Regarding the Necessity of Flash - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/01/15/necessity-of-flash <comment><AUTHOR> "[T]o be useful today, a web browser needs either (a) Flash or (b) H.264 with HTML5 video. Some browsers support both, but every browser needs at least one. In the name of "openness", Opera, Mozilla, and now Chrome have chosen Flash."</comment>


Interview: Apple's Schiller says position on Hey app is unchanged - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/18/interview-apples-schiller-says-position-on-hey-app-is-unchanged-and-no-rules-changes-are-imminent/ <comment><USER2> Hey should just offer to subscribe, and just make clear there is a 30% Apple tax for paying through Apple, and is cheaper if signed up through the web. Consumers whom want to pay the Apple tax will, those whom would sign up online would still do so. I dont see the big deal here.

<comment><USER3> From TFA:

"Unfortunately, of course, the current rules would prevent Hey from advertising or even mentioning any upgraded service and that would have to be marketed through off-app channels."

I'm not sure, if it's explicitly forbidden to imply that there might be other payment methods.

<comment><USER4> It is expressly forbidden.</comment></comment></comment>


Waugh on the Merits - <AUTHOR> https://www.firstthings.com/article/2017/10/waugh-on-the-merits <comment><USER2> _Waugh does not deny that the Catholic Church has aesthetic splendors to offer; what he denies is that such splendors provide a reliable basis for accepting the Church's claims as true. The feelings such splendors produce are sporadic and transitory, and those who wallow most deeply in them will feel cheated and distraught on the day their magic fails. Rather it is the ordinary daily Mass, the opus operatum, performed and assisted at out of duty rather than desire, that points to the objective reality of a universal immutable faith: Your preferences have not been considered._

This is a fairly rare insight, and it generalizes pretty well. Honeymoon phases are nice, but they are not to be trusted.

</comment><comment><USER3> My favourite writer in the english language, grossly underrated. Great to see his cristaline clarity being praised, reading Waugh has made me intolerant of authors that lack this quality. If I could choose to write like anyone I wanted, I would choose to write like him. From a Spaniard.</comment>


Interview with Ken Thompson - on writing Unix, Go language and Dennis Ritchie - <AUTHOR> http://drdobbs.com/open-source/229502480 <comment><USER2> My favorite quote, regarding Go: "When the three of us [Thompson, Rob Pike, and Robert Griesemer] got started, it was pure research. The three of us got together and decided that we hated C++."

<comment><USER3> That's not surprising. Even among its adherents, C++ evokes a love-hate relationship. I really don't like the language, but reading Stroustrup's "The C++ Programming Language" and Josuttis's "The C++ Standard Library", I have to say that I can respect what they have done.

And when you read something like "Effective C++", you learn to appreciate (or pity) developers who have to keep that much information in their heads in order to code. I personally gave up on it years ago and went over to C, but I like to keep up-to-date with what is going on in that world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I found this interesting (regarding Go): "we started off with the idea that all three of us had to be talked into every feature in the language, so there was no extraneous garbage put into the language for any reason".

As a fan of minimalism over complexity, I like the idea, but I can't help but wonder if three of the world's best programmers are the best qualified to decide what programmers in general need. For example, if you can dash off a correct, performant, and theoretically sound version of a data structure in a couple dozen lines of code and 15 minutes, I bet generics seem much less useful.

However, I do prefer that to designing to the lowest common denominator.

<comment><USER5> The older I am the more I come to the conclusion that best programmers aren't those who can bang out complex code, but those who can find a reasonably simple way to implement even complex concepts. This does not work all the time, but mostly when I start to write "heroic" code I simply back up and try to find what I am doing wrong. Maybe this is the case with the authors of Go.

<comment><USER6> Keeping things simple is hard. It takes a willingness to admit your mistakes and the time to go back and correct them.

If you want something to last, you've got to fight to keep it from rotting under the weight of its own design. The less design, the more easily it can adapt to change.

Ingrained in the Go project is the philosophy that things are always worth fixing, no matter how small. I don't think the value of this idea can be overstated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ken Thompson wrote Dennis Ritchie? I didn't realize he was _that_ good a hacker.

<comment><USER8> Why not?

[http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&s...](http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=I_Invented_Burrell.txt&characters=Jef%20Raskin&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So they named their early IM program "writ", but pronounced it "write". These are also the people that named the file creation system call "creat" instead of "create".

Could the next person who interviews Ken please ask him what he has against ending words with "e"? I wonder if there is an interesting story behind that.

<comment><USER10> Ken Thompson was once asked what he would do differently if he were redesigning the UNIX system.

His reply: "I'd spell creat with an e."

\-- <http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kenneth_Thompson#Attributed>

He got his chance with Go... when he added the O_CREATE symbol (an alias for O_CREAT) his comment was:

spell it with an "e"

\-- [http://code.google.com/p/go/source/detail?r=4a3f6bbb5f0c6021...](http://code.google.com/p/go/source/detail?r=4a3f6bbb5f0c6021279ccb3c23558b3c480d995f)

<comment><USER6> And then, recently, we removed O_CREAT from Go entirely! :-)

[http://groups.google.com/group/golang- nuts/msg/75d1090047be3...](http://groups.google.com/group/golang- nuts/msg/75d1090047be38d4)

<comment><USER11> hell yeah. go is the next C

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The last sentence of the interview "Google makes us do that" is very interesting. It's not that Ken is convinced it is a good idea, it is that Google is forcing him to do it. Google knows best after all, implied is that Ken is nobody so special that he can decide how he himself works best.

<comment><USER13> The original Plan 9 file server, kenfs, is a kind of versioning system. He must have thought it was a good idea at the time.

<comment><USER14> For anyone interested: The Plan 9 File Server by Ken Thompson: <http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/2nd_edition/papers/fs>

(Geoff Collyer later added 64bit support: <http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/2nd_edition/papers/fs> and eventually Bell Labs replaced kenfs with Fossil: <http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/fossil/> although some members of the Plan 9 community still prefer the simplicity of kenfs)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A giant amongst men.

<comment><USER16> Absolutely. Compare and contrast with <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2560879></comment></comment>


Why did Kickstarter ban GMOs? - <AUTHOR> http://pandodaily.com/2013/08/02/why-did-kickstarter-ban-gmos/ <comment><USER2> Kickstarter is still a relatively new company and as the company matures, I am sure they will come up with better ways of dealing with these things.

</comment><comment><USER3> Surprising since it was a very popular kickstarter. Was really hoping this was opening the door to GMOs designed to delight consumers. Sad.</comment>


Ask HN: Would a oDesk/99designs co-op work? - <AUTHOR>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative
Sorta like Vanguard funds, if you're familiar with them.
Fees on these freelancer platforms are very high. In some cases, 99designs takes a 40% commission, for very little work.
I remember awhile back there was Scriptlance, which only cost $5 to post a job.
Now you might say this would only benefit freelancers. But if you think about it, the job providers would benefit too. If oDesk's commission on a contract is $500, that's $500 that could have gone to increase the payout. You'd be able to attract a better candidate or have the freelancer spend more time.
This wouldn't be for the money of course. And taking on the entrenched competition (with their network effects) would be hard. <comment><USER2> I think this would work but it would probably have to be country specific due to legal reasons.

I often wonder why this solution has not been adopted in many countries. I heard that in France this exists for example. There are probably legal barriers for this, otherwise it would have been in place a long time ago.

</comment><comment><USER3> Are you planning on starting something like this? Contact me and let's talk.

<comment><USER4> contact me too

<comment><AUTHOR> Contacted you both

<comment><USER5> I'd like to hear more about this as well and see if I can be helpful

<comment><AUTHOR> aunimh you have no contact information in your profile</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


IBM Allows Chinese Government to Review Source Code - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/ibm-allows-chinese-government-to-review-source-code-1444989039 <comment><AUTHOR> If you are getting the wall, here are few other sources:

\- [http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/17/us-ibm-china- wsj-i...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/17/us-ibm-china-wsj- idUSKCN0SA1BZ20151017)

\- [http://www.engadget.com/2015/10/18/wsj-ibm-china-source- code...](http://www.engadget.com/2015/10/18/wsj-ibm-china-source-code/)

\- [http://venturebeat.com/2015/10/18/why-ibm-lets-certain- count...](http://venturebeat.com/2015/10/18/why-ibm-lets-certain-countries- including-china-review-its-source-code/)

\- [http://fortune.com/2015/10/16/ibm-source-code- china/](http://fortune.com/2015/10/16/ibm-source-code-china/)

\- [http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/16/9550315/ibm-source- code-r...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/16/9550315/ibm-source-code-review- chinese-government)</comment>


Duffs Device - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duff%27s_device <comment><USER2> My favourite comment regarding Duff's Device is from Tom Duff himself:

"Many people have said that the worst feature of C is that switches don't break automatically before each case label. This code forms some sort of argument in that debate, but I'm not sure whether it's for or against."

</comment><comment><USER3> My favorite use of Duff's device is this optimization in TIS-100: [https://reddit.com/r/tis100/comments/38hfvl/multiplier_optim...](https://reddit.com/r/tis100/comments/38hfvl/multiplier_optimisation/)

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Duffs%20Device](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Duffs%20Device)

<comment><USER5> But it was a year ago it reached a lot of viewers.</comment></comment>


Father proposes deal for Snowden's voluntary return - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/28/us/snowden-lawyer-offer/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

<comment><USER2> The father believe his son is committing treason for revealing government corruption and to stop exposing it further: [http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/17/exclusive- father-...](http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/17/exclusive-father- edward-snowden-urges-son-to-stop-leaking-come-home/) The father prejudiced the public against his son in the hopes of having his son close to him again. The father even believes Wikileaks is an irresponsible organisation.

