Motorola Shutting Down 280 Slides - <AUTHOR> http://280slides.com/ <comment><USER2> I don't know how the developers are feeling, but years ago I was in a similar situation a couple different times. Poured my heart and soul into excellent best in class design and then had it all yanked out and dumped in a vat of acid. Years of my work, of my life, was gone and squandered and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. The couple thousand hours of unpaid overtime was just insult on top of injury. The last time it happened was from a decision by clueless MBAs after a hostile talent acquisition by a Fortune 500 outfit. The talent doesn't always stick around after that sort of shafting. It's like someone has murdered your baby and then wants to to stick around and help them move furniture across town. No thanks.

One of the best arguments for open source is your work can't be trashed and dismissed by financiers and people with business degrees who have no taste and no idea how to create anything. The one thing that redeemed HP in its recent move to trash WebOS was the decision to open source it. Without that, many of the best engineers on the project would have ended up leaving the company in disgust.

<comment><USER3> If by developers you mean the founders, I'd reckon they are feeling pretty good all said and done.

It's common knowledge that a vast majority of acquisitions fail and end up shutting down post acq. So while I can understand your frustration for your _unpaid_ work, it can be assumed that these guys were _very well_ paid. It makes it less similar to your situation.

<comment><USER2> I apologize for confusing things by bringing up too many issues at once. In particular, I did briefly mention pay, it was meant to be a brief aside, and should not have because it's irrelevant to the point as it pertains to money. Obviously I was paid a lot, but on salary one does not receive overtime pay for extra hours. Extra hours are thus a free will donation to the project. The idea I was trying to express, but failed to do well was that, if I knew in advance my work would be annihilated, I would never have bothered caring too much about it or staying past 5 to meet an important deadline or working all weekend on a bug fix.

It's not about money. It's about having one's powerful creative work destroyed by imbeciles.

I have 630,000 hours alive before I will die from birth to death. About 200,000 of them remain. The clock is ticking right now. Each hour that passes is lost and will never ever be recovered. The time of talented individuals is best spent contributing, not pissing their talent away in futility.

I did not make the same mistake of youth I describe above ever again. Since then I have always retained control and/or ownership of my work. I gently advise others to consider doing the same.

The purpose of my post was to express sympathy and empathy with their tremendous loss, not disdain for not being rich enough. I am already rich enough, what I can't get more of is hours remaining.

<comment><USER4> _I have 630,000 hours alive before I will die from birth to death. About 200,000 of them remain. The clock is ticking right now. Each hour that passes is lost and will never ever be recovered. The time of talented individuals is best spent contributing, not pissing their talent away in futility_

I wish I could give you 10 upvotes for this. Time and passion is _not_ equivalent, not even freely interchangeable, with money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My comment from the day the acquisition was announced:

"pg, please, please get the people building awesome tools to become ridiculously profitable like Wufoo! I so wanted to use 280 North but I was scared they would get bought and vanish. My fear came true. EDIT: Half true. No word yet on what Motorola is going to do with them. Congrats to the 280 Norths, YC, and their other investors. Let's all join hands and pray that Motorola allows development on Cappuccino et al to remain public."

\- <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1631036>

<comment><USER6> And Cappuccino development does continue out in the open. There's no risk of the project dying because of anything Motorola could do to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I never really thought of 280 Slides as a "real" app anyway. It always just felt like a demo for Cappuccino.

</comment><comment><USER8> One more nail in the coffin for recommending web-based services.

<comment><USER9> It does feel to me that joining YC and then taking a significant funding round afterwards is producing a lot of auditions where either the product is outright shut down or only parts are kept.

Sure looking from a higher level these may push forward innovation. Just makes it harder for us early adopters to justify investing time in using their apps/services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Which Motorolla? Google's, or Motorolla's? [context question]

<comment><USER11> Since it is Motorola _Mobility_ , shouldn't that be Google's[1]?

[1]: [http://www.theverge.com/2011/11/17/2570039/motorola- mobility...](http://www.theverge.com/2011/11/17/2570039/motorola-mobility- stockholders-approve-google-buyout)

<comment><USER12> Until the merger is complete, it's very important that Google and Motorola Mobility continue to behave as independent companies. Since this deal is under scrutiny by the FTC, I doubt that Google would put their acquisition at risk over a project as small as 280 Slides.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is 280 Atlas also dead? It seems like there hasn't been any movement on the public beta in 9 months.

<comment><USER14> "761st day of the Atlas Beta."

Hahaha

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Anybody know why?

Not enough users?

Folding the product into something else?

Having something as awesome as Cappuccino and a flagship app like 280 slides runs counter to the Google thesis that JavaScript isn't good enough? ;)

<comment><USER16> There was never a real market for it, Power Point and Google Presentation fills the need of most users i think.

To say that about Google is a little unfair, you can't argue they didn't try. Cappuccino is not that new any more and everyone is doing native apps right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wonder what this means for Cappuccino. Coming from a mac developer, Cappuccino is awesome. I was able to jump right in writing a complicated web app right away without having to use any javascript, html, or CSS. Lots of web developers probably think this sounds stupid, but man, it's awesome.

<comment><USER6> Cappuccino is still doing well as an open source project. This won't have any impact (aside from the unfortunate loss of a high profile example, but it was also two years behind the state of the art).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you are interested in an open source alternative there is Swinger which you can easily run your own copy of: <http://swinger.quirkey.com/>

</comment><comment><USER19> What is 280 Slides? Ive never heard of this.

<comment><USER20> It was te original demo app for cappuccino the web app framework cloned from cocoa to JavaScript and based on objective-j. They went on to build a web equivalent of interface builder called atlas then got bought by Motorola.

<comment><USER19> Wow, that looks damned interesting. So should I drop the whole thing off my radar, or does Motorola axing everything not effect Objective-J and Cappuccino?

<comment><USER21> Atlas seems effectively dead. Cappuccino is still developed but the original founders (now at Motorola) seem to no longer be involved.

<comment><USER6> We're still involved, just not as much as we used to be, or as much as some of our other contributors, as we all have other responsibilities.

<comment><USER22> So is Atlas really...dead? I was really pulling for it there for a while</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Can't Chuck Get His Business Off the Ground? - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQscE3Xed64

<comment><USER2> I really enjoyed this. I came into it thinking, "Ah its not that hard." And left feeling good about how easy it is to start a tech company.</comment>


Brevity Is Beautiful - <AUTHOR> http://betterexplained.com/articles/brevity-is-beautiful/ <comment><USER2> Brevity is not an end in itself but simply one goal of good writing. This means: don't pad, don't over-elaborate, don't meander. Keep your writing focused for its purpose.

But, if that purpose is, for example, to explain the meaning of restricted stock and, as a lawyer, you tell a client that such stock is granted but made subject to repurchase at cost upon termination of a service relationship between the company and the recipient, creating a risk of forfeiture and thereby requiring that an 83(b) election be filed so as avoid having artificial income imputed to the holder as vesting occurs, that is a perfectly fine if windy way to express oneself and creates no difficulty or misunderstanding for the reader (at least I hope not). There is room for variety in writing, and no writer should feel handcuffed by an _artificial_ need to keep things brief.

That said, by all means be brief where you can, and do aim for brevity as a worthy goal of your writing. Just don't obsess about it. It has its place. That is all.

Overall, a very nice piece.

<comment><USER3> The purpose of "good writing" is clear communication. Attempts at brevity, done properly, result in removing fluff and unnecessary details, leaving the key points intact and making them the clear focus. Done improperly, they result in incomplete or mangled communication, with key points missing or inadequately explained.

Be brief, but clear.

<comment><USER4> @grellas, @lotharbot, great points. Yep, the goal of writing is to communicate an idea -- brevity is a tactic.

I love this quote by Einstein: Things should be as simple as possible, but not more so. If something is truly necessary, then keep it, but be strict about what is needed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've always been a fan of trying to organize my writing with several levels of complexity embedded. For example, when writing any sort of FAQ or explanation, I would briefly outline the steps, and then proceed to explain each one in further detail so that a lay audience may understand. This way both someone who's just looking to grasp or relearn an idea and someone who is very new to the topic can benefit. Either way, you're making assumptions about the level of minimum expertise of your audience.

<comment><USER4> Agreed -- good communication is about understanding your audience and circling back into detail as needed. Aka, do a breadth-first sweep, vs. depth-first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The primary quality of prose style is _clarity_ while brevity in an exposition ideally has these three qualities:

      * Context
      * Relevance
      * Cogency

<comment><USER4> Great point. I wonder, though: does first focusing on brevity bring natural clarity, or the reverse?

<comment><USER7> Focusing on clarity will naturally bring brevity, in those instances where it is appropriate. Saying something as plainly and simply as possible, while not being couched in padding, is typically the most clear and most brief way to say a thing.

<comment><USER6> A concise summary. Clarity is a state all humans strive for, reach for clarity in your writing and lucid expression will be a natural by-product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Thought experiment: you see two reference books, one at 100 pages and the other at 200. Do you wonder if the smaller book could be concise and well- written, or do you immediately assume "bigger is better" and reach for the tome?_

Seriously, people do this? What is wrong with them? I'd try to imagine every justifiable reason to buy the 100 page one. Padded technical writing deserves its own level of hell.

<comment><USER9> Obligatory: <http://i.imgur.com/RzRcw.jpg>

<comment><USER10> And, if giving direction to a newcomer - I'd pass her the slimmer volume 9 times out of 9.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For an article on brevity, I found this to be a bit to drawn out.

