Poll about an upcoming fast numpy/scipy port to JS - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1IVo7rJ50uAzDYTbL-kegJBWgQenwGUBs_D89Bhu1LH0/viewform?c=0&w=1

<comment><USER2> This is an interesting idea.

However, their timelines are too short. It makes me feel like they don't really understand what it's going to take.

A good start would be the C++ library libdynd which was designed to potentially be used from Javascript.

NumPy has much more than vectors and matrices. Does Javascript have operator overloading?

<comment><AUTHOR> JavaScript is planned to support operator overloading with value types in ES7. We're following those discussions very closely and intend to support it as soon as it possible with a macro-transpilation solution interim.

We're going to port some stuff directly from numpy and scipy (directly from source with the required legal attribution).

I understand this is a huge undertaking but we're standing on the shoulders of giants and we are optimistic about those deadlines. Of course if it'll take longer it'll take longer we're still building it - any help would be really appreciated of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A key feature for me would be that it remains runnable in the browser.

Gauss ([https://github.com/wayoutmind/gauss](https://github.com/wayoutmind/gauss)) has some nice features in this space. But only has vectors at the moment.

<comment><USER4> It would be cool to have an all JS implementation of NumPy or SciPy but the reality of the situation is that if this is going to be used in a research setting and speed is one of the most important factors, then this is secondary to actually porting over the lower level C++ and FORTRAN code.</comment></comment>


Remembering the Good Days at Bell Labs - <AUTHOR> http://www.physik3.gwdg.de/~mrs/Vortraege/Remembering-the-Good-Days-at-Bell-Laboratories-2004/index.html

<comment><USER2> I found this amusing:

An example of freedom at Bell, one where it backfired, occurred with a Swedish linguist we wanted to hire in the mid-60s. His future department head, Peter Denes, who was to take him out for dinner, asked me what he should answer if the candidate enquired about "freedom" at the Labs. I told Denes to reassure the candidate that he had total freedom - he could do whatever he wanted to do. The next thing we knew his office and the corridor nearby were adorned with posters of Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara - just to test what we meant when we guaranteed him complete freedom. As you might imagine - this was the height of the Vietnam War - there was quite a commotion. People came to see me saying they couldn't continue with their classified, secret work. I had to reassure them that posters couldn't actually see. Then plant security got wind of the situation. They called me and I told them I would take charge, everything was "under control" - which of course it wasn't. But at least I got the security people off my back. Then I called my boss, John Pierce, and explained the whole thing to him. When I was through, he asked me what I was going to do and I said "Nothing, John". He replied with a single word: "Right". Of course, in less than 48 hours the whole thing had blown by.

</comment><comment><USER3> There are some interesting stories in this write-up.

I lived in the former Bell Labs headquarters in Manhattan (Greenwich Village) that the author referenced for about a year and a half (until early '08). Since about 1970 the building has been used as subsidized housing (work/live loft space) for "artists." The residents rarely move out because they pay mere hundreds of dollars per month for huge loft spaces that would otherwise rent for many thousands. Since they were picky about who they selected to live there initially, (they chose "artists" with established careers, most of whom were 30+ in 1970) today it has the vibe of a really eccentric retirement community. I'm not sure what the people (private philanthropists and NEA bureaucrats working together) thought would become of the community they funded/founded, but I doubt its present state is what they envisioned. I'm grateful for the ultra-cheap sublet opportunity I had nonetheless.

</comment><comment><USER4> "Well, I accepted the Bell offer - in fact I would have worked at Bell for nothing, but I didn't mind getting paid for what was for me a dream come true."

This is the kind of company I want to create...someday in the future, I hope.

</comment><comment><USER5> Man, I love hearing stories like these. It's curious how people plan and apply and work to get into top university programs which last a few years, yet they seem to stumble quickly into amazing places like Bell Labs, these super- learning environments that can make a person's career.

<comment><USER6> Sounds like a tautology. Where else would they go but the most prestigious place?

I'd be surprised if they went somewhere sub-par.

<comment><USER5> Right, especially since Bell Labs is about the most institutional example of that kind of environment. I suppose not many people really had as unusual of an entry into that environment as the subject of this article did. Things were quite different back then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Good days at Bell Labs were when my dad took me to "Take your sons to work day" -- and the Holmdel, NJ building was still in all its glory. Now...it's been sold off and nobody knows what's going to happen to it.

</comment><comment><USER8> I joined Bell Labs in late 2000 and quit in six months of joining... I guess those weren't the best days for the labs or Lucent

<comment><USER9> In the recent interview with Soustroup, he suggested that "AT&T bell labs" was the place to be, not "Lucent bell labs". Is that correct-- it has now split in two?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Are there places like this today? How do I join such a place?

<comment><USER4> A product of by-gone years.

If I recall correctly, some of these companies subsidize research at universities. I think your best bet would be to find an institute that's doing stuff you like, or has faculty you want to be around, and get associated with them.

<comment><USER10> Do people do independent research anymore, or is it just too likely they'll reinvent the wheel, lack resources and information, and not receive useful guidance? I'm interested in the university route, but it seems like there isn't as much freedom as in the case of bell labs.</comment></comment></comment>


New startup aiming to be the Netflix for mobile content closes $1B in funding - <AUTHOR> https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/newtv-jeffrey-katzenberg-meg-whitman-1-billion-funding-1202897529/ <comment><AUTHOR> So this is an effort led by Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman, which in itself is noteworthy, but then to claim a $1 Billion "seed" round is eye opening.

I'm highly skeptical with G090's failure ( which is mentioned in the article ) whether a studio(?) focused purely on bite sized content can survive, but they certainly have the funding and pedigree to attract some top level talent to give it a go for a few years.</comment>


Rare Mutation Kills Off Gene Responsible For Diabetes - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/03/health/rare-gene-protects-against-type-2-diabetes-even-in-obese-people.html

<comment><USER2> What's very interesting about this discovery, perhaps even more so than the discovery about Diabetes, is that the results directly contradict research that was conducted on Mice.

So much medical research, and drug trials, are based on the what the reactions of mice are; this discovery makes it clear we cannot rely on mice for everything.

If you read to the end of the article (spoiler) - the original paper was rejected for publication because it contradicted research that showed what was happening in humans, could not be occurring because mice reacted differently.

<comment><USER3> I've been saying this for years. Most of the tox studies or efficacy studies in mice have poor or no models that correlate with human biology. They are indicative at best but should never be used to give a black or white story. The pharma industry and academia is throwing every single year dozens of potentially active molecules because they see toxicity in animals. Note that animals models have also permeated the regulatory bodies, therefore making it into de facto requirements to develop drugs. And it is so rarely ever contested on scientific grounds, where the Science part is effectively very thin.

<comment><USER4> So, we need a better mouse.

How are computer simulation at modelling drug efficiency? Better than mouse, worse, unknown?

<comment><USER5> I think they are poor because there are so manny factors involved that it's difficult to create a reliable model. But I don't know, so this is my opinion. Computers could probably help test simple hypotheses but I don't think they could be used as evidence to begin human trials.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > _deCODE Genetics, a company with data on genes and diseases for the entire > population of Iceland. The American drug company, Amgen, bought deCODE and > its valuable genetic database._

Based on Iceland's reaction to its financial crisis in 2008, I would not have expected such a dataset to be privately held.

It seems in 1998 the Icelandic Parliament "permitted public bidding for the right of a company to create" a "population-wide genomic biobank by collecting data from the entire population of Iceland". It then granted deCODE "the right to create this database after the company made a successful bid to do so" [1].

