  - <AUTHOR> http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/17/rethinking-the-whiteboard/ <comment><USER2> I thought everyone knew $10 4x8' sheets of shower board from home depot was the shoestring budget whiteboard solution. $250 framed whiteboards are for the "Enterprise".

<comment><USER3> It also makes a great desk cover - you can write quick notes all over your desk using a fine tipped Sharpie.

The best way to clean them I've found is 90% isopropyl alcohol. The bad side effect is your office will smell like a doctor's office for a while.

<comment><USER4> You might also consider whiteboard paint. Paint a wall surface and voila, instant whiteboard. That said, the one guy I know who did it ended up covering it with glass panels, so YMMV.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have "Bertha" (4x6) and love it. I'm patiently waiting for 2x3's to get back in stock to buy another smaller one. Oddly, though the process to buy was problematic. I never received an emailed receipt or shipping information, it just showed up one day. No receipt in the box. Also, at one point the SSL on the site was bad.

All of this to say that the product is amazing, but they are still working out the kinks... the kinks mainly (to me, at least) being customer service related. I'm sure that is just a growth issue, though, and will be taken care of in time.

<comment><USER6> Did you put it on textured walls? From their video, it looked like the material was very thin, so I wonder how well it works on any but the smoothest walls.

<comment><USER7> I have my "Bertha" on a textured wall. It works fine, although you can still feel a bit of the texture through it. (The texture is "damped," if you will.)

I don't think it would be a problem for anyone except the most OCD of users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does anyone else think that "WhiteyBoard" is a problematic name? I initially thought it was a Chris-Rock-style joke.

<comment><USER9> It doesn't bother me for the same reason that reading a kid a storybook about the dread pirate Blackhearted Bart doesn't.

An open source package I am aware of, once had a request from a government or non-profit agency, to remove any references to the software's use of "master / slave" in both the code and documentation, as it was found offensive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Reminds me of <http://www.ideapaint.com>

Different solution to the same problem: special paint that acts as a whiteboard when dry. Has the advantage that you can paint over it if you get the "ghosting" effect and it comes in a variety of colors. Downside seems to be that its probably harder to get it off and that it has to be on a wall, unlike the stickers that you can just put anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER11> This isn't deeply relevant to the profiled product, but I found the following characterization of YC rather odd:

"Y Combinator is the early stage investment fund that uses a biannual, weekend-long pitch and demonstration competition to find investment-worthy companies."

Isn't it more or less the other way around? (Demo Day is a "result", not the source, of YC companies)

<comment><USER12> The reporter is clearly confused about what Y Combinator is.

On the other hand, that YC is described as a bi-annual award program speaks to a growing problem that I'm sure PG and Co have to face: admission into YC becomes something to covet for its own sake. I can imagine that people who are in it for the resume padding wouldn't be motivated enough to see their startup through.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> We tried using a stick-on whiteboard and had dismal results. The writing surface was not smooth, since the thin material was going over our (bumpy) painted wall. Also, the adhesive would come off after a while, making us tape the whole thing down. Replaced it with a more traditional whiteboard.

</comment><comment><USER14> A question I asked when these first came out:

how hard would it be to print a faint graphic on one of these? I glued a metal whiteboard to a utility table for gaming; the 1" grid dots are pretty important for the games we play. If I could get a Bertha with pre-printed grid dots I'd be all over it.

Alternatively, how opaque/translucent are these? If I drew grid dots directly onto the table surface and then placed Bertha over the top, how much would the dots show?

<comment><USER15> They're fairly opaque. If they showed at all, they would be very faint. If you had a lightbox underneath, that would be a different story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Has anyone tried this? I've been thinking of getting one but am curious to how well it erases or if it succumbs to a "ghosting" effect over time.

<comment><USER5> Mine has not really had any issues with erasing, though I just purchased it. Thus far a quick rub down with an eraser and everything disappears. Not sure about long term (like leaving something on the board over a couple days/weeks.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It is cheaper to buy a real white broad than whiteyboard in China.

