Martin Shkreli Arrested on Securities Fraud Charges - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-martin-shkreli-securities-fraud/ <comment><USER3> The curiosity being gratified here cannot remotely be called "intellectual".

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER4> I googled "intellectual" and the first words were:

"An intellectual is a person who engages in critical study, thought, and reflection about the reality of society, and proposes solutions for the normative problems of that society"

You could argue Shkreli's behaviour was a problem of society that intellectuals would be curious as to the solution thereof?

<comment><USER3> Sure, one can be intellectually curious about anything. But the Dionysian frenzy we actually see in cases like this has nothing in common with that.

What happens when somebody does bad things, especially repeatedly, is that others seize on it as a socially acceptable way to get their anger out. That may be human nature, but it's the epitome of what we don't want here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It was alleged that Martin Shkreli harassed an ex-employee, including spouse and their children. Quoted: "I will see you and your children homeless"[1], in a sworn affidavit.

Although Shkreli never explicitly denied it, he had implied the accusations were false. Until yesterday, where he bragged about it during an interview with DX:

         I'm definitely the real fucking deal. This
         is not a fucking act. I threatened that
         fucking guy and his fucking kids because
         he fucking took $3 million from me and
         he ended up paying me back. He called my
         bluff. He said, "You're not fucking going to
         go after me." [I said] "Yes I motherfucking
         will." I had two guys parked outside of
         his house for six months watching his every
         fucking move. I can get down. I don't think
         RZA knows that. I think he thinks I'm
         some powder puff white guy CEO that's
         got too much money. No. No, no, no.

Not the kind of behavior you'd expect from the CEO of a publicly traded company.

[1] [http://mic.com/articles/125657/turing-ceo-martin-shkreli- wan...](http://mic.com/articles/125657/turing-ceo-martin-shkreli-wanted-to- make-former-colleague-and-family-homeless)

[2] [http://hiphopdx.com/interviews/id.2825/title.martin- shkreli-...](http://hiphopdx.com/interviews/id.2825/title.martin-shkreli- plans-to-bail-out-bobby-shmurda)

<comment><USER6> Yes. I do not know this man and I have no idea of his habits, but we're entering into "You need to stop doing that damned cocaine" territory -- that is, whether the cause is intrinsic or extrinsic, it appears to the casual observer that he is suffering from severe personality problems.

Makes you wonder who made or approved of him being CEO.

<comment><USER5> He's the CEO of two companies.

In the case of Turing Pharmaceuticals he's the CEO because he founded the company and it's funded by his hedge fund buddies, who like him because they made a lot of money from his hedge fund MSMB, despite the hedge fund being a failure.

He'a also the CEO of KaloBios. In that case he bought, with the same buddies, 70% of the company stock. As the new majority shareholder he simply appointed himself CEO.

<comment><USER7> KaloBios is down 50%: [http://www.marketwatch.com/story/martin-shkreli-losing- over-...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/martin-shkreli-losing- over-25-million-on-his-kalobios-stock-2015-12-17)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Quick reminder that he was arrested for SECURITIES fraud - this isn't related to drug prices. Feel free to read the lawsuit filed against him by his former company to understand why Martin got arrested.

The guy is a pure sociopath. I had long ago predicted this day would come and it's quite nice to see. Will be happier when he's convicted and sentenced.

[http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1438533/0001193125152...](http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1438533/000119312515292581/d19898dex991.htm)

<comment><USER9> People throw around the word sociopath. I have know a few sociopaths. I have been told, I have sociopathic tendencies.

That said, I would never take advantage of the poor, weak, or helpless.

If you have sociopathic tendencies--work on them! Whatever you do, don't cross that line where you think it's ok to take advantage of the aforementioned.

I live among a lot of wealthy sociopaths. They are in complete denial, and actually believe, "Hay it's legal! I did nothing wrong? I'll even go to church, or synagogue!".

I look at them with utter disgust. The sociopaths, I know, haven't done the damage to society like this little puke.

I don't care about his SEC violations. Every trader--strike that--successful traders; cheated on order to get their wad. They all use inside information. Yes, there's some of you who got luckey on this momentum trading these last few years--great. I'm talking about the series 7 boys who always seen to make money.

Raising the price on a drug, a drug that he knew sick patients would be paying "out of pocket" for--that's a true scumbag. The word sociopath is too nice.

<comment><USER10> I wonder why you're being downvoted. Reflexive instinct for someone who admits they have sociopathic tendencies?

<comment><USER11> Because armchair psychiatry and textbook class hatred is not really an interesting contribution to the conversation. The HN bar is higher than mere handwringing.

<comment><USER10> But all the comments saying "this guy is a sociopath" or "all big-company CEOs are sociopaths" or "here's a pop-psychology book about sociopaths" are? They're not getting downvoted....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Shkreli is a total asshole but let's not forget that large pharmaceutical companies use the exact same strategies on many drugs only with prices lowered just enough to stay this side of outrage. Life is 'priceless' and people will pay anything to extend their lives so if all that stands between you and the grim reaper is a patented molecule you can bet that that molecule is an expensive one. Whatever the market will bear is not always something reasonable.

<comment><USER13> Lets also not forget that if you can't make money off lifesaving drugs, you also won't bother to invent any new ones. It seems to make people angry that greedy folks make money by saving lives, but lets remember that one likely alternative to this is greedy folks _don 't_ make money by _not_ saving lives.

Putting my investor hat on, I generally believe that making rich people pretty is a far less risky investment than making sympathetic sick people healthy - <USER2> won't become public enemy #1 by charging a fortune for Botox 2.0.

(None of this is meant as commentary on the specifics of this guy - the media has decided he's a villain, prosecutors can boost their career by targeting him, and I have no way to determine the truth of the matter.)

<comment><USER14> Why can't we have the government fund pharmaceutical research?

<comment><USER15> Because you'd ultimately have politicians direct research, based on what makes the best photo-ops up to the next election as well as the inevitable old-boys- club/revolving-doors "corruption-light" that quickly infects expensive government programs.

Whatever the aesthetics of people getting rich from treating sick people, on the evidence, it's actually very effective.

<comment><USER14> Well, we do have an example of a governmental agency that is free from political control, i.e. the federal reserve. We could have something like that for research, can't we? After the appointment of a governor, the organization could function on its own without politics. Other examples include supreme court of the United States, BBC in the UK etc.

<comment><USER16> The problem is that the price system is the best resource allocation scheme that humans have ever attempted at scale.

When you sever the external link between the product going out, and the money coming in, you destroy some of the positive or negative feedback loops that take into account what people actually _want_ and what they can _do_.

There has to be a hard external link between the outputs and the inputs, or you end up with a situation where rent-seekers charge in and gum up the works, absorbing resources without doing anything _economically useful_ in exchange. The instant you guarantee a cash flow independent of actual results, you create sinecures, and those offices fill up and never go vacant again.

You could end up with situations where the agency _cures_ a disease, but spends 100 times more doing that than it would cost to develop an _acceptably effective treatment_ and also create a foundation that could pay to produce and distribute that treatment to everyone who gets it any time within the next 5 billion years.

Yay, woo, we cured it. But our inability to effectively prioritize resources meant that 99% of that cure budget was _not_ spent on researching diseases that have a far greater economic impact. Oops.

 _Someone_ has to decide whether the money is well spent. And if that _someone_ isn't _everyone_ , then there is an agency problem, and rent-seekers scramble over each other to be the _someone_ , so they can easily profit from that decision-making power.

Now, before anyone goes shaking their pompoms for the free market, I should mention that we haven't actually had one in medicine for a _long_ time, thanks to the godawful market distortions that currently exist in the healthcare sector of markets where most treatments are researched. But at least that market-side link in the feedback loop still exists to some tiny extent, no matter how weak or tenuous it may be now.

So an independent research agency would be great for about 15 years. After that, it will start to become a gigantic black hole of waste and inefficiency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Given this guy's character, it's not too surprising. Not only is he greedy, but he seems to take a lot of joy in trolling people. If you look at his twitter feed, he gushes about buying the only copy of Wu Tang's previous album and talks about putting holes in the discographies of other artists. Last week he had a public poll about who he should solicit for a private album. It seems like he takes a lot of glee in riling people up.

<comment><USER18> >gushes about buying the only copy of Wu Tang's previous album

Seems like people should be a lot more pissed at Wu Tang than this guy. Private album sales from groups with millions of fans is just an asinine idea. Why do they get a free pass here?

