OS X-KVM: Running Mac OS X El Capitan on KVM and QEMU - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kholia/OSX-KVM <comment><USER2> I tried doing this the other day, hoping that I would finally be able to get a working OSX setup on my desktop (have made several attempts with no success at getting it working bare-metal on my Z600). Sadly it just ended with more kernel panics, something I was hoping would be avoided as I got the impression from some sources that QEMU was a more straightforward solution than trying to run it on bare-metal.

Having said that, I've been getting more and more frustrated with OSX (had a great experience with Leopard on a PowerBook G4, and my 2013 MacBook Air is easily the best laptop I've owned, however personally I don't care for the direction that they are taking OSX these days), and ended up using it as an excuse to update to the latest version of elementary OS, which certainly isn't without its teething problems.

<comment><USER3>
       Z600

That's a bit old. Modern Hackentoshes are actually pretty solid on consumer hardware. Z79/Z79, Z170 are pretty much fully supported. Some forum posters claim they've gotten dual 4th Xeon boards to work.

I set one up on my Z79+i7-4790k. It was a breeze. Took about 90minutes following tutorials. My biggest problems were:

-I set up the wrong sound driver

-Nvidia won't detect/modify hot plugging displays you have to manually edit OSX's version of xorg.conf

-Apple's Nvidia driver didn't support GSync or 144Hz. So I had to dealing with image tearing :\

-Non Apple keyboards had weird character mismatching. Had to purchase an Apple USB keyboard.

I ended up reverting because I like my IBM Model M, and losing hardware level vsync was a no-go.

<comment><USER4> -Non Apple keyboards had weird character mismatching. Had to purchase an Apple USB keyboard.

Karabiner is useful for this - for pretty much every keyboard layout you have a tick that remaps it to PC keyboard.

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately Karabiner is broken on Sierra; they are working on workarounds though. \-- macOS Sierra support status

Karabiner does not work on macOS Sierra at the moment.

We are developing Karabiner-Elements which provides simple key modification for macOS Sierra at first. (Karabiner-Elements works on macOS Sierra except prefernces GUI.) \--- [https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/](https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This little line, copyrighted by Apple, is what I understand to be the legal protection they have against people running OS X on non-Apple hardware:

[https://github.com/kholia/OSX- KVM/blob/476ae8b082088049f2f8c...](https://github.com/kholia/OSX- KVM/blob/476ae8b082088049f2f8c547518f35b1cf5d0647/macOS-libvirt.xml#L55)

I would not be surprised if a DMCA takedown will be filed against this repository soon.

More information here: [http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~somlo/OSXKVM/#sec_3_2_1](http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~somlo/OSXKVM/#sec_3_2_1)

<comment><USER7> I doubt that line ("ourhardworkbythesewordsguardedpleasedontsteal") is creative enough to meet the threshold of originality required for something to be protected by copyright.

Even if it actually were copyrightable/trademarked it wouldn't be a valid legal strategy to prevent fair-use:

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

<comment><USER6> I wouldn't be so sure. That case predates the DMCA - see also the AACS encryption key controversy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The OSX license agreement severely limits the practicality of this: [http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/macOS1012.pdf](http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/macOS1012.pdf)

It only allows you:

Section 2B(iii): "to install, use and run up to two (2) additional copies or instances of the Apple Software within virtual operating system environments on each Mac Computer you own or control that is already running the Apple Software, for purposes of: (a) software development; (b) testing during software development; (c) using macOS Server; or (d) personal, non-commercial use.

The grant set forth in Section 2B(iii) above does not permit you to use the virtualized copies or instances of the Apple Software in connection with service bureau, time-sharing, terminal sharing or other similar types of services."

<comment><USER9> The part of that EULA section that really gives me trouble is "...that is already running the Apple Software...".

I want to run OSX in a VM _on my MacBook Pro_ with Windows as the host OS. I used to do it the other way around, boot into OSX and run Windows in a Parallels VM. These days most of my work is in Windows, especially VR work, so it's more practical to boot into Windows. (And I like Windows better than OSX anyway.)

But I still do need to test on OSX occasionally. In an ideal world, since I have VMware installed on Windows, I could just boot up an OSX VM.

But because of that one EULA phrase, OSX will never be supported by a commercial vendor like VMware or a large open source product like VirtualBox - even on Mac hardware!

This leaves booting back to OSX as the only way to run it, and rebooting back and forth is a real pain.

All I want to do is run my legally licensed Windows and legally licensed OSX, and have it be my own choice which one to run as the host OS.

<comment><USER7> It's pretty easy to solve that issue by applying a community made fix: [http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/files/file/339-unlocker/](http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/files/file/339-unlocker/)

<comment><USER10> he'll still be in violation of the EULA though...

<comment><USER9> I'm not too worried about that. I doubt if Apple will get on my case for running OSX on my MacBook Pro!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That is pretty impressive. I spent hours upon hours getting OS X to run on a Linux host in KVM and QEMU. Eventually I did get it to work, but things like Messages.app had no chance of working. That was actually my goal - to create my own little Messages API so that I could send automated messages to myself. I ended up just scripting Messages.app on a real Mac and that works really well, even 2 years after. I remote control my house that way.

<comment><USER12> > I ended up just scripting Messages.app on a real Mac and that works really > well, even 2 years after. I remote control my house that way.

That sounds pretty neat, do you have more details written down anywhere?

<comment><USER11> I've installed an AppleScript handler from within Messages.app. The script below is called ReceiveMessage.script and is located in ~/Library/Application Scripts/com.apple.iChat and basically accepts messages. That's how I handle inbound messages, and for outbound I basically also have a separate script for sending out messages. I do the actual work in separate python scripts called by the shell scripts though.

\-- snip snip --

using terms from application "Messages" on message received theText from theBuddy for theChat set quoted_message to quoted form of theText set quoted_id to quoted form of (id of theBuddy as text) do shell script "echo " & quoted_message & " | ~/bin/MessageReceive.sh " & quoted_id & " > /dev/null 2>&1 &"

            # make messages happy
            return true
        end message received

        on message sent theMessage for theChat

        end message sent

        on active chat message received

        end active chat message received

        on chat room message received theMessage from theBuddy for theChat

        end chat room message received

        on addressed chat room message received theMessage from theBuddy for theChat

        end addressed chat room message received

        on addressed message received theMessage from theBuddy for theChat

        end addressed message received

        on av chat started

        end av chat started

        on av chat ended

        end av chat ended

        on login finished for theService

        end login finished

        on logout finished for theService

        end logout finished

        on buddy became available theBuddy

        end buddy became available

        on buddy became unavailable theBuddy

        end buddy became unavailable

        on completed file transfer

        end completed file transfer

end using terms from

<comment><USER13> I like the project, but I really don't like applescript. In programming languages, it seems there is a tension between easy-to-write and easy-to-read. And I suppose a fork in the continuum with easy-to-read-for-novices and easy- to-read-for-programmers.

applescript went overboard on the easy-to-read-for-novices at severe cost to easy-to-write.

<comment><USER14> What's hard to read about it? Obviously (to me), those are all event handlers. Not sure why (or if?) you have to define the ones that don't actually do anything, though.

<comment><USER15> I'm pretty sure he's saying that they made it _too_ easy to read, at the expense of being easy to write (with the premise that these are opposite ends of a spectrum stated above)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Keep in mind that if you're using the boot.sh method, the NIC's MAC seems to be hardcoded in the script [1]. You might want to change that.

[1] [https://github.com/kholia/OSX- KVM/blob/476ae8b082088049f2f8c...](https://github.com/kholia/OSX- KVM/blob/476ae8b082088049f2f8c547518f35b1cf5d0647/boot.sh#L29)

</comment><comment><USER17> I compiled a document the other day with a lot of links on the subject of macOS virtualization, for anyone interested:

[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VwLJqgc2VkD- EZnMzSFmZRq0...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VwLJqgc2VkD- EZnMzSFmZRq0YjZPCS18uPr94KsOByY/edit)

</comment><comment><USER18> This is really cool. Someone fork this locally before Apple sends their takedown notice.

<comment><USER19> You don't really need to do anything besides a normal `git clone`; any clone is as good as any other, really.

If the project disappears from Github someone would need to find a different place to host collaborative development, though. Maybe there needs to be some sort of Github-alternative in a friendly jurisdiction for projects that are too controversial to host on a mainstream provider in the US? E.g. for DMCA- violating projects, video codecs, DRM removal tools, etc.? I'm not that familiar with the alternatives but it wouldn't surprise me if there are better options in terms of resistance to US court orders.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does this support 3D hardware acceleration? That seems to be a common problem for these types of setups.

<comment><USER2> Hardware acceleration can be done using PCI passthrough to pass your graphics card on to the guest OS. IOMMU and VFIO are two terms I commonly see associated with this, but having never done it myself I am not sure what the difference between them is - perhaps someone can chime in?

<comment><USER21> VT-d = Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O which basically means the CPU has an IOMMU, the IOMMU is a piece of hardware for doing PCIe DMA re- mapping to provide VM isolation. VFIO is the linux driver for passing through IOMMU devices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Is it possible to run several OS' on a single machine with fast switching between them, access to all hardware, and at full or almost full speed?

<comment><USER23> Using Vmware, and passthrough for the videocard you can achieve this with Linux as the host and Windows as the guest.

Not sure if it's possible with OSX.

What we really need are video drivers for OSX, for virtualbox and/or other virtualisation solutons, so OSX as a guest can work really well.

<comment><USER24> VGA passthrough is also possible with KVM. I wonder if Oracle has any plans to add it to VirtualBox? It seems they have made room for KVM support, so in theory they could.

I have seen all OSX versions from Leopard to El Capitan successfully running as a VB guest, but the graphics support has always been bad, since there are no Guest Additions for OSX (BTW this also means no bidirectional clipboard, drag & drop of files, etc..)