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCODE_genetics#History](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCODE_genetics#History)

<comment><USER7> Wasnt expecting this either. And now the whole database is owned by multi- national pharmaceutical.

<comment><USER8> There was a lot of discussion about the whole thing when the bid was made by deCODE. When they got the permission, people were allowed to opt out, but the general attitude towards the company was far too positive at the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I got excited reading the title thinking it was Type 1. Sigh, more waiting I guess.

</comment><comment><USER5> "...even fat people.."

"..the fat old people..."

Is that proper language for an NYT article? It reads more like something from The Onion.

</comment><comment><USER10> I found the gratuitous use of the word 'fat' in this article kind of jarring.

<comment><USER11> It only appears three times, is a proper medical term, and is absolutely relevant to the article subject.

<comment><USER12> "Fat" as a description of a person is as medically valid as "stupid". That is to say, not at all. "Overweight", "obese", and others are actual medical terms that have real definitions, quite unlike "fat".

<comment><USER13> Oh, I see. So synonyms of the word "fat" have real medical definitions. I think it's just that "fat" doesn't sound pretentious enough, so it's not clinical.

<comment><USER14> They don't mean precisely the same thing. "Overweight" and "obese" can be defined, as categories, according to BMI, WHR, body fat percentage or similar. "Fat" is a lot less clearly definable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There must be some law where it takes at least 10 years before a medical discovery becomes a treatment available to the general public.

<comment><USER16> That's because "destroy a gene" is not a treatment. The process of finding a molecule that inhibits the action of the gene, is not rapidly metabolized by the body, is capable of crossing the cell membrane, and doesn't kill people at the same dose as it has its effect takes a while. You have to try a _lot_ of molecules to find one that satisfies all these requirements. There are efforts to speed up the early selection process, such as using computational chemistry approaches to compute which molecules can "dock" with a protein's active site. This is hard though, because proteins & small molecules are not rigid, so it's much harder than just doing a jigsaw puzzle in 3-D. I'm sure robotics is also being used to speed up the initial drug screening, but I know less about that.

Also consider that there's no way to tell the long-term toxicity of a drug except by running a long-term study.

Basically, my dad (who works as a pharma researcher) told me almost exactly what you proposed: it takes 10-20 years to develop a drug and bring it to market once you have a target to develop against.

<comment><USER3> > I'm sure robotics is also being used to speed up the initial drug screening, > but I know less about that.

Yes, for combinatorial screening. But these are very simple robots.</comment></comment></comment>


Transform any text into a patent application - <AUTHOR> http://lav.io/2014/05/transform-any-text-into-a-patent-application/ <comment><USER2> Hilarious... I liked this one linked from the article which created a patent out of the Communist Manifesto:

...

Figure 1 is an isometric view of the progressive historical development of the proletariat.

...

The present invention is itself the product of a long course. The present invention finds its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. The present invention creates a world after its own image. The present invention endangers the existence of bourgeois property. The present invention becomes an appendage of the machine.

This is great.

[1] [http://saaaam.s3.amazonaws.com/communist.pdf](http://saaaam.s3.amazonaws.com/communist.pdf)

<comment><USER3> They should patent the algorithm using their own generator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Every day closer to Accelerando by Charlie Stross.

You should make it into a kind of wizard that asks the user a few questions about their "invention" and then spits out an application ready to file like Turbotax.

<comment><USER5> Great idea - although I think my next step is to automatically send out patent infringement cease-and-desist notices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What would be more useful is to transform a patent to plain non-BS language. Its probably hard but it should help developers understand patents quickly(one point of patents is to release trade secrets to researchers). And yes I know the risk of treble damages from intentional infringement if the patent was read. Also, hopefully such a tool will prevent some folks from knee jerk reactions based on patent titles(who am I kidding :). I bet it would be very hard to make such a tool though

<comment><USER7> I work for a company that pays a reward for patent submissions so I have done a fair number of them, and what has amazed me since I started doing them is that I prepare a submission that by most estimations if a readable, understandable explanation of the invention and I usually include some diagrams. The company evaluates it and they deem it patentable, they then pay special outside council, firms that specialize in such things, and they proceed to turn it into incomprehensible legaleeze babble. They also take my nice diagrams and turn them into those patent stick diagrams. It is too bad that my nice understandable synopsis could not be included. But that is the process, I think reversing the process seems almost impossible.

<comment><USER8> > It is too bad that my nice understandable synopsis could not be included.

I suspect the issue here may be the same as the one that besets people who want to - for example - include a nice human readable version of a EULA alongside the legal version.

It introduces the opportunity for conflicts between the two version. Which is the actual legally binding version?

Your nice understandable synopsis should be used by the PR department for the press release that goes out explaining the newly awarded patent (if the PR department does such things).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I ran this on my thesis: [http://ix.io/cfV](http://ix.io/cfV) and it's scarily good.

</comment><comment><USER7> The ultimate irony would be to submit a patent application on this software that generates patents.

<comment><USER10> That too completely automated ... Like generate -> submit money via gateway -> print n send to verify -> get sms alert over apis -> etc .....

Basically u submit the money rest taken care .... an app on playstore n iphone will be great ....

<comment><USER11> Ha, let's make it a game too! IAPs to get a better lawyer or choose where you sue infringers, global hiscores for the most successful patent trolls (players), share successful suings to Facebook..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is fantastic. I've been reading through bunches of patents lately doing research for a project and this actually made laugh out loud.

</comment><comment><USER13> The post script comment about typing swear words into google patent search is hilarious, even if it is only a translation artifact - for example the first one I stumbled across:

[https://www.google.com/patents/CN202375763U?cl=en](https://www.google.com/patents/CN202375763U?cl=en)

<comment><USER5> Hi! Original author of the post here. Yes - lot of the funny ones seem to be the result of translation issues. It's just amazing how the translator (I'm assuming it's automated) likes to pick the most graphic possible words for human anatomy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is this patented? Think about how much money you could make suing law firms actually using this...

</comment><comment><USER15> You can turn this in to a cool Wordpress plugin for adding a ribbon for blog posts: "Patent me on USPTO". It would be like ribbon for "Fork me on Github" :).

This has real possibility of increasing awareness about how broken current patent system is.

</comment><comment><USER16> While it's a neat exercise, the most important part of a patent is the claims. Everything else is fluff.

</comment><comment><USER17> I love how the author explains how (relatively) simple doing these transformations is.

We've used pretty much the same technique for this little pet project of ours where we add profanity to English texts: [http://cursingapi.com/](http://cursingapi.com/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Excellent, now generate a fake patent and submit it to the USPTO.

If it gets approved, we're in for another round of Sokal affair [1].

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

</comment><comment><USER19> Through automation like this, maybe the patent system can be overloaded and have to be reformed if automated patent filings filled the queues and everyone starts getting wacky patents.

</comment><comment><USER20> Can we turn HN into a patent application? I wonder if it would work on a list of titles.

</comment><comment><USER21> Software eats law?

</comment><comment><USER22> Is this what apple uses?</comment>


Show HN: Text Analysis Demo Using OpenAI's Congressional Testimony Survey CCW - <AUTHOR> https://www.ameliormate.com/qualitative-analysis-demo <comment><AUTHOR> I'm the founder of AmeliorMate, a current YC Startup School company that does text analysis/reporting. As a demo, I analyzed the responses to Jack Clark's twitter survey conducted for OpenAI's Congressional testimony re AI and synthetic media. CCW! [https://www.ameliormate.com/qualitative-analysis- demo](https://www.ameliormate.com/qualitative-analysis-demo)

I'm also exploring how to be most useful to the AI/ML community with data labeling for machine learning and would appreciate feedback from anyone with experience in algorithm training via our anonymous survey. [https://www.ameliormate.com/ml-survey](https://www.ameliormate.com/ml-survey)

Thank You! :)</comment>


Ask HN: Is Copy and Paste a workaround for paywalls - <AUTHOR> The following is present in the Hacker News FAQ:
"Are paywalls ok?
It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds.
In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic."
So is copying and pasting the content to a paste and adding a link to the comments a workaround?
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22978882#22979942 for where this question arose. <comment><USER2> I'm not a lawyer, but sounds like copyright infringement to me.

