Screenshots of upcoming Mega site: key generator, registration, and file manager - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/12/07/kim-dotcom-posts-screenshots-of-upcoming-mega-site-key-generator-registration-and-file-manager/

<comment><USER2> I think most of the responses here regarding the crypto are missing the point. It doesn't matter if the key is not totally random. It just has to be good enough so that they can plausibly deny that they know anything about the file contents. It is their attempt to absolve themselves of responsibility for the copyright issues concerning the content. It is not about making your files more secure.

<comment><USER3> How is this new service supposed to be viable like the last MU? If the point of this "encryption" is supposed to provide plausible deniability, then the whole point of distributing warez via this site "legally" will have to be that the decryption keys are kept secret or underground.

But for this site to be popular enough to allow for downloads supported by ad revenue, then the file links and decryption keys will have to be widely distributed to drive traffic. If someone files a takedown notice with a file and decryption key that proves the data contained therein is copyrighted then won't MU be in the same boat they were in previously?

<comment><USER2> they could be doing something as crazy as putting the key in the "share this" URL. If they put it after the fragment then it doesn't get sent to the server and they can continue to deny having the ability to read file contents. Someone did a "Show HN" with a site that did something similar a month or two back.

Presumably mega then don't offer a site search but instead rely on google to index warez forums with links to the site that include the decryption key. I don't know.

Edit: found the site that did this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3852649>

<comment><USER4> Yep, that was me. I strongly suspect that this may be what he is up to. It occurred to me at the time that there may be a way of doing it with files.

Ultimately I shut down the site as it got very little traction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That key generator seems to imply javascript-based encryption. The only possible use I can see, is encrypting a file on upload, so MEGA's servers can't look inside. In which case I'd very much insist on having an open-source desktop client, instead of entrusting encryption to some javascript code which can be hijacked.

<comment><USER6> Even if the encryption is using a known-good algorithm, there's absolutely no way for the JavaScript client to generate anything close to a cryptographically secure random string for the key.

Unless they use random numbers supplied by Mega itself, I just don't see how that would work. If they are using entropy supplied by Mega, then they might as well not bother with the whole encryption thing.

ED: The screenshot does mention that they gather entropy via keystrokes and mouse movements (like modern OS do), but I'm still not sure that would provide anywhere near the randomness needed.

<comment><USER7> Why? The screenshot mentions RSA-2048. At which point of that algorithm is random input so important that it breaks the encryption if you don't have access to a true random number generator?

I know that you choose p and q by random. And it is obvious that you want to choose numbers that an attacker can't easily guess. But not having access to a hardware number generator doesn't automatically imply you have a real useable vulnerability here, or does it?

<comment><USER8> Not generating good random numbers is not a huge concern for something like AES, where there's just such a large search space. But with RSA, generating a "bad prime" is the difference between something taking until the death of the sun to break, and taking days.

Edit: To clarify, primes for RSA keys are generated probabilistically -- we don't really _know_ that they're prime, we just have a fair amount of confidence to that effect. It's entirely possible to generate bad 'primes' that really aren't prime at all, which makes factoring the keys trivial.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the answer. But I don't understand that. For generating the prime- numbers used, you basically guess a number and use the miller-rabin-test or something like that to test if prim. Maybe you have a better approach, but generally, that should be equally possible using JS as any other language.

You never want to implement something like this yourself for a real product, of course, but i don't see that specific issue. They even could build upon something like jsbn[1]

I thought that this is about a missing random number generator.

[1]<http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~tjw/jsbn/>

<comment><USER8> I am not a crytographer (by any means!), but my understanding from conversations with folks in that space is that it's very possible for a bad PRNG to generate primes that pass the standard tests but are still very breakable. I really don't have any more information than that; I should read up more there.

Either way, that's by no means the biggest issue here -- some browsers already have CSPRNGs -- but rather that the code is coming from their server and is considered to be compromised by default. Browser-side crypto without very strict security boundaries on key generation and access is just bad news.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can someone explain to me the difference between the new Mega and something like SpiderOak?

<comment><USER10> Judging from the past I would guess that Mega will be quite popular in the web-warez scene as a hoster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Who holds the private key?

Do you trust them?

<comment><USER12> _Who holds the private key?_

You do. (Or in reality, the whole world since the point of Mega is to share files.)

 _Do you trust them?_

Depends.

<comment><USER13> > You do. (Or in reality, the whole world since the point of Mega is to share > files.)

That implication makes no sense to me. Why would you ever share a private key?

The trust question is more about public keys. Do you trust that the key you think is your friends public key really is? And that's what key-signings are for.

The screenshot shows in-browser key generation but there's no reason I can think of that they should not accept keys generated by GPG or similar. Generate your keypair as securely as you can and however you like--and then only submit your public key to the Mega site.

<comment><USER12> It's not clear why they're using public key crypto in the first place. But since the whole point of Mega is _sharing_ files, people will definitely be sharing the decryption keys.

Do you trust that that copy of _The Dark Knight Rises_ is really from who you think? Who cares?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Storystreamer – Snap/Instagram Stories UI Inspired News Reader - <AUTHOR> https://storystreamer.live/ <comment><USER2> Not a bad idea, and implementation is solid mvp.

Some thoughts:

1) Given that you have clear categories available, it might be worth it to show the name of the category on the reel as well. Sometimes headlines are very broad, and they might not clearly imply the category. I tried a few categories, and in the end forgot which one I was currently watching. -> By showing category indicator you would give additional context for the watcher, on why a specific story is important. I get there's background color doing more or less the same thing, but only if a picture is missing. Color is great for seasoned users (additional pattern would be great for color blind people), new users would probably need clearer information.

2) after the reel ends, you might want to show a final screen, before jumping to the home screen. This way, people could still tap the prev button, if they wanted to recheck some headlines that they missed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey thanks for your feedback!

I ended up pushing an update with both your ideas.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've always been a big fan of the Snapchat/Instagram Story UI format but I wasn't the biggest fan of the content on those applications. At the same time I wanted a single place where I could get up to speed on various topics. I ended up combining the ideas.

This works exactly as Snapchats 'Discover' Section. There is a collection of 'streams' of various topics (news, gaming, nature, etc.) You click a stream, and you can tap or click to go forward or back. When done the stream viewer closes and the stream link is greyed out until new items are available. It has embedded video and picture support and feels like modern day 'channel surfing'.

Would love feedback and any section ideas!

<comment><USER2> I think bloomberg's tictoc, in it's earlier incarnation, was doing something very similar. It seems to be now renamed, redesigned and merged with some other project.

Their version was heavily based on video. I might remember it wrong, but I think video was also their core problem. I tried it once but didn't really get it, as I hadn't used Snapchat nor Instagram.

Because Tictoc was a sort of old school, video first solution, they were missing the crucial "would you like to know more" step. You could just consume it, but not on your own terms, which kind of makes all the difference.

<comment><USER3> TikTok places far more emphasis on video and visual consumption and less of reading or text.

<comment><USER2> It's a different product, with a slight difference in spelling.

Tictoc used to be a visual news feed created by Bloomsberg, aimed for millenials. It came out around the same time or just before Tiktok landed in west.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a pretty cool website. Reminds of Tiktok with the seemless continuously loading videos, in this case being news articles or other interesting videos. I really like the tv show/movie trailers subsection. Few things to point out: (1) one thing I would do for the news articles is slow down the timer. Perhaps 20-30 seconds. (2) Also image backgrounds and video quality can look off sometimes. (3) The back and forth arrows blend into white or noisy background images -- can the arrow colors change dynamically.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good points!

I added a feature which lets you pause the auto skip by holding the progress bar in the bottom right corner. Should give you more time to finish reading.

I also added some contrast to some up UI elements. I do want the prev and next to fade into the picture though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, that goes way too fast! You could maybe pause if the user keep their finger pressed, or increase the time between stories?

<comment><USER5> or give us the option to set time

<comment><USER6> This. Most UIs need more detailed controls for the user. Everyone is different. One size or setting does not fit all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Cool, but might work better with curated news. Many of the stories I tried are just blank/bad images.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks for checking it out!

Unfortunately, not all items have a picture associated with them as that depends whether the associated webpage has an open graph meta tag image.

Making sure items/their pictures looks nice is another thing, which I'll definitely take a look at.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> this is cool, but stories go by too quickly. also needs some kind of swipe up to read inline functionality.

<comment><AUTHOR> Read inline is definitely on the radar.

For now, I added the option to hold the bottom-right time bar to pause the advancement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a great idea! Do you have any plans to add keyboard shortcut support (a/d to go between stories, w/a/s/d to go between categories)?

</comment><comment><USER10> Is there a mobile app for this? Currently I am "add to home screen" as an alternative. nice work:)

<comment><AUTHOR> No mobile app for now, but I'll consider it!

Add to home screen works pretty well!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Congrats. I love this! Where do you get your content from and how often do you refresh it? How do I request for different categories? I would love to add a few more for politics and covid-19

</comment><comment><USER12> Hi, I would love to see this being localized and configurable.

Would love to talk if you are interested. Europe here.

</comment><comment><USER13> Did you use any template to get stories UI? I would love to hack something similar for a subgenre!

</comment><comment><USER14> Annoyingly fast, had to close it.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can now hold the bottom-right timing bar to pause advancing to the next item.</comment></comment>


F.C.C. Chairman Adds More Ambiguity to His Position on Network Neutrality - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/15/f-c-c-chairman-adds-more-ambiguity-to-his-position-on-network-neutrality/

<comment><USER2> Personally I recommend reading the actual FCC blog entry before voicing your outrage or relief:

[http://www.fcc.gov/blog/ensuring-open-internet-now-and- futur...](http://www.fcc.gov/blog/ensuring-open-internet-now-and-future)

It's far more well-written -- and notably prescient -- than the NYTimes blog post.