</comment><comment><USER18> OK, not exactly the same thing, but for my money you can't beat the giant 3M sticky flip charts. Unlike a whiteboard or whiteboard-like thing, you can write on it, then stick it somewhere else… forever. You never have to experience the pain of erasing! They are very hardy, too; I rolled some up and took them on a transatlantic flight and stuck em up again at my new location.

Pic: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/spiffariffic/4738936107/>

I'm thinking at the new office, we'll go with the glass. I like cheap but I hate the fact that all cheap whiteboard alternatives (and cheap whiteboards) look filthy after a few months. At the Truphone office in London, practically every surface is glass or melamine, it's just one giant whiteboard - that's what I want.</comment>


Engineering at Home: Unlikely objects for coping with disability - <AUTHOR> http://engineeringathome.org/ <comment><USER2> My spouse is a special ed teacher. She was pretty excited to see this- her last school district had an entire office devoted to cheap, practical affordances like this. I can't wait to see at-home manufacturing / 3D printing start making on impact in this space.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ironically, the design of this site actually inflicts physical pain on my eyes.

</comment><comment><USER4> Very celver and I applaud sharing this kind of innovative thinking. And for free. Also I'd like to give some credit in that the site doesn't try and dress up the material as "life hacks" or some other kind of puffery. It's not the easiest to look at unfortunately. I do like simple and this is close to basic, just probably not a personal fan of the color scheme. That's kind of a nitpick which thankfully I do believe is overcome by the usefulness potential of the content and time spent on the site. The About page is a nicely done example I can appreciate too.

</comment><comment><USER5> I love the actual content of the site. But the design is trying to be way too clever, and fails for usability. I would prefer a UI that is simple, readable, and easy to navigate.

</comment><comment><USER6> Goes to show how engineering is born out of necessity.</comment>


Marissa Mayer's Yahoo testing New Logo - J-H http://m.techcrunch.com/2012/10/25/yahoo-is-testing-out-new-logo-ideas-still-isnt-dropping-the/?icid=tc_home_art&

<comment><AUTHOR> Please - is this really going to move the lever?</comment>


Ask HN: Why don't you drive an electric vehicle? If you do, which? - <AUTHOR> Electric vehicle (EV) stories often feature prominently on Hacker News, and attract many comments and upvotes. However, I assume that most posters drive Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles as the comments tend to be looking forward to EVs becoming more widespread rather than discussing their current use.
If you're excited by EVs, why aren't you driving one already? If you do drive an EV, which is it?
I've been driving an all-electric Renault Zoe for the last three years. We've done about 18,000 miles and use it for domestic purposes. The longest trip I've done was about 400 miles, powered by motorway charge points in the UK. <comment><USER2> Because I don't have a car and don't drive except on vacation (at which point it's whatever the rental agency has).

The subways are already electric and about half the bus fleet here have been upgraded to hybrids. Transit FTW!</comment>


Digg's goin down. Wibba goin up. Just sayin... - <AUTHOR> http://wibba.com

<comment><USER2> Dunno about the title. I can tell you that for me personally, I'm burned out on all the "social" sites online. I don't feel like building more lists, following more people, inviting my friends to a new site, or seeing all the same basic headlines and insights regurgitated on additional sites.

</comment><comment><USER3> its pretty kool. where deos the name wibba come from</comment>


An efficient journal (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.harvard.edu/pamphlet/2012/03/06/an-efficient-journal/ <comment><USER2> @dougmccune makes a great point that "with the right conditions a quality journal can be run incredibly cheaply." Discrete Analysis is prime example of this (and there are others), the editors have been able to run the journal on a small grant using Scholastica for peer review and publishing via the arXiv model. Full disclosure - I am a co-founder of Scholastica. I think the key here is that in order to make journal production cheaper it has to be _despecialized_. Journals have come to reply on corporate publishers because printing and early online publishing were too cumbersome for them to manage on their own. In turn publishers have built up levels of specialization for their role. But today, with existing technology and services, journals can assume a pared down publishing model that addresses their needs in a much more affordable way and allows them to retain control of content and its distribution.