<comment><USER25> There's some support:

[https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch09.html#pcipassthrough](https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch09.html#pcipassthrough)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Does anyone know how to get the ISO image, or the installer via the recovery boot (cmd+r)?

I'm having a really hard time running the Apple App Store _BEFORE_ I install the OS. There's kind of a circular dependency there.

</comment><comment><USER27> Very cool; currently the bash script assumes the old "OS X" naming convention of the installation app. To make it work with "macOS" Sierra, some simple changes are required.

</comment><comment><USER28> This will probably be taken down soom, mainly because of the link to the El Capitan ISO</comment>


Cool Web App (click "Open We Feel Fine") - <AUTHOR> http://www.wefeelfine.org/

<comment><USER2> Waited about 20 seconds. Nothing happened.</comment>


View from a Burning Country - <AUTHOR> https://4thgeneration.energy/view-from-a-burning-country/ <comment><USER2> > These fires, and the climate change that has delivered them to us, deserves > an urgent, determined, long-term response with all the tools we have.

These fires were delivered to you by arsonists, not climate change. I'm not a climate denier, but this is akin to blaming everything on a lack of penance to a vengeful God.</comment>


U.S. tech giants collaborate with Chinese surveillance company - <AUTHOR> https://www.fairplanet.org/editors-pick/u-s-tech-giants-collaborate-with-chinese-surveillance-company/ <comment><USER2> Source article from The Intercept already discussed here a few days ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20441786](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20441786)

</comment><comment><USER3> The original article form the intercept[1] is quite insane, Whole thing is about OpenPower organization[2]. You can replace it with "Linux kernel", "Risc V" or any open technology.

[1] [https://theintercept.com/2019/07/11/china-surveillance- googl...](https://theintercept.com/2019/07/11/china-surveillance-google-ibm- semptian/)

[2] [https://openpowerfoundation.org/](https://openpowerfoundation.org/)

<comment><USER4> The click-bait is strong with this storyline. It's also been posted and upvoted here a number of times over the past week, despite it being a non- story. Presumably people are seeing the title and upvoting without reading or understanding what's actually happening. Especially since this is just an editorial that regurgitates the high level points of The Intercept's story with little further thought or analysis.

I've flagged it. IMO, the mods should change the title to something more honest like, "Chinese Microchip Company Participates in OpenPower Foundation."

<comment><USER5> Argh, where does the word "OpenPower" appear in the story?

Edit: a google search for OnePower gets me nothing. Don't get it.

<comment><USER3> The article is regurgitation of another article from the intercept. Follow through the first link in the article.

The very first Google result for me is [https://openpowerfoundation.org](https://openpowerfoundation.org). It also returns a info box on the right side about organization.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When the original article appeared, in addition to the "no comment" from Google and Xilinx and the denial by IBM, there was some deflection by commenters here along the lines of "that's ridiculous, OnePower is all about technical specs for power supplies" or something along those lines.

Can anyone point me to a link on this organization? I found one to something called the OpenPower Foundation which apparently involves IBM and has to do with data centers, but "OnePower" only produces links to consultancies, etc.

<comment><USER3> [https://openpowerfoundation.org/about- us/](https://openpowerfoundation.org/about-us/)

"OpenPOWER Foundation is an open, not-for-profit technical membership group incorporated in December 2013. It has applied for 501c6 not-for-profit status and was incepted to enable today's data centers to rethink their approach to technology. OpenPOWER was created to develop a broad ecosystem of members that will create innovative and winning solutions based on POWER architecture."

<comment><USER6> Ah, I see from the original article in the Intercept that it was about the OpenPower Foundation. Apparently the writers of this one couldn't even get the name of the organization correct.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wait until you hear about what they do with US intelligence agencies

</comment><comment><USER8> they developed a processor together, and now because how it's used they are evil. good stuff. what if some terrorist uses an iphone. is apple some kind of extremist linked company?

</comment><comment><USER9> I clicked on the link and closed it after 3 lines. No. JUST no. I will not stand for those columns. You have KILOMETERS of virtual space on a webpage. You are not stuck on a physical dead media. Don't pretend to be.

<comment><USER5> The reason papers adopted the thin column layout is because it suits the eye better. AIUI the eye can cover most of a narrow column and a few saccades to cover the rest. Also finding the next line is easy whereas if it's wide you may find the one above/below the correct one, or simply start reading the same line again (something that happened to me recently). I understand the optimum width is about 6 to 7 english words.

Try reading it. it is strangely archaic but it's an easy read for me, and well, what's more important, the format or the subject?

<comment><USER10> No it's not dude. The ideal length is dependent on things like font size and line spacing. Having to scroll back up and down is terrible UX. You can just google ideal line length and it'll explain it all.

<comment><USER5> A quick goggle says various character widths per line. If the average length of an english word is 5.1 characters, then it's considerably more words than I suggested.

None of the links I found mention font/line spacing though it's a quick skim so far.

Your point about having to scroll up and down is spot on; it happens that full page fits comfortably onto my screen so I didn't need to. I forgot it wouldn't on others. If I may add to that, the link to the intercept others had to point out to me I missed because it blended in too well with the rest of the text.

Anyway, that's 1/2 hour reading set for this evening, thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


I Am Good at My Job and I Am a Woman in Tech - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/code-like-a-girl/i-am-good-at-my-job-6bf3a792c549#.wot4ieyeh <comment><USER2> I would stick with the title of the Medium article: "I am good at my job". The fact that the author is a woman is completely immaterial to the post. (And of course, being a woman has no effect on whether or not one is good at their job.)</comment>


How's the Economy Doing? Watch the Dentists - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/10/upshot/dentists-coronavirus-economic-indicator.html <comment><USER2> Given the innovation we've seen from some industries in these times, I'm surprised I haven't seen any in dentistry.

I'm probably just naïve about the challenges – or maybe it's happening and I'm just not aware. But I'm surprised my family (3 dental offices between us) hasn't gotten any emails from our dentists selling cleaning kits with elaborate instructions or offering Zoom consultations where they ask the same old questions they'd be asking at a cleaning, planning treatment, etc.

Yes, I realize these things are no replacement for regular cleanings or appointments, but certainly they'd be better than... nothing?

<comment><USER3> I'm pretty sure many dentists are open to remote consultations. I know my doctor is. I assume my dentist would be as well.

I'm not sure what remote cleaning would look like other than "Be particularly observant to your brushing and flossing." I imagine untrained people hacking around with dental tools would cause more harm than good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What's strange to me about all these stories is their veiled, counterfactual suggestion that any of this is really safe given the trajectory the US is on.

If the US had reacted early and competently, like South Korea, New Zealand, Taiwan, or many other countries, people could be going to dentists without too much concern. But we didn't, are on a bad and dangerous path, and now have to somehow pretend that we're not, based solely on popular sentiment.

The reality of COVID-19, how it spreads, and what's proven to quash it have absolutely nothing to do with how people feel about the pandemic.

<comment><USER5> COVID-19 is endemic. Even if first-world countries like the ones you mention can control it, it just takes one infected traveller from a 2nd/3rd world country to restart the whole thing.

The reality is that COVID is a relatively minor ailment, which is not deadly for the vast majority of people - the CDC estimates its IFR at 0.26%:

[https://in.dental-tribune.com/news/new-estimate-by-the- cdc-b...](https://in.dental-tribune.com/news/new-estimate-by-the-cdc-brings- down-the-covid-19-death-rate-to-just-0-26-as-against-whos-3-4/)

There are already no excess deaths in the USA: [https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm)

I think its quite likely that without the media storm, we would have put it down as a really bad flu, once in a quarter century, and got on with life. Last time Sweden's death rate was this high was during their 1993 Flu pandemic (an event which is entirely forgotten).

If we value life, we are about to bring a huge amount of misery to the world from our lockdown policies, already pushing 71 million into extreme poverty: [https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/updated-estimates- impac...](https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/updated-estimates-impact- covid-19-global-poverty)

And allowing existing, mundane diseases to spread rapidly: [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/14/health/coronavirus- vaccin...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/14/health/coronavirus-vaccines- measles.html)

The underlying factor is the aging of populations in the West. Look at the forecast age profile for Italy in 2050: [https://www.populationpyramid.net/italy/2050/](https://www.populationpyramid.net/italy/2050/) about 13% of the population will be aged over 80! Mundane flu waves will kill scores of people, simply due to the demographics.

It is unfair to throw the rest of the planet's population under the bus to protect Baby Boomers in the West.

Its also remarkable that we can muster such effort to 'save' a fraction of the population, already sick and elderly, yet do very little to combat climate change which will impact humanity and the planet forever - not to mention the lives saved now from reducing air pollution.

<comment><USER6> > the CDC estimates its IFR at 0.26%:

You've misunderstood this. Why didn't you link to the original CDC document? Please could you show where CDC estimates IFR at 0.26%?

[https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning- scena...](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning- scenarios.html)

> New data on COVID-19 is available daily; information about its biological > and epidemiological characteristics remain limited, and uncertainty remains > around nearly all parameter values.

> The parameters in the scenarios:

        Are estimates intended to support public health preparedness and planning.
        Are not predictions of the expected effects of COVID-19.
        Do not reflect the impact of any behavioral changes, social distancing, or other interventions.

<comment><USER7> The CDC only lists the estimate for CFR (.4%) on that page.

If you consider their projection that 35% of all infected cases remain asymptomatic (same page), the overall infection fatality rate (IFR) drops to just 0.26 %.

