The Euro falling into a recession? - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/node/21540259?fsrc=scn/tw/te/ar/bewareoffallingmasonry <comment><USER2> Sometimes I think headlines like this are the cause of a recession rather than the facts behind it. Economy is more about psychology than it is about numbers.

(Of course there were governments and financial institutes which have behaved badly in the past, no denying there.)

<comment><USER3> The very same agencies that are generating the headlines are leaking the headlines to hedge funds hours before. There is a current SEC probe of S&P over concerns that employees disclosed info about the downgrade to hedge funds hours before the announcement.

<comment><USER4> I have regularly wondered how all these Hedge Funds (let alone the Banks) are doing _so_ well without some kind-of inside information and/or some means to "generate interest or concerns" in the direction they would find the most beneficial.

<comment><USER3> The banks and large hedge funds manage so much money that their opinions and positions actually impact the market prices.

For example, akin to the "Colbert Bump", there is a "Buffett Bump" where position prices rise as Buffett releases his positions. Over the past few weeks a bunch of firms were required to disclose some positions as part of a 13F filing.

But it's not all puffery. Check out the story of David Einhorn and Green Mountain Coffee (GMCR).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Currently, the disintegration of the Euro is highly unlikely:

\- If each country leaves the Euro, debt (including that with the U.S.) will remain as it is (no change in face value),

\- If each country has its own currency, the inevitable devaluation _will_ increase the value of the debt, and cost of interest (on local currency terms), making it impossible for many countries to repay that debt (including that with the U.S., which is well over $350bn)

\- This will result in the _immediate_ default for a long list of countries.

Food for thought

<comment><USER6> Sovereigns do not play by the same rules as the rest of us. They can unilaterally declare their debt to be in their new currencies, if they separate.

If each country leaves the Euro, then this will definitely happen. If only some does, then it will be up to the courts to decide what the treaties says.

<comment><USER5> You are misreading the comment while making untrue economic and policy comments.

"They can unilaterally declare their debt to be in their new currencies, if they separate." is juts a wrong statement. How is sovereign debt different from corporate debt? Do you have an example?

Example: If Italy goes back to the Lira, the face value of Italian debt that the U.S. Government holds, in dollar terms, _will not change_ , even if that debt is changed to Lira, IT IS NOT re-valued to a price the Italian Govt. sees fit. Should a devaluation of the debt occur, the U.S. would have to write-off billions from its balance sheet (assuming a devaluation of the Lira occurs, which is most certain).

If each country does this, billions will have to be written off, there isn't such thing as "Sovereigns do not play by the same rules as the rest of us.". I suggest you read any debt offering memorandum from any European Government or even the U.S. Government, all terms, clauses, reps/warranties are clearly explained and detailed.

<comment><USER7> Sovereigns are exactly that: sovereign. They create the law. What court do you think you're going to take a country to when they default on a bond? Which court is going to force them to pay? And under which set of laws? Sovereigns can rewrite the law to change the terms of these contracts. What they can't control is how (allegedly independent) third-party ratings agencies rate their bonds, and declare whether a credit event has occurred or not (triggering insurance etc).

<comment><USER5> you missed the whole first point. Anyways, i'm happy you are happy with your answer.

<comment><USER7> What first point? How sovereign debt is different from corporate debt? Because it is different, and I explained why. It's commonly mentioned in articles on sovereign debt. Single example:

[http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/11/20/cds- conspir...](http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/11/20/cds-conspiracy- theory-du-jour-gretchen-morgenson-edition/)

"Everybody knows that Greece can and should take some kind of tactical advantage of the fact that most of its debt has been issued under Greek domestic law."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is so much shortsightedness in this whole crisis. What had to be done was clear from the start:

* recognize the dangers of this crisis and act boldly

* have much stricter controls on Eurozone countries, and have mechanisms to automatically cut expenses/raise taxes when some don't respect the rules (as Greece so blatantly did)

* compensate that making the ECB the lender of last resort of the Eurozone Countries

It's getting late, but there is still time to do this. But our leaders need to stop being timid and worrying so much about their reelection.

<comment><USER9> _have much stricter controls on Eurozone countries_

That would require some new treaties, and in some countries, require a referendum, i.e. a popular vote. If there's a big financial problem, you don't want that to hang on the popular vote or some small member states.

 _have mechanisms to automatically cut expenses/raise taxes_

EU doesn't have the ability to levy taxes, only member states.

The cynic in me says that with the ECB bailing out & funding several states, that the ECB already has the power to dictate taxation matters to some of those states already. Let's see if that saves the euro.

<comment><USER8> Yes, changing the treaties now would really be a big problem; but it looks like they're thinking about bilateral agreements to start with. That would be a much faster approach.

As for taxes to levy, I didn't mean that they would be levied by the EU, but that the member state would have to do that automatically to keep the imbalance in check. Not easy to enforce, but I'm pretty sure a way can be found if there is the political will.

<comment><USER9> There is rarely political will to increase taxes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think that many people like me, that don't even know economy 101, are now wondering: what happens if euro disintegrates, practically speaking?

<comment><USER11> Nothing special. Euro would be exchanged with national currencies. No money will be lost or anything. Just a giant currency conversion, but with some turbulence around it.

Having said that, the Euro is a great project. It will trigger a common European economic policy and that will push Europe to the next level.

<comment><USER12> It's nowhere near as simple as that.

What national currencies will Euros be exchanged for? What rates will they be exchanged at? Will other markets recognise those new currencies (and they will be =new= currencies, since all the Eurozone currencies ceased to exist when they changed to the Euro), and what rates will they be traded at on the markets as opposed to the fixed exchange rate they'll swapped for Euros at.

It took 10 years to get from the establishment of the Euro (then ECU) as a currency to the point where all the Eurozone nations switched to it as the only official currency - there will not be 10 years to switch the other way, and it's going to be very very messy.

The Euro is the 2nd most traded currency after the US dollar, is the 2nd largest reserve currency after the dollar, it's used as part of currency baskets for setting FX rates of numerous other currencies. Were the Euro to dissolve, the second order effects in markets around the world would be extremely turbulent, and likely highly damaging to the world economy.

Claiming that it would be 'Nothing special' is naivety at it's most dangerous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The phrase that struck me is "The risk that the currency disintegrates within weeks is alarmingly high"

 _Weeks_ ?! Wow... that's a very short time frame.

<comment><USER14> What exactly does a currency disintegration mean, anyway? Even of the economy goes into recession, the euro would still be on the market, used by all these countries.

<comment><USER15> It means Greece, followed by Portugal, Spain, Italy, possibly Ireland, all leave the Euro and re-issue their own currencies. Suddenly the Euro is not the currency of a 400 million person economy anymore, but something smaller.

<comment><USER14> And if so what, I wonder? Before the Euro there was the EQU used by no one, I think, it was an equivalence currency. Still, it did not disintegrate.

<comment><USER16> ECU - European Currency Unit

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I read a lot of financial commentary. In the last year the discussion about the Euro breakup has gone from "if it breaks up..." to "when it breaks up..."

