The $1,632 Copy Of Microsoft Vista - <AUTHOR> http://consumerist.com/tag/windows/?i=5010868&t=microsoft-and-the-1632-copy-of-vista <comment><USER2> Its probably a bad thing to reveal which company I work for here :).

The right people at MSFT are on the case (on a Sunday morning during Memorial Day weekend no less) and are trying to sort things out. I left a comment on the Consumerist post asking Bill to send me an email so that we can speed things along.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's no excuse for billing mistakes like this. But everyone needs to be aware that using a debit card for purchases like these (any large dollar amount) can cause problems like this. If the gentleman in question had used a credit card a solution would be one chargeback away. Debit cards are convenient but their great weakness is that if there is a mistake with your account you are locked away from your money until it is resolved. With credit it is the card issuer's money which is under contention. Protect yourself. Use a credit card for purchases, then pay off the balance. It's safer than giving a merchant direct access to your bank account.</comment>


The Irrefutable Laws of Marketing - <AUTHOR> http://irrefutablelaws.weebly.com/

<comment><USER2> All very true. Also a very good, practical and easy read:

"The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding" <http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060007737/>

</comment><comment><USER3> I should probably print these out and stick them to the wall.

<comment><USER4> But first change 'effect' to 'affect'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am not sure I agree that people are persuaded by Ethos most rather than logos. What is the evidence you stated to be overwhelming?

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd add - The best marketing is baked into the product, not bolted on later.</comment>


Megaupload case: New Zealand court wants FBI evidence - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-19280898 <comment><USER2> I was recently in new Zealand and friends in their late 40s and early 50s were upset by the raid on a new Zealand citizen by foreign authorities, in new Zealand. Some of them used mega upload and some hadn't heard of it prior to the raid.

NZ told the us navy they didn't want their nuclear ships in the Harbour, which makes no sense to me, but does show that they have a spine. I wouldn't be surprised if the Mpaa doesn't get their way on this one.

<comment><USER3> Some context on the nuclear free policy in NZ - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealands_nuclear-free_zone>

It's an important part of the New Zealand national identity. There has been talk of allowing nuclear power generation but given how geologically unstable the country is most kiwis seem content to maintain the current policy.

<comment><USER4> Nuclear power generation isn't extremely practical for NZ, because it normally comes in large chunks which we don't have the population to support in most places.

Plus we've got like 70% hydro or something anyway, so we're already doing relatively well as far as burning fossil fuels for power goes.

<comment><USER5> Of course, we have high emissions from agriculture. (All those sheep farts...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Prosecutors allege that pirated movies and other content shared through his > site cost copyright holders more than $500m (£322m) in lost earnings, making > it one of the biggest cases of its kind.

I doubt the point / accuracy of this statement. Those who downloaded the content would have just gotten the content somewhere else. As much as the FBI would like to, you really can't point the finger at Dotcom for this loss of revenue.

<comment><USER7> That's not the point. This whole case has been just testing the water for the FBI - seeing how far the public (and the NZ government) will let them go. Whether they have grand designs for after Dotcom nobody knows (conspiracy!), but this case is clearly about more than all that money copyright holders supposedly lost (I'm in agreement with you on that - I doubt they would have lost any less without MU).

<comment><USER8> I never suspect conspiracy when incompetency is much easier. Men with badges hiding behind organizations often forget the scope and source of their vested powers.

<comment><USER9> "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> >In June a judge ruled that the warrant for the initial raid on his mansion and the way evidence was seized were illegal.

It's amusing the case still exists at all when it's clearly been identified the raid and evidence seizure were illegal.

I wonder why we even have laws when the authorities can so blatantly ignore them without consequence.

<comment><USER11> Unlike the USA, a lot of jurisdictions allow evidence to be used in court even if it was collected illegally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am surprised the NZ courts didn't have the evidence to begin with. How could they decide over the validity of the extradition request without it?

<comment><USER13> Apparently the NZ courts came to the same critical question that you did.

In all honesty, it seems ridiculous that the FBI thought they could withhold evidence.</comment></comment>


Magic Leap reveals Landscape and Immersive mixed reality app UIs - sahin-boydas https://venturebeat.com/2018/07/27/magic-leap-reveals-landscape-and-immersive-mixed-reality-app-uis/ <comment><AUTHOR> This seems promising, although I must admit that Magic Leap mostly interests me due to the continued involvement of Neal Stephenson.</comment>


Interview with Laura Poitras - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/01/laura-poitras-on-finding-edward-snowden-obama-s-tainted-legacy-and-oliver-stone-s-snowden-film.html <comment><USER2> "That's the stuff that drives me crazy—this response of more violence and more war to make us all safer actually creates more violence." \- I hope that one day we realize this is true.

<comment><USER3> Radical Islam will always hate and try and kill. That is not going to stop even if everyone realizes that statement is true.

<comment><USER4> Religion is indeed a powerful motivator, and interpreted certain ways is very dangerous. However, we don't do ourselves any favors by pushing sympathetic moderates towards extremism by waging wars that only serve to open a power vacuum.

The world would be safer without religions that deny the rights of others to exist, and would also be safer if violence hadn't been used to encourage more membership in those religions that promote violence.

<comment><USER5> > _However, we don 't do ourselves any favors by pushing sympathetic moderates > towards extremism by waging wars that only serve to open a power vacuum._

The law of unintended consequences is a tricky beast. I have pasted this link before, but it bears repeating. It's thorny by design, and happens to snide at US - but they are certainly not the only ones who have succesfully created their own enemies. Usually by supporting and funding earlier allies.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4H_E8b-qmo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4H_E8b-qmo)

IIRC Iran was a massive source of counterfeit US dollars in the 1980's and early 1990's. The reason? The last Shah of Persia was supported by the US and was even provided with a mint-quality printing press. [0][1] When he fled the country after the 1979 uprising, the printing press was left behind.

0: [http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/17960/did-usa- se...](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/17960/did-usa-send-federal- reserve-system-officers-to-iran-to-print-cash-for-iranian-o)

1: [http://articles.latimes.com/1992-07-02/news/mn-1906_1_counte...](http://articles.latimes.com/1992-07-02/news/mn-1906_1_counterfeit- bills)

EDIT: made quote appear in italics

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Poitras says "the reporting we've done has all been filtering what's in the public interest versus what's operational" yet in the same interview reveals "the communication flow for the drone system all goes through Rammstein, so it's part of the nerve center. The controls are elsewhere, but it all runs through fiber optic cables that go in and out of Rammstein" How is it in the public interest to know that all drone communication flows through a specific base especially considering how valuable that fact might be to someone who would want to ground our drone fleet?

That is my only problem with Snowden and how these things are being reported. It started out with valid whistle blowing but there are plenty of real operational national secrets that are being revealed in the process. If Snowden simply stuck to the NSA's overreach in domestic spying, it would be much harder for politicians and the like to call him a traitor and marginalize these issues.

<comment><USER7> "If Snowden simply stuck to the NSA's overreach in domestic spying"

On behalf of the other 6.7 billion people on this spinning green ball, thankfully he didn't. We have rights too.

<comment><USER6> >We have rights too.

Not under the US Constitution which is what governs the NSA. That has been one of the main features of government throughout history. They put their own people's rights above the rights of foreigners. EDIT: And doing the opposite will generally be viewed as treason.

I am honestly not aware of anything that was revealed that would violate any international treaty the US agreed to, but will definitely listen if you have examples. I also have a hard time believing that any other country with the capability to do the type of international spying the US does wouldn't do the exact same thing (or isn't already).

<comment><USER8> _I am honestly not aware of anything that was revealed that would violate any international treaty the US agreed to, but will definitely listen if you have examples._

If something is not restricted by international treaties, it does not mean it's ethically ok to do so. I can understand that the US would push the boundaries when it comes to enemies. But it is utterly painful what it has done to so-called allies.

Europe has a lot of historical debt to Canada and the US. However, 'betrayal' is the word that comes up describing what many Europeans feel.

<comment><USER6> >If something is not restricted by international treaties, it does not mean it's ethically ok to do so

This is where I think we get into problems. You seem to be suggesting that people should be allowed to reveal classified national secrets that are legal both nationally and internationally if they find them unethical. I think this is a dangerous precedent to set. Different people will have wildly different views on what is ethical when it comes to war and espionage. That is why it is important to codify these things into laws and international treaties.

<comment><USER8> _You seem to be suggesting that people should be allowed to reveal classified national secrets that are legal both nationally and internationally if they find them unethical. [...] Different people will have wildly different views on what is ethical when it comes to war and espionage._

Definitely.

 _That is why it is important to codify these things into laws and international treaties._

But treaties (as we have seen in this case) often lag significantly.

In the end it is the judgement and the responsibility of the leaker. In this case, I think Snowden made a good call. For many reasons: e.g. the world had the right to know that virtually all internet traffic is tapped or tappable and that cryptography was intentionally weakened. Even if the US is your friend, that makes you vulnerable to criminal organizations and states that are not allies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I found it odd when she said

> I was destroying the physical media, because you can't encrypt SD cards.

Does she mean they don't come with built-in encryption? I'm curious as to why you couldn't just save an encrypted file or encrypted container to an SD card.

edit: aaah, camera. I got the wrong end of the stick. Thanks!

<comment><USER10> She is talking about the SD cards in her camera, presumably. I don't know if you can get cameras that supports encrypting the images as they're written, but it's not unreasonable that she wouldn't have one, and not unreasonable that she'd be reluctant to trust whether or not formatting/overwriting the SD card would be sufficient to prevent recovery.

<comment><USER11> This sounds like a great unmet opportunity to create a camera for journalists that encrypts every picture to a public key that only your editor (presumably in a safe location) has the private key to decrypt.

<comment><USER12> And instantly uploads it (or at least, as soon as the camera is plugged to a phone).