<comment><USER6> But they give 5 projections, and they say that none of these are accurate estimations, they're only to be used for modelling, and that they will change as new information is found.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Dentistry is the last industry I'd watch as a harbinger of the economy. Going to the dentist is truly playing russian roulette with corona. The aerosolization of particles is inevitable as is inhaling them. If there is corona to be aerosolized and transmitted, it will be. I can't imagine anyone getting elective dentistry right now. Then again, many Americans seem to have a death wish right now and would risk their lives for a cleaning.

<comment><USER9> Most Americans will get COVID, and the risk of death is exceedingly low (0.3%). "Death wish" is exaggerating the situation. If you're young and healthy (or even middle aged and healthy), it's reasonable to take what others interpret as risky actions.

<comment><USER10> Are you predicting 500-900k deaths in the USA due to COVID-19?

<comment><USER9> Not a domain expert, so I make no predictions myself but do consume data from subject matter experts on the topic.

Healthy middle aged person who wears a mask in public but goes about his life with his family as if nothing happened. Haven't gotten COVID, but if I do, I'll take sick days and move on. What else would you expect people to do, hide inside forever? Curve was flattened, there's no appetite to do so further if necessary, life goes on (or it doesn't).

<comment><USER11> You don't think we would be better off if we had been as aggressive as countries like South Korea?

<comment><USER9> I think we would, but we won't, so that's what folks will optimize for ("open for business").

Can't fault people for responding to incentives and policy accordingly.

<comment><USER11> It's hard for me to reconcile that you educate yourself by reading what experts are saying and you still are going about your life as if nothing had happened.

Are the policies and incentives so powerful that it's overriding your knowledge that you and your neighbors would be better off if you continued to self-quarantine as much as possible?

<comment><USER12> I too go about my life as nothing had happened. Simple reason: many people who get it are asymptomatic, many who get it only have mild symptoms, yes few unlucky people will be dead but the number are exceddingly low. Not worth it to be worrying about it.

<comment><USER13> This is such a repugnant and ignorant statement that it makes me despair for our society.

<comment><USER12> repugnant is very subjective but ignorant ? Can u point out which part of my statement that is ignorant ?

<comment><USER13> One only needs to look at Italy, Spain, NYC to spot the main problem(s) with the statement. I'm being generous in attributing them to ignorance - there is a very strong likelihood in today's environment that it's willful mis- statement.

Not the least problem is that it implicitly assumes that others will take steps to reduce the worst effects, so that you don't need to bother. The basic anti-social anti-vax position.

In any case it's so easily dissected that I'm going to invoke Brandolini's Law [1] and decline to waste the time to refute BS.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law)

<comment><USER12> >One only needs to look at Italy, Spain, NYC to spot the main problem(s) with the statement

Many are asymptotic, many have mild symptom, yes there is deaths but low in number. Is it not the same case as in Italy, Spain, NYC ?

>Not the least problem is that it implicitly assumes that others will take steps to reduce the worst effects, so that you don't need to bother

I don't assumes others will take steps to reduce the worst effects. Even in in the worst case situation where everyone eventually will get infected (including me), it didn't bother me.

<comment><USER13> > Even in in the worst case situation where everyone eventually will get > infected (including me), it didn't bother me.

Like I said, the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands to millions doesn't bother you. That is repugnant, and sociopathic.

<comment><USER12> There are millions of death happened due to various cases every year even before pandemic. If I let this bother me, I would be depressed all the time. Why would I want that?

<comment><USER13> As I said earlier, I'm not inclined to participate in the refutation of BS, which is what you are trolling out.

This is a once-a-century pandemic of a virus that is not at all the influenza or any other common virus. If left to itself it would kill, most likely, millions in the US alone. That's not millions who were going to die anyway, it is millions of avoidable deaths with 10's of millions of years of life extinguished.

The sociopathic narcissism of individuals who feel like that's fine as long as they personally don't feel at risk, which this exchange typifies, is deplorable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What is the deal with this denialism on Hacker News? Suddenly it seems everyone here incarnated the Elon Musk spirit.

<comment><USER3> You don't need to be denialist to think that it may be appropriate to get back to delayed medical procedures.

<comment><USER14> I assume emergency procedures are still being done.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure what that statement has to do with mine. Many medical procedures/visits that don't need to happen _right now_ should nonetheless not be postponed indefinitely. Dental cleaning is certainly one of those. Others are operations to correct chronic pain or to forestall a future emergency.

Now, you're certainly welcome to think that we should continue pushing those kind of visits/procedures out indefinitely but health officials in most places disagree.I'm being quite conservative in general but I have gone back to the dentist since they reopened.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What kind of data is my new car collecting? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theglobeandmail.com/drive/technology/article-what-kind-of-data-is-my-new-car-collecting-about-me-nearly-everything/ <comment><USER2> > "There's just massive amounts of data being collected, and if you want the > service, you have to agree to it. And people do agree to it, and they have > relatively little control over things," Scassa says.

I'm curious what this will do to the used car market in 10-15 years. Say the original owner consented to all this data tracking. They go to sell the car to buy a new one, and the 2nd owner does not agree to the tracking. Is there a vendor-provided way to shut this off? Or is the vehicle always stuck in a "data collecting mode" regardless of who it is sold to?

Furthermore, if a customer changes the car to stop data upload, that could be seen as tampering with a vehicle. This could lead to legal consequences, but I'm not a lawyer so I can't dwell on the specifics.

<comment><USER3> Seems to me answering those questions will be part of a greater process to balance power and interests between manufacturers and consumers/users.

E.g., Tesla already seems to try and decide the questions in the way manufacturers would likely have them, i.e. suppressing data transmission _is_ tampering and the problem of car reselling doesn't apply as cars cannot be resold anymore without manufacturer involvement.

I think it's up to consumers to offer a different perspective here.

<comment><USER4> > s tampering and the problem of car reselling doesn't apply as cars cannot be > resold anymore without manufacturer involvement.

I suspect this will become a huge societal problem if it continues like this in a car-dependent country like the US. Yes, the middle-class people will probably still be able to purchase $30,000-40,000 cars for the foreseeable future (even adjusted for inflation), but what will happen to the people who won't be able to purchase a second-hand car that costs more than $5000-6000 (or even $1000-2000)? How will they continue to get to work in a country that values public transport so lowly?

<comment><USER5> Good reliable cars are currently cheaper than ever. Of all the problems stacked against the poor, I'm not sure that cars have become less obtainable. Adjusted for inflation, the cheapest economy cars are quite inexpensive, and generally speaking, they last much longer than they did 20-30 years ago.

<comment><USER6> That's the opposite sentiment that I've heard recently (from an American perspective). My understanding is that our used cars are more expensive than ever due to:

a) Certified pre-owned and similar programs making some used cars more appealing (and thus more valuable), removing them from the supply of unvetted, cheap used cars.

b) More folks being able to afford used cars around the world. It seems like at the lower end of the market, many American used cars are shipped to Latin America or the Caribbean (in Europe many older cars are sent to Africa), again reducing the supply of used cars.

This is my sketchy recollection of things I've heard and read, I don't have any direct sources to link you to, but I've certainly heard multiple people bemoan that say, $5-10k doesn't buy you nearly as good a car as it used to (even adjusting for inflation).

EDIT: As an aside, the issue of shipping cars to different regions could also prove interesting for owners down the road. There are already some issues there - I believe my car's navigation system is for North America, or maybe US+Canada. So if my car gets shipped to Argentina in 10 years, the Nav will be useless or will need an update. Not a huge deal. But if Tesla's Autopilot is tuned for conditions and laws in a certain region, it would presumably require reprogramming for another region. Would that be an automatic over-the-air update? Or would Tesla not want to bother with free updates to a 20-year-old car?

<comment><USER7> There's a very long tail of used cars. When you are talking CPO (certified pre-owned), you are talking 0-3 years old, with perhaps 50,000 miles or less (15k-30k probably the sweet spot). Sometimes these can be a good deal, sometimes you can get like 5-10% off the new price (which seems not worth it...to me)

The OP talking about a $5,000 car is talking about a 10-20 year old car with 100,000+ miles.

Both cars appeal to a different set of buyers. The CPO car effectively competes against new cars.

It's not uncommon at all today to see a car tick over 200,000+ miles, so buying a car for $5,000 with 100,000 miles on it can be seen as a pretty good deal. Usually people would recommend a good Japanese / Korean car (Toyota, Honda, etc.).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not too long ago I owned a motorcycle from the 70s. I realized at one point that it was probably EMP-proof: no fuel injection, no fuel pump, certainly no OBD anything, and a (literal) kickstarter. The most complicated thing in the wiring harness was the key cylinder and the relay for the turn signals and headlights.

I miss that bike sometimes.

<comment><USER9> There is an urban fantasy series called "The Rivers of London" series after the first book (or "Peter Grant"-series after the main character) and magic interferes with (in the sense of _completely fries_ ) more complicated electronics there, so his master (the last fully qualified wizard of Great Britain) also drives an old Jaguar that is all-mechanical and therefore magic- proof. Very entertaining series with lots of references to current pop culture.

Edit: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaguar_Mark_2#Portrayal_in_med...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaguar_Mark_2#Portrayal_in_media)

<comment><USER10> Sounds very similar to "The Dresden Files". The main character is forced to drive around in an old car, since his magic interferes with electronics.

<comment><USER11> That poor car... It was almost a character of the series and it was always getting the worst end of things. I would drive a beetle if I didn't know it would kill me in an accident. One almost killed my dad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One of my major requirements when I was shopping for my last car was that it not have a cell modem to enable connected car features. It's too difficult for them to monetize your data if they can't get it off your car in near-real time. I also reckon it's a bit more secure.

The car salesmen have no idea about whether the cars they're selling have modems or not, so I found you have to ask about them indirectly in terms of features. I has success with this line of questioning: 1) Does this car have connected car features? 2) If it does, and I decide to get them later, can you enable them from your computer without me having to bring my car in? If the answer is yes to both questions, the car has a modem.