Paywalls are annoying, but it's up to the authors to decide if they want to charge for access to their works or not.</comment>


Webpack awarded $125,000 from MOSS Program - WebAssembly 1st Class Integration - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/webpack/webpack-awarded-125-000-from-moss-program-f63eeaaf4e15 <comment><USER2> Uh, this is big deal, right? 1st class WASM in the main browser-based module system? Surprised this didn't catch fire.

<comment><AUTHOR> Heh it was trending two days on reddit/r/javascript but is hit or miss.</comment></comment>


A statically typed, procedural language that looks like poorly written erotica - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Property404/fetlang <comment><USER2> Fetlang is licensed under the BSDM (BSD, modified) license</comment>


GNU Guix 0.8.2 released - <AUTHOR> https://savannah.gnu.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=8273

<comment><USER2> Nice new site design too: [https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/](https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/)

<comment><USER3> Apparently 1024x768 is considered mobile nowadays. I can't stop smiling.

Zooming out to 90% turned the full-screen menu into a 'normal' one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why the extra effort on the GNU Project's part to create Guix? What are the advantages over just adopting Nix? Doesn't this mean that everything the Nix project packages has to be repackaged for Guix, and vice-versa?

I found this comparison at [http://sandervanderburg.blogspot.com/2012/11/on- nix-and-gnu-...](http://sandervanderburg.blogspot.com/2012/11/on-nix-and-gnu- guix.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> >Why the extra effort on the GNU Project's part to create Guix?

There are a couple reasons:

1) We believe that unifying the entire system using a general purpose programming language that allows for the creation of embedded domain specific languages (Scheme) is better than using a domain specific language (the Nix language) and a multitude of other languages behind it (C++, Perl, Python, Bash). Our build scripts and client side code is written in Scheme. Our package and system services are written in Scheme. Our init system is written in Scheme. Our initial RAM disk is written in Scheme. This allows us to have good interoperability and reuse a lot of code in different places.

2) We are committed to providing a fully free GNU/Linux distro as defined by the FSF. NixOS includes proprietary some components.

>What are the advantages over just adopting Nix?

I think that our user and programming interfaces are better. We give more care to making sure package test suites pass and we don't use pre-built binaries from third parties (no blobs, no pre-built minified JavaScript, etc). We have really nice Emacs integration. It's nice to have a system that is fully free by default.

>Doesn't this mean that everything the Nix project packages has to be repackaged for Guix, and vice-versa?

Yes.

With that said, I need to mention that I think Nix is great. Really great. I just like the Guix implementation and philosophy more. Hope this helps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "The Guix System Distribution * Liberating. GuixSD is an advanced distribution of the GNU Operating System developed by the GNU Project —which respects the freedom of computer users."

GNU Operating System? Has the FSF moved past calling it GNU/Linux to just calling it GNU? Have they switched back to the Hurd? What's going on here?

<comment><AUTHOR> When we refer to the GNU Operating System, we're referring to the entire collection of GNU software. One of GuixSD's goals as an official GNU project is to integrate all GNU software nicely. The distro is GNU/Linux only right now, but Hurd support is being worked on, too.

See our "about" page for more info: [https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/about/](https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/about/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Guix is really cool, but I wish that it used Common Lido instead of Scheme. Still, much as with Emacs, a Lisp is better than no Lisp.

<comment><USER7> >Common Lido

Slipped by one column on your keyboard? :-D

I agree that a Lisp is better than no Lisp; I'd be more or less equally content if Guix used CL. Major Scheme implementations don't have much lacking compared to CL though, and the core is somewhat cleaner with less historic baggage, so I'm most happy with Scheme. (The standardization though ... _sigh_ )

<comment><USER6> Yeah, stupid phone keyboard and stupid me not noticing:-)

That's one major issue with Scheme: sure, anything can be achieved in a Turing-complete language, but each Scheme does things a little differently. Common Lisp, meanwhile, actually standardised all that important stuff.

And while Scheme is conceptually cleaner, CL feels a lot more well-engineered as a language.

<comment><USER7> I wonder what makes you say CL feels more well-engineered? I can't think of any reasons, unless you simply mean Scheme's under-specification.

Scheme is not just "conceptually" cleaner if you ask me. It's very concretely cleaner. The naming conventions for one ("rplaca" anyone?), the clear-cut orthogonal APIs, the numeric tower with exactness/inexactness, and [insert pun about "hygienic" macros being "cleaner"...]</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Internet Explorer 6 as a chat server with Bridge RPC - <AUTHOR> https://www.getbridge.com/blog/ie6chatserver

<comment><USER2> Forgive me for not being very literate with this type of development, but why would you use Bridge over something like ZeroMQ? (I don't work much in this area, so sorry for my naïveté.)

<comment><AUTHOR> ZeroMQ is one layer down the stack. It is higher-level than TCP but it's basically a transport.

Bridge comes with RPC and automatic routing. It allows you to expose services simply by instantiating native objects and making method calls. (Like an easier version of Apache Thrift: <http://thrift.apache.org/>)

It also takes care of the socket management and routing for you, so there is no host/port configuration to talk to any endpoint in the system. You can simply address things by a human-readable name like "photo-processor" or "search-server".

<comment><USER2> Thanks for making this clear to me! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> That's cute, but the _server_ is actually at getbridge.com, it's not IE6. A browser cannot serve requests. The IE6 client is communicating via getbridge.com, from where the actual connections are being served. There's just some centralized application code in that particular IE6 browser that is controlling the channel logic.

<comment><USER4> This is pointed out explicitly in the section titled "Is this magic?"

We never claim "no server." Our goal was to ask the question, what's possible if you can run computational logic in the browser and rely on a physical server purely for message routing (Bridge).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why the hell would you subject your developers to looking at anything in IE6? Are they masochists by nature?

<comment><USER6> The JavaScript in IE6 isn't too horrible. It's mostly the layout and rendering that it sucks at. By choosing IE6, they could give you the scares without really having a lot of trouble.

I bet they made it with Chrome (or the likes), copied it into IE6, fixed a bug or two (without even bothering about cross-browser compat), and done. 30 minutes. Writing the article costs more time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> While this is awesome, I think declaring the "death of client-server" is kind of naive. For anything that handles sensitive information (e.g. the auth() service here), it'd be mayhem to have all clients also be servers.

<comment><USER4> Our interpretation is that the concept of a client and a server is no longer relevant. Clients are just machines that are over the network that you don't trust. An iPhone is more powerful than servers from 10 years ago. It's a (bad) brief explanation but do you see my point?

Perhaps the only relevant concept now is publishers and subscribers rather than clients and servers?

<comment><USER7> Yeah, that makes sense, and I agree. You make a finer point than the third bullet point in the post :)

Btw, love Bridge--using it to do some slick "client-side" form validation across browser and iOS clients. Keep up the good work!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It works in IE6?!