</comment><comment><USER3> As someone involved in publishing (but on the literary side) I've always made the point that if we reduce the value that we provide to something mechanical, we will eventually become dispensable.

The key to that kind of publishing (and I believe this story illustrates that it matters in academic publishing also) is providing a framework for the best to come to the top. That means supporting, encouraging and publishing good authors.

The JMLR has the great unspoken advantage that all of the people involved in its production have a job that allows (or encourages) them to pursue this project also. That won't always be the case. Often the key people involved will have to have salaries if the enterprise is to thrive. But the point remains the same: if you measure your value by the bureaucratic production aspect then eventually people will simply say: what do we need these guys for?

<comment><USER4> > The JMLR has the great unspoken advantage that all of the people involved in > its production have a job that allows (or encourages) them to pursue this > project also. That won't always be the case.

I'm not sure what you're saying here. The vast majority of hours have always been donated by referees. Then there are the editors, who are either volunteers or paid only a small amount. Aside from that, it's a matter of posting the papers on a website.

<comment><USER3> Well I'm saying that all these people have a livelihood. Within that they are able to afford to volunteer time. That is a somewhat privileged position to be in. In a really good and positive way.

Nonetheless a lot of people that want to do important work in one field or another, need to be able to make that their livelihood. Usually because what they do has not got the automatic financial value attached of something like Machine Learning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is definitely a good example of how with the right conditions a quality journal can be run incredibly cheaply (on the order of < $10 per published article). And it looks like JMLR has a better impact factor (in the 2.4 range) than the Springer journal (IF ~1.8) that the editorial board resigned from [1]. So they're obviously doing it incredibly cheaper, with good results. I don't think you can extrapolate from this that the same model can be applied to every field (as the author acknowledges), but it's certainly a good example to try to emulate. Another would be Discrete Analysis [2] for an example in Mathematics (also a field well-suited for efficient publishing).

I know this submission comes on the heels of the discussion of scholarly publishing on HN a day or two ago [3]. It's certainly a good counterpoint to my previous argument that you can't run a journal super cheaply, although I'd argue that one or two cases in one or two fields don't prove you can scale such a system to work for all of academia. But it certainly shows that it's possible to do at a small scale, and maybe there's someone clever enough to figure out how to scale it up.

[1] [http://www.springer.com/computer/ai/journal/10994](http://www.springer.com/computer/ai/journal/10994) [2] [http://discreteanalysisjournal.com/](http://discreteanalysisjournal.com/) [3] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15265507](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15265507)

<comment><AUTHOR> Discussion about APC pricing would be a lot more fruitful if there was some honest and open discussion about how laborious the publication and it's different work phases actually are. As I said, and as you verified, in the previous thread, no publisher wants to give any breakdown of the costs. This post on JMLR is one of the few where an outsider can actually get some kind of grasp of what it actually takes to publish a journal, and as seen, it isn't that much.

If the actual cost structure was better known, it would be a lot easier to evaluate if the price level is reasonable. Also, it would give a push towards "unbundling" most of the APC. Eg, the author could do the typesetting themselves (as in JMLR) or buy it from somewhere else for cheaper, and thus save grant money that could be used to pay at least something to a grad student or a postdoc currently working for free instead of, as I cynically assume, line up pockets of rich investors and overpaid execs.

I find it a very odd claim that somehow doing publishing at large scale should be MORE expensive than doing it on small scale. My hypothesis is that it's not the production costs, but that at the moment academic publication is so ridden with network effects that publishers can ask for greatly inflated prices to make huge profits and/or be done very inefficiently. It's also such a good business that journals/smaller publishers tend to get bought out or at least invested into by larger companies (most of this was actually done in past couple of decades), who of course have an interest to keep the profit margins as high as possible. And this can happen quite naturally even without full monopoly or cartel, although I wouldn't be surprised if there's some kind of "common understanding" among the big publishers that price wars aren't good for any of them. Also, it's one of those businesses where almost nobody actually pays anything from their own pocket directly, which generally isn't very good for price competition.

