Amazon makes 14 cents from every Lyft ride - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/mohapatrahemant/status/1102401615263223809 <comment><USER2> This is a bunch of FUD.

* No, using a colo saves you way more than just 20%. In one of our facilities, our org has maybe ~15k servers under management and dc costs are ~ 1 million/mo. Build out of the cages and racks wasn't incredibly expensive, I think ~2 million. Power isn't insane either.

* I have no idea what he's talking about re: the fiber statement. We have a blend of different backbone providers that give us ~100 gigabit for ~$0.60 per gig. Compared to bandwidth costs for AWS, it's dirt cheap.

* You don't need ultra fast hot swappable robotic arms if you're not FAANG. With a handful of dc techs and a simple monitoring system, you can swap out disks just as easily, at the expense of a little more opex.

* PCI requires no consultants, its terms are pretty black and white - you will need an ISA though. HIPAA and can be more of a bear, but your org will need this consultation regardless of whether you own a dc or put it in the cloud. AWS does not give you automatic compliance.

* Yes I can totally believe that working at Google, you'd give TCOs that make Google look good.

Literally none of us except Lyft's operations knows what's good for Lyft. 100 million a year is a ton of cash, but gives them presence around the world. My company has datacenters around the world and it is very operationally complex to maintain them. It's definitely not for everyone, but this guy is making it sound worse than it actually is.

<comment><USER3> On an unrelated note when did FAANG before a thing? I don't recall seeing this used anywhere a mere year ago.

<comment><USER4> Also, why is there no M for Microsoft in that abbreviation?

<comment><USER3> probably lack of growth in their stock prices?

<comment><USER5> I think it's because of base compensation of employees, which still holds true still, because Microsoft pays way less then FANG.

Microsoft is the most valuable company in the world. When it comes to stock Facebook probably would be not in FANG anymore because of their drastic stock drop over last year.

<comment><USER6> A for Amazon is well-known for its terrible work env for the employees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't think the title is a fair representation of what's going on. Hear me out.

The way it's phrased, it's like each ride directly translates into 14 more cents for Amazon. But really, the figure comes from averaging Lyft's Amazon costs over Lyft's total rides.

Now, in _some_ cases, that would be valid accounting, if _all_ (or nearly all) of your costs (with respect to that service) are variable. For example, most of the cost of sending a letter is the truck/plane/employee, which are variable, so it makes sense to divide total letters over total truck etc costs.

But would Lyft pay twice as much to Amazon if they served twice as many rides? Would they have to double _every_ AWS service they're buying? I don't think so. They might have to add more of one or two kinds of server/services, but most of that 14 cents figure comes from amortizing fixed costs, which will go down if they scale up further.

Am I off base here?

<comment><USER8> This theory has unfortunately never panned out for me. To the extent that I get a little anxious about my employer getting too aggressive with PR. Organic growth always plays out better for the engineers in the short to medium term.

IT's version of the Laws of Thermodynamics is that nearly every interesting action you can do programatically is going to take _at least_ O(log n) time, where n is the amount of data you have (at rest, in flight, or both).

If I have 16x as much traffic as I used to deal with, my load isn't 16x higher, it's 64x higher - if I'm fortunate and we've engineered for scale. But it could easily be three orders of magnitude higher (16 _16_ 4) if I'm not.

For the 64x scenario I tell my boss to buy more hardware and I put medium to high priority tickets in the backlog to improve the worst cases. In the 3 orders situation, those tickets bump all of our other priorities, and there are more of them. Performance is now a feature. It sucks up a significant and very visible fraction of our engineering budget, which comes with its own sort of opportunity costs.

If you try to scale vertically, we all know that except at the low end, buying a server that's twice as beefy costs far more than twice as much. If you go horizontal, there are plateaus where your network topology has to get more complex (hardware cost, maintenance cost, speed, pick two). Personally, I think the biggest lie in cloud computing is that 10G ethernet fixes all of your network topology problems (ie, it's treated as magic that you don't have to worry about). As disks and PCIe get faster over the next couple years I think that'll be back on people's radars.

<comment><USER9> If your complexity is O(log n), an increase of 16x only increases your time by log(16)=1.2 (constant, not a multiple).

<comment><USER10> I'll say, I'm so used to seeing "log" denote either lg or ln (depending on whether the context is closer to maths or computing) that seeing the claim that log(16)=1.2 threw me for a loop.

This despite it being fundamentally meaningless because of course it needs to be multiplied by some time-dimensioned value anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> People seem have forgotten the productivity loss of running their own data center. When I was in my previous company, most of things are just excruciating compared with what I enjoyed in Netflix. Dockers did not come with persistent volumes, provisioning machines involved lengthy approvals and sometimes long waiting time; building and deploying services that involved multiple clusters that talked to each other required serious devop-fu; production clusters got broken because infra upgraded system dependencies using a background job and mitigating such simple mistakes may take hours if not days. Deploying any non-trivial service required multiple meetings with some infra teams, for resources, for concerns with stability, or whatever. PS, did I mention that we built tens of thousands of Puppet files that very few people understood and any updates to my system took half an hour to refresh yet the early members of the infra team thought Puppet was the best f@#$ tool in the world? The list can go on and on. PPS, did I mention that we had a 500-person infra team and later probably more than a thousand for a fraction of traffic/complexity compared with what Netflix had to deal with, while Netflix didn't even have an infra team (to be fair, Netflix had a build team and a platform team and a monitoring team, which had fewer than 30 people combined)?

In contrast, EC2 alone would have to save us lots of pains.

You may say that my previous company was not technically great. Maybe. If that's the case, how many companies can be really better? I think the fundamental problem is that companies tend to underestimate the effort to build a world-class infrastructure from scratch as well as the opportunity cost due to loss of productivity. Netflix's leaders were truly wise by claiming that Netflix didn't want to work on undifferentiated heavy lifting early on.

</comment><comment><USER12> The thread is much more interesting than the initial tweet.

[https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1102401615263223809.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1102401615263223809.html)

<comment><USER13> This thread only compares ROI of hosting in cloud with building own datacenter and laying own oceanic fiber(!!). The option of using a colo and magistral ISP somehow fell through the cracks.

Of course building one datacenter and own oceanic fiber to host your own services is a bad option for almost every business - not every business can fill a full DC, and 1 DC is not enough to guarantee global operations.

<comment><USER13> The orignal author mentioned how good AWS worked for netflix, but did not mention that netflix rolled their own content delivery system in part because of high traffic cost with all the major cloud providers.

<comment><USER14> My understanding is that most commercial CDNs (Limelight, Akamai, etc) are also more cost-effective than serving directly from AWS. However, commercial CDNs don't know a-priori what files are going to be popular, and how to distribute them in different regions and on different types of storage to maximize efficiency. But that's one of the things that Netflix's CDN team can predict. See [https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/distributing-content- to-...](https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/distributing-content-to-open- connect-3e3e391d4dc9)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Lyft is horribly inefficient in terms of using their AWS resources. I know this first hand. They don't have to build their own DS. They just need to build a better system. Possibly take advantage of Lambdas because a lot of compute heavy operations like geo en/decoding are done in services that run at like 25% CPU in production.

<comment><USER16> Not to pick on you specifically as others are saying more or less the same thing... But if you're such a genius that you know how to slash Lyft's AWS spend without knowing basically a thing about their infrastructure, you should be knocking loudly on their door because I'm sure they have an _extremely_ well-paid job waiting for you.

Otherwise, maybe consider voicing opinions like these about things you actually know something about.

ADDED: Meant to respond to a different comment that didn't suggest any inside knowledge. (Though I'd still point out that even insiders often can't understand how their own company has so many employees in X department, is so inefficient, etc. And this is more or less the case everywhere.

<comment><USER17> "I know this first hand" implies they _do_ know something about their infrastructure.

Given that they work for "one of few >10b unicorns" per their comment history, I have a suspicion you may be telling a Lyft employee they don't know anything about Lyft.

<comment><USER16> I actually meant to respond to a different comment which merely said this was a few hours of an AWS instance.

<comment><USER17> Well, that's factual - you _can_ get a couple hours time on an entire AWS instance for $0.14. That certainly _seems_ to point to an cost-inefficient infrastructure.

<comment><USER16> I don't really have an opinion on how efficient or inefficient their infrastructure is. AWS has lots of services and I'm sure Lyft is using a heck of a lot more of them than just a bunch of EC2 instances.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Some quick math: last I heard, Lyft was doing 1M rides a day. That's 1M transactions per day, or "only" 11 transactions per second. Of course there's lot more (assuming 10x) supporting transactions to enable one ride - search, matching, status updates. Let's say that adds another 100 transactions per second. Rounding up to 150/sec. What am I missing?

In terms of data usage and storage, matching is by geography, meaning their data is easy to shard.

So, how's this $8M per month?

edit: fixed a typo

<comment><USER19> Your math isnt wrong but the load isnt simply averaged out over the entire day. There will be peak capacity times way way higher than the lowest times. I would guess orders of magnitude larger. You have to build for peak capacity. If their target response time is 100ms or something then that adds in lots of complexity.

<comment><USER18> I agree the load will fluctuate - but will mostly follow predictable patterns daily and weekly. However, that's what the cloud's elasticity is for - and AWS makes it easy (and inexpensive) to expand and contract when implemented correctly. Man, I would love an opportunity to optimize something like that!

<comment><USER20> Right?! The cost is way too high for their use case, even considering a large padding to OPs quick maths.

Part of my team one month stopped all development and solely focused on reducing AWS costs and we cut our monthly bill by 50% (probably around 4 dev's yearly salary)

It's not easy, but optimizing AWS resources is an absolute must.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Are we talking just about machines? A huge chunk of AWS is actually enterprise SAAS.