Unfortunately, my wife wanted a car that failed that test. However, my research had indicated that those features seem to be implemented by a module that's separate from the entertainment system. Hopefully I can physically disconnect it without the car nagging about it being missing, but that's a project for another day.

<comment><USER13> _> Hopefully I can physically disconnect it without the car nagging about it being missing_

Don't count on it. Physically locating it and disconnecting it might be very difficult. Worse, since the module in networked via CAN, you literally have no idea how the rest of your car will react. It could switch to limp mode, for example.

<comment><USER12> > Don't count on it. Physically locating it and disconnecting it might be very > difficult.

I already know where it is: it's in a box underneath the entertainment system ("head unit"), and there are a lot of instructions about accessing it.

I also have two options for disconnecting it:

1) total disconnection

2) leave it connected, but cripple its function by removing the antenna connections

I'm thinking that if #1 results in an error #2 would be less likely to.

<comment><USER14> Better: unscrew the antenna and screw in a matched termination/load instead. This will protect the amplifier inside (HF reflections due to a miss match could fry it with overloading the transistor), and be an even worse antenna compared to an open SMA (or such) connector.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> One thing that's interesting to me is, modern cars know (relatively accurately) whether you're speeding or not. They have GPS and a database of speed limits.

Also depending on what's in the car, they may know who was driving it.

How long before a speed safety campaign starts arguing that car manufacturers should be handing over information about people breaking the law in their cars to law enforcement...

<comment><USER16> The information is still not even remotely accurate enough for this to work without ridiculously high levels of false positives.

An obvious example would be in Germany. The autobahn for example has sections that are unrestricted, but those same sections are 130kmh (or sometimes lower) if it's between certain times or raining or whatever.

Half of the time my car interprets that as just being 130.

Outside of that; there are countless instances of my car thinking I'm in an 80kmh zone when it's actually 100, 120, whatever. I can override that because I know what the actual speed limit is. Would the car be constantly reporting back that I'm doing a bad?

Ultimately I reckon perfect enforcement of this would just stop me bothering. I'll get someone else to drive me around like an Uber and they can take the endless tickets instead.

<comment><USER15> I guess that depends on country. For example the UK has no public road (that I'm aware of) where a speed of higher than 70mph is allowed, so that would be an easy initial rule.

Where there are dynamic speed limits in place, it would be plausible to report back possibles (car location and speed) which could then be checked against a central database which was more accurate.

I'm not suggesting that such a system is a good idea, but that I can see car safety campaigners looking on it as the next step in their campaigns...

<comment><USER17> In the US this sort of detection is privatized - by insurance companies lowering your rates if you run their app which beans your location, speed, and motion/fitness data to their servers. At least for Allstate you need 50 drives a month to qualify for the discount, and hard braking or speeds over 80 disqualify a drive from being counted for the discount.

<comment><USER18> >Allstate you need 50 drives a month to qualify for the discount, and hard braking or speeds over 80 disqualify a drive from being counted for the discount.

The really stupid thing about this is that driving 80+ and the occasional hard braking is just normal traffic condition on some roads at some hours. Penalizing people for needing to use those roads at those times and acting like every other normal human around them when doing so defeats the point of insurance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'd really love to see companies start being proud to be "dumb" and disconnected.

<comment><USER20> and you'll pay a very large premium for it, too, unfortunately, since the company has to close off another revenue stream.

<comment><USER21> At what point does data become so accessible as to be worthless?

<comment><USER22> IMO the better question is when data becomes too expensive to be worth it.

There are currently no serious financial downsides to scraping, hoarding, selling, or leaking customer data. There is huge financial upside to doing or risking all of those things.

Companies' data policies may be user-hostile, but they're economically rational.

Data becomes "worthless" when the average joe's phone number is worth $0.003 to marketers, but there's a $500 fine for leaking it, allowing access from an internal team for purposes not specified in a granular opt-in form, or for being found to possess it after its deletion was requested. Routine third party audits are mandatory if you want to interact with other serious players in your industry.

For all the ways that banking and healthcare are hellish, they've at least got the semblance of teeth on stuff like this.

We'll know it's working right when companies spend the same effort to _avoid_ hosting your data that they spend on collecting it today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > A car camera for Affectiva, a company that is developing technology for > measuring driver emotions, in Boston, on Oct. 6, 2018.

No. Just no. Why would anyone allow collecting this kind of information? There is no way it can't (so, won't) be used against you. Everyone gets angry from time to time.

<comment> maze-le There is also no way this information is 100% accurate at all times. Emotional recognition is inherently probabilistic -- there will be false positives and false negatives, no matter how good the heuristic is. In the end, it'll be you who has to prove that you were in an emotional stable state, and not the algorithm that gets scrutinized.

<comment><USER24> Emotional recognition is pure fraud, with zero scientific basis. Snake oil is a big part of the current AI product matrix.

<comment><USER25> Seems to go over well with the phrenology crowd if you get my drift.

<comment><USER26> Somehow, it's always all about the skulls.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm proud to say that my vehicle has zero tracking, is user serviceable, and my purchase of it had zero carbon impact.

It's also 32 years old, gets 14-15mpg, and drives like a truck. It's a 1988 Chevy Suburban. I bought it a few years ago, for $1450 and really haven't put much into it overall. It runs reasonable well (still some things to figure out) and is comfortable. If I had some money I'd fix some of the things wrong with it and update the interior with seats out of a newer model, but overall, it just works.

And that's what I see going UP in value over time. To think I could own a car that could tell some corporate partner where I went for lunch is just unfathomable. I can't afford to own a car that "cool" and I'm glad for it.

<comment><USER28> I'm glad you're happy with your ownership of that thing, but I'm more glad that most of them are off the road by now as we've made great strides in emissions and crash safety since the 80s, not to mention mileage. These are factors with measurable real-world impact on your fellow citizens, and, I would submit, more important than your paranoid secrecy wrt your dietary habits.

<comment><USER27> Heh it's not paranoia, it's just a matter of privacy. Then again, my phone already knows, so it's moot. Crash safety has come a long way, no doubt. But mileage really has not.

For all the complexity of a modern Suburban (at over $50K USD!) it gets 14 MPG around town and up to 23 MPG on the highway. Mine gets about 14/17\. Since most of my driving is local, it doesn't really matter.

<comment><USER28> FWIW unless you have a diesel your official city mileage was 11 when the car was new. But as someone who has to live near other people and use roadways myself, I'm more concerned about tailpipe emissions. NOx standards are literally 100x more stringent starting in 2025 than 30 years ago (50x now compared to 1988).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I used to work for a British car manufacturer which is currently in the process of monetizing all the telemetry they get out of their vehicles, some examples:

* Pothole tracking --> sell to local goverments

* Tyre wear --> sell customer data to target adverts for them / promotions

* Hybrid battery charge levels --> sell data to EV charge point companies.

What was even more concerning was that this data is being collected by another company (who supplied the hardware), who had first dibs on the data.

</comment><comment><USER30> Will the impersonal multinational corporations that control the software in you car be looking out for your best interests?

Will the data collected about you and your behavior be used in ways that never go against your best interests?

Can individual software developers and teams working for these corporations do much about this if they disagree with it?

The answer to these and many other related questions is _probably not_.

Little by little, we human beings are gradually building a panopticon monitored by machines under the control of corporate organisms whose behavior is beyond the control of most human beings. As an example, think about about all the people at Google who have tried, mostly without success, to prevent it from acting like every other impersonal corporation. There's nothing preventing it.

</comment><comment><USER31> [http://archive.is/JdLhu](http://archive.is/JdLhu)

</comment><comment><USER32> It's educational to read waze's verbose privacy policy which goes over what is collected and why.

Assuming good faith here, this is one of the best privacy statements I've read.

[https://www.waze.com/legal/privacy](https://www.waze.com/legal/privacy)

</comment><comment><USER24> Yeah, my last car purchase was an exercise in locating a vehicle without any "smart" technologies. Car manufacturers are the last corporate group I'd trust with anything they are not heavily regulated to provide, such as basic safety measures such as the seat belts they fought for years not to provide. I plan on this being a car I nurse forever, as it is going to be a generation of extremely intrusive data collection, and extremely poor security on these vehicles. I'm staying away for a complete generation, if possible.

<comment><USER33> What car did you end up buying?

<comment><USER34> I was in a similar situation and ended up with a 2011 Mazda3 hatchback. The plan is to limp this sucker along until hopefully our public transit infrastructure improves enough that I don't have to drive ever again.

<comment> blaser-waffle HAH! Was shopping for something similar, albeit a 2012 and/or 2013 that a local dealer has in stock.

Same idea though: drive it until it dies and then pray that uber/lyft/whatever is mature enough that I never have to think about it again.

<comment><USER35> If your goal is to maintain your privacy as you travel around town, uber/lyft/whatever aren't a suitable solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> As long as self-driving a car will be allowed (and I predict this will become quickly impossible the moment self-driven cars will share the space with autonomous vehicles) I will refrain buying any car collecting AND transmitting data without my consent.

Yes that means in ten years or so I will be riding a used shabby old car.

<comment><USER37> A used shabby car can be completely rebuilt, not just the engine, for a tenth of the cost of a new car.

<comment><USER22> I don't think that's true.

You can get a new car for $15k in the US. "completely rebuilding" a used car of any quality, by any definition, is likely to surpass 15k in labor alone, unless you're doing the work entirely by yourself, at which point it's likely to cost 15k in tools.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Toyota is also doing this now, they began collecting data all 2020 models with TSS 2.0. They started insurance offerings to generate $$ off of this data, toyotaims.com.