<comment><USER10> That part you can handle with a Transcend or Eyefi wifi-enabled SD-card. The Transcend cards have also been thoroughly hacked so they can be fairly easily customized.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Most of the geopolitical analysis usually ignores the imminent public global preeminence of the astonishing economical power achieved by the Saudi guys + close allies in the close future. Not to mention how that economical power could look like in 100 years from now.

It is almost certain that this power it is currently already shaping many geopolitical events from the backstage.

Many think these new awesome amounts of money will just vanish after all the oil is gone, but that's not true. The money, most of it, it's already invested in many economical infrastructures around the world, the Saudí sphere of influence has probably similar chances to vanish in the next couple of hundred years as any of the current superpowers (US, Russia, China, etc.).

So many current superpower certainly need to comply with requests from those "new" kids on the block. Like it or not.

And many should look there for reasons to send troops where nobody wants to send them, or for to start wars without any public reasonable cause.

</comment><comment><USER14> Mediocre interview, I think. Nothing really groundbreaking asked or answered with depth.

That said, I agree with her when she says that these two decades of war and terror we've inflicted on the world will be seen as dark times.

I say two decades because we've already been through 13 years, and only now are starting to show the faintest hints of slowing down the rampage abroad and the totalitarianism at home.

<comment><USER15> The fascist West is no better than Russia or China. All Europeans, Americans, Canadians etc should be ashamed.

<comment><USER14> I wouldn't go nearly that far.

Russia doesn't even maintain the slightest veneer of democracy or civic empowerment, and China doesn't really have the capacity to enforce complete compliance from its massive population yet.

<comment><USER16> That actually makes the position of the US far worse. The US claims to be good in some way, to care about freedom and human rights while at the same time they couldn't care less.

China, Russia, Iran and other such countries - no matter what you may think about their policies - can at least be said to be honest.

That doesn't make them good but it does show that the US isn't better, in fact they are quite a bit worse.

<comment><USER15> The entire West is working together on intel. You can argure that Europe, Canada etc. are incompetent and weak but you can't argue that they are innocent. They are deeply complicit. But that narrative doesn't work very well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Does Snowden's legal fund actually have under 9000$? [https://fundrazr.com/campaigns/6mzUd](https://fundrazr.com/campaigns/6mzUd)

Seems legitimate, but that's crazy to me. Maybe they don't count everything?

<comment><USER18> Why does he need a legal fund if he has no intention of returning to the US and facing trial? What does that money actually go to?

<comment><USER19> > Why does he need a legal fund if he has no intention of returning to the US > and facing trial?

Because stuff like dealing with Russian immigration law and maybe also negotiating with the USA _does_ require a lawyer?

And for the question why it's only $9k, the Wau Holland Foundation also accepts bank transfers which won't show up there.

<comment><USER18> If he's using it for Russian immigration, it shouldn't be advertised as a legal defense fund.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Can we fix the URL without the Google redirect? It should go to:

[http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/01/laura- poitr...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/01/laura-poitras-on- finding-edward-snowden-obama-s-tainted-legacy-and-oliver-stone-s-snowden- film.html)

<comment><USER21> Yes, I thought it was some kind of google research.

<comment><AUTHOR> My b. Won't let me edit the link. Suppose I could delete and repost, but might compromise the comments section. Unless there's a riot, I say keep it as is?

<comment><USER20> It's really a request for the mods. I believe they can amend urls.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "You can't encrypt SD cards."

Right there she throws any accountability that she has any idea what she's talking about regarding encryption out the window.

<comment><USER23> I assumed that she just meant that consumer cameras cannot write encrypted data directly onto SD cards. It's not precise technical phrasing, to be sure, but I wouldn't conclude anything so broad from just that sentence.</comment></comment>


Paul Graham on why New York City won't beat Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2011/09/27/paul-graham-on-why-new-york-city-wont-beat-silicon-valley/

<comment><USER2> I think Paul was spot on about a giant claw ripping these startups into shreds somewhere along the way. By intensifying the hub effect, YC circumvents the claw.</comment>


Belgian Scientists Announce New Solar Panel That Makes Hydrogen - <AUTHOR> https://cleantechnica.com/2019/03/03/belgian-scientists-announce-new-solar-panel-that-makes-hydrogen/ <comment><USER2> I really hope this is genuine, it's massive news if it is. What I find interesting about this prospect is how it somewhat solves the "storage" problem of current photovoltaic (electricity producing) panels.

Does anyone know if hydrogen could be used to produce to replace gas based power plants to provide base load power overnight / during long periods of cloud ?

Fingers crossed!

<comment><AUTHOR> If we could extract water while burning hydrogen for electricity. A way to generate carbon less electricity that produces clean water as a byproduct will be a huge problem solver for the world's future.</comment></comment>


Want to Kill Your Economy? Have MBA Programs Churn Out Takers Not Makers - <AUTHOR> https://evonomics.com/want-to-kill-your-economy-have-mba-programs/ <comment><USER2> You could also institute a "permission culture", where every person who wants to do something has to check up with every possible idea or mechanism owner, and get explicit permission to do something.

A permission culture has a double whammy in that after getting burned a few times, everyone will consult with a lawyer before asking permission. That puts 2 layers of "takers" in the process at every decision point.</comment>


Droid Incredible saves browser screenshots to secret hiding place - <AUTHOR> http://i.engadget.com/2010/06/17/droid-incredible-saves-browser-screenshots-to-secret-hiding-plac/

<comment><USER2> It's always better to do a hard reset before selling your Android phone anyway.

Edit: Ops! Missed this part: _"... and even a full reset to factory settings failed to eviscerate the indiscreet imagery."_

I believe that these screenshots are cached to appear as previews for bookmarked sites. But a full reset should wipe everything. If this is not the case, it could indeed be an issue.

<comment><USER3> According to the comments the pictures are stored on the SD card.

* A factory reset has no reason to clean up the SD card

* You'll more than likely keep or wipe the SD card before sale

* Pictures on the SD card should be easy for users to find

Conclusion: non-story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why is this called Droid Incredible? Shouldn't it be HTC Incredible? Seems to be some kind of Engadget inside joke, but I find it misleading.

<comment><USER5> It's the "Droid Incredible by HTC", not to be confused with the "Motorola Droid"

<comment><USER6> I thought "Droid" was one of the US carriers brands. I'd guess they're selling, and probably renaming, phones from various manufacturers to make them seem more coherent.

<comment><USER7> Motorola makes a phone called the Droid. However, they don't own the name Droid, Lucasfilm does (Motorola licensed it.)

If you look at pages for the Droid Incredible, you'll see they also licensed the name: 'DROID is a trademark of Lucasfilm Ltd. and its related companies. Used under license.'

My guess is that Motorola didn't get any sort of exclusivity from Lucasfilm, so other companies are free to call their phones Droid as well if they pay Lucasfilm for a license - and piggyback on Motorola's marketing spend.

<comment><USER4> Wow thats confusing... Seems like a big blunder by Motorola to me, they must be kicking themselves. Imagine HTC comes out with the Droid 2, heh.

<comment><USER8> It's not confusing if you know that, in the US, the average person doesn't think about buying a Motorola or HTC. They are buying their phone from Verizon, so it's up to Verizon to market them. That's why Verizon licensed the "Droid" TM.

HTC wouldn't be able to come out with a Droid 2 because that's Verizon's decision. The Droid 2 is coming out later this year, made by Motorola because that's the way Verizon wants it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Any idea why the phone does that?

Edit: OK, after re-reading it, it seems that it's "bookmarking gadget", I guess its function is to show some preview of the bookmarked pages.</comment>


Microsoft releases CNTK, its open source deep learning toolkit, on GitHub - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.microsoft.com/next/2016/01/25/microsoft-releases-cntk-its-open-source-deep-learning-toolkit-on-github/ <comment> x-sam Only Microsoft can open source documentation on github in _docx_ [https://github.com/Microsoft/CNTK/tree/master/Documentation/...](https://github.com/Microsoft/CNTK/tree/master/Documentation/Documents)

<comment><USER3> Looks like they're moving it to GitHub wiki: [https://github.com/Microsoft/CNTK/wiki/Config-file- overview](https://github.com/Microsoft/CNTK/wiki/Config-file-overview)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> First TensorFlow, then Baidu's Warp-CTC, and now Microsofts CNTK. It is a very, very exciting time for open source machine learning indeed.

<comment><USER5> Except that it appears to _require_ MKL or ACML...

Sigh...

./configure

Defaulting to --with-buildtype=release

Cannot find a CPU math library.

Please specify --with-acml or --with-mkl with a path.

<comment><USER6> At least ACML seems to be open source now too.

"ACML End of Life Notice: We have transitioned our math libraries from a proprietary, closed source codebase (ACML) to open source solutions"[1]

[1] [http://developer.amd.com/tools-and-sdks/archive/amd-core- mat...](http://developer.amd.com/tools-and-sdks/archive/amd-core-math-library- acml/acml-downloads-resources/)

<comment><USER7> And, if I recall, MKL is included in Microsoft R Open (previously, Revolution R Open). At least, that's what the instructions here[1] lead me to believe.

[1] [https://mran.revolutionanalytics.com/documents/rro/installat...](https://mran.revolutionanalytics.com/documents/rro/installation/)

<comment><USER8> Microsoft employee here. MKL libraries and headers will show up in CNTK soon. We are working with Intel on this.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for this, I personally have a license for MKL due to a licensed Intel C++ compiler and it really does a good job. I feel that Intel should do more to get MKL out in the open and more in use by the Open Source community. For instance I would love to have access to their FFT code so I could optimize it for my specific use case, but right now things are a black box. Very excited about CNTK btw, releasing a fully cooked multi machine distributed framework is just awesome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm a bit surprised they decided on a CAFFE-like declarative language for specifying neural net architectures[1], instead of offering high-level software components that enable easy composition right from within a scripting language, e.g., like Python in TensorFlow's case.[2]

Is there anyone from the Microsoft team here that can explain this decision?

