HTML Canvas Deep dive book open sourced - <AUTHOR> http://hudson.joshy.org:9001/job/canvas-book/ws/out/title.html

<comment><USER2> Awesome, the draggable value sliders (that even work on the iPad) are a nice touch and really help you make a visual connection to the values and what they do.</comment>


A Survey of the Localhost Proxying Landscape - <AUTHOR> http://john-sheehan.com/post/57462430325/a-survey-of-the-localhost-proxying-landscape <comment><AUTHOR> If I missed anything, let me know!</comment>


Introducing jQuery Browser - <AUTHOR> https://allsoftwaresucks.herokuapp.com/articles/jquery-browser <comment><USER2> I almost got trolled! Well almost! If only this were true!</comment>


Police May Know Exactly Where You Were Last Tuesday - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/07/17/202801282/police-may-know-exactly-where-you-were-last-tuesday <comment><USER3> In case you were looking for the necessary plea "for the children!" it was here:

 _" God forbid if the day came that a child is abducted from that mall," he says. "We would have that tool available to us, to look at that data and see if we can't find a possible suspect vehicle."_

<comment><USER4> It's hilarious, because kids don't actually ever get kidnapped in the U.S. (by strangers).

Thank you Anderson Cooper ([http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/anderson.cooper.360/blog/200...](http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/anderson.cooper.360/blog/2007/01/raw- data-kidnapping-statistics.html)).

> Despite these huge numbers, very few children are victims of the kinds of > crimes that so-often lead local and national news reports. According to > NCMEC, just 115 children are the victims of what most people think of as > "stereotypical" kidnapping, which the center characterizes thusly: "These > crimes involve someone the child does not know or someone of slight > acquaintance, who holds the child overnight, transports the child 50 miles > or more, kills the child, demands ransom, or intends to keep the child > permanently."

My mom is absolutely freaked out about our wife and I living in the city, because someone might kidnap our daughter. Because a crowded apartment building where hundreds of people can hear a child cry for help is so much less safe than an out-of-the-way suburban house when it comes to a crime that never happens.

<comment><USER5> You say that kids _don 't actually ever get kidnapped_ (which is "hilarious"), then refer to some 115 children a year being kidnapped (where it must meet a list of conditions, and excludes the 50,000+ yearly who are temporarily abducted, often by sexual predators) as proof of your absolute statement.

You have some very confused notions of numbers.

And personally I find 115 children being abducted (in the more-than-a-day- taken-60-miles sense) about 115 too many (and it's simply incredible that the other poster observes that half "return", as if anything less than death is child's play).

Did you know that only three to five children are killed by lightning each year? Yet preventative efforts to avoid children being hit by lightning are extremely widespread. We all know to fear lightning.

<comment><USER6> It could be that there are only three to five children killed by lightning each year _because_ preventative efforts are extremely widespread.

<comment><USER5> Indeed. We all have it pounded into our heads that lightning is dangerous. Sports have standard guidelines, strictly followed, about cancellations in weather. There are significant efforts made to avoid lightning deaths.

Yet I was replying to someone who said that children "don't ever actually get kidnapped" because 115 a year apparently don't count as "ever" (half of whom get murdered, the other half harmed in various other ways, and that's ignoring the 50,000+ who are molested in bathrooms and the like, yearly). All to refute a simple statement that logging might prove useful in such a circumstance.

<comment><USER7> > All to refute a simple statement that logging might prove useful in such a > circumstance.

I don't think that was goal. I think he was questioning whether invading the privacy of a huge amount of individuals is worth it for that cause. How critical is it to have 2 year's worth of car-location data at your fingertips for any investigation? The question is not whether kids ever get kidnapped, but whether such a gigantic dataset aids investigation in any way. A compromise would be to delete the data after a few days, similar to what happens in Minesota, according to the article.

Also: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children's_interests_(rhetoric...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children's_interests_\(rhetoric\))

edit: I mistakenly assumed that hvs and rayiner were the same person. There might be something to be said for your interpretation, but I would assume the best possible one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It is uncomfortable, but you shouldn't ever have had an expectation of privacy when driving around in public with a licensed, regulated and marked vehicle.

Just because it can be done without much manual effort today vs. 50 years ago having people sit around town logging every car they see drive by doesn't mean really the privacy expectation has changed. Just because it is "scary" doesn't mean it is "illegal".

<comment><USER9> There is a significant difference between the expectation of privacy as a platonic ideal and the real life expectation of privacy.

For the former, you're of course right: not much has changed! The local police could have posted someone on every street corner to record every license plate that passed -- probably multiple people to account for traffic!

That's no different than cameras, _in theory_. You have no less privacy with cameras! But _in practice_ , the police didn't do that (to that scale).

So, given that my expectations of privacy are not about logical possibilities, but rather about _actual realities_ , they certainly have changed.

<comment><USER8> The point is: just because it is easier doesn't mean the rules have changed. It is still and always has been legal for someone to track you driving around town, be that by paper and pen, Polaroid, or streetcorner mounted camera with wifi.

<comment><USER10> This argument came up in the GPS tracker Supreme Court case.

The Supreme Court's decision effectively said that having to use people to tail suspects or whoever put a brake on the government. The GPS trackers removed that restriction. They proceeded to rule GPS trackers without a warrant as unconstitutional.

<comment><USER4> That is not what the GPS tracker case said. Scalia wrote the majority opinion of the court, and that opinion was based on the physical intrusion necessary to install the GPS tracker. Physical intrusion into a protected space (your car is one of your "effects") has always been a search requiring a warrant.

See: [http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/10-1259.pdf](http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/10-1259.pdf).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So I assume they're also using them to exonerate people who otherwise don't have an alibi but could be falsely accused, right?

Right??

<comment><USER12> Absolutely not, this metadata is useful as leverage for getting plea bargains out of people. Exonerating someone removes leverage.

<comment><USER4> Withholding potentially-exonerating evidence from the defense in a criminal prosecution is a big no-no. Of course it happens on a regular basis, but if you've got the money to fight it nicely sets up the basis for a reversal of a conviction on appeal. See: [http://www.totalcriminaldefense.com/news/articles/criminal-e...](http://www.totalcriminaldefense.com/news/articles/criminal- evidence/exculpatory-evidence-punishment).

This is not a search or privacy problem per se. Most situations where exculpating evidence is withheld aren't so clear-cut as photographic evidence of the supposed perpetrator's car in a different place. It's usually something more like a statement by a witness whose exculpatory potential is ambiguous enough that a prosecutor can rationalize it as irrelevant. Indeed, I think technology ameliorates this problem. It's hard for prosecutors to withhold DNA evidence, for example, because juries know its widely used and take it so seriously. If use of photographic evidence in prosecutions becomes common, I think it will be difficult for prosecutors to withhold relevant information from the defense without compromising their ability to get convictions from juries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I see these cars all over where I live. It really is no different than the meta data that the NSA is collecting and most likely we will see defense of the gathering using similar rebuttals, namely YOU have a right, the license plate/car/phone/database does not.

Apparently they want to use indirect collection or collection by private groups as somehow not falling under the 4th because of how it was assembled. I guess they could take all of a grocery stores purchase records and do the same, after all they aren't look at you directly under the guise of fixing health issues.

Eventually data, wherever it may exist, will have to land at the Supremes to declare how abstract it has to be before it is not subject to the Constitution. Based on past cases it may not bode well for us.

<comment><USER4> > It really is no different than the meta data that the NSA is collecting and > most likely we will see defense of the gathering using similar rebuttals, > namely YOU have a right, the license plate/car/phone/database does not.

You're mis-characterizing the rebuttal in both cases.

1) With metadata the rebuttal is that the Constitution refers to the "right of the people to be secure in _their_ persons, houses, papers, and effects..." There is a legitimate argument that AT&T's records about when you used their network is not _your_ papers or effects. You didn't create the record, AT&T did. You don't usually even have access to the information, AT&T does. It's not something silly like "the phone doesn't have a 4th amendment right."

2) The rebuttal for gathering information from cameras is that the 4th amendment has never extended to what the government can observe about you in a public place.

The 4th amendment doesn't mean "I have a right to have the government not track or monitor me without a warrant." It says exactly what it means: the police can't search your person or your house, your papers or effects, without a search warrant supported by probable cause. The farther you get from that plain language, the more tenuous your argument becomes.

Vis-a-vis the Supremes, at least Sotomayor has questioned whether it might be necessary to rethink at least the third party doctrine, which is the basis for (1): [http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/the_data_question...](http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/the_data_question_should_the_third- party_records_doctrine_be_revisited). I don't think anyone any time soon would think about revisiting the rule for plainly visible activity in public spaces, which is the basis of (2).

