What to (or not to) put on a personal website? - <AUTHOR>

I want to make a personal website for myself that would potentially have a blog, resume, projects, etc on it and I was wondering what is a good idea to put on the site and what isn't such a good idea?
Others have told me not to put my resume up because it won't really be useful at all. I also have concerns with what an employer might think when he/she looks at the blog and whether its a good idea to mix the two?
Advice on this issue in general is appreciated!
Keep in mind I'm a sophomore in College studying CS. I was hoping a project like making a personal website would be cool and look good also. <comment><USER2> Content is the main aspect of any website. Then design is the next step. Resume not that important. Your site should contain an about page highlighting a little about you and what you do. If people like what they see then they will soon get in touch regarding resume etc. Make sure your site has a php contact form rather than displaying your email address directly. The spam that you get from displaying email address directly soon builds up and is very annoying.

When coming up with design for your site there are a few things to take into account.

Make sure the design looks good on all browsers. What i mean by this is that many people still use older browsers that do not support all the latest CSS tricks. Your design should look good on these older browsers as a start then tweak it to look even better on new browsers. That way any visitors regardless of browser should have a pleasant experience on your site.

Last thing I will add is.....

Look at other sites similar to what you want to achieve. Don't copy them but see what you like about these sites. Layout, design, features etc and see how you can design, customise and implement similar aspects to suit your needs.

Don't forget that over everything else the "content" is the main aspect of any good site

</comment><comment><USER3> First of all: You should do what you feel comfortable doing. If you are not comfortable, it will show in an unconscious way and will taint the over all experience, when someone visits the site (potential employer).

Then: You should show yourself as much, as you are. Why that? Well it might (depending, the way you are), make some potential future employers decide, that you are not, what they are looking for. Well, too bad, but would you want to work there anyway? Somewhere, where you don't fit? Where the culture is maybe not that tolerant?

I, for an example, decided some time ago, that these kind of rejections were a good thing. Because it saves my time evaluating a potential employer. As well, as it saves time for the employer, finding a good match for them.

So my tip is, put on the site everything, you are comfortable with. Even old stuff (code, i.e). Show your way, show who you are, what you have learned, show problems, that you have/had and how you tackle them. show the why behind the things you share with the world.

Be yourself, as much, as this is possible. Add value above just an cv or a resume. Make it easy, to "get to know you better" as a person.

</comment><comment><USER2> I would also add to what sdoering said in their post. Make sure that your content is something you're comfortable and passionate about. This comes through at some level to your site visitors. If you are blogging then it is usually best to keep this blog within a certain field. Look at what blogs you regularly read. What is it about those blogs that keeps you going back for more. Don't go chasing readers or potential employers. If your content is good, relevant and informative in a certain field then word soon spreads and your users will come back for more. Im not saying that sticking to a certain field is the only way forward as we all have opinions about most subjects that crop up in our daily lives but usually it is good practice for gaining regular visitors to your blog. A narrow subject field helps to target a certain type of visitor thus encouraging the right type of target audience. e.g potential employers. After all is said and done the best thing to do is just get it down on paper and go for it. Your ideas, design, writing style, readers/visitors will evolve as time goes by.</comment>


Top 10 Latin American Startups - <AUTHOR> http://pulsosocial.com/2009/11/25/top-10-latin-american-startups-of-2009/

<comment><AUTHOR> In your opinion, which are the most interesting?

</comment><comment><USER2> It's missing Geelbe.

<comment><AUTHOR> It was measured via nominations and votes, surprisingly Geelbee did not receive a lot of popular support.</comment></comment>


Google+ vanity URL maker - <AUTHOR> http://gplus.to/ <comment><USER2> It didn't work for me, it just redirected me to Google Turkey (<http://gplus.to/kenkam> \--> <http://www.google.com.tr/>)

<comment><USER3> In case you didn't know, that link does work for some people. (Me, for instance. I ended up at your profile.)

It might be a regional thing. Or they might have fixed a bug.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> gplus.to seems to have nothing to do with Google, other than someone set up a g+-specific url shortener.

<comment><USER5> and they're quietly collecting people's google id's.

<comment><USER6> Google IDs are not private information.

<comment><USER7> Doesn't mean I'll make it easy for them to get mine. Especially for a url that will loose its value the day google implments the functionality, a temporary vanity url is of little use (to me.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice, though I'm assuming that Google will provide some sort of vanity URLs like fb did.

<comment><USER9> It's odd, because pre-G+, you could set your profile URL (as well as your Picasa albums URL). Now that G+ is active, that capability seems to be gone.

<comment><USER10> There's at least one google engineer in my extended circles that was surprised the ability to edit the URL in the profile editor was gone. The instructions on how to edit the url are still there but the element is missing from the new layout. So he's "looking into it."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was surprised to see that Google+ doesn't have usable profile URLs like Twitter and Facebook, so this is great workaround for a nice simple URL to share. That long string of numbers does not look good.

<comment><USER12> I'm sure this is a feature they will roll out, but it isn't exactly a must- have for an MVP. Facebook didn't add their friendly URLs for many years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> For people who don't have invites yet, is it possible to determine what your Google+ ID _will be_ and reserve a nick ahead of time?

</comment><comment><USER14> sucks reading about google plus when you can't get an invite to g+

<comment><USER15> send me your email...

<comment> clark-kent I would like one, my email is on my HN profile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I kinda wish I could undo it now.</comment>


PHP Central Europe Conference Canceled Due to Lack of Speaker Diversity - <AUTHOR> https://wptavern.com/php-central-europe-conference-canceled-due-to-lack-of-speaker-diversity <comment><USER2> From the article:

"Unfortunately, the organizers indicated they were not open to such an arrangement. According to them, they had only a single woman submit a session proposal this year despite having women present in previous years, and hers was a repeat from a local conference last year. They were also firm that the Call For Papers was done and over and they're not open to reaching out to new people now. Sadly, from what the organizers told me, they actively don't want to do outreach."

 __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __*

So what are the organizers supposed to do? Have a second Call for Papers with a later deadline, just for women, if the initial gender-neutral CFP did not attract enough papers by women? I think the speakers who reneged on their commitments to speak did the wrong thing, since there is no evidence the conference organizers discriminated against women.</comment>


It all changes when the founder gets a Porsche - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@micah/it-all-changes-when-the-founder-drives-a-porsche-32ac25c713ad <comment><USER2> I think it is an important insight that founders who do not need the money will make different decisions than ones that have never had money. It doesn't follow that they make "better" decisions however.

I think what Chris Sacca did was excellent, keep the "everyday" fears away by taking care of imminent personal financial threats, helps founders a lot. But taking FU money off the table prior to a success/fail determination is a dangerous thing to do as it screws up motivations around success.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agree, I've spoken with VC's who said getting liquidity for founders ended up ruining the companies because all the founders cared about was finding ways to create more liquidity.</comment></comment>


Kickstarter almost enabled a $120,000 fraud, and it's not the first - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/94597/kickstarter-almost-enabled-a-120000-fraud-and-its-not-the-first/ <comment><USER2> This is why I will never donate to Kickstarter. Anyone can do this.

<comment><USER3> That is the most remarkably stupid statement I have read all day.</comment></comment>


How Oreo Won the Marketing Super Bowl With a Timely Blackout Ad on Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/underwire/2013/02/oreo-twitter-super-bowl/

<comment><USER2> Remember the posts on HN a few days ago how we're all just as poor and working even harder as we were 50 years ago? This is why.

Scramble to make the money to buy the food whose shelf cost is 90% marketing and 5% the cheapest, crappiest ingredients available. Or buy the washing powder that's 90% marketing and all made in the same factory anyway and the only difference is the self selected demographic targeting. Or #name_whatever_product_you_like.

> they had a 15-person social media team at the ready to respond to whatever > happened online in response to the Super Bowl

This is what our society spends its money on. A crack team of Oreos marketers. Words fail me.

<comment><USER3> Good point. Fortunately, it's easy enough for individuals to opt out. And there seems to be a trend in urban cores towards this.

If you opt out of pacakaged foods and car ownership, you have a lot of surplus money to spend on whatever you want, or save. Ditto for owning a large house, or an oversized apartment.

Edit: to be clear, I didn't mean money is the purpose of opting out of these things. But it's certainly a significant side effect.

How can you afford grass fed beef? With the money you save not paying for oreo's marketing budget.

<comment><USER4> It's certainly _possible_ to opt out of packaged foods as a way of saving money, but I don't think I know anybody who's done so. I'd go so far as to say most people do it to eat tastier, healthier, and/or more ideologically pleasing food, and usually spend _more_ than they would on a diet of Hot Pockets or Taco Bell.

<comment><USER5> In Germany we have Aldi (they own Trader's Joe in the US), they only sell no name products, and I honestly belive food cannot be sold/produced any cheaper.

The two founders used to be the richest Germans for decades.

