How US students get a university degree for free in Germany - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32821678 <comment><USER2> This is not unique to Germany. Finland also offers free degrees for everybody, although there are rumbles about changing this from 2017-ish. Get in while you can ;)

[http://www.studyinfinland.fi/tuition_and_scholarships/tuitio...](http://www.studyinfinland.fi/tuition_and_scholarships/tuition_fees)

It's also worth mentioning that in smaller countries like Finland, the level of English is correspondingly higher, since everybody has been exposed to it since they were young children and, by the time you get to the university level, most textbooks are in English only. In larger EU countries like Germany and France this is not the case.

<comment><USER3> As someone who visited Finland and Sweden for a long period of time in my youth (and attended school in Finland), the spoken English was vastly better in Sweden than in Finland (at the gr.7 level).

<comment><USER2> Yup, Swedes find English easier because the languages are related, while Finnish is not. But broadly speaking, more or less anybody under 50 (60?) or so in Finland will speak and understand English enough to communicate, and in a university environment staff and students will be effectively bilingual.

<comment><USER3> Swedish is definitely easier to learn than Finnish, I'll give you that much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I always wonder why there wasn t more american student here in switzerland.

Both ETH and EPFL rank in the top 15 best technology university wordwide [1] and both are 500 USD / year for international students.

Swiss visa is also easier to get and is more flexible than other shengen country ones, you will not have to loose a day in police station for renewing every 6 months (as it is the case in france / germany). And if you ever want to staybhere you get a 5 year resident permit automaticly if you found a job and a salary comparable to american one for engineering job. [2]

[1] [https://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university- rank...](https://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university- rankings/2013-14/world-ranking)

[2] Swiss junior developer pay for engineer is between 70 to 120k USD whereas french junior engeneer pay is 30 to 50k USD

<comment><USER5> A woman that worked as scientist for a year in a swiss university tells me that the country is very beautiful, but people is hard to reach and you suffer a lot of micro-agressions out of the workplace. Is really hard to find decent houses for rent, and a lot of things seem to be more much expensive or harder to obtain if you are not swiss. It takes a lot of time and money to become a swiss resident also.

There are some major political parties also that actively spread xenophobia and fear against foreigners, specially before the elections.

Finally she realized that was not just earning enough money to be worthwhile.

Just an opinion, your experience can be different (specially if you 'sprechen deutsch'), but maybe american students think that is easier to work in other countries. You earn less but enjoy a better quality of life instead. And of course an english native is much more valued and find a job much easier in european countries that normally don't speak english.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> All of these stories suggest United States students who simply haven't done enough shopping among United States colleges, of which there are thousands. Most of the situations described could fit the same student getting a complete tuition waiver (variously deemed "financial aid" or a "merit scholarship") at plenty of United States universities. List price is not the price that many college and university students pay to gain their higher education degrees, and full list price is plenty low at many United States colleges and universities.

On the other hand, as an American who studied abroad (after gaining my undergraduate degree here), I have to say I'm happy that American students are considering studying overseas, as that has educational value (being in another country) even if the college is a poor value:cost trade-off. Especially studying in a non-English-speaking country (as I did) is very educational, and I highly recommend that to any American.

<comment><USER7> Full need-based aid (not merit scholarships), is extremely rare outside the very top universities.

At other schools, including those ranked in the top 30 or so, "need-based aid" is a euphemism for loans, often in extremely high amounts.

Anecdotal, but I've even seen bait-and-switch tactics at some places: my brother was accepted at Tufts with a decent aid package, and then after freshman year, with no change in family financials, saw it drastically reduced. He dropped out and transferred immediately.

As mentioned in other comments, American education has a lot of pricing similarities to American healthcare, and the lack of any sort of true market mechanisms is a big reason why. Good to see some price pressure getting applied.

Now, whether or not this is a good idea for Germany is a whole different question...

<comment><USER8> Depends on how many people stay, and for how long.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Studying in Germany isn't a bad idea at all. My brother did and it seems, unsurprisingly, that German degrees are well respected in the automotive engineering industry here in the states.

On the other hand, there's 10,160 German students studying full time in the US at a higher nominal price from a 4x smaller population. Perhaps sometimes the cost premium is worth it? Especially if you can get others to pay it via scholarships.

<comment><USER10> If you land in the Ivy league, then yes the price tag might be worth it. Who wouldn't hire an MIT engineer, or an Harvard Lawyer if they can afford it? But if you are not at the top schools why rack up the same type of student debt while you can get the same level anywhere else in the world?

If your field is cultural then yes studying in the country in which it is more pertinent makes sense (Why study Japanese literature in Italy just to illustrate). But if your field is technical, or removed enough from local culture then looking around makes all the sense in the world.

But frankly there is plenty of schools that I regard as highly as MIT, CMU and such that are Europe (Polytech Paris, Poly Lausanne, Normal School of Pisa, Poly Milan, ... I am forgetting a lot) or Asia (Tokyo Tech) and while you might need to get a loan for some costs it will never get to US levels (I studied in Unis in Italy, France and Japan to get my BS and MS and all my loans were exactly EUR15000 by the time I found a job ... I had part-times and Scholarships but those were not hard to get, and I had declared bankruptcy I could have gotten rid of those since I took those loans in Europe).

<comment><USER11> Schools like EPFL are good, but I wouldn't say they were as selective as MIT. I guess its a subjective measure.

I got my undergraduate degree at UW, needed no loans at all (that was a different time though).

<comment><USER12> Isn't EPFL one of the top places in the world for micromechanics and possibly also microelectronics due to the clock making heritage?

<comment><USER13> It's also the birthplace of Scala.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _" It's not unattractive for us when knowledge and know-how come to us from other countries and result in jobs when these students have a business idea and stay in Berlin to create their start-up,"_ \-- Steffen Krach, Berlin's Secretary of Science.

matches somewhat to, _" Can you buy a Silicon Valley"_ ~ [http://paulgraham.com/maybe.html](http://paulgraham.com/maybe.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> I just recently read that foreign students in Germany are failing extraordinarily often. Mostly because of the language.

For someone who wants to go down that route in the US I would heavily recommend learning German intensively for at least two years before even going to Germany, and make sure you can read German almost as fast as their native (English/Spanish) language.

A good starting point is Duolingo.com!

<comment><USER16> The article states that no German is needed for many masters programs.

<comment><USER15> Living in Germany is relatively difficult without speaking German, even today.

<comment><USER17> Is it? That is the opposite of my experience! I spent a few months in Berlin and I had to struggle to get people to speak German -- nine out of ten times someone would hear my American accent and immediately switch over to English... I wonder if it varies region to region (I admittedly didn't get out of Berlin too often)?

<comment><USER18> Berlin is pretty much an exception. My wife has family all over Germany and outside of Berlin and possibly Hamburg I find that very few people speak decent over even any English. And it gets worse the further east you go.

That being said it also seems to be generational. People under 30 tend to know English at a much higher rate than those over 50.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> While the education in Germany is no doubt great. But the benefits of studying in Harvard or Stanford outweigh free education by miles, IMO. I got my MS degree in Finland, my wife got her MS and PhD from Finland. But we both want to send our kids to Harvard or Stanford.

<comment><USER20> Why do you think that is the case? What sort of benefits do you feel you are you missing out on?

<comment><USER21> I can't speak for digitalsurgeon, but I can think of a few (without having ever studied at either of those universities):

1) The professors. Imagine taking classes and interacting with Nobel prize winners, or other famous people in your field (let's say, taking a class with Knuth at Stanford).

2) The networking/social aspects. Imagine being college roommates with "the next Mark Zuckerberg", whoever that may be.

3) More cynically, the pedigree. This one isn't strictly required, but it helps enormously if you want to get into academia, and it can also help you with an industry career or start a startup (it can make things easier).

<comment><USER22> 1) This happens at other universities, including ones in Europe. Imagine walking the same corridors as Newton walked, or being taught by professors who currently work at CERN. 2) Most top tier universities would have this, imagine being college roommates with the next Stephen Hawking or Prime Minister. 3) The pedigree depends on what you are studying, and other nations have their own prestigious universities

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Maybe not really mentioned- but having a free edu and then returning to the us- you basically get more money for the same job, as you dont have to repay the loans and interests, but get the same plus the others get to reduce that debt.

</comment><comment><USER24> A word of caution: before you decide to study in Europe, make sure that the degree they are offering is accepted in the place where you hope to find a job.

A masters at the TU of Munich from the article is probably not a problem, but some types of European degrees don't have an American (or any foreign) equivalent, and may have to be 'legalized'. American universities are not required to accept a foreign under graduate degree, and may require you to take a number of under graduate classes, even if you've already passed exams in those subjects abroad.

<comment><USER25> Accepted? By who? I don't know any industry that 'accepts' a degree other than maybe law and medical. If you want to transfer to an American university later on, then sure you might have to do some work just like transferring from any other school.

<comment><USER24> Accepted as in recognized for what it's worth, or even recognized as a higher education degree at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Another place that is completely free is Argentina. There are quite a few American students in Buenos Aires, not as many as in Germany, of course. It is seen as a cool destination to get a degree, with a very affordable cost of living, while learning Spanish.

</comment><comment><USER27> It seems like most of the options are for your Masters. I only see one place offering Bachelors in Computer Science (for example) in English.

</comment><comment><USER28> Something else I'd like to add: Many european universities, including TUM which is highlighted in the article, also have exchange arrangements with U.S universities. These are mostly top-tier engineering state schools like UC Berkeley and Georgia Tech.

