/dev/random – a new approach - <AUTHOR> http://lwn.net/Articles/684568/ <comment><USER2> This proposed design comprehensively ratifies Linux's nonsensical legacy random/urandom division; for instance, it maintains a "512 bit emergency entropy level" in case urandom becomes "stressed". It appears to be motivated principally by concerns about the quality of entropy being fed continually into the LRNG --- which is a nonproblem.

This is silly.

There are three problems a kernel CSPRNG needs to address:

1\. It needs to seed itself reliably and not provide output when it's not securely seeded.

2\. It needs to re-key itself regularly to provide forward secrecy and recovery from attacks.

3\. It needs to be performant enough to be used in applications to the exclusion of all other RNGs.

That's it. Once problem (1) is addressed, there is never again for the uptime of the system a concern about the quality or "level" of entropy in the LRNG. DRBGs like this document proposes are effectively stream ciphers (in fact: Salsa20, the new hotness in bulk cipher designs, is essentially a hash DRBG --- and, in the BSDs, a [crappy] stream cipher _was_ the RNG). "Entropy" keys the cipher. The idea that you can "run low" on entropy is the same as the idea that you can "run low" on key. No.

Kernel CSPRNGs do need continually updated entropy pools. But not because their original entropy is depleted! Rather: you want your RNG to be updated so that its "key" changes regularly, so that if your system is compromised transiently, you'll recover.

And, of course, the division between /dev/random and /dev/urandom sabotages goal (3) --- arguably the most important goal. Almost every time you've read about some crypto randomness catastrophe --- from Debian commenting out their RNG and reducing SSH key space to 16 bits, to Bitcoin wallets coughing up private keys by repeating nonces --- you've been reading about _userspace RNG failures_. People use userspace RNGs because they think the kernel RNG is too slow. And they think the kernel RNG is too slow because they use /dev/random, which obstinately refuses to provide output when --- wait, I'm not dignifying /dev/random: it refuses to provide output _at random_.

<comment><USER3> Has anybody made a set of patches to give linux the BSD behavior (block until seeded, then never block again)? I run into issues with /dev/random regularly and while I can patch every single application, that feels like playing whack- a-mole compared to patching the kernel.

<comment><USER4> If you're using udev, you can configure it to make /dev/random a symlink to /dev/urandom (eg. [1]). Sadly that doesn't give you the "block until seeded" behaviour though, and I don't know of any kernel patch doing that yet.

1\. [http://superuser.com/questions/309840/how-can-i-point-dev- ra...](http://superuser.com/questions/309840/how-can-i-point-dev-random-to- dev-urandom)

<comment><USER5> You could make a script that prevents /dev/urandom from being made available until /r/random stops blocking, to then also simultaneously create that symlink.

Edit: on boot, first prevent access to /dev/urandom, then symlink it to /dev/random. Then as soon as /dev/random stops blocking, reverse the direction of the symlink. Same improved security, much simpler to use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Gah. Another brain-damaged system that implements complex (and, no doubt, broken) "entropy estimation" with a goal of delivering "information theoretic" security that doesn't even have a structure where information theoretic security could actually be proven.

To the extent that any applications exist where a information theoretic RNG was required, this scheme does not provide one. Instead, it continues the to offer an interface that causes confusion and insecurity without an apparent benefit.

<comment><USER7> Has anyone offered a better patch? I'm genuinely curious and don't know.

<comment><USER2> What's "a better patch"? We need to have a shared understanding of the problem before we can evaluate solutions.

<comment><USER8> Unpredictable and unbiased source of bytes, even on server machines and virtualized hardware at boot time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If I read this correctly, this new suggestion also keeps the entropy estimation voodoo:

"By using the primary DRBG to serve /dev/random, the LRNG ensures that each random number generated by the primary DRBG must be backed by an equal amount of entropy that seeded the DRBG. Hence, the data derived from /dev/random is backed by information theoretical entropy."

(page 21 of the PDF documentation)

<comment><USER9> For an explanation of the voodoo nature of the blocking /dev/random, see:

[http://www.2uo.de/myths-about-urandom/](http://www.2uo.de/myths-about- urandom/)

EDIT: or read tptacek's root comment on this very page.

<comment><USER10> Thanks! This article was very helpful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So, more half-assed entropy estimation voodoo neither verified nor endorsed by actual cryptographers?

For goodness' sake, Fortuna already exists. What happened to "don't invent your own cryptography"?

<comment><USER11> If I understood it, this change is supposed to be fully compatible with the existing interfaces and assumptions, it just claims to give more bits faster, using Fortuna would mean more changes at once and would mean the client code would have to change. Which is easier for OpenBSD to do than it is for Linux.

<comment><USER2> Replacing the LRNG with Yarrow or Fortuna or something like it would not break any client code, because no sane client code can rely on when /dev/random decides to block --- even by the LRNG's broken definition, that blocking happens at random, and could be deferred indefinitely if enough "entropy" were available.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Also, should we use /dev/urandom (on the host) to seed the CSPRNG in virtual machines? [https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu- devel/2016-04/thread...](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu- devel/2016-04/threads.html#02486)

<comment><USER13> The getrandom() call should be used if it's available, and /dev/urandom on legacy systems. The system call blocks once when the system starts until the RNG is initialized with enough entropy, and then never again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> So this makes /dev/urandom more like Window's CryptGenRandom (aka RtlGenRandom) which is using AES256 running in CTR mode as a DRNG.

I'm curious why there still needs to be a distinct /dev/random though. Hasn't history shown that they should really just both point to the same thing? Is there really a need for the difference here? Ditto with the entropy estimation, why is this still a thing?

</comment><comment><USER15> The linked PDF: [http://www.chronox.de/lrng/doc/lrng.pdf](http://www.chronox.de/lrng/doc/lrng.pdf)

Page 4: "The new approach implements the modeling of a slow noise source within the LRNG based on the timing of interrupts and allowing other, even fast operating noise sources to contribute entropy. As discussed above for the legacy /dev/random, only the high-resolution time stamps deliver entropy for hardware events and other information processed by the legacy /dev/random implementation hardly have any entropy. This identification is used as a basis that solely the timing of interrupts is used."

<comment><USER11> "The cryptographic processing of the entropic data is implemented with a well- known and well-studied deterministic random number generator: an SP800-90A DRBG as defined in [2] – naturally excluding the NSA-sponsored Dual-EC DRBG."

"The concept of the LRNG allows the selection of the used DRBG and the backend cipher implementations at compile time."

Is SP800-90A DRBG really state of the art?

According to Wikipedia "the publication contains the specification for four cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generators for use in cryptography." Without Dual-EC it's still three different DRBGs. How good are they? Is there anything better?

<comment><USER2> They're fine. They're sane, straightforward, relatively simple constructions based on hashes, HMAC, and ciphers running in CTR mode. You could make a CSPRNG more complicated, but there's not much reason to.

The stuff that extends the "state of the art" beyond SP800-90A tends to be system-specific and feature-based. For instance, the "estimators" in the LRNG are an extension to SP800-90A (and a bad idea). Rolling over seed files are another extension.

<comment><USER11> > They're fine

Thanks. Does it matter which one of the three is then selected? Only one can be a default.

<comment><USER2> Meh. Throw a dart.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I didn't RTFA, but I'm wondering why Fortuna[1] hasn't seen better adoption or excitement. I think the BSD team made the right approach of making /dev/random|urandom both a CSPRNG, which if seeded and mixed is an unlimited source of high quality entropy.

Fortuna also has the benefit of mitigating damage from a compromised generator. If the generator is compromised it's very difficult to rewind the RNG output and perform a history attack (is that even the right word for such a thing?).

[1] [https://www.schneier.com/cryptography/fortuna/](https://www.schneier.com/cryptography/fortuna/)

<comment><USER2> Every kernel CSPRNG that continually collects entropy is effectively mitigating damage from a compromised generator. This isn't something specific to Fortuna.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The Linux kernel is not using the true RNG circuitry included with all modern microprocessors (this is not entirely correct - see /u/matt_wulfeck's comment). As far as I know, this is because the kernel devs fear that the RNG circuit can be backdoored, allowing an unwanted entity to control the output of the random bitstream.

This is an issue I've been thinking about quite a bit. Is there a way to somehow sign a circuit design on silicon and allow devs to check the circuit's integrity?

For example, in the case of a TRNG, the developer can add a "verify" instruction to ensure that the TRNG on the user's CPU is not compromised before executing the RAND instruction. Of course, that's what the dev does, but the signing itself is much more complex.

I've been looking through the literature and I haven't found much to go on. I know it's likely impossible to do given how many layers there are between silicon and machine code, but I'd like to at least give it a try.

<comment><USER18> A malicious module would only need to act like VW's defeat device to overcome that check. When it senses some integrity/signing routine, it simply isolates itself from a verifiable circuit.

<comment><USER19> For VW, that was easy because the test setup was known and very rigid.