This is the next article I read, <http://venturefizz.com/blog/how-pitch- investor-90-seconds> and in comparison, this is a great example of brevity.

It's punch, quick, and gets to the point.

<comment><USER4> I debated the irony of having an essay on brevity that wasn't short. But, I realized my goal was to have (hopefully) several meaningful thoughts, vs. a single short one. These are basically the thoughts / fears that go through my head when I think about what brevity is and why it's resisted.

That said, brevity is always an asymptotic ideal we're aiming for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "The unix command line ('cat foo.txt | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn') is wonderfully concise and powerful". And yet, contrary to the author's assertion, it can be made even more concise without sacrificing the power:

sort foo.txt | uniq -c | sort -rn

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the comment. Yeah, in this case I decided to keep the "superflous" cat because it offers more flexibility/readability -- i.e., what if you want another command before the first sort? With the 2nd version you have to remove foo.txt and type your command, instead of just inserting "mycommand |" where needed (and what if mycommand doesn't accept a file, just stdin, then you need the cat anyway).

But it's a good point, and there's a balance between the absolute minimum and flexibility. At one extreme you have code golf, at the other you have an abstract FactoryFactory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> _"Brevity is the soul of wit"_ \- William Shakespeare

<comment><USER14> And Shakespeare had florid language like no other, so that's a funny counterpoint.

It was florid but with a purpose. But it wasn't brevity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is absolutely true; especially, I find, here on HN where my concise, clear comments tend to go down better.

(and, yes, this is deliberately concise :))

<comment><USER16> ...and down it went (I did not mod you down, by the way :)

<comment><USER15> I'm not sure why it was down voted. It's actually true (from my observation)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Linking to K&R and calling it "Introduction to C" is a bit sloppy and worth editing, it really threw me off track.

<comment><USER4> Whoops, my mistake! Just updated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> In the spirit of brevity: great article!

<comment><USER4> Thanks! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Most of the time.

</comment><comment><USER14> Has nobody noticed that the best, most vivid, most engaging, most loved authors were not the briefest?

Mark Twain. Shakespeare. Joyce. Toni Morrison. Gladwell. Ackerman. Etc.

It's true that brevity is better than futile padding. But brevity itself shouldn't be a goal, unless you give up and admit up front that you're a terrible writer, and brevity is the best way to make your writing go from terrible to palatably mediocre.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I think "brevity" isn't the perfect word because it seems to imply shortness. I mean it to be more of making every word tell, which I think those writers do.

<comment><USER14> No offense, but what's the point then of regurgitating William Zinsser badly? He said it better than you ever could.

If you really think brevity is important, read:

"On Writing Well"</comment></comment></comment>


Palantir has secretly been testing predictive policing technology in New Orleans - rising-sky https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/27/17054740/palantir-predictive-policing-tool-new-orleans-nopd <comment><AUTHOR> Palantir is one of those companies that has used Valley tactics and perks (free gourmet food, gyms, ping pong tables, etc) to aggressively recruit tons of talent in the DC area to help build the surveillance state.

People I know have COMPLETELY drunk the kool-aid to the point where they wear Palantir t-shirts and walk around talking about being "forward deployed engineers" like a cult.

And I only blame them a little. The DC area is starved of such benefits, so it's easy to pick up tech talent.

<comment><USER2> I live in Baltimore, that's even worse, but I still won't work for any DoD contractors, even though that's where the money is around here.

I'm sure I make significantly less than anyone working for Palintir and I don't have those "cool benefits". But I still make a hell of a lot more than most people in Baltimore (ie the median income in Baltimore, what 50% of people make less than). I'm not looking for praise, but, yeah, you can hold people responsible for the work they do, even if they do it for cool benefits. If you're willing to sell out for gourmet lunches and a ping-pong table, your price wasn't very high.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I used to take pride in working in software. Increasingly, I see tech being used to severely undermine civil liberties, abuse privacy etc. I guess techies are becoming as bad as bankers

<comment><USER2> I take pride in the work I do, but I think working as a software engineer makes me hate tech _more_ than the average person. I know how it works, and I think it's bad for us.

<comment><USER4> I second this. The longer I work in tech, the more I want to jump ship and work the land instead.

<comment><USER5> I don't necessarily want to leave tech, but I would prefer to work on my own projects or at least for something open-source, free and positive.

<comment><USER3> I guess there are lots of opportunities to build software outside of the 20s, 30s well to do crowd. Like for old people, poor people, disabled people and so on. If money is taken out of the equation, lots of areas where software can make genuine positive difference in people's lives

<comment><USER2> The problem is paying your own rent when money is taking out of the equation!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Reminds me of the following a couple years ago in my city. There are sure a lot of philanthropists interested in funding the tech police state, eh?

Just like New Orleans, "The arrangement was kept secret in part because it never appeared before the city's spending board, paid for instead through private donations handled by the nonprofit Baltimore Community Foundation."

Report of secret aerial surveillance by Baltimore police prompts questions, outrage

[http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore- city/bs-...](http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md- ci-secret-surveillance-20160824-story.html)

<comment><USER2> Baltimore actually seems to be kind of the center of these generous philanthropists wanting to help out with police state surveillance.

Bloomberg donates $5 million to Baltimore police for new cameras, technology [http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore- city/bs-...](http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md- ci-bloomberg-police-20171201-story.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> In the last year in New Orleans, there has been a proliferation of very visible CCTV crime cameras and license plate readers at the parish boundaries (all entry and exit points into the city as well as traffic chokepoints). The city wants to combine this with cameras outside every place with an alcohol license and stream it all in real time into a police control room.

If you want to donate to the people opposing this - check out [https://maccno.com/join-the-opposition-to-new- orleans-40-mil...](https://maccno.com/join-the-opposition-to-new- orleans-40-million-security-plan/) \- sign and donate if possible

</comment><comment><USER7> What reasons do they give for hiding these programs from the public? Will it somehow reduce their effectiveness?

The answer, I would guess, is that they think the public wouldn't like it, but what reasons do they actually state?

<comment><USER8> Slowly boil the frog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does this remind anyone else of The Minority Report? At least in that book/movie people were aware of the predictive policing.

<comment><USER10> Worse than Minority Report because at least in there they were actually seeing the future not predicting it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If someone is using machine learning to advertise to me on the web and they come up with some crazy ad they think I might like, no harm done. Using the "probabilities" they may be making the ads marginally better. But if someone uses this for police actions, that is a different story. I expect a little more certainty for something like police actions.

</comment><comment><USER12> The scary thought from black box hi-tech policing like this is that you don't know what little things you said/did that made the algorithms think you're bad or worse a target.

What if there is a bug(and there will be) in such predictive analytical tool? A swat team watching every move of a guy going to get groceries?

</comment><comment><USER13> goes hand in hand with the ambitions of NIST working on the IES SmartCities framework. We are literally building this future right now and there is no discussion on ethics or who will benefit from it and who bears the costs (financial & social). If you want to change things consider subscribing to the NIST mailing list and and make your case.

[https://twitter.com/ValbonneConsult/status/96442652181220557...](https://twitter.com/ValbonneConsult/status/964426521812205570)

EDIT: [https://pages.nist.gov/smartcitiesarchitecture/](https://pages.nist.gov/smartcitiesarchitecture/)</comment>


Show HN: Pitching YC on Saturday - What do you think of our about page? - <AUTHOR> http://about.reviewlark.com/

<comment><USER2> Overall I like it. Some possible changes:

Above the fold page looks a little bland...everything looks like a background image, the birds and the text. My eyes weren't sure where to go.

Also Amir's bio:

"Engineer turned product guy. I find people smarter than me and help them kick ass."

Starts out as first person, then the second paragraph continues in third person. Personally I'd just nix the the part quoted above. It sounds cliche anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> Aw I thought it was edgy! Yeah you're right though, the perspective change is bad. I'll change that.

Thanks for the feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Like the colors, simplicity and the tagline. So excited for you guys! ~ Rhonda</comment>


Ask HN: What does 'Resilience' mean to you? - <AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> This idea keeps coming up a lot in conversations, usually around avoiding or recovering from burnout, but I'm curious what comes to mind when you hear the word? And what exactly does the process of building 'resilience' entail?</comment>


Saul Bass Pitch Video for Bell System Logo Redesign (1969) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=156&v=xKu2de0yCJI

<comment><USER2> Once you skip to about minute 14, this becomes fascinating.

</comment><comment><USER3> To demonstrate how classic this logo is, we hear Bach playing while the narrator says: "Certain visual forms can remain contemporary over a long period of time. We think this new bell is one of them".

Saul Bass designed the AT&T "Death Star" logo only 15 years later.

<comment><USER4> But the baby-Bell companies kept using it much longer after the forced breakup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> fantastic. you might also want to check out the lost ending of his classic Phase IV: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beLpsWaUDNk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beLpsWaUDNk)

<comment><AUTHOR> Some insight into his design philosophy -

Saul Bass: On Making Money vs Quality Work [video]

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfDCNpaPBiA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfDCNpaPBiA)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sick video</comment>


"Want to Develop a Programme Based on Artificial Intelligence" - <AUTHOR> https://www.odesk.com/o/jobs/job/_~01ec599c45bd1a16d3/

<comment><USER2> Does anyone want to split this project with me? I figure we both take home $10,000 for only a few minutes worth of work!