Because of the exchange agreement, tuition for the semester or year you are there is waived. You can have your cake and eat it too.

</comment><comment><USER29> I am a student in Milan (Politecnico di Milano) and I am really surprised that Italy does not even appear as popular destination.

The fees is a little higher than in Germany, but no much, and I really believe that our quality of teaching is at least comparable.

Italy school is very theoretical while German one is more practical.

By the way only 280€ in Munich seems a little off to me...

<comment><USER30> Are Italian universities cheap even for non-EU citizens? That's the part that is somewhat unusual about Germany's scheme, that it's near-free for anyone. Most EU countries with low tuition extend that only to EU citizens, and charge higher (sometimes UK-level) fees to non-EU foreigners. For example in Denmark there is zero tuition for EU citizens, but €10,000/yr tuition for non-EU citizens. This is because under the EU's equal-treatment provisions, EU countries have to treat other EU students equally with their own nationals. So those with no/low tuition for domestic students have to offer the no/low tuition also to other EU students. But they can chage non-EU nationals what they want, and many are lately treating foreign students (often from Asia) as a source of income.

<comment><USER29> This is the relevant website of my university: [http://www.polinternational.polimi.it/how-to- apply/fees/](http://www.polinternational.polimi.it/how-to-apply/fees/)

The total cost for one year is ~3000€ however, depending on your financial situation you end up paying less, ~2000€ but even less honestly...

However the bachelor course are in Italian.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Well, shoot -- I dropped out of high school and it turns out a GED isn't equivalent to them.

But Finland would work! [http://www.studyinfinland.fi/how_to_apply/eligibility_criter...](http://www.studyinfinland.fi/how_to_apply/eligibility_criteria)

</comment><comment><USER32> But instruction is all in German, right?

That requires some planning ahead.

Edit: Wow, I missed that. Very cool!

<comment><USER8> Depends on your University. You can get the MIND courses in English. Other courses are usually held only in German.

<comment><USER33> Do you mind telling us what is a MIND course? (can't Google for it since mind is also an English word.)

<comment><USER34> MINT (not MIND) is relatively the same as STEM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Hold on, what incentive does the EU have to allow US citizens to just go to the EU, get a 4-year education, with full room & board, and then possibly head back to the US? Color me skeptical.

<comment><USER36> It's not full room and board.

My university (in Denmark) had a large number of eastern European students it created a very different environment, a better one in my opinion. Students are exposed to different ideas, different approaches to solving programs and learn to work together with people with a different background and culture. Of cause my university focused heavily on group assignment and working in groups in general.

I honestly don't mind that my tax money is spend on education people from around the world, although I think it's currently only free for EU citizens. And perhaps there's the added bonus of a few opting to stay and work in the country.

<comment><USER22> I agree.

I am also in Denmark, and my university has a number of students from eastern Europe, Russia, South America, Iran, China, as well as those on scholarships from developing nations, and exchange students from the US and Canada.

(I suspect we may have attended the same university, as mine also focused heavily on semester projects (50% of the ECTS) and group work)</comment></comment></comment>


How to Land Your First Startup Job and Leave Corporate Life Behind - <AUTHOR> http://www.energysavvy.com/blog/2011/02/14/how-to-land-your-first-startup-job-and-leave-corporate-life-behind/

<comment><USER2> Good stuff. My only objection is, as a hiring manager, I don't really care what format the resume is in. With me, candidates can use a text file, word or a napkin if it's clear. Just help me understand your education, career track, any key projects and passions.

</comment><comment><USER3> It should be a bigger part of one's happiness factor to believe in your companies mission. If you don't, you feel like there is no point/goal to your work. Good article.

<comment><USER4> Should is a dirty word. When you use it in that way, you're applying your own emotional perspective to everybody and hiding it under some sort of imperative. You shouldn't do that ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Loved Founder and CTO of Krux Digital: "When you apply to a startup, you need to be prepared to talk about your ability to wear multiple hats and get sh*t done."

</comment><comment><USER6> If you're in Seattle tomorrow, EnergySavvy is hosting Techcafe. Come past and learn more about EnergySavvy and the Seattle startup community.

</comment><comment><USER7> Funny to see Facebook now included with "cushy jobs" like Microsoft and Google. What do people at FB think about that? :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Well... where's the risk anymore at FB. And where's the meaningful equity upside for new hires there now? I'd say it qualifies as "cushy".</comment></comment>


The Dual-Use Dilemma in China's New AI Plan - <AUTHOR> https://lawfareblog.com/dual-use-dilemma-chinas-new-ai-plan-leveraging-foreign-innovation-resources-and-military-civil <comment><AUTHOR> I submitted this article. It also discusses what the USA needs to do.</comment>


FBI director: Cover up your webcam - <AUTHOR> http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/295933-fbi-director-cover-up-your-webcam <comment><USER2> From all they ways I can be spied, the webcam is the one that concerns me the least.

At the end, all they will see is a bearded man staring to the front. May they be able to see me naked? Well, probably, but I honestly don't think that they will make a lot of money by selling my naked pictures... My wife tells me that I still look good, but I suspect that she is being nice to me.

What would scare more is that they manage to capture what is on my screen, or install a keylogger, or activate the microphones to hear my conversations, or that they access my hard disks and steal data, including my private keys.

Hey, but putting a sticker on your webcam is a way to show how 1337 your are!

I prefer not to have to bother removing stickers every time I want to do a Skype call.

<comment><USER3> You're displaying a common trope I see sometimes with security:

> "because this particular thing does affect me personally, it doesn't matter. > And because it doesn't matter to me it doesn't matter at all"

Blackmailing people with pictures taken from webcams is not theoretical. It happens[0] and it's good advice to tape up your cam. It may not affect you personally, but it may affect your wife, daughter, or sister in a much more sinister way. Believe it or not this kind of thing can ruin someone's life.

[0] [http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240209018/US-teen- hacker...](http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240209018/US-teen-hacker- pleads-guilty-to-webcam-blackmail)

<comment><USER4> I know someone whose camera and microphone were taken over. A window showed on her computer where the person watching her chatted with her and told her things that he only knew because he was watching her. It scared her to death and made her cry.

Beyond blackmail, it is probably close to the psychological equivalent of a stranger just suddenly appearing in your home watching you.

I think that every electronic camera and mic device should have a hard switch/button that physically disables both the camera and mic. Having to use tape or a cover does not keep you from being spied on; it only eliminates the visual spying. The attacker can still listen.

<comment><USER5> Smartphones represent a bigger security risk in that regard. Front facing rear facing, mic all ones personal data, pictures and so on.

<comment><USER6> Hardly. You put your phone on the desk and it's going to show the ceiling. In contrast to this, people do all kinds of weird things in front of laptops. I've even heard once of someone who allegedly masturbated (!) in front of a laptop. Of course, that must have been an extreme outlier ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Isn't this really just a sign of flawed hardware design?

In my opinion hardware should be designed so that the camera LED lamp should always be lit if the camera is used. If there is a malfunction with the LED, then the camera should also not work. Also there should be a hardware LED for when the microphone is being used which should work in the same fashion for laptops with built-in microphones.

In the webcam drivers I have looked at the LED is controlled independently of capturing, although drivers do enable the LED when the camera is used. This essentially means that hackers can record and disable the lamp.

I've been considering hacking together some piece of software that will continuously use the camera (/dev/video) in order to block it for other applications, and have it fail with visible alerts if unable to block the camera. Not sure if the same thing can be achieved for the audio recording devices due to multiplexing.

<comment><USER8> >If there is a malfunction with the LED, then the camera should also not work.

Many would argue that this is the more flawed design.

<comment><USER9> It seems like a "fail safe" to me. The current design is a bit closer to a "fail deadly" in that it creates a mode that's the worst-case from the user's perspective: the camera works but the indicator doesn't.

It is probably worse to have an unreliable indicator light than it is to not have any indicator light at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "The head of the FBI on Wednesday defended putting a piece of tape over his personal laptop's webcam, claiming the security step was a common sense one that most should take."

One needs to ask why is the head of the FBI telling you this? Cui bono?

This is a red herring.

The FBI has no interest in filming you through your webcam.

They want to listen to your microphone, watch your screen, get the keys you've typed, see the websites you've visited, read the emails you've sent.

Watch you on video? Nah. This is a red herring.

That is the reason the head of the FBI tells you to cover your webcam.

I wish the The Last Psychiatrist would come back.

<comment><USER11> The FBI isn't telling you this so you could protect yourself from the government. They are telling you this because they know how easy it is for someone else to take control of the camera and make your life hard. So it is a common sense step for you to take if you're concerbed about security.

You took a pretty huge jump from that to the FBI listening to your mic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you're so concerned about having your webcam subverted, it seems like the first step would be to insist on a hardware LED that can't be subverted in firmware. If nothing else, it would serve as a canary, indicating that your machine has been thoroughly compromised.

<comment><USER13> And who do we trust to do that? More importantly, is it even possible?

<comment><USER14> In terms of electronics it is fairly trivial and it can be inspected by eye (or microscope) if the manufacturer decides to not encapsulate everything on a chip (which presumably would be the point of such a feature).

Just have the only positive voltage rail going to the camera be the same one that is directly powering the LED. The firmware will be turning this rail on and off, hence turning the camera and the LED on and off simultaneously.