<comment><USER4> Good point! I'm in the midwest, and we have a few Aldi stores here too. There's definitely a distinction between opting out of packaged food (making things from scratch, eating more fruits/vegetables, ..) and opting out of the marketing-driven frenzy of brand name food. The latter can definitely save you money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Let me offer a counterpoint to HN's cynicism. I watched the Super Bowl with tweets streaming through, it was fun and engaging to see reactions and wit to everything from plays, Beyonce, and commercials -- within seconds. If I scroll through now, it's like retelling a joke when the timing is completely off, and shrugging it off as, "well, you had to be there." It doesn't diminish the experience at the time, but it's hard to it relate now.

This isn't the first time for me that Twitter really added to a lengthy real- time event. I fired up my Tweetbot for both Hurricane Sandy and Election 2012. It depends on who you follow, but for me, it made for a much more entertaining night than just watching the CNN talking heads.

As for the value that these brands got, it's hard to say. We're still in the early stages of brands + social, and Oreo can't possibly account for an extra box of cookies sold with any level of confidence. But I do know that I enjoyed seeing Audi, Tide, and Walgreens get retweeted more than I saw my SF friends swearing at the 49ers for the 100th time.

<comment><USER7> > Twitter really added to a lengthy real-time event

But a sporting event shouldn't feel like a lengthy real-time event imho. When I'm watching a good boxing match looking at anything but the screen is the last thing on my mind.

Now american football on the other hand ... 4 hours for 11 minutes of gameplay. I just don't get it.

<comment><USER8> Maybe that's because boxing doesn't stop a lot and is meant to be played in a short period of time while American football is more a military game of attrition with tons of breaks between skirmishes.

Or are you just being willfully ignorant about this?

<comment><USER9> Is that question really necessary? While the question is not directed at me, I AM ignorant to American football. Not everyone is familiar with the way American football is played, especially those from other countries. Your description does shed a new light on it - but I still don't care for it.

<comment><USER8> Apologies, the normal trope on the internet is to be stupidly ignorant about American football as an excuse to insult it. "Lol handegg rules are so strange! Who would have thought Americans would like watching people stand about for hours!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Did that article just reference a comment on Digg's Tumblr?

I feel like I am through the looking glass. Magazine cites one social media website has-been's new social-media website's page.

</comment><comment><USER11> Hmm, I first thought that it was the work of a brilliant marketer at Oreo; but this is even better. They had prepared for it and reaped the rewards.

<comment><USER12> Considering they were running a TV commercial (involving a comic fight in a library over the 'best' part of an Oreo cookie) in a time slot that sells for >$1m, having a social media team standing by to monitor and possibly curate reaction to the advert just seems like common sense. If you manage a major brand and you _don't_ have someone whose primary job is to keep an eye on how that brand is discussed on the internet, then you're not looking after the interests of your employers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I looked once the game had come back up- the tweet had been retweeted around 6,000 times. That's not actually _that_ successful- it seems like the media are talking about it a lot more than people are.

<comment><USER14> That's part of their promotional strategy - talk about why nobody's talking about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> MLB had a good tweet during the blackout: <https://twitter.com/MLB/status/298247417462140928>

<comment><USER16> I don't get it. Is it some baseball joke? I don't watch it.

<comment><USER15> Spring training begins in a few days. It was a light jab at the NFL--in the middle of the power outage--that the MLB season is starting soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'd love to see more reactions to the blackout. When I was waiting for the game to continue, I instantly remembered all the Buffalo Wild Wing 'Overtime' commercials.

If this is how Oreo's marketing team reacted, you can imagine there was someone at BWW corporate working on acquiring the blackout's footage today.

<comment><USER18> Tweeted during the blackout: <https://twitter.com/BWWings/status/298245437373177856>

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> There's also Audi's great quip tweet about Mercedes-Benz not paying the lighting bill.

Audi got similarly beat by a quip a few years ago:

[http://www.bmwblog.com/2009/04/13/billboards-war-bmw-vs- audi...](http://www.bmwblog.com/2009/04/13/billboards-war-bmw-vs-audi/)

</comment><comment><USER20> It's cute, and I bet it helped sell exactly zero oreos. Marketers patting marketers on the back, w00t!

</comment><comment><USER21> Still suffering a pretty crippling depression from that loss, was hoping to at least escape it with sticking with HN and other of my non-sports related content sources.

</comment><comment><USER22> How is this "winning" the Marketing Super Bowl? How many people saw this? A few hundred thousand at best? 108 million people were watching the Super Bowl. A Tweet does basically nothing for Oreo's brand when compared to an actual Super Bowl ad.

<comment><USER19> What!?!?

Oreo spent $xM on a superbowl commercial which everybody saw and promptly forgot when the blond / old people / puppy came on next.

That dumb small tweet was a historical event. I kid you not, it will be studied by pros for the next decade. It just defined a whole new market.

<comment><USER22> The pros can study it all they want. Best case scenario, the Tweeted image probably had 0.5% reach of their Super Bowl ad, in a completely unproven medium for brand marketing. Outside of some niche groups interested in advertising, the Tweet will be forgotten just quickly as the TV spot. EDIT: maybe a win for 360i, who will no doubt garner a lot of interest here. I just don't see what this does for Oreo though.

<comment><USER23> Basically, it got them a lot of recognition for fast ad turn around time, on black swan event. No one expected the power to go out at the game. Heck, Entergy (the utility) didn't expect anything like that to happen. Everyone expects event appropriate ads for the easy to predict or contingency stuff (e.g. post game ads for appropriate for each team's win, even post game ads differentiating between blowout and close conditions for each team) - we all know that those are all ready to go. But a decent add responding to the unpredictable, _in a timely way_ opens a lot of new possibilities. This ad would be downright stupid if it happened after the fact. Further, the later into the event it happens, the lower the amusing aspect of it is to people. In situations like this, the timing is everything. You know that "oh it would have been funny to say $witty_comment" feeling? Advertisers get it too.

So the big deal is oreo just showed the general public that you can have big corporate response to real-time events (for smaller step sizes than before), in a way that the public just didn't think possible.

It's Tuesday morning, and I'm still talking about a superbowl ad. This doesn't happen. I've never discussed a super bowl ad any later than monday evening happy hour, no matter how good. I've written and said and read the word oreo more times in the last day than I had in the month prior. Even assuming they paid 15 people overtime, I'm pretty sure the cost of this compared to the amount of airtime they get over this beats the cost/coverage numbers for almost any other superbowl ad. So, how is it not a win for oreo?

<comment><USER19> Oreo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Can someone explain- is there actually a joke in that ad, aside from "haha the power went out"? Are they doing anything particularly clever, aside from showing that they are really on top of things?

<comment><USER25> I think it was mostly viral due to the speed at which the ad was placed. I think it was something around just a few minutes, which for a major brand, is insanely impressive.</comment></comment>


The Unix system family tree: Research and BSD - <AUTHOR> http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/~checkout~/src/share/misc/bsd-family-tree?rev=HEAD <comment><USER2> This list appears to be missing Plan 9, which is a direct continuation of Research Unix line (a successor to 10th Edition)

<comment><USER3> Plan 9 is not a Unix. At best it's some kind of spiritual successor to Unix, like Infero.

<comment><USER4> Inferno has roughly the same relationship to Plan 9 as Plan 9 has to Unix, as I understand it.

<comment><USER5> I think the most important design criteria in the evolution of Unix to Plan 9 to Inferno was that each step consciously made things _simpler_. Simplify the programming model, use fewer different concepts, get rid of workarounds and hacks by bringing useful features into the OS. Remove redundant utilities and even options to utilities, focus on improving the one may to get something done so it hardly takes any effort to do it, and integrate all the various bits well with each other. It's not an approach that asks for newcomers to hack on all sorts of things to "improve" the OS by adding everything possible to it, which is part of why it doesn't foster a big community.

I think the biggest difference between Plan 9 and Unix is that Plan 9 rids systems programming of many special cases by reusing the filesystem metaphor as far as possible. This is a deep and pervasive change, and makes doing most things on the system just a matter of reading and writing to files. This leads to neat things like the /env filesystem, which is a per-process view of the contents of shell variables as files. (This makes it easy to write make (mk) rules that depend on shell variables, just by listing the files/variables as prerequisites.)

Inferno's biggest difference is that it runs the entire OS on a virtual machine called emu. Kind of like Java, but not just a language. (Inferno has a language too, called Limbo, which is closer to Go than C.)

<comment><USER4> > Inferno has a language too, called Limbo, which is closer to Go than C.

Well, probably not surprising given Rob Pike's involvement in both Limbo and Go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is also a nice Unix family tree there: [http://www.levenez.com/unix/](http://www.levenez.com/unix/)

As it includes Linux, AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, HURD, OS X and their derivatives, the graph is huge but very interesting!

</comment><comment><USER7> This reminds me of a neat NetBSD 1.3 story that was posted here on HN not so long ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6503464](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6503464).