There is a lesson here about taking systems of people and trying to mash them together without acknowledging the necessary pain. I'm concerned that now we're in the end game, and more and more complex strategies are just going to make things worse. I would never advocate any kind of violence, but there's a good reason why Napoleon was the one person who did the most to modernize Europe.

The general consensus seems to be that a recession is already under way, and the contraction will continue until this all gets straightened out.

<comment><USER18> The most convincing argument seemed to me that the way the Euro was set up is simply not workable/secure - for example they can not just print more Euros because of lots of rules.

But that kind of thing hardly seems to be the problem of mixing too many people together, it is simply a flaw in the system.

Of course the initial problem might have been that the system could only be some lowest common denominator of all the systems it tries to combine, making it almost impossible to create something good.

I find it interesting that there are therefore two interesting problems: how to set up a stable currency, and more importantly, how to set up a decision process that produces good results and doesn't alienate everybody.

<comment> k-mcgrady The problem is that monetary policy is not set on a country by country basis. The economic cycles of countries differ and trying to control monetary policy on a global level leads to policies that do not help any country.

<comment><USER18> Still, it worked before. For example Germany used to be a lot of little states with different rulers and different currencies. The money union worked out well. And even within a country there are strong and weak economic regions. That alone does not seem to stand against a common currency.

I suppose even the US has different parts with different economic cycles and different economic strength.

<comment> k-mcgrady That very interesting I didn't know that Germany previously worked like that.

Your point about the US is valid. However as their national debt is $15 trillion they aren't exactly a model economy.

<comment><USER3> Even if the debt is 15 Trillion and one ratings agency felt we didn't deserve the highest rating, investors are champing at the bit to purchase bonds.

<comment> k-mcgrady The reason the US is not suffering more from its huge debt is because the US dollar is the primary reserve currency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> When Sweden voted whether to join the Euro zone back in 2003, one of the arguments against was this exact scenario. They said something like "there has never been a successful case of a permanent currency union without a fiscal union in history. Even if remaining outside of the Euro will have a small negative effect on the Swedish economy, it's akin to paying insurance against the (in their opinion at the time) substantial risk of a Euro collapse."

<comment><USER20> So if there are sufficient amendments to the EU treaties, Sweden is bound to join?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > you can't have a currency union, without a fiscal union

This is just not true. Didn't we have Gold and Silver for a common currency for a very very long time? Didn't countries just default back then?

The problem is not the currency the problem is implicit (now explicit) agreemand that countries cant default in the eurozone. Greek could of have defaulted just as Island did. The only loosers would have been the people holding the debt. There would no Euro-Crisis just a crisis of the countries that do really have a fical crisis.

<comment><USER22> 1\. A peg is not a common currency/currency union. Critically, you readily come on and off a peg.

2\. Various types of gold standards have failed many times in history, including pegs to gold. The reason is almost always the same: countries will overspend no matter what currency they use - wars/militarism are often the excuse. Notable failures include:

\- helping worsen, if not cause, the US Great Depression (US Fed decided to defend the peg to gold);

\- helping cause the Weimar German hyperinflation (due to the victors taking almost all the German gold reserves for WWI reparations).

3\. Free floating, market-traded fiat currencies solved the core problem of a physical _fixed_ currency like gold. But like gold, they do not, nor can they, prevent governments continuing to overspend. However, they do allow a mechanism to _punish_ them for doing so, i.e. the capital markets!

Unfortunately, the capital markets are unable to enforce their own brand of spanking and consolation in this case because there are no individual currencies per government in the Eurozone. So, it has to whip them using the main stick it has left which are the separate sovereign debts, but cannot console them with lower currencies.

After leaving these individual sovereign debt markets in droves and therefore causing government borrowing costs for EZ countries to soar to unsustainable levels, everyone in the markets is finally starting to realise there is no upside in being involved in a common currency which is killing its members.

Locked in a sub-optimal currency area, unable to raise affordable funds, unable to devalue currency, forced to reduce debt levels by austerity, no ability to import inflation (which would reduce real level of debts) because the world economy is entering a downturn, no fiscal union therefore no fiscal transfers, uncompetitive industries and low productivity due to decades of binge spending, therefore low or negative growth outlook...

This is a painful way for any sovereign to live and at some point _something has to give_!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I have always been interested in how the Euro does in the long run given that it is not directly backed by taxation and given that the central body does not appear to have the broad mandate to enforce a fiscal policy for the entire Eurozone. The next year should be really educational in this regard.

</comment><comment><USER24> The Euro is a tragedy of the commons. Each individual country can benefit from using the central bank but all share the costs.

Why are there still people trying to convince us that the mere existence of more lenders is a solution to debt?

<comment><USER25> You've got it the wrong way around. At least according to the official rules, _none_ of the member countries can benefit from the ECB system.

The ECB has broken that rule because they realized that if they stick too tightly to it, they risk a breakup of the Eurozone, and that would eliminate their power base. By giving the least possible amount of support to troubled countries, they hope to stay in power - at the cost of the real living standards of the peoples of those countries, of course, as you can see with a quick look at the double-digit unemployment rates there.

The Euro could _become_ a tragedy of the commons, but it isn't one at this point in time. It is more an example of Wile E. Coyote running into the air since 2000 until, around 2008-2009, he realized that there is no longer any ground beneath his feet. Since then, he's falling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's already a recension, the Institute of International Finance (IIF) had said that last week. The last months the situation in Europe has gotten drastically worse. The expected growth of the economy in 2012 is -1%.

</comment><comment><USER27> Can someone explain why the UK is not shown in any of those graphs? I thought it was part of the Euro?

<comment><USER9> The UK is part of the EU, but it is not in the Eurozone and does not use Euro currency. Sweden and Denmark are also both in the EU and, along with the UK, did not switch over to the Euro.

<comment><USER27> So will the UK be well protected from this fallout?

<comment><USER28> Yep. So long as it doesn't trade with any of the other (eurozone) countries.

Which looking at Britains trade deficit it does. Bugger that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> eric janszen at itulip.com has been speculating on a euro fracture, due to the lack of a cohesive

I find it surprising how just 3 years ago the euro was becoming a safe-haven, with Jay-Z flaunting them in his videos.

</comment><comment><USER30> depression would be more accurate.

the problem, i think, is that there is a core contradiction at the heart of the euro system:

1) you can't have a currency union, without a fiscal union;

2) you can't have a fiscal union, without a true political union;

3) the euro area is a currency union with neither a fiscal or a political union.

in other words, for a currency union to work well, you need to shuffle money around. but you can't do that without political legitimacy, or if people feel like the money is going to "them", as opposed to "us".

The leaders who created the euro were trying to go about it the other way around: currency union would lead to fiscal union, which would lead to political union. but now, in a recession, with things going bad, they are finding that, in fact, they would need all three for any part to work correctly.

why are the Germans refusing to let the ECB be the lender of last resort? the core reason is that they see, correctly, that this would put them on the hook for the past and likely future mismanagement of the Greeks and Italians. of course, they can't say this publicly, so instead you hear all sorts of nonsense, hyperinflation this and weimar that.

or, to put it another way, would the Germans let this kind of thing happen to other Germans? I don't think so! Greeks and Italians are "them", and in bad times people feel less generous and fall back to the "us".

but at the same time, of course, their refusing to let the ECB, as it were, bail out the Greeks and Italians will inevitably lead to their default, exit from the Euro, and who knows what after that. at the very least, expect nationalist parties everywhere to rise in the polls.

let's just hope that we're not rebooting to the early 20th century.

