Foxconn Using Forced Student Labour to make iPhones - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/technology/foxconn-said-to-use-forced-student-labor-to-make-iphones.html?_r=2&hpw

<comment><USER2> 1) Students come from vocational schools that train students for skilled factory labour.

2) This isn't an iPhone assembly line.

3) NY Times shouldn't be publishing BS a week after it has been dismissed as BS [http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/6/3297995/forced-to-work- on-t...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/6/3297995/forced-to-work-on-the- iphone-5-thats-what-these-chinese-students-claim)

4) NY Times acknowledges that their source is BS by quoting another media outlet mentioning that it is a cable assembly line.

5) I can't comment on the electronics industry but such practices are very common in China as the vocational schools are actually ran by major manufacturers.

</comment><comment><USER3> Who's to blame? Apple for creating such demand for a large launch within a short period of time, or Foxconn for accepting such demand?

I'll go with Foxconn - you shouldn't be accepting contracts from multiple vendors if you don't have the manpower.

</comment><comment><USER4> The story is crap, but I frankly I think a number of people would be interested in buying an iPhone 5 in kit form. Granted with modern circuitry it would be pretty insane to have neophytes try to hand solder BGA package-on- package chips but if you look at the phone from the iFixit perspective (just the major assemblies) that would be fun.

</comment><comment><USER5> Why this is news to anybody? If you are surprised or disturbed by this news you have not been in touch with the life in 3rd world.</comment>


Small simple explanation to Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange (D-H) - <AUTHOR> http://tbdcomp.blogspot.com/

<comment><USER2> That's a really, really bad explanation. You have

        Bill: Says: 5
        Bill: hmm Now I know the key is: 5
        Monika: hmm now I know the key is: 5
        And they encrypt their communication
        with this number 5, Hillary does not
        know that the number they have chosen
        is 5.

But Bill said "5" and Hillary is listening!

Really, really bad.

I admit that it seems at the beginning that Diffie-Hellman is complicated, but really it's not. You can implement the basics in 3 lots of 8 lines of python. Follow the logic.

Using uppercase for secrets and lower case for openly visible information, and we're talking about Y (for you) and M (for me):

        We openly agree b (small prime) and n (large prime).
        All calculations will be done modulo n.
        We each pick secrets, Y for you and M for me.
        We each compute powers: y=b^Y and m=b^M
        Exchange these powers openly.
        We each raise the others power to our own secret,
            y^M and m^Y, and we get the same answer!
        Use that as a key in blowfish or similar.

That's all there is. There are some details about "good" primes versus "bad" primes, but really, that's it.

So, a longer explanation:

Together, over the phone, you and I pick two numbers, n and b. One's a 500 bit prime, the other is a moderate prime, say, 53. That's not too critical. We agree these openly, everyone can know them.

Now you pick a really big secret number, Y, and I pick a secret number M. You compute y = b^Y (modulo n) and I compute m=b^M (mod n).

We exchange these, quite openly.

Then I compute y^M, and you compute m^Y. The fun part is that the answers we get are the same.

Why?

You computed m^Y which is (b^M)^Y which is b^(MxY), while I computed y^M, which is (b^Y)^M which is b^(YxM). (using "x" for multiplication, because asterisks change to italic)

Modulo n, everything works.

Now we share a secret, and we can use that in a symmetric cipher such as blowfish, or whatever.

It is believed that no one can deduce the shared secret, or the individual secrets, from the visible numbers.

</comment><comment><USER3> The run on sentences make this article hard to follow. The last paragraph of the article even says, "not the best explanation..." Isn't the whole point that this is supposed to be a good, simple explanation?

Wikipedia offers a much better walk-through of what it is and how it works:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffie-Hellman>

</comment><comment><USER4> It's actually a terrible explanation. I understood it better before.</comment>


Buzzfeed Twitter "like to hear from you if you are not white and not male." - <AUTHOR> http://www.mediaite.com/online/buzzfeed-canada-is-looking-for-writers-white-males-need-not-apply/ <comment><USER2> I have a feeling that someone may be getting a talking-to by their lawyers. That said, the full tweet was

        "@BuzzFeedCanada would particularly like to hear from you
        if you are not white and not male."

which has a subtly different meaning than it would without the word "particularly". It's quite common in Canada for job postings to include words like "we encourage applications from under-represented groups, including women, Aboriginals, visible minorities, and persons with disabilities", because encouraging _applications_ from particular groups does not imply bias in the selection process itself.

<comment><USER3> While the first tweet could have been phrased a bit more carefully, I understood what she was trying to do. Saying something along the lines of "we strongly encourage women and minorities to apply" is, IMHO, completely fine.

But everything after that kinda went completely off the rails. It almost looks like someone needs to put down Twitter for a few minutes and take a break.

<comment><USER2> _But everything after that kinda went completely off the rails. It almost looks like someone needs to put down Twitter for a few minutes and take a break._

I agree; her bigotry was showing. BuzzFeed might escape a human rights complaint because the most problematic tweets weren't part of the actual job posting, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As for 10:05a.m. EST, her current pinned tweet is:

"you owe these pale devils nothing."

[https://twitter.com/Scaachi/status/700703145631023105](https://twitter.com/Scaachi/status/700703145631023105)

Screen grab here:

[http://imgur.com/m5T09G4](http://imgur.com/m5T09G4)

<comment><USER5> That's pure hate.

<comment><USER4> So it is, and predictably, her twitter went private.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> First tweet, who cares. Subsequent tweets, trolling/asshole, why would you work for this person no matter what your or their race is?

I know they are probably getting a lot of shade on twitter, but the tweets sound like a crank, not someone doing hiring. Completely unprofessional.

</comment><comment><USER7> Discrimination against white males is just as bad as anything other form of discrimination.

This is also the wrong way to end up with a more diverse workforce. The "non- diverse" portion of your workforce, who probably highly support your diversity efforts in general, will slowly sour over not being given equal opportunity and float away. It also always leaves the question "Is she really good? Or did she get the General Manager position because she was female?", which again, is not what you want. You want diverse candidates to win the positions fair and square and thereby command the respect of the rest of the team.

The right way to end up a more diverse workforce is to setup a better funnel to find qualified candidates. This requires work (a lot of it) and then a lot of outreach to get them come interview for positions.

But the actual decision for a positions (and as a corollary, promotions) should be on merit, otherwise you are just as bad as the previous state of affairs.

<comment><USER8>
      > Discrimination against white males is just
      > as bad as anything other form of discrimination.

It isnt in any way comparable, discrimination against white males mostly hurts their(our) feelings, discrimination against other demographics has them paid less, physically and sexually attacked more, put in jail or killed by police more (insert almost infinite list of results of being systematically discriminated against for not being a white male)

<comment><USER9> You realize that some white guys are explicitly forbidden to apply to a job, they won't get a chance to get employment to make a living and feed their kids. I'm not saying that non-whites don't face the same issues, but how can you honestly say that it only hurts their "feelings"?

You can be pro-discrimination in favor of minorities, but don't hide behind the "it only hurts their feelings" fallacy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I know I'm not the normal, but this doesn't bother me. I believe that in the marketplace of ideas, the best ideas tend to win out, and if hiring "non-white males" is the best idea, then more power to them. Fighting discrimination with discrimination might or might not prove to be an effective tactic, but it certainly doesn't paint a pretty picture.

On the flip side, in America this violates EEOC laws, and is pretty clearly illegal. Someone in a position to hire ought to be aware of this.

<comment><USER4> Would you be fine with them saying hiring "only white males" in Canada? Or hiring "only white" in Australia?

<comment><USER10> I would. Moreover, I would be perfectly happy with them advertising as such, so that I could know that they were assholes, and happily give my money to their competitors.

Instead, the system we get is one in which everyone pretends to be inclusive, and I end up inadvertently giving money to organizations like Chik-Fil-A.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is "You owe these pale demons nothing" a quote from something, or a pastiche of some style of speech? Maybe US black nationalism or Mugabe-ism? It's not normal English. Google only finds things about Buzzfeed though. I suspect there may be a lot of whoosh happening here.

<comment><USER12> How is it not normal English?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Buzzfeed is built on divisive headlines and half true stories. No surprise this person works there.

</comment><comment><USER14> I encourage activity like this. It helps me add to the list of companies that I wouldn't touch with a 10ft pole.

<comment><USER4> I wonder about some of the folks at Github and at Buzzfeed now. When a vilified person's employers quietly condone vilification by not speaking out against it: how does that make the subject of the hate feel?

More worryingly, the employees who are now given free reign to hate: what will they do with this newfound implicit power?

<comment><USER14> > what will they do with this newfound implicit power?