I wonder which of the now-legacy *BSD and OS X releases has the largest surviving install base. Could it be FreeBSD 4.x? OS X 10.5 on PowerPC Macs?

Edit: 4.x, not 5.x.

<comment><USER8> More likely FreeBSD 4.* than 5. _

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I meant 4.x rather than 5.x. Edited.

My first ISP (which also was the first one in our town) used FreeBSD and I'm pretty sure it was FreeBSD 4 at the time. I knew this because they allowed their dial-up users shell access and, in fact, their official instructions on how to change your dial-up password involved using HyperTerminal in Windows. I still wonder if giving out shells was generosity or carelessness on their part [1] but about a year later they changed it so that everyone who dialed in just got passwd(1) as their shell.

[1] Although since I never really did anything untoward with mine and didn't know of anyone who did maybe they'd actually calculated the risk correctly.

<comment><USER9> Shell access used to be a standard part of all ISP accounts. If you go back far enough, there were no standards like PPP and SLIP to extend TCP/IP to dialup customer computers, and no graphical clients for internet services, so to "get on" the internet, you needed a shell on your ISP's systems.

Your ISP might have existed back then, or been founded by someone who did, or had customers who expected the service.

<comment><USER7> >Shell access used to be a standard part of all ISP accounts.

>Your ISP might have existed back then, or been founded by someone who did, or had customers who expected the service.

That's a good point. Ours was a small post-Soviet factory town, though, so PPP was well established by the time consumer Internet over phone lines came to us (late 1990s-early 2000s). The local ISPs in the nearest big city, which got online earlier, may have had shell access for their customers at first but by the time I got on the Internet shells were far from expected.

A "founder" (or rather, "employee #1") explanation is the most likely. Our particular ISP was itself part of the government monopoly phone company. An interesting thing was that, as far as I know, at the time they didn't have a standard software setup to run their servers and modem pools. For that reason they gave their locally hired admin a free reign. In our case the admin happened to be an old-school programmer lady who started back in the Soviet days. She might have been the one responsible for giving their customers FreeBSD shells.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I always liked this massive PDF version: [http://www.levenez.com/unix/](http://www.levenez.com/unix/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Nice timeline. NeXTSTEP's missing, but Rhapsody made the cut, which is nice.

</comment><comment><USER12> Shouldn't iOS be present in this tree too, as derivative of MacOS?

<comment><USER13> The kernel is probably exactly the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Never realized the 2BSD series was being developed in parallel with 4BSD.

I love to geek out on Unix history when I'm bored, so I'm surprised I never picked up on this.

</comment><comment><USER15> Isn't solaris part of the tree as well ?

<comment><USER16> Solaris broke off from BSD and is based on System V Release 4 ... which is partly based on BSD. It depends on how far back you want to prune the tree. They just wanted to stick with the pure BSDs that didn't take come from other projects I guess

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(operating_system)#His...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_\(operating_system\)#History)

<comment><USER15> Hmm. In that case I wonder how pure of a BSD OSX is.

<comment><USER17> [https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/darwin...](https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/darwin/conceptual/kernelprogramming/BSD/BSD.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's nice to see Mac OS X stem from Unix

<comment><USER19> IIRC it is actually a certified Unix.

<comment><USER20> 'Being a certified Unix' and 'Stemming from Unix' are orthogonal properties; neither implies the other.

<comment><USER19> No dispute here, I was just pointing out that OS X not only stems from Unix (as does, say, FreeBSD), but the "is-a" property also stems from the Open Group actually putting a stamp on it.

This isn't to say OS X is "more of a Unix" than FreeBSD. It means simply what is says, without any other implication: the group that is allowed to say "yeah, this is unix" said that about OS X.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'd like to see the same but with a visual diff of syscall syntax you can access by clicking on any edge.

</comment><comment><USER22> That ascii art - script or hand-crafted?

<comment><USER23> The diffs make me think it's hand-crafted.

[http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/head/share/misc/bsd-family- tr...](http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/head/share/misc/bsd-family- tree?view=log&pathrev=250150)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Fitting (or maybe embarrassing) that it's in ASCII art.

</comment><comment><USER16> Not yet updated with OS X 10.9

</comment><comment><USER25> I just realized one of the reasons I like OpenBSD and DragonflyBSD, but not FreeBSD and NetBSD from that graph. Those nice straight lines with no branching.</comment>


Viruses Have a Secret, Altruistic Social Life - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/viruses-have-a-secret-altruistic-social-life <comment><USER2> Can we infect the viral population with cheaters to help the body?</comment>


Michael Crichton: Why Speculate? (2005) - <AUTHOR> http://larvatus.com/michael-crichton-why-speculate/ <comment><USER2> 10 years ago, I was a religious Techcrunch reader. I read every article. Eventually, I noticed something peculiar: I'd have an idea for a startup, and six months or so later (about the time it would've taken me to do it) someone would come out with that idea! It happened enough times that it pushed me to stop reading the same tech news as everyone else, because I didn't want to succumb to group think.

I've since extended that policy to most of my news...especially social platforms like Facebook and Twitter long before fake news became a thing. The irony is that I've been oft criticized by friends and family for being ill- informed by not reading CNN.

I do wonder how much speculation, opinion and general exposure to ways of thinking shape our thoughts in subtle ways. I'm generally afraid of a future where this phenomenon becomes better understood and weaponized.

<comment><USER3> Almost 10 years ago, I conducted an experiment.

I watched an hour of CNN's every night but it was never that night's coverage. It was from exactly two weeks ago.

It was amazing how much "breaking news!" was irrelevant or just outright wrong, how many large trend predictions were wrong, and how many "[person] will do X" were wrong. While the predictions could have been portrayed as opinions, they were presented as facts and the obvious next steps or conclusions.

I realized pretty quickly that avoiding CNN kept out the blatantly wrong information so even if I didn't replace it with anything, I was net ahead.

A few years ago, I discovered this and realized that some portion of it was probably on purpose:

[https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-internet-flips-elections- and-...](https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-internet-flips-elections-and-alters- our-thoughts)

<comment><USER4> That's the news cycle for you, it's just another time sink to monetize your nonworking hours. There are maybe only a handful of truly significant stories a year, the rest is niche interest stories and stuff that's not very relevant or practical at all in your personal life. Therefore, to keep the lights on, CNN has to keep you on the edge of your seat. They know very well no one will remember yesterdays gaffe.

Personally, I skim the nyt newsletter over cereal and basically only thoroughly read local news articles from the paper of record here and some decent local magazines. Reading local stories gets you out of the little cultural bubble you've formed around your lifestyle. I've learned my city is an onion, a thousand cities at once. National news, on the other hand, is designed to polarize and monetize.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _For example, here is The New York Times for March 6, the day Dick Farson > told me I was giving this talk. The column one story for that day concerns > Bush's tariffs on imported steel. Now we read: Mr. Bush's action "is likely > to send the price of steel up sharply, perhaps as much as ten percent…" > American consumers "will ultimately bear" higher prices. America's allies > "would almost certainly challenge" the decision. Their legal case "could > take years to litigate in Geneva, is likely to hinge" on thus and such._

> _You may read this tariff story and think, what's the big deal? The story's > not bad. Isn't it reasonable to talk about effects of current events in this > way? I answer, absolutely not. Such speculation is a complete waste of time. > It's useless. It's bullshit on the front page of the Times._

His argument is that the media should _only_ discuss whatever has happened already, and should absolutely never mention any expert opinion on how today's events will impact the near future? Saying that steel tariffs will likely to send the price of steel up sharply, perhaps as much as ten percent, is now _" bullshit on the front page of the Times"_?

I've read almost every one of his books and loved them. But this is a great example of how expertise in one field seldom translates to other fields.

<comment><USER6> We might be living in a very different country and world if the New York Times had refrained from speculating on topics like Whitewater, Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, Benghazi...

<comment><USER5> Should NYTimes also refrain from speculating on topics like climate change? Ie, until climate change actually happens, all mention of climate change should be omitted entirely from all newspapers?

<comment><USER6> Back in the old days, there was a clearly-defined place in a newspaper for speculation: the op-ed page. Got no problem with it there. The problem comes when you play shell games with news and speculation on the front page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd be curious if everyone is also experiencing the so called "the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect" in the same way Crichton describes.

In my own areas of expertise -- data analysis and economics -- the answer is "Yes, very much so". Certainly there are pockets of high quality writing, but that mostly comes from experts writing on their own blogs in their own areas of expertise, or from periodic guest articles by the same experts. Mainstream economics writing is, as a rule, terrible. Statistical literacy is arguably even worse.

What's it like for everyone else? What's your area of expertise and is this endemic to your field?

<comment><USER8> my goodness, yes. My background is aerospace engineering, software engineering, and finance. Here on hacker news, the software discussion is good, aerospace is terrible, and finance/investing is teeth-gnashingly, garment-rendingly hopeless. Despite this I do read lots of the health and wellness discussions - and have no idea whether they are really any good.

