The ticking time-bomb at the bottom of the Baltic Sea - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/easternapproaches/2013/11/baltic-sea <comment><USER2> My father, who was in the Royal Engineers at the end of WWII and for a few years after, was always worried about the "tons" of mustard gas and explosives that he and his colleagues were ordered to dump into the Irish Sea. He told me that some of the explosives were so unstable that they "sweated" nitroglycerine, and they used to run their finger down the sides of the explosives and flick it at each other to make small bangs. Bear in mind that although they had explosives training they were basically kids.

He also mentioned that the seas were often so rough that they did "dump and run" as soon as they were out of sight of land. It was supposed to go into the deepest sections of the Irish Sea, but he claims a lot of it was closer to Scotland.

It was the mustard gas, and other nasties that he wouldn't talk about, that worried him right up until he passed away in his eighties. They knew it wasn't the right thing to do, but at that time you followed orders and did as little as possible until you got demobbed.

<comment><USER3> Terrifying. But like you said, basically kids during the war forced to do a lot of things most modern day guys could never even imagine.

<comment><USER4> >>> most modern day guys could never even imagine.

Oh no need for that. Grab a local news paper, check the crime section. 'modern day guys' are not so smart and innocent, are they?

<comment><USER5> My gradma digged trenches and stacked bodies, at the age of 14 or 15. Modern day guies don't do that, or something similar. War time is dramatical different.

<comment><USER6> Eh, go look at footage out of Syria or parts of Africa--it's more a comment on the state of the civilizations going to war.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The shelf life of most chemical weapons is fairly short -- and tends to be shorter the nastier they are.

We're mainly talking mustard gas. Germany did use nerve gases tabun, sarin, and soman [1]. But nerve gases degrade after a period of a few weeks to a few years. I'm not sure _what_ they degrade into, admittedly, and I doubt it's nice.

Mustard gas lasts longer, but is also much less potent. Military use is about 1 tonne for 2.6 square kilometres [2]. So if it were just leaking into the open sea -- even one as small as the Baltic -- it wouldn't be an issue. The problem is really if something re-concentrates it -- currents, or location, or possibly going up the food chain (does that happen?)

So my initial feeling is it's not quite as catastrophic as it sounds. Would love to hear from somebody better-informed, though.

1 - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany_and_weapons_of_mass_de...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction#World_War_II)

2 - [http://www.iraqwatch.org/perspectives/rangwala- powell-020503...](http://www.iraqwatch.org/perspectives/rangwala- powell-020503.htm)

<comment><USER8> > Mustard gas lasts longer, but is also much less potent

Maybe much less potent in killing instantly (ie in combat use), but what about long-term low-dosage exposure?

> possibly going up the food chain (does that happen?)

Bio-accumulation in general is very real thing, and imho the most worrisome aspect of this situation.

<comment><USER9> The issue with chemical weapons is that they are very reactive. Mustard gas would react with the organics floating around in the ocean very quickly.

As for the hydrolysis product of mustard gas, thiodiethanol, it's not very toxic. The MSDS claims acute toxicity in rates starts around 6.5g/kg. So a human would need to consume ~500g in order to see toxicity.

Also, thiodiethanol is quite reactive itself. It would likely be oxidized to the carboxylic acid. Wouldn't surprise me if bacteria could metabolize it.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, given the existence of life at deep-sea sulfuric vents, I wouldn't be surprised if the newly evolved bioorganisms were colonizing the containers at their leakage points.

<comment><USER11> There are no deep-sea sulfuric vents in the Baltic Sea.

<comment><USER12> The point is the ocean is known to contain bacteria which can metabolize chemical sources in the form of sulfur compounds. There's a chance that any slowly leaking CS munitions in the Baltic Sea could host bacterial colonies which break down these compounds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Not just in the Baltic Sea. There's a dump of WWI poison gas grenades 2km off the Belgian coast, buried in the sand. You can see the marker buoys from the beach.

Here's a little map of the area: [http://www.wereldoorlog1418.nl/gasoorlog/paardenmarkt.html](http://www.wereldoorlog1418.nl/gasoorlog/paardenmarkt.html)

EDIT: Then there's the stuff on land. In Belgium they still recuperate between 100 and 200 tons of ammunition per year. Farmers post them by the side of the road for the bomb disposal teams to pick up. A couple of workers in Ypres (yes, that Ypres) died last month unintentionally digging up a WWI bomb.

<comment><USER14> Some very pricy real estate in Washington, DC, the Spring Valley neighborhood, was once part of a chemical warfare station. When WW I ended, the staff followed the approved disposal method--dig a hole, roll in the shells, cover the hole. A lot of nasty stuff, mostly as I recall mustard gas shells, has been dug out and disposed of more properly over the last 30 years or so. But one reads now and then of concern about arsenic levels in the topsoil.

<comment><USER15> Same with some of the choicest real estate in the SF bay area, which came under sustained barrage back when Stanford University was a munitions range.

That was during WWI, when the U.S. Army was targeting Portola Valley, which is now one of the wealthiest zip codes in the nation:

[http://www.worldwar1.com/tripwire/pdf/campfremont.pdf](http://www.worldwar1.com/tripwire/pdf/campfremont.pdf) "Camp Fremont troops engage in mobile artillery practice, near what is now Dish Hill. The guns—almost certainly 75mm field guns of British or American manufacture—are aimed toward Foothills Park and Portola Valley, where 75mm shells were unearthed as recently as November 2010... five million rounds of World War I-era ammunition fired in a four-month span on the foothills where the camp conducted its war games..."

That document doesn't say anything about Woodside (where Steve Jobs famously battled with the town) just a tad to the north. But Woodside was settled earlier. Mountain Home Ranch was settled in 1839 and and a local church opened in 1893 -- all of which likely convinced the Army to shift its artillery range to the south...

<comment><USER16> The Ghost Fleet in San Francisco Bay had me interested after going past it via train. Not sure what the plan is for it, but leaving stuff like that to rot won't be doing the sea any good. The well maintained shipyard that isn't too far from me has one hell of a high heavy metal count and I can't imaging The Ghost Fleet is doing any better. [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suisun_Bay](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suisun_Bay)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> 65,000 tonnes of chemical sounds humongous, but picturing the volume makes it look a lot smaller (not trying to diminish the potential gravity of the problem).

Assume the chemicals have a density of 1 g/cm^3, the same as water, which seems reasonable for organic liquids and such. Then a cubic meter weighs a metric tonne. So 65,000 tonnes is the same as a cube that is 40 meters on a side.

Another visualization: 1/5 of the volume of oil that can be carried by a Very Large Crude Carrier supertanker according to Wolfram Alpha:

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=65000+m^3](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=65000+m^3)

EDIT: Without diminishing the potential gravity of the problem, but trying to visualize what 65,000 tonnes looks like, I'm surprised it doesn't look as big as I thought it would.

<comment><USER18> It may sound small by volume, but it sounds pretty big by potential effect. Especially if we're talking about compounds that can bioaccumulate and move up the food chain. We worry about the mercury content of tuna, what happens when the tuna has an appreciable amount of whatever-mustard-gas-breaks-down-into?

<comment><USER19> Thiodiglycol. It's not a serious issue, I'm more worried about the mustard gas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There used to be -- and really still is -- this cavalier attitude about dumping stuff into the sea, because it gets diluted so much. Disposing nuclear waste this way has only been banned since 1993[0]. And of course more recently, the ocean was where much of the pollution from the Fukushima incident was directed.

Or take sea-faring ships, who dump both grey and black water (ie. untreated sewage) into the sea; I understand this is slowly being subject to some regulation. Ships also run with heavy oil which has its own set of issues (mostly sulfur content and NOx); in terms of CO2 emissions shipping is super efficient though.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_w...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_waste)

<comment><USER21> I recall reading some proposal for dumping nuclear waste in the Marianas Trench. The rational had something to do with tectonic shifting eventually pushing the waste into the Earth's mantle.

<comment><USER22> The subduction zone off Vancouver, BC is also a place for this, and off Chile is even better.

The problem is the subduction zones are very slow -- on the order of 25 meters per 100 years, at most. The waste isn't particularly threatening past 10-20k years.

I still believe in reprocessing as the best solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is there something missing from the article or am I going mad? I don't understand how people came to the rational conclusion that it would be ok to dump thousands of tons of this stuff into the sea. It seems to me that people collectively agreed to create a guaranteed disaster.

<comment><USER24> Ecological concerns weren't really a thing until the '60s. There was a widespread belief that oceans could "take care" of everything; besides, in 30 years we'd all be flying to some other planet anyway.

<comment><USER25> Which is still the belief in some parts of the world as well as some people.

Silent Spring was published in 1962. It brought environmental problems to mainstream Americans. As a result of new awareness the EPA was created.

What seems "obvious" now might not have always been obvious.