Condone and nurture the very activities that less-radical movements of the same nature set out to destroy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Not considering white males in a field that's already dominated by women, and excusing it because it "promotes diversity" ironically sounds like a hypocritical monoculture.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm happy that Buzzfeed is looking to diversify.

But this person's just being an asshole.

</comment><comment><USER17> There's a lot of context for the request for under-represented groups in some of her other tweets. Particularly this chain [1] which begins with:

"1\. The reason why I was sourcing out work specifically from WOC is because we have filled out freelance roster until June with white dudes."

"2\. I am trying to readjust that balance, which is not illegal. I am not sure who you are going to sue for affirmative action, but good luck."

[1] [https://twitter.com/Scaachi/status/700672318406840320](https://twitter.com/Scaachi/status/700672318406840320)

<comment><USER18> Her texts about "pale devils", that's also part of the process of hiring WoC?

There are decent ways to go around this to empower non-white hiring. This isn't helping anyone, and ends up alienating a lot of people.

<comment><USER17> It alienates far more fragile white guys than the groups she's looking to employ. An unfortunate sacrifice, but necessary none the less.

<comment><USER19>
      >  An unfortunate sacrifice, but necessary none the less.

I simply can't agree with this. It seems immature and grossly unnecessary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> People such as this are part of the problem. They're not helping, just causing a bigger divide. Diversity is great, it should be encouraged, but diversity through exclusion should not.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm convinced Twitter ought to be avoided like the plague. It seems to be nothing but a place to get publicly humiliated for an accidental slip up in phrasing or line of thought. People make mistakes, and certain Twitter users do not forgive them.

I'm not a supporter of any group that uses the sjw acronym. I'm just a realistic person who has made mistakes with phrasing in the past.

</comment><comment><USER21> Pale Demons is a _great_ name for a band. Wait, what were we talking about?

// You don't like it? Our album drops in december.

</comment><comment><USER9> People getting to such extremisms are not interested in justice for the present, they're interested in revenge for the past.

</comment><comment><USER22> It's always interesting watching stories that threaten certain ideologies get blasted away from the front page

</comment><comment><USER23> And somebody won't be getting fired.

</comment><comment><USER24> There is a difference between affirmative action and bald-faced racism/sexism. Giving bonus points to underrepresented applicants is fine. Behaving negatively towards a group of people because of their race/sex is not.

</comment><comment><USER9> At this point, the title of this submission doesn't reflect what's going on. It's clearly "white men, go die in a ditch! We hate you!". The first tweets weren't that sensational, but it went down hill pretty quickly.

</comment><comment><USER25> So I've been looking through this thread and there isn't a single comment that's supportive of @scaachi

Makes me sad. I love reading HN, but I wish it wasn't such an monocultural echo chamber of white males that get all riled up every time a woman says something slightly controversial on twitter.

<comment><USER5> Supportive of what? Her overt racism? This seems like nothing more than a hateful and racist stance.

Look, I actually speak differently on this website than I do in real life. In real life, I use a lot of slang and Spanglish. Im aware of the monoculture you're talking about. But to me, it was always a nerd/geek monoculture, not a white one. I guess now that you and others have forced me to think that it's a homogenous white male culture, I subconsciously think that to.

<comment><USER25> I can only imagine what this must feel like for @scaachi. She tries to hire writers that are underrepresented, and lots of people who have nothing to do with it start yelling at her. Yeah, she might not have used the most politically language -- but I think that intent is more important than what exactly upset people tweet when the situation escalates.

I think that it is extremely important to hire people from diverse backgrounds, especially when hiring journalists. That's what I believe she was trying to do, and that's something that we should be supportive of.

<comment><USER5> If you read my rant above, you'll see that there's more than one side to this. It's a little patronizing to the people she thinks she's helping.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The intent here is clearly to exclude based on race and gender not to encourage ethnic diversity. The language is no subtle, 'NO WHITE MEN' is simply racism and sexism. This person should be removed from her position and buzzfeed should issue an apology.

</comment><comment><USER18> The irony is today we got to hear former Khmer Rogue communist on trial masquerading their mass murder as "social justice" [0]

I wonder how far people are willing to go for "diversity". Branding a group as "pale devils" is a good way to start diminish people into justifiable targets.

This isn't going to go away unless someone steps up and stops it. Unfortunately those who want to stop it are being branded as bigots, and others can only gain (votes, power, etc) from situation like this.

0: [http://jurist.org/paperchase/2016/02/top-khmer-rogue-says- he...](http://jurist.org/paperchase/2016/02/top-khmer-rogue-says-he-fought- for-social-justice.php)

</comment><comment><USER27> It really speaks to the viewership of HN that many of these comments are negative, along the theme of 'Discrimination against white males is just as bad as anything other form of discrimination.' This person definitely went overboard, but given the last 300 years of race in North America, discriminating in one set of hires for one company is potentially a great thing. It's amazing that the Canadian constitution literally calls this out in support of it. When you have certain groups of people that you can look at and say 'Ok that person has a much lower chance of success in life than I, just look at them', something is wrong with your country, and people supporting diversity are taking a step in the right direction.

Heres the bit from the Canadian charter of rights "Subsection (1) does not preclude any law, program or activity that has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups including those that are disadvantaged because of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability."</comment>


Confirmed reports of a person with a gun on campus on the Old Campus. - <AUTHOR> http://emergency.yale.edu/

<comment><USER2> Flag and move on, yes. but... reading their latest update reminds me of the Boston-shutdown earlier this year... typical fear-motivated actions...

 _Out of an abundance of caution, Police will be doing a room to room search starting with the residential college areas. When they knock on your door, a Yale Police Officer will slip their Yale ID under the door. Please cooperate. In some cases, Police may use keys, but they will identify themselves. Shelter in Place continues._

</comment><comment><USER3> Why do these make it to the front page of HN?

Edit: Read the submission guide lines in the FAQ. Man with gun isnt a new phenomenon (unfortunately).

<comment><USER4> Flag, and move on.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What kind of statistics do you track and what do you use to track them? - <AUTHOR>

For your business, which quantitative aspects do you measure? For example user registrations, conversion rates, etc.<p>Also, what programs do you use to track these conversions? <comment><USER2> In order of relevance:

* Doing e-commerce, funnel analysis is the metric by which your startup will live, or die. Mixpanel might help, but if your app has non-trivial business logic, implementing it by yourself might be better

* A good extended scope over that is presented in Startup Metrics for Pirates ( [http://www.slideshare.net/dmc500hats/startup-metrics-for-pir...](http://www.slideshare.net/dmc500hats/startup-metrics-for-pirates-long-version) ), which takes the whole lifecycle of your customers into consideration

* A/B testing, and their related metrics are important to figure out, and validate learning about your customers. A/B is best implemented server-side, directly within your app's framework

Once you have these basics down, and even before you launch your MVP, you will need to come up with hypotheses about most columns in the business model canvas ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Model_Canvas> ); for consumer B2C apps, the most important will be your Channel hypothesis -AKA customer acquisition. Depending on your hypothesis, you will need to measure, and validate/invalidate it, for which you can use:

* Adwords has an extremely cool UI by itself, doesn't need anything extra

* For SEO metrics, check out seomoz, or competitive SEO tools. You will need to keep track of best performing keywords, general trends, and competition. It's wise to complementer your SEO strategy with promotional material (see patio's writeups about the minisites tactics), at which point the number of potential customer acquisition keywords can grow geometrically.

* There are a couple of tools for keeping track of Social/viral growth, but facebook's built-in FB insights is pretty good by itself

Your attention is zero-sum, and should be treated as such. Therefore, the most important factor in each metrics you should ask, is whether you can take action upon it (as opposed to being a vanity metrics [ [http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/05/19/vanity- metri...](http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/05/19/vanity-metrics-vs- actionable-metrics/) ]), and if so, what kind (split testing? more cash into adwords? building new niche-specific site? etc).

Godspeed!

<comment><USER3> sdrinf,

wow this is a very detailed response.</comment></comment>


Tarsnap reaches profitability - <AUTHOR> http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2009-03-09-tarsnap-reaches-profitability.html

<comment><USER2> I think it will be a little while before you're nicely profitable, but I'd say it will come. Backups are just the worst thing ever. Getting the data to unreliable tape drives, rotating the tapes, dealing with finite capacity physical hardware, making sure that it's secure (both from people stealing the data and disaster happening to the data). It's a nightmare and one that I'm happy to replace with Tarsnap.

With Tarsnap, I can simply run a cron that creates a backup with the date in the name and I'm done. I never have to eliminate old versions since they all take the storage space of an incremental. I never have to worry about where we're storing the tapes (a crappy basement a block from our main building _shudder_ ). I never have to worry about people getting past the little security in the building. Most importantly, I don't need to do anything. The cron does it. I don't have to monitor tape capacity, constantly test whether the tapes are any good, deal with incrementals vs. full backups, etc.