<comment><USER19> Speaking as a performer myself, what Wu Tang Clan did basically amounts to giving a private performance. They're not allowed to do that? Why not?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Convenient.

To have the guy that abused the system to such extremes that the people and media noticed it, pressuring government to regulate, be taken into custody for something unrelated to this. As if they couldn't have found this a year ago.

It really sounds like "let's find some dirt on this guy".

<comment><USER21> Yeah it does, which is not surprising and while pretty fine in this case can be pretty horrible in others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> > Prosecutors charged him with illegally taking stock from Retrophin Inc., a > biotechnology firm he started in 2011, and using it pay off debts from > unrelated business dealings. He was later ousted from the company, where > he'd been chief executive officer, and sued by its board.

<comment><USER23> Is it not illegal to not report a crime? How can all the parties involved in public trading have not noticed something they had to report.

Aren't parties who are having a debt paid to them interested some diligence the money is legitimate? I mean it's my problem if I unknowingly by a stolen car.

<comment><USER24> _Is it not illegal to not report a crime?_

Pretty sure this only applies to the ethics standards of psychiatrists, et. al. I don't think a normal citizen is required to report crime.

<comment><USER25> In France it would be the end of their career for a professional bound by secret (doctors, lawyers etc.) to report a crime confessed during a session. But they have pretty persuasive power, I know some lawyers advised some people to confess very gritty crimes to the police.

But normal citizens could go to jail for not reporting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> We're not meant to cheer this as a win for financial fair play. It's meant to evoke our self-righteousness. It's prosecutorial discretion with the same logic that this community decries when applied to other people whose violations of law or social mores we find more sympathetic.

<comment><USER27> I don't understand your argument. "meant to evoke our self-righteousness"\- meant by who? What prosecutorial discretion? Sounds like he pretty clearly broke the law, and didn't even try to hide it.

<comment><USER26> My gut is that prosecutions for financial market misdealings are about as selective as the issuance of speeding tickets, i.e. most of the time those who can enforce the law look the other way. They do so in part because it's trifling and in part because there's so much of it and so few of them.

To put it another way, the amounts involved are rounding error and the article doesn't list any serious effects of the charged misdeeds. Instead it's all about comeuppance for something that was legal. The outrage is over raising the price by a bit player. The big players simply charge a lot to begin with for life saving treatments such as chemotherapy drugs...a lot more than a few hundred dollars a dose.

YMMV.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> He was live streaming last night on YouTube from some hotel. Even gave out his cellphone number and was taking questions about investing and whatnot. Was he arrested this morning? He was streaming at around 3am, 5 hours ago.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-4D6yj- cR4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-4D6yj-cR4)

<comment><USER29> I believe that is his apartment, unless you meant that he maybe lives at a hotel (?).

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> am I the only one bothered by this? As a bit of a disclaimer, I am disgusted by what Shkreli is doing in the pharma business (if anyone doubts this, I run a nonprofit dedicated to the opposite of what he's doing).

But what it says is that the SEC is motivated by sometimes petty reasons to go after people that are indirectly related to actual commission of SEC violation. Which of course, every CEO makes pretty much every business day. If the SEC were neutral, why didn't they find and eliminate Shkreli _before_ social media got all hot to trot on hating him? The SEC is basically saying, well, he's unpopular, we have the power to take him out, let's do it.

Something about that seems wrong to me.

<comment><USER31> No, it's not about that. Apparently an interview was published only yesterday, where Shkreli was trash-talking and threatening the RZA.

And as we all know, Wu-Tang Clan ain't nothin' to fuck with.

QED.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> What kind of person would think that they could get away with such blatant extortion and embezzlement? In this day and age?

<comment><USER33> Basically everyone on Wall Street?

<comment><USER34> Sorry, but I get really sick of this kind of low quality knee jerk. "Everyone" \- really?

And no, I don't work in the financial industry.

<comment><USER35> Well, if you look at how the big banks got fined in the last 10 years, it's "Everyone" as in "every big bank".

<comment><USER36> But that's not everyone working at the big bank.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Hopefully this makes Bill Murray's job a lot easier: [http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/11/9890908/rza-bill- murray-w...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/11/9890908/rza-bill-murray-wu- tang-clan-album-heist)

</comment><comment><USER38> Best news of the day! Glad that little dipshit has some justice coming his way. But lets not forget, there are many, many more people just like him

<comment><USER39> The system is biased toward drug monopolies. He merely exploited it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Pretty sure some Feds were looking to pin him after his story broke earlier this year. Protip: Be a quiet or unknown capitalist oppressor

</comment><comment><USER41> The price of flying too high, there's a reason big pharma executives rarely show in the front media.

<comment><USER42> "flying too high" or acting like a complete, arrogant scumbag?

<comment><USER43> You can act how you want behind closed doors. This guy did it on TV, on Twitter, on reddit etc. etc. That was his mistake.

<comment><USER42> Jacking up the prices of those drugs was a pretty public act even if he decided it behind closed doors...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> How will his arrest affect the price of the drug? That is really the only I care about.

<comment><USER45> There's a senate committee currently investigating the common theme of companies buying out-of-patent drugs that have a small market and marking them up immediately after purchase. His arrest might add a bit of fire to the argument, but I suspect it won't have much effect in the long run.

For the record, though, they are looking at the industry as a whole, not just his company and the few drugs he did this with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> when is he running for president?

</comment><comment><USER47> "The password is... _schadenfreude_ ".

</comment><comment><USER48> They only arrested him because he was about to bail out Bobby Shmurda and the feds don't want Bobby Shmurda out.

</comment><comment><USER49> Wait, so he bought a million dollar record and then stole money that he gouged sick people for to pay it off? If he just kept the drugs at the same price and didn't buy the record the world would be a better place and he wouldn't be going to jail. I thought he said he did the price gouging for the shareholders, not for WuTang.

</comment><comment><USER50> I wonder if he will be able to afford Daraprim when he gets out of jail...

</comment><comment><USER51> Couldn't have happened to a nicer chap.

</comment><comment><USER52> What goes around comes around

</comment><comment><USER53> I agree that if the allegations are true, Martin Shkreli is an immoral person to say the least, but I wonder about one thing:

The whole conduct of the prosecutors doesn't look impartial to me. It seems as if someone was vilified by the media and next thing you know he is arrested and charged with fraud in an unrelated case.

As if this was still a society where you had to slaughter the occasional sacrificial lamb to appease the anger of the people.

</comment><comment><USER54> If you want to see what he does in his spare time - [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8gjB1PSXv_oAUSAQ16S0fA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8gjB1PSXv_oAUSAQ16S0fA)

</comment><comment><USER55> Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

</comment><comment><USER56> I hope Wu-Tang and/or Bill Murray make a move. Right now!

</comment><comment><USER57> What do they say about karma?

<comment><USER58> In this particular case, "karma" appears to be "upsetting the morals of enough people, that regulatory and prosecutorial parties become invested in digging up enough of your past until they find something that sticks".

I believe the word you're looking for is "witch hunt".

I'm not saying I agree with the guy, or defend his actions in any circumstance.

I'm just saying that if you told folks "the world is round" during the flat era, you'd be treated and investigated the same way.

<comment><USER59> >I believe the word you're looking for is "witch hunt".

It's not a witch hunt. Dude's been under investigation for 3 years.

The article states this:

"The Securities and Exchange Commission, which according to court documents opened an investigation into Shkreli in 2012, is expected to file a parallel civil complaint against him, according to people familiar with the matter."

<comment><USER58> Here's another case in the same vein, where a very public CEO with strong opinions had lost a decision in a very nasty sexual harassment case (while stating even more of his strong opinions in the duration of the case) which wasn't going to put a dent in his net worth, but later picked up on securities fraud: [https://www.fbi.gov/newyork/press-releases/2015/benjamin- wey...](https://www.fbi.gov/newyork/press-releases/2015/benjamin-wey-founder- and-president-of-new-york-global-group-arrested-and-charged-in-manhattan- federal-court-for-securities-fraud-arising-out-of-fraudulent-reverse-merger- scheme-involving-chinese-companies)

I don't care for their actions, I'm concerned about the subjectivity of legal scrutiny.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> I started a GoFundMe to support Martin. Please donate so we can keep him stocked with Vaseline while he's doing time in federal prison.

