Beijing's Three Options: Unemployment, Debt, or Wealth Transfers - <AUTHOR> https://carnegieendowment.org/chinafinancialmarkets/77178 <comment><USER2> Unlike liberal democracies, Beijing has more room to act in crisis. China has extractive institutions that will ultimately be a growth limiting factor, but I don't see it limiting their crisis responses.

* There will be no political gridlock between left and right that can be solved only with half measures. Decisions are done in small groups of 30 people at most, with several hundred people having some influence.

* They don't have ideological fear of meddling with the markets or private property. It's all about being practical.

Beijing can make mistakes when handling the crisis. After they realize their error, they can take as big hammer as needed to fix it.

<comment><USER3> > It's all about being practical.

The soviets and Mao's regimes had ample powers to do what they wanted, yet it resulted in mass murder and complete catastrophe at unprecedented scale because they made very, very poor decisions. Having leverage does not mean it fits prosperity nor crisis. Look at how soviets encouraged the killing of Kulaks which led to the great starvation (dozens of millions of deaths) in Ukraine in the following years.

<comment><USER2> Those are examples of ideological action.

Chinese have not been strongly ideological after Deng Xiaoping.

Communist party is more like ruling aristocracy with privileges. Communist party is using communism the same way as aristocracy used religion to justify their divine mandate.

<comment><USER4> Central decision makers generally cannot predict the outcomes of the decisions they make because the system is so complex. It's been proven time and time again that the distributed decisions of millions of individual actors ala a non-centralized economy results in a more efficient and non-catastrophic outcome.

Wherever recent history has gone awry is when a few powerful people think they know what's best for everyone else.

<comment><USER2> You have completely wrong image in your mind. We are not talking about fully centralized command economy.

Just like I said in other comment, Look at the post war economies in Europe, Japan, Korea etc. Wage controls, price controls, rationing etc. still a market economy and not a command economy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't get this article. China exceeded their economic growth target for 2018 in April when their economy hit 6.8% growth. Their wages are steadily increasing. Their internal market is the healthiest of any g20 economy. Investments both internally and internationally are up and their population has little dept.

On top of that they haven't touched retirement age, so they have a lot of leverage there.

<comment><USER6> > China exceeded their economic growth target for 2018 in April when their > economy hit 6.8% growth

Wrong. Fake GDP. It's estimated that 1/3 of their GDP is wasteful government spending. Many of their provinces also have confessed to 20-30% fake GDP, thus another 1/3 of their gdp is fake. [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-19/this- is-h...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-19/this-is-how-china- s-regions-fare-in-the-fake-gdp-data-stakes) [https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/new-study- shin...](https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/new-study-shines-light- literally-on-chinas-and-russias-fake-gdp-data/) so we're looking at maybe 1-2% gdp growth, and maybe their GDP is only about 70% of what they claim (9T vs 13T)

> Their wages are steadily increasing.

Wrong. Chinese graduates salaries have fallen for second year in a row. [https://www.ft.com/content/fb5865e4-4993-11e7-919a-1e14ce4af...](https://www.ft.com/content/fb5865e4-4993-11e7-919a-1e14ce4af89b).

> Their internal market is the healthiest of any g20 economy

Wrong. Consumer spending growth declined. [https://www.google.com/search?q=chinese+spending+down&rlz=1C...](https://www.google.com/search?q=chinese+spending+down&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS745US745) . Beijing rent increased 25% !!! in july year over year. That's not a healthy sign of any economy. [https://www.ft.com/content/6324fc2a-a445-11e8-8ecf-a7ae1beff...](https://www.ft.com/content/6324fc2a-a445-11e8-8ecf-a7ae1beff35b) . and now we know Chinese consumers are taking on too much personal debt [https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-02-15/chinese-c...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-02-15/chinese- consumers-are-building-up-too-much-household-debt)

And did you forget China is about to be hit with tariffs from US on 200B worth, soon to be 500B? when their economy is export oriented?

> Investments both internally and internationally are up

Wrong. Yuan has lost 12% this year. Chinese stock market has crashed 30% this year. That's not a sign of increasing FDI. that's FDI leaving and screaming

> On top of that they haven't touched retirement age

Wrong. Chinese demographics looks horrible, and will reach peak in 2025. Their population will shrink 1/3 in the next 60 years.

<comment><USER7> Why government spending is neccesarily wasteful? I would say consumption of financial services part of GDP which is massive in us is less relevant to layman that vital services government provides

<comment> village-idiot Ever heard of Chinese ghost cities? Completely designed and built cities that could home millions but only hold a thousand or so? That's wasteful government spending.

[https://www.businessinsider.com/these-chinese-cities-are- gho...](https://www.businessinsider.com/these-chinese-cities-are-ghost- towns-2017-4)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Studying economics for some time, I think economists often ask wrong questions. So let's say trade war occurs, and china will lose some of its exports. The main question is not whether savings would decrease or investment rise, the main question is how all the spare capacity left will be utilised. Yeah, if it won't be utilised then there will be unemployment, well pointed by the author. If domestic consumer will consume what was produced for exports, then consumption would increase and savings would fall. If Chinese will find a way to use spare capacity to produce something else what is in higher demand (high tech let's say) then investment would rise. And let me assure you that strong Chinese government will find a way to use all the freed up labour/capital resources, so any downfalls would be temporary. On the other side are democracies like US which don't have that much control over production side and whose economies are not that robust to shocks that China may face now.

<comment><USER8> >The main question is not whether savings would decrease or investment rise, the main question is how all the spare capacity left will be utilised.

Undifferentiated low end products are more _price_ elastic than brand goods. China will do fine even if USA will declare a 100% embargo.

Edit: specified that I talk about price elasticity

<comment><USER7> If they are more elastic it means that demand is more responsive to price hikes. This is opposite to your conclusion

<comment><USER8> I mean that Chinese manufactures have an option just to do a slight downgrade of their undifferentiated mass consumption goods that were previously sold to America, and sell them to poorer countries, as well as domestic consumer.

This is what happened in 2008. To Chinese electronics industry the crisis was a blessing in disguise. It saw an unprecedented expansion after it reoriented from OEM for "rich American co." to selling own products to places like South Asia, CIS, and African nations.

A bit of explanation:

Pre-2008 industry was very oriented on developed countries with contract manufacturing of _high premium goods_ secured by branding, marketing, IP lockdown and such - in other word, niches with very inefficient market and companies hellbent on profit maximisation. Thus, they had a huuge leeway for trading unit value for volume which they used to devastating effect.

That was right the time when people in places like Africa realised that $20 Nokla is no worse than low end $100 Nokia, the rest is history.

<comment><USER7> Fair as long as demand is as elastic as it used to be. Like if everyone has a phone now it will be harder to sell new phones. And good for pointing out a critical assumption behind the article - that CA surplus will actually fall as a result of tariffs, as you showed there is a fifth solution - sell to other countries, EU for example, US is not the whole world

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As a non-expert, it seems likely that of the 3 options, wealth transfer will be the main solution to China's debt problems. (It's worth noting, China's high corporate debt levels are, like Japan's, owed to mainly to domestic creditors, and I believe also denominated in the local currency.)

In a totalitarian dictatorship, "political opposition from so-called vested interests" is not that strong a barrier when political and economic stability is at stake.

I think while some unsustainable debt will continue to be allowed to default, a lot of debt will eventually be painfully bailed out by taxpayers (both households and corporations) over time.

This mean lower health, education, and social welfare spending affecting people who didn't cause the debt problem in the first place. That's just the unfortunate price of accumulating large amounts of non-productive debt.

<comment><USER8> There is no Zhu Rongji in current generation of party leaders.

From my personal observations, the leeching of public debt through borderline fraudulent projects barely ceased under Xi. This is an elephant in the room. Only the moment they will lift a knife on it, will we be assured that they began an actual move on that front.

Do you know why Xi raised his hand on his closest supporters in the reactionary camp he leads - Bo and Co?

He did so because he was too afraid that Bo as a much more charismatic person will take over the lead of reactionaries from him.

Now, he needs to pay his supporters in the party lavishly in form of state sanctioned corruption - all kinds of unsupervised small local projects where money vanish using long lending chains, or simply stratospheric remunerations for offsprings of party officials employed somewhere in the chain.

<comment><USER10> Thanks for your analysis. Just to clarify some of your points to readers who may not be that familiar with Chinese politics.

* Zhu Rongji is the more reformist leader in the late 1990s, and seen as one of the few leaders (maybe along with Zhao Ziyang in the 80s and Wen Jiabao in the 2000s) who may have been favorable for a move towards democracy in China.

* Bo and Co = Bo Xilai and ... Zhou Yongkang? They were arrested in 2012-2013 for plotting a coup against Xi and human rights abuses such as organ harvesting of prisoners of conscience, after a high-ranking security official (Wang Lijun) defected and sought refuge in the US consulate, providing inside dirt on these two party chiefs.

* Xi = Xi Jinping, current Chinese leader.

<comment><USER11> Not sure how zhu was viewed as more possible for democracy.

Note that what he did was the most brutal form of autocratic policy making, by forcing unemployment of millions of workers who are not trained to live in a different system; was possible because of autocratic government; and his policy pretty much made the rich out of the ranks of former government officials just like what happened to the Russian oligarchs.