<comment><USER15> Idle though on possible attack vectors:

Convince the firmware to use a lower voltage, one that doesn't hit the breakover voltage on the LED but still powers the camera.

Strobe the line, get snapshots without the LED doing more than very faintly glowing.

<comment><USER16> LED activation voltage is less than what cameras typically require.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> white-flame I said it then, and I say it now:

\- Encryption is our webcam tape.

That tape cannot be thwarted by any remote attacker, legally warranted or not. It's perfect, unbreakable security from webcam visuals being exfiltrated, exactly the security features that Comey says we shouldn't be allowed to have for our data.

<comment><USER17> "What if everyone believed that law-abiding citizens should use postcards for their mail? If a nonconformist tried to assert his privacy by using an envelope for his mail, it would draw suspicion. Perhaps the authorities would open his mail to see what he's hiding. Fortunately, we don't live in that kind of world, because everyone protects most of their mail with envelopes. So no one draws suspicion by asserting their privacy with an envelope. There's safety in numbers. Analogously, it would be nice if everyone routinely used encryption for all their email, innocent or not, so that no one drew suspicion by asserting their email privacy with encryption. Think of it as a form of solidarity."

~ Philip Zimmermann, "Why I wrote PGP"

[https://www.philzimmermann.com/EN/essays/WhyIWrotePGP.html](https://www.philzimmermann.com/EN/essays/WhyIWrotePGP.html)

<comment><USER18> A brilliant point and a salient quote. Why must we continue to live, collectively, with our heads in the sand?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I know this thread will probably get politicized, but I see nothing wrong (or necessarily hypocritical; he's law enforcement, not IC) with his advice here.

<comment><USER20> It's not a bad thing to do, it's just hypocritical of him to value his own privacy but tell everyone else they need to give up theirs and let the FBI and NSA have access to everything they want to keep private.

<comment><USER21> Why would you be concerned about the FBI or the NSA knowing about the content of your digital communiques if you have nothing to hide? Even the most ardent supporter of personal freedoms will admit that the government observing you over a network is the same as taking pictures of you with a telephoto lens on a busy street. The truth is the same: there are too many people and you aren't special enough to deserve personal surveillance.

<comment><USER22> > there are too many people

Oh _please._ They can probably harvest the lot. It'll be some algorithm that deems you worthy or otherwise or gets you on an "of interest" list. Let's keep "personal surveillance" for '50s spy movies and Banksy murals.

More generally, what about the chilling effect on legal and legitimate conversation?

<comment><USER23> _It 'll be some algorithm that deems you worthy or otherwise or gets you on an "of interest" list._

...or your association with "Occupy" or some other political protest movement that someone in power disagrees with, or that your wife bullied some politician's wife for two weeks in school, or that your interfering neighbour with a petty dislike of how you landscape your garden works as a government clerk and can access your data.

There are many reasons why some individual might want to know private things about some other individual. When individuals with some tiny (or vast) power want to wield it over _anyone else_ , especially when they can do it with little oversight, it's very tempting.

That "the government" has access to my private information does not mean it's blind and faceless. It's made up of people with complex motivations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The webcam cover up is interesting to me because it's the only "weird privacy thing" I've seen regular, non-technical people do. A good amount of people at my university, most of which use social media liberally and don't care about encryption, cover their camera up.

<comment><USER25> This is only idle speculation but:

A web cam resembles an eye staring at you all the time. This makes people feel weird, like something is staring at them. The threat to privacy is right in their face and on a gut level.

That's the reason so many people cover them even when they won't take other basic online privacy precautions.

<comment><USER26> Also just in general, people understand what a camera does. It's much harder to understand the implications of abstract "data" going off onto the internet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is like the coal burning power plant telling you to make sure to sort your recyclables into appropriate containers, to make the environment cleaner.

Also people enjoy and feel good about accomplishing small things. Putting a sticker on your laptop is a small easy task. Do it and they feel more "secure" in an instant.

</comment><comment><USER28> Every electronic communication device (laptop, mobile, tablet, etc) should have _1 hardware switch per sensor_ (camera, mic, motion/acceleration, etc) which disables the sensor.

Why manufacturers still haven't introduced this is beyond me.

<comment><USER29> >Why manufacturers still haven't introduced this is beyond me.

Expense and lack of demand.

Some older laptops used to feature hardware kill switches for the wifi (this was prior to the advent of a camera in every laptop). The old Dell D820 model was one such laptop. Eventually they were dropped all around because from the makers point of view, the presence of the switch had no effect on the sales of the laptops.

Anything you add to the BOM (Bill of Materials) for the device raises the final net cost, and there is still enough competition in the laptop/phone space that keeping the costs down is necessary to compete. Additionally, twenty-five cents per unit does not sound like much, until of course you multiply that by 10+ million units built (where a twenty-five cents difference per unit amounts to $2.5+ million difference in the end). So if having the switch or not having the switch made no difference in sales, the maker could either raise their profit, or lower their price (or more likely split the difference) by dropping the switches.

The lack of demand is that not enough purchasers are telling manufacturers they want hardware on/off switches (the purchasers do this by buying only laptops with them, and by not buying laptops without them [which may be difficult to bootstrap now, given that almost no laptop has a hardware on/off switch anymore]).

<comment><USER30> I've found many of those supposedly 'hardware' wifi kill switches were software controlled (When I installed Linux on an old Dell, it completely ignored the state of the wifi switch).

I want a switch that physically cuts power to a device, but no... :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I guess this is just as good place as any to bring this up. In current OS X, you cannot disable your mic. You can turn down the input volume, but never disable. All malware needs to do is raise the input volume and it can listen to you to its hearts content.

And its worse with your iPhone.

<comment><USER32> Can someone confirm if this is actually true? Sounds too far fetched that you cannot disable the mic (i.e not muting, I assume?).

<comment><USER31> Just look around on the internet, you'll find the same thing. I researched this a few weeks ago and was amazed.

You basically have to disable the audio driver in OSX to disable it, and doing that, means you can't play audio at all. And even that isn't enough, it technically can be hijacked at an even lower level.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I was looking for a way to cover the mics and webcam integrated in my laptop which doesn't require a tape. So, I grabbed a couple of those magnets stripes usually found on fridges and then , using a scissor, made two little rectangular stripes and a larger one. Next, I glued the little stripes on the laptop, near close the mics. The nice thing is that the large stripe covers both, the mics and webcam. For me, it's an easy way to cover/uncover fast.

</comment><comment><USER34> I keep mine covered because I work remotely a lot and I don't want to accidentally shirtless video chat someone from bed when I meant to make a different type of call.

<comment><USER35> It was unusually hot and I actually did that myself just the other day - embarrassing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I use a MacBook Pro as my daily driver, but I recently purchased a Lenovo ThinkPad to play around with. Sometimes I forget how awesome it is to have a repairable and modular computer.

I didn't want the webcam or microphone in the ThinkPad… so I took 30 minutes and removed it. Easy as that.

<comment><USER37> Well,to be fair you could just open the MacBook Pro and unplug the ribbon for the webcam. iFixit will have instructions. Removing it entirely granted is another matter, involving opening the screen, but you'd have to do the same on any modern laptop with an integrated camera wouldn't you?

<comment><USER38> For my mac I just used a knife to open screen and shoved black paper strip before camera.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I experimented a bit with an Apple laptop microphone, and it took 2 layers of electrical tape to block the mic. There doesn't appear to be any way to block an iPhone mic without blocking the speaker, too, and I'm not confident that it could be blocked at all.

</comment><comment><USER40> But what about his computer's built-in mic? Unless he's pantomiming all sensitive info...

</comment><comment><USER41> It's pretty sad that he used the word "authority" in this sentence: You do that so that people who don't have authority don't look at you. I think that's a good thing."

</comment><comment><USER42> It's relatively common to have access to private security cameras. Some are even google indexed.

The software included relies on the users protect the web interface. Obviously, this is the vulnerability. Especially with things like default passwords.

Here's an article about it: [http://www.networkworld.com/article/2844283/microsoft- subnet...](http://www.networkworld.com/article/2844283/microsoft- subnet/peeping-into-73-000-unsecured-security-cameras-thanks-to-default- passwords.html)

A lot of these cameras are controllable and have speakers.

People now do live video streams of pranking people through this means.

Pictures: [http://imgur.com/a/0WImd](http://imgur.com/a/0WImd)

</comment><comment><USER43> Back in the day, SGI workstations had a hardware shutter. I still think it's a good idea.

</comment><comment><USER44> My Asus 1015PEM netbook from 6 years ago has a physical screen that slides over the camera; sliding the screen also turns on the camera. Why don't more laptops have this feature if this is such a 'big deal'?

</comment><comment><USER45> The hacker news readership is focussed on startups and technology. It's a career, a business and in some cases an interest in technology.

So privacy as a social good may not be the primary perspective and it often devolves into how this affects readers personally rather than the society they live in or side tracks into technology nuances.

Technology is enabling new negative possibilities but it does not follow that technologists can make a difference. There is no ethical code of conduct. Like everyone else they are another cog in the wheel and software engineers may not have an interest or priority on privacy, social and political issues.

There are a large number of folks working in the nsa, gchq, google, facebook, palantir, hardware vendors and elsewhere actively enabling this.

Like technology itself politics, liberty, privacy and the evolution of modern system from the time of feudalism requires interest and priority. From this perspective the need to tape up your webcam may have completely different ramnifications.