<comment><USER9> As an AE major, what aerospace discussion do you think is terrible?

<comment><USER10> The "as a pilot..." posts baffle me. It's like asking a car driver for his thoughts on automotive engineering, or asking a random computer user about which programming language is best for whatever. This of course is fine if the topic is piloting, but there's a vast gulf of understanding between aircraft pilots and aeronautical engineers.

<comment><USER11> Maybe, but as a pilot you are tested in depth in systems to a degree not found in automobiles.

Aeronautical engineers also miss a lot of the skin in the game that a pilot would have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Fake news is not new. It is at least as old as the oldest written texts. The religions of the world are the largest fake news outlets out there, and those are going along just fine. I mean they kind of have to be - even if you do believe in one of them the rest must be concluded as millenia old fake news.

"Our times are different" thrown around without care is a very widespread cognitive error.

<comment><USER13> >"Our times are different" thrown around without care is a very widespread cognitive error.

Absolutely right. The Book of Ecclesiastes talks about this at great length. History repeats, no-one will remember those of us alive today, and the people who follow us will also be forgotten by those who follow them.

>even if you do believe in one of them the rest must be concluded as millenia old fake news

A religion would not last thousands of years if there were nothing to it, and there's far more commonality between religions than meets the eye. Read the things that Jesus Christ said, and then read the Tao Te Ching. It's astounding how closely they agree on quite a few things. The "Test of Time" works subtly but powerfully over thousands of years. The old religions that still exist today contended, in their time, with hundreds or even thousands of competitors. Those competitors all faded away.

"Sons are seldom as good men as their fathers; they are generally worse, not better." ~Homer, The Odyssey

"Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away." ~Jesus, The Gospel of Matthew

<comment><USER14> If we were on the decline since Homer we would already be living in caves grunting at each other. Perhaps what is being lamented is that the successful found their offspring lesser not just because the properties that made themselves notable weren't heritable that they ultimately arose from circumstances they naturally strove to prevent.

If adversity results in 70% dead or broken, 20% damaged, and 10% triumphant what survivor of adversity gambles with his loved ones. The weaker children of better men then aren't an example of universal decline but rather the result of softer situations.

<comment><USER13> Caves would be a step up from tent cities, and we grunt at each other these days in 140 characters or less--even our kings!

People follow their GPS systems off of bridges into lakes, our ancestors could navigate by the stars. Our bards earn their fame via marketing, and sing their songs using autotune, the bards of old memorized huge corpuses and sang them live. Our ancestors built the Great Wall of China, the U.S. struggles to build the Great Chain-Link Fence. Our academics hack p-values and they publish their work behind for-profit paywalls. When Archimedes discovered how to measure volumes of irregular objects, he ran naked through the streets shouting "Eureka!" When was the last time anyone at the Large Hadron Collider did that?

Our self-help books are generally not worth the paper they're written on. They're written by charlatans and marketed by professional marketers. None of them will be remembered fifty years from now. Ancient self-help books like the Gospels, the Tao Te Ching, the Proverbs of Solomon, these stand the test of time and help countless people every day. They are timeless and evergreen. They'll continue helping people a thousand years from now.

"So was fulfilled what was spoken through the prophet: 'I will open My mouth in parables; I will utter things hidden since the foundation of the world.'" ~Saint Matthew, quoting a Psalm which was already ancient in Jesus's time

<comment><USER14> You are wrong on nearly every point.

\- Most of us aren't living in tent cities.

\- We are conversing in this thread in more than 140 characters per response

\- Trump isn't our king.

\- I a poor person have more really good music on my hard drive then the average person would have been privileged to hear in their lifetime. Most of everything has always been crap but digital copying and cheap gear makes it possible to filter more gems from the dross than you can probably listen to. It has always been fashionable to compare whatever some consider the best of the last several decades to the last several months, ignore the nature of the comparison and bemoan modern music.

\- We struggle to build a great wall of America because its a stupid measure to appease racists who think the brown people are coming for their country.

\- To create and distribute the written word has never been cheaper. Imagine if you and I had to write hundreds of letters to all of the readers who have chanced across this thread!? To compare your preferred edition of the Christian bible solely to crappy self help books and ignore all the really good works out there is either ignorant or deceptive.

\- Academia has never been pure. It's never been free of ignorance, bias, pride, liars, asshats of all stripes, outright stupidity. Science is the merely a method to gradually build upon existing human knowledge despite human foibles.

You believe your religion and its wisdom eternal only because you lack perspective. If the human race lasts thousands of years it will likely little resemble we poorer cousins as ill equipped as a 3 year old is to predict adulthood.

Open your eyes!

            I met a traveller from an antique land,
            Who said—"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
            Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
            Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
            And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
            Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
            Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
            The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
            And on the pedestal, these words appear:
            My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
            Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
            Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
            Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
            The lone and level sands stretch far away."

<comment><USER13> Nice quote. I love the double-meaning in that poem. "Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair", intended by Ozymandias to mean "despair because you are so much weaker", but the double-meaning is "despair because my fall reveals how all human things decay". Look upon my great scientific works, my great technological strides, my space stations and satellites, ye Mighty, and despair!

We could keep talking past each other. Instead, let me short-circuit that and hand you the victory. All you need to reveal what a child and a fool I am is to recite my own Bible back at me:

"Do not say, 'Why were the old days better than these?' For it is unwise of you to ask about this." (Ecclesiastes 7:10)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Engineers and scientists predict the future all day, and if our physical world is any indication, it's working. You can't so easily say "you can't predict the future"

Such an attitude makes us incapable of acting in the face of negative trends. For example, over a million species face risk of extinction right now. Do we have to wait until they are gone before we report on it and act?

[https://thehill.com/opinion/energy- environment/442359-nearly...](https://thehill.com/opinion/energy- environment/442359-nearly-40-percent-of-all-species-face-extinction-unless-we- reverse)

</comment><comment><USER16> Coincidentally I just finished State of Fear last night, a Crichton novel about Eco terrorism. To be honest parts of it made me uncomfortable but with an open mind it can be a very interesting read. His idea of the PLM complex is a pretty interesting take on our current state of affairs.

<comment><USER17> Worth reading this response by James Hansen:

[https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200604/viewpoint.cf...](https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200604/viewpoint.cfm)

<comment><USER18> That's from 2006 and extrapolates to 2020. Has anyone updated it?

<comment><USER19> See this page

[https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/](https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/)

and in particular, this graph

[https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/graph_data/Global_...](https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/graph_data/Global_Mean_Estimates_based_on_Land_and_Ocean_Data/graph.png)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This veers far too heavily into cranky-old-man territory.

It tries to take a purely boolean result of knowing the future, when the real power comes from increasing ones prediction odds ever so slightly. And all it takes is very small increases in ones own odds over the average to benefit heavily relative to blindly marching into the future.

<comment><USER21> I don't think so... if he was really cranky he wouldn't have called it speculation, which is an extremely generous word for what can easily be interpreted as intentionally manipulative narrative.

<comment><USER20> It seems like a pretty broadly defeatist attitude towards current actions having agency over the future:

> We need to start remembering that everybody who said that Y2K wasn't a real > problem was either shouted down, or kept off the air.

> But my point is, for pending legislation as with everything else, nobody > knows the future.

> What will be the effect of electing a certain president, or a supreme court > justice? Nobody knows.

If his focus was purely towards the charlatans who make predictions and keep getting it wrong with no accountability, I would agree. But he takes it a step further by seemingly emphasizing the futility of the very act of trying to foresee and head off potentially bad situations be it technical, legislative or political.

<comment><USER22> This raises my hackles every time I see it (enough to create an account and post): Y2K was ABSOLUTELY a real problem.

There was an enormous amount of money spent prepping for it years before 2000. In 1995, a few years after I graduated from college I got a moonlighting job cleaning databases for a UK phone company, manually editing 2 digit dates to 4 digit dates (I didn't know PERL existed at the time). Yeah, nothing major happened Jan 31 1999, but that's because there was a real, concerted effort to address it that wasn't trumpeted across the news media.

Not directed at you, I just needed to yell at a cloud.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Guy who literally made his career on fear mongering in fiction and speculation gets mad if other fields do it. No self reflected irony at all there. I have a hard time reading this as anything other than a continuation. He has a habit of not seeing the forest through the trees. Instead of focusing on the fact that human caused extinctions have created a literal new age of extinction, he focuses on a specific point because his goal is to discredit science. It's why so many of his books focus on scientists being arrogant egotists. In fairness he wrote this before it became a political taking point, but his type of rhetoric directly lead to the political environment we have now. He's an example of everything he claims is wrong. He demonizes sources with proven track records and he doesn't understand. Why should we take his opinion seriously?

<comment><USER24> > Guy who literally made his career on fear mongering in fiction ...

Can you expand on that? I presume you're talking about his book, "State of Fear". I guess "Andromeda Strain" could be in that category. I found most of his books interesting, educational and often insightful.