That said, AT&T's "Sponsored Data" announcement _ahead of_ the court's ruling is very interesting and I would not at all be surprised that both events have resulted in a _Sword of Damocles_ [1] hanging over the FCC -- or, more to the point, we are all holding our breaths anticipating a final clarification of policy.

Most notably is that the growth of the internet has been _mostly_ organic where regulation has been scarce, however I would be fairly content with reducing the impossibly tight grip of telecom monopolies in municipal environments. The Chairman touches on this saying that broadband is terribly scarce, and attempts to exert pressure on such monopolies could have unintended side-effects -- most notably reduction in service to customers.

That is a valid concern that's very difficult to approach, however I believe competition should be enforced in larger municipalities (>1M population) and 'sponsored data' initiatives would be more suited for mobile broadband services.

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

<comment><USER3> The FCC link certainly articulates a laudable set of principles, but it seems rather late in the game for platitudes. If FCC don't have an actual policy reaction to the ruling yet, when do they plan on having one? Do they expect the Republicans to retake the Senate this year? Maybe they'd like to see another presidential election? What's the hold-up?

I'm not surprised to see the self-serving "very high fixed costs and very large minimum efficient scale" canard floated again. Of course backbones and other fiber networks are costly, but astute observers will note a great deal of competition in _that_ market. It's only in the first mile that competition is lacking, and FCC are largely to blame for that fact.

We have the radio tech we have because it is the radio tech the FCC has allowed. If they hadn't been dragging their feet on white spaces for a decade, the USA's abysmal placing on all the broadband lists would never have come about. Only in the most crowded urban areas should consumers and most businesses be connecting through anything other than a WISP. There is no economic driver for WISPs to be large, so lobbyists and other FCC hangers-on wouldn't make as much money from them. WISPs operating in unlicensed space would take millions of dollars out of the pockets of MNOs, CATVs, and ILECs, and give that money back to consumers, so again there would be less money for corruption. Damn, now I've almost convinced myself it will never happen.

ps. that footnote seems _really_ unnecessary.

<comment><USER4> > The FCC link certainly articulates a laudable set of principles, but it > seems rather late in the game for platitudes. If FCC don't have an actual > policy reaction to the ruling yet, when do they plan on having one?

Presumably, they are first reviewing with the details of the ruling with their legal team and assessing the prospects of appeal (and appeal strategy, whether to file with the US Supreme Court, or file for _en banc_ review by the full DC Circuit.) Should they appeal, there won't be need of a "policy reaction" to the present court decision, because the policy will be the policy already adopted in the _Open Internet Order_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "..the F.C.C. will intrude on the activities of network operators in ways that will damage them economically with injury to them and to their ability to offer more and improved service"

I don't get it, what could you do to damage them economically? All these big network guys make money hand over fist for crappy service. No one I know loves Comcast or Verizon or AT&T. No one.

We've come as a country that invented the Internet to somewhere way down on the list of openness and speed. It's obvious why this is. We have some of the (if not the) most expensive connectivity for lowest speed in the world.

I have to laugh at 'improved service' and I guess I would if the whole thing were not just such a major let down.</comment>


Show HN: Monty Hall Problem - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/victorqribeiro/montyhall <comment><USER2> I used to bring this up in interviews and always ended up asking the candidates to write a program that will show who's right. I still love this.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think this is the first "game" I ever coded in my life. And I did it cause I was intrigued by the fact that you have 2/3 chance of winning by switching doors. Instead of writing a script to run the game 1000 times and check the result, I wrote the game (very bad code) and played it a couples of times.</comment>


The Refugee Crisis Isn't a 'European Problem' - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/06/opinion/sunday/the-refugee-crisis-isnt-a-european-problem.html?smid=fb-share <comment><USER2> From the article:

'The United States and its allies are at war with the Islamic State in Syria — fine, everyone agrees they are a threat — but don't we have some responsibility toward the refugees fleeing the combat? If we've been arming Syrian rebels, shouldn't we also be helping the people trying to get out of their way?'

'Blaming the Europeans is an alibi and the rest of our excuses — like the refugees don't have the right papers — are sickening.'

</comment><comment><USER3> A refugee crisis is what results after sufficient neglect of foreign affairs.</comment>


Meet CI Joe: GitHub's new Continuous Integration server - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/blog/471-continuous-integration-spring-cleaning

<comment><USER2> Would have been more excited it they had offered a hosted CI service, still looks cool tho.

<comment><USER3> That's tremendously difficult given security concerns. Not only would build servers have access to source code, but they would also be running arbitrary user-supplied code of an indeterminate nature.

I'm just surprised they wrote yet-another-build-server with a small feature foot print -- but the more the merrier. More software around automated building is a good thing.

<comment><USER2> Yeah very true. The providers that are doing are doing constrained things like Rails CI. I think thats fine, I just need a place for my smaller client projects that can run Rails or Flex unit tests without me setting up a dedicated slice and having to manage that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> LOVE the name they gave it.</comment>


Ignore the Snobs, Drink the Cheap, Delicious Wine - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/17/opinion/sunday/ignore-the-snobs-drink-the-cheap-delicious-wine.html <comment><USER2> So, what do I do if my tastes are midway between the two?

I mean, I like sweet dessert wines on occasion, like a good muscat, but mostly I would prefer wines that are just a _bit_ sweeter, just a _bit_ less bitter, than the "good" wines, and I sure as heck _do_ appreciate complex flavors. I like merlots, cabernets, petit syrahs, reislings, pinot noirs, and on and on.

Chardonnays often just hit you over the head with oaky vanilla flavor. Might as well be drinking a cream soda.

For reference, I rarely drink sodas which are also too sweet, most of the time I stick with either tea or just water. I also usually prefer hard ciders to beer (which is also often too bitter to be enjoyable).

Oh, and I am _not_ a supertaster (I love broccoli, for example).

So, any wines out there that fit the bill?

<comment><USER3> What's that about broccoli? I like broccoli too, does that mean i have poor taste?

<comment><USER2> Supertasters are folks who are able to detect the presence of several more compounds than "normal". A common indicator is a _dislike_ of certain foods like broccolli (they taste unusually bitter to them).</comment></comment></comment>


How to Handle a Lowball Job Offer - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122817186202670399.html <comment><USER2> _"To negotiate in tough times, you have to be able to create a vision,"_

The best way to negotiate is to be in a position to walk away, by getting another job, else lots of companies out there will low-ball you and site the economy as the reason.</comment>


Intel Starts Publishing Open-Source Linux Driver Code for Discrete GPUs - <AUTHOR> https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Intel-Memory-Regions-Local-Dev <comment><USER2> Finally. Options!! Back in the day we had 3Dfx (went under and sold to nVidia), PowerVR (They're still around. They're probably the GPU chip in your cellphone), Intel i740, and the AMD Radeon. nVidia broke in to the market with the Riva/Vanta/TNT cards. Hell even Trident had some Direct3D/opengl chips. For the past several years we've been down to just the big two (although Intel integrated has held up, even for some medium gaming and indie titles).

5+ was probably too many to support by most game devs, but 3 would be nice and solid. It's also nice that we'll have another player besides AMD that actually gives a shit about Linux/OSS drivers. nVidia might finally be forced to open up and contribute to Nouveau and bring it up to par with amdgpu. The future could be a team green, team red and team blue. Intel has killed the discrete graphics projects before though. So we'll have to wait and see.

<comment><USER3> >AMD Radeon

Or you mean ATI Rage3D. There was also as mentioned S3, Matrox, and 3D Lab ( Sold to Creative, that maker of Sound Blaster Sound Card ) as well. I miss 3DFx ( I still have a few Voodoo graphics Card somewhere ), Glide was way ahead of its time. John Carmack was fighting for OpenGL.

The biggest barrier of Entry to GPU isn't the Hardware, but the insane amount of Software ( Drivers ) optimisation required for the GPU to be even remotely competitive with its rivals.

<comment><USER4> Don't forget Rendition and their Verite chips.

They had an absolutely insane card that had both pci and agp connectors.

<comment><USER5> I'd rather forget Rendition and their Verite chips. My V1000 would NEVER work with Quake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can't wait to pair my Threadripper with an Intel GPU :D Now NVidia, please release an x64 processor to have a complete mix on the market.

<comment><USER7> I rather they fix their GPU drivers by open sourcing them, or AMD.

<comment><USER8> AMD's Linux stack is not only completely open source, most of it is in-kernel and maintained by AMD devs.

<comment><USER9> Try to use OpenCL and you will need blobs. It's major pain to use blender(requires OpenCL if you want to finish render today) not long time ago their blob crashed on new versions libdrm.

<comment><USER10> I'm using RocM OpenCL right now, which I believe is the approved option, or will be. Personally I've not had any issues with it - I can certainly use Blender with it, although the performance right now is so-so (I only have a cheap APU though, so hardly surprising).

I don't believe I have any blobs, other than the firmware one, which is true regardless - can you tell me what blobs you mean?

<comment><USER9> [https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/opencl- amd/](https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/opencl-amd/)

this one, part of amdgpu-pro

<comment><USER10> I can confirm I don't have that installed. I'm using this: [https://github.com/RadeonOpenCompute/ROCm-OpenCL- Runtime](https://github.com/RadeonOpenCompute/ROCm-OpenCL-Runtime)

Edit: actually Blender performance is decent, but the kernels take ~10 minutes to compile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Intel's Gen10 integrated graphics presumably had a bunch of effort put into it, and has been mothballed for years because Intel never could get the CannonLake CPUs out the door. That's got to sting a bit for its designers.