Analytics, authentication, support etc. you don't know what Lyft uses exactly here from AWS. For example if they use Auth0 instead of Cognito they pay that part to Auth0. AWS prices are very competitive most of the time.

AWS is the Walmart of enterprise IT, they sell you everything else too.

<comment><USER22> One could say: AWS is the... Amazon.com of enterprise IT, they sell you everything else too :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> These posts always make it like "cloud is better vs building datacenters on mars".

There are middlegrounds, like colocation & dedicated servers. If you get dedicated servers 4x cheaper than cloud-shared-vps with remote-hdd, then you can overprovision.

Especially now that hardware is getting bigger you need even less space (assuming your software scales vertically).

And they ALWAYS make it like the next hour you will have 10x requests and your database will autoscale that quickly.

<comment><USER24> Agreed. It's disingenuous of the article OP to:

\- only parenthetically mention colocation, as if it isn't absolutely normal to rent a rack/cage/suite as needed from an existing DC operator (which in addition would make datacenter rent an OpEx and actual server equipment be amortized over 2-3 years, not the 10 for real property)

\- somehow present "intercontinental traffic" as something both necessary and tremendously expensive, as if all the major public clouds aren't charging 10x what the market rates for bandwidth are

\- imply that "the cloud" is immune to outages, as if GCP didn't have multiple major global- or region-wide outages over the past few years

I mean, I understand why most companies don't go on-prem despite all that, but this series of tweets is borderline FUD.

<comment><USER25> I'm not sure the article OP is being disingenuous. It's a thread _specifically_ about Lyft's costs - and Lyft is clearly at a scale where they would NOT be colocating.

<comment><USER26> Of course they would. They are a taxi service, not a Dropbox or YouTube. They do neither have obscene demand for storage, nor for bandwidth, they need some servers tracking their users coordinates, running a "who is nearest" search in case someone wants a ride, some GPS navigation/pathfinding during the ride and some billing code after it.

If you don't blow this up to stupid proportions, that should be able to run on modern hardware in a few racks at a colo for millions of users per day, especially since you can neatly shard the load geographically, thus distributing load (and rented racks) over multiple DCs, ideally with failover in place for emergencies. The only thing they really need to merge is the billing data at the end, but handling billing data of a global userbase of tens or hundreds of millions of users in a single system is a solved problem nowadays and does not even constitute a case worthy of the overused "big data" moniker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Amazon got 2 cents from me typing this note and reading ycombinator for an hour.

I love when indirect costs are naively calculated for marginal cost estimates.

<comment><USER28> HN runs on a dedicated box colo'd at M5 Hosting :-P

<comment><USER29> A single box ?

<comment><USER28> Yes.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11916168](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11916168)

<comment><USER29> that is awesome

<comment><USER23> A single core inside 1 server!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> 14 cents per ride is nothing! Maybe 1% of the cost of a ride.

Maybe they could save a bunch by colo or something else. But would 14 cents per ride really matter at all for their competitiveness. I'm not going to notice a 14 cent difference even if I do bother to price compare Uber with Lyft.

This is a VC fueled market. It isn't really about small margins of this size.

<comment><USER17> It may be 1% of the _cost_ of the ride, but it's likely a substantially larger part of the _profits_ of the ride.

Lyft lost a billion dollars on $2B of revenue in 2018.

<comment><USER31> So saving $8m a month, or $100m a year, isn't going to turn that round.

<comment><USER17> Cutting 10% of losses is hardly something to sneer at.

<comment><USER31> If you're still losing $100m a month you have bigger problems then saving a couple million in infrastructure costs.

Moving from AWS, or doubling AWS spending, will make no difference to the company's viability, it's not worth the time in meetings to discuss it.

<comment><USER32> Man this industry is crazy. Most traditional companies fight hard to gain even 1% in net margin.

<comment><USER31> Most traditional companies are based on having revenues higher than costs.

dotcom v3.0 companies are all about the potential and cornering the market. Amazon was exactly the same - it was founded in 1994 but didn't make a profit until 2001.

<comment><USER32> For Lyft having a taxi anywhere I want one with low wait times at low cost is going to secure their success. Not new features in their app, not even latency to the data center.

There's no reason they need to be spending such crazy amounts on servers - ostensibly to allow faster iteration. A new version of their app just isn't going to move the needle. Signing up new drivers will though.

I fail to see how the benefits AWS provides are so important they need to spend such crazy amounts.

<comment><USER31> They need to be seen to be doing something other than bleeding money.

Every extra driver costs them money, every lift costs them money. If they can hold out the illusion of "we know we can save money here when we've got time and have won the market", maybe it keeps the money rolling in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Maybe they could have a reasonably efficient setup instead?

Not sure how you can possibly pay 0.14$ in computing for a single ride (if that's accurate). That's more than 3 hours of a t3.medium instance for example...

<comment><USER25> The tweet took Lyft's total AWS costs and divided it by total rides. It's not a literal accounting of the compute cost for a single ride.

AWS costs that wouldn't really fit into a per-ride accounting:

* Redundancy of instances (regions/AZs) * Data-storage/duplication/backups * Non-ride related AWS costs (hosting/processing of analytics, test & automation infrastructure, etc.)

I'm sure there are others. I'm not saying that there's no way they could get their AWS costs down, btw.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Well, each driver needs a mobile+plan, at ~$100/month fully amortized. Definitely does <1000 rides/month.

APPL, VRZN each get 5c/ride - just for showing up.

I started this comment as a joke. But now i am not so sure.

<comment><USER34> And while i am at it...

Suggesting lyft needs 5-9s is ridiculous for 1000s of servers is ridiculous. Its entire event stream comes from a mobile network which is probably less reliable.

<comment><USER35> It's not that simple - if Lyft won't connect and everything else works, riders and drivers will turn to competitors. Once they've installed the app and signed up for an account with Uber, they're a lot less likely to stick exclusively or primarily with Lyft.

<comment><USER36> Well, 5 9's are 5 minutes of disruption an year. Drivers won't be able to get into Uber on that timeframe. 4 9's would be 50 minutes an year. Unless it is all concentrated on a couple of events it may not even make the clients time- out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> OK, but that's just the AWS expense. How much per ride does Lyft spend on it's own devs (and admin staff) and boxes (and electric and RE costs)?

</comment><comment><USER38> I always see the motivation for the cloud mainly because of financial reasoning but is there a benefit to stay on-site in terms of knowledge retention (for the lack of a better word)? For instance, there is a big push to outsource manufactured parts and good mainly due to "cost savings". However, the are long term cost savings when we keep the parts made in-house which management always overlook. Sure, it cost money to maintain the machines, inventory, and tools but this allows greater flexibility and also retain the knowledge within the company. In addition, it allows the engineers to drive technology within the company faster. Is this the case for data center infrastructure?

<comment><USER39> You are a bit more flexible in the data center. Like, if you really need very low latency and high bandwidth between two machines, you could buy an infiniband thingy. Expensive AF, but may less expensive than setting a horde of software engineers on it for two years to deal with the higher latency.

But, all in all, there aren't all that many practical use cases that really benefits from stuff like that. Most projects are quite happy with some storage, compute, network, and a few managed services. Most companies don't do rocket science with their software and infrastructure.

And there are things that you simply can only afford at scale, like security management for your supply chain, dedicated automation for updating firmware of every tiny controller that's in your hardware, and so on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> "...you'll never have hot-swappable everything managed by ultra fast robotic arms that replace hard drives in seconds."

Does anyone know anything more about these robotic hard drive replacers?

<comment><USER17> I've seen it done for tape libraries.

My understanding is that the biggies - Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc. - don't bother with individual drive replacements (and certainly not with an expensive robotic arm system). They wait for an entire rack to fault over a certain percentage and then just swap out the whole thing.

<comment><USER41> Depends on the case. Facebook at least generally replaces drives as they go. In a pipelined fashion rather than as they fail, though. So, a given drive failure doesn't lead to immediate emergency replacement, but sometime in the next few days as someone makes a drive-replacement pass through that area.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Our (small) company has a $500-$1000 AWS bill. About 2 months ago it was double that. This is a 3-4 developer company. When we hire another person we'll probably increase our EKS instances by one more box. We already paid down our debt - and it definitely cost us about 2 months with half our dev staff. But our goal wasn't to reduce the AWS cost, it was to reduce the time it takes to replicate an environment in K8s with one script. I'm guessing Lyft has not taken a path like that.

</comment><comment><USER43> I think what's interesting to know is of that 14 cents, how much of that 14 cents does Amazon keep as profits and how much goes directly to costs. Some analysis suggests AWS has 25% profit margin which means of that 14 cents, Amazon really only pockets ~2-3 cents per Lyft ride.

Another interesting question is whether that profit margin includes the original capex of when AWS was not reporting the revenue/profit of AWS in its early years. There's also all sorts of creative accounting methods to hide capex such that I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon is selling at cost to buy marketshare in a way somewhat analogous to Uber subsidizes rides to gain early marketshare.

</comment><comment><USER44> I am surprised no one is talking about Lyft's risk assessment of their business. Specifically, this line:

 _Our results of operations vary and are unpredictable from period-to-period, which could cause the trading price of our Class A common stock to decline._

 _Our results of operations have historically varied from period-to-period and we expect that our results of operations will continue to do so for a variety of reasons, many of which are outside of our control and difficult to predict._

I find the term "period-to-period" rather vague. It could mean quarter-to- quarter or even year-to-year.

Still what they are effectively saying is that Lyft cannot be trusted to provide any growth assessment.