It seems that Snowden may have not planned for his family to be used to get him back. It's eerily similar to dictatorships who warn citizens going abroad that their family will still be here if they do not return.

In contrast, Julian Assange's family supports him fully in public. That's pretty powerful support. His mum: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bn7s10_VZ8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bn7s10_VZ8)

It's so sad. I hope he continues for the people of the world, unfortunately without a father in life.

<comment><USER3> Sometimes a parent's sentimentality and love for their child blinds them to all else. It has been mentioned that a number of his family works for the government in various capacities, so they could very well be of a slightly more authoritarian or trusting in authority than Snowden himself.

Snowden seems willing enough to face the statutory punishment for his actual crimes, just not the trumped up politicised charges the Government seems to have in mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't even know papa Snowden and it's pretty obvious to me he's just saying what some government agent told him to say... or else. It is a sad state of affairs that the U.S. has fallen so low. Why isn't anyone protesting? Why aren't people marching on capitol hill? I thought americans wouldn't stand for this kind of stasi crap. I was wrong.

<comment><USER5> You sure?

The first time the father spoke, it was begging for his son to come home, that his son had done something terrible. Most people probably (wrongly) agreed with him. That got peoples' attention.

This time he's changed position, he's a lot more moderate. The people who agreed with him before will now have to re-evaluate their own position.

Let's see what his next announcement is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Snowden should agree to go back to america and go on trial on the condition the NSA and all those related get to go on trial in a publicized court of Showden's choosing with full, live, and uncensored media coverage.

<comment><USER7> What exactly would stop government from breaking such promises? They allowed to lie at negotiations with "terrorist".

<comment><USER6> Any lawyer would have a field day if it was made completely public with media coverage of what was happening and then BAM they screwed him the moment he set foot in the country.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I hope to lighten the mood:

I learned something vital about democracy from videogames. In _Civilization II_ and _Alpha Centauri_ , democracy and technological progress were modeled as being inherently "insecure." Your democratic, free and high-tech government was more susceptible to espionage and you could not effectively conduct espionage.

It amazes me how this simple model reflects the real world nature of free governments.

Leaks happen. The Obama administration's response should not be proactive prosecution. It should be to dismantle unjust, invasive security programs. They are plainly incompatible with free government, and they will be rendered ineffective—either by capitalism, politics, or in this case, whistleblowers.

Edward Snowden is but one of many ways our security apparatus is nullified by genuine freedom.

<comment><USER6> I don't think people would really have that much of an issue with spying programs if they were more transparent.

By that I mean they can't spy on ANYONE, they actually have to have justifiable evidence to suggest a person or group of people is conducting some form of illegal activities or are involved in potential terrorist activities/groups. Which they must then get a court order granting them the ability to spy on these people for a period of time.

During that period of time they don't have to give out the name but once the warrant expires if nothing shows up then the warrant becomes public domain, or if it expires and they prove its helping build a case then names can continue to be suppressed until the time of trial.

No secrecy within the country but enough secrecy that the person being spied on doesn't know until its too late.

^^ Hope that makes sense... My opinion.

<comment><USER9> I also think that warrants should detail the crime and only that crime can be charged with evidence gathered. Anything else for different crimes should be fruit of the poisonous tree, insofar as criminal proceedings are concerned. This would help prevent fishing expeditions, and the granting of warrants until there was reasonable strong suspicion to grant a warrant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Don't trust a government that has something to hide.

<comment><USER11> You could have left off the last 5 words.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> They should also add provisions for: (1) Trial by jury (2) Public hearing (3) No solitary confinement (4) No other forms of torture. Name an organization such as Amnesty International who is responsible for determining what is and is not cruel and unusual torture.

I would also like to see Obama debate Greenwald live on national TV just like the Frost Nixon debates, but I know that would never happen.</comment>


Ask HN: Starting a startup in Aus. In need of resources - <AUTHOR> Heya!
To keep this concise, I live in Australia and working on my MVP. There's plenty of resources for American specific startups with some nice tips though they aren't applicable here. For example, setting up in Delaware is a good idea. Are there any resources that would help with what I should set up AS or tricks with the sydney startup scene?
Thanks <comment><USER2> An MVP is not a business so you should be focusing on finding customers/users first.

Affiliate revenue can be run under a sole trader account - getting an ABN is free.

For Sydney specific stuff, get yourself down to Fishburners for their Friday networking events. But again, don't focus on the business side of things until you have a proven product/service that people want.

[https://fishburners.org/](https://fishburners.org/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Have a look at the content provided by Startmate and Muru.d .

I would hold off incorporating until you have paying customers

If you have zero connections in the US, you might want to also look at Stripe Atlas.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'll have a look. So you'd recommend not doing anything legal till I have paying customers? I won't be getting money direct from users but initially from affiliate links and much later from users.</comment></comment>


JPG vs. PNG vs. GIF vs. SVG - <AUTHOR> https://uxdesign.cc/jpg-vs-png-vs-gif-vs-svg-aefeca89f61 <comment><USER2> This chart offers some dubious suggestions, even ignoring the "Burn it with fire" bit. Unfortunately, it doesn't explain any of its reasoning.

A photograph that's not real big is probably still better suited for JPG. And there's no reason to use GIF for any still image - PNG will be superior in all situations. A moving image may be better off as an MP4 for modern browsers in terms of file size and quality, but there's no mention of that here.

<comment><USER3> > there's no reason to use GIF for any still image - PNG will be superior in > all situations

For small icons with few colors, I find GIFs to be consistently smaller than PNGs.

For example, my website's favicon:

        http://alexvh.me/favicon.gif     216 bytes

        http://alexvh.me/favicon.png    1041 bytes

<comment><USER4> One of the problems with PNG is that many applications default to full-color- with-alpha-channel as the only save method, even though PNGs can do paletted images just as well as GIF and end up basically the same size. So people look at their PNG files and wonder why they are so big compared to the old GIFs because their application sucks.

Edit: I just tried it with your example:

% giftopnm favicon.gif | pnmtopng > favicon.png

pnmtopng: 5 colors found

% ls -l

-rw-r--r-- 1 jandrese jandrese 216 Aug 7 17:33 favicon.gif

-rw-r--r-- 1 jandrese jandrese 255 Aug 7 17:33 favicon.png

<comment><USER5> Don't forget to run oxipng or optipng, as well; pnmtopng doesn't produce optimal PNGs.

(In this case, it just saves 3 bytes, but it can make a _huge_ difference sometimes.)

<comment><USER4> I actually pngcrushed the result after that just to see how many of the remaining 39 bytes I could get back, but had the same result. PNG has just a smidge more fixed overhead than GIF.

<comment><USER5> oxipng got it down to 248 bytes. And yes, PNG has a little more fixed overhead, such as the IEND chunk and some of the required IHDR metadata. That only tends to be an issue in files this small, though, and gets dwarfed by potential savings in larger files.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why use a chart? It's what, four questions?

Is it a vector image? -> Use .svg

Is it an illustration (bitmap) with transparency (i.e. a cutout of a man) -> Use .png

Is it animated? -> Use .mp4 and fallback to .gif

Is it a photo? -> Use .jpg and compress as much as possible

<comment><USER7> Oh yes. Especially, never ever loose vector information if available. Vectors can scale. Bitmaps cannot. The chart gets this plain wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The "Yes" path for `Is it transparent?` leads to the node, `Does it move?`, for which "No" leads to `JPG or PNG`. But clearly the answer should be just `PNG`, right?

<comment><USER9> Correct

But just in general all of it needs to be redone when Webp is more widely used.

[https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/](https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/)

And in that case almost everything can be a webp - animations, transparency, lossy for compression or lossless if need be. You can still burn the bathroom selfies if you want. Except vector, you still want SVG for those.

<comment><USER10> WebP will never take off due to Apple not supporting it. If Apple chooses to support the AV1-based AVIF, that will become the next big format instead. Apple has joined the AOM so there is a reason to believe they will (but then again they also joined the Blu-ray consortium and never shipped a Blu-ray drive)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There's no real reason to use a gif over png for non-animated images. You'll have bloated filesizes and a limited color pallette.

<comment><USER12> In many cases, .GIFs are quite a bit smaller than .PNGs. They're useful for putting small bits and pieces of artwork into data URIs, for instance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> CNCF spends a lot of time dealing with images, including the 1,172 on our Cloud Native Landscape <[https://landscape.cncf.io/>](https://landscape.cncf.io/>). Here's our advice: [https://www.cncf.io/blog/2019/07/17/what-image-formats- shoul...](https://www.cncf.io/blog/2019/07/17/what-image-formats-should-you- be-using-in-2019/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Quite ironic that the chart (PNG by the way) does not even render in Firefox.

<comment><USER15> It requires javascript from a third party domain. Hah.

<comment><USER16> Works fine with NoScript and everything blacklisted.

Firefox 66.0.4 for Fedora

<comment><USER15> It'll work without Javascript if you already have the image cached.

<comment><USER16> Sorry for the late reply, but I just tried a clear cache+refresh and it still loads the image fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wish i could read this. Ugh, Medium is the worst.

<comment><USER18> [https://miro.medium.com/max/2100/1*krupUwPRAO-t3CfGRTPttA.pn...](https://miro.medium.com/max/2100/1*krupUwPRAO-t3CfGRTPttA.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think some people are taking this entirely too seriously.

This is clearly aimed at people who already know this. It's a joke.

</comment><comment><USER20> SVG to me is always overlooked as a means to present not merely vector graphics but also other things like JPEGs with alpha transparency at a smaller size than equivalent, non-indexed PNGs for larger images (link a JPEG for the image and another JPEG/PNG/GIF for the mask, or both together as one image and use half for one and the other).