Lets not forget there have been over 2,000 (known) nuclear weapons test in the world. 1032 done by the US alone, most in Nevada. It is well known that these tests released massive amounts of radiation that affects human health. Clouds carried the radiation across the United States into the Mid-West and Northeast and deposited it with rain.[1][2][3][4]

[1] [http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=390963](http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=390963)

[2] [http://www.sciencemag.org/content/220/4592/18.abstract?sid=e...](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/220/4592/18.abstract?sid=ebaae089-599e-4d84-b440-a5a05b1ea2e4)

[3] [http://www.ieer.org/latest/iodnart.html](http://www.ieer.org/latest/iodnart.html)

[4] [http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/fallout-from- nuc...](http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/fallout-from-nuclear- weapons-tests-and-cancer-risks)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I lived on the Danish island of Bornholm in the middle of the Baltic in the 80s. The island is basically surrounded by mustard gas dumping grounds. Back then many local fishermen were seriously wounded by accidentally pulling mustard gas bombs up in their nets.

</comment><comment><USER27> And then there are 28,500 containers of radioactive waste, dropped into the English Channel between 1950 and 1963: [http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/legacy-danger- old...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/legacy-danger-old-nuclear- waste-found-in-english-channel-a-893991.html)

[..] at a depth of 124 meters (406 feet) just kilometers from the French coast.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Some more detailed information: [http://www.mir.gdynia.pl/wp- content/uploads/2013/11/BST-NATO...](http://www.mir.gdynia.pl/wp- content/uploads/2013/11/BST-NATO.pdf)

<comment><USER7> Thanks for adding this. It's much, much more informative than the Economist article

In fact, I think it deserves to be posted by itself, so I've submitted it as [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7620544](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7620544)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Don't forget the atomic bombs and H-bombs:

* Dozens of Atomic Warheads Lost In Sea by Superpowers, Study Says: [http://www.nytimes.com/1989/06/07/us/dozens-of-atomic-warhea...](http://www.nytimes.com/1989/06/07/us/dozens-of-atomic-warheads-lost-in-sea-by-superpowers-study-says.html)

* Missing for 50 years - US nuclear bomb: [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8107908.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8107908.stm)

<comment><USER29> The first link you posted mentions the USS Iowa Gun Turret explosion, another shocking tale of negligence.

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

<comment><USER12> Fascinating read. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I grew up in a sleepy little town and I lived about 800M from the DOW plant that made 245T and agent orange components. Apparently surplus was dumped in and around the surrounding areas which as time went on became populated with people raising families. Proving the effects of chemical contamination is no easy feat. [http://www.bhopal.net/worldmap/new_zealand_more.html](http://www.bhopal.net/worldmap/new_zealand_more.html)

</comment><comment><USER31> Recently navy mine hunters set off an old british mine in the sea just outside my office. It wasn't too big, which is interesting because the shock wave was. There are some videos from controlled demolition on the net but the shock wave in the ground just has to be experienced.

</comment><comment><USER32> I read an article about it in a polish science magazine many years ago. I'm surprised that given the potential catastrophic consequences of this, no one seems to be doing anything about it. We knew about this "time-bomb" for decades. Can anything be done about it?

I guess it's time to get used to the thought that "holiday on a beach" will soon mean visiting Croatia.

</comment><comment><USER33> To get around the paywall go here: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Tjo28gT...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Tjo28gTGGHIJ:www.economist.com/blogs/easternapproaches/2013/11/baltic- sea+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=at)

<comment><USER34> Or, right-click the link and open in a new private window.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I found an article related to this, [0].

Apparently they dumped stuff in the North Sea as well. The dumping locations that are known of are mostly the deeper parts. The Baltic is 459m at maximum depth while the North stacks a chilling 700m.

I think the dumping locations in the North Sea would be easier to find (The North has been mapped fairly comprehensively due to oil and gas exploration) but harder to deal with (it's tough as hell). The Baltic is smaller and surrounded mostly by land, so I'm guessing the Baltic would be hit harder.

[0] [http://www.chemsea.eu/characterization_and_mapping.php](http://www.chemsea.eu/characterization_and_mapping.php)

</comment><comment><USER35> And they're about to dump some more into the Mediterranean unless we do something about it: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7620714](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7620714)

<comment><USER36> No, they're destroying the weapons at sea, not dumping them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> This may be a dumb question, but why were they tossed into the ocean? Was it because there was no alternative? Or they just wanted them away from potential users of them?

<comment><USER38> Where else should they have dumped this stuff? That's not meant to be a glib response. It was (and perhaps still is) a serious quandary. Should they have buried these munitions in a field somewhere? In mine shafts? In a remote section of the Alps or Pyrenees? I'd imagine that all of these alternatives would have placed the weapons in closer proximity to humans and civilization, with an accordingly greater risk of catastrophe, at a similar ecological cost.

Consider, in addition: 1) that the weapons were unstable and rapidly degrading, which meant time was not on anyone's side; 2) a third World War seemed not just possible, but perhaps probable, especially as tensions mounted between the Soviets and the Western allies. Very quickly after WW2, the United States realized it did not have the manpower to repel a Soviet land invasion in Europe; in fact, it was outnumbered and outgunned by a significant margin. So the US and its allies very much perceived themselves to be in a race against the clock.

In retrospect, it's east to wring our hands about how these weapons were disposed of. But there were very few choices available, all of them onerous. Given the choice back then, i.e., "Do I want this stuff in the ocean, in the groundwater, or under Soviet control?" policy makers found the ocean to be the least of three evils.

Of course, the best thing to have done would have been to disassemble the munitions and render their contents chemically inert. The infrastructure, specialized labor force, resources, and time to do this were not on hand.

<comment><USER37> Interesting. I had thought of "We may have to fight another war" but not that it would be too hard to dig a very big hole and bury them under a mile of concrete. (Do with them whatever we do with nuclear waste - granted we didn't have much nuclear waste in 1945)

<comment><USER38> We should also note that a lot of these weapons -- particularly, the ones seized from the Nazis -- were advanced beyond the technical understanding of the generals who'd seized them.

These bombs and rockets, including their chemical propellants, oxidizers, and payloads, were designed by the world's top rocket scientists, in an era where perhaps a few dozen of those people even existed. Disposing of these things safely and securely would have been a bit like disposing of some alien death ray that turned up in the Arctic permafrost.

Add to this the fact that most of Europe was a bombed-out husk in the aftermath of the war. We're talking entire countries reduced to Third World status. We're talking nonexistent transportation infrastructure. Civil unrest. The threat of riots, uprisings, and invasion on all sides. Factories and assembly plants blown to rubble. Millions of the Continent's best, brightest, and most capable workers annihilated or driven off. Most of the Continent's brain trust being frantically courted by either side of the emerging Cold War battle lines. Total chaos, more or less.

Even getting our hands on enough cement to bury the weapons might have been difficult, given resource and time constraints.

<comment><USER37> Good points. Easy to take the history for granted.

<comment><USER38> Thanks, and very sorry for the rambling on this topic! I just have a fascination with the post-WW2 / early Cold War period.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This is an interesting article, and the comments are even more interesting, highlighting other similar scenarios that have happened around the world.

I'm more curious if we think we'll learn from these and in the future try to make better decisions (which hopefully means we'll avoid production in the first place, which means... well, I live in a Disney world sometimes OK?). Sometimes it's depressing how short term the collective memory of humanity seems to be, what with bubbles and crises repeating themselves every couple of generations.

</comment><comment><USER40> See also:

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

Which is wrecked in the Thames Estuary with 1.4KT of TNT onboard.

* 286 × 2,000 lb (910 kg) high explosive "Blockbuster" bombs

* 4,439 × 1,000 lb (450 kg) bombs of various types

* 1,925 × 500 lb (230 kg) bombs

* 2,815 fragmentation bombs and bomb clusters

</comment><comment><USER41> Surprised that we are 70+ comments into this thread and not one mention of a similar scenario right off the coast of San Francisco:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farallon_Islands#Nuclear_waste_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farallon_Islands#Nuclear_waste_dump)

</comment><comment><USER42> That's a known one, then there are the ones from the Soviet union.

</comment><comment><USER43> The similar US operation was cheerfully named CHASE (Cut Holes and Sink 'Em): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_CHASE](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_CHASE)

<comment><USER44> I came here to make this comment. Interestingly enough, VX poison gas (think The Rock, but less face-melting) was disposed in this way before they tried incineration and chemical means.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Request: someone please post a tl:dr

Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER46> dumping trash into the ocean is like playing morbid peak-a-boo: what is not seen does not exist until it suddenly reappears.

</comment><comment><USER47> This piece of "journalism" is pure speculation.

