An open-source browser extension to auto-skip sponsored segments on YouTube - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ajayyy/SponsorBlock <comment><USER2> Ah ha -- this isn't to skip ads, it's to crowdsource the time segments in YouTube videos where sponsored content is part of the video itself, to skip the segment itself.

I love it technically... but sadly I have hard time believing it will ever work in practice, though maybe I'm just a cynic. :(

Simply because it needs a dedicated base of people always keeping up with all the videos coming out each day who actually will go to the work of rewinding, tagging, fast-forwarding, tagging again, continuing when all they really want to do is just sit back watching a video.

Crowdsourcing for things like adblockers or Wikipedia work because the content changes slowly and is evergreen. But popular YouTube videos rotate very quickly and then sink into a long tail.

I'd love to be proven wrong, however. :)

(One way of possibly increasing adoption, however: I'd love if the extension automatically ended videos when they jump into the "subscribe now!" trailer at the end, especially for talk show segments, and immediately jumped to the next video in the playlist if there is one. They're always the same length for each show, so very easy to keep up-to-date.)

<comment><USER3> Perhaps this is just phase one, to build a dataset out of YouTube videos and sponsored promotions. Phase two could be training a classifier on the dataset. Then, the classifier watches a few minutes ahead of the user, skipping any in- content ads.

<comment><USER4> Sponsorblock developer here. The best part is that I made the database completely public, so someone else can do "phase 2" without me even having to be involved :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This had to happen, right?

It reminds me of Adblock Radio [1, 2], which blocks ads on radios using several techniques (it has nothing to do with the Adblock browser extension).

Maybe they could share some knowledge, especially on things based on sound analysis? Seems hard to do for sponsored content though (nobody would be able to talk about $PICK_A_POPULAR_VPN on YouTube anymore, ah ah).

[1] [https://www.adblockradio.com/](https://www.adblockradio.com/)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21057684](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21057684)

<comment><USER6> Well this wouldn't happen if creators were more picky with their sponsors and there was more variety. As it stands, there's only a few legitimate sponsors (so you would've already heard of them from other videos) and the rest is dubious garbage like VPNs and pay-to-win mobile games).

<comment><USER4> Exactly. I made this only because I couldn't stand how deceptive many modern sponsors are. If that didn't happen, I wouldn't have wasted time making this.

\- sponsorblock dev

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm a happy uBlock Origin user but this one just seems unfair to content creators.

<comment><USER8> You don't have a right to make money by manipulating impressionable people into buying things that they don't need.

Or maybe you do because of free speech, but you definitely don't have a right to have other people not try and stop you from succeeding.

<comment><USER9> And you don't have a right to have your cake and eat it too.

It's astonishing how many people on HN believe it is okay to shaft the sponsors of the content they enjoy and consume. What ever happened to "don't bite the hand that feeds you?"

<comment><USER10> I object to someone trying to influence me, just because they're paid to. Don't you?

<comment><USER11> Then don't watch sponsored channels?

<comment><USER12> And if the only fast video sharing site is teeming with these kind of videos? What would a sane man do?

<comment><USER9> Support the content creator with Patreon and then skip the in-video sponsorship with a clear conscience.

<comment><USER4> Maybe my extension will convince some youtubers to offer non sponsored videos on patreon. That would be the dream result of this extension.

Even nebula (CGP Grey and Kurzgesagt's steaming platform) sadly doesn't enforce this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I like the idea of crowdsourced effort to build useful datasets. Nevertheless, with growing popularity, I can imagine a whole lot of potential abuse of the voting API, e.g: blacklisting competitors channels.

<comment><USER4> Yea, I'm scared of it too now. I never expected growth this fast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Finally something to deal with the deluge of questionable VPN providers using fear-mongering to sell their stuff. I'd love to use this if there was a Safari version.

<comment><USER4> I'd love is someone ported it to be a user script. It is definitely possible.

\- sponsorblock dev

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What is the practical difference between blocking an ad, manually skipping an ad, and watching an ad and then ignoring the product? In all three cases you're mostly worth the same to the creator: zero. This is especially true in worlds like podcasting, where promo codes are the primary tracking metrics to find out how successful the ad campaign has been.

Advertising isn't magic. Your creator is getting paid because they are encouraging users to either spend more or to direct their spending at a specific product (regardless of that product's actual value). I don't see how you're supporting a creator just by listening to ads. The people who _buy_ the products are supporting a creator, and they're subsidizing you. Even to an advertiser, ultimately, your ears aren't valuable. Your money is valuable. A _conversion_ is valuable.

There's this idea that if we all tolerate certain kinds of advertising, creators will get paid and nobody will have to lose -- but it just doesn't click with me, no matter how much I think about it. The money isn't free, it has to come from somewhere. Somebody has to have their spending habits manipulated against their will for this to work. The propaganda has to be effective for some people, or they wouldn't pay this much money to distribute propaganda.

And it's very difficult for me to imagine a scenario where introducing multiple massive middlepeople into that transaction will make the transaction ultimately end up costing us _less_ money than if we just payed creators directly for their content.

We _are_ paying for ads; or at least more vulnerable people are paying on our behalf. I strongly suspect we would collectively pay less as a society if we just gave creators money.

</comment><comment><USER15> I like the channels that let me do this myself. The video ends, there's a clear transition (important), and then the spiel starts. I just turn it off. This is fine.

The bad ones are the ones that dedicate the first 3 minutes to some horrible mobile game (JonTron, etc.), or do mid-video cuts (New Rockstars, etc.), or, by far worst of all, do a very smooth and clean transition into the ad before you even knew the video was over, so for the first seconds you don't even realize you're watching an ad (Kurzgesagt).

I know creators need to get paid, so for all but the last, I don't mind them _too_ much and just skip ahead (but will definitely be using this extension). Ads that are hard to distinguish from content are abominable, though.

<comment><USER4> This extension was built because of Kurzgesagt. I love them, but it really frustrates me that this happens.

Wendover is 100x worse, but I stopped watching his channel all together for that very reason over a year ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I thought this is to skip ads, but no, it is to skip sponsored content _inside_ the video file. I loaded a Veritasium video to check ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDek6cYijxI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDek6cYijxI)), the video started playing, I looked at the bar and saw no yellow markers, and figured the extension is useless for me.

Then I clicked "unskip" and realized it had already skipped over the Veritasium sponsored content straight to the start of the video.

Magical.

</comment><comment> ar-nelson I see a lot of people saying this is unfair to content creators. I understand that sentiment when it comes to blocking normal ads, since revenue is based on ad views; that's why I don't run AdBlock on YouTube. But when it comes to in- video sponsored sections, can the sponsors actually tell whether viewers watched that _particular segment_ of the video? If not, this seems like the most ethical kind of adblock: creators still get paid, but you don't have to watch the (usually scammy) ads.

<comment><USER15> The problem is eventually this or something like this will probably catch on, and then sponsors will pressure YouTube into creating a system to provide metrics on who watches certain parts of videos. It doesn't sound that hard to do on a technical level, and I believe this is already available to creators in some way. Way less work than automagically detecting copyrighted audio and video, which they already do with Content ID.

<comment><USER4> This already exists. You can see realtime (per second of the video) engagement statistics. It shows drops in sponsored sections normally and it pickup back up right after.

<comment><USER15> Right, but can sponsors themselves access this data via an API or something, currently? Asking the creator to email engagement metrics screenshots every week isn't too practical.

<comment><USER4> It is private. I don't think they would really care and would more care about link clicks.

<comment><USER15> True. The people who use these blockers/skippers would essentially never visit those links in the first place, so it may not really make a difference in the end.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I recently switched to Brave Browser and been keeping everything on Lockdown.

Added this.

Brave has made my experience so much better in general - looking forward to seeing how this works for me.

</comment><comment><USER18> What about privacy? Will this extension send a query to a server, identifying each video opened on YouTube?

<comment><USER19> I really hate this kind of nit-picking. You're afraid to give this information to student who said it's not stored, and yet you don't mind to give the same information to the biggest marketing machine who not only uses it, but also sells it.

<comment><USER18> It's naive to assume only the current author has or will have exclusive access to your data.

<comment><USER4> Yes, that's why I don't store data I don't need.

But of course, I agree with you. Don't trust anyone.

<comment><USER19> Don't agree with him. It's your project and your time. If you trust yourself and know you don't log, then why make an effort to appease paranoid users who never checked source code of your extension? k-anonymity will increase load of your server and your cost while you know it's pointless.

On the other hand, user can use VPN, Tor, browser containers to achieve the same. If they really are as paranoid as they say - they already do.

<comment><USER4> Yes, but in general I do agree it is important to be weary of services. Not specifically mine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> One of my first memories as a child in the early 80s was a conversation in the school playing ground about VHS players that could automatically skip adverts. We thought the idea was so awesome

</comment><comment><USER21> I think this is helpful and will give it a try.