It's a rather flexible format, even if you're only embedding it within an img element/via CSS (ie: disabling its other possible functionality like video/JS/interactivity, though this comes at the downside of requiring base64'ing the embedded images, offsetting the some of the filesize savings...).

One can also utilize CSS animations within them (or alternatively SMIL in any Blink or Gecko based browser), whether embedded as an object or image.

</comment><comment> m-p-3 Is it a vector? Yes

Is it a logo? No

Result: GIF

I can't even

<comment><USER21> Only if it's a vector image that's not for a website. The chart assumes only websites know how to handle SVG.

<comment> m-p-3 But why would you downgrade an SVG to a raster-only format...

The SVG is also probably lighter in file size too.

<comment><USER21> Beats me. Well, unless it's for a platform that doesn't support SVG of course, but what doesn't support SVG these days?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I tried writing a breakdown of image formatting for the web (specifically ecommerce) that mostly focused on JPG vs PNG. It's still WIP but if anyone wants to check it out or has feedback please reach out. It's specifically not blogspam, more of a working document that I hope to be able to share with clients: [https://aloagency.com/blog/preparing-images-for- web](https://aloagency.com/blog/preparing-images-for-web)

</comment><comment><USER23> The "burn it with fire" option for gradient logos and bathroom selfies makes this chart much less useful.

<comment><USER24> Yes. The much more environment friendly option would be to recycle the image. But I guess nobody cares about that anymore!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> burn the chart with fire

</comment><comment><USER26> Not a bad chart.

I can imagine it a bit more useful and less cluttered by removing bathroom selfies. Yet I understand the viral element: Burn it with fire!

<comment><USER25> how is it not bad ? it is absolutely not useful and the advices are misguided.

<comment><USER26> I know, also png can be transparent. However, most of the things are useful for newbies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Is it a photo?

Yes: JPG

No: SVG

If you're uploading bitmap diagrams logos etc. they should be vector.

<comment><USER28> So which tool should I use to convert my screenshot to SVG?

<comment><USER29> This one? [http://johanneskopf.de/publications/pixelart/index.html](http://johanneskopf.de/publications/pixelart/index.html)

It might be apropriate in some cases at least.

<comment><USER28> Impressive, but it would at the minimum need some tweaking for it to work well with screenshots I think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> is it a website? GIF -> [https://gif.com.ai](https://gif.com.ai)

</comment><comment><USER31> It's 2019. Frontend developers who aren't using picture tags with WebP and a fallback alternative need to update their HTML knowledge.

<comment><USER32> Safari doesn't support WebP, unless they added it recently, in which case there are still a lot of non-(WebP-supporting) Safari browsers out in the wild.

As always we need to wait for Apple to get their shirt together.

<comment><USER33> You don't need to wait for Apple, you can use the <picture> element to show webP images and fallback to PNGs for browsers that don't support webP.

<comment><USER32> More realistically though until they support it I'll just stick to JPGs and PNGs and forget about this fallback mess. It adds unnecessary complexity to sites that are dynamically generated.

<comment><USER31> What this tells me is that when you build a site that has images uploaded by a user, you do nothing to those images. You just take the upload and stick it in an img tag to display it.

This is the exact problem with developers building for the Web. You'd rather avoid a relatively small amount of additional complexity than build something that's better for users (loads faster, reduces bandwidth, renders quicker).

Even ignoring WebP, you really should be resampling the upload to the right size and running it through something like imagemin to optimize the file size. And there are APIs out there that will do it all for you - it's a post request at most if you don't want to set it up on a server.

<comment><USER32> Not exactly true, this isn't about user-uploaded images. I get it, but optimized JPGs are working, and if it isn't broken, don't fix it. When everyone supports WebP I'll switch to WebP and ditch JPG but I'm not in any hurry and have plenty of other broken things that need to be fixed first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Can we please start a tag for medium articles posted to HN saying that they are member only articles? It is getting quite frustrating...

</comment><comment><USER35> How to annoy me

Step 1: Suggest GIF as an option.

</comment><comment><USER36> Why in the hell would you want vector graphics in GIF ever?

Is it a photograph? No

Is it vector? Yes

For a Website? No

Does it have a gradient? No

Gif

Wat? Once you get to "Is it vector?" it should just point to SVG</comment>


The Six Million Dollar LibC (2008) - <AUTHOR> http://codingrelic.geekhold.com/2008/11/six-million-dollar-libc.html <comment><USER2> I think in every modern libc implementation exception handling imposes no extra cost on function calls. In fact, exceptions might well make code faster, as you can take a bunch of error checks out of hot code paths. Pretty much the only downside is the complexity of implementing exceptions for libc maintainers and some extra space in the binary to store information that make the stack unwinding possible, but that data is far, far away from the crucial .text.

So exceptions are very expensive _when you cause one_ , but for free or even an improvement when you don't.

</comment><comment> vezzy-fnord This was written back in 2008.

That said, the future of Android, at least if it is to become a self-hosting development environment, is in musl and Toybox: [http://landley.net/toybox/](http://landley.net/toybox/)

<comment><USER3> And before the NDK. I'm 100% confident termios is in the NDK because I've used it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As a user, I find nothing encumbering about the LGPL. I'd argue it's liberating. It might be encumbering for a developer to release a proprietary, for profit version based off the work of others, but for a user it's great.

<comment><USER5> My first computer running GNU/Linux: Single core, 66MHz, 8MiB RAM.

Galaxy S4 i9500: Octa-core, 1200/1600MHz, 2048MiB RAM.

That's an advancement of two orders of magnitude.

Getting rid of the GPL so the platform could be locked down is basically the _only_ reason for Google/Android's NIH.

For all the techie mindshare, "open source" is worth about as much as Microsoft's "shared source" \- essentially nothing when it comes to _user_ freedom.

Thank goodness for the (thoroughly pwned GPL2) kernel putting _slight_ pressure on manufacturers to be open.

<comment><USER6> Android is the best argument for the AGPL.

<comment><USER7> Everyone (MacOS X, Android, Jolla, etc.) is building there products, thanks to free Software, (GPL & not GPL) and than adding proprietary wrappers to lock things down & making sure they use non-Copyleft licences for anything else they add as "open"-ed.

Free Software is about governance, community, open development, etc: not only the licence! These company are just grabbing what is now infrastructure built by everyone to sell it back to everyone, locked down, and doing code dumping with not-so-open development and communities to trap people who don't get it.

So, since the free and open aspect could be built with Public Domain or non- copyleft licences by a community or company doing the right thing (tm), I agree, AGPL "all the things!" is the best way to eliminate part of this problem.

(Yes, they can always relicence the code if they own it all, but that's the community & open development part that is harder to evaluate...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Old article, it supports mips, mips64, arm64 now too, and there have been lots of bug fixes, and maybe some additional support. But if you want a BSD licensed libc, Musl is much nicer.

</comment><comment><USER9> If you want to see a tiny version of libc, get the source for the original JOVE editor, Jonathan's Own Version of EMACS, written 1983 by Jonathan Payne while at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School. He was able to cram EMACS into a PDP-11, and to make it fit, had to rewrite all the low-level libraries.

<comment><USER6> Thanks a lot for that tip!

JOVE from 1983 as part of 2.9BSD: [http://www.retro11.de/ouxr/29bsd/usr/contrib/jove/](http://www.retro11.de/ouxr/29bsd/usr/contrib/jove/)

JOVE circa 1988 in 2.11BSD: [http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/PDP-11/Trees/2.11BSD/usr/src/new...](http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/PDP-11/Trees/2.11BSD/usr/src/new/jove/)</comment></comment>


Google Recently Made A Silent Shift To A New Search Algorithm, "Hummingbird" - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/26/google-recently-made-a-silent-shift-to-a-new-search-algorithm-hummingbird/ <comment><USER2> I've noticed that I often just started asking google questions instead of trying to assemble a sequence of words that I think will divine the results I'm looking for.

It's always worked reasonably well and saves me from trying to come up with a search.

At the same time I've noticed that coming up with a sequence of search terms has been working worse and worse in google over the last couple years. I frequently get results for whatever google thinks I was searching for, especially if my original search terms resulted in very few results or no results, I'll just get a result page anyway _except it 's almost never helpful_.

Perhaps this is an attempt to make Google more Star-Trek/Watson-like, and it's great for those use-cases. But for the other cases, like looking up specific serial numbers or whatever, it's a mess.

<comment><USER3> If you want to search for a specific string, force it by putting quotes around it, e.g. "376718578383"

<comment><USER4> It often gets completely ignored.

<comment><USER5> Yup, there have been plenty of times I've put quotes around my search terms and Google decided I didn't really mean to put quotes around them.

<comment><USER6> What do you think Google should do with the following search:

       Who said, "To hair is human?"

<comment> mkr-hn I would want Google to leave it alone and suggest what it thinks is correct as an option, like it used to.

<comment><USER6> I'd rather see:

      exact: Who said, "To hair is human?"

Quotes are too easy to be used accidentally by laymen.

<comment><USER7> Shift+2 just slips in their typing without any intention?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I operate 2 websites that are exact clones of each others, the only difference is the domain. This algorithm change literally shifted %70 of the traffic from one of them to the other one, in a matter of hours.

Edit:

        * Links to the websites, I would say almost identical
        * Same number of the pages are indexed by google, around ~5 million
        * Domains are almost same, no keyword difference
        * They both have same pagerank
        * Domains are registered together
        * Sites are hosted on different ips
        * Total traffic sites get is around ~40k/day unique
        * By this change, total unique increased by %10

<comment><USER9> Sounds like the algorithm noticed the duplication, and picked a "winner". The new winner isn't the same as the old one.