But in the end, I find most of this discussion sort of moot. I quite strongly believe, and can't seem to get any evidence to the contrary, that the actual labor going into the publishing is so low that the industry in it current form shouldn't be, and hopefully won't be, sustainable given the current, let alone future, technology. But OTOH, even if I'm correct, they have huge lobbying budgets, democracy is in such a sorry state and people are so indoctrinated to be selfish, short sighted greedy creatures, I wouldn't be too surprised that the industry can keep the racket going for decades.

<comment><USER6> Here's a good article on why it's hard to calculate per-article costs: [http://cameronneylon.net/blog/pushing-costs-upstream-and- ris...](http://cameronneylon.net/blog/pushing-costs-upstream-and-risks- downstream-making-a-journal-publisher-profitable/)

But yes, prices are not a reflection of cost, but of how much publishers can ask. Unfortunately, given that publishers sell subscriptions in bulk ("Big Deals"), there's no downwards price pressure: if they add another journal to the deal, they can ask more money, without that leading to libraries cutting subscriptions elsewhere. There's no real pressure for APCs as well: authors want to publish in "reputable" journals, and don't pay the APCs themselves, so publishers are free to raise them quite considerably.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Perhaps this is my bias showing, but if you read through this whole interaction [1,2,3], Kent Anderson comes across as a real dick, while both Yann LeCun and George Monbiot come across as pretty reasonable albeit ticked off about academic publishing (imo quite rightfully).

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/academ...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/academic- publishers-murdoch-socialist)

[2] [https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2011/09/01/uninformed- un...](https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2011/09/01/uninformed-unhinged-and- unfair-the-monbiot-rant/)

[3] [https://blogs.harvard.edu/pamphlet/2012/03/06/an- efficient-j...](https://blogs.harvard.edu/pamphlet/2012/03/06/an-efficient- journal/)

<comment><USER6> I often feel the same, although like you, I'm afraid it might have to do with my bias. The Scholarly Kitchen is an interesting place to catch up with the views of the publishers, but interactions like this and articles like most of Joe Esposito's don't really help with the image of "evil Elsevier et al"...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I feel like the "let authors pay for copy-editing themselves, if needed" could be extended to typesetting as well. I can't imagine most manuscripts being _that_ hard to read in the author's format, especially not if they know that it might affect how often they get read/cited.

<comment><USER5> The field of author services (as actual paid-for services, not bundled with journal publication) is an interesting field. Peerwith [1] is one new entrant into the field, which is part of the Springer-Nature incubator Digital Science. They're sort of a marketplace for academics to connect with (and pay) other academics to help with manuscript services, everything from peer review type work to copy editing.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > In fact, JMLR, Inc. didn't even have a bank account until recently; there > was no need.

Heh. Those Elsevier and Springer profits look gross but from the other direction. What are they doing with all that revenue?

<comment><USER6> Make profit margins of 30%-40%... [1]

(And also sponsoring academic conferences and societies, etc. But mostly profit.)

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-b...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable- business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science)

<comment><USER8> My point was given how little they do, even a 40% profit margin is hard to justify. It should be in the 70-90% range!

<comment><USER6> Well, OK, there's more. For example, like the author relies on submitters delivering a properly typeset article (using LaTeX), traditional publishers often discard the original formatting, re-typeset it using an XML-based format that can then produce HTML and PDF outputs again (in the journal's branding). In this process they often introduce errors, and one can question whether it's actually necessary. Then again, the publishers are realising that themselves as well, and are more and more often relying on author-typesetting as well - which in that of course boosts their margins some more.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to Make School Better for Boys - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/09/how-to-make-school-better-for-boys/279635/ <comment><USER2> To me, one of the easiest ways to boost male achievement in education is really simple.