<comment><USER14> > With metadata the rebuttal is that the Constitution refers to the "right of > the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects..." > There is a legitimate argument that AT&T's records about when you used their > network is not your papers or effects. You didn't create the record, AT&T > did. You don't usually even have access to the information, AT&T does. It's > not something silly like "the phone doesn't have a 4th amendment right."

You caused the record to come into being by making or receiving the phone call. No human intervention was required on the carrier's part. Your action triggered an automated response by a machine. The records are about you, were generated by your actions, and exist pursuant to a service contract you hold. To say it is not "yours" is to cherry-pick a certain definition of "yours:" one based solely on who holds the property rights. But there are other reasonable definitions of "yours." Ordinary English usage illustrates this. I could talk about "your records at the phone company," and nobody would find my turn of phrase the slightest bit odd, even though you don't _own_ those records. It should be noted that Constitutional interpretation generally looks to the ordinary meaning of words first. Indeed, in Katz, the Court held:

"The existence of a property right is but one element in determining whether expectations of privacy are legitimate."

By a narrow reading of "their persons, houses, papers, and effects," phone data might not be your papers or effects. However, one ought not read the 4th amendment narrowly. The Supreme Court said in Griswold:

"The foregoing cases suggest that specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance. See Poe v. Ullman, 367 U.S. 497, 516-522 (dissenting opinion). Various guarantees create zones of privacy...These cases bear witness that the right of privacy which presses for recognition here is a legitimate one."

The cases cited in Griswold and those which cite it lay out a doctrine of broadly interpreting privacy rights provided by the 4th and other Amendments. Words like "their" should not be construed narrowly to limit a person's privacy rights.

Instead, we have the doctrine of "reasonable expectation of privacy." That is, where a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy, 4th Amendment protections come into play. For a telephone call, one should reasonably expect the phone company to generate logs, if only for billing purposes and aggregated, anonymized data analysis. However, one would _not_ reasonably expect the sum total of their personal call history to be available to the government.

> The rebuttal for gathering information from cameras is that the 4th > amendment has never extended to what the government can observe about you in > a public place.

This is not true. See, for example, US v Jones (the GPS tracking case). Jones strengthened the doctrine of "reasonable expectation of privacy," enshrining a new application in public places. I expect that we'll see a case about facial recognition, license plate tracking, or something similar where the government assembles a database of your movements in public. Alito's concurrence in Jones reads a prelude to these future cases:

"In the pre-computer age, the greatest protections of privacy were neither constitutional nor statutory, but practical. Traditional surveillance for any extended period of time was difficult and costly and therefore rarely undertaken. The surveillance at issue in this case—constant monitoring of the location of a vehicle for four weeks—would have required a large team of agents, multiple vehicles, and perhaps aerial assistance. 10 Only an investigation of unusual importance could have justified such an expenditure of law enforcement resources. Devices like the one used in the present case, however, make long-term monitoring relatively easy and cheap...But the use of longer term GPS monitoring in investigations of most offenses impinges on expectations of privacy. For such offenses, society's expectation has been that law enforcement agents and others would not—and indeed, in the main, simply could not—secretly monitor and catalogue every single movement of an individual's car for a very long period."

<comment><USER4> I'm trying to tie concepts to the wording of the 4th amendment without resorting to saying: "This is the precedent and that's that." Because the precedent is clear: Smith v. Maryland makes it okay to collect phone metadata, done.

To your general point about narrow versus broad readings: I didn't say there wasn't a plausible broad reading. I was characterizing the legitimate, plausible narrow one. You claim I'm "cherry-pick[ing] a certain definition of 'yours'" but that's precisely what you do when you're characterizing one side of an argument.

As for plausibility--you cite a dissenting opinion, a concurring opinion, and one of the most handwave-y opinions in the history of the Court (Griswold)... The Supreme Court could someday find a broad privacy protection in the "penumbras" and "emanations" of the 4th amendment, and it will be equally handwave-y when they do.

Finally: U.S. v. Jones was based on meat and potatoes Constitutional law: Scalia's majority opinion focused on the physical intrusion necessary to install the GPS tracker.

<comment><USER14> > Because the precedent is clear: Smith v. Maryland makes it okay to collect > phone metadata, done.

I should have brought up Smith. My mistake. My opinion of Smith is basically this: It's at odds with other cases, and its logic rests on a much older picture of the technology. Unfortunately, I don't have time to write a lengthy prediction of how Smith will someday be eroded or overturned. But for now I'll say that I consider Smith to be an outlier with respect to the broader trends in 4th Amendment law I'm attempting to highlight.

> You claim I'm "cherry-pick[ing] a certain definition of 'yours'" but that's > precisely what you do when you're characterizing one side of an argument.

Fair enough. My intention in cherry-picking a different definition was to offer an alternative to the one you presented, simply to show that it's not so cut-and-dry. Perhaps I should have been more explicit about my rhetorical intentions there.

> As for plausibility--you cite a dissenting opinion, a concurring opinion, > and one of the most handwave-y opinions in the history of the Court > (Griswold)

All of which are valid citations. If you were a SCOTUS judge, you'd have the right to take these citations with a grain of salt. But their existence still helps illuminate how the justices think about privacy.

By the way, which one was the dissent? (Not doubting you, just seeking clarification.)

> Finally: U.S. v. Jones was based on meat and potatoes Constitutional law: > Scalia's majority opinion focused on the physical intrusion necessary to > install the GPS tracker.

Yes it did, which is why I quoted Alito's concurrence as a roadmap for the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Drudge headline just linked to a similar article: [http://news.yahoo.com/driving-somewhere-theres-govt- record-1...](http://news.yahoo.com/driving-somewhere-theres-govt- record-140052644.html)

It says the police cars can tag the location of 7K plates during a normal shift without burdening the officers at all. Doesn't sound like too much, but multiply that by about 10,000 (Chicagoland) and two shifts and it adds up fast.

Also here in Chicago, they have an "Open Road Tolling" system that grabs your plate # on the fly at 80 mph.

Then they mail you a ticket if the plate # doesn't match with a valid iPass (wireless box in most everyone's car).

The thing is, there's no way to tell which car in a group has the iPass - <USER2> they _must_ have to run every plate thru their database and match it up with valid iPasses.

 _That_ means the Illinois tollway is grabbing and analyzing say 20 _million_ plates and timestamps every day.

If all that data is stored indefinitely - wow.

<comment><USER16> I submitted it to HN minutes ago, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6057968](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6057968)

It seems to be a new scandal brewing. Surprises me how long it took. I recall in 2009 in Clearwater Florida when a Sherrif car had a gun-type looking devices pointing all 4 sides of the car. I asked what it was and he told me when he drives this thing picks up license plates and raises two alerts (if any): 1) if the tag is expired, OR if the owner of the car has a DL suspended/etc. If #2 then the picture of driver pops up and he visually checks if gender/look matches... if not, then he ignores the alert.

<comment><USER15> Good stuff. It's going to take a _lot_ of outrage to get them to give up tools like that. Those are money makers.

<comment><USER17> Live in fear. Obey!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I expect that applies equally well to the UK with gantries of ANPR cameras over major motorways as well as portable ones in laybys, like the one I saw this morning on the A1 leaving Edinburgh. It wasn't a police car, though, but a dedicated "road tax enforcement" vehicle running it.

I was reminded by a colleague today of a quote attributed to Roger Needham, something along the lines of "privacy is a transient condition in between people realising there isn't an omniscient god, and government realising there was a vacancy" (quoting second hand from memory)

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't think the police will have any empathy towards regular every day people (in regards to license plate databases) until private individuals start tracking the whereabouts of police 24/7 (and potentially posting the data online for everyone to see). Not only that but think about it this way: It doesn't cost that much for organized crime to put up cameras all over town for their own benefit.

BTW: Heaven forbid if one of these license plate databases ever gets leaked! It's not like the government will re-issue everyone new plates for free.

</comment><comment><USER20> My nephew is a detective who just worked an Abduction/Murder case. The suspect was located (and later convicted) largely in part because of the license plate scanners. One thing you cannot argue, they are incredibly effective. My problem is the infinite retention of that data and the fact that many agencies use a private third party for the system. I think eliminating the scanners is a bad thing, but I would like to see some basic rules that would have to be followed.

<comment><USER21> Yeah well knowing where EVERYONE is, ALL the time probably helps them know a lot of things, who is dating who, where you shop, where you work, etc. You okay with all that to "save the children" ?