I am guessing the rich do know how to court the expectations from inside and outside. And I often hear praises from Chinese people to zhu, while at the same time none of them suffer during zhu's policies...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've tried reading this piece a couple times, but despite the bullet points and numbered lists, I can't make any sense out of it. I presume this is because I lack essential background knowledge. Can someone please help explain the context?

When he says "China's debt problems", what exactly is he referring to?

When he says "there are also only four ways that Beijing can respond", what are they responding to and what is the goal of their response?

<comment><USER13> I'm assuming the debt problems are the corporate defaults on bond payments [0] for 2018 until July, were close to equal to the entire year of 2016. There's also consumer debt stuff that's blowing up as well (the whole p2p loan companies going bankrupt was linked on HN recently).

As for the what are they responding to is the engine for economic growth is stalling out from knock on effects behind whats going on above, and I can only speculate that the "goal" of any kind of response will be to maintain some kind of economic "stability".

[0] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-02/china- hea...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-02/china-heads-for- record-defaults-and-downgrades-tip-further-pain)

<comment><USER12> I appreciate the answer. But I still don't see the connection between the proposed responses (the first four bullet points) and the stalling of economic growth. For example, how is "Reduce savings by letting unemployment rise" a response to slower economic growth, and how does this maintain economic stability?

<comment><USER14> Letting unemployment rise is the least desired outcome but is what will happen by default in response to a declining trade surplus. Wide spread unemployment doesn't contribute to economic or societal stability and so China will attempt to avoid that.

The second option is wealth transfer through debt default; or government forced wealth transfer (taxes or inflation). China's debt could be brought down from 300% of GDP to 100% of GDP overnight if creditors simply forgave 2/3rds of debt. That could happen though debt default (debtor bankruptcy) or taxing creditors and giving it to debtors. Having the bulk of your life savings disappear tends to make people angry and so China will attempt to avoid that.

The last option is to kick the can down the road and increase domestic debt which is what they have been doing for the last 10 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Something else will happen, not predicted by the economists.

Economists are impotent at predicting the future effects of monetary policy so it'd be great if they stopped pretending.

</comment><comment><USER8> Such a long article just to state something well known: income growth has stalled for sure, and industry been contracting.

China is about to hit its Brezhnev era. That's my fear.

But for as long as Yi Da Yi Lu and state contracts rain gold, I see no personal reasons to worry

<comment><AUTHOR> I have been reading his blog for years (ever since Calculated Risk, another great economics blog, pointed to him). He has been beating the same drum the entire time. His point is that the mechanics of how an economy work at the macro level reduce to a simple set of equations between investment, savings and consumption. And that those equations force hard choices that have political implications.

I have passed some articles to economics professors I know, but haven't heard whether Pettis' ideas make sense from a theoretical perspective. I know they make sense to me, a layman.

<comment><USER16> > _And that those equations force hard choices that have political > implications._

All economic decisions have political implications because all economic decisions are inherently political. Recall that until recently, we called it _political economy_ until the Neoclassical school decided they wanted to pretend to be—and be viewed as—a science.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Notice that all four paths either raise investment or reduce savings, > thereby reducing the country's excess of savings over investment.

Or...a fifth path would be to entice people to convert "unproductive" savings into investment. If only there were some mechanism where people could tell if this was a viable route like, say, a market based interest rate.

Quite surprisingly, it turns out that "saving" and "investing" are nearly synonymous.

</comment><comment><USER18> Missing option: war

</comment><comment><USER19> _Put differently, over the longer run, Beijing can only avoid a sharp rise in unemployment or stagnant wage growth to the extent that it has managed to achieve significant wealth transfers._

Isn't this exactly what the Communist Party or socialism (fake capitalism) with Chinese characteristics is supposed to have retained the option to do?

To be more specific, a charitable interpretation of affairs is that Xi or whoever is engineering Xi's policies has made sharp left turn, and is taking authoritarian measures to carry out exactly this.</comment>


The Psychedelic Experience FAQ - <AUTHOR> https://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/faqs/psychedelic_experience_faq.shtml <comment><USER2>
         _____     _    _  .  .   ___   __    . .  . .   _   ___    _____
        /     \   | \  / \ |\ | /  |   |  |  /| |\ | |  / \  \ /   /     \
       |  | |  |  |  )(   )| \|    |   |--' /-| | \| | (      V   |  | |  |
       | \___/ |  | /  \_/ |  |    |   |   /  | |  | |  \_/   o   | \___/ |
        \_____/   *******************  ********************  ***   \_____/

<comment><USER3> ...and grab you towel

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Once upon the internets, there was a story of some tech-oriented CEO or other in the US who took LSD on a regular basis (I believe, daily). I cannot remember the source of the story. As web searches these days seem filled with Steve Jobs results (argh), this seems like an appropriate forum to ask if anyone remembers who that was?

While a quick search failed, it did highlight the 'notable Polish security research group' Last Stage of Delerium (LSD) and lsd.net, a separate programming business. It seems that the relationship between psychoactive substances and programming (as with any other form of art/creativity/invention) seems a fascinating and well attested one.

(PS. I have contributed to Erowid over many years and also use and recommend the rather quirkier <http://bluelight.ru/> which can be fascinating, if you are in the mood for forum-browsing)

<comment><USER5> Well there is John Perry Barlow - EFF founder, also John C. Lilly (meta programming and SETI).

And this long discussion, <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4720121>

<comment><USER4> Wow, I never knew a former lyricist for the Grateful Dead founded the EFF. Amazing. Also I wasn't aware of Lilly's obvious impact on the video rendering of Neuromancer (re: dolphin communications).

Searching for more on those I found what I believe was actually the origin of my recollection: <http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/01/70015>

Thanks for taking the time to reply! A very good tangent from work. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Do not bring money or anything of value with you on your voyage. Why? Inevitably your "higher" self will feel compelled to toss the stained worldly items away.

Later, your "lower" self will regret having tossed them ;-)

<comment><USER7> I had a very bad habit of buying stuff while tripping. To this day I still have the mirrored aviator sunglasses that I once purchased... That was an expensive but hilarious mistake.

<comment><USER6> Interesting, I tend to go deep into the woods, but did, on one occasion, find myself tripping on LSD on a riverboat casino in Mobile, Alabama.

At the time Black Jack seemed like an overwhelmingly deep and mystifying game; can only imagine what the dealer thought ;-)

<comment><USER8> Last summer Phish played two nights at the Harvey's in Stateline NV (ie South Lake Tahoe), a Tuesday-Wednesday. Apparently no one working at the casinos knew what Phish's fan crowd is like, because they were all pretty surprised when the crowd of brightly colored tripping kids (who would be awake until the sun came up) all came back to the casinos after the show ended on Tuesday and filled up their blackjack and roulette tables.

<comment><USER9> Phish?! On HackerNews?!! Worlds are colliding Jerry!

<comment><USER10> The Bozo bus must pass.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Evolution:

1\. This is the greatest thing ever! Absolutely the path to enlightenment!

2\. I had a crazy trip. I need some time to recover and to digest these thoughts.

3\. This crap just gets in the way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Like a relationship with a person, a relationship with a substance might also not work out.

This might indicate that:

1\. This is the wrong person/substance for you.

2\. You're not ready. Perhaps if you worked on yourself (through meditation, mindfulness, yoga, spiritual practice, therapy) you could get more out of future experiences.

3\. You're abusing the relationship. You're not treating the person or substance with enough respect. All too commonly, psychedelics are used as "party drugs" rather than used constructively in a deliberate therapeutic, spiritual, religious, or shamanic context. This can lead to all sorts of problems.

4\. You don't have the right guide or purpose. A therapist skilled in psychedelic therapy could be a great help, as can some serious introspection about exactly what it is you need to get from the experience.

5\. Another problem that's all too common is that trippers fail to integrate what they learn on a trip in to the rest of their lives. This could lead to lessons forgotten and backsliding.

6\. You might just need a break. Doing psychedelics too frequently is bordering on abuse.

<comment><USER6> "get more out of future experiences"?

Where is the future and what is there to get?

<comment><USER12> You caught him.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If it is deep, unfiltered introspection you seek, psilocybin is your liege.

</comment><comment><USER14> My biggest regret is tripping on mushrooms. It permanently ruined aspects of my mind.

<comment><USER15> Maybe you can share some more details to inspire/discourage the new generation of programming youth.

<comment><USER14> It was mushrooms in a hotel room in Amsterdam several years ago. I took them with my then-girlfriend - her trip was okay but mine was awful. The visuals, the thoughts, the emotions all felt terrible and when it really hit me I couldn't stop panicking.

At the time, I thought that was it: a bad trip but glad it was over. But over the following months I developed a chronic anxiety triggered by all sorts of things. First time I noticed it was next time I was in a hotel room; I had a panic attack and had to call an ambulance as I didn't know what the fuck was going on with my head. Then, other things became triggers. If I happened to be thinking of either of the hotel room incidents and felt anxious, then whatever else was present at the time would become a trigger for the anxiety. This included internal thought-triggers and external visual and situational ones. Over the next couple of years I had panic attacks in all sorts of places, sometimes seemingly apropos of nothing.

Anyway after a couple of years I managed to get it somewhat under control using a combination of anti-depressant medication and cognitive behavioural therapy. But even now there are some situational triggers that will make me exceedingly anxious, and earlier this month - after several years 'clean' of attacks - I couldn't hold off the anxiety and had another really large attack. Though I was very stressed about something else so I suppose my background levels of anxiety were high anyway.