</comment><comment><USER46> I agree with what most people are saying on here, but I believe there's a bigger picture to it.

Let's say that your computer has been completely 'pwned', and that you are currently reading an article with an ad for Cow Porn, or whatever, on the right hand hand side of the site. The hacker can write some code to check what your eyes, and eyebrows, did when you looked at the ad. If it peaked your interest, the hacker can maliciously add more 'Cow Porn' ads to sites you visit - via swapping out the regular ones.

Now one day you get curious and click on it, and boom they take a screen shot and try to blackmail you.

This is obviously quite outlandish but think about purposefully planting posts, lets say on reddit, by switching out posts. They then look at your head movements, and, or, eye movements then boom, you're added to some list that you wouldn't have be added to if it weren't for your eye movements.

</comment><comment><USER47> I have never covered my Webcam because I trust the light to come on if the camera turns on. Is it possible to bypass that led?

<comment><USER48> In addition to the attacks that others have mentioned here, I've also heard folks comment previously on the possibility of turning on the camera very briefly, just long enough for a single still shot. If it was done fast enough, the brief flicker of the LED might not be noticeable.

(Like you, I had always assumed that the power for the webcam was literally in series with the LED, so that disabling the LED would render the camera inoperable. That seemed like the obvious way to do it if you wanted to provide a truly reliable signal. But evidently that's not the case.)

<comment><USER49> Perhaps you mean in parallel. An LED is driven by 20 mA, whereas a camera requires more like 200 mA, so it's not feasible to wire them in series - either the LED will burn out or the camera won't power up.

<comment><USER48> Yeah, I was pretty sure I was being a little sloppy by using the term "series" (for shame, physics prof, for shame!), but I was hoping to evoke the general sense of "if current doesn't flow through the LED for any reason, the camera can't turn on." Honestly, I'm not 100% certain offhand of a way to wire that (which is why I didn't want to be specific earlier, despite using a specific term: shoulda added some weasel words :) ). Do the LED and the camera run off of the same _voltage_? (If not, then parallel wiring won't work, either.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Previously: [http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and- tech/yah...](http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/yahoo- webcam-users-intimate-images-intercepted-by-gchq-spy-programme-snowden-files- reveal-9158140.html)

</comment><comment><USER51> What about the cameras in your phone and the microphones in everything? Security theater isn't security.

</comment><comment><USER52> I'm about to die laughing at the hoops people are jumping through in the comments to claim they've never pulled up some porn and enjoyed themselves in front of their laptop. Ever. _EVER_

</comment><comment><USER53> This article describes how to turn off the led light on Windows, which is surprisingly easy:

[http://blog.erratasec.com/2013/12/how-to-disable-webcam- ligh...](http://blog.erratasec.com/2013/12/how-to-disable-webcam-light-on- windows.html)

TLDR: Webcams follow the UVC standard and, according to this standard, the LED indicator light is controlled by the host software. So a simple hack is to find the webcam driver DLL, find the function that controls the LED (such as TurnOnOffLED()), make it return immediately, done.

</comment><comment><USER54> Does anyone feel the need to cover their iPhone front facing camera?

<comment><USER55> Yes. I cover both the cameras on my phone with tape, and only remove it when I want to take a picture.

That said, I have a lot more faith in the security of a whitelist-based model like the App store, versus the blacklist model of a PC with antivirus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Unless you're using Prey[0] and want an opportunity to photograph would-be crooks.

[0] [https://preyproject.com](https://preyproject.com)

</comment><comment><USER57> in this day and age how come we don't see laptops carry a physical on/off switch for the microphone and camera?

<comment><USER58> This is the day and age of removing headphone jacks to make a phone slimmer, taking away your disk drive, etc. Most companies care more about aesthetics than functionality at this point.

<comment><USER59> can I have a laptop without a webcam/integrated mic then?

<comment><USER60> How courageous of you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Also remove your microphone and don't use a keyboard? If I were hacking you I'd _much_ rather log your keystrokes or hear what you're saying.

The number of scenarios where having a visual would be useful would be incredibly low by comparison.

Putting a sticker over your webcam is like putting a lock on a screen door.

<comment><USER61> Most screen doors I can think of do have locks.

Even quite home made ones often end up with a hook that kids can't reach.

<comment><USER8> That's my point. It does one thing, but it's by no means security.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> I prefer to have a computer composed by parts, so I attach the webcam to the computer when I need to, same thing for the audio and many other applications.

I only need 1k of ram to send a secret message, so no virus or malware could be in my tiny computer.

</comment><comment><USER63> Didn't all Sun webcams used to have little irises that you could close on them?

It seems like a sensible precaution: makes it less likely I'll accidentally log into a company conference call in my dressing gown with my camera enabled.

</comment><comment><USER64> Just saw the prescreening of snowden movie with online live event with movie cast and snowden post movie, and this was exactly what was depicted in the movie and in the event talk.

</comment><comment><USER65> So the guy who decries "going dark" when it comes to encryption wants us to literally go dark with our webcams. It's like a dystopian comedy setup.

</comment><comment><USER66> At some of my house parties I require guests to check their phone at the door. Price of admission. (I keep a landline and am ok with giving that number out as an emergency contact number). Boy does this get the conversation started.

I can tape my phn camera, but what about the other 20 phns in the room? I have no control over them to keep them from posting photos of me drinking or whatnot during a party, photos I do not want online.

From the tin-hat perspective one must do (much) better than consider their personal devices. One must consider _all_ devices in their _personal proximity_.

<comment><USER67> It'd be amusing to have a little Faraday cage by the door for them to deposit into. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> Aren't these attacks primarily for Windows? Would using Linux (say Arch) mitigate these?

Edit: Shouldn't we be more concerned about phones and tabs?

<comment><USER69> Nice attempt at humor :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> In case anyone's looking for something a little bit more sophisticated than a sticker to put on his/her webcam: [https://soomz.io/detail/webcam_covers_a10](https://soomz.io/detail/webcam_covers_a10) Been using it for a while and it works like a charm. (Though on a phone it does tend to attract a bit of dirt and the color wears off over time. If you keep your phone in the pocket of your pants, that is.)

</comment><comment><USER71> Quick question for HNers: why isn't something like the camera insicator light implemented for the microphone?

</comment><comment> SG- Anyone know what kind of laptop he uses?

</comment><comment><USER72> Please cover your webcam, it is distracting while we are trying to listen to what you are clicking on.

</comment><comment><USER73> What I don't understand is why he has to defend it? (Yes, it might seem hypocritical.)

</comment><comment><USER74> Instead of a sticker, one could also use this clever, simple, magnetic gadget (not affiliated):

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1893116150/nope-20-live...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1893116150/nope-20-live- free)

<comment><USER74> Seriously, downvoted without an explanation? That's quite poor. If something about my post offends anyone, I'd love to know about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> I swear this is a true story:

I worked at Staples when I was 19, and when I first started I was a "front end lead" (read: the only full-time cashier), so I would work behind the service counter at the front.

Once, I was standing up front while there were no customers when all of the sudden the voice of the general manager (we'll call him Bill) popped onto the phone's speaker, "Hey, Michael". I looked up and noticed the light next to "Manager's Office" was on. I instinctively replied, "Hey, Bill; what's up?", despite the fact that it nearly gave me a heart attack.

Bill proceeded to tell me to run something he needed to the back, which I did, and that was the end of that.

Then, one day I was helping a customer with some Cross pens behind the counter. I stood up to grab a key that was next to the register when I noticed out of the corner of my eye that the phone's "Manager's Office" intercom light was on. It made my heart jump because I hadn't talk to anybody through it, and I knew that Bill was in the back office. I immediately realized, 'oh my god, he's probably spying on me to see how my service is!'. It made me feel uncomfortable, until I realized it was an opportunity to be extraordinarily helpful and jovial with the customer and be "candidly" observed by my manager. So I did that. I rang the customer up and she left. The light went off after a few minutes of silence.

After that, I noticed the light come on a number of times on different days, which surprised me. I even ran to the back after helping a customer once, while the intercom light was still on, sneaked around the corner, and looked into his office window to see if it was really him. He was sitting there looking at his phone. I looked for just a moment when I heard from the speaker above, "<beep!> cashier to the front". I ran.

Bill was probably the greatest manager I've ever known, such a hard worker, a really cool guy to talk to, well respected by everyone, etc. In fact, if all managers were like him, Staples would probably still be a force to be reckoned with. So, it never bothered me the way it probably would have, had it been some creepy manager. This is necessary for the rest of the story, because had it not been the case, I would have probably called him out, etc.

Eventually I started being extra jovial all the time, because I never knew when I'd miss seeing the light come on and miss the opportunity to impress Bill.

Bill was so impressed with my service that I was given a raise and promoted to manager of the copy & print center about 6 months later, which eventually led to me opening my own print company and quitting Staples (after seeing how high the margins were), which led to me learning how to use Adobe Creative Suite and graphic design, which led to me shifting my focus to print design for clients (brochures, cards, etc.), which led to me meeting some guys who ran an Internet marketing company one day while trying to sell my print design services. They wanted to hire me full time, and did, so I began learning web design, then web development, then back end code, etc.

I always tell myself, 'I was probably destined for this kind of work', but the reality is that my entire life might have been changed by simply knowing I was being spied on by my Boss. I realize that it probably worked out for the better in my case, but the fact is, knowing that somebody is watching you causes you to change who you are. It's a form of control in and of itself. In fact, it doesn't even need to happen to you. Now that we have all seen that the government does spy on people, it's hard to imagine all the tiny ways that it might change your behavior and the things you say (e.g., online).