If they were allowed to use xray scanners to scan every car on every street in a city to see who and what is inside - you okay with that escalation? Because they are doing it "near" borders (backscatter on vehicles) and who knows where they will take it next.

<comment><USER22> It's like you didn't read what he said:

 _My problem is the infinite retention of that data and the fact that many agencies use a private third party for the system. I think eliminating the scanners is a bad thing, but I would like to see some basic rules that would have to be followed._

<comment><USER23> As I see it, we need more explicit rules about privacy that encompass both gov't and private parties. Whether we get rid of FISA or the NSA will ultimately not matter (fat chance, of course) -- if it seems important enough, gov't will always be able to entice the private owners of data to "voluntarily" share with law enforcement.

This car location database is just the tip of the iceberg, and it happens to be absolutely unambiguously legal for gov't and corporations to do whatever they please with this data.

I am not actually paranoid. I am quite confident that the norm is for the police to have reasonable procedures in place -- the last thing a police department wants is for a police officer or former police officer to be accused of using police resources in a creepy manner to stalk/spy on an ex- spouse or similar. They want an explicit paper trial of Officer X asked about car owned by person Y for reason Z. Even if the norm is pretty good, the public should have clear expectation that can be understood.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> [http://www.aclu.org/files/FilesPDFs/ALPR/rhode- island/alprpr...](http://www.aclu.org/files/FilesPDFs/ALPR/rhode- island/alprpra_cityofprovidence_providenceri_1.pdf) haha its ok there are no records of anything anyway, im sure this is the same in other cities/towns

</comment><comment><USER25> NPR sure is getting a lot of material from Reddit these days

<comment><USER26> You don't think the ACLU might have sent out a press release?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I wonder if one can use paint or some kind of odd wavelength light bulb to make recording the license # too blurred to use.

<comment><USER28> Your thinking to hard, just slap some mud on your plate and say you drive on a dirt road.

<comment><USER29> Committing an illegal and regularly enforced crime of driving with an obstructed license plate seems like a poor plan to try and defend your right to an abstract sense of privacy.

<comment><USER30> As I've said time and tim again: Hacks and technological tricks are _not_ the right way to fight civil rights violations. It has to happen through the legal system. If you're just hacking your way around bad laws, you are setting yourself up to get in trouble somewhere down the road.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> See you next Tuesday.</comment>


Real Sysadmins Don't Sudo - <AUTHOR> https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/sysadmins-dont-sudo <comment><USER2> As a Fedora person I do prefer the way Fedora handles the root account as opposed to the "locked by default" approach that Ubuntu takes, but I think he's arguing against a straw man here.

The point of locking the root account in Ubuntu is not to protect the user from damaging their system with commands: it's just to not have an account with a potentially weak password and a known username that can be brute forced or abused in other ways. Not everyone that installs Linux knows the full implications of the root account, and given that it's a very, very, minor inconvenience to the user who wants that account enabled, that sounds like a fine trade off to me.

I also feel like the author greatly exaggerates the inconvenienced caused by this to the sys admin. Instead of `su -` and typing the root password, is it so hard to type `sudo -s` instead?

Also if there are multiple users on a server that may need root, using `sudo` makes it so you don't have to remember to rotate the root password every time a person who used to have root access leaves the company or switches teams or something. For setups with hundreds or thousands of machines, sudo is a much more scalable approach IMHO.</comment>


How world-changing are the culture and politics of free software? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/how-world-changing-are-the-culture-and-politics-of-free-software/2008/08/23 "Geert Lovink interviews Christopher Kelty on the issues covered by his book Two Bits". I found the critisism of amateur anthropology by people like ESR quite refreshing. <comment><USER2> _if I argue with him, I give him the status of a fellow researcher, and I don't think either his research or his ideas merit that_

Harsh but fair.</comment>


Chinese cyberspies breached TeamViewer in 2016 - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/chinese-cyberspies-breached-teamviewer-in-2016/ <comment><USER2> Is this the breach that was detrimental to TeamViewer (but the articles says otherwise)? I used to love TeamViewer. It was so convenient and made life so much easier to remote screen share. Allowed me to access my computer anywhere I needed, the latency was minimal, and it didn't require any port sharing. But the hack in 2016 was a good slap in the face reminder that any point of entry on a computer will be exploited...I got super lucky since my computer had a lock screen so they could not remote in. I would be super paranoid on the info that was leaked since they would scrub your saved passwords. I remember following the reddit post at that time and a bunch of people "bought" $1000 worth of Amazon and other gift cards unknowingly. I believe some people manage to transfer some money too. It was a PITA for a lot of people to dispute the charges too since it was from their computer!

<comment><USER3> It's unlikely that the two breaches are related. A government-backed breach will usually try to stay stealthy and will not burn their access by exploiting it for cybercrime.

However, this confirms that TeamViewer should not be trusted to be open about security issues, so it's possible that there was a second breach that they either didn't notice, or also kept secret.</comment></comment>


Give us your phones and passwords - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2017/01/14/complaints-describes-border-agents-interrogating-muslim-americans-asking-for-social-media-accounts/ <comment><USER2> Canada is brutal with this. They will demand your phone, they will demand your password. If there's anything that makes them think you might overstay your visa, they'll likely deny you entry. The only "reasonable" solution, is to enjoy your trip free of cumbersome electronics, or buy new ones.</comment>


Ask YC: Are Standards a joke? - <AUTHOR>

What do you guys think ? Google news has - 1310 Errors, 91 warning(s) http://tinyurl.com/5vne4e Google.co.in has - 68 Errors, 13 warning(s)
http://tinyurl.com/5oznsp News.ycombinator.com has - 136 Errors, 6
warning(s)
http://tinyurl.com/5l6ftf Facebook has - 27 Errors, 6 warning(s)
http://tinyurl.com/62xcta Yahoo has -  91 Errors, 64 warning(s) http://tinyurl.com/5bqf9p Youtube has - 70 Errors, 56 warning(s)
http://tinyurl.com/5gsap7 Live has - 4 errors http://tinyurl.com/69x2ll Blogger has - 28 Errors
http://tinyurl.com/5djo4q <comment><USER2> There is enough standardization happening to allow your browser to render those pages. That's a good start.

The problem historically with Web Standards has been 2-fold the lack of concrete implementations for vendors to work from. This leads to a variety of interpretations of the details of the standard.

Secondly their has been a lack of incentive for people to create standard markup. I hope things like Open Social (with Caja) and Yahoo's Search Monkey fix that. In the case of Search Monkey by using a Microformat (which must be valid HTML) then you get an enhanced listing in the Yahoo search engine. A definite benefit.

</comment><comment><USER3> I didn't look at all the pages, but Google News' 1310 errors are caused in large part by the fact that they don't even declare a doctype. The use of the _font_ tag (and not even quoting attribute values) is pretty embarrassing, but as previously stated, it's "good enough" for most browsers to render it properly.

There are dozens of very valid reasons for why that isn't really "good enough," but I won't get into those here. I don't think it's a question of whether or not standards are a joke, I just think there is disagreement among people as to whether or not they're worth adhering to. Having a few errors is no big deal; using deprecated HTML tags _is_ a big deal (or at least I assume it will be at some point). I don't think the standards were created under the assumption that everyone would adhere 100% to them; that simply requires more effort than most people are willing to put forth.

This is further compounded by the fact that, yes, browsers _do_ generally properly render even horrific markup such as that on Google News. I would argue that this is only done because it's a necessity and it shouldn't be viewed as a license to create deplorable markup, but what do I know. Until such a time that the advantages of proper standards (and extensions of them, such as microformats) become real benefits to people/businesses, many (most?) will continue to create junk markup -- because they're simply lazy, want to save a few bytes on the page load, or whatever other justifications they come up with.

That doesn't mean standards are a joke, it just means the benefits are too few, too poorly understood, or perceived as too insignificant (who cares about blind people on the internet?!?!)

<comment><USER4> It is perfectly legal in HTML to not quote attributes, and the FONT-tag is also a perfectly legal HTML-tag.

Purely presentational markup (like the FONT-tag) is legal and not a problem. It is only a problem (e.g. for accessibility) when information is conveyed _only_ through presentational markup, or when semantic markup are misused for presentation (eg tables for layout or blockquote for margins). But validation cannot detect these kinds of problems (because it requires an understanding of the meaning of the document), so validation is pretty useless to determine if the HTML is "good" or "bad".

Validation is highly overrated as a means of determining the standards- compliance of a web-site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> On the web real standards usually evolve out of best practices of hackers. The "standards" set by standards bodies are standard in name only, for the most part. They publish a large specification and people keep what is useful and discard what sucks. Or if you are Microsoft, Apple, Mozilla, etc you create your own proprietary stuff.