There's no longer any excuse for having poor backups. Tarsnap allows you to do full backups as often as you want while only using the space of incremental. It's paranoid secure and replicated on S3.

Congratulations! You deserve for this service to become the premier backup solution for many IT departments.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Before anyone asks, I'm not going to say how much profit tarsnap made in February, except to say that it's significantly less than I spent on insulin (I'm a type 1 diabetic) -- I belong to the crazy set of people who get very uncomfortable at discussions about income.

To be honest, I wouldn't have posted this at all, except for one important thing -- the fact that tarsnap is self-supporting (as I mention in the post) means that people have a much stronger reason to trust that it will continue to exist in the future.

<comment><USER3> Out of interest and on the topic of your personal profitability, do you get any meaningful income from the AdSense on your daemonology.net pages?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not recently. A couple of years ago I was getting around $4 CPM and $50/month from Adsense; now it's more like $0.25 CPM and $10/month. It's at the point where I'd remove the adsense except that I can't be bothered to edit all the pages I put it onto.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Congrats Colin for sticking with it for 2 years and even more amazing, being a lone founder and remaining focused.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I must say, though, that staying focused on tarsnap has been easier than staying focused on my doctorate was -- with tarsnap, I could see my code improving long before tarsnap reached public beta, but for my doctorate, I didn't start writing my thesis until the beginning of my third year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Congratulations!

 _"What guarantee can I provide that the tarsnap service will continue to operate?"_ \- lots of upstarts get this question, and rightfully so. I've been wondering, would it be possible to set up some kind of foundation that would take over the data if a company goes out of business? This way users can get to their data, and port it to somewhere else, even if the company goes bankrupt. If it is possible this would give a lot of potential customers one less worry.

<comment><USER6> This is a really good idea, but sounds like a pain to set up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really hate to be an asshole about this, but I took a look at your pricing model:

\- $0.30 / GB of bandwidth

\- $0.30 / GB / month of storage

From what I see, you could host this on AWS and be "profitable" with just one customer, right? I mean, if your definition of profitability includes only your variable non-staff costs, which seems to be how you're defining it...

<comment><AUTHOR> _From what I see, you could host this on AWS and be "profitable" with just one customer, right?_

If EC2 instances were free, sure. :-)

<comment><USER7> I'm assuming you're using S3 for storage, right? And the pricing for S3 is less than your pricing, so where's your additional marginal cost? Is it just an EC2 instance to handle the requests? Still seems like a really low threshold...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Congrats :)

It's a pretty big thing to be able to say that your service will stick around.

</comment><comment><USER9> Congrats! I'm encouraged to see that others are able to pull it off on their own without cofounders, it gives me hope for myself.

Thanks Mark

</comment><comment><USER10> Congratulations! There should be an award for this, perhaps a tee shirt that says "Ramen Profitable".

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not ramen profitable yet.

<comment><USER11> We need to define a new milestone before "ramen profitable".

Perhaps we can call it "beer profitable", as in, you can't actually live off your profits but you can buy the occasional beer with them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> great news!!! thanks for such a useful product Colin.

</comment><comment><USER13> Don't you mean "reaches cash flow positive"?

<comment><AUTHOR> No. Tarsnap has been cash flow positive for several months, thanks to the fact that people have to deposit money before using tarsnap. (Tarsnap turns out, completely by accident, to be an amazing cash flow machine: I take in money before I provide a service, but Amazon doesn't charge me for the costs of providing that service until the end of the month, and I don't pay the credit card bill on which that appears until the end of the following month.)

I mean profitable: Income (which does not include unearned revenue) greater than expenses.

<comment><USER13> Then I'm with menloparkbum and not understanding what you mean, since your business doesn't even cover the cost of keeping its sole staff member from going into insulin shock.

Didn't really mean to wade in here. Congrats on getting some liftoff with tarsnap.

<comment><USER14> It feels like you're deliberately not understanding so you can have a massive row about it.

Tarsnap business has money coming in from paying users, and that is enough to cover the non-human costs of servicing those users.

It's not a claim of amazing success or resiliency or world-beating awesomeness, it's a statement of progress, a milestone, a reassurance that things are moving in the right direction, that tarsnap isn't wallowing in "I have users but still no income" land.

Stop reading too much into it and then arguing about how much of a misleading dirty stinking lie it is.

You're spoiling a positive progress report with a meaningless argument and at the same time implying cperviva is misleading/lying, and stupid/incompetent. In short, you're trolling.

<comment><USER13> Hey, Colin: did you take offense?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, but I did wonder a few times if people were deliberately misunderstanding what I was saying. :-)

<comment><USER13> Congrats again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Cool service, I'll be signing up my two servers over the week</comment>


The Non-Libertarian FAQ (aka Why I Hate Your Freedom) - <AUTHOR> http://www.raikoth.net/libertarian.html

<comment><USER2> It mentions the Libertarian over-use of 1984. I've always found this especially ironic, because Orwell was a Marxist who fought with the POUM in the Spanish Civil War. Granted, a Libertarian Marxist, but I rarely see the types this FAQ is addressed towards willing to make the distinction.

And this is unrelated, but I always like to add a nod towards it, if you enjoy Orwell's work, pick up _Homage to Catalonia_. One of my favorite books, and even if you disagree completely with Orwell's politics, his writing and storytelling is extraordinary.

</comment><comment><USER3> Libertarianism: the belief that the ideal form of government for a small village scales to societies of hundreds of millions of people.

</comment><comment><USER4> The problem with articles like this is that they're too patronising to be an engagement with the opposition, and they aren't charitable enough to present the opposing arguments in their strongest form. I say this as someone who mostly agrees with the author.

Also, why is it missing all the obvious case studies in favour of focusing on American ones? If you're going to talk about government healthcare intervention, please please please mention the UK's national health service.

<comment><USER5> I didn't find it patronizing in the least. As to whether it presented the opposing arguments in their strongest form, that's hard for me to say as I strongly agree with the article and generally find the pro-libertarian arguments to be weak.

As to why the UK national health service isn't discussed - why should it be? The article is pretty specific that it's not intended to demonstrate all statism all the time is perfect, but that some statism some of the time is beneficial.

<comment><USER4> The fact that a person who agrees with arguments didn't feel personally patronised isn't exactly shocking... Think about the structure and arguments used here, things like "You lose." and "Tricked you.". There wasn't any real need for the childish hostility against some imagined libertarian

If you don't understand why the NHS is relevant to the topic of government healthcare intervention (which is discussed at length) then I'm not sure?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _But to other people, libertarianism means that politics must be seen solely as a cosmic battle between the State and the Individual, and that the only solution to this dichotomy is to oppose the State in all its actions._

That is the most extreme definition of Libertarianism that I have ever heard. Most Libertarians that I know are practical. They're not anarchists. Their primary desire is to reduce the size and scope of government.

</comment><comment><USER7> This isn't actually anti-libertarian or even anti-anarchist. It is written for a peculiar type of person who likes to call himself a libertarian and who hates taxes so much that he doesn't want to pay for government services he doesn't use. Unfortunately, the author already knows that this type of person is more likely to dismiss his FAQ as the drivel of some Soviet Commie-Nazi rather than read it.

</comment><comment><USER8> The zes and zirs kept getting in the way in this document and caused me to take it less seriously.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I prefer the Spivak pronouns myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I can't understand people, who reject Non-Aggression Axiom (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-aggression_principle>).

<comment><USER10> In my case, I reject armchair deontological ethics in favor of ethics that have at least some grounding in science and empirical examination of the world, so the non-aggression axiom fails for the same reason that Kant's ethics and Christian ethics fail.

<comment><USER7> Can you explain when "ethics that have at least some grounding in science and empirical examination of the world" conflict with the non-agression axiom?

<comment><USER10> They may or may not conflict; I just reject it as an _axiom_. It's possible that there are good reasons to support a society structured around a non- aggression principle, though.

(I don't have a fully worked-out ethical theory, but I'm intrigued by the stuff Sam Harris is doing to try to reduce the gap between ethical theorizing and science.)

<comment><USER7> Oh, that seems like a pretty reasonable approach to things. Thanks.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Github-Integrated fluxflex Aims At Making Cloud Hosting Easier And Cheaper - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/17/github-integrated-fluxflex-aims-at-making-cloud-hosting-easier-and-cheaper/ <comment><USER2> I just tried installing a Django site from their "shared" apps as well as importing a Github repo of my own. Both builds failed and I can't find why in their logs.

