Whoa, dude, are we in a computer right now? NASA scientist thinks we could be. - <AUTHOR> http://www.vice.com/read/whoa-dude-are-we-inside-a-computer-right-now-0000329-v19n9

<comment><USER2> The first comment on the site illustrates (depressingly) well how this type of speculation is being perceived by the average uneducated person:

      Wow this was a really good article. I didn't realize that we are
      so close to simulating consciousness. and this part: "In quantum
      mechanics, particles do not have a definite state unless they're
      being observed." is that true? That blew my mind.

I'm not sure if its superfluous to even state this here on HN, but I feel compelled to: We are _not_ "close" to simulating consciousness, and the whole quantum thing doesn't actually work like you've been led to believe.

First of all, there is a whole spectrum of simulation software to consider. The most Matrix-like method is a direct 3D game-like environment with really good graphics where many parameters of our current environment are hard-coded and everything is executed with the human inhabitant in mind. This is probably close to what the article is trying to invoke if for no other reason than "it's easy to understand". It's also the one which least conforms to our observations. If the universe is being simulated, it's more likely a bottom-up simulation where things like planets, plants, and eventually people simply emerge instead of being designed outright. For all intents and purposes, such a universe would be indistinguishable from a "natural" one, so much so it's bordering on pointlessness even arguing about it.

Second, simulating consciousness (or rather more precisely: designing and running human-like minds on a digital substrate) directly is not something we're particularly close to. We are still missing important engineering details about human brains to recreate them, and likewise generalised AGI research also has some gaps in understanding how to build advanced problem solving machines. Depending on the chosen method of "simulation", from full no-shortcuts whole brain emulation probably being the most expensive to fast and memory-optimised non-human AGI being the more efficient, we might already have enough raw computing power to drive a mind using just a couple of desktop computers. What we're missing though is the right software.

I'm also getting really tired about this whole "observer" misunderstanding whenever quantum physics is invoked. I can't help but feel this was an intentional consequence when they chose their terminology. To this day it remains a poor choice of wording. The agenda behind this might not only be designed to sell books to New Age lunatics, but also to enable pseudo- religious excursions undertaken by otherwise respectable scientists such as Penrose.

</comment><comment><USER3> > "Unless you believe there's something magical about consciousness"

Well, yes, I do actually. See philosophical zombie (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie>). Although I don't doubt that the physics of our universe could be simulated.

By the way, there's actually something called the Bekenstein bound (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bekenstein_bound>) which puts a finite information limit on a volume of spacetime. Incredibly enough, the information content is _not proportional_ to the volume of the region, but to the volume's surface area. This is known as the holographic principle (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle>).

I did a calculation the other day for fun with the Bekenstein bound. All of the information in 1 kg of water can be entirely described with roughly ~20,000 earth masses of 1 TB hard drives (assuming each hard drive weighs one pound).

And if someone wants to see something extra freaky, calculate the maximal information content of a Planck volume ;)

<comment><USER4> I'm sorry, you believe the physics of this universe could be simulated but still accept that the p-zombie argument is valid? So in p-zombie land, there's an Xcelerate making claims about being conscious for _exactly the same reasons you are_ (ie physics), but only _you_ are actually correct? Moreover, you're correct _entirely by accident_ , because your reasons for making your claim to consciousness (ie physics) have nothing to do with the actual fact of your consciousness? I just can't take that seriously.

<comment><USER3> I'm sorry you feel that way. We just happen to disagree then.

What constitutes science? You must be able to predict events from a theory and you must be able to reproduce them. But there's a third, implied tenet that most people forget about: anyone performing the experiment _must_ come to a consensus on the results of the experiment.

For me, "experience" is easy -- it's the most "real" thing in my reality. Vision, hearing, taste, smell? Those could all be faked some day with advanced enough neural manipulation.

Let me attempt to clarify.

Suppose you have a hypothetical person who sees an apple floating everywhere in front of him. He tells everyone that he sees this apple, but everyone else says "No, you're crazy. There is no apple there." So he takes a photograph of the apple. He prints it out and says "Look! Right here in this photograph is the apple!" Again, everyone says "I see no apple." He can consistently, predictably, see this apple. He decides to even paint exactly what he sees. And when he looks at his painting, he sees an apple, but everyone else sees empty sky.

Is this person crazy? Well, if science is determined by consensus (which it is), then yes, the majority of people would say that he is crazy. But now instead of just this one guy with an apple, let's say that _everyone_ sees a piece of fruit in front of them. But it's a different type of fruit for each person. And they all try to tell each other that there is clearly, obviously, unmistakably a fruit floating _right there_ in front of them, but everyone thinks everyone else is crazy because they can't see other people's fruit -- only their own.

So eventually, they decide to just forget about the fruit. Maybe it's not actually real if everyone else can't see it? (Would a person in a computer simulation see this fruit?) And so, despite everyone obviously having their own fruit hanging right in front of them, they have all decided to say that there is instead no such thing as floating fruit, since no one can come to a consensus about everyone else's fruit existing.

So there you go. That's how I view consciousness. Although I should tweak that slightly -- "consciousness" perhaps isn't the right word. Consciousness can be manipulated with drugs and sedatives. What I am really referring to is the act of "experiencing" something.

<comment><USER4> You've conflated a couple of things here, and I think my position must have been a little poorly stated as well. Here's some points, in roughly ascending order of important. (Anyone reading this: skip to the bottom if you're not going to read it all.)

First: 'Science' does not embody the whole of human knowledge, not at all. That's not even what it's for. It is a true thing that 1+1=2 (with standard definitions, Peano arithmetic, etc), but science has nothing to say on this matter.

Second: The fact that other people talk about this fruit they see, and you yourself have this fruit that you see, is very strong evidence that people have fruits, even if, with our current understanding, we can't verify it from physics.

Third: I do believe consciousness exists. I think (in fact it seems self- apparent to me) that consciousness is a property of processes or algorithms. Can I explain how exactly it arises? No, but then for virtually all of human history we had no idea how, say, biology or magnets or fire could come out of physics either.

Fourth: Just because a process has some property doesn't mean we'll ever understand it in a satisfying way - even very simple processes (care to explain how the current best-candidate for BusyBeaver(6) works?) This is _not_ the same as that property not existing.

Finally: This was in my original post as well, was in fact the entire point of said post, and I can't seem to find a response in your post. If you accept (as is a part of the p-zombie postulation) that the reasons you say things like 'I am conscious' are entirely because of physics, do you think that this means your consciousness has nothing to do with your claim to be conscious? That seems absurd to me, and to me it seems that the conclusion _must_ be, given the above, that consciousness does in fact fall out of physics.

For clarity, here's that final argument spelled out again.

1\. My claim to be conscious does have to do with the fact of my consciousness. (Agree?)

2\. My claim to be conscious is completely determined by physics, since I would also make it in p-zombie world (that is, the world which is by hypothesis completely determined by physics). (Agree?)

3\. Therefore, the fact of my consciousness must fall out of physics. (Agree?)

Or in set-theoretic terms, because that's how I think:

fact-of-consciousness \subset reasons-for-claim-to-be-conscious \subset physics _implies_ fact-of-consciousness \subset physics.

Do you disagree?

<comment><USER3> I really like the way you stated your arguments.

First: Yes, I agree.

Second: Hmm... I don't know. People talk about ghosts a lot as well. There are many people who claim that they see ghosts. But I don't think that is strong evidence that ghosts exist.

Third: We need a consistent _definition_ of consciousness here. It would waste a lot of time if it turned out we were debating different concepts. I believe your idea of consciousness is that it is an emergent phenomenon that arises from simpler processes, much like how biology arises from the simple laws of QM. Is this correct? If so, then with that definition of consciousness, I agree with you. And we will learn more about it as time goes on.

Fourth: Yes, I agree. Chaitin's constant is my favorite exemplification of that idea.

Finally: "Do you think that this means your consciousness has nothing to do with your claim to be conscious?" Yes, that is exactly what I think. Although replace "consciousness" with "the act of experiencing existence" and that is a much closer semantic match to what I am attempting to convey.

> 1\. My claim to be conscious does have to do with the fact of my > consciousness. (Agree?)