</comment><comment><USER12> I can't wait for some eDRAM to act as my L4 cache and finally start addressing the von Neumann bottleneck.

<comment><USER11> Get yourself a 5 year old laptop ;) [https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/crystal_well](https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/crystal_well)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Are there security benefits of "fake local memory"? I imagine a sandboxing arrangement where a rogue WebGL app can't hack your entire OS.

Several applications (a) opencl servers - just fill an extra slot (b) eGPU over thunderbolt (c) a drop in GPU for Risc-V boards (sans ARM's Mali)

<comment><USER14> As far as I can tell, you are describing problems already solved by virtual memory.</comment></comment>


What do you think of Backblaze utilizing subpar encryption? - <AUTHOR> https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=backblaze.com

<comment><AUTHOR> A ssllabs scan of backblaze.com shows that they are using horrible encryption at least on the webservers. TLS1.0, RC4 only, no Forward-Secrecy. I was thinking about using their service for offsite-backups, but seeing this I'm really uncomfortable with that idea.

I've contacted them about two months ago and had a brief discussion with their support about that. Back then SSL3 was still enabled, so was compression. They also supported 3DES. Now they've disabled 3DES (WTH?), compression and SSL3, but left RC4 as the only cipher in place.

What do you think?</comment>


Algorithms Behind Modern Storage Systems - <AUTHOR> https://www.infoq.com/presentations/storage-algorithms <comment><USER2> The author states that the talk was inspired by this series of blog posts[1] if you are like me and find articles about technical topics much easier to consume than talks.

[1] [https://medium.com/databasss](https://medium.com/databasss)

</comment><comment><USER3> Another interesting tangent I've been curious in is networked storage.

The algorithms (protocols like AWS SRD and Infiniband RD) [0][1] and hardware (network gears and protocol specific ASICs or FGPAs) used to get to 100gbps and beyond over tech like RoCE, Infiniband+RDMA, Elastic Fabric Adapter are in themselves interesting for a clear reason that these are complex distributed systems in their own right with high availability, super low latency, and considerable throughput.

Other networking tech enables not just reliable storage over network (either block devices like EBS or filesystems like EFS or Lustre) but also things like content delivery at internet scale [2].

[0] [https://mobile.twitter.com/_msw_/status/1067280447732740097?...](https://mobile.twitter.com/_msw_/status/1067280447732740097?lang=en)

[1] [https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/ssw_aix_71/co...](https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/ssw_aix_71/com.ibm.aix.networkcomm/protocols_rdsdatagram.htm)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17347355](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17347355)

</comment><comment><USER4> Looks like an interesting talk. Mandatory reference to the DDIA book: [https://dataintensive.net/](https://dataintensive.net/). It features a whole chapter on B+Trees vs LSM, etc. A must read IMHO if you're into this kind of stuff.

<comment><USER5> If you liked DDIA, you'll love Andy Pavlo's Advanced Database Systems course on the CMU Database Group's Youtube channel. Its about 30 hours long, fairly easy to follow, and focused on state-of-the-art database systems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a video and slides; this discussion is from when the article was linked here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17079197](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17079197)</comment>


Synology-SA-18:64 Synology Diskstation Manager - <AUTHOR> https://www.synology.com/en-global/security/advisory/Synology_SA_18_64 <comment><USER2> > Detail: Reserved

> Abstract: A vulnerability allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code > via a susceptible version of Synology Diskstation Manager (DSM).

> Publish Time: 2018-12-26

That's pretty much all of the useful information on the page, hmm! So if you've upgraded your DSM since Christmas, I think you have the fixed release

<comment><USER3> Got the mail yesterday notifying me about:

Synology-SA-18:62 Synology-SA-18:64 Synology-SA-18:65

Looks like they got the fixes for DSM out pretty quickly - [https://www.synology.com/en- uk/releaseNote/DS918+#ver_23824-...](https://www.synology.com/en- uk/releaseNote/DS918+#ver_23824-4) (65 is SRM bug, not DSM)

and then mailed me a week or so later..

<comment><USER2> If you have SNMP signals on your DSM, you probably got an alert sooner, something like this if you were actively listening for it:

> WARNING - Synology "DS1513+" (s/n: "XXXXTTT99999", "DSM 6.2-23824"), DSM > update available</comment></comment></comment>


Online hyperparameters optimization made free and open source: need feedback - <AUTHOR> https://bender.dreem.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> The goal here is to give to the ML community an open access, asynchronous, yet powerful, hyperparameters optimization tool. But it is just a Beta for now and we need feedback guys ! :)

The project is based on our open source optimization library (for now based on TPE-like): [https://github.com/Dreem- Organization/benderopt](https://github.com/Dreem-Organization/benderopt)

And you can interact with this library with a whole ecosystem of clients :

\- A web client : directly on bender's website, you can visualize the optimization process on nice graphs; and compare the performances of different models on the same problem with a ranking board that ultimately allows you to pick the best model with the best hyperparameters set.

\- A python one, a R one : it allows you to get automatic suggestions of hyperparameters set to test within your code.

Everything is documented on this readthedocs : [https://bender- optimizer.readthedocs.io/en/latest/](https://bender- optimizer.readthedocs.io/en/latest/)</comment>


Ask HN: What did you do to ensure product viral growth since launch? - <AUTHOR> I've seen a plenty of resources on how to design your product/business to account for networking effect or effective word-of-mouth tactics to make your user base grow once your product is out there. I wasn't so lucky to find many case-studies describing what successful teams did to get initial seed of customers right away after launch. I found an interesting case-study about how Slack did it (http://bit.ly/2RtKIDO) and I'm curious if you have similar stories to share. Thanks! <comment><USER2> Slack case-study URL un-shortened [http://firstround.com/review/From-0-to-1B-Slacks-Founder- Sha...](http://firstround.com/review/From-0-to-1B-Slacks-Founder-Shares-Their- Epic-Launch-Strategy/)</comment>


400 Years of the Third Law – An overlooked and neglected revolution in astronomy - <AUTHOR> https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2018/05/15/400-years-of-the-third-law-an-overlooked-and-neglected-revolution-in-astronomy/ <comment><USER2> It's a real shame that stuff like this is not taught in introductorry science classes. IMHO it's actually much more important to understand the _process_ of science than its results, but modern science education concentrates almost exclusively on the latter. This leaves many students with the impression that science is nothing more than a list of "facts" to be memorized, with no understanding of _why_ these facts are in fact facts. This leaves them wide open to believing pseudo-scientific claims, because to their eyes they are indistinguishable from real scientific claims.

<comment><USER3> I hear this often and then I wonder what kind of curriculum people went through. I had lab session in science class as far back as middle school and continuing all the way through high school and college.

During the lectures we learned facts and derived some consequences. But during labs we ran experiments, gathered data, and had to perform some regressions.

I'm going through the MIT OCW QM course and the instructor is motivating all the formulas given with experimental results from the 1890s thru 1920s to show how intuitions are violated.

I've never seen a single textbook or been in a lecture that was just piles and piles of formulas with no exposition or motivation.

The only time I've experienced this was outside of STEM. Every history class I've taken, prior to university level, was piles of births, deaths, wars, facts, ad infinitum.

<comment><USER4> Practical demonstration and motivation of formula is one thing, but I think there's another axis that's quite important, and perhaps what the GP was alluding to: the _means_ by which people figured out that their intuitions were wrong. It's one thing to reproduce the double-slit experiment, it's another to imagine the mindset one must have to come up with the double-slit experiment in the first place, to reject common thinking of the time. To learn a kind of hypothetical sympathy, as Bertrand Russell calls it, for laws and models that were once considered plain truth, and are now seen as antique and often amusingly wrong-headed. To show that there is no real monolith of monotonic progress called "Science", and that the History of Science is as much a scientific process as any individual act of experimentation.

Learning that kind of meta-critical-thinking about the process then enables you to not only engage with broadly accepted ideas, but also with the introduction of new ideas, the motivations and psychology behind ideas, and the fickle and deceptive nature of models in general.

<comment><USER5> You're looking for Feynman's Lectures on Physics. It's a 3 volume set (and accompanying audiovisuals are available on youtube) that gets at exactly this kind of thinking.

For example, the double slit experiment came out of a really simple question. Bullets seem to behave like particles, waves in water, like waves. Light seems to behave like a wave, as well. But we know from other experiments that sometimes it behaves like a particle (Einstein's paper on the photoelectric effect demonstrates why). In fact, you can show that the diffraction of light is due to the behavior of light through a single slit, with spacing set appropriately for its wavelength. But what happens when you try to put electrons through? I don't think anyone expected the results. They're unintuitive and rightly stunning. But it was trying to understand the weird particle/wave duality of light that led to the result on electrons and subsequently other particles. The books go into a lot more detailed on the variants of the experiment people tried to try and understand the incredible results they were getting, like varying the rate at which particles were going through, adding detectors, etc..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reading in this article about Kepler, it seems like the spirit of his discovery was more in the vein of numerology than science in the way we idealize it - he appears to have been looking for pleasing relationships like Bode's law and just happened upon something better by accident.

<comment><USER7> This seems a bit harsh. He made a general statement that would be falsifiable by any series of careful astronomical observations. Rather than being falsified, his statement has been verified by subsequent observations. Perhaps you meant to make a sort of "right-place-right-time" argument, but that hardly would be "numerology".

