Euro MPs block bank data deal with US - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8510471.stm

<comment><USER3> It's funny how the US feels entitled to do all these things, but when other countries want the US to allow them to do the same, there's no way. The war crimes court comes to mind as the most blatant example of this "one rule for you, another for us" mentality.

<comment><USER4> The United States constitution forbids anything like the war crimes court. Also, the ICC and all war crimes courts are a farce -- they are show trials for all practical purposes, and I think extremely dangerous.

1\. If a person commits heinous crimes in their country then it is up to their country to handle it.

2\. If the crimes are committed in another country it up to that country to handle it.

There is no need for the ICC except to lend legitimacy to illegitimate claims.

I agree though, I can't believe that other countries are willing to hand over data of their citizens that should be protected by them.

<comment><USER3> If it was their stance that a war crimes court is a bad thing, then it would be a fine, principled stand that I wouldn't have a problem with. But given that the US has never had a problem trying _foreigners_ in war crimes courts (e.g. Nürnberg, or the whole Guantanamo/terrorist deal), they apparently don't think their constitution is good enough to apply it in a more wholesale fashion.

I remember Noam Chomsky saying something like "An argument whose validity depends on who is using it is merely an attempt at justification without any substance", and that seems a lot like what we're seeing here.

<comment><USER4> 1\. After Nuremburg it was a show trial put on by Stalin, there was no justification for the court -- it wasn't like the laws they broke existed in some sort of international context. 2\. Not to defend Guantanamo -- I think it's abhorrent, but it is not a war crimes court, it's a place where prisoners of "war" are being taken.

As I said before, I think the entire concept of war crimes in nebulous and if there is any enforcement it should be done by country affected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> bjelkeman-again Is this type of monitoring legal in the US when monitoring bank transactions in the US? Does it already happen in the US? Imagine the reaction if this had been the other way around, the damn Europeans spying on US bank transaction in the US.

<comment><USER5> Well, I believe transactions in the US are monitored. At least large cash withdrawals and deposits are. 5,000 or more is usually reported by the banks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is good news, but somehow EU governments think it's ok to use stolen bank data:

[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/informant- off...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/informant-offers- germany-secret-swiss-bank-data-1884062.html)

<comment><USER7> What do you mean? First of all that was Germany, so 'EU governments' does not apply in that case. Second it is a big difference between buying information about your citizens and selling information about you citizens.

<comment><USER8> Denmark is also considering it.

Yes, there's a difference, but it's still very wrong.

We're talking about governments buying illegally obtained information, thus sanctioning the crime. How is this different from the government not being allowed to wire-tap its citizens, but if they go on the black market and get a black-hat to do it, it's suddenly OK? The only reason is the presence of an international border.

<comment><USER9> Illegal by whose standards?

How the information was obtained outside of Germany may be a crime, but not in Germany.

As a citizen of Germany you are required to provide to the German government information that determines taxes owed. Any attempt to evade this obligation is a crime in Germany.

In this case Germany has a right to the information.

<comment><USER8> > Illegal by whose standards?

The law of any country anyone would consider civilized. Including Germany, Denmark, Lichtenstein and Switzerland.

> In this case Germany has a right to the information.

Well, states don't have rights. Their citizens are required to hand over the information, and the government is entitled to punish citizens that fail to do so. But that's a minor point -- Yes, Germany is entitled to that information, but they don't have a right to break the law of another country to get that information. What happened to Lichtensteins right to sovereignty?

And what if it wasn't tax information, but information on ethnicity? Seriously, information about citizens that one government "has a right to", that another government doesn't mind helping you conceal. Not to bash Germany in particular, but we have privacy laws for a reason.

I'm not a fan of tax-evasion, but tax collection is not, in itself, such a holy venture that it warrants any means.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This will most certainly be a setback for tracking and disrupting terrorist/rogue state/criminal financing operations. I personally know someone who used to use Swift data (among other financial transaction tracking data) to track "bad-guys" doing very, very bad things. They are out there, they are gaming the system, they are hiding behind loop holes and they do mean us harm.

Hopefully the privacy concerns can be worked out asap.

<comment><USER11> The problem is when this is used to give eg. Raytheon the details of payments made to a European company for eg a radar system in some 3rd country - <USER2> lets them put in an advantageous position to bid for the next bit of work.</comment></comment>


Lyft and Uber boast they'll wipe out hundreds of thousands of jobs in a decade - <AUTHOR> https://pando.com/2016/09/19/lyf-uber-jobs/3e462e1e18d1dcc538dc222c7825f7e3c75efc4c/ <comment><USER2> driving a car is the least important part of what a taxi driver really does. Loading groceries for the handicapped, helping people figure out where they really want to go, telling the person going to the ER that they don't actually want to go to _that_ hospital, that they'd certainly spend less time for their minor injury at the smaller full-service ER, etc...

Sometimes people just needed someone to talk to.</comment>


NSA Hiring Civil Liberties & Privacy Officer - <AUTHOR> https://www.nsa.gov/psc/applyonline/EMPLOYEE/HRMS/c/HRS_HRAM.HRS_CE.GBL?Page=HRS_CE_JOB_DTL&Action=A&JobOpeningId=1039797&PortalActualURL=https://www.nsa.gov/psc/applyonline/EMPLOYEE/HRMS/c/HRS_HRAM.HRS_CE.GBL?Page=HRS_CE_JOB_DTL&Action=A&JobOpeningId=103&

<comment><USER2> I'm sort of dismayed that they apparently didn't have this position before?</comment>


Chebyshev polynomials of the first kind and primality testing O(log^3 n) in C++ - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dendisuhubdy/Chebyshev-primality-test/ <comment><USER2> Interesting approach. Unfortunately the code apparently has no licence so we can look but cannot touch (possibly this is an oversight).</comment>


Mining the Sky - <AUTHOR> https://logicmag.io/04-mining-the-sky/ <comment><USER2> A lot of people assume material from space only has value when brought back down earths gravity well. This is short sighted and naive imo. The real value is in building space based industry and settlements ie O'neil cylinders. It maybe true that a gravity well is necessary for some industrial processes. This why low gravity bodies like the Moon and Mars are important.

<comment><USER3> Whether Earthlike conditions are _necessary_ for industrial processes is beside the point. Nobody knows how to do any industrial process in space and there is sharply limited demand for space industry right now.

Maybe if we get a lively asteroid mining industry going, that will generate demand for other industries in space. Trying to get everything going all at once takes an already insanely difficult project and layers orders of magnitude more complexity on it before payoff.

<comment><USER4> > Nobody knows how to do any industrial process in space...

False. Don't conflate your own ignorance with that of others. There's an enormous body of literature on in situ resource utilization and in situ manufacturing, including countless lab-scale demos of industrial processes and some also demonstrated in space (for instance, ISS relies on electrolysis for oxygen production and also produces methane with the Sabatier Reaction to recover some of the oxygen as well). Just check out ntrs.nasa.gov for some examples.

There are way too many processes to name here.

<comment><USER3> Oh god. Did you just suggest electrolysis as the kind of exciting industry that we know how to do in space?

In second grade, I assembled some equipment to do electrolysis. This does not make me a captain of industry.

<comment><USER5> I'm with you here - I'm really not sure how a load of lab studies [in a gravity well], theoretical papers [also in a gravity well] and some fairly predictable processes in low gravity equate to humanity's 'knowing' how to 'do' a wide range of heavy industrial processes that haven't, for the very most part, ever even been attempted.

I have a fairly hands on job in many ways - one that allows me to explore and develop techniques - so whilst I can often envisage solutions in advance, I'd think it absolute hubris to claim I 'know' much until I've actually done it and proven it.

As far as I'm aware, I can't think of anything in even the light industrial range of development that's actually been tried in orbit or low gravity, off- surface.

Certainly not enough to deserve being smeared by accusations of ignorance... .

\- ed

I suppose construction of the ISS from pre-made components might qualify as 'light industrial'.

<comment><USER4> It's pretty simple, actually. You put the process you developed in a centrifuge if it doesn't work in microgravity. Much of the life support (and water recovery) system on ISS (which is just a large collection of several industrial processes) uses centrifuges for this purpose.

<comment><USER5> You make it sound so easy!

Consider a 'simple' example — what might the effect be of a high speed, high mass 'drilling widget' be in such a body? Not much, probably, at least in the very short term.

Cumulatively though? A device weighing a few hundred KG, rotating at a few thousand RPM for a few hours or days or weeks at a time?

What effect do you think that might have on your 'quite simple' centripetal environment, floating as it is in zero g?

Sure, it can be accounted for — but it's not 'pretty simple, actually'. Anything but.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Luxembourg is very bullish on asteroid mining. They think it's gonna be a > huge business five, ten, fifteen, twenty years from now.

That timeline seems comically bullish. What's the biggest thing we've brought back to earth on an unmanned mission to date? Probably a few grams of asteroid dust. That timeline is maybe right for autonomous cars, but I doubt we'll see mining on an economically significant level in any of our lifetimes. It just doesn't make sense from a cost perspective when we have plenty of resources on earth that can still be extracted. I guess you can make a case for doing it to learn how to build things in space, but again, the engineering hurdles are huge, so no way that's going to matter any time soon.

<comment><USER7> The Soviet Union brought back about 300 grams of lunar material in the '70s ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_rock#Unmanned_sample_retu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_rock#Unmanned_sample_returns))

Still not much, but quite a bit more than a few grams.

<comment><USER8> And the us brought back 842 lbs of moon rocks according to wikipedia.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Unless they master some sort of hive/swam worker architecture which works in an autonomous way the timeline seems very aggressive. Sending humans to space that far out on asteroids can be super expensive project to get materials available on earth.