Have male teachers.

An incredible 84% of teachers are female. [1] This has led to a dearth of male role models in schol for all the guys there.

I have 1 male teacher. (I'm in high school) And he's the computer teacher, a stereotypical male field.

[1] [http://www.edweek.org/media/pot2011final- blog.pdf](http://www.edweek.org/media/pot2011final-blog.pdf)

<comment><USER3> First, isn't the article about higher education, most professors are male.

Second, is that really a problem? Honestly so much of the world is becoming if you can't physically see someone similar to you doing something you are disadvantaged. Do you really need to see a male teaching a subject for you to press yourself to do your best?

I had primarily women teachers too, probably everyone did. It didn't do anything positive or negative to me. If you can not drive yourself, you are going to be at a significant disadvantage when you move on to the working world.

<comment><USER4> "It didn't do anything positive or negative to me."

Understanding that nurture is a force in developmental psychology, this statement is unfortunately false. The people around you have an affect on your epistemology and Super-Ego (if you care for that approach).

Only you can say what that effect was, of course. But it is disingenuous to suggest that the people who you possibly spent more waking hours with than your parents had no effect on you whatsoever.

<comment><USER3> Just no. If you are so influenced by seeing the gender of someone doing something that it sets your ability to do it you have problems well beyond whom you see doing it.

This is just further down the road of of giving up personal responsibility. "I never saw another man/woman doing it so I never tried. It's not my fault it's society not giving me role models to emulate."

<comment><USER5> You're talking about children. You're saying children should be self-aware enough to take that kind of personal responsibility for their own growth?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Boys are born tinkerers," she said. "They have a deep-seated need to rip things apart, decode their inner workings, create stuff."

Fortunately it was a woman who made that statement, it would have been sexist otherwise, right?

<comment><USER7> No, because she immediately points to scientific studies backing up her statements. Facts can't really be sexist, so if there is a problem with the statement, then we need to determine why the study is invalid.

<comment><USER8> Evolutionary psychology is always fraught with controversies.

I don't know if someone could read the paper referenced [1] and give some insights on the methodology used.

I ask because studying the innate differences between men and women is extremely hard, cultural bias is huge.

After reading many papers (on both sides of the "women and men are different" fence) I've come to the personal conclusion that you can't really treat evolutionary psychology as a hard science. It's just too controversial as it is, everybody seems to be pushing a personal agenda. Just read the studies if you can access them and make up your own opinion.

Maybe in a few decades when the dust has settled we might be able to reach a consensus. As it is, I really wouldn't treat those papers as "facts".

[1] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19883140](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19883140)

I would like to cite more sources but the only ones that come to my mind right now are in french. Maybe this would be a good starting point:

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It appears anything that is pro-boys is immediately seen as "anti-girls" which shouldn't be the case. If we want true equality we need to have equal opportunities but be aware that gender has different methods, motivations, and desires.

</comment><comment><USER10> "Young men in Great Britain, Australia, and Canada have also fallen behind. But in stark contrast to the United States, these countries are energetically, even desperately, looking for ways to help boys improve. Why? They view widespread male underachievement as a national threat: A country with too many languishing males risks losing its economic edge."

As an American, I may be unplugged from many of these happenings, but I feel like this is a stark difference between America and other countries. We seem to have a laissez-faire attitude that "If there's a problem, and a deadline for the problem, someone will just magically figure it out at the last second." And we often attribute that someone to the free market. On a broader note, as with any issue people seem to have significant worries about, what is a good way to actually begin solving it, assuming this general American attitude? I honestly don't know.

<comment><USER4> I'm not certain we attribute "that someone" with the free market in many cases. Education is quite solidly considered the purview of the federal and state governments these days, which I think contributes to that last second feeling.