No, for the simple reason that you can write a computer program that prints out "I am conscious." Its claim of consciousness is only due to a program that someone wrote.

> 2\. My claim to be conscious is completely determined by physics, since I > would also make it in p-zombie world. (Agree?)

Yes, I agree with that.

> 3\. Therefore, the fact of my consciousness must fall out of physics.

Were 1 and 2 true statements, they would indeed imply 3. But since I don't agree with 1, 3 also doesn't seem to be true.

<comment><USER4> > I believe your idea of consciousness is that it is an emergent phenomenon > that arises from simpler processes, much like how biology arises from the > simple laws of QM. Is this correct?

I wouldn't call that a definition. Here's a working one: my consciousness is the part of me which thinks and feels, which enjoys music and mountains and friends and so forth. Computers as of now can take input, but can't experience input the way I do; the gap is what I call consciousness. (To this definition your above description does apply.)

> "Do you think that this means your consciousness has nothing to do with your > claim to be conscious?" Yes, that is exactly what I think. Although replace > "consciousness" with "the act of experiencing existence" and that is a much > closer semantic match to what I am attempting to convey.

This is the bit I'm having trouble with. For me, I experience things, and then state that I experience things. The relationship is direct and causal. From what I understand you experience things and then state that you experience things, and these facts are completely unrelated? I'm pretty sure Occam had something to say about that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The idea put forth is that if we're able to simulate life that we must almost certainly be living in a simulation. But this assumes that our post-humans have nearly infinite computing resources and that each simulation (within a simulation) somehow has the uncanny ability to evolve to the point of creating exceptionally good simulations. I don't think either is true so I think we're probably real.

<comment><USER6> A treatment of the question by an Oxford philosophy professor: <http://www.simulation-argument.com/>

The paper is very readable, even for the novice.

tl;dr:

"A technologically mature "posthuman" civilization would have enormous computing power. Based on this empirical fact, the simulation argument shows that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) The fraction of human-level civilizations that reach a posthuman stage is very close to zero; (2) The fraction of posthuman civilizations that are interested in running ancestor-simulations is very close to zero; (3) The fraction of all people with our kind of experiences that are living in a simulation is very close to one. If (1) is true, then we will almost certainly go extinct before reaching posthumanity. If (2) is true, then there must be a strong convergence among the courses of advanced civilizations so that virtually none contains any relatively wealthy individuals who desire to run ancestor-simulations and are free to do so. If (3) is true, then we almost certainly live in a simulation. In the dark forest of our current ignorance, it seems sensible to apportion one's credence roughly evenly between (1), (2), and (3). Unless we are now living in a simulation, our descendants will almost certainly never run an ancestor-simulation."

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Assuming we are a simulation, I don't see any reason to assume that the "base universe" has remotely similar beings or even physics as ours. It's obviously (if anything is obvious) possible to simulate different physics from our layer. Why not the outer layer? We might not be "bits" in a recognizable sense, or even qubits. We can't really keep any of our most basic assumptions when speculating here.

Luckily, in Real Life I'm a dualist.

<comment><USER8> > I don't see any reason to assume that the "base universe" has remotely > similar beings or even physics as ours

There are plenty of reasons. First, it's much easier to just copy a known world than create a complete new physics and beings. Just that, creating s coherent set of rules governing the universe would be a major undertaking. And I'm not even convinced that there are multiple types of intelligence, ie. I think all intelligent beings are fundamentally similar to each other.

Secondly, simulations similar enough seem to be more entertaining. Thirdly, mostly simulations similar enough would be useful as experiments.

<comment><USER9> As to #1, there's no reason to believe we're the first or only type of simulation. There could well be some life that said "hey, we've been running these simulations of our world for a while, but what if we tried making _carbon_ -based life forms for fun?". I imagine that would happen a lot: I don't see everybody doing exactly the same type of thing on their computers today for fun, nor can I imagine any reason people running life sims would be any different. All I know is that (if I can trust my memory) I'm in a relatively stable physical environment. When you can simulate a lifetime in an hour on commodity hardware, there's going to be a lot of people trying crazy stuff just to see if it ends up being stable.

As to #2, I'm not sure I agree. We've got lots of computer environments ourselves that aren't very lifelike at all, from Conway's Life to Sim-(fill- in-the-blank) to World of Warcraft to extremely specialized (and non- entertaining) environments. To some extent, that's because we don't have the processing power to simulate real life, but even with infinite processing power, I would guess that most simulations would not be perfectly lifelike. There are more lifelike simulations available today, but I don't think they're a majority.

For #3, yes, but maybe you're assuming the main purpose of simulation would be for experiments, and therefore that they're similar to the real world. From what I've seen of my world, the most common use of computers is entertainment, and for this, being different from reality (either a little or a lot) is very important. Research will have human brains-in-a-computer first, but a decade or two later the Playstation 7 will have a lot more of them. It's like asking: you're a master-level chess computer, who are you? You might be Deep Blue in 1996, but you're far more likely to be a chess program running on somebody's PC a few years later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ugh...same old shit, no new data to suggest that this might be possible within the time span mentioned. Moore's Law, Exponential Growth, blah blah blah.

<comment><USER11> I am really tired of Moore's trend being referred to as a Law.

<comment><USER12> It _is_ a law though. The mistake is in thinking that means it will always hold true or is necessarily "correct".

As wikipedia nicely puts it:

 _Scientific laws:

1) summarize a large collection of facts determined by experiment into a single statement,

2) can usually be formulated mathematically as one or several statements or equation, or at least stated in a single sentence, so that it can be used to predict the outcome of an experiment, given the initial, boundary, and other physical conditions of the processes which take place,

3) are strongly supported by empirical evidence - they are scientific knowledge that experiments have repeatedly verified (and never falsified). Their accuracy does not change when new theories are worked out, but rather the scope of application, since the equation (if any) representing the law does not change. As with other scientific knowledge, they do not have absolute certainty like mathematical theorems or identities, and it is always possible for a law to be overturned by future observations._

"Law" is not a stronger form of "theory", as is popularly believed.

Now granted, it is not a particularly _good_ law. Strictly speaking it is bad science, but a law it is nevertheless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This sounds like Solipsism Syndrome [1]. I used to experience it in my Fluid Dynamics class, convincing myself that no one in the world could possibility give a shit about this stuff, so it must be all taking place in my mind.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism_syndrome>

</comment><comment><USER14> These people are closet creationists. The thought of there being no reason for the universe is probably quite frightful for them.

<comment><USER15> I love the notion of "no reason for the universe". I find it to be very pleasing.

<comment><USER16> The ultimate sandbox. Deterministic, free will-less sandbox. :(

<comment><USER17> How can it be deterministic if there are elements of randomness in our universe? I mean true randomness such as electron movement and nuclear decay.

<comment><USER18> Instantaneous nonlocal action does not make it nondeterministic, it just makes it unpredictable.

<comment><USER17> I am not a physicist, so I'm speaking outside my realm of expertise. On the topic, Hawking suggests the following:

"Quantum physics might seem to undermine the idea that nature is governed by laws, but that is not the case. Instead it leads us to accept a new form of determinism: Given the state of a system at some time, the laws of nature determine the probabilities of various futures and pasts rather than determining the future and past with certainty."

It's an interesting idea, because to me it suggests that if one were to rewind time and play events out again without changing anything, subtle things may occur differently. This would lead to larger time changes over a larger period of time. The idea seems strange, but then, so do many things on the quantum level as they are completely outside our traditional experiences.

Apparently no consensus has been reached on this topic by experts in the field. I won't try and convince you, just present my interpretation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> But does it have protected memory? Can we write into it the things we want and need?

<comment><USER20> I'm constantly fearing that Voyager might trigger an "out of bounds" exception

<comment><USER21> Or that when the NPCs in our hyper-realistic video games start creating their own video games we'll run out of stack space.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The pixel analogy doesn't quite hold here. The only reason pixels have a certain size if because the maker of the screen didn't make them any smaller. With quantum mechanics (at least by my undergrad understanding of it), those "pixels" are due to angular momentum, and properties of standing waves.

</comment><comment><USER23> The article suggests this is a new idea. This isn't a new idea at all, it's been kicking around for years.

Interesting but untestable, and has no effect on our scientific understanding of the world. Fun thought to have but ultimately useless.