Greedy content producers will not stop including sponsors in their videos. "This video could not have been made without $sponsor..." Yeah, yeah, what a BS: Lots (like several 100k) of subscribers, Patreons, ads on the videos, affiliate links in the description and sometimes sponsored hardware with a well visible brand logo and you still come around and tell me you couldn't make ends meet without even more sponsorships?

Especially with all the more-or-less shady VPN providers, "JLCPCB" on electronics videos or Skillshare on the rest of the videos, YouTube feels more and more like linear television.

<comment><USER22> And for all the channels which really are relying on that revenue? Are you paying for YouTube Premium? Are you signing up to support the creator on Patreon? Are you paying channel memberships?

What's left to fund your favourite content when none of this happens?

<comment><USER23> Does some part of my YouTube premium membership fee go to the content creators?

<comment><USER24> I remember seeing something about a very low percentage of viewers being YouTube premium, but accounting for something like 40+% of revenue.

<comment><USER25> That depends on how much ads pay, how many users watch ads/use adblock, how much they watch etc. Videos that get few ads or low-priced ads might indeed have the membership be a large portion of the revenue. Generally it's more in the 10-20% range though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This seems excessive if it's going to hurt content creators. Content creation is not easy and some YouTubers need the sponsor money to continue creating work for the channel as ad money pays very little. Most channels I have visited tell you they are sponsored by so and so, which was making it easy to know which videos were sponsored and I'm assuming those are the ones this NN will pick up. Now the sponsors could potentially ask creators to become more creative and more deceptive.

On the other hand something like this inevitable and I will check out the project.

</comment><comment><USER27> Is this extension even relevant? I haven't ever seen those on youtube. uBlock + pihole do the job.

Smart TV, on the other hand, manages to bypass my pihole (as if adds were burned into the vid), that's where I need to figure something out.

<comment><USER28> This isn't about the ads that are inserted by YouTube. This is trying to block parts of the main video that are ads.

<comment><USER27> "parts of the main video that are ads" \- well, i'm not sure what those are. Is it something that happens when they record a program from a TV and then upload that video to youtube without removing TV ads?

<comment><USER29> Imagine a Youtube video where the host takes a break to read off an advertisement and that you'll get a 10% discount if you use their code during the checkout process. And then they resume with their content.

They often will pre-record these segments with a consistent "now with a quick word about our sponsors" jingle which can be statically detected and removed from the video.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> So much tech targeting content creation revenue generation!! Why? Can't we just let those generating free content do their thing without going after their livelihood?

<comment><USER31> It's an unstable equilibrium, not win-win but win-lose. It's only win-win if you think being subjected to tracking, ads, etc costs you nothing. Many people would disagree.

<comment><USER25> These are sponsor segments that are part of the video. There is no tracking involved that isn't also part of the video, because it's part of the video itself. This is not about privacy, but rather about being annoyed by ads.

<comment><USER15> That _is_ why I use ad blockers, though. I don't care about the tracking, generally; I care about seeing ads. This is why most people use them. There's nothing wrong with not wanting to see ads.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Amazon acquires meeting-productivity startup Do to expand Chime - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/08/amazon-can-do-chime/ <comment><USER2> From their shutdown blog post [0], it looks like they gave users just 9 days warning before they deleted all user data. Also, the login link (still present in the header) takes you to a page they seem to have forgotten to add content to [1].

[0] [http://blog.do.com/post/157299307009/announcing-our-next- cha...](http://blog.do.com/post/157299307009/announcing-our-next-chapter)

[1] [https://www.do.com/login](https://www.do.com/login)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm curious how much of this startup value is just in domain name.

<comment><USER4> They might not own it...

Salesforce had the domain in 2013, and was an investor in Do.com. The domain may have been on loan/lease.

I previously worked at a startup that was using a domain on a "rent to own" basis. I suspect something similar here.

<comment><USER5> Interesting! Do you have any info how terms of these leases look like?

<comment><USER6> Noah Kagan did a podcast on the deal he made to buy Sumo.com. Not a straight lease but more like a payment plan. He talks about how Mint.com was purchased this way too.

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/noah-kagan-presents- form...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/noah-kagan-presents-formerly-the- inflection-point/id1187402810?mt=2#)

<comment><USER7> This sounds like seller financing, it's very common in real estate transactions and other large asset purchases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder how much they got acquired for. It seems to have been in an early stage? 2-10 employees from the screenshot in the article.

</comment><comment><USER9> google g suite competition? next add file collaboration or buy dropbox. mailbox chat ...

</comment><comment><USER10> That headline is incredibly hard to parse.

<comment><USER11> Well the founders are kinda of stupid to choose 'Do' as their company name, showing zero awareness of SEO. Maybe it is not far in the future, until The startup emerges...!

<comment><USER12> There's something to be said for the dot-com-era fad of actually having "dot com" in your company name.</comment></comment></comment>


Create an AI on Your Computer - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2009/05/28/create-an-ai-on-your-computer/

<comment><USER2> "Problems in chemistry, biology, physics, economics, engineering, and astronomy, even questions of philosophy could all be helped by the application of an advanced AI."

One of the indications of maturity in "artificial intelligence" research is the emergence of more bounded and tractable sub-fields devoted to specific A.I. problems. Machine learning, computer vision, robotics, etc. The tangible success of these research areas make me wonder if simulating human brains is the most useful approach. Which reminds of this Tom Mitchell quote:

"My late colleague Herb Simon used to talk about how aircraft are artificial birds. In many ways aircraft exceed birds in their ability to fly, but in many other ways they do not. The path to recreating human intelligence may deliver a similar outcome. Just as birds and aircraft are similar but different, we may create artificial intelligence in the future that mimics human brains, yet also differs greatly in its implementation and capability in a variety of arenas."

[http://singularityhub.com/2009/04/24/devices-that-read- peopl...](http://singularityhub.com/2009/04/24/devices-that-read-peoples- minds-are-you-thinking-what-im-thinking/)

Is simulating a human brain the shortest path to solving "problems in chemistry, biology, physics, economics, engineering, and astronomy?" Machine learning techniques that are very different from what a human brain does, working in concert with the brains of human researchers, might turn out to be the most productive path.

<comment><USER3> You're absolutely right: simulating a human brain is the shortest path to solving problems that relate... to the human brain. No other guarantees exist.

It's going to be difficult to make a computer architecture that approaches the parallel ability of the human brain.

<comment><USER4> Definitely, especially as its such an 'analogue' problem, maybe digital computers aren't the right job for this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think efforts along these lines are hopelessly misplaced; all it's going to produce is a simulation of an autistic brain. It's not without scientific value but it's not going to cross a threshold and say 'hi there!'.

When reading proposals for creating AI, few researchers discuss (at least publicly) the idea of simulating hunger or pain. How are we going to create intelligence without simulating qualitative experiences which give rise to the basic drives of avoidance and desire, which intelligence helps to fulfill?

At the risk of stating the obvious, a cat brain is about 3 orders of magnitude smaller than a human's, but most will agree that a cat has personality (maybe mice do too, but I've never kept one). What we really want to create with AI is something that has enough personality for us to form a relationship with it which does not require us to pre-abstract our communication. So we would be far better off building something about as capable as (and no more dangerous) than a cat, and building 10 of them, which we can then play with and try to train. We can probably dump a whole lot of brainspace since we don't need to simulate the full complexity of an endocrine system etc etc; but we do need our ACats to have enough autonomy to get itself into trouble. We are never going to develop a machine that thinks if we don't give it something to think about, and it will never have anything worth thinking about if it doesn't have a sense of self, and it won't develop that without having to make decisions which feed back its qualitative experience.

I am not an adherent of Searle's Chinese room argument, but on the other hand asking the guy in the room whether he prefers noodles or rice is devoid of meaning if he subsists on an endless supply of burgers and fries; all you get int hat case is an expert system which parses Chinese but has nothing of note to say in that language.

<comment><USER4> When you refer to a machine needing a 'sense of self' it sounds as if you are referring to consciousness. To an extent you could maybe say even a thermostat has a limited form of consciousness in that it holds a belief that a room is at a specific temperature and it is able to effect this through its own output, functioning as a cybernetic system.

I think you could certainly give such a system the impression of having feelings by implementing some kind of stimulus and reward process, but I think that needs to come second to appearing intelligent first (albeit in a rather emotionless fashion), but yes it would make the UI much more friendly.

I like the idea of trying to mimic the human brain as a path to AI, as it would give the system the ability to theoretically cope with a massive set of problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind._

<comment><USER7> Come on, Butlerian Jihad? Please tell me that was a humorous quip and not a real opinion ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's interesting. I have a couple of spare machines lying dormant. But I'm kind of thrown off by the commercial intentions. It was only a brief mention but I need to read more about it before jumping in.</comment>


Could a Gravity Trick Speed Us to Mars? - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/science/space/magazine/17-10/st_twoburn

<comment><USER2> I recently heard a talk on a similar idea: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerogravity_assist>

A lot of technology still needs to be developed before something like this is viable, but if it were possible a trip to mars travel time would be cut down tremendously. If I remember right there were two launch windows a year using that method.