<comment><USER76> I worked at Staples too (Business Machines!), the management was not shy about reminding us about mystery shoppers.

My managers would always walk around the corner right at the instant I would sit down for a minute when it wasn't busy 5 hours into my shift. Never failed. Ugh.

I know we didn't have surveillance cameras in the store at the time though, because it was a sore point (and against Staples policy at the time).

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> I wonder if he covers front and back cellphone cameras.

</comment><comment><USER78> Laptops have a LED showing when webcam is in use

</comment><comment><USER79> Hypocrite!

</comment><comment><USER80> What about the part where we stop buying products with integrated cameras?

What about the part where we stop buying devices that we have seeemingly no hope of control over?

What about that?

Is boycott a word too strong?

Gee, you're right.

We should all just give up, and accept that what we're sold, is that which we must buy.

<comment><USER81> I think you're being a bit quick to judge people here…

Having an integrated camera is obviously a lot easier to deal with, logistically, than lugging along an external USB camera.

I think a lot of the people here would love to have hardware-level kill switches for their video camera. And mic. And WiFi. (I would; I used to own a Thinkpad with a hardware kill switch for WiFi. It was useful, even aside from the privacy benefits.)

<comment><USER80> I think you're neglecting a key detail: alternatives are hardly even on the shelves, and NO ONE QUESTIONS IT.

      > Oh, well, that's just
        supply and demand, of
        course!

      > Everyone just WANTS an
        always on internet connection!

      > Why would anyone ever remove
        the battery from their
        cell phone???

      > It's more cost effective
        to build the device
        like that. Common sense!

      > Everyone wants a unique
        identifier, GPS and 911
        service. It's safer!

Yup, no one would ever want things any other way. It's silly to question why the invisible hand of the market works as it does.

<comment><USER82> The really amazing part about the downvotes here, is that HN is unable to reconcile the realities of mass surveillance that tend to conflict with profit motives, and yet the collective overtone of HN professes itself to be a bastion of progressive futurist space exploring tranhumanism. Few seem to notice the cognitive dissonance.

Sort of a cruel prank. Those in the best position to release the yoke, are only motivated to tighten it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Another Big Milestone for Servo: Acid2 - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mozilla.org/research/2014/04/17/another-big-milestone-for-servo-acid2/ <comment><USER2> Servo is the kind of project that launches a thousand research papers. Some of the early results are staggering and the project is still just getting going. It is a great example of doing serious research to practical ends.

Some examples:

\- firstly, the entire foundation, Rust, is itself an ambitious research project that solves many long-standing problems in the domain.

\- Servo has, or has plans for, parallelism (combinations of task-, data- parallelism, SIMD, GPU) at every level of the stack.

\- The entirety of CSS layout (one of the most difficult and important parts of the stack) is _already_ parallelized, and it's fast.

\- It puts all DOM objects in the JS heap, eliminating the nightmarish cross- heap reference counting that historically plagues browser architectures (this is part of Blink's "oilpan" architecture).

<comment><USER3> > \- It puts all DOM objects in the JS heap, eliminating the nightmarish > cross-heap reference counting that historically plagues browser > architectures (this is part of Blink's "oilpan" architecture).

Does Gecko not already do this? Certainly Presto did, and (I believe) Trident does.

But to add another bit of research into the mix, and what I think is arguably the most important point:

\- Builds on all the work around HTML(5) and CSS 2.1, both of which are the best part of a decade of work, both aiming to get browsers actually implementing to specifications, and specifying behaviour in sufficient detail (with minimal undefined behaviour) that a web page cannot easily distinguish two user agents. By actually specifying the web platform as it actually exists, it suddenly makes it far more practical for new browsers to enter the market (compared with the previous hellish situation of the hardest part of developing a browser being reverse-engineering existing browsers with sufficient marketshare that web developers ensure their web pages work in them). If this is shown to be viable, suddenly we have a truly open platform!

<comment><USER4> Here's another really fantastic reason for the research Servo is doing: by using concurrency and parallelism pervasively, Servo is discovering and mapping out all the places where sequentialism is baked into the web standards themselves. With any luck, their experiences will help to guide the next generation of web standards and prevent them from being inadvertently hostile to parallelism.

<comment><USER5> floats :(

<comment><AUTHOR> The float taketh away and the clear: both giveth back again:

[http://pcwalton.github.io/blog/2014/02/25/revamped- parallel-...](http://pcwalton.github.io/blog/2014/02/25/revamped-parallel- layout-in-servo/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> With the bad press Mozilla has had the past few weeks it is easy for people to forget about some of the awesome things Mozilla are working on such as Rust and Servo. I really like the look of Rust and feel it might be the future native language for high performance applications. It is very exciting!

<comment><USER7> Indeed. Brendan's resignation was dismaying and distracting, but we haven't stopped working on stuff.

Just after Brendan resigned, I read a comment somewhere to the effect of "I guess that's the end of Firefox OS". Um, no. A major project run by a company of 1,000 employees (and many volunteers) doesn't stop because one person left, even if that person is at the top. Especially when it's progressing well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is awesome, I wonder if there is a more constrained web rendering engine somewhere. Something where rather than 'render everything we've ever seen' is 'render the following html 'standards' correctly' (or at least predictably). I was looking for something like this for a modern day sort of serial terminal thing.

<comment><USER9> Out of interest, what are the reasons you don't want to be able to 'render everything we've ever seen'?

<comment><USER10> I worked for a medical software company which had to deal with incoming digital images (DICOM) from all kinds of manufacturers (Siemens, GE, Philips, and tons of other smaller players).

I once heard one of our lead developers say that 80% of the code we wrote was to work around problems in everyone else's implementations. The DICOM format has a bunch of predefined fields and supports custom fields that manufacturers can use, but a lot of manufacturers would, for no reason I could figure out, use fields incorrectly a surprising amount of the time. They would store one of the most basic pieces of information in the wrong field, and then store that data nowhere, or put it in a custom field, or store it in the wrong format, etc.

Enough manufacturers doing 95% of things right and 5% of things wrong, making everyone else jump through hoops to handle their broken behaviour, and suddenly your code grows massively. Sure enough, we had to write an entire system for remapping fields from certain machines so that incoming data from broken implementations would be somehow magically coerced into being correct (either by simply copying data over to fields, or more advanced post- processing).

The less time browsers spend wondering what to do with inherently, irredeemably broken HTML, the faster they can render content which actually does work properly.

Unfortunately, that only works in controlled environments, like store kiosks, intranets, etc. Otherwise you end up choking on the 95% of the content which is only 5% broken.

<comment><USER11> Your story is a perfect example of the dark side of Postel's law: "Be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept." The people who care about writing software that Just Works™ end up maintaining software that is crushed under its own gravity. :)

<comment><USER7> I think the wisdom of Postel's law is questionable at best.

<comment><USER12> Apparently what we think of as Postel's law is a bastardization. [http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang- questions/2014-March/0781...](http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang- questions/2014-March/078195.html).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I want Rust scripting support in Servo.

      <script type="text/x-rust" src="foo.rs">

Since Rust is a safe language this should be possible without compromising security, though I don't think anyone's yet attempted to write a JIT compiler for Rust. Has the Servo team considered this as a possibility?

<comment><USER14> Why do you want to script with Rust?

<comment><USER15> Javascript is a terrible language, even though Rust is experimental it would be a big improvement. And it does have attractive aspects as a language.

More broadly, breaking the iron grip Javascript has on client-side development would be wonderful and Mozilla is the last stumbling block in front of this goal.

<comment><USER16> Insofar as scripting languages go, Racket/Scheme would also be a nice addition. After all that is what Eich was going for when he created JavaScript. He wanted a language with scheme-like semantics but other forces wanted it to have a C-style syntax.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7483729](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7483729)

<comment><USER4> Note that the previous announcement was a bit premature: three weeks ago, on the date of that discussion, Servo was passing Acid2 only on a feature branch. As of two weeks ago the master branch should be passing as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> When can I expect Servo to be in Firefox instead of the current engine? 2015/2016? do you have a rough idea?

<comment><USER4> There are no plans yet to ever integrate Servo directly into Firefox. At the very least Servo will certainly exist as a standalone browser engine (and unlike Gecko, Servo is designed to be embeddable, so it will be an actual alternative to Webkit in that space).

The biggest impetus for Servo at the moment is that it's researching the biggest wins to be gained from concurrency and parallelism in browser engines, thereby guiding efforts to tack such things onto Gecko.

<comment><USER19> Well, then I'll hope for a Servo equivalent of Luakit before too long.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > Many kinds of browser security bugs, such as the recent Heartbleed > vulnerability, are prevented automatically by the Rust compiler.

Does anyone care to explain how this would work? If you used OpenSSL from Rust you would still be vulnerable to Heartbleed. Or am I missing something?

<comment><USER21> Of course it's true that Rust can't protect you from things done in libraries called across its FFI. It's also true that at the moment most of, or at least a lot of, real work done in Rust eventually ends up calling into some C library. But I think that will be less and less true as time goes on.

<comment><USER22> Lots of bits of Servo use the FFI, but we've been replacing them as we go along with Rust versions. We did this so we could stand up a whole browser as fast as possible and then iterate on the important pieces first.

As an example, we used to use Netsurf's C library for CSS stuff, but now we have our own parser and style system written in 100% Rust.

