A friend is helping with my startup. What's the legal arrangement we need? - <AUTHOR> My friend is helping me develop my startup. He's doing it on the side and will not be an employee.
What do I need to do now, from the legal side, to protect the company (and avoid red flags to investors)?
He's doing it all for free, and is happy to as he's using new technologies he wants to learn. The classic worst-case scenario is your friend suing you down the line when you become successful. <comment><USER2> You should have him sign some sort of work-for-hire / IP agreement. Absent such as an agreement, all of the work he does is owned by him, not your company.

Likely, he will refuse to sign such an agreement without compensation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice. That makes sense. I think I can structure something with upside for him like right of first refusal for the CTO role when funding hits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> _> He's doing it on the side and will not be an employee._

Then congratulations, he's a cofounder.

Treat him as such.

</comment><comment><USER4> I would search unconscionable contract. I think there's some good advice about it there. Maybe search exploit my friends.</comment>


The Invisible Bike Helmet - <AUTHOR> http://vimeo.com/43038579

<comment><USER2> That's "Hövding", for those interested. <http://www.hovding.se/>

<comment><USER3> Or <http://www.hovding.com/> for English speakers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for these</comment></comment></comment>


How To Study: 4th Grade & Social Studies - <AUTHOR> http://designbygravity.wordpress.com/2010/03/01/how-to-study-4th-grade-and-social-studies/

<comment><USER2> In first year of college I had math classes, and use of scratch paper was forbidden. (and solving system of 4-5 linear equations on 4cm by 4cm part of paper is really interesting resource problem :)

I guess math teachers hate reading their students... At least in my college.

</comment><comment><USER3> Am I reading this right? This girl is 10... This isn't a stab at the author. It's great that he is getting good study habits for his daughter at an early age. It's more at the education system. I really don't think 10 year old's should have to do this type of study each night. They are 10!

<comment><USER4> Considering how little the average parent in America helps their grade school age children with their classes, I'd say that making your 10 year old study like this every night is far from the worst thing you could do to them.

<comment><AUTHOR> One thing I've noticed is that here reluctance/enthusiasm to study is directly tied to how efficient she feels the studying will be. If she knows she'll get an A because she does effort Y, she will do effort Y. My problem with the school system is that studying is too disconnected from results, and so kids end up feeling like their test results are random. That's a killer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I still fail to understand why the ability to memorize a bunch of facts is so valuable, or more importantly why it should be such a necessary and important skill in K-12 education.

Does this have any application in the 'real world'? I would imagine critical thinking and problem solving are much, much more useful.

<comment><USER6> Memorizing facts isn't innately valuable -- it's valuable because it makes critical thinking and problem solving easier. If you have a larger working memory (because you've memorized lots of things before), you'll be able to hold a larger system in your head to analyze.

Unfortunately, the educational system usually separates the memorization phase from the problem-solving phase far too much to establish the causal link. Using chemistry as an example, I think the (incorrect) reasoning runs something like this:

\- Most good chemists know the periodic table by heart.

\- Therefore, step 1 to being a good chemist is to memorize the entire periodic table.

They have the best of intentions -- every field requires you to know some basic concepts before you can start manipulating them. But when I took a math class in college, we didn't start off by memorizing the definitions of groups, rings, and fields. We just started doing proofs. Everyone learned the definitions fairly quickly just as a side effect of looking them up often enough to solve the problems. So the far better approach is just to memorize "as needed," which also makes the memories more likely to stick around in the brain.

A final example, using history: Originally, I detested it as a subject solidly in the "memorization" category. But I finally got a teacher who forced it into the problem-solving category. Her exams were essays, where we had to write a position paper arguing for a specific side of a political debate. This immediately made those random memorized facts useful, because they could be brought in to support a larger conceptual argument. This teacher was somewhat of a local hero for her incredibly high passing rates -- her students actually learned history, while others merely memorized assorted facts.</comment></comment>


Autopsy of a Pentium III - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencystuff.com/?p=24 <comment><USER2> Just reminds me how, with the way things are progressing, there will be no way for future civilizations to actually see out technological sophistication. It will all be attributed to superstition.

</comment><comment><USER3> Really cool stuff! Check out the timestamps from the SEM - you can see he was doing the pictures in opposite order.

</comment><comment><USER4> Wow this blow my mind, i have a CS degree but never imagined this level of miniaturization.

See Believe</comment>


Ask HN: How can I confuse an ion stream weapon? - <AUTHOR> If there was an electrical stream via ions by say a tesla weapon that doesnt exist yet.
I am wondering how I can confuse it enough (reverse the polarity) or shield.
The best I can come up with is hanging grounded wires, magnets or small running electrical on the ceiling.
I know of faraday cages.
tl;dr: i need to alter polarity of ions in my room, as they come in at electrical faster than light speed, enough to block an ion stream (phaser weapon) <comment><USER2> The cheapest mechanism is the tinfoil hat.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks

(and breastplate!)</comment></comment>


Reached 1000 signups in 3 months - <AUTHOR> Just crossed 1000 users for my SaaS in little over 3 months.
When I started https://reetro.io my initial goal was to get 100 signups in 3 months.
Now we have many big companies including Tesco,Liberty global, ING and Experian using the tool regularly and providing valuable feedback.
Thanks for all the things and inspirations, I have learned from other hackers. <comment><USER2> Congrats on crossing the 1000 users mark! Reetro looks like a really cool tool. There aren't many good retro tools, I'm definitely going to have my team give this a try.</comment>


Engineer Thinks We Could Build a Real Starship Enterprise in 20 Years - <AUTHOR> http://www.universetoday.com/95099/engineer-thinks-we-could-build-a-real-starship-enterprise-in-20-years/#more-95099

<comment><USER2> The guy's actual web site: <http://www.buildtheenterprise.org/>

That was submitted here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3967130>

Alternate reports of the same story:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3965116> (msn.com)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3964173> (io9.com)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3961894> (universetoday.com)

</comment><comment><USER3> Now _this_ should be a Kickstarter project. With such detailed plans as "Research" for 9 years I'm not seeing any risks here. Jokes aside, I'm not really sure what the point would be. As much as I love the idea of spaceships and exploring space, the budget this would require vs. the payoff - at this point in time, given the other problems we have on Earth - do not seem worthwhile.</comment>


Why is Scott Thompson still CEO of Yahoo? - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/software/276078/why-scott-thompson-still-ceo-yahoo

<comment><USER2> Because boards don't make decisions overnight, especially considering that it sounds like there is some hostility on the Yahoo board.</comment>


Mum's the Word: on the NSA's Series of Cold War Security Posters - <AUTHOR> https://www.bunkhistory.org/resources/3220?related=2223&relationship_name=CORE%20IDEA <comment><USER2> I'm surprised we don't see a modern reinterpretation of security awareness / counter intelligence communication reminders.

During the Cold War if the Soviets acquired state of the art semiconductors there would be little chance in them reverse engineering it successfully without a massive investment of further IP theft and CAPEX in the form of a chip fab.

Nowadays the vast majority of total R&D is for commercial use(with military application) rather than trickle down commercial use from military R&D in the post WWII environment.

An argument could be made that with an increasing proportion of military capability being a combination of Commercial technology "A" mashed up with Commercial technology "B"(with some minor modifications) that the need for security is greater due to accessibility of commercial technology being near ubiquitous.

Were the powers that be too paranoid back then, and not paranoid enough now?

Steve Blank's Secret History of Silicon Valley is relevant:

[https://steveblank.com/secret-history/](https://steveblank.com/secret- history/)

Especially the inversion of R&D from military to commercial.

</comment><comment><USER3> This article starts OK, but the conclusions don't make any sense to me... Print advertising isn't dead, it still lives on (of course) in print, and even if newspapers and magazines are diminishing, billboards and other outdoor advertising certainly are not. Sure, there is way less of an emphasis on it with new types of media that have popped up in the meantime, but it's crazy to say the Internet has killed it...

It says "It's hard to imagine the NSA launching a similar campaign today" and "We'll never see their likes again" \- but of course they still produce this kind of stuff internally... Sure, the style has evolved and changed from the mid-century aesthetic, and the way the message is communicated has changed a bit, but 'creative/artistic' posters for this purpose still exist and will continue to... I literally saw a cartoon poster reminding people not to share classified information produced by the Australian Defence Department last week on a site visit to a Navy facility that uses some of our hardware...

</comment><comment><USER4> Well those look like something made for the original Twilight Zone. Or a parody of them.

The British equivalents frequently look dated and anachronistic but without the disturbing vibe. One or two of the WW2 Brit posters had a slightly Soviet feel - mainly from the art style.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't get the creepy vibe the author is claiming. looks like mundane office posters of the period to me.

<comment><USER6> a phone in a noose isn't creepy?</comment></comment>


For Better or for Worse - <AUTHOR> http://jmoiron.net/blog/for-better-or-for-worse/ <comment><USER2> A great and thoughtful perspective on Go and Go's potential legacy. Nice to read something that responds to the language's explicitly-stated goals, rather than ignoring them outright.

</comment><comment><USER3> I recently watched Guy Steele's "Growing a Language" talk. It's very much related to jmoiron's post here, and is worth a watch despite its age:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ahvzDzKdB0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ahvzDzKdB0)

Steele's commentary on "Worse is Better" seems to me to be a better representation of the original essay than the one expressed here about Go. Steele says:

"The gist of ['Worse is Better'] is that the best way to get a language used by many persons is not to design and build 'The Right Thing,' because that will take too long. In a race, a small language with warts will beat a well designed language because users will not wait for the right thing; they will use the language that is quick and cheap, and put up with the warts. Once a small language fills a niche, it is hard to take its place."