<comment><USER9> It. _is_ IE6.</comment></comment>


BBC Blogs – Adam Curtis – HYPERNORMALISATION - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/02d9ed3c-d71b-4232-ae17-67da423b5df5 <comment><USER2> This is the new film by Adam Curtis, the maker of The Century of the Self and other great documentaries. Worth a watch. It was just shown on the BBC TV and [http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p04b183c/adam-curtis- hy...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p04b183c/adam-curtis- hypernormalisation) here , and ought to be available to those with BBC Worldwide subscriptions.

Note: I hope it's available in other ways, so that others can buy this this public service institution is rewarded more so it can make more such things in the future. (ie, if you torent it, please find a way to contribute back, like buying old DVDs of Fawlty Towers, Jeeves and Wooster, Ab Fab, etc)</comment>


Business milestone: the Hot Chick Tipping Point - <AUTHOR> http://valleywag.com/tech/business-milestones/hot-chick-tipping-point-265004.php <comment><USER2> So how do you explain this? <http://360east.com/blogfileupload/billgates.jpg>

</comment><comment><USER3> Upvoted for pictures of hot chicks.</comment>


JavaScript Is More Popular Than You Think - <AUTHOR> https://www.onely.com/blog/javascript-more-popular-than-you-think/ <comment><AUTHOR> I love JS but using it for content backfires as these examples show.</comment>


Mice treated with a protein from umbilical cord plasma showed improved memory - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/young-human-blood-makes-old-mice-smarter-1.21848 <comment><USER2> I'm reminded of this famous historical figure who inspired numerous vampire stories. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_B%C3%A1thory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_B%C3%A1thory)

<comment><USER3> And a black metal band, if memory serves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's apparently a thing now.

Peter Thiel has purportedly invested millions in anti-aging. A company called Ambriosa in particular matches older people with younger people for blood routine blood transfusions.

While this study may or may not work with humans, the Ambriosa project does seem to have legs.

<comment><USER5> Nothing could possibly go wrong with this plan.

<comment><USER6> "And there once was a generation so selfish they even harvested the blood of their own children to prolong their own lives."

"Grandma, you're telling stories again. That couldn't possibly be true!"

"I swear on my husbands grave that it was true! They even levied a tax on them and made them pay for the treatment."

<comment><USER7> We are all equal but some are more equal than others. Those who are more equal have more money therefore they can officially buy bodies and rent their blood to others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So, it's like a real life "Flowers for Algernon". Let's hope for a better ending.

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

<comment><USER9> more like Flowers for Dracula

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can young animal blood also make old humans smarter (sheep, goats, pigs, ...)?

If so, and without adverse effects [1], an opportunity is discovered. Human cells might be better but a protein from animals might be cheaper and less ethically challenged, thus more accessible to the masses.

[1] An expert please have a say whether that is plausible or not.

<comment><USER11> Maybe, like in the mice studies, we could just graft baby goats to our backs after we hit 50.

Sure, it will look odd, but that will just be the price to pay to stay young.

The real trick will be to keep the goats from chewing on your shirt collars.

<comment><USER12> I feel like this is the entry point to a new piece of dark speculative fiction, in which extreme age is venerated, and the number of goats attached to your back becomes a symbol of your wealth and power.

<comment><USER13> Perhaps a larger animal. Detachable coupling of course and some sort of programmatic control of the beast. The coupling would include devices which would increase the concentration of life giving material and turn back less desirable properties of the blood.

I would ride upon a great blood engorged elephant and take pity upon all the unwashed goat tethered masses.

<comment><USER14> I storm through the seas like Poseidon himself, a conquering champion, grafted to the back of a 24-foot baby blue whale. Next time around, though, I'll ask the doc to position me _in front of_ the blow hole. Rookie mistake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I generally trust Nature, but unfortunately i can only access what appears to be more of an abstract, but i hope it addresses the concerns of [http://news.berkeley.edu/2016/11/22/young-blood-does-not- rev...](http://news.berkeley.edu/2016/11/22/young-blood-does-not-reverse- aging-in-old-mice-uc-berkeley-study-finds/) and similar research suggesting these claims could be anomalies.

<comment><USER16> > I generally trust Nature

That's your first mistake. Don't take my word for it:

[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v483/n7391/fig_tab/4835...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v483/n7391/fig_tab/483531a_T1.html)

Glamor journals are glamorous because of their "impact" (people read and cite them), and that "impact" occurs because they publish sexy (not necessarily replicable or useful) findings. Note that Nature is not a bad actor _per se_ , and in fact their editors have completely destroyed my lack of faith in peer review lately (as an author). But the incentives for CNS journals skew in favor of "sexy" rather than "scientific", and the general tendency of NIH to fund "sexy" means that almost all research in glamor journals must be treated as suspect until replicated, ideally in a clinical trial or by an un- incentivized third party lab.

> I can only access what appears to be more of an abstract

There's a site called [http://sci-hub.bz/](http://sci-hub.bz/) that can help.

> these claims could be anomalies.

You are correct, and you should heed your instincts. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and a single experiment or replication is one (possibly quite principled) sample from a distribution of potential outcomes. Don't invest yet ;-)

Side note: it seems like numeracy and statistical thinking is becoming the default in an educated population. You, too, are destroying my lack of faith in humanity. Thanks.

<comment><USER16> nb. Here is the link to the article:

[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature22067.html)

Here are the figures:

[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/fig_tab/n...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/fig_tab/nature22067_ft.html)

If you need a fulltext link that can be arranged, but it's not a bad idea to understand how DOIs work. Here is one:

doi:10.1038/nature22067

This is essentially a URI; the piece after the : is a URN, which is meant to uniquely identify a piece of published research (now expanded to include preprints and software).

To route it, you'll need a URL which your browser can resolve. Happily, if you visit

[http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature22067](http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature22067)

you will return to the paper. It is meant to provide a durable identifier, so that even Elsevier journals can't reliably hide the identity of a publication. What this also means is that "unlocking" services like Elbakyan's can use it as a primary key. Suppose you paste the URN part of that DOI onto [http://sci- hub.cc/](http://sci-hub.cc/) or [http://sci-hub.bz/](http://sci-hub.bz/) to complete the URL. What do you suppose happens?

(This is left as an exercise for the reader, and of course I cannot and do not condone violations of copyright law. So don't read whatever might pop up, ok?)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Interesting study in this regard: Michigan State University, East Lansing: Modulation of mammary gland development in pre-pubertal mice as affected by soya and milk protein supplements. [1] - Makes me wonder if there is a connection between the young mice and the milk they get from their mothers "isolated form of bovine alpha-lactalbumin commercially available. Alpha- lactalbumin is the primary protein in human milk, and is therefore extremely important for infant nutrition."

[1] [https://books.google.com/books?id=XLy5ZQVwPbcC&pg=PA24&lpg=P...](https://books.google.com/books?id=XLy5ZQVwPbcC&pg=PA24&lpg=PA24&dq=TIMP2+supplement&source=bl&ots=CvFhpTzfOc&sig=RkW7kJgLFJcdZHEeuWwwNC8uJEU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjEtZaghLbTAhWFNiYKHUIkDvg4ChDoAQg7MAY#v=onepage&q=TIMP2%20supplement&f=false)

[2][http://www.sovereignhealthinitiative.org/articles/antiaging....](http://www.sovereignhealthinitiative.org/articles/antiaging.html)

[3][http://www.daviscofoods.com/specialty/alpha.html](http://www.daviscofoods.com/specialty/alpha.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> Where can I get some disease-free youngling blood?

</comment><comment><USER19> Why does this totally make of me think of the book (and movie) The Glow?