<comment><USER3> let's also build it in tapes and call it "samaritan"</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Does this exist yet? UGC video clearinghouse for protests/etc. - <AUTHOR> I was inspired by OSINTHK's work during the protests in HK--assembling multiple videos of single incidents to provide as much context/evidence to fight the public relations battle.<p>I'm sure something like this must exist already--a collaborative public OSINT platform for correlating UGC by timestamp and location? Where users can upload video and based on the metadata you cluster them into incidents, add additional info, tags, etc.<p>(if it doesn't exist, it seems like it should) <comment><USER2> I think the problem you'll run into is getting people to upload.</comment>


Android 4.2 is Missing December in Calendar - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5961558/android-42-is-missing-a-very-important-feature-december/ <comment><USER2> Better link already discussed: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4798930></comment>


Classroom for GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://classroom.github.com/ <comment><USER2> I use Github in my courses, and I was excited when I saw this. Three responses:

1\. The permissions screen immediately irked some of my collaborators – why does this need access to _everything_, including deleting repositories that already exist? They pointed out that if one privacy/security-conscious student makes a stir about this in an undergrad course, it's all of a sudden a potentially huge issue. And I teach my students to be suspicious of screens that ask for too many permissions, with good reason!

2\. Can I connect this to my institution's internal Github enterprise? I currently manage assignment distribution and collection with hand-rolled Github scripts that run against our institution's deployment. Do the teachers_pet scripts work in that environment as well, or is there Classroom- specific setup required to make that work?

3\. On the screen where I choose organizations, there was a text box for a new organization, and a dropdown. I thought I was making the choice to create a new organization, but it seems to be creating all the repos in an existing organization selected in the dropdown. This has caused a lot of folks to all of a sudden get signed up for automatic notifications who are members of the selected org. That's annoying, now I have to clean up after Classroom and figure out what went wrong. I doubt that adding random student repos to an existing organization is ever what a new user wants, and I tried to follow the flow that (I thought) would not accidentally do that. It seems like a Classroom organization is a different thing from a Github organization?

<comment><USER3> 1\. We're working with the OAuth permission model that exists today, but I've passed along your feedback to our platform team. The generic use case for Classroom for GitHub is to create a new organization to use for student assignments and use Classroom for GitHub to manage that organization. If / when you decide to stop using Classroom for GitHub you can remove your organization and it will clean up after itself.

2\. GitHub Enterprise is not supported, but others have requested this feature: [https://github.com/education/classroom/issues/240](https://github.com/education/classroom/issues/240)

3\. I'm having a hard time understanding your situation, but would appreciate it if you could file an issue at [https://github.com/education/classroom/issues/new](https://github.com/education/classroom/issues/new), can't promise that it will be fixed immediately, but need to gather feedback like this.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the response! Related to (1), the issue was more that when a _student_ visits an assignment page, they get the same big permission list as an instructor; it makes sense that instructors might need a plethora of permissions. Is that necessary for students?

Issue for (3) reported here: [https://github.com/education/classroom/issues/250](https://github.com/education/classroom/issues/250)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the report. Your point about (1) is well taken, maybe file an issue on that too and we can discuss ways to improve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I developed a similar system when I was teaching a web development course [1] last year. It's open-sourced at [https://github.com/qrohlf/gradebook](https://github.com/qrohlf/gradebook) for anyone interested.

[1] [http://webdev.qrohlf.com](http://webdev.qrohlf.com)

<comment><USER3> This is great, thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think this is absolutely the way forward for technical courses (where the prof and maybe students already know how to use git, or can be expected to learn).

A course is kind of like a web app with a lot of common functionality. Too bad most LMSs seem to think we want to write our course in a little text box with no version control (even newer ones like Canvas make this assumption).

<comment><USER6> I agree, I think students should be learning how to set up version control very early on in 101 level classes. If for nothing else, it will preserve their work and ensure nothing is lost. I wish I had all of my work from University in git. I still have a lot of it, but things were inevitably lost because I did not use any kind of version control.

Also I like Markdown as a format for taking notes when you want to type them. Github renders these very nicely and its very convenient. However, I wish they had support for latex equations (inline or block).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Classroom for Github automates repository creation and access control, making it easy for teachers to distribute starter code and collect assignments from students.

There's more info on our blog: [https://github.com/blog/2055-teachers-manage- your-courses-wi...](https://github.com/blog/2055-teachers-manage-your-courses- with-classroom-for-github)

</comment><comment><USER7> What's the cost of this? And who pays it (e.g. each individual student, the school/department/grader, etc)?

I like GitHub a lot, but I will say they can be rather pricey. $7/month for their smallest private plan, you can literally run your own VM in the cloud (e.g. on AWS/Azure) for that amount (and run Gitlab), get a terabyte of cloud storage (which you can store hundreds of Git repositories in), or go to one of their competitors.

And, yes, this absolutely does require a private repository if you want to avoid cheating.

<comment><USER3> It's totally free. Teachers can request free private repositories at [https://education.github.com/discount](https://education.github.com/discount)

<comment><USER8> This needs some videos to show what it can do. Not many teachers know what GitHub is and if I wanted to suggest this as a possible option I could not explain it to them.

Maybe a video showing the creation of an assignment and sending it out (url via email, is it?), students completing the assignment, and teachers looking over a completed assignment.

If that is a poor example of what this does then I missed the point entirely.

<comment><USER9> > Not many teachers know what GitHub is

That's rather unfortunate, as more and more of the people putting their degree to work definitely need to know what it is, especially in start ups.

<comment><USER10> My university showed us 'RCS'...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As a teacher of non-CS courses, it's nearly drool-worthy as an alternative to Blackboard but the private Repo's are not free and this is a deal breaker.

<comment><USER12> GitHub Education provides free private repositories for educators.

You can check it out here: [https://education.github.com/discount_requests/new](https://education.github.com/discount_requests/new)

<comment><USER13> As I recall, that's only for use in the classroom, to get students hooked. If you're doing research, or anything other than teaching a class, you pay for private repos. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Bitbucket gives you a free unlimited account if you sign up with a .edu email address.

[Edit: You actually get five free repos. Still limited and not at all the deal you get with Bitbucket.]

<comment><USER14> No, GitHub gives you 5 free private repositories for any educational use if you sign up with an academic email. I use mine for research.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I posted a blog post yesterday on Why on How educators use GitHub, and thought it might be interesting to some of the people here as well.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10256868](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10256868)

</comment><comment><USER16> Looks great at first glance I'll incorporate it into my new class eventually.

I read through the education stuff and if I'm reading correctly one can get a free private repo for coursework? My class has two groups of 30 and they'll eventually have to complete a longer project in subgroups of 3-5. Any recommendations for that setup? I'm assuming there's no free plan for this as it would essentially require ~20 private repos. Those could get wiped every semester though.

I've def. scribbled down that I want to teach git(hub) ASAP because learning to use it from the getgo in the first semester is huge.

<comment><USER3> As a teacher you can get as many private repositories as you need for your course for free. Just make a request here: [https://education.github.com/discount](https://education.github.com/discount)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> @GitHub:

I love the idea - would love to try it - but is there a way for me to define which organizations it has access to ?

I cant give access to my work or client organizations just to tire-kick a new app

<comment><USER3> Yes, you can set up 3rd party access restrictions on your organization accounts and manage access for each organization independently.

[https://help.github.com/articles/about-third-party- applicati...](https://help.github.com/articles/about-third-party-application- restrictions/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> GitHub's student SaSS package is the antithesis of educational. Students cannot learn, modify, and share any of this software. I see nothing but praise for GitHub in almost everything they do, but from my perspective they are doing great harm and have now directed their attention at the future generation of hackers. CS students need hackable software, free software, to learn from and build things with.

<comment><USER19> So students should not use Google, because Google is not open source? How about Stack Overflow? Or closed-source hardware?

While it's important for students to be able to learn modify and share software, it's obvious that they cannot rely on open software alone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This looks great, as I would expect.

However, a major hurdle at US universities is FERPA [1]. FERPA (but really the fear of litigation under FERPA) is one reason why universities host their own software.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Educational_Rights_and_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Educational_Rights_and_Privacy_Act)

<comment><USER21> I fully agree -- people underestimate this issue. We recently had a long discussion among the CS faculty on using GradeScope (a software for grading paper exams). It looks great and I would love to use it, but the feedback was that the University would not approve of it for privacy reasons. Even using Google forms is problematic for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is awesome! The only thing missing in using Github properly for a classroom environment was repo management / isolation.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is interesting to me as a way to give software candidates quizzes. HackerRank similar services are comically expensive.

<comment><USER3> Would love to hear more about your use case if it works for you. Definitely leave some feedback in an issue on the open source repository: [https://github.com/education/classroom/issues/new](https://github.com/education/classroom/issues/new)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> They should join forces with Khan Academy.

</comment><comment><USER25> Would private repos created by my teacher count toward my 5 private repo limit of GH education?

<comment><USER3> No, these repositories are created in the teacher's organization account. Totally separate from your individual repositories.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wish this existed when I was a student.

Immediately forwarded to favorite CS prof.

</comment><comment><USER27> How to actually try it? I've created free organization under my GitHub profile, but Classroom still says me "You're not managing any organizations yet."

<comment><USER28> Classroom for GitHub needs access to your organization. Grant access in Settings | Applications | Authorized applications | Organization access

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Will this be available for Edx and Coursera too? So few CS MOOCs encourage version control and they certainly don't allow using a free public repo.

</comment><comment><USER30> One thing thing I dislike about GitHub's student/teaching services is that they are all in a centralized manner and seem like half-commercial.</comment>


Ning, free, eyeballs, layoffs - <AUTHOR> http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2284-eyeballs-still-dont-pay-the-bills

<comment><USER2> Worth pointing out:

a) Facebook used the same 'fat' strategy and is winning big.

b) Swinging for the fences increases the odds of striking out.

c) Marc Andreessen is not interested in creating 37 signals.