</comment><comment><USER48> I've been thinking of moving to Poland from the U.S. for a few months now. This sort of thing doesn't necessarily make me not want to go, but it does make me angry how the U.S. and other countries treat the majority of the world like our own, personal dump. And it makes me wonder how well Americans would be received by the locals once people start coming down with cancer and other horrible diseases that we essentially are the direct cause of.

<comment><USER49> "Under an agreement reached at the Potsdam Conference in 1945, Britain and the Soviet Union dumped around 65,000 tonnes of Germany's chemical weapons stockpile into the murky depths of the Baltic Sea in 1947-48."

What does America have to do with this?

<comment><USER50> > What does America have to do with this?

America didn't go to war to stop it, so obviously things that happen in the Baltic Sea are the fault of America. Or something, I don't know.</comment></comment></comment>


Court decides "fair use": Turnitin.com not violating student copyright - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/04/fair-use-bolste.html

<comment><USER2> I'm actually kind of torn over the result in this case. On the one hand, it's great that the court adopted an expansive view of fair use. In particular, I'm glad that the court strongly approved Pierre Leval's transformativeness test, which is a great standard for internet services that use copyrighted works in innovative ways.

On the other hand, you have to admit that it's weird for the students, who are forced to submit their personal works to this third-party service.

Consider an analogy: your startup got a great valuation from a VC, you're signing the papers, and suddenly the lead partner says to you, "Oh, one more thing. You have to submit copies of all of your software to Microsoft for archive purposes. But don't worry, they promised not to do anything with it!"

Sure, Microsoft will probably just leave your source code on an archive disk and never look at it. But still, it's a weird feeling.

<comment><USER3> _students, who are forced to submit their personal works to this third-party service_

The value the students gain from this service is authentication that their school papers are their own work, which makes their school credentials more valuable. It is a good trade-off for the students, who lose no rights at all to produce further derivative works from their original works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Google should use this as a precedent for storing the works of books in a database for search purposes.

<comment><USER5> Google wouldn't be that crazy, surely. Imagine the copyright outrage, the legal fees, and the obvious need to track down authors all over the world.

Why such a fantasy would cost them $125M at least!

<comment><USER6> that is nothing compared to what they could gain

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Interesting commentary on cultural differences regarding plagiarism in academic papers:

<http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish/2009-04-15-voa1.cfm>

<comment><USER4> Do you think this is a cultural difference or an educational difference? Many students may not see what is wrong with representing the thoughts of others until it is explained to them (something that occurs typically at a high school level in Australia).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Cool! I always thought that the copyright claims against Turnitin.com were a classic example of a "strike suit," a bogus legal claim to shake down a defendant for a monetary settlement.

<comment><USER4> Maybe, but the claim isn't that bogus - the students haven't given Turnitin.com rights to use their work especially for monetary gain.

<comment><USER3> I heard a lot from one of the students when he was first publicizing his lawsuit on another Web forum. His dad was a lawyer, and it was painfully apparent that they were constructing outlandish hypothetical harms to students in an online statement they wrote about why what Turnitin.com does was so evil, in their opinion. He finally shirked away from the online discussion on that forum after getting lots of counterargument from fully grown and very experienced lawyers who poked holes in his claims. I see the court system on both the trial level and appellate level have done the same. My impression at that time, and my impression today, is that the case was made up in an attempt to make some easy money--just the sort of lawyer behavior that should be decried by hackers everywhere.

<comment><USER4> Maybe but to me this seems like an ad hominem argument - just because he did it for money doesn't mean there isn't some value in his argument. As I mentioned in another comment, if we substitute student work for music tracks then this wouldn't even be an argument. This ruling is saying it is within my fair use rights to profit from dealing with copyrighted media abstractly, so long as I don't distribute the media itself.

What I haven't seen mentioned is that when there is a match on plagiarism then the teachers _do_ get access to the plagiarised document - so they are profiting from using _and_ distributing copyrighted material they have no rights to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Turnitin is generally evil. They don't just keep the work of students without the student's permission, but they crawl sites for any potential school work they don't already have: <http://turnitin.com/robot/crawlerinfo.html>

<comment><USER3> That sounds approximately as generally evil as Google, Yahoo, and any other Web search service that crawls sites.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Looking for input re Orrick Law Firm... - <AUTHOR>

Hi.  I attended an Orrick event a month ago. At the end of the seminar our CEO was pinged by a budding attorney to meet and has been in weekly meetings with Orrick ever since.  There appears to be some promise of introducing us to investors, and "if only you had /this/, you'd be in a deal."  I know nothing of Orrick's intentions or reputation and was hoping to get some input.  Anyone know anything?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I know nothing about their ability to intro startups to investors, but Orrick as a firm is first-rate.

<comment><USER3> Concur about Orrick's being first rate - also, its Silicon Valley lineage was much strengthened when it merged with Venture Law Group in 2003, VLG having itself been a Craig Johnson-led spin-off from WSGR a decade before that.</comment></comment>


Remind HN: Today (9th of May) is Mother's Day in US - <AUTHOR>

I know we tend to drown in all the tech, entrepreneurship, fresh ideas, ipad news, facebook privacy issues and the lack of HN search. But let's not forget our mothers :)
Give them a call, a present, a longer hug than usual or whatever suits you (and your mom)
I know, mother's day is just one huge commercialized drama nowadays but take it from me (or don't); most mothers -do- care about this day! <comment><USER2> Unless you're in the UK. If you are, don't panic! ... (because you already missed it several weeks back ;-))

<comment><USER3> So think of this as early warning for next year. Your mom already knows you pretty well and will laugh if you send her a card now to beat the rush.

<comment><USER2> And there's Father's Day not far down the road.. I think that's the same in both countries!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mothers_Day> \- It's different day in many countries.

<comment><AUTHOR> Over 70 other countries celebrate it on today as well. Besides the US, also Canada, India, China, South Africa and a large part of Europe is in this list; represents a decent number of HN'ers here, I thought =)

<comment><USER5> Yes, but in many of those countries it's already Monday.

Since my mother lives nineteen timezones ahead of me I have to be pretty on top of the whole "mother's day" thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Give them flowers, folks. And tell her how much you love her.

It's hard sometimes for us to express how we really feel... I love you too, ma.

</comment><comment><USER7> Thanks for scaring me! Mother's Day (US) is 9th May. Mother's Day (UK) was in March.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's on the "second Sunday in May"™.

At first I thought it was yet another plot to cover the Victory Day[1] with meaningless holidays like the day of Europe.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_Day_(May_9)>

<comment><USER9> Victory Day is a very big holiday in the post Soviet Union countries.

<comment><USER10> true

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I made my mommy a website: <http://becauseyouremymom.com/>

And here is the message I sent her on the site: <http://becauseyouremymom.com/loves/savant>

</comment><comment><USER12> There are always some good e-cards for mothers with a sense of humor...

[http://www.someecards.com/mothers-day-cards/for-enduring- the...](http://www.someecards.com/mothers-day-cards/for-enduring-the- bloodcurdling-torture)

</comment><comment><USER13> Hey HN - wanted to let you know about a really special initiative.

To Mama With Love (<http://www.tomamawithlove.org>) is a project by Epic Change (<http://www.epicchange.org>) to honor moms across the globe and raises funds for one Mama in Tanzania to help her build a home for children in her village. They're planning on raising $50000 and need our help.

The hashtag on twitter is #ToMamaWithLove. Hope you'll join us!

EDIT: To help, go to their website and create a heartspace to honor your mom!

</comment><comment><USER14> If you are a tech entrepreneur in the social media ecosystem (facebook, twitter, social-games), you probably dont need a reminder since all your friends in either of these networks will have a status for "happy mothers day" :)

</comment><comment><USER15> [http://www.happiness- project.com/happiness_project/2010/05/t...](http://www.happiness- project.com/happiness_project/2010/05/think-about-your-mother.html)

</comment><comment><USER16> Every day is (should be) Mother's Day. If you don't already keep in touch on a more frequent basis, why not start today?

</comment><comment><USER17> <http://www.tomamawithlove.org/>

</comment><comment><USER18> Ahhh geez! I'm in Australia and I really could have used this a few hours earlier...

</comment><comment><USER19> Remind HN: Not everyone here is in the US.

<comment><USER20> Remind axod: Only you care.

<comment><USER19> I was in a blind panic all morning. I went to the shops based on this (now found to be bogus) news item. I will be forwarding the receipt for the flowers, chocolate and petrol to the submitter of the post.

It wouldn't hurt to adjust the title to "Mothers day in some localities", with a list of gps co-ordinates ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Thanks!</comment>


How to factor 2048 bit RSA integers in 8 hours using 20M noisy qubits - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.09749 <comment><USER2> It would require 2.7 billion Toffoli gates gates for 2048 bit input and it could factor one key in 8 hours.