In other words, the lesson of 'Worse is Better' is that getting a 'good enough' thing to market, and benefiting from the network effects of its widespread use, will always beat getting the 'the really good' thing to market in the same category, because the cost of delay is the loss of (community) network effects. The illustrative example here is UNIX and C, but it can be easily cross-applied to more recent projects.

From that vantage point, Go isn't a good example of 'Worse is Better'. It occupies the same niche as C, but was delivered nearly 4 decades later. It seems to be a "second edition of C" designed with very explicit goals of correcting specific deficiencies of C as a systems programming language, but without the scope creep that characterizes many "second systems".

Other languages -- like Python and Scala -- occupy completely different niches and have already achieved similar scale of network effects.

The rest of Guy Steele's talk is worth watching, because his high-level point is that the languages that win aren't the simpler ones, or the ones with the simplest/best design, but instead are the "growable" ones that get to market. For example, from Steele's vantage point, the success of a programming ecosystem like Python's would be evaluated as follows: it isn't that it has the right level of simplicity/dynamism, or an appropriate programming paradigm. That Python made good decisions there helps, but they aren't the key ingredients. Instead, its success is that it _shipped_ in 1991, _evolved_ over time to keep up with programming trends, that it has an awesome 'import' statement, and that programmers feel they can 'grow' the language through libraries (e.g. Django for web development, Pandas for data analysis) without waiting on the slow core language or stdlib evolutionary process.</comment>


How Stephen King Was Outed as Richard Bachman - <AUTHOR> http://mentalfloss.com/article/502166/how-stephen-king-was-outed-richard-bachman <comment><USER2> "This is what Stephen King would write like if Stephen King could really write."

Heh.

</comment><comment><USER3> It took an obsessive nerd to actually go to the Library of Congress to research the novel's copyright information (the Pre-Internet Age's equivalent of looking up domain registry information?). Rather smart and perceptive of him, but I am not sure doxxing "Richard Bachman" was a good move. This happened recently to writer "Elena Ferrante" as well.

</comment><comment><USER4> interesting for its explanation of why Stephen King created the pseudonym. i had always wondered.</comment>


WSJ comes out for SOPA - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-57361059-261/wsj-comes-out-for-sopa-more-lawmakers-pull-support/

<comment><USER2> First thought: "Well _of course_ WSJ would be pro-SOPA".

Second thought: "But just because you would expect it of them doesn't make them wrong. What points do they make?"

Final thought: "Oh look, a paywall. Oh well..."

It seems their mission to overzealously block content on the internet was impeded by their decision to overzealously block content on the internet.

<comment><USER3> Disclaimer: I heard the Editorial via my Audible subscription this morning and sometimes those editions are abridged. Though normally not in the Editorial section.

I thought the article was pretty fair to be honest. It called out the DNS issues as being egregious and they highlighted the constitutional basis of copyright which most people forget. They also highlighted the difference between individual piracy and piracy for business as an important point (the exact sentence is "This isn't college kids swapping MP3s as in the 1990s. Rather rogue websites set up shop overseas and sell US consumers bootleg [media]"

My main criticism is they made SOPA seem a little more benign than it is. They say...

"The notion that the SOPA dragnet would catch a stray Twitter Link or Facebook post is false"

Well, I don't see how that is false. My main issue with SOPA (now that the DNS part has be taken out) is it could be used to allow media companies to shut down legitimate indie products because they resemble commercial offerings. Because the bar is set so low as far as initial proof is concerned.

Anyway, the bottom line is the article is worth reading and it isn't just "Murdoch Henchmen Towing the Line". I wish they'd let it out of the paywall so you could see that.

<comment><USER4> Isn't selling bootleg stuff ALREADY illegal though? I mean, ICE can shut you down for importing ripoff stuff if they find it already - why do we need SOPA/PIPA to make things even more difficult for regular people?

<comment><USER5> As far as I understand it, if you have a website with a non U.S. domain name and not using a U.S. or U.S.-treaty-based payment system, there is no way to block access to rip-off items (material or digital) to be purchased in the U.S. For material goods, customs have the ability to confiscate these at the borders. There are international treaties in progress, where the U.S. partners with other countries, but the internet is a big, wide-open place and it's easy to move elsewhere or get safe harbour.

(For the record, I believe that only innovation will solve these problems, not suppression).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This: "One of America's most respected newspapers has come out on the side of copyright owners..." really annoys me. I am a copyright owner. I make money from that fact. I am against SOPA.

Setting up a false dilemma of "copyright owners" vs "others" is incorrect and evil spin. Everyone be sure to note that many of the sites and people against SOPA (e.g. Google, Tim O'Reilly, etc) are all major copyright holders and beneficiaries when you talk with people about this.

<comment><USER7> I agree. In any debate it's important to frame the issue carefully and to avoid letting the opposition choose the terms that will be discussed. If most people view this as "rogue sites/thieves vs. legitimate copyright holders" or something similar then the debate is already partly lost.

<comment><USER8> Exactly. They've already won in the press where SOPA and PIPA are referred to as "piracy bills". We need an alternate term. Unfortunately "skip-due-process bills" has too many syllables.

<comment><USER9> I think "no-free-speech bills" is short and to the point.

<comment><USER10> Censorship bills?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is meta, but as of right now every single comment on this article is about why the WSJ would claim to believe SOPA is a good idea, not what their actual argument is. A decent fraction of these comments cite Rupert Murdoch and/or phone hacking.

That's not very productive. Anyone on the pro-SOPA side can say exactly the same thing about e.g. Google. One of Google's major divisions, Youtube, was built in part on piracy. And Google itself does help people find pirated content; that's not something immoral, and they do make it difficult, but Google benefits from some copyright infringement in the sense that it means they're a better default search engine, since some fraction of queries are for copyright-violating content.

And the WSJ article does make a similar point:

 _Wikipedia has never blacked itself out before on any other political issue, nor have websites like Mozilla or the social news aggregator Reddit... They've taken no comparable action against, say, Chinese repression._

This is not the first thing so awful that websites choose to take such action --it's the first awful thing that _threatens them_ so much.

The WSJ also points out that the most egregious part of SOPA--DNS-level censorship--was removed in the latest draft. They don't make an exceptional argument, but they do make a superficially reasonable case; someone unfamiliar with the way the Internet works would likely find it pretty convincing.

SOPA/PIPA is an awful, awful idea. But if the WSJ claims that it's a good idea, and you claim that the WSJ only says so because corrupt, then you lose by default. The WSJ can have a good argument that defends their economic interests, or that is hypocritical in light of what they've been caught doing in the past. SOPA opponents are in a very similar situation.

<comment><USER10> The WSJ's point, that Wikipedia has never blacked itself out on any other political issue, is factually incorrect - odd that a _newspaper_ can't take the time to do its research, but Wikipedia blacked out in Italy after passage of a similar law there making it responsible for user content. Oddly enough, Italy backed down as well.

Wikipedia takes action when the Internet is threatened - that's just common sense. Which may be why the WSJ editorial page can't grasp it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> _The e-vangelists seem to believe that anybody is entitled to access to any content at any time at no cost—open source. Their real ideological objection is to the concept of copyright itself, and they oppose any legal regime that values original creative work. The offline analogue is Occupy Wall Street._

That alone is enough to render the article useless, a very bad piece for a generally high-quality blog (can we just call newspapers blogs from now on? it's technically the same thing)

On the other hand, the internet doesn't yet offer a good way for creators to get rewarded for their work. Donations are too arbitrary, itunes despite its popularity is tied to music corporatism and so is spotify. What other startups are working in novel ways to monetize intellectual property?

<comment><USER13> > What other startups are working in novel ways to monetize intellectual > property?

Selling DRM-free downloads is working extremely well for many; Bandcamp comes to mind. Plenty of indie content creators do just fine handling piracy by ignoring it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I used to read the WSJ regularly, but stopped when their editors came out so obsequiously in favor of the bailout in 2008, after years of rejecting government intervention. Even this editorial is a farce. How often does the WSJ use the phrase "rights" in a positive way outside this context?

<comment><USER15> Privatize profit; socialize risk. That's just another way in maximize profit and minimize risk. Pretty consistent with capitalism.

<comment><USER16> True capitalists believe that government is a referee; government should not the bagman for losses or a source of investment funding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Of course it does. It's a Murdoch paper, and Murdoch is a fascist. All Murdoch's outlets operate as a kind of Pravda for American neo-fascism.

(I am not using the term fascism hyperbolically. Murdoch is, I think, properly classifiable as an authoritarian collectivist -- a fascist.)

<comment><USER18> Fun fact: _fascism_ wasn't the first name Mussolini wanted for the Italian political movement of the 1920s-40s. _Corporatism_ was the original name.

<comment><USER19> No it wasn't, that's a lefty myth recently invented. The word "corporatism" didn't exist back then.

Mussolini referred to corporativismo, which he defined as a large number of people working together, not specific to the modern corporation.

You shouldn't relay bad information if you're actually ignorant of Fascist history under Mussolini.

<comment><USER20> "Corporatism" as a concept has existed since the 19th century (identified by that term) and so did exist in the 1920s for Mussolini. Corporatism has similar aims as corporativismo, which is the Italian for corporatism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Pretty much cannot trust the position of the traditional medias, like WSJ, on SOPA. They have a clear conflict of interest since their owners underwrite the legislature.

