No More Résumés, Say Some Firms - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203750404577173031991814896.html

<comment><USER2> Three points of contention, and then a pointer to more valuable advice from a fellow HNer:

1) Union Square Ventures is a leading name in this space - _everyone_ knows Fred Wilson's blog. On top of that, they only have three "staff" listed on their site. USV can ask would-be employees to fly up to NYC to deliver resumes in person and they'll still get plenty of applicants.

2) The job openings in the article that focus on surveys and personality tests - supposedly instead of resumes - are clearly unskilled labor (e.g. social media intern). This is exactly as it was when I applied to work as a waiter at Olive Garden in 2000.

3) IGN's coding challenges are similarly suspect as a representatitve example because game dev is a glamor industry with a surfeit of naifs lining up for these underpaid jobs. Prized developers aren't going to participate in many coding-contest-as-hiring-lottery situations unless they're just really interested in the problem. Ask a YC company who's ever posted a hiring puzzle: what percentage of your correct submissions were from people who didn't even want the job?

The tactics cited above wrongheadedly invert the recruiting plan tptacek uses at Matasano: Start from the assumption that you want the best people possible and that those people will have plenty of great alternatives to working for you. Do your best to get your company's name in front of those people and to convince them that they'd have a rewarding time if they joined your team.

I trust Thomas's experience in identifying and recruiting talent far more than I do a career WSJ reporter's [1] trend spotting.

[1] <http://www.linkedin.com/pub/rachel-emma-silverman/31/331/507>

<comment><USER3> _Prized developers aren't going to participate in many coding-contest-as- hiring-lottery situations unless they're just really interested in the problem._

For a competent developer, a "cover letter brainteaser" that takes an hour to do is essentially equivalent to a $100+ application fee (in terms of opportunity cost).

<comment><USER4> I actually haven't applied to Google specifically because they require at least 6 interviews. Maybe they wouldn't want me anyway, but we're certainly not going to find out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's funny how the answer to not getting enough interest from qualified candidates is to make it more troublesome and time consuming to apply so that only unemployed people will bother.

It's often heard that 3 page CVs are an abomination since no one has time to trawl through all that. But now, doing a video interview just to apply is OK to require, at least according to this article.

Where I work, CVs with cover letters are fine, links to web presences are fine, if someone wants to send a DVD or link to a private youtube exhortation that's also fine. Whatever works for the candidate we'll look at it.

It can be tedious to sort through all these CVs, assuming your company is able to get any relevant applications at all. But that's the price of acquiring talented people. Hiring someone for a creative job like development is as tricky as selecting a spouse to get married. It's a long term commitment that will affect both of you profoundly. It's not the same as buying a pound of hamburger.

<comment><USER6> Not to mention that I don't hae a twitter account, linked in profile of note, or really any meaningful web presence. I'm kind of busy actually _making_ things.

<comment><USER7> This. I think instead of spending your time online being a blowhard on twitter or your blog or wherever, you should be making things. Github, twitter, a blog, whatever should just be artifacts created as a by-product of making things.

The ideal employer who doesn't want resumes should be able to tell the difference between these two things.

<comment><USER2> Better still to spend _most_ of your time making amazing things and then _just enough_ time promoting them so as to generate a bit of notoriety.

Jeremy Ashkenas, Yehuda Katz, and Zed Shaw each build great things and give them away to the community. They also blog about these great things and they show up here on Hacker News to encourage discussion of their work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Am I the only one who sees tons of red flags the moment a job opening requires a video? It feels to me like the ivy league tradition of the in-person interview. Ivy league administrators tell themselves it's easier to judge an applicant's character and suitability in person, but in practice it turns into another way to ensure that the table tilts in favor correct ethnicity and income level.

Am I wrong to see the same thing in a video application? The more cash and connections you have, the better video you're able to create. Don't tell me the hiring manager won't notice the applicant in the $1500 suit with the professional (but not too professional) video.

<comment><USER9> Pre-recorded videos seem like a supremely silly job interview requirement. Recording a video is nothing like talking to a human being, and ability to execute videos is a learnable skill, not a marker of innate ability, so it's weird to optimize a process around it.

But USV can create any requirement they'd like, and they'll still get candidates, because a role at USV is a prestige job. They might just as well require candidates to compose a freestyle rap about their accomplishments; it wouldn't cost them candidates.

<comment><USER10> When I was unemployed and desperate for any job I could find I attended some monumentally stupid job interviews.

Being asked questions about your favorite superhero power or simpsons character or which of their list of offensive unlikable celebrities I would rather date.

I think part of the process sometimes is figuring out how far you will go to humiliate yourself for them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Personally, I love this trend - I last updated my resume 3 years ago and haven't sent it anywhere since. I just direct people to my portfolio (link in profile) which has all the stuff I built. Much easier that way.

But in my previous life, I was an enterprise Java developer in the financial industry. None of the projects I built are online - they're all proprietary B2B applications. It's some of the best work I've ever did, yet no one will ever find out about it online. The only way for me to tell this story is through the resume.

How do people like that supposed to present themselves, in this new hot social media environment?

<comment><USER12> One option: Word of your skill travels at approximately the speed of beer. (i.e. Try traditional networking.)

You can also have a web presence about the work which does not actually include the work. Talk about an interesting sub-problem which is non- proprietary. Talk about architecture choices. Talk about the tech you used and the problems you overcame while using it. Write about how firms in the financial industry are missing opportunities to throw Java at problems and make heaps of money.

<comment><USER13> Why should I have to do that, outside of work, in order to get another job? I'm happy with my current work, and that means that I'm not trying to go out of my way to find additional projects on the side. I have hobbies I'd rather be doing outside of work that don't involve computers. I don't feel that it should be necessary to prove to any potential employer that I'm working outside of work.

<comment><USER12> It's not necessary. Exercise isn't necessary, either. It's a good idea for almost everybody, and even if you dislike the activity doing it probably improves outcomes for things you actually do like, but no one will force you to do it.

<comment><USER10> The problem is I think that it puts some people at a much bigger advantage over others.

A 20something who works at a funky startup and writes for their corporate blog and gets paid to spend 20% of his time contributing to the rails codebase or something.

vs somebody older (or maybe not) who works 60+ hours a week in a corporate (possibly non IT) organization which has strict corporate blogging policies (i.e don't blog about work) and has a family to look after.

I can see a lot of crap getting thrown up and github and mediocre blog entries written prior to interviews.

I think this article sums it up fairly well: [http://teddziuba.com/2009/10/i-dont-code-in-my-free- time.htm...](http://teddziuba.com/2009/10/i-dont-code-in-my-free-time.html)

<comment><USER2> This is a sales problem. You can have the best product in the world and you still won't get the customers you want without a solid pitch and some networking.

Ted's post about not favoring github et al in applicant screening is one thing, but an aspiring employee who chooses to forego some easy and visible self-promotion has only himself to blame when he doesn't get the same opportunities as someone willing to meet hiring companies at their point of need.

To hire someone you have to find them, vet them, and entice them with the right deal. People who make themselves easier to find and to vet are going to get better deals on average.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hmm. I'm inclined to believe this is unfair to people who might be just as competent and productive as those whose work is "out in the open", but can't share or reveal anything for some valid reason.

This is common inside the Valley and outside it. Around here, a certain fruit- based computer company advises its employees not to reveal specifically to outsiders exactly what it is they work on. People who write code for big, technical but non-software firms (defense contractors etc) similarly have nothing to show (publicly) for their efforts.

It's nice to imagine that everyone works for some fun little startup that lets you blog and contribute to open source and has everything up on github, but the reality is that if you limit the search to those candidates, you will find the talent pool pretty insular. Some highly competent and very desirable people are locked away in big companies where they're not allowed to make a big fuss about what they're doing. For them, the traditional resumé is still very valuable.

<comment><USER2> Too-secret-to-blog-about work has a hefty opportunity cost and must be priced accordingly by a would-be employee.

When faced with the choice between unverifiable secret work or highly visible work (open source, name brand employer, etc.), be sure your compensation expectations are weighted to match the future marketability of the experience you stand to gain on the job.

It would be nice if prospective employers could _just know_ that you are out there and that you are competent. Realistically they are going to prefer the safe bet presented by a known-good contributor with an impressive public portfolio.

Edit: rephrased to clarify my work sorting heuristic.

<comment><USER9> That cuts both ways. If a track record of accomplishment in open source has market value, then companies offering that benefit can provide lower salaries. If on the whole open source software roles pay less, you can expect a different demographic of developers to work in those roles.

I don't really believe that exposure to open source projects has that much market value, though. I also think it's probably very hard to run a dev hiring pipeline that expects to primarily recruit people from open source projects. There are a _whole lot_ of very talented developers who have spent their careers doing closed-source (i.e.: normal) software development.

<comment><USER13> I don't think that dpritchett was talking about open source vs closed source work. He was talking more about NDA-covered work, which could be on open or closed source code.

For most of the "normal" closed source work, it's easy to say that you worked on X product or feature, and can talk about some of the challenges that you encountered with it.