</comment><comment><USER10> > there's a lot of money to be made in making outer space safe for extractive > capitalism.

> There are only so many sovereign countries. Luxembourg is one of them. And > throughout its history, it has survived by making laws that businesses want. > It's as though lobbyists write their legislation. In fact, sometimes they > do.

> It's going to look like the extractive industries on earth. It's going to be > a repeat of what we're seeing in Congo. Now, one big difference is that > there aren't any humans to suffer human rights abuses up in space, so that's > good.

It's frank, I'll give it that.

Hooray for the future...!

</comment><comment><USER11> Does all this space mining talk refer to the asteroid belt past Mars?

Or are there other sources?</comment>


The Power of Tmux Hooks - git-pull https://devel.tech/tips/n/tMuXz2lj/the-power-of-tmux-hooks/ <comment><AUTHOR> Great, a complex way to do what should just happen automatically (adjusting to changed resolution or resized terminals).

As a long time vim/tmux user, I'm just done with these powerful tools that I have to spend all my time configuring to make useful (nevermind seamless or delightful). It's masochistic. I have way better, meatier, more meaningful things to work on than my dot files.

<comment><USER2> My tmux _does_ resize automatically...? Is there some other kind of resizing that's necessary? I split side-by-side, I make another terminal emulator tiled side-by-side, original term narrows to take half the display, tmux's panes resize so they're still using half the vertical space. I'm really not sure at all what the point of this post was supposed to be.

<comment> git-pull Thank you for spotting that.

As of tmux 2.6:

main-horizontal and main-vertical layouts have a main-pane-height/width that has to be adjusted.

tiled, even-vertical, even-horizontal should automatically resize.

I updated both tmux articles to mention that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Any tmux fans might learn something from the most recent "minimalist guide" discussion, it seemed a bit more in-depth (or perhaps more tips) than others.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15776995](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15776995)

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=tmux](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=tmux)

</comment><comment><USER4> tmux has geek appeal and I can see the use case for remote sessions, but for local macos dev I've changed to just use iTerm for splits (I tried byobu as well).

tmux seems to need extra yak shaving to get vim integration, copy/paste and scrollback configured nicely and I just couldn't see the benefit over iTerm's native functionality.

Can anyone sell me on tmux over iTerm for local dev?

<comment><USER5> Alacritty.

Butter-smooth scrolling as you hold down j in vim. Doesn't have its own scrollback, so use tmux just for that. There is so much less TUI lag, it's on par with using a regular GUI text editor.

[https://github.com/jwilm/alacritty](https://github.com/jwilm/alacritty)

<comment><USER4> Interesting. Could you use the mouse to interact with scrollback using your workflow? I mostly use keyboard but sometimes I just want to flick upwards and copy a block of scrollback text using the mouse.

<comment><USER5> Yes, through tmux config.

[https://gist.github.com/sijad/771426b3995eb05faeb6d78926645e...](https://gist.github.com/sijad/771426b3995eb05faeb6d78926645e56#file- tmux-conf-L72)

Found in [https://github.com/jwilm/alacritty/issues/146](https://github.com/jwilm/alacritty/issues/146)

Alacritty might get mouse modifiers to use its own text selection (better for a remote session), but that's good enough for me.

I use, for extra vim niceness:

        setw -g mode-keys vi
        bind-key -T copy-mode-vi 'v' send -X begin-selection
        bind-key -T copy-mode-vi 'y' send -X copy-pipe-and-cancel "reattach-to-user-namespace pbcopy"
        bind-key -T copy-mode-vi MouseDragEnd1Pane send-keys -X copy-pipe-and-cancel "reattach-to-user-namespace pbcopy"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Events and hooks are neat, but I can't think of a single use case, anyone have suggestions? The idea in the article semis redundant.

<comment><USER7> I keep my build output on watch in a tab and have touched tell macOS to send me a notification when it notices a certain text pattern. It's especially nice for things like Jekyll rebuilds.

<comment><USER5> Eh, you don't need tmux hooks for that. Just

        mkfifo notify.pipe
        grep 'error' < notify.pipe | notify-macosx-or-whatever >/dev/null &
        compile-whatever | tee notify.pipe

Edit: You can do this WAY more simply with bash >() pipes.

        compile | tee >(grep 'error' | notify >/dev/null)

<comment><USER8> Sure, you dont NEED it, but then you don't need a lot of stuff. I guess the value comes from not having to remember all those commands, just enter the hooks in the config and you have those steps happening automatically for you.

<comment><USER5> That's kinda what saving as build.sh is for.

IMO tmux is much cooler when you do stuff like running commands in or sending text to a different window. Check out entr(1) for some sweet use cases that are much more fun than the hooks. That vimdiff thing ... I used it a few months ago when trying to replicate some complicated rollup.js compiler output options. Awesome, even though I own Kaleidoscope.

[http://entrproject.org/](http://entrproject.org/)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Amazon discloses breach of email addresses and names - <AUTHOR> Hello,
We're contacting you to let you know that our website inadvertently disclosed your name and email address due to a technical error. The issue has been fixed. This is not a result of anything you have done, and there is no need for you to change your password or take any other action.
Sincerely,
Customer Service
http://Amazon.com <comment><USER2> I received one of these, verbatim to the above. It passes SPF validation as originating from Amazom.

There is some discussion here: [https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/t/nice-we-re- contact...](https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/t/nice-we-re-contacting- you-to-let-you-know-that-our-website-inadvertently-disclosed-your-email- address-due-to-a-technical-error/429577/43)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you.</comment></comment>


OpenSSL Security Advisory - 26 Sep 2016 - <AUTHOR> https://www.openssl.org/news/secadv/20160926.txt <comment><USER2> I use LibreSSL and just want to thank OpenBSD/LibreSSL devs for their great work. It makes running TLS a lot less stressful for me, so thank you.

Also: thanks to Google for finding the bug, via honggfuzz.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thankfully the RCE vulnerability is only in OpenSSL 1.1, which is probably not commonly used yet.

Does the second issue imply that OpenSSL does not have any automated tests for the CRL functionality?

</comment><comment><USER4> I think unfortunately by now it's high time that we get a complete replacement written in a safer language and one that doesn't carry so much old baggage. And no, LibreSSL is no such thing.

<comment><USER5> There is a _lot_ of room for improvement in the current OpenSSL code base. Simple cleanups, for one. Code formatting. Removing duplicate code. Static analysis. Unit tests.

The OpenSSL maintainers seem to be doing something _other_ than all that. The historical defence for this was that they had minimal funding (which is no longer true), and that the funding they did have was for adding new features.

That's just not an acceptable excuse. And it never was an acceptable excuse.

Cleaning up code should be part of normal software development. Re-factoring code, adding unit tests, etc. Adding static analysis builds (clang is free, and Coverity is free for open source projects).

It's 2016. Why are some people still using software practices from 1992?

<comment><USER6> Has this been suggested to the OpenSSL devs? If so, what did they say? If not, adekok, perhaps you can do that. You are 100% correct here.

<comment><USER5> That's pretty much what the LibreSSL people have done. And no, they didn't get much response or buy-in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> [http://marc.info/?l=libressl&m=147490843900748&w=2](http://marc.info/?l=libressl&m=147490843900748&w=2)

        Just a quick note that LibreSSL is not impacted by either
        of the issues mentioned in the latest OpenSSL security
        advisory - both of the issues exist in code that was
        added to OpenSSL in the last release, which is not
        present in LibreSSL.

</comment><comment><USER8> TL;DR from the lead developer Rich Salz, on Twitter:

 _openssl 1.1.0a had a use-after-free bug in its fix. :( 1.0.2 had a crash in its fix. :( please update._

[https://twitter.com/RichSalz/status/780383148236541953](https://twitter.com/RichSalz/status/780383148236541953)

</comment><comment><USER9> "woops". Good they caught it fast. Interesting it was from fuzzing rather than direct inspection.</comment>


Pr0n on the Couch - <AUTHOR> http://damienkatz.net/2009/04/pr0n_on_the_couch.html

<comment><USER2> First common sense blog post I've read on this topic. Can we put this issue to bed, er... to rest... DAMMIT!</comment>


Apple: The World's Most Discreetly Feminine Brand? - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/24/apple-products-design-forbes-woman-time-service.html <comment><USER2> It would be really nice if the article started with the note "Bridget Brennan is CEO of Female Factor and author of the new book, "Why She Buys: The New Strategy for Reaching the World's Most Powerful Consumers" (Crown Business). " instead of putting it in the end.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's funny because one of his main talking is that Apple doesn't make remote controls.

But they do...</comment>


What happened to Mit spinoff solidenergy – solidenergysystems.com - <AUTHOR> If I recall correctly they were supposed to come out with a battery half the size of the current smartphone batteries in 2017. Haven't seen or heard of any device carrying their tech. <comment><USER2> It's been just over a year since they received funding, and it's still early 2017. Give it time; if this really comes to market I'm sure we will all hear about it.</comment>


What if making circuits was easy? - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/botfactory/squink-the-personal-electronic-circuit-factory

<comment> o0-0o This looks great, and I am wondering what the "ink" will be like. From your presentation, I can see that it's silver, or some compound of silver. I think the ink will be key to your profit here, and you should definitely patent the recipe you come up with.</comment>


(Better) Tabs with Round Out Borders - <AUTHOR> http://css-tricks.com/better-tabs-with-round-out-borders/ <comment><USER2> Props to the author showing a iterative development process instead of just a example and code dump.

</comment><comment><USER3> Those tabs are beautiful at the end.

A little off topic, but at the end where it says browser compatibility is "everything but IE" got me wondering. Does Microsoft's IE team care about their product at all?

I thought with IE9 being so standard-compliant and 6 finally dead, tiresome browser-compatibility fixes were a thing of the past. I'm sure Microsoft's IE team reads about how much their browser sucks, right? Why does IE continue to suck?