<comment><USER3> Hi. I'm the founder of fluxflex. I'm sorry for the inconvenience, but we got an error for installing applications several hours ago. It was already fixed and currently the service works well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I tried various apps from their pre-configured list, but nothing works yet. Disappointing so far.

</comment><comment><USER5> Seems very easy to use, anyone else got experience with it?

</comment><comment><USER6> tried a wp install, looked good but hadn't clean urls (rewrite) active, looks good but they need to explain better the processed time</comment>


DeepLearning11: 10x Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti Single Root Deep Learning Server - <AUTHOR> https://www.servethehome.com/deeplearning11-10x-nvidia-gtx-1080-ti-single-root-deep-learning-server-part-1/ <comment><USER2> It's nice to see NVidia's behavior here is more widely known now. To this day, I do not understand the justification for asserting that one cannot install GeForce GPUs wherever one wants to install them. I really wish that Nvidia felt more secure that killer Tesla features like NVLINK and the Tensor Cores were sufficient product differentiation to make purchasing Tesla GPUs worth the price.

And that's because to the best of my knowledge, most of the CUDA ecosystem out there was developed on GeForce GPUs.

There is currently no GeForce equivalent of Volta at a time when the underlying programming model has undergone some traumatic changes that really alter the way to write efficient code going forward. If the only way to access Volta GPUs turns out to be AWS instances at $25/hour or $150,000 DGX-1V servers plus hosting costs, I suspect a lot of existing CUDA code will bitrot.

Imagine a near future where AMD Vega GPUs are faster than GTX 1080 TI at FP16 training and inference for deep learning. Without some sort of successor to that GPU, I really think that could happen because Nvidia went out of its way to cripple FP16 performance on GeForce.

<comment><USER3> 1080Ti doesn't have double speed FP16, Vega 64 should be more than twice as fast for half precision training/inference. The problem is that AMD is has been lacking in framework support and fast optimised kernels. This seemed promising - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15516166](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15516166)

<comment><USER2> It's worse than that, the FP16 MAD in GTX 1080 TI is significantly slower than converting 2 FP16 numbers to FP32, performing FP32 math on them, and accumulating results in FP32. Had it been the same speed, I don't think I would be anywhere near as annoyed as I am with this crippling.

That said, at Vega's 26 or so FP16 TFLOPS, it wouldn't be hard for NVIDIA to release a GeForce Volta with 30-40 tensor core TFLOPS, that both stomped on Vega and remained significantly inferior to V100. Given how hard it is to program Volta optimally, I'm surprised they haven't done so already, if only as a Titan XV Edition that can only be purchased from their website.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, will be interesting to see if they can bring the price of GPUs with tensor cores down, from what I've read it's too expensive to make them right now for consumer market.

BTW - do you happen to know what DL frameworks currently support mixed precision training with Volta tensor cores? Curious to see if AWS V100 instances can really do 120 TFLOPS as advertised. I think latest versions of CUDA/CuDNN support Volta now?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The commodity GeForce Nvidia cards versus the Enterprise Tesla NVidia cards is history repeating itself, with enterprise disks vs commodity disks. We all know who won in the end (commodity disks, of course).

The 1080Ti card is about 60% of the performance of the P100, but costs 700 dollars instead of 5k dollars. Of course, people will try and build these boxes, they have a much higher ROI compared to Nvidia's DGX-1. So what do NVidia do? Try and stop vendors from selling them! [https://www.pcgamesn.com/nvidia-geforce- server](https://www.pcgamesn.com/nvidia-geforce-server)

<comment><USER5> There are some other knobs that NVIDIA will surely try (has surely tried?) to tweak as well, such as making the consumer devices deliberately less power efficient, fusing off chip features which make compute workloads more efficient, or sabotaging the drivers (either in general or on a per- application basis).

With disks there was always just as much pressure on the consumer side to keep energy down, cost down, and capacity up, which means that there was no natural segmentation, and no straightforward unnatural segmentation.

<comment><USER6> I think you're vastly underestimating amount of work that goes into those things. What if instead what you suggest they do not invest as hard in gaming parts? Design, QA, QC and support cost money after all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How do they keep those cards cool when they are packed so close together? I built a crypto currency mining rig once and I had to have a reasonable amount of separation between the cards so the side mounted fans had somewhere to pull air from.

</comment><comment><USER8> Very interesting. I just have a single of these (Gigabyte Aorus 1080 TI), and have recovered 1/3rd (or a bit more, with the latest bitcoin spike) of the purchase price over 4 months doing mining.

I'd like to ah, learn about machine learning so here's to hoping Nvidia doesn't nerf its deep learning capabilities on the driver level.

</comment><comment><USER4> I gave a talk at the Spark Summit Europe last week, where i went into detail on this server and how we can scale out deep learning training on Tensorflow with it and AllReduce (by Uber): [https://www.slideshare.net/secret/A7b9rAsLaipg6](https://www.slideshare.net/secret/A7b9rAsLaipg6)

TLDR; You can scale out distributed Tensorflow training to tens/hundreds of GPUs with AllReduce on machines like this one, not just on the DGX-1.

<comment><USER9> can you set your slideshare to public? thanks!

<comment><USER4> Fixed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why use a dual Xeon E5-2650 V4 instead of a single Epyc 7401P?

Are there no appropriate mainboards yet?</comment>


Perl Golf Apocalypse - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perl_Golf <comment><USER2> Anyone up for a game?</comment>


Git performance results on a large repository - <AUTHOR> http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/189776

<comment><USER2> If anyone changes anything in the git format to solve this, there are two changes that need to be piggybacked on the next format change:

1) add a "generation number" - Linus mentioned this is a deficiency that he would like to fix, but is not worth introducing a backward incompatible change. (Instead, generation numbers are currently being computed by scanning through history; luckily, they are only needed in some merge scenarios so it's not too bad)

2) Add support for "chunked files" - a file that is represented as a text file of chunk ids (like a directory, sans the file names); to get the file contents, you recursively unpack each file, and concatenate them.

bup does (2) "artificially" without notifying git. As a result, it can quickly and efficiently handle small changes to a 100GB file. It's a shame that git can't do that - the rebuilding of such files need to be in the core, but their encoding can be left to a bup style extension (and different break algorithms may match different usage scenarios)

With (2), you'd be able to "git add" your 30GB virtual machine file to your git repository, and version it. How cool would that be?

</comment><comment><USER3> As of August, they think they are on their way to a solution: [http://www.quora.com/Facebook-Engineering/Has-Facebook- solve...](http://www.quora.com/Facebook-Engineering/Has-Facebook-solved-their- large-Git-repository-problem-yet/answer/Chuck-Rossi)

<comment><AUTHOR> Fascinating. Thanks for the link. Sam mentions in the thread:

      With the hard–working part of git on the other end of a network service,
      you could back it by a re–implementation of git which is written to be
      distributed in Hadoop.  There are at least two similar implementations
      of git that are like this: one for cassandra which was written by github
      as a research project, and Google's implementation on top of their
      BigTable/GFS/whatever.

It will be interesting to see how FB approaches it.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How would you like to be managed? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I guess the entrepreneur in me says I don't want to be managed so I choose to be innovative and work for myself.

</comment><comment><USER3> To not be.</comment>


Turtl: A secure, encrypted Evernote alternative - <AUTHOR> https://turtlapp.com/ <comment><USER2> Check out Standard Notes as well for a good cross-platform encrypted notes app: [https://standardnotes.org](https://standardnotes.org).</comment>


Damn Cool Algorithms, Part 1: BK-Trees - <AUTHOR> http://blog.notdot.net/2007/4/Damn-Cool-Algorithms-Part-1-BK-Trees <comment><USER2> Some implementations:

Lisp: <http://cliki.net/bk-tree>

Python: <http://hupp.org/adam/weblog/?p=103>

Ruby: <https://github.com/threedaymonk/bktree>

Haskell: <http://www.robdickerson.net/?p=346>

Java: <http://code.google.com/p/java-bk-tree/>

<comment><USER3> IMHO the explanation on the Lisp implementation page is much clearer then the article.

<comment><USER4> What an odd thing to say! The Lisp implementation page has no explanation that I could find of either how to build the tree or how to search it. Or did you mean you found the source code to be a clearer explanation?

Edit: The lisp page does have a nice picture of a tree. Did you mean that looking at that picture you could figure out both the algorithm for building the tree and for querying it and the proof that these are correct faster than by reading Nick's blog post?

<comment><USER3> I meant that the picture explains the tree's structure much clearer than the blog post, which is probably not surprising. Didn't really look at how to build or query the tree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This seems similar to the VP-Tree, which there was a post about a few days ago, except that VP-Trees use binary partitioning because they're measuring similarity in a continuous space, while these ones use discrete buckets because similarity is measured discretely.