<comment><USER3> a) Facebook is a definitely the odd man out. They made something happen that very, very few other eyeball companies have managed.

b) Facebook isn't winning shit for their investors YET. They've allegedly just turned cash flow positive, but they're still $750MM in the hole from VC infusions over the past SIX YEARS. Add interest and risk premium and Facebook has to make a TRUCK load of money to pay back their investors. Not just break even.

c) Fashions change. Remember when Myspace was the golden goose? Friendster? It is far from a guarantee that Facebook will remain hot shit for long enough to pay back $750MM with interest and premium.

<comment><USER2> I think Ning is trying to maximize the size of success, not the likelihood. Trying something very, very few other companies have managed is precisely the point.

Most of us would rather increase the likelihood; but most of us are also not Marc Andreessen. It's important to recognize this. There's nothing wrong with rolling the dice and going big, if that's what you want. [EDIT] It's foolish, however, if you think playing that way will increase the likelihood of success.

<comment><USER4> I think your point is the most widely used justification for GOING BIG. But even big companies need sustainability. Clearly 37signals has their own unique message but if there's one thing I get from it, it's that businesses should be built _to last_. Whether you are trying to make space-travel affordable or running your own Italian restaurant, your venture _needs to last_.

So the question is not necessarily one of magnitude, it's that internet companies looking for eyeballs _tend_ to be running on faulty logic counter- intuitive to _lasting_ \- forget about making money, or changing the world ; you can't do that if you aren't here tomorrow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is flagrant linkbait. I start to write a witty comment responding to this post, but then I realized that's exactly what they want us to do. They even told us, explicitly in their book, that their forumla for success was to create controversy in order to attract attention to their business.

I'm still waiting for the day when I see a 37Signals post about how they intend to build great collaboration software, and not about how people should run their businesses. Making inflammatory statements statements about other people's companies is definitely one way to make it. But so is thinking and talking about your actual product.

<comment><USER3> We have a whole weblog dedicated to talking about our product and calling out new feature launches: <http://productblog.37signals.com/>

Most people aren't that interested in just reading an infomercial, though. Lots of people are apparently interested in reading opinions and discussions about industry topics. Be they VC funding or whatever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is just more blindness from the folks at 37s. I would like to know how much David pays Google to use their service? That's right he doesn't, so why doesn't he put his money where his mouth is and pay for each and every web service he utilizes.

<comment><USER3> WTF are you talking about? I pay for plenty of services. In fact, I love paying for good services. Dropbox is a great example. So is Campaign Monitor, Zendesk, and Survey Monkey.

Give shit away for free and people will take it for free.

<comment><USER6> How much do you pay for a search engine? You think that the 37s business model applies to every web business out there and it doesn't!

<comment><USER7> The 37signals business model, also known as "a business", is the business model employed by about 99% of all businesses on the planet. They make a product or offer a service and their customers pay them for it.

<comment><USER6> But you think it works for all 100% of businesses. And that's where you're wrong. A search engine is a perfect example of a product which would fail if they tried to sell access. But you can continue to pad your ego and think you know everything there is to know about business.

<comment><USER8> "But you think it works for all 100% of businesses."

Did David or Jason actually say something to this effect?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Look at Me - <AUTHOR> http://www.cjr.org/cover_story/look_at_me.php?page=all <comment><USER2> A very interesting, if thoroughly depressing examination of the state of journalism today. The Gawker episodes do not make anyone look good.</comment>


The crazy perversities of civil asset forfeiture - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2243428/pagenum/all/ <comment><USER2> Civil forteiture is one of the most egregious abuses of civil rights in America. As far as I'm concerned, having a court case entitled "United States v. One Mercedes-Benz Sd Vin Wdbcb20c6fa177831" is tantamount to Reductio Ad Absurdum. How can a piece of property be guilty of a crime or a tortious act?

</comment><comment><USER3> From Radley Balko (as usual):

" _Take the Money and Run

"The crazy perversities of civil asset forfeiture._"

New development:

" _But allowing unelected_ private _attorneys to oversee a county's forfeiture proceedings on a contingency basis is the worst option yet._ "

Plus the usual corruption, e.g. a judge changing his mind about a case after asking for $5K in forfeiture money for A/V equipment and getting turned down: " _'Since then Judge Headley has had, well, I'll just say he's had a much different demeanor in forfeiture cases.'_ "

Balko notes that Indiana's constitution requires forfeiture money goes to schools ("'child' is the root password to the Constitution"), but of course they have dodges to get around that.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think I agree with Radley Balko, but it's hard to tell, because in his crusade against civil asset forfeiture rules, he leaves out quite a bit of detail. To read him, you'd think that any police officer can take your car and stick it in an impound by executive fiat. Not so.

In Illinois, which he refers to in many of his blog posts on the topic, Balko insinuates that the state can hold your property for as many as six months without going to court (in other places, he says it can be over a year). That's not true. Property owners can file claims for their assets and get them back in less than 2 months after a court hearing (the "2 month" number is a statutory time limit).

It's only if _both_ sides of a case stretch their time limits to the absolute maximum (the defendant by failing to file timely claims, and the prosecutor by dragging their feet) that the limit hits 180 days.

Furthermore, Balko's definition of "not having a day in court" apparently excludes "days in court for the specific purpose of getting your stuff back"; in other words, he appears to only be counting the actual criminal trial. But that's silly. Either way, it's still an impartial judge making the call, not the revenue-hungry police force.

To read my comment, you might think I'm fine with civil asset forfeiture. I don't think that I am. But I'm definitely not fine with sloppy arguments.

<comment><USER2> Depriving a person of access to his or her property without charging the person with a crime is a violation of due process. I shouldn't need to file a claim for the return of my property if I haven't been accused of wrongdoing. I also disagree with your argument that "property owners" (not "defedants" since the property is accused of the crime, not the person) simply need to file timely claims because hiring a lawyer to file a claim costs money that the property owner may not be able to afford if they have few assets and the seized property is something like an automobile, the loss of which causes them to also lose their job. The constitution exists to protect citizens from this sort of thing.

<comment><USER4> I don't understand how you can claim a lack of due process. The deprived is explicitly granted multiple hearings in court by a criminal judge. They in fact get _more_ due process than a simple criminal defendant, because if they win any one of those hearings, they get their stuff back.

The rest of your comment, whatever. You're missing my point. I'm not taking on civil asset forfeiture, just sloppy reporting.

<comment><USER5> I think he's referring _reasonably and ethically due_ in _due_ process. These things start to sound like cliches, but both words are important here. Just because the corruption is legal doesn't make it ethical, or _due_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For more info about the original topic, see this documentary about the legal system in the u.s. It shows cops driving around in SUVs and using guns and stuff they seized without warrant or arrest or conviction of crimes. It also clearly shows the conflict of interest when discussing the issue with some of the police officers.

This policy was created, according to the documentary, as an incentive for local law enforcement to team with the federal government in the drug war by rewarding them for investigating drugs crimes and seizing property in the effort.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbsI1j--XaE>

</comment><comment><USER7> There's nothing civil about asset forfeiture.

</comment><comment><USER8> Completely outrageous, and completely unsurprising.

</comment><comment><USER9> While this is outrageous, it is a state matter. Each state has the right to be idiotic in it's own fashion. I say this as a native Floridian.

<comment><USER10> > Each state has the right to be idiotic in it's own fashion.

Actually, no, they don't. We have these things called habeas corpus and due process and civil rights that are supposed to protect us from governments being idiotic - on any level.

Edit: Emphasis mine "[N]o Person ought to be taken imprisoned or disseised of his freehold, or be exiled or deprived of his Privileges, Franchises, Life, Liberty or _Property_ but by due process of Law."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Due_process#In_the_U.S>. - 1788 as a condition for New York State to ratify the Constitution

<comment><USER3> Well, after the passage of the 14th Amendment they were supposed to protect us from lower level governments, but that was quickly eviscerated by the Supremes (e.g. _Slaughterhouse_ ) and only bit by bit is being fixed.</comment></comment></comment>


Graphics accelerators – what are they? (2001) - <AUTHOR> http://www.azillionmonkeys.com/qed/accelerator.html <comment><USER2> Cool article. The future was correctly predicted here - this is how modern graphics works:

"I've had discussions with people that suggest that an accelerator for Pixar's Renderman architecture is possible. (This is the technology that brought Toy Story and A Bug's Life to the silver screen.) The basic idea is to describe object surfaces programmatically by both perturbation and texture content with subroutines called shaders. Renderman is probably the most advanced rendering system today, but cannot be done in real time with today's technology because of the enormous compute power needed."

<comment><USER3> Yes and no.

Renderman is a very different architecture to the "SGI-like architecture" (the terminology the author uses) that cards at the time were settling into (and desktop GPUs still use).

In Renderman, you subdivide all triangles until the triangles are all smaller than a single pixel, then you collect all triangles that effect each pixel, sort them, decide which triangles will effect the final color and then run the pixel shader for those triangles. Since the subdivided triangles are smaller than a single pixel, you only need to run the pixel shader once, and you don't have to worry about perspective correct texturing.

It would be near impossible to implement this at real time in hardware.