<comment><USER21> I think it's a great approach, and I plan to whole-heartedly enjoy watching more and more of those chunks get whittled away as time goes on. I'd love to see a pure-rust spidermonkey replacement at some point!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is what I see when I run Acid2 in Servo. Perhaps they haven't merged the changes in to the public repo yet.

[http://cl.ly/image/1b123r220P3u](http://cl.ly/image/1b123r220P3u)

<comment><USER24> Yes, the fix (a submodule update for rust-layers) is blocked on a Rust upgrade which is currently in progress.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is Servo using GC?

<comment><USER24> For the DOM thread only, yes. All layout data structures are not using the garbage collector.

<comment><USER26> And for those who don't follow Rust closely, it's important that it's "the DOM thread only," as Rust's opt-in GC is on a per-task (thread) basis, so the threads that don't use GC don't even know it's there or running.

<comment><USER27> (Note that Rust doesn't actually have its own GC yet, Servo is just using spidermonkey's JS GC. pcwalton's comment implies it is being used single- threadly though.)

<comment><USER22> There can be multiple script tasks even within a single page. For example, cross-domain or sandboxed iframes will have each DOM and script in its own task. Also, each of those will have their own layout and rendering tasks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm curious what Chrome's plans are for the future, in particular related to parallelization. Has anyone seen any articles about that anywhere?

<comment><USER29> Eric Seidel talks here about some of the ideas in parallelizing things: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Sm- DbIOqiU#t=818](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Sm-DbIOqiU#t=818)

And a 2014 Brainstorm thread with similar ideas: [https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msg/blink- dev/Z5O...](https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msg/blink- dev/Z5OzwYh3Wfk/IWooaY5FZowJ)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Buzz – A messenger where your connections expire - <AUTHOR> http://buzzmessenger.co <comment><USER2> This is reeeeaaaalllyyyy cool. Perhaps you should be targeting this at the college kids a whole lot more than the people on HN? (just a thought!)

Apart from this, could you elaborate a lil more on other use cases for a messenger which can hold conversations on a temporary basis?

<comment><AUTHOR> Dating for one. A lot of people I know give fake phone numbers out because they're not too comfortable giving their phone number out randomly. As well as people who use dating apps: tinder, match.com, bumble, etc. The next step for a lot of these apps is to get out of their chat interface and to get real time responses. But at this stage, you might not want anything besides a one time hookup.

Selling things or more transactional things. You have to meet-up somewhere to exchange the item. Having real time messaging would be helpful here.

Conferences themselves. Or hackathons. It's important to add everyone you meet at the conference or hackathon on linkedin. But at a hackathon, for example, you're going to be talking a lot to a small group of people. Real time messaging might be super important there. And then afterwards only reach out once in awhile.

And online mobile games. I play a lot of those clan based games. And their native game chats are usually awful, clunky, slow, I lose messages. There's also a good amount of those people I don't want to give my real info too but I still want to chat off the game. The major case is if there's drama in the game and I need to send a screenshot over for one reason or another. This has happened to me a lot.</comment></comment>


90 errors in open-source projects - <AUTHOR>

There are actually 91 errors described in the article, but number 90 looks nicer in the title. The article is intended for C/C++ programmers, but developers working with other languages may also find it interesting. The materials collected in this article will be useful for authors of articles, books and blogs. Examples of errors can be used to demonstrate advantages of different programming styles  for instance, why you should not try to make your code shorter by writing long expressions.<p>You can read the article: http://www.viva64.com/en/a/0077 <comment><USER2> FYI, text submissions are penalized in HN's ranking algorithm. You'd probably be better off submitting as a URL, especially given that most of your explanation should be apparent to someone visiting the page.

</comment><comment><USER3> According to the HN guidelines, titles like "90 errors in open-source projects" should just be listed as "Errors in open-source projects", or perhaps rewritten to something else.

</comment><comment><USER4> Convention for this sort of description is to simply add a comment after submitting the url.

</comment><comment><USER5> clickable link: <http://www.viva64.com/en/a/0077></comment>


DNA Lounge Cocktail Robotics Grand Challenge - <AUTHOR> http://www.dnalounge.com/calendar/2015/07-12.html <comment><USER2> FYI to those unaware: DNA Lounge is run by JWZ/Jamie Zawinski. One of the founders of Netscape and Mozilla, primary author of XEmacs, Xscreensaver, etc. ref: [http://www.jwz.org/about.html](http://www.jwz.org/about.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> See also - The Roboexotica cocktail robots party, which just had its 15th annual party in Vienna:

[http://www.roboexotica.org/](http://www.roboexotica.org/)

(and of course, my entry from 2009, Adult Mario: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kiKE3lif8Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kiKE3lif8Q))

<comment><USER4> Something like that could work really well in a place like Mana Bar (a cocktail bar and video gaming lounge, really just a bar with wall to wall consoles etc.). You could have games that you pay to play, and how well you do = how much alcohol your drink gets. With appropriate warnings and such that could be really fun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Related: a friend of mine made this a few years ago: [http://v2.nl/archive/works/daredroid](http://v2.nl/archive/works/daredroid)

</comment><comment><USER6> ooo pay $45 to work on a project for their marketing stunt! What a deal!!!

<comment><USER7> I don't understand why the upper comment was downvotted without any explanation, when it's not far from the truth. Even if the people like the event, it's still a marketing stunt similar to hackathons or other competitions.

<comment><USER8> It probably cuts down on people signing up for a lark and then not showing up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great idea. Terrible moderator (watch the video).

I hope there'll be some lovecraftian mixologist contraption to up the ante a little.</comment>


Amazon is using peer pressure to keep German workers from calling in sick - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/962717/amazon-pays-german-warehouse-workers-bonuses-partly-based-on-when-their-coworkers-call-in-sick/ <comment><USER2> Heavily discussed 12 days ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14091880](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14091880)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is sick.

> workers are not required to provide a doctor's note until after the third > day they stay home with an illness.

There are ways for employers to require on the first day if abuse is suspected. Amazon should stick to established employment practices than to come up with contractual innovations that undermine the spirit of the law. The risk that a worker is becoming sick belongs firmly in the realm of the employer and not of co-workers. Shifting that is abuse of power.

<comment><USER4> An employer can ask for a note on the first day, there is no law against that. Employers don't do that because it's incentives sick employees coming in which gets expensive when all of them do stay home.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Germany is known for its generous labor practices, including paid sick days.

I know Americans aren't used to employees having rights but the country that's known for its generous laws isn't Germany, it's France.

<comment><USER6> What they mean is that it's being generous compared with the US.

<comment><USER7> Which, as everyone that lives in a Developed country outside the US knows, is not saying much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> LOL. Disgusting. They turn it from "sickness" to "preventing injury".

In Australia it's called personal leave (though many bosses don't) because it covers not just you being sick but also family being sick.

I take sick leave liberally. I suffer depression and don't go to work. Sick leave is calculated as part of the salary, just like holiday.

</comment><comment><USER9> The result is probably that people who actually give a damn about their coworkers work, even when they are sick, and the people who don't call in sick when they aren't.

<comment><USER10> I have told sick colleagues before who have come in that they are doing more damage than good. That turning up in their condition, infecting everyone else, is a net drag. That they will take longer to get better and will produce lower quality work while they are sick, and they will infecting others, causing even more damage.

If they really cared about their coworkers, they would stay home and get better. If they care about being seen to be at work (for whatever reason - maybe they have a toxic culture of presenteeism) over their coworkers, they'll come in.

Of course, if the cost of staying home is that everyone loses a bonus, we can come to some arrangement. I would be happy for my sick colleague to take it easy and just mark time while the rest of us covered their work for the day, and I'm sure we can send them off "to gather supplies" or some such if we need to. You get what you incentivise; you incentivise employees to come in when they're sick, that's all you'll get.

<comment><USER11> Yes, this is what I never get about incentives like that: why on earth would you _want_ to incentivise your employees to come to work sick?

A constantly sneezing worker will be unprofessional, prone to making errors, much less productive and endanger his/her co-workers. Now, granted, this is Amazon so no client will see those warehouse employees and I guess their processes are so airtight that one employee making mistakes won't have such a big impact (four-eyes principles or whatever). But it still seems pretty inefficient to me.

In Switzerland, some companies have insurance that covers sick days for employees - if your employee is sick, the insurance company will pay the wage during that time. This is mainly meant to cover longer sicknesses in smaller companies, who otherwise might get into real financial issues, but it also has the (in my opinion) desirable side-effect that a company is actually better off sending you home than having you at your desk as a half-productive zombie.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> That is one less generous interpretation of the policy. However, knowing Amazon are fairly big proponents of Lean/Kanban/Systems Thinking, I suspect the intent is actually a different one.

The alternative interpretation would be: Amazon is using peer pressure to make German workers call in sick.

Any group who actually thinks about it would quickly realise that 1 person off for 2 weeks with the flu is better than 10 people off for 2 days each with the flu.

<comment><USER13> You're ignoring two things: 1. People's selfishness and 2. People of older age

> Any group who actually thinks about it would quickly realise that 1 person > off for 2 weeks with the flu is better than 10 people off for 2 days each > with the flu.

People tend to not think that way. It'll not be "luckily David stayed home so we don't get sick" but "David stayed home _again_ and we didn't meet the requirements, screw you David!"