Just treat them as propaganda.

<comment><USER21> On the flip side, the WSJ could say the exact same thing about Google, Facebook, Ars Technica, etc. Just because they offer a different viewpoint doesn't mean you should completely write them off. Instead, it is useful to read these types of pieces to see what the opposition really wants.

If there is to be any sort of compromise, we can't just shut our eyes and plug our ears when the traditional media says what it needs in a law.

<comment><USER22> There is a difference. Google and Facebook are not media organizations and are clearly stating that SOPA will hurt them. People go to media companies for news, and when they see op-eds like the one in the WSJ, are less likely to consider that the writer herself is a critically invested party in the issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> What's not at all surprising about this is that the WSJ is positioning SOPA as an anti-piracy bill and not as a bill that gives tacit acceptance to the assertion that government controls of information channels is acceptable in a free society.

Also the WSJ being _One of America's most respected newspapers_ hasn't been true since Murdoch purchased it and started inserting opinion into front page news stories.

<comment><USER10> Well - they still report the news quite well. It's just their editorial page that's off the rails.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I find it rather humorous that it is unsigned. It makes it feel even more as though it were penned by Murdoch.

<comment><USER25> Editorials are, as a rule, unsigned. That's what makes them editorials as opposed to op-eds or columns. They represent, ostensibly, the opinion of the newspaper itself rather than any individual staffer. The NY Times does the same thing.

(The WSJ could avoid a lot of confusion if it labeled its editorials "Editorial." Instead it labels them "Review & Outlook," a term only regular readers of the opinion section will be familiar with.)

<comment><USER24> I honestly never knew the difference. Thank you very much for that insight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I prefer Murdoch's twitter rants to these articles (by fox, wsj and his other holdings). At least when he tweets, I know where the opinions come from.

</comment><comment><USER27> It's a Murdoch paper, what else did you expect?

Off Topic: Whenever I read WSJ I always think of Weekly Shounen Jump and then I'm like that makes no sense, this has to be about the Wall Street Journal. It's never about Manga.

</comment><comment><USER28> So they chose to back money over liberty. Not a real surprise, if you ask me.

</comment><comment><USER29> TFA from CNet begins "One of America's most respected newspapers" in big text, forgetting to mention that, well CNet is part of CBS Interactive and CBSi is part of... you probably get my drift.

</comment><comment><USER30> Ok I think I understand now, so I can't link to copyrighted material in any way or my site will be pulled, but I can hack into peoples mobile phones right?

</comment><comment><USER31> For some reason this sentence jumped out at me:

"Some lawmakers have noted that PIPA and SOPA would not affect anyone of the Web sites participating in the blackout."

I assume the argument being made here is that they're domestic sites and would not be affected by the legislation. And since they're not pirating anything what do they have to worry about. I could see someone reading it and thinking this is much to do about nothing. But this bill really puts pressure on domestic sites to comply and as we all know will just push the pirate sites to find ways around the law. So really, the sites most affected by these laws will be domestic and law-abiding.

</comment><comment><USER32> Post a comment. Include a link to respectable content. Tweak target page to SOPA-contrary content. Goodbye, WSJ.

Might that wake 'em up?

</comment><comment><USER33> I had a look at the comments on the article and pretty much every poster, wall street journal subscribers included, are opposed to SOPA.

</comment><comment><USER34> WSJ has always been trash 'reporting'. No surprises here.

</comment><comment><USER35> Yup, an editorial with out any author attribution. Go Murdoch!

</comment><comment><USER36> Could we block HN submissions that point to WSJ articles? Maybe Reddit could do the same?

<comment><USER37> I think proposals of this nature are not productive.

Much of what fuels anti-SOPA/PIPA sentiment is rooted in the principles of individual freedoms and the preservation of a commons that makes the exchange of information, ideas and enables commercial, individual and scientific innovation (amongst a whole long list of other awesome things that the Internet fosters). Taking retaliatory measures against those that exercise those freedoms, as distasteful as their position may be, is exactly the type of behaviour that SOPA proposes. We can each choose not to support those organizations that seek to control the Internet at the behest of Big Media and Hollywood, but to institutionalize controls constraining those that support it is, in my opinion, a victory for SOPA.

<comment><USER38> That's bullshit.

Rejecting submissions from SOPA supporters on a private website just isn't the same as manipulating the machinery of government the way bill supporters have done.

<comment><USER37> That's inflammatory.

But to your point, I wasn't commenting on the manipulation of government (a point that I also don't agree with - I think the government is complicit, not manipulated) but on the manipulation of technology to stifle freedom of expression. I don't see a huge difference between building filters that target torrent sites and building filters that target SOPA supporters. Nor do I think it makes a difference whether this is initiated in response to legislative demands, or some sense of "what is right".

YMMV.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Google won't let you leave a review for Jiminy Peak - <AUTHOR> In Dec. 2018, Jiminy Peak posted this [1] employee letter, telling resort employees (often <18 years old) that they would be terminated unless they worked during a state of emergency, and no accommodations would be provided.
The picture of the employee notice was posted on Reddit and Facebook in the following hours, leading to outraged comments from thousands.
Some of those people took to voicing their complaints in a review on Google Maps, and their review count soared from 822 to 1,100+ and their score dropped from 4.4 to 3.7.
Then, the next day, Google froze their reviews and began deleting everything after those 822 reviews.
To this day, their reviews remain frozen.
How did Jiminy Peak get such a quick response from Google while other establishments have had to shut down after a controversy that left their reviews devastated?
Will Google re-enable reviews at some point in the future? For now, Jiminy Peak has locked in a great review score.
Did Google notify reviewers that their content had been deleted? Will it reappear at some point?
[1] https://i.imgur.com/Z0LZPhi.jpg <comment><USER2> I can only assume Google doesn't want their reviews brigaded by publicity incidents like this.

While I don't think Google always knows best, it does bring up the question of if you were building a review site (i.e yelp or otherwise) if you would permit such brigading. Personally, I think it would be difficult to tell between spam and brigading, so it's best to take this approach.

</comment><comment><USER3> I agree with the sentiment that review bombing should not be a way to voice criticism, but the unfortunate reality is that it is used extensively. The line from the article which questions how Jiminy Peak managed to get a favourable Google response when others have been destroyed is a salient one. This becomes yet another method by which the large tech companies exert control through their monopoly on information.

</comment><comment><USER4> Bombing Steam/Gmaps is not how you should voice your opinion. That is not the intended use of the platform.

<comment><USER5> I need to disagree here, what good is a review section if you can only post certain kinds of views about the product? What would the intended use be? I personally think the downfall of review sections in general is the score system. I believe the score systems sort of undermine the reviews themselves. Yet, I obviously understand why they are used and that they are 'useful' for people.

<comment><USER6> That's true, but very often review systems are not designed for bombings and fall apart there.

The best design I see for this is something like Steam, which has "recent" and "overall" reviews, which are more resistant to bombings but also allow them. If the publisher screws people on a DLC or IAP, people would want to know, but in some cases, it's just emotional exaggeration led by someone else.</comment></comment></comment>


Large Collection of Free Data about Cities - <AUTHOR> http://www.city-data.com/ <comment><USER2> Their terms of use are pretty explicit that this data is not free. You can look at the web pages though.</comment>


Software Can Recreate 3D Spaces from Random Internet Photos - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xg87ea/software-can-recreate-3d-spaces-from-random-internet-photos <comment><USER2> Previously discussed a few days ago:

"NeRF in the Wild: reconstructing 3D scenes from internet photography"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24071787](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24071787)

</comment><comment><USER3> This was actually done over 12 years ago with a feature extraction called SIFT and approximate nearest neighbor kd-trees at the university of british columbia. It was turned into a product by microsoft. There are youtube videos that show models of the notre dame cathedral recreated with photos from flickr.

<comment><USER4> "Building rome in a day" and the "Photo tourism" papers were seminal works but you're not really making a serious argument if you are claiming them to be equivalent prior art to this.

I get it, artificial neural nets make everything easy and boring...back in the day when you had to solve difficult linear algebra problems by hand and tweak descriptor matching thresholds for ages...those were the good old glory days of computer vision. ;)

<comment><USER3> I think you have an exceptionally warped idea of how manual photosynth was, or maybe you aren't familiar with it at all.

[https://youtu.be/p16frKJLVi0?t=32](https://youtu.be/p16frKJLVi0?t=32)

The core idea is placing pixels in 3D space, in this case by figuring out the transform of the projections of each image.

This reconstructs a field by taking into account the direction each color is coming from, but the difficult part is getting that information in the first place, which photosynth already did. This paper seems to be organizing that data into a network while claiming that the entire capability and result is new.

<comment><USER5> The NeRF-W paper is definitely not claiming that the entire capability is novel. The authors even cite the original Photo Tourism paper in the "Related Work" section. The introduction explains what makes their approach different:

> The Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF) approach [21] implicitly models the > radiance field and density of a scene within the weights of a neural > network. Direct volume rendering is then used to synthesize new views, > demonstrating a heretofore unprecedented level of fidelity on a range of > challenging scenes.

Reconstructing camera positions and sparse point clouds is not really the "difficult part"; it's been a fairly well-understood problem for more than a decade, as you point out. Generating high-quality images without obtrusive artifacts is a much harder problem, and Photosynth didn't even try to solve it.