Before all this happened, I was a pretty relaxed and chilled out kind of guy. It makes me sad that I'm never going to get back to that state of mind. When I look back at recordings or writings of the pre-mushrooms me, he seems almost like a stranger. It's very odd.

This of course is not necessarily a typical experience on mushrooms, and I suppose I was predisposed to this somehow, but it was a very unpleasant way to find this out.

<comment><USER16> Something similar happened to me, but with weed. I was experienced with LSD, mushrooms, and marijuana, but one night, after watching Fight Club while high, I couldn't get the thought out of my head that my buddy (also high, who had suggested we watch the film) was merely a projection of my alternate personality. At first I found this odd thought funny and I brushed it aside; but it kept recurring and it turned into a multi-hour panic attack. Like you said, I used to think there was a "before" me, and an "after" me. It truly changed my life. I struggled with severe anxiety and panic attacks for many years afterward. To some degree, I still do.

I used to think of that night as the cause, but I later noticed that I had been building up to some kind of "breakdown" for months. I had always been a bit more tense, a bit more worried, and more sensitive than most. I had a deep belief that, if I tried hard enough, I could prevent bad things from happening. This sense of control is at the root of anxiety disorders. Most people don't think bad things will happen to them, so they lose no sleep about it. Those of us with anxiety issues are just the opposite: we're constantly trying to prevent and prepare for the worst, even though the majority of those feared events will never materialize.

Anyway, if you haven't already done so, I suggest that you not think about the mushrooms as being the cause but rather the trigger. Once anxiety attacks begin, they are very difficult to control. It wasn't the mushrooms specifically; rather, it was the anxiety that caused the downward spiral, as the conditioned fear response gains strength through repetition. (There's a load of good publications about this.) In short, there aren't two versions of you ("pre-mushroom you" and "post-mushroom you"); you just had a serious transformative experience.

<comment><USER14> I'm sorry to hear of your similarly terrifying experience. The mental model you use to describe it is interesting though, and makes me consider that the narratives we (in the general sense) formulate to represent our lives are an important tool in processing them. Will definitely have to think about this a bit more.

Out of curiosity, may I ask how you dealt with your experience in the following months afterward?

<comment><USER16> At first, I didn't deal with it very well because I didn't realize what was happening. I thought I had gone crazy, or was in the process of going crazy. Back then, the Internet wasn't as helpful as it is today (or harmful, depending upon how you want to look at it), or I would have Googled it; but I had heard about panic attacks through film and TV (The Sopranos, for example) and I eventually dragged myself into a bookstore to browse the self-help section (something the "before" me never would have done), and there I stumbled across books about anxiety disorders. After a few months of suffering, this was enough to motivate me to see a doctor. Of course, the doctor was familiar with anxiety, and suggested that I see a psychiatrist. This totally blew my mind. A psychiatrist? I was "normal" just a few months before. I had never even considered seeing a psychiatrist for any reason, so I brushed it off, thinking that I just needed to get it under control by myself.

So I spent the next year reading about anxiety, going through workbooks, taking supplements (another thing I had never done before), and trying to "gain control." Turns out, trying to wrest control is a bad way to approach anxiety; it imposes impossible expectations upon yourself--"If only I were smarter and stronger I wouldn't have these panic attacks. I just need to get it together." This kind of thinking makes anxiety worse. And it got worse.

Eventually though, I was able to find a better approach that involved accepting anxiety as a part of my life. I was inspired by something I had read about Zen Buddhism, so I began trying to view my anxiety as an old friend, my old torturer, my own brand of human suffering. Believe it or not, this worked. I began to intentionally do things that made me anxious. Axiety is much less powerful once you acknowledge that its roots lie in the brain, in the evolutionary drive to protect oneself from danger, and you can't consciously control it. All you can do is acknowledge it and move on, or "Feel the fear and do it anyway." I forced myself to reengage in life. I never stayed home when feeling anxious (I found this was the worst possible thing I could do); I accepted invitations to parties, I traveled, I enrolled in college, I moved.

But I continued having recurring episodes of severe anxiety that would leave me crippled for weeks: I couldn't sleep, I could barely eat, I had difficulty doing simple things like grocery shopping. So, at the urging of my family, I saw a psychiatrist (who was not helpful at all, as all she wanted to do was find out whether someone had touched my peepee when I was a boy. Hint: no one had), a neurologist (who was very helpful and very knowledgeable about anxiety), and a new primary doctor. My doctors coordinated to find a suitable medication, an SSRI. With this, coupled with my learned coping skills, I eventually began to feel "normal" again. A few years later, after experiencing no severe anxiety, I dropped the medication and was able to move on with my life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is a really great guide. Many good points there. You should definitely read it if you plan on trying anything.

</comment><comment><USER18> The Psychedelic Crisis FAQ is also a worthwhile read.

[http://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/faqs/psychedelic_crisis_...](http://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/faqs/psychedelic_crisis_faq.shtml)

</comment><comment><USER19> i must say experiencing level 5 is amazing and scary. one truly understands how reality is constructed by the perception of the senses.

</comment><comment><USER20> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR7KnQ_5ZxE>

<comment><USER21> [http://yooouuutuuube.com/v/?width=192&height=120&yt=...](http://yooouuutuuube.com/v/?width=192&height=120&yt=sR7KnQ_5ZxE&flux=1&direction=rand)

<comment><USER22> that's fantastic! Thanks for sharing

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I find it hard to imagine someone reading this document and coming away thinking that taking psychedelics are a good idea, if they have any sense of stability in their lives. (for someone with nothing to lose and little hope for better, I can imagine drug consequences not being worse)

<comment><AUTHOR> On the contrary. The more stable and integrated your life and psyche are, the greater the chances of having a good experience.

Psychedelics often bring a lot of subconscious, repressed content to consciousness, and it is mentally stable, healthy, and integrated individuals who are in the best position to deal with that content.

I would strongly caution unstable individuals, or people who are experiencing or being treated for mental illness to stay far away from psychedelics (unless you're using them under the supervision of an experienced therapist -- and even then, that's very controversial).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Several of the hallucinations described can be reached by meditating.

And there are hallucination types due to drugs that aren't in there. I've seen crazy stuff, like people's neck stretching for tens of meters and their head coming right in front me although they were on the other side of the street. I did stop taking drugs, nearly 20 years ago, after that one did happen to me.

I still do meditate that said.</comment>


Making the most of Redis and Sorted Sets - <AUTHOR> http://aimeeault.com/blog/making-the-most-of-redis-and-sorted-sets

<comment><AUTHOR> An extremely popular use case for Redis' sorted sets is leaderboards. During the last GDC I was amazed how practically every game developer I talked with was using Redis just for that - here's the post I had published afterwards: [http://redislabs.com/blog/the-top-3-game-changing-redis- use-...](http://redislabs.com/blog/the-top-3-game-changing-redis-use-cases)</comment>


An Introduction to OpenBSD [video] - <AUTHOR> https://blog.lambda.cx/posts/openbsd-introduction-talk/ <comment><USER2> I've grown to love OpenBSD recently (and BSDs in general). I started life using Windows all the time, switched to Linux when I went to university, had a fling with Macs for a few years, then almost exclusive with Linux again for years. In the last several years I discovered the BSDSs, and OpenBSD is now my daily driver. It is so beautifully simple. Configuring a secure server is easy. The config files are consistent. It just works.

I highly recommend installing and playing around with it. Like Lisp, even if you don't go permanent with it, the encounter will change how you think and what you expect in terms of elegance from every other system you use.

<comment><USER3> I've been on linux for many years, and have been growing curious about BSDs, but confused over the various BSDs variants. I'm still unclear of how exactly BSDs are superior to linux. Could you shine a light on the different BSDS, and perhaps a recommendation?

<comment><USER4> The biggest thing you'll find over Linux (IMO) is the advantage of having one team build things. Linux the OS is actually the Linux kernel + userspace software, and those pieces are built independently. With the BSDs, the team is building the userspace and kernel together. You end up with a small, well- designed system that fits together nicely.

As an example, OpenBSD gives you a HTTP server, load balancer, and firewall right out of the box – and they all make use of pledge(2) and privsep and other security designs in a very consistent manner. And the documentation for the whole system is top-notch: you can read their manpages and not have to resort to Googling things.

I'd recommend you spin up OpenBSD on a VPC (try Vultr or DigitalOcean) and kick it around.

<comment><USER5> _Linux the OS is actually the Linux kernel + userspace software, and those pieces are built independently. With the BSDs, the team is building the userspace and kernel together. You end up with a small, well-designed system that fits together nicely._

That's a blessing and a curse. While the BSD approach leads to more consistency, the Linux approach allows the ecosystem to move faster. In BSD projects, progress is often hampered, because proposals to drastically change subsystems is met with inertia, and then nothing happens. In Linux the inertia is there, but nobody stops people from implementing an alternative implementation, because the pieces are relatively decoupled, and then convince distributions to adopt the replacement.

This is why Linux ecosystem went from System V init -> Upstart -> systemd. Similarly, X11 -> Mir/Wayland -> Wayland (although Wayland could be adopted as a default on BSDs as well). Or chroot -> LXC -> Docker (or more generally cgroups + user namespaces). Although controversial (every change leads to some controversy), technically systemd and Wayland are substantial improvements to their predecessors.