<comment><USER6> The VP article linked to this one as background material. That is where OP found this article to repost for karma.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> i especially like the part where it says. "The only copy of this online seems to be in the ACM archive, which is subscription only."

<comment><USER8> To clarify, Nick Johnson is referring to the original paper on the topic ("Some approaches to best match file searching" by Burkhard and Keller in 1973). It's a common frustration that ACM archives are not freely available to the public.

In the comments, "Sarah" notes that the paper can be found here:

[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.160...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.160.2510&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

BTW, Nick's Blog often has gems and is well worth a regular read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The SISAP metric spaces library comes with an implementation: <http://sisap.org/Metric_Space_Library.html> You can also compare BK-trees with other methods and you may encounter that their performance is not so great, specially for high dimensional spaces.</comment>


Show HN: Easily convert spreadsheets into accessible URL endpoints - <AUTHOR> https://www.apicastor.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Would love any feedback!</comment>


Git-crypt – Transparent file encryption in git - <AUTHOR> https://www.agwa.name/projects/git-crypt/ <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14079514](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14079514)

</comment><comment><USER3> Reprising a comment from a similar tool:

Don't keep encrypted secrets in your git repositories, if for no other reason than that it makes access revocation deceptively difficult --- but also because it encourages you to have a development team in which ordinary devs have a full complement of secrets on their laptops at all times.

Instead, keep secrets "out of band" and supply them to applications as part of your deployment process.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14080007](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14080007)

<comment><USER4> Maybe it's not a great idea for software projects but for keeping personal data in git (the author wrote it for dotfiles) it seems brilliant.

<comment><USER3> If your repo isn't, and never will be, part of a team, I don't care what you use to encrypt it, and don't have any criticisms to offer of this tool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I know tptacek regards this as a security antipattern (he's usually right), but I do it anyway for smaller projects. It's better than committing plaintext secrets to a repo somewhere.

Couple things I wonder about:

1\. I don't understand why git-crypt is written in C, when a shorter shell script that calls out to openssl(1) and gpg(1) would seem to suffice.

2\. The symmetric key mode isn't ideal -- the gpg mode is better -- but up until OpenSSH 6.7 you couldn't easily forward gpg-agent's unix domain socket, which you need for working with a git checkout on a remote machine. There are also some issues with the gpg-agent protocol last I checked. Has anyone actually gotten gpg-agent forwarding to work?

</comment><comment><USER6> git-crypt doesn't really seem well maintained any longer.

Two alternatives that I've used and like are:

[https://github.com/StackExchange/blackbox](https://github.com/StackExchange/blackbox)

[https://github.com/elasticdog/transcrypt](https://github.com/elasticdog/transcrypt)

<comment><USER7> great to know these, thanks!</comment></comment>


New Technique Against Tumors - <AUTHOR> http://www.cell.com/abstract/S0092-8674(14)00136-6

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I don't know how to compress the original title.</comment>


Audio Engineers Built a Shield to Deflect Police Sound Cannons - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/dyzpna/audio-engineers-built-a-shield-to-deflect-police-sound-cannons <comment><USER2> Amazing how in a supposedly litigious society like America it's possible to deploy a device which causes intentional, indiscriminate, _permanent_ injury across a crowd and not get sued into oblivion. Bit like how tobacco, asbestos and Kinder eggs all incurred product liability because they weren't intending to be damaging to health, but gun manufacturers aren't liable because their products are supposed to be dangerous.

<comment><USER3> I wonder if inflicting permanent disability without leaving any obvious physical traces on people that the police see as their adversaries is in fact part of what makes these devices attractive.

<comment><USER4> Are you saying that the police prefer dealing out permanent damage over non- permanent damage?

<comment><USER5> No he is saying the police have no reason to prefer one to the other if the effects are hidden.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It seems like a corner-cube would do a serviceable job in this context and might be lighter, as long as the reflector is substantially larger than the wavelength of the sound.

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

Wikipedia claims that the LRADs operate at ~2.5 kHz, which corresponds to ~13 cm wavelength. If a corner-cube is about the size of a protest sign, it might be sufficient? As a rule of thumb, if it is about as big as the LRAD device itself, it'll probably have some efficacy. The more-directional the LRAD is, the more effective the corner-cube will be.

In Seattle, at least during "normal" protests, there are restrictions on the materials used in constructing protest signs (no wood bigger than 1", etc.) in order to limit the extent to which they can be used as weapons. One ought to be able to pretty-readily test whether or not foam-core-board corner-cubes (or any design) are effective reflectors with relatively low-intensity sound sources.

<comment><USER7> Protesters should make a parabolic reflector with the focus about 50ft out. Pretty sure cops would stop using these things instantly

<comment><USER6> Parabolic reflectors require alignment and they bring incident energy to a focus no matter what.

Focusing the energy of an instrument that is designed to approach dangerous sound-intensity levels is certain to make the situation _more_ dangerous. Non- violent action is predicated on the idea that hurting anyone, including an aggressor, is counterproductive. A corner-cube reflector won't hurt an LRAD operator any more than the LRAD operator is hurting others. A parabolic reflector could.

If the golden rule isn't sufficient motivation to avoid a focal instrument, perhaps friendly-fire will be: A parabolic reflector will always bring parallel waves/rays to a focus at the focus. If the reflector is more than a focal-length inside a crowd, it is going to destroy the ears of a protestor.

Like glass bottles that start fires in the Australian Outback by concentrating sunlight, anything that concentrates sound energy in an environment with an LRAD is a recipe for unintended consequence.

<comment><USER8> Is having a parabolic reflector a violent action? The only way it could hurt someone is by reflecting the pain they were trying to put on you.

If I had armor that ricocheted bullets back at the shooter, I wouldn't consider myself culpable if someone who tried to shoot me shot themselves.

<comment><USER9> > Is having a parabolic reflector a violent action? The only way it could hurt > someone is by reflecting the pain they were trying to put on you.

Yes, violent retaliation is still violence.

Violence only in retaliation and/or self-defense may be a valid approach to protest in some circumstances, but it's not non-violent protest.

<comment><USER10> You have a strange definition of 'retaliation'. If you throw a ball at a brick wall and it bounces back and hits you, the wall didn't retaliate or act in self-defense. The entire impetus and result is 100% on you. The same applies here.

<comment><USER9> The first use of "retaliation" should be "retaliation and/or self-defense", like the other. I was staying a broader principle which applies to but extends beyond the immediate case.

I will agree that the proposed device might (if targeted appropriately) be more defensive than retaliatory, though the fact that it only causes harm to the focussed-on target if someone attacks it doesn't make it purely defensive or non-retaliatory, in fact, if not carefully targeted it makes it quite indiscriminate retaliation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > LRADs have been a part of anti-protest tactics since the mid 2000's, when > they were adopted by police after being used as a crowd control tool by U.S. > military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Those who stand by idly while America does this to other people should remember that what we're inflicting on them will be inflicted on us tomorrow.

<comment><USER4> >Those who stand by idly while America does this to other people should remember that what we're inflicting on them will be inflicted on us tomorrow.

The US military used B2 bombers in Iraq. Do you expect these to be deployed in Seattle any time soon?

<comment><USER12> >The US military used B2 bombers in Iraq. Do you expect these to be deployed in Seattle any time soon?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVE#1985_bombing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVE#1985_bombing)

>From a Pennsylvania State Police helicopter, Philadelphia Police Department Lt. Frank Powell proceeded to drop two one-pound bombs (which the police referred to as "entry devices") made of FBI-supplied Tovex, a dynamite substitute, targeting a fortified, bunker-like cubicle on the roof of the house. The resulting explosions ignited a fire from fuel for a gasoline- powered generator stored in the rooftop bunker. The fire spread and eventually destroyed approximately sixty-five nearby houses.

<comment><USER4> Wow this spectacularly bad judgement on the part of LEO (FBI), right up there with the Waco siege (ATF). Thanks for bringing this up, I did not see it before.

Still, this looks like an improvised explosive device was used by the police, and it's not an off-shot of the US military programs.

So my point still stands - just because something is deployed by the US military abroad does not mean it will be deployed at home. To suggest otherwise is to spread needless gloom and panic.

<comment><USER13> > Just because something is deployed by the US military abroad does not mean > it will be deployed at home.

Maybe not necessarily in 100% of the cases but once something is manufactured it is likely that the manufacturer will look to expand its customer base. Hence (imo) the militarization of police across the US and indeed the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> >Rife and Liberti designed their shield to reflect audible sound waves that are condensed and carried via ultrasonic frequencies

>According to a detailed teardown of the LRAD 300X posted by another audio technician, the LRADs produced by Genasys, the company that pioneered the devices, do not use an ultrasonic beam to project sound.