Microprocessors reached that high MOS transistor count less than 10 years ago. For example, 8-core Core i7 Haswell-E has 2.6 billion transistors (2014). [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count#Microprocesso...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count#Microprocessors)</comment>


Show HN: The operating system I built as my high school project (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/aswinmohanme/ultronOS <comment><USER2> For my high school senior theology project, we were instructed to select a modern news event, categorize it into one (or more) of the seven deadly sins, and then give a class presentation. I miraculously convinced my group to choose the Microsoft antitrust case since I had just read the Wired cover story on it. Throughout the year, I sat in the back of the room and had a fake bible cover over my Flash 5 Bible and was reading about actionscript instead of paying attention to a topic I had no interest in. For the project, I made a fully interactive Windows 2000 desktop and functioning start menu that would launch "programs" that were the visual components of the presentation. We had the teacher move class to the computer lab where I loaded the flash executable onto each computer so the students could play with it while we gave the oral presentation. It was pretty awesome and we ended up with the only A in the entire grade!

<comment> d-sc ... and this is the reason we can't have nice things. Source: In 8th grade our class had to do a book report 'project'. I selected an ebook on intro to processing (it's an environment build on Java that lets you create graphics applications easily). I wrote an application that drove a (self built) 6-wheel drive robot wirelessly around our school for the project.

Needless to say, there's was little literary analysis done, but the class enjoyed the wireless video stream.

Future me came to get annoyed by overachievers that raised the bar for 'A' grades.

<comment><USER3> Overachievers should not be able to raise the bar. If they can, then the system is broken. Grades should be relative to the course content, not the abilities of the students.

When I started university, it was clear that I had much more experience programming than the other students, but I had to do certain introductory classes anyway because there was no way to receive credit for half a decade of self learning. On one assignment my lecturer went looking for things to mark me down on that were outside the scope of the assignment because "it would look suspicious if you got a perfect grade".

Some people are just capable of more than is expected of that class for whatever reason, not because they intend to demoralise everyone else and break the system.

<comment><USER4> Similar story when I was at college (UK meaning) (late 90s).

Final project was an inventory system for a company.

Mine was a RDBMS backed system that implemented proper stock control with parent/child SKU handling etc (I went to the library and checked out books on inventory control) and was fully documented (180 pages of documentation) and a full user manual with a FAQ.

I thought that was what professional programmers did...man was I in for a shock when I hit industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What a coincidense, for my high school senior project in 2017 I built an operating system as well [1] (which I still work on to this day). For anyone who is put off by the difficult of building an operating system I highly recommend just going in and getting your hands dirty. osdev.org is a fantastic resource and theres plenty of reading to do on the web, and getting more intimately familair with your hardware is an incredibly gratifying and enlightening experience. Even if you never end up with something useful, the learning experience of working in such a liberated and constrained (theres no rules, but no supports! anything goes within the constraints of the hardware) environment is second to none. And once you build your operating system, you can always go back and do something new with it. Mine has become something of a zen garden where I can just play with new ideas and algorithms, without having to worrying about reaching some sort of goal.

[1] [https://github.com/block8437/brackos](https://github.com/block8437/brackos)

</comment><comment><USER6> Those who say this is more about bravery than raw skill or intellect have momentarily forgotten that OS's have to not only be coded, but debugged.

<comment><USER7> Like the author?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19070587](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19070587)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> 'Ultron is designed with OOP in mind and has not failed to live up to the promise at all possible places.'

Would that more professional programmers had this humility. :)

<comment><USER9> I read that sentence as saying that OOP was successful.

<comment><USER10> I read that too, and also read OP as being sarcastic

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Ultron! This is the browser that Google uses, right?

</comment><comment><USER12> is there any projects that influenced this project? Just curious as googling some of your code turns up in other projects.

</comment><comment> lachlan-sneff I did this too! Was a great learning experience.

</comment><comment><USER13> Jesus, at my high school it's an accomplishment to know how to read

<comment><USER7> In my experience, writing "scary" software like a compiler, an OS, a kernel driver, etc is more about bravery/daring than raw skill or intellect. There are quite a few people that know C and C++ in high school, so it seems reasonable that at least some of them would have someone (IRL or online) nudge them in the direction of an OS and tell them "it's not as hard as you think, if you dare to try."

I don't say this to diminish the accomplishment here, but to encourage others to try it too.

<comment><USER14> I don't know C but I am interested in learning.

What would be a good place to learn the steps of making an OS?

I just want a bird's eye view right now, just to understand the moving parts. This will also help me in the future as a manager.

<comment><AUTHOR> I followed this [http://www.osdever.net/bkerndev/Docs/intro.htm](http://www.osdever.net/bkerndev/Docs/intro.htm) with some pointers from osdev wiki

<comment><USER15> Nice! I remember following this site back in the day. My tiny "OS" got till paged memory management and didn't really go any further. I used to use "Bochs" CPU emulator for testing.

<comment><USER16> Right, I used bochs too: it was a full emulator, none of this "let's just let the CPU really run these" things. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> How does it compare to TempleOS? :)

<comment><USER18> TempleOS is real mode. What do we do all day?

<comment><USER19> TempleOS does not run in real mode, it runs in long mode (64 bit)

<comment><USER18> The author had some... memorable quotes. It was a reference to his most infamous post. I assumed the OP knew about the author's past and wasn't asking for a genuine comparison. Tho looking back I'm not so sure.

For the brave of heart (NSFW): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCgoxQCf5Jg&t=3295](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCgoxQCf5Jg&t=3295)

Won't make much sense out of context. The video does a pretty good job of explaining the whole story if you have time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Which school did you go to?

<comment><AUTHOR> Kendriya Vidyalaya Adoor, Kerala, India

<comment><USER15> KV-ഇൽ OS development ഒക്കെ പഠിപ്പിച്ചു തുടങ്ങിയോ?

<comment><USER21> Kannada? I'm not indian but I remember these symbols from a twitter crawling project.

<comment><USER22> Idu malayalam aanu mone

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> You went to a great school!

Congrats for your accomplishment</comment>


Triangle Startup Factory Goes Big – Graduates Spring 2012 Class - <AUTHOR> http://triangletechtalk.com/1/2012/06/triangle-startup-factory-graduates-spring-2012-class/

<comment><USER2> As a co-founder to one of the companies (ruzuku) that went through the Triangle Startup Factory, I can't recommend the program enough.

Chris and Dave are amazing. They have lots of experience working with startups and they are well connected to the local and national startup scene.

They connected us with a couple of amazing mentors that saw some of the potential that Abe and I had missed and helped us realize that fairly quickly. We've now got a new business model and are kicking ass and taking names. :) And even though the program has ended, our mentors are still involved.

Pitch Day was great. They spent a lot of time the last couple of weeks really helping us refine our pitch -- ended up with a couple of solid pitches. One more of a story meant to generate excitement and another rooted more in the market and financials -- all the details that an investor would be looking for.

Not sure how many people showed up, but there had to have been 200 or more people -- at least, that's what it felt like up on the stage giving our pitch. We're now busy following up with potential investors and executing our new business plan. Crazy, hectic times. And we get to squat at the American Tobacco Campus in the TSF digs at least until the new class arrives.

Their application for the Fall class is tomorrow. You don't have to be located in the Triangle to get in -- at least one of the companies (Berst) was from Chicago and I know several of us had people living and working from other places in the country.

Happy to answer any questions about the program for those considering applying. Also willing to give any advice on how to get in.

</comment><comment><USER3> As a founder of one of the companies in this first batch of Triangle Startup Factory, I would highly recommend the program to startups across the country. This is a startup accelerator grounded in core lean principles, and it provides exactly the level of resources (including significant funding and a great mentor base) critical for an early stage company.

Durham (North Carolina) is not just an incredible area to live from a quality of life standpoint, but it also a true center of entrepreneurial activity. Startup Stampede, Smoffice, ExitEvent, LaunchBox Digital (back in 2010), and Triangle Startup Factory (TSF) are just a few examples of the entrepreneurial sparks flying in this place.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions about TSF. I am happy to help!

<comment><USER4> Anil, what's up? Hope everything is going well for you guys!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We (Fogbeam Labs)[1] didn't get in last time, but we'll be applying again this fall. One thing that I like about TSF is that they do actually give you some feedback on _why_ they didn't pick a given applicant.

In our case, the two reasons they cited were "market too small," and "lack of expertise in this domain (by TSF)". Unfortunately, there isn't anything we can do about them feeling they don't have sufficient expertise in enterprise knowledge management and collaboration software, but the market size thing was obviously just a communication breakdown on our part, since the market for this stuff is farking huge. This time, our application will focus a lot more on the current market opportunity, and hopefully we'll be accepted.

And ultimately we're not even limiting ourselves to _just_ "knowledge management and collaboration." That's just where we're starting. The goal is to provide quality Open Source solutions up and down the stack, that A. don't suck (like most enterprise software), B. have excellent UX, C. are well integrated (with each other and with external systems), and D. use cutting edge technology to address the highest-value customer problems.