I used to worry about standards until I realized that it costs time and money when and as long as the browsers are following a single standard its a waste of energy. Now if it works in all the browsers I push it live, standard or not. If it breaks, I fix it and then push it again.

It is all a big coordination game really. An invisible hand works well enough in the web marketplace of ideas.

</comment><comment><USER6> Validation ≠ Standards

All of these parsing 'errors' have clear and straightforward ways to handle them — to the point where the browser can handle an unclosed <p> much faster than it can download and parse '</p>'.

What's worse is that making a parse tree out of markup was never a problem! Consistent CSS layout has always had problems in all rendering engines, but parsing has never been problematic in the slightest.

Microsoft was absolutely right to cockblock XHTML — removing all parsing exception handling is so damn _counter-revolutionary_. It's pathetic that Microsoft understands the web better in this case than the W3C.

<comment><USER4> An unclosed P is not an error. It has always been perfectly legal HTML and has an unambigous parse. There are a lot of cases in HTML where you are allowed to leave out tags, and the paser can infer then. This is part of the SGML nature of HTML.

However browsers _also_ have graceful handling of invalid and ambigous syntax, and that is a much more controversial issue, because the resolutions have been browser specific and undocumented. This is obviously bad for interoperability.

Draconian error handling is the simplest possible solution to this problem, but HTML5 has a much better (but also much more complex) solution which is to openly specify rules for handling any conceivable syntax error. Microsoft has not peen part of this effort AFAIK.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Dont confuse standards and validation. Web standards are of course critical for the workings of the web. Validation is highly overrated though.

The reason people get hung up about validation is that it can be performed mechanically and gives an unambigous result. However it only check against a small (and pretty unimportant) part of the specs. For example a validator cannot check if you use semantic markup (which is pretty important), but will complain about superficial and harmless errors like leaving out the type attribute on a script tag.

</comment><comment><USER7> Not when you are developing for a government client that could hypothetically get sued if you don't use them. They don't find that possibility funny.

</comment><comment><USER8> Standards are like international law -- only half the countries follow half the laws half the time.

</comment><comment><USER9> Standards are crucial to the rendering of all those pages -- but de facto standards, rather than de jure standards.</comment>


Java Threads Comment to Sun 1998/08/20 - <AUTHOR> http://d.hd.org/JavaThreadsCommentToSun19980820.html <comment><AUTHOR> A real fossil that I have never zapped!</comment>


Tech workers find communal living a solution for high rents - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-san-francisco-tech-images-idUSKBN16H2EE <comment><USER3> I try to help recruiters calling me from the Bay Area understand how profound a negative impact the housing prices are for my modest standard of living. I'm in the midwest, and my house current estimated sale price (if offered for sale today), would be insufficient to be the down payment for the purchase a comparable sized house/property in a reasonable middle class (not upscale) area. I could drop the size of my house (1600 sq ft) down to say 600 or so. And then the pricing is, using Bay Area zillow listings, about a factor of 2 higher than what I could sell my house for here.

Honestly, the housing cost is a severe impediment to people with families, unless companies decide to adjust for this in a real manner. But, the moment they do, pricing/rents will go way up.

The only real way to solve this problem is to not try to bring more people to the Bay Area. Defuse the rent seekers. Reduce the tech mediated inflation.

I don't think this will happen on its own. You'll need a crash of some sort for the area to find its real prices. And it is alarming talking to the recruiters, whom seem to think that housing prices will only ever go up.

This communal living is IMO, a symptom of the problem. It is not a long term solution. I don't know what is the solution. Though I should point out that there is a whole rest of the country which is relatively open ...

<comment><USER4> Candidates who make this argument ("pay me 5x my current salary so I can afford similar housing") come across as super tone-deaf.

The cost of housing reflects the opportunity you find in the area. It's a matter of personal preference. If you prefer a big home and less opportunity, stay in the midwest. If you prefer to be where opportunity is greatest, and are willing to sacrifice on square feet, consider the bay area.

But to expect both reflects a lack of common sense. Market salaries and home prices are what they are.

<comment><USER3> Respectfully, I disagree with

> The cost of housing reflects the opportunity you find in the area.

The cost of housing reflects the market for housing which is driven by many factors, including local opportunity.

Again, with all due respect, the tone deafness isn't on my part (and I don't ask for 5x salary).

It is on recruiters calling me up, telling me how wonderful it is there, then offering salaries on par with, if not below what I am making or being offered elsewhere. I have to help them understand the very real aspect of opportunity cost, the huge negative impact, and that if they want someone like me to view this as an attractive offer, they are going to need to think about these issues.

Put another way, the symptom I alluded to is one where you wind up pricing pretty much all of the talent out of the area. Which, as the invisible hand of the market often does, fixes the problem for you.

Are some people willing to lower their quality of life, live in a dorm with N other people, in a space they cannot call their own, for exorbitant rates? Yes, of course. The article was about that.

Is this a stable scenario? I doubt it. I could be wrong, but I've seen too many of these cycles to buy into "housing prices always rise." Or, "the reason it is so expensive is due to opportunity."

The reason it is so expensive is due to rent-seeking behavior, driven in part but not in whole by opportunity. At what point will people say "no more"? That is the question I find interesting.

<comment><USER4> I can tell you that candidates from outside the bay area made all the same arguments in 1989, the year I moved to Cupertino from a very low cost state. And yes there were several booms and busts since that time.

So go ahead, place your bet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In Oxford & Cambridge we have the same problem.

I am spending an uncomfortable part of my income in renting. Furthermore, landlords tend to be greedy and unhelpful with any issues. Regulations give you little protection. So the whole experience is disgusting even if you are willing to go for premium properties.

I am considering to buy, but I am not to keen to borrow money equivalent to a decade and a half of income. It feels like selling my soul. The problem here is incredibly expensive land. A small plot in the countryside goes for at least £150k. With so much empty land, permit restrictions can only be explained as a way to keep land supply low and prices high.

I can only sympathise with the tiny house movement. They try to hack planning regulations by building small homes which require no planning permits [1-4]. Maybe not a scalable solution, but definitely a way to voice concern about unfair and wealth-extracting policies that force you to devote years of work to buy a tiny chunk of land from billionaire landowners.

[1] [http://www.tinyhouseuk.co.uk/property- ladder.html](http://www.tinyhouseuk.co.uk/property-ladder.html)

[2] [https://tinyhousescotland.co.uk/faqs](https://tinyhousescotland.co.uk/faqs)

[3] [https://www.echoliving.co.uk/planning](https://www.echoliving.co.uk/planning)

[4] [http://tlio.org.uk/](http://tlio.org.uk/)

</comment><comment><USER6> $1900 for sharing a house with 40 other people? What a joke

And these are people making 6 digits per year

I'd rather get a lower pay and not worry about crap at this level, even though rising rents seem to be an issue at every city that matters

<comment><USER7> Dickensian neo-tenements are cool and disruptive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder how far away the tech industry is from returning to company towns, complete with Bitcoin-like digital scrip to spend at their online stores.

It seems like the amount of time/energy spent dressing up the bleak economic prospects of structural inequality as new fashions could be put to better use addressing these problems. But then I guess the robber barons of the gilded age didn't have teams of marketers under the thumb of outrageous student loan debt.

<comment><USER9> >bleak economic prospects of structural inequality

The housing crisis has nothing to do with economic inequality. If there are 3 units and 5 people who want them, 2 are going to be dissatisfied, even if they all make the exact same income.

Lower inequality just changes the allocation strategy away from "who has the most to spend" to things like government lottery, who was here first, who belongs to the most politically favored class, and who is willing to spend the largest share of their equal incomes on rent (making the most sacrifices in other areas of life). Arguably, we already live in this world, due to SF's progressive policies around housing allocation which seek to dampen the influence of "how much do you have to spend on rent" on what (if any) housing you'll get access to.

The housing crisis would remain exactly as severe as it is now if you erased 100% of inequality between people.

We have it because there is economic inequality between geographic areas, leading people to migrate to areas where this no room for them, and no will to build vertically to make room.

But that's only in a world with flat population. If we were reproducing above replacement rate, a housing crisis would be _inevitable_ without construction, even if every person and every area had exactly the same socioeconomic status.

<comment><USER10> This is only when you look at it as a zero-sum game, which is only the case because there's not enough new construction happening. If you addressed the inequality between homeowners and non-homeowners by getting rid of the protections afforded by proposition 13, you'd create a situation where it's in everyone's best interests to have lower housing costs and we'd see more new construction as a result. As it is now, homeowners are actually incentivised to oppose new construction since it increases the value of their property.