<comment><USER4> It looks just fine in IE9, rounded corners and everything. The only thing that's missing are the gradients the author adds at the end - and that's only because he picked and chose what vendor-specific CSS to use there.

EDIT: On the subject of vendor-specific extensions, it seems to me that a lot of new features of "the open web" such as WebGL, Native Client, and advanced CSS trickery all basically work best in Chrome, or maybe Firefox six months later (remember how long it took firefox to get text-overflow:elipsis?). These are all features that basically exist in a single browser at the moment. Here's some food for thought; we've had all of these in a single browser before, and that browser was IE6. ActiveX and a certificate system replaces Native Client and sandboxing, and it had it's own css filters for an awful lot of things just arriving in CSS3, as well as DirectX-accelerated transforms.

We've transitioned from having only one browser support the common features of the internet (IE6), though a brief period of openness, but it seems like we're heading down the single-browser path again. Just because Webkit is open source and the W3C publish a standard doesn't mean that everything is better this time - nobody thought IE would stagnate in its heyday.

<comment><USER5> _Just because Webkit is open source and the W3C publish a standard doesn't mean that everything is better this time - nobody thought IE would stagnate in its heyday._

Well it's better in one important way: the browser makers don't try to dictate behavior of other browsers. Instead of fighting, they put their own behavior in a namespace until they agree on an open standard. Then they can drop the prefixes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Whatever happened to web standards?

        background:      -o-linear-gradient(top, #ECECEC 50%, #D1D1D1 100%);
        background:     -ms-linear-gradient(top, #ECECEC 50%, #D1D1D1 100%);
        background:    -moz-linear-gradient(top, #ECECEC 50%, #D1D1D1 100%);
        background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #ECECEC 50%, #D1D1D1 100%);
        background: linear-gradient(top, #ECECEC 50%, #D1D1D1 100%);

Wasn't the whole point of web standards to move beyond bullshit like that?

<comment><USER7> Yes. But forward-consistency and early access are both valuable for site- makers, so pre-standardized features are prefixed in case they change when the standard comes out.

If you want to _use standards_ , you need to select what's available to you by your target audience, and ignore the non-standard-compliant cases. If you want to _do things_ , and keep as large a target audience as possible, you need to either hack them together with old tech or jump through hoops to do it with new tech. Especially given the web's rocky past, many developers would prefer to use the new stuff. And there are tools to help - Less or Scss, for instance, make those prefixes essentially free.

But that's just a fact of programming in general - you could write a web-app and get it on any computer with a modern browser. Or you could write it in Ruby, and get it on any computer with a Ruby interpreter, and include an installer / instructions for those that don't. Or you could write it in C, and get it on any computer with a C compiler, and you may have to write your own library code / preprocessor controls to handle strange architectures, and change things based on your target OS. Or you could write it in assembly, and have it run on almost anything, but have to handle multiple flavors and an endless variety of available memory, and input and output devices.

Or do any of the above, pick a subset of the devices that are technically capable of reading your code, and screw the rest. Porting Doom 3 to Commodore 64 probably isn't going to work, despite the code being written to the standard of whatever language it was written in (probably C, which I will assume for now), and compilers adhering to the same standard for targeting the C64. That you can't run Doom 3 on your C64 doesn't mean the standard is broken or useless.

\--

The nice thing about those prefixes is that, in general, it means you can use new features and know they'll work as you designed for _years_ to come. If a re-design every year or so is cheaper than vendor prefixes, then yes, they're a pain - wait until the standard comes out. If not, they're a time saver to get handy new features a couple years early, _and_ free switch-over to the standard when and where it's implemented.

<comment><USER6> I agree it's better than what we had before, but...

1\. Basically now we're stuck with +five lines to specify one thing. When can we switch to just one line, and drop the prefix versions? I doubt any time soon. We're only now dropping support for IE6.

2\. how useful is it to be able to build stuff that only works in some browsers? I get that it helps push stuff forward, but you get myriad posts on HN that are like "look at this sweet thing I built (only works on chrome)" or something similar. Good for you, you built something cool, but you might as well have done it as a native app because I can't run it without downloading a different browser.

Interoperability is one of the basic premises of the web.

<comment><USER7> Which is why many projects have moved beyond writing such things by hand, and use css-compilers. And interoperability is _never_ one of the premises of the _bleeding edge_ , which is generally what those myriad posts touch on (HTML5 audio, for example).

Many of the older CSS3 specs are now supported in modern browsers, so I'd say we're pretty close, really. Or now, if you only support the most recent version (which accounts for what, >50%?). A stupendously far cry from where we used to be not too long ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Like it. I finally feel we're at the stage now where I can start dropping things like this into pages without too much worrying about compatibility.

Many a year has gone by where I've seen cool things appear that I'd love to use but just couldn't write off ~ 70% of browsers. Those days are numbered, more or less, and it makes me unsad.

</comment><comment><USER9> wait what is this sorcery: "display: inline-block;" It's a new feature of CSS3 right?

edit: I feel so stupid not knowing about this even after years of CSSing. Apparently it's CSS2 but doesn't work well if you don't have IE8+

<comment><USER10> inline-block exists in IE6/7 it just works a bit differently. It doesn't apply to elements that are display:block by default. However, it works quite well on span and other inline elements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's interesting that the author uses :after to put the single pixel horizontal border at the bottom of the tab row. I'm no designer, but I'm sure I've done that part before just with normal border rules.

<comment><USER12> There are slight problems with doing this with borders. <li> bottom borders is shown ON TOP of <ul> bottom border, so you end up with two pixel border. You can slightly tweak margin on selected <li> only, but :after element seems easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you're following the steps, it's interesting to zoom in on your page to better see what's going on with the curves.

</comment><comment><USER14> Impressive results here. Reaching this kind of overlapped tab style is non- trivial even with plain images/sprites.

<comment><USER15> Not THAT non-trivial. I built overlapping tabs using images and JavaScript in 1997 - that wasn't more than a few hours' work (couldn't have been - I have the attention span of a door handle).

<http://www.wittenburg.co.uk/mobile>

Click "Handsets" on the top menu.

Select any phone on the left.

Tabs are shown on the right.

[Edit] Not saying joshuacc's CSS version is trivial. It's not. And it IS impressive!

<comment><AUTHOR> For the record, this isn't my work. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It does not work on IE7 and has squared tabs on IE 8. And JQuery is required too, it is not installed on all websites. This version works on any browser without framework: <http://www.xul.fr/javascript/tabs.php>

<comment><USER17> jQuery is NOT required. He is only using it in the demo to change the selected class on the menu items.

<comment><USER16> jQuery code is embedded in the demo I have downloaded, and the goal of the demo is to show how to use the tool. I have tried to remove this code and then tabs do not work.

<comment><USER18> All you need to do is change the className of the old selected li element to "" and the new selected li element to "selected". That doesn't require jQuery, but if you remove the code without replacing it with a non-jQuery alternative, of course it's not going to work. The tabs, though, don't depend on jQuery.

<comment><USER16> Of course, it is proven in the link above.

<comment><USER19> Nothing has been proven, the article in question is about how to STYLE the tabs to get the rounded corner design, not how they function as tabs. That is a secondary concern.

The use of jQuery was to provide the functionality so you can see it in action. If I felt the need I could easily recreate the tabs on a series of pages that do not require javascript at all.

The only reason this might need javascript involved is if the tabs are changing content on the page without loading a new page, such as swapping out divs in a container.

I believe you are confused about design versus function.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Exquisite graphic design, quality css and good explanation.

</comment><comment><USER21> These tabs are awkward in my browser. The way they overlap gives a physical sense that the tab over there was the one I was just in because it's sitting above the tab next to it.

... except it doesn't appear to be intentional, or in line with what I just visited. On the example page, click the last, then second, then third to last tabs. Even though you're in the second tab and were just on the third, the last tab appears to be resting on top.

It looks awkward to me. Sorry, that was a lot of criticism for a well written iterative CSS guide which I appreciate!

<comment><USER22> I was thrown off too -- until I realized that Chrome does tabs that way, and it's not confusing there at all. It's just that the post author overlapped them in the opposite direction that tabs typically are laid out: the rightmost tab in the CSS version is the highest, instead of the leftmost one like in Chrome / Sublime Text / other noticeably overlapping tabbed applications.

<comment><USER21> Chrome's always overlap in one direction though, it's at least consistent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Impressive, sir. Too bad no IE support. Basically useless in application without an IE-specific sheet. In which case, why do it in pure CSS at all?

<comment><USER24> Hardly useless, if it degrades gracefully. In this case, the fallback in IE 8 & 9 seems to be perfectly usable for me (I haven't tested older versions).</comment></comment>


Cisco Buys Jabber - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2008/09/19/cisco-buys-jabber/ <comment><USER2> It's interesting that they bought Jabber Inc. and not Process One.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hopefully this helps XMPP to get en mass and reach end users world-wide, not only russian geeks as it is now :-).

<http://www.google.com/trends?q=jabber></comment>


Samsung phone's camera has a "Beauty Setting" - <AUTHOR> http://www.samsung.com/uk/consumer/flagship/SM-C1010ZWABTU/tutorial/tutorial/beauty_face_correct_facial.html <comment><USER2> this should have been a real time interactive demo rather then a point and click sideshow.</comment>


What the f*** is the edge? - <AUTHOR> https://arcentry.com/blog/what-the-f-is-the-edge/ <comment><USER2> > _Cynics might of course argue that we have come full circle, from thick > client to butt back to thick client, but that would miss the point of what > "the edge" is all about: In a world of increasingly ubiquitous computing > power we are well advised to reflect on where our computation happens and > how we can make the most efficient use of the resources at our disposal._

Which is exactly why we the cynics say we've come full circle.