<comment><USER60> Jesus guys, it was just a joke. People are so sensitive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> This guy seems more and more like a comic book villain every day. The next step, I suppose, is when he's sentenced to spend eleven days in a minimum security prison and he falls into a vat of industrial chemicals while working in the laundry. It turns him even whiter and he takes on a silly name, and disappears into the night, embarking on a spree of ne'er-do-wellery.

Then again, he's already screwed over a lot more people as CEO of a pharmaceutical company than he probably could as a super villain. It takes the efficiency of capitalism to achieve real evil, I guess.

</comment><comment><USER62> I don't know the details of this particular case but whenever I see a very public figure arrested, no matter how reviled, I grow a bit concerned. Despite being sleazy and unethical, his raising of drug prices was not against the law. Financial law was written purposely vague such that it can be used a hammer to arrest those who dissent from the will of those in power.

Yulia Tymoshenko, former prime minister of Ukraine was convicted of "embezzlement and abuse of power". Julian Assange, editor-in-chief of Wikileaks is facing extradition. Elliot Spitzer, former attorney general, was ousted from power due to a prostitution scandal that appeared targeted.

Whatever you think about US health care and drug prices, we should not rely on a system that requires individual actors to be good people. We should strive for a system that does not require moral actors to function.

Of course I could be wrong. Shkreli arrest could be legit and be purely coincidental to the outrage that he has drawn.

<comment><USER63> Try reading the article. The arrest is not for raising drug prices.

<comment><USER24> You missed the OP's point. Most of us unknowingly commit major crimes in the course of our day, just given the sheer volume of statutes arrayed against us.

OP is referring to when prosecutorial discretion permits "the powers that be" to use this fact against people who fall into disfavor.

<comment><USER64> According to TFA, the investigation started in 2012, long before his notoriety.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


I pine for the days before "app" was used for everything - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=app

<comment><USER2> You mean before smart phones, tablets, affordable laptops became mainstream. Back in a time when technology wasn't 'cool'... back then we ran programs and applications. It wasn't cool to abbreviate =P

</comment><comment><USER3> Yeah... back in the good ol' days of "application"!

</comment><comment><USER4> Back when websites were called websites

</comment><comment><USER5> Why?</comment>


Show HN: Make better mutual and index fund investment decisions - <AUTHOR> https://fundhub.xyz/ <comment><USER2> Nice, simple and intuitive. Btw, you should make a calculator that shows how much would you gain, if you invested X money at Y date.

</comment><comment><USER3> Doesn't work when I have adblocker on. You have a "angulartics" or something like that that is a hard dependency.

<comment><AUTHOR> Weird. I am using AdBlock & AdBlock Plus on Chrome and the site works. Can you provide some more information about the error? Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It is a quite nice website. Perhaps I would enjoy it if I understood all these letters. AGAWX?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Symbol column, also known as ticker, represents unique identifier of the fund in the market. AGAWX is one of the funds of the 361 Capital company. For example a ticker for one of the most popular index funds is SPY (SPDR® S&P 500® ETF).

Have you bought any investment funds before? When I am searching for longterm investment fund, the most important information is the fund growth and expense. Everywhere else, this information is available only per fund, not in a sortable and searchable table. Fundhub tries to solve that.</comment></comment>


My Top Tools for Web Development - <AUTHOR> https://livecodestream.dev/post/2020-05-20-my-top-5-tools-for-web-development/ <comment><USER2> Can you remove the 'Show HN' prefix in the titles? Blog posts can't be tried out [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> My bad, I made the change, I was confused on how Show HN worked, thanks for sharing the link with me</comment>


1.8M American truck drivers could lose their jobs to robots - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2016/8/3/12342764/autonomous-trucks-employment <comment><USER2> This is definitely coming, and truckers need to be aware. Upskilling now is imperative.

At the same time, it isn't just the truck drivers. Logistics is also changing and becoming automated, then you've got delivery drivers (I'll assume they are also considered in the same bucket as truck drivers), bus drivers etc.

Self-driving cars also have a huge impact. It isn't just taxis/uber-drivers that are being replaced, there is the change to infrastructure. How do parking needs change? How about traffic police?

I was thinking about this yesterday, and how do we think far enough ahead to prepare as a society, and benefit from these changes?

On a side-note, I seriously question the stats from NPR's most common occupation. How can you have states where the most common job is Secretary? Is Software Engineer really the most common profession in any state?

<comment><USER3> Indeed, it appears there's a viable argument for "retail sales" as the most common job in 42 states. [http://www.marketwatch.com/story/no-truck-driver- isnt-the-mo...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/no-truck-driver-isnt-the- most-common-job-in-your-state-2015-02-12)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is an interesting sort of career path for people. A hundred years ago there was no such thing as a long-haul trucker, the only reliable way to get goods over vast distances was train if there was tracks or boat if there were navigable waterways.

Through the 1950s trucking became a force to recon with, and these days with seemingly everyone moving to zero-inventory systems it requires a degree of flexibility that rail can't afford.

Still, you have to wonder how many horse and buggy drivers were put out of business by long-haul truckers. A single motorized vehicle could do the work of twenty wagons which were probably the standard mode of transportation in many places until highways emerged.

Self-driving is just the next step.

<comment><USER5> However, the effect this next step can have on the overall economy can be disastrous. Not only is truck driver the most common profession, with their unemployment creating hardships for millions of families, and the families of industries related to truck driving, but also the knock on effect that will have. Imagine all those families spending less, creating recession, lay-offs, and bankruptcies in every industry. It could be more disastrous than the housing crisis.

<comment><USER4> It will have a pretty major impact on things, but then again, so did switching from wagons to diesel trucks. How many people making horse shoes and buggies went bankrupt? How many people were there that used to deal with the horses, with the carriages, with selling goods and services to people?

The efficiencies gained by long-distance hauling being practical made entirely new industries possible. So long as this automated transport enables _new_ business opportunities that require labour it will be a positive thing.

If this is robotic trucks driving goods to robotic factories with products designed by robots, then we're screwed.

<comment><USER6> And how much social upheaval was there? Enough to kill off a good chunk of the working population.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think robots will be the future in many industries but honestly self driving cars are no where near where they need to be. There are none on the road right now, yeah, none. You cannot trust a single one to be safe in conditions the average driver can drive in. Soon as it rains, snows, or such, these systems start to fail.

Oh sure they brag up the internet but damn, they are doing the easiest driving there is. Throw a few plastic supermarket bags in front on your "self driving" car and you will find it isn't anything more than self tailgating. Really, why are these systems so big on tail gating when its not guaranteed you are tail gating another car with similar equipment? Finally, who is liable when a supposedly self driving car is told to speed?

back to trucks, long haul might get it first but not unless roads are setup to accommodate them because bad weather driving is a lot further off than we suspect

</comment><comment><USER8> There is a glaring contradiction between the two mainstream narratives, one of which goes that we need working class jobs because not everyone is capable of middle class jobs, the other of which says there aren't enough people to fill working class jobs so we need immigration.

There two narratives exist in almost every Western nation.</comment>


American (Relative) Decline Would Be a Good Thing? - <AUTHOR> http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2010/10/american-relative-decline-would-be-a-good-thing/

<comment><USER2> I have a little brother who made all sorts of bad decisions that left him in a bad financial situation. A few times I lent him some money. Eventually he pulled through, started a business and is now making significantly more than I am. Rationally and personally I think that is awesome. Still, sometimes I get a bit jealous. I mean he's my LITTLE brother. He's better off, I'm better off (I even do some work for him now) but worse of relative to him.

I liked how this article is just a little reminder that other countries doing well does not come at our expense but to our benefit.</comment>


CLKSCREW: Exposing the perils of security-oblivious energy management - <AUTHOR> https://blog.acolyer.org/2017/09/21/clkscrew-exposing-the-perils-of-security-oblivious-energy-management/ <comment><USER2> Its an attack that expoits power management, changing freq/voltage on one core to prompt a fault while leaving a second observing core running normally.