<comment><USER10> While we are on this topic, does anyone know the current state of art for text duplication detection algos? I understand that Google used LSH but they must have made a lot of progress since.

LSH: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locality- sensitive_hashing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locality-sensitive_hashing)

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure about the algorithm in use, but I what I hope is happening is that Google is now looking for the earliest publication of content when deduplicating. Most copycat sites have to copy their text from something existing, and if Google has already indexed that, they know that later versions of it are copies (and can presumably be knocked down in rank).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It seems to work:

Where is disneyland - Shows a map and has "Get Directions" [https://www.google.com/#q=where+is+disneyland](https://www.google.com/#q=where+is+disneyland)

How big is disneyland - 160 acres [https://www.google.com/#q=how+big+is+disneyland](https://www.google.com/#q=how+big+is+disneyland)

<comment><USER12> [https://www.google.com/search?q=how+did+walt+disney+die](https://www.google.com/search?q=how+did+walt+disney+die)

<comment><USER13> That's cool, haven't seen this one before. Thanks for sharing :) Played around with it a bit, and it seems to have pretty good coverage; got everyone from Frederick Douglas to Dijkstra.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If people use your product all day, everyday, and you release the biggest overhaul of your product in 4 years, and nobody notices, is that a good thing, or a bad thing?

It makes me wonder if Google has become so "good enough" that more and more engineering effort will be spent for smaller and smaller returns.

<comment><USER2> Playing devil's advocate, they say in movies that the best special effects are the ones you don't notice at all.

<comment><USER15> I think that's more applicable to less obvious things like the audio production in a film.

<comment><USER16> It applies to a lot of special effects too. Many — probably most — special effects are striving to look organic. For example, did you notice that half of Titanic was shot in front of a green screen? Were the special effects in the Adventures of Superman TV series better because their chromakey work was more noticeable?

It isn't that the special effect doesn't have an impact, but that you don't specifically notice the effect because it blends seamlessly into the rest of the film.

<comment><USER17> Oh, it goes a lot deeper than that my friend. It's now normal for standard- issue comedies and dramas to be chroma keyed, comped, etc:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clnozSXyF4k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clnozSXyF4k)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhN1STep_zk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhN1STep_zk)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is going to be not good news for SEO people that just have affiliate ads and used to do things like Celebrity Net Worth bc now the user does not have to click on their site as Google will give them the answer they need.

<comment><USER7> Google are infringing the content creators copyright in such circumstances.

<comment><USER19> Facts aren't copyrightable.

<comment><USER20> But collections of facts _can_ be (or, at least, protected under a monopoly that is copyright-like)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The shift to answering questions becomes really important over the longer term, and people shift to using voice as a means of interacting with the net.

Dictated queries are going to come as natural language, not query syntax.

</comment><comment><USER21> I remember building websites for the Internet back in the day. Now, all we do is building websites for Google as it became the main entrance of the Internet.

</comment><comment><USER22> So it means a lot more words will be parsed as highlighters (like 'how to' or 'where is') of one or more main search terms. I see the big usability leap it will be for very everyday life, natural searches. At the same time the list of almost non searchable terms will be growing so much.

I dread the day I'll have to look for some satiric blog called something like 'how to not' but I won't be sure enough about the exact terms to allow me to search verbatim.

It feels like there's an expanding dark space in the shadow of bright neons.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm speculating that this change is the result of analyzing their users' behavior. Over the past couple of years I made a switch to asking questions, especially when trying to figure out some obscure Excel code I needed or something like that. I almost always found some forum response that would answer my question relatively quickly. I'm curious to see how this change will effect the results compared to my past experience. This might prove to be a boon for sites like Quora, as well.

</comment><comment><USER24> Funny story (at least for me): When I was 13, I wrote a letter to Google to implement this because my mom used to search like this, entire sentences. I also remember I attached an algorithm of how they should do it - rewriting the sentences into separate and useful keywords.

<comment><USER25> Did they send a reply?

<comment><USER24> Nope, never.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've been watching this ever since I noticed the a/b testing. One of the side effects is that you bounce off the Google page rather than click through to some page. Google got into some trouble for this with currency exchanges (the calculator would auto calculate currency conversions) But they seem to have worked around that complaint (type in x dollars in y currency to see a 'one box' type answer).

I wish I could see how it affects their AdSense revenue. (a lot of 'answer' sites are just AdSense landing pages)

At what point does it take all the load off the Wikipedia servers if it just serves up the answer on the page :-)

</comment><comment><USER27> <digression-disclaimer/>

There are many things that I think should be google-time-worthy:

\- mail notifier as a first class citizen, a tiny dot would be a time saver

\- many of their urls are 256+ chars in size ... , I'd love parseable urls that fit in a 1024 width browser bar

\- no more link hijack on the front page, they surely know how to do it without rewriting the link on click ... or at least propose a quick way to select the original url shown below (a web semantic-unit/best-practice since long)

</comment><comment><USER28> I just had to ask, "How has Google changed its search algorithm?" and that produced some interesting results, with not all of the results being about the latest change.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=How+has+Google+changed+its+s...](https://www.google.com/search?q=How+has+Google+changed+its+search+algorithm)

</comment><comment><USER29> As we search more on mobile devices, the way we interact with a search engine changed. Just look at Siri. It may not be a ground breaking technology now but we're slowing moving to making more and more voice controlled search requests. Some of these requests are better answered by Wolfram Alpha than Google.

During the past decade, Wikipedia emerged as the primary source of high quality organized digital knowledge. This, together with the open data policy practiced at may governmental agencies, supplied search engines with quantitative data easy to process and understand.

For the next few years, this looks like the biggest change in search engine technology to expect. We are going to switch from mathematically precise queries and semantic processing of the search corpus to a semantic processing of the queries and a reliance on more quantitative data sources.

</comment><comment> mkr-hn People have used increasingly longer, more specific search queries over the years, either through Google's efforts or through people learning to make use of search engines. This is the logical next step since people were always asking questions of Google, even if people didn't always realize it.

</comment><comment><USER30> Well, the article says it's in place for a longer period of time - we see a major organic traffic growth from Google on [https://usersnap.com](https://usersnap.com) and many search result entries popped from page 2 to page 1 (and thus leading to clicks).

</comment><comment><USER31> That's interesting...For the longest time, the .org domain that has my name, but that I haven't updated in at least 3 years (and has no real content), was almost always on the first result of Google searches for my name. Now it's nowhere to be seen

</comment><comment><USER32> The change is interesting. It's making me re-think the description/title of my site if this algorithm is based on serving up the answer to questions. I have noticed that my traffic has dropped a little so I might not be targeting correctly.

<comment><USER33> If you rethink the description/title, you'll probably be inclined rethink the way you write the articles themselves. It makes me wonder if we'll see a change from "good writing" to "quick, digestible nuggets of information served without nuance" that's even more striking than the current content landscape. When Google makes strong decisions like this, it really opens up the playing field to others who have different ideas and may not even need to court advertisers.

<comment><USER32> In my case, it's not an article, it's just a single page that is a web utility. I just went on google insights to see what people are searching for and the keywords in my title aren't optimal. I'm just going to reformat my title based on answering a question instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I think, This is not end of the SEO but it's very difficult to get traffic for new website by seo. As new search engine's algorithm back link value is zero. But Content should be unique and informational.

</comment><comment><USER35> I think "miserable failure" is the root cause of Hummingbird.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=miserable+failure](https://www.google.com/search?q=miserable+failure)

</comment><comment><USER36> Not silent for me. I was wondering what happened to the use of keyword search, it seems to work less well nowadays. Only phrase searches still give great results...

</comment><comment><USER37> Consult the SEO chicken bones.

</comment><comment><USER38> Google is becoming the portals they railed against in early 2000. Their problem is that natural growth has all but stopped so Google is trying to keep as many people as possible in their properties hoping the click on an ad eventually. King Larry cannot face Wall Street and admit that Google needs to be treated as a money making giant but not as wildly growing one, so he's riding Google to the ground.

What's wrong with answering questions and offering everything under the sun? Because another site might have better answers and offering but Google's MBAs will make sure that page is buried down below--unless they advertise.

"Best for the users" has been replaced with "best for this quarter's earnings," and it's just a matter of time before it catches up with Google. Google criticism was barely existent just 2-3 years ago, now it's widespread. What else will they do to prop up their earnings??? On what can you trust them?

<comment><USER39> Is it baseless assumption Thursday? What evidence do you have to support any of this?

<comment><USER38> _What evidence do you have to support any of this?_

How about you tell me line by line where I'm wrong? Beware that I do this for a living, I help manage quite a few small business sites and know this first hand. I also follow Google's stock and earnings reports. You should read Patrick Pichette's comments about their low CPC and how ad clicks increased by double digits. It's obvious that Search will hand more penalties this quarter to more sites, hoping they advertise and help increase CPC along the way.

<comment><USER40> I believe that the burden of proof lies with you and your original claims, not with those that doubt you. We're not saying you're wrong, but we are saying we'd like to know more. Can you please provide us with resources so we can get familiar with the information behind what you have to say?

<comment><USER38> Fine. Where am I wrong? What claim needs to be supported?

Obviously you don't expect a secret email or memo, we deduce from their actions and results.

<comment><USER41> Sigh: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophic_burden_of_proof](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophic_burden_of_proof)

Obviously nobody is expecting a leaked memo or something, but an explanation of which actions and what results you are talking about would be nice, since you _are_ the one making claims.