</comment><comment><USER3> This seems to be talking about the Oberth effect.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberth_effect>

</comment><comment><USER4> Problem is, it doesn't discuss much on what those savings might be, only that they exist.

<comment><USER5> I think they are speaking of the Oberth Effect: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberth_effect> about which I know nearly nothing, but the multiplier at the end of the Wikipedia example is 3.3.

In brief, you let a planet pull you in to its gravity well, then while you are going very fast burn your fuel to get your Δv.

At this point my physics falls apart. You either…

1) Gain the energy from the propellent coming down and not having to go back up. (f=ma doesn't help me here)

2) Gain extra energy because the rocket force is constant and with a greater 'v' the kinetic energy is greater. (says whose frame of reference?)

3) Gain energy because you balance some equation and realize you left the exhaust at a lower altitude. (Dr. Carl Bender tried to pull this stuff on me in freshman physics. It looked good on him.)</comment></comment>


Userdir URLs like https://example.org/~username/ are dangerous - <AUTHOR> https://blog.hboeck.de/archives/899-Userdir-URLs-like-httpsexample.orgusername-are-dangerous.html <comment><USER2> > All userdir URLs on one server run on the same host and thus are in the same > origin. It has XSS by design.

The ship has now sailed, but I still think it's worth pointing out that it is Javascript's security model that is broken by design, that XSS vulnerabilities are the result, and the same origin policy is an incomplete workaround as illustrated by the article. This becomes clear when you consider that userdir URLs pre-date Javascript.

The public suffix list is yet another incomplete workaround for the security flaw in the same origin policy (that "same origin" isn't a concept that can be clearly defined).

The modern web stack is a security house of cards, as demonstrated.

<comment><USER3> Honestly I can't think of a much better system that can support a billion websites. What would you change/overhaul about the current system if you could ignore compatibility?

<comment><USER4> Firstly, I'd fix the damn spelling of the referer header instead of everybody putting up with it for close to 30 years.

I don't think it's that JavaScript and HTML are a bad choice, but there are some things that would have made life a lot easier if they were strongly enforced sooner, including secure cookies by default, SameSite=lax, removal of referer header and CSP - doing them sooner would have stopped bad developer practices while also removing a fair chunk of application security complexities, but at least we're moving towards a better world regarding those now.

I don't know if it'd be technically possible to implement, but additional characters to mark unsafe strings would have a huge impact on webapp security. Reflection of untrusted data at the moment generally relies on one of: HTML encoding, URL encoding or JavaScript escaping and escaping a safe way is highly context-dependent (I've seen an unescaped "\n" cause injection within JavaScript contexts). A way of effectively storing the level of trust a chunk of data has across multiple transports when marking untrusted data including within HTML/JS, SQL statements and interpreted languages like BASH or PHP - this would eliminate a bunch of vulnerabilities and would probably have mitigated a bunch of notable historic vulnerabilities and/or hacks.

<comment><USER5> > HTML encoding, URL encoding or JavaScript escaping and escaping a safe way > is highly context-dependent (I've seen an unescaped "\n" cause injection > within JavaScript contexts)

I have had a hard time convincing co-workers that if you have php generating sql generating (! yes!) html generating javascript, you need to escape the string for javascript since it's embedded in javascript. Then you need the string escaped for html since it's embedded in html. Then you need the string escaped for sql since it's embedded in sql. Only then can you chuck it into the middle of the string. It is better to not do such craziness; but once you've decided to do such craziness, you must do it properly. The similarities between js and mysql escaping are irrelevant; it must be escaped properly each time it is embedded in another language.

<comment><USER6> Escape characters are one of the most stupid things in the computing world.

The formats could be so simple: first the length of the data, then raw data of that length

<comment><USER7> But then we would never be able to treat text as a stream. All of your one pass algorithms would become two pass.

<comment><USER8> I'm curious what you mean by this — why does coding for length prevent streaming? The receiving end can certainly treat the text as a stream still. Do you mean that the sender cannot "stream" if they are generating the contents on the fly? That seems trivial to solve - just break it up into chunks, assuming a little bit of buffering is OK.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a non-problem. There is no real threat model. It's like how you can cast to my TV if you're in my house. Sure, anyone could attack the party by posting porn on the TV but that's really not going to happen because I'm not going to invite you and put you in the wifi if you're the kind of person who does that.

<comment><USER10> Also, example.com/~username style URLs usually are 1990s-style static web sites where the only Javascript is something like a marquee. They are not the kinds of sites which have extensive Javascript or a web forum people can sign in to; _at most_ a site like that would have a guestbook.

<comment><USER11> Marquees were HTML

<comment><USER12> MSIE-only extension.

Edit: The "true" marquee was running in the now defunced status bar (window.status) via JS.

<comment><USER11> ::Vietnam flashback music::

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The only place I've seen these used are universities (eg each professor gets a webspace) and other small companies and organizations. I think it's relatively safe to assume Alice isn't going to attack Bob—if she did want to, she has better ways to do so.

Now, if someone knows of a host selling ~username spaces to members of the public, that's a different story.

<comment><USER14> When I see ~username I know I'm about to load a page with some cream tiled background. These days every user just gets their own subdomain like username.usersites.com

<comment><USER15> Heh. I use two userdir websites for work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've never seen a userdir URL being used with anything but raw static HTML with no or little JS. Generally the type of people who use these hosts don't use cookies or local storage at all. They just want to post a few web pages, photos, or documents. Can someone find an example?

<comment><USER16> Eighteen years ago my university let me host PHP scripts in a /~user directory, and I wrote my own simple blogging software and ran it there.

It was vulnerable to the attacks described here. Thankfully no-one on that domain ever exploited it in that way.

<comment><USER17> Today my college lets me do the same. I wonder if I could even possibly use `mod_wsgi` to run something like a Python server.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Ridiculous. The solution isn't to call public_html bad. The solution is to encourage people who are going to run things like webmail and other sites with Javascript like that to use a specific virtualhost for webmail.

<comment><USER19> Would be nice if we included a path in the spec for single origin. It's almost as if the spec was designed to kill off public_html style share hosting... either that or talk the control panel software people into using subdomains instead of paths for userdirs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> User-specific subdomains have their own set of problems too. This is why, for example, GitHub Pages switched their hosting from username.github.com to username.github.io - even with HTTPSOnly cookies, you can still _set_ cookies for other subdomains.

[https://github.blog/2013-04-05-new-github-pages-domain- githu...](https://github.blog/2013-04-05-new-github-pages-domain-github-io/) and [https://github.blog/2013-04-09-yummy-cookies-across- domains/](https://github.blog/2013-04-09-yummy-cookies-across-domains/) are relevant

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you read the post?

It specifically mentions that and even names github.io as an example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've only ever seen userdir URLs hosting static content - ideally, static HTML with lesson plans or a resume or something. Why would anyone host a web application on a userdir? This seems like a complete non-issue.

Also - why would a blog be threatened by XSS? A blog is a collection of static HTML files and I assume the creator would be using a composer or just a text editor + browser to add and edit pages. Why would anyone log into a blog? Nowadays anything like a comment section is generally handled by iframes to some other service (like Disqus) anyway.

<comment><USER22> > _Also - why would a blog be threatened by XSS? A blog is a collection of > static HTML files and I assume the creator would be using a composer or just > a text editor + browser to add and edit pages. Why would anyone log into a > blog?_

Perhaps you've never heard of WordPress [0], the 17-year-old blogging software used by ~60 million web sites as of 2012 [1] and that is, today, "the platform of choice for over 35% of all sites across the web" [2]?

\---

[0]: [https://wordpress.org](https://wordpress.org)

[1]: [https://web.archive.org/web/20160129215921/http://www.forbes...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160129215921/http://www.forbes.com/sites/jjcolao/2012/09/05/the- internets-mother-tongue/)

[2]: [https://wordpress.org/about/](https://wordpress.org/about/)

<comment><USER21> I have experience using Wordpress; in sixth grade I tried out the Wordpress editor and felt writing HTML was easier. I admit it's popular with less-savvy users and with companies with money to burn, but it seems unprofessional to use Wordpress for anything you can write by hand. I don't think anyone would be using blogging _software_ if they didn't have their own domain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> You'd think this was just an archaic relic but Bambora payment processing (which hasn't updated their site since uppercase HTML tags and framesets were a thing) has a userdir feature that lets their customers upload static file to their "secure webspace" which is hosted on the same domain for all customers.

<comment><USER10> [https://www.bambora.com/en/us/](https://www.bambora.com/en/us/) looks like a modern web site to me; if there was a URL we could look at, it would be interesting to see this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The tildeverse has some words for you

<comment><USER14> Those sites have no backend code so there isn't really much risk of cookies being shared.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I would argue that the root issue you're describing which leads to XSS on the same host is allowing un-sanitized input leading to code injection.

It is entirely possible to design your own application which uses unique userdirs without using any of Apache's built in functionality that are completely immune to XSS because it is not possible for any of the users to place malicious scripts on the server.