If you randomly check, say, power usage and latency of the on-board RNG (ideally combined with high-resolution IR recordings of the CPU), it will, at least, be harder for the CPU manufacturer to install a backdoored RNG that is active most of the time (but one that only gets activated after receiving some trigger, say a specific instruction sequence would still be virtually undetectable)

<comment><USER20> The problem you are trying to solve is much closer to the "decidability problem" than you might suppose at first sight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> /dev/urandom while entropy available is low:

      $ rngtest -c 200000 -b 2000 < /dev/urandom
      .....

      rngtest: bits received from input: 4000000032
      rngtest: FIPS 140-2 successes: 199848
      rngtest: FIPS 140-2 failures: 152
      rngtest: FIPS 140-2(2001-10-10) Monobit: 24
      rngtest: FIPS 140-2(2001-10-10) Poker: 15
      rngtest: FIPS 140-2(2001-10-10) Runs: 60
      rngtest: FIPS 140-2(2001-10-10) Long run: 54
      rngtest: FIPS 140-2(2001-10-10) Continuous run: 0
      rngtest: input channel speed: (min=3.782; avg=63.752; max=82.928)Mibits/s
      rngtest: FIPS tests speed: (min=4.559; avg=158.909; max=194.627)Mibits/s
      rngtest: Program run time: 83882495 microseconds

It gets much worse.

</comment><comment><USER16> Can someone help me understand why intel has both the rdrand and rdseed instruction set? If your device outputs high quality random data, why would it need two outlets?

<comment><USER21> [https://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2012/11/17/the- differ...](https://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2012/11/17/the-difference- between-rdrand-and-rdseed)

rdseed directly gives you the output of a hardware RNG, limited by the rate that hardware RNG produces random bits. rdrand gives you CSPRNG output seeded by rdseed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> If a machine is land locked without good sources of entropy, maybe it can go out to the internet for some nice randomness.

<comment><USER9> Perhaps some lovely clean Irish randomness:

[https://www.random.org/](https://www.random.org/)

Sadly, LavaRand, the connoisseur's choice of internet randomness, is no longer with us:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20010926221159/http://lavarand.sg...](http://web.archive.org/web/20010926221159/http://lavarand.sgi.com/)

<comment><USER23> If the machine truly has little entropy to start, it might have trouble establishing a secure TLS connection to the remote source.

That said, here is my little "wwwrand" script, that assumes Google News will return unpredictable and unrepeatable content. You could also throttle curl using --limit-rate to generate more interrupts for strace to log.

nice -n 19 strace -CTiv -ttt curl -LNv [https://news.google.com](https://news.google.com) 2>&1 | shasum -a 512

<comment><USER9> Surely if you want unpredictable and unrepeatable content, 4chan is the place to go?

<comment><USER24> /r9k/ can hook you up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is there a good reason not to copy what OpenBSD does in this area?

<comment><USER26> NIH</comment></comment>


Academic software for research papers - <AUTHOR> http://mendeley.com/ <comment><USER2> meh. ls -l works just fine ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> At a glance, this looks kind of like a cross platform copy of the Mac-only (due to Mac library PDF support) application Skim.

<http://skim-app.sourceforge.net/></comment>


Ask HN: Frustrated with my co-founder. Any advice? - <AUTHOR>

Hello everyone,
I wanted to share the situation that I currently am with my co-founder and ask for some advice, and maybe even get it from people who've been in similar situations.
In the beginning, him and I were co-workers (both web developers) and really good friends. One day we decided to start some project together, and shortly after that he proposed we do something he'd been wanting to do for a long time. After quickly evaluating the feasibility of the idea and the current competition in the market, I agreed we should do that instead. I wasn't part of the target market for it, but he was, and knew plenty of people who were, too. After a few months of struggling to make decent progress on our free time, I decided I was gonna start working part time, and spending the other half of the day on the startup. I had a lower cost of living and I could do it, and I've always been more risk averse. He needed his full salary and couldn't do it, but appreciated my gesture. He asked me if I wanted more equity for it (the deal was 50/50), and I said 'no'. I know. BIG, rookie mistake. I thought we'd be making a living out of it in a few months, and didn't mind working a bit more and earning less for that long.
Well, after six months of me working part time (during which, his job was basically to give his opinion on look&feel, features, etc), we launched, and since then he also took responsability for system administration tasks, since he knows about that and I don't. Our startup has quite a lot of traffic, so its sysadmin necessities are a bit high, but definitely not even a part time job. I'd say now, two years after launch with +20M pageviews a month, it's about 5 hours a week on average. Some weeks a lot more, others nothing at all.
Two monhs after launch, I decided to quit my job and work full time on the startup. I had a side passive income business that gave me enough to live by, and to be honest I was only excited to work on this, and not my job anymore. It took us an extra year from this point to make any revenue for the business, so for another year I was working full time, while he did the occasional (but important, none the less) sysadmin tasks. Also, he'd convince his friends, who were target market, to become users. It's true, we wouldn't have been able to grow our user base without his connections (or it would have been a lot more difficult), but it's not like he had to convince each one by one or anything. Our users are already using competition services, so it's a matter of knowing them (check) and sending invitations with some custom message on his behalf. From there, it grew pretty much on its own. He also dealt with a friend of his who's a jackass, but a partner who brought an important number of users in the beginning.
So one year after we launch, we start getting revenue. In 2-3 months, it's the same that he's making at his day job (which is a good salary), and increasing every month. 3-4 months after that, it's already 30-50% more than he makes. And here we are, about 10 months after starting being profitable, and he's still raking in his average 5 hours a week on sysadmin stuff, still no word on when (if ever!) he's gonna quit his job to work full time on the startup. To be honest, I am very disappointed in his behavior and commitment, and I don't think he deserves the 50% share of the company he has. Not to mention the fact that he's just a reactive person (something breaks? we fix it. customers complain? we address it.), but nothing really "creative" comes out of him: let's do this, even if noone asks for it; let's try improving this metric; let's aim for higher revenue; etc. Long story short: for the last year and a half, I've been the one who's been running the business, while he's the sysadmin guy who for some reason, I have to check with first before doing anything major, and who also takes 50% of profits.
For a while I tried to just think of him as some early investor that was lucky to get into the deal, but it's just there in my head all the time. The unfairness of it all, and it's really affecting my ability to focus on the business. I'm constantly thinking of new ideas and projects (even spending time on some of them), even when I know there are just a shot, and I already have a great, profitable business in my hands. Only because I wouldn't have him in those businesses.
I'm sure most of you will be thinking of "well, just talk to him and ask for more equity!" The thing is, we've had difficult conversations before, and they didn't go well. For example, in the beginning we said (yes, nothing on paper or concrete, again, rookie mistake) that I'd get some compensation for my extra time spent (part time, then full time) on the startup once we were profitable. Once that time came, the conversation was more like "well, nobody told you to do it, you did it because you wanted to!", so the compensation he thought was fair was ridiculous to me (like a two month salary, for a year full time and half a year part time).
Also, I'm sure he'd be quite on defensive if I brought this up. "You're trying to take what's mine!". Keep in mind he's the one who's part of the target market, so he feels very emotionally attached to the business, a part of it, after so long. And on top of that, he's in quite a bad personal situation right now, and it's gonna last at least a few months, so even more of a reason to take it badly.
Any advice on what to do? Has anyone been here before?
P.S. I'm using a throwaway account because I don't want this whole drama to be traceable to my startup, sorry.
EDIT: I guess I should've answered as well "What would make me happy? What's the ideal outcome?". Well, talking to him and him accepting to lower his equity significantly would be the ideal outcome. 25/75 would be ideal, 40/60 would be OK as well. I guess what I'm afraid is having the conversation, not getting to any agreement but instead worsening the situation with him. We went to such a phase before, and it wasn't pretty (and I was totally unproductive). <comment><USER3> OK - you recognise that it was an error not to change the equity split at the point when your level of commitment to the project abruptly changed and exceeded your partners.

In your current situation I assume you are now drawing a salary as a full time employee of the business. Any income split between you and your partner would be on the profits - so you should get your salary plus 50% of any profit after expenses (including your salary). Provided your salary remains at a commensurate level then your respective incomes should reflect the realities of your current situation. No harm in your partner receiving a small salary for his administrative tasks - just make sure it reflects the level of work and (perhaps) industry norms.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well that "equity split" was when I decided to go part time, at that point, we effectively had done the same work (almost nothing).

And no, I don't get any salary as a full time employee, all profits are divided, so we effectively get the same amount of money every month.

<comment><USER4> Your business is doing well enough that it should be set up properly - <USER2> legal structure, proper accounting, etc.

When you do this, your accountant (at least in America) will happily tell you that to be 100% kosher, full-time employees should get paid full-time salaries at market rates, whether they're owners of the company or not. Both the IRS and individual states take a dim view of small-business owners dodging 15% or so in payroll taxes by paying themselves solely via corporate distributions.

You can and should _also_ pay yourself out of corporate distributions, of course, but to be legal your salary should come off the top first, and only then should you be splitting profits 50-50 with your cofounder. If your cofounder also wants a market salary, well, he'll just have to come work on your business full-time with you.

<comment><AUTHOR> As far as I (and our accountant) understand, the structure we have is not a problem at all from a legal point of view (We're not from the U.S.), so no worries there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Honesty is best policy.

Effectively there's a difference between investors and partners. Investors put in money and reap profits. Partnership has to do with sacrifice (time).

In all fairness I'd say it would be good if you take your current salary ( from startup ) + his current salary ( from startup + job ) and divide that by 2.

It is only fair if you both do equal amounts of work a week that both get the same benefit in a 50/50 partnership.

If that's not viable, propose the reallocation of shares - you could always visit a lawyer.

Alternatively, if you're running the business - take a vacation and see if he picks up the slack.