Older people ("older" as in 45+) are more often sick due to age related problems like back pain, knee problems, etc. Having those people on your team means that you are disadvantaged in comparison to other teams that don't have so many older people. People notice those things and will try to get rid of the older people to get their cut. To the company the experience of older people matters but their colleagues only see their bonuses disappear. This creates hostility between age groups and (imho) leads to ageism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is plain disgusting. My wifes employer (not Amazon) has a similar concept to reward bonuses for teams and this causes a lot of mobbing against her and her colleague (also mother). The reason less bonus got paid out were sick leaves, well they don't call it that way, but it boils down to that.

Reason for her/our sick leaves are not that we are sick, but kids < 4 years are just more often sick when going through all the various childhood diseases. Kindergarten will phone you and you have to pick up your sick kid within an hour. Then one of us has to stay at home and watch the sick kid until the doctor says it's ok to put them back in kindergarten.

</comment><comment><USER15> Most people I know here, abuse the rule with the 2 sick days ( making extended weekend e.g. ), but there's something more though.

I don't see what's wrong with people skipping work from once in a while, so even abusing the rule is not such a big deal ( IMHO ).

Maybe as a capitalist country, if amazon needs dedicated people they can easily increase the pay-rate, which is low anyway, to the point that people will care more about being at work, than being "sick".

<comment><USER16> What would increasing the pay-rate change? Being sick would also pay more.

<comment><USER17> That's not the issue. When you are paid peanuts, you stop caring about the work.</comment></comment></comment>


What would you cover in a CS class for MBAs? - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/phrogdriver/TuckPM <comment><USER2> I just finished an EMBA which is a slightly different target: people with 6+ years of experience aiming at upper management, so was more high-level than many MBA programs. My classmates varied from 28-50 across large and small companies in all industries. So our course name was "Information Technology as a Strategic Tool" so a different focus than "Technology Product Management".

Main Topics from our class:

      1. Technology & Business and IT Fundamentals
      2. Technology Planning, IT Governance and Enterprise Architecture
      3. Technology Selection and Implementation
      4. Managing Information Technology Risk
      5. Technology & The Customer

Part of the description:

This course emphasizes technology as a business enabler and stresses the importance of aligning technology initiatives with daily operations, strategic planning processes, and with the organization's vision, mission, culture and short and long-term objectives.

We initially covered the building blocks of IT systems to know the concept of database, UI, distributed versus centralized systems, and such things. But then we used case studies and a group project to get into successful and unsuccessful projects to implement and upgrade systems. Events like the Target data breach were excellent fodder. The list of case studies could be useful as well, but again they are focused on IT for a company rather than managing a product.

I'd be happy to share the syllabus and some other materials with you if you email me. I don't feel comfortable publicly posting it all without my professor's consent.

</comment><comment><USER3> Aside from actual CS knowledge, I think it would benefit MBA students that do not have a background in CS to know how software development and deadlines usually work. Would be nice if you manager understands that building a bug free software requires time, and inflexible deadlines is certainly not an option to motivate a software programmer.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> We have similar courses covering strategy, but I would much appreciate the syllabus to compare and see which cases you used. You can DM me your email on twitter @adamgengler if you don't want to post it publicly. Thanks!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Any suggestions from the HN community would be much appreciated!</comment>


Using Python and Pandas to Create Continuous Futures Contracts - <AUTHOR> http://www.quantstart.com/articles/Continuous-Futures-Contracts-for-Backtesting-Purposes <comment><USER2> _The main difference between a futures contract and equity ownership is the fact that a futures contract has a limited window of availability by virtue of the expiration date._

There are many more differences between futures and equities, but one big thing to keep in mind is the leverage you can get with futures. The CL contract he's talking about is for physical delivery (or receipt) of 1000 barrels of WTI light sweet crude oil in Cushing, OK. The front month contract is currently trading around $97/barrel so the total value value of one contract is about $97,000. The CME will let you buy or sell a single contract with a little less than $4,000 worth of margin. That's like 20x or 25x leverage if you are trading close to the margin limits. I guess what I'm saying is that it's a pretty easy way to blow yourself up if you don't know what you're doing.

<comment><USER3> In my teens, my father traded commodities. Hogs, corn, soy, all on the CME (for a brief period, he worked on the trading floor, but then I came along). During this time, I provided IT support (this was in the early 90's), aggregating historical market data (hello Knight Ridder!), plotting charts (Supercharts, when it was still software and not a SaaS platform, on Windows 3.1), and so forth.

I saw first hand what happens when you're sweating the market going against your trades. My father would smoke heavily and not sleep at night.

Now that I'm 31, we joke about those times. I still build algos with Quantopian for fun (and share them with my dad over a beer, throwing the backtest up on a 70" TV), and make a few bucks here and there, but you would be fucking insane to try to be a day trader now (competing against people with crazy financial and technological resources).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very cool. I have revisited the WTI/Brent spread trade a few times in the last few years - actually wrote a simple algo using Quandl data for USO and BNO, two ETFs linked to the WTI and Brent futures. I would love to update it to use this continuous futures contract logic and see how it does. [https://www.quantopian.com/posts/brent-slash-wti-spread- fetc...](https://www.quantopian.com/posts/brent-slash-wti-spread-fetcher- example)

<comment><AUTHOR> A nice algo with a good Sharpe. Although I'm not sure I could stomach a 37% drawdown!

<comment><USER4> Thanks. The drawdown is not ready for prime time indeed, I haven't traded it for that (among other) reasons. But I like the idea a lot and the futures linked ETFs seemed like an easier place to start that the contracts themselves.

<comment><AUTHOR> Futures linked ETFs in general are a great approach that have really helped "retail" traders get access to a previously difficult market.

Ernest Chan provides some good examples re GLD/GDX spreads, for instance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fascinating read and a quick skim of the article index made me add the blog to my rss reader. Looks like quite a bit of interesting stuff in there.

It amazes me just how much more there is to learn, no matter how much I think I know about a topic. For example, I have never heard about the importance of smoothing the price between futures months. Even though I was in the front- office of a large energy trading firm for over 6 years[1]. (I lead a small tech team handling pre-trade research data so my experience was tangential to the actual trading).

It seemed to me that the traders compartmentalized the trading months. They trade prompt right up to expiry, then they start trading a new prompt (of course they were also trading spot and other stuff, not only prompt month). Nobody ever seemed to care about the price disjunction when the month rolled.

So I find this idea of different methods to smooth that price really interesting. What kind of trading are you doing where that matters?

[1] and I really miss it. Hope I can go back to something like that again someday.

<comment><USER6> It would not generally be of interest to discretionary traders (as you are likely describing) but for automated trading using statistical models it is important to be able to construct a continuous series. The sudden price jump from backwardation or contango contract shifts would otherwise appear to be a large price move. As the article points out the smoothing method chosen also matters in that ultimately some information is being lost so the smoothing method needs to match the model.

I'm not sure what is meant by the rollover smoothing increasing transaction costs, this might have caused you some confusion if you're familiar with futures trading. Generally the actual mechanics of trading with the continuous series is that trade entries and exits and position sizing are calculated from the artificial continuous series and a trade that spans a roll will be rolled over (ie the previous contract position closed and a matching position in the new contract opened) on the roll date just as a traditional position would be. There would be no need to trade every day of the roll window, it would just be a paper exercise to come up with a proportional price for the artificial continuous contract.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> My first thought was that this could be about automating panda reproduction via Python. It would continuously ensure the future of the species.

Python _does_ have a library for everything, you know.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do wonder whether zoologists are now continually frustrated with the Python data analysis ecosystem when they perform their Google searches :-)

<comment><USER8> Our local Python user group receives inquiries about snakes on a regular basis...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> that's pretty cool, thanks very much for sharing this!

just had a quick scan through the code and it looks there's one thing missing (apologies if not as I haven't had the time yet to really run the code). if you actually want to create a tradable backtest you have to bear in mind that you are selling/buying during the roll period meaning that if you invest amount x before rolling over what you end up with after the roll is not equal to the value of your perpetual series.

to give you a simple example: if you roll over 1 day only and CLG14 settles at t1=100, t2=110 and CLH14 settles at t1=90, t2=95 your position after the roll is worth 105.56 (not 95).

makes sense?</comment>


Unencumbered Open Source Commodore 64 ROMs - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/MEGA65/open-roms <comment><USER2> According to this [0] reddit post, the copyright on the C64 ROMs is currently owned by a company called Cloanto [1], whose premier product is a COM/ActiveX currency converter, like it's 1999.

Anyway, it sounds like a fun project.

[0] [https://www.reddit.com/r/c64/comments/6d8ss0/who_owns_the_co...](https://www.reddit.com/r/c64/comments/6d8ss0/who_owns_the_commodore_trademark_now/)

[1] [https://cloanto.com/](https://cloanto.com/)

<comment><USER3> Michael Battilana (Cloanto) is to Commodore as Brewster Kahle is to Archive.org

He's genuinely tried to preserve the history of Commodore (Amiga in particular) and make it available to everyone, in Cloanto's Amiga Forever and C64 Forever packages. I understand there's no profit from this; it's all fan work under the guise of commercial offerings.

If Cloanto is holding on to the copyrights, it's for good reason. Following the demise of Commodore, there has been non-stop conflict between subsequent owners of various parts of the IP and copyrights. At least Cloanto is committed to preserving the Commodore legacy - the company has been around since the 80s, and has produced some flagship Amiga software.