<comment><USER25> Isn't the premise of every one of his books "scientists fuck it up, leading to exciting circumstances"?

Even if he has written books that don't follow this pattern, Jurassic Park surely does; I'm not sure why you didn't mention it yourself

<comment><USER24> > Isn't the premise of every one of his books "scientists fuck it up, leading > to exciting circumstances"?

Some of his books have the premise that some scientists are short sighted and myopic, while others aren't. We can briefly talk about Jurassic Park the book, which I assume you have read. The movie shares only the most broad story arcs with the book.

....and I started typing a synopsis... [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurassic_Park_(novel)#Plot_sum...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurassic_Park_\(novel\)#Plot_summary) is pretty good.

To your point: yes, there's a group of scientists that fucked up, and there's another group of scientists that are trying to honestly work things out.

I'd say the biggest antagonists in Jurassic Park are big corporate interests.

Upon reflection, aside from his first couple of books, that seems to be a common theme.

<comment><USER25> I used the word "scientists" and that's probably my fault. I don't think it substantially changes the argument that Jusrassic Park is "fear mongering", though, especially in the context of the original article.

The the corporation and its scientists are tied together in that they try to predict the future, which as Crichton kindly explains, is completely impossible. The corporation believes that investing money will lead to profits later, and the scientists it employs believe that their safety measures and female-only population will prevent things from going wrong.

The "good" scientists only react to events in the past and the present; observing the dinosaurs as they are, taking action against immediate threats, and reconstructing the series of events that led to the catastrophe. The chaos mathematician may as well be a self-insert in the context of this article; he spends half his time explaining to people that nothing can ever be predicted, with mathematical "proof".

<comment><USER24> Yes, there are antagonists in the novel Jurassic Park who are scientists, just as there are in State of Fear.

It hardly generalizes to everything Michael Crichton has written though.

<comment><USER25> Again, the original topic was "fear-mongering", and I accidentally made a statement specific to "scientists". Not all fear-mongering is related to science, and not all scientists in his books are fear-mongered about. It was a mistake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Re: Y2K, wasn't it not a (major) problem specifically _because_ the world panicked over it and fixed all those two-digit year fields in their databases?

<comment><USER27> Some of the panic and mainstream speculation was ridiculous (airplanes falling out of the sky, etc.), but yes, a ton of work went into fixing the various y2k bugs in a large percentage of the world's software, which is why the event passed so smoothly. We can only hope that a similar mobilization results in people of the future opining on how climate change wasn't such a big deal after all, but given the current trends* I'm not betting on it.

*Despite Crichton's assertions, we do know some things about the future. The sun will come up tomorrow; soon it will be autumn and then winter (at least here in the northern hemisphere), and given the current atmospheric level of greenhouse gasses and the amounts being emitted, the earth will continue to warm beyond the current level. We can in fact very accurately model the amount of warming over the long term, although of course we can not precisely predict the day to day or even year to year changes, as there are a number of other factors that add randomness to the result over the short and medium term. To use an analogy, if I plug my bathtub drains and turn on the faucet, I can predict that absent some intervention there will be mopping in my future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> As a programmer, I've noticed that while the media is often wrong about technical details, they are also often ahead of me in terms of the social impacts of technology. I thought since they didn't know how FB and Twitter work under the hood they would also be wrong about the social devastation it would cause. Turns out I know more computers. They know more about people.

<comment><USER29> those platforms were vehicles for the media to spread misinformation and fear - yet you blame the platforms more than you blame the authors for the devistation?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> > He was wrong about diminishing resources, he was wrong about the population > explosion, and he was wrong that we would lose 50% of all species by the > year 2000. He devoted his life to intensely felt issues, yet he has been > spectacularly wrong.

Spectacularly wrong... by about 20 years.

</comment><comment><USER31> Why does anyone feel a need to go further than "speculation is entertaining" or "speculation sells"?

</comment><comment><USER32> Wait a sec, didn't the steel prices increase (and didn't the tarrifs cause lots of other issues)? Was that coincidence?

Here's an analysis : [https://www.tradepartnership.com/pdf_files/2002jobstudy.pdf](https://www.tradepartnership.com/pdf_files/2002jobstudy.pdf) , written in Feb 2003 (Tariffs were imposed in 2002, which was when NY times article was written [https://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/06/us/bush-puts-tariffs- of-a...](https://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/06/us/bush-puts-tariffs-of-as-much- as-30-on-steel-imports.html))

Their summary:

"We found that:

• 200,000 Americans lost their jobs to higher steel prices during 2002. These lost jobs represent approximately $4 billion in lost wages from February to November 2002.3

• One out of four (50,000) of these job losses occurred in the metal manufacturing, machinery and equipment and transportation equipment and parts sectors.

• Job losses escalated steadily over 2002, peaking in November (at 202,000 jobs), and slightly declining to 197,000 jobs in December.4

• More American workers lost their jobs in 2002 to higher steel prices than the total number employed by the U.S. steel industry itself (187,500 Americans were employed by U.S. steel producers in December 2002).

• Every U.S. state experienced employment losses from higher steel costs, with the highest losses occurring in California (19,392 jobs lost), Texas (15,826 jobs lost), Ohio (10,553 jobs lost), Michigan (9,829 jobs lost), Illinois (9,621 jobs lost), Pennsylvania (8,400 jobs lost), New York (8,901 jobs lost) and Florida (8,370 jobs lost). Sixteen states lost at least 4,500 steel consuming jobs each over the course of 2002 from higher steel prices.

• While insufficient data exist at this time to measure the precise role steel tariffs played in causing such significant price increases, relative to the other factors, it is clear that the Section 201 tariffs played a leading role in pushing prices up. Steel tariffs caused shortages of imported product and put U.S. manufacturers of steel-containing products at a disadvantage relative to their foreign competitors. In the absence of the tariffs, the damage to steel consuming employment would have been significantly less than it was in 2002.

• The analysis shows that American steel consumers have borne heavy costs from higher steel prices caused by shortages, tariffs and trade remedy duties, among other factors. Some customers of steel consumers have moved sourcing offshore as U.S. producers of steel-containing products became less reliable and more expensive. Other customers refused to accept higher prices from their suppliers and forced them to absorb the higher steel costs, which put many in a precarious (or worse) financial condition. The impact on steel-consuming industries has been significant. In making policy for the revitalization of manufacturing, including the steel industry, our conclusions suggest that the effects across the full industrial spectrum should be considered. The lessons of the impact of higher steel costs should counsel a good deal of caution when import barriers are considered."

Oh and the chart they publish of prices from 2002 shows the following:

HR Sheet metal: went from about $220 to $300 ($ per ton) an increase of 36% HD Galvanized metal: went from $330 to $460 an increase of 39% CR Sheet metal: went from $305 to $405 an increase of 32%

</comment><comment><USER33> Because news media is not in the business of facts as such, they are in the business of a _story_. The buzzword today is "narrative". They will fit their reporting into a compelling or provocative narrative to move more newspapers and magazines. Hence, news about Bush's tariffs must not be reported alone, but must be contextualized in terms of a narrative about what a dangerous man he is and how he undermines his own goals when it comes to preventing terrorism. This will sell more copies of the _Times_ both to people who agree with the narrative and people who are looking to challenge it.

You can see this unfolding right now. The _New York Times Magazine_ , for instance, is currently running stories about slavery and plantations, and tying those into modern stories about race, justice, and capitalism, as part of its "Project 1619" which is explicitly about selling the narrative that USA culture is a slaver culture. This "hot takey" interpretation of American history is being promoted because it will sell more magazines than a more nuanced view of history.</comment>


The cell menagerie: human immune profiling - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v525/n7569/full/525409a.html <comment><AUTHOR> This is a pretty good article outlining the state of the art in immunology. I thought the technique for single-cell handling was quite interesting.

I work daily with flow cytometry and formerly worked daily with mass cytometry-- these tools (especially CyTOF!) are really giving us a glut of data to sift through that becomes unmanageable very quickly. I think there's definitely room for information technologists to help out here. There's already algorithmic ways of parsing the vast amounts of data that we get, but they're very imperfect and depicting the scope is nearly impossible.</comment>


Completed Universal Computer/Constructor - <AUTHOR> http://pentadecathlon.com/lifeNews/2009/08/post.html

<comment><USER2> Now that is very impressive, a compiler with 'life' as the target architecture :)

<comment><USER3> Excuse my ignorance, but I didn't understand a word of what the article was about. Could you explain me?

<comment><USER2> No problem, it's a pretty academic exercise what they're doing there but it is very interesting for lots of reasons.

The game of life is a cellular automaton 'game' designed by John Conway, see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life> for lots more detail.

Conways life has been proven to be 'Turning complete', which means that it can compute anything worth computing, even though due to practical limitations (time, memory) plenty of things that you could compute in theory in practice are not worth waiting for.