Contrast that with defense contract work that requires classified clearance. If you're a developer on that, you will most likely never be able to talk about it to most recruiters or interviewers before you retire. There is no way to actually talk about what you've done with the general public. That can hurt a career, especially if it puts a black hole in your experience on a resume.

<comment><USER9> Ah, I didn't pick that up from the thread. Fair enough; I agree, if you can't even talk about what you're working on in a future job interview, you should price that into your comp.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I really dislike this model. While it makes it extremely easy for companies to covertly use a prejudice filter on applicants, it makes it really hard for a person to have a social life on the web that's entirely different from their work ethos.

<comment><USER10> True, if you have a twitter account filled with links to pictures of yourself drunk at titty bars your potential employer might be able to find it but I don't see how it serves anybodies interests to explicitly point them to it.

Will be interesting (and scary) to see what happens as social media permeates more of our lives and makes things public.

Will we end up with a situation where employers will enforce strict rules about out of hours conduct of employees so as not to reflect badly on them, Orwellian Society?

Or will everyone have so much dirt on everyone else that it just stops to matter anymore, this could in fact lead to a more honest and liberal society.

<comment><USER16> > Or will everyone have so much dirt on everyone else that it just stops to > matter anymore, this could in fact lead to a more honest and liberal > society.

I think we already have that (well, at least at the medium-to-large-company level), it's called company Christmas parties.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I really used to value the internet as a "third space" like a bar, or a club. I don't really want it to become an extension of my work persona. I will adapt I suppose, I have started to make a conscious effort to build a presence under my real name. But honestly, how much management of my online presence must should I really be expected to do?

</comment><comment><USER18> It's a very interesting topic. I've worked at a company where we would get a stack of applications (about 1500) over night (right before the deadline of course) and the crappy tracker system we used would crash. Even worse I searched for a reasonable alternative, but simply couldn't find one that was SIMPLE. Sure there're plenty of bloated CRMs out there, and even some honest efforts like jobvite and interview street. But I couldn't find the right balance of simple tracking and review/screening features. So, as PG once suggested, I went and built my own.

It's still in dev mode but we've gotten pretty good responses from potential customers so far. Some of the issues we've tried to tackle has been the resume "problem" as discussed here. The thing is, resumes are much more than the content they hold. The design of the page, the choosing of words and descriptions, how to weight the important stuff etc. You can tell a lot about a person by looking at their 'paper' resume. It's almost like judging a person by their handwriting, though this metric is sort of skewed since everyone I know, myself included, has developed crummy handwriting ever since spending 10+ hours/day communicating via a keyboard.

An interesting point-of-view I've seen a lot of places is the obvious, yet under-prioritized factoring of values and soft skills. Personally, I think it's naïve to think you can attract "the best, the top 1%" of coders, managers, product devs and so on. What would be far more valuable in terms of hiring would be to find those people that would actually fit the company culture and team the best. Skills can be learned, but personal values and interests can't. So a silly manager might ask for someone under 30 with 15 years of experience in C#, Java, Ruby, and some html/css for good measure. Yet, this is the skewed metric to evaluate on. Instead, they should find the person who finds the problem they're meant to solve interesting and someone who would fit well into the company and the team. If the candidate 'only' knows C++ and Python, it's far easier for them to get up-to-date on the company program running on Ruby than trying to force the 'ideal hard skill candidate' into a culture he/she's not comfortable in. Prioritizing candidates in terms of soft skills and values are actually one of the pillars of the program I'm working on. It's a tough nut to crack..

Another issue we've talked about is how to evaluate someone with a minimum of screening bias? There's so much bias going into an evaluation of a person, and it's a well-known issue that we tend to look for people similar to ourselves - even though it might not be what the company is actually looking for. So, if the application tracker could enable "blind" mode and switch off certain information like pictures, names, tests scores etc. it could potentially negate some of the bias involved in screening. Even letting multiple people rate a candidate could negate some of it, yet the work flow used in most HR departments simply don't allow for this kind of flexibility.

Long rant, interesting topic.

</comment><comment><USER19> Probably the best reason to forsake the traditional resume is to keep incompetent "headhunter" agencies away. I annihilated my linkedin profile a couple years ago, and keep just a tar.gz of a HAML formatted resume on my site.

</comment><comment><USER20> A resume is helpful, but reputation is paramount. Their decision reflects an already existing pattern:

code -> git repository

design -> portfolio

investment analysis -> written opinion & prediction

<comment><USER21> Engineering Manager?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> As an owner of a software company, handing me or anyone else at the company a resume is actually a (slight) negative. It means you're handing it out to anyone who will take it, and you haven't done the research on our company.

One can certainly overcome such a tiny black mark, though, since we definitely forgive ignorance in the strange ways we sometimes do things.

</comment><comment><USER23> A large part of it is unrealistic expectations.

I just went through another useless gig interview,was in fact upfront about that I ask for 50% advance on project dev costs and get miss-directed when I ask directly if they understand that its not a suggestion.

<comment><USER20> Depends on the scale of the project. Something small, sure. But if it's a 6-month project, it's unreasonable (should do deposit/retainer along with regular payments).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Using Twitter, Tumblr, and Linkdin to determine suitability is like asking Dick Chaney if he's a nice guy.

The results can and are easily stacked through bogus accounts.

If a company thinks that professionals use those sites for professional reasons, then I question the professionalism of the company.

</comment><comment><USER25> But would you want to work for news corp some of us have standards and working for known hackers and serious criminals like NI is probably going to be a black mark.

Hacking a retired SIS officers pc is far more serious than VMB'ing some poor murdered girls phone for example.

</comment><comment><USER26> We are trying to solve this exact problem at GitHire. See <http://www.githire.com/about> for more about our process.

There are a lot of problems with resumes that have been brought up again and again. Many companies we are working with welcome the change.

For those of you who still want to play the resume game, and don't want to spend your off-work hours contributing to open source, or building a web presence, don't worry. There will be plenty of job openings for you at companies who like to do things the old way.

<comment><USER24> So want people to blow off NDAs for your karma? Fail.</comment></comment>


Creativity is often spurred by ignorance - <AUTHOR> http://fsce.in/13Hidhn7

<comment><USER2> This is so true. I've seen it with my own experience -- had I know what I know today about the industry I'm in, I probably wouldn't have started my business. But a decade ago, I knew nothing, and, well, ignorance was bliss (and worked!)

I think this is also, to some extent, why Silicon Valley seems to favor young entrepreneurs -- not because youth has some fundamental "betterness" to it, but because when a seasoned vet gives 100 ways an idea can fail (because he's seen them happen), an idealistic entrepreneur waves them away -- "bah - not an issue."

They're both right to some extent -- there are 100, 1000, 10000 ways an idea can fail, and the more you know, the more reasons you can come up with to avoid starting. But people still start crazy businesses, people still take risks, and entrepreneurs still do their thing with blissful reckless abandon (as they should!) :)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is misleading. They were wrong in two cases.

1\. They underestimated the difficulty and cost of the project.

2\. They underestimated the profitability of the project.

Had their estimations been more accurate, they would have realized that it would have been profitable even at 10x the original estimate.

They got lucky. Someone with more accurate estimates would have gotten the funding and succeeded as well - but had the project been unprofitable, his more accurate estimates would have steered him away from it.

While ignorance may lead to more attempts on average, it will also create less value in the long term, as more of those attempts will fail. An entrepreneur with better knowledge is more likely to succeed.

</comment><comment><USER4> I dunno, maybe the factories would have relocated had the route not been there. Minmax finds a way.

However, the general point about creativity remains, and I find myself relying every day on free software projects which would not have been engaged in by an economically rational individual.</comment>


Potential Half-Life 3 plot posted by retired series writer Marc Laidlaw - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/08/half-life-3-plot-marc-laidlaw/ <comment><AUTHOR> Someone on r/halflife has pointed out that it is 10 years since Laidlaw retired. And that that was the purported expiration date for his NDA: [https://www.reddit.com/r/HalfLife/comments/6vvn00/a_laidlaw_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/HalfLife/comments/6vvn00/a_laidlaw_thing_that_you_might_want_to_see/dm3eql8/)</comment>


Quantum Leaps, Long Assumed to Be Instantaneous, Take Time - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/quantum-leaps-long-assumed-to-be-instantaneous-take-time-20190605/ <comment><USER2> This headline is deeply misleading. It is true that energy states are quantized. It does NOT follow that the transition between them is "instantaneous". The transition has always been known to be gradual, but the "gradualness" is not a smooth transition in the energy of the system, it's a smooth transition between being in one energy state to being in a superposition of two energy states to being entirely in the second energy state. That process plays out over (typically a very short but nonetheless non-zero) time. This has been known since the very beginning of QM.

What's news here is that this transition, which has always been predicted by theory, has been experimentally observed for the first time.

<comment><USER3> I have questions: you describe the change of states of particle as

        "a smooth transition between being in one energy state to
        being in a superposition of two energy states to being
        entirely in the second energy state."