<comment><USER8> The point is that Germany IS going to pay for the crisis anyway, because if Greece, Spain and Italy defaulted, the German banks would lose hundreds of billions of euros of German money. The European economy would enter a crisis that would last years (decades?), and most of German exports are to other European countries - thinking that they could have a great economy amid a European depression is just stupid. And I'm not even thinking about the possibility of wars should become "everyone for himself" in Europe again.

So, it isn't a matter of self interest vs. generosity: it is a matter of understanding that it would be MUCH less costly to make the ECB lender of last resort now than to wait and just hope that things will fix themselves. Moreover, in Italy the only real risk is that of interest rates on its massive debt going too high: Italy already has a primary budget surplus, with "normal" rates the debt would already be shrinking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Headline wrong, twice:

1) Question mark. Recession already starting.

2) Not falling, pushed.</comment>


More than 65% of people put on ventilators will die, NHS data shows - <AUTHOR> https://metro.co.uk/2020/04/07/65-people-put-ventilators-will-die-nhs-data-shows-12521335/ <comment><AUTHOR> As some context, the NHS is the United Kingdom's national health service — and the UK's leader is now in a London NHS ICU. Assuming he's is getting the same treatment as others in the UK's NHS ICUs — odds of him dying currently appear to be 50%.

<comment><USER2> Big assumption. Pretty sure he was moved there as a precaution in a way that most others weren't. And so far at least he's not receiving ventilation (invasive or otherwise).</comment></comment>


Microsoft Prepares x86-64 Support for Windows on ARM Devices - <AUTHOR> https://wccftech.com/microsoft-prepares-x86-64-support-for-windows-on-arm-devices/ <comment><USER2> I wonder if having x86-64 cores alongside ARM cores could be a thing, like how ARM big.LITTLE combines different core types for efficiency with different tasks.

It used to be a thing that was more common for compatibility, like in the Commodore C128, PS2, Nintendo DS, etc, where there would be processors of older or other architectures available to run certain software.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think Intel has something like that in the pipeline: [https://analyticsindiamag.com/inside-intels-latest- breakthro...](https://analyticsindiamag.com/inside-intels-latest-breakthrough- is-foveros-3d-stacking-technology/)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any startup founders here with an accounting/finance background?  - <AUTHOR>

Just a topic I've been curious about for a while. I currently study accounting and finance in university, but I'm working on a startup that is totally unrelated. I'm sure there are people in a similar situation, and if you're one of them, I'm really interested in hearing your story! <comment><USER2> My degree is Bachelor of Management, Specialization in Finance. Aside from a well-rounded business education, I haven't really needed it and it hasn't helped me get jobs at tech startups.

</comment><comment><USER3> Currently sitting for the CPA but working on a few ideas. Hope to launch something in the next year.</comment>


Show HN: Case of Art- Custom your own phone case with our easy-to-use design app - <AUTHOR> http://caseofart.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN!

Case of Art is a project I've been building off and on in almost 2 years. It's my first complex thing I've ever attempted to build and very excited to finally share it with the world.

The concept behind Case of Art is pretty straightforward: custom your own phone case with the help of our easy-to-use design tool.

You may wonder why it took so long? In the short answer I was trying to make the "perfect" product but in the reality it was just an excuse to cover the fear of putting the product out there.

I would love to get some feedback from you guys so that I can improve it.

I'm also curious to know how do you overcome being a perfectionist and get things done?

Thanks, Former perfectionist

</comment><comment><USER2> So, it's "case-o-fart", right?

Surely someone must have raised this issue with you before, right?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hahah yes unfortunately. Maybe in the future I will rebrand it.</comment></comment>


Decided to start moving things with my first "serious" project - <AUTHOR> https://sekrt.com/blog/the-bad-the-problem-and-the-solution Well since my lasts projects were... let's say... not so well; meaning I lost interest, etc. I decided to take this idea and launch it! Is a elegant innovative solution and I think it have legs. <comment><AUTHOR> Have to add. Sekrt is not a Groupon clone!</comment>


Has "Homosexual" Always Been in the Bible? - <AUTHOR> https://www.forgeonline.org/blog/2019/3/8/what-about-romans-124-27 <comment><USER2> I don't understand. The old German version translated זכר (male) into young boy and then later in 1983 an American financed a German translation because there weren't enough Christians in Germany (!?). The new translation correctly translates it to male. So that proves that the Americans wanted to influence how Germans think about homosexuals.

If I understood this correctly then this is one of the worst research that I have read on hn.

<comment><USER3> I don't follow your argument from having read the article. It says the original version was against sleeping with young boys, not men. And the 1983 version changed it from young boys to homosexuality. The author argues the original word was Greek and the text was to denounce Pederasty, which was a strange Greek practice. He also argues this change in word was deliberately made by as part of a larger anti gay agenda

<comment><USER4> The original Hebrew ( not Greek ) word in the book of וַיִּקְרָא (aka Leviticus) means male.

<comment><USER5> And the original Greek word in the New Testament (the New Testament's original language _is_ Greek) is also arsenokoitai:

[https://www.crossway.org/articles/what-does-arsenokoitai- mea...](https://www.crossway.org/articles/what-does-arsenokoitai-mean/)

"It's a compound word: "arsen" means man and "koite" or "koitas" or "koitai"—depending on a verb or a noun—means bed."

But there are different interpretations about what that "those who sleep with men" meant:

[https://www.gaychristian101.com/what-did-paul-mean-when- he-u...](https://www.gaychristian101.com/what-did-paul-mean-when-he-used-the- greek-word-arsenokoitai.html)

"Despite what some scholars allege, arsenokoitai is _never used in any extant Greek literature with our modern meaning of homosexual._ The best evidence available today indicates that arsenokoitai described shrine prostitutes. That is the learned opinion of Philo, a contemporary of both Jesus and the apostle Paul and one of the most widely read Jewish intellectuals in the first century."

"Because the Jewish view was that Lev 18:22 and 20:13 (Deu 23:17) prohibited shrine prostitution, it is highly unlikely that Paul would have used arsenokoitai with a meaning unfamiliar to most of his readers.

And because arsenokoitai is never used in any extant Greek text from AD 57 to AD 1450, to refer to two men or two women in committed partnership, it is highly unlikely that Paul would have used arsenokoitai with that meaning, which would have baffled his first century readers."

Regarding the word that the "Latin lexicon from 1483" apparently used to translate the arenokoitai word, the Greek language did have a specific word for that:

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

"The word pederasty derives from Greek παιδεραστία (paiderastia) "love of boys",[1] a compound derived from παῖς (pais) "child, boy" and ἐραστής (erastēs) "lover"."

So we can be sure that that Latin lexicon is wrong. If Paul wanted to mean "boys lover" he had an existing word for that, and didn't have to use "arsenokoitai" ("those who sleep with men").

<comment><USER4> Leviticus is mentioned in the article - hence the comments on what is original.