When an opportunity for work appears in the free market, there is quite often a surge of responses. I hope it doesn't come across as cynical, but, I think often when there's an opportunity for work in the public market, there's quite often a surge of analysis and discussion and waiting until a response has to be given.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> _Why aren 't they being implemented?_

Because votes can be won in the US on girls education but not on boys education. For now. Agree there will be a tipping point.

Outside of politics, all US education needs to be addressed, independent of any segmentation.

</comment><comment><USER12> _" Officials at schools at or near the tipping point are helplessly watching as their campuses become like boy clubs, with a surfeit of men competing for a handful of surviving women. Henry Broaddus, dean of admissions at William and Mary, explains the new anxiety: "[M]en who enroll … expect to see women on campus. It's not the College of William and William; it's the College of William and Mary."_

Just me who feel that it is slightly offensive and paint a picture of women as sex objects? I wonder how they were allowed to print it without massive outcry.

<comment><USER10> It's interesting how flipping the gender provides a different emotional reaction. It reminds me entirely of the rapid sorting test in Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. You are given two categories, such as (White or Good) and (Black or Bad) and sort things on the two axes (face color and goodness). Apparently, people (all colors alike) do far better with the categories as I outlined than if you flipped good and bad, and put white with bad and black with good. Essentially, these stereotypes (white is good, men compete for women as if they are prizes, etc), become a part of everyone. Innately.

I'm curious, if you wanted to make a similar point as the article, but imply that coeducational studies are more productive, how would you do so?

<comment><USER13> I don't know how much "(White or Good) and (Black or Bad)" being psychologically-ingrained categories has to do with _race_ , though.

Some things early _homo sapiens_ knew about, that are white: rice, fatty tissue, soap, and safe sunny environments.

Some things they knew about that are black: mold spots, dried blood, charred flesh, and dangerous moonlit environments.

(Same for red with "sweet berries, fresh blood, flushed skin, and fire"; green with "medicinal plants, unsafe still water, vomit"; etc.)

I bet there wouldn't be nearly as clear an association if the colors were "vaguely dark beige" and "vaguely light brown".

<comment><USER10> Interesting point. Just to clarify, in the original study you were to sort actual images of faces. So when I say white and black, I don't mean they were sorting things such as "rice" to the "white" bin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The biggest difference is that boys are about DOING and girls are about TALKING. That's not about just schools, but the last 400 years of men's and women's role on society.

Boys don't typically learn by talking, they learn by pulling things apart and doing skills. In addition, because of all the push to "score" children, we've taken away the basic "boy" traits almost entirely.

When I was in elementary school it went form 9am to 3pm with sn hour of recess AND half hour of lunch. There was plenty of time for boys to wiggle and make noise and stuff. My kids current schools were from 8am to 3:30pm with about 45 minutes between one recess and lunch/recess. That's more "chair time" than most office workers are expected in a workday. All the "hands on" things have been removed for cost... Art, music, shop, gym are all drastically scaled back to maybe one of each one time a week if at all. School is strictly "listen and repeat" and MOST boys in history don't learn that way. As modern skills like computers, machining, manufacturing,etc require equipment folks just don't have at home, most boys never have a shot at the typical "boy jobs" until they are 16 and go to a career center or go to college or start working.

</comment><comment><USER15> As a person who attended a Title 1 high school, I saw a lot guys who came from single parent homes get kicked out after freshman year. I mean a lot them didn't understand the concept of not talking, but at times I felt like a lot teachers where just out to get them.

</comment><comment><USER16> >> How to Make School Better for Boys?

Make them __run __more, damnit.

</comment><comment><USER17> Okay, I was willing to read this and keep an open mind. But then I got to the fourth paragraph and saw this:

" Officials at schools ... are helplessly watching as their campuses become like retirement villages, with a surfeit of women competing for a handful of surviving men."

Is the argument here that women only go to college compete for men? And that colleges with more women are "retirement villages" because there aren't enough young men to hook up with?