Likewise it is also entirely possible to build a web app that doesn't use userdirs at all in any form for anything and still be vulnerable to XSS because of underlying input sanitization or code injection problems.

So whatever you're going to do, just do your homework and do it well.

</comment><comment><USER12> I actually do not understand, why this hasn't been addressed over all those years. As far as the evaluation of origin is concerned, we may easily implement something like:

If the path field of a URL contains a tilde directory, do the following: 1) split the path after the tilde directory, 2) add the first part to the host field, 3) use the second part as the new path field.

If there are any concerns regarding compatibility, make it opt-in via a HTTP header field.

<comment><USER26> The tilde is just a convention. There are also sites that map it to /home/<user> or something. Perhaps extending the Accept-Origin headers could work.

But the basic message is: don't expect any protection from cross-directory script attacks, so use domain names for anything serious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Not really a problem if the host only serves static content. Author argues that there still is what I guess could be called a phishing vector:

 _> All of this is primarily an issue if people run non-trivial web applications that have accounts and logins. If the web pages are only used to host static content the issues become much less problematic, though it is still with some limitations possible that one user could show the webpage of another user in a manipulated way._

It is really _without_ limitations possible that one user could show the webpage of another user in a manipulated way, but for a static site that is true whether it can be done dynamically because they share domain or because the phisher can simply read your site content, copy and manipulate it.

</comment><comment><USER28> The title makes it look like the problem comes with the "~username" URLS naming scheme, while it really comes from any features that let the user host static files they upload AND link somewhere else on your website.

The site take the example of apache mod_sites, but alone it's not enough. You need apache mod_sites, and the ability inject a link served by it somewhere else.

Well, yes. If you let user input anything and then inject it anywhere in your website, it's a security whole. Not a surprised.

So if you let your users host entire application on your website, and let other users of your website visit those applications. Well, I mean, sure it's a problem.

The best sandbox is the one you don't need to use.

</comment><comment><USER29> Today we have affordable wildcard CA-signed SSL certificates (thanks Let's Encrypt!) so there's no excuse for not following [https://username.host/](https://username.host/) structures.

</comment><comment><USER30> > While this issue should be obvious to anyone knowing basic web security, I > have never seen it being discussed publicly.

It was discussed here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15141594](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15141594)

I'm still of the opinion that there should be an RFC around tilde urls, making it official that they're for hosting static content that isn't vouched for by the owner of the main domain. This has been an important part of our culture for decades, and it should be formally recognized and codified so that people can do it in a secure way.

</comment><comment><USER31> It made me nostalgic, my (static) webpage was like/~that in 1995 or so.

</comment><comment><USER32> What? No. mod_userdir is not dangerous. The resulting URLs are not dangerous.

Having multiple unrelated unvetted outside users with the ability to make your server serve arbitrary JavaScript is dangerous. The route you take to get there is kind of beside the point.

If anything, mod_userdir is helpful in that it's obvious when content is under the control of a different user. Perhaps browsers should treat x.com/~x/ as a different server from x.com/~y/ for XSS purposes.

</comment><comment><USER33> Sure, if you're running _entirely separate systems_ behind each username.

But in that case this has been true since XHR first came into existence 15-20 years ago: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest) (sub)domains are a fundamental requirement for web security, they essentially always have been.

</comment><comment><USER34> you could fix this pretty effectively with the Content-Security-Policy: sandbox header, which would just deny all same origin policy access

</comment><comment><USER35> Most Userdir URLs like that just go to 404 pages anyway. That is the bigger problem.

</comment><comment><USER36> Summary: host user pages as username.example.org instead so browsers will consider them to be separate origins

</comment><comment><USER37> No danger if ~username/ can only contain static pages. No tokens to be stolen etc. in XSS scenarios.

</comment><comment><USER38> I didn't know about the public suffix list, that's a cool idea to maintain as a community resource. Nice!

</comment><comment><USER39> When roboform was still popular a lot of its users had it fill out username and password automatically.

</comment><comment><USER40> (I am so glad the title is not "Userdir URLs considered harmful".)

</comment><comment><USER41> This is not a problem of userdir but of Javascript. Userdir is older, then JS arrived and introduced many kinds of vulnerabilities, then some of these have been addressed, with mixed results. With userdir you're perfectly fine if you don't use JS.

</comment><comment><USER42> So maybe 90% of academic websites are built in this way

</comment><comment><USER43> what about [https://example.org/+rm+-rf+/](https://example.org/+rm+-rf+/) ?

</comment><comment><USER44> -

<comment><USER45> Looks like he edited it to remove now but parent comment was basically saying he's been telling customers to avoid shared hosting by using shared hosting in the form of Heroku, etc instead.</comment></comment>


Finding the Four Month Bug: A Debugging Story - <AUTHOR> http://evanjones.ca/jvm-mmap-pause-finding.html

<comment><USER2> Excellent investigation into the "why" of a performance problem. All too often I can get to the bottom of a "what" of a performance problem, but answering "why" can be an entirely different ball-game.

Running this all the way to the ground must have felt so satisfying.

</comment><comment><USER3> I really like good debugging stories; written well, they're like a very short mystery story, in which I get to follow the thought process and watch the bug being cornered and identified, and ultimately it goes in my personal arsenal of things to think about in the future if I'm ever in a similar situation.

Sadly, this one is ruined by having the answer stuck in the first paragraph with a great big "TL;DR" in it, so even if I read the whole thing now, I already know the answer which colours my thinking the whole way through. What a disappointment.

It's even got the word "story" in the title.

</comment><comment><USER4> I second the recommendation of Debugging by Agans. It was recommended to me by one of the best debugging people at Apple, and the approaches it outlines have served me well in the years since.

<comment><USER5> Agan's principles listed in 'How to debug hard problems' is a great way of life in itself.</comment></comment>


The Passion Myth - <AUTHOR> http://www.ajkesslerblog.com/the-passion-myth/

<comment><USER2> If the OP is talking about Startups, he's probably right. The only time I've ever felt physically ill was when I had my own business.

I've loved coming to work for the last 1.5 yrs _every day_ (no exceptions!) for the small 3 person company that employs me.</comment>


PolyBrowser, a new way to browse the web - X-combinator https://polybrowser.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is interesting, but these guys need to hire a designer!</comment>


Want to Hack on Facebook Analytics? - <AUTHOR> We're a Facebook analytics product with serious traction and we're looking for 1-2 hackers wanting to jump into some code head first and join us in our crazy startup adventure.
We're in closed beta, and across our beta testers we're measuring 40+ million Facebook likes (growing every day). Customers include national consumer brands, pro sports teams, and some of your favorite tech blogs.
We're looking for folks with:
- solid experience with Ruby/Rails
- willingness to experiment in MongoDB
- desire to work with the Facebook APIs
- love of Facebook (especially Facebook Pages)
Nice plus if you have experience in:
- mobile (any platform)
- marketing / social engineering
- statistics
- front end / design
- customer support / cat herding
We won't mind if you never graduated highschool (one of our founders didn't--although he has two college degrees) or want to work remotely. We drive ourselves hard, love social metrics, and ship code daily.
If reading this makes you salivate, drop a note to email@example.com. Resumes are nice, GitHub is great. <comment><USER2> It seems there's Facebook analyticsporn on Hacker News almost every other day (I'm looking at demographics vs advertising prices [1]). You came to the right place (if Ruby was one of my top 3 languages, I'd apply).

[1] [http://euri.ca/2011/04/11/facebook-advertising-prices- part-1...](http://euri.ca/2011/04/11/facebook-advertising-prices-part-1/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Can you mention location and whether you accept remote work?

Just a suggestion to maybe repost here as well: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2396027></comment>


The Liberal Blind Spot - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/opinion/sunday/the-liberal-blind-spot.html <comment><USER2> That's because they're not actually liberals. They're leftists. Would it be too much to ask that we use the word "liberal" the way the rest of the Anglosphere does?

<comment><USER3> To be fair, this is mostly goalpost moving. Leftism is now mainstream liberalism.

I used to identify as a liberal but now mainstream liberalism (leftism) is against basic things like freedom of speech.

Feels weird to identify as a 'conservative' since I grew up associating very negative things with that term but there it is.

<comment><USER4> The political terms left, right, conservative, liberal, have a different and often opposite meaning in the US than most of the rest of the world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a messy and poorly constructed argument. In the abstract, sure the author's not wrong that the academy lacks conservative voices, but what concretely are we missing? In economics, the contributions of conservative thinkers is clear. What's the equivalent for conservative voices in sociology? That in fact, blacks are poor because of their culture and not ongoing structural racism? I honestly feel that any worthwhile conservative arguments are being made by center-left thinkers.

This particularly is incredibly disingenuous:

> I suspect many liberals disdain evangelicals in part because they don't have > any evangelical friends.