<comment><USER5> Sure. I don't dispute that the author of the text in the NT was probably inspired by Leviticus. And both Leviticus and NT use "men" there.

I don't agree that codefreakxff's claim that "the original version was against sleeping with young boys, not men" is correct. Because Greeks had the specific word for that and didn't use it there, but used the word arsenokoitai.

Searching even more, this internet poster even argues that the Paul used that rare word (with "men") because he used the more common for "fornicators":

[https://www.quora.com/How-has-usage-of-the-term- arsenokoitai...](https://www.quora.com/How-has-usage-of-the-term-arsenokoitai- changed-over-time-and-does-the-word-appear-anywhere-other-than-the-Bible)

"Centuries before Paul, the πορν- porn- root referred only to prostitutes & prostitution. But over the centuries, the meaning expanded to include all illicit sexual contact. Paul had already used the word πόρνοι pornoi to mean fornicators. What that meant is that Greek, for all intents and purposes, no longer had a word that specifically referred to having sex for money. That alone was reason to create a new word for it."

That actually sounds strange to me, that at Paul's time there was not a specific word for prostitutes.

<comment><USER4> >Sure. I don't dispute that the author of the text in the NT was probably inspired by Leviticus. And both Leviticus and NT use "men" there.

Cool, just to clarify, the word means 'male', not 'man', and is applied to animals as well as humans.

<comment><USER5> Yes, in Greek too:

[https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/ἄρσην#Ancient_Greek](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/ἄρσην#Ancient_Greek)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You know it doesn't actually matter right? Transgender people / Trans-the- concept doesn't appear in the Bible _at all_. Not a single word. And yet, Christians still _vigorously_ claim they're "against God" and "immoral".

And why? Because at the end of the day, many Christians (and lots of other people tbh) construct a byzantine mansion of circular reasoning, to justify their shitty bigoted _feelings_ towards LGBT+ people.

</comment><comment><USER7> > of 4 of the 6 clobber passages, all these nations and translations were > referring to pederasty, and not what we would call homosexuality today

I would have liked to hear more about this. What are the other 2 passages, what do they say, and how might it have been changed over time?

</comment><comment><USER8> What Greek words are used in Romans 1:26-27?</comment>


The Swedish Staycation Obsession - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200813-the-swedish-staycation-obsession <comment><USER2> Well when you are largely being held at gunpoint in one country by totalitarian impositions on your personal freedom, you don't really have much choice.

The romantic view of nordic bliss is also absurd. It is incredibly common to take "stay-cations" in the UK, France, Germany, despite the UK, Germany also having the largest spend abroad & mobile economies in Europe.</comment>


U.S. Police Shootings: Breaking Down the Data by Race - <AUTHOR> https://www.cybercoastal.com/u-s-police-shootings-breaking-down-the-data-by-race/ <comment><USER2> Now is the time for us to start doing the hard work to make police accountability happen. Getting public records data accessible is a way to make good progress toward this.

450+ of us are working on a new project called the Police Data Accessibility project, aimed at making local court record data (which contains cop/department level data) accessible outside of clunky county court records websites. More info here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/gr11aw/i_think_i_a...](https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/gr11aw/i_think_i_accidentally_started_a_movement/)

<comment><USER3> Step one: Demilitarize the police.

<comment><USER4> Or just train them like the military because the military has some actual discipline and internal accountability.

<comment><USER5> They already do train them like the military. In fact, since Obama, they've also been arming them as the military as well, not only with M4's and Barrett 50's, also with up armor MRAPS and hummers. That's not including other tactical wartime gear such as stingrays etc.

Train The cops as soldiers, don't be surprised when cops act as soldiers.

I realize that as we've been millennialing our military into occupying and policing, but make no mistake that's not what they're for. And it's the same issue with cops.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is there any source for this data normalized per police interaction? Basically I want to know where in the process the issue starts. Are non-whites stopped/harassed more by the police so they get into more altercations that lead to shooting/death or are police just more likely to shoot non-whites? The difference makes a huge change at what level the issue should be addressed at.

Also comparing the rate of shooting to deaths would also be nice to see if there is an issue of care after a shootout.

<comment><USER7> "An Empirical Analysis of Racial Discreperences in Police Use of Force, Roland G. Fryer, Jr.m July 2017" [1]

This is by African American Harvard prof, and highly controversial because his research indicates there isn't actually that much racial disparity in policing.

I for one, believe it. Cops are mostly not aggressive, and cops are mostly not racist. But there's a wide bell curve on that - and some are racist, some are aggressive. Coupled with the fact there are 330M people, 1 Billion guns, areas of 'extreme violence' ... we're going to see bad situations on CNN every few months for a long while yet.

Fixing the 'bad cops' problem is important, but so is fixing the 'out of control crime' problem, which is probably much harder due to complex social root causes.

[1] [https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/fryer/files/empirical_anal...](https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/fryer/files/empirical_analysis_tables_figures.pdf)

<comment><USER8> There is the problem. You can frame most cops as good but dealing with out of control crime, and you can frame most people as good, but dealing with out of control police, and both can be right. (Even through I actually believe both are probably wrong)

Worse, both can be right and events like recent ones can still be demonstrably unequivocally wrong inexcusable. It's almost like the statements of general trends are uncorrelated with the highest profile cases. Which is the problem.

<comment><USER7> True. And other 'problem' is 'facts' vs 'populism'.

I think what happened in Minnesota is outrageous, but probably not as indicative of systematic problems as some people might believe.

I don't think the 'cops are bad' narrative is healthy - BUT - it may be necessary to help fix the problem. Humans are lazy, we fear for our jobs, DA's may not react until there is political pressure and everyone is throwing everyone under the bus.

It's also worth remembering that almost every single measure of 'inequality' has been steadily improving over the last 30 years and our current 'race war conditions' may be really just a function of Twitter, Social Media, and ever more biased press on all sides, jockeying for clicks and attention.

<comment><USER9> I'll say to you what I end up saying to everyone who has this view, read the The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

I can guarantee that if you read that book and look at the data, you'll change your mind.

Believe me, it'll cover every single talking point you probably have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> the data looks pretty reasonable IMO. It's not as big of a difference as I would expect.

Also, noticeably missing asians, native american, middle eastern data.

<comment><USER11> Two and a half times as likely to be killed by police doesn't seem that bad to you?

<comment><USER12> The real question is "why is that?". Do blacks tend to get into more altercations with police, is it systemic racism, both?

Without further investigation, this graph can bait people into jumping to misinformed conclusions.

Furthermore, the site states: > black Americans account for less than 13 percent of the population but they are shot and killed by the police at a rate that's over twice as high as for white Americans.

Yet they also account for over 50% of crimes in the U.S [0]. Like I said, ask questions, don't just look at a graph and raise pitchforks.

[0]: [https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in- the-u.s.-...](https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in- the-u.s.-2016/topic-pages/tables/table-21)

<comment><USER13> > Without further investigation, this graph can bait people into jumping to > misinformed conclusions.