<comment><AUTHOR> While I would prefer commitment and involvement, if he'd done as you say on his own (hey, I feel I should at least give you half of my salary), at least I would've thought he's not committed, but fair. At this point, I don't want or need half of his salary.

About taking a vacation, I feel he wouldn't step up (or he'd do a bad job), so it'd would be basically abandon the business to its own luck (or best case scenario, waste time in limbo). Not sure I want to do that unless it's a last resort option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Have you considered using a mediator ?

There are people who come form a counselling background who are experienced in settling business disputes such as this. I would present it to your partner as business strategy consultation or something like that.

But basically, you both need to talk and come up with a solution that works for both of you.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a really good piece of advice, thank you. We actually have some common friends who are either web devs or entrepreneurs themselves, and I've always had this whole thing hidden from them. Might be a good time to bring it up and ask them to mediate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> As defensive as he'll probably be you've got to have the conversation.

Make it about the future not about the past (we all know how tiring "I did this" - "no you didn't" conversations can get)

Sit down and say - look we're doing great aren't we! This is the point where we need to decide how we're moving forward. Options are he matches your work hours - you're both at full time, you both keep 50/50. He keeps his job and scales back to 25/75. OR you match his working hours (i.e very little) and you're then free to pursue whatever else you're interested in.

Make it clear though that you're really keen to work full time on the project and you want him to do his bit.

It seems he's on the greedy-train seeing how long he can last with a full time job and 50% of the lucrative project income. Talking about the past will probably just cause arguments. Make it like now is the time to make the right choice.

</comment><comment><USER8> Am I right in saying that it was his ideas and his contacts that got it all going? Than it seems to me you got a good deal in the beginning. If not than 50/50 seems fair. What you should do is go for a higher salary as an employee of the business, that will of course mean less profit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well his idea in the way of "let's do this!", but he's had it for years. Don't we agree that ideas are a dime a dozen if not executed?

As of contacts, well they got in play after 6 months of part time work, and while they got the thing rolling, as of now maybe only 1-2% of our current customers are people he knows. Yes, it would have been a lot more difficult to get it rolling, but I'm not sure this "one time good deed" is enough to get 50% of it, while I've been working on it full time for years after that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've experienced some aspects of this before and I know it can be difficult. The longer it goes on, the more set into the current deal you are and its very difficult to change.

One way it could be made easier is if there was an independent reference point. E.g. can you afford to hire an employee? (1) This employee could pick up some of the work and it would presumably have to be paid for 50/50 and (2) If you are still putting in many more hours than your co-founder then you can log those additional hours and you should at least get paid a similar amount that you are paying to the third employee.

</comment><comment><USER10> Some options I can think of:

1\. Stop working that much. Maybe he will notice. If he does, it would be a good way of starting the discussion.

2\. Make him feel guilty. (Though this would be a bit mean)

3\. Be open to him about how you feel and that you don't enjoy working anymore. Don't demand anything, just tell him how you feel.

If either of these approaches would work I can't say. You have to see for yourself if they fit your situation.

<comment><AUTHOR> The first option I tried (not by choice), when I was for 1-2 months doing only the essentials to keep in running. This was like 8 months ago when we had another big dispute (told around the end of the main story), and he didn't say a word.

<comment><USER10> What was his justification to demand you to work more? He must have something, right?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well he never demanded me to work more. I spent those 1-2 months barely working because we had serious issues. When we resolved them, and I decided to just think of him, as I said, as lucky early investor, I started working again. The thing is, I DO love the company and I think it can be very big.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What's wrong with a clear dispute?

You write down your point of view and ask what you really want. Start from here.

Hey, we are friends, but enough is enough. I feel the current situation is unfair. I work full time and I should get something like a salary but not you, because you are not full time.

If you cannot find a consensus, then, may be you should ask a lawer to know what is considered fair by law.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess my fear is that, confronted with the choice of: I get money, and you don't; or we rethink our equity; he'll say "You know what? I think I'm ready to be working full time on this!", which doesn't repare the past two years, and to be honest, at this point I'm not even sure I want him full time on this, given his total lack of commitment. "Deciding" to go full time when given an ultimatum, is not enough for me.

<comment><USER11> As other had said, you only way is honesty. The hard one.

If you have so much to get out of your chest, you should may ask the help of a mediator.

But in the end, there shouldn't be something you didn't tell him. Be clear about what you expected and how much you were disappointed. And also be clear about your point of view about him going full time.

If you can't find a mediator, the best way of telling him is by writing a list of facts. Try your best not to use judgment value. Just facts, then what you want and what you don't want.

If I understand correctly, your ideal situation would be for him to quit the startup for free. But let him explain his point of view. After a long discussion you might find a solution.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm starting to realize this may be the only way to go for me to feel good about the whole thing. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Consider keeping the 50/50 equity split, but pay yourself a fair salary for your fulltime dedication to the business.

What's fair? Maybe your market value. Maybe his salary level in his other job. Maybe what it would cost to hire a replacement for you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Even this way, it doesn't repair the last two years, where I've felt like I put it a lot more work, it would only make things fair from now on, which is only a small part of the problem.

<comment><USER12> Then ask for a cash bonus. Or a disprroportionate share of the next few month's sales.

Decide what you think is fair, and propose it. Being silently angry does no good. And you might just get what you ask for... or maybe better! Maybe your partner is oblivious, and this will provide the wake-up call your business needs!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What if the whole thing would have gone busted and you guys lost money, would you still change the equity to 25/75?

<comment><AUTHOR> As a bootstrapped Internet company, we didn't invest any more money than to pay servers. And actually, a close person to me invested a certain amount of money (because I asked), and he spent most of it on things I didn't agree on (neither did I know of, since I didn't have access to the bank account at that moment). We gave it back to the investor once we made it back, but that's another experience that shows me this is not a guy I feel comfortable sharing a business with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> IS there anything in writing?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well our current equity is, but there's no vesting or anything about "what you have to do in order to earn that equity".</comment></comment>


The Flaw at the Heart of Democracy - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190318-can-we-reinvent-democracy-for-the-long-term <comment><USER2> It's hardly controversial that _future generations are disenfranchised in the same way that slaves or women were_. It becomes almost instantly controversial to say it still is this way, exploitation is the design, violence is the only sure equalizing solution while still not arriving at equality, justice works too slowly, and elections only serve to make a population complicit with the bad choices of its leaders.

Is random selection of leaders really an effective substitute for voting? Are elected leaders, in the aggregate, consistently worse than 50/50 chance? Random selection must be even more contrary to aristocracy than voting, because voting permits the vestiges of aristocracy to persist. If leadership selection were really random, you'd expect aristocrats to be elected equal to their percentage of the population. It wouldn't entirely disenfranchise them, which is to say they wouldn't be treated the same way they've sought for generations to treat the majority.

But then, do we really understand randomness? It's a really interesting idea, but I sooner expect aristocratic tendencies to blow up the world before allowing any further diminishing of their power.

<comment><USER3> Randomness could easily be more fraudulent than voting, because who could possibly prove that it failed?

<comment><USER2> Right. Faith based randomness won't cut it. And how do you authenticate random? You'd have to prove it was fraud, in effect prove a negative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> FWIW, there is at least one 2020 U.S. presidential candidate running on the idea of intergenerational justice, which is a term I hadn't heard before this election cycle.</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone been recruited by VC firms to work for their portfolio companies? - <AUTHOR> Like the title says, I'm used to getting "recruiter spam" email, but I've never gotten one from a respected VC firm until today.
I am interested in a new position and wouldn't traditionally think of going through a VC firm.
Anyone have experience with this and who can tell me a bit about it? <comment><USER2> I wouldn't read too much into it unless you have a personal connection with a partner or whoever contacted you at the VC firm. A lot of the larger firms run in house recruiting teams to help their portfolio companies. So I'd just treat it like any other recruiter call unless I had evidence otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER3> I haven't been recruited that way but I have been contacted this way. I don't have any experience with this process besides that.

Why wouldn't you go through a VC firm? I think it seems fine, but then again I've never been through the entire process.

</comment><comment><USER4> People like to network. Consider it a business card with words.</comment>


Modern C is now feature complete - <AUTHOR> https://gustedt.wordpress.com/2016/11/25/modern-c-is-now-feature-complete/ <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13054705](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13054705).</comment>


Meet the entrepreneurs turning restaurant delivery into airport food - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/hngry/meet-the-entrepreneurs-turning-restaurant-delivery-into-airport-food-a26577d5f3d6 <comment><USER2> Over the next 5 years:

1\. add pizza, Chinese, wings, subs, mexican, burgers

2\. drop mexican because it doesn't deliver well.

3\. drop Chinese because the equipment is completely different from the other three and the incremental sales don't really add up.

4\. They basically stumbled back into a basic pizza delivery operation.</comment>


Chat in Firefox, Seriously? - <AUTHOR>

Facebook tried 'email' it didn't work. Google tried Google+ didn't work., or for that matter a social network. Microsoft tried 'search engine' it didn't work.
If you don't want to learn a lesson out of it, then you are purely an idiot.
Moral of the story. Stay focused on what you do best, or if you want to 'disrupt' the current market of a specific product, then you have to build the most innovative earth-shattering, ground-breaking product, that could blow the competition away, otherwise you will be beating the dead horse.
There is no room for at par or mediocre efforts in a highly competitive product marketplace.
It's not a rocket-science, it's called 'common-sense'. <comment><USER2> You have to try to see if you can succeed. Apple tried with the iPhone, Amazon tried with AWS, Nike tried with the Jordan's and that seems to have worked out pretty well for them. Just because something exist doesn't mean someone else should not try to compete in that market, especially if they have the capital, and staff for a good competitive edge.