<comment><USER9> Policymakers have set it up as a zero-sum game _precisely_ to address structural inequality: to prevent tech workers from ruining everyone else's lives.

Viewing preexisting homeowners here as unfairly advantaged (rather than unfairly disadvantaged by the influx of people with higher incomes than them) is a fringe position that only works on HN. I think it's correct, but it's not going to win a Board of Supervisors election.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here's a less flattering article about The Negev: [http://sfist.com/2014/11/21/tech_co- op_the_negev_faces_furth...](http://sfist.com/2014/11/21/tech_co- op_the_negev_faces_further.php)

<comment><USER12> An almost 3 years old article

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I used to live at the Negev, it is not an accurate depiction of startup culture in San Francisco. For starters, it used to be a place that hosted regular Hackathons, tech talks, and other tech related stuff. However it soon turned into a druggie fest, at one point I even saw a girl doing cocaine in the main communal area. I don't think I would ever live in the Negev again, but I did meet a few people that were very nice.

The Negev is a small microcosm of start up culture in the Bay Area.

</comment><comment><USER14> I have been looking into alternative living situations as a hobby for sometime because I am not convinced that the standard single family occupant home/apartment is best for us as humans, but at the same time 1900 a month for a shared apartment is bat shit crazy.

</comment><comment><USER15> 1900$ is ridiculously expensive. Even in Manhattan you can get a nice private Bedroom in shared apartment (3 to 5 BHK) for significantly less than that. At 1900$ you can get a bedroom in shared 2 Bedroom apartment physically next to the Google building in Chelsea.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm a bit worried that this can be penny wise and dollar foolish. Increasing density like this temporarily lowers the minimum cost of rent, but the price per square foot skyrockets. I can't imagine that will be good for any of us.

I also can't imagine the actual cost of the building being anywhere near that much per person. I pay 50% more (each) with a roommate to live fantastically in a skyscraper that has plenty of room. How much is being pocketed in this arrangement?

</comment><comment><USER17> > "Sarah Sherburn-Zimmer, executive director of the Housing Rights Committee > of San Francisco, said housing problems have arisen because occupants leave > buildings being converted to communal homes and cannot afford to move back > in or the space is no longer suitable for them."

This is incorrect. The reason is because of zoning density restrictions which causes market inefficiency in this case a politically induced scarcity which is a form of rent-seeking.

These zoning laws that create artificial scarcity benefit the wealthy landowners to the detriment of those who rent or want to buy into the housing market.

Economists discuss this. See Tim Harford's book, "The Undercover Economist" or read Harvard Economist Edward Glaeser for starters.

David Ricard was the first to see "rent-seeking" and he joined parliament to help to overturn the "Corn Laws" in 1848.

These zoning laws are simply another way of the wealthy to unfairly get more wealth from others instead of wealth creation through good ideas.

With all of the wealthy company owners in SV and SF, I'm surprise they don't lobby to overturn these repressive zoning laws.

</comment><comment><USER18> > Zander Dejah, 25, pays $1,900 a month rent to live in a downtown San > Francisco house with at least 40 other people, many of whom sleep in bunk > beds.

I'm just gonna say it, that's moronic. These articles about people choosing (and yes, when you are a dev who has loads of options it is absolutely by choice) to live like this, or in vans or whatever, just piss me off.

</comment><comment><USER19> Some of us don't want to live communally; we want a place to ourselves in a good area at a decent price :/

<comment><USER20> You could always try one of the many SROs [0] in San Francisco, primarily the tenderloin district.

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

<comment><USER19> Is an affordable one-bedroom apartment too much to ask? A small one- or two- bedroom house?

The former are close to $1500 just for rents (nowhere near SV) and the latter do not seem to be built very much. Very depressing as a native who wants to purchase a simple house in his hometown.

<comment><USER20> Where is your hometown? With the cost of land, it seems crazy to build a 1 - <USER2> bedroom presumably ranch style house in San Francisco. Those style of homes in the Sunset used to be had for $500k or so ten years ago. I think they go for around $1M these days.

I agree that 1 - 2 bedrooms houses are the perfect size, though. I currently live in one (not in CA).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is this city specific? It's nowhere near this bad in south bay.

I'm in Mountain view, close to Caltrain and getting a private room in a large house (sizable backyard, garage, hot tub, kitchen, living room) with two other roommates for $1600/each. We looked at at least a dozen similar houses.

</comment><comment><USER22> 40 people times 1900 per month is 76,000 per month, 912,000 per year.

Usually for real estate back of envelope calculations, 120 months or 10 years' worth of rent is what the value of the property is. What did the Negev property sell for?

<comment><USER23> It seems in the bay area that figure isn't accurate. From my experience the term is even greater than 150 months, often more than 200. I guess this means rent is cheap here (or conversely the price to buy is very high, probably partly because mortgage rates are so low and the interest is tax deductible).

<comment><USER24> In most cities (not limited to US) it now takes 20 or 30 years of rent to make up the price of a property.

<comment><USER6> Hello Bubble

<comment><USER25> Ahh. The good ol' days when it was only 20 yrs rent.

<comment><USER24> And the rent wasn't 50% of your income.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> m-j-fox Thought this was going to be about Chinese subcons a la Foxconn and friends. A different kind of tech worker but maybe not such a difference in lifestyles.

</comment><comment><USER26> Nothing new under the sun, the rest of us suffer while the top part of society buys their 3rd house and 2nd boat. Let them eat Ramen.

<comment><USER27> The number of people with 3 houses _and_ 2 boats is tiny. Much less than 0.1%.

<comment><USER28> Does a kayak count as a boat?

<comment><USER27> Only if dog houses do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> As much as I like visiting the Bay Area, the cost of living is one of many reasons I'd never consider living there.

</comment><comment><USER30> Developers should start building communal spaces where you have your own room and bathroom and share everything else.

<comment><USER27> "Dorms" being the technical term for that arrangement.

<comment><USER28> I've lived in several dorms, and I never had a bathroom just for myself.

<comment><USER31> The new senior dorm where I went to school had private bathrooms in the dorm rooms. Of course everyone of them went and got a small fridge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> For 1900 a month you can rent the same condos as pro athletes in Atlanta, just sayin.

<comment><USER33> Well yeah, but then you're living in Atlanta (and after 5 years there, I'm not moving back)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is the best way to get slice of a bigdata set present in txt files? - <AUTHOR> I have 20 .txt files each having records ranging from few hundred thousand records to a couple of million records. All these files are interdependent. For example if we take person.txt and address.txt, I have person_id field in person.txt and all the corresponding address can be found in address.txt with person_id as foreign key in address.txt file.
My question is what is the best way to generate a slice of the whole data set?
For example lets say we have person_id from 1 - 1 million in person.txt file and lets say i want to get all the related data in all the files for person_id = 1 - 10. What would be the best approach?
Finally i want to generate 20 new .txt files which contain data for those 10 person.
Two approaches I can think of are:
1. Store in the data from all the .txt files in different tables. Then write different queries to get data from all the related tables by joining them.
2. Write a python script and use different tools like grep, cut etc within the script to get the data slice. For example, first I can run grep on person.txt file to get all the records in person.txt file. Then run grep on other files(using person_id if that is the foreign key in the other file or some other field from the result I got from previous grep).
Approach 1 will give the advantage of indexing in database which will make reading from tables faster.
On the other hand writing a python script will avoid the overhead of creating a database, storing all the data in the database and joining.
I'm not sure which his the best way to get better execution time for my requirement. Any help is appreciated. Thanks. <comment><USER2> I'd reach for SQLite. It's a great and fast way to do the joins. It also would make for a much better way to transport this data than a collection of interrelated text files. If the data will be transmitted and refreshed periodically this will make for a much more scalable, extensible, and smooth process.

</comment><comment><USER3> It depends on your case.

I can say that pandas is amazingly good and fast at joining, if your data is really huge you can parallelize/segment your data with dask.

If it relatively simple to do the joining then it will probably be quicker to process the .txt files and not hard to write the script.

If the complexity is high you might want to try sqllite.

</comment><comment><USER4> Spark makes processing data in files really easy: at work I've been using this to read in a bunch of events and generate various metrics from them.</comment>


Motivation is just as precious as execution - <AUTHOR> http://codercofounder.wordpress.com/2011/09/22/motivation-is-no-less-precious-than-execution/

<comment><USER2> This article rings true with me. Especially in the managerial role, I love seeing it when my guys show and prove how passionate they are about a project. Makes it so much easier to support them!

<comment><USER3> I think execution without motivation is nil.

I loved this article, BTW.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's one of those things that you kind of know to be true, but then it startles you when feel its impact on your own work over a long period of time. Thanks, BTW.