The basis of the 'Turing Completeness' argument for the game of life revolves around the 'glider', a simple pattern that moves across the grid that the 'life' cells play out their existence on. These gliders can be set up and timed in such a way that you can form simple logic gates with them, and from these simple gates you can construct more complicated digital logic circuitry, like adders and so on.

This in turn can lead to a life based universal computer, and it seems that these people have done just that. On top of that they seem to have a 'translator' that will produce the 'life' pattern you need to compute arbitrary calculations, which is the essence of a higher level language (the 'machine' language of life could be considered the initial state of the cells, to produce that you could set them all up by hand or you could have a computer program help you doing it).

I hope that explains it accurately enough and I hope that if it is accurate that it is clear.

<comment><USER3> Finished studying the theory. Now it kind of makes more sense, thanks.

So, they created a translator to give you the initial state that would end up calculating what you need? Cool, but how can they create a universal calculator if there can't be any interaction with the system?

This is the part that seems less obvious to me. It is said to be a zero player game, right? You set it up and you see it play itself till it dies, you die, or it grows stale or you grow bored. You do not interact with it so how would you make it calculate what you need?

<comment><USER2> Yep, you got it.

It's more like a programmable calculator than a real computer at the moment, but that's only a superficial difference. For instance, if you wired a switch into your computer and you set the 'life' game to initiate a glider on a switch press then you could interact with it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Crypto problems you actually need to solve - <AUTHOR> http://unhandledexpression.com/2015/10/01/crypto-problems-you-actually-need-to-solve/ <comment><USER2> FWIW, UX plays a big part in controlling adoption. Apps like OpenSignal/TextSecure for encrypted communications make the whole process about as painless as possible. I downloaded TextSecure for Android and registered my number. I made my girlfriend download OpenSignal for iOS and register her number. I opened the app and saw her on my contacts (TextSecure will tell you which of your phone contacts already appear to have the app installed) and sent her a message. Boom. We're done. All of the tedious key- exchanges and whatnot were completely behind the scenes and we never had to deal with it directly. Those options are still there, and if I ever migrate to a new phone we'll probably have to do some kind of new exchange, but otherwise the "fun" of trying to manually exchange PGP keys was completely behind the scenes.

<comment><USER3> Ouch, isn't that totally insecure?

Whatever place TextSecure is getting the key from could have replaced your girlfriend key with something else and be MITMing all the traffic.

The proper way to do this would be to have your girlfriend's phone display a QR code with her public key and have you scan it with your phone camera, or using NFC to transfer the public key if available.

<comment><USER4> You can verify fingerprints (manually or via QR code, example screenshot: [https://info.securityinabox.org/sbox/screen/textsecure- en-1/...](https://info.securityinabox.org/sbox/screen/textsecure-en-1/045.png) ) if you're concerned about MITM. You will be warned and need to manually accept the new key if a person's key changes.

Your "proper way" requires people to actually meet before they can begin a conversation, which greatly limits usability (you couldn't even test the app without a friend sitting next to you - who would keep an app they can't even try out on their phone?).

<comment><USER3> Yes, using a central server should be possible, but the application should ask you whether your friend is with you and if you say yes, it should use the QR code/NFC method instead (which also has the advantage of working with people you just met and haven't otherwise added to your contacts yet).

If you say no, it should clearly delineate how an attack could take place and advise you on how likely it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd be very excited to see more Free Software instant messaging applications support OMEMO ([http://conversations.im/omemo/](http://conversations.im/omemo/)). It's basically TextSecure's Axolotl protocol with a few slight modifications. As such, it support multi-party OTR-like PFS and multiple devices. In contrast to TextSecure, Conversations (the first client to implement it) allows you to use it without having to install Google Play Services and makes it usable on a decentralized infrastructure (XMPP). If it became standard for Open Source messaging clients (whatever transport they use) to have Omemo built in and use it opportunistically, we might actually have a chance to provide usable crypto to the masses.

<comment><USER6> Does OMEMO support synchronizing conversations between multiple devices? Being able to jump seamlessly between laptop/phone/desktop is musthave for me, last time I checked that stuff was very much unfinished in XMPP (I think the relevant XEPs were "carbons" and "MAM")

<comment><USER5> In principle, this should work - I haven't tried it, but in Conversations, the fingerprints of my other connected devices show up and I can say that they belong to me.

In any case, there are no desktop clients yet that support OMEMO. Conversations and Jitsi support Message Carbons though (together with a compatible XMPP service, such as yax.im) very well. On the console, there is profanity that also supports it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > "Making email and PGP easier to use is not only a UX issue."

Yes, but UX is still the biggest issue. By all means develop next gen crypto tech: but first, make what we have now usable by people who aren't Unix people.

I would pay money for binaries of an Open Source GnuPG for OS X which wasn't awful to use.

Not in a tarball, not assuming I want to use the command line, on gnupg.org (with the angry SHA1 certificate warning fixed), not linked to from there for 'people who want GUIs'.

<comment><USER8> The problem runs deeper than UX in plugins for mail clients. Offline key exchange is inconvenient enough that it prevents GPG from being used as encrypted-by-default mail. Identity and key management is really the underlying issue, something in the spirit of CONIKS might be good enough to build a working system though. As OP points out even then you have issues with multi-device support.

<comment><USER7> > The problem runs deeper than UX in plugins for mail clients.

UX runs deeper than software interfaces.

> Identity and key management is really the underlying issue

Yes, that's a UX issue.

So:

\- Get GPG key from Facebook (which has them as part of the standard profile today)

\- Say to person: you should contact this person by a means you trust and confirm this is their key (since we don't trust anyone by default).

\- Once they click OK, they can now send messages to that person.

Nothing stopping other mainstream sites from adding GPG, it's jus that FB is the only one I know of. Obviously GitHub doesn't count since most people aren't software developers.

<comment><USER9> Which brings us back to trusting a 3rd party to not tamper with the key exchange...

<comment><USER7> Well yeah, that's why I addressed it in the post you're replying to. Offline key confirmation is still the best bet for most people, it's just that people don't use it because they don't use crypto because crypto tools are awful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is good, but getting "well-known" solutions actually used in practice is a very hard, and worthwhile problem. (This is not _just_ "PGP needs a better UI"; it's also "how do I get embedded/IoT developers to use half-decent crypto", "bringing TLS into the 21st century", etc.)

<comment><USER11> This is exactly the infrastructure problem the author was referring to. And the big problem here is that infrastructure is neither a high-margin business model nor particularly interesting to build -- while being just as difficult on the business side as starting a new social network in 2015.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Personally I'm hoping Google/Yahoo's End-To-End encryption tech goes somewhere. I really liked the idea behind the use of a gossip protocol to let everyone know what keys they had seen for a given user so that active attacks are not necessarily completely prevented, but are noticed.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'd be glad if people stopped asking for PFS in email. Email can not have PFS. If you actually implements PFS over email, it becomes instant messaging.

Yes, you can cargo cult the PFS algorithms over the email infrastructure, but if you save the temporary key, it's not PFS anymore, and guess what, if you want to save your message to reading later, you'll have to save the temporary key too.

<comment><USER14> Adam Langley's Pond protocol for anonymous email uses the Axolotl ratchet with PFS.

[https://pond.imperialviolet.org/](https://pond.imperialviolet.org/)

<comment><USER13> > Pond messages are asynchronous, but are not a record; they expire > automatically a week after they are received.

That's not email.

Ok, that's less "instant" than most instant messaging system. But it has the same trade-off. It has a bigger time window when messages can be decrypted, and messages last for longer.

If you give-up on reading your email latter, yes, you can have some kind of forward secrecy.

<comment><USER15> But the idea of perfect forward secrecy is not that your locally stored mail is securely encrypted in the future, but instead that mail that was intercepted in transfer should not become readable, even if your key is later recovered.

With your locally saved mail/messages it is up to you how to and whether to securely store them. You can save them decrypted if you are not worried about getting your device stolen. You can securely delete them if you think that you can not keep their content safe. You can do anything in between, it's your choice to make.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Can you recommend a translation service for website trans? - <AUTHOR>

I am looking for a translation service to help with the localization of riddle.com, where I can upload an Excel with 26 language columns and get just one Excel file back with all translations. I have tried gengo.com and icanlocalize.com, which allow the upload of an Excel file but both send back 26 individual files, which I need to merge. Does anyone know a service where this is less painful? <comment><USER2> I'm not sure if they support excel, but [https://unbabel.com](https://unbabel.com) looks like a good service.

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you.. they look really good. Will give them a try.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Are you looking for a semipro or pro service?</comment>


PostgreSQL Locking Revealed - <AUTHOR> http://blog.nordeus.com/dev-ops/postgresql-locking-revealed.htm <comment><USER3> Tangential: does anybody know how dependable is pg_repack[1]? I just discovered it and the promise is great - being able to do a VACUUM FULL, and even move tables around, without locking them and thus without downtime - <USER2> I'm not sure what are the risks in using it in production.