Also, while the cyclical nature of client/server design seems to be a thing, unfortunately underlying _ownership_ is not cyclical. For instance, a cycle or two ago, the "edge" computer meant software I _bought_ running on _my_ machine. This cycle, it means software I don't have any stake in running on machine I lease and have little control about.

This is the part of the trend that's worrying to me. Cycles of thin/thick clients are irrelevant. Disenfranchising end users is a problem.

<comment><USER3> In case anybody else is confused like I was: there is a plug-in for browsers that turns all mention of "cloud" to "butt". Parent apparently has this plugin installed, and thus the "to butt" part is "to cloud". (Users of said plugin will see me just saying butt a lot here :P )

<comment> daniel-alex Interestingly enough I didn't even notice it until reading your comment. Looks like I have a "butt" to "cloud" translator in my brain.

<comment><USER2> I know I have one, that's why I never notice when the extension is on (I have it installed in Chrome, but I spend half of the browsing time on Firefox these days).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We (Cloudflare) have largely stopped talking about the 'edge' for some of the reasons cited in the article.

1\. No one actually knows where it is or what it means.

2\. It conjures images of classical 'edge compute' use cases like the self driving cars in the article. Those use cases tend to be exceptionally specialized (or just silly).

3\. Edge implies a core or origin exists, and maybe it doesn't need to.

We would rather imagine a world where we embed the compute directly into the network, putting hundreds or thousands of points of presence within a few ms of everyone on earth. We imaging moving all the compute and storage there, not just some fraction which needs ultra speed. If it is easy to run code close to your users, and it's affordable, there's no reason everyone shouldn't run everything as close to the consumers of the Internet as possible.

<comment><USER5> A fully mesh P2P computer cloud would be magical. Everybody is the edge that way :)

<comment><USER6> We're building that right now: [https://holo.host](https://holo.host)

<comment><USER7> Following that link I learned about an ICO and then had some marketing content. Honestly I wanted to learn from the link "how" you were going to change things- maybe technical content?- instead I got this flashback when a bunch of years ago you would see these land pages of gurus selling you books about how they got rich online...

<comment><USER6> An overview is available in the Green Paper: [https://files.holo.host/2018/03/Holo-Green- Paper.pdf](https://files.holo.host/2018/03/Holo-Green-Paper.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Cynics might of course argue that we have come full circle, from thick > client to cloud back to thick client, but that would miss the point of what > "the edge" is all about ...

You don't have to be cynical -- merely to have either been in, or have read about, IT trends over the past few decades would suffice to understand that it's _all_ cyclical.

The _cynical_ observation is that fashionable management trends and/or the market's eagerness to engage in ill-considered change as a convenient substitute for thoughtful progress, manifesting as regular vacillation between a centralised and a distributed approach to compute & storage, 'keeps us all in jobs'.

<comment><USER9> It doesn't necessarily have to be due to an ill-decision; thick/thin client cycling can be seen as the obvious result of network/compute cost effectiveness ration swapping. When network is cheaper, thin clients make more sense; when compute is cheaper, then it makes more sense to have it local, and thus thick clients.

And due to diminishing returns + economies of the scale, as the market starts investing in one, the other side starts to make more sense..

<comment><USER8> You may be right, but I'm wary of the implication that 'the market' is rational.

Also, if the market leans more towards network or compute (I'm not sure that's a useful distinction, but I'll run with it for now) wouldn't the economies of scale necessarily continue to accentuate the initial trend, rather than induce an oscillating pattern?

<comment><USER10> Data likes to accrete, almost as if it has its own virtual gravity.

Cycles oscillate some, depending on compute speed and network latency.

But there isn't as much oscillation as people think. 80's/90's style non- networked personal computing was a rare exception to the usual rule of networked centralisation with smrt-ish terminal access.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> One time, I got a telemarketing call from someone selling satellite TV or something like that. I kept him on the line some time, asking all sorts of enthusiastic questions about his amazing service. I then proceeded to ask him how high up his satellites were, and if they could be giving God cancer. He (obviously) did not have a good answer. I then disappointedly told him that I was going to have to run his setup by my wife, as she made the religious decisions.

This seems like that, modulo Poe's law.

<comment><USER12> When did people on this site start using the word "modulo" for something other than the modulo operator in mathematics?

<comment><USER13> The weird thing is I feel "minus" makes more sense. Isn't "modulo" remainder? Whereas you're talking about the part that's left out, rather than the part that is remaining?

<comment><USER14> It's not just taking away 1 x though; modulo is "if x weren't a factor"

<comment><USER13> OH, so you're saying in a % b = c it refers to b rather than to c? That would make sense... I always just read it as "remainder" in which case it would refer to c...

<comment><USER15> I don't think speech is mathematical, rather the opposite if anything. In _a equivalent b modulo c_ the c is the _modality_ , the property or condition we are interested in. The use in English is different to math's, because _Natural languages are like mathematics modulo the rigidness_. A category theorist would say _isomorphic upto_.

Here're two quotes taken from wiktionary

> _Thus, the underlying structure which I would assign to Navajo will be > identical, modulo word order, to the one that we found to be projected in > all of the languages studied in chapter 3._ 1990, Margaret Speas, Phrase > Structure in Natural Language, p. 281

> _Moreover, in the role of consumer, each individual (modulo his location) > faces the same array of goods and services on sale to anyone who can pay the > purchase price[.]_ 2002, Richard Arneson, "Egalitarianism", in The Stanford > Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Mathematically, these expressions could be modeled in a vector space where "word order" or "location" are dimensions that are ignored. It's somewhat like saying: left and up are the same modulo rotation; [1 1 0] and [1 1 4] are the same modulo [x y lim(z->0)], if that makes any sense.

<comment><USER13> I had looked up "modulo" in a couple dictionaries and only seen the mathematical definition. I hadn't thought about it as being related to "modality", interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > "Edge Caching" it simply refers to the Amazon datacenter closest to whoever > requests the site

I can't speak for AWS, but for GCP there are many more Edge and CDN points of presence than there are datacenters:

[https://cloud.google.com/about/locations/](https://cloud.google.com/about/locations/) (flip to Network tab in map)

And in Google's case "Edge" simply means where you exit the public internet and get on to Google's own network:

[https://peering.google.com/#/infrastructure](https://peering.google.com/#/infrastructure)

Although there are also "edge nodes" (caches) located within ISPs outside the Google network.

Disclaimer: I work at GCP, but not on networking.

<comment><USER17> It's still a "datacenter" though, right? Just a smaller one. It's not a "region" i.e. there's no other services available other than cloudfront (and I guess lambda@edge).

Or do you mean they might not be owned by aws (or Google)?

<comment><USER18> Not really. Google literally just sends ISPs some servers stick into their racks with other networking equipment. These are very "scrappy" compared to what people think of as data centers, but if a room with some network cables, an AC, and a rack counts as a data center... then sure, they're datacenters ;)

[https://peering.google.com/#/options/google-global- cache](https://peering.google.com/#/options/google-global-cache)

> Once registered and qualified by Google, we will send you a simple agreement > for joining the GGC program. After you have electronically signed this > agreement, Google will ship you servers that you install in your facility > and attach to your network. Google will work with you to configure the > servers and bring them into service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > real-world transmission times between e.g. London and San Francisco end up > at around 150ms. That's [...] a catastrophe for self-driving cars needing to > make realtime decisions.

Why in the world would/should a car in London be relying on a cloud computer in SF to tell it how to make real-time decisions...?

<comment><USER19> I think the better question is why should a car be relying on a cloud computer at all for real-time decisions -- what would that car do when it's in a cellular dead zone?

<comment><USER20> There are edge cases where it is possible. My employer sells Automated Valet Parking [0] where the video cameras of the garage are used to steer the vehicle. Of course, this is a well controlled space where you can ensure connectivity and the car will drive slowly so you can ensure safety.

I don't believe safe real time and 5G cellular networks can be combined at reasonable scale. The latency is enough for some use cases, but reliability/connectivity/safety is not enough. So we still agree here.

[0] [https://www.bosch-mobility- solutions.com/en/highlights/autom...](https://www.bosch-mobility- solutions.com/en/highlights/automated-mobility/automated-valet-parking/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think OP is missing the point here. As he being the sales rep, the only valid answer would have been "Yes, it's on the edge.".

It is a question dedicated to find out if you yourself think the product is good enough or how well you think it positions itself with the competition. Maybe it's just me being stupid here, but I find it funny how the whole discussion here has turned into a technical debate, which the original customer's point IMHO clearly wasn't.

There is no edge. You define the edge by what you believe in.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here: When talking to an investor you are only a "sales rep" to some degree. You are the owner of a company looking to raise funding by selling a certain percentage of shares, so much is true - but the mindset is more one of finding the right partner.

Given a promising enough vision and execution there's no shortage of interested VCs and the challenge is in picking the right one for the long term. All VCs offer money, but many offer value beyond that. As the VC(s) you'll choose will hold a significant stake including board seats and voting rights you'll want someone with a deep enough understanding of your industry, technology, market, sales or operational model.

Even if we were talking about selling to a customer here I would argue that one's better off providing long-term value (and forfeiting a deal if one can't) than just catering for any buzzword-driven expectation and watch the whole edifice crumble a few months down the line

<comment><USER21> I totally agree with your points here. But just as few others have pointed out, it looks more like a "shiny object syndrome" or it could also be a bit of that the customer is not an expert of the software field and feels like he/she's gotta bring something to the table to sound credible.