Of course, the downside is that the integration is left to the distributors and the documentation may be inconsistent or uneven.

\---

Another thing to take into accounts when looking at BSDs is that the BSDs have far fewer contributors than the Linux ecosystem. So, you might find that it lacks basic things such as 802.11ac support (though there has recently been movement in FreeBSD again) or support for the newest GPUs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> OpenBSD is also a great choice for a firewall too [https://www.openbsd.org/faq/pf/](https://www.openbsd.org/faq/pf/)

<comment><USER2> Highly recommend "The Book of PF" for anyone looking into OpenBSD as a firewall. Lots of nice information in one place and helps showcase how fantastic pf is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I use it for our network services except for file storage or required OS of a software vendor[1]. It is supper easy to setup and now the upgrade story is much easier, it really is a minimum maintenance OS. Regenerating the system and putting back the files needed to run is very straightforward.

1) I once thought enterprise software was the worst imaginable, but nothing compares to government required software that only runs on Windows 2003.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think presentation got one thing wrong. npf (NetBSD's pf) is not coded on based on OpenBSD's pf.

<comment><USER9> NetBSD used to contain an old copy of pf as well as ipf and npf.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> OpenBSD does not do KASLR as far as I'm aware.

<comment><USER11> OpenBSD does have Kernel Address Randomized Link (KARL) since 6.2 [1].

[1][https://www.openbsd.org/62.html](https://www.openbsd.org/62.html)

<comment><USER10> Yes which the linked piece covers but it also says OpenBSD does _both_ KASLR and KARL.

<comment><USER12> Yes the author is incorrect in their slides, OpenBSD has userland ASLR, it uses both PIE by default and also created static-PIE, which are self- relocating executables. There's also been a considerable effort to convert OpenBSD's already privsep daemons to the fork+exec model, most having been completed, expanding upon initial work done on sshd over 16 years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> OpenBSD is great. Except for Theo.

If you question Theo on anything, even something reasonable, you will incur his wrath, and that of his henchmen (the clique of project devs that surround him).

Case in point is the whole "Funding our Electricity" thing: (a) Theo insists on keeping their test lab in his own house (b) Theo insists on supporting obscure archaic architectures (c) Theo claims on list to have incurred 20,000 dollars of electricity that year (d) Theo refuses to answer reasonable questions, such as cost breakdown, why the equipment can't be moved elsewhere, why the insistent on obscure architectures. Or when he does answer its essentially "my way or the highway".

OpenBSD is great, no doubt about that. But the whole Theo & friends clique needs to change.

<comment><USER14> I think this is his equipment rack in his basement from 2009. The image is from the official OpenBSD web site.

[http://www.openbsd.org/images/rack2009.jpg](http://www.openbsd.org/images/rack2009.jpg)

Security is an important issue to them so they feel they need physical direct control of the hardware and don't want it located somewhere else.

Also some of the equipment is old and may not survive being transported.

I remember them saying taht alignment and endian issues can only be found when compiling and running on the actual hardware. Cross compile to a different arch and emulators don't catch the same bugs.

<comment><USER15> No wonder someone mentioned how expensive his electricity bills were. Some of those older machines eat some power. I was looking at old Silicon Graphics servers but the noise and power consumption was too much.

<comment> cbm-vic-20 That's some "cops kick down the door to shut down your illegal marijuana grow operation" level of electricity use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> OpenBSD is brilliant and I'm sure it runs on a multitude of network hardware, that you don't even know you encounter on a daily basis !

Given that this is HN, many of the readers might already know the "story" and I'm sure it has be told many many times... but I will tell it anyway since it's so funny (to me at least). Also we probably should not admire or approve of this sorta behaviour.

Right so disclaimer out of the way, the story goes that:

Someone once incurred Theo de Raadt(Main guy at OpenBSD) ire by asking the wrong question at the wrong time, and Theo de Raadt hacked his router and remotely remapped his keyboard.

Now that is funny - Wrong but funny:)

<comment><USER17> Given that that anecdote is a criminal allegation against a living person, you should provide a source or STFU.

<comment><USER18> It is only a criminal allegation if there were indeed laws against it at the time and in the jurisdiction at hand.

Playing "practical jokes" with each others systems was a fairly common occurrence in the hacker-scene back in the day...

<comment><USER16> Exactly THIS! I remember "taking over IRC channels" back in the 90's remember "ping flood", only to lost it again a few hours later. Guess you had to be there to appreciate the time and the culture.

It was a joke and not a declaration of war or a "federal crime". When did geeks get so serious :/</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Windows.app: Open source OS X window manager atop JSCocoa - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sdegutis/windowsapp

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been using Windows.app for about a week now and use it pretty extensively these days. For whatever reason, I could never work divvy/sizeup/slate/etc. into my workflow; the config UIs generally felt tiresome or overwhelming.

You can configure it with JS or CoffeeScript, and using JSCocoa gives you access to most (all?) of Cocoa's API to do as you please. And the latest version has a minimal REPL that you can use to tinker.

The author has a nice config you could paste into ~/.windowsapp.coffee to get started:

[https://github.com/sdegutis/home/blob/master/.windowsapp.cof...](https://github.com/sdegutis/home/blob/master/.windowsapp.coffee)

</comment><comment><USER2> Screenshots for the lazy?

<comment><USER3> Screenshots don't really make sense for this app. It's a configuration-based WM, so APIs make more sense.

Here's a link to the CoffeeScript/JavaScript API: <https://github.com/sdegutis/windowsapp#api></comment></comment>


Mental Focus Significantly Improved By Brief Diversions - <AUTHOR> http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/216047.php

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting implications for UX design. A few choice quotes...

"A new study in the journal Cognition overturns a decades-old theory about the nature of attention and demonstrates that even brief diversions from a task can dramatically improve one's ability to focus on that task for prolonged periods."

"As expected, most participants' performance declined significantly over the course of the task. But most critically, Lleras said, those in the switch group saw no drop in their performance over time. Simply having them take two brief breaks from their main task (to respond to the digits) allowed them to stay focused during the entire experiment."</comment>


Authority and Paying Your Dues - <AUTHOR> http://www.garann.com/dev/2012/authority-and-paying-your-dues/

<comment><AUTHOR> I posted this link because I felt it merited discussion and response.

I should disclose that I'm writing this as a young (by most estimations) caucasian male, with an above-average earning power (compared to non-engineers of my demographic), and a relatively comfortable childhood background.

I'm surprised the author didn't mention the Dunning-Kruger effect (i.e. ignorance begets confidence). Growing up, I knew this by the proverb 'the empty can rattles the most'. Looking back on my own short career, I certainly recognise that I was at my most arrogant when I was at my most naïve. If I'd known then what I now know I didn't know then—and mostly don't know now—I would have been a less outspoken individual. Perhaps most notably, I wouldn't have bullshat my way into certain situations which caused me to grow: had I known the limits of my own knowledge, I would have remained firmly within them.

There's a great verb in British English: to _blag_ something. To blag something is to obtain it by deception or rhetoric, a kind of 'sleight of mouth'. The darker side of the same coin is the _con_ (or _confidence trick_ ), but blagging implies a less grave offense. I am where I am right now because I blagged my way into circles, positions, and jobs I had no proper right to be—I had no experience, little knowledge, and lacked respect for my elders (figuratively and literally speaking). But when you're thrown in at the deep end, your only choice is to swim.

I'd like to posit a hypothesis. It's well-known that men are more abundant in the field of Computing than women, and maybe it's precisely because women are more humble and rational—they aren't deceived by the same arrogance that testosterone induces. Anecdotally, I've known more women than men refrain from applying for a job because they believe it's beyond their current ability. But at the end of the day, none of us really know what we're doing. The field of Computer Science is still going through puberty, and we're wandering around in the dark finding out these amazing and heretofore unknown truths about these fabulous little machines.

I'm reminded of David Letterman's interview with Grace Hopper, when he asked her about her work on the Harvard Mark I. He said: "How did you know so much about computers?" and she replied "I didn't, it was the first one." (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ0g5_NgRao>)

</comment><comment><USER2> For what it's worth, the author is filtering critical comments.</comment>


UserVoice launches TouchPoint Toolkit to move service away from the help desk - <AUTHOR> http://pandodaily.com/2013/03/21/uservoice-launches-touchpoint-toolkit-to-move-service-away-from-the-help-desk/

<comment><USER2> I dig this. Breaking down support and community interaction into even smaller steps will get more users to take the first step of participating. I heard that early usage shows a _big_ bump actually happening.

</comment><comment><USER3> I cannnnnnnnot wait to utilize these new features.</comment>


iPhone users pay higher prices at German carsharing Sixt - <AUTHOR> https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article190490795/Sixt-Share-Wer-ein-iPhone-hat-zahlt-beim-Carsharing-mehr.html <comment><AUTHOR> I haven't found an english source yet, sorry.

Welt magazin reports that Sixt has an adaptive AI controlled pricing that results in iOS users and customers in expensive stores seeing higher prices than other users.</comment>


Show HN: GoJS - Interactive Canvas Diagramming Library - <AUTHOR> http://gojs.net/

<comment><USER2> We have been looking at it and currently use the WinForm based product from you guys.