The comparison to Muslims is an awful false equivalence. First of all, discriminating against someone because they hold intolerant beliefs is categorically different from discriminating against someone based on their religion (and let's be honest, given that Sikhs and other South Asians get targeted, it's really a racial issue). Second, he's postulating this without any evidence. Lots of academics grew up in the South or the Midwest, and a lot of great universities are in those areas as well. Thirdly, even if someone doesn't know an evangelical personally, they are exposed to Jerry Falwell, the Bush administration, Fox News, Kim Davis, etc.

If Kristoff wants to make the claim that individual conservatives shouldn't be judged based on the plethora of conservative thought leaders that represent them in the media, he needs to provide an actual argument for that distinction. If he doesn't want racists, homophobes, misogynists, etc. in the academy, he needs to provide examples of the useful discourse we are missing out on.

Frankly, the center-left vs hard-left feel like the debates we should be having as a society, e.g. how do we reconcile the racist history of our most esteemed institutions with our modern values, or how do we deal with the consequences of tech rapidly eliminating the livelihoods of millions of working class citizens.

<comment><USER6> > Thirdly, even if someone doesn't know an evangelical personally, they are > exposed to Jerry Falwell, the Bush administration, Fox News, Kim Davis, etc.

Even if someone doesn't know a Muslim personally, they are exposed to Osama Bin Laden, the Saudi regime, ISIS, Hezbollah, etc.

<comment><USER5> Which is why I said that if this is the argument Kristoff wanted to make, he has to make that argument. The equivalence you're trying to draw is a very poor parallel, and needs a lot of work to turn into a coherent argument:

1\. The elected officials and thought leaders of a group are much more representative of a group's beliefs than rogue actors.

2\. The point you're trying to make is that evangelicals may not be a monolith. That's a completely fair argument abstractly - but what does it mean concretely? After all, Evangelical is much more specific than Muslim. Specifically, in the context of the last 30 years of American politics, Evangelicals have been a socially conservative movement, often standing in the way of gay rights & women's rights. "Muslim" is just a much broader term, and doesn't carry that political weight.

If your argument is that there are evangelicals outside of that movement that aren't bigoted that deserve to be heard, well you have to explain what that group looks like. Also, you have to change your thesis to "We need more moderately right leaning people in the academy" which as you can see is a much less bold and interesting claim, and is one about goal posts, not the intolerance of the left.

3\. Internal politics are more reliable. The average American can understand more of the nuance of what's happening in their country because it's reported & discussed more, and competing sources are more readily available.

4\. Let's be honest, it's not like the academy is swimming in Muslims either.

Kristoff agrees that blatant homophobes, racists, misogynists, etc don't deserve to be hired.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> When this topic comes up, I feel "I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup"[1] should be mandatory reading. Tolerance isn't about allowing dissent or including marginal groups. Tolerance is difficult, unpleasant, and uncomfortable. If you don't feel those particular traits for any given groups opinions, then it isn't tolerance.

[1] [http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate- anything...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything- except-the-outgroup/)

<comment><USER8> Exactly.

Personal anecdote; I am not a religious person but I live in a Muslim country. A Facebook friend who is an atheist keeps making obnoxious posts about religion; calling religious people stupid and atheists intellectuals etc. I was really tempted to honestly tell him to zip it as all of this was cringeworthy and served only to annoy people. But as I was typing a long reply I realized that this is what "tolerance" or more likely "freedom if speech" is all about; it's not "believing people can say what they want" as much as "not pointing out how annoyed they make you feel".

<comment><USER9> Maybe, although I'm not sure it's clear cut in your case. I don't think that tolerance necessariy requires pretending to agree. Sometimes (although not necessarily in this case) an uncomfortable private conversation is more appropriate. There's a large difference between pointing out to someone one- on-one that you don't agree, versus pointing out to "the group", who you expect to agree with you, that the individual is in the wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance)

</comment><comment><USER11> It's hard not to agree with the premise of the article, basically that we should live by the values we assert. Or as often expressed on HN, we should "eat our own dogfood".

I guess it's the familiar problem of awareness of one's own biases, and the classic example of the kind of "insight" that few people achieve. Acceptance of others feedback and interpretations of reality is usually essential for such self-development. Likely the author believes the essential components are missing: both the diversity of world views and the willingness to hear them.

Reminds me of HN discussions about diversity in tech industries, while widely divergent points of view are expressed, moderators caution us to express experiences and opinions in a civil manner. That can't be too much to ask.

Lucky for me I've not had to deal with academia in a long time. Remarks like those in the article give the impression that there is increasing bias and intolerance. Of course that couldn't be uniformly true among institutions and disciplines, but to the extent it exists it would be pernicious.

To those on HN who have current first-hand experience in academic environments, I'd love to ask how much the situation resembles that noted in the article.

Edit: keeping a good thought the thread's subject can be discussed calmly, better to be able to learn something from it.

</comment><comment><USER12> Conservatives love liberals and are super inclusive of them. This is only a problem on the liberal side.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's quite ok if people have prejudices, and even discrimination, or any other thoughts that are controversial, as long as their actions aren't harming another person's property.

In my personal observation, the problem of liberalism, is it is trying to enforce a ideology/doctrine in a larger scale, through law making process or extensive propaganda, etc.

<comment><USER14> > In my personal observation, the problem of liberalism, is it is trying to > enforce a ideology/doctrine in a larger scale, through law making process

This 'problem' sounds like a near-perfect description of the civil rights movement in the 60's.

I'm not saying it's the correct tactic for all social ills (as seen by liberals), but it has its use and it has worked before. I fear the problem is that the only tool they have is a hammer.

<comment><USER13> Yes, it worked initially, as those oppressed groups did get some degree of equal opportunities. But today, as it evolved in such a political way, the subtext has changed, different groups of people using it not to gain equal rights, but equal privileges, or rather, supremacy against other groups.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It is not a blind spot. Intolerance against intolerance is intentional.

> Surveys show that Americans have negative views of Muslims when they don't > know any; I suspect many liberals disdain evangelicals in part because they > don't have any evangelical friends.

If a liberal perceives Muslims and evangelicals to be intolerant (or at least less tolerant than themselves), their intolerance against them will be intentional and it may serve a purpose.

<comment><USER16> This is beyond just intolerance of the intolerant, it's a sick worldview. I'd like to repost here a Reddit comment which I found to perfectly capture what is wrong with the so-called regressive left:

Social Justice Warriors are also referred to as the regressive left because they are regressing backward from liberal society to defining people based solely on their identifying group, be it race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or religious belief. They simply rationalize their bigotry differently; the bigoted right separates people by these lines but think that everybody should conform to the majority/dominant group. The bigoted/regressive left also treats people on the same lines but think that those in the dominant group should give special privileges to those in the minority in order to equalize.

This is also an important distinction. It isn't that they are just overzealous on equality; I don't think that's necessarily possible. They have redefined equality. For most of us, it has always meant equal treatment of all individuals by setting a single set of rules and judgment based on individual merit. The liberal ideal is to not even care what color, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or other personal identifier a person has, unless it is directly relevant. Thus which group you fall in is generally irrelevant. That you happen to be born with a certain skin color then gives you no personal benefit or hindrance.

The regressive left defines equality as a bulk statistic over the whole of an identifying group. Which group you fall in then is critical to how they treat you, the same as far-right bigots. (They only differ on how they treat each group.) If you are white and male, for example, then you are seen as privileged because, statistically, white males have more wealth and power. That you may individually have no power or wealth is irrelevant to them, as if there is some big party where all the white males all go to divvy up the loot and push a single common agreed interest. By this reasoning, a homeless American white male murdered by police (like Mark Kelley) is privileged; a billionaire African black woman (like Isabel Dos Santos) is not. To these regressives, the idea of not caring what somebody's personal identity is (such as race) is abhorrent. They don't see their blatant racism or bigotry, largely because they think it's ok as long as they're rooting for the group that is statistically an underdog (even if the individual isn't).

When challenged on this whole bizarre re-definition of equality, many will dismiss it as "reverse racism", meaning it's only racist against the dominant group, so who cares. (Again, regardless to the actual circumstances of the individuals.) But this is, of course, mistaken. They are stereotyping all people based on the groups they fall in, and dictating which groups are allowed to do what, across all groups, and to the detriment of many in those groups. Muslims are seen as oppressed in the West, so the regressive left oddly supports the conservative Muslims to oppressive other Muslims, like separating men and women, because that oppression is just part of their culture, which is an underdog in the West. So if you are a liberal Muslim woman seeking equal rights and treatment for Muslim women, the regressive left will actually fight against you, even trying to get you banned from speaking at a university. It's this perverse redefinition of equality based on bulk statistics that leads to such bigoted reviews that the regressive left ends up with many of the same policies as the bigoted right. A fundamentalist religious group on the right in California sued (and failed) to have yoga removed from schools as a violation of their religion. A regressive left student union successfully stopped yoga classes at the University of Ottawa under the guise it is "cultural appropriation".