<comment><USER8> Well, he got a bunch of numbers, looked at them until he saw some meaningless pattern, and told the pattern to everybody.

It's the same kind of thing numerologists say they do. He certainly kept a very open mind, he wouldn't get the correct result otherwise, but as far as appearances go, he looked exactly like a numerologist.

(And from the mixing that astrology, numerology, and astronomy had at the time, he probably sounded like a numerologist too. Maybe even identified himself as one.)</comment></comment></comment>


Artists Hijack MoMA with AR Art Exhibition - <AUTHOR> https://www.artnome.com/news/2019/10/25/artists-hijack-moma-with-ar-art-exhibition <comment><USER2> Akihiko Taniguchi, featured in the article, is great. An example of their fun work:

[https://vimeo.com/261521572](https://vimeo.com/261521572)

<comment><AUTHOR> Love it! Haden't seen that video, thanks for sharing. The noodle record is priceless!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Yet another case in which William Gibson proved eerily prescient. While not quite the same, this exhibit evokes a lot of the themes of his 2007 novel _Spook Country_ (the whole trilogy of which it was second is fantastic!), which was written before AR/VR tech was anywhere near as advanced as it is today.</comment>


FarmVillains - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfweekly.com/2010-09-08/news/farmvillains/

<comment><USER2> They have a distinct advantage in being able to test/modify/adapt their games faster than everyone else, because they have 700 employees & a huge warchest of cash.

It is unfortunate that copyright protection doesn't kick in till much later (according to the article) in a game's play. Can't say the world is much better off with a bunch of farming simulating games.

<comment><USER3> _Can't say the world is much better off with a bunch of farming simulating games._

I like to think that it's either preparing people for a coming apocalypse where we'll all have to do our own agriculture or someone is searching for the ultimate farmer that will save humanity (a la The Last Starfighter), so maybe we're getting _some_ use out of it.

<comment><USER2> unfortunately people won't actually know how to plant stuff, and will expect their watermelons to grow in 36 hours.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The time mechanic mentioned has been in plenty of other games for years now.</comment>


High score, low pay: why the gig economy loves gamification - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/nov/20/high-score-low-pay-gamification-lyft-uber-drivers-ride-hailing-gig-economy <comment><USER2> Could complex gamification of payment structures amount to worker misclassification?

i.e. if an Uber/Lyft driver must meet a complex set of job requirements in order to earn a reasonable wage, e.g. driving at particular times, in particular places, accepting certain minimum percentages of tasks assigned, etc...

...might it not be more appropriate to call these folks employees than contractors?

The counterargument could be that if they are allowed to participate in the platform without "playing the games" so to speak, then they aren't "job requirements", but if it's only possible to earn a reasonable wage by playing, could it be argued that they should be considered as such?

EDIT: I see a couple of comments in this thread stating that they are employees and not contractors however I believe that is not the case (i.e. that Uber has fought to maintain the contractor classification and won so far) ?

EDIT2: Ah, I now see that there have been some recent court cases going the other way, at least in California ([https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/1/17308178/uber-lyft- drivers...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/1/17308178/uber-lyft-drivers- california-court-classification-dynamex))...not sure if any change has actually been effected yet?

<comment><USER3> yes, if payment is not tied directly to services rendered, it gets harder to argue that the platform is simply a pass-through middleman to contractors. this is related to a similar revenue recognition problem with uber pool/lyft line, where recognizing the revenue up front makes the drivers seem less like contractors and more like workers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I hesitated in writing this comment as I can see that the majority of commenters have a negative view of the 'gamification' presented by the article, but I don't see this as inherently evil or immoral at all.

The 'gamification' described by the author in their driving for Lyft is simply quantifying, tracking, and incentivizing performance at a given activity. It's in the best interest of both the driver and the company to achieve a high driver rating. Why wouldn't they track and display this statistic to the drivers? It's in the best interest of the company for drivers to log more rides, so they offer an optional incentive to complete x drives in y time. The driver receives additional compensation that they wouldn't otherwise if they achieve the goal. Both sides benefit.

The scary side of performance tracking comes when more and more is expected of the worker, their performance being able to be measured accurately isn't the issue. It's management's decision to get as much blood out of their workers as possible.

<comment><USER5> I bet Lyft gives the drivers only the information that's profitable for Lyft and not the big picture. It's very one-sided.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't know if gamification is the enemy here. I don't think this would be an issue if driver incomes hadn't taken such a massive hit in the past year or so with Uber / Lyft.

I worked as a checkout operator at a supermarket for four years while in High School / College and really enjoyed it - I used to play a game where I'd see how many items I could scan per minute (we needed to do 15, my average was between 22-25 from memory). I did the same thing when I worked a paper run before that, challenging myself to see how quickly I could get it done.

Gamifying tedious activities is good and we should be doing more of it.

<comment><USER7> There's a happy medium somewhere between gamification to make the somewhat monotonous job of a checkout operator more enjoyable, and metrics-driven employment where you're peeing in the corner of an Amazon warehouse because if you drop below the equivalent of 22 items per minute you're fired without the chance for appeal.

I agree that it's not the enemy, and can at times be a useful thing to have as an ally within a healthy business relationship, but it _disproportionately_ gives ammunition to management strategies that don't respect the human.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Gamification is a new form of employee abuse that people haven't yet recognized as abuse. It's only a matter of time before we all acknowledge it and ban its use in a work setting.

<comment><USER3> please back up such a bold declaration with some rationale. any tool can be taken too far and become abusive, but you've made no attempt to make that connection.

humans are competitive (and also cooperative). we like to know how we are doing, and gamification facilitates that while also relieving boredom from an otherwise tedious task (something i do often just for myself).

<comment><USER9> > humans are competitive (and also cooperative). we like to know how we are > doing, and gamification facilitates that

That was already known via driver ratings. No one considered that "gamification" because it's a basic KPI.

The "lab rat" aspect of this comes into play with some computer-generated BS "challenge" like ""Complete 34 rides between the hours of 5am on Monday and 5am on Sunday to receive a $63 bonus."

In videogames, this is called "grinding", aka gaining experience points doing tedious, repetitive tasks, in order to proceed to the next experience level. The difference is, video game players aren't doing something that requires the same level of attention and duty of care as a car driver.

<comment><USER3> see, that's why i asked for details. your last point about safety is an interesting wrinkle to consider.

but i view your example (a $63 bonus for 34 rides) to be more an incentive than a gamification because it involves real money, not simply "meaningless" points.

ratings are more akin to gamification in my view because (1) they're not directly tied to an incentive, and (2) it takes advantage of our human nature of wanting to do well, especially when it involves how other people view us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Decent read as the manipulative uses of game design are often overlooked. Think about how "fun" it feels to scan your own items at the checkout and hear those nice tones. Uber and Lyft drivers have Pavlovian response when they hear a new ride beacon ready to accept.

<comment><USER11> It's bizarre when people suggest it's some sort of capitalist scam that we can check ourselves out at the grocery store.

Surely all of the upsides of self-checkout have a higher weight than the machine beeping at you.

Also, they beep because your attention is spent rotating each product to let the scanner find the barcode, and you might not notice that it scanned otherwise, and accidental multiple scans cost the customer money.

<comment><USER12> Self-checkout shifts the physical and mental labor traditionally done by a worker onto the consumer to save money. Instead, I'm paying for the product _and_ performing the labor traditionally done by someone else chiefly to save the company money in labor costs. Opinions may vary about the convenience, efficiency or "upsides" of that, but in a sense it is the quintessential capitalist scam.

<comment><USER13> Standing in line waiting for someone else to scan my groceries is just as much of a waste of time.

The faster I can be out of there, the happier I am. And, less labor spent on scanning items means the store can be open for longer hours, have more organized shelves and be cleaner, etc. All in all, this is automation that increases the efficiency of the operation. Yes, you pay some cost in that you have to place your items into bags (with the current iteration of the technology) but I think you the customer get something out of that work, even if it's just a slightly lower rate of price increases.

It is time to think seriously about how we are going to deal with fewer jobs available. Will the increased corporate profits that result be spent on giving cashiers education to become knowledge workers to further increase these profits and the efficiency of society? Will the money be fed into basic income or public services, so that everyone in society will be taken care of even if there are no low-skill jobs for them to do? We are already seeing what happens when we don't think about these things in certain industries, and it's not great. Someone will have to step up and say, we will be the country that takes care of everyone, because the "work 8 hours a day and you get a house" era is long over.

<comment><USER12> As I said,

> Opinions may vary about the convenience, efficiency or "upsides" of that

I highly doubt that the savings on labor cost will translate to "longer open hours, more organized shelves and cleaner, etc", I would guess the savings translate to more profit and more concentration of wealth at the top.

Look, I'm not so much of a luddite that I _refuse_ to use self-checkout lines, I'm just realistic about what the motivations are: maximizing profit.

<comment><USER13> I feel like the motivation of any business is to maximize profit. Even if there is a side goal of improving society, in the end, you can't do that if they turn off your electricity for non-payment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Gamification is overt and transparent psychological manipulation. I had friends in Sociology etc. who had to conform to elaborate ethics compliance guidelines before launching surveys etc. Why is gamification not similarly controlled?

<comment><USER3> as social animals, we manipulate each other constantly. all it takes is a word, a grunt, a glance, a micro-aggression, even an unwitnessed action. are you suggesting we regulate all human behavior?

<comment> intro-b I'm sure you understand that there's a difference between normal, personal human interactions, as you've just described, and a complex technological system designed and implemented for use in a business setting?