<comment><USER24> The article actually states quite clearly that it is _not_ a new idea.

 _This hypothesis—versions of which have been kicked around for centuries—is becoming the trippy notion of the moment for philosophers, with people like Nick Bostrom, the director of Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute, seriously considering the premise._

Are we really sure it's untestable? It seems like something that might be worth thinking about. If we look in the right places (theoretical math, physics?) might we be able to see reflections of a world "outside"?

<comment><USER23> >>The article actually states quite clearly that it is not a new idea.

I was talking about this bit, which is a bit lower:

"but he is one of the first to argue we might already be living inside one."

>>Are we really sure it's untestable? It seems like something that might be worth thinking about. If we look in the right places (theoretical math, physics?) might we be able to see reflections of a world "outside"?

We can never be 100% sure it's untestable because it's impossible to prove a negative. But I put it in the same basket as testing the existance of a god.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is not science. This is fabrication, fiction, and to an observer, Bullshit.

</comment><comment><USER26> I think there is a principle of conservation of computation in the universe that would not allow this.

Just like a system that takes some energy in cannot output more energy than what it took in, I think a simulation that takes some computational power in cannot output more computation than the original system is capable of.

If we had a simulation of the relevant aspects of the universe, of the mind, of computers, etc. that was capable of running another simulation inside it, in order to run the other simulation while still running itself it would have to double its computer power (or half its simulation speed), it would have to share computational power with any simulation running inside it, whether directly or nested inside another one. Without creating more computer power out of nothing it would soon come to the physical limits (or the computational limits) and would not be able to go further.

</comment><comment><USER27> Since these simulations are getting so complex, it shouldn't be long until we can scan our brains structure exactly and simulate it in mobile computer attached to an android.

Then androids could simulate the combination of DNA from parents and have baby androids. :o

<comment><USER28> >Then androids could simulate the combination of DNA from parents and have baby androids. :o

well that is the fun bit. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Did this guy only just now watch The Matrix or something?

<comment><USER30> In Matrix, minds are not simulated, and only a faux-earth is presented to people, much more like Descartes's evil genius[0]. Actually, most of the processing would actually happen in people brains, since only stimulations matter, and they would only need to be quite gross compared to a whole universe of physics iterated over at Planck intervals.

[0] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_demon>

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Here's a nice short story about probabilities and a universe "simulating the course of what the programmer considers to be ancient history" I stumbled upon some years ago:

<http://qntm.org/responsibility>

</comment><comment> daniel-cussen Ah, so when they said 42 is the answer, they meant it was the seed number.

(If you've played Minecraft, a world simulator, you know you need a seed number to get the world started. It's the "let there be light" and ensures your Minecraft world is unique.)

</comment><comment><USER31> A lovely piece of conjecture, complete with pop-culture and drug references.

</comment><comment><USER32> What if we are? We still can't change the laws of physics, rewind time, fast forward events, live forever.

So no, we aren't.</comment>


Official: Cellphone service shut down in Boston to prevent remote detonations - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/official-cellphone-service-shut-down-in-boston-to-prevent-remote-detonations-of-explosivew/2013/04/15/21824c30-a60f-11e2-9e1c-bb0fb0c2edd9_story.html

<comment><AUTHOR> What's the legal justification behind doing this? Not surprised that it's done, but am surprised that there's a legal mechanism in place to shut down cell service for an entire major metropolitan city.

<comment><USER2> I believe that in an emergency the FCC reserves the right to shutdown whatever it sees fit. (Something like this was reported on Bloomberg news when AP first reported it.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd hope (assume, really) that calls to emergency services can still go through.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do believe public emergency transponders and radios use a different spectrum (independent of the spectrum used by the general public for cell phone calls, etc), but am unsure if that's still the case for making a 911 call. I don't believe it is... Thus, if cell towers are disabled, and hence, your phone doesn't work -> you won't be able to make emergency calls. Someone please correct me as I don't want this to be true.</comment></comment>


Mac OS X 10.6.3 Released - <AUTHOR> http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/29/10-6-3-released/

<comment><USER2> When will they release TRIM support? I am sad.

<comment><USER3> Maybe when it actually boosts real world benchmarks.

Maybe once drives start shipping with it enabled, so you suffer a massive performance degradation without TRIM being called by the OS (since the firmware isn't collecting its own garbage).

Maybe once Intel can ramp up their production enough to take OEM customers for their SSDs and it can really go mainstream.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are reports of 10.6.3 causing problems with MacFusion/sshfs, so if you rely on MacFuse to access files remotely, take caution.

References: [http://groups.google.com/group/macfusion- devel/browse_thread...](http://groups.google.com/group/macfusion- devel/browse_thread/thread/7a1a111327b03d06/379eca24c017d8a5) , and a guy in my office who sent an email out after his 10.6.3 upgrade was useless for him.

<comment><USER5> Yep, this issue bit me. There's no real fix, but to keep sshfs working you can grab the Leopard static binary: <http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/wiki/MACFUSE_FS_SSHFS> and mount your volumes from the command line.

This has happened before; I wish MacFusion weren't so fragile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wish Apple silently included support for new MBPs and will release those things soon. Getting really tired of waiting for new ones.

</comment><comment><USER7> 10.6.1 was 71MB, 10.6.2 was 473MB, and 10.6.3 is.. > 700MB? Has an Apple update ever been that large?

<comment><USER8> To be fair, the 10.6.3 update is actually ~437MB via Software Update. The Combo update includes all past updates (1.6.1 and 1.6.2).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Installed just fine for me, although I see zero evidence of it actually doing anything for me.

</comment><comment><USER10> FWIW, X11 has been upgraded to a newer xquartz version, restoring 16-bit accumulation buffers.

<comment><USER11> ... but if you really care about X11 support, you should probably be using the XQuartz releases anyway (<http://xquartz.macosforge.org/>). They're still "official", just not guaranteed to be as stable as OS updates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Mind. Blown.

<comment><USER13> Why?

I don't mean to be snarky. I don't actually understand why this is a "mind blowing" release (other than the fact that it was released by Apple).

<comment><USER14> The sheer size of this update gets me. 10.6.2 ran just fine for me, and I haven't noticed a thing since I installed today's update.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Most popular server-side high level languages? - <AUTHOR>

What are the most popular server-side high level languages right now, by active user/developer community?  Is there a good way to filter client-side from server side development use in some kind of census?  Admittedly, the line between client and server is a bit blurry.  (Much of what's implemented on a Rails server is really UI, for example.)  I'd also be curious to see 3 numbers, one for definitely client, another for pretty much server, and a third for a bit of both. <comment><USER2> I use PHP for my day to day as well. The community and the language are both very active, tons of cheap reliable hosting, well known and understood performance and scaling profiles. PHP is easy to get wrong but not all too difficult to get right.

The one thing I like about PHP more than anything is the lack of abstraction, there is no "response" object you are writing to, you want 'some-crazy-tag- with-weird-attributes' you don't have to trick your library into outputting it, everything is just strings you echo out.

With the glut of web frameworks for PHP (CakePHP, Symfony, NOLOH, etc.) you can go full blown MVC fairly easily. I prefer to work with Flourish <http://flourishlib.com> as I find it to be the perfect core for a website.

</comment><comment><USER3> I use PHP as my scripting language. A lot of my server-side processing is done in PHP, including sockets and statistical analysis. I know it best, and am most effective with it.

Python is a bit more robust for all things higher-level, and I would recommend that before PHP any day (for someone starting out in).

Client side stuff is (for me) all JavaScript, always, using the JQuery library to ease my web pain.

HOWTO do divide Client from Server? Separate machines and insist that all back-end processing and storage goes on one set, and all client-side functionality goes on the other. Loading/parsing of archived data is a client- side process, as far as I'm concerned. Use standard protocols and formats to talk between the machines.

<comment><USER4> Ditto, except for me the breakdown is PHP for work, Python for personal projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Popular" here is going to mean maybe 15% market share, if my memory serves correctly. Popular server languages remain Java, PHP, ASP.NET, and increasingly Ruby.