Once we ship our first couple of products, and get that initial toe-hold / purchase point and are able to start accelerating, we are going to shake things up in the enterprise.

[1]: Fogbeam Labs, the up-and-coming Open Source collaboration / knowledge- management company. <http://www.fogbeam.com> Go there now and sign up for our newsletter. It's not necessary for you to spend the rest of your day thinking about how cool Fogbeam Labs are, and how much you want to email all your friends and tell them about us too. But if you can remember a time when you were really excited about a company like Fogbeam Labs, then think back to those feelings and how that made you feel, and do the right thing.

<comment><USER2> One of the things we learned a lot about at TSF was a beach-head market. It's the first market you take on to get traction (however you're measuring traction). So, I'd suggest talking about "knowledge management and collaboration" as your beach-head and WHY you've selected that as your beach- head...and, possibly most importantly, why traction within this beach-head will allow you to tackle some of the other markets you have on your radar more easily.

Also talk briefly about the potential market size of your other target markets. You don't have to have all the answers for your other markets -- after all, they are not your target market, yet -- but you should show some knowledge about those markets and be able to talk convincingly about how your product solves a real problem in those markets.

As for market expertise: I think it comes down to two things. How long have you been working in that industry and how many contacts do you have so that you're not jumping in cold. If you don't have either of these, it's going to be a big red flag. I'm guessing you have had some way of validating the problem, so I am going to focus on the network problem. Find an adviser that works in the industry that is well-connected and can tell others that your solution is heads-and-shoulders above what's out there now and is solving problems in new ways that add 10x more value than current solutions. I use 10x as you're going to have problems convincing people to switch unless you are able to provide a ton of value.

Anyway, just my $.02. The other thing you'll learn about, if you get into TSF or any accelerator: mentor whiplash. You're gonna get a ton of advice and most of it conflicting. So take these suggestions for what they're worth: one person's feedback based on your 5 paragraph post. ;)

<comment><USER4> _One of the things we learned a lot about at TSF was a beach-head market. It's the first market you take on to get traction (however you're measuring traction). So, I'd suggest talking about "knowledge management and collaboration" as your beach-head and WHY you've selected that as your beach- head...and, possibly most importantly, why traction within this beach-head will allow you to tackle some of the other markets you have on your radar more easily._

Yeah, that's text-book "Crossing the Chasm" stuff. We'll need to narrow down the "beach head" to something more precise than "the market for companies that need km and collaboration," of course. And we have some research we've already done in that regard. Depending on how things shake out, there's a chance we'll focus on finance related firms first, even though my initial penciled-in list of possible target markets did _not_ include finance... due mainly to the idea that finance is highly insular, very regulated, and has a ton of domain specific vocabulary, and none of us have specific experience in the field. But, as things have worked out, we've talked to several finance related firms, and my $dayjob as a consultant actually has me in Chicago now working for a finance firm. And I'm making new connections here, in this industry, so it's looking more and more realistic.

That said, I'm still thinking that "old school" industries like manufacturing, distribution, logistics, retail, etc. might be better for us. But that's the kind of stuff we're still working on settling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Durham, NC and the Triangle in general are fast becoming a great startup hub. It's definitely a great place to live and the proximity to the universities provides a large talent pool for startup founders to draw from.

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

</comment><comment><USER6> I can't speak from experience at other accelerators but the connections we made and mentoring we received was incredible; our TSF advisors are still engaged every week. And the significant funding lets you do the market testing you really need to prep for a data-driven go-to-market strategy.

</comment><comment><USER7> great accelerator. smart guys.. connected and one on one mentorship.

And you get almost 2.5x the cash compared to others. gotta love being able to survive on stuff other than ramen.</comment>


DLR Insurance Business - <AUTHOR> https://blog.plover.com/misc/dlr-insurance-business.html <comment><AUTHOR> > _The fare collection system is interesting. You buy a ticket, but you don 't > have to show it before you board. Instead, during the ride, a ticket agent > might come through the car and demand to see it. If you can't produce it on > demand, you become liable for a large fine. So you can evade the fare, but > doing so is a high-risk gamble._

This is how public transport works in all places I can think of in Germany. The fine is typically around 40 Euros for first time offenders and it is a criminal offense.

The fare pricing system is usually quite complicated though and there is a certain risk that you have to pay because you just made a mistake. The inspectors are rather ruthless.

Actually I like London's TFL system were you make sure you have enough money on your Oyster Card and be done with it. If I remember correctly I have never bought a separate ticket for the DLR so I suppose the Oyster Card is valid even for the DLR. That's all just so much more convenient than in Germany.</comment>


Facebook begins censoring images of prophet Muhammad - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/01/27/two-weeks-after-zuckerberg-said-je-suis-charlie-facebook-begins-censoring-images-of-prophet-muhammad/?tid=sm_tw <comment><USER2> From the article:

"Just this December, Facebook agreed to censor the page of Russia's leading Putin critic, Alexei Navalny, at the request of Russian Internet regulators."

"Critics have previously accused the site of taking down pages tied to dissidents in Syria and China; the International Campaign for Tibet is currently circulating a petition against alleged Facebook censorship, which has been signed more than 20,000 times."

""I'm committed to building a service where you can speak freely without fear of violence," Zuckerberg said in his Hebdo statement."

The outlandishly egregious doublespeak of Zuck aside, Facebook is a data mining company devoted to making money from its users. The only terms on which it can be said to support free speech are the terms under which it is able to mine user data, then sell user data. In less polite terms, Facebook is a no- limits whore for anyone with cash, so we should expect to see exactly what we are seeing.

Here's a question: what are the conditions under which Facebook will censor the content in the US/European market? I guarantee you that it's coming, provided the right topics are being discussed and the right groups are interested in squashing discussion.

<comment><USER3> > Here's a question: what are the conditions under which Facebook will censor > the content in the US/European market?

Breast-feeding mothers in Europe and US have had their images removed.

EDIT: Not sure if that still happens, but it's easy enough to find articles on WWW about it.

<comment><USER4> Also in the current news is a Frenchman suing Facebook for _closing his account_ for posting Courbet's _L 'Origine du Monde_, an artwork which depicts a certain part of the female anatomy _very_ prominently.

Several years ago an image of a friend I (re)posted was subject to FB policy- based deletion. I'm not sure whether this was because reposting other people's images was frowned on at that time or the sight of the top of a male ass wearing female underwear poking out from jeans in a group called the "ass appreciation society" was a bit too racy (I can't find the email I received about it, and I believe the original pic is still there) but I'm convinced it was several orders of magnitude less likely to have caused anyone offence than a Muhammed-cartoon-meme.

<comment><USER5> I too posted Courbet's painting to Google+ a couple of years ago and it was removed. I contacted Google on the subject but never received an answer.

<comment><USER6> Freedom of speech, blah, blah. Zuckerberg is a lier, he should be a politician.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Blocking access to pages from countries where the court order was issued seems entirely reasonable to me. GitHub does the same[1].

The censorship here is the responsibility of the Turkish government, not Facebook. It's supposedly a democratic country so maybe even represents the will of the people living there.

And anyway, when social sites block "objectionable" pages on their own or under criticism, but with no involvement of the legal system, anyone who complains about censorship is quickly shut down with arguments that it's a private company under no obligation to protect free speech. Why expect them to defy sovereign states when they usually can't handle a little outrage on Twitter?

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8703650](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8703650)

<comment><USER8> A year ago, YouTube and Twitter refused to take down content that the Turkish government didn't like, and they were both blocked.

YouTube - [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/27/google- youtube-...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/27/google-youtube-ban- turkey-erdogan)

Twitter - [http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning- mix/wp/2014/03/21...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning- mix/wp/2014/03/21/turkey-bans-twitter-and-twitter-explodes/)

I was in Istanbul at the time, and I'm certain the Streisand effect more than offset the censorship, and badly damaged Erdoğan's reputation at home and abroad.

Banning popular sites shines a bright light on repression. Resistance can be more effective than collaboration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I still find the supposition that Facebook was supposed to defy a court order hilarious. Yes, I understand it's a court order from Turkey, not America, but you can't just flagrantly break the law in other countries simply because yours believes differently.

Or put another way: As much as Americans like to act like it, we can't enforce our ideals around the world without significant investment that I don't think anyone wants us making after the last couple of times.

<comment><USER8> In the worst case, Turkey could ban Facebook. Would they really do that? It's nowhere near certain.

Google left China rather than submit to their censorship regime, and the Chinese market is like 18 Turkeys.

And if you do remove content, you can make that action transparent on Chilling Effects[1]. Facebook doesn't do that, either.

There are alternatives.