At the terminus of this transition, is the particle no longer in a superposition? IE there is now a 100% chance it's in the second state and 0% chance that it's in the original state?

If so, does that imply that the function of the particle's state (with respect to time) is discontinuous? Since there's a point at which it goes from being a superposition to exactly 0%.

<comment><USER2> That's a very good question. It has two answers.

The first answer is that a system is never 100% in any particular state because that would violate the uncertainty principle. When we speak of a system "definitely" being in a particular state that's an approximation/simplification. It actually means that the system is in a superposition of some range of states that for all intents and purposes we can treat as being the same, and the probability of it being in a state that cannot be treated the same for all intents and purposes is so close to zero we can ignore that.

The second answer is that whether or not a system is in a superposition depends on your point of view. A system can only ever be in a "single state" (according to the above approximation) with respect to some observable, and if it is in a single state with respect to that observable then it is necessarily in a superposition with respect to the complementary observable, e.g. a particle that is in a definite state with respect to position is necessarily in a superposition with respect to velocity.

So the whole process is everywhere and always continuous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> While not a perfect analogy, if I understand this properly, essentially if electrons jumping states were pitching in an unregulated game of baseball, the chances a pitcher will toss the ball increases as time goes on and previously we thought the ball just appeared over the plate instantaneously when that random time occurred.

But instead, while you still don't know when exactly, you do know there will be a wind up for the pitch before the ball is thrown, and we can see this windup, and we can time things to hit the ball, or shoot the pitcher with a blowdart and keep the pitch from happening.

So if there are systems in certain configurations to which this property is applicable to, and if we needed to keep things in that configuration until a time of our choosing, for instance if a state change occurs it would have cascading effects, we can do so.

<comment><USER5> So god doesn't play dice, she plays poker.

<comment><USER6> How do you get poker from that?

<comment><USER5> Both are games of chance, but dice has no tells.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a quantum physicist: This might be an interesting experiment, but as far as the theory goes, this is exactly what is to be expected from standard quantum mechanics.

Quantum leaps being instantaneous would be a (possibly common) misconception.

The leap in a quantum leap is describing the notion of a discrete jump in measurement outcomes.

<comment><USER8> Okay, so you're a quantum physicist and you can answer my question!

My understanding of QM is that a quantum's system's state is suddenly and discontinuously changed by a measurement.

My understanding of this article is a bit confused, and I think that there are two possible things we could be seeing: 1\. Quantum collapses of superpositions actually do take time ("This Changes Everything") 2\. This particular quantum system is not actually being measured, but is oscillating in superposition in some odd way. ("Just a Particular System")

Which case is it?

<comment><USER7> That would be 2.

What's done in such an experiment is that we initialize a quantum state in a particular state (that this is possible is not actually obvious, but let's assume it's true) and then we make a lot of repeated measurements after different amounts of times.

So we're not talking about a single system, but instead about statistics about a set of measurements with systems that have been set up in the same initial state. (Each system only being measured once after a certain time after it's being set up).

<comment><USER8> Gotcha, so the ideas of "Shut Up and Calculate" QM about wavefunction collapse for ideal systems aren't incomplete.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I guess I'm kind of confused on what the discovery is; we have a quantum system evolving unitarily from one state at t_0 to another state at t, and the probability of measuring the system in one of two discrete states changes continuously as well (despite the actual measurement outcome being discrete). I thought this has been known for a long time, implied by the time dependent Schrodinger equation, so I didn't quite catch from the Quanta article what is new, mathematically. Can anyone clarify?

<comment><USER10> _> I didn't quite catch from the Quanta article what is new, mathematically_

Nothing is new. This experiment is simply confirming a prediction of standard QM. All the talk about "quantum jumps" and how something has supposedly changed about the way we understand them is just pop science reporters misunderstanding the actual science.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you're a lay person like me and you want to make sense of this, read "Einstein's Unfinished Revolution: The Search for What Lies Beyond the Quantum" by Lee Smolin. It was just published recently, and it anticipates this result!

[https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/316818/einsteins- un...](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/316818/einsteins-unfinished- revolution-by-lee-smolin/9781594206191/)

<comment><USER12> I just it but don't recall where he predicted this. Do you remember what he said?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Uhm...forgive me for asking, but a continuous quantum jump is...what exactly?

How is this in any way consistent with the rest of quantum mechanics?

Edit: I don't mean to sound snide, I am genuinely confused about what this experiment means.

<comment><USER14> It's a process of transition between two distinct states. Say a bit flips from 0 to 1; there is a short time period during which that bit is physically "in transition", but it would be incorrect to say that the bit has a value of, say, 0.5 during the transition.

Also remember that quantum mechanics is a way to make statistical predictions of outcomes of certain experiments; it does not claim to explain what is _actually happening_ underneath.

<comment><USER15> I strongly disagree with your second paragraph. Quantum theories do, we think, correspond to what is _actually happening_ underneath. They might not be perfect correspondences, in that our theories are incomplete or approximate, in the same way that Newtonian gravity is an approximation of General Relativity in the weak-gravity regime.

Bell's inequality places a strong constraint on what sort of physical theories can explain quantum phenomena. If you believe in locality (the universe has no global variables, and information propagates outwards through local interactions), then the wavefunction is a real thing, and the actual state of the universe.

<comment><USER14> The formalisms of quantum mechanics are widely accepted, but as you know, there is considerable disagreement about what may actually be happening underneath:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_m...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_mechanics)

(Aside: Bell's theorem additionally requires one to dismiss the possibility of superdeterminism.)

<comment><USER13> So this is what I do not understand about Bell's Theorem: it seems to dismiss in the assumptions the possibility of determinism (I don't understand where the super comes from, as there is no distinction) and then goes on to conclude "Hey, there must be fundamental randomness". Didn't we just assume the conclusion?

<comment><USER15> It does not assume from the outset that there is no determinism. It sets bounds on the types of results that you can get with deterministic local variables. Those bounds are violated in the real world. Hence, the universe is either quantum mechanical, or there exist hidden nonlocal variables that give the illusion of quantum behavior.

<comment><USER14> Bell:

 _There is a way to escape the inference of superluminal speeds and spooky action at a distance. But it involves absolute determinism in the universe, the complete absence of free will. Suppose the world is super-deterministic, with not just inanimate nature running on behind-the-scenes clockwork, but with our behavior, including our belief that we are free to choose to do one experiment rather than another, absolutely predetermined, including the "decision" by the experimenter to carry out one set of measurements rather than another, the difficulty disappears. There is no need for a faster than light signal to tell particle A what measurement has been carried out on particle B, because the universe, including particle A, already "knows" what that measurement, and its outcome, will be._

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

I think it's useful to be clear about the dividing line between demonstrated scientific results and our scientific intuitions, even when those intuitions are driven by observed patterns that have been reliable in the past. Intuitions are excellent drivers for formulating new theories and experiments, but it is epistemically dangerous to conflate beliefs and knowledge in our minds.

<comment><USER13> > Suppose the world is super-deterministic, with not just inanimate nature > running on behind-the-scenes clockwork, but with our behavior, including our > belief that we are free to choose to do one experiment rather than another, > absolutely predetermined, including the "decision" by the experimenter to > carry out one set of measurements rather than another, the difficulty > disappears.

You see, I think Bell is kind of obfuscating here: this is just normal determinism and it seems to me like Lagrange would have been perfectly fine with this. Causality only, even for the atoms that happen to reside in a human brain.

Edit: what do you mean with your last paragraph? Because I interpret it like this: the belief that interferes is that we have free will and can choose and basically change the past (counterfactuals). But I have a hunch that you mean it like: QM is weird, be careful.

<comment><USER14> My understanding is that the "super" in superdeterminism is just making clear that we are considering the experimenter completely determined as well, but yes, they are essentially the same thing.

Last paragraph I mean what you interpret — our everyday experience of "free will" may blind us to certain possibilities that we have no strong evidence for or against, just as our everyday experience of a classical world makes QM seem "weird" and unintuitive, even when the experimental evidence is well- established.

There's a particular curiosity when the possibility of a world without free will calls into question the extent of the power of science itself. Are there other techniques that can provide satisfying arguments about the potential nature of reality in a world where we cannot rely on the power of experiment to reveal this nature?

<comment><USER13> I think it does call into question the power of science, but also: assuming non-determinism does not give us this power back! If materials (atoms / humans) can arbitrarily disregard the laws of nature by making choices (however that would be implemented), what does an experiment even mean?

Edit:

This is a relevant theorem, that nicely complements Bell:

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Tangentially related request: I'm frequently very impressed with how many HN users seem to have a pretty solid grasp of physics (or maybe the right term is quantum mechanics?) and I'd love to be able to follow along but my science education more or else ended with high school. Could anyone recommend a good resource for someone with zero knowledge of this space to get very basic foundation?

<comment><USER17> You might want to check out [http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/theorist.html](http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/theorist.html), [http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~gadda001/goodtheorist/index....](http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~gadda001/goodtheorist/index.html)

<comment><USER16> Wow! This is quite a gem, thanks! I can pinpoint exactly where on this list my physics knowledge drops off.