In my mind, the reality is that you should choose the programming language based on the skills of you or your programmer(s) and the task at hand. If I were going to implement a banking system, I'd probably look first at Java and its J2EE libraries to see what options were available there. I've used PHP recently (despite it being a reasonably painful language) because it has some wonderful productivity and scalability features that we've been able to really take advantage of.

However, I've nothing against any of the other platforms (with the exception of a slight bias away from anything that requires me running windows servers), and have been fiddling with Ruby, and also exploring Haskell, Erland, Clojure, and even Scala.

Unless we're talking in-house applications using VB or C#, or mobile phone applications using ObjC or Java, "client-side" almost always means HTML/CSS/JS these days.

So, look at the task and the talent, and go from there. Most of the common platforms that you've heard of are all going to have large enough communities for support and libraries to perform various non-standard tasks.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER6> If you have any good ideas for how to discern those categories, I'm always trying to think of new ideas for <http://langpop.com> .

</comment><comment><USER7> I would suggest NodeJS. It lets you do many of the essential low level server side operations. And if you already know JavaScript from working with browsers, then you'll feel right at home.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've been using CakePhp for about 3 years, on sideprojects.

Planning to learn a Java/Scala based 'equivalent'.

</comment><comment><USER9> Django and PHP (CakePHP, Codeigniter, etc), and obviously RoR.

My current favorite is Python/Flask.

<comment><USER9> PHP is the quickest to get up and going and will probably be the cheapest to host. Unless you go the Google App Engine route. PHP is probably the most promiscuous though.</comment></comment>


Trent Doesn't Like Phones - <AUTHOR> http://hookflash.com/2011/09/i-dont-like-phones/ <comment><AUTHOR> The interesting thing here is that one of Skype's most noted weaknesses is actually its core strength: calls tend to be scheduled (or at least negotiated first via IM).</comment>


Joojoo Tablet: Only 90 Preorders (With 15 returned) - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5505724/joojoo-tablet-court-docs-show-90-preorders-and-15-returned <comment><AUTHOR> Just to add one point to this. Back in February this article was published: [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/blogs/techchron/detail?entry_i...](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/blogs/techchron/detail?entry_id=56641)

In it the founder said "Fusion Garage will beat Apple to market and will benefit from the awareness Apple brings with its iPad. Orders and inquiries, he said, have gone up since the Apple announcement."

But if you look at these documents they give the sales for Dec '09 ($0), Jan '09 ($37,858) and Feb '09 ($6,257). The iPad was announced on Jan. 27, 2010. So it looks to me like the iPad effectively killed the Joojoo's sales.</comment>


Effective Email Marketing With Patrick McKenzie - <AUTHOR> http://foolishadventure.com/audio/email-marketing-for-startups-with-patrick-mckenzie-fa131/

<comment><USER2> You would have got more attention here if you said patio11 instead of Patrck McKenzie :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Great tip. Almost put Patio11 in the title, but went with full name instead.

<comment><USER3> Jeez, it should have gotten more attention in any case.</comment></comment></comment>


Amazon orders subject to replacement fraud (still) - <AUTHOR> http://www.gmcbay.com/post?postId=ef970926-b3d4-4390-b384-4c49c00359b3 <comment><USER3> George, do you have any domains with your whois/registrar information matching your Amazon account information? I guessed that was the vector they used to attack me. I had several domains with my home address as my address, along with my email and name. Voila. The entire triangle of data the CSRs need.

I was able to get a CSR to show me some of the logs of the chats with the scammer, which was particularly enlightening:

[http://www.htmlist.com/rants/two-for-one-amazon-coms- sociall...](http://www.htmlist.com/rants/two-for-one-amazon-coms-socially- engineered-replacement-order-scam/) (Thanks also for linking to my post in your article. It's insane this is still going on.)

<comment><AUTHOR> I do, yes. The domain this linked post is on is registered to my current mailing address which is the same as the one I have on my Amazon file as my shipping and my billing address.

I've changed my Amazon email address as you suggested in your helpful email and hopefully that will be enough since I don't think it would be practical to try to put my mailing address back in the bottle at this point.

<comment><USER4> Change your registered domain address! There's basically no upside to having your "real" address listed.

<comment><USER5> What should I put instead? Isn't a bogus address grounds for ICANN to take your domain name away?

<comment><USER6> Check if your domain registrar offers an anonymous registration service. Mine provides it for free, but some charge a small yearly fee. It is still fine per ICANN standards since it simply goes to a forwarding service.

<comment><USER7> From ICANN's perspective though, doesn't that mean that the owner of the domain is the registrar?

While most registrars would be perfectly fine, I worry about the one that is willing to take the domain for themselves (for a domain not worth going to court over).

While not exactly what happened, I remember the case of the @N twitter account be stolen ([https://medium.com/@N/how-i-lost-my-50-000-twitter- username-...](https://medium.com/@N/how-i-lost-my-50-000-twitter- username-24eb09e026dd)), and wonder if having your actual information on the registration would help or hurt a situation like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's a working hypothesis:

| Why is Amazon's security for replacement orders so lax?

Amazon values customer satisfiction above their fraud write-off.

| Why would they send a replacement to an address that has never been associated with me, and is in a wholly different state than the one the original item was sent to?

Because the time between ordering an item, and defect can be sufficiently large to cover moves: people shift around all the time. It's entirely concievable you'd like to exercise replacement rights from Texas, even though you've ordered it from NY.

| How did the scammer know about my order in the first place to social engineer the replacement request?

Via: either buying order requests, using third-party honeypots to capture your info, using the domain registrar, or a combination of any of these.

| Why haven't Amazon black-listed the 13820 NE Airport Way; Portland, Oregon address as a destination for replacements? This package drop address shows up again and again when you Google around for people who have been hit by Amazon scams.

I suspect this might be [http://reship.com/](http://reship.com/) (Alexa rank: 166K). This is entirely legit: if you're a UK customer who'd like to buy stuff that are exclusively US-only, reshippers are the cheapest way to do so. Based on their Alexa rank, I suspect Amazon makes quite a money on these customer segments. Blacklisting them also wouldn't help this case: reshipping companies can easily buy up a handful of different addresses in a range of cities, making this a game of whack-a-mole.

| Can I really trust this company to hold multiple credit card numbers of mine in their database, one click away from someone potentially ordering thousands of dollars of merchandise that they can apparently easily redirect to an address that should have been black-listed years ago, if there were any kind of sane security policy in place?

Note that no credit card, or password database has been compromised in executing this attack. This is social engineering corporate goodwill at it's vilest.

I suspect the root cause of this issue to be the friction-less execution of this engineering. A proper solution for this problem might be as simple as sending out an email with clickthrough-link-confirmation before replacement shipping; this would raise the bar from "knowing about an order" to "knowing about an order, and having an active compromise on the mark's inbox".

<comment><USER9> > Amazon values customer satisfiction above their fraud write-off.

I doubt this is the case. I've had to place chargebacks against Amazon to get my money back for purchases that were not delivered due to Amazon screwing up and telling the vendor that the software key(s) were not purchased.

For anything software related, they offer no refunds _even when they and /or their vendor screw up to the point the product is unusable_.

<comment><USER10> > I doubt this is the case. I've had to place chargebacks against Amazon to > get my money back for purchases that were not delivered due to Amazon > screwing up and telling the vendor that the software key(s) were not > purchased.

There may be a difference between how they treat physical and digital purchases then, because my experience (and the experience of vast numbers of internet commenters) is that Amazon will refund or replace a physical order with basically zero investigation.

<comment><USER9> Yes, they have different policies depending on what you purchase and whom you purchase it from.

Frequently with physical products Amazon is able to place the majority cost [they only lose out on their commission] of the refund onto the supplier. [e.g. If Amazon's fraud check fails to catch a fraudulent order, they push the cost of the chargeback onto the supplier if it is a FBA or MFN item. They also do this if their system screws up and merges multiple products onto the same ASIN even tho they are different colors or whatever.]

My guess is the vendor in this instance was large enough Amazon had to make a different deal where Amazon was the one eating the refunds if it was Amazon's error. The vendor blamed Amazon. Amazon couldn't even figure out I issued a chargeback and successfully disputed it for my money back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The way this is played up makes it sound like a security issue, but it's a social issue above all else.

A story I've been meaning to write for a while, but aligns well with this: I bought a kindle a while back, with the (kinda expensive) case because I knew I would break the screen if I didn't.