<comment><USER38> So tell me, what claim needs to be supported? I am not going to sit here and write 1000 words for each word I used to try to convince you.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Last industries to be taken over by AI? - <AUTHOR> What would you guys think would be the last industries to be fully taken over by AI? This is a relevant question for entrepreneurs I guess.
My bet would be on research and entertainment. I feel like while these will be partially automated earlier, it will be a while until we manage to fully automate them.
Research is probably going to be automated before entertainment, but especially the human behaviour research, where again you need to have a good understanding of human emotions etc I would imagine will take a while. Also, we still can't fully understand how ideas come into our minds, it might be more than just random connections and memories.
Entertainment is highly connected to humans, empathy, emotions etc, which I expect it will take us a while to fully understand and thus 'teach' computers about, or help them learn about it themselves. Actually, I think entertainment is going to be our last activity/job before we are fully obsolete.
I can't think of anything that we won't be able to automate. Which brings quite a few questions in my mind in terms of how we'd be motivated to stay alive - working keeps lots of people off depression. But that's a different topic.
Do you have any thoughts on the topic? <comment><USER2> The ten jobs least likely to be taken over by computerisation:

1\. Recreational Therapists

2\. First-Line Supervisors of Mechanics, Installers, and Repairers

3\. Emergency Management Directors

4\. Mental Health and Substance Abuse Social Workers

5\. Audiologists

6\. Occupational Therapists

7\. Orthotists and Prosthetists

8\. Healthcare Social Workers

9\. Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons

10\. First-Line Supervisors of Fire Fighting and Prevention Workers

This according to Frey & Osborne, The Future of Employment - How susceptible are jobs to computerisation? (2013)

[http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Futu...](http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe I'm saying this because I've been involved in the restaurant industry for most of my life in varying capacities (cook, chef, waiter, bartender, manager, soon to be owner), but I think there will always be a certain niche for restaurants and bars staffed by humans.

Certainly fast food restaurants, probably establishments like diners, hotels, etc..., will make use of automation, but going out, talking to a human, getting drinks and food made in front of you - that whole experience isn't something you'll ever be able to get from AI and robots.

I do feel that when AI/automation truly takes over, humans will definitely be relegated to artistic/performance media. Hopefully, this means a good societal safety net/basic income, and that we can spend our time pursuing various arts and scientific research, and that society doesn't turn into the dystopia that so many are afraid of...

<comment><USER4> As a consumer I'd nearly always prefer a machine take care of my needs than a person or an animal. It's fun to talk with my friends, family or other diners at a restaurant, it's not usually fun to talk with the staff. At least in Chicago they usually seem miserable, incompetent, or a mix of both.

It might be fun to have niche locations with humans serving people and taking orders but I imagine it'd be more like horse drawn carriages serve tourists.

<comment><USER5> Maybe you visit the wrong restaurants or other parts of the US are very different than Chicago? I have had mostly excellent staff experiences in the US to such a point that I use US examples to train our restaurant staff. Also, although I would like to see far more automation, I would suppose your opinion in this particular case is rather unique? Obviously I do not know that for sure but experience says it is in my friend group.

<comment><USER6> I live in North Carolina and see a full spectrum of restaurant service quality. In the end, you tend to get what you pay for. Though my biases and sister tell me we're nicer and happier down here than in Chicago ^^

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Even though it feels like a bit of a non-answer, I'd say the last industry taken over by AI is probably the AI/automation industry itself (or, in a broader sense, programming/software engineering).

<comment><USER8> I came here to make this exact same non-answer.

<comment><USER7> At least you got to make a non-comment :-).

</comment></comment></comment><comment> semi-extrinsic The question is ill-posed at best. What do you mean by "fully taken over by AI"? Take your entertainment example, say movies and TV shows. Do you suggest these are fully taken over when all the actors are replaced by animation? Or also all the marketing and other ancillaries? How about IP ownership? Or is it merely when the movie script is written by AI?

> I can't think of anything we won't be able to automate

A lot of manual labour will never be fully automated, since making a general- purpose robot that is as lightweight, flexible, cheap and self-contained as a human is not going to be a positive ROI.

Especially in this hypothetical age where most humans are left unemployed by AI, the cost of labor will be near-zero. People may even be willing to work for free, just to fill their days. Thus the robot will always be more expensive.

If you want proof of the latter, go on youtube and check out all the people doing metalwork, woodworking, making food, brewing, arts&crafts etc. just for fun.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's tasks that are taken over by AI and is not industries or job that's taken over. With that regard, any industries are subject to some tasks being transferred to AI, but that's much more like how many of tasks that was traditionally done manually done by machine one way or the another.

</comment><comment><USER10> Despite what the silicon skinned Japanese toys might suggest - sex workers.

</comment><comment><USER11> As a parent: caring for a child for any amount of time is the obvious thing. It would require almost complete human replication in ai form

</comment><comment><USER12> The arts/humanities maybe? Because the human intellect and human emotions will always be relevant and valuable to other humans.

Sidenote: when I say "arts/humanities" I'm not just referring to entertainment but also the branches of society that deal with introspection and cultural criticism for the sake of human autonomy.

<comment><USER13> I think it is something on the first line for potential replacement. Deep learning chat bot, which learned emotions from million of books can come tomorrow and successfully imitate human emotions.

<comment><USER12> A computer's capability for imitating a human doesn't take away the value of human-made art. If anything, it's another medium. Otherwise you're arguing that people don't care about understanding the human condition, which I don't think will be a valid claim anytime soon. AI can definitely take over the production of decorative objects though, of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is it harder to create a brain than a body?

Is it harder to create generalists than specialists?

The fine grained resolution we have with respect to actuation and tactile sensing might be harder nut to crack than honing down on the regularities in our cortex. A teacher for example needs to guide your hand when you learn to write or prevents you quietly from drowning when you learn to swim.

Even a truck driver might be more a generalist than a specialist. A truck driver jumps out of his truck to unload, fill in papers, prevent people hitchhiking in the back, prevent theft, taking detours, finding an address even with errors in the administration.

I also doubt sincerely that we will be able to tune the AI in such way that they will be content with all the jobs humans do not do anymore. Are we able and willing to codify a society on intellect? Will we be willingly creating unambitious AIs for particular dull tasks?

</comment><comment><USER15> I think the touch of human labor has a value of its own, especially in high- end manufacturing and services. If high tech automation allows us all to have precisely perfect mass produced tables and chairs, for example, the value of handmade furniture with its "imperfections" will rise. Just as mega-scale agribusiness produces ever more perfect fruits, vegetables, and grains, has been accompanied by more and more people taking an interest in farmers' markets and local producers.

Now, certainly the mass producers are making money, so I'm not suggesting those industries are poor investments. I'm just thinking that strategically, if you want to find a niche that won't be eliminated by technology, look at the high-quality end of any particular market.

</comment><comment><USER16> Subsistence farming? I think anywhere where it is simply not worth putting AI will be the last to go. The easiest industries to replace will be first (factory workers, truck drivers), I think the high value jobs will be next (simply because they are high value, there will be more effort in replacing them) e.g. managers, ceos, engineers. (these will be a little ways off though)

There were a few papers published this year using reinforcement learning to optimise architectures for CNNs and recurrent neural nets, I think this sort of thing will only get bigger. If you think about it, researchers just do a bit of guided random search, something that reinforcement learning can do pretty well. So the 'research' job title may describe applying these AIs instead of actually doing low level research.

</comment><comment><USER17> Entertainment will be early to go.

As soon as we can get realistic video and audio why employ 100+ people to do the show. It'll all be CGI.

One person can do Game of Thrones.

This is why I think CG audio will be an amazing jump for humanity whole new content will be created and make other content obsolete.

<comment><USER18> Okay, so the grunt work of entertainment (manually creating models, rigs, applying textures, shaders, etc) might eventually be reduced (although the current trend is the opposite, despite better and better software), but the creative aspects of entertainment (not just coming up with something 'different', but making it a meaningful difference) will be damn difficult to replicate in a consistent and repeatable way by computers for a long time to come.

Creative work also benefits from multiple people (up to a point) with multiple unique experiences of living life working together, as well. We aren't even trying to do that with computers right now, so I think their creative output would be more limited in scope (again, for awhile, not necessarily forever).

Computers may be able to do variations on an established formula, though, and there's a lot of formulaic dreck out there.

<comment><USER17> Computer aided storylines will be the start?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Marketing, which is basically applied psychology.

<comment><USER20> You're absolutely right, and sadly, this (IMHO) is to the detriment to humanity as a whole. The ease and accuracy with which the fitness function provides feedback (did this change result in more money being spent?) means that this field will grow to be very accurate in an extraordinary time-frame.

It's not just the fact that this will be used to drain the wealth from society. The same techniques used in marketing to get people to purchase a product can be applied to convince them to do anything. We've already seen how fake new can be used to convince people to bring rifles into pizza places full of young children.

If these techniques can be applied in an automated and targeted fashion, the results could be absolutely devastating to society. Imagine what happens when a company develops the technology that could mine social media profiles, identify people that would likely commit mass murders, then use automated tools the subtly influence their behavior in such a way as to promote that outcome. Then they sell it to the highest bidder.

I consider that to be a scary world to create. And I think it is totally plausible, if not inevitable.

<comment><USER19> I work in marketing and personally budget out 8 figures+ a year in direct marketing spend. The truth is it's really hard to persuade people of things. Direct Marketing is 50% about finding people who already agree with you and want your product, 25% getting their attention, and 25% is testing which product messaging most jibes with people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's not about if we can automate something, I believe it will come down to social forces preventing ai in certain areas.

Politics are not going away any time soon, nor is law.

</comment><comment><USER22> Most jobs involving some amount of nurturing and empathy, although you can automate some of them (eg: massage therapist). Many people will want to be heard, seen, and understood by another human being.