[1] [http://reorg.github.io/pg_repack/](http://reorg.github.io/pg_repack/)

<comment><USER4> We use it on medium size tables (around ~100M rows and ~100GB each). No problems. The perf boost we get from clustering rows in the right spot on the disk is huge.

<comment><USER5> Out of curiosity, as you apparently have some real data and real use-cases - have you benchmarked SSD vs disk for your use-case? In particular, do you still see a (comparable, or not) speed-up from better clustering of rows on SSD? (I would guess not, unless you have a lot of fragmentation at less than SSD write-size (typically 4k?) - and AFAIK postgres should already be trying to fix that for you, by how it lays out data on disk. But SSD do have somewhat better sequential read than random-read, even if not as dramatic as spinning disks).

<comment><USER4> There's still a speedup, but it's dwarfed by the magnetic->SSD boost.

We do have fragmentation within a block. Our records on the heap are about 150 bytes, so maybe 30 rows per 4K page. In the pathological case where there is 1 row per page due to fragmentation, queries have to fetch 30x the number of blocks, which is a killer on a spinny disk.

<comment><USER6> People still use spinning rust for databases?

<comment><USER7> I have to deal with a couple of plattered databases. It's not optimal, but there's usually some cost constraint, or there are only 100 users on it a week. Or both, in which case it's no big deal and it's very very cheap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love Datomic because of the way it removes the need to understand these locks completely. With datomic you can reason far more easily about a set of concurrent updates than dealing with SQL locking levels.

The trade is you are essentially always running with your database as fully serialized writes.

<comment><USER9> Can that be achieved by setting all writes in postgres to isolation level serializable?

<comment><USER8> Not in the same way. Because the datomic database is immutable queries can take as long as they want and the results will never be inconsistent.

<comment><USER10> Postgres transactions can also take as long as they want and the results will never be inconsistent.

The downside to SERIALIZABLE is that conflicts become visible failures to the client, so you have to handle them and retry. Datomic solves this by serialising through the function you pass, but at great latency cost.

<comment><USER9> No free lunch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> These locks can be non-trivial to reason about at times. On 9.3 I've been bitten numerous times by concurrent transactions attempting to escalate share locks to exclusive lock because of a FK and getting stuck forever, without the db being able to break up that deadlock. If you intentionally limit the # of connections to the db (which you should), that can lead to downtime. Needed to learn about SELECT FOR UPDATE pretty quickly after that. It seems like that's somewhat ameliorated in 9.4+, although it's still possible in a few corner cases, if I recall correctly from talking to RhodiumToad.

<comment><USER11> I believe that if you set the foreign key constraint as deferred, the lock won't be attempted until commit time (and then only briefly), which should help a lot -- assuming your problem is with long-running transactions that hold locks while they are open.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I notice they mention advisory locks, which aren't used much. MySQL has them, too. They're useful for such things as preventing two copies of the same application from running. This works across machine boundaries, and if you lose the database connection or the client machine or the host machine, the lock is released, so you don't have all that nonsense about Linux/UNIX lock files hanging around.

I use those for tasks that should only have one copy running on a cluster, but any machine in the cluster can run.

</comment><comment><USER13> There is also interesting new module pg_stat_wait that enables LWLocks monitoring (as well as other types of locks), it is already used in mail.yandex.ru (the 2nd largest email service in Russia). However the module requires Postgres be patched [https://github.com/postgrespro/postgres/tree/waits_monitorin...](https://github.com/postgrespro/postgres/tree/waits_monitoring_94) Related discussion in -hackers: [http://www.postgresql.org/message- id/flat/3F71DA37-A17B-4961...](http://www.postgresql.org/message- email@example.comfirstname.lastname@example.com)

</comment><comment><USER14> There is also pgrowlocks[1] that can be usefull.

[1] [http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/pgrowlocks.htm...](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/pgrowlocks.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> note: there are also "skip locked" and "nowait" clauses in Postgres 9.5 for more flexibility when dealing with row level locking. This gives you the option of failing immediately (nowait) or just getting back the set of rows that aren't locked (skip locked).

[https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/What's_new_in_PostgreSQL_9....](https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/What's_new_in_PostgreSQL_9.5#SKIP_LOCKED)

</comment><comment><USER16> I could swear that I saw Stonebreaker comment on this very subject in a talk from the past year or so (available on Youtube).</comment>


10 Million Galaxy S III Sold by July, A Word from Samsung - <AUTHOR> http://www.starwebworld.com/10-million-galaxy-s-iii-sold-by-july-a-word-from-samsung/ Starting from a base of 9 million pre-orders was quite evident that the race of the Galaxy S III began falling, and according to what said JK Shin, head of Samsung's telecommunications sector, sales of the last top of the range of the house will exceed 10 million before the end of July. <comment><USER2> I'd love to see Google and "the market" tell Samsung it's time to slowdown and make some official statements regarding how Samsung will support its products for current and future releases of Android.

<comment><USER3> i think it's pretty obvious they are happy with their decision - you get your android upgrade when you go from galaxy s2 to s3 and alike.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This "article" is completely incoherent gibberish. Who is voting this up?

</comment><comment><USER5> nice post....</comment>


Seattle-area officials report new coronavirus deaths, bringing US total to 6 - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/02/seattle-area-officials-report-3-new-coronavirus-deaths-bringing-us-total-to-5.html <comment><AUTHOR> US death rate so far:

6/96= 6.25%

Iran death rate so far:

66/1501= 4.44%

Is the US undercounting to a greater extent than Iran?!

<comment><USER2> Yes, the US is severely undercounting.

There are a few reasons for this, none of which are acceptable.

1\. The initial guidelines for test kit requirements were needlessly strict. They sought to create tests which would not test positive for related pathogens like SARS or MERS, neither of which seem to be circulating in the wild right now.

2\. The first batch of test kits issued by the CDC were faulty.

3\. The CDC disallowed tests for people that did not have a link to China.

The CDC has displayed staggering incompetence at handling this. I don't know whether this is due to inexperience (the administration fired the CDC's entire pandemic response team in order to cut costs) or trying to downplay the situation in order to mitigate damage to the stock market. Or something else equally inexcusable.

It's anyone's guess how many people are actually infected by coronavirus in the US right now. But I don't think estimates less than 500 or so have any chance of being accurate.</comment></comment>


Can the iPhone Thrive in Apple's Closed Ecosystem? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/18/technology/18apple.html?_r=1&hp <comment><USER2> Yes. Next question.

Long answer: People are locked into their App Store purchases, and are familiar with the device. See also Blackberry users who love their devices.

This is a mindshare thing. Apple doesn't depend on being on top - they depend on making their cut of the market lucrative, which they wildly succeed at.

<comment><USER3> Of the ~$200 I've spent on apps, only about $10 of that is on apps I still use. I'd be happy to switch to a new ecosystem but I don't find anything compelling on Android yet.</comment></comment>


Intel CEO says Windows 8 is not ready - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57520193-75/intel-ceo-slams-windows-8-says-its-not-ready-report/

<comment><USER2> Well "slams" isn't exactly accurate however he is right in saying Windows 8 is still a pretty big work in progress for Microsoft however they had to release this year. It is a stable OS however it is a little schizophrenic to use with the awkward way that Metro (Modern UI) has been crowbarred into it.

In my opinion Windows 8 is more of a technology/strategy preview and not a "real" Windows release. I have been running the RTM since it hit MSDN and it is fine to use as a primary OS however it isn't all that nice to use as your primary OS. There are so many rough edges and inconsistency's it is quite frustrating to use at times. However this is Microsoft trying to work out how Windows will work on tablet/touch based devices so it is to be expected.

Other than developers wanting to get used to some of the new development options available with WinRT and people who want Windows on a tablet and not iOS or Android I don't see any real reasons to upgrade from Windows 7. Especially as Windows 7 is a nicer experience for desktop/laptop users IMHO.

<comment><USER3> Every version of Windows has been much improved by the first service pack. I think the first point release will be where we start to see a better integration of the two halves of the UI.

<comment><USER4> Vista's service pack was Windows 7.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Typical cnet article "INTEL CEO SLAMS WINDOWS 8", and I quote directly from the article:

"... Otellini also said releasing Windows 8 before it's completely ready is the correct decision to help Microsoft and the PC makers compete against Apple during the key holiday season. He added that Microsoft can make changes after Windows 8 ships, the report said."

<comment><USER6> Of course Otellini is saying that. He's becoming desperate about PC sales, and he wants something to boost the sales as soon as possible, and because Windows 8 is probably the _only_ chance Intel has to enter the tablet market, although even that isn't guaranteed. That doesn't mean Microsoft should make the whole mass-market beta-testers.

<comment><USER7> Yes, but regardless of how Otellini feels, he never said what they said he had said. So it's very deceptive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am actually pretty impressed with it on my 2006 computer. It's quicker then 7 and looks better. I am also surprised how well the mouse works on "metro" apps without a touch screen. The bottom line is that MS made changes to the traditional desktop, kernel and file system that make Windows 8 worth the upgrade.