<comment><USER39> As a benefit for paying for their safety services they will harvest everything by default, it's not even clear if you can opt out of absolutely everything

[https://www.toyota.com/privacyvts/images/doc/privacy- portal....](https://www.toyota.com/privacyvts/images/doc/privacy-portal.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Has there been a similar dive into what Tesla collects?

</comment><comment><USER41> Sometimes I wish HN had a hard stop on posts that link directly to paywalled content. Feels spammy.

<comment><USER42> Turn JS off by default and white-list websites that you trust.1

<comment><USER43> I have JS disabled, and this site says it can't validate my access to the article.

<comment><USER42> I don't know how to explain this. Works for me in Vivaldi with JS off</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How 3d printing can save lives - <AUTHOR> http://www.irinnews.org/feature/2016/07/14/how-3d-printing-can-save-lives <comment><AUTHOR> > Those tasked with clearing it have a hard job, made harder by a serious > dearth of training materials – often little more than textbooks and > PowerPoint presentations.

The idea of having to learn how to disarm a landmine from a powerpoint presentation is terrifying.

Cambodia has a lot of landmines. Many of these are lost. People don't know where the mines are. So when a mine turns up after flooding it causes worry - is there a cache of mines somewhere that's now unearthed?

[http://www.irinnews.org/feature/2013/10/21](http://www.irinnews.org/feature/2013/10/21)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The title sucks, but this article is about 3d printing landmines so people can train to defuse old weapons.</comment>


Bitcoin Miners Can Now Be Charged Extra for Electricity: NY Power Authorities - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2018/03/17/bitcoin-miners-can-now-be-charged-extra-for-electricity-new-york-power-authorities-say/ <comment><USER2> Now we can uderstand why alien civilization might need to build a dyson sphere.</comment>


Snowden Is The Kind of Guy I Used to Recruit–in Russia - <AUTHOR> http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/snowden-is-the-kind-of-guy-i-used-to-recruitin-russia-106648.html#.U3P3gV7MUhf

<comment><USER2> Duplicate of: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7743250](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7743250)

And again, it's a PR Hit. The author is "a former director of operations for the CIA". He's required by law to lie about this sort of thing.</comment>


Kickstarting the Creative Funding Future - <AUTHOR> http://www.brendanschlagel.com/2013/02/19/kickstarting-the-creative-funding-future/ <comment><USER2> Please also note UInvest as a crowdfunding platform:

<https://uinvest.com.ua/?amigosid=32511>

It's primarily oriented towards established local businesses as opposed to new startups.

But nonetheless it's a good example of crowdfunding in action.</comment>


Selector uniquing in the dyld shared cache (Snow Leopard performance) - <AUTHOR> http://www.sealiesoftware.com/blog/archive/2009/09/01/objc_explain_Selector_uniquing_in_the_dyld_shared_cache.html

<comment><USER2> This is Greg Parker's blog; he's an Objective-C runtime wizard at Apple. Definitely worth reading. (Very low volume.)</comment>


These Suburban Preppers Are Ready for Anything - <AUTHOR> http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/May-2015/Suburban-Survivalists/ <comment><USER2> I love seeing people hoard seeds. Anyone who actually does garden for a hobby knows seeds are the least of it. Many modern strains are bred to be used with synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and won't do well without them. Gardening requires practice, good soil, and a knowledge of what to do with the result. A good garden is likely several years to decades old. Try gardening sometime first.

I'm not a prepper; I am a hobby gardener, though; I'm a hiking, backpacking, camping enthusiast; I'm a practical homeowner who comes from a blue collar background and owns a decent collection of tools which I use regularly. I live in a hurricane zone, so I keep lamps and extra food on hand. So what does a prepper do different? Every one I've met doesn't use their stuff.

<comment><USER3> It amazes me, too. If you are so enamored with 'preparing' for a particular lifestyle, why not live it?

It's the same with the 'survival' crowd. They don't go camping, they "practice".

Makes me wonder if it's just an excuse to consume.

<comment><USER4> _> Makes me wonder if it's just an excuse to consume._

Never underestimate an American's belief that any problem can be solved by shopping.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I grew up in a Mormon household, and I still think that the practice of keeping food storage and 72-hour kits is one of the smartest practices in that culture. I still keep a bag of emergency supplies in my apartment and car, and even though I'm just a grad student who doesn't have like a two-year supply of wheat and water, having a small supply is a good idea in case of short-term disaster in your area. Furthermore, I find such practices encourage me to buy certain kinds of food in bulk, which has been better on my wallet. It's hard for me to understand some of my fellow students who let their kitchens go completely empty on a regular basis.

<comment><USER4> I tend to agree, but I also think there's a balance to be struck.

It is a _very_ good idea to keep a few days' worth of non-perishable food and water on hand, even in the absence of an apocalyptic "SHTF" scenario. Things happen. A few years back my town was hit by a hurricane, and our water was out for three days after an electrical failure fouled the municipal purification systems. I had enough bottled water on hand to ride that out comfortably, which was nice.

But that's not "prepping" so much as just common sense. Building a fortified cabin in the woods and stocking it with AR-15s is something else entirely. It's getting ready for a scenario that I'm not sure it's entirely possible to ever be "ready" for.

<comment><USER6> Seriously. Just play a few hours of DayZ and you learn that there is no such thing as a stronghold if the enemy has the same guns you do. In fact, being stuck in one place makes you extremely vulnerable. If a fight happens, people on both sides will die. And no matter how well you shoot, you'll run out of ammo, or just get shot by a guy you couldn't see.

That is the problem I see with this kind of "prepping": its isolationism. The focus in such a situation should not be an every-man-or-family-for-itself attitude. The focus should be on getting all the people who aren't "zombies" together to begin rebuilding long-term living solutions.

Besides, turning away starving people and keeping everything for yourself is just plain wrong.

All that is not to say that there wouldn't be "bandits", and that it wouldn't be necessary to defend the "good guys." But the fundamental attitude seems wrong to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7>
        "[Hurricane Katrina's] aftermath was a wake-up call for thousands
        of Americans. "It taught people you could go hungry, thirsty, and
        even die in the U.S. before the government could save you."

Sure, if you're poor and black[1], and the government happened to put someone profoundly unqualified in charge of FEMA[2].

        "I'm a bit of a prepper. I probably have some materials and views
        that could get me seriously put on a watch list."

This person sounds like a raging narcissist. In fact, everyone in this article does.

        I ask Campbell if he fears the kind of lawlessness seen in post-
        Katrina New Orleans or the riots in Ferguson, Missouri.

Again the comparison of the middle class (ostensibly white) narcissistic "preppers" with African-Americans in poverty-stricken areas.

        Preppers emphasize certain threats and ignore others to "craft
        a scenario where their preparations can be seen as both necessary
        and sufficient."

Raging narcissists.

Anyway, you could say that these people aren't doing any harm to anyone or anything besides their own bank accounts, but I disagree with that. Between fostering a greater sense of paranoia and distrust between them and their neighbors, helping them double down on a "I've got mine, so fuck you" attitude, and inspiring them to vote for fringe candidates who not only agree with them, but _actively want to see the apocalypse happen_ [3], I'd say these people are doing real harm to the fabric of society.

[1] [http://www.journalofamericanhistory.org/projects/katrina/Lan...](http://www.journalofamericanhistory.org/projects/katrina/Landphair.html)

[2] [http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/11/03/brown.fema.emails/](http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/11/03/brown.fema.emails/)

[3] [http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Michele-Bachmann-Barack- Oba...](http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Michele-Bachmann-Barack-Obama-Iran- Israel/2015/04/15/id/638639/)

<comment><USER8> I suspect that there is a direct connection between this phenomenon and the US being a nation that despite all of its resources and know-how was not only unprepared but apparently fundamentally _unwilling_ to handle a disaster like Hurricane Katrina.

(Americans have apparently already forgotten, or maybe never even realised, what an enormous international embarrassment that was.)

<comment><USER9> Sure. Just like France, despite all of its resources and know how has a heatwave in 2003 that kills over 14 thousand people. Europeans have apparently already forgotten, or maybe never even realized, what an enormous embarrassment that was for a "modern" country in the 21st Century.

<comment><USER10> It's a little more complex than that.

The French (European) heatwave had a lot of long held social and family structures that contributed to it, from a tendency of the elderly to live by themselves, often disconnected to one degree or another from family, most of the country was in 'holiday' mode in August, and other things.

The embarrassing thing about Katrina wasn't that it happened (though the flooding was preventable), or the deaths.

It was that -the agency specifically designed to deal with the AFTERMATH, and given billions of dollars to do so- was so spectacularly incompetent, from the top down (Michael "Heck of a Job" Brown, a lawyer friend of Bush's put in charge of FEMA who by the time of Katrina had no more emergency management experience than the NIMS course you and I can take online for free), that they actively made things worse in many cases, not better.

<comment><USER11> Then they spent billions on loans to rebuild - and no rebuilding was done, and nobody paid back the loans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Preppers. Zombie Movies and our love of apocalypse is fascinating. Repping is similar in some ways to Cosplay, I think. It's a hobby intertwined with the way our fantasy obsessed minds work. It enables people to keep engaging with their fantasies. In this case, the weirdly persistent apocalypse fantasy.

When I was about 14-15, I loved Stephen King's "The Stand" and some of my friends liked it too. The youth fetish culture didn't really exist in that time and place, but the book and its post apocalypse world fascinated us. We talked out what we'd do and how. Find an island. Rescue damsels. Train dogs.

It's a persistent sort of a fascination. Interestingly so. It would be fun to find out more about the art history of zombie apocalypses.