<comment><USER3> Yes I know what you mean. I think execution without motivation is a job. I have never had a job before. :D</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hundreds of Silicon Valley startups want to copy other startups - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/bits/2013/12/07/hundreds-of-start-ups-hope-to-be-a-copycat-start-up/?_r=0

<comment><USER2> Just because a company's funding pitch begins with "The Uber of health care" does not mean that company is a copy of Uber.

</comment><comment><USER3> Discussion from yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6866822](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6866822).</comment>


Company Scans Your Books For a Dollar – Ship 'Em In, Get a PDF via Email - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2011/08/18/company-scans-your-books-for-a-dollar-ship-em-in-get-a-pdf-via-email/ <comment><USER2> My grandmother, who passed away last week, was an author. She self-published two novels through a printer who typeset her books and printed a few hundred copies. I don't know what happened to the original text files she gave her printer and I know she never got a digital typeset copy.

I've been wanting to re-release her novels as ebooks, but haven't had a way to digitize them. This is perfect for me.

<comment><USER3> Ideally you'd get something besides a PDF, which is a pain in the neck to turn into a 'real' eBook.

<comment><USER4> Why is that? .PDF isn't proprietary enough?

<comment><USER3> PDF is really a display format, whereas epub/mobi are more HTMLish in that they are not quite so specific in how they want things displayed, and thus can be flowed into different screen sizes pretty easily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder how well they do with math books?

Even the original publishers have trouble with those. I was going to buy the ebook version of "Proofs from the Book", but downloaded the sample first from Amazon, and it was completely worthless. You'd have a line that would say something like (S in the following represents a capital Greek Sigma):

       S( ) <= S( )

where there were supposed to be things inside the parenthesis.

I checkout out a few other serious math books for Kindle, and although most weren't as bad as the above, I'd usually find some deal breaking errors in the handling of math symbols. For instance, I seem to recall one that would lose exponents of -1 if they were attached to a small letter. I didn't see anything else wrong...but it was an abstract algebra book, and it is customary to use multiplicative notation for groups, an so a^-1 is the customary notation for the inverse of a. Group theory gets very confusing when a^-1 gets replaced by a.

At this point, I don't think I'd buy a math book for Kindle even if the preview was flawless unless I was very sure that the preview included every mathematical symbol that would be used in the book, and in all the sizes they would be used in.

<comment><USER6> If it's a raw image with little to no OCR, you won't have that problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What I noticed about this company, after checking their website:

1) They list an "Accept direct shipment from Amazon" option (coming soon). Think about it: this means a book could be printed, sold, shipped to this company, scanned and destroyed without ever being read. Something is very odd here.

2) The business is located four blocks from my apartment. Maybe I'll try them out...

<comment><USER8> Re 1), what's odd is that current ebook pricing makes this an attractive option.

<comment><USER9> I can imagine a group of 20 students, buying a book, shipping directly from amazon to that company, and getting a copy for a very small fraction of the cost

<comment><USER10> While that's true, the post you are replying to was basically saying "I can imagine a single person buying a book, shipping directly from amazon to that company, and getting a copy for less than the ebook cost" which I think is a more extreme version of your scenario.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Article doesn't mention a big audience that would be very interested in cheap book scanning: the print disabled. Blind and partially-sighted people are the most obvious members of this group but dyslexics and others who cannot read normal print would also benefit. Many books are of course already available through libraries for the blind but if you need less-popular or specialised texts you are out of luck.

With an aging population it seems this is a very natural niche.

Now if it were only OnePoundScan instead of OneDollarScan...

<comment><USER12> This doesn't OCR them, it's just an image, so the blind are still out of luck.

<comment><USER11> Well, it still helps - you can OCR a book file yourself, even if you can't see; just a few clicks and then go do something more interesting. Scanning your own book is possible, but requires sitting there throughout.

Edit: <http://1dollarscan.com/pricing.php> says "OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition. The PDFs will contain the OCR text layer behind the images to make the text searchable and selectable." This service is labelled free so I guess you get it (or can get it) for each scan.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The video indicated that the binding for the book was being cut off. I suspect that will prevent students from borrowing books from the library, getting them scanned via this service, and returning them.

It is sad that many hundreds of thousands of hours have been wasted by students photocopying books :(

<comment><USER14> > I suspect that will prevent students from borrowing books from the library, > getting them scanned via this service, and returning them.

Now I'm curious, how much does a library charge for a lost book?

<comment><USER15> Dont go down that road - please. If you "borrow" someones book you rob one person of the privilege of reading it in the future. If you pull the same stunt with a library book you potentially rob many people well into the future. For some reason libraries are very slow to replace lost books. I guess just knowing with good certainty that the book is actually gone for good rather than placed in the wrong section would be a tough nut to crack.

<comment><USER14> I wouldn't. But it's not like I'm the only person who would think of this. So, really - are lost book fines low enough to incentivize students to steal them, ship them to get scanned, and pay the fine?

Especially in the case of required textbooks.

<comment><USER16> The normal fee is the cost of the replacement and a processing fee (University of Maryland and most of the public libraries I have dealt with). When I was at the university they would accept a replacement that you bought, but still charge the processing fee to get it back on the shelf.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I run a photo scanning company in Canada (<http://photoscanning.ca>) and I was seriously surprised at the number of people asking for this service. I get a ton of teachers that are looking to have their material on their laptop instead of lugging everything around, students wanting their texts on their iPads, etc. We haven't officially done it yet as I hadn't looked into the copyright issue as much as I should, but may in the future.

The digital photography method is certainly less destructive, but hugely more expensive & time consuming. A $15,000 scanner can do 120+ sheets per minute... The pricing for book pages seems very solid (keep in mind that scanning is quoted in impressions, so your 100 sheets is 50 pages double sided, if I'm not mistaken)

</comment><comment><USER18> The way the current rules are written for fair-use, if two people send in an identical book, are they allowed to send the same PDF to both rather than scanning twice? I wonder how the governing bodies would view that. Side-note, I think it'd be interesting if if they collected/published data about what books are sent in, and from where.

<comment><USER19> > _if two people send in an identical book, are they allowed to send the same > PDF to both rather than scanning twice?_

In somewhat-analogous circumstances almost 30 years ago, a court said "no." The case was _Micro-Sparc, Inc. v. Amtype Corp._ , 592 F.Supp. 33, 34-35, 223 USPQ (BNA) 1210 (D. Mass. 1984). The defendant offered a keyboarding service: It typed in the source code of programs published in a hobbyist magazine, then sold disks to purchasers of the magazine. The court rejected a fair-use defense and held that this infringed the copyright in the programs. (Adapted from a chapter in a treatise I published long ago.)

<comment><USER20> After reading this case, it seems to me that a different section of the copyright code was tested here. I believe space shifting of media other than computer programs has a solid history...

That the subject was a computer program is what seemed to trip up the case in my opinion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I want to do this with all my books and paperwork (old bills, receipts, notes from college, photographs (crappy snapshots, really)). This was my plan:

Buy a ScanSnap s1500m for $420. It does double sided scans at 20 ppm but that doesn't include OCR time or paper jams. Let's guess it averages 500 pages an hour.

Pay a neighbor kid $10 an hour to cut and scan.

Even if I sold the scanner when I was done, this is still way cheaper. It's a shame they don't scan things besides books. Although, I'm not sure I want to send my old tax forms to a sweatshop...

<comment><USER22> > It's a shame they don't scan things besides books

It sounds like they do. Homepage says books/photos/business cards/documents/greeting cards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is a cool idea but it is a bit sad that it is necessary. Sad because it is wasteful. Books are written in a digital format. So we are using natural resources to make them, turning them into digital (which they already were, and probably in a better format then PDF like LaTeX, specially for technical books), and then destroying the physical copies after they consumed resources.

Of course it's necessary because not all publishers release digital versions or they release it with a ton of DRM, etc..

Still, it's a bit sad.

<comment><USER24> A lot of us are doing the same thing with CDs and DVDs. You can choose waste or DRM; so far you can't have neither.

<comment><USER25> Most music available for purchase these days doesn't have DRM but in the case of video, you are correct.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Would something similar make sense for say music cd's, dvd's etc? I for one would _love_ to send someone my media collection, and have it ripped into lossless format and put on cloud. In order to get around piracy issues etc maybe the entire collection can be digitally signed by my public key...