Biggest issue we see right now is print output. We need good large format printing. Since it completely canvas based any print output is going to be raster, which will not scale up and use large amount of memory if made at any decent DPI.

We had the same issue when looking at the Silverlight version, all raster based, printing looked bad and took forever with large memory usage. You guys pretty much said no to using Silverlight 5's vector print capabilities.

I would seriously look at an SVG based renderer and/or at least an SVG export function allowing for resolution independent vectors mainly for printing but also for saving.

Secondary but not by far and related is PDF export. You guy recommend Phantomjs for server side PDF generation. This isn't a bad solution, but again it hampered by the raster rendering, SVG based rendering would make this a workable solution as I believe Phantom will do PDF vectors from SVG.

Your most direct competitor that we see is Y-files, and their solution does SVG rendering of the canvas, has great layout, looks good and can even save GraphML that can be loaded in their other products.

<comment><USER3> I have to ask (+ be safe in the knowledge my plug is no worse than Simon's - Hello Northwoods \0/), how come HN folks find GoJS and yFiles and not so much our product mxGraph (www.jgraph.com). We've been doing this library since 2005, the others went into production in 2012 (I think). We seem to attract the Enterprises, but not so much the general devs. If anyone is feeling critical, does our site simply not make it clear what we do?

And yes, we export to SVG client-side and also to PDF in Java :).

<comment><USER4> yFiles has been around for many years, and the yWorks free-to-use diagramming tool based on it named yEd is in my use-it-everyday list.

<comment><USER3> I was referring to the release dates of the web native products, yFiles HTML and GOJs, the companies are indeed all much older.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> jack-r-abbit It works pretty nice. It looks so-so. But it seems a little pricey to me. $1350 for a single, internal app & $8385 for unlimited apps forever.[1] That feels pretty high.

[1] [http://www.nwoods.com/sales/ordering.htm](http://www.nwoods.com/sales/ordering.htm)

<comment><USER2> What's comparable for less?

Y-Files is really nice but even more expensive: [http://www.yworks.com/](http://www.yworks.com/)

D3 could be made to do a lot of this stuff, but you would have to build it, time = money.

<comment> jack-r-abbit I don't know what is comparable for less. But both of these are expensive. And there is nothing wrong with that. It seems people are paying it. Just my opinion that the price tag is high.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks very nice, but -- any plans to release a community / OSS version?

<comment><USER6> My thoughts exactly. Looks very nice but pricey.</comment></comment>


What Makes an Entrepreneur? Cojones - <AUTHOR> http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/01/05/what-makes-an-entrepreneur-appetite-for-risk-711

<comment><USER2> Self congratulatory bull-shit. Plenty of people become entrepreneurs out of some level of desperation (need to put food on the table!).

They learn and with some time they can become excellent - or simply just good enough - at running a business.

The 'ballsy' ones are disproportionally represented in the stellar successes camp as well as the miserable failure camp, with the majority of them in the latter.

If you are not risk averse at all you will have to be extremely lucky to survive an extended stretch of entrepreneurship. For every phase of managing a company there is a different profile that works best, and the best entrepreneurs are the ones that adapt their personalities to the situation they find themselves in.

Serial gamblers can have a winning streak, but they eventually always lose.

<comment><USER3> This whole series (this article is part 7 of a series of blog posts) seems like it should be titled "Qualities the Author Perceives he Embodies that Lead to his Great Success".

I guess that was a long way to call this self-congragulatory bullshit.

<comment><USER4> No, not really. On my blog I often talk about the things that I F'd up along the way. Probably more articles on that than self congratulations. I did some things well, I did some things poorly. I use examples from life because I think it makes it easier to read than just management speak. But I understand how this series could be perceived that way.

<comment><USER5> It's OK to say the word 'fuck' here.

But I liked your series. It's inspirational to those of us who haven't made the slam dunk yet, even if you've traded in your entrepreneurial risk profile for that of a more conservative investor (a reasonable move, I might add).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _I figured that the alternative was that I start my third company with no salary and all risk. I had nothing to lose!_

The above remark from the article fits my mindset pretty well. The rest of the article, that talks about what huge risk-takers entrepreneurs have to be and what big balls they need, doesn't resonate with the above remark and doesn't resonate with my understanding of how life works. It strikes me as a misframing of the facts.

I agree with many of the anecdotal judgment calls in the article. I just wouldn't frame it as "I said no because his actions proved he lacked cojones". I would say things like "His actions suggested lack of confidence in his own work/product and if he didn't believe in himself, why should I?" or "His actions suggested poor judgment, so it would be unwise to invest in him. The odds of it going badly are too high."

If you can Bring It and you know it, you don't need cojones to "gamble" on yourself. There is a huge difference between gambling on something and having confidence in something.</comment>


Architecting Containers: Understanding User Space vs. Kernel Space (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/architecting-containers-part-1-why-understanding-user-space-vs-kernel-space-matters <comment><USER2> With ECS, I use ECS optimized Amazon Linux Images. The kernel, system, tools suite, in short the instance in which containers will be run is provided by Amazon.

What considerations should I have regarding the article's theme when using pre provisioned hosts?

</comment><comment><USER3> Just want to say I found this helpful and well-written. Now hava a much clearer picture of containerisation as a technology.

</comment><comment><USER4> 2015

<comment><USER5> Thanks! Updated.</comment></comment>


P5.js: Processing for today's web - <AUTHOR> http://p5js.org <comment><USER2> Holy shit! This is great presentation [http://hello.p5js.org/](http://hello.p5js.org/)

<comment><USER3> > Your browser doesn't support all of the features required for this demo. > Please consider using the latest version of Chrome.

I guess "today's web" is not an Open web, and has a single-point-of-failure hard-dependency on Google (at multiple levels).

<comment><USER4> It also works in Firefox, Opera, and WebKit. The only modern browsers left out appears to be Safari 7 (no WebGL) and IE (Web Audio).

Give it a year and both of those are likely to work.

<comment><USER5> Indeed. If the authors stop by, consider changing the message to something more like

"Your browser does no appear to support a couple things required to play this presentation(WebGL, Web Audio etc). The latest versions of several browsers do. You might want to try one of those instead."

<comment><USER6> thanks, yes, working on a fix right now. we also want to make it clear that those things are not necessarily required for p5.js itself, just the demo.

<comment><USER7> but they're obviously required to do things in the demo no?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm naive. What makes this comparable to - or better than - D3 js, Easel js, Three js, Raphael js, Kinetic js, Paper js, Famo.us js, Impact js... and boy I'm sure I can think of many more. I realize they don't all share the same feature sets... but I'm not understanding what makes this new or exciting.

Edit: Maybe I don't get the "processing" part... isn't this about creating interactive experiences? The examples demonstrate so and I didn't see examples of processing complex data sets or anything. Would love to hear some elaboration on it.

I noticed the statement "p5.dom lets you interact with HTML5 objects beyond the canvas, including video, audio, webcam, input, and text." This is interesting. Perhaps the point here is P5 manages more interactive components without the developer having to mash different tools together?

<comment><USER9> There's plenty of reasons why there would be such a state of affairs. Probably the biggest is that there is no clear winner in this space. D3 is shoring up, but it is quite a bit more complex for non-devs IMHO than what this looks to be. Frankly this is a pretty lazy comment. You could just look at the link's "Start" page for <5 minutes and see for yourself why it's different enough to warrant existence and could legitimately be in the running with the X other JS frameworks that have overlap in canvas drawing.

I mean it's in beta, clearly, and people are in here harping about the accessibility of one of the presentations on the site and comparing it to relatively mature (eg D3 is on v3) frameworks. That isn't very fair.

<comment><USER8> | You could just look at the link's "Start" page for <5 minutes and see for yourself why it's different enough to warrant existence

Honestly I'm not seeing what's different. I'm working on a hybrid canvas/html5 feature app right now. A good portion of the API (p5js.org/reference) feels, well, typical.

I don't want to discredit the project, it does look nice. You're point about beta is good.

In fairness, this appears to be targeted towards non-programmers, and having been deep in UI for years I may be missing the simplicity sake.

Also, I had no interest in slamming them for a temp broken browser context... rather I'm trying to understand what makes this awesome. In years of browser UIE I hadn't heard of [http://processingjs.org/](http://processingjs.org/).

<comment><USER10> Yes, the "processing" refers to the name of a programming language / programming environment originally founded / created by people at the MIT Media Lab.

It is not referring to "processing" anything as a verb, but the name of the programming language outlined at [https://www.processing.org](https://www.processing.org)

processing.js and this p5js are interpreters for the processing language built in javascript (so that people can write processing scripts in javascript).

You probably haven't heard of it in browser ui/development because it's not specific to the browser.

Many people use it to build interactive art environments both virtually and in the real world (tied to things like servos and light machines, etc) - and a lot of people use it to teach interactive graphics to kids or newcomers to programming.

So it's a totally different thing than what you are thinking of. It doesn't compete at all with any of the graphics libraries because it's for a different purpose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Have you guys seen Bret Victor's criticism of Processing in [http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/](http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/)?

<comment><USER12> This seems to be more a criticism of Khan Academy's live Processing editor.

<comment><USER11> There are lessons there for improving live editing environments (whether Khan Academy's, or p5.js', or ...), but also a call to rethink teaching (programming) in general.