Adrian Colyer: _This is brilliant and terrifying in equal measure. CLKSCREW demonstrably takes the Trust out of ARM's TrustZone, and it wouldn't be at all surprising if it took the Secure out of SGX too (though the researchers didn't investigate that). It's the deepest, widest impact, hardest to fix security issue I've seen in a long time._</comment>


Show HN: Hacker News in Python-vision - <AUTHOR> http://gumho.github.io/codehn <comment><USER2> fails PEP.

just kidding (it does though), it is cool and interesting.</comment>


Google Pregel: a system for large-scale graph processing - <AUTHOR> http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1807167.1807184 <comment><AUTHOR> here is a brief summary

Pregel defines a sequence of supersteps (execution cycles) which are executed in parallel on the entire (partitioned) graph.

The supersteps are executed by worker threads, synchronized by global synchronization points and coordinated by a master. Pregel keeps vertices and edges on the machine that performs computation and uses network only for message passing.

Within a superstep each vertex executes the same user-defined function. There is no message passing between vertices during the superstep but the vertices will recieve their messages in the next cycle only.

There are no remote reads, or shared memory concepts like locks, mutexes and semaphores - it is a "pure message passing model".

Vertex can modify its state, or that of its outgoing edges, receive messages sent to it in the previous superstep, send messages to other vertices (to be received in the next superstep) or even change the topology of the graph.

Vertex state machine has two states Active/Inactive. a vertex is activated by a message received from a previous superstep. A vertex deactivates itself by "voting to halt". When all vertices are deactivated and there are no messages in transit the algorithms terminates.

The output of Pregel program is a set of outputs emitted by vertices, could be a directed graph or a set of disconnected vertices or aggregate stats.

The authors mention Valiant's "Bulk Syncronous Parallel model" as the main inspiration behind this model (I've found only ACM link: <http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=79181>)

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----

PageRank in Pregel:

class PageRankVertex

: public Vertex<double, void, double> {

public:

virtual void Compute(MessageIterator* msgs) {

if (superstep() >= 1) {

double sum = 0;

for (; !msgs->Done(); msgs->Next())

sum += msgs->Value();

 _MutableValue() =0.15 / NumVertices() + 0.85_ sum; }

if (superstep() < 30) {

const int64 n = GetOutEdgeIterator().size();

SendMessageToAllNeighbors(GetValue() / n); } else {

VoteToHalt(); } } };

</comment><comment><USER2> I'd love to find a PDF of the full paper; we hear so much about MapReduce, and this is essentially the map-reduce approach as applied to graphs.

The best reference about Pregel I've been able to find so far is a one-page announcement, published last year: [http://jloxim.mimuw.edu.pl/redmine/attachments/11/p6-malewic...](http://jloxim.mimuw.edu.pl/redmine/attachments/11/p6-malewicz-2.pdf)

<comment><USER3> MapReduce is already being applied to graphs.

Spectral graph theory, ie, the construction and manipulation of graphs that are described by matrices, has been around for quite some time. Two types of matrix representations are typically used. Adjacency matrices and Laplacian matrices.

Page Rank is an example of this. It is equivalent to finding the centrality of a graph, by computing the primary eigenvector of the adjacency matrix of the graph.

MapReduce is used for accomplishing the difficult task of computing the needed eigenvector of a multi-billion dimensional matrix. Instead of attempting an exact computation of the primary eigenvector, the power method is used. The power method is an iterative approach that quickly approaches an approximation of the eigenvector. It comes down to looping over a matrix multiplied by a vector until you get the precision you're looking for.

The cool thing about the power method is that you don't REALLY need to get your data in to some sort of linear algebraic representation of a matrix, you can just use more efficient data structures to mimic matrix multiplication.

Since matrix multiplication is done a row and a column at a time, you can split it up in a parallel manner. The map function handles the computation of each row of the resulting vector, and the reduce function puts it back together again, ready for the next iteration of the power method.

As for PreGel, I didn't really understand the description of it.

I have always had a lot of gripes with publications related to algorithms. There are very rarely any code snippets. I feel at least that the authors should go over their algorithms in some sort of pseudo-code.

I realize that academic papers are written for a specific audience in mind, an audience that is used to seeing a bunch of algorithms described in linear algebraic notation, but I feel it does a huge disservice to spreading knowledge. I mean, I'm somewhat versed in mathematics, albeit at an undergrad level, but I rarely know what these articles are talking about in any specific detail, at least to the point where I could reproduce their approach in functioning computer code.

I've even been published in ACM, and I can't follow the majority of papers in the journal!

This isn't just applicable to computer science, rather all mathematics in general. The notations used are so arcane that even the simplest of ideas can seem daunting. It's probably why so many people are turned off by mathematics early on in their academic careers.

It took me a good week of brushing up on linear algebra and reading through various descriptions and white papers to figure out what was going on with Page Rank. It really isn't that complicated of an algorithm in the end... you're just constructing an MxM matrix where rows and columns are considered web pages, getting those rows to add up to 1 while making sure there are no elements equal to 0, computing an eigenvector, and then scaling the eigenvector down to make each element add up to 1. However, you read the Wikipedia entry on Page Rank and it is borderline indecipherable!

Why isn't there a "somewhat complex math explained in normal language with pretty pictures and graphs" textbook or website out there? Are all mathematicians incapable of communicating their art form to the world at large?

<comment><USER4> Well, there's "Proofs without words" (<http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Kx2cjyzTIYkC>) and its sequel (<http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=wMpwQgAACAAJ>). I'm not sure that's exactly what you meant, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Digging around a bit, without much luck - there's the research blog post of a year ago: [http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2009/06/large-scale- graph...](http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2009/06/large-scale-graph- computing-at-google.html) (some comments there point to similar work.)

Snippets:

 _so far we haven't come across a type of graph or a practical graph computing problem which is not solvable with Pregel. It computes over large graphs much faster than alternatives, and the application programming interface is easy to use. Implementing PageRank, for example, takes only about 15 lines of code._

 _spoiler: The seven bridges of Königsberg — inspiration for Leonhard Euler's famous theorem that established the basics of graph theory — spanned the Pregel river._

</comment><comment><USER6> Is the PDF available for download somewhere?

<comment><USER7> Should be available here: <http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1807184></comment></comment>


Google Speeds Up Shift of Hardware Production Away from China - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-11/google-is-quickening-a-shift-of-hardware-production-from-china <comment><USER2> I don't see how this could even possibly encourage the CCP to capitulate in the trade war.</comment>


Anti-Akrasia Technique: Structured Procrastination - <AUTHOR> http://lesswrong.com/lw/1fe/antiakrasia_technique_structured_procrastination/

<comment><USER2> I find the original far more interesting and useful:

<http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/>

<comment><USER3> The _original_ '95 version is here: <http://www- csli.stanford.edu/~jperry/procrastination.htm>

<comment><USER2> Cool - good find. I've checked - the text is identical, it's simply been transferred to the new site, so in that sense the link I found is "the original" - it's the original text.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's a creative and fresh viewpoint. However, I am not so sure if it's going to work. for me at least.</comment>


Show HN: Personalizable 3D Try Room along with real time digitization of clothes - <AUTHOR> http://www.sensestyles.com/TryRoom <comment><USER2> The page doesn't load right :S</comment>


Introducing Librem Social - <AUTHOR> https://puri.sm/posts/introducing-librem-social/ <comment><USER2> I remain hopeful that projects like this are a way for commercial interests to funnel money and development to the upstream open source project owners. Purism talks a big game about being a social purpose company. Lets see if they can follow through with their self-imposed commitments. Thus far, it does seem like some the greater mobile gtk toolchain has benefited as result of these efforts on the librem phone, but that's a pretty small niche right there. It doesn't seem like they are integrating with the upstream projects as much for these social/communication services as much as they are with their mobile stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the reason they're not integrating upstream on the social stuff as much is because they've removed more than added. They do less, on purpose. I like that their Mastodon instance doesn't have the firehose. It seems to help keep peoples posts more diverse and personal and avoids people feeling like they have to pick a side and comment on whatever is #trending today. If they gave the option to turn on the firehose, it would loose that feel because many of the users would fall into the same trap. Even if they still post interesting stuff, their overall feed could be lower quality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I loved purism. Got their laptops. But the OS and most software (and i am sure this social network too) is a fly-by-night operation. At best!

The laptops too, in a way. They are nice but for the price should have been nicer (e.g. no USB C charging or monitor out, etc, for a machine more expensive than a maxed out mac or HP). Everything they do just scream "we slapped those things together. Now pay us".

Now they are riding the waves of the librem5 hype... and i am sure they will deliver just because the competition on mobile phones is abysmal.