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0286653/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0286653/)

</comment><comment><USER20> The Rats of NIMH? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mrs._Frisby_and_the_Rats_of_NI...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mrs._Frisby_and_the_Rats_of_NIMH)

</comment><comment><USER21> Instead of ape apocalypse, rat apocalypse :))

</comment><comment><USER22> should we start worrying people getting pregnant just to be harvested (voluntarily or not, for themselves or for sale)?

<comment><USER23> Listen to NPR's story for contemporary opinions against how this might not work for humans. [http://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2017/04/19/52397584...](http://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2017/04/19/523975844/human-umbilical-cord-blood-helps-aging-mice- remember-study-finds)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> And so the mice vampires rise and conquer the world!

</comment><comment><USER25> Great news for Peter Thiel!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> tl;dr: found that human umbilical cord plasma (= blood minus cells) improves old mice brain function (plasticity, memory), then teased out which protein in the cord plasma seems to have this effect (TIMP2) and showed that it is actively transported across blood-brain barrier (by marking it radioactively).

Since this worked across species barriers, it can be speculated that a similar effect would be seen when administering TIMP2 in humans. It'll be exciting to see what comes of clinical studies, which are under way.

[EDIT]:tone down expectations

<comment><USER26> Then efficacy, safety and long term safety have to be verified.

Apparently it is nowhere near as clear cut as expected. See the NPR article linked below.

<comment><USER27> Npr is not a great news source

<comment><USER28> how come?

<comment><USER29> A paucity of alternative facts, perhaps?

<comment><USER30> Are you saying that NPR doesn't have many alternative facts?

I think the point the original comment was trying to make was more that NPR doesn't have much in depth coverage when it comes to science. You'll think NPR does an exemplary job when it comes to content you don't know much about. But when you're more knowledgeable about the field being covered, you start to see minor inaccuracies to "dumb down" the concepts.

Which isn't a bad thing necessarily, it gets the point across without being too wrong.

<comment><USER29> You are speculating as much as I am about what f4ker's cryptic and uninformative post actually meant. If he meant what you think he meant, he could simply have written a note about what, specifically, in the NPR article is simplistic.

I do not see any way around news sources being simplified, to some extent, about everything, and you appear to agree. Do you think NPR's news is notably "not great" in that regard? Its liberal bias shows, but not in a way that strikes me as deceptive.

<comment><USER30> I'm not the authority on journalism by any means, but I'm happy to provide my own take.

There have been some stories on NPR (and most news sites as far as I can tell) that I've felt more knowledgeable about, and realized things were being simplified to make it easier to digest.

I guess another way of putting it would be that at first glance, you think NPR is awesome, and does a great job of covering the news. But then at second glance, you realize that while not intentional, it's just not as detailed or complete as you'd like it to be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The vampire myth is getting some fresh blood too.

</comment><comment><USER32> Don't let Thiel hear about this.

</comment><comment><USER33> So vampires have more IQ than humans? I should reconsider becoming a vampire hunter.

</comment><comment><USER34> Well, this is really not news. I knew about this for the first time in a documentary called "Monkey Shines", from 1988 ;-)

</comment><comment><USER35> Sound to me they finally found the fountain of youth. hehhe</comment>


One of Bay Area's Last Fry's Electronics Stores Closes - <AUTHOR> https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Bay-Area-locations-Frys-Electronics-closed-14939907.php <comment><USER2> What an odd title. This is the _first_ Bay Area location to close without being immediately replaced by a larger store.

Fry's has had a location in Sunnyvale since its founding. It has expanded to new, much larger buildings twice.</comment>


Mikron 1663RU1 – first Russian 90nm chip: weekend die-shot - <AUTHOR> http://zeptobars.ru/en/read/Mikron-1663RU1-16Mibit-SRAM-russia-zelenograd <comment><USER2> What is the target market for a Russian 90nm 16Mbit SRAM? The only customers I can think of would be Russian defense contractors where domestic sourcing might be required. The fact that it's in a (gigantic by current standards) ceramic QFP would also suggest an aerospace application.

edit: here is a part from TI that might be similar, that Mouser has listed for $6,075.49. It is export-restricted, radiation hardened, and has advanced error detection and correction.

[http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Texas- Instruments/SMV512...](http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Texas- Instruments/SMV512K32HFG/?qs=sGAEpiMZZMt9mBA6nIyysB7QeAAJmsUtO4zpepNnmDY%3d)

<comment><USER3> > The fact that it's in a (gigantic by current standards) ceramic QFP would > also suggest an aerospace application.

(For anyone else like myself who didn't know what a QFP was: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quad_Flat_Package](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quad_Flat_Package) )

Why does a ceramic QFP suggest an aerospace application?

<comment><USER4> Essentially any time you see ceramic packages they are either US or Russian military where cost is not a consideration. Aerospace is very similar in their requirements for ruggedness and performance over temperature swings, so often end up using the same packed chips as the military rather than consumer level ones. Lots of early medical electronics like pacemakers seem to use military spec packages as well, presumably just because they are in a space where you can't really dig them out easily and replace some faulty consumer grade 74 series logic.

<comment><USER5> I think I saw some of those when I was working with guys who designed oilfield tools. It was always a challenge to find stuff with a decent MTBF in the 150C+ oilwell environment. IIRC, there was no published info on it, so we bought a ton of different brands and models, tested them all in-house, and built tools with the ones that performed the best.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> To what end? If they're afraid of backdoors why not use 3x commercial (in this case superior) gear & compare outputs constantly? Cheaper, faster & more reliable, no?

<comment><USER7> They might be afraid of sanctions from other countries. Russia should be able to self-sustain at least to certain degree (military, providing basic services to citizens).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > 1663RU1 has became their first 90nm product reached commercial customers

Neat. Anyone have an idea who their customers are/what this chip would be used for?

<comment><USER9> T.zssdt

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> So how does this compare to other high-end Intel chips out there where they are already are at even lower nm? What is so special about this chip?

<comment><USER11> > So how does this compare to other high-end Intel chips out there where they > are already are at even lower nm?

It compares poorly. There's nothing this chip can do that's special or more functional. It's just an SRAM, which is usually the first step in proving a process works and can produce something useful.

They'll probably eventually use this to implement some logic which means the chips would actually do computations instead of just storing data. For embedded applications, there's a decent amount you can do with a 90nm ASIC process, but there's only a few applications that would actually make it reasonable to pay the price to build a whole fab to make them.

The only thing that's special about this chip is that it's made in Russia, which means that if you're Russian, you can get a chip made in Russia. Which is something a military or government would care about, but few other people do.</comment></comment>


Systemd mounted efivarfs read-write, allowing motherboard bricking via 'rm' - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/2402 <comment><USER2> The comments by Lennart Poettering, IMO, are a prime example of the schism between what is needed for reaching "the year of Linux on the desktop" and what some hackers think is best.

Nobody sells a chainsaw with safeties disabled, remarking "you can always attach the chain catcher" if people report a couple of accidents, but Lennart thinks requiring almost every user to change the default install ( _(note that you can remount it readonly at boot, simply by adding an entry for it into /etc/fstab, that is marked "ro"_) is a better idea than mounting it read-only, and requiring those few who need to write these variables to do some extra work by remounting it read-write.

<comment><USER3> That is an extremely uncharitable reading of what he wrote, and I don't think it captures the essence of his intent at all. He said:

> Well, there are tools that actually want to write it.

It needs to be accessible in some manner.

> The ability to hose a system is certainly reason enought to make sure it's > well protected and only writable to root.

Agreement it needs to be guarded, because it's a problem if it can hose a system.

> But beyond that: root can do anything really.

This is a truism for Unix, and altering this is much more of a problem than the occasional bricked machine. This is free software, and the ability to use it to control our hardware to the fullest extent possible is part of that freedom. Root cannot and should not be restricted from doing what it needs. It _can_ , have hurdles put in place to make it harder to accidentally do something it doesn't mean to do though.