Edit: I wouldn't worry about most jobs being replaced any time soon. It's a tougher problem than you probably think it is.

</comment><comment><USER23> Counselling? Psychologist? Pastor? Something along those lines I think.

Sufficient wet & squishy to make it difficult to work out what you'd need to automate let alone doing so.

<comment><USER24> Non-intelligent computers have already been used as therapists since as far back as the 60s.[0] People are easy to fool when you're feeding them platitudes.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The question is can AI industry be taken over by AI?

</comment><comment><USER26> Fiction writers. I doubt AI will ever gain the proficiency to write a good, interesting, original story.

<comment><USER27> I can't remember exactly - but i recall reading an article that was about an fiction writing AI winning a price for a short-story. Oh - google my old friend... [http://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/japanese-ai-writes- no...](http://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/japanese-ai-writes-novel-passes- first-round-nationanl-literary-prize/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Law will take some time as often questions are more nuanced than simply applying the law to a problem.

<comment><USER20> That, and it's going to be really hard to extract the facts of a case through automated means.

There are two big benefits to AI in the legal realm -- automation of rote tasks, such as constructing simple contracts, that companies like LegalZoom already do; and predicting outcomes of trials based on the lawyers and judges involved in the case.

<comment><USER28> For sure, though Judicata ([https://www.judicata.com/](https://www.judicata.com/)) are making good progress in this.

Automation of routine tasks will certainly reduce the number of lawyers as many are used to taking styles from their firm's systems and amending it to suit a client's needs, but for bespoke legal advice it will be hard to replace an experienced lawyer (for now).

And yes, case outcome prediction is a great tool but I see that being more limited to insurers deciding whether to fund cases etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> You're assuming there's still a human audience in a position to demand human entertainment.

</comment><comment><USER30> I think sports entertainment and sports fans will exist for many years to come.

</comment><comment><USER31> Programming, hopefully.

</comment><comment><USER32> last job will be politics, not because AI won't be able to make better decisions, but people will never give up power !

</comment><comment><USER33> art but it is not an industry and also psycholgists. apparently it takes a human to understand a human better

</comment><comment><USER34> Teaching.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you scale internal discussions in growing teams? - <AUTHOR> For those that have experience working in or leading growing teams, how have you scaled internal communications and discussions without it becoming increasingly noisy? <comment><USER2> You can create sub-groups within say Slack and have rules and procedures as well on what each specific channel is for. The right signal/noise ratio will be evident over time and also contingent on the nature of your employees.

There are other alternatives to Slack as well like Rocketchat.</comment>


An introduction to Wayland - <AUTHOR> https://drewdevault.com/2017/06/10/Introduction-to-Wayland.html <comment><USER2> > Wayland is the new hotness on the Linux graphics stack

Use wayland (with gnome) everyday myself but wanted to point out that wayland started almost 10 years ago :) The adoption has taken forever though partly because of the infinite legacy of X11 and lack of support from big players like nvidia.

<comment><USER3> Adoption has taken forever mostly because it's a solution in search of a problem, at least in terms of how it's been sold to users. The main user- visible difference is "lose the ability to run remote programs on your local display" \- you can understand why users aren't lining up for that.

<comment><USER4> For what it's worth, I might be a more-obsessive-than-average user, but it kills me when I see tearing and flickering in X11 windows. "Every frame is perfect" is a super visible change :)

Btw, am I right that tearing in a video in VLC is an X11 interaction, or is that purely a VLC thing that I should expect to keep happening with Wayland support?

<comment><USER5> > but it kills me when I see tearing and flickering in X11 windows

Honestly don't think this will ever be solved in the open source world. It rarely even gets solved in the commercial world unless there is an internal design team involved who have enough power to force the dev team to solve these things. Win 10 for example has some silky smooth transitions but then you resize an explorer window and it flickers black.

So many people don't even seem to notice it but for some of us it's nails on a chalkboard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting article, nice to see some more practical examples.

For those unaware, SirCmpwn is responsible for sway - [https://github.com/SirCmpwn/sway](https://github.com/SirCmpwn/sway) \- which aims to be an i3 compatible compositor for Wayland. In my experience it's not production ready yet, but it's definitely a pretty cool project to keep an eye on if you do use i3.

<comment><USER7> Out of curiosity, when was your last exposure to Sway? Many people use it as their daily driver and would agree that it's production ready (even if it's not done). Can you report any bugs you find?

<comment><USER8> The most annoying thing is the mouse lag and higher resource utilization compared to i3.

Aside from that, it's great though. I used it for a month before going back to i3, you've really put a good amount of work into the project.

<comment><USER7> That's fair, it definitely has inferior performance.

<comment><USER9> What are the reasons? Is there any problem that cannot be solved?

<comment><USER7> A lot of it comes down to the choice to use wlc[1], a library that provides some of the low-level plumbing for Sway. It was great for getting Sway up and running quickly, but it's not very flexible for the directions we want to go. Most of Sway's performance issues are due to WLC or decisions Sway had to make to accomodate WLC.

Currently most of the work on Sway is being done on wlroots[2], with the goal of replacing wlc. The design is much more flexible and should have better performance and should avoid imposing constraints on Sway that impact its performance. A lot of Sway features are also currently blocked by wlroots, since wlc isn't flexible enough to allow us to implement them. I'm actually lucky enough to be working on wlroots full time at the moment, thanks to a generous commercial sponsor[3], along with some support from Patreon[4]. The future is definitely bright for Sway :)

[1] [https://github.com/Cloudef/wlc](https://github.com/Cloudef/wlc) [2] [https://github.com/SirCmpwn/wlroots](https://github.com/SirCmpwn/wlroots) [3] [https://nyantec.com/](https://nyantec.com/) [4] [https://www.patreon.com/sircmpwn](https://www.patreon.com/sircmpwn)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Fun fact: Wayland is supported on ChromeOS versions 50 and above for the supported Android applications.[0][1] Consequently, you can run Fedora with Wayland on a supported Chromebook using crouton.[2]

[0][https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=549781](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=549781)

[1][http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Google- Ch...](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Google-Chrome-50)

[2][https://nmilosev.svbtle.com/crouton-fedora-wayland-yes- pleas...](https://nmilosev.svbtle.com/crouton-fedora-wayland-yes-please)

<comment><USER11> nice, i've actually reset my chromebook (removing crouton) a few month ago because the constant context switching annoyed me... i think ill reenable it later today and try that out

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If I recall correctly, one major catch is that wl_shell has been feature- frozen since 2012 and lacks newfangled features like the ability to minimize windows. For newer functionality you need to use xdg-shell instead, which regularly changes in backwards-incompatible ways and there's no guarantee the version your application implements (or any version of it) will actually be available.

<comment><USER13> I don't follow Wayland closely but there's a thread proposing stabilisation from a little while back [https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/wayland- devel/2017-Ma...](https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/wayland- devel/2017-May/034170.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I was hoping for a somewhat broader and more abstract discussion of the concepts used in Wayland (and not C structures).

</comment><comment><USER15> A question that may only be of interest to me: is anyone looking at getting Wayland running on Windows? In particular, interacting with the new WSL stuff?

<comment><USER7> I imagine it's possible, but complicated. You'll likely need a custom backend for your compositor - I doubt WSL implements DRM (display resource management).

<comment><USER16> WSL doesn't support the graphics stack at all. But it is possible to VNC or RDP (with xrdp as a server) into an X11 session running inside WSL, so that's what people do.

You wrote below that Wayland supports RDP. If so, it sounds like that should work?

<comment><USER7> I wrote below that Weston (a specific Wayland compositor) supports RDP and that Sway eventually will. But yes, Weston might work on Windows in that case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why does this remind me of CORBA?

<comment><USER15> It's definitely using the same IDL->language dependent API as CORBA, but that doesn't mean it has to be an out of control garbage fire.

<comment><USER18> doesnt mean it won't either.

minimize is already shoved in the debug api. sigh, in the end I really hope nobody but qt/gtk/sdl devs are even getting close to this.

<comment><USER19> On that note, Torvalds rants about some missing functionality in some G+ comments i came across.

[https://plus.google.com/+KeithPackard/posts/azxz8ZPKght](https://plus.google.com/+KeithPackard/posts/azxz8ZPKght)

Sadly it seems impossible to link to individual comments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is something like VNC or some other way to remotely view a desktop or an app going to be possible in Wayland?

<comment><USER7> Weston supports RDP and in the future Sway will as well.

<comment><USER21> Last time I tried, weston-rdp was unusuable: slow, high bandwidth usage and had trouble with key repeat (pressing a key even for a short while resulted in multiple characters).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Has anyone been able to run Chrome (or anything Electron based) on Wayland in a virtual machine? I just a black rectangle instead of Chrome/VSCode/etc.

Disabling GPU acceleration for Chrome via command line flags or for the VM entirely seems to fix it, but that's obviously a non-solution.

I'm running Fedora 25 in a VMWare Workstation 12 with a Windows 10 host.

</comment><comment><USER23> Are there any decent, minimalistic tiling WMs for Wayland yet? IIRC awesomewm wasn't planning on supporting Wayland.

<comment><USER24> Sway (basically i3) I actually used for quite a while as my daily driver and it works great. Another one I want to check out soon is Way Cooler.

[https://github.com/SirCmpwn/sway](https://github.com/SirCmpwn/sway) [https://github.com/way-cooler/way-cooler](https://github.com/way-cooler/way- cooler)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm surprised to see XML. Wouldn't JSON or some other format be a better choice?

<comment><USER26> XML has several advantages over JSON: it's much better at self-documentation and the schema validation tools are more powerful. Namespaces compose elegantly. XML has a bad reputation due to enterprise-y abuse of the technology, but that does't mean it's a fundamentally bad idea.