<comment><AUTHOR> it wasn't point of my post, I never meant, one shouldn't try. actually this is how all of these big Giants in the industry have succeeded and come along. But still, what my post missed was the emphasis on the 'rational' trying, than 'me-too' trying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Google tried Chrome.</comment>


Lockhart's Lament: On Mathematics at School - <AUTHOR> http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_03_08.html <comment><USER2> My high school algebra/trig teacher was a real drone; every problem had to be done by rote and she cared more about your handwriting and placing the numbers the same way she did than whether you actually knew what you were doing. She had the imagination of a four-function calculator; to her it "math" meant "mechanical". I made C's and D's in her classes, because I'd see shortcuts that got the right answers faster but she'd mark right answers wrong if we didn't use her methods to get them.

Meanwhile I was writing my own 3-d graphics engine at home, working all the math out from observation of the real world with yardsticks and using graph paper, because I didn't have internet at home to look up the answers or the math education to know . Every time I'd try to ask her if anything from algebra or trig connected in some way to what I was doing, or if she knew of some math tools that would help me, she'd shut my questioning down and belittle me. I actually worked out sine/cosine and rotation matrices out on my own before we covered them in class, because she wouldn't point anything out to me.

To this day I still don't know if she was such an unimaginative rock that she really didn't make any cognitive connection between math and real world applications, or if she just hated me for being a nonconformist.

<comment><USER3> What are you working on now? Just curious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The bit about finding the area of a triangle was great -- a quick, simple example of what math is and why anyone would enjoy it.

K-12 public school math education burned me so bad that I didn't realize how much I love math until my mid-20s. (These days I'm reading about abstract algebra for fun!)

</comment><comment><USER5> As a mathematics major and having gone through some seriously crappy math courses in highschool (and even freshman college courses) including AP Calculus classes, I just want to say that I truely recommend reading this article.

It really cannot be stated any better than this, folks. Even as a math major, reading this reinspires me and refuels my passion for mathematics.

Simply lovely. :)

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm a graduate student in mathematics.

This article made me cry. Really powerful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it's a very very nice article. Actually, you put it better: very, very powerful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wish I could upmod this so many times... Amazing article, everyone should read the entire thing.

I hated math throughout school, although I was told I was "good at it", even though I had no clue what was going on. Now I know why!

What can we do about this?!

</comment><comment><USER8> Great article! I've always thought that having math education focusing on formulas is having poetry and literature focus on grammar and spelling -- the painting and music analogies are dead-on.

But that's exactly what happens: Formulas and equations (grammar) are one way to express a beautiful idea. Unfortunately we end up focusing on the syntax and not the semantics, the underlying meaning.

Shameless plug, but I try to do my part to make math intuitive at betterexplained.com.

What a great essay.

</comment><comment><USER9> It always struck me how my math classess seemed to focus on the mechanical exercises and never let us glimpse at the true genius of what we were brainlasly repeating with them.

However, I think I could say the same for many of my classes. As an Engineering student, I'm sure most of my physics classes are way beyond what I will ever use when I leave university (trig btw, heavily used for most of this classes). I think the same reasoning could be applied here, instead of repeating painful exercises consisting basically of memorizing and rearranging formulas, let the student wonder at the context and history behind each of the subjects and the problems that were solved with them.

This is a problem affecting education systems in a deeper level than the math curriculum, it comes down, I think, to something the author points at, which is this widespread notion that education is supposed to be something that "prepares tomorrow's workforce" instead of it being a source for inspiration and enlightenment.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is a beautiful article. I hated math during high school, but was very good at it. I even skipped a grade of math so I could free up my schedule to do more interesting classes! It's such a shame - I love math puzzles but really hate math class.

Even the introductory math courses in college are terrible.

</comment><comment><USER11> Man, what a great article. Thanks.

I love Lockhart's definition of Trigonometry: "Two weeks of content are stretched to semester length by masturbatory definitional runarounds".

Reading this article makes me understand why people home-school their children.

</comment><comment><USER12> Did anybody read _King of Infinite Space_, the biography of Donald Coxeter?

I noticed the article used lots of drawings, and I believe this and the general discussion fits into Coxeter's thinking on mathematics, versus the Bourbaki school's more rigid and less intuitive approach.

"GEOMETRY. Isolated from the rest of the curriculum, this course will raise the hopes of students who wish to engage in meaningful mathematical activity, and then dash them."

</comment><comment><USER13> The PDF was painful so here is a converted HTML link <http://viewer.zoho.com/docs/xdLbwd>

</comment><comment><USER14> It struck me while reading this that we should rename the subject we teach as maths to puzzles.

Just about everybody likes having a go at puzzles, and people are pretty good at selecting puzzles with the right amount of challenge. I'm sure as a student I'd have a more positive expectation going into a puzzles class than the current experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know. I think maths can be fun and can be very interesting without having to hide it as puzzles. I'd prefer to call the things by their name, but to show them as they truly are: interesting, fun, and even quite addicting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Very interesting. Does any one have any suggestions to interest an 11 year old about Math?

<comment><USER16> Let them find a way to use it.

When I was in high school, I played Robot Battle, a game in which you scripted behaviors for automated tanks. This gave me immediate reason to use and learn much of what I learned in math at school. The day we were taught basic trigonometry, I was on the edge of my seat, because I knew that what I was learning would be useful several hours later when I got back to coding my robots.

Of course, you can't force an interest on a child, but you can certainly introduce them to new ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is this specific to math, or is all standardized (bastardized?) education this way?

I can't remember doing any creative writing in elementary school, but I do remember diagramming sentences, much like the musician's nightmare in the article.</comment>


Facebook Stops You From Posting 'Irrelevant Or Inappropriate' Comments - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/05/facebooks-positive-comment-policy-irrelevant-inappropriate-censorship/ <comment><USER3> This is an isolated incident. "Irrelevant or Inappropriate" sounds like a euphemism for spam- if Facebook is fighting comment spam then I applaud them. Their algorithm just isn't quite right yet. No story here.

"Is this censorship?" Are false positives on a spam filter censorship?

<comment><USER4> Hi, fb engineer here. This is exactly what's going on. If you recall, there were several articles written a few months back pertaining to comment spam, and very low quality comments (ascii art or 'LOOOOOL!!!') from subscribers. This is part of an effort to curb that and has likely gone awry. It only affects subscriber -> subscribee comments.

<comment><USER5> So FB tries to filter out ASCII art.

It sounds to me like FB is trying to win over advertisers who really are not interested in the web, except to the extent they can profit from it. And they may learn FB has led them to believe there is much more potential than the results actually show.

Meanwhile, the "consumers" using the web are generally interested in it. That includes ASCII art and LOL, as a means of communication. And not simply to discuss, purchase products and services.

FB is going to fade away. It's just a matter of time.

Because their motives are becoming more and more clear to even non-technical users, these motives are antithetical to the social (cf. commercial) premise of the internet, and they cannot maintain a monopoly on communication through the web, excluding other avenues by being "the only option". Couple this with advertisers who are still patiently waiting for results, results which will never come.

How can you call this anything other than censorship? There is no profanity, no objectionable content whatsoever in the post.

It's not "isolated", it's "targeted".

<comment><USER6> Another FB engineer here - I actually work on the system that caused this false positive. You're right that if we were actually trying to stop constructive discussion from happening, that would be bad. We're definitely not trying to do that - in fact, our goal is the exact opposite.

Similarly, if we let through blatantly malicious or spammy comments, I think that would be bad as well.

While I wish I could say we were perfect at stopping spam, the reality is that no spam classification system is perfect. Sometimes we err too far on the conservative side, and spam gets through. Sometimes we err too far on the aggressive side, and good content is incorrectly blocked. That's what happened here - it turned out one of our spam classifiers was a little too aggressive, and we've turned it off.

<comment><USER7> A laudable goal, but for what definition of "constructive"? And PLEASE don't tell me that you guys think it will be the same definition for every site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Google+ needs to do this. I follow Linus Torvals and some other big names in tech, and there are dozens of worthless comments on every single one of his posts.

"+1"

"Wow,,,,,,,,,,,"

"。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。"

Incredibly low signal-to-noise, which makes me not even want to look at the comments.

<comment><USER9> I like the HN way of doing things, where every user can choose their own showdead setting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a great example of machine learning gone wrong. Facebook turns the knob on their "positivity" algorithm a little too far to the right.

Machine learning is one of this things that works great until it doesn't, and you get misguided decisions like this that had zero human involvement.

<comment><USER11> wat?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is consistent with Facebook's established strategy. Ultimately Facebook want to make sure that you (the user) will always associate Facebook with positive emotions, not negative ones.

It's the same reason that there is no dislike button, in spite of years of requests to the contrary.

If you really look closely you will find that Facebook does not have the most advanced UI, nor does it offer the most functionality. People don't use FB for any of those reasons, even if they think they do. People use FB because FB makes them feel happy, connected, and valued among their "friends".