At Missou, the activists demanded blacks-only housing so that they could explore their culture. Racists on the right also want blacks in their own housing. In the UK, student unions have supported the right of Muslims to separate men and women in lectures as long as they are the same distance from the front. "Separate but equal" was also a policy of the American racist right. The regressive left, led by Anita Sarkeesian, wants to stop sex and violence and scantily clad women in video games. The religious right, led by Jack Thompson, have long fought for this as well.

Same policies over and over. Just different rationalizations. They aren't just an extreme version of the left; they've abandoned liberalism for a form of underdog authoritarianism via stereotypes.

<comment><USER17> > If you are white and male, for example, then you are seen as privileged > because, statistically, white males have more wealth and power.

No. If you are white and male, you've experienced more _invisible_ privilege than you realize. [1] It's not about wealth, but it is about power -- power over others.

Questions:

* White man says that black woman stole something from him. What will happen?

* White woman says that black man stole something from her. What will happen?

* Black man says that white woman stole something from him. What will happen?

* Black woman says that white man stole something from her. What will happen?

What were your honest, visceral, reactions to each of these statements? Were they all _completely_ symmetric? I can tell you I've been working on balancing my own feelings about various races, and I can't claim my own thoughts were completely unbiased. And I have been trying for years to purge the bias.

There's an _awesome_ video of three college-student-aged in a park. All three are _obviously_ trying to steal a bike. They picked three actors and dressed them roughly equivalently. [2] Watch the video if you want to be shocked, or just read my summary if you can't be bothered:

* White Actor: Everyone ignores him or asks him what he's doing. He gives dodgy answers, but people wish him "good luck" or leave the scene. Some say they might have called the police later (when confronted by the camera crew), but they clearly didn't seem to be concerned.

* Black Actor: Within seconds, people start to confront him. They talk about calling the police. They _CALL_ the police, right then and there. Many are confrontational.

* White Female Actor: People walk by, mostly ignoring her; one guy _offers to help her steal the bike._

That last one had me dying of laughter. If _that_ video doesn't convey a direct, _obvious_ example of white privilege, then I'm perfectly confident in saying you're the one who's got the closed mind -- or a political agenda to promote. That video is one _indisputable_ example of white privilege.

Watch that video and tell me, with a straight face, that 90% of US prison populations are black men because they commit more crimes, and not because they simply are arrested more often. For drug crimes especially; I knew tons of kids who did drugs when I was in (my 99% white) high school, and none were harassed by cops, much less arrested. One guy's brother got arrested eventually for dealing [EDIT: Just remembered, he was or at least looked hispanic!]. Would that have been true if it were 99% black? I bet everyone I knew would have a story about being harassed.

> When challenged on this whole bizarre re-definition of equality, many will > dismiss it as "reverse racism", meaning it's only racist against the > dominant group, so who cares.

The dominant group _doesn 't need help._ Some other groups do. Helping groups isn't the same as discrimination.

Girls do as well as boys in engineering and programming, and yet _many_ cultural pressures push them away -- not least of which are the attitudes of boys (and other girls) toward girls who seem to "geeky." Is it bad to have programs that encourage girls to follow STEM career paths?

But if you fire a white person to maintain a quota of black employees, _that_ is reverse racism, and it's illegal. I know because I'm friends with a (liberal) attorney who successfully won a multimillion dollar reverse- discrimination lawsuit against an employer who fired white employees to meet a minority quota. (IIRC--not sure if I have the details precisely correct.)

> At Missou, the activists demanded blacks-only housing so that they could > explore their culture.

Were the activists black? Given the video above, and the way that blacks can be treated in the US, could you really _blame_ them for wanting to live in a safe place, where someone isn't going to accuse them of ... whatever?

> So if you are a liberal Muslim woman seeking equal rights and treatment for > Muslim women, the regressive left will actually fight against you, even > trying to get you banned from speaking at a university.

This topic is far more complex than you're making it out to be -- and I can't claim to know all of the details. Among other things, there are people (and countries: France) that want to _prevent_ Muslim women from wearing traditional Muslim garb in the name of "liberating" them. I would say that any government that is enforcing a particular behavior (that doesn't harm others!) has to provide the burden of proof that their actions are just. And forcing women to take off all head scarves or religious symbolism is no better than forcing them all to wear head scarves.

You're throwing up straw men by the ton; there are real people out there, suffering broad cultural prejudice, and people like you are trying to ridicule them by using terms like SJW. I'm a privileged, straight, white man, and I recognize that fact. Maybe it's easier to recognize because I also have a decent amount of wealth, but I'm not going to pretend that my success is _entirely_ because I'm awesome. It was _far_ easier for me to get where I am because I'm privileged, and I'm not going to poke fun at people who are trying to help those who aren't.

And I'm going to try to help disadvantaged people when I can, your ridicule or no.

[1] [https://www.mtholyoke.edu/org/wsar/intro.htm](https://www.mtholyoke.edu/org/wsar/intro.htm)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge7i60GuNRg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge7i60GuNRg)

<comment><USER18> > What were your honest, visceral, reactions to each of these statements?

Let me add some:

Attractive white woman says that low income white man stole something from her. What will happen?

Black woman and white woman each comment that babies of their own race are the prettiest babies. What will happen?

Power dynamics are fluid and contextual.

> Helping groups isn't the same as discrimination.

It is. The only cases where it makes a difference are inherently zero sum or net negative, because if they weren't then the racial preference wouldn't have been necessary to reach the same outcome.

> Watch that video and tell me, with a straight face, that 90% of US prison > populations are black men because they commit more crimes, and not because > they simply are arrested more often.

90% of US prison populations are men. Less than half of those men are black men. Black men are, however, highly overrepresented in part for the reasons you suggest.

> Girls do as well as boys in engineering and programming, and yet many > cultural pressures push them away -- not least of which are the attitudes of > boys (and other girls) toward girls who seem to "geeky." Is it bad to have > programs that encourage girls to follow STEM career paths?

It depends on the nature of the program. Does the program mitigate the cultural pressures? Good. Does the program make girls "special" and give them things not available to the boys? Not good.

> It was _far_ easier for me to get where I am because I'm privileged, and I'm > not going to poke fun at people who are trying to help those who aren't.

Which is why it's a lot easier to tell how much help someone needs based on where they are right now rather than the color of their skin or whether or not they have a penis.

<comment><USER17> > Power dynamics are fluid and contextual.

True, but a distraction. When you can have a black man graduate from a top university, well dressed, and yet pulled over, torn from a car, treated poorly and handcuffed -- all for being black and owning a car that made the cops think he might be a drug dealer, that seems _even worse_ than privilege from money.

Fighting privilege as a result of wealth is another noble cause; the entire 99% movement was about that, as is Bernie Sanders' popularity. But its existence doesn't mean that other problems aren't worse.

I honestly don't like the statements on either side about the babies, so I'll just leave that one.

> > Helping groups isn't the same as discrimination. > It is. The only cases > where it makes a difference are inherently zero sum or net negative, because > if they weren't then the racial preference wouldn't have been necessary to > reach the same outcome.

No, I'm not talking quotas, I'm talking extra education and being open to working with someone who doesn't look like you. There are cognitive biases that cause people to naturally _want_ to work with people who look like themselves; making an extra effort to overcome that bias and honestly compare candidates is _not_ , by any stretch, a bad thing.

It's only "net negative" if you think the whites who had all of the privilege somehow "deserved" the jobs that the potentially better minority or disadvantaged candidates could get with additional help and with mitigation of bias in hiring. I know that there are groups who feel that way (otherwise Trump wouldn't be where he is), but that kind of us-vs-them mentality is harmful.

<comment><USER18> You're defending positions nobody is attacking.

Here's the part from the original post where you were wrong:

> The dominant group _doesn 't need help_.

And the reason is that you assume the dominant group is homogeneous or even discretely identifiable. "Black men need more help than white men" is a statement which is true in the aggregate but tells you nothing about whether a _specific_ black man needs more help than a _specific_ white man, and using the color of a man's skin to make the assumption that he is like the stereotype of his race is black letter racism.

We need to be teaching people that that is not OK, not that it is OK under various subjective circumstances that racists can then use to rationalize their racism.

So this:

> When you can have a black man graduate from a top university, well dressed, > and yet pulled over, torn from a car, treated poorly and handcuffed -- all > for being black and owning a car that made the cops think he might be a drug > dealer, that seems _even worse_ than privilege from money.

Even assuming that's true (but cf. people who die of starvation or exposure or suffer preventable diseases for lack of money), the fix for that is to fix it.

This kind of gets at the heart of what is wrong with the concept of privilege. If you frame it as privilege then the evildoers are the people who have this "privilege" of not being unjustly harassed by the cops. But the actual evildoers are the cops who unjustly harass black people. And we need to attack a problem where it is, not where it isn't.

> It's only "net negative" if you think the whites who had all of the > privilege somehow "deserved" the jobs that the potentially better minority > or disadvantaged candidates could get with additional help and with > mitigation of bias in hiring.

"The whites who had all of the privilege" are not in the same decision space. The rich man's son always gets the job because his father owns the company.