Processing is clearly on the right track given all the wonderful things that have already been made with it ... consider how many more people it could reach, how much more wonder could exist, if Processing were to move beyond `ellipse(50, 50, 80, 80)` (for example).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you would like a simple environment to play with p5.js right now, I've created a simple template in Plunker: [http://plnkr.co/edit/tpl:ElV3rt?p=preview](http://plnkr.co/edit/tpl:ElV3rt?p=preview)

Have fun and great job on the library!

<comment><USER13> I've always loved the simplicity and beauty of Boids [1] by Craig Reynolds.

Here is the flocking demo from the p5.js website [2] for your editing pleasure: [http://plnkr.co/edit/C2afiQ?p=preview](http://plnkr.co/edit/C2afiQ?p=preview)

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

[2] [http://p5js.org/learn/demos/Hello_P5_Flocking.php](http://p5js.org/learn/demos/Hello_P5_Flocking.php)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't mean to be that guy, I'm genuinely curious. Is this pretty much the same thing as [http://processingjs.org/](http://processingjs.org/) ?

<comment><USER15> See: [https://github.com/lmccart/p5.js#how-is-this-different- than-...](https://github.com/lmccart/p5.js#how-is-this-different-than- processingjs)

<comment><USER16> This looks more attuned for Javascript and Web development. Here's an overview of some differences too: [https://github.com/lmccart/p5.js/wiki/Processing- transition](https://github.com/lmccart/p5.js/wiki/Processing-transition)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Shame there's no 3D; I guess it's still Three.js for now. They have plans for it though, and it looks like a great start so far otherwise, and they have official support from the Processing foundation too.

</comment><comment><USER18> How does this compare to [http://processingjs.org/](http://processingjs.org/) ?

<comment><USER19> See [1] (via [2])

[1] [https://github.com/lmccart/p5.js#how-is-this-different- than-...](https://github.com/lmccart/p5.js#how-is-this-different-than- processingjs)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8144626](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8144626)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> From the "Start" page:

      If you didn't type it correctly, you might not see anything. If this happens, make sure that you've copied the example code exactly

This is definitely a big no-no if your goal is "to make coding accessible for artists, designers, educators, and beginners".

<comment><USER6> good feedback, what would you recommend as an alternative wording? would love to improve it.

<comment><USER21> I don't think that's what he means. I interpreted that as criticism to the way your language handles errors. At the very least, there should be _some_ kind of feedback to the user, especially if you're making this with the intention of drawing in non-programmers.

After all, JavaScript was invented for this exact purpose...and we all know how many "content creators" and non-programmers are using that...

<comment><USER22> :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is processing.js deprecated now? Are both js implementations going to co- exist? Seems a little unfortunate that there is an obvious split without any hard language describing the future.

</comment><comment><USER24> Great return to the roots for processing. Always more of a fan from the periphery than a user. It harkens back to the original days when they only had the proce55ing domain.

</comment><comment><USER25> It's cool. Great to have this spirit, keep going.

Feedback: The editor currently starts up showing an empty function. Would be nice to add a line of code in there for instant gratification of seeing something draw from code right away.

Shouldn't have to explicitly call createCanvas() for simple apps. Why not do it by default to match the current window size?

Can't get the editor to refresh without stopping and starting, I assume that's a beta issue?

<comment><USER6> great feedback! command+r will refresh, but maybe we need to add an explicit button. other good points, too. would you mind posting these thoughts here: [https://github.com/antiboredom/jside/issues](https://github.com/antiboredom/jside/issues)

<comment><USER25> sure, done. good luck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> hm, im not sure what to think about this. Despite beeing another 'framework/library' that promises to ease the learning curve for non programmers to produce graphics, i do not fully understand why using it should be more easier than drawing to blank 'raw' canvas element with a bunch of wrapped drawing methods. Eg. why do i need to an 'updatePixels' wrapper of putImageData, just to ensure syntax equality, overall the abstraction layer just seems really thin. Should we not accept that every platform has its own tools, and stop making the ultimate crossplatforn artist drawing framework. Wouldnt it be better to accept the languages own features and try building stuff on top of that, instead of trying to mimic another language, also without considering the target languages limits (eg. p5.js isnt caching anything, constantly getting context via getContext('2d') is just slow...).

sorry for the rant

<comment><USER11> Accessibility matters! The fewer barriers to entry, the fewer interested people your project will turn away.

<comment><USER26> For sure, the initial barrier is really low, but when it comes to actually building stuff with it, you still have to deal with the js way of doing it, handling classes, obviously totally not like the java counterpart, or collecting your projects resources in script tags, which is messy. At some point you also have to drop the global methods, which seems to be the obvious first benefit. Im just not sure if teaching a dogmatic processing like way is the way to go in js, or general

<comment><USER11> Agreed, I wish you didn't have to deal with JavaScript's quirks (or script tags even).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The presentation was really well done, it kept my attention and the interactivity helped make their points.

</comment><comment><USER28> I am super excited about this. I don't have much background in Javascript but I used processing back in the day. This sounds like fun to mess around with. Thanks for posting.

</comment><comment><USER29> It basically looks like processingjs without the processing language.

Couldnt they contribute to processingjs directly instead of creating yet another framework?

<comment><USER6> this is a different direction than processingjs with different goals, read more here: [https://github.com/lmccart/p5.js#how-is-this-different- than-...](https://github.com/lmccart/p5.js#how-is-this-different-than- processingjs)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Looking for examples / demos.

<comment><USER31> Demos: [http://p5js.org/learn/#demos](http://p5js.org/learn/#demos)

Getting Started Guide: [http://p5js.org/get-started/](http://p5js.org/get- started/)

Transition Code: [https://github.com/lmccart/p5.js/wiki/Processing- transition](https://github.com/lmccart/p5.js/wiki/Processing-transition)

<comment><USER32> Looking through those examples, it seems like all of the functions that p5 provides are dropped into the global scope. Do you know if there is any easy way to cause all of those functions to live inside a "p5" object or something?

<comment><USER33> Yes - you can instantiate a p5 object: [http://p5js.org/learn/examples/Instance_Mode_Instantiation.p...](http://p5js.org/learn/examples/Instance_Mode_Instantiation.php)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> awesome stuff, this is one of the best way to get kids involved in programming too.

</comment><comment><USER35> Really cool! Reminds me a lot of ActionScript but (finally) for the browser

</comment><comment><USER36> Many of the examples did not work for me in Firefox (latest-OSX).

</comment><comment><USER37> Too bad it's GPL licensed instead of a more permissive one :(

<comment><USER38> Poor you. You are only getting software, for no cost, offered with permission to use it, modify it, and distribute it for no additional cost to whom you want.

If only they would allow you to take the software and then put restriction on it. It is after all those restrictions that really matter, not the software. Too bad that adding restrictions is not included in the deal.</comment></comment>


The past three months have proved it: the costs of lockdown are too high - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/14/the-past-three-months-have-proved-it-the-costs-of-lockdown-are-too-high <comment><USER2> Pandemics are not new, they're millennia old, and the correct response is simple - The point, in a pandemic, is to overreact, and overreact fast. The pride-before-a-fall west did not consider themselves vulnerable enough and physical actions were taken far too late. It is most likely at least verging on criminal, wilful negligence - the responses from the UK government.

I know a lot of people talk about how 'they didn't have all the facts', or 'it all happened too fast'. I don't buy it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hindsight is 20/20, isn't it? In my view the initial extreme lockdowns were essentially necessary due to the unpreparedness of the Western world.

How many people had masks in the West in March? Basically no one. And yet in the East people wear masks every flu season.

I have to admit to myself that a few years ago I thought my coworker wearing a mask to work after an illness was sort of an oddball thing to do, like this person watched one too many anime shows. I was wrong.

The West didn't listen to the East when it came to previous serious pandemics. There was no alternative to extreme lockdown because there wasn't and still isn't any effective contract tracing.

As of May 11, Taiwan has only 7 COVID-19 deaths. They engaged in contact tracing essentially from day one. They were ready. You can't be ready retroactively, that's like starting a professional sports season without conditioning first.

<comment><USER4> Everyone had a mask. It takes a minute to cut up a t-shirt and put in a paper towel filter. Czech citizens deployed home made masks virtually overnight. The initial reports that masks don't work were wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> All of the economic criticisms of lockdown just take for granted a Darwinian government policy of laissez-faire, trickle-down economics, which you find in the US, and to a lesser extent in the UK. It's possible to economically survive a lockdown, or any other kind of widespread crisis, if the government provides massive social support for the vulnerable. The problem isn't the lockdown, the problem is the callous greed of the wealthy.

</comment><comment><USER6> Why don't all these people who are out of work just learn to code?

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting voice, the inflections in the language used are designed to impress the idea that any dissent from this idea that lockdowns are too expensive is uninformed or ignorant. This is the someone's opinion they are trying to impress on the larger world; this is the Capitalists using the media channels they own to say the economy is more important than human lives, while the East handles the pandemic so successfully it makes the USA and the UK look like children.

<comment><USER8> > this is the Capitalists using the media channels they own

The Guardian is well renowned for being a socialist organisation. Structurally the paper has editorial independence, and much of its funding comes indirectly from a large endowment.