You should submit this to the main page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Natura Facit Saltus or No" was something Schrodinger wrote in 1952! (does nature jump or no?) Of course it's a continuous process, how else would water flow? As they mention in the article, here's the link to Schrodinger's paper "ARE THERE QUANTUM LEAPS?" [https://academic.oup.com/bjps/article- abstract/III/11/233/14...](https://academic.oup.com/bjps/article- abstract/III/11/233/1456020)

</comment><comment><USER19> Preprint: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.00545](https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.00545)

</comment><comment><USER20> Here's an interesting passage:

> "The strategy reveals that quantum measurement is not about the physical > perturbation induced by the probe but about what you know (and what you > leave unknown) as a result. "Absence of an event can bring as much > information as its presence," said Devoret."

</comment><comment><USER21> If a quantum system is going to transition between two states that have different energy, would we not expect it to take a time specified by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle? If the change in energy is delta E, would we not expect the transition to take delta T = h bar/delta E?

<comment><USER10> _> would we not expect it to take a time specified by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle?_

There isn't actually an energy-time version of the uncertainty principle, at least not the simple one you're assuming here, although many pop science presentations talk as if there is. A good article discussing this is here:

[http://www.math.ucr.edu/home/baez/uncertainty.html](http://www.math.ucr.edu/home/baez/uncertainty.html)

For a quantum system transitioning between states, the probability of transition in general will vary as a function of time; how it varies depends on the specific state of the system. There is no general rule that relates the expected transition time to the change in energy. (Note also that not all transitions are between energy eigenstates.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I feel like this could have profound implications on a macro level, but I'm not sure what.

</comment><comment><USER23> I like the way they circumvented observation of the dark state. Very clever, and a very interesting result.

There seems to be some sort of "hidden variable" there... can anyone explain it?

<comment><USER24> If I am understanding the article correctly, there is no hidden variable implied. Quantum physics claims changes are random, with nothing precise and determinate underneath that causes this. Think of the example of flipping a coin. It's random, but for each flip if you had exact data for the movement of the coin as it left your hand, you would presumably be able to predict if it would land heads or tails. Quantum physics claims that for events at the quantum level, there is nothing definite underneath that determines what will happen, it is just fundamental randomness. The hidden variable idea is that there is something definite underneath, we just haven't discovered it yet.

What the experiment seems to have found is only that the probability of an event occurring changes smoothly over time from 0 to 1, not that there is some underlying exact cause for what the probability is at a given point in time.

<comment><USER23> They detected a quiet period of slower transitions before the spontaneous drop to the middle state... this implies that "something" happens prior to the transition.

They were able to detect this "something", and even prevent the state change.

In my mind, that "something" represents a hidden state or something like it within the synthetic atom.

<comment><USER24> The trouble is there are some strong arguments against that idea, so quantum physicists tend to assume that such "somethings" just don't exist. Yes, that is very counter-intuitive, but that is one reason quantum physics is so weird.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> In physics if you wait long enough, everything you know will have changed: often it happens on many scales at once.

</comment><comment><USER26> Amazing. What is the energy of the system while it's in transition? I guess they're arguing superposition of 1 and 0, continuously sliding to a higher likelihood with time. I mean, eventually a photon is emitted, and that can't be continuous. I guess I'll have to read the preprint.

</comment><comment><USER27> >..to be instantaneous...

By which frame of reference? I never understood the language around "instantaneous". Isn't simultaneity relative? So that where one frame of reference says two events are simultaneous, there or others that say they are not?

<comment><USER28> The old quantum theory was developed in non-relativistic setting, so this was not a concern. But you are right, relativity complicates lots of things in quantum theory, including the idea of "instantaneous" quantum jumps. In relativity, if some event is to be universally instantaneous, then it has to happen at a single point of space. Which is possible with point particles, but then you get the problem how those point particles can find each other to interact at a single point so often as measured cross sections indicate... perhaps they are not exactly points, but waves, but then we can't have instantaneous events, the event has to happen to the wave in big region of space where simultaneity is relative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> "Another text saying that the founding fathers of quantum mechanics were not only wrong but idiots, as some current geniuses revealed. In reality, it's the other way around, of course. [...] I don't think it makes sense for me to discuss the paper and Ball's summary more deeply. One would have to correct every sentence that is wrong or at least misleading – which is basically every sentence both in Ball's text as well as the text in Nature."

[https://motls.blogspot.com/2019/06/experimenters-and- especia...](https://motls.blogspot.com/2019/06/experimenters-and- especially.html)

<comment><USER30> Any statement by Motl regarding the work of other physicists should be taken with a heap of salt.

[https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Lubo%C5%A1_Motl](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Lubo%C5%A1_Motl)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> My undereducated guess is that there is nothing random about it. We just don't understand the underlying workings of the system enough yet.

<comment><USER32> Your view was the consensus view among physicists until Bell's Inequality was verified to be violated. Now it's the minority view.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Does this imply anything about the Many Worlds Interpretation [1]? I am not a physicist (IANAP?), but if states change continuously vs discretely... should that not discount MWI?

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many- worlds_interpretation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many- worlds_interpretation)

<comment><USER34> It does not. The could be a continuum of universes... or something.

</comment></comment><comment> Ono-Sendai well, obviously. This was always pretty clear to anyone who put some serious thought into it. Did anyone really think electrons just magically jump from state to state? There is a real physical process there that takes time.

<comment><USER35> > _well, obviously. This was always pretty clear to anyone who put some > serious thought into it. Did anyone really think electrons just magically > jump from state to state?_

Only prominent QM scientists. Amateur pundits always knew that they don't magically jump.

<comment><USER28> There is a famous story about a guy trying to convince Niels Bohr in 60's that quantum transitions in different molecules close to each other can coherently influence each other and result in amplified emission of coherent radiation. Bohr utters something in the sense that is impossible, quantum transitions are random, photons are not correlated, so the molecules can never cooperate. The guy didn't take the prominent QM scientist too seriously, went on and built the device. He was the famous Charles Townes, one of discoverers of the maser/laser effect. Of course, he knew the transitions aren't instantaneous but take time and mutual interaction of molecules and mirrors can synchronize them.

<comment><USER35> So is the moral of the story that everybody (or close) that doubts some consensus in physics is a misunderstood genius?

There's also 1000 times more stories of crackpots "knowing" everything, from how to do cold fusion, to perpetual machines, to why Relativity or QM is wrong, etc. They even have the diagrams and math to show you they're right.

And yes, some of them even "knew" things verified later - if you have random unsupported opinions some of those will also be legit.

Unless the parent had some actual proof for their insight before the verification, the phrase "This was always pretty clear to anyone who put some serious thought into it" (as if physicists who didn't regard this didn't) is as good as someone saying the same about a coin toss ("hey, it turned out to be heads, anyone could see that").

<comment><USER28> No, the story is interesting because it shows the authorities on the subject do get things wrong, and because Townes and many other important scientists knew that the simple idea of instantaneous quantum jumps due to Bohr and Heisenberg and maybe Pauli (I think these three were one the most prominent proponents) wasn't that well secured by the general quantum theory and by the experiments.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Guardian Mobile Innovation Lab: New Podcast Mobile UX - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-guardian-mobile-innovation-lab/uncovering-the-potential-of-mobile-audio-a-new-experimental-player-and-a-new-show-f2eb13af0665 <comment><USER2> For Mobile app development services refer [https://www.hokuapps.com/services/mobile-application- develop...](https://www.hokuapps.com/services/mobile-application-development/)</comment>


Statistics of 62K Passwords - <AUTHOR> http://www.codelord.net/2011/06/18/statistics-of-62k-passwords/

<comment><USER2> I'm sure nobody is surprised that the most common passwords are "123456", "password", etc. There is a perception in communities like ours that the average user is completely inept and shouldn't be trusted to create a secure password, but I have to wonder how many of these passwords are actually designed to be secure.

I often use enormously unsecure passwords when "signing up" for sites that require registration to continue. I've probably created dozens of accounts around the web with logins like 'qwerty:qwerty' or 'qwer4321:qwerfdsa'. This isn't because I'm a moron, it's because I will never need to access the account again and I therefore don't care about security. "qwerty" is easier to type into a password field twice (for confirmation) than "glxCdsXX3_2".

I would be interested in seeing an analysis of the actual usage of accounts with the most common passwords. It would be interesting to have a bot log into a large amount of cracked accounts and download any usage history or generated data that would indicate how often the account has been used. My guess is that a significant number of the common-password accounts would have the same date for "first created" and "last login". That data could be used to weight the frequencies of the common passwords and paint a much more interesting picture.

</comment><comment><USER3> The 10th most common password was far too interesting for me to ignore. While it is fairly easy to type, its not easy enough for it to be some sort of tap- password.

Having a closer look at the list, and assuming the dump is organised in some sort of chronological creation order, you can see that all the accounts which use that password are created in several tight groups, share a fairly common username theme (mostly female names), and use a fairly narrow selection of email providers. I would guess they were made by a bot.