<comment><USER3> yes, but the original question made a broad statement about regulating human manipulation. my rebuttal was to ask where we draw the line.

note that historically we've allowed all kinds of manipulations (like basically lying in advertisements, _caveat emptor_ ), in an abundance of caution to avoid infringing our 1st amendment rights (in the US).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm becoming more and more convinced as time goes on that our new technologies only look at one side of the equation: cost. They seem to be doing little or nothing to increase incomes. So I must ask myself, are these really technologies if they don't provide utility to all players?

Across almost all industries, people used to be able to provide for their families, or at the very least support themselves on a 40 hour work week. Now we have Uber and Lyft decreasing the cost of taxi rides to perhaps half their previous levels. That's nice for clients, but they're also lowering wages to perhaps half or even a quarter of their previous levels. That missing quarter is where executive and corporate profits come from.

Is there a term for a company that focuses on incomes first? Is there a way to program that into a corporate charter, to encourage gig companies like Upwork to maximize incomes? Could we use private means to optimize the economy for incomes?

For a lot of reasons, the federal government has been crippled in its ability to do the simplest things like raise the minimum wage or even give unions equal legal footing with corporations. That worked to pump debt into the economy for a decade or three but now we're seeing strife in the forms of increasing addiction, suicide rates, delayed marriage and childbirth, etc. It's one thing to be against unions and another to be against the general working population, which is what this wealth inequality is becoming. We're reaching an endgame here that is not sustainable - that may lead to widespread civil disobedience at the very least, and probably violence or even revolution eventually. What can be done?

<comment><USER16> > Is there a term for a company that focuses on incomes first?

perhaps a worker coop? [0] such an organization is not explicitly focused on maximizing worker incomes, but it seems like a likely outcome.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> China is going all-in on this with their social credit system. That's being rolled out in Beijing. All Beijing residents will be judged on a point system by the end of 2020.[1] "Those with better so-called social credit will get 'green channel' benefits while those who violate laws will find life more difficult. Those deemed untrustworthy will be 'unable to move even a single step.'"[2]

""For example, when we drive, now we always stop in front of crosswalks. If you don't stop, you will lose your points."

[1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-21/beijing-t...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-21/beijing- to-judge-every-resident-based-on-behavior-by-end-of-2020) [2] [http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-06/06/c_137235486.htm](http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-06/06/c_137235486.htm)

</comment><comment><USER18> Gamification reaches beyond the gig economy.

Things like home grown versions of Shark Tank or other judging-panel game shows are becomming pretty common in companies

<comment><USER19> That's interesting. Perhaps the intention is to completely ruin the employee's dignity and will (and render them more compliant) by forcing them to beg several fat middle managers for the privilege of doing their own job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Ah. Now we understand what "agile" is really about.

</comment><comment><USER20> There's nothing particularly wrong with incentives via gamification to retain and encourage usage of their platform. Drivers drive more, riders have more rides, Uber and Lyft make money, drivers sign up more drivers for rewards. It's a classic viral loop

</comment><comment><USER21> Seems like Ebay was one of the original online "gamifiers" which used seller and buyer ratings to elevate the overall quality of the "service workers" on their platform.

Amazon followed suite.

I wonder if we should consider both as part or as leaders in the "gig economy".

I think if we can build a proper network we can make local economies complete with the global giants by using gamification. Nudge consumers of products or services to buy local with a sort of consumer rating or something.

4.75 stars means they get get deeper local discounts, etc. Local network marketing.

</comment><comment><USER22> I don't understand why drivers can't charge different rates.

<comment><USER23> Tried something similar recently (contentfly.co) where we have writers set a minimum rate and the market anchors around that.

It's been pretty interesting.... the rates have gone up but not as high as we thought.

<comment><USER24> Any further info on that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Isn't money a form of gamification, especially once you get beyond the most straightforward types of transactions and economic relationships?

Wall St is full of click farms where people grind for gold and hidden power ups.

What we may be seeing is more like an explosion of alternative currencies. I'm not saying this is good. These are mostly "company tokens" or domain specific lock-in tokens that are not fungible.

<comment><USER26> I don't know about "company tokens" \-- that reminds me of "company towns" of the early industrial revolution era where workers weren't paid in fungible currency, but in company vouchers.

That said, I think most of the commenters here don't recognize how many of the gamification mechanics[1] have long been built into office work. "Employee of the month" plaque = leaderboard. Sales team progress bars. Perks like corner offices with great views for the most valuable employees.

[1] [https://www.gamified.uk/user-types/gamification-mechanics- el...](https://www.gamified.uk/user-types/gamification-mechanics-elements/)</comment></comment>


The life's work that proved Einstein right - <AUTHOR> https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/05/14/the-chirp-heard-across-universe/xYC8dFRTnCyl3tT2LNuafN/story.html <comment><USER3> Man, the days when a kid without particular academic accomplishment could just be "guided" to MIT by a teacher impressed by his intelligence and passion. Or when a dropout could just wander into a physics lab and land a job as a research assistant. Neither sounds remotely feasible in 2016- these days, the available human potential and ambition outstrips society's resources to actualize it, by an order of magnitude. Coming decades will have to do without their Weisses.

<comment><USER4> On the other hand, there were the days when you had to be born into the right social caste to have any chance for an interesting life at all, otherwise being doomed to a lifetime of menial labor.

I really do prefer our current situation to 99% of the history of mankind.

<comment><USER5> Those days are today: [http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/05/recruitm...](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/05/recruitment- resumes-interviews-how-the-hiring-process-favors- elites/394166/?single_page=true)

<comment><USER6> That was an awesome read. Thanks...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I worked on LIGO as a graduate student, where I had the privilege of interacting with Rai Weiss. He is a role model for us all: brilliant, hard- working, and human. After he retired from his teaching duties at MIT, he could often be found late at night in the electronics shop of our Louisiana lab, working to eek out a little more sensitivity in the detector, a half decibel by a half decibel. As a graduate student, I appreciated his sincere concern and advocacy for our dissertation work.

He also has wonderful stories from a long career in physics: inventing atomic clocks, launching balloons to map out the cosmic microwave background radiation, being pitched the proposed Space Shuttle program by Werner von Braun himself, serving on the JASON committee... He is probably too modest to write an autobiography, but it would be a captivating tale.

</comment><comment><USER8> If this article can't be read because of a pop up, just close the tab and open click on the link again.

<comment><USER9> Why reward the paper (or its advertisers) for abusive practices?

<comment><USER10> Did somebody hit you over the head with a tent-pole, CamperBob? What abuse are you possibly talking about? This story is a tremendous work of journalism, crafted by an author who really ought to get paid for his work. Or do you work for free too?

<comment><USER11> From the official guidelines:

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if "proving Einstein right/wrong" will still be the #1 clickbait headline for physics articles 100 years from now.

<comment><USER13> I never got the reasons for the whole idolization/obsession with Einstein. Seeing all the guys that were his contemporaries - discovering fundamental stuff about the universe was a favorite pastime back then. I guess he was probably the first to break out as a celebrity.

<comment><USER14> Einstein's modification of Classical Newtonian Physics is still unparalled today.

<comment><USER13> In his time we also had Planck, Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrodinger - <USER2> contributions are as foundational and unparallel too.

But nobody is the media is obsessed with proving Max Planck wrong. Or Schrodinger.

"Will scientists finally prove XXX wrong", XXX is always Einstein.

<comment><USER15> yes, the others, if Heisenberg (or other German scientists) would be a bit more smarter then WWII may have ended differently and in that new world no one would be praising Einstein, for obvious reasons: [http://history.stackexchange.com/questions/8491/did- heisenbe...](http://history.stackexchange.com/questions/8491/did-heisenberg- undermine-the-german-atomic-bomb-by-deliberately-hiding-his-exper)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> >> He was at MIT as an undergrad "for two years before flunking out, losing his way while pursuing a girl he met on a ferry."

Sound like something I would do.</comment>


'Coup 53' tells the story of 1953 campaign by MI6 and CIA to oust Iran's leader - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2020/08/18/903505983/coup-53-tells-the-true-story-of-the-cia-s-campaign-to-oust-iran-s-leader <comment><USER2> The CIA/MI5 coup is fascinating not only because it overthrow a democratically elected government of a Middle Eastern country in 1953 (!) but also because of its consequences. There is not a single democratic government in the ME sans Israel. No, tiny Tunisia does not count, it is in the Maghreb (N. Africa).

What would the middle east look like if the Mosaddegh government had continued? No revolution, No Ayatollah, no Iran-Iraq war, no Hezbollah? Instead we got the Shah who forced his people to modernize, secret police pulling veils off women was common and generally unleashed a reign that was anathema to most of the conservative population outside Tehran. Most of the anger you see is towards the US is from that reign rather than the coup.

The Iranians who are Persians, and not Arabs, have a civilizational history going back 1000s of years. Expat Persians have achieved great success in the US and UK. Going further back, the Zoroastrians, who fled the Islamic conquest and arrived in India more than a millennia ago are the richest, most educated and economically successful minority group by an order of magnitude, or two.

The Shah's reign lasted 25 years. A generation that grew up under the Shah's tyranny led the revolution in 1979. The Islamic revolution is now 40 years old. There have been almost two generations that grew up under the Islamic govt's misrule and grandiose projects of power projection. Hopefully they can take charge and lead Iran back to civilizational greatness. Iran, the middle east and the world needs it.

And I would really like to visit the gardens of Shiraz or the markets of Isfahan which have been around for 1000s of years ;)

Edit: As pointed out in the comments, instead of Arab world, I should have used Arab speaking. There are Arab speakers who are Arab and there are Arab speakers who are not Arab.