I broke the screen anyways (some badly aligned books in my bag I think). I sent a kinda annoyed email at amazon about how their case didn't seem to help me much.

The next morning somebody from Amazon called me, trying to help me out with seeing if they could fix the screen (reboot style things). I was fairly confident I destroyed the screen, but they offered to replace it for me for free if I sent them back the old one at their cost.

The issue was that I was heading off to Japan the day after (from France), and so it would be a bit complicated for me to go to the post office on a sunday night to send it off. Instead, they offered to just send me the replacement to my address in Japan, no questions asked.

At no point did I prove anything about my story, I could have walked away with 2 Kindles (granted, one is probably blacklisted now, if I put it online). They did know I had bought one recently (which let them get my phone number through my account), but still.

Amazon has some pretty great customer service, and honestly requiring "proof" would, although for a rational human being would seem normal, have caused me great grief and I would just think about my 300g brick that I used for all of 1 week.

Anyways, I like Amazon a lot more than I probably should and take any opportunity to tell this story. Fraud is the small cost to pay compared to the goodwill you end up with by trusting (or at least pretending to trust) your customers.

The wifi on the replacement Kindle stopped working though... been too lazy to figure out why though.

<comment><USER12> Oddly, someone else in this comments section mentions an, according to them well-known, issue with this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7882436](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7882436)

<comment><USER13> Yup, it's me. The issue is mentioned many many times on Amazon forums,and everyone reports the same thing. Sometimes it's enough to change the name of your wifi network,sometimes it won't help. I also found a post somewhere talking about how the Wi-Fi kernel driver of the Paperwhite actually crashes in presence of certain networks, and nothing helps except for a reboot - <USER2> obviously if that network is still there it will crash again.

It seems to be mostly triggered by BT/Virgin Media routers here in the UK:

To give you an example: [http://www.amazon.co.uk/forum/kindle?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/forum/kindle?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=Fx3IRFCNF3E5K2W&cdThread=Tx2Q9SIWX3B7U91)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Amazing that the scammer is even able to have the fraudulent replacement item sent to a different address than where the order was originally sent not once, but twice and an address not associated with the account nor confirmed/verified and could possibly be linked to multiple accounts.

Seems like a blatant oversight in loss prevention and fraudulent data sifting. Not only does it admit that an account has been compromised in some shape (socially most likely), but it disappointingly shows incompetence in Amazon CSRs.

<comment><USER15> If I recall, to deliver to a new address, Amazon requires you to verify by entering the card details you are using for the purchase, to prevent fraud. They should be doing the same here.

<comment><USER16> Maybe that fails for zero cost items like this as there is no card being used?

<comment><USER15> But if its a return, surely they can pair it with the original purchase, inc. the address and card used?

<comment><USER16> The card might have expired and be destroyed, so you could have a valid reason for not being able to produce the number.

<comment><USER15> In which case, you would simply get in touch with support and prove your identity and purchase some other way as my thinking is that this would a rare occurence, since receiving a faulty purchase pair using a card that has expired and you no longer hold whilst living at a completely different address is a freak event. Plus, couldn't you still use the expired card as verification even it expired?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Yodel (especially poor UK courier) lost an expensive item once. Once I got through to a human at Amazon, they took me at my word and the replacement item was on its way that day. A few weeks later the original turned up, looking very battered.

The amount of goodwill I have towards Amazon because of that experience is tremendous. I took out Prime, and I look there first for everything now. I can absolutely see that being worth the shrinkage.

</comment><comment><USER18> My experience with Amazon customer service hasn't given me any faith in their competence.

Years and years ago I ordered a few items, mostly DVDs. I got the items. Months later I get an email from Amazon customer service saying I owe them money from that order because I never paid for it. I said "huh?" I call customer service and I found out it was because there was a chargeback. I didn't do a chargeback so I was confused.

Eventually I figure it out because the CC number shows up on the invoice with the last 4 digits. I accidentally transposed the last 2 digits of my CC number. I combed through my CC statements and found out that I indeed wasn't ever charged for the original items. Apparently the card was valid and was charged even though it was someone else's card. That means they didn't even do the least bit of checking to see if the billing address was the same or even name.

I call up and told them what happened. They just were dumbfounded and confused about the whole situation and didn't know how to handle it. They just kept insisting I return the items and they'll give me a refund. I think she was confused as to what I was even trying to tell her since I received the items. I said I didn't want to return them and even if I did they were now used items. They said "what's the problem then?" I told them they THEY sent ME and email saying how I owe money. I wanted to take care of it. Well finally the customer service rep just took down my right CC number and presumably wrote it in as a note in the logs or something.

I was never charged for the order.

\---

Even more years ago my college boyfriend told me that when he was like 17 him and his friends played some kinda "prank" where they ordered some expensive cameras shipped to the school and put in some fake name and credit card. _Apparently_ according to him the cameras shipped. Kids freaked out they would get in trouble, they told a science teacher. Science teacher took care of it and called Amazon before the cameras arrived to say that it was just some kids messing around.

<comment><USER19> You can't transpose two numbers in a credit card, the card number will fail luhn validation which means its not a valid credit card.

<comment><USER18> Well it happened. _I didn 't make the story up_. It was the last two numbers. I am totally serious that happened.

Perhaps Amazon didn't validate at all. Who the hell knows?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I used to be an Amazon customer service rep. I know for a fact that replacements can only be sent to the original address. However, you can change the address _after_ the order's been made. Calling into customer service to change this address is going to be risky, so doing it self-serve online is probably what's being done here. These hackers had access to your account I suspect.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the insider info. One question I have though is if they did have access to my account and are able to change addresses after an order is made online, why not go for the gusto and make really expensive orders using my on- file credit card numbers instead of just doing replacement items?

In any case, I've changed both my password and my email address on Amazon, so if they did have access to the account that should solve that issue for now. The whole situation has made me paranoid enough that I'm considering creating a locked-down custom VM used solely for Amazon shopping.

<comment><USER21> It's because they didn't want to alert you of the charge. Coming from a previous blackhat, the last thing a blackhat would want to do is alert you that something is happening. How often do you check your bank account? Probably once a day, maybe more. How often do you check your Amazon? Maybe only when you're going to buy things. I have my accounts set to text/notify me with every transaction detail.

Another reason why it'd be a replacement is because you don't get charged anything directly. They're betting you see the $0.00 charge, no bank activity, and you'll just brush it off like it was just a glitch. Not only this, but half the people who do this aren't even 18 and they're just reading tutorials on forums for how to get free stuff by social engineering or "hacking."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Just a note that Amazon have been known to ban accounts if you action too many returns. The bans are very rare, but they are for life and across all Amazon properties. Hit up Google for more.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is my primary lingering worry about the whole situation, that it may impact my ability to get replacement items sent out if I actually need them in the future.

Hopefully they take your Amazon history into account when figuring this sort of thing out because I've been a customer for a very long time and have spent an amount of money that would likely seem obscene (if I totalled it up) over the years.

<comment><USER23> >> Hopefully they take your Amazon history into account

But of course they won't. Your experience with them clearly demonstrates that reality. No leg of that octopus knows what any of the other legs are doing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I found it also pretty odd that I could use my Prime account to order things for a friend using my address for shipping and billing and his bank details for direct debit (which is the most common means of payment here on Amazon.de, I guess).

The other way around (his address, my bank details) also works without any further verification.

So I could basically just enter someone's bank details and hope the order ships to my anonymous forwarding address before they notice. The victim will then order her bank to refund the fraudulent direct debit transaction (thanks to SEPA she now has 13 months to file the request). Amazon will probably suspend the account but the perpetrator will obviously not care.

Even if it's less convenient (because not instantaneous) Amazon should be doing something similar to what PayPal does: transferring a few cents together with a verification code to the account for verification.

This scenario would hopefully only work if the account itself was compromised. But when looking at how overcredulous customer support seems to be it might well be possible to pull this off without actual access to the account.

<comment><USER25> I do this frequently, the use case is ordering things for my father, who's certainly capable of doing this on his own, but since I buy so much stuff from Amazon, starting a year after they opened, it's the most convenient way.