It's an art piece. Someone figured out a way to get news coverage with minimal effort (and it really was very little effort). Check out their site:

[https://www.daveandgabe.care/](https://www.daveandgabe.care/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Add some copper mesh or foil to the design, and you can block ADS as well! (microwave pain ray)

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

<comment> non-entity Dammit now I'm curious and have to research microwave pain rays

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Reflecting dangerous soundwaves back to the police may be prosecuted as assault on a police officer, a serious crime (automatic felony in NYC, for instance).

<comment><USER17> That really bugs me. If it's a crime to reflect back onto the cops, why wasn't it a crime for them to use it without justification?

<comment><USER18> "Why is it a crime if I detain criminals but not a crime if the police do?"

<comment><USER19> Isn't citizen's arrest a thing? I think you _could_ detain criminals if you wanted to.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen%27s_arrest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen%27s_arrest)

<comment><USER20> While citizen's arrest is a thing, it does not automatically give you the right to detain someone. A use of force (as would be required to detain a subject) is often only legal to stop a direct felony from taking place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "The shield is also 50 lbs, so it's not exactly easy to transport through a crowd."

That's putting it mildly.

<comment><USER22> Seen hippie girls carry this weight in a backpack thru Asia.

<comment><USER17> There is a big difference between 50lbs in a backpack and holding 50lbs out in front of you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Do earplugs not work for these?

<comment><USER24> Nope, your skull picks up the ultrasonic vibrations and delivers them to your eardrums. Kinda like bone-conduction headphones.

<comment><USER25> The article claims that the LRADs in use do not use ultrasonics. However this is a good point for other directed-sound weapons that might be in use.

<comment><USER24> I was getting this confused with a different tech then. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF9G9M0cR0E&t=170](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF9G9M0cR0E&t=170)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> As someone who values their hearing - I religiously wear earplugs at concerts and muffs at the gun range - these absolutely terrify me. Good to see solutions, even if they're just initial prototypes that may/may not work, being developed.

</comment><comment><USER19> Can I get a couple of these for my apartment?

</comment><comment><USER27> In a similar way they will be able to use the beamforming capabilities of 5G for crowdcontrol once the stations are deployed everywhere.

<comment><USER28> okay i'll bite. What's the power output for a "5G" station, and how much of that energy can be directed to a small area with beamforming? Finally, how does that figure compare to sunlight, which is around 1000W/m^2?</comment></comment>


If you're not a Prime member, Amazon won't sell you "The Last Jedi" - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/technology/2018/04/amazon-is-letting-only-prime-members-buy-the-last-jedi-on-blu-ray-why.html <comment><USER2> Amazon has definitely become less consumer focused.

For two other examples, they used to price match themselves, then it was only in the last 30 days, and now they just refuse unless you ship the product back and ask for a refund/re-order.

But worse still, and nobody seems to have noticed this, Amazon has removed the "Buying this elsewhere" from their Wish Lists. This started on Amazon (UK) but has no been deployed to Amazon.com. That means that if someone is using an Amazon Wish List your choices are either: Spoil the surprise, or buy it from Amazon. That's even true if you buy the product from Amazon but a different version/edition it doesn't match with the exact Wish List one (or forgot to add it via the Wish List).

The "Buying this elsewhere" is still listed in Amazon's help[0], so I provided screenshots showing what it now looks like[1]. Consequentially I'm now looking for an alternative Wish List vendor I can recommend to friends and family that does provide a "I purchased this elsewhere" option.

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=3058771)

[1] [https://i.imgur.com/b6KDNqt.png](https://i.imgur.com/b6KDNqt.png)

<comment><USER3> I've almost managed to avoid Amazon over the past 12 months or so. There are plenty of alternatives, and I've found the alternatives much more reliable, and delivery times and communication much better.

In addition, the alternatives are often far cheaper; books, especially.

I kind of regard Amazon as a hostile business these days. If I have to buy something from them, I feel like I need to wear gloves and wash my hands after.

<comment><USER4> What alternatives do you use for books? I'm dying to find an excuse to let my Amazon Prime account lapse.

<comment><USER3> Mostly, I use Abe.

<comment><USER5> FYI, Abebooks is a fully owned subsidiary of Amazon.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article suggests this is to a business spat with competitors in the video space, but that misses the overall reality of Prime-only items: That Amazon regularly and arbitrarily marks large swaths of items as Prime exclusive for no other reason than to force people into subscribing to Prime. This can include older Blu-rays that aren't hot items at all, to regular daily items like diapers and shaver blades.

If you try and add a Prime exclusive item to your cart and check out, they'll automatically add the Prime subscription cost to your cart. This is really the sole purpose of this maneuver. And given that it's been recently said that Prime has over 100 million subscribers, this dark pattern seems to work pretty well.

<comment><USER7> It almost makes me want to cancel my prime subscription that I've had for 8 years. I really hate rewarding companies for this kind of behavior.

<comment><USER6> This is why I refuse to remain a Prime subscriber. I do use the monthly plan once or twice a year (particularly the Christmas shopping season), when I know I can advantageously receive a massive amount of value out of it.

(If you have Prime and buy a new $60 video game, you get like $14 off, so buying Prime for a month if you're going to buy a game is pretty much free.)

Not being a Prime subscriber has afforded me often finding cheaper prices elsewhere. I buy from Target, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Newegg, etc.

As for when I do shop Amazon: I wait until I have an order big enough for free shipping, which often means I am more hesitant to buy things rapidly and have more time to consider my purchases, it keeps my spending down overall.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> My read on this is that it's Amazon taking another step towards their long- term endgame in retail.

Amazon is one of the few companies out there that thinks in the long term. Like the Cylons in the reimagined _Battlestar Galactica_ , they Have A Plan. And in retail, that plan has been to leave money on the table in order to build the biggest, most loyal customer base possible -- until such a time as their position in the marketplace was unassailable, at which point they would flip the switch and start milking those loyal customers for all they were worth.

I wrote a little bit about the first signs that the switch had flipped a couple of years ago: [https://jasonlefkowitz.net/2015/07/amazon-the-screw- begins-t...](https://jasonlefkowitz.net/2015/07/amazon-the-screw-begins-to- turn/)

 _> Why would you need to pay for Prime if the free shipping they offer to everyone already works fine for you? It's a good question. To which Amazon's easiest answer would be to simply change the free shipping so that it doesn't work fine for you so much anymore. Suddenly you have a reason to shell out those ninety-nine smackers..._

 _> Amazon has spent twenty years now attracting shoppers with goodies like fast, free shipping. But businesses don't give out goodies without expecting to make money off them at some point; so fast, free shipping quietly becomes a choice: fast shipping, or free shipping. "Customer delight" becomes "fulfillment operations" to be "optimized."_

<comment><USER8> Not disagreeing with your point. But a fun bit of trivia. The Cylons never actually had a plan in the show. According to creator Ronald D Moore, they intended to come up with something later, but never did.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hee. Yeah, by the middle of season 3 or so it was clear that the _BSG_ writer's room had a big banner hanging in it that read "FIGURE IT OUT LATER."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am not supporting a side here. But what exactly is the practical or moral issue with this? Is it that Amazon is squeezing money out of people who want the movie but probably won't use the Prime service otherwise? Is it false advertising where Amazon claims to cater to everyone, but you really only benefit if you use their Prime service?

<comment><USER6> It's just a terrible way to treat your customers, that's all.

I get having exclusive discounts/pricing. But when you say "subscribe or go elsewhere, we won't sell this to you"... I go elsewhere.

It feels like Amazon has moved very far away from the "focus on the customer" approach they used to have. They should never be giving me a reason to buy from a different store.

<comment><USER10> You cannot go elsewhere for digital exclusives or very new releases; unless by elsewhere you mean to violate copyright.

<comment><USER6> I was specifically speaking of physical items you can generally buy at other retailers, like Blu-ray discs or diapers. Most "Prime exclusive" items are sold elsewhere. Like Best Buy.

One of the months I _was_ forced to get Prime and was very angry about it, was that Amazon chose to make an "Amazon exclusive" Amiibo also "Prime exclusive". So Nintendo only sold it to Amazon, and Amazon only sold it to Prime members. If I didn't want to pay six times the cost on eBay, I had to get Prime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> They use similar deceptive practices with Audible. You can't cancel your account without losing the credits you have already paid for. I believe this works so well because people wishing to cancel probably have unused credits but when they go to actually cancel they will have to think twice before giving up their credits or searching for some books they want and then cancelling.

</comment><comment><USER12> So what; Costco won't sell you a can of beans if you aren't any kind of member.

<comment><USER13> Costco won't sell you anything if you're not a member, so it's not a good analogy.