Likewise with the data you've linked. Submission of data to the UCR database is completely voluntary and does not represent an accurate picture of crime in the United States:

> "The totals provided in this table reflect only those persons arrested by > law enforcement agencies that provided race information to the UCR Program; > therefore, the totals may not match those shown in other arrest tables for > the nation." [0]

> "It is incumbent upon all data users to become as well educated as possible > about how to understand and quantify the nature and extent of crime in the > United States and in any of the more than 17,000 jurisdictions represented > by law enforcement contributors to the UCR Program. Valid assessments are > possible only with careful study and analysis of the various unique > conditions affecting each local law enforcement jurisdiction." [1]

I.e., you can't expect to get any kind of meaningful analysis by dumping a table of raw, incomplete data into a thread.

[0] [https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in- the-u.s.-...](https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in- the-u.s.-2016/tables/table-21/table-21-data-declaration)

[1] [https://www.ucrdatatool.gov/ranking.cfm](https://www.ucrdatatool.gov/ranking.cfm)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Oracle Discloses Critical Java Vulnerability in 7u97, 8u73, and 8u74 - <AUTHOR> http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/alert-cve-2016-0636-2949497.html <comment><USER2> Chrome browser isn't affected:

[http://java.com/en/download/faq/chrome.xml](http://java.com/en/download/faq/chrome.xml)

</comment><comment><USER3>
      affecting Java SE running in web browsers on desktops.
      This vulnerability is not applicable to Java
      deployments, typically in servers or standalone desktop
      applications

It's ridicoulus how many security problems the browser plugin has. good that it is deprecated and maybe removed when 9 will hit</comment>


Nurses fired for not getting mandatory flu shot - <AUTHOR> http://www.abc57.com/news/local/IU-Health-Goshen-Hospital-fires-nurses-for-not-getting-flu-shot-185346842.html

<comment><USER2> And?

If you're dealing with people who have potentially compromised immune systems on a daily basis, you should be taking every vaccine possible.</comment>


Why Amazon is not to blame for your AWS downtime - <AUTHOR> http://www.lockergnome.com/it/2011/04/23/the-aws-outage-how-to-avoid-downtime-in-the-cloud/

<comment><USER2> "The way Amazon AWS works, you have the ability to easily replicate your environment across multiple availability zones to prevent the kind of catastrophic downtime we saw this week."

Yes, that's what everyone was told. What the author doesn't realize is that several availability zones went down. I'm not sure the author is actually that familiar with the outage given this non-trivial mistake.

<comment><AUTHOR> The author (me) is aware that multiple availability zones did in fact go down. Depending on your level of willingness to accept downtime, configuring an app to be in US East, California, Ireland, Singapore, and Tokyo (or some combination of those 5 regions, beyond being in several parts of US East) would have avoided an outage completely.

<comment><USER3> What I'm curious about is how to reliably transit service across Regions. ELBs live in a particular Region, so they don't help. You could certainly register multiple ELBs to the same CNAME and do a limited round robin that way.

But, even if you manually pulled the record for a downed region, you can't rely on downstream DNS to respect your TTLs.

I suppose you'd at least be able to say something like "some of our users" as opposed to "we're completely down." That seems like cold comfort, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wouldn't say that the linkbait title is completely wrong, but the author is misguided about the severity and scope of the Amazon downtime.

If you read Quora's account [1], it's clear that this was regionwide, not just limited to a single availability zone. This debunks the misguided understanding that simply having slave instances in different availability zones will be enough for ensuring availability.

While that's what you would have expected from Amazon (and the name "Availability Zones"), that's not what happened.

The issue wasn't necessarily that Amazon had downtimes--you'd be hard-pressed to find a provider that has never been down. The issue was the scope and duration of the downtime that demonstrated that availability zones mean little in terms of service redundancy.

[1] [http://www.quora.com/Quora-Outage-April-21-22-2011/What- caus...](http://www.quora.com/Quora-Outage-April-21-22-2011/What-caused-the- Quora-problems-outage-in-April-2011)

<comment><AUTHOR> In the article I improperly used "availability zones" to mean spanning both the AWS AZ construct and the AWS region construct. My point was specifically that by building your app to either function in US East, CA, Ireland, Singapore, and Tokyo or to fail over to one of those locations, you can avoid a situation where you've put all your eggs in one basket.

<comment><USER5> Seems like controversy for controversy's sake. Sure, by mirroring to another region completely, you'd avoid an EBS downtime, but the same could be said for having another provider too. The idea of AWS being you pay less and pay for what you use with the understanding that you can mirror to another AZ in moments to recover from issues.</comment></comment></comment>


Wooden combination lock build [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hsshcWnJNM <comment><USER2> If you are interested in woodworking I highly recommend that you check out Matthias Wandel's other videos. His channel is one of the best, if not the best woodworking channel on youtube.</comment>


Adobe's John Nack: Adobe is "sabotaging" HTML5? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2010/02/adobe_is_sabotaging_html5.html

<comment><USER3> Since the word "sabotage" is getting thrown around, here's some guidelines from an actual WWII sabotage manual.

<http://boingboing.net/2008/06/11/sabotage-manual-from.html>

 _(1) Insist on doing everything through "channels." Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions. (2) Make "speeches." Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your "points" by long anecdotes and accounts of per sonal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate "patriotic" comments. (3) When possible, refer all matters to committees, for "further study and consideration." Attempt to make the committees as large as possible — never less than five. (4) Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible. (5) Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions. (6) Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision. (7) Advocate "caution." Be "reasonable" and urge your fellow-conferees to be "reasonable" and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on. (8) Be worried about the propriety of any decision — raise the question of whether such action as is contemplated lies within the jurisdiction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon._

Slightly uncanny resemblance.

<comment><USER4> I was going to post that I doubted the authenticity of this quote, since its style struck me as overly modern and all the sources on the web seemed to trace back to one talk from a 2008 conference. But then I googled the document's apparent title ("Simple Sabotage Field Manual") and discovered what appears to be the original:

<http://www.gutenberg.org/files/26184/26184-8.txt>

Skimming around this thing is pretty interesting. They recommend plugging sewage systems by flushing sponges down toilets. And here is part of how they recommend setting fire to a factory:

 _To make another type of simple fuse, soak one end of a piece of string in grease. Rub a generous pinch of gunpowder over the inch of string where greasy string meets clean string. Then ignite the clean end of the string. It will burn slowly without a flame (in much the same way that a cigarette burns) until it reaches the grease and gunpowder; it will then flare up suddenly._

Sounds pretty authentic to me. Which makes the original quote all the greater. It opens a new possible explanation for the inefficiency of large companies, too: they're full of saboteurs!

<comment><USER5> That document was written for Norwegian resistance fighters during the occupation by Nazi Germany.[1]

You can tell from its reference to "Quislings", which were the collaboration government (like Vichy France) of Norway at the time.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Norway_by_Nazi_Ge...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Norway_by_Nazi_Germany)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> You can get a better idea by reading some of the blog postings written by Adobe's Masinter here over the last year:

<http://masinter.blogspot.com/>

They include an explanation of why HTML5 being specified too well makes it anti-competitive, comments on why you shouldn't refer to HTML5 as a "standard", why Google is cheating at standards by employing people to work on them full time, and why irrational people hate Flash for no reason.

Basically it sounds like someone playing politics _really_ well.

<comment><USER6> I read the public mailing list thread - starts here: [http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public- html/2010Feb/0349...](http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public- html/2010Feb/0349.html) \- and continues for quite some time.