</comment><comment><USER45> A really elaborate (and admittedly interesting) way of repeating the constant refrain: Things that work for the extremely large-scale usually aren't ideal for the small- or medium- scale. This applies to everything from codebase size to infrastructure size, and the opposing force tends to be engineers' inherent enthusiasm for engineering things. Be honest about your actual needs and know when not to chase the N=∞ case.

<comment><USER29> Is lyft considered extremely large scale?

<comment><USER45> Well, that's the question. The guy basically makes the case that it isn't, for this purpose, and that Netflix and Dropbox are. Good insight into the hairy details, but the overall thesis is pretty simple.

<comment><USER46> I would say he's making the case that Lyft doesn't have a single component with ridiculous scale like Netflix CDN or Dropbox storage. That could just mean Lyft's costs are more evenly distributed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> This is why Twitter is terrible for having real conversations. This was painful to read because of formatting and structure.

<comment><USER48> There's the threadreader version [https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1102401615263223809.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1102401615263223809.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I dunno, hetzner and contabo sell boxes for $20/mo

I still find it weird thaf lyft needs so much processing per ride, it just doesn't sound efficient

And a lot of ppl seem to find this normal. Its not, this could be money that pays the driver more

</comment><comment><USER49> Certification has nothing to do with DC right? It depends on the product. You have to get pci done even if you use AWS

</comment><comment><USER50> Something to consider in all estimates - if cloud provider could run into conflict of interest with you.

</comment><comment><USER51> Their payment processor also takes a big cut. This is just a cost of doing business.

</comment><comment><USER52> how much per ride goes in taxes?

</comment><comment><USER53> How are they paying this much?

</comment><comment><USER54> Why would you need to build underwater fiber????????? I don't understand.

<comment><USER55> Especially for Lyft, where you can be pretty sure most stuff won't cross oceanic boundaries: "Raoul is arriving in a white Cunard QM2-G32"

<comment><USER56> Look out for 'Uber for Ferries' in this summer's YC batch!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> The title is clickbaity.

They get paid that ~14 cents but they don't 'make' that much.

What they make is what is left after costs.

<comment><USER58> If you were to say how much you get paid, you would in general say you make x an hour. You wouldn't say "Well, after taxes, rent, food, gas, insurance, etc, I make x-y an hour."</comment></comment>


Ask HN: When is crowdsourced funding viable? - <AUTHOR>

Diasopra has raised more than $100,000 with crowdsourced funding. Is it just that all the stars aligned for them and that caused the outpouring of donations or is it possible to reliably fund projects this way?<p>http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/196017994/diaspora-the-personally-controlled-do-it-all-distr <comment><USER2> I would imagine its possible as long as you keep the faith, show progress, and don't promise too much.</comment>


Ask HN: What skills should a new grad be learning? - <AUTHOR> I've recently graduated with a degree in Cyber Security. What skills should I learn (tech, lifestyle, or otherwise) before I begin my full-time job in a month? <comment><USER2> I have an entire blog about this. 150+ posts, including from other perspectives (recent boot camp grad, hiring manager, CTO).

The short answer is I'd learn to focus on people and communication. Tech is really important, but so is being able to work as a team and achieve company goals (which might not be served by the shiniest new tech).

A lot more here: [https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/](https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Best advice I can give, as a manager, is self-discipline. It's a core tenant of what divides my good workers, from my standard workers.

Sure, learning Java, or C#, or Python is nice. But what really makes an effective worker to me is someone who has strategies for tackling problems, and I believe that the highest abstraction of that is self-discipline.

When you are tasked with a problem in the real word, whether it be enterprise, start-up, or side project, you will need to look at the problem wholly. You will need strategies for laying a path that you, and you alone can follow.

There's so much to writing software, but every developer wants to type. Do you have a good method for discovery? Understanding unfamiliar project landscapes, or code flows? Are you practicing reading code? If a manager gave you a project in a project you've never seen before, how do you know where to start?

Do you have a strategy for note taking? For flow charting as you discover? For documenting minutiae as you come across it during development? If you do, are you consistent? You need to be diligent and habitual in your process. If you present problems in a consistent manner to your manager, you will developer an easy means of communication, allowing you to solve things faster, and get what you need faster.

Are you consistent in your coding style? Are you implementing according to the problem, or according to whatever new tool you most recently discovered. That's engineering discipline.

I didn't really get there until I was in my late 20s, but it took some seriously trivial changes in my life to get started on that road. Like, I started making my bed every morning. Reading before bed, making a small breakfast, and coffee before work. Walking twice a day. Gym at lunch.

Having a schedule, being habitual, helps you get in the mind set of optimization. Optimizing your own processes will lead you to consistency, and sharpening your consistency will force you to be disciplined!

</comment><comment><USER4> What are your life goals? What are your interests? Only you can determine what you are passionate about, and those interests are what you should pursue.

If you want to focus on your health, then you might want to set up an exercise routine and good diet. This is useful for offsetting sitting at a desk.

If you are talking about tech, then maybe you can learn about something that interested you but that wasn't taught in college or do a deeper dive. Experiment with Pi, or create an Android app, etc.

On a personal level you can start a new hobby. Maybe start a garden, make your own soap, learn an instrument, etc.

</comment><comment><USER5> Project management. Honestly, if you can stick to deadlines, you'll be your supervisor's favorite.

</comment><comment><USER6> I would say rust. It makes writing custom low level code (say a disassembler) so much easier.

</comment><comment><USER7> Bash, its useful for almost any job where you write code.</comment>


Quadz - HTML5/jquery game - <AUTHOR> http://quadz.8x.to

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a little html/jquery game I've been working on for the past two years, on and off. It should work in recent Chrome/Safari/Firefox/Opera. jquery.animate-enhanced plugin converts javascript animations to CSS3 which is very smooth where accelerated (like on iPhone/iPad). There's also a native version for iPad (free and paid, a lot more levels) - the same web app runs in UIWebView. Check it out. Email me at email@example.com if you'd like promo code for the paid iPad version.</comment>


Infosec duo cuffed after physically breaking into courthouse during pentest - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/09/13/pentest_arrest_coalfire/ <comment><USER2> From the end of the article:

> _Additionally, we cannot comment on this specific case as it is an active > legal matter._

Companies and other organisations always say this, and it's true. However, what I'd like to see is this:

Make a statement, then encrypt it with a public/private keypair. Keep the private key, and then when the legal matters are resolved, provide the private key so we can see what you wanted to say.

Even simpler, file the statement under an escrow agreement.

In the main, _I don 't believe they want to say anything._ More, for those of you into logic: _I actively believe they want to say nothing._

I believe the "... legal proceedings ..." is too convenient, and we should pressure organisations to make statements under suitable escrow conditions. Good and honest organisations would welcome it.</comment>


Ask HN: Best intro marketing books? - <AUTHOR>

Hello HN,
I just recently wanted Drew Houston's talk at Stanford where he mentions that early on in his career he had to learn a lot of different disciplines such as sales, marketing and so on.
I figured out that I need to understand a lot more about marketing than I do now (zero) and I need a good place to start. I think Drew mentioned Guerrilla Marketing as his first text, but I was hoping that you guys might recommend something even better to me.
What should my first intro marketing book(s) be? Seth Godin's stuff? Guerrilla Marketing? Others?
Thank you! <comment><USER2> There's so many Guerilla Marketing books out there that it's easy to get lost reading forever with no return on your time investment. I found one Guerilla Marketing book that's like a 'best of' called "Guerilla Marketing Remix- The Best Of Guerilla Marketing" By Jay Conrad Levinson & his wife.

The Guerilla Marketing Handbook by Seth Godin seemed so dated it was hard to get through, but there were some gems in there. I think Seth's book 'Permission Marketing' is a classic & doesn't get old (not yet at least), I learned alot there. Purple Cow & Free Prize Inside are my favorites of his, still marketing I guess.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> After some 15 years in advertising and countless books, I now recommend Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends...", of which many modern ad/marketing books are poor derivatives. I'd also add a book on marketing metrics; an Amazon search will bring up a number of them, all fairly similar. If you are interested in specific advertising tactics, I'd start with a book about writing direct-response copy because that's the most replicable and hence useful knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER4> "Start Small, Stay Small" by Rob Walling is my fav.

<http://startupbook.net>

Also I recommend reading as much Tim Ferriss as possible</comment>


Y Combinator companies has more funding than sum of all remaining accelerators - <AUTHOR> http://www.appsbi.com/y-combinator-companies-has-more-funding-than-the-sum-total-of-all-remaining-accelerators

<comment><USER2> I always call YC a money-making machine machine when describing it to the unfamiliar.

</comment><comment><USER3> Funding is not success.</comment>


France Demand Removal of 15M Project Gutenberg Books from Internet Archive - <AUTHOR> https://boingboing.net/2019/04/11/one-hour-service.html <comment><USER2> Original blog post from the Internet Archive: [https://blog.archive.org/2019/04/10/official-eu-agencies- fal...](https://blog.archive.org/2019/04/10/official-eu-agencies-falsely- report-more-than-550-archive-org-urls-as-terrorist-content/)

<comment><USER3> Two day old HN discussion on this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19627885](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19627885)

Yesterday's HN discussion on this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19646035](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19646035)</comment></comment>


Spartan HUD – Next Generation Augmented Reality Helmet - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/realjds/spartan-hud-next-generation-augmented-reality-helmet?ref=user_menu <comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone, happy to answer any questions, I'll keep an eye on the thread. Cheers!</comment>


Show HN: Block Android Factory Reset Attack - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/GICodeWarrior/AutoResetBlocker

<comment><AUTHOR> This application blocks USSD codes in tel: URLs from executing in the dialer without explicit user action.