Allowing FB to be used to post negative comments runs contrary to these objectives and, due to the current limitations of machine interpretation of language, it is inevitable that some innocuous comments get misinterpreted along these lines.

I'm not saying that I am supportive of this practice, but I do understand why they are doing it.

<comment><USER13> "associate FB with positive emotions, not negative ones"

So basically, it wants to be the Disneyland of the Internet?

Laudable. Although I can't tell if my early adopter bias is telling me this is an avenue for disruption, or whethrer such safe pablum is the ticket to riches for reaching the masses. I am now leaning towards this being a big step in the AOLification of FB.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Based on the anecdotal comments below the original post, it seems like there's a very high correlation between posts that get flagged as inappropriate by Facebook and those that mention Google+ or link to it. Which seems absurd, on the face of it, but I am going to have to experiment.

<comment><USER15> Interesting.

Based on anecdotal evidence I actually believe that there is a high correlation between flagged Facebook posts and alien abductions. It seems absurd sure. But I am going to have to experiment.

<comment><USER14> Perhaps this is an issue of my tone not coming through on the internet, but I wasn't giving anecdotal evidence any weight on its own, which was the point of my experimentation. Experimentation, which, as you will see from my reply, yielded nothing. The only thing I can figure is that you read what I said in a hurry and didn't digest what I meant or you don't understand the scientific method.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The solution is pretty straight forward. Stop using FB to handle your site's comments. I don't even see comments on TechCrunch anymore because I have FB whitelist only and I'm not the only one.

</comment><comment><USER17> @nikcub I think it's not a coincidence.

In fact FB declines Post and Messages for a while already. For example you can't post or comment and include a picture from imgur, while it (obviously) fine from other hosts. Thats what i experienced so far, but i can imagine there are other examples.

That does not need to be censorship. Might be that they got an agreement about not hotlinking or hosting imgur images for copyright reasons.

<comment><USER18> If you click on 'reply' below the comment you're responding to, it will nest and your comment will show up in nikcub's threads (so it will be easier to notice for them).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Facebook's algorithms seem on their way to becoming the 'Allied Mastercomputer'/'Adaptive Manipulator' that tortures the remnants of humanity in Harlan Ellison's dystopic short story, 'I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream':

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_No_Mouth,_and_I_Must_Scr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_No_Mouth,_and_I_Must_Scream)

</comment><comment><USER20> This is not isolated. fb's algo sucks. I was posting a genuine comment & tried to post it 3 times. It warned me with a popup, as in the article & the 3rd time, it warned me that i would not be able to comment on public posts.

IMHO, a more practical flow would be: warn the user 3 times, but on the 3rd & final time state that : this will be submitted for review by a human reviewer & if found abusive, your a/c will be disable for x days.

A genuine commenter would gladly agree to such a request.

FB has humans who could review this, or they could use Amazon's Mturk - <USER2> off each abusive comment as a HIT which gets posted after the 3 warning attempts, & maybe send it to multiple reviewers(mturk workers) - & use a majority vote, to decide among the reviews.

Decision could be binary ( ban/no ban) or some reputation metric ( decrement by 10 points , & if no suspect activity occurs in the next x(30?) days, karma/ reputation to be restored to the original number.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is not isolated.

I posted a comment on a friend-of-friend's feed. He posted some Bertrand Russell quote and I took issue with the phraseology but generally agreed with the sentiment.

When I clicked the "post" button, Facebook gave me some warning message along the lines of "are you sure you want to be posting this? If you post bad things you could be banned from commenting"

I found this fairly insulting. I think Facebook has finally found the thing that's going to drive me completely away from their system.

</comment><comment><USER22> Having just finished a general AI course, this was fascinating and a great example of why to be careful with automation.

</comment><comment><USER23> The ironic thing is that if Facebook also forbid irrelevant _posts_ , it would become a vast, empty wasteland.

</comment><comment><USER24> This happens to me fairly often. Though I seem to get this warning more:

[https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak- snc7/374152_...](https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak- snc7/374152_10151486189050161_558110160_23577940_1717231185_n.jpg)

<comment><USER25> Wow, that's pretty "nice."

P.S. {temporarily removed}

<comment><USER6> I don't think that's how sharing someone else's post works. If I make a friends-only post, and you share it to your friends, only the intersection of our friends can see it. I agree this is maybe not as clear as it could be on the UI, but I believe that's how it should work. If you find otherwise, would you mind filing a bug at www.facebook.com/whitehat?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So Facebook has decided to take control and accept responsibility for content on third party sites? That's an...interesting choice.

</comment><comment><USER26> Is it using sentiment analysis?? If so that is very cool. But also annoying; I'm glad I don't use FB.

</comment><comment><USER27> Completely ridiculous. The next step is Facebook hellbanning people for "inappropriate comments".

<comment><USER28> Isn't that exactly what happens here?

<comment><USER29> What is the point of that comparison? The purpose of HN is very different from the purpose of Facebook. On this site, comments are everything - they define the site.

Joel Spolsky gave an interesting talk on the "Cultural Anthropology of StackExchange" where he talks about the importance of keeping people out as a tool for building communities. The prime example was StackExchange vs. Yahoo Answers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> People are still using Facebook?

<comment><USER31> Lol, quite an opportune comment as FB approaches 1B users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Hey, where's my "Generate an appropriate comment" button?

According to Mark Zuckerberg, people using Facebook are "dumb fucks," so probably they should be guided?

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm just super impressed Facebook admins can string two sentences together in a coherent way! I'm happy to give them a piece of gum as a reward. Those fun guys just need to promise not to walk while they chew it.</comment>


Aza Raskin's redesigns of boring medical test results - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/visualizing-bloodtests/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+InformationIsBeautiful+(Information+Is+Beautiful)

<comment><USER2> What this links to appears to be one redesign of a boring medical test result, which was not done by or associated with Aza Raskin. Am I confused?</comment>


My New Years Resolution: Billing Myself For Wasted Time - <AUTHOR>

As a self-employed consultant, with my own pet projects as well, probably my biggest challenge is focus. While I can easily force myself to focus when I have a deadline or paying client, when I am working on my own projects or on my own time it is super easy for me to get distracted.
Semi-inspired by Nathan Barry's post about his first year self-employed, and the comments here on HN, It appears forcing yourself to make commitments to yourself as well as avoiding wasting time browsing blogs and checking email and social feeds, is the main key to success.
So, my new years resolution this year is to start invoicing myself and tracking every minute, and every missed-dollar spent on various activities.
Using my last paid consulting rate (as this grows as I sign each new client)I will calculate my time and costs associated with each personal project, as well as tracking the cost of wasted time.
The hope is that,"You Manage what you measure," holds true, and by noticing I wasted $1200 a day and spent another $800 on personal projects, will help skew that math in favor of more productivity, budgeting time and knowing the true cost of pet projects, and most importantly, Recognizing How Much Money I Could Have Made By Focusing On Filling my Funnel, Finding New Clients, and Pitching New Projects to Existing Clients (why wait for them to come to me?!)
Do You have any tips or advice for tracking and managing this Resolution would be much appreciated. <comment><USER2> What seems to work for me (and I never planned it this way), is switching things up semi-often. I'll try out a different way to organize the code, check out a new build system, try to use a new testing framework etc. Ultimately this our job, and this shit can get boring easily. Try to keep it fresh.

Also, the whole to-do list, or the pomodoro thing, that stuff has never worked for me. Hate to be so cynical, but your entire posts just reminds me of those bullshit promises I'd make myself when I was younger ;p</comment>


US Weather Radar - <AUTHOR> http://weather-ng.com/us-weather-radar.html <comment><USER2> I generally just use the NOAA full resolution loop: [http://radar.weather.gov/Conus/full_loop.php](http://radar.weather.gov/Conus/full_loop.php)

This plus a big monitor, my kids think they are in a weather command center ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> I made a network of twitter bots that tweet beautiful, color-blind friendly animated radar GIFs every 2 hours.

Here's the continental US (@wxGIF): [https://twitter.com/wxGIF](https://twitter.com/wxGIF)

And a list of the bot network: [https://twitter.com/wxGIF/following](https://twitter.com/wxGIF/following)

<comment><USER4> Where are you pulling the info from? Regardless, this is something I didn't realize I wanted but have already followed the relevant ones. I don't like all the third party weather sites and usually rely on NOAA, but this makes it so I will see the radar in the morning. Cool stuff.

<comment><USER3> Pulling from NOAA, changing the projection, palette, and adding a basemap.

Data source: [http://radar.weather.gov/GIS.html](http://radar.weather.gov/GIS.html) My GitHub repo: [https://github.com/mattparrilla/wxGIF](https://github.com/mattparrilla/wxGIF)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nothing amazing about this... the national weather service has been doing this already for about 2 years on their website.

<comment><USER6> Where do you find something like this there?

<comment><USER7> glad you asked ;-) [http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=33.55910&lon=-8...](http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=33.55910&lon=-82.79530&FcstType=digitalDWML)

[http://forecast.weather.gov/afm/PointClick.php?lat=33.9321&l...](http://forecast.weather.gov/afm/PointClick.php?lat=33.9321&lon=-84.3037)

[http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?site=all&textField1...](http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?site=all&textField1=33.5591&textField2=-82.7953&&FcstType=digital)

[http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?CityName=Sharon&sta...](http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?CityName=Sharon&state=GA&site=FFC&textField1=33.5591&textField2=-82.7953&FcstType=graphical)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My favorite no-nonsense radar for the Seattle/PNW area is the UW atmospheric sciences one: [http://www.atmos.washington.edu/weather/radar.shtml](http://www.atmos.washington.edu/weather/radar.shtml). Fast to load, no-nonsense.