I came to the conclusion that Larry Masinter from Adobe did issue a formal objection to the public list - this is quite obvious from this post: [http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www- archive/2010Feb/0002...](http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www- archive/2010Feb/0002.html)

However, there was then further communication that took place in a private, members-only list, where apparently this objection was handled.

What seems to be happening is either Adobe is innocently handling the process of raising objections incorrectly, by posting them in a public list, then withdrawing them privately later on, or Adobe is maliciously attempting to subvert the process through delaying tactics.

I encourage you to read the thread and decide for yourself if Adobe is really innocent or is deliberately delaying. In considering such things, I usually like to look at what the parties have to gain/lose, as well as their actions.

<comment><USER7> Well, if you read what the gentlemen from Adobe has said since, his objection on the private list was about how the chairs of whatever committee he raised his objections to basically made a unilateral decision without discussing the objections. So, at least according to him, the private list material is essentially objecting to the process by which his public objections were handled.

<comment><USER6> Yes, but since all objections are to be made in public, in order to foster transparency and documentation of the process, I have a hard time understanding why making private objections to those same individuals that he had publicly objected to before would help.

If the process is truly broken, get it out in the public and document it. This reeks of the type of politics that is meant to kill something through subversion of the process and delaying tactics. If you can't kill HTML5 outright, kill the process of developing the standard and you've effectively done the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ooh boy, shit just got real: [http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public- html/2010Feb/0439...](http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public- html/2010Feb/0439.html)

> Ian Hickson:

> Since I was mistaken about the formal objection, should I prepare the drafts > for FPWD publication now? What date should I use?

<comment><USER9> I can't wait to find out what's actually going on. I'm inclined to distrust adobe. Their track record this month has been less than stellar in the honesty category.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Adobe needs to embrace HTML 5 and start making great tools around the HTML 5 runtimes. Flash, the runtime makes them nothing. Yes, the build tools around Flash, however, they need to stop their belly aching around HTML,JS,and CSS and learn to embrace and profit.

<comment><USER11> That they aren't doing this is why Jobs called them lazy. They are lazy. There is no reason it should take 40% of the CPU to show a video in a flash embed on a laptop.

If they can't optimize any better than that, how are they _ever_ going to see success on mobile devices?

<comment><USER12> It's hard not to be condescending about this but this is super basic: Video is hard if it is not hardware accelerated.

Apple refuses to provide a public api for this, so flash video needs a lot of CPU time on OSX.

All cell phones that allow flash video will have hardware acceleration and will not have a problem with it.

<comment><USER13> Please don't parrot Nack's talking points.

Flash on Windows has only had hardware accelerated video decoding for about 6 months, on minority hardware, in beta versions of Flash 10.1. It hasn't been released yet. No cellphones with full Flash players have been shipped yet either, despite breathless press releases going back years.

Unaccelerated Flash on Windows handles video decoding just fine, and has for years, with no special hardware or APIs available. It's squarely Adobe's problem.

<comment><USER12> It seems to be the users of OSX problem. Window's is much more flexible about allow the access to hardware.

I wasn't parroting talking points...I just have experience with video on linux unaccelerated and it is not fun at all. The direct acceleration of video decoding is relatively new but I'm sure the Android versions with use this feature.

Thanks for info. Chill on the paranoia .

<comment><USER13> Yes, hardware acceleration is nice, but the lack of raw access to it isn't the issue here. Flash has always worked fine on Windows without it.

Apple's position is that if you want to decode+display video, it would be best to use the QT API with the codecs they ship, and get acceleration for free where available. Given Adobe's track record, they don't want them mucking about in the bowels of the video drivers.

Accelerated video drivers were the number one location of kernel panics on Windows XP, so Microsoft spent a lot of effort to rearchitect the system in Vista, where it now causes a "kernel oops" instead, and the user just gets a 2s pause and a taskbar notification while the driver reloads. They took a lot of grief from users over the slightly decreased performance and the transition when their drivers didn't work at all, but it was the right thing for them to do. Apple has not yet needed to invest in this.

The Flash plugin is by far the most common cause of application crash reports on Mac OS X. Nearly every user experienced them, I used to get them on a daily basis! Very few of their users have ever seen the OS X kernel panic screen, especially without having failing hardware, and Apple would like to keep it that way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If anything, this debacle demonstrate that the process should be open to all and public, not opaque as it is today.

<comment><USER15> <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2010Feb/>

Some things may be said in private mailing lists, face to face conversation, phone calls, IM etc. but the actual standards, the objections and the decision making process is all public.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Shelley Powers (<http://shelleypowers.burningbird.net/about>), who is quoted in the post, has worked in the industry for decades, has written several O'Reilly books about Web technologies, and used to be highly critical of the way HTML standards development has gone. (Yeah, and now she's on the HTML WG. Veterans of volunteer organizations should be familiar with the "OK, if you think we're doing everything wrong, _you_ can join us on the committee" gambit.)

If she says Adobe is not to blame, Adobe is not to blame.

<comment><USER17> Mark Pilgrim, who is not quoted in the post, has worked in the industry for a decade, has written several books about web technologies and remains highly critical of the way HTML standards development has gone. He says Adobe is to blame.

<http://twitter.com/diveintomark>

I don't think this one can be untangled by deferring to experts - at least not yet. There's still not enough information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> According to:

[http://www.osnews.com/story/22874/Teacup_Meet_Storm_pt_IV_Ad...](http://www.osnews.com/story/22874/Teacup_Meet_Storm_pt_IV_Adobe_Blocking_HTML5_/)

there's no sabotage, it's just how things normally "work" (for some value of work).

</comment><comment><USER19> Reading the recent "Adobe Bad" threads is like watching HN lose brain cells.

Having owned only Mac/Linux hardware for the past 10 years I have my share of Adobe frustrations, but all this bandwagon jumping after Jobs made a few comments is ridiculous.

<comment><USER20> It's standard backlash-backlash.

First, it was against Apple - "Without Flash, the iPad will suck. Apple is evil for excluding it". Now, the pendulum has swung the other way - "Adobe is evil".

Eventually we'll settle on the agreed upon: Adobe is only mildly evil. :)

<comment><USER6> Adobe has been evil for a long time. Remember Dmitry Skylarov? Jailed for writing software that Adobe didn't like - [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Sklyarov?wasRedirected...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Sklyarov?wasRedirected=true)

<comment><USER19> My point is that it was never (or rarely) mentioned as such in HN prior to Jobs' comments...

Generally I don't think any company is more or less evil than any other. Most publicly traded companies pretty much do whatever they can get away with - <USER2> if they don't do so now, their next CEO will.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Forgive my ignorance. But could anyone link to or provide a brief summary of what the general process is here? I'm not familiar with writing specifications, etc. Any information explaining the process would be appreciated.

</comment><comment><USER22> I wouldn't blame them even if they did. Apple basically declared war in deciding not to carry flash on the iPad. However, 'sabotaging' HTML5 just seems like sensationalist tripe.

<comment><USER23> To be fair, Apple isn't really waging war on Adobe. They simply decided that it wasn't in their best interest to support Flash on their devices.