It's more as if Target would refuse to sell you a certain size of diapers unless you sign up for their credit card membership thingy.

<comment><USER14> Most Costcos will actually sell alcohol to nonmembers, as a probably unintended result of some states' old blue laws.

<comment><USER12> In some Costco locations non-members can get into the food court area to buy Costco fast food. This is outside of the cash registers and the food vendors don't check memberships.

<comment><USER15> Interesting, in Mexico, Costco does check for membership at the food court, but I think they don't at the pharmacy.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Spice is throwing up problems not seen with other drugs - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/britain/2018/09/29/spice-is-throwing-up-problems-not-seen-with-other-drugs <comment><USER4> Had plain old cannabis been legalized 20 years ago, I doubt that these synthetic cannabinoids would have become notable articles of commerce. Maybe a handful of adventurous psychonauts would use contract research laboratories to make small quantities and post trip reports. But cannabis wasn't legalized, so hundreds of chemicals with sort-of-similar effects, selected more for "not technically banned yet" than "believed to be safe for human consumption," are being tested on human subjects without safeguards.

<comment><USER5> So right. By desperately hanging on to criminalization of pot, politicians have created a much worse situation.

My question is, is spice an issue in the places where pot is legal?

<comment><USER6> I moved from Manchester (in the Article) to Holland a year ago. Maybe my comment might be insightful.

No it's not a problem here... Illegal drugs are still a thing, but anything that was in Manchester an 'ex-legal high' tends to be sold at SmartShops which have a brick-and-mortar presence.

I have never seen anyone who was obviously a spice-head. I've seen some homeless people here (much less than in Manchester), but they actually mainly just chat (in English) to me and ask for help rather than pure begging. Holland actively helps homeless people which is less than I can say for the UK.

I've been asked for help about 4 times in 1 year in the Netherlands.

I got asked once a day in Manchester.

In London, I got asked 4 times a day!

The spice epidemic in Manchester, isn't purely a result of drug law. The current UK government has no compassion for the homeless or unemployed. If you force people into vulnerable situations, then they are going to be taken advantage of.

# Another story about why spice is popular...

About 6 years ago, the place in the article (Piccadilly Gardens), had sellers trading weed. It was terrible stuff, both low quantity, and low value, but it was clearly labeled with a green cannabis leaf. It was relatively harmless. If you asked anyone 'where could i get some', it was the first answer.

About 4 years ago, they increased police presence in Piccadilly Gardens due to complaints about 'the smell'. Local newspapers wrote about it, and the end result were, several of the dealers were arrested. These were dealers that had been operating for years, and were the closest thing to a 'go-to' place there was in the city center.

4 years ago, ex-legal highs were not yet outlawed. It's not hard to imagine what happened with the vacuum.

For me, weed is not longer exciting. It is a take it or leave it thing now, and I am much more concerned with my relationship with alcohol... but yeah... Spice is a problem because weed is a 'class B drug' now.

<comment><USER7> > In London, I got asked 4 times a day!

lived in London for more than a year, I got asked maybe 10 times in that entire time. They are often polite and never aggressive.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the anecdote, baby.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The article undersells how potent "spice" is--up to 50,000 times stronger gram for gram than pure THC.

You're in the LSD world of micrograms having effects, and also the research chemicals world of not knowing what you're getting.

The potency allows easier smuggling, where only a few grams at a time are imported, then diluted/cut on arrival. The ease of smuggling is perhaps the largest economic factor in the drug's rise.

<comment><USER10> Much like heroin only became popular in the US following the criminalisation of opium.

I suppose there are parallels with the current opioid epidemic these days, in that restriction tends to cause more problems than it solves (at least in this area of policy).

</comment></comment><comment> vertex-four See, weirdly, part of the solution here is to not get all up in people's business over drugs - if it were less risky to use more traditional drugs, people would do that instead. They use spice because it's (supposedly) hard to get done for it - working around the system that seeks to prevent them from using their drug of choice.

The other part of the solution is to provide actual help to people, not contingent on things like "priority need" (aka you can't generally access housing help as a man without children), and before people wind up being forced to disclose a criminal record to any potential employer.

<comment><USER11> > They use spice because it's (supposedly) hard to get done for it - <USER2> > around the system that seeks to prevent them from using their drug of > choice.

That's not why people in England use spice. They use spice because they wish to get heavily intoxicated, and spice does that cheaply and easily.

<comment><USER12> If cannabis was legal, I'm pretty sure the majority would use it instead of spice. Hell, if cannabis had been legal before spice became a thing, I'm sure spice never _would_ have become a thing - indeed, a whole host of synthetic analogues for a variety of drugs would probably never have come into existence.

<comment><USER11> The article is not talking about the majority, but about the several thousand or so people who are homeless and about 10,000 or so more people who are prisoners.

People who want to use cannabis will use cannabis. It's trivially easy to get hold of, and it's mostly dealt with by warnings or cautions. Approximately no- one is using spice because cannabis is illegal.

Alcohol is legal, but that doesn't stop a few people from drinking litres and litres of shitty white cider or industrial vodka.

Go and talk to street homeless people sometime.

<comment><USER12> You said "That's not why people in England use spice", so I assumed you were generalsing to the whole of England, and not just prisoners and people who are homeless in England. Sorry if I misunderstood.

I agree that for a subset of prisoners and people who are homeless, they are looking for the cheapest possible drug, regardless of negative side effects.

> Approximately no-one is using spice because cannabis is illegal

Not sure if you're still only talking about people who are homeless here? Regardless, spice only even _exists_ because cannabis is illegal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A small anecdote, but when I was in high school they started drug testing if you participated in or used any non-essential services, like parking or playing on a sports team or joining a club. The effect was that a lot of people that smoked cannabis switched to spice. It was also legal at the time, so it was potentially easier to get.

In my opinion, the policy bit the school in the ass because spice had a considerably stronger and more harmful effect than cannabis.

<comment><USER14> Same deal when I was in the Army. Soldiers started smoking Spice and K2, which was just some plant substrate laced with a compound cooked up in a Chinaman's laboratory, always one methyl group ahead of the regulators. Much scarier than any of the combat hazards I was exposed to.

<comment><USER15> Dude Chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature.

<comment><USER16> Asian American, please!

<comment><USER17> But he is presumably talking about a man from China who has never been to America. What if Chinaman is actually be the accurate term here lol.

<comment><USER16> This isn't a guy who built the railroads here, this is a guy....

This entire sub-comment thread is just quoting a scene from the Big Lebowski, in case you haven't caught on :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > drugs that hit the same brain receptors as cannabis but are more potent and > addictive

Okay, why there are using cannabis as an example and not other substances that react with those receptors, like chocolate? It is better as they abstained from using the term "synthetic marijuana", but you can still sense an agenda. Things like this put me off from reading news pieces. If I see so much foul language and twisting things to put a certain angle on the topic - on the topic I am fairly knowledgeable, then how much propaganda is being served in the topic I know little about? This is a disgrace to journalism. Apologies for my rant.

<comment><USER19> its actually something of a bit of poor research on behalf of the article combined with a slight naming issue, originally "spice" when sold as a commercial product initially contained 2 synthetic cannabinoids JWH-018 and one other which i cant remember off hand.

later on other brands using different mixes came about one of the biggest being called "Black Mamba" this too was generally a mixture of synthetic cannabinoids sprayed onto smokable herbs, but then came the psychoactives bill which banned most of these chemicals meaning that they started to be produced illicitly and also led to the mixture of chemicals used in them being even further twisted.

this brings us to now and while fringe analogs of synthetic cannabinoids are no doubt still being used and by no means are they likely to be good for you the problem chemical is actually more likely to be MDPV or a derivative of it (methylenedioxypyrovalerelone if memory serves correctly) otherwise known as Monkey dust or simply "Dust" it wouldnt surprise me to see some form of dissociative analog in there too, something like 3MeO-PCP

MDPV is not a cannabinoid but more a stimulant of sorts which gives a very short high with very long acting unpleasant side effects. of course its highly unlikely we will ever know exactly what is in that crap but one thing is for sure you have one and only one thing to blame for the problem and that is the prohibition of other substances proven to be less harmful. were we to make a sensible move the likes of the one Portugal has it would likely alleviate the problem greatly, even simply legalizing the sale and recreational use of cannabis would likely greatly reduce the problem (whilst also creating businesses, jobs, tax revenue and tourism to name but a few economic benefits)

how do i know all this stuff? experience i have no shame in admitting i became interested in psychoactive chemicals at one point in my 20s and spent a few years deeply researching and trying a staggering number of chemicals both the classical psychoactives we all know and a large number of "research chemicals" MDPV was in fact one of said chemicals, i only did it once and i did it via insuffluation it gave me a 15min buzz followed by 3 days of no sleep, twitchyness, paranoia and toward the end a similar situation to amphetamine psychosis including hallucinations, from what im told smoking it only serves to intensify all of this. of all the chemicals i tried there were few i could label as fundamentally "bad" but MDPV was definitely one of those few

i fully agree with you that at this stage any comparison to cannabis is pretty idiotic, not only do we not actually know what is in the stuff but even if it were synthetic cannabinoids and nothing else theyre likely now so far removed from the original substance that they have totally different effects just look at what happens when you modify something like amphetamine, both MDMA and Meth are amphetamine analogs but you dont see many people homeless, toothless and brainless due to an MDMA addiction. a quick read of PIHKAL or TIKHAL will show you just how much the effects of a chemical can change with only a tiny modification

its a shame that people arent more biochemically aware or theyd know that articles like this are packed with poor information but sadly thats not the case so we end up with people demonising other substances based on poor information from supposedly trustworthy sources

<comment><USER20> One note about synthetic marijuana, I always thought the existence of it's market demand was primarily due not to prohibition/absence but the asinine legal, financial or social consequences that can come along with failing a drug test for THC... (losing a job, professional license, education funding, etc). Of course, in the US at least, those mostly arose after, as a reaction to prohibition.