The hack itself was discussed yesterday. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4569686>

Unfortunately, most people think it is only Samsung phones or the Galaxy S3. In reality, the vulnerability affects most Android phones out there right now. [http://dylanreeve.posterous.com/remote-ussd-attack-its- not-j...](http://dylanreeve.posterous.com/remote-ussd-attack-its-not-just- samsung)</comment>


Lightworkers and Darkworkers - <AUTHOR> http://hunternuttall.com/blog/2009/01/lightworkers-darkworkers/

<comment><AUTHOR> Reposting because I posted a higher-level link earlier (thanks hga).</comment>


Stack Machines: Notation Polish Reverse calculator - <AUTHOR> https://igor.io/2013/12/02/stack-machines-rpn.html

<comment><USER2> Related, the Shunting-yard algorithm ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunting- yard_algorithm](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunting-yard_algorithm)) is a clever algorithm for converting infix expressions into Reverse Polish or Polish Notation, that only takes linear time.

<comment><USER3> I have once modified the Shunting-yard algorithm to parse distfix expressions ([https://github.com/noteed/syntactical](https://github.com/noteed/syntactical)). Agda is quite famous for offering distfix (or mixfix) operators.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting read.

You can make this run infix notation by adding a simple front end. Reasonable quality description here: [http://scriptasylum.com/tutorials/infix_postfix/algorithms/i...](http://scriptasylum.com/tutorials/infix_postfix/algorithms/infix- postfix/)

Although that bit is built into my brain now after using RPN/RPL calculators for the last 20 years. I wouldn't swap RPN/RPL for anything.

</comment><comment><USER5> RPN can also be viewed as a serialization mechanism for expression trees, and with the addition of a 'dup' operator, directed acyclic graphs (aka DAGs). The notation is used by both the JVM (with typed operators) and the CLR (with operators whose type is inferred from the operands on the stack). Evaluating the stack symbolically results in rehydrating the source tree.

<comment><USER3> Python's Pickle format is similar. It interprets opcodes using a stack-based "pickle" machine. (I have started an Haskell implementation of it [https://github.com/noteed/python-pickle](https://github.com/noteed/python- pickle))

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hey I made something like this a while back too! Except I'm not so sure mine is "Reverse" PN, it might just be standard PN...

[https://github.com/codeandiron/calculator](https://github.com/codeandiron/calculator)

</comment><comment><USER7> Not bad. Although it took me a minute to figure out what language the example code was in. I'd suggest a note to mention that it's PHP. (And also, possibly, using a different language, but that's a matter of taste.)

</comment><comment><USER8> "Notation Polish Reverse"

I see what you did there!

<comment><AUTHOR> +1 to you! :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Very well done with both the content and the quality of the visuals. It strikes me how brief this explanation of RPN is, but still with clarity.

</comment><comment><USER10> shame there is no mention of how you can convert from infix to postfix by also using a stack... this completes the link to familiar everyday programming languages. :)

[http://scriptasylum.com/tutorials/infix_postfix/algorithms/i...](http://scriptasylum.com/tutorials/infix_postfix/algorithms/infix- postfix/)

<comment><USER11> Hi, author here. Shunting-yard is actually what the next post in the series will be about. ;-)

<comment><USER10> cool stuff :)

<comment><USER11> FYI, here's the follow-up post. [https://igor.io/2013/12/03/stack-machines- shunting-yard.html](https://igor.io/2013/12/03/stack-machines-shunting- yard.html)

<comment><USER10> good work :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Please help me decide which startup I should work for? - <AUTHOR>

	I am interning this year and I applied for 2 startups focussing on 3D printing technology. One startup consist of some good experienced founders who have worked with google, Samsung before but and their main focus in using 3D scanning technique to create a 3D printed object (and they don't pay). The other consist of young inexperienced graduates and they have a wide domain of projects related to 3D printing also I have a choice to create and start my own project with them and also they pay me good. Which one I should go after! <comment><USER2> Speaking from past experience only, and just going off what you described, personally I would go with the first one. It sounds like they are more focused and have a specific plan with their business. The second choice seems to be all over the place, not sure what their business plan is, and are just throwing ideas around until one sticks.

Another piece to consider is the people in general. Hopefully you have met both teams and have an idea of what they are like. Go with your gut on who you think is the better team and group you would like to work with.

Finally, as it is an internship, if at all possible take the pay piece out of the equation. If you can afford to live without the pay for the period of the internship then this should be a low priority for selecting. Experience and connections can be worth more than any dollar amount down the road.

</comment><comment><USER3> Risk big, win/loose big!

<comment><AUTHOR> tell me which one you find risky?

<comment><USER4> both</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Real time alerts and notifications – new dweet.io functionality - <AUTHOR> http://beta.dweet.io/

<comment><USER2> Hey, the URL seems to not work. "[http://beta.dweet.io/"](http://beta.dweet.io/")

<comment><AUTHOR> We are back up and running! Please let us know what you think.</comment></comment>


Email Sent by Michael Hastings Hours Before His Death Mentions 'Big Story' - <AUTHOR> http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/06/21/email-sent-by-michael-hastings-hours-before-his-death-mentions-a-big-story-and-a-need-to-go-off-the-radar <comment><USER3> The probability of a journalist investigating a big story in the atmosphere of recent scandals is significant. The probability of having a car crash, even a weird one is also quite significant. I won't comment on the (alleged) history of DUI offenses of hastings.

But if you really want to go off the conspiracy deep end, here's my take: Hastings was driving a modern Mercedes. These come with everything like ABS, EPS, Servo steering, Electronic throttle control, automatic transmission and so forth. And as you might know, cars these days are basically computers on wheels intrepreting the users input to the devices output. So if you really wanted to "produce" a freak accident, like say, remote controlling the car into a palm tree. All you'd need to do was hack the onboard control computer, you probably wouldn't even need an RC receiver as you could probably reuse the builtin wifi/radio to input commands to the computer. So unless you perform forensic examination of the onboard computer (which is usually locked down with DRM so you aren't able to repair your own car anymore) there'd be zero evidence.

<comment><USER4> Please don't.

The computer doesn't control the steering and breaks are mechanical. There's no remote control.

Unless you sabotage the car, what you're saying is impossible. But if you sabotage the car, you don't need all the electronics. Just wear off the breaks or whatever else.

I think you're overestimating the importance of Mr. Hastings. Maybe you'd like to add some folklore or magic to what is a tragic, but trivial death.

<comment><USER5> Brakes in most modern cars are under computer control. They are in mine. I know that because I can disable that control if I want to drive more aggressively.

Before you say something's impossible, you might want to do some research.

[http://www.autosec.org/pubs/cars- oakland2010.pdf](http://www.autosec.org/pubs/cars-oakland2010.pdf)

Cars can be controlled via their onboard computers.

> I think you're overestimating the importance of Mr. Hastings.

Wikipedia:

"His Rolling Stone profile of General Stanley McChrystal, commander of NATO's International Security Assistance Force in the Afghanistan war, documented the widespread contempt of him and his staff for civilian officials in the US government and resulted in the general's resignation."

On the journalistic threat scale of 1-10 I'd say Hastings was an 11.

<comment><USER6> I'm under the impression that computer controlled brakes, like power steering, default to mechanical control. So if the engine starts revving without his consent the driver should still be able to apply the brakes enough to disable or slow down the car.

<comment><USER5> Take a look at the paper I referenced above. Their tests show the ability to disable braking while manual override isn't possible.

While that doesn't address this specific car, it shows that it's possible on at least one type of car.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> First I have seen of this, so I have no idea of the various theories. As I understand it, the car crashed at the front and blew up? Correct? If so...

I find it very, very hard to believe a modern Mercedes would do that. Merc are very safety conscious, they sell to well off people who expect not to blow up, and that is on top of strict EU safety rules and testing. I assume the US also has it's standards to comply with too. This is a luxury car manufacturer which prides its self on safety above and beyond legislation or international standards, and sells to customer who fully expect that.

So, is there no public Merc statement or full on internal investigation? A Merc blowing up like that publicly should be a massive PR disaster for them. Who wants a luxury car that blows up in a front impact? If it is as simple as a front impact causing the car to blow up, I would have thought Merc would be very, publicly, concerned about that.

If I were some one interested in investigating this, I'd be perusing Mercedes to see what they have to say.

<comment><USER8> "I find it very, very hard to believe a modern Mercedes would do that. "

Mercedes cars are not immune to the rules of physics. Gasoline is flammable.

[http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/car-experts-michael- ha...](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/car-experts-michael-hastings- crash-572699)

 _But post-crash fires are, in fact, depressingly typical, especially in high- speed scenarios, says Philadelphia attorney Max Kennerly, whose firm represents plaintiffs in car fires.

"If someone is driving at high speed and hits a very solid object, yeah, you'll get a fire out of that," Kennerly says. "It wouldn't be an underestimation to say that every day, a lawsuit is filed over a car fire right after an accident. There are every year 300,000 vehicle fires..."

Frank Markus, technical director of Motor Trend, points out that "any impact at speeds high enough to rip the drive train out of a car is highly likely to force some object to rupture the fuel tank. There is a lot of potential chemical energy in a gas tank that's even a quarter full...

So while the casual evidence might suggest otherwise, the prosaic reality is that cars involved in high-speed crashes often go up in flames_

edit: boo, beaten to the punch by 2 minutes with the same cite.

<comment><USER9> Gas is indeed flammable, but only under specific circumstances.