So, agreement on the problem, and agreement that something needs to be done to fix it, and a caution that access can't be entirely closed off without consequences, so root needs access. What's so horrible about that?

<comment><USER4> Not only is root root, and should be permitted to access and modify the system as desired, it seems to me that the root of this problem is that motherboard manufacturers are shipping faulty boards. I shouldn't be able to brick my motherboard from my operating system, and that I can _is_ a bug. You're telling me there isn't so much as a factory reset on these boards?

Perhaps systemd _could_ shield users from their motherboard's manufacturer's stupidity, but the amount of flack being received doesn't seem warranted; has the same amount of outrage been directed towards the manufacturers?

<comment><USER5> We've been living in a world where you couldn't brick the firmware from the OS for a long time, and it's been terrible. I'm perfectly happy to take the risk of being able to brick a board from the OS if it means I never again have to try boot to a dos disk and run a proprietary exe to update the BIOS.

Some boards do have something of a "factory reset" in the form of dual bios so that if one is bricked, the backup can still be booted. But it's not a bug that not every motherboard has this feature.

<comment><USER6> The point isn't that it _can_ be bricked; it's that it's possible to brick it via an "rm". Or heck, doing _anything_ hardware-related via an 'rm'.

The UNIX philosophy of "everything is a file" has always been based around the conceptual 'contents' of these 'files'. The kernel doesn't (directly) care if you remove a device node (block or character-based), it doesn't care if you remove a pipe, and it doesn't care if you remove a socket - even though all of these things are interfaces to the kernel in one form or another. Removing these files only removes your ability to access that interface.

Simiarly with files in /proc - which, like /sys, is directly exported by the kernel. In many cases the kernel refuses to even allow you to unlink the 'files' in /proc, even when it might make sense. (For example, you can't kill a process by 'rm'ing anything in the relevant /proc directory.) Instead, you update the configuration values that the files in /proc represent by echoing into their contents, where applicable.

The case with the efivars 'file' actually causing the kernel to take action when it's removed is what's at issue here. The fact that it happens to brick some computers is particularly unfortunate, but does a good job with showing the problem here. This isn't what the "everything is a file" philosophy is about.

<comment><USER5> I was not defending SystemD, I was defending the hardware manufacturers against the accusation that they're "shipping faulty boards".

I think SystemD is in the wrong here. Operating Systems should be protecting users from bricking their hardware.

Harware manufacturers should not be shipping hardware that's nearly impossible to brick, because it results in hardware that is nearly impossible to update.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> These threads are never productive. Running rm -rf / is going to offer multiple interesting ways to make your life miserable, eg: a mounted FUSE filesystem, an NFS folder pointed somewhere important, Samba mounts from your network automatically connected from your desktop, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if you could nuke firmware off a device by deleting the appropriate file in /sys/.

Systemd hate is en vogue these days so they are an easy and common target. Why no invective towards the kernel that actually implements EFI-as-a-filesystem?

<comment><USER8> Sometimes people run rm -rf / just for fun before reformatting a system, just to see what happens. Given that its purpose in life is to delete files, it stands to reason that running this command on a system which contains no important data is OK. A _default_ configuration which makes this command _destroy hardware_ is not reasonable.

<comment><USER3> rm -rf / probably doesn't do what you think it does. The coreutils version of rm includes --preserve-root[1], which is the default[2].

It also supports --one-file-system, which would prevent this and a host of other problems as well. That said, I don't really see a problem with Lennart's response. It's basically, "we should take steps to make this hard to do, but root is capable of doing anything, so don't expect it to be foolproof."

1: [https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/rm-i...](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/rm- invocation.html)

2: [https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/Trea...](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/Treating-_002f-specially.html#Treating-_002f-specially)

<comment><USER8> Is there some response besides the one linked here? Because all I see here is basically saying, "We're not going to change anything, this is not a problem, remount it yourself if you don't like it."

<comment><USER3> He says "The ability to hose a system is certainly reason enought to make sure it's well protected and only writable to root." That looks like agreement that it needs something done to me. I took the followup comment to be a useful to on how to mitigate the problem until then.

<comment><USER8> Isn't it already only writeable by root? The request is to make it not even writeable by root without taking some additional action to make it writeable first. If I understand correctly, that bit you quote just describes the current situation.

<comment><USER3> I take the _and_ in his reply to infer he agrees something additional should be done. Whether his ultimate response for _how_ to do that is adequate is unknown, since he didn't really elaborate on exactly what he thinks should be done. It could be he meant that to signify agreement with the suggested course of action in addition to agreement that there's a problem to be fixed.

In any case, the only thing clear to me from his statements is that he agreed that there was a problem in need of attention, which makes the response here somewhat baffling to me (although not as baffling as it _should_ be. It's fairly easy to see how a lot of the animosity comes from feeling about systemd in general and Lennart in particular, especially since some people state as much, as if that has any bearing on his response in this instance).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > (note that you can remount it readonly at boot, simply by adding an entry > for it into /etc/fstab, that is marked "ro")

He's suggesting that not mounting it as read-only by default will break a few things like grub-install, but promptly suggested editing /etc/fstab to mount it read-only by default.

So... his own solution to the problem is to mount it as read-only.

The hard drive analogy is ridiculous because while you can lose data you cannot brick your hard drive or computer by erasing it. There are ways to brick a hard drive by corrupting the firmware but there are very specific tools like "hdparm" that you have to use to do it, not an everyday command like "rm".

This makes me wonder why Linux only has a single "root" user rather than multiple types of administrators. Windows, for example, has Administrator, which can do nearly everything, but some files and processes are protected under SYSTEM or TrustedInstaller. If you REALLY want to, you can still remove those files by changing ownership, or launching a command prompt with SYSTEM permissions, but it does add a significant hurdle to doing things that could cause significant damage.

<comment><USER10> In linux, there is the immutable file attribute which won't let root rm the file without first changing it with chattr.

<comment><USER11> File attributes need to be implemented by the filesystem. efivars is a pseudo- filesystem which does not implement them. It could, but that is one of the more needlessly complicated solutions...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> To be fair, userspace access to these variables is required in order to manage EFI boot. Having them there to be deleted (by root!) accidentally is probably bad, but this isn't a meaningful security fix.

The real crisis here is that modern firmware is developed in an environment so fragile and isolated that it's simply unable to recover from configuration that is "wrong".

I had a laptop that I bricked about two years ago by accidentally wiping out the partition table on the soldered-down storage.

<comment><USER8> I don't think this is meant to be a _security_ fix, it's just meant to make it so you can't accidentally break your hardware with what seems like an unrelated filesystem command.

I agree that the stupid firmware is ultimately to blame, and mounting this stuff read-write is a fairly reasonable initial decision. But given the existence of this stupid firmware, the resistance to implementing an easy mitigation by mounting it read-only is insane. I can't understand why there are any responses besides "oh shit, we'd better change this."

<comment><USER13> Technically, denial of service is a security issue - I have modern servers that boot via UEFI (since GPT is required to support large disks), hopefully with less buggy implementations but if someone manages to get root on a server they could totally kill the hardware.

Having to reinstall an OS because some script kiddie decided to `rm -rf --no- preserve-root /` your server bites, but actually bricking the system requiring a board replacement is scary. (Of course, they could technically be a jerk and flash your UEFI EEPROM, but most servers have a backup they will restore from in case the primary has been corrupted).