Modern Graphics APIs took one small aspect of Renderman (pixel shaders) and re-implemented them on top of the existing "SGI-like architecture". They also invented the idea of vertex shaders to program the hardware Transform and Lighting units. (Renderman used distortion/displacement shaders instead. Vertex shaders could only move vertexes. distortion/displacement shaders could distort any point on the triangle in arbitrary ways).

 _Sidenote: Shaders are more of a programming interface than a hardware feature. GPUs with powerful programmable per-pixel pipelines appeared before pixel shaders, and graphics programmers had to configure them with DirectX 7 and OpenGL 1.3 's TextureEnviroment features. Shaders just gave programmers a much more sane way to access those same features_

<comment><USER4> > subdivided triangles are smaller than a single pixel, you only need to run > the pixel shader once, and you don't have to worry about perspective correct > texturing.

>It would be near impossible to implement this at real time in hardware.

Let me introduce you to the world's greatest virtual concrete slab, courtesy of 2011 Crysis 2: [https://techreport.com/review/21404/crysis-2-tessellation- to...](https://techreport.com/review/21404/crysis-2-tessellation-too-much-of- a-good-thing/2)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone have a strong recommendation for a in-depth book on GPU architecture?

The most I can find is Nvidia white papers, a few posts on ARM blog about Mali GPU architecture (without a lot of proprietary internals) and chapter 38 in Computer Graphics P&P, 3rd edition that talks about GPU architecture.

In lieu of book, any course that does the same would also be useful.

<comment><USER3> This series of blog posts is a very good in-depth explanation of how modern GPUs work:

[https://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/a-trip-through- the-...](https://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/a-trip-through-the-graphics- pipeline-2011-index/)

<comment><USER5> @phire awesome, thanks for the link. This weekend is a trip to GpuLand!!!</comment></comment></comment>


Dire future etched in the past: CO2 at 3M year-old levels - <AUTHOR> https://m.phys.org/news/2019-04-dire-future-etched-co2-million.html <comment><USER2> Cookie and tracking gdpr fail on that site :(

One click opt out unavailable.

Opt out unavailable.</comment>


The Equifax Breach Exposes America's Identity Crisis - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/the-equifax-breach-exposes-americas-identity-crisis <comment><USER3> I don't know. I found the argument convincing that even naming the breach "identity theft" is beginning to push responsibility away from Equifax and make it seem a personal problem of those affected, or a general societal phenomenon. When in reality it's just Equifax's poor security practices.

As you probably know, the exploit basically is using Java's ability to dynamically execute code from JVM bytecodes (supplied via XML in this case, but that's just an implementation detail). Once you get remote code execution ability, it's game over for most Java backend apps, because these are executed in a single process/address space and thus lack basic process isolation. Even if JAAS were used to propagate authorization contexts within the Java backend, typically (almost always) Java apps operate in such a way that a single database identity/credential sets is used for any and all database access.

Dynamic bytecode execution is a core feature of Java and other JIT execution environments, so you can't use straightforward NoExecute bits (provided by hardware and supported by OS loaders to disallow calling into dynamically allocated memory) to prevent this from happening, and can't contain/isolate execution paths with authorization contexts either. For these reasons, I think this breach should make banks and other financial institutions rethink their Java strategies mid- to long-term.

<comment><USER4> Ability to execute data as code is present in many languages. Almost all of them these days. I think you are saying that banks should only use C or C++ ??

<comment><USER5> I don't know Java well, but at least in .NET it's possible to set a flag that disable execution of dynamically emitted code.

Obvs, you should do this on every box that accepts connections from the outside world.

Obvs, it's no easier to get people to do this in practice than it is to get people to quit using string formatting to get parameters into their SQL queries.

<comment><USER6> Make it opt out/default behavior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Something non-US folks don't always get about the US -- in a lot of ways, the US is more analogous to the EU than it is to any one country of Europe. That is to say, the US Government is the national entity, but quite a lot of power is still held in the states. There is a 200+ year wariness of federal power here.

One of the ways this manifests itself is that identity is established and maintained largely by the states. Your driver's license is basically your national ID here, even though there are 50 different kinds of driver's licenses.

In the 1930s we had Great Depression, New Deal, etc. and Social Security. Once Social Security Numbers became a thing, they became wildly popular as a stand- in for a national identifier. And now they're crucial, and they get stolen all the time, and we have nothing better to replace them with.

National IDs are a nonstarter politically in the US. One side thinks it is undue encroachment on local rights, and the other side thinks requiring ID disenfranchises the poor and undocumented. That's the tl;dr version of course -- reality is more nuanced.

<comment><USER8> > National IDs are a nonstarter politically in the US. One side thinks it is > undue encroachment on local rights, and the other side thinks requiring ID > disenfranchises the poor and undocumented. That's the tl;dr version of > course -- reality is more nuanced.

As a non-American, this doesn't really make much sense to me. There's already a national ID, the Social Security card. It's just a really really terrible form of national ID.

<comment><USER9> Social Security card is made of paper, has nothing but the number and your name, and 99% of people in the US have lost, destroyed, or never carried it to begin with. Stupid paper card even says "Do not laminate" but mine is laminated and thus intact after 40 years.

SS#'s were never meant to be personal ID numbers or national ID numbers. This was a big thing when they were introduced. Unfortunately, companies use them ALL the time. There should be a law against companies asking for your SS#.

Anyway, nothing about American government or the American people makes sense. We're probably the most irrational, stupidest electorate in the world. I mean, look who we elected president!

<comment><USER10> Except if the SS number was not meant to identify people, _what was it for_? It was meant to track people throughout their lives to set the amount they get paid by the program based on what they made / what SS tax they paid.

It is terrible at that, it is terrible as a general id, and its just another example of doublethink in American politics - we want national welfare programs that are restricted only to valid citizens, but we don't want to actually know who the citizens are or keep track of them, or have any concrete way to identify them.

<comment><USER11> > Except if the SS number was not meant to identify people, what was it for? > It was meant to track people throughout their lives to set the amount they > get paid by the program based on what they made / what SS tax they paid.

Sure, but there's a huge difference between identifying people's _accounts with Social Security / IRS_ and being a National ID card used for everything everywhere. It's was designed for the first, and _intentionally forbidden_ for use as the latter, despite everyone using it that way anyway.

Social Security cards _literally said_ "NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION" right on them, for 30 years, to try to stop this from happening. It did anyway...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I never realised till now that American's SSNs were supposed to be kept secret. That's absolutely ridiculous. The idea of trying to keep the UK equivalent (National Insurance Number) secret is laughable. How can anything function when an important id number is also supposed to be known by very few people?

<comment><USER13> The scheme was designed in 1935 as a way of identifying people enrolled in the then-new Social Security program (hence the name), and was gradually made a de facto national ID number over the intervening decades as the increasing scale of national population and economic activity prompted a desire for greater legibility to facilitate management and taxation.

Greater legibility, management, and taxation are values not shared by a very sizable section of the US citizenry. _Without digressing into a pointless and stupid flamewar over Humean oughts around these points of fact,_ we can acknowledge that every attempt thus far to implement a national ID scheme has been, and no doubt any future such attempt will be, energetically and, thus far at least, very effectively countered by those who so strongly prefer that no national ID scheme exist. Unfortunately, the US federal bureaucracy being what it is, we _will_ have a national ID scheme whether well-designed as such or otherwise, and the wide adoption of Social Security and (generally) 1:1 mapping between SSNs and citizens made it the obvious candidate for a de facto national ID. Businesses followed government in adopting it as such.

Now, instead of a proper, admitted national identification scheme which would at least have a _chance_ of being marginally secure, we have a motley collection of the world's most hilariously shitty zero-factor authentication methods, making a wide variety of frauds so trivially simple to perform that we've had to spin them off into a new category of their own, "identity theft", which we regard as just one of those unfortunate things that happens sometimes, like cancer. Even after the Equifax breach, it'll probably still be cheaper to continue looking at the problem this way than to roll back the eight decades of technical debt that have gone into creating it. So it goes.

<comment><USER12> The UK is also heavily resistant to any sort of national ID scheme, and so National Insurance numbers (our equiv of SSN) are also a sortof proxy ID for people in work etc. But the difference is we don't pretend they are secret. In other words: we use it as a primary key, but we don't assume its a shared secret.

<comment><USER14> So let's say you want to apply for a bank loan or credit card online, or look up information about yourself on a government website - how do you prove you're you?

Or is this simply not possible in the UK without visiting a bank branch etc.?

<comment><USER12> You usually end up sending copies of your passport and proof of address (eg utility bill) by post. Sometimes the copies have to be certified by a lawyer/solicitor, to prove they are true copies of the original document

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "We need laws that limit the collection and use of SSNs."

The problem shouldn't be defined as "let's still keep SSN secret, but limit its collection", because sooner or later your SSN will leak. The issue is that SSN number shouldn't be considered as secret and some other measures should be used to identify the person.

<comment><USER16> Anything collected will eventually leak.

The issue is that companies shouldn't be collecting _ANYTHING_ , and what they do collect should get purged ASAP.

The problem is that every company got addicted to collecting information and nobody made them pay the price for doing so.

<comment><USER17> There are legitimate use cases where collecting and storing (in some manner at least) is necessary. You cannot just stop companies from collecting information, and furthermore stop them from storing any of it. Thats just naive.

<comment><USER18> The private university I went to used to issue student emails that were first three letters of last name followed by last four digits of social security number. It always seemed odd to me. Years later, they've switched and we don't have that problem any more.

Companies can generate a unique identifier without using SSN. Of course, the main problem is that they can't do authentication based on that identifier. So why can they do authentication based on SSN?