TL;DR. I think very few people smoke(d) Spice (TM)? because they simply couldn't access marijuana.

<comment><USER21> I was a freshman in college right when spice/JWH was first catching on, and from first hand experience I know at least 5 people who used it semi regularly even though they weren't expecting a drug test. The fact that you could get it cheaply from the headshop accross the street and carry it with you risk free was the main selling point then. Also it didn't smell like weed and you could keep it in the dorm without stinking the place up. Eventually we started learning about the crazy health risks and the law started catching up with banning the most common JWH formulations, and it wasn't worth the risk. Fortunately most folks in my friend group were able to move off campus and make safe connections with weed dealers and either do that, or sober up completely. But it definitely had appeals to people who could not easily get marijuana or didn't like the sketchness of getting it in a prohibition state.

<comment><USER19> seems the situation was different in the US but much is, you guys had an analogs law long before us and also some states with legal cannabis.

thankfully for the tech savvy not too many years later came the advent of the dark web markets such as silk road which gave people access to clean weed fairly easily. say what you will but i believe the dark net markets are actually a force for good, although there isnt the "community spirit" which existed in the original silk road, there were many good people on there

now im sure there are those reading this thinking "good people?? these are drug dealers! theyre scum!" but that isnt the case, especially in those days, people cared about providing clean quality substances to people who wanted them, no one was "pushing" anything and almost everything was of the finest quality. again its an issue of the image the media has created. its a shame im so terribly poor at writing in general or i could write a fairly interesting book or article about this sort of stuff

<comment><USER21> Yeah, I just read your comment about people in the UK adulterating marijuana with random junk and it just blows my mind that anyone could do that. I definitely see how that would drive people towards synthetics.

I know what you mean about community though. Where I'm from most of the dealers are the stereotypical goofy hippies who seem to worship cannabis and see it as a cure for anything. It's a little obnoxious to listen to them rant sometimes, but at least I know they genuinely aren't going to poison anybody for a few bucks, they just really like weed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The original spice chemicals were pretty good. Only serious side effect was extreme tiredness the next day. Besides that they were good and trippy. Then the government banned that chemical so they keep modifying the structure to the point that some of them are really evil. This issue could probably be solved by legalising normal weed.

</comment><comment><USER23> [https://outline.com/uzZP8x](https://outline.com/uzZP8x)

</comment><comment> m-i-l Also published today "Spice: a lethal epidemic fuelled by austerity": [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/29/spice-...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/29/spice- lethal-epidemic-austerity-drug)

</comment><comment><USER24> What are we going to do?

Should some kind of 'Basic Assistance' include fairly unlimited metered doses of whatever drugs a person may want?

Fully legal, regulated, and taxed?

What would an idealised harm reduction programme look like?

<comment><USER25> Germany and other places do opiate maintenance with diamorphine (heroin). You go in and get to shoot up as much as you want then go about your day. Sounds nice.

<comment><USER5> >> sounds nice

Sounds shit to me but I fully respect any system that allows it. These people can probably get on with some sort of life in between their hits instead of spending their lives trying to get in a position to get high agsin.

<comment><USER26> Switzerland has a program where clean heroin is given to addicts. Since the program started in 1994, none of the participants died from an overdose or other problems caused by impure drugs.

Also, as long as you have a clean substance, it is actually easier and healthier to taper of heroin by lowering the dose than by substituting it with something like methadone. The last withdrawal when going from a low dose to taking nothing anymore is way heavier when coming of methadone than it is for heroin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> [https://outline.com/uzZP8x](https://outline.com/uzZP8x)

</comment><comment><USER28> > _chemicals sprayed onto dried plant leaves and smoked._

Huh. Why? What's the point of spraying them on dried plant leaves? Nostalgia?

<comment><USER29> Interesting question! Yeah, nostalgia or... inertia maybe? I think the original synthetics were developed as "legal highs" and thus filled a particular demand for "smokable leaves that get you high" as a substitute product for weed.

And when you think about it there are practical advantages.

The form factor is not bad, compatible with your existing lighters, papers, pipes and so on and takes up "the right amount" of space (harder to lose but still concealable). Lungs are an excellent drug delivery system. You can also use it out in the open since there are existing (legal) things it could be.

You could distribute it "pure", but it would be a lot more fiddly (tiny bags) and require a fragile (and suspicious) glass pipe, lightbulb, alufoil or what- have-you. Harder to maintain for your "addict on the go". From a marketing perspective, much more threatening (crack/meth associations).

"Injectibles" have similar (but worse) downsides.

A pill, or snortable powder could work? Probably these do exist already - <USER3> of dodgy pills around, some of them are bound to have these actives. Generally slower onset though and less of a high than smoking the same thing. Also somewhat different market.

Have not seen synthetic edibles or oils but no reason it couldn't be done.

If you were going to "startup the heck out of it" you would probably go for some kind of juul-like vape. Subscription, of course....

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> He who controls the spice controls the universe.

<comment> em-bee The spice must flow!

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I've reached the article limit, despite having never browsed

<comment><USER32> Use Firefox Reader View after the page covers the content with the article limit banner. Reader View is an icon that appears on the right side of the address bar.

<comment><USER33> Even better: These extensions let you open the page directly in Reader View, the 1st via context menu, the 2nd via list of sites to be always opened in Reader View:

[https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/reader- view/](https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/reader-view/)

[https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/automatic-reader- vi...](https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/automatic-reader-view/)</comment></comment></comment>


Who's In Charge Of Apple App Store? Anyone? - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/25/who-exactly-is-in-charge-of-the-app-store-anyone/ <comment><USER2> I had my own small experience with multiple personalities when submitting my game. I used the back button image meant for rewinding as an undo button. I submitted the full version and free version at the same time. The full version got accepted and the free version denied for "Rewind button only meant for rewinding media like audio/video. Please change and resubmit."

I didn't care so much about the rules, it was the additional one week wait as I had to get in the back of the line for a small change.

<comment><USER3> I have the feeling that Apple's approval team consists of three factions: (a) Those who approve nearly anything; (b) those who search for a way to access some kind of inappropriate material with the app; (c) perfectionists who want an app to function exactly like the HIG specifies. (a) makes up 20-30%, (b) 60% and (c) 10-20%.

<comment><AUTHOR> And that's the problem with bureaucracies making technological decisions: it's nearly impossible to achieve consistency - and thus the sort of predictability that enables developers to hit the moving target of acceptance by the bureacracy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's clear that the App Store is seriously broken. Every week we hear some new horror story, and they cover a distressingly wide range of types of brokenness. It's even clear, to an extent, what needs to be improved; better or more reasonable standards, for one, but the biggest issue, with a bullet, is transparency (as someone who deals with Apple regularly in a professional context I can say sadly that these are issues that Apple needs to improve on in more than one aspect of their business; their consumer face is magnificently polished but a lot of their corporate back end, so to speak, stinks).

What's truly distressing is that there's absolutely no indication as to whether these ARE in fact being addressed—or even if they're being ignored. The App Store and its machinations are _so_ opaque—and so inconsistently so—that just as developers are left in the dark when they submit an app, the community as a whole is totally in the dark about the state of the Store and its many discontents. We have no real idea if Apple has heard us, and whether they care if so; we have no idea if there are any improvements afoot or not, so we sort of sit in uneasy darkness. There's the half-formed notion that tomorrow they might unveil a fully-formed, totally overhauled App Store protocol that nobody knew was coming. But of course, there's also the notion that they won't.</comment>