EDIT: Though, now that I think about it, this is still only going to stop users from hosing their systems. A malicious user could still run an arbitrary binary or kernel module that hoses the UEFI variables as well. Or by modifying the UEFI boot config to load some other custom UEFI binary to hose it... firmware vendors really just need to get their crap in gear, software (even running in UEFI boot services mode shouldn't be able to hose it).

<comment><USER8> Regarding your edit, exactly. The issue could be considered a security issue, but this fix is not a security fix. A security fix would be something like only allowing touching EFI during startup and then somehow securely and permanently disabling that ability until the next reboot, or a physical write- protect switch on the computer.

Or EFI firmware not being so stupid, but we know that's not going to happen.

<comment><USER13> Maybe if there was some awful Windows virus that nuked boards with bad implementations they would fix their crap.

<comment><USER14> Bingo. You're only a call to SetFirmwareEnvironmentVariable away from having your Windows system hosed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This isn't a systemd problem. It's a kernel problem.

Allowing accidental access to a resource capable of doing permanent damage is dumb. Even embedded processors generally have an "unlock/lock" sequence when you want to write to their flash memory.

The fact that the kernel doesn't require you to write a "magic number" somewhere to gain access is foolhardy.

</comment><comment><USER16> One day I broke my laptop's boot list, so I went to add a new efi boot entry. I couldn't and thought it was due to my inability to find a proper usb bootable media with efi support since you can't access efi-vars if you boot from bios.

Turns out linux used to store crash-dumps inside efi-vars, so mine were full and new entries couldn't be written. Good thing /sys/firmware/efi/vars/ was mounted rw, thus a `rm -rf /sys/firmware/efi/vars/dump-*` fixed it.

Some kind of protection would be nice, but the ability to see and use efi-vars as a filesystem is useful too. If we listen to security researchers too much, our computers will be no fun.

<comment><USER17> Breaking your laptop's boot list _will happen more often_ with it mounted RW anyway. So it's good it fixed it for you, but I doubt the number of cases it's fixed something/been useful outnumbers the cases where someone bricks their system using what is probably the most repeated Linux command on the internet: rm -rf /.

<comment><USER16> The reason the efi's boot list was broken was because I wanted to replace a HDD. The laptop has 2 HDDs, I removed them and booted with the new, empty disk for an experiment before adding back my system disk. UEFI thought is was appropriate to remove the non-existing disks' entries from its list and thus I couldn't boot anymore.

Anyway, I don't think this is a systemd bug. The /sys interface comes from the kernel and whether you will access efi vars depends on your kernel configuration. There is the older module (I believe _efivars_ if it isn't compiled as built-in) and the newer (I believe _efivarsfs_).

I've done my fair share of systemd bashing but here we have:

      1. Broken and/or naive EFI implementations
      2. Linux kernel's default choices (expose efivars as rw)
      3. Distro's choices (compile kernel with said modules as built-in)

And we give the fault to systemd. Every other init system out there does the same.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> And that's the sort of thing that could easily sneak into the `curl [http://some/url](http://some/url) | sudo bash`-style of installs that are popular these days.

<comment><USER19> Good.

<comment><USER13> I could do it in an RPM post-install script too if it will get people to stop whining about running arbitrary scripts.

All software you install on your system through binaries is potentially suspect to an extend. Sure, I trust the Fedora build system to do the right thing, so I can with some certainty assume anything in the Fedora Collection or EPEL is "safe" \- but when I need to install 3rd party software to get my video card working I can throw all that out the window.

Be sane when testing _any_ binary you install, at least with RPM's or DEB's I can verify the GPG key of the vendor - assuming they bother to use one at all... piping scripts directly from curl to bash is bad because of the potential of the stream ending early and leaving in an inconsistent state, that's the only thing that is notable worse versus installing a package (and can be worked around by downloading it first, THEN executing it).

<comment><USER20> Given you need to be root to install software on an Ubuntu system, a deb could do that also.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Unless you're doing something super screwy, GRUB, the excuse for this backwards default, doesn't even need access to UEFI. UEFI booting looks for a file in a FAT-formatted partition of a hard disk with a specific ID -- C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B for GPT disks and 0xEF for MBR disks. All EFI does is to look for a file BOOTX64.EFI on that partition. There's no need to muck around the UEFI settings for this, it Just Fucking Works.

<comment><USER22> Only removable disks use bootx64.efi, though some (but not all) BIOSes will look for that on fixed disks too. efibootmgr needs access to efivarsfs to configure an EFI boot entry for Linux on a fixed disk. Relying exclusively on bootx64.efi on the EFI system partition will break on some devices, and will overwrite the Windows bootloader (and conversely, Windows doing so will render Linux unbootable).

<comment><USER21> The standard is for EFI to look for that partition on all disks, even hard disks. If there are a few broken systems that do otherwise, they could use other methods, but keeping things mostly standardized seems like the best way to go. It's how Windows does it, it's how FreeBSD does it, it's how OpenBSD does it, etc. Mucking around with it doing otherwise is just asking for problems.

<comment><USER22> The EFI standard specifically limits that to removable media. Windows installs itself via the EFI boot variable mechanism; Windows _also_ installs itself to bootx64.efi, but even if you overwrite that, you can still boot Windows via its EFI boot entry. Having Linux systems install themselves only to bootx64.efi would produce a fragile installation (particularly in dual-boot configurations).

<comment><USER21> Okay, I read the standard and you're right, they are supposed to install to a vendor specific location, so my apologies. Boot's an additional place you can put it, but not the regular place.

As an aside, goddamn is UEFI ugly. BIOS it was easy -- set the partition you want to boot as bootable, and away you go. here you have to copy the bootloader file, and then write to the firmware what file you want to boot, which feels even more fragile and confusing if you decide to wipe a hard drive to put a new OS on it unless you do everything just right.

<comment><USER23> > As an aside, goddamn is UEFI ugly.

You're goddamn right it is. Matthew Garrett [0] used to do UEFI stuff for -IIRC- RedHat. He has MANY blog posts about fucked-up parts of the spec, and horrifyingly fucked-up implementations of the same. Sadly, it looks like most (if not all) of his posts are now tagged "advogato, fedora", so I can't point you specifically to the UEFI gore posts.

[0] [http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/](http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/)

<comment><USER24> My personal favorite is how [http://lkml.org/lkml/2013/11/11/653](http://lkml.org/lkml/2013/11/11/653) is posted by @hp.com that also locked access to UEFI updates to paid customers not long after it was posted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Why not just turn off recognition of "rm" in the efivarfs? That is, the response to "unlink" of a file that represents a system abstraction of firmware should be something drastic only to the unlinker. SIGSEGV or something. "Go away, don't do that."

<comment><USER26> Well there are use cases where you'd _want_ to remove an EFI variable.

<comment><USER27> Then just require the efivars to have different semantics, just have a look like unbind works for drivers. If you really want to be super cautious, add a safeguard to enable this.

        echo 1       >/sys/...efi.../enable_remove
        echo varname >/sys/...efi.../remove_var

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Unix has a long tradition of doing a `rm -rf /` before reinstalling a system. I don't agree with the people saying "don't do that". It worked safely before, it should still be safe to do.

(yes I know about --no-preserve-root)

<comment><USER29> `rm -rf /` was never safe, even if reinstalling the system. If it worked for you then you were just lucky. In the context doing a reinstall you need to specify --one-file-system, but really you should just reformat the partition, it'll likely be much faster anyways.

<comment><USER30> On one episode of BSD Now[1], Bryan Cantrill tells how they made 'rm -rf /' not work on Solaris. It seems like a good idea in that they managed to stay compliant to POSIX while disarming that particular foot seeking-missile.