Yep, done with this article.

<comment><USER18> That might be an extreme interpretation but I don't see it as unlikely that romantic possibilities are a factor for college aged people when choosing a place to spend several years of their lives.

Somewhere with a healthy gender mix feel more inviting overall than somewhere with a "bro club" atmosphere (or the opposite of that).

<comment><USER14> That's where we have a bit of a double standard of expectations. We expect a girl to go to college ZPRIMARILY to get an MRS. Degree, preferably ABOVE her social standing. When guys go to school we expect WORK first, Mrs. Second. You end up with this situation where women should compete with men fairly, all the time... Except when they want to stop competing and get married. Even then, men are competing for FOOD ON THE TABLE, every day, the next 40 years. Women don't have the same "skin in the game" because Daddy pays for school until hubby marries them.

<comment><USER18> I don't know if that is necessarily true. At least amongst my peer group, men would place a high weight on non academic factors in university choice. As long as the the university offered a course they wanted and had enough prestige to match their perceived social standing and families expectations factors like distance from home, cost of living , party reputation and where their friends were going were the big factors.

From my recollection the women tended to be more conscientious about their studies too and often had added pressure from being the first woman in their immediate family to have attended higher education.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


SHA512JS: Hash Locally - <AUTHOR> http://deckar01.github.io/SHA512JS/

<comment><AUTHOR> I am looking for ways to beef up my passwords. This was mainly conceived as an alternative to Passpack.

The idea is that hackers who obtain a server's hash do not expect the plaintext password to actually be a base64 encoded SHA512 hash. It also encourages salting to prevent password reuse.

What do you think?

Too much security?

Too time consuming?

Too awesome, must download GreaseMonkey script!

<comment><USER2> Security through obscurity. The hackers don't expect you to have a hashed password? So what? This is no different from salting.

Also, by adding a new function into your password hashing have you changed the cryptographic properties of the composed function? Have you formally proved that these new properties are as strong as the uncomposed properties? No? Then don't do it.

DON'T ROLL YOUR OWN CRYPTO, PEOPLE!

Composing functions counts as rolling your own, btw.</comment></comment>


IBM Watson Acquires AlchemyAPI - <AUTHOR> http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/46205.wss

<comment><USER2> to the OP, it seems you cofounded Vivisimo: What were your experiences after being acquired by IBM?

<comment><AUTHOR> Overall it was a good experience. Our attrition (already low) didn't increase, we kept our office and most of our culture, we grew the team and increased our sales many folds. Now we are part of Watson which is pretty exciting. Obviously there also downsides related to being in a big company - the biggest being that you have uber forces beyond your control rocking the big ship.</comment></comment>


Facebook's Mandatory Anti-Malware Scan Is Invasive and Lacks Transparency - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-mandatory-malware-scan <comment><USER2> I saw the screenshot of the FB anti-malware message being tweeted about and thought for sure it was a malware/phishing scam, so I was surprised to read that it is an official FB feature (admittedly I haven't been using FB much lately).

That the feature couldn't detect the user's OS (had her download a Windows binary even though she was on a Mac) doesn't lend much confidence though

<comment> mind-blight I thought the same thing. That's really bad. It's going to train users to be more susceptible to phishing attacks. I can't tell my grandmother that any site that tells her to install software is a scam, because Facebook just made this a legitimate user workflow

<comment><USER3> > I can't tell my grandmother that any site that tells her to install software > is a scam

I mean, you still can :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Have you seen their VPN yet? Offers you "more secure facebook" while facebook tracks every site you visit instead of just facebook.

<comment><USER5> I figured this would be satire. It's not satire. [https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/12/facebook-starts-pushing- it...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/12/facebook-starts-pushing-its-data- tracking-onavo-vpn-within-its-main-mobile-app/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Facebook's Mandatory Anti-Malware Scan" is something I expected to read only by 2026 or so, as the company, falling to hard times, would resort to dotcom bubble-era techniques.