\--

[1] See examples on [https://github.com/Microsoft/CNTK/wiki/CNTK-usage- overview](https://github.com/Microsoft/CNTK/wiki/CNTK-usage-overview)

[2] See examples on [https://www.tensorflow.org/versions/0.6.0/get_started/index....](https://www.tensorflow.org/versions/0.6.0/get_started/index.html)

<comment><USER11> According to their slides[1] it is planned:

Quoth: "Models can be described and modified with

• C++ code

• Network definition language (NDL) and model editing language (MEL)

• Brain Script (beta)

• Python and C# (planned)

"

[1][http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/dongyu/CNTK- Tu...](http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/dongyu/CNTK-Tutorial- NIPS2015.pdf) thanks to @sharms

<comment><USER8> Hi MSFT employee here. Yes. High-level bindings are planned and are a high priority. We will document the planned interfaces on GitHub soon.

<comment><USER12> Thanks for letting us know. Any hand-wavy non-committal indication of how long that might be? Weeks/month, two months/more than three months?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is great news - I was looking at Tensorflow the other day, but on Windows / OSX it doesn't take advantage of my GPUs. For my desktop I was stuck as my new 3440x1440 monitor doesn't, for the time being, work with Xorg's intel driver.

Hopefully this is a viable alternative, I would love to see a online course in machine learning leveraging this. I found [http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/dongyu/CNTK-Tu...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/dongyu/CNTK-Tutorial-NIPS2015.pdf) on the homepage which looks well put together to start off

<comment><USER14> Apparently there is also a CNTK book available in pdf (~150 pages) at: [http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/226641/CNTKBook-20160121....](http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/226641/CNTKBook-20160121.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> quoted performance numbers on multiple GPUs leave other frameworks in the dust. where's the catch?

<comment><USER16> I was thinking the same thing, it almost looks a little too good to be true -- although it does kinda make sense given the focus on GPU-based clusters. I wonder how this compares to Baidu's warp-ctc [1]. They don't _really_ seem to be the same thing, and maybe I'm missing something since I'm just starting to get into ML, but it seems to be conspicuously absent from this writeup.

[1] [https://github.com/baidu-research/warp-ctc](https://github.com/baidu- research/warp-ctc)

<comment><USER5> 1-bit SGD and insanely high minibatch sizes (8192) it would appear: which drastically reduces communication costs, making data-parallel computation scale.

If so, while very cool, that's not a general solution. Scaling batch sizes of 256 or lower would be the breakthrough. I suspect they get away with this because speech recognition has very sparse output targets (words/phonemes).

Too bad the code below isn't open-source because they got g2 instances with ~2.5 Gb/s interconnect to scale:

[http://www.nikkostrom.com/publications/interspeech2015/strom...](http://www.nikkostrom.com/publications/interspeech2015/strom_interspeech2015.pdf)

<comment><USER17> Yep. To elaborate: really big batch sizes can speed up training data throughput, but usually mean that less is learned from each example seen, so time-to-convergence might not necessarily improve (might even increase, if you take things too far).

Training data throughput isn't the right metric to compare -- look at time to convergence, or e.g. time to some target accuracy level on held-out data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> How many Deep Learning frameworks now? I think DL frameworks are coming up like JavaScript frameworks

<comment><USER19> Here's a (currently incomplete) list of Deep Learning frameworks : [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XvGfi3TxWm7kuQ0DUqYr...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XvGfi3TxWm7kuQ0DUqYrO6cxva196UJDxKTxccFqb9U/edit#gid=0)

There are many :)

<comment><USER20> Missing Vowpal Wabbit: [http://hunch.net/~vw/](http://hunch.net/~vw/)

<comment><USER21> I'm not sure if it's a deep learning framework. Perhaps they are in some ways complementary [http://hunch.net/?p=2875548](http://hunch.net/?p=2875548). Who knows, maybe CNTK is one big reduction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> An evaluation of the open source ML options - [https://github.com/zer0n/deepframeworks](https://github.com/zer0n/deepframeworks)

</comment><comment><USER23> "...Worry about scaling; worry about vectorization; worry about data locality...." [http://www.hpcwire.com/2016/01/21/conversation-james- reinder...](http://www.hpcwire.com/2016/01/21/conversation-james-reinders/)

[http://icri-ci.technion.ac.il/events-2/presentation-files-ic...](http://icri- ci.technion.ac.il/events-2/presentation-files-icri-ci-retreat-5-6-may-2015/)

[http://icri-ci.technion.ac.il/files/2015/05/00-Boris-Ginzbur...](http://icri- ci.technion.ac.il/files/2015/05/00-Boris-Ginzburg-1505051.pdf)

Nvidia Chief Scientist for Deep Learning was poached from Intel ICRI-CI Group [https://il.linkedin.com/in/boris-ginsburg-2249545?trk=pub- pb...](https://il.linkedin.com/in/boris-ginsburg-2249545?trk=pub-pbmap)

[http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/~wolf/deeplearningmeeting/speaker.ht...](http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/~wolf/deeplearningmeeting/speaker.html) Look for quote: "...In a very interesting admission, LeCun told The Next Platform ..." [http://www.nextplatform.com/2015/08/25/a-glimpse-into-the- fu...](http://www.nextplatform.com/2015/08/25/a-glimpse-into-the-future-of- deep-learning-hardware/)

Yann LeCun states on Nov 2015 (29:00 min mark) GPU's short lived in Deep Learning / CNN / NN [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7TUU94ir38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7TUU94ir38)

[https://www.altera.com/en_US/pdfs/literature/solution- sheets...](https://www.altera.com/en_US/pdfs/literature/solution- sheets/efficient_neural_networks.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER24> They claimed to be "the only public toolkit that can scale beyond single machine". Well, mxnet ([https://github.com/dmlc/mxnet](https://github.com/dmlc/mxnet)) can scale across multiple CPUs and GPUs.

<comment><USER25> Multiple machines implies scaling across a network or backbone - <USER2> logical computers. As I understand it at least.

<comment><USER26> Mxnet does. The commenter just left that part out. "The library is portable and lightweight, and is ready scales to multiple GPUs, and multiple machines." [https://mxnet.readthedocs.org/en/latest/distributed_training...](https://mxnet.readthedocs.org/en/latest/distributed_training.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Is this used on Azure Machine Learning? Do they use GPU based machines for it on Azure?

<comment><USER18> Project Philly is a Deep Learning platform that is underdevelopment in Microsoft

<comment><USER27> can you share more?

<comment><USER18> Project Philly is supposed to be a GPU platform in Azure that will enable us to run 100's of GPUs. Primary focus is Deep Learning and will be using Nvidia GPUs. CNTK, I think will be the default way to harness the Computing power.

I think that is all that has been revealed. I suspect that this will be announced within a couple of months and this cntk release has something to do with that

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Can't wait for sousmith's take

[https://github.com/soumith/convnet- benchmarks/issues](https://github.com/soumith/convnet-benchmarks/issues)

</comment><comment><USER23> [https://software.intel.com/en- us/blogs/2013/avx-512-instruct...](https://software.intel.com/en- us/blogs/2013/avx-512-instructions)

"...Worry about scaling; worry about vectorization; worry about data locality...." [http://www.hpcwire.com/2016/01/21/conversation-james- reinder...](http://www.hpcwire.com/2016/01/21/conversation-james-reinder..). [http://www.hpcwire.com/2016/01/21/conversation-james- reinder...](http://www.hpcwire.com/2016/01/21/conversation-james-reinders/)

Nvidia Chief Scientist for Deep Learning was poached from Intel [https://il.linkedin.com/in/boris-ginsburg-2249545?trk=pub- pb...](https://il.linkedin.com/in/boris-ginsburg-2249545?trk=pub-pbmap)

[http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/~wolf/deeplearningmeeting/speaker.ht...](http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/~wolf/deeplearningmeeting/speaker.html)

AVX-512 instructions [https://software.intel.com/en- us/blogs/2013/avx-512-instruct...](https://software.intel.com/en- us/blogs/2013/avx-512-instructions)

Look for quote: "...In a very interesting admission, LeCun told The Next Platform ..." [http://www.nextplatform.com/2015/08/25/a-glimpse-into-the- fu...](http://www.nextplatform.com/2015/08/25/a-glimpse-into-the-future-of- deep-learning-hardware/)

Yann LeCun states on Nov 2015 (29:00 min mark) GPU's short lived in Deep Learning / CNN / NN [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7TUU94ir38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7TUU94ir38)

[https://www.altera.com/en_US/pdfs/literature/solution- sheets...](https://www.altera.com/en_US/pdfs/literature/solution- sheets/efficient_neural_networks.pdf)

[http://icri-ci.technion.ac.il/events-2/presentation-files-ic...](http://icri- ci.technion.ac.il/events-2/presentation-files-icri-ci-retreat-5-6-may-2015/)

[http://icri-ci.technion.ac.il/files/2015/05/00-Boris-Ginzbur...](http://icri- ci.technion.ac.il/files/2015/05/00-Boris-Ginzburg-1505051.pdf)</comment>


Remind HN: Don't Forget to Submit Your YC Application - <AUTHOR>

Applications close in less than an hour at 8:00 PST. If you've made any changes to your application, be sure to actually submit it before the deadline.
Clicking the "resubmit" button after the deadline, even if you've submitted before, will mark your application as late, significantly reducing your chances.
Also, last time, there was a chat room for applicants to discuss their ideas: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1813949
Does anyone want to set up something like that this time? Or shall we all just go to #startups? <comment><USER2> We are totally willing to setup the applicants chatroom again (<http://www.nodejscloud.com:8001>) if there is enough demand.

<comment><USER3> Count us in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Clicking the resubmit button does not mark your application as late (otherwise, #6 on the instructions would be misleading). You just have to make sure you submit at least once before the deadline. The URL to the app will probably be replaced with the late app tomorrow, and then you won't be able to get back in. Best of luck to all applicants.

<comment><AUTHOR> Apologies for the misinformation, I guess I am mistaken.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> We want to build a peer-to-peer social network that connect people together by using bleeding edge picture analysis on their mobile internet devices (MIDs). Combined with state of the art audio analysis or the user's voice we can create the world's first social analysis network that blends the virtual world and the physical world together through 3D graphics!