Only difference is I'm in the US and charging it to a credit card of his. And a Prime account is not required (we recently split the difference on getting one). And if they're looking for fraud, that we have the same last name, and his billing address is about a mile away, could reassure them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> It happened to me in a brick and mortar shop : I went to the shop to have my laptop repaired and they told me it was impossible since I had been reimbursed when I gave them the laptop back 6 months ago (the same laptop I had in my hands).

They never told me what happened but I suspect someone in this shop took the money and declared the laptop returned.

</comment><comment><USER27> > Amazon is out quite a bit of product and a _lot_ of trust from me.

The product is still a drop in the bucket for Amazon. Hopefully some of you actions will trigger their fraud protection dept. to blacklist the address or maybe they think it's not worthwhile blacklisting a whole address with multiple suites for a tiny amount. Anyway, I don't think it's reason enough to lose trust in Amazon. As long as they got the honest customer covered, it's OK to lose some when you are running a business of Amazon's scale.

As @sdrinf mentioned, it's social engineering at play. Maybe they can raise the bar to placing phone orders/replacements. Or maybe they think, they'll lose more business by adding a teeny hurdle than gain on fraud recovery.

 _A times B times C equals X. If X is less than... we don 't care_ kind of thing (Fight Club recall reference)

<comment><USER28> Amazon might not even loose money from this at all. It is common for retailers to charge these costs back to the supplier.

<comment><USER27> This is a logistics issue: shipping to an unverified address before receiving back the original product. Amazon should be solely responsible for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> "Also, our secure server software (SSL) is the industry standard and among the best software available today for secure commerce transactions."

Hey! What the heck? I'm in the security industry and had no idea about this new "secure server software" and why is the TLA SSL? What the heck? I've been on vacation for the last week, when did it hit?

On a serious note, I understand that some security teams hire non-technical types into the team but it's always the responsibility of senior staff to make sure they are at least understanding the basics, especially when communicating with customers. Say it with me: Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). There's a credibility problem here somewhere.

<comment><USER30> First, they'll be negotiating TLS in nearly all cases.

Second, they were not defining the acronym. They're just stating they have software to help secure things, and as an side it's called SSL. They mention SSL because some users may have heard of this and it signals that Amazon's doing the right thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I would think that if Amazon is failing to rectify the problem, then they at least have a very clear and obvious incentive to do so.

<comment><USER3> It's extremely straightforward: they value customer satisfaction considerably above their own fraud write-offs. That's literally it. It's a bit silly, because there are a number of measures the CSRs could take to prevent someone with JUST your email, address, and name from accessing your account (Netflix asks for a "call in code" visible when you're logged into the site, for instance), but they don't.

The CSRs are in India and basically told to satisfy any "did-not-arrive shipments". The fact that they are also willing to ship to an alternate address is completely insane. But my scammer told them they were "on vacation" and appealed to that side of the customer satisfaction coin.

<comment><USER13> Yup. I had the same thing with Logitech - my mouse broke while I was visiting my parents in an entirely different country, and they sent me a replacement there, without having to send the old one back. I just explained I was on vacation and it was fine,they just asked me to give them the new address.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Another angle: this is why I shop at Amazon, and make a point to buy items fulfilled by them directly.

Any time I have had a problem with an Amazon item, they have made it insanely easy, and cheap, for me to get a new one.

With the Kindle 2 (first one with the directional nub) the screen was VERY fragile. I used the official case but just putting it in my bag caused the screen to crack 3x in a year. When this would happen, I'd call Amazon and they'd have a new one on my doorstep the next morning. Then I'd use that box to send the old one back, no questions asked. Sure I could have been a fraudster and probably could have somehow kept 2 Kindles, but I appreciated the customer service.

[Aside: no I'm not just an idiot, the Kindle 2 really was that fragile. I've had a Kindle of every generation and never broken any other screen, but broke that one 3x].

</comment><comment><USER33> Is it really that hard to craft a title that uses normal english? For example:

"Amazon orders are still subject to replacement fraud"

There, I won't have to sit there and swap emphasis in my head until it makes sense with that one.

<comment><USER34> Newspaper headlines very often omit linking verbs (am, is, are, etc) when they can be inferred from context to make room for more important words.

They probably don't have much use on a web page except to _sound_ like a newspaper headline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Presumably there's some Durden-esque equation for costing this, wherein increased earnings from customer retention and goodwill more than offset estimated losses through fraud.

</comment><comment><USER36> I bet there's a thread on socialengineered dot net about this. I'd do a google search for "site:socialengineered(dot)net amazon replacement"

Obviously I'm not going to link to a scam site, but you can get in through and read the articles through Google so you don't have to register with them. I saw this site with another Amazon scam where people were requesting refunds saying not shipped, etc.

</comment><comment><USER37> UI complaint:

If I click on a picture to view a larger version of it, I should not have to hunt around the page for a blue button to stop viewing the large image.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, you're right!

My site (which is woefully unfinished even for its originally intended purpose) is primarily used as a photo-blog showing photo albums to remote friends and family. This rant was the first text-heavy traditional blog-post I've made to it. I need to put some work into making the UI make sense for posts made in that context.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Amazon themselves have actively recommended this reship.com when I asked about delivery before for certain product.

</comment><comment><USER39> If you happen to notice this before the item is delivered you can call UPS and have the package returned to sender.

If you really want you can have someone stake out the home and see who comes, but that's really something for Amazon + the Police to do.

<comment><USER3> Not just returned to sender. I've had people tell me they were able to have Amazon reroute the package to them, and then be told to keep it. It's like a free Xbox (or camera or whatever) without having to do the dirty work of perpetrating the scam yourself!

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Are Amazon actually making money on these? Do they charge costs and shipping back to the supplier above trade price?

</comment><comment><USER41> Are you somehow on the hook to return a defective item because of these replacement requests?

<comment><USER3> No, the scammers claim it never arrived, so Amazon merely sends it again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Could this just be a database querying problem, and maybe no items were actually shipped as a result?

<comment><USER43> Nah... It's only a case of not reading the article...</comment></comment>


Can Someone Just Invent an 'I Consent to Sex' iPhone App Already? - <AUTHOR> http://reason.com/blog/2014/06/18/can-someone-just-invent-an-i-consent-to

<comment><USER2> "Ultimately, I'm counting on the free market to work its magic and provide a sensible and convenient method of demonstrating mutual consent."

LOL, libertarians. Because "click the button on your phone or I'll beat the fuck outta you" totally wouldn't happen.

<comment><USER3> Requiring overt threat of physical force would probably be a substantial improvement, actually. It would not allow perpetrators to fool themselves, it might make victims less likely to blame themselves and/or more likely to come forward, and it might make things more detectable. I think there is a lot of harm that currently lies in the ambiguity.

It wouldn't eliminate rape entirely, but... duh? That's not a claim anyone was making.</comment></comment>


Haskell, and Why It Might Be My New Favourite Language - <AUTHOR> http://unbui.lt/#!/post/haskell-an-introduction <comment><USER2> TL/DR; a flimsy write-up on why he did not like Go, followed by a good write- up on what's great about Haskell when you just start to use it.

Again this underlines some ideas I have about both Go and Haskell:

* Go is great from a commercial perspective; easy to learn/understand, but nothing ground-breaking.

* Haskell is great from a technical perspective; ground-breaking all over the place, but takes an investment.

I believe the Haskell investment is one that every serious programmer should like to make as it should make your both work easier _and_ more fun.

<comment><USER3> I'm undoubtedly a Haskell convert (from Erlang / Scheme / Python) with little experience in Go.

The investment is pretty big, yes, but I also believe it is great from a commercial perspective because it really improves the result for End-Goal- Programming (end goal is to serve business needs, not technology for technology's sake):

        1. Time to market for a product
        2. Easy / clean refactoring
        3. Massive scale code base management
        4. Program longevity and maintainability

1) Time to market is extremely important for businesses and products and schedule over-flow is a _common_ problem in software engineering that Haskell _really does help solve_. Since building production software in Haskell I've become completely frustrated by Python because I spend far more time building in it due to _debugging my own undisciplined habits out of the end product_. I'm not a very disciplined dynamic type programmer.

It also produces _cleaner and less buggy_ product for the end-user. Which is so important!!! Particularly as a startup.