Under this, in some way, is the fact that major catastrophes and cultural "rebooting" plays a pretty substantial role in human history. I find the idea that the world's flood myths (Noah, Atlantis..) relate to catastrophic flood events. Religions tell us about past catastrophes and promise future ones. There are some pretty interesting suggestions that the early fertile crescent civilizations' (eg Egypt) sudden rise are actually rebuilding events following the catastrophic demise of earlier (EG Gobleki Tepeh in Turkey) civilizations. There's also a lot of genetic evidence of major population collapses at several points.

There's also post war baby booms and some other bits and pieces suggesting that we are hard wired to think apocalyptically.

Interesting stuff.

<comment><USER13> As you say, apocalyptic thinking seems to be deeply wired into the human psyche.

If your threat model predicts a high probability of nuclear war, civilization- threatening pandemics, or other end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it scenarios, you should probably move to a defensible rural homestead with solar panels, a long growing season, and a fresh water supply -- that's an hour away from the nearest interstate. I hear the intermountain west is nice this time of year.

What's interesting is that few prepper/survivalist discussions -- that I've seen, maybe I'm missing them -- mention the _opportunity costs_ of moving to the backwoods. I interviewed Y2K prepper/survivalists who quit their jobs and followed approximately the above advice. The problem arises when the collapse, well, doesn't happen. And you're two hours (in the summer) and six hours (in the winter) from the nearest emergency room.

Also once you sell that city condo or suburban house and move to your self- sufficient rural homestead, you then have a strong incentive to predict the collapse is coming. Maybe it's not going to be Y2K after all, but how about suitcase nukes in big cities? Or bioterror? Etc. There's also a subset of religious survivalists who seem to want an ungodly and immoral secular society to meet its doom; I wrote about this for Wired here: [http://archive.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/1999/01/1719...](http://archive.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/1999/01/17193)

<comment><USER14> There seems to be a very high overlap between the prepper 'community' (I hesitate to use the term about such self-avowed rugged individualists) and those who anticipate a race war, war with Islam, or some similarly catastrophic political event. There are many people who still have a chip on their shoulder about the civil war, and seem to yearn for a different social order.

<comment><USER6> > a race war, war with Islam, or some similarly catastrophic political event.

At least one of those is, essentially, already in-progress. At least one of those is, essentially, a farce.

Determining which is which is left as an exercise for the reader.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Preppers are very culturally specific. Pretty much unheard of in the UK. Our cultural response to the possibility of disaster is "blitz spirit"; everybody pretends it's WW2 for a bit and that fellow citizens and civil authorities will band together to sort it out.

There are undoubtedly people with a few weeks' supply of food, but that would be because they live in remote areas or islands and may suffer weather related disruption.

The American prepper rarely says it, but seems to be afraid of civil breakdown, perhaps in the form of some race war.

<comment><USER16> Well, yeah, America is a country where one allegedly unjust killing by a cop results in looting and nationwide rioting. That's not conducive to trust in ones neighbors. That said, I think in most cases where it really hits the fan, people help each other out.

<comment><USER17> I think you got your first sentence backwards. Among nations of (loosely) similar GNP per capita, America is the only country I know of where a cop killing a citizen in broad daylight doesn't even make news because it happens every day.

<comment><USER16> Which doesn't really detract from my point: no matter how you want to slice the causation, it's not an environment conducive to trust.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> How does anyone practice for the end of the world? Putting in time at the shooting range isn't enough, and just fishing or gardening for fun can be very challenging. I cannot imagine starting a farm in the middle of the apocalypse without at least a few years experience of preparing the land, planting, cultivation, and harvesting---and once you've brought in a harvest, you have to figure out how to preserve it. Having all the seeds, fertilizer, water, gear, and books in the world but none of the relevant experience seems like a good way to starve to death. Never mind the fact that the guy who lives in Downers Grove (a humorously apt name given his expectations) is going to be in for a world of hurt when Chicago gets nuked:

[http://www.nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=5000&lat=41.87811...](http://www.nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=5000&lat=41.8781136&lng=-87.6297982&hob_opt=1&hob_psi=5&hob_ft=17519&crater=1&casualties=1&humanitarian=1&fallout=1&ff=50&psi=200,20,5&therm=_3rd-100,_3rd-50,_2nd-50,_1st-50&zm=10)

<comment><USER4> Yeah, the suburbs seem like the worst possible place to build your doomsday fortress: too close to lots of people to avoid notice, too far from the kinds of places you'd want to scavenge from...

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> He has 25 pounds of meat in the freezer. Leaving aside the whole problem of keeping stuff frozen when the electrical system goes off, That's just not that much. If you live in a semi rural area, buying a partial animal (or whole for those with big freezers) is cheap and effective.

A 1/4 cow will get you that much in ground beef alone, plus the steaks and roasts and stuff. I think the last one I got was 100+ lbs. Half a pig is 60-100lbs. Either of these will fit in a small chest freezer with room to spare.

Hell, we bought 25 lbs of salmon last year from a guy who goes to Alaska in the summers to fish.

<comment><USER20> Seems like if you rounded up to integer values of animals, the maintenance of the animals could be even cheaper, especially with the need for a freezer obviated. For integers >= 2, the animals may even display non-zero growth rates.

<comment><USER19> Umm. Sorta kinda. Freezers are easy. Frankly solar + batteries or propane powering a freezer would be more cost effective and less time consuming than raising the animals. Most hobby sized farms need significant inputs, like grain or hay. If you aim for enough land for pasture/forage, there's still going to be times of the year when you'll either need to have harvested likely requiring fuel/machinery) or bring in inputs.

Chickens, the most cost, effort, and space effective food animals need about .1lb/day of grain, in addition to forage and kitchen scraps. For that, you'll get eggs and occasionally, chicks. FWIW, I've had chickens for 5 years, and the first chick hatched yesterday. If you've got young hens, you might get .75 egg/day/hen. As they age, that goes down. All in costs are probably O($0.50)/egg.

<comment><USER21> But when the amount of eggs per chicken goes down, the amount of roasted chicken goes up. :)

<comment><USER19> Again, Sorta. More likely that you're looking at boiling or stock than a roaster, since the older working birds will be leaner, smaller, and tougher. Most meat birds live a very short, overfed life where they're raised from birth to slaughter in 10 weeks or so, leaving a 5lb(ish) carcass after cleaning.

Laying hens will start laying after 4-6 months, then be productive for another year, and start to tail off for the next year or two. They're 3-4lb birds before cleaning.

On the gripping hand, there is the excess rooster problem, commonly solved with coq au vin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Like people who buy tools in the hopes that it will make them better at some particular craft, these "preppers" seem to think having a home fortress, guns, and a large amount of supplies is going to help them when disaster strikes.

The only thing that helps in that situation is being highly resourceful, adaptable, and having survival training. I'm sure an SAS-trained individual with more more than a pair of underpants would hold up a lot better than one of these families that, due to circumstances beyond their control, can't access their cache.

<comment><USER23> > The only thing that helps in that situation is being highly resourceful, > adaptable, and having survival training.

Uhhhhh ... NO.

The only thing that helps in that situation is a plane ticket to somewhere else. People die because they're in the wrong place at the wrong time. We don't have time travel yet, but we can sure as hell get out of dodge.

<comment><USER22> Consider: All the plane tickets in the world wouldn't get you out of a place that gets turned into the next Palestine. That airport isn't sending anyone anywhere any time soon.

If you've got foresight then you have options.

<comment><USER23> Well obviously waiting until the last minute until things turn to shit is profoundly stupid.

Anyway, I wasn't necessarily restricting you to air travel. Take a boat. Or a car. Or walk on your own two feet.

When things turn to shit, people get out. They don't go into their bunkers with their canned food. That's stupid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> On the tamer side of things, general disaster preparedness is smart. FEMA has a pretty good website[1] dedicated to the topic.

I'm probably not alone in saying my emergency supply consists of a bunch of uneaten Soylent sitting neglected in a low cupboard. I also live in Seattle, where earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are a real threat. So really, I ought to start taking my own advice here.

[1] - [http://www.ready.gov/are-you-ready-guide](http://www.ready.gov/are-you- ready-guide)

</comment><comment><USER25> In general, this is a waste of resources. There is a very low statistical chance of an apocalypse event occurring.

I agree with general disaster preparedness. You should have a few weeks worth of water/food, and a flash light on hand in case of a natural disaster.

MMM on preppers: [http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2014/03/03/why-we-are-not- rea...](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2014/03/03/why-we-are-not-really-all- doomed/)

<comment><USER26> > There is a very low statistical chance of an apocalypse event occurring.

And some people assign a large enough negative utility to dying in an emergency that it makes sense for them to spend a substantial amount of money preparing for an emergency.

<comment><USER25> Yes, there is a negative utility on death. But if you spent 50% of your extra money and time on preparing for something that has a 1% chance of happening statistically you will lose. Not only the resources outlayed, but the opportunity cost associated with them.

<comment><USER26> That's not how it works. It's not rational to allocate resources to preparing for possible outcomes depending solely on the chance of that outcome happening. For example, there is maybe a ninety percent chance that I will get a splinter over the next year, but I don't allocate ninety percent of my resources preparing for this eventuality.

One rationally allocates resources so as to maximize expected utility; if an emergency has a very high negative utility, and an agent believes they can substantially minimize the utility loss by preparing thoroughly, it may work out for them to spend a fair amount of money preparing for a hypothetical emergency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Economic collapse? Requiring barrels of cash to buy an apple? Simply put... No.

[http://www.pssurvival.com/](http://www.pssurvival.com/)

</comment><comment><USER28> I plan to make my money in the post-apocalypse selling maps to preppers' homes. Just give me 5% of their cache and we're good.

<comment><USER29> That's funny, but it is a real issue preppers often dismiss. If you sit on a big cache o stuff, and have nothing else to offer for the rest of the community, what's going to prevent them from taking it away from you.