<comment><USER27> Check out <https://www.murfie.com/>

<comment><USER28> Hmm, now what about that box of tapes and mix-tapes I have in storage?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is a repeat article of a business borne in Japan fueled by iPads and lack in home shelf-space in big cities. [http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/02/japanese-book- scannin...](http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/02/japanese-book-scanning- services-fueled-by-ipad-e-readers/)

I think they scan new books, once they have one scan in inventory, they don't have to scan it again. When you send them your book, it's proof you owned one and they send you a PDF. That is, they don't scan all individual books --so if yours had margin notes, that would be lost, I believe.

</comment><comment><USER30> Book scanning is actually a great tool for University students. I know that a lot of the actual University libraries are trying to go digital, but in the mean time being able to quickly find specific passages by utilizing the find function makes for a much easier day at the old study hall. This sort of idea could certainly pick up traction around schools for the next few years.

</comment><comment><USER31> I was all there, until it said 'PDF'. For my purposes I need a more accessible format.

Other than that, I could definitely see this helping with my foreign language studies. Especially Japanese, as the company appears to do a lot of books in that language.

<comment><USER32> What kind of format were you looking for? Would it be better to receive it in all three: PDF (w/ OCR performed), TIFF, and ASCII?

<comment><USER31> UTF8 preferred, since I'd be doing mostly Japanese. Shift-JIS would be acceptable. Basically just plain text. For books, anyhow. If I sent any comics, I'd want image files.

Though, after thinking about the cost of shipping, book, etc, I'm not sure I'd send much... It'd be only things that I really, really want to read and just haven't learned the vocab for yet. And there really isn't much of that.

<comment><USER33> They OCR it, so with the PDF you get whatever text data they are able to extract from it (don't know about the encoding, but that is easy to convert), _plus_ additional information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> They chose a pretty bad name for their website.

What happens when they need to charge more (or less) than one dollar? Also, they're also locking themselves into the "scanning" market with the word 'scan' in their domain name.

<comment><USER35> > What happens when they need to charge more (or less) than one dollar?

Why would they need to charge more? And the nice thing about computer tech is that with dropping costs, you don't have to change the price, just the quantity each $1 buys you...

(Right now $1 only buys you 100 pages, which is an awful small book.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> This would be a great business if you got to keep your book. Ie: instead of 1$, pay 5$ for the first 100 sheets but no spine-cutting and you get the book back intact after. Much more worth it!

</comment><comment><USER36> They should have a student plan. I see this being very useful for college and university students like me. Your one tablet could contain all of your books and manual!

</comment><comment><USER37> Do they OCR before converting to PDF? Having a PDF that is just a 'picture' isn't very helpful (can't search for text, change text size, etc).

<comment><USER38> yes, the pricing page on their site says OCR is included free.

<comment><USER39> That depends though. Isn't there a way for the PDF page to be an image, but for OCR to produce an index of keywords, so that you are viewing the image, but the index is searchable? This doesn't solve the increase/decrease text size issue (though it does solve the searching issue).

<comment><USER24> Yes, searchable PDF puts the OCRed text behind the image so that it's not visible but is still searchable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Wow, maybe we'll finally get a digital edition of "The Four Steps to the Epiphany".

</comment><comment><USER41> They're not scanning your books for a dollar. They're letting you pay them to give them books. Then they resell them at some discount. Speculation...but that's what I would do.

<comment><USER42> The 1DollarScan site says they cut the spines off the books to scan them, so unless that isn't accurate, they aren't reselling the books.

<comment><USER28> If they get the same book to scan twice, why actually do the second scan? Why not just use the scan from the first copy of the book? And if that is the case, now they have a fresh copy of the book with its spine intact.

It would be a waste of the resources invested in the production of that physical book to not find some productive use for that copy.

<comment><USER43> Some people write notes on the margins of the page and underline key-phrases when reading. I don't think they would check each book to see if it was "clean".

<comment><USER44> How about you just let the customer indicate whether he has a clean book or not? Just charge more for `dirty' books.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


De-clutter Your Interface with Hover Controls - <AUTHOR> http://www.usabilitypost.com/2008/11/19/de-clutter-your-interface-with-hover-controls/

<comment><USER2> This is a terrible solution:

\- It won't work on any mobile device (touchscreen or not)

\- The user has to guess where the controls are, and even if it's obvious to you, it's not for 20% of them at least.

The real solution is to link the title of the entry to the edit form, and to add a delete icon to the right. Yes, it will repeat itself on each line, but it's still more accessible to everyone.

To help the user know on which line he's clicking the delete button, you can altern the background of the lines (grey/white/grey/...) or just make the background change while the mouse is hovering. And as a bonus, have a meaningful confirmation of deletion (repeating the name of the entry) upon click.

Win/Win, everyone is happy.

</comment><comment><USER3> The disadvantage of this is that there is no visual cue to the user that additional controls will appear.

Not every user will spend time hovering over your entire UI, searching for controls that you've hidden away.

This is a one-dimensional design decision. "UI looks cluttered, lets hide some stuff. Wow that looks better!". But from the viewpoint of a new user, you've just created a barrier.

<comment><USER4> Have you conducted any studies that show that? We have done this and so far no one has ever complained about "missing links/buttons". Most users never even noticed when we switched to hover controls

<comment><USER5> Have you done any studies to ensure that new visitors know that there are contols to discover? Perhaps they aren't complaining because they don't know they're missing stuff.

Or perhaps they just leave.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We did some workplace usability testing with non-technical staff (admin, sales etc) and this was a fair hurdle in our prototypes.

We struck a better balance in different projects by either leaving them at a soft 30% opacity, or a desaturated and washed out look until hovered. Giving a subtle visual indication that the option is still there allowed us to remove the weight from the design while achieving a satisfactory level of discoverability.

It was important to choose our visual cue carefully as, on text, the desaturation makes it look disabled. Icons with a desaturation (not complete) and a contrast tweak lend themselves beautifully to this.

Disclaimer: no data kept, this is all anecdotal with a relatively small sample (5-10 people).

</comment><comment><USER7> My question: How well will this work on a device like an iPhone where hovering isn't useful.

Although I think the the problem with repetitive buttons does need a solution, I also think it's too hard to assume that users will figure out that hovering over something may allow them to see additional choices.

<comment><USER8> This question crossed my mind too. Anyone have a solution?

On the other hand, I just learned the technique of using psuedo-classes early in the css selector chain. Sweet!

<comment><USER9> The solution I've used requires Javascript.

It detects when on a touch screen, and if so, adds a CSS class to one default item that gives it the same display-characteristics (including showing hidden controls and shading) as if it were being moused-over.

Then, set it so any touch on other eligible elements moves this 'current' class.

In some ways, this could be a clearer model for pointer environments, too: reveal the hidden controls on at least one element at the start, and adjust the one full-revealed item as the pointer moves. This requires Javascript, and is a bit more cluttered, but won't leave anyone in the dark about what's possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wordpress has been doing that for a while on their posts admin page. Hover the title of each post, and you get a link to edit / delete, etc...

I find it horrible. It's confusing, and you never remember the position of the links, so you tend to do two steps: 1. move the mouse over the post title, 2. Go to the desired link, instead of just going directly to the appropriate link.

<comment><USER11> I think it depends on context and execution. For example Twitter always used them over tweets in their app, and it works quite well, or do you disagree?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> My preferred description of this crap is "mystery meat navigation"

<http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/mysterymeatnavigation.html>

Ahhh, good old webpagesthatsuck.com. In itself it kinda sucks in 2011, but lots of good advice there still.

</comment><comment><USER5> As a power user I'm atypical, I know, but I hate hover controls because they slow me down. I've also used interfaces that border on unusable because they are both slow _and_ undiscoverable.</comment>


UA Study Shows Stark Differences in How Conservatives, Liberals See Data - <AUTHOR> http://uanews.ua.edu/2016/07/ua-study-shows-stark-differences-in-how-conservatives-liberals-see-data/ <comment><USER2> Link to abstract: [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092656616...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092656616300666)

I was intrigued by the following paragraphs from the article:

> In three separate studies, Tullett and colleagues offered participants in > both the Deep South and West Coast a chance to view data on three topics: > the justness of the world, the efficacy of social safety nets and the > benefits of social media.

and

> Tullett said she picked political issues that were relatively broad because > people's views on specific topics – like gay marriage or abortion – might be > more idiosyncratic.

(note that I haven't been able to look at the data)

The researcher says she has picked political issues that are relatively broad. But I actually do wonder if the subjects chosen are neutral enough. My intuition said these issues are the issues a college educated person with a cosmopolitan worldview would pick (saying that as someone with that worldview). I think that the different values and priorities between conservatives and republicans, and the different demographical makeups, might skew the results. So a lot would depend on how different demographical factors were controlled for.