And citing hollywoodreporter.com? Thanks but I think I'll rely on more reputable sources:

[http://dsc.discovery.com/tv- shows/mythbusters/videos/crash-a...](http://dsc.discovery.com/tv- shows/mythbusters/videos/crash-and-burn.htm)

<comment><USER10> That's not original reporting from THR, it's an aggregation of other stories, written by THR.

Here, maybe you'll trust NFPA instead:

[http://www.nfpa.org/itemDetail.asp?categoryID=953&itemID=296...](http://www.nfpa.org/itemDetail.asp?categoryID=953&itemID=29658)

<comment><USER9> I'll just say that you, Steko and jlgreco seem pretty invested in presenting the same case, ad nauseum. With that, I have some projects to head off to work on.

Cheers

<comment><USER11> Curiously, if you read our histories you will see that tptacek and I could not possibly disagree more on most of the other aspects of this continuum of stories.

But hey, if I were a government shill in Virginia I wouldn't want to make it _too_ obvious right? Gotta keep it mixed up a bit.

<comment><USER9> Who said you were a government shill? dun dun dun...

<comment><USER11> Oh crimey, I've been had!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Somewhat ironic (or perhaps disturbing is more appropriate) the recent posting on HN [1] of the historic CIA review of assassinations, in which staged car accidents were fairly prominent.

This line from that post comes to mind,

"If the subject's personal habits make it feasible, alcohol may be used [2 words excised] to prepare him for a contrived accident of any kind."

[1] [http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/ciaguat2.html](http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/ciaguat2.html)

<comment><USER13> How could it be staged, exactly? The guy was flying down Melrose. The engine of his Merc flew like 100 feet from site of impact. I just don't see how it could be staged.

<comment><USER14> Flying down Highland. And that was a transmission, not an engine.

<comment><USER13> Re: Engine. [http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2013/06/michael_hastings_...](http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2013/06/michael_hastings_crash_engine_flew_speeding_recovery.php)

Obviously crashed on Highland. CCTV of of him flying on Melrose ... link evades me right now.

<comment><USER14> Check my post above for the flying by link...

It's a transmission connected to the engine. Forgot this car has a small motor. But they're both out there, laying 200 feet out. Strange.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I remember actually rolling my eyes when the first Hastings crash conspiracy statements were made here on HN, now they don't seem so far fetched. Crazy world. Still, chances are it was an unfortunately timed accident. However small it might be though, the (perceived) realistic probability of government involvement is kind of a big deal, at least for people like me who historically never believed in that sort of thing.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is a video from a UCSD researcher on malicious attacks on modern automobiles [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHfOziIwXic](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHfOziIwXic)

Examples of what can be done: Insert in the radio a CD containing a malicious WMA file that would play fine on the computer but once in the car could completely compromise the car electronics...

<comment><USER17> Link to the original paper and one additional paper: [http://www.autosec.org/publications.html](http://www.autosec.org/publications.html)

The money shot - single image comparing all attack vectors: [http://i.imgur.com/ylXoPmz.png](http://i.imgur.com/ylXoPmz.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I still call poppy-cock. It's just such a ridiculous proposition.

Look, the guy contacted Wikileaks a few hours before his death. Wikileaks! He also contacted his employers about a story he was writing on the subject of NSA. Now, if .. IF the FBI/NSA were intent on ending him, surely they would have been privy to said communications. This being the case - what motive would they have to go through with it? I mean, by doing so, they would knowingly and invariably be drawing more heat to that which they were covering up. How? Well,

a) Wikileaks knows about it. Therefore a suspicious death would draw more attention to whatever it was he was about to report.

b) A suspicious death would make him a journalistic martyr, prompting one of his fellow reporters to pick up on where his research was left and give even greater salience to the issue reported. The FBI aren't stupid. They know that murdering a reporter would only magnify the issue down the track.

I'm sorry, it just doesn't make sense to me that they would willingly self- immolate by killing the dude and igniting several spotfires.

I'd like to believe it too. I'd love to see these Prism guards go down, believe me. Honestly thought the people of HN were a bit beyond the conspiracy crap you find on Reddit and such places.

<comment><USER16> Well, he was one of the most successful journalists of his age; he previously destroyed a former CIA general with his writings; he claimed one year ago to have lots of sources in governmental agencies ( [http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/uaha0/iam_michael_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/uaha0/iam_michael_hastings_a_reporter_for_buzzfeed_and/c4tpn8s) ); he recently wrote messages saying he was onto something big re: NSA; he was, basically, at the apex of his career. Why would he go "yeah, let's see how fast this car can go now!" all of a sudden? I am not saying he was killed but I would not find hard at all to believe TBH.

<comment><USER18> _Why would he go "yeah, let's see how fast this car can go now!" all of a sudden?_

Maybe he was drunk.

<comment><USER16> In his book he claimed he had his last drink when he was 20 yo.

<comment><USER19> He has a history of drug and alcohol abuse, so it's possible that he relapsed and went on a bender.

Important to note that I haven't seen anything to say that he had any drugs or alcohol in his system. I haven't read any of the reports. Maybe someone has already done the test and said there wasn't any drugs or alcohol in his blood.

<comment><USER20> One thing that sucks about him dying in a fire is that it may frustrate efforts at toxicology/autopsy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Does anyone know the name of the street where the crash occurred? Said to be in Hancock Park, but I can't find that palm lined center-row street in google maps. Want to check something out.

My opinion on the crash - from the pictures online of the crash almost immediately after impact, the whole car is very much on fire, yet the R-side door paint is unburned. This just doesn't fit with modern fuel safety construction.

In the current political climate, and given the evidence he was onto some big story, the 'dead man in a wifi-controlled car' idea seems quite realistic.

<comment><USER14> Highland Avenue - pretty decent two-lane street (in each direction) with a large center divider full of relatively skinny palm trees and grass.

[https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Highland+Avenue,+hancock+park...](https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Highland+Avenue,+hancock+park&hl=en&ll=34.083038,-118.338368&spn=0.001067,0.00142&sll=33.999883,-118.473362&sspn=0.012079,0.022724&hnear=N+Highland+Ave,+California&t=h&z=20)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory is that conspiracy theorists actually believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is chaotic. The truth is, that it is not the Jewish banking conspiracy or the grey aliens or the 12 foot reptiloids from another dimension that are in control. The truth is more frightening, nobody is in control. - Alan Moore

<comment><USER23> What is the evidence that this world operates chaotically? Are you sure you understand what that word means?

When we talk about the term "truth" it's absolutely critical that we have evidence in our words.

<comment><USER23> Being downvoted for asking for evidence of claims about the term 'truth' is not a good sign.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Seriously, Glenn Beck's website is showing up on the front page of Hacker News? It's like the worst of Rush Limbaugh meets Alex Jones. Flagged.

<comment><USER25> I don't see this as an issue.

We often have links on hn by left wing sources such as MotherJones. Quite frankly I enjoy reading stories written by the different viewpoints and am most certain hn readers are able to detract personal biases from articles as well.

<comment><USER26> I'd prefer not to be supporting Glenn Beck's company by boosting his impressions if I can avoid it. Especially if another source (LA Times) broke the story.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Cars almost never get fire when they crash. It seems more likely that you crash a car that caught fire.

<comment><USER28> Fuel tanks don't catch fire if you shoot at them with tracer bullets (see the old episode of mythbusters), why should they explode when the car hit a tree? It was a nice car, well designed, and surely the engineers at BMW had considered various crash situations, including a front colliosion with a blunt object.

<comment><USER29> People mentioning mythbusters as if it is actually a relevant data point is really annoying.

They are an entertainment show, nothing more. Because they shot a tracer bullet at a gas tank (really that's the "evidence"?) means exactly nothing in the real world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Want to consolidate all of my comments into one, so here goes:

1\. Raw footage of the crash, that Mercedes (appears to be a 2012 C-Class Coupe) is fully engulfed in flames. The car blew up on impact. How is another question.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LSY3wVuASg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LSY3wVuASg)

2\. Dash cam footage of driver running red light (Highland Avenue & Santa Monica Blvd) at a high rate of speed. Video dissolves moments later (something was cut from it)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNhqKRugk8Q](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNhqKRugk8Q)

3\. 5:00 into first video (crash) - you can see the entire transmission thrown over 200 feet into the sidewalk.

4\. Car is really on fire here, not sure a C-250 fuel tank (17.4 gallons) could create that big of a fireball? And that's a full tank.

5\. I will assume Mercedes would engineer the car with the fuel pump cutting off from the engine at the moment of impact. All electrical systems, fuel, combustion, etc. would be disconnected for this reason.

6\. He was traveling at a high rate of speed (80+ mph). Highland Avenue is a nice two-land (in each direction) street, no potholes, bumps, smooth like a baby's ass (that particular section of the street). The palm trees are also fairly thin compared to some bigger ones we have here.

7\. Who are these LANewsLOUDLABS people? Why are they filming a) the red light at that gas station, b) the accident site shortly after (but going through side streets as opposed to simply going straight and making a right turn?) and c) have an LAPD police scanner (LAPD uses trunked communication, you need a $500+ scanner, of course, accessible to anyone (and legal) with $500.00. But a, b, and c just seem odd...

8\. You can tell briefly that the car used by "news" above has a silver exterior. I'm not sure of the make/model, does NOT really sound like a V8 to me, maybe a turbo 6... Driver saying "oh shit" seems genuine, if that makes a difference.

Prelim thoughts:

1) He was going fast, really fast.

2) He ran a red light (there's always a reason for this: alcohol, bad judgment, being chased by someone, etc.)

3) Vehicle burst into flames - but when?