And if you decide to build censorship tools to stay in the good graces of the regime, then don't say "I am Charlie" while you're doing it.

[1] [https://www.chillingeffects.org/](https://www.chillingeffects.org/)

<comment><USER10> > censorship

China wanted to censor inconvenient history. Turkey wants to censor offensive (to them) religious images. I think that's the important comparison, not the size of the market.

<comment><USER11> The Turkish legal code has a clause against "insulting Turkishness", which has been used to censor mentions of the Armenian genocide, so they're clearly not against history-related censorship.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I find France's own crackdown on non-protected free speech during and shortly after their legendary march for free speech to be much more ironic than a business obeying local law.

<comment><USER8> The issue is not that Facebook obeys local laws.

The issue is Zuckerberg shouting "I am Charlie" while simultaneously building the machinery of censorship.

[https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10101844454210771](https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10101844454210771)

If you think some censorship is better than an outright ban, fine. I don't agree, but I understand your rationale.

But don't build the tools of repression and ride the "I am Charlie" bandwagon at the same time. FB is blocking the same class of content that Charlie Hebdo gave their lives to publish.

Zuckerberg n'est définitivement pas Charlie.

C'est écœurant.

<comment><USER13> The whole I am Charlie thing is full of hypocrites. i.e anyone who talks free speech to promote their agenda.

<comment><USER14> The existence of hypocrites does not invalidate the movement. Democracy suffers them and remains a valuable form of governance. It could always be better and we should strive to make it that way. It's unfortunate that hypocrites do raise the noise and wash out the message... we could be doing this better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> When a company blocks a page in the US due to a US court order: they're a respectable, law-abiding company.

When a company blocks a page in another country due to that country's court order: censorship! Where's the freedom of speech?!?!

I am an American, but: if my fellow Americans want to see censorship in play, take a look at the fight Al Jazeera had to get into cable networks (especially in the days after 9/11). And they had to start a subsidiary, Al Jazeera America, to get around some hurdles.

<comment><USER16> > When a company blocks a page in the US due to a US court order: they're a > respectable, law-abiding company.

Forgive my naivete. Is there precedence for this? Are there pages blocked in the US due to US court orders (and available elsewhere in the world)?

<comment><USER17> See ICE's "Operation In Our Sites" and related domain seizures. See also: DMCA and ContentID abuse.

<comment><USER18> As egregious as those are, none are an example of a site being blocked after a court order.

<comment><USER15> Well, to be honest, they were blocked even _without_ a court order...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For HN discussion, see [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8951262](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8951262)

</comment><comment><USER19> We censor hate speech. They regard images of Mohammed to be hate speech.

<comment><USER20> It's not hate speech. It's sin. It's religiously forbidden to depict Mohammed, neither pejoratively nor complimentarily, the teaching is that one shall not depict the prophet anyhow.

<comment><USER21> Its a sin for Muslims. Why would it apply to non-muslims ?

<comment><USER20> In Islam, Muslims are to obey what the prophet says and follow how he behaves and lives (Qoran, Hashr 7, Nejm 3-5, Maaide 99, Neesa 13-14 [1]). So, sometimes some religious rules in modern Islam are rooted in hadiths, not directly the Qoran itself. There are hadiths that forbid depiction of the quick [2]. Also, some consider depiction and other forms of art to be _sheerk_ [1], which means pretending or comparing oneself to God, trying to be godlike, which is sin (Hashr 24, Araph 11 can be interpreted to tell that creating and shaping are attributes of the God).

Thus there are various interpretations of Islam's allowance and tolerance of depiction of the things, the quick, the people, the prophecy and its particular prophet Mohammed. Sunnis, which are Turks and majority of Arabs as far as I know, loathe and are averse to depictions to some extent. More religious older people in Turkey refrain from being depicted anyhow, while some are fine with memorial pictures of themselves and relatives. Majority of the community is though, do not oppose any sort of picturing apart from Mohammed's, and they are taking and publishing pictures of themselves and other people and objects, animate or not, as everybody does. I have heard that Shiites are also lax regarding prophetical depictions, but I have not encountered personally the shiite culture, so, I do not really know.

So, it all boils down to the fact that when someone, Muslim or not, publishes visual material regarding Mohammed, and the God in an islamic context, they should be ready to face different reactions from different parts of the Islamic community. And, as we are living in the internet age, where information goes from Alaska to Iraq in the speed of light (figuratively), its no surprise that living in a non-muslim community does not matter at all in this context.

One would be offended when somebody tries to hurt or offend someone who he considers to be more worthy to him than himself, right? Well, the verse Ahzab 6 [1] says that Mohammed is more worthy to a Muslim than himself.

[1] I have tried to phonetically reproduce names of soorahs and religious terms, I do not guarantee they are correct.

[2] Now, I am not that familiar with hadiths and how these are really cited, but here are some citations nevertheless: Müslim 2107/96; Müslim 2107/90, 94; Buhari 5957, 5958; Müslim 2107/87, and others.

<comment><USER22> And once you decide that being offended > killing those who offend you, we see how truly horrible certain mindsets can be. It is disgusting in my opinion.

<comment><USER20> Religion holds the power to make people horrible. Yes, killings are horrible, but I also behold that hating people is similarly horrible, and not being tolerant is also similarly horrible. I'm an irreligious atheist, for I think that transcendent dogmas of faith make people horrible. And these dogmas made people horrible before the Charlie Hebdo incident and these dogmas will continue to make people horrible also after it. In the grandparent comment I sought to explain the phenomenon, not to justify it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If you carry out the request of an oppressive government, you are as much a part of it as the people physically performing atrocities. Facebook should be ashamed of themselves.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm curious what the legal consequences to Facebook would have been for ignoring the order. Would the Turkish government have sufficient authority to make local ISPs block the site? Would Turkey fine Facebook?

Enforcing any penalty would be a problem. If Facebook has no assets in Turkey, Turkey would need to go after Facebook's assets elsewhere, perhaps in California. U.S. courts probably wouldn't enforce a judgement of a Turkish Court that was at odds with the First Amendment in the U.S. Constitution, though the cases on this are mixed.

It's also interesting to compare this "graven images takedown" system the U.S.' DMCA takedown system. Here you can post some pretty offensive things on the 'net, but god help you if you post a picture of Mickey Mouse!

<comment><USER20> > Would the Turkish government have sufficient authority to make local ISPs > block the site?

Yes. This has happened with Twitter during the country-wide protests in summer 2013 and with YouTube when sensitive political conversations were leaked just before presidential elections in march 2014.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> How do they know what he looks like ?

<comment><USER26> Exactly. The pic in the Charlie Hebdo magazine was just a brown guy with a beard and a (turban?). No mention of Muhammad at all AFAIK.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> TL;DR: Facebook prevents images of Muhammad to be seen in Turkey.

</comment><comment><USER28> It is silly to expect a company to not comply with local law. Do we expect Facebook to give up its business in the US if it decides tomorrow that it doesn't agree in principle with some aspect of American law?

If Facebook was censoring content in America to assuage Turkey, there would be a good reason to gripe about it. It is not doing that.

</comment><comment><USER29> how fb gonna ban pictures that nobody could verify it is him? every person who use his name? or just picture with m* string on it?

this is absolutely crazy and very uncommon sense.

so the image is him because people claim it is him, but in reality the truth is, it is not him, just bunch of ... perceive it is him.

</comment><comment><USER30> Je Suis Pragmatique

</comment><comment><USER31> i quit facebook 12/31/2014\. before doing so i explained to many of my friends and family why i was doing so. every single one of them, no exaggeration, agreed with my reasons, but said they couldn't because of (reason x, y, z). now that ello is patenting their ip i think it is especially important to begin thinking about ways to create _public protocols_ for these type of _services_. what do you think it would require for most people to give up fb?

</comment><comment><USER32> Why do they always call him 'prophet' Mohammed? The only people who think that he was a prophet would be Muslims (and maybe B'hais?).

<comment><USER33> Jesus is called _Christ_ (Messiah) in the media too. It's just part of the vocabulary now, I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> What surprises me most about this article is how many censorship requests come out of India. What are they trying to censor?

</comment><comment><USER35> A quick mention of the first comment; true, we Americans can't expect to be able to break the law overseas and get away with it...but, as anybody who's spent time in a Muslim world, etc, or perhaps has a ton of family from that tradition - it's easier to see why Je Suis Charlie could give Facebook a headache.

I can't sue a journalist overseas for slander that occured about three years ago and still exists; for the most part, I only recall it as an example of how the "international justice," issue cuts both ways. We have the United Nations for a good reason and in both Costa Rica and another country, some of my best friends worked there.

If another country, not the USA, wishes to use an invention of my people (the internet) to crap on me, well, they should also either suffer the consequences of American justice...OR, even better, we should all realize that _living_ in one place doesn't and should never subject one to _another_ place's definition of right and wrong.