<comment><USER3> > Generating high-quality images without obtrusive artifacts is a much harder > problem, and Photosynth didn't even try to solve it.

That's not really true, there are lots of ways to blend the points/pixels/images together from different viewpoints, including the illumination changing - this looks like more of a refinement in compression/volumetric representation instead of generating geometry and having view dependent textures or some other technique. You can see in the video that some things like the water shift as the view changes in a very soft way, and some things end up represented with more transparency. The results look good, but it might accurate to say that the article is way off in its claims instead of the paper, although the paper fails to mention photosynth as a citation as far as I could see.

<comment><USER5> > That's not really true, there are lots of ways to blend the > points/pixels/images together from different viewpoints

Of course there are, but (as far as I recall) Photosynth didn't use any of them; it only projected the original images on top of a point cloud. In any case, that's kind of my point; the rendering step is where the interesting research has been happening, not the camera pose reconstruction process which is trivially easy in comparison.

> although the paper fails to mention photosynth as a citation as far as I > could see.

Photosynth was Microsoft's implementation of the same technology that was described in the "Photo Tourism" paper from 2006, which the NeRF-W paper does cite. Naturally, it makes more sense for other researchers work to refer to the original academic literature rather than the commercialized product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When I first experience a picture of a street turn into a 3d environment I thought it was wonderful and that we would gradually learn to travel further into the painting with each cm taking more effort than the cm before. Eventually we would be able to (be it virtually) walk our way from something closely matching reality (or the imagination of the artist) to a collectively generated fully imaginary environment without knowing where one ends and the other begins.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is the cool kind of thing a behemoth like Google can and should please the world with, from a company their size. Unfortunately it's been at the expense of user privacy and competition.

Nonetheless I admire (some of) the new places they take us.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've been making cross-eyed 3D pictures (What it is: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfBHJEIvAc4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfBHJEIvAc4) (not my video)), it's surprisingly effective, I can see how far landscapes actually go and how distant objects are...</comment>


Ask HN: Clojure vs Elixir for robotics? - <AUTHOR>

I am writing a report called 'Robot cognition of the Future'
My concepts act around a probabilistic and declarative DSL for robot programming in a highly concurrent and distributed language (which allows easy metaprogramming and a hygenic macro system).
What kind of above language should I use to write the proof of concept (and may be production)? <comment><USER2> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_(programming_language)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_\(programming_language\))

It has built-in language support for explicit concurrency, offering tasks, synchronous message passing, protected objects, and non-determinism

It's also designed specifically for embedded and realtime applications.

</comment><comment><USER3> Have you considered any of the probabilistic extensions to Prolog? (i.e. PITA for XSB?)

</comment><comment><USER4> What kind of hardware are you targeting in the proof?</comment>


Infiltrating Any Startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.startupsopensourced.com/2011/05/10/infiltrating-any-startup/

<comment><USER2> My fav part of this is when the Airbnb founder says he didn't start the company for money. I think we've all heard the story by now about how desperate they were to make money.

<comment><USER3> It's more accurate to say that now that he has as much money as he can spend (he can cash out multiple $m's in a financing round whenever he wants) that he doesn't need 10 times that right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I got my last job at a startup by emailing the startup's info@ email address the following (searched my email for the exact copy):

 _Are you guys hiring devs for threadbox? I'm a web dev/software engineer in Palo Alto - couldn't find a jobs section on your site, but I have done some interesting work in the email space and I think there are a lot of opportunities there - let me know if we can get together.

Best,

V---- N----

@v---- _

I think reaching out personally can work very well for small companies. I had sent this email the day after I had read on TechCrunch that they had raised funding.

<comment><USER5> Wait, if you launched Threadbox why are you asking to be hired for it? I don't understand.

<comment><USER4> They had announced funding when I was hired, but the product had not been developed or launched yet.

<comment><USER5> Oh, hmm, from your profile I understood that you were a (sole) founder, sorry about the confusion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The first person to buy a domain and get it in front of the founders = hired The next 100 = annoying & stalker-ish

Some solid tidbits in there too though

</comment><comment><USER7> What horrible advice. Yes, stalk the founders to get a job.

<comment><USER8> and blog about it ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> IMO, this kind of stuff is creative and cool... until it gets reduced to a formula.

</comment><comment><USER10> Not too sure whether this is the right way to attract talents; most talents can have their pick of work and they don't need to beg a startup founder to hire them. Only those who are desperate enough need to resort to this kind of tricks.

<comment><USER11> I know quite a few desperate, amazingly talented folks. :)

<comment><USER10> I'm based in Malaysia, but I can't seem to find them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I know of at least one case where a person tried this and did not end up getting hired at the startup mentioned.

</comment><comment><USER13> This Post hits all of the keywords.. StartUp, OpenSourced, Infiltrate a bit of a turn-off ...seems to be a trend on HN to have such a post nowadays

</comment><comment><USER14> please-vote-my-comment-up-up-to-the-highest-height-so-pg-will-hire-me

<comment><USER14> Sigh. It was related to the article!

Sorry.</comment></comment>


Clever social engineering. A malicious web page that tells you it's malicious. - <AUTHOR> http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00002051.html

<comment><USER2> So much of the protection from this sort of attack has to do with user training (or the lack thereof). We need the same sort of PR campaign / public service messages that aim to reduce drunk driving, lack of seat belts, etc.

And before you scoff at that, think of the economic cost of letting folks get "trojan'd" -- this helps build botnets, which have a measurable negative social impact on the Internet -- more spam, financial fraud, DDoS attacks, etc. Obviously not as severe as drunk driving deaths, but worthy of prevention nonetheless.

I know I'm trained -- I look at that "OK" button on the install dialog and my stomach churns. But others don't have this geek instinct, and that should be corrected.

<comment><USER3> What exactly would you train them to do? It has to be comprehensible by laypeople and distilled down to a single mantra.

So many security related interactions have backfired already, like this one. Is there one simple, straightforward principle that users could follow that will always work, and will keep working long into the future? I doubt it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I know a good number of people who would fall for this. Very clever to imitate the warning, I must say.

</comment><comment><USER5> It would be even worse if the malicious site was an exact copy of the true Firefox block page. So, when the user clicked on "Get me out of here!" it would prompt to install the rogue AV.

</comment><comment><USER6> That's what you get when your WARNING screen looks exactly the same as a screen that a website or app can cause you to display.

I have always wondered how the Mac OS password screen works (you know, the one where you are supposed to enter your system password). What if an app spoofs it? How would the user know the difference visually?

<comment><USER7> Doesn't that same problem exist with all password screens?

<comment><USER8> That's why windows (optionally) requires you to press ctl+alt+del to login.

<comment><USER9> I'm ashamed to say I've never been anything but annoyed at that feature until now

<comment><USER10> As always, greater security equals greater annoyance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't know. The first thing that occurred to me on viewing the warning is that Firefox is working as expected -- it is warning me about a malicious site. So why is it asking me to download updates when it appears to be working correctly? It's a contradiction. But maybe that's just me.

<comment><USER3> What the typical victim thinks is probably something along the lines of "I'm already in trouble, I better just do what the authorities tell me to do before I make it any worse."

Most people (still!) don't question authority and there is a picture of a policeman right on the page, for gosh sakes!

The problem with making users afraid is that attackers will find a way to use that fear against them. You can't scare people into thinking critically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This attack would screw only Opera users. It would not work for users of IE and Firefox and Chrome, who at least know to look for the signature checking, because all such browsers will flag the downloaded executable such that Windows will check its signature before running it.

<comment><USER13> if someone knows to look for a signature before running the file, i'd assume they didn't download it in the first place.

<comment><USER12> Oh, no, you don't have to look for any signatures. Windows will look on your behalf and warn you if needed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is smart but nothing new in the sense that people have used fake antivirus warnings, fake windows error messages, etc for years now to push you to click on some sort of buttons which would then lead you to a binary install with spyware.

<comment><USER15> Firefox's html warnings in the browser's content window seem to make this particularly easy, though.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, I'd like to see these warnings move out of the HTML space and into the chrome in some difficult to mimic fashion.

<comment><USER17> This is already happening for a long time. I remember some ad banners which looked like message boxes or download dialogs in Windows XP style.

(... which were easy to spot for me, because I'm using a completely different system)

<comment><USER15> You're right. But something like this would be harder to fake: [http://www.mozilla.com/en- US/img/tignish/features/security-i...](http://www.mozilla.com/en- US/img/tignish/features/security-id.png)

<comment><USER18> Yes and no. Mozilla's a bit screwed on this front, because they use XUL to render their interface - and, critically, the browser can render XUL pages. I don't have FF installed on this machine, but you should still be able to check it out at <http://www.faser.net/mab/remote.cfm> to see a demo of the feature.

It's a pretty cool feature, but it means that on Firefox, attackers should be able to emulate basically any chrome they want to.

<comment><USER19> To demonstrate, go to chrome://browser/content/browser.xul in firefox

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't know which Alanis Morrisette song the author is referring to.

<comment><USER21> at a guess?

"ironic"</comment></comment>


Red Cross: How We Spent Sandy Money Is a 'Trade Secret' - <AUTHOR> http://www.propublica.org/article/red-cross-how-we-spent-sandy-money-is-a-trade-secret

<comment><USER2> The fact that the Red Cross considers other (similar) charitable organizations as "competitors" sounds very weird to me. Does competition exist outside of the world of for-profit organizations?</comment>


Electric brain stimulation decreases IQ scores and racial prejudice - <AUTHOR> http://www.kurzweilai.net/electric-brain-stimulation-decreases-iq-scores-and-racial-prejudice <comment><USER3> This makes perfect sense based on how tDCS is hypothesized to work.

tDCS is believed to enhance _learning_ by providing more force behind the encoding of memories: it's like pressing harder when writing with a pencil, making it harder to erase. Normally it takes many iterations of practice to encode a complex skill properly, but with more electricity behind the "write" operation it takes fewer iterations.