Your blog post sent me far into memory lane. I still remember a case where I was a starting entrepreneur and I was selling a website remake. The customer asked me if our CMS's database was relational. He clearly did not even have a clue what that actually meant, but neither did I :) I knew it was "most probably totally irrelevant" to the whole case (just as you seemed to ponder), but my uncertainty showed. I was maybe under my 20s then, though I was very confident I could deliver. But I was no salesman, more of an enthusiast geek with a vision.

What he was basically asking me was "why should I pick your product instead of all the others? Is this person credible?". It caught me so off-guard, that I kind of froze back then and wasn't able to bring the conversation to a level where our product would be compared to the competitors. Focus on the good things etc. Maybe he did it just check, if I was actually aware of any competition!

I didn't get that contract. I still remember it as a lesson learned in many levels and your blog post somehow reminded me of that moment. Can't really say if they are comparable, but there you have it :)

ps. My first thought today could be more like "what is this person scared of the most in this situation, where does this kind of question stem from?". A great sales rep might ask that question directly back. Cheers!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > When e.g. AWS Cloudfront, Amazon's Content Delivery Network talks about > "Edge Caching" it simply refers to the Amazon datacenter closest to whoever > requests the site.

Kind of? If by "datacenter" they mean the things they said earlier that AWS had 18 of, then no, not really. There are many more Cloudfront points of presence that there are AWS regions (over 100 of the former). In practice unless someone lives very close to a proper AWS region (like I do here in DC), odds are there's a Cloudfront PoP much closer to them than a "datacenter" (i.e., AWS region).

<comment><USER23> It seems a bit nit-picky, but AWS has ~18 commercial _regions_ , but far more datacenters. It's availability zone that's a data center (more or less), not a region. So for each region you end up with 3 to 5 data centers or something like that.

<comment><USER24> Even a single AZ might consist of multiple datacenters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > This front-layer of computing power is also referred to as "fog computing" > or "dew computing".

The bit about self-driving cars talking to a server to make split-second decisions is laughable but this right here just makes you want to flip the table.

If you're requirements are so extreme that you need to be on "the edge" you can do that today, it's called client-side development.

<comment><USER26> People have been doing client-side development for millennia. That's ancient. Who wants boring offline technology that's locked down from communication with the cloud where hundreds - no, thousands of servers are using algorithms that are constantly improved with machine learning?!

I kid. Mostly. Most sane people would agree with you. However some people can't see the forest for the trees. Has "buzzword-driven development" become a phrase yet?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The anecdote at the start of the article seems to me to suggest the investor talked about "being at the edge of science" or technology - i.e. doing something disruptive and new.

But the rest of the article talks about the location of data and servers and it's relationship with the word "edge". Am I missing something? Why is the anecdote unrelated to the article?

<comment><AUTHOR> (Author here) sorry about the confusion, I can see where you are coming from. But yes, the investor was very much enquiring about whether it is on "the edge" in a cloud computing sense. Having said that, it's important to stress that many - in fact, most - of the VCs I've talked to were amongst the most impressive, accomplished, knowledgeable and intelligent people I ever had the pleasure to work with.

There is, however, a (growing?) number of VCs with a purely financial background that approach investment decisions by establishing a framework of future trends/ developments (Crypto, Blockchain, Edge, Sharing Economy, E-Mobility and so on) and then vet potential investments based to how well companies align with these trends as well as basic suitability criteria (founding team, execution, traction etc.)

This isn't a bad thing per se as it might add a less biased view to investment decisions than the one made by the tech-founder-funds-tech-founder echo chamber, but it can lead to the level of detachment with the fundamentals of what one's talking about displayed in this article.

<comment><USER27> Thank you for the clarification. "On the edge" seems so strange to me when talking about edge computing/caching but I suppose I'm not in that industry.

<comment><USER28> I work in cloud computing and also find it strange. At most, I have referred to CDN "edge nodes", but I would've never said "on the edge", but "on the edge node". In other contexts, I simply would've referred to "the closest datacenter".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Please fix the scrolling under mobile Safari, it has no momentum.

<comment><USER30> And chrome.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the hint, will do (seems to be iOS specific, hmm)

<comment><USER31> Please just remove anything that interferes with the scrolling at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> Should be fixed now (there's nothing trying to interfere with the scrolling, just an overflow setting to hide the hamburger menu that seemed to cause the laggy scroll on iOS. (Hopefully I didn't make it worse - redeploying while being Hackernews #1 is always a bit scary)

<comment><USER29> Much better now, ty!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Honestly anyone who invests on the basis on what layer of cloud computing is currently being used to solve the problem can't be doing too well.

</comment><comment><USER33> If you are willing to embrace the term 'cloud' \- as everyone here seems willing to do, including the Cloudflare (...) guy - then you have already admitted that you are happy with that type of garbage. 'Edge' seems trivial in comparison. If you really care about this bullshit then you should agree to avoid all these VC/buzzword/corporate/marketing bullshit terms.

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately, you need to live with those terms if you want money, because people _with_ money use them. I assume they don't even care if a given buzzword has any relation to reality whatsoever - all that matters is whether the market (read: other rich and wannabe-rich people) thinks that buzzword is hot or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> _but it is not enough for cases requiring sub-millisecond latency and incessant availability: Fields such as IoT metric processing_

Why would IoT metric processing be latency sensitive? Whether my thermostat processes the temperature in 3 milliseconds or 30 milliseconds seems immaterial.

<comment><AUTHOR> true for private IoT, but the industrial IoT is orders of magnitude bigger and comes with a host of use cases where machines operate at 100 to 1000 Hz cycles - and for stopping your 20.000 rpm milling machine or opening your pressure release valve 30 milliseconds makes a lot of difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This seems like an exercise in quickly ascertaining what kind of audience you have. If you are talking with someone who needs to feel like they are buying "the edge" or whatever, adjust your sales pitch. Also, if you start off with a buzzwordy pitch and realize you're speaking with an engineer, switch to a more technical approach.

</comment><comment><USER35> 5G networks take heavy bet on the future of edge computing.

5G's secret weapon against other wireless technologies is reliable ultra low latency (up to 1 ms, at a low failure rate). It's enough for network automation in factories and factory robotics.

For customer applications it would make a sense to but graphics processors that can do VR, AR, games and machine learning inference very close to customers. It's and more practical for mobile users cheaper to get computing power as service than carry it around.

</comment><comment><USER36> For the record according to this link, [https://aws.amazon.com/about- aws/global-infrastructure/](https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global- infrastructure/) AWS operates in 18 geographies (called) regions... These are not data centers. There are 55 availability zones (AZs) at AWS regions, and each AZ has at least 1 data center..12 more AZs at 4 more regions are also announced

<comment><USER37> Also, there are over 100 AWS CloudFront POPS:

[https://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/details/#infrastructure](https://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/details/#infrastructure)

And you can do compute in CloudFront POPS with Lambda@Edge:

[https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/lambda- edge.htm...](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/lambda-edge.html)

<comment><USER38> Only node.js available in Lambda@Edge

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> So annoying when people try to be fancy and break the default scrolling behavior. That's one way to get me to not read your blog.

<comment><USER40> The author has commented and it seems this is unintentional.

<comment><USER41> Thanks :-) - should be fixed now.

<comment><USER39> Glorious!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> While this is an interesting discussion, it doesn't explicitly make the point that there's typically a tradeoff between network latency and processing speed. Even if I'm using some server with 500 msec network rtt, I come out ahead if doing whatever locally would take over 500 msec longer.

</comment><comment><USER43> This is a strange use of the word "edge". Especially because, as others here have noted, it doesn't include a clear indication of the "core", aside from maybe large datacenters.

The older usages of "edge" are from the networking world, where infrastructure and technologies have a relatively sharp distinction between "core/backbone/trunk networking" (large trunk lines, intercontinental fiber links, etc.) and "edge networking" (last-mile telco infrastructure, routers handling one building or campus of a company, etc)

From this networking perspective, _both_ the end-users local device _and_ the centrally-hosted server are at the edge, though AWS will have more reliable and lower-latency connections to the internet core than your cell phone.

</comment><comment><USER44> I think for most cases, "on the edge" means some devices on the sites of those IOT sensors/small collection machine installed. In compare to "on the cloud" which means on the server hosted by Amazon/Azure etc.

</comment><comment><USER45> I presume that nobody sane is sending critical self driving car decisions to the cloud.

<comment><USER5> It was only used as an example of something you CANNOT do with such high latency. It was not implying some company out there is actually using a high latency server for real time processing

<comment><USER46> It's a pretty bad example of that, though. There are enormous problems involved in the idea of remote piloting a car, but a 150ms feedback loop is no big deal. It's slightly better than a human.

Especially if you look at the latency of one-server-per-continent, which is still extremely far from "edge": you get something like 50ms or better. That's easily good enough to control anything a human could control by hand.

<comment><USER47> Pretty sure there are systems where one would struggle to regulate with 20Hz loop that humans can do. At least with easy methods like linearized PID. For example an inverted pendulum

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I deeply hope it's a buzzword prank so that non-tech people and managers will start demanding "edgy software" and "edgy computing" and looking to hire "rockstar edgelord".

<comment><USER49> At the very least one hopes that managers will start googling for "edging videos".

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> The edge, as used most often in my experience, is the entry point that connects the public and private internet. It rarely has anything to do with location (in almost all cases it's implied the edge is regionalized to be the closest data center to the target).

For AWS: a Lambda at the edge, for example, may be a Lambda behind an API Gateway that acts as the public entrypoint into infrastructure behind a VPC. That Lambda is at the edge.

<comment><USER51> On AWS that's a somewhat confusing way to put it since there is Lambda@Edge, which allows you to run Lambdas to handle/manipulate CloudFront CDN requests at their edge locations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I tried to search "ETSI MEC" in hackers news and got no results.