<comment><USER4> Yup, the article also says:

> My guess would have to be it's some worm that resets the accounts it hacked > into to it.

<comment><USER3> Ah thanks, I need to learn to read gooder. The password got me so curious I couldn't even finish reading the sentence.

Edit: Thinking about his explanation, it doesn't really make sense to me. If that were really the case, those accounts would be more evenly distributed through the list - yet they are tightly clustered, which leads me to think they were created in groups (guessing the list has some sort of chronological order).

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure what you mean by "clustered".

Where are you looking at the clustering?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We built a "password strengthener" the other day. During the analysis phase, we ran our passwords database (~10M accounts) against a dictionary. We wanted to do this to ban the top ten most common used words among other things. The results beyond top 10 were completely different than the ones pointed here by the OP, the first 10 were almost exactly the same.

My take is that this depends considerably in your target audience, I'm not disclosing which team I'm a member of, but if you run the same analysis to come up with ideas on how to enforce users to chose better passwords, you'll see how different the result are going to look.

<comment><USER7> This implies that you're storing plaintext or unsalted hashed passwords, right? What's the use case where this is necessary?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> you can look at the password histogram here: [http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/LulzSecPasswordBreak...](http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/LulzSecPasswordBreakdown/PasswordDashboard?:embed=yes&:toolbar=yes&:tabs=yes)

tableau public tends to be a little slow, tho.

</comment><comment><USER8> Ran it against /etc/dictionaries-common/words (en_US), 16% matches.</comment>


Poor choice of OpenSocial community board seat candiates, is it all over? - <AUTHOR> http://www.opensocial.org/page/community-elections-2011 <comment><AUTHOR> Compared to quality of last year's community board seat candidates [1] _(and certainly 2008's [2])_ this year's set seem very poor. I wonder if this indicates the community is dead?

[1] [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sourceid=chrome...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=cache:http://www.opensocial.org/page/community- elections-2010)

[2] [http://blog.opensocial.org/2008/10/rock-vote-opensocial- foun...](http://blog.opensocial.org/2008/10/rock-vote-opensocial- foundations.html)

</comment><comment><USER2> How is Evan Prodromou a poor candidate? I don't know him personally, but he seems to have solid credentials.</comment>


Software on Librem 5 and PinePhone Linux Phones Is Progressing Nicely - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnx-software.com/2019/06/06/software-development-librem-5-pinephone-linux-phones/ <comment><USER2> If these devices are useable it could start a movement away from Apple and Google's ecosystems. Smart phones are no longer novel and iPhone releases don't have the same excitement they used to. We're getting to the point where the technology is cheap and developed enough that 3rd parties can develop their own, where before Apple and Google were the only projects with enough information to innovate on what was already out their.

In the same way IBM used to dominate the computer market but now we have raspberry pi's with just as much power but available for basically nothing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for posting this, I hadn't heard about the PinePhone at all. Very interesting price point ($149 for the 2GB version)!

I just hope they can get the UI smooth and responsive. All UIs of Linux phones I've used in the past (Ubuntu Touch, OpenMoko) had a laggy UI which made them unpleasant to use even if you disregard all the other usability issues. And it wasn't the hardware's fault. The same phone wasn't slow when using Android instead of Ubuntu Touch.

I'd rather have a more bland yet snappy UI than a lot of eye candy.

<comment><USER4> The Wayland based Jolla phones are very responsive in my opinion (uses Android and Jolla regularly)

<comment><USER3> Good point, SailfishOS is snappy and smooth from what I remember.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A potentially huge difference between the Purism Librem 5 and the Pine64 products is that Purism is emphasizing privacy and security.

Both companies are based in countries believed to compel compromises sometimes, but my current gut feel is I'd rather have a Librem 5.

I currently have a dumbphone, and a trail of nonworking PostmarketOS, Replicant, and FirefoxOS devices. If we could get the Librem 5 software working reasonably well atop PostmarketOS, that would provide a less-secure "budget" option for getting more people onto the platform, for people who can't swing several hundred dollars. Even were Purism to later introduce a budget device, open source and not being locked to their devices would be an encouraging sign for adopting the platform.

<comment><USER6> > A potentially huge difference between the Purism Librem 5 and the Pine64 > products is that Purism is emphasizing privacy and security.

Dunno, PinePhone is said to have physical switches too.

Also all you need for privacy is complete control of the OS, which you will have on PinePhone (complete mainline Linux support, down to GPU drivers). It doesn't matter what country the HW vendor is from if the OS/bootloader is fully controlled by the user.

Main thing that will hold PinePhone back initially is lack of suspend to ram support. There are some partial solutions (WIP crust firmware), bit it's not complete, yet. There's still time though.

PinePhone will be the first smartphone I'll buy, regardless of SW support, as I'd like to play with the HW anyway. I already had plenty of fun with other mobile Allwinner SoCs in form of a A83T based tablet, and A64 is quite similar to that and very familiar to me. So all the SW I already wrote for the tablet will be easily re-targettable for PinePhone.

It will be interesting to see how Pine64 will make it usable for regular people. But for me as a programmer, it's will be a very nice device that I'll be able to fully control and experiment with without any limits. Even the power management co-processor is fully user programmable and has support in gcc toolchain since gcc 9.1.

<comment><USER5> Hardware backdoors is one real thing (the hardware is mostly closed black boxes), and that's a concern on both devices. Cutoff switches, baseband isolation, etc. don't solve everything.

BTW, that's great news about upstreamed kernel and toolchain support. IIUC, an earlier problem with some of those tablets was that there were hundreds of variations, and good luck getting a mainline kernel on any of them, or finding a second tablet if you got the first one booting with all the devices.

<comment><USER6> Well not completely black, for example Quectel modem on PinePhone is running it's own Linux system, which has many parts open sourced, and is at least pokeable and allows for not so hard reverse engineering. For anyone with enough time, now that Ghidra is available, it should be fairly straightforward to see what's hiding in there, even in the proprietary parts. You should be able to even run shell commands via some AT commands, if not via adb.

[https://osmocom.org/projects/quectel- modems/wiki/Quectel](https://osmocom.org/projects/quectel-modems/wiki/Quectel)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think v1 of these phones will be disappointing, but promising. If the projects survive to launch their v3s, I'll get excited.

If anyone on their teams is reading, the deal breaker for me is this: I need Authy, or an equiv, and Anki. Also need a step counter and my password manager to sync across devices easily. Probably slack too. Phone and texting also, but honestly the web browser would be secondary. Maps could be optional.

If a new phone could provide that, I think I could safely buy it and be able to use it as a daily driver.

</comment><comment><USER8> The problem with Linux is that the UX and UI are always lackluster.

How do we make people work on those parts as a hobby? Can we make UX/UI have their own demo-scene culture?

<comment><USER9> I care about UX, but don't know how to influence development.</comment></comment>


DigitalOcean: Back to Linode for Me (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://dogsnog.blog/2013/12/26/linode-vs-digitalocean-linode-wins-for-me/ <comment><AUTHOR> I had hidden this post because of D.O.'s response to me and promise to do better, even though their status page never reflected the problems.

I re-enabled it and am posting because it's apparently still relevant, seeing the poor customer service here:

"Digital Ocean Killed Our Company" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20064169](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20064169)

<comment><USER2> How is your experience with Linode? After seeing that incident, we held an emergency meeting to bring in another cloud provider.

<comment><AUTHOR> Still top-notch, over all these years. 100% professional handling and communication.</comment></comment></comment>


Redis creator calls for HN replacement - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/antirez/status/124256931970949120 <comment><USER2> please do not upvote this, I don't want to get a free AD about my idea in the site I want to replace.

Also I love this community, I think the problem is the fact that there is a conflict of interest here that I don't like, and in general is a privately owned stuff.

Will try to follow up via twitter as here is not the right place IMHO.</comment>


Supermarket giant Carrefour launches 1st virtual store in France - <AUTHOR> http://www.rudebaguette.com/2012/10/04/carrefour-virtual-store-france/

<comment><USER2> Has been tried in Prague, Czech Rep., last year - a flop except for the free press: people likely to buy your stuff through your smartphone app are not likely to stand around and scan barcodes.</comment>


Machine Learning 101 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/onfido-tech/machine-learning-101-be2e0a86c96a <comment><USER2> Good stuff! I'm interested in seeing more information about different cost functions.</comment>


India's about to hand people data Americans can only dream of - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-13/india-s-about-to-hand-people-data-americans-can-only-dream-of <comment><USER2> When I first (mis)read the title, I had a mini heart attack, thinking that the govt was going to hand over a lot of personal data to private companies.

Instead, it appears that they're trying to give citizens more access to and control over their data which seems nice.

That said, the Indian government _really_ don't have a great track record of securing citizens' data. I hope they do a better job this time.

This is the brainchild of Nandan Nilekani. He also developed UPI and Aadhaar. The former is amazing. The latter is... controversial at best. But they really fudged up user privacy, and essentially "tricked" millions into giving up their biometrics and personal info - which were then leaked, stored on US servers, etc. :(

Let's hope they've learnt from their mistakes.