2) If you need to cleanup some technical debt from taking short-cuts or not accurately pre-planning architecture, Haskell's type system makes it _so friggin ' easy_ your eyes will bleed when you try to do the same in a Python / Ruby / Erlang program.

Additionally, it really allows you to respond to the market better too! If you have to pivot your product it's not "Oh shit, now we're going to have to take that duct taped sewage monster and turn it into a duct taped ninja turtle." it's "Hmmm, well, let's think through the new types a little bit and re-shape some of this code, I know the compiler will tell me when I'm being a silly human."

3\. Python and Ruby aren't really appropriate for large scale code bases because dynamic typing means you need an equally massive amount of tests to ensure no one else in the org fucks shit up. It makes team based programming on the same codebase far more manageable!!

4\. Once I've built my Haskell programs and wrote a few minor property tests with QuickCheck, they usually _run forever_. I've rarely ever had a case where I would get unexpected crashes (usually from my not understanding Haskell's laziness earlier on in my Haskell career).

Long-term maintainability is massive factor here too; it's so much easier to figure out what the damn thing and all of its constituent pieces do with the type system!!! It's like having an index and a table of contents for a book. Since most programmers forget their own code anyway (comes back to that fallible human thing), having a neat and correct _abstract description_ of your program and its parts is invaluable to a commercial enterprise.

So, in short, I actually think Haskell is the _best language_ a commercial enterprise could choose. All you need too is one really good programmer that can mentor, then train them as you go; the good news with Haskell is even when you write shitty Haskell code (un-idiomatic, mostly in the IO monad, and barring space leaks), it's usually better than even the good Python and Ruby code those people would be writing.

<comment><USER4> +1, (1) (2) and (3) are very real problems in industrial software development.

I've been reading a lot how Twitter transitioned from an RoR monolith ("monorail") to SOA when they got big enough, it's a rough journey but I suspect many companies have to take it once they evolve from iterative prototyping/experimentation to correctness at scale.

I've also realized writing good, maintainable code can be done in any language, it's just that some languages (e.g. Go) make it much harder to write unmaintainable code for many of the reasons you've cited above. "Debugging my own undisciplined habits" really hit it on the head.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, if you ever get a chance to build something for production in Haskell / Scala / OCaml you'll realize how little even Go (which is better than Python and Ruby!) does for you.

The funny thing is, I believe (from real-world startup building experience) that Haskell has allowed me to iterate / prototype my products faster than I ever would have with Python and Erlang (my old go-to tools).

Also, with Haskell, there's no late-night and weekend fires to put out :) Which makes me more productive and generally happier.

[EDIT] To whomever is downvoting these legitimate comments, speak up why you think they are inappropriate for this discussion instead of downvoting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Slightly meta, but: has anyone else noticed how much love languages with very strong type disciplines have been getting on HN recently? Scala, Haskell, Clojure, Go, Rust jump out.

Maybe language designers/toolmakers are getting better at bringing the benefits of stronger typing (superior editor support, faster execution times, less need for unit testing) without as much baggage: highly ceremonial code, complex compiler setup/tooling, etc? I suspect editor/compiler-level type inference, where you can do things like "val x = NewVal()" vs. "NewVal x = new NewVal()" might have something to do with it.

As someone who's swung back and forth across this divide, I get the sense that modern static language development is much less of a pain in the ass than it was 10yrs ago.

I'm less interested in static vs. dynamic than I am in why the community seems to be floating in this direction __recently __, when the past 5-7 years has been all about RoR, Django, and even Perl.

<comment><USER3> I do not consider Go to have a strong type system. It's static though.

Strong typing allows you to do a lot and it also solves the problem we _fallible humans_ bring to the table. Humans are pretty good at being creative but extremely terrible with details, remembering things, and keeping track of "hairballs".

Strong type systems solve pretty much all of that.

Now, with some of Haskell's newest features (like Type Holes) it's starting to make dynamic languages look more like children's toys because you get all the power and safety of a type system with the same "do what you want, it will (usually) tell you what you're intending to put there".

Dynamic programming came from a need for rapid iteration of a program because that's how humans work, we "start" then iterate till we have a more complex and functioning program. The problem with that model though, is that the burden of correctness is on us _in the end_.

Programming in Python is like leaving your dishes pile up in the sink for a week, then spending two hours doing dishes on Sunday.

Programming in Haskell is like taking your dish to your cleaning robot that will wash it, dry it, and put it away for you. All you have to do is know what you want to use the plate for and return to where the robot can get it.

<comment><USER5> > Programming in Haskell is like taking your dish to your cleaning robot that > will wash it, dry it, and put it away for you. All you have to do is know > what you want to use the plate for and return to where the robot can get it.

With the occasional smash coming from the kitchen when you find out the robot has been trying to hold all of your plates at once instead of putting them away because you haven't gone to get one out of the cupboard yet ;)

<comment><USER6> A stack of type t things blowing up because of lazyness... How appropriate ; )

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Haskell syntax just seems pretty crazy. I know nothing about it, but I just read it and wish that maybe one could use a few more lines and get better understandability at the expense of terseness.

<comment><USER3> It's the difference between Eclipse and Emacs. Haskell actually encourages "internalization" of abstractions through terser syntax.

Emacs is like that, you internalize the editor which makes you 5x more productive than you are with an editor that externalizes the abstraction requiring your brain to use another layer of translation (the visual one).

If you learn Haskell, you'll find it quite enjoyable (I do now). The way I think in that language is _so much more abstract and precise_ than it ever was in Python / Scheme / Erlang / Ruby / Javascript.

[EDIT] To whomever is downvoting these legitimate comments, speak up why you think they are inappropriate for this discussion instead of downvoting.

<comment><USER8> Your enthusiasm has convinced me to give Haskell another shot, do you have a favorite resource I should try? I didn't have great luck prior.

<comment><USER9> These should get you started:

Really well presented series of lectures:

[http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~cis194/lectures.html](http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~cis194/lectures.html)

Cheat sheet:

[http://blog.codeslower.com/static/CheatSheet.pdf](http://blog.codeslower.com/static/CheatSheet.pdf)

Books:

[http://learnyouahaskell.com/chapters](http://learnyouahaskell.com/chapters)

[http://book.realworldhaskell.org/read/](http://book.realworldhaskell.org/read/)

"What I Wish I Knew When Learning Haskell":

[http://dev.stephendiehl.com/hask/](http://dev.stephendiehl.com/hask/)

Haskell Tutorial for C Programmers (useful for anyone coming from an imperative world):

[http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Haskell_Tutorial_for_C_Pr...](http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Haskell_Tutorial_for_C_Programmers)

Hoogle (API search engine):

[http://www.haskell.org/hoogle/](http://www.haskell.org/hoogle/)

<comment><USER9> Oh I forgot the Erik Meijer lectures are awesome:

[http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/C9-Lectures-Erik-Meijer- Func...](http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/C9-Lectures-Erik-Meijer-Functional- Programming-Fundamentals/Lecture-Series-Erik-Meijer-Functional-Programming- Fundamentals-Chapter-1)

<comment><USER10> One thing you get from his lectures that aren't in other resources is how he views OOP and FP as two different sides of the same coin.

Fascinating to hear how the same ideas are expressed both ways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> getMultiples is even shorter and clearer written like this:

        getMultiples = [x | x <- [1..999], x `mod` 3 == 0 || x `mod` 5 == 0]

<comment><USER12> Golf:

      getMultiples = [3,6..999] `union` [5,10..999]

<comment><USER13> That doesn't sort the output neatly. You need a merge

[http://hackage.haskell.org/package/MissingH-0.18.6/docs/Data...](http://hackage.haskell.org/package/MissingH-0.18.6/docs/Data- List-Utils.html#1)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> one thing about Haskell: It is different from other languages, but once you got the "mindset" it turns out to be surprisingly _easy_* to use.

* especially, the haskell way of type-abstraction is sound and makes for really nice and convenient libraries in a way that one cannot imagine if not experiencing it form oneself.

</comment><comment><USER15> As crazy as it sounds, I can confirm that Go is a gateway drug for Haskell.

<comment><USER16> Have you looked at Rust?