</comment><comment><USER4> I heard this is a sort of hail-mary for the company's existence, that they need recurring revenue and need it badly.

Their products haven't been selling well and if you look at the last few puri.sm updates posted on HN they didn't even attract 10 comments if any at all.

The last macbook update thread was past 1000 comments when I read it.

If the HN crowd isn't interested in a privacy-oriented FSF-friendly computing devices, who is?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think people here are interested in the Librem 5. Laptops are already easy enough to make your own with just a few compromises, and I don't think many people would choose PureOS over other Linux distros. But the phone space has 3 choices iOS, Google Android and open Android (e.g. LineageOS). The open Android options are forced to run on fairly locked down hardware made by companies that have no interest in open sourcing anything and don't want any hardware buttons, no matter how useful they might be. There's a desperate need for a mobile device made for general purpose computing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Are these apps open source? I'm curious to see if they changed mastodon in any meaningful way.

<comment><USER6> From what I hear they took out all the moderation tools.

edit: ah, here's the commit which does it. [https://source.puri.sm/liberty/smilodon/commit/9cae431902a2c...](https://source.puri.sm/liberty/smilodon/commit/9cae431902a2c0ce6438c6722a3a901e279c78fc)

"\- Return error from reports REST API \- Remove links to report in web UI \- Reject reports from ActivityPub"

(which is to say, if you're using it, the 'report' functionality is gone, and if someone on a remote instance hits the 'report' button on a toot from Purism and says 'send this report to my admin and Purism's admin' then Purism will just error out instead of accepting the error.)

I really dunno what possessed Eugen to think that was a good idea. Apparently this commit has been reverted but I've still defederated my instance from Purism because who the hell knows when they'll think this sounds like a good plan again?

<comment><USER7> I don't understand why you'd have to dig through another instance's git history and make a judgment call based on a reverted implementation detail.

Doesn't Mastodon have tools to notify the admin or even temporarily defederate based on X number of user reports from a given instance?

<comment><USER6> "Purism's instance removed all moderation tools" is the reason I have an opinion on them at all. I only realized they reverted that when linking to the commit where they broke it for my previous comment.

I might change my mind on defederating them if the users of my instance weigh in, but forty years of growing up along with the Internet has given me a rather jaundiced view of the ability of people whose primary concerns are ___software_ __freedom __* to make sensible moderation decisions. Especially when they 've started from a position of "we can completely opt out of moderating our social software, it'll be great, I'm sure everyone will behave like adults" and had to be argued out of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Fair warning to anybody thinking of using Librem Social: it's a Mastodon instance whose management seems willing to tolerate speech that most of the rest of the Fediverse finds objectionable. Don't expect that you'll be able to interact with users of other Mastodon instances, as their admins may refuse to federate with Librem Social.

<comment><USER9> The "main" mastodon.social instance isn't choosing to ban them at this time: [https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/102180995301556021](https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/102180995301556021)

Also, from the article: "If you are being harassed, or witness online harassment, block and flag the offending user and a moderator will take action. We do not tolerate harassment. This is an area of well-established rights, Librem Social is built on and with the expert policies of ACLU, FSF, and EFF, while avoiding the pitfalls of ham-fisted censorship we all dislike from Big Tech."

And the link to their Code of Conduct is here: [https://librem.one/conduct/](https://librem.one/conduct/)

Some elements of the Mastodon community are a bit... extreme in their views on moderation, but it doesn't seem like Purism is going outside the standard faire here.

<comment><USER10> >The "main" mastodon.social instance

mastodon.social isn't even the largest mastodon instance[0]. Even aside from that The majority of active accounts are hosted on small or personal instances, especially for English speaking accounts.

>extreme in their views on moderation

IIRC instance admins had an issue with the purism instance not actively going against hate-speech. I'd hardly call that extremist.

[0]From [https://instances.social/list](https://instances.social/list)

Instance Users

DOWN pawoo.net 549417

DOWN mastodon.social 321500

DOWN mstdn.jp 191718

UP switter.at 118232

<comment><USER11> It isn't extreme, statistically speaking, but at least it isn't what I would want in a social network. If I wanted a heavily censored network I would just use Twitter.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


███ ██ █ ████ everything ███ █████ is █████ ████ ████ fine ████. - <AUTHOR>

███ ██ █ ████ love. █████ ███████ ███ your █████ ████ government. <comment><USER2> For no good reason, a rant:

As far as I know, companies are not held legally accountable when their database is illegally accessed and consumer data (passwords and emails) are released to the public. In civil engineering, if a dam fails, the man who signed his name to the design is held responsible. Legally. And he likely loses his license. The same is true of doctors and lawyers.

It will not surprise me if the government steps in to create standards for online security; programmers have not taken steps to self-police.

The same seems true with SOPA. The theft of intellectual property is clearly a problem. A robots.txt file does not stop someone from scraping your content. There's been no effective self-policing and in its absence the result is a Congressional act.

Does the act go too far (by denying due process)? Sure. Might that get scaled back in the courts? Likely. Has Google, Wikipedia, or any of the countless sites protesting SOPA offered up an alternative that actually resolves the problem. No.

I don't support SOPA, but I have a hard time opposing it when this is the state of affairs it was born from.

<comment><USER3> Although I guess it's technically true that "the theft of intellectual property is clearly a problem", it's unenlightening. Shoplifting and texting in theaters are also clear problems, but I hope you'd oppose insane laws where people caught doing those things are publicly hanged alongside their immediate family. Is the theft of intellectual property such an _urgent_ problem that it merits an extreme response? That I doubt. We seem to be doing mostly fine with the status quo. It might be a bit frustrating when your content is pirated, but it does not call for drastic measures on the scale of SOPA. (And of course, this is all ignoring the fact that SOPA would actually be _quite ineffective at stopping piracy_ , and would mainly just act as ammunition for trolls and anticompetitive corporations. I'd guess that true pirate sites would generally be less affected by SOPA than the average non-pirate site that just accepts user-generated content.)

<comment><USER2> The evidence speaks: it was clearly an extreme and urgent problem to some parties, hence the act is under serious consideration.

Shoplifting is not only illegal, but much is dedicated to minimizing it.

To claim that SOPA is similar to a death sentence for shoplifting is excessive hyperbole.

We have drivers licenses and stop signs for our once 'open roads'. Clearly as a civilization we are capable of allowing oversight. Should it be as severe as removing due process? Absolutely not.

Should the world of the web gotten out in front of this with an elegant solution? Yes. It didn't and hasn't.

The reality is similar bills will be pushed until the problem is resolved.

<comment><USER3> > _The evidence speaks: it was clearly an extreme and urgent problem to some > parties, hence the act is under serious consideration._

This is a non sequitur. The fact that something is under consideration does not mean it addresses an "extreme and urgent problem". For example, the Gravina Island Highway (the "road to nowhere") was not only under serious consideration, but was actually built despite the fact that it did nobody any good. And we've all heard about silly laws, like how it's illegal to tease skunks in Minnesota. Do you think skunk-teasing is an extreme and urgent problem?

The fact that an industry group is pushing a bill that would give it massive power does not indicate that there is actually an urgent problem that needs solving, much less that the bill is what's necessary to solve their problem. I mean, if somebody offered me a million dollars, I'd absolutely take it, but you would be wrong to infer that I'm a million dollars in debt. In this particular case, many of the numbers the industry associations have thrown out to show a need have been proven to be outright fabrications, and most of the others have been shown to be heavily skewed. So not only have they not shown a legitimate need, but they've demonstrated that their motive has nothing to do with need.

Now, don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that piracy isn't a problem — just that I don't see a need for drastic measures.

> _Shoplifting is not only illegal, but much is dedicated to minimizing it._

The _maximum_ sentence for shoplifting in most places is one year in jail. We're hardly taking SOPA-level countermeasures against it.

> _To claim that SOPA is similar to a death sentence for shoplifting is > excessive hyperbole._

I don't think so. Jailing people for song covers on YouTube is about as disproportionate, and SOPA essentially implements the death penalty for websites that don't have the resources to police user-generated content with 100% efficacy. But at any rate, the point of the comparison is that it is a _drastic_ solution to a vexing but not-so-drastic problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For no good reason -

This post reminds me of John Carpenter's _They Live,_ and that maybe what we really need to take care of SOPA is Rowdy Roddy Piper - whose website is, fortuitously, not blacked out today. <http://www.rowdyroddypiper.com/>

</comment><comment><USER5> █████ ██ ████ ███████?