<comment><USER19> SSN is the only reliable way to disambiguate duplicate names. Differentiating all the John Smiths by mailing address is too intractable, especially when you have JS Jr. and JS III living together. It is used to construct a primary key for the database.

<comment><USER20> Except that's not always been the case, either. SSNs have always been a terrible way to disambiguate people. There are weird, crazy edge cases in SSN history. Cases exactly such as JS Jr getting the same SSN as JS III in a podunk town because the local SSA administrator was feeling lazy that day and JS III was already deceased. The federal SSA website claims that that never happened, but if you have a big enough database (say, Equifax) you can spot all kinds of simple dumb human errors like that. For many, many years the SSA left local administrators in charge: the first 5 digits and the weird way they are hyphenated were local district numbers. For people born before 2011 (!), when the new randomization scheme was switched to, there is a 90% chance you can guess their first five numbers if you know their birth date and birth city (which is why it is so ridiculous that PII rules to keep SSNs safe ever considered it fine to show only the last four, those are only meaningful digits for still the majority of SSNs in the wild).

SSNs were never designed for what the credit bureaus and banks and insurance companies (and everybody else) use them for, and there are too many cracks and failure cases. Companies need to admit their failures and come up with a real solution; but companies have so much sunk cost in SSN-keyed databases they aren't likely to ever actually do that. (Maybe this Equifax breach pushes more companies to try. Cynicism says companies remain cheap and invested in their sunk costs.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The article goes a bit off the rails at the end, with all the focus on using a changeable identifier ("And if this new identifier were easy enough to change (unlike SSNs), breaches, leaks, and other unintended exposures would be less consequential.")

There's no reason not to keep SSN as an identifier. Just the same as I wouldn't change my name if I suffered identity theft. Instead there needs to be authentication (eg via a method such as a token, 2FA or whatever) - <USER2> it's that which needs to be resettable.

Simply making use of SSN _alone_ illegal in certain industries would be a reasonable approach: it would stop current problems whilst not insensing the "mark of the beast" brigade.

<comment><USER22> The government could bring in an auth service adding a password to your SSN. Problem solved. Kinda.

<comment><USER23> or a digital signature, or a MAC. Something where we could verify against a publicly-known value safely, and without giving that secret part away to anyone else. The secret would be between the Federal Government and the citizen.

<comment><USER24> Why should the government have it at all? Just let private citizens manage their own private key.

<comment><USER25> And what happens when people inevitably lose their private key? How will they regain access to their SSN?

<comment><USER26> They would probably have to through a similar procedure as they do to get a replacement social security card. That is, they would have to present at least a drivers license and US passport at one of the local social security administration offices.

At that point, they can regenerate the key-pair and have the SSA official sign the public key and keep that on file.

Now, presumably, it is possible to forge both documents, but I would think that the government could check their records (federal and state) to verify the authenticity of the provided documentation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> For everybody who isn't acquainted with how Social Security Cards work in the US and how they came to be I highly recommend watching "Social Security Cards Explained" by CGP Grey [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Erp8IAUouus](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Erp8IAUouus)

He also explains why US citizens don't have an Identity Card as opposed to many European countries.

<comment><USER28> That's quite crazy. Though here in NZ we don't have a National ID number either, we have several different numbers for different purposes. Most places will work with a driver licence or passport number, but given there's no need to register a change of name it gets a little tricky.

If you don't have any of those you can get a statutory declaration of identity from a local court. You just have to swear you're the person in front of a justice of the peace and provide a passport photo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Coming from another country I really have difficulties understanding why e.g., utilities would want to have your SSN. What do they get that they otherwise won't get? Isn't a validated address and a credit card number enough for them? What is the scenario that they try to protect against? That someone misses his 30 USD utility payment and has a CC that is not covered? That seems like a rather weak argument

<comment><USER30> These databases are there essentially to punish you. If you don't pay your utility bill, they report that to the credit agency, and reduces your chances of getting credit elsewhere.

These credit information don't give much benefit to Americans, it gives benefits to businesses[1]. It's essentially just a global black list where business can communicate who not to do business with.

This business is there for other businesses and we are the product there. This is why people generally have very shitty experience when they have to interact with them, and this is why Equifax thinks the problem is solved when they provide free one year credit monitoring service.

[1] note how Equifax thought it was important notice that the core database - the one storing your credit records was not affected. None of Americans care about this, but if the core database storing record was compromised Equifax would disappear overnight without any help of the government, because none of the businesses would want to use it.

<comment><USER31> > _These [_ sic _] credit information don 't give much benefit to Americans, > it gives benefits to businesses_

Americans own, work at and consume the products of businesses. If there is a class American law generally holds above investors, in terms of protection, it's consumers.

I would also argue consumers benefit from our credit rating agency system, shitty as it is--it allows more people to get cheaper credit faster and more easily than if we had to establish trust at every commercial interaction.

<comment><USER32> I would suggest that getting credit faster and more easily is not a benefit for consumers but a benefit to business also.

<comment><USER31> > _I would suggest that getting credit faster and more easily is not a benefit > for consumers but a benefit to business also_

Access to credit reduces poverty, internationally [1] and domestically [2]. It is also critical to letting poor and middle class individuals start small businesses [3]. Consumers and businesses benefit from financial systems that efficiently allocate credit. That's why both consumers and businesses voluntarily finance purchases with credit. (This is not a Panglossian claim that our system is perfect. Credit is better than no credit for consumers. Our current CRA system, while a complete mess, is still probably better than forcing trust to be re-ascertained at every commercial interaction.)

[1] [https://www.microfinancegateway.org/sites/default/files/mfg-...](https://www.microfinancegateway.org/sites/default/files/mfg- en-paper-impact-of-microcredit-on-poverty-evidence-from-bangladesh- may-2002.pdf)

[2] [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/29/business/microcredit- for-a...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/29/business/microcredit-for- americans.html)

[3] [https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9b12/726539fadbcaaebcd7ea9d...](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9b12/726539fadbcaaebcd7ea9da5760d61862fce.pdf)

<comment><USER33> My prior expectation of almost any of the aspiring business-owners that you describe, is that they do not have the knowledge necessary to successfully run their business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The problem is that SSN's are treated like a private key. If somebody has that private key, and some basic information about you, they can basically impersonate you electronically.

Meanwhile countries like Estonia use an electronic card reader with a PIN to verify digital identity, making it nearly impossible for somebody to impersonate you. Using this Estonian system, you can tell anybody your personal code ID.

<comment><USER35> In Italy the personal id is computed from name(s), surname, date and place of birth (state of birth if born abroad) and a check digit. Collisions are pretty rare (one every few tens of thousands of people), so it's pretty much a public piece of information.

Electronic identification is available on three levels: id+password, id+password+OTP (the most common), id+password+smart card (everybody has one, but in practice it is only used by officers nowadays). Getting a password is free and takes about 15 minutes plus a trip to the post office. It works pretty well, and underneath it's just SAML2 so everyone can use it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> We HAVE a set of laws and regulations mandating that SSN numbers be kept secret. It doesn't work. We have laws restricting the use of SSNs (it is illegal for most situations to demand an SSN, except for the situations where it is mandatory). They don't work either.

There is, however, one simple solution. Inform banks and others who need to verify identity that they may not use knowledge-of-someone's-SSN as a means of verifying identity. After a brief adjustment period for them to change their processes, publish a public list of every citizen's SSN. (Note: the Equifax breach already did half the job here... so that part isn't hard.)

There is no problem with having SSN numbers, and we MUST have something of the sort if the government intends to keep track of its citizens. There is no problem with SSN numbers being public, and history has demonstrated that it is impossible to design a system that successfully keeps them secret. The only problem lies in the fact that we treat knowledge of this number as some kind of proof of identity.

</comment><comment><USER37> The real crisis here is that Equifax isn't being held responsible for providing meaningful fraud protection beyond one year. When I lived in the UK, the banks were constantly trying to sell me "fraud protection" and "identity protection" \- trying to argue with the salesdrones about why you think it is insane that they are trying to sell me protection against their own shoddy information security practices was useless.

I'm not a big fan of over-regulating, but this is a specific issue that requires a significantly heavier hand then "i'm going to another bank" as they are all as bad as eachother.

<comment><USER30> Instead of heavily regulating I say we should make this service obsolete by passing similar to European laws where people can request what information given company holds about them, request removal and not allowing data collection without permission.

Neither of those companies provides anything valuable to ordinary citizens and the data collection they do comes with great price to us as it shown with recent Equifax fiasco.

<comment><USER37> well, Equifax is big in the UK, mostly to keep track of your credit rating, to allow individuals to borrow money.

I think you will find on closer inspection that EU data protection laws prove to be surprisingly flexible when it comes to things relating to money. But hey, at least we are protected from evil cookies tracking us! Talk about a fucking sleight of hand....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> What we need is a system like a base key and derivatives keys that can be revoked / issued via some central government system. If someone's SSN gets compromised, revoke the base key and all keys are invalidated. If a individual organization's use of your key get's compromised, revoke and reissue. Most likely this all will have to happen transparently without the user really knowing what's happening under the hood. Perhaps on the blockchain?!

</comment><comment><USER39> I lived in the USA for long enough to get a SSN and a credit rating, but I left some time ago.

I've now discovered that my details are in this leak.

Does anyone have any advice for how a non-US citizen, not currently living in the USA, can secure their data and ensure that its not being used nefariously? I.e. is there a way to permanently retire a SSN and credit rating, remotely (which doesn't involve dying, lol)?