However, with perceptual reasoning, encoding memories quickly would be counterproductive, because it would cause your first ideas to be firmly encoded, leading you to consider fewer ideas. This would prevent the broader considerations necessary in problem-solving.

I'm not a neuroscientist, so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt. I've just read a lot about tDCS, and have no formal training.

</comment><comment><USER4> I feel a Harrison Bergeron moment coming on.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron)

</comment><comment><USER5> If the electrical current were turned up high enough all racial prejudice would disappear and IQ would approach 0.

</comment><comment><USER6> Wonderful. You just know that some wag will jump on this and twist this into "It is intelligent to be racist!".

Personally, I find the idea of wiring my brain, my _self_ , up to something which zaps it with little to no understanding of the underlying science or function scares the bejesus out of me, and strikes me as a strange at best and stupid at worst thing to do.

Ah, let me just pop a leech on this, it'll get my phlegmatic humour rebalanced.

<comment><USER7> > You just know that some wag will jump on this and twist this into "It is > intelligent to be racist!".

Not before some wag jumps on it and makes sure anyone who tries to discuss the topic rationally and thoughtfully is already seen as racist and stupid.

I dream of a community where everything is up for discussion, even if I disagree with it.

<comment><USER6> Actually, the first response was from a hellbanned account espousing exactly that point of view.

I'm also not sure where you got that I'm trying to censor discussion - <USER2> commented, did you not?

"michas 3 hours ago [dead]

It has nothing to do with intelligence, it is just all about being realist. Existence of different races comes from the fact that there are genetic differences between people. It would be stupid to assume that those genetic differences have no other effect than skin color."

<comment><USER8> I don't see anything wrong with the quote you posted. It doesn't imply that people of different races are stupid or inferior. It just implies that you expect genetic differences to correlate with all manner of other measures.

Respectfully, I think you're reading into it too much.

<comment><USER9> While there's technically nothing racist about a small variation in intelligence. But this comment leaves a bad taste in my mouth, as we know that.

1\. Individual variation in intelligence dwarfs any population level measure with regard to race. 2\. The evidence with regard to IQ differences by race is suspect at best, especially because it is unclear that one can accurately control for socioeconomic factors. 3\. It would be ignorant to assume that transporting an entire people from one continent to another, forcing them to serve as slaves for much of our history, systemically suppressing their political representation even after granting freedom, and an extremely efficient police-prison-industrial complex that disproportionately targets that minority would leave no lasting ill effects.

It suggests to me the motive is a writer's true belief is in racial superiority, which given the hellbanned account, seems the more likely option than an honest attempt to further a scholarly discussion.

<comment><USER10> 1\. I don't see how this point has any relevance. Of course the variance between outliers in a population is going to differ greater than the variance between population means. What does that have to do with anything? 2\. The IQ disparity among the races is well studied, well researched, and well documented. It sounds like you need to do more reading on the subject. 3\. So now it's clear that while he was making a general comment about the need to accept the reality of differences among the races, you're making it out to be a comment against black people. Ok. But I'll respond to your tangent: It would be ignorant to assume that the only IQ studies done were on slave-descended, or, as you would call them, "systemically oppressed" African Americans. IQ studies have been conducted world-wide, and regardless of where or when they've been performed, Ashkenazi Jews consistently score the highest, East Asians second highest, Caucasians next, then Hispanics and Latinos, then Blacks.

You seem like someone with an axe to grind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >... Participants (n=60) were randomly...

Beside from that, the title suggests something like a causal connection when they just found it correlating on a sample of 60 persons? Seriously?

This study is utter bullshit.

<comment><USER12> It's getting really annoying how many self-annoited gods of statistics keep creeping up online.

60 is plenty if the effect is large enough. Hey, even n=4 can make for a good study. Give two of them cyanide and two of them a placebo, let all the trial- size-too-small-correlation-isnt-causation-people watch and then ask them to back up their criticism with a nice helping of the tested substance.

<comment><USER11> Exactly,

"... if the effect is large enough"

<comment><USER8> Are you saying the effect isn't large enough? If so, why?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The college-for-all model isn't working - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/opinion/commentary/la-oe-jacoby-college-vocational-training-cte-20131203,3,898619.story#axzz2mRF9jXQa <comment><USER3> It's a joke among engineers that you need to graduate from college so that you can start learning. My college experience (non-technical bachelors) was just a joke, period - high school 2.0. Still, I wouldn't have the good job I do now if I hadn't completed my degree.

We keep running into this problem where employers think college degrees are more valuable than they probably are. Part of that is impressed culturally, but more than anything we lack better methods of certification in most jobs. We need certification that matters, is widely accepted, and that employers actually trust. It has to be marketed well, and it has to actually produce graduates with up-to-date skills. It's not easy, especially in fields where curriculum must change yearly.

Underlying all of this is a larger, unavoidable change taking place: the disappearance of unskilled work. Computers and machines are slowly taking over every unskilled job, starting at the least skilled and moving upwards to things we used to think of as skilled labor. Taxi drivers and factory workers will hardly exist in 10 years. Construction workers will only supervise machines in our lifetimes. Unless you want to work in a low-paying retail job for the rest of your life, you need to get a degree so you can work your way up some corporate ladder - or so the thinking goes.

<comment><USER4> A major benefit of college is a baseline of domain knowledge that will serve you in your professional career, but indeed, that's also a major benefit of a technical program. The real disconnect is that college is _also_ (or at least is supposed to be, or has traditionally been) a schooling in the liberal arts. Four years spent learning to think critically about society and culture as well as one's area of specialization, and to express oneself in the marketplace of ideas.

Which is just something many people don't really care to do. And that's fine. The problem is trying to _get_ everyone interested in it, denying the fact that many lack interest and aptitude, and then diluting the experience for everyone while saddling the next generation with decades' worth of debt.

<comment><USER5> I've always wondered about the reputed benefit of learning to think critically from a liberal arts education.

For example, with engineering, an airplane built from your design flies or does not. There's no pretending it flies when it doesn't. Reality cannot be fooled, so one is forced to learn to think critically.

But with liberal arts, the same person can argue both points of view with equal facility - how does one tell which is correct? What good is being able to criticize without a mechanism for determining the correct way? Or even a better way?

<comment><USER6> The liberal arts mechanism for ordering arguments is democracy!

The idea of liberal arts is that their study enables one to participate as a full-fledged member of society. Thinking critically about arguments that concern society requires not just checking the validity but also the soundness of an argument. I suppose you really need some understanding of culture and history to make up your mind about many issues of importance to the society in which you live.

<comment><USER5> Re: validity of the argument.

In engineering, you learn to discern logical fallacies rather quickly. Insulting your computer (ad hom) won't fix bugs in your programs. Insults in issues of importance to society are the norm, even going to the highest levels.

As a lawyer friend told me once:

1\. if justice is on your side, argue justice

2\. if the law is on your side, argue the law

3\. if neither the law nor justice is on your side, insult the other side

<comment><USER7> "When the facts are with you, pound the facts. When the law is with you, pound the law. When neither are with you, pound the table and scream like hell."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For those who aren't aware, this is an op-ed (meaning the newspaper doesn't stand behind any of the facts claimed) from a right-wing Koch brothers organization.

Several commenters have already noted that the fundamental "fact" here, that certain vocations are experiencing major shortages (the "skills mismatch" claim) is completely false, which it is. The Great Recession stretches across all job fields and locations in the United States and beyond.

Nutshell: this op-ed is from someone who hates broad-based education and wants to bring in a sort of reverse work-training system: you pay them for the privilege of working at various companies, and we call it modern vocational education.

<comment><USER9> Great that you noticed it's an op-ed by the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, but, is the college for all model working?

<comment><USER10> The other option is college for the rich. So it's working better than the alternative.

<comment><USER11> What about college for those who want a career that demands a degree (realistically, not according to HR)? The discussion here should be about under what circumstances college is meaningful and appropriate, not whether author's world view. If the article is wrong, dispute it with sources.

<comment><USER12> Almost all careers are either certification-based or they create an arms race of education. When you have an arms race everyone has an incentive to get a degree but perhaps not everyone with said degree will get a job. Resources are wasted, but there isn't any incentive to stop the system from perpetuating itself. When you have a surplus of unemployed-educated people, why not hire over-educated workers? This reenforces the need for a degree.

Every time I see people saying "not everyone should go to college" during a non-economic-boom I wish they would start teaching game theory to high schoolers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Perhaps, but what's definitely not working is the guaranteed loans from governments, which gives universities access to virtually unlimited funds. If the government wouldn't give loans for college, US tuitions would probably be 10x less, just like they are even in the most expensive universities in Europe or elsewhere.

<comment><USER14> I strongly disagree. In the Australian system everyone gets a higher education loan from the government(with interest locked to the inflation rate and repayment only required if and when taxable income passes a certain threshold), and yet our tuition rates are much lower than in the US.