Notice also how post-processing/filtering the data can make a big difference in the results and interpretation:

Image #1: weather-ng.com: [http://pbrd.co/1DzfPkq](http://pbrd.co/1DzfPkq) Image #2: UW Atmospheric Sciences: [http://pbrd.co/1DzfYEh](http://pbrd.co/1DzfYEh)

Much more detail in #2.

</comment><comment><USER9> Wait, isn't everyone using these since at least 5 years? A biking culture and frequent weather with intermitted showers has apparently clouded my view here.

(Simply google weather radar and the area you want to look at, and project the speed of shower areas to know when to leave the house and how fast you have to ride to stay dry..)

</comment><comment><USER10> Canada's shoddy version:

[http://weather.gc.ca/radar/index_e.html](http://weather.gc.ca/radar/index_e.html)

They've done lots of modernizing in the last while, it used to be much worse but at least they're paying attention to it.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm more used to the interface of FullScreenWeather [0] from WUnderground, but this seems to give me access to a broader scope of data. Nicely done!

[0] [http://www.fullscreenweather.com](http://www.fullscreenweather.com)

</comment><comment><USER12> For those looking for a "flat" image, I really like the NWS National Mosaic page: [http://radar.weather.gov/ridge/Conus/full.php](http://radar.weather.gov/ridge/Conus/full.php)

</comment><comment><USER13> I like the Norwegian one at yr.no quite well (In general that is a great weather forecast site).

[http://www.yr.no/radar/norden.html](http://www.yr.no/radar/norden.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> Anyone else just getting a "Loading . . ." splash screen?

<comment><USER15> I was able to load it on OS X with both Firefox and Safari without issue. On 7 I got stuck using ie9. Chrome on 7 worked as well

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Nice! I like the gadget too.</comment>


ScaleWell offers $1,000, free office space for Chicago entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-0222-scale-well-story-20100222,0,5457837.story

<comment><USER2> I think this is a great idea. I am sure that many many start-ups begin at home, but personally I love being in the office, it removes me from any non work related distractions.

As into my projects as I get, L4D2 is always there waiting for me when I am at home, I don't often crack, but in the office, it doesn't even cross my mind that I could be doing something else.

Well done to ScaleWell!

</comment><comment><USER3> For "no strings attached" it seems like a really good deal. Not sure exactly what no strings attached means though...

<comment><USER4> It means exactly that. The trustees and funders do not take any equity. They just provide the money, some advice and experience.</comment></comment>


The Siege of Carrie Lam - <AUTHOR> https://idlewords.com/2019/12/the_siege_of_carrie_lam.htm <comment><USER2> (For context — am an expat living in HK.)

Living in HK the last few months has been frustrating for me, primarily because of growing spread of misinformation and the untrustworthy reporting on the situation. It's getting hard to know what information to believe, and that's even for myself living here, who has seen all of it from my own eyes. How could you expect anyone reading the news or social media from a foreign country to be reacting to valid information?

The western media is making it sound like Hong Kong is Syria. Protester private channels makes wild unfounded claims about mass-scale executions and rapes. Chinese media makes it sound like HK is under siege by terrorists. SCMP's reporting is increasingly suspiciously lacking and pro-establishment. The government is entirely untrustworthy and straight up lying about everything and anything.

There are a few people doing good work (e.g. OSINT HK), but it's not enough to rise about the noise drowning it all out.

Of course the real situation is more nuanced. It's also all entirely pointless, with no hope for de-escalation or positive resolution.

That said, it's also not nearly as dramatic and disrupting to daily life as you'd expect. Living in HK is still far safer than in downtown San Francisco (or anywhere in the US for that matter). For those wishing to stay out of it, avoiding protests is fairly easy (I mean — unless you live in Mong Kong or Prince Edward). The handful of times I ended up right in the middle of it, nobody really cared to bother any bystanders.

The government seems to be on a mission to do anything in its power to make things worse, from repeatedly escalating the situation through violence, inflammatory policy, and generally being a party-pooper and cancelling all ordinary celebrations (e.g. Halloween).

Today, walking down the street in Sai Ying Pun, I observed workers replacing the wooden paneling they've been installing in front of the mainland Chinese banks to protect them from the thrashings with welded metal paneling. It was somewhat of a sign that they're getting ready for this to continue in the long term.

<comment><USER3> What western media? The NY Times and the Washington Post make it sound troubled, but not like a war zone.

<comment><USER4> > Western media is making it sound like Hong Kong is Syria. Protester private > channels makes wild unfounded claims about mass-scale executions and rapes.

Yes, I was going to say I never got this impression listening to NPR.

[https://www.npr.org/tags/352993831/hong-kong- protests](https://www.npr.org/tags/352993831/hong-kong-protests)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The hopeless situation of Carrie Lam fronting the CCP and having to execute its policy, is what drove Hong Kong into the people's revolution of 2019. Under the CCP, local administrators do not need ideas, just obedience. Carrie Lam's misfortune was to be sandwiched between the increasing paranoia of Xi Jin Ping, and the increasing rebelliousness of HKers, and she has no strategy to resolve the two forces.

Except she could have chosen to take the HKer's side. She is after all a HK citizen and its representative even without true election. Seven million rebels can parallelize a city, but pissing off a few thousand bureaucrats in the politburo simply leads to tantrums and rhetorics. If she had done that, HK's economy would not have stalled, HKers would rally behind her, and the whole Two System debate could be channelled into a consultation process that can remain civil and reasonable.

HKers will not forgive her for her missteps and police brutality that led to thousands of arrested and hundreds of maimed/injured/raped/dead. That will always be her legacy.

But HKers can thank her incompetence for triggering the nationalistic feeling of a Hongkonger. The city of immigrants and world refugees has never been so clearly in sync, and the common enemy so in focus.

<comment><USER6> > Except she could have chosen to take the HKer's side.

Could she ? Wouldn't she have been "disappeared" as well as her family ?

Not trying to excuse anything of course, she chose her side a long time ago, but still…

<comment><USER7> No, she would not have been disappeared. Hong Kong is not a society where senior public figures and family members are purged for stepping out of line.

But let's say you believe that dark scenario. In that case, even small gestures, like visiting a school or hospital, or not calling protesters "enemies of the people", would have been a sign of sympathy.

<comment><USER8> She chose to visit injured police officers and broken Octopus machines (turnstiles in the local metro) instead of victims of police brutality.

She did visit the local mosque to apologize when the police blasted it with tainted water, after she was called out on it. She did not visit nor apologize to local churchs which experienced worse behavior.

She simply refuses to learn what Hong Kongers truly think of her. The district elections were a stinging rebuke to her administration, yet she believes that she is right.

We Hong Kongers will remember her and her cronies forever, in the same way we remember the June 4th crackdown.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> ' No one on either side of the conflict , then or now, has a satisfactory theory of why Carrie Lam won't form an independent inquiry into police violence, the demand that is the emotional core of the protests.'

Does China have anything to loose with an independent inquiry into police violence ?

The Hong Kong situation is still quite baffling. I initially thought that the emotional motivation was independence. But it seems like that's not the crux of the issue

<comment><USER10> > I initially thought that the emotional motivation was independence.

More like autonomy: apparently Hong Kong citizens don't mind being part of China as long as they can keep their self-governance.

And that ties in to your question:

> Does China have anything to loose with an independent inquiry into police > violence ?

Such an inquiry would emphasize HK's autonomy (and also paint government as potentially fallible, something the party doesn't like to see discussed). On the other hand: does China have anything to win with such an inquiry? I can't see anything (there are four more demands and giving in on this would likely increase support for demanding the rest), so for them it's all risk and no gain.

<comment><USER11> > More like autonomy: apparently Hong Kong citizens don't mind being part of > China as long as they can keep their self-governance.

So they don't mind being a part of China so long as they aren't actually a part of China. I can't blame them either, the current system has worked out well for the island, and China's internal polices have not had quite as much success on the mainland.

But Chinese officials were pretty clear from the start that they intended to integrated HK eventually and that the semi-detached existence was only temporary. They see this as inevitable and the HL population is just dragging their heels on something that has to happen in the end.

<comment><USER12> I think some folk in the west naively assumed that a wealthy populace on the mainland would get tired of corruption and rule by self appointed officials, and eventually liberalise. Harmony would be achieved this way.

Instead China is implementing totalitarianism on a first world region and the Cantonese hate it.

<comment><USER13> HK is largely cantonese but not all cantonese are from hong kong. let's use accurate language

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Best of luck to the HK people. I called it home for better part of 2 years. I lived in Wan Chai on Hennessy rd near the computer center.

Plenty of atrocities committed - people being shipped off in train cars reminiscent of pre-WWII photos that I have only learned about in school.

Best wishes.

[EDIT] I agree I should have said alleged atrocities. Sadly, hardly anyone left in HK is impartial but hopefully independent enough investigations are opened.