<comment><USER9> Sure it's not just faster because it's a clean install?

<comment><USER2> My main computer is a 3½ year old Dell laptop (2.5Ghz C2D, 4GB RAM) and Windows 8 boots and runs a little smoother than Windows 7 does. Not enough for me to stick with 8 though, I am quite happy to keep it restricted to a virtual machine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> He hardly 'slammed it'. He actually agrees with Microsoft's decision to release it.

<comment><USER11> "Slams" is a word that appears in headlines more than it deserves, because it's short. It helps that it's dramatic, but mostly just because it's short. "Woes" is another extremely common one, and you see "Woos" a lot during election season.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Have to agree. Recently I used a Windows 8 Samsung tablet at a Microsoft Store. As much as I love Microsoft, I still feel the whole Metro paradigm is a slight mistake. They are closing the doors to the tried-and-true interface that Windows users have grown to love by trying to wall people into Metro. Frankly, "Desktop" is almost unusuable without a Start Menu button. You can't get into Computer Properties easily (usually right-click Computer on Start Menu). Control Panel is not obvious. It's virtually impossible to pin things on the dock unless you can find a way to open them. Businesses aren't going to upgrade unless someone uses a touch-screen or tablet (and even then it's doubtful).

They should be trying to make users WANT to use Metro--instead of forcing them into it. It's beautiful, great for tablets, and has the apps people crave. I'm not sure what they mean by "tested and ready", because I can't be the only person who has brought this up on the Internets and I'm sure they've discussed this internally. As a Windows-fan, they're losing me. And like in politics, if you've lost your base, you've lost.

<comment><USER2> If you right click on the bottom left corner (where the start menu button was/where the start page icon appears) you will get a context menu with most of the things you could want such as Computer Management, Command Prompt, etc.

<comment><USER12> Thanks, I forgot about this during my playtest. They couldn't have put an icon there or something?

Frankly the easiest way to get around is Win+R if you know the right shortcuts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'd agree. It doesn't feel finished yet. I think the OEMs will be all over it customising it which is going to ruin the experience.

<comment><USER14> With the defaults in place (boot to Metro Start Screen), my guess (hope) is that OEMs will customize it with Windows 8 Apps _. Because these apps are sandboxed, it should be really easy to remove them without leaving traces behind (except for files in ~/AppData probably).

_ Their apps certainly have more impact on the Start Screen and the full screen 'immersive' experience should appeal to consumers (an OEM would hope).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is spam. Here's the original source: [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-25/windows-8-bugs- plag...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-25/windows-8-bugs-plaguing- microsoft-intel-ceo-said-to-tell-staff.html)

Can we somehow vote cnet off the planet? And ZDNet, and the other ones my mind has blocked out from the trauma.</comment>


Why Do Nigerian Scammers Say They Are from Nigeria? [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.econinfosec.org/archive/weis2012/papers/Herley_WEIS2012.pdf <comment><USER2> Interesting comments in some previous discsussions, [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Why%20Do%20Nigerian%20Scammers...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Why%20Do%20Nigerian%20Scammers%20Say%20They%20Are%20from%20Nigeria%3F&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

</comment><comment><USER3> When I was younger, around 7 or 8, and saw my parents get the Nigerian scammer spam, I felt bad because they had some sort of sad story tied in to the email. It wasn't until I noticed the sloppy grammar that I realized that it was a fake email.</comment>


Kindle gets text-based adventure games - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-10/07/kindle-games-adventure-text

<comment><USER2> FTA:

"Before computer games arrived on the scene, kids amused themselves with choose-your-own-adventure books that allowed you to explore fantastic worlds that were described without the aid of fancy graphics.

"As computers became a little more powerful, these were translated into text- only adventure games that retained the spartan aesthetic, but allowed the player a little more control over their exploration of the world. For example, you'd type "north" to move north, where you'd then "look" around a scene before deciding how to interact further."

Uh... No.

"Colossal Cave", the first text based Adventure game: 1976, by William Crowther, running on a PDP-10. By '77 it had been ported to Unix.

"The Cave of Time", the first Choose Your Own Adventure book: 1979.

<comment><USER2> Correction: The first interactive novel was Sugarcane Island, published in '76. Two others ones, rather obscure and unknown, were published in '77, and '78: "Deadwood City" and "Third Planet from Altair". The idea didn't really kick off, however, until the Choose Your Own Adventure series began in 1979.

It seems clear that the development of Adventure-style games and the interactive novel were independent of one another.

<comment><USER3> The article's version of events yields a more intuitive narrative flow.

> ...the Editors of the Guide were sued by the families of those who had died > as a result of taking the entry on the planet Traal literally (it said > "Ravenous Bugblatter beasts often make a very good meal for visiting > tourists" instead of "Ravenous Bugblatter beasts often make a very good meal > _of_ visiting tourists") they claimed that the first version of the sentence > was the more aesthetically pleasing, summoned a qualified poet to testify > under oath that beauty was truth, truth beauty and hoped thereby to prove > that the guilty party was Life itself for failing to be either beautiful or > true. The judges concurred, and in a moving speech held that Life itself was > in contempt of court, and duly confiscated it from all those there present > before going off to enjoy a pleasant evening's ultragolf. > <http://flag.blackened.net/dinsdale/dna/book2.html>

<comment><USER4> In other words, the Wired author just made up stuff that sounded good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Someone correct me if I'm missing something, but this has _nothing_ to do with the Kindle.

It's a website that lets you play the games[1]. A minimalist website, _slightly_ more minimal than any I've seen which does this, but a website nonetheless. Any _device_ which has a web browser has access to this website, the Kindle is just an example of one.

They could've labelled it for the Nook, or Sony's e-readers, or _anything_. The iPhone has access to it as well. It's news only because someone decided such websites are worthy of news, and made one into a high-profile example.

The only thing which has any relevance to the Kindle is that there's a referral link to buy one on the site.

[1]: <http://www.portablequest.com/>

<comment><USER6> The Kindle connection is really just setup for this (fantastic) closing paragraph:

> _Of course, with the e-readers' lack of a backlight, you won't be able to > play in the dark. But that's probably just as well. You might get eaten by a > grue._

<comment><USER5> Then you should light lantern first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Note that there is already a very high-quality Z-machine interpreter in Javascript available to any device that has a modern web browser (e.g. tablets:)

<http://parchment.toolness.com/>

</comment><comment><USER8> While we are on the topic of text games, I highly recommend Jason Scott's (textfiles.com, BBS Documentary) documentary on text adventures: GET LAMP

<http://www.getlamp.com/>

It might seem expensive compared to the latest hollywood movie but think of it as enabling a computer nostalgist to preserve our history.

<comment><USER9> I just got done watching the 2nd DVD from Get Lamp and I was throughly impressed. I'd watched it at PAX East prior, and then the 1st DVD a few weeks ago. The 2nd DVD goes into some excellent depth.

Plus he isn't just making movies, but like you say, preserving history with his massive archives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If it works for text adventure games, then it will work for the command line, vi and other tools of that era (apart from the missing "ESC" key), with multi- _week_ battery life.

<comment><USER4> But with a large keypress lag. I wonder how it would do for Nethack? Perhaps MUDs will make a comeback?

<comment><USER3> Nethack maybe also too laggy? but MUDs could be great, esp since it has wifi/3G...

I guess twitter/SMS also :(

<comment><USER10> It's ideal for Nethack. Infinite thinking time is enforced by the platform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There's a port of Frotz for iPhone / iOS and an app named Twisty on Android that are z-Machine interpreters (so they can play these games offline.)

</comment><comment><USER12> This might almost be a reason to get a Kindle.

I'm a big fan of playing games I find on the Interactive Fiction Archive -- <http://ifarchive.org>

Good stuff.

</comment><comment><USER13> It would be much better as a kindle app.

I applied to enter the kindle developer program, saying I was interested in doing an interactive fiction interpreter, but I've heard nada.

</comment><comment><USER14> For more Interactive Fiction, including a mirror of the IF archive and Infocom game packages check out <http://guetech.org>

</comment><comment><USER15> When I was in middle school, someone had a TI calculator that was programmed with a rudimentary choose your own adventure style game. It was really cool!

</comment><comment><USER16> Here's the website they're talking about: <http://www.portablequest.com>

<comment><USER17> I played it for 5 minutes and then seriously considered getting a pencil and paper to start drawing out a map like I used to do. I forgot how addictive these games were!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Did a Hacker News post just give me warm fuzzies...?

I think it did.

<comment><USER4> "You are in a maze of twisty little book reviews, all alike."

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Sorry to rain on Kindle's parade... but iPhone/iPad has been able to do it since the beginning of time: <http://code.google.com/p/iphonefrotz/>

</comment><comment><USER20> Can you play MUDs from the Kindle?</comment>