For example, I just finished a Bachelors degree in a STEM field at a relatively middle of the road university and my total education debt comes out just short of $30k.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> A discussion on an EconTalk podcast about trends in college education resonated with me. They discussed college as being an extended adolescence for many students: today many students treat it as an expensive way to find one's way in the world and learn about oneself whereas going back 20 or 30 years it was more about improving your employment prospects. They cited as evidence the doubling of psychology undergraduate degrees (nice for learning about oneself, but lacking a corresponding increase in jobs available) granted over a period where STEM degrees remained flat. A similar doubling in performing and visual arts degrees was another trend they contrasted to STEM degree popularity stagnation. The podcast is at [http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2011/12/tabarrok_on_inn.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2011/12/tabarrok_on_inn.html)

</comment><comment><USER16> What college for all model?

What we have is not college for all, not even close. We have capitalistic college education; where it costs as much as the market will bear, and the ability of the market is distorted by massive student loans which kids are told they have to get as it is an investment into their future.

College for all would be if college was free to every high school graduate, and costs were kept down by universities being run like places of learning and not capitalistic enterprises focused on football tickets and massive stadiums.

<comment><USER17> I agree with you in principle, but please choose another target other than football tickets and massive stadiums. Most massive stadiums are filled with paying customers whose money is then used to fund all the other athletics programs that don't charge money because too few people would actually pay to watch them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's hard for me to take this article seriously with so many falsehoods. Shortage of STEM workers? Debunked: [http://spectrum.ieee.org/at- work/education/the-stem-crisis-i...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/at- work/education/the-stem-crisis-is-a-myth)

College costs out of control? Only because states are cutting subsidies for higher education and forcing students to pay more.

That said, towards the end there are some good points. It could be argued that there's a public interest in promoting higher education because its necessary for a functional democracy. But if the public abandons this goal and higher education is only for job preparation, then why should the state be involved at all? In that case, state tuition subsidies are really corporate welfare.

Although on-the-job training and apprenticeships are more effective for many jobs, that would mean employers have to shoulder the cost rather than the state.

<comment><USER19> Tuition _couldn 't_ skyrocket if students had no means to pay it. The enabler in this situation, is the disconnect between the availability of financing and the product being financed.

You can't get a $60,000 loan for a $20,000 car, but you can absolutely rack up that much (or more) in college debt, for an education indistinguishable from one at a third of the cost.

With that kind of distortion in the market, why would anyone be surprised at rising tuition?

<comment><USER18> If your explanation were true, we should expect tuition to immediately shift to students when federal loans and grants became available in 1965.

But in fact, the data shows that state tuition subsidies for public 4-year colleges have declined slowly, except in the years following recessions when states cut their budgets. These years show much more dramatic declines. This is consistent with my hypothesis that state budget cuts are the primary driver of tuition increases.

It's possible that your point still holds, that the availability of federal loans made it easier for states to cut tuition subsidies. But that's a change in the politics of the issue, not a market distortion. Without federal aid, politicians would be more vulnerable to the charge that they're making college less accessible.

Federal loans have obviously not created a tuition bubble, for the simple reason that the _cost_ of a public 4-year education (the price charged to states + students) is essentially unchanged over the last 25 years.

The story may be different for for-profit colleges. If you want to argue that there's a market distortion there, essentially that for-profit colleges are gouging students and the government, I could easily be persuaded. But since only 10% of students are enrolled in these schools, they're unlikely to be the main source of increasing student debt.

<comment><USER20> _This is consistent with my hypothesis that state budget cuts are the primary driver of tuition increases._

Two words: administrative bloat!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> We're not saving for our kids' college. The oldest is 16 years away, and we believe that college will either be totally unaffordable, or the bubble will have burst and won't exist in its current form.

We are focusing on our retirement instead, because we believe it's far better to take care of that and not become a burden on your kids just when they're trying to take care of their own families and retirements.

<comment><USER21> It's also far more valuable to teach your kids to save for their own college. A few years of odd jobs, paper delivery, whatever will make them appreciate that money isn't infinite. My parents didn't (and couldn't) afford to pay for my college, and thanks to that I knew that every year I stayed would be another ten grand in debt I would have to pay off. That led to me leaving university after a pointless year and going into the workforce. As I suspected, it was the best education-related decision I'd made.

That said, be careful. Student loans offices generally make the assumption that parents will contribute towards their kids' education; if the current status quo does remain at that point (and I hope it doesn't) they may find themselves unable to afford college because they'll be told that you'll be paying for half of it.

<comment><USER22> I don't know that a paper delivery route will have a meaningful impact on college tuition.

<comment><USER20> Yeah, unless they plan on delivering papers for about a century or two.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "Meanwhile, companies in a range of sectors — manufacturing, construction, healthcare and other STEM fields — report severe skilled labor shortages."

Construction and manufacturing have severe labor shortages? I'd love to see a source for that claim. In my neck of the woods, they still haven't recovered from the recession.

<comment><USER24> They have skilled labor shortages at the prices they're willing to pay. Every time you hear an employer claim they can't find someone for a position, inquire about the salary they're offering.

<comment><USER25> This type of bullshit seems to be widely believed on HN.

I work in the engineering department of a software company and I'm closely involved with recruitment and interviews. I'll tell you this: the vast majority of people (over 95%) we turn down are unqualified, period. Meaning, we wouldn't hire them even at half the salary level advertised for the position. It has nothing whatsoever to do with what we're willing to pay - <USER2> salaries are actually very generous and we aren't afraid to pay someone what they are actually worth. The problem is we can't actually find people like that. So yes, from our perspective (250+ person tech company in SoCal), the talent shortage is very, very real.

<comment><USER26> "Unqualified" by what standard? What makes you think your standards are appropriate for the positions you're offering? And what makes you think your salaries are "very generous?" Lot's of companies think their salary/benefits packages are "very generous" when they're anything but. Without context your post is a giant meaningless assertion.

Software developers aren't (typically) stupid. They have a reasonable idea of the value they provide the company. My estimation is that almost every company under-compensates their engineering staff. I doubt yours is an exception.

<comment><USER25> >>"Unqualified" by what standard? What makes you think your standards are appropriate for the positions you're offering?

Because we do very rigorous analysis of why successful employees are actually successful. We know what it takes to perform well at each job function.

>>And what makes you think your salaries are "very generous?" Lot's of companies think their salary/benefits packages are "very generous" when they're anything but. Without context your post is a giant meaningless assertion.

Lots of websites aggregate salaries by position and geographic region, so we know the numbers. We also have very good benefits. For instance, our 401k program is a dollar-for-dollar match up to 15% of salary, which is extremely rare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> A lot of kids are attending college because it's a status symbol for their parents, and I think it's been that way since the 90s. I remember being in high school and hearing about my friends getting in big fights with their parents because they did not want to go to college, which of course was unacceptable in white upper middle class suburbia.

</comment><comment><USER28> This has been a problem here in California for a while now. Schools push kids into a college track, even though they are not going to be successful. This has caused the state universities and community colleges to take in larger amounts of students which stretches budgets and also has caused the graduation rates to decline. Many of these students would be better served by a vocational school, but it seems that there has been a stigma placed on students who don't want to go to a university.

</comment><comment><USER29> " More Americans attend college today than ever before: this year, 42% of young people 18 to 24 years old."

This is why education costs so much nowadays and the product is so poor. Everyone has the right to pursue learning. But, these folks aren't owed anything because they've sat through enough classes to earn a BA.

<comment><USER30> I don't understand how putting more students through college increases the cost per student, in normal industries more business generally means reduced costs.

<comment><USER31> High demand almost always means higher prices unless the supply is increased proportionally. That's different from what I think you are saying which is as a product is easier to produce, it's price goes down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> It does seem like the drop out rate (and debt associated with non-degrees) is high enough that the current model isn't working. My concern is that replacing it with less education hurts more. The Vocational Education trend seems like it's on the right track. It would also be good to copy the German apprenticeship model.

</comment><comment><USER33> The boomers made it a big deal, I do web development with my BA and wish every day I had all that money back. I even tried to major in CS but couldn't follow my classes because the school had brought in Russian grad students who couldn't understand questions that were asked in class.

</comment><comment><USER34> College-for-all is fine, and probably an inevitable pursuit.

What's not working is the college administrative model.

<comment><USER26> College-for-all accomplishes two things: commoditization and (failed) attempts at one-size-fits-all education.

Simply put, not everybody is equipped to handle an academic education (in fact, a small minority truly are). At the same time, the vast majority of work being done today in the US in almost any field (including the majority of software development) really ought not be considered "academic" work--it's essentially vocational already. One doesn't need--and shouldn't be required to have--a college degree to be employable in a web app shop or for most development (or other) roles.

The following may be an unpopular sentiment, but I truly believe that the focus on "college-for-all" just frustrates people who are talented in ways that are not academically inclined and, frankly, consumes resources unfairly for those who are. All parties are worse off for it.

What we need is _less_ focus on conflating "academic education" with "education", and the result of that is less focus on "college-for-all."

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I see a lot of folks here talking about college education in economic terms. So, sure, the evidence is certainly mounting that we've mucked something up: tuition is stupidly high, graduation rates are low, people are dogging their way through college 'just because' et cetra. But nobody (around here, anyhow) seems to be speaking on higher education in terms of intrinsic value.

I'm talking about the way going to a university integrates you with a ton of strange, weird, different people. How there is a tremendous amount of information and culture that is absorbed, either by directly learning it or simply by osmosis. The 'by osmosis' thing might be a bit of an assertion, but I think that most people who've been to university can probably relate to the concept.