Though I suspect that in any sort of emergency where the scenario resembles TEOTWAWKI, SHTF, etc, a big proportion of the robbing bands will be preppers who find out the hard way that the only thing in the stash that works as expected is the assault rifle.

<comment><USER6> And then they run out of ammo. Or catch a stray bullet. Or get stabbed in the back. (Hey, if you're with a bunch of people willing to do violence to others, who's to say one of them won't do it to you?)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> There was a show on discovery for a while that followed some preppers. Watched the first season. Some of the stuff that the people did was cool, but some of the other things was a little out there for me</comment>


Partisan Gerrymandering and the Efficiency Gap - <AUTHOR> https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers2.cfm?abstract_id=2457468 <comment><USER2> The problem with the efficiency gap is that relies on voter patterns, but voter patterns are affected by gerrymandering.

So if you know that your vote is unlikely to affect the outcome, then you won't vote, which distorts the efficiency gap metric. In other words, it incentivizes districts that are so partisan that they discourage the opposition to vote.

In contrast, the compactness metric [0] only relies on census data and ignores voting patterns, party membership, or other metrics. Though this has downsides, at the very least it avoids the feedback loop of the efficiency gap.

[0] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/06/03/this-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/06/03/this- computer-programmer-solved-gerrymandering-in-his-spare-time)

<comment> gingerbread-man There are factors beyond compactness which merit consideration, the problem being that neither has been well-defined in a quantitative sense.

States usually point to two kinds of "communities of interest" with regard to the redistricting process: racial minorities and citizens connected by some lower political boundary ie. city limits.

A better re-districting algorithm would have to take those factors into consideration.

<comment><USER2> Let's suppose we want to introduce other factors. We now have to ask:

* who gets to choose the factors?

* when and how can they be changed?

* how do we measure them?

Let's suppose we go with the "community of interest" approach. As you pick and choose particular communities of interest to include in the algorithm, it changes the resulting district. This means that the districts resulting from such an algorithm can be adjusted by adjusting the types of communities. Thus, a party with great influence over the process will petition to have communities of interest that it knows will produce districts favorable to it. This will work for a time, until the opposition party realizes that they _too_ can influence the districts by petitioning for particular communities of interest.

Then, when the opposition party comes into power, they will _also_ try to get those communities changed. No factor is immune to this -- even the influence of racial categories on districts can be chosen and manipulated (and both parties ARE doing that, including the "good" party).

So, while the algorithms could be "better" than the pure compactness approach in an ideal world, it would only work if we could 100% prevent the adjustment of definitions and weights of communities of interest. And given the nature of politics, I think that will be very unlikely.

<comment><USER3> What if instead of worrying about whether the districts are fair, we worried about making it so that the fairness of the districts doesn't matter?

If we used mixed member proportional representation, the districts could be draw using any method and we could still be sure that all voters would be represented fairly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> gingerbread-man The problem with the efficiency gap as a metric is that, even when districts are drawn by algorithms blind to partisan affiliation, (considering only geometric compactness, for instance,) often an efficiency gap persists.

"The challenge for House Democrats is that their while their voter coalition has proved large enough to carry the popular vote in five of the past six presidential elections, it remains intensely concentrated, mostly in urban areas. That concentration provides a systematic advantage to Republicans in the struggle for the House—even before considering the GOP's edge in control of redistricting after the 2010 census." ([https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/01/the- gop...](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/01/the-gops-control- of-congress-is-only-getting-stronger/431775/))

Gerrymandering is bad, but fair and equal representation is an individual right, not something to which political parties are entitled.

<comment><USER4> _The problem with the efficiency gap as a metric is that, even when districts are drawn by algorithms blind to partisan affiliation, (considering only geometric compactness, for instance,) often an efficiency gap persists._

I think that just illustrates that no rule will meet all definitions of fair.

The proposal in the article hand waves it away by suggesting that the efficiency gap be used as a limiting test on proposed districts rather than drawing districts so that it is minimized.

</comment></comment><comment> dane-pgp It's worth noting that more proportional voting systems tend to be more immune to gerrymandering.

<comment><USER5> True, very much true, but some are more resistant to others: mixed-member systems tend to be less resistant, whereas STV tends to be more resistant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Political parties(at least in the US) are themselves a form of gerrymandering. The issues for which the 2 main parties stand for seem almost arbitrary except that one party is "of the future" and the other party is "of the past". Yeah there's some philosophical basis for the positions but they're often post-hoc to serve certain special interests.

[edit]

I've frankly become slightly sympathetic to non-democratic forms of government because I feel political parties inherently lead towards forms of treachery. They will be bought off or will try to invite outsiders as a means to grab onto power. My ideal political system these days is a meritocratic lottery system.

<comment><USER7> Actually a lottery system is not incompatible with democratic principles. In fact, it was one of the original principles of Athenian democracy:

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

      In ancient Athenian democracy, sortition was therefore the
      traditional and primary method for appointing political
      officials, and its use was regarded as a principal
      characteristic of true democracy.

<comment><USER8> That's an interesting approach.Not so easy to implement probably.

<comment><USER9> There's also the question of who is eligible for the lottery and who ultimately controls that determination. That form has a strong incentive to pervert the lottery process, both by choosing who is eligible and by perverting the draw itself. The latter is probably easier to secure than the former.

And even philosophically, I tend to doubt there's any widespread agreement on what makes a good leader to begin with. If anything, we disagree quite bitterly regarding that.

<comment><USER8> It may end up like jury duty where people will want to get out of it if they can.

<comment><USER10> Not everyone tries to get out of it. Some people even enjoy doing their civic duty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Second, we compute the efficiency gap for congressional and state house > plans between 1972 and 2012. Over this period as a whole, the typical plan > was fairly balanced and neither party enjoyed a systematic advantage. But in > recent years — and peaking in the 2012 election — plans have exhibited > steadily larger and more pro-Republican gaps.

I think the way we normally talk about gerrymandering as a tool that one party uses to gain an electoral advantage over another party is kind of misleading and may lead us to measure success by the wrong metric.

Another way to thing about gerrymandering is not as a Republican vs Democrat thing, but an elected officials versus their constituents thing.

To use the US House of Representatives as an example, House members of both parties want the same thing, which is to get re-elected. Furthermore, they want to be re-elected by such a wide margin that their job is secure and they don't have to spend a lot of time and effort campaigning.

The voters, on the other hand, want their elected representatives to be accountable, and so they want them to be afraid of possibly losing the next election. Voters want their preferred party/candidate to win, but it's also in their best interests that elections are close enough that the implicit threat of withholding their vote is enough to motivate their representative to do their job well (whatever that means to the voter).

When party A is able to re-arrange their districts so that all their candidates have safe seats, they usually cram a bunch of party B's supporters into districts that also give a certain (smaller) number of safe seats to party B.

If you think of this as a zero-sum game between party A and party B, then party A wins a certain number of seats and party B loses an equal number.

If you think of this as a game between the voters and their Representatives, then the Representatives (of both parties, except for the handful in party B that lose their seats) won because fewer of them have to work to get votes and the voters lost because they have less influence than they did before.

The efficiency gap seems like a good metric to measure whether party A or party B is winning, but it's not obvious to me that it's a good metric for measuring how safe the seats in a given state have become.

The efficiency gap metric would say that 50% of the votes were wasted in a 2-way near-tie for a not-safe seat, but also that 50% of the votes were wasted in an election for a safe seat if one candidate got 100% and the other got 0%.

I'm not sure how best to measure seat safeness in a way that can distinguish an unbalanced result due to gerrymandering versus an unbalanced result due to one candidate running a better campaign than his/her opponent. We can look at margin-of-victory statistics in many races in many districts and make generalizations about how there are more safe districts now than some time in the past, but it's harder to say conclusively (in a way that would persuade a judge) that one particular district is gerrymandered.

</comment><comment><USER12> Most promisingly, this metric was recently used as a basis for voiding the gerrymandering attempts of Wisconsin Republicans.

<comment><USER13> Interesting, I'm also curious of the results of this metric in Utah. they seem to mention it a few times but I didn't see the actual examples.</comment></comment>


Pure CSS3 dancing Bender - <AUTHOR> http://liveweave.com/GoGhKy <comment><USER2> Not to detract from the creativity here, but the id attribute specifies its element's _unique_ identifier[1]. Strictly speaking, this should never happen:

                ...

[1] [http://www.w3.org/TR/2013/WD-html51-20130528/dom.html#the- id...](http://www.w3.org/TR/2013/WD-html51-20130528/dom.html#the-id-attribute)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, not sure why it's not throwing a bunch of jQuery errors in the console

<comment><USER4> I don't think any Javascript is in use at all here, but if it were I would not expect errors but instead simply unexpected behaviour as browsers tend to just try do _something_ if what you are asking isn't clear (for instance if a jquery selector returns nothing, any changes you chain after the call just apply to that nothing instead of complaining that they expect to have some nodes to act on).

Multiple elements with the same ID is wrong of course, so you can't guarantee what will happen if you use and ID based selector: three equally (in)correct interpretations would be "act on the first element you find with that ID", "act on all elements with that ID", and "error because we don't expect to find more than one". By breaking the standard you are exposing yourself to _undefined_ behaviour - the browser can do what it likes and each environment might do something different.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is nuts -- but sadly dancing Bender is not too practical. (Unless the dancing trend catches on and GitHub releases the dancing Octocat to production...)

For more practical CSS madness, I'd recommend Ana Tudor's creations[1]. She had a cool talk at CSSConf.eu about the math behind building some of her CSS creations.[2]

[1]: [http://codepen.io/thebabydino/public/](http://codepen.io/thebabydino/public/)

[2]: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9HeWBH_kvg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9HeWBH_kvg)

<comment><USER6> Great additions but again read my post.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I don't want to be critical -- just wanted to point to some other lower- level shapes that might be easier for others to learn from and build upon. 100% believe we need more dancing characters, not less.