4) Engine and transmission over 200 feet away from crash site (tree)

5) That roof is gone, there's a big hole with flames shooting out - but this car has a panorama sunroof. That glass shattering + high impact collision = hole.

6) Any arson specialists, chemists - feel free to chime in on the pattern, color, position, spread of the burns at 3:00 of the video.

7) The cockpit is intact - so is the drivers seat - the engine is gone, the car is badly damaged in the front, but if there was no fire, I'd say bad injuries but alive. Fire killed the guy.

<comment><USER30> > 2) He ran a red light (there's always a reason for this: alcohol, bad > judgment, being chased by someone, etc.)

This is the most interesting part of the story to me. Even if he was drunk, I'm finding it hard to believe he would race through a light at that speed.

<comment><USER31> Really? Maybe it's just my perspective reading safety reports in the Navy, but "drunk guy driving fast in completely wrong area" is not at all unusual.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > _Meanwhile, investigators are still looking into what caused Hastings to > crash on Tuesday. They are trying to find out if the car had a technical > problem or if he may have had a medical condition that caused him to wreck._

There's speculation online that it was a bomb, which isn't under technical problems or medical conditions. Which makes me wonder, would investigators conclude it was a bomb if there was ample evidence?

<comment><USER11> Why would some nefarious conspiracy orchestrator put a bomb in the car? If you are going to cause a crash, why throw a bomb into the mix too? It would only serve to cause more suspicious and loose ends. The absolute _most_ that makes any sense is a gallon jug or two of gas under the seat just to be sure, but even that is _really_ pushing it.

Think about it, if _you_ were tasked with causing somebody to be declared dead in a car crash, would _you_ also put a bomb in the car? Only if you wanted to be caught maybe...

<comment><USER28> No, I wouldn't.

But then the car blow up (sending the transmission way away) and cought fire. A car doesn't blow up and doesn't catch fire from hitting a tree.

A bomb fits the evidence much better.

<comment><USER11> It makes no goddamn sense to put a bomb in the car. Unless your hypothetical conspirators are idiots or suicidal, then _" sometimes crazy, unusual, or unintuitive shit can happen during high-energy collisions"_ is far more plausible, regardless of if it was intentional.

> _A car doesn 't blow up and doesn't catch fire from hitting a tree._

Yeah, you keep saying that... Here is Ryan Dunn's 911 after a tree was done with it: [http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/06/21/article-2006369-0C...](http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/06/21/article-2006369-0CA708FE00000578-802_634x471.jpg)

<comment><USER31> That's a tow truck dude, where's the car?

<comment><USER11> Exactly. Another angle: [http://www.montgomerynews.com/content/articles/2011/06/23/mo...](http://www.montgomerynews.com/content/articles/2011/06/23/montgomery_life/news/doc4e039d5dee0082782844751.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The Blaze. Glenn Beck's site. Really?

</comment><comment><USER14> Raw footage of the crash - that Mercedes (appears to be a 2012 C-Class Coupe) is totally engulfed. The car blew up on impact. How is another question.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LSY3wVuASg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LSY3wVuASg)

<comment><USER33> Correction for anyone likely to be disappointed as I was - raw footage of the fire after the crash. The guy with the video camera gets there and interviews an eye witness after the car is already burning.

What is amazing to me is just how much the entire car burns. I really don't know anything about car fires but it looks crazy how much the entire vehicle is engulfed in flames from what appears to be a one-car head-on accident in a relatively new mercedes.

I had a, I guess unfounded, belief that a modern luxury-brand car would be fairly fire retardant. Not much you can do about gasoline and the tires, but seems like all the interior upholstery and cushions, etc could be reasonably non-flammable.

<comment><USER34> Having seen a few car fires (including several arsons): once they _do_ catch fire, they tend to burn for a good 10-30 minutes, depending on variables. There's a lot of plastic in cars, and that's little more than solid oil. Accelerant will help start the process.

And yes: fires in the event of accidents are fairly rare, even at high rates of speed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "I need to go off the radar for a bit."

Not sure how big this guy is, let's just say average build, average height - is it me - or is there no visible body in the driver's seat at 3:00 in the video?

If he wasn't wearing a seatbelt, he would have been ejected to where the engine was. Otherwise, that seatbelt keeps him in the same place, even if he leaned over, etc.

Not into conspiracies but definitely some interesting observations from others on this thread.

The BIGGEST red flag of course is WHY he was speeding through a red light at a high rate of speed.

Could be many, many things.

<comment><USER19> > The BIGGEST red flag of course is WHY he was speeding through a red light at > a high rate of speed.

I'd be interested to know how many people drive through red lights, and how many people drive at that speed, and how many people drive at red lights at that speed. (Not because it has any bearing on this story, I just want to put it in some kind of context.)

<comment><USER18> In LA people drive like that all the time. I am not sure why that part of the story is suspicious.

<comment><USER14> Idiots, drunks, criminals, people fleeing the police do. Not sure this guy falls into ANY of those categories. Just strange, that's all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Well, he's definitely "off the radar" now.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm sure many here will roll their eyes at this source:

[http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1687.htm](http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1687.htm) Top US Journalist Attempting To Reach Israeli Consulate Assassinated - <USER2> Sorcha Faal

But it's an interesting set of dots. The address they give for the Israeli consulate is correct: [http://www.israeliconsulatela.org/index.php/en/get- direction...](http://www.israeliconsulatela.org/index.php/en/get-directions) Which does make it about 9 miles from Hastings' crash site, fwiw.

But I'm more interested in identifying the exact crash location, and the direction he was going. In this article: [http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/06/21/email-sent-by- mic...](http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/06/21/email-sent-by-michael- hastings-hours-before-his-death-mentions-a-big-story-and-a-need-to-go-off-the- radar/) there are two photos of the crash site that should allow location of the exact site using google maps and streetview. Particularly this one: [http://www.theblaze.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/06/600x39998...](http://www.theblaze.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/06/600x39998.jpg)

It seems to be somewhere sth of the intersection of Highland and Melrose Av, here: [https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Highland+and+Melrose+avenues&...](https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Highland+and+Melrose+avenues&hl=en&ll=34.082379,-118.338423&spn=0.004417,0.004308&z=18)

I've tried, but still can't pinpoint it.

From this image: [http://www.theblaze.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/06/600x339.j...](http://www.theblaze.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/06/600x339.jpg) I'm wondering if the car clipped the foreground palm tree, then hit the next tree solidly on the front left of the car. So the car ends up spinning to the right, stopping at 90 deg to the street. This would explain why there's little visible damage to the RH side of the car. But not really why the rear damage.

If that's so, it must have been traveling away from the camera view point. But is that going Nth or Sth? In either case, it's hard to see how that fits with heading to the Israeli consulate.

Someone might like to go and see if there's any shrapnel damage in the road surface anywhere before the impact point.

</comment><comment><USER36> So, nothing new on the Voynich front.

</comment><comment><USER37> Accidents do happen, even after sending email warning about big stories and Fed investigations. But then it all depends on his "big story." It need not be the Government doing it, maybe some big fish to avoid jail, embarrassment or a fortune loss, called in a favor or paid to have the problem solved. Personally I could see both of them happening.</comment>


Five founders left to split $36,000 after their tech startup gets sold for $82M - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2317924/Five-founders-left-split-just-36-000-tech-startup-gets-sold-82-million.html

<comment><USER2> A little more background from the article: the five founders left the firm in 2000, 11 years before it was ultimately sold. At the time they left, the company was floundering and nearly bankrupt. The investors who took over the company saved it and are almost wholly responsible for it being sale-worthy.

Really, the founders should consider themselves lucky they got anything at all; they certainly didn't do anything to earn the windfall.

</comment><comment><USER3> I feel like there is probably a lot more going on under the surface than the article portrays.</comment>


Ask HN: How to give a "Web 101"-type presentation to non-technical people? - <AUTHOR> Me and my colleagues have been asked to give a "Web 101" / "Demystifying the Web" presentation to a field of non-technical people.
These are folks who generally work in marketing or advertising, and want to build up their knowledge base so they can better understand technology topics when working with various agencies.
What topics would you cover if you were giving this presentation? What are some things that are OK to skim because it may get too technical and isn't relevant to their area of expertise? Any key points to avoid?
We are thinking we don't want to get into any specific programming fundamentals (variables, functions, loops), or libraries (React, MongoDB, Git), and try and stay as general as possible while still plugging in any gaps they may have.
One strategy we had was the use one of those "polling" apps where people can anonymously text a question they've had but have been too afraid to ask about, and we can try and answer those questions.
Besides trying to answer people's specific questions, some general ideas that we had include:
* History of Computers, the Internet, and HTML
* Building Blocks: HTML, CSS, JS (Content, Style, and Functionality)
* The Browser
* Web 2.0 and the rise of user-generated content
* Web 3.0? (Ubiquitous Connectivity, "The Cloud," "The Intelligent Web")
* Emerging Technologies (AI/ML/NLP, AR/VR/MR/"XR")
* Nitty gritty (high level, but these may be too specific): SPA, PWA, CMS, PaaS
Has anyone here had to do something like this before? Any material you'd recommend to draw inspiration from? <comment><USER2> I find one thing I'm always having to explain, is caching.

Why content doesn't always update straight away. What is it? Why do I need to clear it? etc.

I had one guy brick his computer last week trying to 'clear his cache', still no idea what he actually did. But it's a topic that'd probably be useful, maybe also authentication and state management.

Also, the fact that browsers aren't always 100% compatible with sites and why etc. It's obvious to us but to non-technical people they think the browser is 'the internet' and that's it!