Or, in other words: I agree completely, in fifteen years I have never used 'rm -rf /', I always used mkfs to create fresh filesystem.

[1] [http://www.bsdnow.tv/episodes/2015_08_19-ubuntu_slaughters_k...](http://www.bsdnow.tv/episodes/2015_08_19-ubuntu_slaughters_kittens)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> That's a dreadful response from Pottering.

</comment><comment><USER31> So, the short read here is, one (arguably poorly thought out) complex system interacts with another (again, arguably poorly thought out) complex system in unthought about ways... Why is anyone surprised?

I'm no fan of systemd or Poettering, but this behavior is consistent for unix, root can do anything, including break peripherals or hardware thru poorly advised actions - why is this a big to do?

<comment><USER32> Because this is a violation of principle of least astonishment[1], as a sysadmin when I hose my system using rm I expect to be able to repair or recover without having to replace the motherboard.

see also: [https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=207549](https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=207549) [https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=208102](https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=208102)

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> How long before someone realises that grub could also be made part of systemd... _cringes_

<comment><USER23> > How long before someone realises that grub could also be made part of > systemd...

[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Systemd- boot](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Systemd-boot)

<comment><USER33> This is why I didn't even want to google it... ignorance is bliss. Thank you, i guess...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I can't understand why people argue about this. Just put some safety measures on it already. Or at least change the rm option to "\--brick-my-motherboard"

<comment><USER35> Honestly, I feel the issue is more rm -rf's default behaviour being to cross filesystems. This is almost always not what you want (and tends to result in deleting network drives, to give an example which has nothing to do with systemd), especially considering attempting to delete a mount point fails.

<comment><USER8> I think there are at least three issues here.

One is efivarfs making it too easy to destroy stuff. It should probably identify problematic hardware and prohibit modifications that break that hardware. This is no fun, but hardware-specific workarounds are a fact of life for real-world OSes.

One is, as you say, bad default behavior with rm. Crossing filesystems by default is pretty weird. Preventing that unless it's explicitly requested would largely fix this problem and many others too.

And one is mounting efivarfs read-write by default. It's too dangerous to be that easy to modify.

I don't think it's too useful to try to pin one of these down as "the issue." They're all worth fixing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Could be a job for SELinux. Most of the files in efivars don't ever need modifying. So SELinux could make all files unmodifiable by default, and allow modification of the few that are needed by efibootmgr.

<comment><USER13> Unless you set SELinux to run in strict mode root still has access to delete everything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> See also [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11008449](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11008449) .

</comment><comment><USER38> sensible defaults</comment>


React Native source - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gdi2290/react-native

<comment><USER2> Wow that was gone in a flash!</comment>


Ask HN: What % of Fortune 500 companies are currently paying ransomware hackers? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I'd assume that this is a closely guarded secret. A company wouldn't want to encourage targeted ransomware attacks by admitting that (1) their security is bad enough that they were hit by ransomware in the past and (2) they're willing to pay ransom.

Why do you want to know?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Ran a similar poll on twitter: [https://twitter.com/datarade/status/914181410407239680](https://twitter.com/datarade/status/914181410407239680)</comment>


I Now Pronounce You Legally Null and Void - <AUTHOR> https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/i-now-pronounce-you-legally-null-and-void <comment><USER2> This is something that has been on my mind a lot over the past few years, having gone through an ugly, costly divorce and having watched friends stay in rotten marriages. Relationships come in a lot of forms, and we lack vocabulary, laws, and social acceptance for many of them. My mother's partner of more than ten years is still legally married to someone else, because to divorce would set off financial destruction for both parties. My "partpanion" and I call each other that because partner is so clinical, companion so incomplete, other terms like "significant other" a strange twist of the language. Can a seventy-year old really be a "girlfriend / boyfriend"? We will likely never marry, and to make things odder, "domestic partnership" can now only be made legally binding here for older people, presumably for the purpose of making it easier to deal with things like medical-power-of-attorney in the event of poor health. And then there are all the people I know who stay in terrible marriages either because of kids, money, religion... I kinda like some of these examples from the article that are so "live and let live" accepting of humanity, so long as we are good to each other and providing nurture to any children produced. Until that time, the lawyers sure make out like bandits.

<comment><USER3> In Scandinavia we have the term "kjæreste" which roughly translates to "most beloved". When I think about I believe it's only in Norway and Sweden we have that word. In Sweden they have the word ælskling which means much the same thing. Both used in much the same way as boyfriend/girlfriend, but without the gender and without the implied youth so can be used by both young and old.

<comment><USER4> Would "dearest" be close to "kjæreste"?

<comment><USER5> Spot on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article points to many historical connections between the women's rights movement and marriage laws, through I wish it would have connected the dots to the current day. Looking at here in Sweden a lot of laws in regard to marriage was abolished in the time around 1960-1980, through the feminist movement was split on the issue and has since not really continued to abolish them. The US for example still have alimony as a concept which backs from the 1700s world view that alimony to wives was paid because it was assumed that the marriage, and the wife's right to support, would have continued but for the misbehavior of the husband.

A lingering view of marriage is the idea that the two individuals are now a single entity and should be treated as such by the government and companies. From a 21th century perspective this doesn't make much sense. Historical a loan might have been given to a family, and if it defaulted the debt transferred to the other family members. Today that is no longer a practice. Welfare is usually on a per-person basis with some minor exceptions. The biggest exception here in Sweden is insurance which still has some "family" aspect attached in both cost and coverage.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is about marriage history.

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't know how others on HN may feel, but given stories I have heard I personally have no desire to be legally married until men are treated a bit more favorably by marriage law.

As it stands, a man who has accumulated significant assets and net worth as is common in the tech industry, would be easily ruined by a divorce to the wrong woman. Prenuptials do not always save you.

<comment><USER9> You fundamentally misunderstand what marriage is.

<comment><USER10> Perhaps, then, you could explain where the commenter you are responding to's misunderstanding lies, for the benefit of him/her and the rest of us?

<comment><USER9> The point of marriage is to pool money to provide for each other and your potential children. Once you get married it's not "your" money any more, it belongs to both of you.

That's from the States PoV, and since they make the laws that govern marriage it's a reasonable position to take.

All the other stuff (eg religious baggage) that comes along are optional extras.

<comment><USER6> As I explored in an other comment, it used to be that once married the community viewed the family as a single entity and as such the money did not belong to a single person but rather to the family. Very similar, debt also did not belong to a single person but was an property of the family and in cases of death of the parents it also transfered to the children. From the banks PoV, it was a reasonable position to take that it was every family members responsibility to uphold the family honor and repay any debt.

This 18th century view was thankfully mostly abolished by later centuries. We don't see children going into debt slavery just to repay their parents or grandparents sins. An other 18th century concept is that children starved and died if they did not have a supporting family. There was no welfare state or no social net. A major progress in the way government operates today is that government operates on individuals. The PoV of the state is that there is individuals that need food, healthcare, and social support. Those individuals could be a child in which a lack of essential needs cause the state to bring in social services. The family is only a factor when evaluating the available support an individual has, but in the end its the individual that the government focus on. 18th century marriage law did not look at the individual, and as such it made sense that marriage was a single entity that formed a family which members had legal responsibility to each other. The state issued the laws that defined a family, the family protected each member, and the chain of command (and law) was simple, clear and established.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I feel click baited by the title.

<comment><USER12> I did not, my mind went straight to marriage/divorce when I read the title. I don't think the title was at all click bait.

<comment><USER11> For some reason I expected someone with the last name Null to get married to someone with the last name Void or some kind of benign database error to produce a marriage certificate with said surnames.</comment></comment></comment>