<comment><USER6> Probably Thursday.

<comment><USER7> No I think it █████ ██████████, don't you think?.</comment></comment></comment>


The key to regenerating bodies - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527471.100-healing-touch-the-key-to-regenerating-bodies.html

<comment><USER2> I wonder if medical insurance would pay for replacement parts, because they sound expensive.</comment>


Robot Has Rat Brain - <AUTHOR> http://www.livescience.com/technology/080814-robot-brain.html

<comment><USER2> Hmm... This is a little misleading. It looks like they're using brain matter as a circuit, but not so much a conscious brain making decisions and having circuits interpret that.

 _The researchers aim to get the robot to learn, by applying different signals as it moves into predefined positions._

This line speaks most loudly that it's just a circuit.

Am I mistaken?

<comment><USER3> From what i understood, the brain doesn't make decisions, it just reacts to stimulation.

I think today's xkcd is appropriate :D

<http://xkcd.com/465/>

<comment><USER4> It does make decisions, at first it just reacts to stimulation for example it runs it into a wall and they give it a shock, next time when it sees the wall it doesn't run into it! Which is pretty amazing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Didn't Survival Research Labs have a mecha that had 4 legs, each of which was acutated by an electrode attached to a pet hamster's leg? If the writeup in Whole Earth Signals was correct, there was also a microphone that translated the hamster's squeaks into blasts from a flame thrower.</comment>


China talks of building a "digital Silk Road" - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/china/2018/06/02/china-talks-of-building-a-digital-silk-road <comment><USER2> > "In April [Xi Jinping] said it would involve helping other countries to > build digital infrastructure and develop internet security.

Boy, I sure don't like the sound of the world's most oppressive maintainer of internet infrastructure helping other countries to build out their own services.</comment>


New Firefox download manager appears in UX build - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/new-firefox-download-manager-appears-in-ux-build-2011097/

<comment><USER2> Doesn't look as good as the Download Status Bar ([https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/download- stat...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/download-statusbar/)) which I've been using for years. They could have just copied or bundled it.

<comment><USER3> The problem with that is it takes away vertical space, the exact reason I hate hate hate the Chrome download bar.

<comment><USER2> Not everyone is on a netbook these days. Even when I use my old sony-tr I much prefer the status bar to another window. I configure it to go away after 15 seconds after finishing, and there is a "mini" mode as well if you're on a crippled machine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The only time I've ever been remotely satisfied with the download manager in Firefox was when I completely replaced it with an add-on, so I'm looking forward to this change.

</comment><comment><USER5> Thank christ, the download manager is one of the last remaining bad parts of Firefox.

</comment><comment><USER6> For anyone who doesn't know this already, running the nightly builds of Firefox is ridiculously easy. Just visit this page.

<http://nightly.mozilla.org/>

On OS X, I have the stable Firefox.app and bleeding edge Nightly.app installed side-by-side, and never have any problems.

<comment><USER7> This is the Nightly UX build, which appears to be something else?

I use Nightly and don't have this feature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Uh, looks exactly like the new Safari downloads window.

<comment><USER9> <http://limi.net/articles/safari-downloads/>

<comment><USER10> Apple was probably more inspired by their own iPad popovers, which they seem to have implemented in several other apps as well.

iCal: <http://cl.ly/9xSk>

iPad: [http://developer.apple.com/library/iOS/documentation/UserExp...](http://developer.apple.com/library/iOS/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/MobileHIG/Art/popover_flatten.png)

<comment><USER11> From parent article: >That's why it's so exciting to see our designs being adopted by other browser makers.

Is this designer claiming the design is a Mozilla original and not essentially exactly what's been a UI design in the iPad since release? Or am I reading too much into this?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am genuinely curious how this is better than what is currently in place; could someone explain?

<comment><USER13> I believe the current problem is that Mozilla has removed status bar so there's no way to know if a file is downloading without a separate window being constantly open. The way to open up download window is not very accessible either, especially on Windows where menu bar is hidden. (OK, you can still access it from the access button on the top left, but still...)

I'm not sure how Mozilla will handle the file saving dialog, but with the current UI, there are two window popups in order to download something: the file saving dialog and the download window itself (which user may choose to open or close it, but require to do so every single time he downloads something). That means before they hide the status bar, you have three UI pieces just for managing a download, with two being intrusive.

The new approach will reduce that intrusiveness interaction to minimum, will have an indicator on active window as long as something is active in the download list and will put everything in a single place rather than all over the UI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I thought this was first planed for firefox 6. [http://www.browserscene.com/2011/04/firefox-6-download- manag...](http://www.browserscene.com/2011/04/firefox-6-download-manager- slated-for.html)</comment>


Overview on Top Python Frameworks for Web Developers - <AUTHOR> Python is an object-oriented, interpreted, dynamically-typed and interactive programming language. Here, we're going to describe the most common Python web frameworks. It should be more than enough for you and your Organization to pick the one you want to start with based on your requirements: bit.ly/2ZTwYpV <comment><USER2> On the Web2Py framework, the article (bit.ly/2ZTwYpV) claims that "Though it allows us to create dynamic web content in Python. It does not support Python 3.". This is incorrect. Web2Py does now support Python 3.</comment>


The case for making low-tech 'dumb' cities instead of 'smart' ones - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2020/jan/15/the-case-for-making-low-tech-dumb-cities-instead-of-smart-ones <comment><AUTHOR> I'm not a fan of this 'dumb' cities framing, but otherwise a great piece. I love the 'rewilding' concept, drawing on indigenous systems and wisdom to design with nature.</comment>


This Guy's Car Got Stuck at 125mph—for an Hour - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/02/this-guys-car-got-stuck-at-125mph-for-an-hour/273140/ <comment><USER2> I'm not entirely certain how this got dropped by the atlantic, but if you click through to the Guardian, it mentions that the car was "adapted for disabled drivers".

Assuming they mean some form of hand controls for gas & brakes, that's a pretty damn important detail they left out.

</comment><comment><USER3> And to think, during an hour of high drama, the driver could have simply reached over, switched off the ignition key and ended the drama.

<comment><USER4> or thrown it out of gear, or even used the handbrake to slow it a bit. Seems a bit ridiculous that nobody in the emergency services thought of any of these things ... something's not right.

From wikipedia:

> The Laguna featured a 'keyless' ignition system which, instead of a key, > used a credit card style device to unlock the car and start the engine.

that might eliminate the first possibility: the car could be "clever" enough to not allow cutting the ignition while it's at speed. There's also mention of a model being shipped with a "proactive transmission", on which I can find this description:

> flick-shift, six-speed, proactive transmission

I suppose flick-shift might also be routed through the computer so you don't damage the machinery by attempting to put it into low gear or into park at speed ... or into neutral, I guess.

Are vehicles really being approved without mechanical failsafes?

<comment><USER5> The transmission sounds similar to the Steptronic or Tiptronic automatic transmissions. You can shift up and down all day long with the paddles, but you can't downshift into a gear that will redline the engine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is going to sound really obvious, but what about slowly applying the emergency brake?

</comment><comment><USER7> Oh my, he did the right thing to call the police, though the car was not in control, he was in control.</comment>


When going outside is prison: The world of American hikikomori - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/02/the-world-of-american-hikikomori.html <comment><USER2> I live a life that can be easily described as hikikomori. I struggle with anxiety and I've tried my best to find work (I did even graduate from college -- it took me 6 years, but I did it), but it seems I am doomed to fail in every endeavor. When my parents die, I will likely suffer a slow and painful death at the hands of starvation. It seems that is my destiny...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Via: [https://www.metafilter.com/182276/American- Hikikomori](https://www.metafilter.com/182276/American-Hikikomori)</comment>


Ask HN: Should URL's be case insensitive? - ng-user I frequently visit https://news.ycombinator.com/active and sometimes I accidentally type https://news.ycombinator.com/ACTIVE which provides me with a nice
Unknown.
message...
Should a URL string be case insensitive or does it actually matter? <comment><AUTHOR> StackOverflow is typically a good place for this question. [1]

Most web servers on unix or linux the URL is case sensitive. IIS on windows the URL is not case sensitive. The domain name is not case sensitive.