More info about Aadhaar "scandals":

[1]: [https://www.firstpost.com/tech/news-analysis/aadhaar- securit...](https://www.firstpost.com/tech/news-analysis/aadhaar-security- breaches-here-are-the-major-untoward-incidents-that-have-happened-with- aadhaar-and-what-was-actually-affected-4300349.html)

[2]: [https://m.timesofindia.com/city/hyderabad/tdp-app-keeps- aadh...](https://m.timesofindia.com/city/hyderabad/tdp-app-keeps-aadhaar- information-on-amazon-cloud/articleshow/68263120.cms)

<comment><USER3> A major problem with Aadhaar is how UIDAI has completely discounted the fact that Aadhaar will be used by people who have zero idea about technology/computers. "Most" of the scandals with Aadhaar has been social engineering to gain access or clueless government officials printing the data and putting it up publicly on their department websites.

99% of the cases I see is humans being completely inept at handling data - most of them probably don't even realize the implications of such a central repository of data.

Fortunately, UIDAI has made some improvements. You can lock your biometric authentication and every request to verify will fail until you unlock for 10-15 mins. They have implemented a virtual ID over Aadhaar which can be used for verification without handing over your original number - but here's the problem, institutions have no idea that these numbers are valid too!

I do believe that a system like Aadhaar is necessary for India BUT govt institutions like UIDAI cannot and should not declare their end of responsibilities at just the technical level (which UIDAI frequently does by claiming that data is housed in secure vaults and encrypted and blah blah). If you build a system which will be responsible for a billion lives, you are also responsible for teaching people safety and enforcing requirements which minimise, if not eliminate, social engineering.

At the end of the day, you are a government institution, not a company.

<comment><USER4> The technical side of Aadhaar is also _incredibly_ inept. There is several days worth of reading material at [https://medium.com/karana](https://medium.com/karana).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> On paper this sounds great.

In reality I suspect they've created an extremely rich single digital target whose security isn't up to snuff if Aadhar is any indication, and the entire country is about to have an unintentional experiment with completely open finances.

<comment><USER6> It's not single. Eight Account Aggregators are already approved. Go through the technical architecture for better understanding.

[https://sahamati.org.in/account-aggregators-in- india/](https://sahamati.org.in/account-aggregators-in-india/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This smells like a big wooden horse. Also are we not mentioning the very icky bits about citizenship shenanigans happening right now[0]? The invalidating larger bank notes just a few years prior[1], no doubt to facilitate these very shenanigans?

[0] [https://qz.com/india/1781692/in-photos-india-refuses-to- stay...](https://qz.com/india/1781692/in-photos-india-refuses-to-stay-quiet- in-the-face-of-repression/)

[1] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-modi-corruption- idU...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-modi-corruption- idUSKBN1331WT)

</comment><comment><USER8> The entity behind it: [https://sahamati.org.in/](https://sahamati.org.in/)

 _Nandan Nilekani (cofounder of Infosys and one of the main architect of India digital payment movement - UPI [0]) launched Sahamati (= 'consent'), a private not for profit company, that aims to be self regulatory organisation for Account Aggregator ecosystem which aims to facilitate financial sharing among financial institutions with user consent._

[https://medium.com/karana/sahamati-sro-for-financial-data- sh...](https://medium.com/karana/sahamati-sro-for-financial-data-sharing- ecosystem-d93d0169c2b8)

[0]UPI: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Payments_Interface](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Payments_Interface)

<comment><USER9> Would like to add the fact that India's identification system Aadhar is also Nandan Nilekani's brainchild.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Don't fall for this traps.

Never trust a government launched projects which try to disguise itself as good for society and turn it into a tool against the citizens themselves.

For example India launched Aadhar for having identity of every Indian, but it was not enough now government is working on another project called National Population Register (which started in 2010 before aadhar was available and is unnecessary today), which will be used to issue another identity card and it will be at government discretion to decide who is the citizen of India (survey question for this asks the religion or ethnicity of the person according to rules framed by current government for NPR). It's controversial and government of India is repeating copy of same statement what aadhar was designed for to determine and provide benefits to Indian citizens.

On the surface Indian government monetary agency says it will be on people's consent on the other hand Government of India is launching another program to force every details of Indian citizen stored by companies like internet service providers, google, Facebook etc. to be accessible to government agency in India without users consent. Indeed Mozilla launched a campaign in India to get clarity on it, as it is happening in closed corridors of power without Indian citizens consent or knowledge.

Combine whole online history with each and every financial transaction and credit history and give it to government agency. It will lead very quickly to a dystopian world and there are example of governments in world already doing it. China can ban its citizens from travelling, buying daily necessities at a click of a button. USA can imprison anyone for even an unproven offence in many parts of the world like the way an executive arrested in Canada or American citizen kept in Guantanamo without trial or due process.

I hope there is a movement that government should be restricted to serving its citizen instead of ruling and controlling them.

Based on what I have seen so far only rich and powerful with resources thrive in autocracy, communism or democracy, for general citizens any remedy is costly and they will suffer even if may get some relief in the end it might be too late. If government becomes all too powerful as it is happening everywhere in the world now, dystopian world where rich and powerful rule the rest is not far away. (Government trying to become more powerful everywhere these days by taking away privacy rights, asking for unfettered access to financial and daily life, use them to restrict citizens).

<comment><USER11> NPR will require a lot of demographic information which is currently not present in Aadhar. It doesn't seem completely pointless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This kind of lines up w/ my Unified Privacy Theory, which is: Our largest data problem isn't privacy but disproportionate access to data.

This is made worse - btw - by privacy laws that limit access to data by you and me but not by powerful interests, w/ a history of ruining lives.

<comment><USER13> Would you happen to have any expansion of this theory posted somewhere?

I'd add a few other observations:

\- Information by itself isn't power, but is a power multiplier. Given any two entities, and an extant power imbalance, an informational equality between the two _still favours the more powerful_. Yonatan Zunger, chief architect of G+, made this point eloquently rebutting David Brin's "Transparent Society" argument.

\- Privacy alone (or analogues such as anonymity or pseudonymity) are secondary to _impunity_ as an enabling mechansim. For the disadvantaged, privacy and anonymity rights allow redress against the privileged. For the privileged, it's often immunity or impunity that offers sufficient protection. The "MeToo" movement, particularly Epstein and Weinstein cases, are examples of a sudden loss of immunity. For international espionage and terrorism, it's not mastermind wizardry so much as inability to effectively sanction which enables actors, state or non-state.

Some of the arguments raised against GDPR address this -- that the powerful will seek to have inconvenient content redacted, while ordinary citizens would be unable to. My read is that this risk is overstated, though it's one to consider.

The whole data-broker sector, predicated on bulk access to consolidated and well-structured data (postal address change records, DMV, voter registration, credit card purchases, credit scores, browser history, etc., etc., etc.) is a case in point of what you describe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This sets up an interesting problem for those that accept time-limited data but do not delete it in a timely manner, or surreptitiously copy, package and sell it. How will the state detect and punish that kind of abuse?

</comment><comment><USER11> [https://outline.com/sRS3FJ](https://outline.com/sRS3FJ)

</comment><comment><USER11> Does this cut out financial aggregators? If not, will they be able to access this system?

</comment><comment><USER15> You see a dream, I see a nightmare.

</comment><comment><USER16> This going to be a security nightmare. AADHAR data has already been leaked/sold by unscrupulous vendors.</comment>


Printbrush: pocket-sized printer - <AUTHOR> http://www.printdreams.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I always thought I wanted a portable 'magic wand' printer that was the width of A4 paper, but now I realise I was wrong.

This printer appears to sense where it is on the page and dumps ink in the correct locations as you slide it across.</comment>


The Future of the Book is Unfinished - <AUTHOR> http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-future-of-book-is-unfinished-john.html

<comment><USER2> My book "Biodigital" & I are main topics of this post. I'm around for a bit if anybody has questions.

<comment><USER3> Haven't read the book yet (as I just heard of it from the post), but sounds interesting. I am also currently working on a piece of fiction with some similar themes, and was wondering if you could share some thoughts on how you manage references to real world entities and technologies in the story? What sort of balance did you find between history, science, and fiction?

<comment><USER2> I guess I would say that the story is the important thing, not the themes or real-world references or whatever. It's a novel, so above all, the story has to be compelling and the characters have to be believable and at least somewhat interesting.

With regard to real-world people, places and things, I was just aiming for verisimilitude, to make the setting (and the science and computer science) believable to people who knew the territory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've seen two major developments beyond the traditional published-once book. This article talks about one of them: "Unfinished", whether for fictional works with multiple editions or edited versions (as in this article), or for non-fiction references continuously updated to cover the latest version of the topic they document. However, this article still assumes a punctuated series of versions in essentially complete form, intended to be thought of as a complete book, even though the author may release a new version in the future.