To the trains - I was referring to this I saw a few weeks ago: [https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/dxz3xd/transporti...](https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/dxz3xd/transporting_prisoners_by_train_potentially/)

It is not a good look loading anyone in trains who is captive. True, we don't know where they're headed, could be fine - it's a bad look given the situation.

<comment><USER15> HK has been in a bad economic situation for many years. Without mainland China's support, it's even worse. The tension in the HK society is at the breaking point. Young generation has less opportunities to improve their life quality.

People who support CCP believe that it is the greedy capitalism caused the problem. Implementation of the CCP regime can rebuild HK. People who support democracy believe that it is the CCP iron fist caused suffocating.

No one is backing down. It ended up with a civil war.

Humans repeat their mistakes generation after generation.

<comment><USER16> It's an extraordinary claim that mainland has been supporting HK. What support do you mean by this?

<comment><USER17> Economically, a lot of businesses profit from mainland Chinese tourists (some mainly thanks to them). Reduced travel in light of this year's events has caused a serious drop in sales of luxury products, for example.

Yesterday I talked about just that with an HKer who works in marketing. Democracy supporters acknowledge that this trend is hurting the economy, though on bright side they welcome businesses starting to target local long- term customers more.

<comment><USER2> Business is bad.

The number of restaurants and bars I see closing on an almost daily basis is getting sad. My friends in the F&B industry here confirm that they're hurting. Bad.

Hospitality is hit even harder with hotels at 30% occupancy and many having to offer rates at 50% or higher discounts, and having to lay off staff.

<comment><USER18> HK has been over-reliant on these businesses to provide employment for a long time. Most of the F&B outfits that are closing are fly by night outfits which would only work when everyone in CBD has more money than sense. It will be a good thing if this leads to us diversifying our economy a bit more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm not sure I buy the argument that Lam is just a bumbling politician failing to deal with a crisis when she's backed by the most powerful authoritarian regime in the world.

<comment><USER20> Yeah it's hard to believe, but that's part of the issue. She's never been a politician, and was a second rate administrator / civil servant at best before she was chosen for the position. I think that we often overestimate the abilities of leaders everywhere in the world...

In addition, China is happy to let Carrie and HK stumble...to a certain extent of course. But they truly have been very hands off on the HK protests. I think it's worth noting that China is perfectly fine with HK getting burned by itself just as long certain lines aren't crossed (independence, violence against PLA, etc.). They weren't worried about losing HK when it was under British colonial rule, they certainly aren't worried now.

Furthermore, things really aren't that bad considering how the media has been reporting HK. It's still an extremely well-to-do city and life goes on in most parts.

<comment><USER21> To add onto it, she was basically picked because the other potential candidate was a little too good at being a politician, and campaigned for the position without Beijing's blessing.

<comment><USER7> You can't just mention him in passing and not say that he was widely known as Mr. Pringles, for his majestic moustache!

<comment><USER22> Were I to achieve not just being a successful politician, but one known as Mr. Pringles. What a life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's really sad to say but a vicious fight, even with no endgame seems to be the only sensible move for the Hong Kong people at this point.

At least, if they get pummeled, in the end, it will be extremely clear that whatever happened was not consensual and will set them up to fight another round down the line.

</comment><comment><USER24> Off topic, but the site creator should really toss Bruce Mahalski some credit for his image they are using as their logo.

</comment><comment><USER25> The CCP is probably content to let the HK situation continue to fester. The economic role of HK relative to the PRC will continue to wane. HK will continue to be portrayed as an object lesson in the dysfunction of democracy. The CCP can assert control whenever it needs to by simply turning off the water and electrical supply.

</comment><comment><USER20> The Hong Kong situation is much more complicated than mainstream media outside Hong Kong would like the world to believe, but that goes without saying.

The issue with the current HK government at the end of the day is that Carrie Lam is a second rate administrator and is wildly unqualified for handling the current situation in HK. Worse yet, she has one of the worst cabinets / teams ever assembled (you would need to be familiar with local HK politics to know this). In other words, HK couldn't have had a worse group to lead the city at this point in time.

Having said that, Carrie is completely reliant on the police force at this stage. There is no way she agrees to an independent inquiry or any major moves against the police. At least not right now.

I'd say that the independent inquriy may be something that can be compromised on at some point. But universal suffrage is out of the question, and demands 3 and 4 would never be accepted by the rest of Hong Kong nor would any reasonable person accept it given what has taken place since the original protests. In fact one of the key issues is that "the protest" isn't just one unified movement that has been moving forward since its inception.

<comment><USER26> > demands 3 and 4 would never be accepted by the rest of Hong Kong nor would > any reasonable person accept it given what has taken place since the > original protests.

Why wouldn't any reasonable person accept an independent inquiry into police brutality? That doesn't sound very reasonable to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Are there any good reasons to support the take that the extradition law was Lam's own initiative and not pushed for by China ?

<comment><USER7> James Palmer writing in August in Foreign Policy gives what is the consensus view among journalists in Hong Kong:

"Analysts generally believe that the bill was the initiative of Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam, not a measure suggested or strongly pushed from Beijing. Lam may have been aiming to please the Chinese authorities and strengthen her position, or it may have been an attempt to put a formal procedure in place in order to circumvent the Chinese authorities from simply kidnapping Hong Kongers."

[https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/08/03/why-is-hong-kong- erupti...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/08/03/why-is-hong-kong-erupting- protests-china-extradition/)

<comment><USER27> Thanks, my impression was that Beijing tried to quickly capitalize on an opportunity that presented itself with the Taiwan murder - if this is really Lam's own doing then the level of either stupidity or self-dealing is staggering.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> As an ABC who currently lives in HK but has no ties to Asia (born and raised in the US) and has no personal interest in what's happening in HK, what I observe is a global increase in pace of change affecting this generation across the entire world, with drastically different results per region / body of people based on their current economic, cultural, and political positions.

I think earthquakes are a good illustration of what's happening. Energy that builds up, friction developed between tectonic plates that gets released, either violently or smoothly, with varying levels of impact depending on the geological conditions surrounding it.

In the US, I mostly agree with the high level view that Andrew Yang ascribes (which is actually just the technocrat doom and gloom point of view) - economic changes that created waves of discontent, with an unconscious realization that problems have become too big for individuals alone to deal with, demanding escalation to the government level to solve, bringing in a feeling that we need something radically different (Trump) to handle the observed radical differences that the 21st century world is bringing in.

In Asia, the socio-economic changes that are happening are the same as the US, except instead of having the strongest economy in the world with a wealth of resources, education, a progressive history and lots of national-level experience in dealing with shocking changes, you have... exactly what you see in HK. Asian culture, stemming from confucian values, encourage and promote people to power who like to keep things the same way and discourage adaptation (harmony in society is defined as minimizing conflict which usually means not rocking the boat).

While the US (at least compared to other countries) has a system in place that can handle mistakes, has a rich history of how to handle change and how to properly push for progressive value shifts, the whole of Asia lacks all of that experience as a culture. What you have is a bunch of the older generation who are used to the old way of doing things, and see the world more similar to the godfather era rather than modern society. The rest of society has a value to not rock the boat and to care for outward harmony over bring up legitimate issues. This yields an environment where people are just not "trained for change". The actions that the current Asian political powers are taking look primitive to anyone who has lived in modern society and has observed how progressive shifts actually take place (and many have taken place over the last 5-10 years).

It will be very interesting to see how Asia adapts because modern society isn't going anywhere, it's actually speeding up and clashing more and more with how the older generation wants things to be.

<comment><USER29> > As an ABC who currently lives in HK

ABC?

<comment><USER2> (Not OP) a common acronym for American-born Chinese.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Rip democracy

<comment><USER31> yep, RISE In Peace ;)</comment></comment>


German regulator says it discovered new illegal software on Daimler diesels - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/daimler-slashes-outlook-on-fresh-diesel-allegations-11561367960?mod=rsswn <comment><USER2> This is further proof that everyone was doing it.

There are so many valuable lessons to takeaway from this, but weirdly for me, it's to _never depend on innovation_. Especially _specific_ innovation.

It's important to remember that everyone a decade ago was riding high about the potential for diesel. Consumers, car producers, and regulators. And everyone was making promises about how good diesel was going to get - based on the expectation that you can just dump resources into a certain technology and get innovation, magically and predictably. But it feels like everyone just hit the innate limitation of the resource and tried to pretend it didn't exist.

<comment><USER3> This is such a defeatist attitude that lets VW off the hook. We may yet find that everyone was doing it but this isn't it. No one has been found to be doing large-scale cheating like VW so far. And the technology to make diesel cleaner has always been there. The VW scandal is exactly that they cheated to make the cars cheaper by avoiding having extra emissions hardware. Even after all the scrutiny diesel cars are still being sold and as far as we know pass emissions.

<comment><USER4> Not just hardware but also just using less adblue fluid.

That seems even crazier on the surface. Let's kill a few people so our users don't have to refill a tank as often.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I scratch my head on that one. Is a DEF system that expensive for the end user? It seems like it would have been a trivial thing to include.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Isn't it about time all software/hardware in cars should be required to be open-source? There should be no room for secret functionality on something as pervasive and dangerous as cars and trucks. Especially if it's also kept secret from their supposed owners.

<comment><USER6> Yes, but that won't solve the issue.

The issue is regulators write regulations for one thing, but want a subtly different thing.

If you and I start a game of poker, but rather than winning through skill, I call the FBI and get them to search all your cards, have I broken the rules of poker? It wasn't a written rule not to call the FBI...