The problem with making decisions at the margin by favoring a nominally less privileged group is that it's too late by then. If the specific person applying for the same job really had significantly more privilege, he wouldn't be applying for _the same job_. He would be an engineer instead of a mechanic or be applying for a senior position instead of a junior one. To be in the same decision space already implies an equivalent level of privilege. Accounting for it again is double counting.

> that kind of us-vs-them mentality is harmful.

Categorizing people into groups that have more variation within them than between them and then using the groups to to make preference choices _is_ the us-vs-them mentality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's too late for leftists.

The leftist narrative lost with Gamergate.

All the domains used to crumble in face of the leftists. They went after individuals and tried to get them fired. They virtue-signaled even in Github repos. [https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015](https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015)

Everyone who wasn't inclusive enough got attacked. You career was in jeopardy if you ever dared to think something a little outside the norm.

Politics, scifi, comedy, STEMs... Every and all domain fell.

Except gamers. Gamergate was when everything changed. This is when being more- progressive-than-thou stopped working.

The pendulum stopped moving left.

To anyone who's been paying attention (and old enough to understand), this was a major event.

Everything since then was just going through the motion. An immense building crumbling down while everyone inside it is trying to get to the top. "I'm more tolerant than you; I accept trans in my bathroom!"

If you are even slightly interested in history and sociology, you should be very attentive to the next few months/years.

As a more libertarian/right-wing individual, it is a glorious thing to see.

I just hope that the leftist didn't push the pendulum so far that it's going to come back with a vengeance and destroy everything it its path.

</comment><comment><USER3> If he got this far, this guy is about 2 months away from supporting Trump.

Leftism is a religion and leftists are some of the most close-minded people you will ever meet.

MAGA

<comment><USER20> It's official, /r/the_donald has now reached HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The author is missing the point of tolerance, which at it's core is "don't bother other people". _Evangelical_ christians, by definition, bother other people.

<comment><USER3> The _raison d 'être_ of leftism is literally to bother other people because it gives leftists a feeling of power.

<comment><USER22> If you want to compare bothering other people, both left and right is guilty of bothering other people. On the left, we have taxes, gun control, speech control (the PC variety), various financial and labor regulations, etc. On the right we have decency laws and associated speech controls, marriage licenses, drug prohibition, opposition to immigration, etc. Of course, both lists are far from being complete.

The ideologies built on not bothering are outside linear left-right spectrum, towards libertarian and further anarchist ideas (depending on how far you are willing to go with that concept).

<comment><USER3> Yeah I agree except for the immigration thing. That is an international affair and a matter of sovereignty and has nothing to do with personal freedoms.

Leftism currently is driving the hardest for authoritarianism. I expect we'll see something similar on the right in about a decade though I'm curious to see what it'll look like considering that it seems like religiousness is on the permanent decline in America.

<comment><USER23> They hardly have a monopoly. Trump's stated positions on weakening and attacking the press when it suits him are from the same playbook.

<comment><USER3> I don't know how you can look at media organizations like the New York Times and not see that they clearly have a comically overt agenda in how they talk about him and represent his positions.

<comment><USER22> NYT certainly has a known political bias, and that's no secret to anyone paying attention. Trump highlighting this bias and addressing it would not be a problem. Trump hinting at using state coercion to influence the content of NYT reporting is a huge problem and runs directly contrary to the 1st amendment (not that his presumptive opponent doesn't have her own huge flaws in that department) and US free speech culture.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


LOLCode.net - Now your LOLCats can use the CLR! - <AUTHOR> http://blog.notdot.net/archives/32-LOLCode.net-Now-your-LOLCats-can-use-the-CLR!.html

<comment><USER2> By the way, if anyone wants to talk about a serious platform, how sick is .NET right now? First IronPython, then IronRuby and F#, now LOLCode.

Microsoft is still a (relevant!) tech behemoth, whether we want to admit it or not.

<comment><USER3> no wai... mikrosoft still suckz,,,. ^_^

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Lolz.... I iz in ur screen riting ur code

<comment><USER4> LOLspeak on news.yc. Now I've seen it all.</comment></comment>


Awesome Engineering Team Management - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-management <comment> brainboard-co Valuable information, I was lucky to work with this brilliant guy.

<comment><USER2> Likewise! Thanks for the kind words! Happy to contribute to the field and share the knowledge base I accumulated in the past few years! :)</comment></comment>


Finland's basic income experiment: small employment effects - <AUTHOR> https://www.kela.fi/web/en/press-releases/-/asset_publisher/LgL2IQBbkg98/content/results-of-the-basic-income-experiment-small-employment-effects-better-perceived-economic-security-and-mental-wellbeing <comment><AUTHOR> TLDR: Only had 6 days more employment, but had a perception of better mental and economic wellbeing. In families with children who received a basic income, employment rates improved during both years of the experiment.

A change in the unemployment benefit system (more stringent entitlement criteria) in the 2nd year has complicated interpretation of the results.</comment>


Meet the Firm That's Betting Against the Startup Bubble - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2016/08/04/shorting-startups/ <comment><AUTHOR> Fyi.

Their blog/research: [http://www.snow.ventures/blog/](http://www.snow.ventures/blog/)</comment>


The Wireworld computer - <AUTHOR> http://www.quinapalus.com/wi-index.html

<comment><USER2> I tried the java demo and the wireworld computer (not the applet) crashed... the whole display, all of the bcd converter, and 90% of the registers and bus got stuck in electrion head/tail mode. The "ERROR" in the left hand side "BUS ERROR" was lit up too!</comment>


Layout-Isolated Components - <AUTHOR> https://visly.app/blog/layout-isolated-components <comment><USER2> The usefulness of this articled is lessened because it's React-specific and React is bad with DOM and style isolation in general.

The base problem here is that both a component and its host may want to style the component. The component model should account for this and offer some guidance.

Web components do this with the `:host` selector that styles the component from within its shadow root. The styles applied with the `:host` selector can be overridden by the outside styles, without the component needing to weaken encapsulation by allowing styling from the outside via JS properties. This means it's not really bad for a component to give itself default outside styling like block vs inline display, or even margins, because the user can always reset them as needed, much like built-in elements.

For instance, a web component might have these styles:

        <my-element>
          #shadow-root
            :host {
              margin: 1em;
            }

And at its use-site, the margins can be set differently:

...

        <my-element></my-element>

...

Shadow DOM also helps with specificity fights, as the cascade goes: shadow style -> light style -> light !important -> shadow !important. This way a component can define which styles are only defaults.

Edit to clarify: one of the big problems with the article is the use of inline styles. They have the highest specificity and there's no built-in way to "merge" inline styles like you normally get via inheritance and the cascade.

<comment><USER3> > Web components do this with the `:host` selector that styles the component > from within its shadow root. The styles applied with the `:host` selector > can be overridden by the outside styles, without the component needing to > weaken encapsulation by allowing styling from the outside via JS properties.

I don't see how the React approach of accepting styles as JS props is any weaker in terms of encapsulation compared to your example above. If anything, it offers the opportunity for stronger encapsulation because it supports limiting/transforming the styling props we accept through those JS props, and even allows us to define a styling API for our component that's completely independent of CSS semantics, enabling components APIs that can span multiple platforms with independent implementations.

<comment><USER2> You're right. If we're talking about only the root element, it is similar to :host, because the custom element is itself stylable from the outside.

What makes me say that encapsulation is weakened is that threading JS property bags to other internal elements is also relatively common, and inline styles don't really offer any encapsulation there. Other selectors in the page can still select and style properties that are not directly styled by the element. I should have clarified that.

Shadow DOM provides true runtime style encapsulation, and the selectors on the page can't select the internal elements at all.

<comment><USER3> Ah I see, that makes sense. Shadow DOM definitely offers much stronger style encapsulation than a React component where you can only "enforce" that components shouldn't reach into it to style internals by convention.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A fundamental problem of building isolated components in HTML/CSS is that the CSS `display` property sets both an element's inner layout (how it lays out its children) and its outer layout (how it is laid inside it parent).

E.g. you have to make an element "display: inline-flex" to make it an inline flexbox. You can't just make it "flex" and have the parent decide whether it is inline, a block or whatever.

The consequence of this is that a parent component cannot properly layout a child component without knowing its internal layout structure. And if it doesn't don't know the child's layout (if its dynamically supplied for example) then it can't safely do anything with it. So long as this limitation exists, there will _never_ be true layout encapsulation on the web platform.

For a while, the CSS Working Group planned to address this problem through the introduction of separate `display-inside` and `display-outside` properties. This would mean an element could specify its internal layout using `display- inside` while its parent could control its _external_ layout using `display- outside`. Then, in their wisdom, they dropped it from the spec[1].

I mean, it's not like developing with encapsulated components is a popular approach on the web nowadays. It's not like many people are using React, or Angular, or Vue, or Web Components—the W3C's own goddamn multi-year effort to push component-based development—so why bother wasting time adding features that would help?