<comment><USER7> It looks like you're designing a user interface. Would you like some help with that?

<comment><USER8> Lets not go back to having animated office supplies offering us advice.

That was best left in that last century...

For the young ones: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Assistant](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Assistant)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Pure CSS horse: [http://codepen.io/anon/pen/tvaio](http://codepen.io/anon/pen/tvaio)

<comment><USER10> There's nothing CSS about it. It's simply an image.

<comment><USER11> That's the joke.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How does.. I don't even...

Is there some tool they used to make this? Because my human brain can't imagine how this came to exist.

<comment><USER13> Looks like pretty clean handmade CSS.

I don't see any magic here. Modern CSS3 lets you build arbitrary geometry with arbitrary animations if you're crazy enough.

What I do see here is an excellent grasp of Cartesian geometry and some serious dedication. Which I suppose is no less magical.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The legs slide horizontally off Bender's ass on Firefox 24 on Linux :-( Nevertheless, great work!

<comment><USER15> Works on iOS 7 Safari and Chrome for me, but not IE10.

It seems to bring into question the practicality of multi-browser support of these complex 'apps' utilizing fancy CSS and HTML5.

<comment><USER16> A lot of the neat features used in demo's like this (although I haven't checked this ones code specifically yet) often rely on prefixed features and the like; it's more for showing what _could_ be, rather than what _is_ per se.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For those of you who are bound to ask the point, this is pure hacking. You are given a technology and you produce a result, sometimes for the fun of it! Thanks for this! I learned a bit.

</comment><comment><USER17> I love when people see the potential to use HTML structure as a makeshift DAG. Similarly, once the DOM got fully grokked in the mid-2000s, it was if the web changed overnight. From flat documents to a flexible graph. And to do this without JS? We're talking no actual imperative code here, just dead structure and presentation markup.

This is one of the first CSS animations I've seen that works flawlessly for me, at least on the iPhone. I also noticed the non-unique ID attrs as is noted below, but let's be real. With that amount of CSS to conceive of and write, would you really glance twice at the twenty lines of HTML you're using as a fly-by-night DAG? For a non-commercial passion project? The creator of this was in the ZONE!

The pure insanity makes me grin and long for the pre-teen days where there was time for this. All the ANSI art, the HyperCard stacks, the strange games made using dirt-cheap language implementations. Sigh, but a nice sigh. Also makes me damn grateful for open source and standards.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is really neat. I'm really interested in seeing how all these new fancy CSS3/HTML5 features shape the evolution of casual online games. Back in the day it was either static images, like the Neopets sort of thing (which are still pretty common with young kids I think - Webkinz is a cash cow and that site looks straight out of my childhood), or slow awful Flash games that usually didn't have any data persistence. Even if this Bender example is kind of hacky as other comments are indicating, the possibilities still seem pretty limitless.

<comment><USER19> For an example of one modern JS game, see [http://www.bombermine.com](http://www.bombermine.com)

I'm not aware of any games that use CSS3 for the ingame graphics, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It seems like we should be seeing heavy duty graphical editors that output CSS3 animations. Any tools exist yet?

<comment><USER21> Well, there's this: [http://www.sencha.com/products/animator/](http://www.sencha.com/products/animator/)

Never used it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I can't believe this show is off the air. Again. Forever. :-(

Anyways, I hope ad people don't catch on to how CSS is a bit harder to block than JS.

</comment><comment><USER23> Try zooming in your web browser for a ghostly -- some might say spooky -- disembodied bender.

Just in time for halloween.

</comment><comment><USER24> Unfortunately Bandcamp's embed doesn't seem to be working in Firefox/liveweave for me, but here's a theme song added:

[http://liveweave.com/bhu7HB](http://liveweave.com/bhu7HB)

</comment><comment><USER25> neat!

I've gotten into CSS3 and JS recently but I'm not sure how this works.

Can someone explain to this old C dog the principles of how it works, though? I thought this would require JS to work?

I apologize in advance for being out of touch. :(

<comment><USER26> You set up your elements in HTML, then do the keyframes and reposition the elements in CSS.

I did this: [http://lucianmarin.com/peculiar/](http://lucianmarin.com/peculiar/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> After a while the legs and to some degree arms go out of sync with the rest [http://i.imgur.com/EMGqXA3.png](http://i.imgur.com/EMGqXA3.png)

</comment><comment><USER28> Several
s with the same id... heresy!

</comment><comment><USER29> Made my day. I need this for my 404 pages.

Is anything known about the author or license of this work? Will Comedy Central likely object?

</comment><comment><USER30> remind me of CSS 3D teapot.

[http://yow.eventer.com/yow-2012-1012/the-story-of-the- teapot...](http://yow.eventer.com/yow-2012-1012/the-story-of-the-teapot-in- html-by-brian-beckman-and-erik-meijer-1266)

</comment><comment><USER31> Lovely, congratulations. This kind of thing inspires me to learn more and more!

</comment><comment><USER32> This must be what CSS3 has been invented for. I can die in peace now.

</comment><comment><USER33> Looks awesome while listening to Another Brick In The Wall Pt.2

</comment><comment><USER34> Always find myself stunned by the capabilities of CSS.

</comment><comment><USER35> What people can do in CSS3 blows my mind. I love this!

</comment><comment><USER36> The real Bender's eyes have square pupils.

</comment><comment><USER37> Hacker's equivalent of animated gif :)

</comment><comment><USER38> I call bullshit on the "pure css" part. Nothing works if you have javascript turned off.

<comment><USER39> It's actually liveweave which doesn't work with javascript turned off.

This works if you don't have javascript on: [http://fiddle.jshell.net/w5GFR/show/light/](http://fiddle.jshell.net/w5GFR/show/light/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Impressive! Great job.

</comment><comment><USER41> Just WOW. Good job.

</comment><comment><USER42> Ha. This is great!

</comment><comment><USER43> holy mother of god! this is absolutely awesome!

</comment><comment><USER44> Guess CSS is basically a Turing complete language.

</comment><comment><USER45> boom!</comment>


Google Suggest makes it to Google.com - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/at-loss-for-words.html <comment><USER2> Hmmm..."google is evil" has 49,400,000 results, while "microsoft is evil" has only 17,000,000 results. Interesting.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder how this will effect the organic market for misspellings? Even with Google's spell check (post search) there was still a vibrant market for common misspellings.

I used to know a guy who had top rankings for "Amazom" and it banked him some nice affiliate dollars for years.

I'd love to see stats in a few months that show it's effect (or not).

</comment><comment><USER4> I was wondering why it would only work for me in the FF search box. I didn't know it was a labs feature.

Now I'm on Google.com and it's not working for me. Do I have to change a setting in my Google account? I'm on FF3.

<comment><USER5> It's being rolled out to users in blocks, not everyone has it yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think Yahoo had something like this for months now.

<comment><USER7> Its called yahoo search suggest. It also broadens by category without being intrusive. The thing I like with search suggest is that it starts giving suggestions only after you dont type anything for few seconds for eg when Im trying to think over the spelling. Google suggest kind of keeps distracting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The feature must be costing them more in bandwidth than most small, invade-a- licious nations earn in a year.</comment>


Uruguay's detective of despair - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/juan-carlos-onetti-latin-americas-first-modern-novelist-was-a-detective-of-despair <comment><USER2> Having spent three months living in Montevideo I relate to a feeling of ennui and despair. Buenos Aires would have done it too.

<comment><USER3> Mario Benedetti wrote some very sad stories.

Eduardo Galeano I can't explain; he was just too colourful for the River Plate.</comment></comment>


Avoiding cross site request forgery in your web apps - <AUTHOR> http://markmaunder.com/2007/avoiding-cross-site-request-forgery-in-your-web-apps/ GMail recently fixed a CSRF vulnerability but not before someone lost their domain name to an attacker. A very brief summary of how to avoid the same mistake in your web apps. <comment><USER2> Far better read:

[http://activereload.net/2007/3/6/your-requests-are-safe- with...](http://activereload.net/2007/3/6/your-requests-are-safe-with-us)

(and plugin attached!)

<comment><AUTHOR> Not bad - assuming you're a rails dev.</comment></comment>


The Rise of the High School Hacker - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/81a5d7da7f51

<comment><USER2> I wish more people would've commented because this is an excellent post. I think in the future the same will be said for those who learned programming at these bootcamps popping up around the country as they also want to prove they have ability too.</comment>


HTTP Conversation Codes - <AUTHOR> http://www.seldo.com/weblog/2008/11/19/http_conversation_codes <comment><USER2>
        Person A: 200, 417, 502.
        Person B: 204, 503
        Person A: 400?!
        Person B: 402...
        Person A: 405, 200
        Person B: 206, 205, 200?
        Person A: 100.

Your really quite limited on what situations you can play out with HTTP codes... :P

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, you see, the status code is just a part of the whole HTTP Conversation spec.

You also have the request, response, message headers, message body, request methods, etc.

The W3C CSWG (Conversation Specification Working Group) is currently in the process of selecting members for a committee to write the first draft of the RFC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> There's been a ton of interest in this chart, so I turned it into a poster :-) Thanks for visiting, folks!

</comment><comment><USER4> sounds a lot like rest for toddlers by mark pilgrim: [http://diveintomark.org/archives/2006/12/07/rest-for- toddler...](http://diveintomark.org/archives/2006/12/07/rest-for-toddlers)</comment>


The Perfect Ted Talk That Never Happened - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4PFrYteKxI <comment><USER2> I wonder how many replication attempts they tried. There could still be some value if it happened sometimes at not others. If it is random, there is value in the negative result. Extremists don't perceive color differently: that's a valuable finding!</comment>