Regulators across the world have similar gaps in the rules, and both humans and automated design tools will start to exploit them, possibly unknowingly. Instead they need to make far more watertight rules. They should simply require all cars to measure their own emissions, and bill the companies for any cars which either mis-measure emissions, or measure more emissions in their lifetime than an allowed limit. Then manufacturers will have an incentive to upgrade cars in the field.

<comment><USER7> "It wasn't a written rule not to call the FBI..."

But it _was_ a written rule not to use a defeat device.

This isn't a case where manufacturers found a loophole and regulators got upset because they wanted manufacturers to obey the spirit of the rules rather than just the letter. This is a case of manufacturers blatantly breaking the explicit written rules.

<comment><USER6> Same thing.

If I am designing a printer and you say "it must be able to output 10 pages per minute printing black and white text, and make it as light as possible", then I, the printer designer go to work, tweaking the design of the printer to meet that goal, while keeping the weight down.

Seeing nothing about the color printing speed, I don't care about that. It's just black and white speed that matters! I make the black cartridge super fast and super wide. Whoa - gotta keep the weight down! Oh well - I'll make this colour cartridge smaller/cheaper/slower/lighter.

Suddenly, we have a printer that does 10ppm of black and white, and only 0.1ppm of colour, because it has to crawl along.

We now have a 'defeat device'. It performs great in test conditions (black and white text), and badly in general use (colour pages are common).

Did the designer explicitly make a defeat device? Not really... They just only made it work well in the test conditions, and performance in all other conditions suffered.

<comment><USER8> This analogy is just _wrong_ \- as in completely incorrect.

Car makers didn't optimize what they were told to optimize for, they optimized for the test they knew the regulators would perform.

A correct analogy would be you telling manufacturers, "the printer must use at most X grams of ink per square centimeter", but then they go and only optimize it for the specific test printouts you will do. In truth their printer is exceeding that threshold just so they can also advertise higher printing speeds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> With these OTA updates how can regulators determine if there was "illegal" software on a car?

Daimler doesn't do OTA but Tesla for example could remove autopilot code in an update that caused a death and there would be no way to test for it without getting access to the old firmware or source code. Tesla would not hand those out without court order which would require suspicion.

<comment><USER10> > With these OTA updates how can regulators determine if there was "illegal" > software on a car?

Raid an office, check the source repo and the release log, question engineers, asking questions about what was pushed out OTA, and what wasn't. If your company did not keep such audit and repo logs, you are probably not SOX- compliant (Or the european equivalent thereof), and they should assume the worst in your intent.

Regulators and police aren't some kind of unthawed-from-the-ice-age caveman lawyers. They have as many tools to answer this question as any engineer working at these firms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> So, the software in question was no longer in production by 2015, the year that VW got busted. Makes one wonder. Maybe regulation is effective?

<comment><USER12> Or it wasnt needed any more. Some of these cheats, are to protect the engine, in certain scenarios, these might not be needed, with newer engine designs.

<comment><USER13> Damn it's Christopher Walken!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's a nightmare for car manufacturers right now - they had a gun held to their heads in europe to go diesel, then the politicians changed their minds and decided to push EV despite there being little effort made to create viable supporting grid infrastructure. Jaguar Landrover bet big on diesel and are digging out, but the chances of recovering from the diesel debacle while succeeding at innovating EVs is slim. Meanwhile dozens of Chinese EV firms are going to the wall, despite China being the big transportation growth market

<comment><USER15> Jaguar Land Rover even built a huge diesel manufacturing facility [1], finished in 2014. I visited it around that time, the site was very impressive but cost them a huge amount of money.

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

<comment><USER14> Tata have been wonderful stewards of Jaguar heritage, it's disheartening to see the whipsawing they have been getting from the EU

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > _The KBA believes that a coolant thermostat that is activated during normal > driving to protect engine parts in [sic] an illegal defeat device_

This badly written line is the only technical information in the article. Since a thermostat is only a temperature sensor, I don't get how it constitutes a defeat device of any type. I also don't get how activating a sensor to read coolant temperature _protects_ anything. And why would an installed sensor be turned off anyway?

<comment><USER17> The wsj has too few infos, however if you can read german, there are very detailed articles:

[https://www.sueddeutsche.de/auto/daimler-mercedes-glk- rueckr...](https://www.sueddeutsche.de/auto/daimler-mercedes-glk-rueckruf- kraftfahrtbundesamt-1.4495109)

As i understand it, the motor seemed to artificially open the thermostat to keep the engine colder than usual. Now my guess, as an automotive engineer, is that they did this to reduce the time where the engine is in the normal operating range. It makes no sense to me, unless the emissions test only applies when the engine is in normal temperature. Or, second guess, as the engine is colder, it emits less NOx, because NOx appear when the combustion temperature is too high.

Or simpler: the thing activates when the coolant is 20 deg celsius, the starting temperature of the test

<comment><USER18> > Or, second guess, as the engine is colder, it emits less NOx, because NOx > appear when the combustion temperature is too high.

That's a major issue. NOx emissions are caused by engine heat interacting with nitrogen and oxygen from outside air, which gets you to a nasty trade-off. Run the engine hotter and get more efficient combustion, therefore less CO2 emissions; or run the engine cooler and get less NOx emissions. By design, Diesel engines combustion happens at much higher pressure and temperature than gasoline engines, which is why diesels produce much more NOx.

Diesel emission fluid can reduce NOx, but also reduces efficiency, meaning more CO2 will be released.

<comment><USER17> True, it is a constant compromise that the engine is doing at each injection.

For the article, i think the journalists just didn't understand the explanation, and it is probably the simpler solution : they enabled the emission cleaning algorithm when the coolant at startup is 23 degrees, so clearly a defeating device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> >The US Environmental Protection Agency accused VW Group of including illegal software on its diesel vehicles to ensure that the diesels would pass emissions limits imposed by the US.

Is this worded correctly? I thought the issue was that the software detected when it was being tested and then output emissions that were substantially less than during normal operation.

This sentence from the article makes it sound like the software made the emissions be under the limit all the time.

<comment><USER20> > This sentence from the article makes it sound like the software made the > emissions be under the limit all the time.

The use of the word "pass" leads me to assume that it's referring to levels when being tested

> ...would PASS emissions limits imposed by the US.

(Emphasis added by me)

<comment><USER21> It's worded poorly and should say "would pass emissions TESTS...", I think. What does it even mean to pass a limit?

<comment><USER22> Not to exceed it. Aka your limit is 500ppm, passing the limit means you did not exceed the limit.

<comment><USER21> That's not English.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> As a german I sometimes have the feeling that our automobile industry has more advanced software than the government.

</comment><comment><USER24> Rogue engineer strikes again!

</comment><comment><USER25> Some people need some serious prison time to put a stop to this.

</comment><comment><USER26> Why isn't there an EU wide recall?

I though the type approval was EU wide

</comment><comment><USER27> Url changed from [https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/06/german-regulator- says-i...](https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/06/german-regulator-says-it- discovered-new-illegal-software-on-daimler-diesels/), which points to this.

</comment><comment><USER28> I dont see the reason why sw should be open source.

<comment><USER29> Neither hardware IMHO.

Unless, you could somehow prevent competitors from stealing I+D. Which you can't. So closed source it is (that makes things harder for competitors).

<comment><USER30> You prevent competitors from stealing by requiring them to open source their stuff too.

<comment><USER29> Yes, that will be a complete success with anything coming from/going to China. Because we all know that they respect IP.

<comment><USER30> If they want to sell their cars Germany they'd have to open source their code. I see no problem.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Find something Rusty to work on - <AUTHOR> https://www.rustaceans.org/findwork <comment><USER2> This site was launched today to coincide with the beginning of the "impl period". We plan to finish off our 2017 roadmap goals by spinning down the RFC process for 2017 and spending the rest of the year focused purely on implementation work—which doesn't just mean code! Here is the full announcement and roster of working groups:

[https://blog.rust-lang.org/2017/09/18/impl-future-for- rust.h...](https://blog.rust-lang.org/2017/09/18/impl-future-for-rust.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Just having a resource like this available is a great sign for the community's long term health.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, Rust has a fantastic community. Easily the most welcoming one I've seen. Even more impressive given the problem space it lives in.

<comment><USER5> It makes me wish I had problems in that space to work with Rust :P

<comment><USER3> This link shows a whole page full of them. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is there a similar list for Python? This is the closest I'm able to find:

[https://bugs.python.org/issue?status=1&@sort=-activity&@disp...](https://bugs.python.org/issue?status=1&@sort=-activity&@dispname=Easy%20issues&@startwith=0&@filter=&@group=priority&@columns=id,activity,title,creator,status&keywords=6&@action=search&@pagesize=50).

<comment><USER7> You might give OpenHatch a look:

[https://openhatch.org/search/?language=Python&q=](https://openhatch.org/search/?language=Python&q=)

<comment><USER8> Looks like OpenHatch is planning to shutdown? (Or maybe I misunderstood the blog post)

[https://blog.openhatch.org/2017/celebrating-our-successes- an...](https://blog.openhatch.org/2017/celebrating-our-successes-and-winding- down-as-an-organization/)

<comment><USER7> D'oh, I had not seen that. Sorry!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was literally just desiring something like this!</comment>