<comment><USER3> >There is not a single democratic govt in the ME sans Israel

The millions of Palestinians unable to vote for the government that controls their movement, trade, and lives in general would probably disagree with your characterization of Israel as a democracy.

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately, "democracy" doesn't mean "liberal democracy" and it certainly doesn't mean "nice democracy".

For instance, in the Athenian democracy women and metics (immigrants) couldn't vote and slavery was legal. In modern times, the USA, the model of modern democracies, has the largest military in the world (in history!) and does not hesitate to use it to crush lesser nations.

I wouldn't be able to tell you what "democratic" means exactly (I'm not a political scientist) but I susepect having elections without limits on who can vote and who can stand for office, having independent courts and the rule of law are important criteria and under those Israel sure checks out as a democracy. Its people are free. It just happens to keep crushing some other people, who are not its own people, under its heel.

<comment><USER5> I think what the GP was getting at was that having a sizable population of people living within the de-facto boundaries of a state who are unable to vote (in this case, because they lack citizenship) makes it less democratic.

That's a slightly different problem than the fact that democracies can be terrible if the voters choose terrible things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There was a documentary about the coup shown on Channel 4 in the UK in 1985: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhCgJElpQEQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhCgJElpQEQ)

Just before it was shown, the role of Norman Darbyshire, the MI6 officer involved in the coup, was leaked to the Observer: [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/02/mi6-the- coup-i...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/02/mi6-the-coup-in-iran- that-changed-the-middle-east-and-the-cover-up)

The Observer received a D-notice which prevented its publication.

The makers of Coup 53 made use of the unpublished Observer material.

Briefly, the UK Government wanted Mosaddegh overthrown because he wanted to nationalize a British oil company (Anglo-Iranian). It tried to get the CIA involved but Truman opposed American involvement. This changed when Eisenhower was elected president.

<comment><USER7> Yup a lot of Age of Empire is used in the documentary. Finding that Observer material in Microfilm set them down the merry path. My father was excitedly telling me about it when they discovered it. He really couldn't believe it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love this. Our decades of oil wars still don't seem to be common knowledge. All of the wars have of course been sold to the public as something else and it's a pretty important thing to understand about modern western power.

<comment><USER9> Much is clarified once it is understood that Germany lost WWII due to lack of oil:

[https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/How-Oil-Defeated- The-N...](https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/How-Oil-Defeated-The- Nazis.html)

[https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/06/oil- denial-p...](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/06/oil-denial- policy-cia-middle-east-cold-war-united-states-britain-soviet-union-213983)

<comment><USER10> There's more than enough oil in the US, Canada, and Mexico to support not only US military needs but the entire North American civilian economy indefinitely. There is no risk of the US ever losing a war due to an oil shortage.

When the US 'goes to war for oil' in the Middle East, it's going to war not to protect its oil supply but rather to make sure the profits of oil accrue to US companies and to ensure that oil remains priced in US dollars, which is vital for the US Dollar to continue to be the world's reserve currency.

<comment><USER11> You can't value oil under your own soil the same as imported oil, and it has nothing to do with profit.

Oil demand is never going away (we need it for plastic, lubricants for wind turbines, etc) but the supply is. When you are talking about macroeconomic nation state scales of oil, the only logical decision is to acquire foreign oil. Not only are you helping to speed the depletion of their reservers, you are holding yours.

The last barrel of oil on earth will be worth more than all the barrels that came before it.

Edit: I did some math. As of 2018 there were 43.8 billion discovered barrels of oil in the US, in 2019 we consumed 20.46 million barrels a day domestically. So we are self sufficient for a little less than 6 years.

<comment><USER12> This assumes you don't discover alternatives to fossil fuels before running out of them. Historically this is a bad bet. As the price increases people search harder and harder for alternatives. It seems impossible now because cheap oil means there's no demand for alternatives, but people are clever and if there's demand they'll usually find a solution.

<comment><USER11> To understand the economics of oil you have to think of it as a raw ingredient rather than a fuel source.

Even if you stop burning it (which I think is a terrible idea), you can't live without oil. Antiseptics, rubbing alcohol, paint, aspirin, toothpaste, shoes, pens, bike tires, computers, etc. require it for modern production.

Heck, a standard solar panel plopped on top of your home requires just shy of a full barrel of oil to produce.

<comment><USER13> > Even if you stop burning it (which I think is a terrible idea)

It's possible to interpret this sentence to mean two opposite things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > For years, I thought the CIA was the prime mover of the coup, but I was > wrong.

I think the CIA was indeed the prime mover of the coup, at least according to the CIA's official history. Derbyshire, the person who was in charge of SIS's Iran branch, came up with the idea of a coup, but the Brits had not the capacity to pull it off and so they asked the CIA for help. The whole operation was very well documented by the declassified report entitled "CIA Clandestine Service History, Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran, November 1952-August 1953", which is downloadable from

[https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB28/](https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB28/)

<comment><USER15> I think you might have a different understanding of the phrase "prime mover" than the author. Aristotle used the term[1] to refer to the source of all motion, the idea being that motion had to begin with some entity moving without having been moved from something else, and then all other motion flowed from it. According to the history you give, Derbyshire would fit the definition of the prime mover here; he had the idea without it having come from another source, and so the CIA's action only came about as a result of that initial idea.

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

<comment><USER14> You are right. I did learn this term in high school decades ago but have forgotten it. Thanks for the explanation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's not explicitly mentioned in the article, but the documentary has been released for streaming today at [https://coup53.com/](https://coup53.com/).

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the link! I'm working on the documentary and as we don't have a distributor we're doing what we can. We know that people all over the world would like to see it. We have to develop subtitles and reach out to theaters in each country to partner with them. It's a lot of work. If anyone has suggestions of art houses in the country they are located, please send them to us! We are partnering with independent cinemas because they are really hurting because of the pandemic, so any venue that partners with us gets 50/50 split of profits.

<comment><USER16> I watched the documentary last night and it was fantastic. Wonderful work and thank you.

<comment><USER7> I'm so glad. I will pass on your comment to the film-makers. We've been a bit overwhelmed. I updated the website today with almost 100 cinemas we're partnering with and I'm hoping it doesn't crash. ::fingers-crossed::

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There's a web comic version of this story being developed: [http://alpha.operationajax.com/](http://alpha.operationajax.com/)

<comment><USER18> Marjane Satrapi's awesome autobiographical comic "Persepolis" [1] also addresses this as the setup to the chain of events that would lead to Iran's current theocracy.

I recommend this comic as well as the movie based on it.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persepolis_(comics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persepolis_\(comics\))

<comment><USER19> Worth noting that Satrapi's family were part of the US supported-side and so the story might be slightly slanted to one side, covering more the time period where a conservative religious group cane in to power as a backlash.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> > How that happens is the heart of the film, which paints a fascinatingly > detailed picture of how, in practical terms, you go about toppling a popular > foreign leader. It all starts with spreading around money and maybe > arranging a couple of assassinations.

"The Jakarta Method" by Vincent Bevins delves into how the CIA adapted and shifted course to address some of the weaknesses of its in-plain-sight coup approach in Iran and Guatemala in the 1950s. The ideal is always to preserve as much as possible the impression that the change in regimes is driven by local, endogenous political forces. The recent coup in Bolivia is a good demonstration of how this can be pulled off while almost entirely avoiding accusations of U.S. involvement.

<comment><USER20> Other recent attempts in "America's backyard"

\- Venezuela 2019

\- Ecuador 2010

\- Honduras 2009

<comment><USER21> Personally I would also argue for Brazil, 2016. _Operação Lava Jato_ was publicized as an anti-corruption effort, but more recent information indicates it was more of an anti-socialist coup. Sérgio Moro was in IVLP, and the highlight of his first trip to USA after becoming Justice Minister was a courtesy call at CIA headquarters. [0] This was an unmistakable public statement of Moro's allegiance and actions.

[0] [https://www.brasilwire.com/in-plain-sight-bolsonaro-moro- and...](https://www.brasilwire.com/in-plain-sight-bolsonaro-moro-and-the-cia/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> A great book on this topic is "All the Shah's Men" by Stephen Kinzer.

<comment><USER23> I liked it a lot, although I've later found the depiction of the Eisenhower administration a bit simplistic. Another good and fun read on that is Evans' _Ike's bluff_, which paints a more detailed picture on John Foster Dulles in particular.

<comment><USER24> All the Dulles siblings are interesting in their own ways.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> To anyone interested in this, I'd highly recommend Stephen Kinzer's _Overthrow_.[1]

It covers not just this incident, but many others throughout history when the US has overthrown foreign governments.

[1] - [https://www.amazon.com/Overthrow-Americas-Century-Regime- Cha...](https://www.amazon.com/Overthrow-Americas-Century-Regime- Change/dp/0805082409)

</comment><comment><USER26> The story that the CIA did this is mostly myth created by CIA people to enhance the reputation of the CIA in the eyes of US White House and Congress. CIA had Kermit Roosevelt Jr. (Teddy's grandson) in Iran working on it, but he accomplished little, and the CIA sent him orders to stop a couple of days before the coup. He pretended not to get the message and kept trying, but probably without much effect. Mohammad Mosaddegh lost power when the ayatollahs raised their opposition to his rule. Roosevelt then returned to the US and collected all the credit.

This PR coup led to Eisenhower giving Dulles of the CIA a couple of fighter planes to use in Guatemala to remove Jacobo Arbenz from power, which was the CIA's pinnacle of success, strengthening the CIA's reputation even more and leading to the agency's mediocre record thereafter.