[https://portal.etsi.org/Portals/0/TBpages/MEC/Docs/Mobile- ed...](https://portal.etsi.org/Portals/0/TBpages/MEC/Docs/Mobile- edge_Computing_-_Introductory_Technical_White_Paper_V1%2018-09-14.pdf)

It is one of the definitions of edge computing, any comments?

</comment><comment><USER53> For all the effort we've put into moving spreadsheets and financial data to the cloud, there's just no replacing the immediate feedback of a local Excel app when doing What-If-Analysis, Goal Seeking... or a dozen other financial tasks.

Keeping "the edge" in sync with a centralized system-of-record via intelligent Excel add-ins is beginning to look like our big bet for 2019 (and beyond?)

</comment><comment><USER54> A gem on this topic: "On the Design of Display Processors" (The Wheel of Reincarnation) [http://cva.stanford.edu/classes/cs99s/papers/myer- sutherland...](http://cva.stanford.edu/classes/cs99s/papers/myer-sutherland- design-of-display-processors.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER55> Does anyone know what visualization tool the author used to create the AWS architecture diagram? It looks really cool.

<comment><USER56> [https://arcentry.com/](https://arcentry.com/)

<comment><USER57> What's kinda mind blowing is that this is an actual business. I can't imagine why someone would need this specifically for their cloud presentations. Like isn't visio enough for everything?

<comment><USER58> Wow! So the original story is written on the blog of a company that is creating Chart of clouds architectures (and probably being on the edge)? I'm amazed by how niche that business is!

also very nice plug to put your diagrams into the story

<comment><USER57> Right, I didn't even make the connection until the OP asked the question here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_edge_technology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_edge_technology)

Not sure why everyone assumes the question was regarding networking.

</comment><comment><USER60> Why the hell would an investor care about some technical performance nuance that could easily be implemented via setting up some Cloudfront distributions?

Did she ask about your cache headers as well?

</comment><comment><USER61> Is it really a self-driving car if it needs a network connection?

</comment><comment><USER62> An article about the edge and no mention of Akamai. Last I heard even Amazon Prime Video was being streamed on Akamai, not on CloudFront.

</comment><comment><USER63> Did the terminology come from "edge routers"? Those are simply the last router before the device which uses the network.

</comment><comment><USER64> Wouldn't a PHP app with app servers in locations in many POI then connected to azure cosmosdb essentially feel like and act like"the edge" to a user.

Nuxtjs and nextjs are "the edge" apps. But the server being centrally located especially for global ecommerce needs to go the way of the dodo.

Shopify being one. Some plus clients are near $800,000+ a year. Yet still no database or app servers outside the US.

</comment><comment><USER65> Would be interested in how the talk with his investor continued...

</comment><comment><USER66> guitar player from U2

<comment><USER67> Came here for this. Leaving satisfied.

Also, I can appreciate how some might feel like we are in a "fat client" world again and in some cases I am sure we are - it will depend on who is wielding the hammer as to whether it is used "properly" or the "most efficiently". I love how the modern cloud allows us to deploy computational power to the source of the data - if we so choose/need to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> FWIW, the Edge is a vehicle made by F∗∗∗.

<comment><USER69> Needs more edge-lord.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> I too enjoy thick butts.

</comment><comment><USER69> Investor makes business decisions based on marketing fluff, more at 11.</comment>


Using Chez Scheme as a Shell - <AUTHOR> https://forum.hunterpraska.com/b/blog/5 <comment><USER2> I could see taking this approach if the outer-most pair of parentheses was implicit. Could be this is how it's already done? I've never tried a Scheme shell.

<comment><AUTHOR> A very similar idea is the Wisp[1] mode in Guile.

1\. [https://www.draketo.de/proj/wisp/](https://www.draketo.de/proj/wisp/)

<comment><USER2> Interesting! I've been using F# lately, which perhaps shows the limits of the idea. I find myself wishing all of the expressions were parenthesized. Which surprises me a bit because my day-to-day language is Python and I'm entirely comfortable with significant whitespace in a procedural context.</comment></comment></comment>


We won a CES robotics innovation award, then they took it back - <AUTHOR> https://loradicarlo.com/pages/cesgenderbias <comment><USER2> As impressive as this toy sounds, I don't see how it is related to robotics. The comparison between a vibrator and a full sex robot does not make sense to me; a sex bot needs to articulate joints and show human expressions, a vibrator needs to make some ver slight movements in very specific places.

I don't blame the author for being upset about this because I can't see a reason to retract the submission to the contest. I do, however, feel like these kinds of sex toys are only minimally related to robotics, so I think they shouldn't have been able to submit their device in the first place. That's another fault on the end of CES. As sibling comments note, there's been vibrators on the robotics section before, but it might be that they slipped through the submission process as well and, to prevent controversy, let through unscathed. Now that more of these submissions come through the board seems to have decided that enough is enough and actually speak out against these just-if-not-nearly robotic devices.

Their defence that the product has been designed with the help of roboticists is very strange. If me and a few aerospace engineers build a fence that fence does not qualify as a space craft, no matter how many heat shield we stick to the side of it.

Spending half the page blabbering about empowerment of women and LBQTI+ only detracts from their argument. Their baseless claim of mysoginy and homophobia distracts from their reasons for why they should be included in the first place and should not have been included in this response. It makes the author of the piece look very unprofessional and desperate for help from some of those action groups that take to the streets the moment they see the word "discrimination".

<comment><USER3> It does match the definition of a robot as based on this dictionary's second definition: [https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/robot](https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/robot)

There was also likely a long process for awards, its a pretty scumbag move to suddenly just not give the award/honor after announcing it, I can imagine my anger too if someone was going to give me an award and then not. CES is in the wrong here, they've been quite unprofessional.

The lady does sound a bit too dramatic but I imagine she is pissed, that's all.

<comment><USER4> When the reason for rejection is "obscenity" and they are letting exhibits play porn in the exhibit hall, I'd be pissed too.

<comment><USER5> That wasn't the reason though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm trying to link the accusation of gender bias and LGBT rights with the act of conceding the Innovation Award. Looks like their reason is that "it does not fall under Robotics category" which the article debates well. But, what actions and indications lead to gender bias?

If I am a woman and I get rejected from a job, I don't immediately start accusing the interviewer of gender bias. It hurts the cause for real issues when the noise in the social media is due to all kinds of baseless accusations.

<comment><USER7> I guess the argument is that if the only difference between two "robots" is the gender of their intended audience, and one gets banned, then that's prejudice.

Along the same lines as, if the only difference between two people doing the same job is their gender, and one gets paid more, then that's prejudice.

They're not wrong.

Of course, CES could argue that it's bad timing - that the new product came out just as CES started cleaning up. Maybe these male-oriented developments will be similarly disallowed. We'll have to wait and see. Still, terrible optics for CES and a bad decision all round.

<comment><USER8> Their vibrator got banned from competing for an award. It did NOT get banned from being at CES.

The male-focused sex products did not even compete for the awards as far as I can tell, or at least did not get any of the awards.

<comment><USER9> >and subsequently that we would not be allowed to showcase Osé, or even exhibit at CES 2019.

It did, which means that there is a bias, given that other sex-themed tech was not similarly banned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For those who didn't read the article... The author is claiming that their is a partial lewdness order among products so that normal products <= robotic vibrator <= vr porn. Therefore, if the lewdness threshold doesn't ban vr porn it cannot ban robotic vibrators either. But since robotic vibrators are banned and not vr porn, discrimination must be at play.

<comment><USER5> "Robotic" vibrators are not banned. OhMiBod (woman founder, too) has had them on display for years, and have a booth this year. Apparently it adjusts intensity based on your heartbeat from your apple watch now!

Also, a smart vibrator from last year, also by a woman founder:

[https://sextechguide.com/news/mysteryvibe-crescendo-app- upda...](https://sextechguide.com/news/mysteryvibe-crescendo-app-update/)

The lewdness thing is inconsistent but clearly has nothing whatsoever to do with gender bias or sexism.

<comment><USER11> OhMiBod's categorization as a personal massager is probably the determining factor- it provides the organizers enough plausible deniability to have it displayed on the main floor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If they wanted to avoid obscenity, they should have taken down all the toys and any sexist entertainment out there.

It just doesn't seem fair to this curly looking innovative toy.

<comment><USER13> > any sexist entertainment out there

Indeed. Booth babes, 'fitness' models, etc are blatant _wink wink nudge nudge_ "this isn't eye candy specifically to lure in male reporters and buyers, they're here to welcome you to our product booth and nothing else, honest".

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why are they playing the gender bias card here? It's odd to take it back, but this clearly has nothing to do with gender. What a silly ploy for even more attention.

<comment><USER14> According to the article, they aren't allowed to exhibit their sex toy for women at CES, while a sex doll for men and VR porn targeted at men are on display.

There may be other explanations, but it does look like a bit of a double standard.

<comment><USER5> The previous sex toy that won an award was for women, from OhMiBod, founded by a woman. This is just a weak attempt to create controversy. It has nothing to do with them being women and that's a silly first assumption.

If you go to the OhMiBod website, they have a big ad up boasting of their CES 2019 presence, including their all-female lineup of vibrators.

 _"The company's experience contrasts starkly with the way CTA has treated sex toy company OhMiBod. Based in New Hampshire, the company has a variety of vibrators on display. They launched more than a decade ago and first appeared at CES in 2011 with a vibrator that synced to music on an iPod.

They've been at the show ever since, and have received nothing but support from CTA, said co-founder Suki Dunham."_

Also, there is nothing gender-specific about VR porn.

The fact that they were notified by CES 2 months ago and only launched a cheap smear campaign now is also telling.

And another year, a product by B.sensory, another smart vibrator, also won an award. Also a female founder.