<comment><USER15> Not yet. It looks like a moving target for now so I'm waiting for a stable release.</comment></comment></comment>


IOS 7 Passcode Security Flaw - <AUTHOR> http://www.acbcases.com/blogs/news/9255701-ios-7-security-flaw-must-read <comment><USER3> Somebody got too excited - this is a feature, not a flaw. Also, it's getting boring, these lock screen "hacks" that half the time are intentional behaviours. True hack would be accessing your phone remotely. If you at any point allow the "hacker" a physical access to your phone then you either shouldn't store all these TOP SECRET documents there, or change friends (because I assume most of these lock screen "hacks" are used for pranks - <USER2> can't imagine leaving my phone unattended outside my home)

<comment><USER4> If this is a feature it is a badly designed one because this could be a real problem if your phone is stolen and you don't notice for instance, they should have added a voice identification system or similar to balance convenience and security, at least on the first use to open a timed session, which is totally in their capabilities in my opinion.

<comment><USER5> This feature is only badly designed in that it's not communicated during the setup process that Siri will still work. This _is_ a feature, it can be turned off, and is 100% intentional.

The security your propose doesn't provide enough security to be worth the effort. (Hello tape recorder!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Swipe up on the locked phone to get to the control panel

Open the stopwatch app

Go over to alarm clock

Hold the power button until you get the "Power down" prompt

Hit the cancel button and immediately hit the home button twice, holding it down just a little longer on the second press. It takes a try or two to get the hang of.

Then you're in the target's multitasking menu

Go to the camera app, view photos, and you can share the pictures from there with email, Twitter, and more.

<comment><USER7> > Then you're in the target's multitasking menu

Neat, but you can't actually go into any app other than the clock app - tapping apps in the multitasking menu does nothing.

> Go to the camera app, view photos, and you can share the pictures from there > with email, Twitter, and more.

I just see a message telling me I can't see the photos without unlocking the device first.

My question is... how on earth did you figure that first one out??

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "........have stumbled across a huge security flaw"

for a behaviour which is careless at worst, and _an actual option in the pass lock settings_.

This may be a controversial viewpoint, but I definitely think the massive attention given to security problems is causing these people to hype up some feature they don't like as an important security flaw. This is ridiculous.

(Also a reason why rampant 'technology press' 'reporting' should typically be ignored, I'll bet this is already making the round on MacRumors and similar rags.)

</comment><comment><USER9> Apple has thought about the security vs. convenience tradeoff here. That's why this setting exists.

        Settings -> General -> Pass Code Lock -> Allow Siri

</comment><comment> martin-adams If only Siri could validate it was your voice making the commands. But with my experience of Siri on the 4S with iOS 6, Siri fails most of the time with the simple things like "Call [name] mobile" but worse, takes ages to even fail (due to network flakiness though).

</comment><comment><USER10> As far as I am aware this is intentional behaviour, with the ability to opt- out.

These guys should turn the " _Allow access to Siri when locked with a passcode_ " option to _off_.

<comment><USER11> Shouldn't that be the default, then? (I don't have an iPhone so I can't check it)

<comment><USER10> It is not the default. That would negate much of the useful functionality of Siri.

Being able to trigger it and make requests without looking at my phone is one of the key reasons I use it.

It's a convenience / security trade-off that is under the user's control in Settings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If I remember correctly, in iOS6 when interacting with Siri while the phone was locked, Siri would respond to certain commands by telling you that you needed to enter your passcode to do that.

</comment><comment><USER13> I just tried it, and I couldn't get it to update my facebook, it just kept saying "command not found". Though I have to admit, I don't use Siri. It did seem that I would have been able to place phonecalls, but the numbers I tried were International, and I don't have an international plan.

</comment><comment><USER4> If this is true it is an impressive security debacle for a company like Apple, "allow siri access while the iPhone is locked" should clearly be off by default, and the user should be alerted about the potential dangers when deciding to turn it on.

<comment><USER10> I was under the impression that this was by design. I guess it depends what expectations you have for a passcode lock.

My expectation is that my phone is reasonably secure from co-workers when I leave it on my desk for fifteen minutes at a time. And that if stolen, I have enough time to remote-wipe it before the passcode is bypassed.

<comment><USER4> When a door is locked I don't expect it to open by saying "let me through", with all the specific differences I think this is a reasonably common expectation to have.

<comment><USER10> I am quite sure that is not correct in this case.

You have some limited access to features while Siri is on, only if the allow with passcode option is enabled. You do not have full run of the entire phone, nor are you able to bypass the lock screen.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Your Weekly Address from the President-Elect - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zd8f9Zqap6U <comment><USER2> This is just the weekly radio address...with video.</comment>


Tesla's "unexpected" new product reveal postponed til Wednesday - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/17/teslas-unexpected-new-product-reveal-postponed-til-wednesday/ <comment><USER2> I think the article is on the wrong track regarding autopilot speculation. It seems unlikely that "a new product unexpected by most" would end up being an autopilot upgrade.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. "Unexpected by most" has to mean a new product line, otherwise the wording doesn't make too much sense (and would build up unnecessary hype, were it only an evolutionary update to an existing product).

<comment><USER4> "Unexpected by most" could be related to the pace of the uprade, Autopilot 2.0 with next level autonomy ready next month, hardware already in cars leaving factory. I expect a big upgrade to Autopilot OR a new product line.

<comment><USER3> But isn't that precisely what we expect them to do? People have been predicting a fully autonomous Tesla for years now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Tesla Truck?

Smart/Mini competitor?

Watercraft of some type?

Finally revealing the fictional electric plane mentioned in Iron Man 2?

Tesla Motorcycle?

A transforming amphibious Tesla vehicle?

As unlikely as most of these are, they are more likely than this much hype for announcing the next level of autopilot.

<comment><USER6> Were you around when Dean Kamen's 'IT/Ginger' was hyped so much people were totally disappointed when it turned out to be the Segway?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a risky strategy. Tesla has been missing deadlines and has ambitious timelines with the new FIFA factory, add to that a SolarCity integration and Musk running a little rocket company called SpaceX, and I could see investors punishing Telstar is this isn't absolutely magical and fully baked. Until the Model 3 is delivered, everything else is a distraction.

<comment> pi-err > Until the Model 3 is delivered, everything else is a distraction

Agreed - except to increase cash flow to get to build >500k Tesla 3 fast enough.

They're climbing a mountain of risk at this point. If the first T3 production year is too low in quality and/or quantity, the rest of the reservations could evaporate, especially as the rest of the industry is finally embracing electric.

A utility version of Tesla X could churn out some hard needed cash.

<comment><USER8> There isn't enough battery manufacturing capacity in the world for other auto manufacturers without Tesla's Gigafactory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's rumors of a small Tesla SUV parked at LAX last Friday. I wonder if they're re-revealing the Model 3, or a variant of it?

</comment><comment><USER10> Tesla Motorbike PLEASEEEEEE

<comment><USER11> There are some players in this space already, and I don't think it would be a smart play for Tesla to enter it.

Motorcycle manufacturing is a ~$4.4bn industry, and there were about as many Toyota Camrys sold in 2015 as there were on-highway motorcycles, so the market opportunity there is very limited. Motorcyclists as a demographic tend to be conservative in their preferences (for example, see the debate over ABS, Harley Davidson), as well as _very_ cost-sensitive. The machines themselves are very sensitive to weight, and even the best batteries can't compete with gasoline for energy density which either means very short range (see Zero's offerings) or very heavy bikes (see the late Mission Motorcycles' 550lb R). Finally, there are very few engineering synergies between motorcycles and cars so cost savings by parts reuse is negligible.

Tesla's historical model of starting with a premium offering wouldn't work because even the best LiIon motorcycle couldn't compete with a petrol-powered competitor in any objective measure except for environmental friendliness... which is insufficiently compelling to the typical rider to open the market.

Motorcycles are very cool, and I'm an avid long-time rider, but e-bikes are necessarily a niche of a niche. Tesla is looking for hockey-stick growth over the medium term.

Edit: forgot to add that US automobile manufacturing output was ~$61bn in 2015.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Tesla Hybrid similar to Prius?

<comment><USER10> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp_K71MM6Xk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp_K71MM6Xk)

<comment><USER13> Well they did say it would be unexpected.</comment></comment></comment>