The war is being waged mostly by the fanboy contingent

<comment><USER24> Isn't streaming video pretty processor intensive too?

<comment><USER25> Well, that's just it - HTML5 video will allow Apple to make whatever optimizations necessary to keep power consumption to a minimum.

If video is wrapped inside an opaque Flash container, a huge chunk of Apple's user experience is now squarely in Adobe's hands; this isn't confidence- inspiring given the general stability and performance of the current Mac Flash app.

<comment><USER24> There is quite a big difference here.

Adobe allows for interaction with the video. Apple QT is just that... video.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Simon St. Laurent has an interesting analysis and commentary on the whole debacle: [http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2010/02/the-widening- html5-chas...](http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2010/02/the-widening- html5-chasm.html)

It seems that the whole HTML5 standards process was broken from the start and is likely to remain that way. The recent hoopla is just some public airing of the dirty laundry that has always been there.

</comment><comment><USER26> In the end will this debate really matter at all? So many browsers are already supporting html5 features like canvas and the video tag.

<comment><USER27> It depends on how you look at it.

If you look at it in the sense that some browsers support it and others will likely follow, no, it doesn't matter.

If you look at it like IE6 supported CSS, it won't matter tomorrow, but in a few years when everyone has to hack their site to pieces just to give a box a rounded corner that looks the same in every browser.... well, it will matter then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Short answer: No.

Long answer: The W3C process is apparently so opaque that even the editor of the spec believed it to be so. Rumor travels faster than fact.

</comment><comment><USER29> Adobe seem really great at communicating with their users. Pity their products have declined so much recently.

<comment><USER24> Adobe has a pretty large collection of products spanning a rather large and diverse group of disciplines and therefore users and customers.

So are you talking about all of them or just some? How did you get to that conclusion?

There is plenty of things that they don't do very well but that can be said about more or less anyone else out there can't it?

In general as a user of their Masters Collection I am pretty satisfied with how they allow my workflows to be optimized across the line.

That's what adobe is in the business of helping me with.

<comment><USER6> This is why it's so easy for companies like Apple and Adobe to fight over competing standards. You have both companies with developers that have years of training and work experience within their individual content creation pipelines. We call them "fanboys", but in reality they are just working people like you or I that have a particularly well developed skill set and don't want to have to re-train on a whole new platform.

I'm reminded of the great quote by Upton Sinclair: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it."

<comment><USER24> I think that hit's it pretty much on the head.

I am not a fanboy, I am just semi-relying on their products and the workflow opportunities it gives me.

Having said that if it seems like the discussion regarding apple/adobe has much more to do with the implications of their products rather than the products themselves.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Atomic Clock (Gorgy Timing) - <AUTHOR> https://apps.apple.com/us/app/atomic-clock-gorgy-timing/id295302256 <comment><USER2> Been using it for close to a decade, best app purchase I've made. Only wish that Apple would allow custom watchfaces so I could use it as my primary watchface!

</comment><comment><USER3> What is this "special internet time protocol"?</comment>


Apple dumps Intel from laptop lines - <AUTHOR> http://semiaccurate.com/2011/05/05/apple-dumps-intel-from-laptop-lines/

<comment><USER2> This is from May 5, 2011.</comment>


SLOTH – Security Losses from Obsolete and Truncated Transcript Hashes - <AUTHOR> http://www.mitls.org/pages/attacks/SLOTH <comment><USER2> More interesting than the attack itself is their overall effort of combining formal verification with protocol implementation. Along the way, they've found all these problems in the _other_ protocols because they didn't use such rigorous methods. Quite an argument in favor of using high assurance techniques for at least critical, slow-changing protocols like TLS.

Anyway, I found this paper...

[http://www.ieee-security.org/TC/SP2015/papers- archived/6949a...](http://www.ieee-security.org/TC/SP2015/papers- archived/6949a535.pdf)

...that reminds me of older, high assurance designs. The classic way to do it is the so-called abstract or interacting state machine models. Each component is a state-machine where you know every successful or failure state that can happen plus argument security is maintained. Then, you compose these in a semi-functional way to describe overall system. Seems the miTLS people did something similar for theirs that they call "composite, state machines." The result was clean implementation and verification of what got really messy in other protocol engines. Plus, new techniques for handling that of course.

Really good stuff. Worth extending and improving in new projects.

<comment><USER3> Formal verification of protocols like TLS is essentially the research thesis behind this group at INRIA, which was also responsible for Logjam (as well as the paper you linked to).

<comment><USER2> Oh yeah, they're kicking ass on every front of this sub-field. Then, Leroy et al are doing that for compilers and language analysis at INRIA as well. Then Astree is leading it for static analysis of C.

France, esp INRIA, seems to be in the lead on verified software with a real- world focus. It will be great when more elsewhere follow suit.

<comment><USER4> Galois just gave a talk on high assurance crypto at RWC (they made cryptol and other open sourced tools to give formal proofs of security)

<comment><USER2> Oh yeah, Galois is another one of the greats in the field. They just keep cranking out one practical thing after another. At a higher pace than most it seems. Here are a few good things on their end.

Scrolling their blog is endless insights [https://galois.com/blog/](https://galois.com/blog/)

CRYPTOL's open source page [http://www.cryptol.net/](http://www.cryptol.net/)

SMACCMPilot has things like Ivory language [http://smaccmpilot.org/](http://smaccmpilot.org/)

GitHub site with 8 pages worth of their stuff [https://github.com/galoisinc](https://github.com/galoisinc)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They mention that _tls-unique_ is used by FIDO. Does this include the U2F specification that is just getting starting to gain acceptance for two-factor authentication? If so, what does it mean for U2F going forward? Are there (potentially/in theory) issues with using it for 2FA?

(I'm not a crypto guy, obviously...)

</comment><comment><USER6> The link's not working for me, nor is any reference to SLOTH given on [http://www.mitls.org/wsgi/tls-attacks](http://www.mitls.org/wsgi/tls- attacks).

<comment><USER2> [http://www.mitls.org/downloads/transcript- collisions.pdf](http://www.mitls.org/downloads/transcript-collisions.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's not clear if the JRE6 and the JRE7 are impacted (does the JSSE shipped with them support TLS1.2)? If so, pretty worrying as not supported anymore yet widely deployed.

<comment><USER8> I keep seeing this in a lot of places, but Oracle are still releasing JDK6 and JDK7 updates every quarter. AFAIK TLSv1.2 is not supported on 6.

Edit: ah, but only to customers paying for support.

<comment><USER9> Java7u79 is supposed to be the last public release. From the SLOTH page, it looks like there might be another release to address this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's not clear to me that this work establishes that truncated hashes are dangerous, so much as that tls-unique is just not a very good protocol.

<comment><USER2> I wonder why you're speculating given they used the attacks against default configurations of Java apps, Firefox, some Chrome builds, BouncyCastle, and more. Amusingly, the clients often accepted the weaker crypto even when it was disabled. Fits my meme's nicely. Then, some of the flaws that led to that were fixed.

Not sure how applicable it is now outside a checklist item for a situation that can repeat in a new client. Yet, the paper said they used it on real stuff. Was there something specific you were thinking about that's not covered by that?