</comment><comment><USER7> I guess it's russian roulette for how long till I permanently quit Facebook then.

<comment><USER8> Personally quite shocked that anyone in this community would endorse FBs behaviour in general by being users.

A closed version of the internet controlled by a corporation? We should be yelling from the rooftops not nitpicking things like this story

<comment><USER7> I keep it for family. It does allow me to connect with relatives I otherwise wouldn't hear from. However, I've deleted my Facebook before (for over a year even), and I'm waiting for a good time to wipe mine officially. I'll lose touch with a lot of relatives is the downside. Facebook makes it almost effortless to communicate with family.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That scan is a .exe file, so it won't run on Linux. When I try to log in using Chrome on Linux, they ask me to run it; I can't, so I can't log in.

Happily, so far, they don't ask from Firefox.

</comment><comment><USER10> I lack context. Can some Facebook user describe what this is about for non- facebook users?

<comment><USER11> The article fully explains it; using Facebook doesn't really provide any additional insight. Facebook has decided to lock people out of accounts if their undisclosed mechanisms of detecting a potentially compromised client machine is tripped, and will continue to lock them out until they run a Facebook supplied (but apparently sourced from one or more of a shifting set of partners) malware scanning application is installed on the users machine and run, with all the intrusive level of access that antivirus type of applications tend to have.

<comment><USER10> Training users to download and run dodgy antiviruses when some website says you're infected. What could possibly go wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What's the best way to leave facebook while still retaining access to their advertising tools?

I have no desire to personally be on FB anymore, but I would like to maintain the pages + ads for business purposes.

<comment><USER13> I have an account with no friends and that is an admin of one page, which I buy ads for. It's not my real name, but obviously has my real CC info in there.

Interestingly, a friend showed me his contact list entry for me (I believe created through a 3rd party OSX app), and in the Facebook field it had the name used on the admin/ads account I have. Given I don't use my real email address on the Facebook account I am amazed (but not particularly surprised) that the connection was made.

<comment><USER14> Might have tied it via your phone number.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> How could Facebook detect an infected machine?

> A Facebook spokesperson said Charity may have been asked to download the > wrong software because some malware can spoof what kind of computer a person > is running

Just changed the user agent?

<comment><USER16> Maybe detect browser extensions that malware might drop? Other than that, no idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is a new low. They have no shame.

</comment><comment><USER18> 1\. create (or download) a fresh windows VM

2\. run the malware scan

3\. everything shows up as clean

4\. ???

not defending facebook or anything, but that seems relatively easy to bypass.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, totally. I'll just tell my grandma who uses Facebook to look at family pictures that she just needs to spin up a new VM if she gets locked out.

<comment><USER19> You will be the one spinning VMs to unlock facebook for your whole family.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I didn't realize Facebook did this. I feel like the spirit of the idea is from a good place, though, even its the implementation and messaging have flaws. The article has a bit of a "it's evil" slant that I'm not entirely sure I agree with.

That said, I'm on Linux, so it would be pretty tricky for me to fix this issue if it happened to me.

<comment><USER21> The one part that struck me as genuinely evil is refusing to offer a guarantee about the data use.

I realize internet companies all always hate offering info about data use, much less binding agreements. But "let us and a third party touch and modify every single byte on your machine to use our product" is a gigantic ask, and deserves at least some good-faith effort to keep the results walled off from everything except security initiatives.

Beyond that, the intent seems fine. I still think it's hubris, though - Facebook is ostensibly just a website, and attempting to remotely diagnose and treat malware is something they ought to acknowledge they're not going to do well.

<comment><USER22> Well that's easy: They guarantee they will store and use all the data forever, and they guarantee they will lie to both you and the authorities about what they have used it for and whether it has been deleted.

<comment><USER21> Ok, fair point. A data-use guarantee would only reassure me if I didn't expect outright lying, and that's more faith than I have at the moment.</comment></comment></comment></comment>