<comment><USER6> youre in!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Chatting about great ideas totally beats studying for exams, so I'm definitely in!

</comment><comment><USER8> Got mine in a full day early. Pumped.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm down.

</comment><comment><USER10> CRAP!

I am worried I may have accidentally resubmitted after 8!

I think I may have miscopied the posterous video URL and when I noticed, I still had the application open in one tab and hit update not knowing this would mark it as late!

How can I confirm this?

<comment><USER11> I submitted half a dozen edits after the deadline, fixing stuff i found while re-reading the application. Now they've shifted it around so it says "The application deadline for this cycle has passed. You can still submit a late application, though the chances of getting funded are lower."

I suspect the real close was at around midnight, not 8pm.</comment></comment>


100% automated, official certificates for Docker containers - <AUTHOR> https://ungleich.ch/u/blog/fully-automated-ssl-certificates-for-docker/ <comment><USER2> Wait, the article says "Finally all your docker containers can be world wide reachable, fully secured without any manual configuration required."

Is that a good thing? I hope it is tongue in cheek. I thought the secure practice is to hide the docker containers behind reverse proxies in DMZs, not expose them publically to the internet.

I expected this article to be about setting up your own CA in docker.

<comment><USER3> > hide the docker containers behind reverse proxies in DMZs

Why though?

Usually a reverse proxy is use for (a) load balancing (b) SSL/TLS termination. The solves the second; the first can be solved via DNS.

Many times, it's actually quite difficult to obtain a suitable reverse proxy proxy, e.g. FTPS.

<comment><USER2> FTPS is also placed in a DMZ as it is internet facing and you can use any layer 4 reverse proxy for it. And DNS load balancers have serious downsides, like clients resolving IP adresses on which the service is down (removing servers takes time due to DNS caching down the line)

The whole point of a DMZ is to have another layer keeping your data as far as possible from the Internet. In the unlikely case a Reverse proxy is exploited remotely, the potential damage is most likely limited to it. After getting in the RP you would need to go through another firewall that is normally tuned to allow only connections to the application server containers.

Worst thing you can do is connect your insecure DB to the public Internet and leak the data of one billion people: [https://www.cisomag.com/elasticsearch- server-exposed-1-2-bil...](https://www.cisomag.com/elasticsearch-server- exposed-1-2-billion-people-data/)

The insecure Elasticsearch server could have had a nice green padlock, but if the default admin/admin credentials weren't changed it will not help at all. It is better to just assume that everything is not configured right and treat it accordingly and do layering so you basically need to hack everything to reach the most improtant prize.

TLS and x509 certs solve only the encryption and trust problems, making them easy is very good, but there are other security issues to consider.

<comment><USER3> > FTPS is also placed in a DMZ as it is internet facing and you can use any > layer 4 reverse proxy for it.

Not if you use passive FTPS, which most clients require.

> The whole point of a DMZ is to have another layer keeping your data as far > as possible from the Internet.

That layer has to actually _do_ something though. Adding 10,000 feet of copper wire between you and the internet doesn't make you safer; it makes you slower and poorer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice fluff-free article.</comment>


Domain hacks and the creation of Hipster Domain Finder - <AUTHOR> http://www.coffeecodecou.ch/domain-hacks-and-the-creation-of-hipster-domain-finder/ <comment><USER2> People no longer use domains. I've seen tons of people go to Google search and put "domain.com" there. With mobile, domains are even less useful. I think people still have ".com" in their mind and for sure "somethingapp.com" is easier to communicate than the future "something.app". It confuses people, they are used to ".com". It's like ".mobi" and ".tel", which were supposed to be killers. Yet, most companies just implemented "m.something.com" instead of ".mobi". These cryptic names only get hacker kudos, mere mortals don't really care and for most of those, you need to pay a premium and be stuck with a crappy registrar. Gandi is pretty good though and I hear much more hacker- friendly with not paying so much attention on take down notices like with the US registrars.

</comment><comment><USER3> > For this reason I was surprised to find out that there were no tools > available for finding such domains.

Ever heard of Domainr?

<comment><AUTHOR> > Ever heard of Domainr?

Domainr tells you if a word you enter is available as a domain hack, but there were no tools that actually find the words for you. Sorry I could have been more clear there, thanks for pointing that out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> HDF is cool, no doubt; but I have mixed feelings about using some of these TLDs for important projects. I simply haven't decided how much to trust these small registries.

Awhile back I bought tra.gd when I thought I needed a short domain for something. If someone were to build a brand around a .gd domain, could Grenada change their rules to disallow international commercial usage? A more popular ccTLD example is .io.

</comment><comment><USER5> Always wanted to get al.ec, but it's apparently too short (when I've Googled it). I'd also like .ks to be a TLD so I can by soc.ks (I'm a huge socks fan).

<comment><USER6> Similarly, when the 'land' tld was announced, I wanted to get `le.land`. Sadly, I can't get ones that short.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I bought dg.gs ages ago. (dg is my initials.) It's handy for super-short email addresses when you have to type one into a touch screen credit card terminal like square.

</comment><comment><USER8> HDF is very useful indeed. I had been looking for something like it for a long time now. Any plans on adding longer words or search?

</comment><comment><USER9> So, [http://ins.ertco.in](http://ins.ertco.in) makes me a hipster?

<comment><USER10> at least 40% more hipster than delicio.us

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> A lot of ccTLDs do not allow direct first level registrations. There should be a filter for this.

</comment><comment><USER12> If I was 15 again, I would register

les.bo

<comment><USER11> ...and if your 15 year old self had $500 for the registration fee. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> my actual domain:

xa.bi</comment>


How the Harper Government Committed a Knowledge Massacre - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/capt-trevor-greene/science-cuts-canada_b_4534729.html <comment><USER2> This phenomenon is certainly not limited to the Harper government, nor to Canada. Just the other day, Franklin county, North Carolina destroyed boxes of priceless 19th century records, including court records, by bringing them to an animal shelter to be burned.

Photo from Twitter: [http://pic.twitter.com/ZjEPcajo8U](http://pic.twitter.com/ZjEPcajo8U)

Here's the unbelievable part: the local historical society and local genealogists volunteered to re-house and rescue the records FOR FREE and the county still said no, refused to let them examine the records, and destroyed them anyway!

Full story here: [http://stumblingintheshadowsofgiants.wordpress.com/2013/12/2...](http://stumblingintheshadowsofgiants.wordpress.com/2013/12/21/160-year- old-documents-intentionally-destroyed-in-franklin-county-n-c/)

<comment><USER3> Not exactly the "full story" when it omits the facts that support differing conclusions. That's sort of the opposite of "full story".

Some moderating details:

* Documents were damaged by a mold that is hazardous to health

* State archivist claims the documents were of "low historical value"

* Archivist claims some were confidential, and couldn't be legally released to 3rd party

[http://www.wral.com/historians-lament-destruction-of- frankli...](http://www.wral.com/historians-lament-destruction-of-franklin- county-records/13229922/)

<comment><USER2> Those "moderating details" are inane. The Heritage Society was willing to take the risk of storing and possibly digitizing the documents, some of which were moldy and some of which were not. Indeed, members of the Heritage Society were the ones providing the initial manpower (and masks and sanitizer) to clean out the building basement where they were found, including the broken furniture and muck. If they're willing to take documents in that condition, having already seen it first hand, why should the state be paternalistic about it?

Furthermore, some of the records were clearly NOT of limited value:

 _" The following is a description of the early investigation, accounted by Ms. Torrent of Franklin County Heritage Society; "Immediately we found Chattel Mortgages from the 1890′s, court dockets from post civil war to prohibition, delayed birth certificate applications with original supporting documents (letters from Grandma, bible records, birth certificates, etc), county receipts on original letterhead from businesses long extinct, poll record books, original school, road and bridge bonds denoting the building of the county, law books still in their original paper wrappings, etc., etc. etc. The list goes on and on. Our original feelings of shock that the records were there and in such bad condition led to feelings of joy that they were still there and that someone had thought to retain them for us to discover so many years later.

Each book or box opened produced a new treasure. A letter, stamped and in the original envelope, from a Franklin County soldier serving in France during the First World War asking the court to be sure his sister and his estate was looked after while he was away. A naturalization paper from the late 1890s for an immigrant from Russia escaping the tyranny of the Czar. A document from County Commissioners in the early years of road building requesting another county repair their road as it entered the county. Lists of county employees and what their wages were in 1900. A court document paying the court reporter who took the depositions in the "Sweat Ward" case, (Ward beheaded a man in the 1930s and later became the last man to be lynched in the county). Postcards, county bills, audits, cancelled checks, newspaper clippings, store ads from long gone businesses. Boxes and boxes of court cases covering the years of prohibition, a docket from an individual accused of running a "baudy house" within the city limits, a photo tucked now and then inside a book, one of the courthouse unseen since the 1920s. Again, nothing was in any order and many of the boxes were combinations of records from many decades."_

What an amazing, amazing collection of documents! But sorry, it's all ashes now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Take this article with a grain of salt. You normally can't quietly and quickly shut these types of things down. It would be on the CBC and especially something like this would be very hard to pull off. Here is why:

1\. Obvious environmental concerns about oceans and fisheries.

2\. The conservative base is pro-government regulation of fisheries.

3\. The conservative base is sentimental, and destroying first copies of anything would piss them off.

4\. Newfoundlanders (man is it hard not to write "Newfies") gave up a shit ton of prosperity after joining Canada by having the government come in and regulate their fish stocks. (To be fair, they didn't have much choice. If they had kept going there would be nothing left in 5 to 10 years. No I'm not exaggerating it was fucking bad.) For the conservative government to do something that widely flies in the face of that would be to piss off an entire province.

5\. The government is under a lot of flack by gutting the census and by muzzling federal employed scientists, this would make voters across Canada balk.