But yeah, clearly they hate companies run by women and products for women.

Face it, you are getting played by a PR op here. Startups will do anything for coverage, and this is a pretty low brow tactic. Sadly, it worked very well.

It's unfortunate because it really waters down actual incidents of sexism, and people are getting desensitized to claims that any adversity someone faces is because everyone else is a racist or sexist. That's counterproductive to the cause.

<comment><USER15> >The previous sex toy that won an award was for women, from OhMiBod, founded by a woman

So...this completely undermines CES's revised story (that they can't give the Lora DiCarlo toy an award because there's no category for sex toys).

The fact that CES has given two separate reasons for this decision, neither of which makes sense, isn't exactly making them look good.

<comment><USER5> Who cares. They should write an article about their confusing rules then (it would not be the first, this comes up every year).

But don't cry sexism when there are female "sexual health" devices by female founders on display and winning awards.

Maybe they are trying to change their image, and this device couldn't satisfy another category. Maybe they decided it wasn't novel enough in the areas that matter, and it's just a better vibrator.

VR Porn is in the VR category, not an adult category, for example. And VR porn for women (whatever that means) is allowed too. Even if the studio has a mostly woman engineering team!

There is already a conference for adult toys at the same time. CES doesn't want to be that.

<comment><USER15> That's like saying "don't complain about sexism in tech when there are female programmers". The fact that CES doesn't operate a 100% efficient program of sexist discrimination doesn't show that Lora DiCarlo didn't experience sexist discrimination.

<comment><USER5> No, it's not. A simple examination of the circumstances demonstrates that sexism is the least likely explanation here. There is nothing to suggest that may have been the case, and the weak reasoning they do provide is demonstrably false.

<comment><USER15> Sexism isn't "the explanation", it's the background structure that makes it easier for stuff like this to happen. Trying to isolate sexism as a discrete causal component would be like trying to isolate the causal role of capitalism, or American culture. If your landlord evicts you for not paying the rent, they're probably not thinking "I must follow the principles of capitalism" while they're doing it. But it's still something that happens in the context of a particular economic structure.

<comment><USER5> This logic just doesn't make any sense. The relationship between charging for a rental and capitalism is obvious. Nothing that transpired even hints that sexism could have played a role, conscious or otherwise, and the data that we do have suggests the opposite. Why are you digging your heels in and insisting that there must be a bias component involved in this decision?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A French sex toy for women (Little Bird by B. Sensory) already won a CES innovation award in 2016. I can't remember if it was in the robotics category or not.

We are already reading the arguments of one side here, I wonder what the actual justification for the rejection was.

<comment><USER11> The Fortune article has more context- [http://fortune.com/2019/01/09/the-ose- toy-ces2019/](http://fortune.com/2019/01/09/the-ose-toy-ces2019/)

Considering CES responded two months ago, why publish this response now? Seems more of a strategic PR play in the news cycle IMO. I'm 100% for the equality/equity movement but this seems to be an attempt at co-oping it for PR in order to boost a bottom line, at the expense of providing ammo to those who wish to discredit the movement entirely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Maybe they should have submitted their product to the appropriate catagoey -- the one with all the other sex toys.

</comment><comment><USER18> Might wanna put an NSFW tag on this...

</comment><comment><USER19> "We also believe that society needs to drop the taboo around sex and sexuality - it's a part of life and health that absolutely should be part of mainstream discourse."

It's 2019 and an overwhelming number of social discourse is solely about sex and sexuality. A lot of people literally care about sex health more than any other health and it is, by many, believed to have negative effect on many people's mental health as well.

<comment><USER20> That doesn't justify a double standard.

<comment><USER19> But making such opening statements questions their integrity

<comment><USER20> Their integrity is irrelevant when you have the facts and can judge the behavior of CES for yourself.

<comment><USER19> But while examining this article, it should make people question everything that's implied

<comment><USER20> I don't see anything implied; it's all quite explicitly stated.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Visualizing the IBM Watson API - <AUTHOR> http://ardoq.com/visualizing-swagger-api-documentation/

<comment><USER2> Cool visualization! I especially like the way you could split the views

</comment><comment><USER3> This is just perfect!

</comment><comment><USER4> Awsome

</comment><comment><USER5> watson approves!</comment>


The mysterious Cold War case of unidentified aircraft descending on Loring AFB - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/35674/the-bizarre-mystery-of-unexplained-aerial-incursions-over-loring-air-force-base <comment><USER2> For the interested, no-nonsense types coming by this thread, I want to point to Harley D. Rutledge's[0] "Project Identification: The first Scientific Study of UFO Phenomena"[1][2].

He was a Ph.D. in solid state physics at the University of Missouri (at the same time as this Loring AFB story, it seems). Hearing about the nonsense of a UFO fad, he decided he'd go into the field and explain this phenomenon. He couldn't, but got a grant from a newspaper so he could spend time on this and the result was a book (Project Identification) which is pretty much a very long physics report.

He never concluded they were "spacemen" or some such, he simply observed and reported, and only used his own observations. Despite being dry, it is a very interesting read - a downright page-turner for me.

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

[1]: [https://www.amazon.com/Project-Identification-First- Scientif...](https://www.amazon.com/Project-Identification-First-Scientific- Phenomena/dp/0137307055)

[2]: [https://www.reddit.com/r/UAP/comments/d5gtcs/project_identif...](https://www.reddit.com/r/UAP/comments/d5gtcs/project_identification_a_must_read/) (contains link with pdf)

<comment><USER3> There have been plenty of credible scientists rising alarms over the years, none more tragic and important than James McDonald:

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

<comment><USER4> Powerful read of his life story. A man of great conviction, who only sought the truth. he would be ridiculed in our time too

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There was similar incident in UK called Rendlesham Forest incident.

Later, it was revealed, that it may actually been an SAS prank to USAF military personel residing on site. See [https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6539849/Has- mystery...](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6539849/Has-mystery- Britains-Roswell-finally-solved.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> Fascinating. More examples of large organizations encountering unknown and non-reproducible phenomena.

Like everybody else, I have no idea what this is. I have, however, consumed scads of stories about military organizations encountering things they can't deal with. Some of these are quite prosaic for their situation, such as UN forces figuring out that the Chinese were entering the Koran War.

I _think_ I have enough of these examples to reach a tentative conclusion: for many organizations, the _information_ that they've had incursions and are stumped is extremely important. If there's a known weakness, other competing powers might take advantage of it. What actually happened is besides the point. The mission is to control information, access to information, and the larger narrative.

You layer on half-remembered (and perhaps exaggerated) stories from fifty years ago and you get articles like this. My best guess is that this is very similar to what happened to the US Navy recently, only in this case the military has managed to confuse the issue enough that investigators will be debating details for decades to come.

Reality is not required to conform to our standards of scientific proof. If we can't observe or manipulate something, there's no way for us to scientifically reason about it. That's tough for a lot of folks to deal with.

<comment><USER7> I know from my own experience that even with normal news stories, most miss the point at some level because the journalists have incomplete information or cherry pick to reach a desired conclusion.

In these scenarios with the military, you're guaranteed that anyone who knows what is going on isn't talking. Especially on a SAC base. And it's highly probable that anyone who is talking has no clue or is delivering BS information.

Just after this time period, there were a number of UFO sightings in the northeast, especially around Plattsburgh AFB, Rome AFB and Fort Drum. The UFO aspect was widely reported, and later the "sightings" were attributed to flight testing of terrain comparison navigation systems for cruise missiles. I'd look more at that type of explanation than anything else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > The men in the crew decided not to report what they had seen, because they > had entered a restricted area and could have been arrested for the > violation.

Some classic conspiracy theory quotes: "we met with alien life for the first time, but did not report for fear of disciplinary action".

Also, what are the real odds that the first guy would've been ordered to _not_ shoot a helicopter snooping on nuclear arsenal for three nights in a row? I imagine you'd get shot down immediately if you as much as tried to enter the vicinity of a military zone.

<comment><USER9> Yeah the lack of a shoot-down makes this already unbelievable story even less likely. A helicopter hovering 150 feet above a stockpile of nuclear weapons? Please. This place would have had a 10 mile restricted airspace around it with a no-questions-asked shoot-down policy.

I want to believe just like anyone else, but I'm not willing to ignore my gut instincts to get there. I think this entire thing is a perfect storm of group thought, suggestion and paranoia.

<comment><USER10> A plausible explanation could be that the chain of command already knew about these and they were scared to start a fight. Would you start a fight with someone who had a gun and you only had a rock?

<comment><USER11> A more plausible explanation is that they were testing the security of a base; the higher ups were fully aware of what the "mystery helicopter" was, because they sent it in to gauge the base's response.

<comment><USER12> I was wondering that exact thing, especially after the command to not shoot it down unless it attempted to land. Seems to me that if I had a facility this sensitive, I'd want to see how the people running it reacted to someone—especially several skilled someones—attempting to break in.

I'll admit I lean towards the skeptical end as far as UFOs having an extraterrestrial origin, although I'd say anything that doesn't violate the laws of physics is technically possible. I can't explain the accounts of aircraft maneuvering in ways that seem impossible for a physical aircraft to do, but one of the more interesting explanations I've heard is that, at least as far as the ones observed over Groom Lake, they might not have been physical aircraft at all:

[https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other- strang...](https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strange- places/looking-at-the-bob-lazar-story-from-the-perspective-of-2018/)

<comment><USER13> A big thing to consider, especially with aircraft, is that your brain is bad at judging distances and speeds. What may look like a crazy maneuver may be a sane one if you understood the distances and angles involved. It isn't like we're hearing stories about people flying within 200 feet of a craft, waving at aliens, and then they just turn 90 degrees at mach 2.