<comment> the-rc I have known Michael personally for almost a quarter of a century now. Boy, does time fly...

You might say I am biased, but I can vouch for his genuine work to preserve the history of computing, not just Commodore or Amiga. For example, I think he bid on an Cray that the DoE was getting rid of and had to get it shipped to Italy for his computer museum project. Which wasn't cheap, because the thing weighted a ton. Multiple ones, actually.

Several of his projects were definitely not for the money, like his collaboration with a research team at University of Bologna to create drop-in replacements for narrator.device and/or translator.library that could convert Italian text to speech. Commodore Italy donated a bunch of machines to the team. This was in the context of Amiga software for people with severe disabilities, which wasn't a cash cow.

Which is also funny, because in 1997 Michael was the one in the audience that challenged a bit Richard Stallman on software economics, during the latter's talk at the Italian Amiga developer conference. He got RMS to say that, no, professional software developers like him were not necessarily entitled to make more money than a waiter. Quite a few of us among the hundreds that witnessed it still remember the exchange.

I haven't followed the latest controversies, but I do agree that his is nothing but fan work.

<comment><USER4> I guess my main concern would be his bus factor. What guarantees are there that his estate will provide the same gentleman's agreement to focus on archiving rather a money grab?

<comment> the-rc No guarantees, although knowing how careful he is with legal issues (see how he might have involuntarily started the GIF wars, by asking Unisys where to send them money for a patent license), I wouldn't be surprised if he already thought of that. I'm sure I'd first knock on wood if he read your comment, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is there not a good reference for doing a clean room implementation? These guys seem to be trying to figure it out from base principals and are struggling. Certainly someone must have written a book or something by now.

Maybe start here: [http://www.uta.edu/cse/levine/fall99/cse5324/cr/clean/page1....](http://www.uta.edu/cse/levine/fall99/cse5324/cr/clean/page1.html)

<comment><USER6> I dunno, man? I think their justification sounds pretty sensible: approx 100% of qualified C64 developers will have spent a good deal of time poring over the original code, so there's a very good chance that any supposedly clean room implementation will, legally speaking, be anything but. Hence all the extra palaver.

(The only questionaible thing in my view is why they aren't using 64tass.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> They can be used in emulators and replaced on C64 boards that had the ROMs burn out. This reminds me of the Amiga ROM Kickstart that AROS made for Amiga 68K units o run AROS in emulators or real Amigas.

I see a lot of projects like this in Europe. I guess their IP laws are slacker than the USA?

<comment><USER8> Maybe the US devs are slacker... haha, no I expect them to be busy making money hand over fist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Did they get a lawyer to look at their reasoning? It reads like what you get when software guys try to make "common sense" reasoning about IP law.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, their argument that an "implied right" to copyrighted materials arises just because it's widely infringed and the copyright holder hasn't sued anybody, seems fishy. I think they are confused with trademarks. Any citations of actual legal cases would be welcome.

This is only an aside to their actual reverse engineering work, but still.

<comment><USER10> That whole section should just be deleted as IANAL speculation. If they're not sure about it then it's just noise. If they were sure about it, the project would be redundant.</comment></comment></comment>


When Chinese hackers declared war on the rest of us - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612638/when-chinese-hackers-declared-war-on-the-rest-of-us/ <comment><USER2> The article misses the context of our generation, in which multiple Western and Eastern governments as an underlying trend have been exercising the same behaviors.

Australia officially banned strong encryption for state surveillance this week. The Unite States got caught in the world's most intrusive global and domestic surveillance effort and buried the news of this through its relationship with the domestic press. Poland repealed its supreme court after upending its government. Israel has been criticized for its domestic assassination program targeting thousands of people a year. The United States has a threat scoring system automatically scoring political, social, economic, and other "risk" data into municipal police departments so that these people can be monitored and managed without a warrant.

The fact of the matter is Western nations have been engaging on censorship, surveillance and "perception management" and "strategic communication" (read: propaganda) campaigns at home and around the world for decades.

Chinese hackers aren't "Us versus Them". The British _helped_ the Chinese establish a modern propaganda program over the past decade. Where are the British in this article?

Overall, disappointed at the narrow view of the article. It can't offer solutions because its hasn't identified the problems.

<comment><USER3> Every country uses their advantages, but I think you've painted a false equivalence here. Your comment won't get you a reduced Social Credit System score. Nobody's going to come knocking on your door. You can post critiques of Britain, US, EU etc but you'll still be unjailed and alive in the morning.

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

<comment><USER4> I think the point is that China is exploiting the same system that other countries created and started exploiting prior, but it is doing so on a larger scale and to a more obvious degree than the others. That is to say, yes, it's a problem, but let's take a look at all the other instances of this type of behavior, so we can work toward a general solution, rather than just saying 'fuck china!'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >Back in 2015, though, GitHub was still an up-and-coming, independent company whose success came from making it considerably easier for other people to create computer software.

GitHub was an "up-and-coming" company just three years ago in 2015? They were founded in 2008 and immediately exploded in popularity. I can't take the rest of the article seriously after reading just three paragraphs.

<comment><USER6> I would consider the audience not being engineers who use tools/services like github everyday. At the end of the day, github wasn't some huge public company with high market cap, and were recently bought by microsoft.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> DDOSses (some of them) from China are indeed incredible. You trace them back, and they turn out to come from the central datacenters of China Telecom itself. Right out of the middle of their network core.

At first you think "IP spoofing". Every self-respecting DDOSer does it these days. And that's true. Then you start tracing the path of the traffic. Turns out the packets come straight from direct peering interface with China Telecom, in Hong Kong. The IPs WEREN'T spoofed (so luckily they suck at it, or at least some departments do).

Absolutely incredible. In my opinion this government maintains datacenters, at least 40-50 racks, JUST for ddosing sites they dislike on the internet.

Just imagine what the legal and PR disaster any western telco would face if they had maintained a datacenter dedicated to sabotaging others on the internet. Incredible.

It also makes it hard to decide what to do. Cut off China Telecom ? You get a choice: cut off all government (and academia) in China, or cut off everyone else (except "special economic zones"). That's pretty much it for mainland traffic.

Incredible.

</comment><comment><USER8> "Us" vs "Them" is a cognitive bias. A title that attempts to exacerbate that bias isn't very nice.

<comment><USER9> Take any given server. Log the IPs of invalid SSH attempts to access the machine over 3 months. Plot the IPs on a geolocation.

Chinese originating IPs are the overwhelming number.

I posted my actual data years ago as a response to some comment, but I could just grab my recent logs and nothing has changed much (frequency, outliers, and some volume trading).

While the phrasing may be obtuse, it's a sentiment reflecting reality.

<comment><USER10> It would stand to reason. China has the largest number of endpoints, and thus is most likely to have the largest number of compromised hosts. I take it you've ruled out the possibility this is a geographically diverse spread of actors taking advantage of poor security practices on the large swaths of Chinese infrastructure in your logs?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >GitHub and Tibetans like Lobsang Sither were among the first victims on a new front in China's war on the internet, launched by a new breed of censor determined to go after the country's enemies wherever they might be, using whatever means necessary.

I wonder if China's fentanyl factories aren't plugged into the internet...

</comment><comment><USER12> Yet more evidence that shows the Chinese Communist Party is engaged in suppressing people's rights in order to enhance their own power.

</comment><comment><USER13> A DDoS is not "hacking". I've personally seen DDoS much bigger than the one described in the article over things as trivial as League of Legends online gaming.</comment>


Review our startup: Wibba.com - discover and share great products - <AUTHOR>

we've spent some time developing http://wibba.com as a platform which makes it quick and easy to discover and share cool products online and offline.
share products you think are cool or follow others to keep updated with things that they're loving.
this is a early alpha.
you can share product links, follow others and be followed, link with twitter and more.
there is so much noise out there its impossible to keep updated with everything going on.
I want to follow Scobleizer so I can see all the new apps he's loving, I want to follow a friend whose a DJ to see all the new tunes he's digging. I've got a good friend who works in fashion - I wanna see the trends he's discovering.
We developed this purely for products, not general chatter
would love to hear what you guys think - please bear in minds its really early days.
thanks so much
http://wibba.com <comment><USER2> Good concept.

Is there a voting mechanism/do you plan to add one?

What about a recommendation engine?

Finally, have good fraud protection and you may even want to consider limiting the amount of submissions made by a user in a given time period or this will quickly become a place to spam affiliate links and the same product links over and over.

<comment><AUTHOR> thx, do you think it makes sense to add voting? we're not after a digg style model at all - hate how those sites are gamed so much by spammers.

not sure we need to limit submissions - you only follow who you want to hear from, if someone drives you mad - you can unfollow like twitter.

thanks so much for the feedback

<comment><USER2> I don't know about voting, just a random thought.

One thing I would be interested in though is an aggregating tool that would let me see if more than one of the people I am following have submitted the same item. I might be more inclined to look at/buy something if 40 of my friends have submitted it rather than 1.

Well I figure you will want to demonstrate the service or fill the home page with some kind of content to non-logged in users. If it is nothing but the same product link over and over or affiliate links, there is no way I am going to join it because I figure it is just a spam service.

<comment><AUTHOR> thats a great idea, thanks dude</comment></comment></comment></comment>


University lowers entry score for female applicants in engineering and IT - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/aug/29/university-makes-10-point-entry-score-adjustment-for-female-applicants <comment><USER2> If Atar isn't useful as a predictor, why rely on it at all for admissions?</comment>