6\. Canada is fighting off illegal Chinese and Portuguese fishing boats. These libraries contain information that is useful if we're ever going to get reparations from them.

7\. No clear motive for doing so. It isn't like big oil has made a giant spill and the conservatives are trying to cover up the environmental damage or anything.

8\. I fail to see this being reported on the CBC, and they would be all over this.

<comment><USER5> Those are all good reasons not to do this. But "nobody smart would do that" doesn't refute the reporting. You could come up with a similar list of common- sense reasons not to start wars in the middle east but in the US we do that like every 5 years.

<comment><USER6> Yes, we might call this the "no one would ever fight a land war in Asia" fallacy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If I understand it correctly, Canada had 3 elections in the span of 5 years, and Harper was elected as the prime minster 3 times in a row. To be more precise, the Conservatives had 2 minority governments and 1 majority government, with Harper being the leader of the Conservatives.

Sorry, but just like the Bush era, by voting someone in again and again, and knowing his agenda, it basically legitimizes anything he does. I think Canadians already knew who he was and his behavior, and to imagine him getting voted in 3 times in a row, well, this isn't on Harper, it's on the Canadians for voting him in.

It's a real shame though that Harper is such a tyrant that he would allow this destruction of historical data. That's not someone I would want as my leader, and I hope in the next election his party gets voted out. But for that to happen there has to be a better alternative, and apparently so far there hasn't been one.

<comment><USER8> It's not quite that simple, though. The Harper government has cheated in most of those elections - they were caught in 2006 in the In and Out scandal, but it carried no punishment and so nobody cared. They are also recently (2011) accused of using robocalls targeted at (elderly/non-conservative) voters, posing as Elections Canada, and telling voters to go to the incorrect polling station. This definitely happened, and a few Conservatives are implicated, but to what extent it affected the elections and to what high level of power the order came from is being investigated still (by those appointed to Elections Canada by Stephen Harper).

Canada may have elected the Conservatives - or we may have never voted them in to power at all. It's tough to tell because they cheat in every election.

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

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Canadian_federal_election_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Canadian_federal_election_voter_suppression_scandal)

<comment><AUTHOR> It does appear the Canadian conservatives have been learning from their brethren to the south: Karl Rove started the worst of such election abuses in the primaries against McCain in 2000.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> _" Many scientists have compared the war on environmental science to the rise of fascism in 1930s Europe. Hutchings muses, "you look at the rise of certain political parties in the 1930s and have to ask how could that happen and how did they adopt such extreme ideologies so quickly, and how could that happen in a democracy today?"_

Well of course it's just like the rise of fascism. And the "knowledge massacre" is, as the word denotes, essentially a genocide.

Thank you, HN.

<comment><USER9> Here, let me jog your memory: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik)

(Apologies, but Godwin's Law seems unavoidable in this context. Yes, here's a historic example of a no-shit Fascist party who fired lots of academics because of their ethnicity _or_ their field of expertise and replaced them with a whole fabricated fake "science" that was ideologically acceptable to them. Note: burning libraries was _explicitly_ part of the program.)

It's excessive to call Harper's government "fascist" (although Harper has prior form for hard-right politics: [http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2011/04/19/0...](http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2011/04/19/03610.html) ), but this is indisputably a tactic used by fascist movements.

<comment><USER3> Holy shit I just got a reply from Charlie Stross!

Honestly, I don't see the parallel at all. GoC isn't trying to rewrite science: it's closing scientific institutions (minor ones) as part of budget cuts. Certainly it's not doing so out of a nationalist campaign against scientists of a specific _race_ , which is what defines fascism (isn't it?). Arguably it's a politicization of science, if it's intended to suppress climate science; but that has nothing to do with fascism, it's just bad policy.

<comment><USER6> I'm not going to get into the fascism vs. not-at-all-fascism debate.

But there is something like nationalism at work here. You have the self- appointed champions of "real Canada" (Harper's base in the landlocked provinces) systematically undermining the knowledge and cultural capital of the Alien Other (the "weird" provinces that touch salt water, which for various reasons are all not quite "real Canada).

It's probably not fascism. But it's more than just bad policy. It's bad policy that consistently works out to the detriment of non-favored geographic, linguistic, and yes sometimes ethnic groups.

<comment><USER9> Yes, this. It's the equivalent of red state/blue state culture war politics in the USA, turned up to 8 or 9 (if not 11). It's also destroying _research libraries_ that provide exhaustive raw data going back decades or centuries on _the natural environment_.

If you view Harper's constituents as the resource extraction industries, the destruction of this information is useful to them insofar as it deprives their opponents (the science-backed environmental lobby) of ammunition with which to oppose environment-degrading policies. With these libraries gone, much information is forever lost that could otherwise be used to build a coherent policy case opposing, e.g. tar sand extraction or other resource extraction businesses on environmental grounds.

Note that Stephen Harper is a member of an evangelical fundamentalist church that opposes environmentalism and denies anthropogenic climate change:

[http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2012/03/26/Harper-Evangelical- Miss...](http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2012/03/26/Harper-Evangelical-Mission/)

Whether what's at work is misguided tribalism, business-centric anti- environmentalism, religious fundamentalism, or something else, I hope everyone on HN can agree that _destroying research libraries_ isn't a good foundation for evidence-based policy making in governance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Herr Harper also had coast guard bases eliminated that only cost a paltry amount per year and instead blew $20 million on his new weird ministry of religious freedom office nobody wants.

</comment><comment><USER11> Sounds like the 21st century equivalent of book burning?

Control over knowledge and its dissemination is the primary weapon in the arsenal of the state. Military hardware comes after.

<comment><USER12> Could be, given that book burning was always more of a symbolic act to intimidate the supporters of the ideas contained in the book rather than just the act of destroying information. What could the purpose of burning records of environmental research centers and monitoring stations possibly be, for what's pocket change to a first world Government?

I have just read this, not being from Canada, but this Harper fellow seems to have an internal war with the institutions of the State in charge of the monitoring and protection of the environment and a budget deficit, so he went forth and dismembered the one in charge of water, despite what his advisers said, and what's common sense nowadays, that water ecology is in danger world wide after heavy abuse.

<comment><USER13> There are countless historical examples of the burning of books and cultural artifacts to suppress ideology and culture. The Catholic Church was a constant destroyer and perverter of opposition cultures for political power. A few examples are: Savonarola's Bonfire of the Vanities, the Spanish Inquisition, the conquest of the new world...

The total destruction of information is an act of political conquest. It eliminates the ability to use that information to form an opposition in the future and it delegitimizes any current opposition.

I'm seeing at least two other mentions in Canadian press:

[http://o.canada.com/technology/environment/harper- government...](http://o.canada.com/technology/environment/harper-government- cutting-more-than-100-million-related-to-protection-of-water/)

[http://thetyee.ca/News/2013/12/09/Dismantling-Fishery- Librar...](http://thetyee.ca/News/2013/12/09/Dismantling-Fishery-Library/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So whatever happened to calling the government to get a quote on record about this? Is "trust but verify" not known at HuffPo? Or is Canada on an extended holiday?

<comment><USER15> The former.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> So data and information are irreversibly lost? In the Age of Internet?

<comment><USER17> In some ways, it's even easier for information to be lost in the digital age; _unless it 's in regular use_, it can end up on crumbling tapes in an obsolete format that cannot be understood. There are various underfunded efforts to recover and transcribe old NASA data that suffer from this.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is the ratio of worthless applications to your job advertiesments - <AUTHOR>

I presume, with every job advertisement you publish, there must be some bullshit applications which waste your time. (Under-qualified applications etc)<p>I wonder how much trouble they give it you. <comment><USER2> Regardless of how well you word your advert, the majority of applicants will be inappropriate. The only proven solution is to carefully select the medium you use to advertise. For example, if you posted an advert for a Ruby Dev on Monster you would get thousands of replies and be lucky to get one or two decent applicants whereas if the same job was posted on a platform like HN you would have much fewer applicants but a significantly higher calibre of candidate.

Think about the type of people you want to hire. Where are they likely to respond to a job advert?

</comment><comment><USER3> If you are getting too many worthless applications, you aren't writing effective job ads.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's not my point. I don't have an intention to hire right now. I want to know more about general statistics.</comment></comment>


Single bungling IT engineer to blame for BA's £150M global meltdown - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4565236/IT-engineer-blame-BA-s-150million-global-meltdown.html <comment> UK-AL The system should have been designed so the engineer could not have caused this. Thus its a system design fault.</comment>


Secrets of running a six-figure Airbnb business - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/3021179/secrets-of-running-a-six-figure-airbnb-business <comment><USER2> I don't know why this is getting so much media attention as if it's some new innovative concept. Airbnb is just a new marketing platform for these types of listings. I've subleased two apartments multiple times using Craigslist alone (free, and I can use my judgment to screen for ideal tenants). Sites like HomeAway have done vacation rentals for a long time. Serviced apartments and extended stay hotels have existed for ages, allowing short-term stays and short leases, usually targeted towards corporate employees who are temporarily on assignment or relocating.

It's not a new industry at all, but inside the tech echo chamber people want to act like it is so they can pat themselves on the back for their "disruption."

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I was going to say that vacation rentals have been around since people lived in caves.

The surprise isn't so much that money can be made but that people are rather brazen about breaking lease terms and laws (which I believe are reasonable; who wants an everchanging parade of random, unvetted people traipsing through the hallways?).

<comment><USER4> Someone's renting their place out on airbnb or similar in my building (in NYC) and it kinda sucks. Most people are just rude but otherwise uneventful, but some are noisy, some smoke outside my window, some can't figure out how trash works. Some lock themselves out at 4:30am and buzz and bang on my window until I let them in since my buzzer is the only one that works. Not sure what to do.

<comment><USER2> Make a fuss with the landlord. The standard lease agreement in NYC requires landlords to be informed of subleases in writing. They can object with a reasonable basis.

<comment><USER5> If someone who I didn't know was banging on my window at 4:30am asking to get into my building, I'd call the cops.