<comment><USER3> I don't understand your question. I'm not doubting the impact of the paper, just one of its conclusions.

<comment><USER2> That's all I was wondering.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Copyright troll bugging us, are we screwed? - legal-toss-away Backstory:
We are a UK based SaaS with public user profiles where anyone can upload images as their profile photo. Photos are not the primary feature of the site.
What happened: We received a copyright notice on behalf of a collection agency of sorts (representing big name publishers) saying that one of our users had uploaded an image which was copyrighted. We took the image down right away, but shortly thereafter we got a follow up email demanding several thousands of dollars on behalf of the rights holder for use of their image while it was up on the user's profile. We obviously don't want to pay and potentially open ourselves up for future similar claims. We contacted our lawyer and they told us there's not much we can do, and I'm really hoping they're wrong.
Has anyone faced a similar issue, and how did you handle it?
Thanks!
* Note: This incident happened -before- the EU upload filter law had passed, but we are still being hounded to pay up. <comment><AUTHOR> Get a second opinion from a copyright specialist in the UK. If you were a US based company it would fall under the DMCA safe harbor as long as you were registered. I imagine the UK has something similar.

Things to check: Does the company actually own the copyright? When someone uploads an image does your privacy policy/terms of service indicate that you've been granted a license to use the photo OR at the very least does the uploader acknowledge that they have the right to the image? Is it possible that the uploader had been granted permission to use the photo inadvertently? Is the image in question actually the image that's copyrighted (the software used in rights management is often error prone). Was the image planted by the company?

Remember that you can negotiate the fee down, assuming they even bother to file a lawsuit.

The really important thing is to make sure that going forward you're protected from these types of complaints. This is what your current lawyer should have done when reviewing your terms and conditions, etc.

</comment><comment><USER2> Here's what you do: ignore it.

<comment><USER3> I agree. All other arguments aside and assuming they're 100% correct, I doubt they're going to waste resources to file a lawsuit over an image of a person that did not generate any monetary value. Ignore it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Re: "This incident happened -before- the EU upload filter law had passed"

AFAIK this actually is only a directive and not a law just yet. As a directive it will be down to the individual governments to decide how it will be implemented. The final vote will be in Jan 2019.

</comment><comment><USER5> Does that usage not fall under the UK/EU's equivalent of fair use?</comment>


Erik Meijer and Gilad Bracha: Dart, Monads, Continuations (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Erik-Meijer-and-Gilad-Bracha-Dart-Monads-Continuations-and-More

<comment><USER2> Any chance Dart will escape this js/V8 world and be real stand-alone "in its own" language? Preferably with native codegen.

<comment><USER3> 100% chance

The Dart VM is almost 4 years old: [https://github.com/dart- lang/sdk/commit/4c0f559d23b4ffc50848...](https://github.com/dart- lang/sdk/commit/4c0f559d23b4ffc5084884b95ad0b956fa95db9c)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> (2012)

I really wish people would get in the habit of including the date in their submitted titles for non-current links. Older links are fine if they're still of interest, but since this is Hacker _News_ after all, things that aren't _new_ should be labeled as such.</comment>


24 years of email - <AUTHOR> http://www.jgc.org/blog/2010/02/24-years-of-email.html

<comment><USER2> Heh, I'm so old I remember being on the first mailing list on the Internet back in 1972-73, which was (suitably meta) a mailing list about mail programs & related issues.

(It was based out of BBN, whence came the first email.)

The first mail servers were rather primitive: they were just (pre-TCP/IP) FTP- like servers that would open your local mailbox (on TOPS-10 in our case, at HARV-10) and append to it. Lots of interesting locking issues...

<comment><USER3> I'm not that old but I do remember the day when my college BITNET email address could finally gateway to the Internet. Seeing dots in the domain part of the address was weird.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > And most people's domains hadn't reached the point where just using initials > was unworkable.

Seems like my first email address (especially university VAX accounts) back then were even more cryptic and included some bizarre Godzilla reference like firstname.lastname@example.com.

<comment><USER5> The .mil domains were especially bad, you'd end up with monstrosities like:

firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think Gmail/Apple Mail's message threading system should be included. When I think about the pre-thread days of having to read 16 separate emails because 8 corporate douchebags all responded needlessly to the same original message, it makes me appreciate email threading even more.

<comment><USER7> Threading predates Gmail by a couple decades. RFC-822 (1982) specifies the necessary fields, and though I don't have personal experience prior to the early 90s, I'm sure decent MUAs supported threading in the 80s.

I actually find Gmail's threading annoying since it only threads at the level of the "conversation" (aka "subject"), even when the initial thread has split. So Gmail doesn't tell me which branch a particular message lives on, and if the reply does not quote enough context, you really can't find out without inspecting the raw message.

Furthermore, several messages that _should_ be threaded together, such as a patch series, show up as unrelated messages in the UI because they have different subjects. So Gmail's threading UI does the "wrong" thing because people have a tendency to screw up headers, e.g. trying to start a new thread by replying to an existing one and changing the subject. I'm not sure this is progress.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Search isn't a general replacement for folders. If you're using folders to try and find things, then yes, search is better for finding than you doing classification yourself.

But filtering things into folders is very useful for other basic forms of categorization, such as by identity (if you have multiple email addresses), or by mailing list (mental context switching is hard) or by priority (I do mine by three categories - the actual inbox, which I empty regularly, emails that will need replies after something else has been done, and everything else).

<comment><USER9> A lot of categorization can actually be done by search though--identity and mailing list can be done by searching against the to: field.

<comment><USER8> I read my Usenet newsgroups and my mailing lists using the same software, with threaded conversations in multiple branches etc. handled in uniform fashion.

The same style for email conversations (in the GMail grouping sense) works less well because, as it turns out, the heuristic of using the title for thread membership works quite well for mailing lists but not so for personal mail, where "Hello" and similar variations come up too often.

The identity issue is less about functionality than it is about the risk of accidentally using the wrong persona. Not that I'm trying to be schizophrenic, but I do have a degree of compartmentalization in different areas of my online life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What about attachments? AFAIK attachments weren't part of the initial implementation of email.

Today though, emailing attachments to small groups is mainstream. This is what many people use as THE form of controlled document distribution and collaboration.

Will improving this aspect of email be the next evolution?

<comment><USER11> Attachments are part of MIME.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > That's one major innovation every 8 years

I wonder if this is a pattern across technologies.

<comment><USER13> No. Just look at the major innovations on the web and you'll see it doesn't follow that pattern. Search Engines, Google, Web based email, Web based Applications, AJAX, Rebirth of Javascript, Horizontal Scaling, Tagging, Folksonomy, Wikipedia, Twitter, Blogging, all major innovations and some have occurred in less than 8 years of each other. Frequency of major innovations are fueled by how many people are working on it. Rates of innovation can be a measure of how hot a technology is. Every 8 years indicates a much cooler technology than say the web.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > I don't think the little > is cutting it anymore.

Edit: Read the article before you respond.

<comment><USER15> >> I don't think the little > is cutting it anymore.

Of course it is, coderdude!

EDIT: too subtle?

<comment><USER14> I think it was just too early (in the morning). :)</comment></comment></comment>