Edited: repeating clichés without giving any attention to the underlying truths is harmful to all, in my opinion.

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

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


You Love Your iPhone. Literally. - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/opinion/you-love-your-iphone-literally.html?_r=1 <comment><USER2> " _The subjects' brains responded to the sound of their phones as they would respond to the presence or proximity of a girlfriend, boyfriend or family member._ "

Well perhaps because, you know, at the other end of the line..

Maybe next he should test whether people feel affection at the sight of a photograph of a loved one. Wait.. this kind of study has been done a bazillion times in every possible variation. The only thing different in this particular study are its exceptionally erroneous conclusions. But the man has a book to sell, A Book With An All Caps Title.

" _My best advice? Shut off your iPhone, order some good Champagne and find love and compassion the old-fashioned way._ "

Technology and old-fashioned romance can actually co-exist, believe it or not. Absolutely wank piece of writing.

<comment><USER3> I had exactly the same thought. Also, the "separation anxiety" he speaks of is hardly due to "love" for the iPhone, but rather to the fact that people would rely on us to carry the phone around with us to be available at all times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _"Earlier this year, I carried out an fMRI experiment to find out whether iPhones were really, truly addictive, no less so than alcohol, cocaine, shopping or video games. In conjunction with the San Diego-based firm MindSign Neuromarketing, I enlisted eight men and eight women between the ages of 18 and 25. Our 16 subjects were exposed separately to audio and to video of a ringing and vibrating iPhone.

...

In short, the subjects didn't demonstrate the classic brain-based signs of addiction. Instead, they loved their iPhones."_

Fanboism to a whole new level. I really like my iPhone a lot, but I'm not sure if I "like like" my iPhone.

<comment><USER5> >Fanboism to a whole new level. I really like my iPhone a lot, but I'm not sure if I "like like" my iPhone.

The article is a bit confusing as it goes in many directions. It starts with the 'cult of Apple', then goes into how Apple is indoctrinating the youth into touch (which is natural for a 14 month old) and concludes with how all people are emotionally attached to their phone, regardless of the brand.

The iPhone is always the easy target but it shouldn't have been the focus of the article.

Edit: I've never thought fanboyism is particularly wrong. There's nothing wrong with being a fan of sports team, musician, actor or brand. The problem is when they become irrational and angry.

<comment><USER6> No, there is something fundamentally wrong with fanboism. Imagine a company very similar to Apple that suddenly came into existence; call it "Orange". Suppose Orange had products nearly identical to Apple in quality/UX except for a few innovations here and there. Would an Apple fanboi embrace Orange as a potential new vendor or defend their current pet corporation?

I understand people liking a product/process because it is efficient and profitable or even aesthetic. But fanboism in all its forms creates a stagnant mind with blind loyalty that dismisses superior products.

BTW, this also extends to musicians, actors, sports teams. Sports teams are way too transient even define as an entity. Players become free agents or retire, coaches get fired. I do wonder if any Houston Oiler fans cheer for the Tennesee Titans.</comment></comment></comment>


For everyone who complains about America (Jay Leno article) - <AUTHOR> http://jtame05.wordpress.com/2007/04/27/from-the-desk-of-jay-leno/ <comment><AUTHOR> I saw this on Facebook posted by a friend, who said Jay Leno wrote it originally.

I found that hard to believe, so I did a Google search. It points to someone named Craig R. Smith who wrote it, apparently.

Anyway, I think it's inspiring for American entrepreneurs to know they're free to choose whatever they want to. Most of this stuff is consistently taken for granted in our busy lives.

<comment><USER2> although I agree that we should be happy to be free, I believe this article has too much sleight of hand. Yes we should be happy about having the lifestyles we do, but should we be happy enough to overlook the recent behavior of our government?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Rather than a point-by-point rebuttal, the idea is to always move forward and progress toward more individual freedom. To formulate the question in such a way as to say: "hey, aren't you glad at least we're not Darfur?" is to encourage a race to the bottom.

</comment><comment><USER4> Contains the sentence "Make no mistake about it." Bad sign.</comment>


How Does BaaS (Blockchain as a Service) Work? - <AUTHOR> I hear that all biggies (MS, IBM, Amazon etc) are jumping in with their own BaaS offerings. But I'm puzzled - if these providers each maintain their own blockchain, how can a transaction involving entities which exist in different blockchains, succeed? <comment><USER2> It won't. Each blockchain will handle a different type of transaction (e.g. bonds vs. shipping) so cross-chain transactions aren't really needed.

(Disclaimer: This comment hypothetically assumes that blockchain blockchain blockchain mania actually works.)

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought the blockchain boundary is limited to the provider (IBM, MS etc), not to the transaction type or business domain (shipping, bonds etc).

If the a blockchain is specific to a transaction type, does it mean all providers will use the same copy of the blockchain for that transaction type (shipping type etc)? But in that case, since blockchain doesn't belong to anyone, the BaaS providers would be similar to mining pools. Isn't it?

<comment><USER2> The idea is that each provider will "own" one industry.</comment></comment></comment>


Triputer - <AUTHOR> http://cpu-ns32k.net/TRIPUTER.html <comment><USER2> I was hoping this was about ternary computing...

</comment><comment><USER3> I didn't know some of the computers being integrated so I did some searching:

PC532: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC532](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC532)

Ceres: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceres_(workstation)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceres_\(workstation\))

Oberon (OS used on Ceres): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberon_(operating_system)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberon_\(operating_system\))

I guess most people here know the BBC Micro, what I did not know is that you can add a second processor to it (the author mentions they will be adding a 32016 Second Processor): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Micro_expansion_unit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Micro_expansion_unit)

</comment><comment><USER4> We had an Encore Multimax at WPI (it replaced the Dec-20). Its "annex" terminal server outlived the computer as a product. A friend inherited the 9-track tape drive- it was SCSI, so we used it on a PC for a small data conversion business.

</comment><comment><USER5> [https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=cpu- ns32k.net](https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=cpu-ns32k.net)

Some SSL issues going on there</comment>


Show HN: I run too fast, so I made an app to slow me down - <AUTHOR> http://pace.fm <comment><USER2> If you're looking for an idea for a pro feature, have users calculate their stride length (they'd need to run say a mile and count their footsteps)

then convert that to a tempo in BPM for a desired speed (that's like a five minute math problem there, to quote my math profs, it's an exercise for the reader)

then play songs within 5% of that BPM.

Boom. Pace yo self.

<comment><USER3> This would be very interesting to try -- I don't trust the GPS accuracy of my phone over short distances, so using GPS to detect pace changes could be error prone.

As an extra advanced trick: adjust the stride length for incline changes ... though I don't know how you get that information accurately enough!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> First, congrats to this guy for building and releasing software that solved a problem he had.

But in my experience, a good way to improve your pace, become more consistent, and improve your running form in general, is to NOT WEAR HEADPHONES. You need to be very aware of your surroundings, mindful of your breathing and heartrate, and aware of your cadence to really have a good sense of your form and speed. Seeing an elite runner wearing headphones during a race is very rare; most claim it's because they need to _concentrate_.

Playing music while running not only makes is harder for you to hear what's going on around you, hear your own footsteps, etc, but it's a huge mental distraction (for me at least). If I'm listening to music, even passively, I'm more likely to revert to a sloppier form, change pace, etc.

</comment><comment><USER5> When I started running, I didn't have the discipline to keep pace. So my splits were like 9...9:30...10:15...10:30.

But developing discipline to know your own body and abilities might just be the most important part of training. Hopefully this helps you be _more_ aware, not less.

(FWIW, after 8 months of training, I've learned to run miles within 10 seconds of each other, without a metronome.)

<comment><USER6> Just curious, could you run with this accuracy on any route or only on your regular run?

<comment><USER5> Last week I got 8:12, 8:16, 8:20 on a circle route with no traffic. On a less- known route I imagine the variance would go up, but not because of starting too hard out of the gate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> With Android having a magnitude bigger market share, why is that so many companies, PoCs and MVPs tend to bootstrap for iOS? I get the whole "they are big spenders, so they are more likely to buy my app", but if your concept is so great why not invest a little more time in also deploying for that massive Android audience?

<comment><USER8> I've only developed for iOS, but the 2 weeks I spent 2 years ago developing for Android, I was simply relieved that I only had to target one Android tablet, so my genuine question:

Is there any such thing as an "Android audience?" Calling it a "Samsung Galaxy S4 audience" or "Moto X audience" might be more accurate, right? Because if you want to reach that so called entire Android audience, you have to target much older operating systems and set that as your lowest common denominator.

<comment><USER9> I think there's an "Android Audience". Regardless of device, they/I want portrait and landscape, android look 'n feel (Actionbar, etc), desktop widgets, background push, and so on. There are fairly easy ways to support some new and old APIs without resorting to lowest common denominator, such as checking the version before making the API call, and reflection. It is a continuing support and testing issue to support "This works on 4.0+ only" features.

The big problem with testing is interacting with OEM and 3rd party apps for your own core app functionality. Such as launching an external camera to take a picture: who knows what camera app the user has installed, and what it will return back to your app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a great idea, but unfortunately doesn't help us runners who find music distracting while running.

<comment><USER11> Try using a metronome then. I'm sure there's plenty of apps available for that.