There's a step beyond that sense of "unfinished": the future of the book is _in progress_ , actively being written and edited. There's something particularly fun about reading the first few chapters of a book whose ending is _not yet written_ , providing feedback, having a conversation with the author, and seeing that feedback reflected in the next update. See a typo, or a plot hole? Post a comment with a bug report. Having that experience with software was what hooked me on Open Source; however, that experience is not by any means limited to software, and it's quite a thrill for books (fiction or non-fiction) as well.

Having that feedback and update channel pervasively available really changes your outlook on prose, as it does with software. I've long since stopped putting up with software for which I can't file a bug report and ideally write a patch. Imagine a world where a significant fraction of books work the same way.

</comment><comment><USER5> So, a lot like indie games?</comment>


OS X Chooses Discrete Graphics for Status Bar App - <AUTHOR> http://www.reynoldsftw.com/2010/04/status-bar-app-has-os-x-choosing-discreet-graphics-sucking-battery-life/

<comment><USER2> Apple isn't "using discrete graphics for that app", Apple is using discrete graphics for a given set of APIs which CloudApp is using to do something. Did they need to do it that way? Maybe, maybe not, but the onus is on the application developer, not Apple. It's not like Apple has some master list of applications that use discrete graphics, it kicks in on certain API calls.

Silly little rants like this, where someone doesn't quite understand the way a system works and so blames the wrong provider; these things are the reason for Apple's crazy draconian SDK terms. Imagine a similar situation on the iPhone: "Waa, Apple killed my battery life when I run this application at boot!" 10 million retweets later, Apple is having to explain some third party application's deficiencies, and it could very realistically effect their bottom line.

<comment><USER3> No, they are. They decided, for no goddamn good reason, to switch on the discrete graphics chip when certain APIs were called, after doing a whole lot of work for years and years to encourage the use of said APIs.

AMD is doing this the right way- turn it on when you plug in, and let users toggle the thing manually. Optimus seems like an interesting compromise. But API sniffing is ridiculous, because 3D != Intensive 3D That Must Be Fast.

<comment><AUTHOR> exactly... The idea is great, but needs more thought, because as you rightly suggest, not all 3D graphics = intensive, and not all types of app (ie status bar apps doing nothing) require discrete graphics card switch on 100% of the time...

THIS, is the issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'd like to be clear right now what this article is about. It's about Apple's choice to get frameworks such as Core Image and OpenGL to direct which graphics card the Mac should use, and how by doing this, there have been some unusual cases whereby some applications cause the dedicated graphics card to be enabled, and continue to be enabled. This leads to a detrimental effect on battery life which is the exact opposite for putting this in place. With this in mind... read on.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sometimes I think Apple just jumps out of a moving train. For example it isn't possible to turn off the notebook display and only keep the connected monitor/projector active. Or, if you wake it with the lid closed to turn on the (notebook) display at a later time without disconnecting the external display.

Same with this. I can understand why they do the switching the way they do it, but where is the harm in putting a "Don't use discrete graphics" option in the Energy-Saver menubar drop-down menu? If they believe their customers are that stupid display a dialog box warning them, with the option to never show it again.

<comment><USER5> You can use a Macbook in closed-lid mode to use only an external display. Also, if you open the lid afterwards, you can hit 'detect displays' to wake up the internal display. No reconnecting necessary.

<comment><USER4> > You can use a Macbook in closed-lid mode to use only an external display.

Yes, but this requires an external keyboard, a connected power outlet and putting the system to sleep.

Thanks about the 'detect displays' button, though still the key for switching mirror/extend mode should do that without requiring me to go into settings (or have the menubar item active).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I also read that having X11 running apparently switches to the discrete GPU. Now, I have no idea why it would do that (GLX extension?) but that kind of sucks given that I spend essentially 100% of my time in an xterm. (If anything, X11 graphics is so slow anyway that I don't see the point of ever switching to the discrete GPU for its sake.)

Really, Apple needs to fix this. If the application requires < x resources, or if the frame drawing time is < y, then stick with integrated graphics regardless of API used.

<comment><USER7> Why run X11 just for an xterm instead of just using Terminal?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> AFAIK there's no public API for putting icons in the menu bar, so it's not surprising that an app doing something hacky causes problems.

<comment><USER2> <http://tinyurl.com/nsstatusitemguide>

Perfectly legal, documented APIs for adding an NSStatusItem to the global status bar. I think it changed in Tiger?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> _Discrete_ , not _discreet_. I had a lot of trouble parsing that sentence (oh, so the status bar application has flashy graphics by default and OS X somehow forces it to have less flashy graphics?) before I realized what the title meant.</comment>


Show HN: Tasky – Flow diagram task management - <AUTHOR> https://tasky.fyreworks.us <comment><USER2> Nice. One suggestion: Automatically position the nodes. There are algorithms for this, like dagre[1]. That would also mean you could let people create connections by dragging from one node to another, rather then having a special handle to make connections.

[1]: [https://github.com/dagrejs/dagre](https://github.com/dagrejs/dagre)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a giid example of someone who's amazing at UI/UX trying to help those planners..

It's insanely nice, done very well from a quick glance. I;m just not sure the audience you're looking for.. Not a dig at it. Just an observation from experience.

Those who I've worked with usually are either set in their ways or want something very structured. Linking, related items, cross teams etc.

Honestly I would work with this if it was a small team, 1 project, and more UI/UX guys..

Again I love the look and feel, it just seems (to me) that your audience wont accept it.

If you ever want work though, DM me. This is sensational.

Is it open source ?

</comment><comment><USER4> Hey nice job! I plan to add a tree-view to my app. Would you be interested in helping me create the UX for a graph / tree view? The app is a nested Kanban board called Kanception.io

<comment><USER4> PS I use React

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Really good interface. Could be great but I think it needs _some_ documentation. How do I make a new project? Can this be self-hosted? Do I have to export to save or is there another method? Help!</comment>


Hackers post fake stories on real news sites 'to discredit NATO' - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-53594440 <comment><USER3> Disinformatziya.

No document I have ever read covers this topic in more detail than this briefing by Peter Pomerantsev, author of "Nothing is real and everything is possible."

[https://imrussia.org/media/pdf/Research/Michael_Weiss_and_Pe...](https://imrussia.org/media/pdf/Research/Michael_Weiss_and_Peter_Pomerantsev__The_Menace_of_Unreality.pdf)

This briefing, which is held in the library of Congress, is where I first heard the term "fake news" in 2014. It's a stunning contextualization of what has been happening in the last decade.

<comment><USER4> Is it worth reading? Anything different from the CIA's PsyOps?

<comment><USER5> Unlikely to differ much, at least as of mid-twentieth century practice:

[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/48612/48612-h/48612-h.htm](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/48612/48612-h/48612-h.htm)

> "The lower down the echelon, the nearer the armies of the world came to > standardizing psychological warfare organization. They did this for the same > reason that they all organize into regiments instead of centuries, cohorts, > or tribes. Modern war is a self-standardizing process if the enemy > experience is to be copied, enemy techniques improved, allied assistance > accepted, and military practice kept up to world standards. Psychological > warfare units needed printing and radio sections; to service these sections > they all needed intelligence and analysis offices; to distribute their > materials they all needed agents and liaison. Black propaganda organization > varied more than did white, but it was amazing to Americans, uncovering > Japanese subversive-operations units, to see how much the Japanese > organization resembled their own."

(White propaganda is material one admits one has written. Black propaganda is material one claims someone else has written. Both go back to well before the last century. Linebarger has historical notes, with examples going back thousands of years. Having been one of the people who "lost china", Linebarger also offers some opinions on why the communist propaganda was more effective than the capitalist in that case.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Always irks me how the media use the term "hackers" as some usurped terminology to describe criminal acts using technology. For me, it is like calling burglars a locksmith - that don't happen and yet we see the word "hacker" used by the media to describe criminal acts so far removed from the words original meaning that it just pains me and i'm sure many others. More so when the populus definition of that word now parallels what the media have been putting out for years, it just creates whole generations that will never know what a true hacker is.

<comment><USER7> The meaning of all words changes. It would be ironic if the meaning of the word hacker would be unchangeable, impenetrable.

<comment><USER6> > The meaning of all words changes. It would be ironic if the meaning of the > word hacker would be unchangeable, impenetrable.

Hats off, brilliantly put and the whole aspect that the word hackers got hacked is one that I'll remember with a smile upon this subject. Thank you for that perspective - I'll think better for it.

<comment><USER8> Indeed, that was insightful - the word "hacker" has been hacked by mass media to re/present a politicized and criminalized interpretation.

The predicament itself feels ironic, in that "hacker" culture reveled in the amoral, going beyond conventional behavior, thinking outside the box, getting around rules and systems, manipulating technology for fun and profit.

In a way, that dark side of the hacker attitude now pervades politics, business, and the media. Public institutions and private organizations are surveilling, cataloguing, identifying trends, and maniputing public opinion and social behavior.

I suppose it was inevitable that "hacker culture" itself was infiltrated and hacked, to serve an ulterior purpose.

A healthy reaction has been the rise of "maker culture". What is old is new again!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> USA itself is already souring on NATO, no hackers needed.