<comment><USER40> You can "freeze" your credit with each of the 3 rating agencies (Equifax, Experian, TransUnion) which will prevent anyone (including yourself) from applying for credit using your information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Any rational system needs to be able to: 1) Identify someone and 2) Authenticate someone. A moment's thought will suggest that the mechanism used to identify someone has different and at least somewhat conflicting goals to what the mechanism used to authenticate someone has, and these must be different systems.

For example: The identification token should be shareable, globally unique, and probably mostly immutable. The authentication token should be secret, not globally unique, and resettable if compromised.

The US system currently tries to use SSNs as both a means of identity _and_ authentication: Telling someone your SSN both tells them who you are, and proves that you really are that person. Obviously, this can't work.

Either we need an actual unique ID number, and then we treat SSNs as a secret password, OR we need to treat SSNs as non-secret usernames, and add some form of actual authentication. Either will work I suppose, although the second seems more practical.

<comment><USER42> The only option is the second because SSNs are already widely distributed so have lost their use for authentication.

<comment><USER41> As a practical matter, yes. I mean, in principle we could declare a do-over, and re-issue any compromised SSNs (which would be uh...all of them), but uh...yeah.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I think we're mixing two different purposes here.

Authentication through knowledge of a SSN is an absurd practice, and is a non problem in countries which have a national ID card scheme. Introducing ID cards would be my obvious response to this leak. Not re-issuing SSN until the next major leak.

Having a universal unique identifier for every individual across systems is a different matter and I am not convinced this is even desirable. In a world where no organisation is able to protect its data (or even willing since most organisations now are looking for ways to monetize it), this is making it too easy to link an identity across breaches. I don't think your utility companies have any need to know your SSN.

<comment><USER44> For the purposes of fraud, it's fairly easy to link accounts across datasets even without a unique key like SSN. You can just guess based on name and address or something and if you're only right 90% of the time that's still a pretty big win.

<comment><USER43> People move home, particularly in the US which has a quite mobile population. Many people have many variants of their names, including middle names or long composed last names, and you have a huge number of homonyms. So while you may get a 90% hit rate on two, perfectly current, and breached at the same time datasets, I would expect that number to reduce greatly in a typical real world breach.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> It makes me wonder why identity has to be a centralized government thing. For most purposes, my google account is my primary identity. If I forget a password, resets go there, so it's my foundational identity online. Per- purpose identity seems like an okay thing. I could have a financial identity, and gaming identity, a communication identity, etc. Just like the government doesn't need to know what I own on steam, it doesn't need to know my credit score. And just like steam doesn't need to know my drivers license/social, maybe my bank shouldn't either?

Writing this, I'm realizing how closely identity and privacy are related. For any transaction with memory (like games I buy on steam) there needs to be some identity. Connecting that identity to my other identities is a privacy question. We're probably at a tipping point where we could go either way next. It scares the crap out of me to think about it that way.

</comment><comment><USER46> In Sweden your SSN is public information. I posted the same comment on another Equifax thread and got some pretty interesting replies relevant to this discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15208223](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15208223)

<comment><USER47> I believe that all EU has a similar approach, it is just the US that _misuse_ the SSN.

The way it is done in Italy (it is called "Codice Fiscale") it is composed through a public algorithm from name, surname, place and date of birth with a final "control" character (derived by the preceding characters) so - with the exception of the very few cases of total homonimy - it can be recreated "on the spot".

Nowadays it is however printed on an electronic card, with both a magnetic stripe and a chip and it is the actual card (together with an ID document[1]) that "authenticates" your identity (in person) while on some government sites you can use the card (with a smart card reader) to authenticate.

[1] actually the main thing is the ID document, passport, ID card or - in some cases - driving license, with that you can declare your Codice Fiscale even if you don't have the actual card with you.

<comment><USER48> Thanks for the great content and information.

Just a minor nitpick: your identity can't be authenticated. You, as an individual, can be identified, but the only thing that can be authenticated is the piece of plastic (ensuring it is not counterfeit).

I wrote down an analogy for the different lingo some months ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13635820](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13635820)

<comment><USER47> Yep, sure, you are correct, that's why I put it in double quotes, more accurately the identity can be "verified" or "vaidated" by the ID card (of course authentic) or even more strictly by comparing the photo (and other description data) on the ID card to the looks of the bearer.

I just checked and also en.wikipedia has a good description of the algorithm used, JFYI:

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> a federal id smart card would be a great solution, but people won't let it happen because it might be "the mark of the beast".

I'm not joking. I have heard that more than once.

<comment><USER50> Because it _is_ the "mark of the beast", just as SSNs or surveillance bureau's primary keys are. And no, I'm not joking either.

It's entirely sophomoric to trash a book of generational wisdom by taking its metaphors literally for use as strawmen. A actual "beast" was no more a part of their daily routine that it is of yours.

If identifying and cataloging people were against people's immediate interest, then it would actually not happen and it wouldn't be a concept worth mentioning. So the apparent fact that the practice looks fine and dandy to you is an indicator of exactly nothing! The problems manifest themselves on the scope of many generations, and true wisdom is to heed warnings from past failed societies rather than laughing them off.

(For the record, I'm an atheist).

<comment><USER49> so you are opposed to drivers licenses?

and for the record, they meant the antichrist as an actual person, not a metaphor...even though there's plenty of evidence that the book is referring to roman coinage and caesar.

i really don't know how to reply. you are saying identification is wrong?</comment></comment></comment>


Archaeologists armed with spears demonstrate how Neanderthals hunted - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/06/archaeologists-armed-with-spears-demonstrate-how-neanderthals-hunted/ <comment> onion-soup Any link I open on my phone shows a huge cookies/GDRP popup. How did we manage turn mobile web into shit? It's almost 2020

<comment><USER2> A browser app to automatically filter that crap (ala AdBlock) would be awesome!

To answer your rhetorical question: the usual path. Road to hell paved with good intentions, top-down imposition, do-gooders run amok, etc.

<comment><USER3> Android Firefox, with the built-in Tracking Protect feature enabled, did block it for me, FWIW.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Every time I read about one of those anthropology/archaeology experiments Im immediately reminded of this The Comic Strip Presents... episode:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyRtTx3sU7o&t=37m0s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyRtTx3sU7o&t=37m0s)</comment>


Best Compilers Course? - <AUTHOR> is Stanford CA 143 the best introductory compilers course? what about CMU 15-411? or MIT 6.035?
I'm looking to scratch an itch I've had for years. if the experience goes well, I might consider FTE opportunities in the domain.
my background is Stanford B.Sc. (systems focus) <comment><USER2> From a quick look at all 3 syllabi they all cover similar material. CMU 15-411 and MIT 6.035 seem to cover implementing optimizations as part of the projects while Stanford CS 143 does no so I'd recommend one of the former ones.

As someone who took 6.035, I cannot recommend it enough. It's probably the favorite class I took while in college. The class covered a lot of compiler theory during lectures but unlike other classes that involved programming there was no skeleton code or starting point for the project (4 parts, each building on each other). You got an empty git repo and a set of instructions of what your compiler interface should be in order for TAs to be able to run your compiler. You had to figure out everything on your own.</comment>


Bonnaroo Music Festival To Host Their First Hackathon - <AUTHOR> http://www.hackeroo.io

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://siliconbayounews.com/2013/06/05/major-music- festival-...](http://siliconbayounews.com/2013/06/05/major-music-festival- recruits-codemkrs-to-produce-its-first-official-hackathon/)</comment>


Ask HN: Best Books on Economics - <AUTHOR>

I'm wanting to learn more practical information on economics, and wondered if anyone had any good suggestions on books that you've found uniquely useful in learning economics.  Most college textbooks unfortunately let the dismal science keep its name and seem to make it more confusing at best.  But, there must be better books/resources to make economics make sense and actually be useful.
Some books I've seen recommended on HN and elsewhere include:
- Economics in One Lesson
- SuperFreakonomics (or the original Freakonomics)
- Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science
If you had to purchase just one economics book, which would you find most useful and why?  Any suggestions are appreciated ... eBooks/Kindle edition are best.  Thanks! <comment><USER2> A lot of econ books are really just political screeds dressed up as social science. You have to watch out for that. But to answer your question, the best by far is Bowles's "Microeconomics: Behavior, Institutions, and Evolution." Here's an excellent summary:

[http://stevereads.com/weblog/2007/05/21/nearly-done- bowless-...](http://stevereads.com/weblog/2007/05/21/nearly-done-bowless- microeconomics/)

And here's an tiny excerpt:

 _Like the overnight train that left me in an empty field some distance from the settlement, the process of economic development has for the most part bypassed the two hundred or so families that make up the village of Palanpur. They have remained poor, even by Indian standards: less than a third of the adults are literate, and most have endured the loss of a child to malnutrition or to illnesses that are long forgotten in other parts of the world. But for the occasional wristwatch, bicycle, or irrigation pump, Palanpur appears to be a timeless backwater, untouched by India's cutting edge software industry and booming agricultural regions._

 _Seeking to understand why, I approached a sharecropper and his three daughters weeding a small plot. The conversation eventually turned to the fact that Palanpur farmers sow their winter crops several weeks after the date at which yields would be maximized. The farmers do not doubt that earlier planting would give them larger harvests, but no one the farmer explained, is willing to be the first to plant, as the seeds on any lone plot would be quickly eaten by birds. I asked if a large group of farmers, perhaps relatives, had ever agreed to sow earlier, all planting on the same day to minimize losses. "If we knew how to do that," he said, looking up from his hoe at me, "we would not be poor."_

</comment><comment><USER3> "New Ideas from Dead Economists" by Todf Buckholz is an accessible but informative overview of the field, and free of ideology.</comment>


Regenerative Medicine's Promising Future - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/07/10/atala.grow.kidney/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

<comment><USER2> I love articles like this. Excerpt:

 _Skin and cartilage substitutes are available through regenerative medicine techniques, and laboratory-grown tracheas, blood vessels and other tissues have been implanted in patients. Because of the promise of regenerative medicine, the U.S. military has funded an $85 million effort to develop regenerative medicine treatments for wounded warriors. Advancements made through this project will also benefit the civilian population._</comment>


Show HN: Eventail, a compact calendar today widget for iOS - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/eventail/id959674103?ls=1&mt=8 <comment><AUTHOR> Hello there. Since the widget API for iOS was introduced I was hoping somebody would write one that displays the calendar in a mini-week view. At some point I got tired of waiting and written one myself.