As fo Groom Lake, it would make a lot of sense for high performance unmanned vehicles to be trained out there. You could also confuse a small aircraft close up for a large air craft being far away (this is actually quite common and applies outside of UFOs). I wouldn't be surprised if they had drones all the way from the size of your hand to the size of a F16. That's the kind of things those people work on out there. It isn't like we're talking about a technology that is extremely advanced, just something that's 20 years ahead of the commercial space (which we saw that stuff like laptops were invented 20 years before it became a public item. Same with many inventions. Moving from proof of concept to viable mass product takes time). I'm not sure why people think it is a far reach for a secret facility that works on advanced aircraft to produce aircraft (manned and unmanned) that can do things that no aircraft today could possibly do. Really, if they aren't accomplishing those feats then where the fuck is my taxpayer money going?

<comment><USER14> There are indeed reports of exactly that, and some of them from professional aerial observers like pilots, reporting on objects in the sky performing what are to us physically impossible maneuvers of sharp turns at supersonic speeds, or accelerations from full stop to hypersonic in absurdly quick times. The 2004 Air Force encounters alone were absolutely bizarre:

[https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/tic-tac-ufo- video-q-...](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/tic-tac-ufo-video-q-and- a-with-navy-pilot-chad-underwood.html)

a military report of the same incident: [https://media.lasvegasnow.com/nxsglobal/lasvegasnow/document...](https://media.lasvegasnow.com/nxsglobal/lasvegasnow/document_dev/2018/05/18/TIC%20TAC%20UFO%20EXECUTIVE%20REPORT_1526682843046_42960218_ver1.0.pdf)

<comment><USER15> Save yourself time and watch the Mick West debunking videos... [https://youtu.be/Q7jcBGLIpus](https://youtu.be/Q7jcBGLIpus)

<comment><USER14> Oh please. His conclusions are awful and especially his conclusion on the 2004 video. I actually emailed the guy to clarify a few points just to see if i'd misunderstood something he'd said and no, as per our email exchange, he essentially bases his entire debunk on the video itself while totally ignoring the wealth of eyewitness accounts from all the days prior to it being recorded.

With that, he arrives at the conclusion that this was a plane (in the 2004 video), despite the pilots and radar operators involved emphatically stating very, very different observations about what they saw during the 2 weeks or so of these events.

Rational, analytical debunking is good, so long as it forms reasonable and grounded conclusions. In this case though, Mick West essentially seems to fall into the trap of: I'm a debunker, so I have to debunk, no matter the contortions and deliberate disregards involved.

It's unfortunate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The track of this thing coming over nightly from Canada was so well known to the locals that they'd sit out and wait for it - [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32608477-charlie-red- sta...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32608477-charlie-red-star)

<comment><USER17> I know someone who lives just south of the border in Maine. They have told me many times over the years that they see unusual lights sometimes for numerous nights in a row.

I have a few pictures they've taken over the years but honestly it is hard to say what anything in them could be. Not enough magnification in the camera, focusing problems, color saturation, etc. I can confirm that they fit the description of the lights reported in the Loring descriptions.

You can grab the Loring qriteup from the site listed in a post here but you have to navigate through their history page and then almost to the bottom of the historical events they documented. It is a pdf of the events and the investigations.

[Loring AFB - Reading Room - pdf of UFO Event near bottom of list]([http://www.loringremembers.com/park/multimedia/reading- room](http://www.loringremembers.com/park/multimedia/reading-room))

After reading this story I decided to see where this Loring SAC base was located. It turns out that the lights this person has observed are close to the old base (tens of miles). I have confirmed that their appearance is not explained by the rise of planets in the evening, stars, etc since I know within a few meters where they were taken and have located ground features visible in the photos on a map.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you see something, take video. With reference points in the video if at all possible. Get others nearby to take video. Don't bunch up; get some different points of view. Upload the videos to YouTube. Somebody will crunch on that and get 3D positions. Few optical illusions hold up from multiple viewpoints.

</comment><comment><USER19> These days this type of report would seem to be classified under the phenomenon of ball lightning, no? [1]

It seems irresponsible for the article to not even mention it. On the other hand, I suppose that would puncture the fun that it would be actual extraterrestrial spaceships or something...

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

<comment><USER20> I never heard of ball lightning masquerading as a Huey.

<comment><USER19> The article starts off with a report of what sounds like an actual helicopter, but then the bulk of the article is about reports of lights moving around and changing direction far faster than a helicopter could.

The author seems to be deliberately confusing the two for the reader. But obviously an article about a couple of rogue helicopter visits wouldn't be worth reading about.

<comment><USER12> Funny you mention that. In an earlier comment, I shared a link to the website of Tom Mahood, an engineer/Area-51 observer. Mahood had a theory that the lights seen over Area 51—moving in ways no known craft could maneuver—were, essentially, artificial ball lightning.

I don't think my scientific credentials are sufficient to critique this idea, especially in regards to what happened here. As far as a lot of those other reports describing supernaturally fast and maneuverable craft, however, the idea that this is a non-physical object of some sort sounds plausible to me in a way that theories about extraterrestrial technology generally don't.

[https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other- strang...](https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strange- places/looking-at-the-bob-lazar-story-from-the-perspective-of-2018/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Happening in 1975 makes it about the only case I've heard of that I wouldn't immediately suspect CIA involuntary drugging, though I wouldn't rule out some military intelligence agency research.

<comment><USER22> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor) says 1968–1989, but it does seem a little early.

Condor, the musical: [https://imgur.com/a/3b65X](https://imgur.com/a/3b65X)

<comment><USER23> Truly a pearl of dark and cynic humor, right up my alley! Skrreeee.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The article refers to loringremembers.com which shows a domainparking website. But loringremembers.com/home shows more info.

<comment><USER25> [https://sites.google.com/site/loringremembers/](https://sites.google.com/site/loringremembers/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Human memory is not very trustworthy. 45 year old human memories even less so.

</comment><comment><USER27> Was the second, more distant object (a combat chopper?), shooting a prototype particle accelerator to mess up with the base and test their readiness?

</comment><comment><USER28> .....there was no alien. The flash of light you saw in the sky was not a UFO. Swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus.....

</comment><comment><USER29> Anti gravity tech.</comment>


Exit interview: reddit's Alexis Ohanian - <AUTHOR> http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2849-exit-interview-reddits-alexis-ohanian <comment><USER2> I think it's good of 37signals to interview someone who had a happy experience NOT following their "run a self-sustaining revenue-based business forever" mantra.</comment>


Show HN: Better team wikis with slack integration and chrome extension - <AUTHOR> https://www.answerbox.co/ <comment><USER2> This looks promising. As someone who's struggled getting something like this set up for various teams in the past, I can say that we never found anything we LOVED ... if we were lucky, a mashup that worked good enough.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice XD</comment>


Proposal: Afrikan Countries That Shutdown Internet Should Be Denied IP Addresses - tefo-mohapi https://www.iafrikan.com/2017/04/14/proposal-submitted-to-afrinic-suggests-afrikan-governments-that-shutdown-the-internet-should-be-denied-ip-addresses-2/ <comment><AUTHOR> Can I ask - why is it you always spell it as "AfriKan" in all your submissions? Is there a cultural awareness I am lacking?</comment>


Nobody Goes to Art School to Make Money, so Fuck Off. - <AUTHOR> http://medium.com/@omershapira/nobody-goes-to-art-school-to-make-money-so-fuck-off-48fee12e24c2

<comment><USER2> Quite a few people go to art school to make money, and these people are generally happy to have investors talk to them. Investors will continue to target these sort of events for as along as this continues to be the case.</comment>


Ask HN: How's the Denver, Coloraldo tech startup scene? - <AUTHOR> I recently graduated and my employer is allowing us to work remotely.  I want to meet other techies and hopefully meet a potential co-founder. I was considering San Francisco, but since there's a pandemic, SF is less attractive and the housing costs don't seem worth it. I'm considering Denver now cause I can save a lot more and get a decent apartment, but I'm unsure what to expect with startup scene. <comment><USER2> Look into Boulder, Colorado. That is where the startup scene is in Colorado.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm looking into it and it does look pretty good. However, it seems like the housing costs are less in Denver and have newer residential buildings. Which neighborhoods in Boulder would you suggest living in?

<comment><USER3> If you like the SF / West coast progressive vibes, Boulder will be better. Denver is bigger with more diversity and things to do. It's super easy to meet people because many are new and looking for friends. Definitely much cheaper than Boulder. Housing / rent should be going down, lots of new buildings going up.

I'm leaving CO because the air quality is so bad out here, especially in Denver. Sixth worst last time I looked.

Denver has a vibrant tech scene like Boulder and you will find they only ask for normal work hours. Work life balance is a big part of the Denver culture. People love the outdoors activities, sporting events, and drinking. This is a heavy drinking / drugging town (another reason to leave)

If Denver sounds like your preference, I can tell you more about the neighborhoods and put you in touch with an amazing apartment search company. Literally the best experience I had looking for a new flat, they did everything, scheduling viewings, Uber you around, buy lunch.

<comment><USER3> Salaries are also good, and I saw a report which put Denver at #2 behind Austin for how far paychecks go.

Austin is another great consideration. They don't have state income tax either.

<comment><AUTHOR> I appreciate the offer, thanks for the great response :)

I actually ended up choosing Seattle, it seems like more my vibes (being less laid back for one), I already got a college buddy there, the housing prices are similar, and it's more walkable (don't need a car!).

I'll be reevaluating after a year and maybe hop down to Denver (Seems like it would be great place to combat the 'Seattle freeze' if that's really a thing)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Boulder and Denver are close enough that you can really benefit from both. There aren't as many startups there as SF, but the people seem to be more interested in building relationships than just pushing their own app.</comment>