<comment><USER12> I picture a "Tell Tale Heart" scenario. This would drive me crazy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady Great idea! Not sure exactly how much I like the idea of changing the speed of the music. Did you consider beeps? e.g. set a target pace, as you drop below it app beeps and increase beeps as you continue to slow (and the same for pace increasing).

</comment><comment><USER13> Had this idea - except mine would be a variation for training.

Instead of too fast, it would make an insane buzzing sound if too slow. The problem I would think is accuracy. You hit a bad area, suddenly you are being annoyed even though you are on target.

<comment><USER14> I've configured my cycling GPS to auto-pause when I'm going at less than 5 km/h. So sometimes, while I'm struggling to pedal up a big hill, my GPS adds insult to injury and auto-pauses with a sad beep.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I walk fast. It hurts my leg, and I walk to work everyday.

I found what worked, was that if I was walking with someone I'd normalize my speed. Because other people somehow can pace them selves, I can't. Wonder if it's related to ADHD.

</comment><comment><USER16> Out of curiosity, what was the motivation for doing this? What is so bad about running too fast? How is "too fast" defined?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've just started long-distance running, and when I run too fast, I tend to burn out long before my target distance (and end up walking the rest of the way home).

With Pace.fm, I can set a desired speed and the app will help me stay approximately on-pace.

<comment><USER17> I always try for a negative split (slower first half than second half). It's always better to have that extra energy to burn - which feels better: passing 50 people during your last five miles of the half marathon or getting passed by 50 people? Most people start out too fast - just let them pass you and smile as they do. Deep down you'll know that you will pass them in mile 10.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> zupa-hu Genious! I am still running on treadmills just because of the feedback loop. That app might change my life :)

</comment><comment><USER18> Recommending this to all my novice running friends. Nothing like annoyance to help set a good habit!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I would change the title of the post.

<comment><USER20> To what, and why?

<comment><USER21> It sounds really arrogant. I'm so amazingly fast that I have to use an app to stop myself from taking off into the air like Superman.

<comment><AUTHOR> I see your point — I didn't intend it to sound like that!

I'm a novice runner, so I tend to run too fast for my fitness level and burn out too early.

<comment><USER22> I think it only sounds arrogant to someone who doesn't run, or who has never experienced the problem.

I started running in March of this year, after having lived 35 years of my life believing that there was something wrong with me that physically prohibited me from running. Every time I tried running, I would end up gassed very quickly, with my heart rate shooting up to 180 bpm. I tried all sorts of things, but it turned out, I just ran too fast. Surprisingly, this isn't something anyone thinks to tell beginning runners: slow down. I found that I had to focus on running slower than was comfortable in order to get my endurance up. It required real, conscious effort to slow down.

I don't know how many people experience this problem, but I know it was a giant hurdle for me. Your app seems like a really fantastic idea.

<comment><USER23> I think that's something that most beginner runners don't think of. Endurance base is so important but also the one that is neglected a lot of the time.

It's easy to think "I want to run fast so I have to train fast" but it's harder to get into a mindset of "I want to run fast so I better not tire out as quickly". Long steady runs are the best way to build this up (long being relative to your level, of course)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> 9km/h is slow :-P !</comment>


"Guccifer2"'s second release from DNC hack - <AUTHOR> https://guccifer2.wordpress.com/2016/06/21/hillary-clinton/ <comment><USER2> As tptacek indicates, it isn't remarkable that the DNC was hacked or that this hack is legit. What is interesting is the content; Parts 1 & 2 suggest, but do not confirm, that the DNC was operating as an ally of the Clinton campaign.

E.g. lots of HRC defense docs, oppo research on Biden, prominence given to HRC in candidate position tableaus, etc.

<comment><USER3> Why is it remarkable that the DNC is an ally of one of the most prominent Democrats in the country?

<comment><USER2> It's remarkable that the documents show the DNC positioning themselves as an ally of a prominent Democrat in May of 2015 (and October, re: Biden) who was not the nominee and who hadn't been voted on by any American.

In other words: favoritism in a party primary by the party infrastructure is supposed to be verboten.

<comment><USER4> It seems like Guccifer2 could easily craft whatever narrative he wants by selectively releasing documents. For example, he could release pro-Hillary material and withhold similar material for other candidates. Or, even without any malcontent on his part, the documents he nabbed may not be fairly representative.

<comment><USER5> If that was the case, the DNC could easily release materials showing that his releases are not representative. They can even make them up.

<comment><USER6> Yes. That makes a lot of sense. One of the two largest political parties in the US should definitely engage publicly in a debate with "Guccifer2". Why didn't anyone else think of that?

<comment><USER7> If there's credible evidence that the party apparatus had decided that the fix was in from the start, they owe an explanation to their millions of supporters and rank and file members, no matter how silly the hacker's nom de guerre.

<comment><USER6> Sorry. I didn't mean to say directly that "Guccifer2" might not be a credible source. More, sort of slyly imply it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This should go without saying, but be careful downloading those documents. Guccifer 2.0 could have added a malware payload.

<comment><USER9> He also could have added his own content to craft his own narrative. I doubt any of the documents were digitally signed or could really be verified for their authenticity in any way.

<comment><USER10> That's just a different kind of malware payload, and probably a more consequential one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The prevailing attitude in the software security community seems to be, Russia or not, this is probably not just some random hacker doing it for the lulz.

The game theory of publicly hacking the DNC before an election makes zero sense (what happens when/if Clinton wins), but that doesn't mean some other organization couldn't be doing it just to mess with them.

<comment><USER11> > _The game theory of publicly hacking the DNC before an election makes zero > sense (what happens when /if Clinton wins)_

I'm having a hard time following this. The game theory of… Russians?… hacking the DNC for what purpose? How _would_ a Clinton win affect this?

> _In an earlier statement, Trump said the hack was a political ploy concocted > by the Democrats._ (Bloomberg)

Or maybe you're referring to that?

<comment><USER6> Sorry, I was typing on my phone earlier.

It is awfully high risk and awfully low reward for Russia to hack the DNC right before the 2016 election. The Democrats are likely to win, and they'll come into office with a fresh memory of Russia having screwed with them.

On the other hand: if they _did_ hack the DNC, but screwed up by getting caught, maybe it makes sense to recast the operation as some sort of Wikileaks-esque information liberation strike?

Or, some faction either inside or outside of Russia is actively trying to mess with some other faction inside of Russia by implicating them in such a cartoonish plot.

The thing I don't see being taken very seriously among security people is the idea that there is a random hacker somewhere in eastern Europe who pulled this off on their own. Not because it would be hard to do, but because the specific traces that apparently got left don't make sense for a freelancer.

<comment><USER12> Can you please link to an analysis (or something) of the specific traces that were apparently left behind?

<comment><USER13> [https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion- democ...](https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democratic- national-committee/)

[https://motherboard.vice.com/read/guccifer-20-is-likely-a- ru...](https://motherboard.vice.com/read/guccifer-20-is-likely-a-russian- government-attempt-to-cover-up-their-own-hack)

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national- security/cyber...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national- security/cyber-researchers-confirm-russian-government-hack-of-democratic- national-committee/2016/06/20/e7375bc0-3719-11e6-9ccd-d6005beac8b3_story.html)

<comment><USER12> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The "Romanian" hacker whose command of the Romanian language is suspect:

[https://motherboard.vice.com/read/dnc-hacker- guccifer-20-int...](https://motherboard.vice.com/read/dnc-hacker- guccifer-20-interview)

</comment><comment><USER15> Article talking about the files here. [0]

Also, I find it interesting that the Clinton Foundation has come out saying they have been breached as well. [1]

[0] [http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/hacker-releases-clinton- fo...](http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/hacker-releases-clinton-foundation- documents/article/2594452) [1] [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-21/clinton- fo...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-21/clinton-foundation- said-to-be-breached-by-russian-hackers)

paragraph of interest:

"Clinton Foundation officials said the organization hadn't been notified of the breach and declined to comment further. The compromise of the foundation's computers was first identified by government investigators as recently as last week, the people familiar with the matter said. Agents monitor servers used by hackers to communicate with their targets, giving them a back channel view of attacks, often even before the victims detect them."

</comment><comment><USER16> I wish someone would hack major news organizations, especially FoxNews, so that we can see the extent to which the news organizations collaborate and act on behalf of the political parties and donors.

<comment><USER17> Can't, they have actual firewalls and some basic security competence.

<comment><USER18> If you think that just because all their editors are on CIA payroll, I think you have to much faith in CIA security.

<comment><USER18> And for the ignorant among you that think I'm joking:

[http://www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php](http://www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Crazy. How is this going to alter opsec in future campaigns?

Campaigns have members and volunteers with such varied skill sets. Putting security policies in would be a big ask.

<comment><USER6> Not at all. All campaigns are owned up all the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Why the hell are these docx and xlsx files? What kind of macro malware b.s. did he put in them? No way am I reading anything that's not plain 7bit ASCII from that website.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is what I like, equal opportunity hacking.

<comment><USER22> Except when the FBI hacks an iphone. Then we all get mad

<comment><USER23> I don't recall anyone getting mad at _the FBI_ hacking an iPhone.

What I think you're referring to is when "we all" got mad at the FBI for trying to force Apple to hack an iPhone. "We all" objected to the idea of a national government compelling a private company to invent new lock-picking tools.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> NSI... despicable. Reading this can get you a court date.</comment>