</comment><comment><USER36> Just doing what's best for business and keeping costs down, nothing to see here.

<comment><USER37> It's what is also best for their users. The site would simply be banned if they didn't comply with local laws.

<comment><USER18> Would that really be so bad for users in Turkey? Maybe a blanket ban of Facebook and other popular sites would encourage a change in government. This appeasement just enables authoritarian censorship.

<comment><USER28> A change in government because some sites are unavailable? That's ambitious -- we just need to look at China to see how well that idea works.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Startup Feedback (post beta lunch) - <AUTHOR> http://www.plored.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello, we are looking for some feedback because we lunch our final realese.

Plored will be the Amazon of social networks user's content. Our marketplace is the content generated by users and we link it with products and services that retailers sell online. Each content redirects potential consumers to buy the product integrated on the content. All this content is distributed on Plored and also on third parties´ websites and Apps. This solution enables retailers to reach high quality leads due to visitors/readers that consume that content. On the other hand, this solution gives users and publishers a tool to make money through the distributed content</comment>


Why Do Smart People Send Nudes? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/02/jeff-bezos-sexting/582391/ <comment><USER2> Why do animals have the inate urge to reproduce? Smart and rich doesen't cancel out evolution? Someone touching your bits, and even the chase is satisfying? Color me shocked. /s</comment>


How To Get Experience Working With Large Datasets - <AUTHOR> http://www.bigfastblog.com/how-to-get-experience-working-with-large-datasets <comment><USER2> Sometimes, when I want to play with/benchmark a new technology stack, framework, library, etc, I run into the problem of not having a database to test out with it. As a result, I spend a non-trivial amount of time (I'm not the best coder) banging out a script that fills out a custom database with the fields and datatypes I want. However, this strikes me as an example of unnecessary 'yak shaving'. My first impulse is to make a web app that creates custom databases, but luckily I googled around a bit and found this first which already does that: <http://www.generatedata.com/#generator>

<comment><USER3> Except generatedata has a 200 record limit. Luckily it's open source, so if you can host a PHP app you can bump it up to whatever you like. I did this a few weeks ago (bumped the limit up to 10000):

<https://github.com/rgarcia/generatedata> <http://smooth- frost-5744.herokuapp.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's a lot of other sites dedicated to datasets:

<http://aws.amazon.com/datasets>

<http://getthedata.org/>

<http://www.kdnuggets.com/datasets/index.html>

infochimps, datamarket.com,

reddit/r/opendata and datasets,

<http://thedatahub.org/dataset>,

NYT and Guardian,

UCI machine learning repository,

<comment><USER4> Kaggle.com,

<http://trec.nist.gov/data.html>

<https://sqlazureservices.com/browse/Data> (expired Cert, but i'm reasonably sure it's a legit MS site)

<http://www.aggdata.com/data>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Large Datasets open to public : [http://www.quora.com/Data/Where-can-I-get- large-datasets-ope...](http://www.quora.com/Data/Where-can-I-get-large- datasets-open-to-the-public)

</comment><comment><USER6> I think it's much more helpful to have an idea of what you want to get out of your dataset. Generating random data can be useful for stress testing systems, but without an idea of what you want you'll have no idea whether what your exercising is useful or not.

<comment><USER7> Random data or mashups of public datasets are good for learning the mechanics of specific processing frameworks, but you really need a clear objective guiding the analysis to understand the concepts behind processing big data.

Random data is god for the _how_ and the _with what_ (to an extent), but not for the _when_ and the _why_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can anybody share any "Aha!" moments coming from crunching big data? It would be interesting and useful to know how you went from theory to actual validation, especially if the result couldn't have been obtained any other way. Thanks

</comment><comment><USER9> Voter registration files are also freely available.

Here are CSVs for several million names, addresses and voting patterns for the great state of Ohio.

[http://www2.sos.state.oh.us/pls/voter/f?p=111:1:322955311706...](http://www2.sos.state.oh.us/pls/voter/f?p=111:1:3229553117069219)

</comment><comment><USER10> Seems to be down. Here's the cached version: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.bigfastblog.com/how- to-get-experience-working-with-large-datasets)

<comment><USER11> It's up again now and staying up. The original server it was on wasn't prepared for the wrath of Hacker News.

<comment><USER12> Ironic that "BigFastBlog" wasn't prepared for a few thousands (tens of thousands maybe) hits. It's not loading atm for me either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Shameless plug, but if you want to work with big data you could just apply for this position at Yammer. DO IT!

<https://www.yammer.com/job_description?jvi=ogZcWfw7,Job>

<comment><USER14> Your link is dead.

<comment><USER15> Are you using noscript? The link worked once I allowed jobvite & yammer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have a potential project that would involve testing somewhere in the range of 500 Cassandra nodes. What are the best tools to use in load testing such installations? Is everything pretty much custom?

<comment><USER17> With out more information it's very difficult to give advice.

If you're not load testing with your real actual application code and real application load I wouldn't even bother testing. The numbers will be so misleading that it's mostly pointless.

What does it matter if your cassandra install can do 500,000 writes per second if your real app exhibits lock contention issues that brings that number down to 5,000 per second, or latency issues that bring the number down to 50,000.

Since you should be performance testing with real application code and load you'll need to add two things to your code:

1) Code to record the load (logs can work great for this) 2) Code to playback the load at a multiple

Then I'd add the parameters you want to tune for to your testing code and use a genetic algorithm to tune the parameters for your cassandra install.

So, yes, real load testing always involves custom code. If you're just looking for numbers to impress management then use whatever because it's not going to correlate to anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Another possibility would be to work for companies that have big data already.

<comment><USER7> That can be a chicken-and-egg problem, though, since many of them only want people who already know how to work with big data at some level.</comment></comment>


ARM adopts 64-bit architecture  - <AUTHOR> http://www.tgdaily.com/hardware-features/59302-arm-adopts-64-bit-architecture <comment><USER2> This link has a bit more information. [http://www.arm.com/about/newsroom/arm- discloses-technical-de...](http://www.arm.com/about/newsroom/arm-discloses- technical-details-of-the-next-version-of-the-arm-architecture.php)

I wonder how these two new modes will relate to existing modes like Thumb2?

<comment><USER3> Even more information: <http://www.arm.com/files/downloads/ARMv8_Architecture.pdf>

The answer is that there is only one 64-bit ISA, but all current 32-bit modes are still supported.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I just found that this morning. I'm sort of leery of the move to 32 GPRs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> ARM is basically doing to Intel what Clayton Christensen taught Andy Grove to do with the Celeron.

<http://hbr.org/2010/07/how-will-you-measure-your-life/ar/1>

<comment><USER5> That's a great story. Thanks for posting it.

Actionable material.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> My prediction: once this architecture is in the release channels, Intel is out of them. In a matter of years, Intel will be the dinosaur of microprocessors. Unless Intel also (re-)embraces ARM. Its simply a matter of price and configurability. ARM is simply unbeatable when it comes to price. Let alone energy efficiency. Its time to short Intel shares..

<comment><USER7> ARM is unbeatable in terms of price right now, but that's because they have much smaller parts that are much cheaper to produce. What makes you think that will still be true if they want to approach the performance of mainstream Intel parts?

Historically, low-end parts have managed to kill high-end parts by selling in larger volumes and amortizing their fixed costs over a larger base. ARM sells in huge volumes, but how is selling $1 embedded chips going to help them amortize the cost of their high end stuff? Decades ago, doing that sort of thing would helped Intel fill up their idle fab time while competitors like DEC struggled to pay for their fabs, but ARM has never owned its own fabs, and selling completely different low-end parts doesn't really help amortize the cost of masks, post-silicon debug, etc. of their high end parts.

I'm also skeptical that ARM will retain its power:performance advantage if it tries to scale up performance to match low-end mainstream Intel parts (e.g., core i3). The main reason ARM has better performance:power is that there are diminishing returns to performance. Another is that Atom is a new product line, and Intel doesn't have much experience trying to optimize for low-end parts. That won't be true going forward. Yet another transient advantage ARM has is that Intel uses a high performance process, but they've said that they're going to have both a high performance and a power optimized process in the future. If anything, Intel's process wizardry should give them an advantage there, once they decide to push it. What other inherent advantages does ARM have over x86? It's a PITA to decode x86 instructions, but the ARM instruction set isn't very nice, either (e.g., look at how they ran out of opcode space, and overlayed some of their "new" NEON instructions on top of existing instructions by using unused condition codes for existing opcodes).

I wouldn't bet against ARM but, if they win, it will be because of the usual reasons: better marketing, better business practices, and better engineering, not because there's some inherent advantage that lets them be cheaper than Intel. And, by the way, the configurability advantage you mention actually hurts them in terms of cost, by increasing the fixed cost per part.