<comment><USER4> Heh, yeah I mean people do get locked out though sometimes... gotta do the neighborly thing.

Calling the LL / Calling the cops are a bit more of a nuclear option that I'm looking for; I just want to find out who's doing it so I can discretely ask them to inform their renters of a few things. I don't want to see airbnb go away :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A night at a hotel is so much more expensive than a night at an apartment. That arbitrageurs would find and exploit this loophole seems obvious in retrospect. This invisible hand is pushing up the cost of an apartment, and down the cost of a hotel room.

People talk a lot about the downsides of Airbnb on HN, but there's also a big upside -- increased mobility. When I was 20 I would have loved a worldwide leaseless exchange for furnished apartments, both short-term and long.

<comment><USER7> _That arbitrageurs would find and exploit this loophole seems obvious in retrospect. This invisible hand is pushing up the cost of an apartment, and down the cost of a hotel room._

What we need now is software that can find apartments for rent and people looking for a place to stay, offer to rent the apartment for a bit less than the owner wants and offer to rent it to the people for a bit more than they're looking to pay, pocketing the difference and doing this hundreds of times per second. This will provide "liquidity" and make the AirBnB market "more efficient".

<comment><USER8> You joke, but nothing makes the landlord or the renter accept those offers. They can simply leave the original offer on airbnb and wait to get matched with a willing counterparty for the price they want.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > _Making a Living in the Sharing Economy_

Ephemeral landlords are a farcical interpretation of the "sharing" economy.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is illegal in many parts of North America and the world, and certainly against nearly all rental contracts...

With news like this getting out with increasing regularity, I don't think it's going to last long...

<comment><USER11> True and it's interesting for reasons I haven't seen mentioned yet.

When I was a landlord I remember having two tenants who were subletting the house. I didn't care, in fact I specifically told them that I didn't want to know about anyone not on the lease. My reasoning was that if they wanted to have a few friends live there and split the rent, it meant they would have no problem paying _me_ every month. However, I wanted to limit the damage liability to just the two official ones.

Now, if I knew they were subletting through AirBnB and making multiples of what they were paying in rent, I'd have to ask myself why I needed them and why I shouldn't just do the same when their lease was up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It seems that people are just prodding local governments to intervene here. I'm guessing there's going to be a lot of "That was good while it lasted" posts in a year or two.

<comment><USER13> It seems like it's only getting easier for people to voluntarily organize these apartment-sharing or -renting deals. If it's not through AirBnB, it's Craigslist, or any number of online competitors. Governments can and probably will try to crack down, but I think they're on the losing side of this battle. And I hope I'm right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> No big secret. Just another small business man evading all kinds of taxes, like tourism tax and income tax. These together can reach close to 50% of revenue. Wait until the IRS sticks its fingers in the "sharing economy". It already requires amazon and ebay to issue 1099-Ks for "large users", defined as $20K or more of gross revenue a year.

<comment><USER15> You didn't read the article, did you?

"Airbnb installed a pop-up window on its site to remind hosts that they should follow their local laws when they register, and Bradley plans on paying San Francisco's 14% hotel tax (that's on top of the 3% that Airbnb charges for payment processing). Airbnb sends its hosts 1099s so they can pay taxes on what they earn, and he also plans to pay income tax on his Airbnb revenue."

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > and they [city officials] argue Airbnb hosts owe occupancy taxes, which > assure tourists pay their fair share for police, street cleaning, and other > public services they use while in town.

I don't think that argument makes sense. Each apartment is being paid for in the same way it would be if the actual owner lived there.

</comment><comment><USER16> Interesting. The first 6 months I lived in SF I was able to pay my rent by renting on Airbnb the I apartment I was still renting in Miami.

</comment><comment><USER17> My guess: now, profitability. Later, competition (and intervention).

<comment><USER18> Hotel taxes will probably make it not worth the hassle. That, or the landlords / HOA will be much more strict about this sort of a thing.

<comment><USER19> So what you're saying is I should make a startup to provide aggregated hotel tax and HOA/local jurisdiction information over JSON based on physical address.

Y Combinator here I come! /s

<comment><USER20> I'd wager that's a better idea than many of the other pitches I hear

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Managing 6 apartments and taking that kind of risk (90% occupancy) seems like an awful lot of work for this kind of return.

<comment><USER22> His sunk costs seem to be low. As long as he actually doesn't buy the apartments and do this, the risks are small.

Worst case scenario is he terminates his leases and he's back to square one.

This is a dream real estate scenario. No mortgage, and really high cash flow every month.

The risk is that as more people do what he is doing, supply will increase and prices will go down which will likely make his cashflow equal his lease payments.</comment></comment>


The Jordan Peterson All-Meat Diet - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/08/the-peterson-family-meat-cleanse/567613/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> I am reading Charles Darwin recounting of his travel on the Beagle, and in Argentina he mentions the Gaucho diet that is essentially only eating beef and drinking mate.

From wikipedia [0]

>The gaucho diet was composed almost entirely of beef while on the range, supplemented by yerba mate (erva-mate in Portuguese), an herbal infusion made from the leaves of a South American tree, a type of holly rich in caffeine and nutrients.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaucho](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaucho)</comment>


Zulu: Multi-platform Commercialized OpenJDK - <AUTHOR> http://www.azulsystems.com/products/zulu <comment><USER2> Wow, they seem to be going out of their way to avoid mentioning any benefits I might get from using Zulu over OpenJDK or Oracle JDK for that matter.

Knowing Azul through Cliff Click's excellent blog posts I was expecting to see better GC, scalability work etc. but nope - this just seems to be rebranded JDK that is open source and has Enterprise support. Given Oracle they might have some success but that's about it.

<comment><USER3> Azul are just making sure that there's some enterprise-viable alternative to getting screwed by Oracle.

As in, Oracle installing adware with their Windows installer is currently damaging to Java as a brand, and making Oracle Java be less of a "sane default" than Sun Java was.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Zulu is simple: It is a free and freely re-distributable binary distribution of OpenJDK for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS. Each binary is tested and certified (literally), which in the Java world is no small thing.

For MacOS and Windows, Zulu is the only binary distro of OpenJDK that I am aware of. For Linux (as of this writing), Zulu is the only publicly available binary distro of OpenJDK 8 that actually undergoes TCK testing and Java SE compatibility testing. [RedHat provides 7 and 6 binaries through the IcedTea project, but IcedTea has not yet shipped a Java 8 version].

So unless you want to build OpenJDK from source (and test top verify what you built is good), you'll need to get a binary from somewhere. Zulu is that somewhere.

To demonstrate the simple value of a tested and certified binary build: The current default Java binary thing you get on docker's official Java runtime image for Java 8 is 8u40 ([https://registry.hub.docker.com/_/java/](https://registry.hub.docker.com/_/java/)). But 8u40 doesn't actually exist. It is still in development in OpneJDK and won't be released until March 2015. So this thing you pull off a repo is certainly not a tested or released version (likely a top of tree snapshot built from source and just pushed to an experimental repo).

For a current list of companies and organizations that are actually able to fully test OpenJDK 8 (or 7, or 6), see the TCK signatories list at: [http://openjdk.java.net/groups/conformance/JckAccess/jck- acc...](http://openjdk.java.net/groups/conformance/JckAccess/jck-access.html)

<< And yes, I work for Azul. >>

<comment><USER5> How come IBM is missing from this list? I thought the ditched Harmony and are now contributing to OpenJDK. I remember some keynotes some years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really can't get over the level of marketing here. "Report" after "report" from a company that specializes in generating favorable copywriting out of thin air ([https://451research.com/about](https://451research.com/about)).

This is clearly not a product being targeted at developers, so I have no idea why "Open Source" or Docker is being pushed, other than being profitable buzzwords. In fact, on first impressions this looks like exactly what I would produce if I wanted to cheat clueless IT executives into buying a rebranded copy of OpenJDK.

If that's the goal, maybe it will work. If not, they badly need to rethink the site.

</comment><comment><USER7> The obvious question is - does it provide anything additional on top of `OpenJDK` that I can already install via `apt-get install openjdk` ? I suppose those builds are 100% open source too.

I skimmed through 451's analyst report if Azul is bringing any of their own improvements to Zulu but answer seems negative.

<comment><USER8> They apparently have a pretty cool garbage collector for the JDK, but it's not part of Zulu, it's part of Zing (their commercial JVM).

Also, this has been around for like a year, so it's not even really that new...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> A lot of companies would love use OpenJDK instead of OracleJDK or any other proprietary JDKs. This is wise move from azul to provide support for openJDK.

</comment><comment><USER10> The only reason I use the Oracle jdk in my enterprise vs. OpenJDK is performance. Oracle goes out of their way to make it a pain in the ass to install their jdk. If Oracle's jdk were available via apt, this would be a no contest.

I'm curious if there's a performance improvement with Zulu and if there are apt repos available.

<comment><USER11> From Java7, I thought both Oracle jdk and OpenJDK were almost the same. Does Oracle still offer an edge over performance?

<comment><USER12> In my experience yes. It is especially clear on more limited (ARM) devices (Chromebook ARM, Atom/Celeron laptops) though; if you get stuff running at all, it is very slow; swap Oracle JDK in and it's suddenly very usable. I myself don't do a lot with server side Java anymore, but my colleagues tell me the same things, but it's fast enough for most applications there. On the client it's far more obvious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Isn't OpenJDK already "free, 100% Open Source"?

What are the benefits of this "commercialization"?

<comment><USER14> Last time I checked OpenJDK had no Windows distribution. Given that Oracle bundles adware with their JDK, Zulu means that people like me may no longer have to look at Java as a massive joke.

<gasp> I might even have a JDK on my machine by the end of today.

This is great news for Windows users.

<comment><USER15> > Given that Oracle bundles adware with their JDK

A HN user should know better.

The JDK never had any bundles.

The JREs which are available at [http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/inde...](http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html) also never had any bundle, even on Sun days.