</comment><comment><USER3> I do regular presentations, although mainly security related, for the non- technical staff at my workplace. I have a few comments, stemming from personal opinion and anecdote, that you should feel free to take or leave.

My comments are hopefully on-topic, but I'm not positive on the exact scope of your presentation nor the technical literacy of the people you are presenting to. A web 101, to me, is rudimentary stuff. From your general ideas however, it seems like this is a bit higher level than a Web 101. I'm not sure if your ideas are just ambitious, or if this is a bit more than a 101.

\</comment><comment>

If this is Web 101, and not Programming 101, I would advise skipping over any sort of programming whatsoever. Even though it can be presented in a logical and understandable fashion, if someone has trouble understanding the basics of web, I do not believe they are going to enjoy even surface level programming. Perhaps just an extremely brief overview (and/or definitions) would suffice. "X is a programming language, usually used for Y, and it helps accomplish Z". A marketer (generally) doesn't need to know what a function is doing or how it does it, they want to know how it helps them.

Although a brief history of computers might be good to introduce the presentation, I wouldn't spend much time on it. I have found that most people I have presented to really aren't interested in the history or development of computers or the internet. They want to know what's happening _now_.

Emerging technologies would be good, but I would avoid getting too specific. I would recommend focusing on what the technologies will allow them to do, rather than focus on how the technology does it. "We've all heard the buzzwords AI, ML, etc. As they advance, and as costs come down, here are some things we could leverage the technology for...". Emphasizing what the technology will do for your marketers and advertisers will have them much more excited than trying to explain what is happening mathematically or programmatically.

I find the key with giving a technical presentation to a non-technical audience is to not cover too many topics, even if they are just overviews. Rather, a slightly more in-depth and much more focused presentation has always yielded me better results. My first presentations tried to cover everything from passwords, to phishing, to viruses, etc. They were not very successful.

What specifically is the goal for your presentation? If you have to choose one thing for your audience to walk away with, what would it be? Center your presentation around that, and perhaps touch on some tangential topics.

\</comment><comment>

Personally, given the goal of "demystify the web" only, and assuming a completely non-technical audience, I would structure my presentation like this:

Extremely brief history of computers, using a story instead of technical. As my presentations are usually security related, I like to start with the 1903 telephone hack, where a gentleman named Nevil Maskelyne interrupted a public presentation of a "secure" telephone line, by sending insulting Morse Code messages during the presentation [1]. It usually gets some laughs, is relatable, and segways nicely into how things have evolved since.

Next I would focus on an overview of browsers and websites. Something fairly short, but lays the groundwork for the meat of the presentation.

Since your audience is mainly marketing / advertising, the bulk of my presentation would be focused on the (slightly) more technical side of those fields. If they are familiar with SEO, you could discuss what is happening on the back end. Perhaps talk about web scraping, indexing, linking, analytics and tracking, etc. Anything that might help them do their job better.

That might lead into how AI/ML and all the other buzzwords might help them with SEO, or writing copy, etc. Again, not focusing on what AI is, but how AI might _help them_.

Just my 2c, I'm sure whatever you come up with will still be a great help!

[1][https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228440-700-dot- dash...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228440-700-dot-dash-diss- the-gentleman-hackers-1903-lulz/)

Edit: Some afterthoughts. A quote comes to mind, but I cannot find the exact one. It's along the lines of "Using a simple, but _somewhat_ wrong analogy is much better than a technically accurate, but confusing one". Secondly, I would advise having your main goal be to teach them something that they _can use_ in their day to day. Something that affects them, personally. You want them to be invested in what you have to say, and the best way to accomplish that is to show them what your presentation can do for them during their day to day.</comment>


First Brexit, then Trump, and now, behold the smart hairbrush - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2017/01/withings-kerastase-loreal-smart-hairbrush/ <comment><USER2> Any bets on when the first botnet containing hairbrushes will be discovered? ;-)</comment>


Physician with a Slick, Web 2.0-ish Method of Practice - <AUTHOR> http://www.jayparkinsonmd.com/

<comment><USER2> It's called a boutique practice. My day job is as an ER nurse (while I finish my CS degree), and it's totally the way I'd go for my medical care if there was someone around that did this.

Some doctors with a boutique practice take a retainer fee plus bill insurance. Sounds like this guy is going the cash only route. I'm sure he'll end up making more money that way, regardless.

The average GP in NYC probably makes about 120,000 - 150,000. But they have to carry a 5,000-10,000 patient load while each patient gets 15 minute appointments. Some docs routinely see over 20 patients a day. This guy is charging a $500 retainer for two visits a year. That means that if he has 300 patients, he's making what a regular GP makes at an HMO. If each patient has two visits a year, that means that he can have 2 appointments a day and make the same amount as an HMO doc. That's his break even point. Anything over that, and it's gravy. I'm willing to bet that he has a 500 patient load. So, he's bringing in $250,000 net plus extra visits and appointments. So, by going cash only, he's probably making twice what an insurance doc would make.

This guy also does house calls only. So, he doesn't have the overhead that he'd normally have with an office--staff, office rent, equipment, etc... He doesn't have to hire billing specialists. He outsources all of his X-Ray and lab work, so no overhead there. And, he has an unofficial network of non-jerk specialists that he can refer people to that he likes working with.

I'm surprised that this hasn't caught on more than it has.

If you're his patient, look at his appointment schedule. He's giving people a half-hour to one hour time slots. And, he does a lot of his consultations over the wire, via IM, video chat and cell phone. He probably doesn't have to see his patients most of the time, and it's a lot easier for his patients to get in touch with him. His patients are happier and he has a much better quality of life.

Brilliant.

<comment><USER3> Do you think he's getting any kickbacks from his referrals to the specialists?

<comment><USER2> I seriously doubt it. Doctors have always had gentleman's agreements to refer patients to each other, and then refer the patient back once the specialist is done.

The only kind of payola that I've ever seen after 14 years in health care are drug companies purchasing cruises/lovely dinners, etc... for doctors.

<comment><USER4> It depends on the type of doctor, and the type of service. For example, dentists and oral surgeons use referral kickbacks almost 100% of the time. I've seen xray specialists and open-MRI centers also offer doctors kickbacks.

It's obviously not seen in HMOs and in emergencies or in large hospital institutions, but in the private medicine arena, where this guy is solely practicing, it certainly is more common than you make it seem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is this guy bypassing managed care completely? Its like a return to the old way doctors used to practice, house visits and all. But this guy leverages modern communication to maintain a wider patient base than previously possible with strictly face-to-face visits. Interesting.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wonder what would happen if you got a bunch of new, young, hip doctors and started the exact same kind of thing in San Francisco. You could have a really sweet centralized appointment and advice site with always-accessible doctors ready to chat 24/7, which is covered by the patient retainer fees and/or insurance.

Healthcare 2.0?

(PS anyone interested in seriously seeing if this is feasible?)

<comment><USER6> sort of exists already. I use these guys:

<http://www.sfoncall.com/index.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sorry, but this is health-care going back to pre-1850 levels with a Web 2.0 interface. If this becomes widespread, it defeats the whole idea of 'pay according to your means, get treatment according to your needs', social solidarity, etc.

<comment><USER8> Good. In case you hadn't noticed, most Americans do not agree with that concept. Maybe they oughta try it in Russia. Oh, wait. Too late.

<comment><USER9> They tried it in france and a lot of european countries and it works rather well....

But of course, forget what I said, keep on thinking that any concept of fair social health care is equivalent to totalitarian communism.

As for me, I will go on with my belief that it a government is there to provide fair and equal access to education and health care and protect an healthy competitive economy through antitrust laws and simple and efficient business regulations (unlike france).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is really interesting and refreshing to see a change in the way that healthcare operates ...

BUT, it seems like this guy is trying to bypass insurance companies completely. From the FAQ: _... I accept absolutely no health insurance at all and my fees may not be reimbursed by your insurance company._

We all know that health insurance is a huge confusing nightmare in the U.S., but I don't think its advisable get rid of it completely. I suppose if you don't have insurance, then this doc would be a really good alternative.

<comment><USER11> Not necessarily.

My surgeon Dad told me once that his practice pockets pennies out of every dollar they officially bill the patient. Where does the rest go? Between his own liability insurance, the insurance companies not paying up, and the privacy/medical records red tape.

This guy's model is actually my Dad's dream: be able to go treat a patient for 30mins, get paid for it(versus fight for hours with the insurance). The actual bill would be lower too because for most part he only has to charge pennies on the dollar since there won't be as much red tape.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This looks really great... until you get cancer.

<comment><USER13> consider this system paired with traditional catastrophic health insurance

</comment></comment><comment> daniel-cussen On a somewhat unrelated topic, why is health care so pricey in US? Do doctors willingly quota spots in medical schools?

<comment><USER14> It's expensive largely because of the prices of malpractice insurance doctors have to carry, greedy insurance companies, and a lot of red tape.

I'm not sure what you're asking with the second question, can you rephrase it?

I'm sure some studies are out there, but how much more expensive is medical care in America compared to Europe and Japan? Sure, we pay out of pocket here, whereas it's rolled in to taxes over there, but what's the price difference?

<comment><USER9> Here in japan, when I go to the doctor I pay between 5 and 10 dollars + medecines... The national health care covers 70 % of the bill (so the doctor would cost between 15 and 30 dollars). The national health care is compulsory and costs me about 150 dollars a month (since I'm a contractor I pay it in full, for employees they only pay half and their employers pay the other half)

In france, when I was a student, the doctor cost 20 euros and the national health care covered 80% (so I paid 4 euros). As a student, the national health care was included in my tuiton fees that cost around 600 euros for one year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ah... One appropriate chance for sick==(slick,!healthy) pun and you blew it karzeem.