<comment><USER8> (IIRC Atom is an x86 translation layer on top of an ARM core. Am I mistaken?)

<comment><USER9> Z5xx series Atoms ( [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Atom_microprocess...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Atom_microprocessors#MID_processors_.28UMPC.29) ) had PowerVR GPUs (they call it GMA 500, but they have nothing in common with Intel's own GMA's!), the ones that are normally used with ARM CPUs. Sony Made ultra-portable Vaio P-Series with them ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_VAIO_P_series> )

Unfortunately, it looks like it all was a fluke. I haven't heard of any notebooks with Atom Z6xx series, presumably because Windows won't run on them because they don't have a PCI bus. With the architecture consisting of a single model (Vaio P-Series) the possibility of running Linux is vanishing: there was a special build[sic!] of Ubuntu that should run on it, but that's it.

<comment><USER10> The Oak Trail platform fixes this by using a different chipset that is PC compatible and thus can run Windows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hopefully the next iteration of the Raspberry Pi will have this!

<comment><USER3> It's currently using a 6+ year old ARM11.

<comment><USER11> Damn... I had no idea. I guess that would explain why my year old cell phone is more powerful. Thanks for the info!

Perhaps Version 4 of the Raspberry Pi will use it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is there any backstory on why this is only happening now? The address space situation is already borderline in some areas of ARM usage, and cell phones are about to break 1GB of physical RAM (if some haven't already?).

Seems like this is a couple years overdue to have anything close to a comfortable margin.

<comment><USER13> The instruction architecture is irrelevant to the issue of address space.

The Cortex A15 can already address up to 1TB of memory.

<comment><USER14> Oh? How does it handle this? Something similar to PAE? To PSE? Explicitly using cooperative coprocessors? A completely different scheme?

Also, isn't it relevant to process-addressable (virtual) memory? Barring explicit APIs such as AWE. As far as I know, ARM registers are 32b so a process should not be able to load data from an address higher than the 4GB mark (in its virtual memory), am I wrong?

<comment><USER13> Two separate issues, memory per process (which is limited to 32bits of address space) and total physical address space available to the MMU. It is similar to PAE in fact ARM calls it LPAE.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Space Guns – A history of the least subtle way of getting into orbit (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/looking-up/space-guns-fa2dda0561ec#.pvnv9vmd9 <comment><USER2> Project Orion is another contender for "least subtle way of getting into orbit": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propuls...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_\(nuclear_propulsion\))

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Dug up this link because of a casual interest I had into Iraq's Project Babylon [1] that was deemed by the UN to be a weapon, even though it wouldn't have been able to aim at anything. It would have just been useful to put payloads into orbit.

Officially, the ambitions of the project were unknown, but the man, Gerald Bull, [2] Iraq asked to develop the program was purely interested in building an inexpensive way to economically launch satellites into orbit.

Gerald Bull was assassinated by unknown parties in 1990.

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

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


Show HN: Grpzi – Effortlessly Coordinate Groups - <AUTHOR> https://assemblymade.com/grpzi <comment><AUTHOR> Simple clickable prototype of the new Grpzi phone app now available at [https://marvelapp.com/f1df0](https://marvelapp.com/f1df0)

Thanks to Marvelapp.com for their great new prototyping tools!

<comment><AUTHOR> Join the Grpzi team @ [https://assemblymade.com/grpzi](https://assemblymade.com/grpzi)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The development of Grpzi is well under way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Join the team @ [https://assemblymade.com/grpzi](https://assemblymade.com/grpzi) Contributors required!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do tech firms ever offer on the job training? - <AUTHOR>

In most firms entry level employees don't bring much to the table except their ambition and raw ability.  The actual skills they develop are usual acquired on the job and specific to that firm and/or industry.  For example, if you were hired as a logistics trainee, most of the skills and protocols you use would be acquired at work and usually could not be developed beforehand.<p>However, in most technology firms relating to developer/engineering positions it is expected that the candidate would already have a firm grasp on the technology he would be using and the only on the job skill development that would occur would pertain to that specific firm's projects.  For example, if a firm had a job opening for a Ruby on Rails programmer the candidate would be expected to already know quite a good deal about RoR and he would not expect the firm to give them basic training on RoR. <comment><USER2> _Smart_ tech firms are willing to hire experienced developers who can learn new stuff in a reasonable amount of time. There tend to be or should be limits, e.g. back in the '90s it really didn't tend to work to hire a non-OO programmer to work on an OO language project, because they had to learn a new paradigm as well as the more minor details of a new language (which if we're talking C to C++ isn't that big to begin with), unless you were willing to wait something more than a month for them to be productive.

It would be interesting to look at the hiring of companies that do functional programming. A new employee how didn't at least take SICP or one of its functional derivatives would take a while to learn the new paradigm.

And there are many tech companies that simply can't do anything other than train new employees because they're just not going to find anyone who's up on their technology. Before the mainframe alternatives to IBM all but died and UNIX took over the midrange companies doing anything other than IBM mainframe work generally would have to train their new employees, e.g. Honeywell didn't expect new Multicians to be productive until at least a month had passed.

Today's greater standardization allows what you're talking about ... which many people think is also commonly a sign of poor management, specifically the manager who doesn't believe he has the ability to mentor those under him or even be able to judge their progress in coming up to speed. Heck, how many companies even ask prospects to _prove_ they can program (e.g. FizzBuzz), let alone program in the language/framework in question?

In general the state of the art in US IT industry management is _dreadful_ and you can't particularly afford that in a field that's so difficult and unforgiving ("Can't fool Mother Nature" sort of unforgiving).</comment>


Network Solutions breach exposed 500k credit cards - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/25/network_solutions_ecommerce_breach/

<comment><USER2> Most of the time I see people looking for different payment processors, security doesn't even seem to enter the list. Is this something that we need to consider when picking a processor, or are they all pretty much equal?</comment>


Trump's Floating Cities: Solving Immigration with the Help of Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@noncanonic/trumps-floating-cities-solving-immigration-with-the-help-of-silicon-valley-part-1-8cb082ea9cde#.qw8wwkkrm <comment><USER2> What is the appeal of this over the abundance of unsettled land in North America that does not need to be created from scratch? I guess building a wall sounds a lot more romantic when there is a ferry in the moat.

Don't think for a second that an island 12mi off the coast of California would not be subject to US influence.</comment>


Google's Quantum Computer Proven To Be Real Thing (Almost) - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/06/d-wave-quantum-computer-usc/ <comment><USER2> "They must have switched this thing on today - all my Google searches now return pictures of cats that are both dead and alive."

\--best comment for days in that linked article, lol

</comment><comment><USER3> The title is very misleading IMO. There have been quite a lot of questions around D-Wave's quantum computing claims. The linked story is about a paper that shows that the D-Wave machine indeed shows signs of quantum entanglement.

The question whether D-Wave's quantum computer can achieve non-linear speed-up WRT classical computers is still not answered (but a lack of quantum entanglement would have ruled out such a speed-up).

The lack of scientific characterization of what the D-Wave machine actually does is quite odd, given that they have been selling these machines as "quantum computers" for quite some time.

As other commenters have pointed out, Scott Aaronson's blog is a very good resource for scientific discussion of D-Wave's claims: [http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1400](http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1400)

</comment><comment><USER4> Very misleading title. The story is entirely about the D-Wave (supposed) quantum computer, which Google has now bought. It's D-Wave's quantum computer, Google really had nothing to do with it except that it bought one.

<comment><USER5> So it's like nearly everything Google is famous for then?

<comment><USER6> It's Dwaves creation but Google bought it. Last time I checked the search engine was created in house.

<comment><USER5> Yea, the search engine is about the only thing. Which is why I said " _nearly_ everything" and not "everything".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here is a paper that disproves the USC paper mentioned in the story. [http://arxiv.org/abs/1305.4904](http://arxiv.org/abs/1305.4904)

</comment><comment><USER8> I appreciate the physics are rather complex, but I'm really struggling to understand why the D-Wave machine isn't regarded as a quantum computer by many. Doesn't D-Waves machine use qubits?

Also, why hasn't D-Wave come forward and explained their process to put those critics to rest? Is it just a matter of trade secrets (ie they want to retain their monopoly)? If that's the case, I thought that was one of the few credible reasons for patents.

I really get the feeling that I'm too stupid to grasp all this properly :(

<comment><USER9> A good summary by leading D-Wave skeptic Scott Aaronson [http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1400](http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1400)

<comment><USER10> Scott actually had some good thoughts about D_Wave at some point. A year or so ago, D-Wave actually gave him a personal tour of the place, and convinced him that they were legitimately doing good research (He wrote about this in his blog: [http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=954](http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=954) ). But things change over time, and with a lot of the largely unwarranted hype recently, he's opinion of them has changed</comment></comment></comment>