The only one with bundles is the download from [http://java.com/](http://java.com/) and even then, it isn't Oracle or Sun's fault if people lack reading skills.

EDIT: Truth hurts

<comment><USER14> > The JREs which are available at ... also never had any bundle, even on Sun > days.

Oh. I stand corrected.

> [http://java.com/](http://java.com/) and even then, it isn't Oracle or Sun's > fault if people lack reading skills.

[https://who.is/whois/java.com](https://who.is/whois/java.com)

Registrant Organization: Oracle Corporation

The adware-bundled installer is provided by Oracle. Whether or not I know better to install adware is irrelevant (because I do, and that's why I don't currently have a JRE installed). Nowhere does Oracle indicate _where_ you can get the JRE without the adware bundle. Your comment is the first time I have _read_ that such an installer exists.

What is relevant is Aunt Tilly's experience - as any HN user should know. She is told by something that she needs Java, goes here[1], clicks on the first link and gets adware. That is victimizing the ignorant and is why I do not take Oracle, and by association Java, seriously. That is why Zulu is exciting - because maybe now I can correct that perception and start doing some Java.

Reality hurts.

[1]: [https://www.google.com/?q=java#q=java](https://www.google.com/?q=java#q=java)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > Linux (including Docker)

feed the "buzz".

<comment><USER17> There's no relationship between companies as far as I am aware. I'd prefer it if we weren't mentioned, but that's their prerogative</comment></comment>


Made in USA logo a differentiator? (49 comments) - <AUTHOR> http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.478704.49 <comment><USER2> I'm inclined to say it makes no difference, but it might. Some may have small partiality to US (or western) software, but more for support and documentation reasons. Where or from whom the code was from is opaque to most users anyway. The topic reminds me of this particular essay, which is fitting: <http://paulgraham.com/usa.html></comment>


Last month was the warmest October on record globally - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/05/weather/warmest-october-temperatures-climate-trnd/index.html <comment><USER2> "which analyzes temperature data from around the planet, said October 2019 was the warmest in their data record, which goes back to 1979."

This is meaningless. "On record" should be hundreds of years to really show me that there is a real heat wave. Instead, we have data only going back to 1979.</comment>


Quantcast Shakes Up Online Ad-Targeting Model - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124684239585598449.html <comment><USER2> Well the adage.com folks are also charging for info.

And the "detailed" article at [http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArtic...](http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=108887) is short, but says:

"Typically, marketers buy audiences and behavioral categories defined by publishers and ad networks. Quantcast, however, is offering them the opportunity to use their own data to define their target audience, and then to buy it directly in real-time."

...which doesn't say much to me.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately, I have trouble finding _details_ about their approach except through _paid_ subscription to wsj.com

If anybody knows more about Quantcast or their approach (or has read full article), maybe you could let us know if what they're doing can teach us anything?

[ see also: <http://www.quantcast.com/target.com> ]</comment>


Ask HN: Where are the Wakemate reviews? - <AUTHOR>

I am so close to buying a Wakemate. I'm completely sold on the concept and it presents a compelling value proposition: sleep better, without taking meds, for $50.<p>However, I can't seem to find any actual hands-on reviews of the device. The website says the first devices shipped in January. Has anyone here used a  Wakemate? Would you care to enlighten me about your experiences with it? <comment><USER2> As far as I know it hasn't shipped. I pre-ordered it last year when it was scheduled to ship at the end of January. They then delayed that and said Q1 2010. It still says that and they still haven't shipped. They made a post last week on their facebook page saying they would tell us shipping details soon, but haven't said anything since then.

<comment><AUTHOR> I hope it's not vaporware!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I got an email on March 11'th saying that they were shipping out the first ones in March. I haven't heard anything since.

 _Sorry for the radio silence ? we have some good news: the first run of units will go out in March! We do not know how large the run will be right now, but it will not fulfill all of the pre-orders. We'll let you know if you're in the first batch as soon as we can. Thanks for your continued patience and interest in WakeMate; we can't wait to show you what we've made!_

</comment><comment><USER4> Hey Guys,

Greg from WakeMate here - Because we have not publicly shipped any units yet, there are no reviews of units just yet. We will be shipping out the first units at the end of the month so you should be seeing some reviews soon. More detailed information will be posted to our website and blog.

</comment><comment><USER5> Here's the TC article from that January delay: <http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/23/wakemate-delay/>

Have you emailed them? email@example.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Haven't emailed them. I'm less worried about being the first to get one. I want to let the early adopters figure out whether this thing is legit and then I'll make my decision. I really hope it's the real deal.</comment></comment>


Amazon to cut affiliate fees to sites focused on free books - <AUTHOR> http://onehundredfreebooks.com/blog/2013/02/22/friday-morning-022213-five-free-kindle-books/

<comment><AUTHOR> Starting March 1st, Amazon is going to cut affiliate fees for sites that have a heavy focus on promoting free Kindle books and fit the following criteria :

"In addition, notwithstanding the advertising fee rates described on this page or anything to the contrary contained in this Operating Agreement, if we determine you are primarily promoting free Kindle eBooks (i.e., eBooks for which the customer purchase price is $0.00), YOU WILL NOT BE ELIGIBLE TO EARN ANY ADVERTISING FEES DURING ANY MONTH IN WHICH YOU MEET THE FOLLOWING CONDITIONS:

(a) 20,000 or more free Kindle eBooks are ordered and downloaded during Sessions attributed to your Special Links; and (b) At least 80% of all Kindle eBooks ordered and downloaded during Sessions attributed to your Special Links are free Kindle eBooks."

I run such a site and it will be interesting to see what happens next. I fully expect many of the sites that exist today will no longer exist in a months time. Or, they will look to promote other platforms (IE: Apple, Nook, etc).

What may be more interesting is what will this do to the authors and the KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) offerings? What will be the new incentives that Amazon will offer up? And will authors still promote their books for free?

(I say yes and the trend will move to "perma-free" . Books that are always free to hook a reader. IE, the first of a series, character, etc...)</comment>


What would Jack do? - k-mcgrady http://alyssaaldersley.com/what-would-jack-do/

<comment><AUTHOR> As an experiment in human limits, great. As a sustainable and effective way of running your business, absolutely terrible. Keep in mind the following (assuming you are a normal human being and do not have special powers, like Jack Dorsey): 1\. The human mind can only maintain sustained focus at the highest levels for a limited amount of time each day, which is why in a typical work day, performance drops significantly after 3PM.

2\. When tired or exhausted, your mind will default to system 1 thinking (using Nobel winner Kahneman's description for fast, intuitive, emotional and automatic decision-making process because it requires less energy; from his book Thinking Fast, and Slow) which is normally bad for start-ups that require intense focus and deep insight.

Accept that the human mind works very well in matters requiring problem solving skills and creative deliberation for 4-5 hours, the other 4-5 hours leave for less intense duties (responding to routine email, basic accounting, staff meetings, exercise, playing with the kids, etc.). To push your mental focus so hard will render you a complete zombie by nighttime and your significant other will leave you, make no doubt about it, because it would be like talking to a wall that just nods and blinks. I know, been there, done that, both as the zombie and on the receiving end of a zombie.

Simply put, 16 hour work days will destroy your family and wreck havoc on your creative process. Although it may be great for those engaged in routine debugging that is almost automated and rythmic, I simply don't see this approach to work as useful for anybody in a position requiring problem solving or creative focus.

</comment><comment><USER2> I like the idea of thematic days.

Some days i just feel like writing all day. I should do all the writing for everything I am working on.

I could also setup meetings for all projects on certain days.

Finally, like my dad say, it is all about discipline. Without it, it is not going to work.

<comment><USER3> There's something to be said for setting a (reasonable) goal for a day, a theme if you will, and sticking to it. It's also interesting to note that this might be the best way to train/practice. I think it was an article linked off of HN to that 10,000 hours website about performers who practiced in three (or more) hour chunks who made the most progress.

As an anti-anecdote, I've been trying to burn through my todo lists without really organizing the items on them, just letting them come as they may, and it always seems demoralizing at the end of the day because even though I may have checked off a lot of items, there was no "big" coherent thing I accomplished, and I didn't check off as many items as I wanted to.</comment></comment>


"Person of the Year" Nomination for Higgs Boson Riddled with Errors - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/11/29/person-of-the-year-nomination-for-higgs-boson-riddled-with-errors/

<comment><USER2> A definite read wherein it shows that a Time article has at least one error in every sentence. Amusing. And I learned that the Higgs Boson does not account for all the mass in the universe, just some of it. And a new word, "Higgsteria."

</comment><comment><USER3> Ahh... good ol' Time Magazine:

[http://www.theonion.com/video/time-announces-new-version- of-...](http://www.theonion.com/video/time-announces-new-version-of-magazine- aimed-at-ad,17950/)</comment>


The Most Common Flaw In Software Performance Testing - <AUTHOR> http://saasinterrupted.com/2009/12/16/the-most-common-flaw-in-software-performance-testing/

<comment><USER2> _One simple and easy way to run meaningful performance tests is to take a snapshot of your production data (minus any personal/private information of course)_

That's the real trick isn't it? You need to sanitize personal data, but maintain similar cardinality on all the indexes.

</comment><comment><USER3> Using production data sets is very important. It's also really important to understand what your users are doing or will be doing with your application. It doesn't matter if the dataset is realistic if the simulated traffic doesn't represent realistic activity.</comment>


Douglas Crockford on JavaScript and HTML5  - <AUTHOR> http://www.webmonkey.com/2010/05/douglas-crockford-on-javascript-and-html5/ <comment><USER2> He's wrong about security being ignored in HTML5.

HTML5 added postMessage that allows to isolated DOMs to communicate (previously you'd have to give up isolation), sandboxed iframes (you can embed untrusted content and e.g. disable plugins in it), blocking of link referrers (webmail links won't leak your inbox URL), cleaned up content sniffing, defined exactly how browsing contexts and window proxy objects behave (very tricky balance of backwards compatibility and isolation of pages).