[https://tinyvpn.org/cs/](https://tinyvpn.org/cs/)

[https://tinyvpn.org/Cs/](https://tinyvpn.org/Cs/)

[1] - [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15641694/are-uris- case-i...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15641694/are-uris-case- insensitive)

</comment><comment><USER2> While the host part is case-insensitive, the path is case-sensitive on almost every website. In principle a website could choose to do a case-insensitive match, but I can't think of one that does.</comment>


Ask HN: First job at a startup vs. a big company - <AUTHOR> I am about to graduate and wanted to know the pros and cons of choosing between a startup and a Big company for my first software job. Please offer your opinion. <comment><USER2> Go for the startup early in your career, consider the big company later in your career. The advantage of a startup early in your career is you'll be give wide latitude for taking on many roles - heck it's going to be needed! This will give you the opportunity to do things you will never be able to do at a big company and get a lot of experience in general.

Big companies tend to offer more financial security - which is something you may find yourself wanting later on in your career. Big companies also provide the opportunity to take on big opportunities that could never be considered at a startup - but unless you have a lot of experience you're never going to get to work on that project anyway.

The only other thing I would advise is not to stay anywhere too long while in your twenties. 2-3 years. Get a wide range of opportunities to work in different environments and with different kinds of people. It's not for the money (though that helps too) - that experience will make you extremely valuable to a big company later on.

Good luck!</comment>


When to Copy Ideas, When to Steal Ideas - <AUTHOR> https://davnicwil.com/when-to-copy-ideas-when-to-steal-ideas/ <comment><USER2> Take my ideas, please!

[http://github.com/samsquire/ideas2](http://github.com/samsquire/ideas2) [http://github.com/samsquire/ideas](http://github.com/samsquire/ideas) [http://github.com/samsquire/ideas3](http://github.com/samsquire/ideas3)

</comment><comment><USER3> There's even more to this. davnicwil says just use the same sponge cake and excel in your area of expertise: the icing. Good advice.

Alternatively, if you are a "fast follower": after the other company has evangelized the new feature (sponge cake) and started to build an audience for it, you can see what features seem to really matter and either make a simplified one or one that addresses the limitations of it.

A great example is the iPod, the famously lame latecomer ("no wifi, less space than a nomad. Lame"). Apple launched into a market which was already developing (tiny MP3 players), and not only put their own "icing" on it (e.g. design) but addressed a couple of the fundamental problems with the existing ones (the complexity of getting music into them and navigating to find what you want). So they weren't even really competing with the other players.

<comment><USER4> Agree, and to dive in a bit more to the icing, one of the most important and least remembered ingredients in that icing was the 1.8" Toshiba hard drive. That allowed for the miniaturization of the iPod relative to other, clunkier players like the Nomad that used much larger 2.5" laptop hard drives [1], or flash-based players that could store only 25-50 songs.

Combined with iTunes, they solved for the end-to-end experience: easy to use, easy to carry around, easy to manage your library. Other players only solved for the narrow experience of playing music.

To be honest, though I do like the industrial design of the first iPod, it was perhaps the weakest part of the icing. The click wheel hadn't even been invented. It was all about the three pillars of iTunes, compact size, and '1000 songs in your pocket'. Despite the subject of the post being about copying, on iPod they actually copied very little from existing products of the time, in style and substance.

[1] [http://www.iretron.com/blog/posts/technology-flashback- creat...](http://www.iretron.com/blog/posts/technology-flashback-creative- nomad-jukebox-2000/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Copy [means] to borrow an idea for its known useful results; steal [means] > to take ownership of an idea and extend it to create some novel result.

> Copy the same sponge any cake could use, then using your own creative > talents as icing to make something uniquely great (steal) in the areas that > make a difference in your product's niche... Steal strategy! Copy tactics

As an engineer working on product, this is good advice. It's often appealing to reinvent the wheel and succumb to "not-built-here" symptom. Especially when it comes to questions like "what stack and language to use", often, the best answer is "whatever has worked before." Rather, what's worth reinventing is the actual features or user-facing aspects of the product.

Don't go crazy making your own global Javascript store: just roll Redux or MobX. As someone who loves engineering challenges, I find myself reining myself in a lot on this at Wanderlog ([https://wanderlog.com](https://wanderlog.com)). But I realize whether we're successful or not isn't going to be our technical infrastructure. That needs be solid, but what really matters are the little things we can do to wow travelers

<comment><USER6> Why do people always plug their companies in their comments? It turns me off completely.

<comment><USER7> WanderLog is a YC company. This is a YC website.

It also shows that where their experience comes from, adds validity. In this case, I can go directly to their website and see the results of them "reining themselves in" on a production website.

<comment><USER6> I'm more inclined to dig into his company if his comment offers insights but when you just plug your company in, it just makes your comment feel insincere like pr speak.

Am Googler, ex-FB, Uber, want me to list my resume?

<comment><USER8> I think his plug was only about a 4th of his post, I would have expected a little bit more shamelessness if that were really his goal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "I am not bothered they stole my ideas, but that they have not had any of their own" \-- Nikola Tesla

</comment><comment><USER10> >"Good artists copy. Great artists steal"

Who said that? Steve Jobs? It seems so.

The tireless Quote Investigator[0] locates many sources, including a progenitor from the 19th C, but can't find Picasso (who Jobs credited) saying it.

I was familiar with the T.S. Eliot version "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal", or in its context:

"One of the surest of tests is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest."

The point of that is, in part, that good artists _don 't_ copy. Copying/imitation of the greats is how you learnt to make art, but it's part of learning, part of becoming an artist–not part of being one, let alone a good one.

I always think of the way Shakespeare took a plot, say _King Lear_ , from historical sources, and made it his own. It's akin to a "cover" (in the rock music sense), but made so completely his own that every other version is forgotten.

[0] [https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/06/artists- steal/](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/06/artists-steal/)

</comment><comment><USER11> To start, how about South Korea's approach to testing corona virus.

I fully accept that this is a low effort and mostly off topic comment.

<comment><USER12> That implies having the technical competency required to copy. You can't copy another project's code when you can't even find the power button.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If all you ever do is copy and steal, you'll never learn how to develop the skills necessary to innovate and create.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the theme of my post :-)

I used _copy_ and _steal_ in the same deliberately ironic way they're meant in the famous quote "Good artists copy, great artists steal" \- i.e. wrt the creative process of reusing and extending existing ideas to innovate and create new things!</comment></comment>


China flight systems jammed by pig farm's African swine fever defences - <AUTHOR> https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3042991/china-flight-systems-jammed-pig-farms-african-swine-fever <comment><USER2> The article says that criminal gangs have been using drones that drop contaminated items to spread the disease. Is this true and if so, why would they do this?

It seems too crude to use as a way to enforce a protection rackett. eg. If a gang wanted to punish one farmer for not tithing them, by infecting his pigs, they risk infecting the neighbors' as well.

Could it be a kind of terrorism to put pressure on the government?</comment>


SIGIL, a New Doom Campaign by John Romero - <AUTHOR> https://www.romerogames.ie/sigil/ <comment><USER2> For those unsure what is meant by "you have to have the original Doom":

Doom binaries require the presence of an IWAD with the "full game" flag set in order to load PWADs (i.e. level sets like Sigil). The shareware Doom WAD lacks this flag; the retail version's WAD, and Doom 2's, have it.

You can buy a copy of Doom, ready to run on modern hardware, from Steam. This will include the "full game" WAD, and thus be able to load and play Sigil.

There is also, if you can't or don't want to drop a fiver on the official release, a WAD available from the FreeDoom project, which you can use with the more capable GZDoom binary. The FreeDoom WAD also has the "full game" flag, and using it with GZDoom will also satisfy the requirement and enable you to load and play Sigil.

You don't need it to be so original that it comes on floppy disks and specifies a 386 to run on. But, if you have that, that will work too - although it'll probably have a hard time with modern WADs.

Me, I'm looking forward to playing it in Project Brutality, which is something like Doom might have been if the hardware of the time had allowed it.

<comment><USER3> > although it'll probably have a hard time with modern WADs.

Excuse my ignorance as it's been 20+ years since I did any DOOM development, but has the format of the WAD file changed over the years? I thought it was just binary assets joined together with a simple header that specified the file names & byte boundaries

<comment><USER4> I believe he meant the game engine itself: Those new levels were all designed using modern Doom engines, you can see even Romero is uzing gzdoom for screenshots etc. So they usually have a lot more corners and polygons than the doom maps devised at the time the game went out for the first time. It'd probably struggle to render in software.