In my opinion that adds a lot of value to a society. I know these are not original ideas, and it wouldn't be nice to live in a highly educated society where absolutely nobody has work, but I wouldn't immediately discount the value that is added by sending the masses through university. As explained by numerous people here, this strategy is clearly broken as a method of certification and job training. Does that mean that we should do a 180 and reserve anything beyond vocational training for the Marxes, Shakespeares, and Feynmans? I think not. I'm not suggesting that people here are promoting that idea, just illustrating that moving in that direction might destroy a lot of value that's not as plainly seen as one's student loan balance (something I can certainly relate to...) or the national unemployment rate. Maybe I'm just being young and naive.

</comment><comment><USER36> Slightly disappointed to not see the obvious arguments.

As a university drop out I may be biased but I do believe that 'education for all' is a horribly misguided premise which persists because of the practicality of cheap childcare it provides (!)

I believe that vocational education is pretty flawed too...

I fail to see the value in qualification X if everyone can get it. All qualifications seem to be an exercise in desire and discipline... and this is why it doesn't work. IMO.

It works fine for serious and competitive fields like medicine and dentistry, but for the vast majority of fields out there a degree isn't worth much at all.

I can, and maybe have, written your dissertation from your textbook with no lectures... and I will do just fine.

Smart guys will drop out and succeed because of the same reasons they drop out, not in spite of it... just a shame so many drop outs are probably dropping out because education is not for them - or possibly university or vocational education is not right for their entire field.

</comment><comment><USER37> Grants for vocational programs are nice and all, but the damage has already been done. The huge expectation in the United States for every student to attend college - that has to be overcome for these things to be successful.

</comment><comment><USER38> "Supply and demand" at work.

<comment><USER39> Subsidy and demand, you mean.

<comment><USER38> As the upper limits of cost are reached, people will explore every avenue for obtaining funds for paying for what they demand, including borrowing from their own future (mortgage), pooling money for odds-based distribution (insurance), and confiscating money from others just this side of being theft (tax-funded subsidies). When you run out of other people's money, you find something else suitable to spend the limited funds on.

<comment><USER39> Well, said. Have you written any more on this subject?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Insecurity in the Jungle (disk) - <AUTHOR> http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2011-06-03-insecurity-in-the-jungle.html <comment><USER2> Summary: Jungledisk doesn't protect the integrity of encrypted data, and doesn't securely derive keys and is thus vulnerable to fast offline attacks. The thing Jungledisk right is to use the same block cipher mode as Tarsnap (and, incidentally, virtually every mainstream encrypted storage system).

The impact of using unauthenticated encryption to store data is that your backup provider could end up owning your machine. Attackers can carefully choose which data to corrupt. They can exploit the randomization of corrupted decryption to set up conditions for memory corruption exploits, and, in more sophisticated but totally realistic attacks, exploit guesses about known plaintext to produce attacker-controlled nonrandom plaintexts. A backup provider with client-authenticated crypto can't do that, because the keys that encrypt the data also ensure it's integrity.

The password storage issue is no different than any other password storage problem; again, direct your attention to <http://codahale.com/how-to-safely- store-a-password/>, mentally substituting "storage of password hash" to "derivation of AES key".

To my mind, the key derivation is the real problem here. A surprisingly large number of secure encryption storage products don't ensure data integrity. Realistic attacks against that vulnerability are feasible but difficult: you'd have to be targeted.

If you're going to write an article about how a competitor's encryption is inferior to yours and cast it as a vulnerability report, I'd suggest not recommending your own encryption scheme as the replacement. The scrypt recommendation in this article sticks out like a sore thumb. Virtually nothing uses scrypt.

We can nerd out on CTR mode vs. CBC mode; I'm starting to come around to Colin's take on CTR because of ciphertext indistinguishability as I see more practical vulnerabilities that take advantage of it. I think the padding issue is a red herring. CBC padding is easier to get right than absolute rock solid reliable generation of CTR nonces and absolute rock solid management of CTR counters, which are things I see people get wrong regularly. Distinguishability is the real problem with CBC.

<comment><AUTHOR> _To my mind, the key derivation is the real problem here. A surprisingly large number of secure encryption storage products don't ensure data integrity. Realistic attacks against that vulnerability are feasible but difficult: you'd have to be targeted._

I think the lack of integrity is more important than you're making it sound. There's a lot of situations where a lack of integrity can be exploited to create a lack of privacy too.

But the main reason I mentioned the lack of integrity first is that I needed to mention the lack of HMAC to explain why they had the ridiculous "salted key hash" construct.

 _If you're going to write an article about how a competitor's encryption is inferior to yours and cast it as a vulnerability report, I'd suggest not recommending your own encryption scheme as the replacement. The scrypt recommendation in this article sticks out like a sore thumb. Virtually nothing uses scrypt._

I think you're misstating what I wrote a bit. I said that scrypt is the state of the art in the field -- which it is -- and that given that Jungle Disk was around before I developed scrypt, they should have used PBKDF2 or bcrypt.

<comment><USER2> I'd rather geek out about CTR v CBC than harp on the scrypt recommendation. Consider the scrypt thing a friendly style note. You wrote an article about a competitor's insecurities. When you do that, don't recommend they adopt your own cryptosystem unless (like CRI had to do with DPA countermeasures) they have to. Here, it just made you look unnecessarily petty.

What privacy attacks were you thinking of? Call some of them out.

<comment><AUTHOR> _Consider the scrypt thing a friendly style note._

Note taken. :-)

 _What privacy attacks were you thinking of?_

Things like replacing files with malware.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, we were saying the same thing, I think, but you said it more clearly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> My understanding is that SpiderOak, Tarsnap, and Wuala all do this correctly (using one of PBKDF2, bcrypt, or scrypt.)

Colin - Perhaps the companies in the backup space that put effort into handling this carefully should work together and create a PSA style website with a matrix chart of how the varies providers handle "encrypted" data. Make it a separate domain and do our best to be elaborately objective about it. Any interest?

<comment><USER2> What block cipher mode does SpiderOak use, and how does it verify the authenticity of its data? Tarsnap goes through a lot of extra trouble to MAC its data; few other providers do. You'd hate to see everyone treat key derivation as a shorthand for "doing all of encryption right".

I looked on the SpiderOak site, saw a lot of material on how keys are derived and not stored on SpiderOak servers (great!), but didn't see a lot of details about the mechanics of actually encrypting and checking data.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for asking. If you're interested, would be very happy to discuss SpiderOak's crypto strategy in depth with you the next time I'm in Chicago. Could share source code, etc. IMO, most interesting parts are the key scoping, which allow users to selectively publish ("share") portions of stored data by publishing the appropriately scoped keys.

SpiderOak uses AES256 in CFB mode with authentication via HMAC. The code is careful about unique nonce/counter usage, crypto code is confined to specific modules that rarely change, and reviewed by cryptographers outside SpiderOak. Client and server have minimal trust relationship.

Being paranoid about data integrity (not only because of crypto issues, but also because bitrot happens routinely at petabyte scale) the data authentication happens repetitively at a few different layers. From all end user devices, we see about one bit error per 4.2tb of upload transactions.

<comment><USER4> Why CFB vs CTR? Is there some reason parallelization is unneeded or impossible?

<comment><USER2> Also... what counters?

(Regardless: happy to get together anytime in Chicago).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> @cperciva: Thanks for this; now i'll convert my 8char ascii system password to a 10char one. Do you have any data showing how large a password needs to be to make it ridiculously expensive for a TLA (gency) to commit a large amount of hardware to cracking? i.e. how much time past the 10chars does it consume ?

<comment><AUTHOR> It depends on your KDF. MD5 is ridiculously weak; the standard MD5-crypt is 1000 times stronger; bcrypt is better yet; and scrypt is vastly stronger.

The best source for this my scrypt paper, really.

<comment><USER6> What license is the scrypt code released under?

<comment><USER2> It's BSD licensed but probably not easy to integrate on your platform. BCrypt is an easier choice. When we see Java and .NET implementations of scrypt, we'll start recommending it, but I'll be honest and tell you that we rarely recommend scrypt today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If, like me, you're wondering: "Does 1Password use all the stuff?"

<http://agilebits.com/products/1Password/user_guide>

<comment><USER8> More details here: [http://help.agilebits.com/1Password3/agile_keychain_design.h...](http://help.agilebits.com/1Password3/agile_keychain_design.html)

<comment><USER7> Thanks, that's the page I was on -- stupid AJAX navigation!

Anyway, the document seems *nix specific. Does Windows have a /dev/random?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Stupid question: Why is the 34 character password easier to crack than the 8 character password?

(Upon re-reading I think I may have missed the assumption that the long password only contains english text, no punctuation, numerics, etc.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, the 34-character is English text.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Given the available options, what's the best option for automated backups?

<comment><USER11> Apart from Tarsnap, maybe Duplicity <http://duplicity.nongnu.org>?

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. There are some things I dislike about duplicity (e.g., its reliance upon GPG) but it's probably what I would use if I couldn't use Tarsnap.

<comment><USER12> What makes you shy away from backup apps that rely on GPG?

<comment><USER2> Cryptographers hate GPG. GPG is ugly as sin†. Unfortunately (and I mean that only with a little bit of snark), GPG mostly still works, in the sense of standing up to active, informed attackers with modern techniques.

† _For instance, look how it handles message integrity._

<comment><AUTHOR> Your definition of "mostly still works" is "it's secure as long as you ignore the vulnerabilities people keep on finding"?