<comment><USER27> I never saw a nice use-case of namespaces. Maybe you can show me one?

So far I have only seen namespaces used by Inkscape to state that a SVG is a still image using 3 different name-spaces in one hierarchy. Does it not just add complexity to need to support different standards at the same time

<comment><USER28> > I never saw a nice use-case of namespaces. Maybe you can show me one?

Basic example: If you want to mix data from several formats in one document.

Let's say you want to create an RSS-feed which contains information about "new stuff" whatever that new stuff is. This "new stuff" may actually be other XML- data which can be parseable and processable by other tools (like for instance new builds, deployments, whatever). This data probably has a format of sorts individually, independent of the RSS-feed itself, which has its own well defined format.

Now let's say both the RSS-feed and the custom-data contains both a "link" element and a "title" element. Without namespaces, these are bound to collide.

Some examples of problems which then arises:

\- How can a RSS-library validate that the feed format itself is correct?

\- How does a RSS-feed library know which "link" elements it should process and display, instead of only ones which belongs to the _feed definition_?

\- How does the RSS-processing library know that it should most definitely ignore _that title_ which belongs to the deployment metadata?

\- Etc etc

Namespaces allows you to combine data from different formats without ever running the risk of the data getting mixed up by whoever consumes them.

It's a really basic feature, and it's at the core of the whole eXtensible bit of XML. I'm honestly surprised by both the amount of people who find this confusing and how few people are able to realize the value of such a simple construct.

I guess too many "1337 HTML ninja rockstars" got introduced to XML as "just another angle-bracket markup format" and never actually bothered to learn anything about absolutely foundational XML basics.

<comment><USER27> > Basic example: If you want to mix data from several formats in one document.

Can you get more concrete on why you would want to mix formats? So far what I have seen namespaces were used just to extend one format.

> Now let's say both the RSS-feed and the custom-data contains both a "link" > element and a "title" element.

Easily avoided if you just extend one format, but can happen if you would want to mix existing formats because of some reason.

> \- How can a RSS-library validate that the feed format itself is correct?

You still need some code that parses the non-RSS part anyway, which can validate it. Don't you usually have just one parser that parses RSS and the non-RSS at the same time? If not, how are you passing your non-RSS XML tree- parts from the RSS-only library to the "new stuff"?

<comment><USER28> > You still need some code that parses the non-RSS part anyway, which can > validate it.

Provenly incorrect.

How many RSS validators validates the contained HTML (as HTML, not as per XML well-formedness)?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Update to Celebrity Photo Investigation - <AUTHOR> http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2014/09/02Apple-Media-Advisory.html <comment><USER2> So i'd wager there'd be quite a few celebrity dick picks available too if hackers wanted them. We know men like to send them unsolicited, and I'm sure those celebrities had received more than a few. But there are none. And why? Because those women were specifically targeted by people with a lot of resources and patience. (it's important that they were targeted specifically for being women).

To all of you idiots blaming the victims out there right now "should have used 2fa, should have used stronger passwords":

1\. You don't know if 2FA was in place, you don't know what strength the passwords were.

2\. Again: those women were highly targeted. Can you defend yourself if someone takes a week/month long project to break into your phone? (Also this was during heartbleed and other big vulnerabilites)

Come off your bullshit high horse. Don't blame the victims here.

<comment><USER3> Re: 1) 2FA wasn't in use by these individuals. If you read the Apple release they not only neglect to mention 2FA as a source of the breach but actively encourage users to sign up for it. If 2FA was in place I doubt that this vector would have been successful.

That being said, I think the culpability is on Apple here as much as it is on the individuals responsible for obtaining the links. Security questions were never good security and companies need to start moving away from failed models.

<comment><USER4> Security questions are just horrible. 2FA is good, but these celebs have people that handle their social media, so even if the technical leaks are plugged, things would just move to social eng. tactics, bribe an assistant, etc.. Probably a number of people have a celebs Twitter password.

Pretty worthless statement by APPL. "happpens all the time", "not our fault", etc.. They should be called out for security questions in the 1st place if that's what they use at all. Even after Sarah Palin which was greatly publicized. These companies learn nothing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So, basically find any celebrity interview where they state what school they went to, their first pet, etc.

Exactly the same way that Sarah Palin's email was hacked - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin_email_hack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin_email_hack)

</comment><comment><USER6> So "This is a very common attack on the Internet that we didn't do much to protect you against by default"?

It's a pain setting up two step authentication across a lot of services, but I guess iCloud is probably one that's worth the effort. Still I'd rather brute force was not an option.

<comment><USER7> The recently fixed "find my phone" feature doesn't support two-factor auth because, presumably, you can't find your phone to get the second factor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> From what I've read on 4-chan, Ars, Slashdot (indiv. comments, not articles) and other sources that this wasn't one person hacking a group of celebs acount, but a leak from an underground celeb nude trading ring that has existed for a while. So multiple hackers over a long period of time, from multiple sources.

link to one explanation: [http://i.imgur.com/vnd0H9J.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/vnd0H9J.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER9> The damage has been done, surely?

Headlines around the world are "iCloud hacked", "Apple hacking scandal", "Are your photos safe on iCloud?" etc.

Meanwhile celebrities like Kirsten Dunst have described iCloud as a "piece of shit" (a tweet with emoticons).

Timing is not great for Apple since they are supposed to be launching health and payment related features for iOS in the next few days.

Question is, would Apple have responded so quickly if celebrities weren't involved?

<comment><USER10> I'm sorry, but Apple was hacked. There are multiple layers to security. Even the physical security of the building counts. If you have a terrible, easy to crack security system like "What is your first pet's name?" and your customers lose their data because of it, your system was hacked. Plain and simple. Security isn't just blocking a port or an ip range, it's the entire, the _entire_ , system. Those "security questions" are very easy to find out, therefor the system is insecure.

<comment><USER11> Don't most companies use this very same "insecure" system? 99% of the population won't have this problem because not even some of your closest friends know what street you grew up on or your mother's maiden name. If you are going to use this information as part of your personal security, don't go telling people. Because, duh, you might as well tell them your password.

<comment><USER12> Just because a lot of companies are using the system does not make it secure.

Many security conscience people don't answer security questions truthfully because the application of security questions is inherently insecure.

<comment><USER11> You're right. I guess I have too much faith in the average user to not pick a question with a potentially obvious or easily discovered answer to it.

<comment><USER13> I forget the term for it, but it's exactly like Terms and Conditions. Always expect the user to solve any puzzle put to them using the least amount of energy/effort. It's quite honestly not worth it to anyone to go through the work of securing their information/data/whatever until it's actually genuinely at risk or they have lost something in the past. Until then it's an impedance and an annoyance that makes them very unhappy.

Once something like this happens it's impressive how much cognitive dissonance there is behind the excuses those very same people make or their claims that not enough was done to protect them. Don't get me wrong, these individuals were horribly victimized and it's not ok, but we can't allow ourselves to be satisfied by just blaming the company, especially if they otherwise provided the tools that would have kept the account secure. We can only realistically expect the companies we entrust our data to be responsible for making it possible for us to secure our data and not leaking it through other systemic failures. If we choose to shortcut it then it's our responsibility to learn from that and do better next time. We can't blame anyone involved here for doing what they should otherwise be motivated/expected to do. Apple provided the tools to protect the accounts, and as far as we know didn't allow them to be otherwise compromised. The victims set up their accounts in a way that they could easily access/recover them in the future (honestly, it's now required to remember around 20+ account passwords to manage our lives and it's only getting worse) regardless if they knew the risks or not. Security education is out there and it's as loud as we could hope to get it, people just won't internalize it until the risk is tangible. We can demand that companies like Apple, but it won't actually improve anything if people can't be bothered to use them or more importantly find it WAY more inconvenient and seek ways to bypass them in whatever way possible just to get them out of the way.

It's a shame that this is blowing up for Apple as if it's all Apple's fault, but maybe some good can come from it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If I was in Hollywood right now I'd be offering high-price security consultation services to teach celeb's how to use 2FA.

<comment><USER15> I've spent some time thinking about and talking about ti with friends in the security world before.

I think it's a good idea, but falls short in reality. Celebrities arguably don't want it, you'd be a babysitter between them and their devices/APIs. Something they'd likely hate and continuously undermine, especially when a large part of their "job" is connectedness.

<comment><USER16> >I think it's a good idea, but falls short in reality. Celebrities arguably don't want it, you'd be a babysitter between them and their devices/APIs. Something they'd likely hate and continuously undermine, especially when a large part of their "job" is connectedness.

If Entourage has anything to do with the real world, you could as well be talking about their agents. And as far as I know, there is no celebrity without agent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _> After more than 40 hours of investigation, we have discovered that certain celebrity accounts were compromised by a very targeted attack on user names, passwords and security questions, a practice that has become all too common on the Internet._

 _> None of the cases we have investigated has resulted from any breach in any of Apple's systems including iCloud® or Find my iPhone._

Um... doesn't "a very targeted attack on user names, passwords and security questions" count as a "breach in... Apple's systems"? A social engineering hack is still a hack.

<comment><USER18> Is it still a social engineering hack if a well-known celebrity with their personal info broadcasted all over the internet decides to use that personal info to secure their account? Or rather, is that a social engineering hack on Apple, or the celebrity themselves?

And what should Apple do, in this situation? If your names show up in tabloids, don't allow you to answer certain security questions? Require 2FA if your name is mentioned on Google more than a certain number of times?

I don't feel this is an Apple problem any more than it would be if someone created their iCloud password and then posted it on their Twitter.

<comment><USER17> "Require 2FA for everybody, full stop" would do the trick.