That's what I understood from it tho.

<comment><USER5> It's not a hardware VS software thing since modern ports of software renderers for DOOM are not very demanding and can easily get upwards of 1000fps (yes, thousand). It's more to do with assumed memory constraints of the original DOOM.EXE on DOS for PCs which placed constraints on renderer related resources available which in turn limited level complexity. With modern ports, those constraints have been loosened quite a bit and more complex levels can be made.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This business model is cool, free game digitally, but boxed it costs money. (let's ignore the "you need the original doom" stuff for the purposes of considering this business model)

Also, the company providing the actual boxes, Limited Run Games, does cool stuff. I thought a game was going to be digital only, and then found them doing a version in a real box, DRM free, no steam activation required; I thought that was cool of everyone involved.

I miss big boxes. Apparently they disappeared because Walmart wanted to make room for DVDs by removing software SKUs, so the software publishers downsized the boxes so they wouldn't have to put fewer SKUs on the shelf at Walmart. [https://rome.ro/news/2018/4/18/big-box- extinction](https://rome.ro/news/2018/4/18/big-box-extinction) (intro) and [https://rome.ro/bigbox](https://rome.ro/bigbox) (actual blog post w/ story)

Lastly, John Romero, if you're reading: fix your blog ^ why is the intro not included on the blog post page?

<comment><USER7>
        This business model is cool, free game digitally,
        but boxed it costs money.

If you're not Romero (and probably even if you are) this is a plan to make basically beer money - or any way, not enough to support a development studio making these games.

I suspect this is mostly a hobby for him.

<comment><USER8> It works in music though

A friend of mine runs a small music label in Italy ( [https://www.heavypsychsounds.com/](https://www.heavypsychsounds.com/) ) in the stoner segment and had some success printing vinyls in limited edition of the bands he publish

You have to create your fan base first, but usually when you build it from the ground up it's loyal and buys everything you print

He makes enough to sustain a small business and had the satisfaction of getting in touch with the bands he once listened to when he was younger and to republish them (Nebula, Nick Oliveri from QOTSA, Brant Bjork from Kyuss)

<comment><USER9> It works for the label, but does it enable the artists to live off of their music? I doubt it.

<comment><USER10> Most musicians live off the money they make touring and performing. It's rare that a musician makes enough money off of record sales alone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > a wad is a default file format for DOOM® and DOOM II®. It stands for > "where's all the data?"

All this time and I never knew that.

<comment><USER12> I always thought a "wadded up" ball of paper, like a map or a blueprint

<comment><USER13> I think they aimed for that double meaning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> DOOM was great game in mid 90th. It has inspired me as a schoolboy actually to learn computer programming and graphics. It actually inspired me to read some great books like "Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice in C" and "C programming language".

I learned a lot about BSP trees, sprites, 3D modeling, I did modify WADs, wrote my own simple engine to work with them. I finally could understand how this amazing Game was made!

Thank you Mr Romero!

<comment><USER15> I followed a similar path as you, I didn't learn 3D modelling though, but I went down the hex editor path modifying the doom exe to make rockets move faster. It took me aaaaages to learn this (probably 2-3 months total time over a period of years)

Echoing you too, Thank you Mr Romero!

I can't wait to play this for the pure hit of nostalgia

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Respect. DOOM nostalgia runs deep. And if anyone hasn't read _Masters of Doom_ it is certainly of the most powerful origin stories imaginable ;)

<comment><USER17> Whenever _Masters of Doom_ is mentioned, my ears perk up. I've read it four times. Again, definitely worth the read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> So this guy just asked buckethead to make some music and he did. Huh. That's cool.

<comment><USER19> And then says this about himself!

> if I hadn't been a part of DOOM®'s creation, I would have absolutely been a > hardcore member of its community.

...who's harder-core?! Roll them out, please!

<comment><USER20> I wonder how many game developers can say that of themselves nowadays!

<comment><USER21> In fact that's the official reason John Carmack fired Romero from id: "not working hard enough". This is, spending too much time on IRC, newsgroups, etc. engaging with the community instead of working.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I noticed Romero has been selling a lot of his gaming collection in eBay the past year.

Along with this Sigil release, it makes me think he's struggling a bit, I hope not.

Still a cool concept, I miss games that come with packaging and games.

<comment><USER23> The husband of noted game developer Brenda Romero is doing fine. By all accounts, he is selling his old treasures mostly for nostalgia reasons. He has fond memories of those times developing Doom and he wants to share those pieces of gaming history. Plus at a certain age you just realize that you have stuff cluttering up your attic which is doing you no good but still has value to others.

His company Romero Games Ltd. has had at least one big hit in recent years, Gunman Taco Truck, which by all accounts made a nice little profit. I believe he also occasionally lectures in Ireland on game design.

From everything I gather, John is happy, healthy and wealthy enough to be able to devote the odd few hours to a passion project which is dear to his heart. He loves Doom something fierce and given both the impact it had on society and the period of his life developing it took place it, it is hard imagine how he wouldn't have it occupy a special place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Are you also required to own a PC with 386 CPU, 4 MB of RAM, a VGA card and MS-DOS in order to play this?

<comment><USER25> You can get DOOM ported to run on modern hardware on Steam: [https://store.steampowered.com/app/2280/Ultimate_Doom/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2280/Ultimate_Doom/)

<comment><USER26> Install Zandronum or ZDoomGL, and copy the doom.wad to it. You will get a much better experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > and requires players own the original 1993 registered version of DOOM® in > order to play

Dude. Even if I _could_ find the game I had back then, I don't even have a floppy or CD drive anymore.

<comment><USER28> I think he means "the original DOOM, not the recent reboot of it" not "break out the floppy disk drives." It's five bucks on Steam.

[https://store.steampowered.com/app/2280/Ultimate_Doom/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2280/Ultimate_Doom/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> e1m8b: [https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom/Ports/d-f/e1m8...](https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom/Ports/d-f/e1m8b) \-- has mirrors

Be very gentle, the server seems taxed: e1m4b: [https://www.doomworld.com/e1m4b/e1m4b.zip](https://www.doomworld.com/e1m4b/e1m4b.zip)

</comment><comment><USER30> "Actually, there are only nine distinct level wad files. It turns out that you can put both the single- player and the deathmatch levels in the same wad..."

I would love to understand or even hypothesize why one would want to do it this way.

<comment><USER31> The deathmatch levels are rooms in the single player campaign. Lock some doors and change the spawn point, and save some disk space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I grew up with doom so this is awesome. I know that he is the original creator and that this is technically a free mod, still wonder if Bethesda will just let him do this if it proves to be popular.

<comment><USER33> _The_ original creator is a bit much. John Romero was mostly a level designer. Carmack did the heavy lifting.

<comment><USER34> Carmack worked on the engine. Romero built the dev tools in addition to designing levels. Both contributed significantly to the design of the game.

Carmack is one of the most talented engineers alive, but that doesn't negate all of the work that the rest of iD put into Doom.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The favicon is Apple's logo? [https://www.romerogames.ie/favicon.ico](https://www.romerogames.ie/favicon.ico)

</comment><comment><USER36> I thought this was pretty cool when reading about it. And then I read Buckethead made the music and now I HAVE to order the Limited Edition! :D Dang it will set me back $166 but hey Christmas is around the corner. Happy holidays!

</comment><comment><USER37> Can someone elaborate on the meaning / significance of E1M4B and E1M8B ? Particular in this context:

> I learned a lot from E1M8B and E1M4B, so I think I did a better job this > time.

Also, why does a few doom levels need 16gb?

<comment><USER38> > Can someone elaborate on the meaning / significance of E1M4B and E1M8B ?

Those were the last two levels created by John Romero, more than 20 years after the original launch of the game.

<comment><USER39> They were also _really_ good. He certainly doesn't seem to have lost his touch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> This is awesome, and I do hope he creates a new level pack for Doom II's anniversary. The new enemy types and double-barrel shotgun make Doom II a lot more interesting IMO.

</comment><comment><USER41> > A 16GB 3 1/2-inch floppy disk themed USB that includes the free megawad data > and extras.

Should be 5 3.5gb 3 1/2-inch floppy disk themed USBs

I mean, if this is what we're doing

<comment><USER42> If that's what you're doing, then surely 12 1.44gb USBs?</comment></comment>