</comment><comment><USER27> There was an interactive graphic novel of these events for iPad/iPhone: [http://www.cognitocomics.com/project- ajax.html](http://www.cognitocomics.com/project-ajax.html)

The free apps are still present in the App Store, but are now incompatible with recent iOS versions.

<comment><USER21> The fact that this project succumbed to bitrot, and is now being relaunched as a website, seems to say something about the longevity of phone apps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Thanks for posting this. I'm working on the documentary. We're having a live Q&A in 5 hours with the director Taghi Amirani, the editor and co-writer my father Walter Murch, and actor Ralph Fiennes who portrays Darbyshire. The Q&A is moderated by Jon Snow of Channel 4 news. This is exclusive access if you buy your ticket to our online premiere now! It's on our website.

We're having our general release on Friday. It's available in the USA, UK, Ireland and Canada. We're going country by country because we don't have a distributor.

</comment><comment><USER28> I don't necessarily trust NPR to do that great of a job telling this story. I do recommend listening to the Iran section (all the sections, really) of Safe for Democracy: [http://safefordemocracy.com/podcast/6/](http://safefordemocracy.com/podcast/6/) . (Note: that's part 1 of 9).

RSS feed here: [http://safefordemocracy.com/feed/podcast](http://safefordemocracy.com/feed/podcast)

<comment><AUTHOR> Appreciate the additional sources. I share your skepticism about NPR's take on this sort of thing but have found that sometimes dodgy-but-mainstream sources can still be quite useful for kicking off productive discussions where some of the more salient facts can be explored.

<comment><USER28> Useful to start discussions, yes! Sometimes risky because they can spread common myths, and it can be very difficult to supplant them. It's so much harder to unlearn something than to learn the right thing the first time, of course.

Safe for Democracy does thorough and sourced deep-dives into the histories of a few American "interventions", disrupting or controlling or supposedly attempting to create democracy in other countries. It goes through the background of the countries, often 100+ years prior to the events in question, and sets the stage thoroughly so that you can get a sense of the cultural forces and context. It also emphasizes the humanity of those involved and what violences were done beyond rattling off death counts so that you can understand the long-term cultural impacts and often genocides involved that are easier to miss if you only hear numbers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> For a longer read on the history here, "All the Shah's Men" is a great read.

</comment><comment><USER30> The most fascinating part of Americanism to me is that America regularly compromises and helps compromise any country that doesn't share the same interests, and America's citizens (mostly) think it's fine. The society lives in fear of its government, its representatives live in fear of its military, and the military is controlled by higher-ups who probably shouldn't have been given power. Often people accuse the leaders of these compromised nations of being dictators as if America doesn't have a track record of instilling even more evil leaders (for example, Pinochet[1]).

Why can't America just leave other countries alone and tend to its own sorry affairs? America tries to make other countries "more free" and then treats Blacks, Asians, Native Americans, Mexicans, other people of color, women, transgenders and other gender-nonconformists, homosexuals and anyone else that isn't heterosexual, Communists, Socialists, and anyone who isn't their form of "normal" as second-rate citizens in their own country. America (rightfully) accuses other countries of tampering in their election and then tampers in others' elections.[0] Their actions often contradict the values they claim to purvey.

I hear often that if another country was doing as poorly as America is right now, America would have "liberated" it already.

[0]: I found a source here: [https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-interfered-in- elections-of-...](https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-interfered-in-elections-of- at-least-85-countries-worldwide-since-1945/5601481) for my claims, however it's questionable due to accusations of spreading propaganda. Here's a relevant article from a more trustworthy source: [https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/07/the-us- has...](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/07/the-us-has-a-long- history-of-election-meddling/565538/)

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet#U.S._backing_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet#U.S._backing_of_the_coup)

<comment><USER31> _Why can 't America just leave other countries alone and tend to its own sorry affairs?_

Should the US just ignore the issues with Hong Kong? Honest question.

The US was quite isolationist in the early 1900's.

<comment><USER32> Maybe you should.

<comment><USER31> No doubt the US would be trashed if they did.

Maybe the US should have stayed out of WW2, or at least the European theatre? Western Europe would have fallen under the yoke of a communist dictator for 50 years.

<comment><USER30> WWII was different though because America joined the war after the Pearl Harbor attack, which was a direct offense by the axis powers. In my opinion America should actually have joined the war effort when Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany because Poland was (iirc) an ally to America. The situation is different with Hong Kong because China already controls Hong Kong. The conflict happening there is more of a civil war.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Fascinating how demographics change. Back then the UK population was bigger than Iran/Iraq/Syria/Israel/Palestine/SaudiArabia combined and much wealthier and powerful. Now those countries combine to hundreds of millions of people.

</comment><comment><USER34> Now imagine for a second another country overthrowing the US elected government and installing their own dictator.

How exactly would Americans feel for that country later? (even just from that incident alone, let's ignore half a century of later meddling).

When Americans consider other countries' reactions towards them, they seldom consider the impact of their own actions, as if the toppling some sovereign country's government (the worse thing you can do) is no big deal, and others should just sit and take it...

<comment><USER35> It wasn't very many years earlier that Germany waged total war against the US but a grudge hasn't held out there...

<comment><USER34> Germany hardly waged war against the US, toppled their governmnent, occupied it, bombed it, etc.

Japan did a few of those, though after much provocation to achieve exactly that and give an excuse to the US to sell the war to its public.

The US intervened in the European war (and not even decidely so, that's another myth), to ensure their improved role in the post-war environment, as the old European colonial powers were weakened by the war.

<comment><USER36> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_declaration_of_war_ag...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_declaration_of_war_against_the_United_States)

<comment><USER18> What exactly do you mean? It's just a description of Hitler's declaration of war on the US. It did not result in _total war_ being waged on US soil, and it was mostly a strategic blunder on Hitler's part.

<comment><USER36> The Nazis had numerous attempted sabotage operations in the continental US. They also sunk many ships off the eastern coast.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Theater_(World_War_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Theater_\(World_War_II\))

Their lack of 'total war' on the US is mostly the consequence of a lack of resources / more pressing concerns.

<comment><USER18> Let's see, as per your link:

> _20,000 Killed, 45,000 Wounded, 100 Captured_

Note the count includes actions by Japan against the US. Compare it to the European theatre of war.

> _Their lack of 'total war' on the US is mostly the consequence of a lack of > resources / more pressing concerns._

But this is irrelevant for this discussion. The fact remains that the US didn't suffer total war waged by Germany on their soil during WW2, and this might explain the comment which sparked this thread:

> _It wasn 't very many years earlier that Germany waged total war against the > US but a grudge hasn't held out there..._

It's easier to hold a grudge with millions dead, bombing campaigns destroying your cities, etc, don't you think? Arguing formalities such as whether Germany and the US were at war seems pointless in this context, doesn't it?

<comment><USER36> No, I think you are vastly underplaying the extent to which Germany was America's enemy. Don't forget that Jews had escaped Germany to the US, especially prominent scientists like Einstein. The US didn't 'hold a grudge' because the Cold War power struggles didn't allow for it. West Germany needed to be an ally.

<comment><USER18> > _West Germany needed to be an ally_

Oh, I definitely agree with this! This attitude also helped shape the narrative of WW2, especially of the Eastern Front [1], by former Wehrmacht officers in the employ of the US Army Historical Division. The Cold War made friends of former enemies, and let them tell their story in an unprecedented way -- an instance of history being told by the _losers_.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Once again, behind a bad geopolitical situation is a Brit. History is unduly kind to the U.K., ignoring all of the atrocities of their colonialism for the sole reason that they suffered and overcame in WW2. Israel Palestine, India Pakistan, and Iran are all direct results of their racism and chicanery.

<comment><USER38> The British have a horrible history of imperialism, but just to be clear, this was mostly carried out the by US, who also have a horrible history of imperialism.

<comment><USER37> Agreed, but I'd argue that the US's imperialism is fairly well-known. The British managed to avoid that via shrewd and destructive campaigns of divide- and-conquer that stacked the odds against future democracies.

<comment> Ar-Curunir ? I don't know if you've lived in any British colony, but tons of people despise the British Empire to this day

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> And yet Trump is doing basically same thing. Toppling our government, this time with sanctions.

50 years later when Iranian did see US as enemy, don't act surprised. This is what Trump sows.

<comment><USER40> We will have to agree to disagree.

I'm American and all I've ever seen from Iran is people chanting for my death and the death of the people I love. I was born in the 90s and had no bearing on foreign policy.

If sanctions prevents Iran from accomplishing those goals then I personally will consider that a good thing.

<comment><USER41> First, not all Iranian people are chanting your death. This is the propaganda from both sides that says that.

Sanctions currently have the effect at making people in Iran even more dependant of the government, and plays well into the Iranian government propaganda.

<comment><USER40> > First, not all Iranian people are chanting your death.

Yeah I have no problem with your average Iranian. But the Iranian government routinely organizes protests where people are _literally_ calling for the death of Americans.

Sanctions also have the benefit of preventing the Iranian government and their terrorist revolutionary guard from harming Americans as well as they could without sanctions.

<comment><USER42> > the Iranian government routinely organizes protests where people are > literally calling for the death of Americans.

 _Literally_ is the keyword here, because the translation "death to something" is just the literal mistranslation of the Iranian idiom meaning "down with something". As if someone believed that when you say "I'd die for a beer" you really meant it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I see this story often, and it is basically true.

I would like to remind everyone though that for every regime change the US engineered, the KGB was responsible for many times more.

Part of the USSR's philosophy after all was worldwide revolution that was to be exported to all countries.