The application website with more information can be found at [http://eventailapp.com](http://eventailapp.com)

All feedback is very welcome.

I am throwing a few promo codes into the bunch.

4EP34ETF93AM FNYAM47N9PKF T6HXN4PPKPFJ EPLLRTE9P93N 7PT9H6XHXTLW 6H7P4YH9LR74 WY36L4RWK4RM 43XTKH7WPNTJ K4AT6WRK67KN MJXK9EEPNAE7</comment>


Fast, portable tests come online to curb coronavirus pandemic - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41587-020-00010-2 <comment><AUTHOR> > Two drops of blood from a pinprick is enough to detect a virus. They're > essentially the same as home pregnancy kits.

Hope we can make COVID tests as abundant as pregnancy tests</comment>


A Look Inside James Baldwin's 1,884 Page FBI File - <AUTHOR> http://lithub.com/a-look-inside-james-baldwins-1884-page-fbi-file/ <comment><USER2> Interesting post from the comments ...

"The FBI did not investigate writers according to their literary merits. As Kurt Vonnegut's biographer, I can tell you that, despite his publishing Slaughterhouse-Five— one of the most popular anti-war novels of the 1960s— the FBI didn't keep a file on him. But the bureau did monitor the lives and works of Amiri Baraka, Lorraine Hansberry (a 1,000-page file), W.E.B. Du Bois, Ralph Ellison, Chester Himes, and Richard Wright, among others.

What the bureau opposed was African American literature and its potential— a backhanded recognition of that genre's power to influence readers. No cultural upheaval would be coming from the likes of Roth, Updike, or Mary McCarthy, for reasons you no doubt understand."

<comment><USER3> Are people surprised that the FBI of the 50s was treating black intellectuals as some sort of alien internal enemy?

It's not as if this has changed much. Compare the treatment of e.g. Black Lives Matter with white groups or individuals which are overtly pro-violence, e.g. [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/neo-nazi- br...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/neo-nazi-brandon- russell-explosives-bombs-white-supremacy-timothy-mcveigh-threat-magistrate- judge-a7785236.html)

<comment><USER4> > _Are people surprised that the FBI of the 50s was treating black > intellectuals as some sort of alien internal enemy?_

No, what's surprising is that some people think this was then, and things now are different.

<comment><USER5> A lot of that "thinking" is either wishful, or sculpted by people who need post-racial apathy to commit their very racially motivated crimes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Although more like 20 pages than 1800 pages, my family recently use FOIA to obtain my grandfather's FBI file. It was apparently opened after someone at a party he attended overheard him speaking about the Rosenbergs and reported to the FBI that he "sounded like a communist". It turned out to be pretty interesting.

If you have any family members that were involved with the anti-war movement or with the labor movement, you may want to file your own FOIA request. They were surprisingly responsive. Not within the statutory limits mind you, but less than a year.

<comment><USER7> Glad to hear the spirit and effect of the FOIA gets put to use. Thanks for sharing the notion and encouragement that there's merit to giving it a try.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> But why did James Baldwin have reason to scrutinize the FBI's role during the civil rights movement? Some background: [https://zinnedproject.org/2016/03/fbi-war-civil-rights- movem...](https://zinnedproject.org/2016/03/fbi-war-civil-rights-movement/)

<comment><USER9> A James Baldwin history of the FBI in the South sounds like an amazing book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Granted this is a very narrow view into the files, but they seem awfully concerned about the gay stuff. Was gay propaganda really that big of a concern for the FBI back then?

<comment><USER3> It was certainly something they could use against people. This wasn't so long after a previous massive witch-hunt: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavender_scare](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavender_scare)

(I can't parse "gay propaganda" without interpreting it as massively homophobic, care to elaborate?)

<comment><USER11> I wish more people would understand this.

The reason they are homophobic is because making a normal activity immoral gives them something they can use to defame people.

Similarly, the reason they are racist because having a frightening other makes it easier to control the populace. You need a bad part of town to keep prices up in the good part.

These underlying racist/classist/sexist/homophobic motives then reach around acausally and individuals think we are in a post-racist or post-sexist society, that black people commit crime, or that Jews run the world, or whatever. The system reinforces itself because it needs to in order to survive. Rational basis for both the -isms and the denial of their power forms out of nothing to serve the end goal of GDP growth and consolidation of wealth in the capital class.

It also provides a cultural grounding for policing "good whites" and "bad whites". You can't use merit, because then the rewards are too predictable and people won't get addicted to them. When you ground badness in a neighbor culture, it means people who are part way between cultures (i.e. all of us) never really know exactly when the rewards are going to come, so they become addictive. Only people at the extremes know when the rewards are coming: rich whites (always), poor blacks (never). Both groups use that freedom from political addiction to control culture. Whites architecturally, blacks artistically. Wall Street and Hip Hop.

That's also why you see black culture bifurcated with some moving "towards the bottom" and some "towards the top". There is a power source in both directions, in thug life and in assimilation. Of course this also provides free propaganda for racists... "look how they move towards badness"...

<comment><USER12> First time upvoting anything on here. Well written.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


IPhone 4S: why has standby time dropped? - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/oct/11/iphone-4s-battery-life-standby <comment><AUTHOR> does anyone at HN have any insight/idea of why this might be?

</comment><comment><USER2> possibly because it take more juice to run the new chip?</comment>


GDPR made searchable by Algolia - <AUTHOR> https://gdpr.algolia.com <comment><USER2> If you want the law in a machine-readable format (YAML / JSON), we open- sourced our GDPR portal which includes parsers and raw data for the entire law as well as all recitals and footnotes in German as well as English:

[https://github.com/DPKit/gdpr-portal](https://github.com/DPKit/gdpr-portal)

The website itself is available here:

[https://gdpr.dpkit.com](https://gdpr.dpkit.com) (EN) [https://dsgvo.dpkit.com](https://dsgvo.dpkit.com) (DE) (works well on mobile too)

This is a work-in-progress, please let us know if you have any questions.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is great and would be even better if it included the official adopted guidance from the working groups. For example, this is a very useful document:

[http://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/article29/item- detail.cfm?item_...](http://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/article29/item- detail.cfm?item_id=622227)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is nice. Though it's worth pointing out to UX folks that flags are not languages.

[http://www.flagsarenotlanguages.com/blog/why-flags-do-not- re...](http://www.flagsarenotlanguages.com/blog/why-flags-do-not-represent- language/)

<comment><USER5> Oh, darn. I read the domain name and thought it'd be a discussion about how forcing users to memorize two-hundred command-line switches is an extremely poor substitute for an actual domain-specific language. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not sure if Algolia doesn't generally work on mobile but this page is unusable on my Galaxy S8 in Chrome. See [https://imgur.com/a/SEP6qdo](https://imgur.com/a/SEP6qdo)

<comment><USER7> Thanks for sharing! Responsive design fixes are on their ways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This makes me wonder how Algolia deals with GDPR.

For instance, if a user requests their data to be removed, how fast can this be reflected in Algolia's indices, and in the instant-search?

<comment><USER9> And for an encore: Does Algolia have a data processing agreement in place with HN?

<comment><USER10> You would need to ask YC to disclose this. They have a dpa ready to sign.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I went in and searched for children, so I can see there is not even English language stemming going on - which I mean that is the most common language to find a stemmer from in my experience.

I used to work for Thomson Reuters on their legal services products and while it is nice seeing something like this outside of a paid for service it's not that impressive. Maybe I'm jaded but from the comments here I was expecting to say 'wow, that is cool' and not immediately find that stemming didn't work.

on edit: fixed misspelling, formatting

</comment><comment><USER12> Great work! UK charity The Society for Computers and Law is running a hackathon with the ICO in June in case anyone is interested in helping bring more tech to GDPR. Details at [https://www.scl.org](https://www.scl.org)

<comment><USER12> Sorry full link : [https://www.scl.org/events/525-scl-data-protection- hackathon...](https://www.scl.org/events/525-scl-data-protection-hackathon- saturday-16-june-2018-london)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This:

[https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general- da...](https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data- protection-regulation-gdpr/)

Also has a search function and is a bit closer to the horses mouth.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is great! I love how it automatically pulls full definitions for terms from the relevant "Article 4. Definitions" section and surfaces them throughout the text. I would love to see more legislation made available in this easy to understand format!

</comment><comment><USER14> The presentation here is the most user friendly I have encountered so far: [https://gdpr-info.eu/](https://gdpr-info.eu/)

</comment><comment><USER15> This is awesome. Any chance algolia can make the whole of American Jurisprudence searchable? :D

</comment><comment><USER16> Is the code for this website opensourced?</comment>