Yourmorals.org has a load of research on different values between liberals and conservatives [1]. Liberals seem to value fairness/reciprocity more, and in- group/loyalty less [2]. Liberals are more likely to think a lack of equality is wrong [1]. I'd think these differences might cause a difference in the interest that respondents have in "the justness of the world" and "the efficacy of social safety nets". It's not that they won't be interested, but I can imagine the political priorities are different. Social Media benefits seems to me something that interests younger people more, but I'd hope those kinds of things were controlled for.

[1] See [http://www.polipsych.com/2010/10/27/differences-between- whit...](http://www.polipsych.com/2010/10/27/differences-between-white-male- liberals-and-white-male-conservatives/) for a portion of the yourmorals.org research. [2] See [http://www.ethicsdefined.org/the-problem-with- morality/conse...](http://www.ethicsdefined.org/the-problem-with- morality/conservatives-vs-liberals/) for a graph on some different values, taken from yourmorals.org</comment>


Why I chose Brave as my Chrome browser replacement - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/4/18249623/brave-browser-choice-chrome-vivaldi-replacement-chromium <comment><USER2> Counterpoints:

Brave has been moving in a privacy- and user-unfriendly direction lately.

I've been heavily using Firefox on desktop and Android for 6+ months and have bumped into compatibility issues perhaps twice. Both times, I jumped into Chrome for a few minutes. Not a big sacrifice.

<comment><USER3> Can you provide specifics on Brave direction?

<comment><USER2> Can't find it all now, but here are a few:

[https://mobile.twitter.com/tomscott/status/10761608828733808...](https://mobile.twitter.com/tomscott/status/1076160882873380870)

[https://www.cnet.com/news/brave-browser-fix-for-online- adver...](https://www.cnet.com/news/brave-browser-fix-for-online-advertising- pays-you-to-view-ads-that-respect-privacy/) (not evil necessarily, but certainly not as good as Firefox + addons that block all ads and trackers)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19129309](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19129309)

<comment><USER3> Thanks, Facebook tracking is a deal breaker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In terms of this article, when "shaking the Chrome habit":

> I'm growing less and less comfortable with having Google know more and more > about me.

Is any browser built on Chromium completely de-Googled? Brave is moving to a Chromium foundation.

</comment><comment><USER5> Load up Valgrind and check how many memory leaks are in Brave, hundreds.

<comment><USER3> Would those also be in Chrome?</comment></comment>


There is something about this 110 MPG car that does not smell right - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.howstuffworks.com/2009/06/05/there-is-something-about-this-110-mpg-car-that-doesnt-smell-right/

<comment><USER2> A lot of it seems to be tricky math. It's not MPG, it's MPGe, the 'e' is for 'equivalent'. However, marketing guys have been playing those games forever, so no surprises there.

They're claiming E85 has 1/3rd less energy than gas, so they're actually getting 110*0.66 = 72.5 mpg of E85.

72.5 mpg is not as good for marketing hype, but it's still impressive.

He seems to be playing some games with the acceleration profile as well. If you 'gun it', you're in 'power mode', not 'efficiency mode', so the mpg numbers no longer apply. I'm not certain if this is common practice or not in these kinds of tests. It probably is.

I think he is mainly just taking control of the throttle away from the driver, and doing a "throttle by wire' system, giving you the most efficient (and probably painfully unresponsive) acceleration profile possible, when you're in 'efficiency mode'. I'm not sure if that buys him the whole 72.5mpg or not, but it's in his toolbox. <EDIT: Actually I can imagine such a system that wouldn't be too bad. When the user makes relatively small acceleration addition requests with the throttle pedal, you use your efficiency optimized acceleration profile to give it to him. When the user "stomps on it", because a truck is about to hit him, then you give him the requested throttle amount. I can imagine such a system would yield efficiency gains without being too painful to drive.</EDIT>

Whether there's something else in the engine that gives you the rest of the efficiency gains, or if that's all of it, remains to be seen.

Of course, we don't know if any of this is real, but if it is, it's a cross between "real" and "marketing real".

<comment><USER3> my idea of a fuel-efficient car only has a brake pedal - acceleration is controlled by a computer

<comment><USER4> People want to be able to floor it to merge into traffic - its a safety feature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Comment #1 below really says it: Even if you have a _100%_ efficient engine, it takes more energy to propel that un-aerodynamic Mustang through the air 1 mile at highway speeds than you get out of 1/100 gallon of gas. And that's ignoring rolling friction and powertrain losses. It's a perpetual motion machine.

<comment><USER6> I think what they need to do is make an instant on/off engine mated to an instant on/off transmission.

Right now, even when you are going down hill, the car slows down because of transmission friction, and you end up hitting the accelerator to maintain your speed.

If it's instant on/off, they can afford to let the car go in neutral when the driver isn't accelerating, so you won't use up fuel fighting the transmission. Same goes for instant on/off engine. If it can be turned on instantly, there is no reason to keep the engine running when you are just rolling along

<comment><USER5> At highway speeds, it's mostly aerodynamics, so it won't buy you that much.

Check out this entry in the Tesla Motors blog: <http://www.teslamotors.com/blog4/?p=70> It talks about the power required to maintain a certain speed and what's responsible for it.

The Tesla Roadster uses ~ 230Wh/mile to cruise at 55mph. What is that in equivalent mpg? Gas has 34MH/liter, which is 35800 Wh/gallon. For reference, that gives 35800/230=155 mpg.

With the given frontal area and Cd of that Mustang, it takes 140Wh/mile to overcome aerodynamic drag only. Let's assume they have a magic, loss-free power train. That leaves the tire drag, which should be about the same as the Tesla since they are both high-performance cars and probably weighs the same given the Tesla is dragging around all the batteries. The Tesla plot shows tire drag to be ~60Wh/mile, which adds up to a _theoretical minimum_ of 200Wh/mile, which is 180mpg.

A more realistic assumption is that the Mustang power train (they only talk about engine so I assume it has a standard transmission) is no more efficient than the Tesla's, which requires a further 75Wh/mile. This brings us to 275Wh/mile, which is 130mpg.

To reach 110mpg, the engine would thus need a thermodynamic efficiency of 85%. This is more than twice the efficiency of diesel engines at ~40%.

It can't work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> 110 miles / gallon = 2.14 liters / 100 km

</comment><comment><USER8> My suspicion is that they're not counting the ethanol in their MPGe calculation. They claim to be using E85. In other words, the fuel mixture may contain about 85% ethanol. Their MPGe calculation probably only counts the gasoline in that mixture, the 15%.

</comment><comment><USER9> From their website:

"A Northwest Ohio start-up company is nearly ready to create 2,000 green auto industry jobs!" [1]

They've received 312,000 orders ... right. For comparison the tesla model S has received _over 1,000_ orders [2]. An order of magnitude difference. Why haven't we already heard of these guys?

1\. hp2g.com/articles.html; 2\. www.autobloggreen.com/2009/05/12/tesla- reports-over-1-000-model-s-orders/

<comment><USER10> Because everyone here is focused on Silicon Valley, and Tesla hangs around there.

<comment><USER11> For perspective, the new Prius model has a sales target of 100,000 cars in 2009.

Somehow I doubt that some small company with a new engine technology has outsold threefold Toyota's massively efficient and effective sales, marketing, and dealership network across the US, _and gone completely unnoticed_ by mainstream media.

The car business involves a lot more than just the design of the engine or the car.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think the trick is the "equivalent" part. If I got it right, they are using some sort of fuel which provides 1/3 of the energy regular gasoline does. Which means they are probably doing 110/3 mpg on this type of fuel.

<comment><USER5> It doesn't matter what the fuel is. You get the same amount of energy out of it, so it's no easier running 110*3/2 mpg on E85 (which is 2/3 the energy density) than 110mpg on gas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> its probably gets 110mpg based on the % of fuel that is gasoline. ie the fuel is 99% ethanol and 1% gas so the car runs a regular 20mpg but because only 1% of that fuel is gas it gets a magical 2000mpg (20/1%). Their probably doing something shifty like counting the ethanol as free energy and therefore not including the ethanol burned in their MPG calcs...

</comment><comment><USER14> A car that does 377 mpg: <http://www.seattlepi.com/local/351903_needle20.html>

But that means: hardly any chassis, no gearbox, aircraft tires, the engine is wrapped in asbestos, driving a constant 30 mph, etc., etc.

This car is in the Guiness book of records.

Edit: BTW, I'm not claiming that means the car in this article is also plausible: if it claims to yield a constant 55 hp, then it can't do 110 mpg.

<comment><USER5> I think this one is where things will have to go if we want efficency: <http://www.aptera.com></comment></comment>