<comment><USER38> Please substantiate your claim with a source. I'm pretty sure the US is responsible for more, although I don't have the numbers at hand. It is a much longer-lasting empire that used the Soviet Union as an excuse to knock over any neocolonial country, such as Iran, that even thought about taking money from the profits of international companies and spending it on its own citizens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Americans are winners as were the Brits before them. History will always favor the winner. The only practical lesson out of this sad story and countless others through history is: learn to be strong and so you can be a winner.

<comment><USER45> Learn from history. Every empire falls.

<comment><USER46> The Roman, Pandyan and Byzantine Empires had pretty good runs.

<comment><USER45> Still fallen

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> By "Iran's Leader", surely they mean "Iran's dictator", right?

Mossadegh convinced the government to give him 6 months of "emergency powers", ostensibly to fix the financial problems of Iran. In reality, he did a little of that, but also used his powers to further entrench himself by diminishing the power of the Shah. And then he got another 12 months emergency powers, and used it to redistribute land to the poor. Unfortunately at that time, Iran was also incredibly insolvent (due to the British boycott), and so the poor were not happy.

You might argue that Mossadegh would have succeeded if not for the British boycott.. sure, maybe he would have. But what do you expect to happen when you forcibly take all of the British resources? Should they just have said "Oh fine, have them, let's keep doing business together"?

The clerics, at this point, were already the proverbial kingmakers in Iran. They backed Mossadegh when he was expedient, and they backed the Shah when Mossadegh failed them. There's no reason to believe that Iran would have continued under Mossadegh into some kind of Socialist paradise - he probably would have just been deposed by the religious nuts a few years later regardless, just as happened with the Shah.

<comment><USER48> > But what do you expect to happen when you forcibly take all of the British > resources?

Very strange how oil underneath the Iranian soil can be considered a "British resource".

<comment><USER49> Not strange at all when you consider the Iranians had absolutely no means of extracting it themselves.

They gave willing access to their natural resources in exchange for a relatively massive revenue windfall then seized the sizable British capital investments with no compensation.

<comment><USER37> Right, so if BP drills for oil in South Texas that means that the Texas oil reserves should be under their control? This viewpoint reeks of racism and Anglo-Saxon exceptionalism.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Letter from NY Governor: about Amazon tax breaks - <AUTHOR> https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/op-ed-governor-andrew-m-cuomo <comment><USER2> It's interesting that a lot of the media companies who criticized the tax incentives given to Amazon - The NY Times, the NY Post, Warner Media (CNN) - are themselves recipients of significant tax incentives from NY.

<comment><USER3> Why is it interesting?

I mean, I understand that Cuomo used it as an attack-the-messenger sort of thing.

But just because the corporate owners do the same thing doesn't mean it's not a valid criticism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow. This fool thinks that Amazon employees earn $75/hr. He could generate 25,000 jobs with a stroke of pen by approving fracking in his state. But it would violate his religious beliefs.</comment>


Bible or Qur'an: See a verse from either. Can you guess which? - <AUTHOR> https://bibleorquran.org <comment><USER3> This actually seems really easy. The writing style alone of the Quran is very distinctive.

(I got one wrong out of eighteen, but that one was because the verse from the Bible had the word "God" in brackets, which is the usual convention for a word not being present in the original text. )

<comment><USER4> The point is less about style/punctuation and more about thematic content - they're similar texts with similar stories and overtones. Just 2 different groups of people using these similar texts to justify very different (how different?) cultural and societal norms because they are "God's will".

<comment><USER5> I don't think they are _very similar_ texts at all, have you read both?

The old testament is a compendium of an entire people's history over a significant period of time; with one of the primary themes being the this- worldly reward for correctness / obedience of God's Law where disasters and tragedy indicate the deviance or transgression from the Law. The Quran is a revelatory text from a single generation, revealed by God to Muhammad, primarily providing divine justification for Muhammad's conquests and further expansion.

If your intent is to suggest they are similar as in terms of laying down God's law and Morality - sure: but that's the _essence_ of monotheistic religion more generally.

<comment><USER4> I've read both. Yes, similar in laying out God's vision of morality and justice through parables and stories.

This is the goal explicitly stated on the website:

 _The mission of BibleOrQuran is to educate people about the true nature and content of the Bible and Qur 'an. False statements such as "81% of the Qur'an is about killing infidels!" and "The bible teaches only peace!" are commonly thrown around with little evidence to back them up. Despite their lack of credibility, however, they still continue to polarize and cause irrational hate and fear. We hope that by showing random Bible or Qur'an passages, we show how similar the two texts are and allay many of the fears of Islam and its teachings._

<comment><USER5> > False statements such as "81% of the Qur'an is about killing infidels!" and > "The bible teaches only peace!" are commonly thrown around with little > evidence to back them up.

We must be engaged in conversations with very different interlocutors, at least I don't know of anyone claiming things akin to the above. The new testament may be peaceful, - but the old testament is downright bloody!

 _O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.

Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Whats the point of this? Aren't they similar because the Qu'ran, like the bible, is founded off the Torah (aka old testament)?

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

<comment><USER7> I think that's the whole point. They have many similarities. The book " Opening the Qur'an: Introducing Islam's Holy Book by Walter H. Wagner " does a great job of introducing the quran to those coming from western point of view.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm guessing the majority of both Christians and Muslims would admit, when not under threat of being kill for saying so, that they don't follow these books by the letter, not even half of it. What I don't get is, if you don't, why lump yourself in with the insane bunch that do? Call yourself something else (that doesn't include the original name) or, better yet, don't give yourself any label and build an modifiable set of principles based on personal experience and advice from people you respect, not commandments from people who say they know better than you.

<comment><USER9> "Modifiable" is fundamentally contradictory to a core concept of Islam; the Qur'an (mother of books) is infallible and not open to change by mankind - <USER2> has existed beside God from the beginning and transcends time. This is where it is quite radically different to Christianity (New Testament).

<comment><USER8> How could infallible information even be stored in fallible information storage units a.k.a words? Interpretation by mankind is the same thing as changing it. Anyway, I'm not saying change or amend the books. Qur'an 2.0 would be carrying forward the "Qur'an" label, the opposite of what I'm talking about. Christianity amended in the past for whatever reason but I don't think we'll see that happen again, they're playing the same game. Since the majority of of people in both camps are visibly not following these books by the letter, I think it's safe to assume most don't actually believe them 100% and should stop labeling themselves.

<comment><USER9> It's a belief system, Muslims believe it was orated to Muhammad, perfectly, without error (except that one time) - your technical view of information transfer is disingenuous with the topic at hand; just try your proposal on moderate, practising Muslims and see how far it gets.

Some of the content of the Old Testament and Qur'an are pretty explicit in their brutality so I don't see how you would get round that... Redact it?

<comment><USER8> If most Muslims believe it, why aren't most brutes? Or are most?

> (except that one time)

That made me laugh even though I don't get the reference. What is it?

Also, according to Wikipedia, the Qur'an isn't even believed to be directly written by Muhammad. Is everyone involved in it's current compilation assumed to be just as perfect as him?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting, thanks. Does this need to do a round-trip for every question, though? Seems unnecessary, just spit out 10 of them per request or something.

</comment><comment><USER11> The Bible comes across as better English, but that is a bit unfair, because the King James translation must initially have sounded awful too.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've always wanted to jump into a project that used NLP et al and theology/mythology experts to map thematic commonalities between the world's religions and proto-religious texts. I contacted Huston Smith a little too late.

</comment><comment><USER13> Too bad the differences in translation styles make it really easy to spot which is which without even having to really read. :/ And I'm not even a native English speaker.

</comment><comment><USER14> Out of 12, I got 12 bible verses. Hmm.

</comment><comment><USER15> Interesting concept! I'm enjoying playing with it. Reminds me of a Pepsi- challenge page Microsoft set up comparing Google and Bing search results when they were launching. I went into that one expecting to be able to tell the difference, and I was right. Similar feeling here.

As others have pointed out, the internal similarities of the specific translations mean it doesn't take long for a user to be able to make calls based on style rather than content. Maybe randomizing translation as well as passage would help remove that loophole?

The UI could use some love - "input" components should be separate from "output" components. As it's designed now, I can't simply memorize blue/left means "pick Bible" and green/right means "pick Qur'an", because I have to remember that for every _other_ click, blue/left means "get the next question" and green/right isn't a button right now; it displays my result.

Atm this feels like those implicit social cognition tests from Harvard ([https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/selectatest.html](https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/selectatest.html)) Round 1, a pic will pop up, as fast as possible without making errors, press left arrow if it's a happy face or right arrow if it's a sad face. Round 2, keys reversed. Round 3, left for light skinned person and right for dark skinned person; Round 4, reversed. Round 5, left for a happy or light face, right for a sad or dark face. Etc. Every time the rules change, your responses slow down for a while because you have to actually process things instead of acting on instinct.

I don't want to have to think about whether the button I'm about to click will perform a "Bible" or a "Continue" action, nor do I want to look for whether or not my answer was correct in the area of the page I've mentally allocated as "Qur'an".

UI wishlist:

\- Neither choice should be colored green or red; those colors have semantics attached to them. (I'd probably make them both blue, but making them different colors from each other is probably fine too)

\- Ability to use the keyboard arrow keys to make a choice, for the sake of speed

\- If the choice is wrong something big and red should appear (but somewhere that's NOT one of the buttons or where the passage is displayed)

\- If the choice is right, something big and green _could_ appear (but doesn't really need to - season to taste)

\- No continue button at all; when will a user of this page ever _not_ want to continue getting passages? A continue button only really matters if there's something to lose, like (for instance) using up limited time or scoring low points by getting a passage before you're ready to start</comment>