Almost every section of the spec has "Security considerations" subsection and whole thing is plastered with security warnings: <http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/>

All new features have same-origin restrictions, and are going to support CORS: <http://www.w3.org/TR/cors/#origin-header>

There have been other advancements, like CSP and STS: [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Features#Origin_Header_.2F...](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Features#Origin_Header_.2F_Sec- From) which are going to be standardized by AppSec WG at W3C (<http://www.w3.org/2010/07/appsecwg-charter>).

If there's something missing, he could report a bug (I don't recall anything reported by him): [http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/enter_bug.cgi?product=HTML%20W...](http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/enter_bug.cgi?product=HTML%20WG) It's even possible to report bugs without registration straight on the spec page: <http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/>

And many fundamental issues are really unfixable, i.e. a "fixed" browser would "fail" to work "properly" with many major websites. Lots of simple payment gateways (including some of PayPal) rely on CSRF vulnerability to pass payment data. Google-hosted jQuery relies on XSS vulnerability. The only practical solution is opt-in to new, stricter security models, which is what HTML5 and other WGs are developing.

<comment><USER3> I think he is referring to a specific issue: He wants a security model that allows "sandboxing" partially-trusted code so that it cannot take over the whole page. Today, if you execute a piece of JavaScript you have to trust it fully. This is an issue with e.g, ads. If an ad includes JavaScript, it can steal your users passwords.

He mentions Caja (<http://code.google.com/p/google-caja/>) which is an attempt to provide such a security model.

I guess this is a serious issue for the big ad-driven sites like Yahoo and Google. He is frustrated that the other parties involved in standardization (primarily browser vendors) does not prioritize this issue. I do agree that it is disingenuous to state that security was ignored.

<comment><USER2> Not having his pet feature in the way he likes is not same as ignoring security (and he repeats few times that HTML5 prioritised other stuff over security, keeps making things worse, etc. which is not true).

<iframe seamless sandbox="allow-scripts"> allows embedding of untrusted scripts. JS won't be able to escape the frame, but will be able to display result within the frame or send you result via postMessage().

<comment><USER4> Using an <iframe> this way is like securing your house by nailing your door shut. Caja is more like just adding a lock to the door.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Quoted from the video on JavaScript:

"eventually i discovered that there is actually brilliance in this language, that it's right in a way that very few other languages ever get right"

Can someone please explain this? As someone who is not familiar with JS, I'm very curious to what he means in this sentence.

<comment><USER2> It's "Lisp in C's Clothing" (<http://javascript.crockford.com/javascript.html>)

JS has first-class functions with closures. This is simple concept that enables lots of interesting constructs — callbacks, methods, currying.

It makes event handlers/callbacks very easy (so easy that node.js can rely on them for everything).

It allows very flexible "fluid interface" like in jQuery.

Mixed with JS dynamism and prototypes allows you to invent your own OOP variants (and JS's standard prototype-based OOP isn't bad either).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Apparently everyone is happy with Javascript, or there would be different scripting languages on the client-side. Apparently it wasn't an issue whether Javascript should be used in HTML5.

Technically a <script type="text/python"> shouldn't be impossible either.

<comment><USER7> It's not technically impossible but it would be challenging to get all the browsers to support embedded Python, not to mention versioning issues (does IE10 target Python 2.5, 2.6 or 3.1?).

<comment><USER8> This feature is already here: Appcelerator's Titanium

It supports Python, Ruby, PHP and you can do things like <script type="text/python"> or <script type="text/ruby" src="myfile.rb"/>. They have made an underlying object system that can act as a bridge between Javascript and Python/Ruby/PHP, it's called Kroll.

Kroll's source code has been released: <http://github.com/appcelerator/kroll>

Obviously, there are bound to be multiple gotchas when using such a bridge between languages, nevertheless I thought it was pretty impressive the first time I saw it.

<http://developer.appcelerator.com/doc/desktop/python>

Scroll to the bottom of the page for an example of using jQuery via Python.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm wondering if security was ignored, when introducing HTML5, simply because it isn't as sexy as adding new features? Removing XSS seems like a win to me, especially -- as Crockford points out -- with new technologies like web storage being introduced.

<comment><USER10> What are you talking about? How do you "remove XSS" — it is not some feature of HTML what you can just "remove". And no, security was not ignored.

<comment><USER11> navigator.allowXSSAttacks = false

If only the silly browser makers would set that flag to false _sigh_ It's so easy!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> yup crockford is my hero :) his book showed me how to love javascript.</comment>


Programmer Meets Designer - <AUTHOR> http://tefflox.net/2009/02/programmer-meets-designer/ <comment><USER2> What was that ?

I don't get the point, except if it is outlining the obvious fact that Twitter may also work as a way to get in touch with people you don't know.

<comment><AUTHOR> The point is that Twitter is a _better_ way to find [clients|projects|help] than other sites established for that express purpose.</comment></comment>


One-time treatment generates new neurons, eliminates Parkinson's disease in mice - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200625102540.htm <comment><USER2> The news we want to hear. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hopefully not with added tumor risk and this will turn into a treatment.</comment>


Ask HN: How is Uber losing money? - <AUTHOR> ELI5. I don't quite understand where their money goes. I feel like once they got their applications, servers, law trouble resolved/done, they shouldn't have had any trouble. But by all accounts they are in a bad situation (financially and others ways also). It seems like something that should be able to run with some maintenance but not enough to lose money? <comment><USER2> They subsidize a lot of the cost of rides. The driver earns more than you pay, with Uber making up the difference. It's a marketing cost.

</comment><comment><USER3> Investors have pumped in a lot of money looking to make even more, but while uber remains a private company it is not accountable to those investors. When management decides they have had enough they just close the doors and take what is left. Just the M.O. you would expect. cabtax

</comment><comment><USER4> Uber is fighting legal cases all over the world and in so many jurisdictions. That all costs a lot of money for lawyers and management time which could other wise be more gainfully applied.

The Uber business model is easily copied, e.g. Lyft, so they are subsidizing drivers to keep them from defecting.

The biggest secret is that managements (and Uber is not alone on this) don't really care about costs, it is only investors' money.</comment>


Hannity Tells Assange, 'I Do Hope You Get Free One Day' - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/09/hannity-tells-assange-i-do-hope-you-get-free-one-day.html <comment><AUTHOR> Five years ago the world was different, compare this classic Rap News video (#6)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl4NlA97GeQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl4NlA97GeQ)</comment>


Ask HN: How would you design a study to see if Covid-19 makes us more sociable? - <AUTHOR> Rabies, toxoplasma and a range of other things are known to cause behavioural changes in humans and other animals. These changes help the things to spread.
There has been one study that looked at behaviour after the flu vaccine that suggests that the virus may also change our behaviour to spread [1,2].
Given the wide amount of testing and monitoring of people with Covid-19 we have the ability to design a study to see if this Coronavirus makes us more sociable in the asymptomatic stage. One potential is that people who are infected may be more likely to break quarantine rules, another idea is that by noticing when you are feeling a new urge to be more sociable than normal, perhaps that might be a common pre-symptom. And perhaps the virus makes no change on human behaviour. Lets find out.
So, how would you do it? Online survey? In person interviews?
I can imagine that people may have considerable guilt about socialising or going out when they were infectious but feeling well and may not tell the truth. Memories may be vague, and lockdowns might well complicate things. Could it only be done after the fact, or before? Maybe social media or Tinder data could be used?
How could we control for this?
[1] Reiber, C., E.C. Shattuck, S. Fiore, V. David, P. van Goozen, and J. Moore. 2010. Change in human social behavior in response to a common vaccine. Annals of Epidemiology 20(10): 729-733. DOI: 10.1016/j.annepidem.2010.06.014
[2] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/darwins-subterranean-world/201801/does-the-flu-trick-people-being-sociable <comment><USER2> 1) I would start by attempting to define sociable.

2) Then find potential factors that may affect sociable. Determine a way to negate these effects.

My opinion is point 1 is a fool's errand. Point 2 is basically impossible. Ex. Someone that is used to interacting with people all day, may be more likely to break a social isolation, whether they are infected or not.

You are trying to fit a narrative to the world. Start by observing what is going on and deducing practices first.

<comment><USER2> I guess if you could show a cause-effect relationship between covid19 and some neurochemistry, maybe it's more believable.</comment></comment>


IBM Computer to Match Wits With Jeopardy Champs in $1 Million Showdown - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-14/ibm-computer-to-match-wits-with-jeopardy-champs-in-1-million-showdown.html

<comment><USER2> Same story, several sources:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2003332> \- google.com

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2003637> \- nytimes.com

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2003930> \- datacenterknowledge.com - This one has a comment.</comment>


25 Years Later, 'Star Wars: Dark Forces' Is a Forgotten Gem - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qjdz5v/star-wars-dark-forces-25-years-later <comment><USER2> Not really forgotten. This era had a small number of 'gems' for fans: The Thrawn books series, the SW RPG (d6), and the Dark Horse comics - Dark Forces was another in the lineup for fans. This was one of the pivotal video games for Star Wars fans and was probably (at least in my experience) one of the key games that opened the market for later Star Wars games.

</comment><comment><USER3> Who forgot DF? Maybe young'ns too young to remember playing it when it came out.</comment>


phpDaemon: Async framework for network apps implemented in PHP using libevent - iso8859-1 http://daemon.io/

<comment><AUTHOR> Congratulations! Awesome project!</comment>


Show HN: Just launched Library – Gamifying sharing content - <AUTHOR> http://www.libraryapp.co/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hello,

I had this idea about 5 years ago when I was in college. However, I never pursued it because I think I was afraid to fail. But this idea has never left my head so I said screw it and decided to just go for it. Library is gamifying sharing content. The way it works is that everyday there's a theme and users submit photos and posts related to that day's theme and users can comment and vote on their favorite photo or post. The user with the most votes picks the next day's theme. I would greatly appreciate any input or feedback you have.

Thank you</comment>