Many in the USA are tired of being criticized for being the "world police" yet the same critics also scream when the USA starts pulling its military personnel out of their country (like Germany, most recently).

I say Europe should use their own money to build their own Navy and Air Forces to protect their own interests and make their own trade and travel routes secure. Right now most EU countries are putting virtually none of their budget into military because everything is taken care of by the USA (and they can launder protection of interests through USA as well so USA takes all the heat if something goes wrong).

Maybe people will complain less about the US military when they have to use their own tax dollars to secure their own borders, shipping and air routes, protect their own interests, etc.

<comment><USER10> Unfortunately for you and the rest of Americans that feel this isolationist tendency, your country will be a part of the world whether you like it or not. A modern conflict that does not involve the US is not the same thing as a modern conflict that does not affect the US.

Also, your opinion of Europe doesn't seem founded in reality. Since when does European nations not have their own standing armies, and since when are American army resources used to protect European borders and shipping routes? And from who?

The US needs the rest of the world as much as the rest of the world needs the US. You seem to be under the influence that the US is somehow being fleeced by the rest of the world while nobody but you (conveniently enough) contributes anything.

<comment><USER9> Well, I'm sick and tired of being lambasted by the rest of the world 24/7 and would like to go back to pre-WW2 isolationism.

EU can fend for itself. It doesn't need the US military. And the USA doesn't need NATO. Our military is bigger than the rest of NATO combined.

> Since when does European nations not have their own standing armies

Europe spends very little on their military compared to USA, China, Russia, etc.

> and since when are American army resources used to protect European borders > and shipping routes?

US Navy protects merchant ships, oil tankers, cargo ships, fiber optic cables, and more from damage, sabotage, seizure, piracy, and more. If you don't recognize global trade and communications stability provided by US Navy, it's time to be reminded. It's time you protect your own interests with your own money. It's time you deal with Russia on your own without a US presence.

> The US needs the rest of the world as much as the rest of the world needs > the US

You just said you don't need "American army resources" because the European nations have their own "standing armies". I whole-heartedly agree. Let Europe use its own military to protect its own interests.

> You seem to be under the influence that the US is somehow being fleeced by > the rest of the world

It does seem like "biting the hand that feeds you".

From my perspective EU is like "Cool, USA is taking care of tons of stuff we would normally have to pay for military-wise, so we can use that money instead to provide more social services to our citizens! Also the USA sucks [insert criticisms at every opportunity]"

<comment><USER8> > would like to go back to pre-WW2 isolationism

And we all know how that turned out..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In Romania, fake news try to say that NATO military bases run a prostitution rings with underage girls. There was a case[1] where a criminal raped and killed a girl in a city near a NATO military base and all the fake news articles were trying to say that the criminal was providing underage girls for the NATO soldiers.

[1] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnapping_of_Alexandra_M%C4%8...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnapping_of_Alexandra_M%C4%83ce%C8%99anu)

</comment><comment><USER12> Gee, I wonder what nation could possibly be behind this?

<comment><USER13> Why are you sure it is a nation. NATO is by no means an uncontroversial entity. Millions of peace activists—including my self—would love to see it abolished.

Although I do admit, the content of the fake news articles seem a little crude to be coming from peace activists. Personally I would post simple truthful anti-NATO, anti-military, and anti-nuclear weapons propaganda if I had the will to break into news web sites CMS.

EDIT: People are rallying against my anti-militarism. I don't think there is a point arguing that, and such an argument is blatantly out of topic. Here we are discussing that I have a reason to doubt that a nation state is behind these attacks.

<comment><USER14> > Millions of peace activists—including my self—would love to see it > abolished.

I wonder how Europe will respond when the next Crimea happens? Or if Taiwan gets attacked. It's a real question, and I'd love to hear from a peace- activist.

I'd bet Europe will do nothing. Merkel wouldn't even openly criticize China for stripping away democracy from Hong Kong. European models work well in a world without dictatorships. But as long as we have dictatorships, rigid pacifism is just throwing militarily weaker democracies under the bus. Irrespective of what one thinks about Trump, the US military a dependable ally for (many) democracies. And perhaps the only one with the willingness to act.

(Not an American.)

<comment><USER13> We are speaking very much out of topic. The fact that I'm personally against NATO adds nothing in the debate on whether a nation state was behind these attacks. But lets entertain this anyway[1].

Crimea was annexed by a militaristic nation from a smaller less—but still quite—militaristic nation. Ukraine is neighbored to the west with supporting European nation—some with a really big military, and even nuclear weapons. None of those were able—or even willing—to stop the annexation. In this instance these armies were useless.

China annexed Tibet in the 50s and it wasn't stopped. What makes you think Taiwan would be any different? China is a dictatorial power that is committing a genocide against a religious minority in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. It is not stopped. What makes you think Hong Kong would be any different?

Please note that invasions, and wars are not the only ways to act against human rights violations. There is also sanctions and boycotts. This was particularly effective to stop the South African apartheid. But alas, the current world powers are unwilling to apply even that to try to stop China from their human rights violations.

\---

1\. _Even though I've had this conversation dozens of times, and the idea of military is so engraved into people that the idea that we don't need it—or worse is harmful—is too alien for people to even contemplate._

<comment><USER15> > We are speaking very much out of topic.

You do understand we're talking about NATO and Russia, right? I mean, there is no clearer example of why NATO was created and exists up to this day that Russia's attack and invasion of Ukraine. The reason why Russia dedicates itself to weaken NATO is precisely that as well. You cannot talk about NATO without discussing Russia's historical aggression and expansionist agenda towards all its neighbouring states.

Knowing that, and as you are a self described peace activists with an axe to grind against NATO, why do you intentionally turn a blind eye to the very core of the problem?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> why is the BBC calling NATO Nato? I had to internet search to figure out what they were talking about

<comment><USER17> [https://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/en/articles/art201307021121335...](https://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/en/articles/art20130702112133530)

> Use the abbreviated form of a title without explanation only if there is no > chance of any misunderstanding (eg UN, Nato, IRA, BBC). Otherwise, spell it > out in full at first reference, or introduce a label (eg the public sector > union Unite).

>

> Where you would normally say the abbreviation as a string of letters - <USER2> > initialism - use all capitals with no full stops or spaces (eg FA, UNHCR, > NUT). However, our style is to use lower case with an initial cap for > acronyms, where you would normally pronounce the set of letters as a word > (eg Aids, Farc, Eta, Nafta, Nasa, Opec, Apec).

For the average reader, I would argue there is little chance of misinterpretation, and BBC certainly agrees. Besides that, because "NATO" is pronounced "nay-toh", they spell it with an initial cap.

<comment><USER18> Shouldn't that "Bbc" which looks odd to me?

<comment><USER19> How do you pronounce "Bbc" as a word, not as spelled-out letters?

<comment><USER20> Beece

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Once the USA has a sane commander-in-chief again, it's going to need to completely overhaul its approach to the Eastern European region, among other things.

<comment><USER22> A sane commander that starts useless wars in the Middle East to transfer billions of tax payer money to his donators?

<comment><USER23> It's been like 17 years since the US started a war in the Middle East. Your talking points are a little dusty.

<comment><USER24> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2019_United_States_ai...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2019_United_States_airstrikes_in_Iraq_and_Syria)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libyan_Civil_War_(2011)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libyan_Civil_War_\(2011\))

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

<comment><USER25> While I'm an advocate of the US entirely removing itself militarily from the Middle East, none of those properly qualify against the parent's point.

The parent referred to starting wars. The first one doesn't qualify at all.

The US and NATO have intervened in the two civil wars (along with numerous other countries; with France recently pleading with the US to remain in Syria). It's an overreach to claim the US started the Libyan Civil War or the Syrian Civil War, neither is true. The US was opportunistic in trying to squeeze Syria's dictator Bashar al-Assad out (with Russia on the other side, trying to prop up the dictatorship). Those civil wars are the inevitable result of decades of extreme oppression by dictatorship, which will always end in armed revolution.

<comment><USER26> > The US and NATO have intervened in the two civil wars

It might have been a civil war at the start, but after that it was a war of the US against two sovereign states. Nothing civil about that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Other than Russia, does any other nation state have a major problem with NATO?

Is there any reason to be opposed to the existence of NATO other than: "I'd really like to invade country X, but can't because it's mean retaliation by x,y,z & n"

<comment><USER13> Not just nation states, but plenty of citizens—in and out of NATO member states—have plenty of reasons to have quite a few problems with NATO, and other military alliances, and any military, and state supported violence in general.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> If the recent HN story of Apple taking 30% of refunded purchases is any indication, fabricated stories have a frighteningly strong staying power.

What was especially sad was that a highly knowledgeable group of people (HN) were misled and deceived by the Apple story (which could have been easy verified). If HN is so easily misled, how much more likely is the general population vulnerable to these foreign-government-orchestrated intentional information war campaigns?

<comment><USER29> > highly knowledgeable group of people (HN) were misled and deceived

Just because you work a high paying job and you're very good at it, that doesn't mean you are impervious to deceit.</comment></comment>