<comment><USER2> This is a slippery slope argument that ends in you arguing that the best tested cryptosystem in common use (TLS) is _also_ insecure. All cryptosystems have vulnerabilities; the question is, how workable is the system after those flaws are fixed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, yes. I also think SSL is too complicated for people to get right. ;-)

<comment><USER2> For the record, I respect the critiques practitioners have of GPG. Unfortunately, their alternatives tend to be ad-hoc. There should be a clean, simple, GPG-like standard, perhaps based on ECC and AE cipher constructions, to replace GPG. But until that happens, in the choice between ugly and workable vs. simple and fragile, ugly and workable is the right choice for most people.

As always I think you drastically underestimate how dangerous this stuff is because you've dedicated your career to it, while normal implementors --- even crypto enthusiasts (look at Tor and SSH) --- have little of the nuance required to get it right.

I like the fundamentals of TLS more than you do; I don't think it's a bad or needlessly complex protocol (except maybe session resumption). I see that reasonable people can differ on that point. But, _very importantly_ , TLS is also a vehicle for collecting and implementing the best known methods in cryptography. I think you tend to overlook that.

As always, my opinions are as a software security practitioner and not as a cryptographer, since I am not one.

<comment><USER13> It sounds like Colin is taking issue with openssl the implementation, while you're defending TLS the protocol. In that case, I agree with you both.

(As an aside, it's great to see two of my favorite HN commenters in the security field engaged in conversation at this level.)

<comment><USER2> The appearance and track record† of the code in OpenSSL does the credibility of TLS no favors, and it is totally understandable why someone who had to deal with software security for a platform that ships and depends on OpenSSL would become allergic to it.

But, two responses to that:

* First, what Joel Spolsky says about rewrites. Sometimes code is ugly for a reason. Clean rewrites of OpenSSL will inevitably introduce bugs. Introducing bugs in SSL†† implementations is perilous.

* Second, there are mature alternatives to OpenSSL. For instance, most? browsers don't use it.

† _In fairness, that's because OpenSSL dates back to a time when nobody was getting C software security even close to right._

†† _I use TLS and SSL interchangeably, which is a foible I should work on correcting, but the difference doesn't matter much here._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I continue to not understand how people imagine these services working (de- dupe, block level updates, etc) without access to the unsecured version of the data. As for the claims about what Amazon could do to your data... there's even less sinister options. S3 is _not_ 100% safe storage. There's a chance for bit rot and that may occur. If you don't check the file yourself, you won't know. Again, that seems a bit inevitable, no?

edit: left out a 'not'

<comment><USER15> De-dupe: Wuala encrypts the file with a key derived from the file itself. This key is then encrypted with the user's key and both (the file and the encrypted key) are uploaded to the cloud. Disadvantage: If the file is known to an attacker (i.e., a copyright holder) the attacker can possibly find out which users have access to this file. Advantage: Allows for de-duplication, but is more secure than Dropbox.

Block-level updates: I don't see a problem with this. Partition the file into blocks on the client (before the encryption). The server doesn't need access to the data for this.

<comment><USER2> As Steve Weis pointed out in an earlier thread about schemes like this, deriving keys from the contents of files breaks semantic security. Lay engineers reason about this problem the way you just did: "the RIAA can tell I have Lady Gaga MP3s". But practitioners are worried about much more subtle and devastating flaws, particularly in cases where attackers may exercise some control over the blocks being encrypted.

Any scheme that derives passwords from file contents gives me the willies.</comment></comment></comment>


Think with your hands: How to get started with Lego Serious Play (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://de.slideshare.net/martinsandberg/lego-serious-play-intro <comment><USER2> I highly recommend anyone (from about age 8+) get some Zometool construction toys, [http://zometool.com](http://zometool.com) [https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=zometool](https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=zometool)

They're super fun for modeling different kinds of geometrical shapes, and useful professional tools for mathematicians, physicists, chemists, architects, artists, ...

<comment><USER3> It's hard to tell what they are from the website, they look like Knex but with spherical connectors - that's not a bad thing at all, but is there more that I'm not seeing easily?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My job: help teams run more like Google and less like the IRS. That means lean, kanban, Agile, Scrum, XP, DevOps --whatever tool gets us from where we are to where we want to go.

I became interested in this a couple of years ago, and I've had the privilege since then of working with some LSP folks.

My initial thoughts are that I like this a lot as a way for strangers to get to know one another. It seems really appropriate for team kickoffs, or in cases where the team is a team -- but in name only. When it works, it's a great way to get people to stop engineering the content of what they're saying and just emotionally open up. The few times I participated, I was very impressed with how quickly strangers came together as a working team.

So my position currently is "play with it a bit and see where it might work or not". I don't see myself using this enough to get certified. I'm also not seeing how it works with already norm'ed teams, but maybe I'm missing something. Finally, like everything else in tech, there's a lot of hand-waving and over-promising. The hype cycle doesn't mean it's a bad thing. It just means you have to be careful about what's real and what's hype.

Fascinating line of thought, though.

<comment><USER5> My thoughts:

1\. If you bring out LEGO while introducing yourself to a new team, you're going to seem less down to earth and approachable and more like a children's social worker.

2\. I feel that hiding serious topics behind infantile representations is only going to jade your mature staff, and lead to a lack of trust as they would feel patronised and discouraged from straight and open conversation.

3\. Not that I work in such an environment, but it seems like a lot of startups go for a light and playful atmosphere but end up with a very forced 'have fun... or ELSE' culture in a failed attempt to Google themselves. I feel the same failure often occurs with service industry companies trying to follow the Disney management style.

Just my two cents. For the record ping pong tables and rubik's cubes rub me the wrong way also.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Question: usually we create 2D models of sw: powerpoint, visio, a sketch on the whiteboard.

Has anyone tried lego or some other 3D construction set? Did it work? Is there anything particularly suitable to build "architecture"?

<comment><USER7> It's a long time, but isn't this the software they build in the novel Microserfs?

If so the idea's been around a long while, so I guess it just doesn't work in real life.

It's a great geek novel anyway.

<comment><USER6> From what I remember the sw they were working on in the novel was more like a Virtual Reality lego. I.e. something like what they use in Second Life, or possibly Minecraft, but I don't remember it being aimed at modelling sw architecture. Also, by using a 3D sw you would lose the physical manipulation part, which seems to be important, according to the article linked above.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> gene-h It is also worth mentioning that Lego makes a great mechanical prototyping medium. A big advantage is being able to quickly iterate and demonstrate something that works in the real world.

In simulation, it's easy to forget about things like friction*, deformation, slop, backlash that aren't simulated.

That being said, it is high time that someone made a mechanical construction set simulator for VR...</comment>


Ask HN: What to read during the holidays? - <AUTHOR>

I'm going to the library tomorrow and would love to have some suggestions on what to rent for the break.
What are your favorite fiction books?
I'm not a fan of science fiction or fantastic, but anything that is not programming related is fine.
p.s. Last book I read was The Fountain Head (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fountainhead), which was great (except for some long descriptions). <comment><USER2> I discovered the fountainhead last year and I found it fascinating although it becomes more and more awkward as you progress. At the end it seemed to me like a journey into a sick mind, which makes it all the more interesting.

I would recommend semi-autobiographic books by sick minds.

Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, by Robert Pirsig who was actually treated by electrotherapy in a psychiatric ward. He ended up writing a not so sick book with a philosophy I find a lot more convincing than Ayn Rand's.

Valis, the novel in which Philipp K. Dick describes how he more or less fails to make sense of his religious (or whatever) experience. It's sold as science fiction, but that's just a weak way of saying that book is completely crazy. Since it is semi-autobiographic, the characters are much more alive than in anything else I read from Philipp K. Dick.

And if you want to know why Howard Roark has a low life expectancy:

Loneliness, human nature and the need for social connection, by John T Cacioppo and William Patrick. This is non-fiction.

</comment><comment><USER3> Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

Nonfiction:

Market Wizards: Interviews with Top Traders by Jack D. Schwager (1993)

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond (history)

</comment><comment><USER4> If you enjoy history you may want to read Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels (historical fiction). I loved it.

</comment><comment><USER5> if you liked the Fountain Head you can read The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins ( insight into evolution ) - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene>

</comment><comment><USER6> I am going to get through Warren Buffett's biography, The Snowball.

</comment><comment><USER7> The Da Vinci Code (haha remember when that was huge)

</comment><comment><USER8> Anything by Terry Pratchett.

</comment><comment><USER9> Non-fiction but a great read:

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard Feynman

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surely_You%27re_Joking,_Mr._Fey...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surely_You%27re_Joking,_Mr._Feynman)!</comment>


Endlessh: SSH tarpit that slowly sends an endless banner - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/skeeto/endlessh <comment><USER2> neat, but wouldn't this be kind of resource intensive?</comment>


H1-B population Estimate [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Native%20Docs/USCIS_H-1B_Authorized_to_Work_Report.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Hard to believe that there is no way for USCIS to get the actual count. Is this the best they can arrive at given all the technology these H1-Bs develop. USCIS should hire a couple of H1-Bs to develop techonolgy that tracks tech workers in real time.

<comment><USER2> They can get the actual count. Passport numbers are unique and foreigners have their assigned alien number in their I-94 record.

They probably just don't know how to do it.

<comment><AUTHOR> they are with different departments. for security reasons(?) i-94 details may not be available to USCIS.</comment></comment></comment>