</comment><comment> daniel-cussen Good stuff.</comment>


Live Photovoltaic generation graphing in the UK - <AUTHOR> https://www.solar.sheffield.ac.uk/pvlive/# <comment><AUTHOR> Hitting 12% of capacity today. More stats: [http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/](http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/)</comment>


SmileBASIC 4 for Nintendo Switch - <AUTHOR> https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/smilebasic-4-switch/ <comment><USER2> > In order to upload your works to the server or unlimited downloading of the > published works, you need to purchase Server Tickets in the game.

ok.. so it costs money, but if I want to share a game I write, or look at others, I'd have to buy some kind of ticket? $9 to upload a limited amount of code, [https://ec.nintendo.com/AU/en/titles/70010000010544/consumab...](https://ec.nintendo.com/AU/en/titles/70010000010544/consumables/cqjhtpfl6uprvlt0)

What's next, some kind of "purchase another 100 lines of code" DLC package? You know, as a kid I learned BASIC from school friends, neighbors, and family members, and taught BASIC to many more, by trading the source code freely. Books like "BASIC Computer Games" were gotten at the library for free. My computer booted into BASIC for free.

Now I realize how disadvantaged I was, _this_ is the future -- teaching children about "platforms", that hold your code hostage, monetize on your creative works, and nickel and dime away your creative energy.

To think, all that nasty PIRATING of BASIC code !! Without paying anyone?! Thousands of dollars on the table, finally somebody is monetizing this!

<comment><USER3> We need a modern "codable console" in the spirit of the Commodore 64 and Sinclair Spectrum etc.

Something you can just unbox and start playing and programming on right away. The Raspberry Pi is not it, the iPad isn't it, and neither is any Android. The remakes/revivals of the C64 etc. are not it either.

Something like a laptop that boots into a _friendly_ GUI/CLI hybrid within 1 second, and doesn't require the internet or signing-up or any other bullshit. Just a big fat blinking cursor.

<comment><USER4> There are plenty of them to choose from.

[http://www.ic0nstrux.com/](http://www.ic0nstrux.com/)

[https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid- go/](https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-go/)

[https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-go- advance/](https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-go-advance/)

[https://arduboy.com/](https://arduboy.com/)

[https://www.specnext.com/](https://www.specnext.com/)

<comment><USER3> The Spectrum Next seems to be the closest to the ideal, and obviously it's perfect for Spectrum fans including me, but it's missing:

• A built-in display.

• A platform not tied to imitating an older platform.

• A language not tied to an older language.

As for the others, despite being commendable efforts, they're also missing one or more of:

• Usable straight out of the box; no assembly required, and without need to connect and update the system first.

• A single official repository (not excluding others) for sharing and distributing user-made programs, accessible from the device itself as easily as the App Store.

• Standard keyboard AND standard game controller (most have only one or the other).

• No fragmentation: If you wrote a program for the Commodore 64 or ZX Spectrum, it would run on 99% of the C64s or Speccies (the only differences that I can recall were the 48K/128K versions, and things like "speech" packs etc. but we don't need separate "upgrades" like that today).

As "blondin" commented:

> _i see people talking about the arduinos, raspberry pis, and all these micro > devices for which you have to pick additional components among myriads and > you will be very lucky if 10 more people have the same setup that you have. > these people are missing an important point about platform and sharing > here._

<comment><USER4> I kind of agree, however they are the closest one will ever get like those old platforms.

Waiting for the perfect unicorn will not work out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm currently mindblown at one of the programs publicly available for download in the software, which is a NEC PC-8801 emulator... I peeked at the BASIC code and it does indeed appear to be emulating a Z80 and it even includes support for loading real BIOS dumps and floppy images seemingly.

I can't find much information about the software online but I think it was developed for one of the competitions and I'd highly recommend checking it out if you decide to purchase SmileBASIC 4.

<comment><USER6> Can you share a link? Do you think would it be possible to play with the code from the (free) book "Machine code for beginners" [0] with that emulator? I'd like to get some familiarity with machine code, and thought maybe it's a simplest way to start with. Or maybe you can give other suggestions for the emulator?

From the book (page 3):

> The book is specially written for computers with a Z80 or 6502 > microprocessor.

[0] [https://usborne.com/browse-books/features/computer-and- codin...](https://usborne.com/browse-books/features/computer-and-coding- books#__mcenew)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very cool. This will probably get some kids onto the path of a future programming career. I remember my first PC running MS DOS, being young and curios I just had to try everything, eventually stumbling upon Pascal, and that would basically shape my adult life.

Sometimes I worry about the new generation though, despite the prevalence of technology and information, most grow up on locked down mobile systems, which are made for consumption and don't promote creating very well. They are also very opaque to what's actually happening under the hood. Mobile UI is an godsend for user experience, but it's also one heck of an abstraction layer.

Maybe that's why so many people are trying their luck with becoming influencers, streamers or youtubers, because that's seems like the kind of content creation these devices promote.

Anyway, on the same vein, I was positively surprised when Overwatch added some kind of visual coding environment for custom games a year or so ago. Seemed a bit silly, but give kids the tools, and they'll create. I'm sure that alone will have a real positive impact for many young adults.

<comment><USER8> I've gotten my kid very into Nintendo Labo. You build toys from cardboard that hold the controllers and so you can drive a car in the game with a cardboard wheel, for example. But the whole thing is a veneer on learning how the toys work through additional activities, and then a drag and drop programming interface is available so you can make your own interactive tools using the Switch. He's not quite old enough to grasp the programming interface, but the discovery section demystifies the abstraction layer of the controller. Its not just a box. Its a box you open up and change.

<comment><USER9> If you haven't bought the VR kit, they added a full 3D editor on top of the engine from the first few releases, which allows you to create VR or non-VR games. It's absolutely incredible and was sadly overlooked. I've been hoping for them to update it with proper sharing and do a new marketing push but doubtful such a thing is coming. There are 2 VR sets available- the full kit is more impressive but the software is the same on both if you care more about the diy games than what Nintendo provides.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> i waited forever for a release on the DS. it finally came but on the switch. also the developers told me that a switch lite wouldn't be the best experience (not TV output among a few things).

<comment><USER11> Previous versions of SmileBASIC also exist on the DSi (under the name "Petit Computer") and 3DS (simply called "SmileBASIC").

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder how tihs compares to FUZE [https://www.fuze.co.uk/nintendo- switch.html](https://www.fuze.co.uk/nintendo-switch.html)

<comment><USER13> No public API docs for either platform it seems?

<comment><USER11> [https://sup4.smilebasic.com/en/doku.php?id=reference:top](https://sup4.smilebasic.com/en/doku.php?id=reference:top)

[https://fuzearena.com/help](https://fuzearena.com/help)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> That's not the first solution, when gaming console gave access to hardware through simple programming language for the purpose of entertainment and education. There was Sega Saturn Game Basic [0], published in 1998 and giving access to almost all console hardware capabilities.

However, 2020 is not 1998, and I personally consider Basic a bit outdated even for education purposes. Don't get me wrong, it's a great tool to introduce world of programming to kids, but Python would have been much more practical and extremely simple to learn.

[0] [https://youtu.be/O_QU8eaMymo](https://youtu.be/O_QU8eaMymo)</comment>


A simple tool to check if Lulzsec has leaked your personal data - <AUTHOR> http://siliconfilter.com/has-lulzsec-leaked-your-data-online-heres-a-simple-tool-to-check

<comment><USER2> Reminds me of this: <http://ismycreditcardstolen.com/>

<comment><USER3> The fact that this site is not transmitted through TLS is mildly amusing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Are you sure you trust the people that wrote/published the widget? I wouldn't be surprised if it was just a way to steal your e-mail address.

<comment><USER5> Exactly. That was my first thought too.

<comment><USER6> This is Zee from The Next Web. I can absolutely 100% put-my-reputation-on-the- line tell you that the widget is not harvesting emails. I know the developer personally and trust him completely

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Oh, it's not a swindle. What you do is, see, you give 'em all your credit card numbers, and if one of them is lucky, they'll send you a prize."

</comment><comment><USER8> We are 100% sure.

(See this comment from our editor in chief: [http://thenextweb.com/industry/2011/06/16/lulzsec-has- releas...](http://thenextweb.com/industry/2011/06/16/lulzsec-has-released- over-150000-names-emails-and-home-addresses-check-if-youre-one-of-them- here/#lf_comment=1823766))

<comment><USER9> You won't even make the widget's author known. You're keeping that secret, and I doubt you've had someone competent analyze the widget's source code. No thanks.

Also, after some fuzzing, it looks like the widget might be vulnerable to a SQL injection attack, so I hope nothing really is being harvested.

<comment><USER10> I can understand why they might want to keep that a secret. I can imagine some group, perhaps Lulzsec themselves, attacking someone who tried to help the victims.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Probably a more secure way is to log into your Gmail account, scroll down to the bottom of the page, and click on the "Details" link of the line "Last account activity: 1.5 hours ago on this computer. Details" They show you locations from where your account has last been logged into.

<comment><USER12> That will only tell you if somebody has hacked your Gmail account. The OP is for checking if somebody may have hacked one of your other accounts (e.g. Sony) where you used your e-mail address.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I immediately thought that this wasn't worth the risk of trying just on the off-chance its phoning back to Lulz with my info. Sort of asking to be hunted. Maybe I'm paranoid...

</comment><comment><USER14> I submitted my e-mail and got a syntax error. Great.

<comment><USER8> If you give the error we can ask the developer to fix it. It's a known bug.</comment></comment>