The proposed solutions you outline all assume that "password + security question" is only an insecure system for celebrities. But we have enough experience by now to know it's an insecure system for everyone.

<comment><USER19> >>"Require 2FA for everybody, full stop" would do the trick.

How do you require 2FA for the Find My iPhone application when the only context for using that application is one in which your phone is lost?

<comment><USER20> Most 2FA schemes give you some backup codes. I'm sure people use Find My iPhone differently, but it's not unreasonable to suspect them to be used rarely. Once your device is back in-hand you could generate a few new backup codes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> At what point do tech companies start making two factor authentication mandatory?

It's one thing to say "We tell our users to use two factor authentication - it's their fault if they don't use it" but it's another to say "all user accounts use two factor authentication to ensure security of their data"

</comment><comment><USER22> > _After more than 40 hours of investigation, we have discovered that certain > celebrity accounts were compromised by a very targeted attack on user names, > passwords and security questions, a practice that has become all too common > on the Internet._

So, the brute force attack with reasonable guesses at email addresses?

<comment><USER23> My guess would be that they found someone an address of someone with ties to a celebrity, compromised their account through security questions, and then found more personal information and iCloud accounts by going the contacts of each person they compromised.

That was my suspicion from the start, security questions tend to be the easiest way to compromise accounts since finding someone's mother's maiden name isn't hard to do anymore.

<comment><USER24> I think it's quite easy to argue that when accounts are compromised because of security questions whoever implemented those questions is at fault. They are a convenient, if crap way to secure accounts. Apple and everyone else have to do better.

(I suppose the good news is that you can actually protect yourself from this. However, how to protect themselves won't reach most people, so in the big picture this is cold comfort. I do think it's the job of the platform owner to make sure that users cannot easily leave themselves open to attacks. Most people don't know about security, the platform owner does.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > "we have discovered that certain celebrity accounts were compromised by a > very targeted attack on user names, passwords and security questions"

> "None of the cases we have investigated has resulted from any breach in any > of Apple's systems"

Don't these lines contradict each other?

<comment><USER26> Answer: "Hack" was due to weak passwords and no 2-factor, not because of any weakness in Apple's systems.

<comment><USER27> > _Apple 's systems_

Systems aren't just technical (software), they involve human beings, feedback loops, interactions, etc. Apple's security systems are in fact weak, just not weaker than the norm.

Actually I think the Apple press release was poorly worded. This in particular:

> _None of the cases we have investigated has resulted from any breach in any > of Apple's systems_

There was indeed a breach in Apple's system, there just wasn't a system wide breach that compromised _all_ accounts, just a select few.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> People have become so close with their smartphones that they entrust it with more information than their friends know. In addition no brand is more loved than Apple, with many celebrities being ambassadors to the brand. The brand is planning to introduce new payment and health services next week.

For the average consumer two-factor-authentication means nothing, but they will start distrusting Apple more and will be more careful with data. This does not mean they will use more and better security. The average consumer will just stop using some of these services.

<comment><USER29> Nitpick: Ambassadors work in an Embassy.

<comment><USER30> [http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ambassador](http://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/ambassador)

> 2 a : an authorized representative or messenger

> b : an unofficial representative <traveling abroad as ambassadors of > goodwill>

<comment><USER29> Parent had ambassador spelled as embassador.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm still wondering if the Find My iPhone brute force bug was exploited.

Why doesn't Apple at least offer a bug bounty reward? Is it irresponsible that they don't?

All they offer now, as far as I have found, is a mention on this web page:

[http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1318](http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1318)

And, does the fact that this bug made it into production suggest a lack of internal security audits at Apple?

<comment><USER30> They specifically mention "Find My iPhone" as NOT the source. I'm not sure if you missed that bit, or you are you saying you don't believe them?

<comment><USER31> The way they worded it can be interpreted to mean that it is still a possibility that the Find My iPhone bug was involved. And anyway, I'm still wondering if it was exploited in this celeb pic scandal or other breaches we haven't heard about yet, so I still have those questions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I had no idea that Apple supports two-step verification.

<comment><USER33> [https://twofactorauth.org/#retail](https://twofactorauth.org/#retail) ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> It seems like it would be a feat to gather all the user IDs of these famous people in the first place. I'm guessing there's a black market just for that? I used to work on a service used by quite a few famous people, if anybody on the project was unscrupulous, it would have been easy to pass those emails and other personal information on to a hacker.

<comment><USER35> If you can break into one person's account and get their contacts then you can recurse from there. It's likely that one celebrity knows another and so on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> 2FA is no panacea. My yahoo account (only used for flickr) was compromised with 2FA & 20+ character password.

<comment><USER37> How? Did you have another email account attached as a backup that was compromised?

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> If anyone wants to setup 2FA for their Apple ID here's their support page on it: [http://support.apple.com/kb/ht5570](http://support.apple.com/kb/ht5570)

<comment><USER25> _enables 2FA_ Apple: "Please wait 3 days to continue." Ugh.

<comment><USER39> Why "ugh"? Introducing a delay makes it much more difficult for an attacker to use 2FA to lock a user out of a compromised account. It's actually a really smart idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Just a friendly remind of the sites that support 2FA, Apple is on the list: [https://twofactorauth.org/](https://twofactorauth.org/)

<comment><USER40> Wow thanks for the link, I didn't know half of these had 2 Factor Authentication. Time to enable them all!

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'm confused. The description of the problem doesn't rule out an issue with IBrute (targetted attack on usernames, passwords) but then they state it wasn't an issue with ICloud or FindMyPhone.

Is this to suggest that its social engineering or just a password reset job? I don't otherwise see how an attack on usernames and passwords translates.

I guess the thing I'm really trying to figure is that if it was IBrute (which personally I would find an embarrassing failure) would they actually admit it?

<comment><USER42> They seem to have specifically ruled it out later in the statement, as iBrute was targeted at Find my iPhone:

> None of the cases we have investigated has resulted from any breach in any > of Apple's systems including iCloud® or Find my iPhone.

<comment><USER41> Understood. My second question then is just asking whether Apple have a reputation for truthiness in this arena. I genuinely don't know, I'm asking.

<comment><USER43> I think that have a pretty good record on owning up to something. It would hurt them much much more to lie about it at this point.

<comment><USER44> I'm curious what you base that on... that they own up to problems. I know it's certainly not true with hardware issues. They may eventually fix it, but it's rare that they'll comment on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Full investigation means full...Apple will clear this issue and do the best...and do the full investigation.. Ciiworldwide

</comment><comment><USER46> Why not make 2FA mandatory?

<comment><USER47> Because not everyone has an iPhone.

<comment><USER33> Not all 2FA requires an iPhone. Any phone with SMS will do.

<comment><USER48> Any phone on a supported carrier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I am kinda of sick of hearing about how celebs got hacked and how it is such a big deal.

The media over hypes these things and really the celebs involved should of used stronger passwords and/or 2 factor authentication. They should of known better.

People get "hacked" this way tons of times by using weak passwords and/or security questions. You'll never see that appear in the media.

The inequality here is the importance the media places on Kate Upton, Jennifer Lawrence, etc. It a waste of tax payer money to get the "FBI" invoked. I see it also has a waste for the government to chummy up with these "celebs". Some of them are great entertainers no doubt, but what have they done to really deserve the popularity they have.

Have they build something that tremendously improves people lives. Are they key decision makers on items that effect people? Yes Jennifer Lawrence is a great actress but c'mon.

Stop giving importance to celebs by not reading news about them. Radaronline, Tmz, etc.

<comment><USER50> They are performing artist, how you feel about their contribution to society is based upon how you feel about performing artists in general.

Is society enriched by the eloquence of humanity of ballet? Does humanity prove itself to the universe when our best singers hold a pure note for a brief moment in time? What impact does a movie exploring some aspect of the human experience have upon the world?

Popular performing artists are popular because their performances bring some amount of joy to people's lives.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are the simplest gdpr compliant data governance tools - <AUTHOR> Gdpr ( see https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/data-protection-reform/overview-of-the-gdpr/) will be enforced in 12 months time in 2018.
Data governance is not only a core activity but a regulatory requirement.  In your view, what are the simplest data governance tools that make the process of data engineering transparent to a layman business user?
Thank you in advance <comment><USER2> I highly recommend checking out Gigya's Customer Identity Management Platform. www.gigya.com

Gigya will manage user data on behalf of organisations across Gigya's data centres around the world to comply with GDPR. It provides user's an 'account profile' space to view/manage the data that organisations hold on them. This profile can connect to other data applications such as ESP/CRM/DMP/etc to make sure there is a master identity to consolidate all this data. The profile area will help ensure customers the right to be forgotten; and enable customers to take their data with them.

Highly recommend checking out this webinar that Gigya have held with analysts to understand how the platform can be used to become GDPR compliant. [http://www.gigya.com/resource/webinar/understanding-gdpr- cus...](http://www.gigya.com/resource/webinar/understanding-gdpr-customer- identity-management/)

Any questions please reach out to me at email@example.com

Tj

</comment><comment><USER3> \- watch [https://www.collibra.com/landing_page/landing_pagegdpr- how-t...](https://www.collibra.com/landing_page/landing_pagegdpr-how-to-build- a-data-protection-framework-resource-gating/) \- read [https://www.collibra.com/blog/how-data-governance-drives- gdp...](https://www.collibra.com/blog/how-data-governance-drives-gdpr- compliance/) \- study [https://university.collibra.com/courses/general-data- protect...](https://university.collibra.com/courses/general-data-protection- regulation-gdpr-use-case/)

Always happy to help if you have more questions. firstname.lastname@example.com

Note: for full transparency I am one of Collibra's cofounders.</comment>