[1] [https://drafts.csswg.org/css-display/#changes- wd](https://drafts.csswg.org/css-display/#changes-wd)

<comment><USER2> Your vitriol towards CSSWG is misplaced. The CSSWG didn't remove the functionality of `display-inside` and `display-outside`, they just made `display` multi-valued so you can write `display: inline grid`.

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/CSS/display](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/CSS/display) [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/CSS/display-ins...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/CSS/display-inside)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> While I agree with all of the problem statements in this article, I don't quite agree with the proposed solution of just exposing style props for parents to pass through arbitrary values, at least not as a general solution (it could still be the appropriate solution for certain special cases).

I think this approach actually results in _less_ useful component isolation in that you can no longer reason about layout of the component _itself_ in isolation, because it can be much more difficult, sometimes impossible, to predict how the styles in the component itself will interact with the styles passed through by the parent.

Instead, I'd recommend always using plain block elements with no explicit height/width/flex properties for the outermost bounding box of your reusable components, so parents can _indirectly_ control how they're laid out using flexbox/grid and add containers that constrain the available space for them to render in and add flex properties if necessary.

Totally agree with the suggestion of using spacing components over margin though. We called this the "golden rule of components" in that reusable components should be entirely responsible for rendering everything within its outermost bounding box (outside of delegating certain parts/properties of it through explicit APIs), and should render nothing outside of it (including empty space, i.e. margins). Of course, edge cases exist where it's necessary to break away from this guideline, but I feel it's a great general rule of thumb for creating flexible reusable components.

<comment><USER6> _reusable components_ [...] _should render nothing outside of it (including empty space, i.e. margins)._

Could collapsing margins be an exception to this rule, in principle?

I've mostly worked in Android, iOS and React Native, none of which have collapsing margins. But I've often wished they had, as it would make some layouts a lot simpler! It would be great to just smoosh components together and have them agree between themselves how much space is needed.

HTML has collapsing margins but they seem kind of half-baked. Is there enough functionality there to be useful, or is it best avoided entirely?

<comment><USER5> > HTML has collapsing margins but they seem kind of half-baked. Is there > enough functionality there to be useful, or is it best avoided entirely?

Generally I'd recommend avoiding them entirely, as the rules for when margins should collapse are nuanced and sometimes applied inconsistently between browsers.

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/CSS/CSS_Box_Mod...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/CSS/CSS_Box_Model/Mastering_margin_collapsing)

It just adds too much cognitive overhead to reasoning about your layouts to be worthwhile imo. Whereas with spacing components, what you see in the virtual dom is what you'll get.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> @media queries based on browser width are especially bad. Unfortunately there is no css way for stylings dependent on the width of the _component_ itself.

<comment><USER5> It's not CSS based, but I've had reasonable success with ResizeObserver based component size queries, at least in the context of small components that don't accept other nodes to render.

I've found this hook ([https://github.com/react-spring/react-use- measure](https://github.com/react-spring/react-use-measure)) to be reasonably robust, as long as you only use the size properties and don't rely on the accuracy of the positioning properties, which is not something that ResizeObserver is designed to handle (it can get out of date when the component moves due to dynamic content appearing/disappearing around it without actually resizing: [https://github.com/react-spring/react-use- measure/issues/9](https://github.com/react-spring/react-use- measure/issues/9)).

It remains to be seen how this could scale when applied to larger "container" type components and the entire app though, as I imagine cascading re-renders as higher level elements resize could become an issue. Curious if people have experience with using ResizeObserver for component size queries at scale?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really like the idea proposed here of <Spacer /> components. I always thought it was weird to assign a margin to elements of a list to achieve spacing. To maintain proper spacing it's often best to either make the top and bottom margins of each element equal, or remove the top/bottom margin from the first/last element. Both techniques come with complications.

Abstracting that out makes it easier to achieve a commonly used layout. Not quite sure the best way to implement this, but I'll definitely be giving the idea a shot.

[https://seek-oss.github.io/braid-design- system/components/St...](https://seek-oss.github.io/braid-design- system/components/Stack/)

[https://github.com/seek-oss/braid-design- system/blob/master/...](https://github.com/seek-oss/braid-design- system/blob/master/lib/components/Stack/Stack.tsx)

</comment><comment><USER9> > Layout-isolated component - A component that is unaffected by the parent it > is placed within, and does not itself affect the size and position of its > siblings.

I'm honestly still surprised that this isn't the default. Beyond maintainability, it's an obvious _security_ problem, which clickjacking made apparent years ago.

The security implications of user interface API apparently isn't well understood outside the capability security community though:

Design of the EROS Trusted Window System, [http://srl.cs.jhu.edu/courses/600.439/shap04windowsystem.pdf](http://srl.cs.jhu.edu/courses/600.439/shap04windowsystem.pdf)

> Remember when we were building our apps as a set of screens and pages > instead of thinking in components?

If pages were components in the browser, there wouldn't be any difference. Xanadu had something like this way back in the early 90s, ie. page transclusion.

</comment><comment><USER6> Or, "Object-oriented"

 _Remember when we were building our apps as a set of screens and pages instead of thinking in components?_

Sure, but I also remember building web apps in GWT, using a toolkit of reusable widgets, with an OO interface.

 _Edit to add:_ I guess I'm more agreeing with the author than arguing with them; I just find it amusing how what goes around comes around.

<comment><USER10> How does it become any more object-oriented?

I saw it more as "purely functional", where components are the functions and styling outside of the component is a side-effect. Avoiding side-effects like margin or align-self makes components more like pure functions than objects IMO.

<comment><USER6> Margins and align-self aren't side-effects. Their semantics are consistent and reproducible and depend only on the context a component is placed in, just as a property like width does.

They're awkward because they have bigger knock-on effects on the overall layout of components within the parent.

In an OO mindset, I see this as being all about what interfaces your object exposes. For something like a button or slider control, it obviously exposes an action callback of some kind. But it _also_ exposes a generic "child component" interface, which is the only thing a generic parent component cares about.

What are useful things and what are obnoxious things for a child component to do? Flexibly adapting itself to a range of sizes is useful. Demanding that it should be centered is obnoxious. In fact it would be hard to express at all in most OO widget toolkits. So I think this problem is very closely related to good OO design.

<comment><USER10> Their semantics might be consistent, but they sort of leak into the parent. Height and width are local to what the component renders, and they don't depend on the parent (as long as they aren't relative sizes). But things like margin and align-self change how the parent renders all of its children.

In other words, the view rendered by the component is a function of properties like height and width. But when you throw in margin or align-self, the component now depends on its siblings.

The OO perspective is interesting — I agree that it effectively makes these things hard to express. I now think that it's more of a problem relating to encapsulation and isolation. OO would isolate it through a child component interface while FP would have a function that can't affect siblings.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I think we're mostly agreeing! Encapsulation and isolation are the key bits, and both FP and OO suggest ways to achieve them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's crucial to account properly for relationships between components. The best approach to this I've encountered in over 20 years of web-related experience is found at [https://every-layout.dev](https://every-layout.dev). Compose complex, responsive layouts from expertly crafted primitives, using axiomatic CSS, and positioning becomes a breeze. The non-layout-related styling can be handled however you like; my preference is emotion for component-scoped styles (`sx` prop and styledcomponent API FTW), and design tokens for colors and typographic scale. I've been meaning to write up my approach bc it's exciting to be freed (and free others) from fighting endless css battles.

<comment><USER12> I hope you do write it up!

Here's a working link:

[https://every-layout.dev/](https://every-layout.dev/)

<comment><USER11> Thanks! (fixed link)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So, the article talks about what not to do. Are there good examples of layout isolated components inside a complex UI?

<comment><USER14> We make a browser-based game development IDE (www.construct.net), and IMO an important aspect of this is CSS containment: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/CSS/CSS_Contain...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/CSS/CSS_Containment)

You can use 'contain' CSS properties to guarantee that layout inside the element won't affect anything outside it and vice versa. 'contain: strict' is basically a bulletproof container for arbitrary content, with performance benefits too. I'm not sure if it covers everything the article was trying to achieve, but it seems surprising not to mention it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It isn't entirely true that padding is safe in terms of layout isolation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Correct :) But it generally is and I didn't wan't to go all too deep

<comment><USER16> Not much need to go in a lot of depth, box-sizing:border-box simply makes it so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So.... non-responsive?</comment>


DIY induction stove – Frying eggs with magnets - <AUTHOR> https://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-Induction-Stove/ <comment> phoe-krk The easter egg that I love is the actual, physical reference to the Spaceballs movie.

[https://cdn.instructables.com/ORIG/FYX/9FR4/JNULHKMJ/FYX9FR4...](https://cdn.instructables.com/ORIG/FYX/9FR4/JNULHKMJ/FYX9FR4JNULHKMJ.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER2> As I have seen an induction furnace very quickly melt an aluminum billet, and this device works on an aluminum pan, it is not clear to me why induction stoves do not work on aluminum pans - is it because stoves work at a frequency that depends on magnetic hysteresis losses in ferromagnetic materials for generating most of the heat? Is it likely that this device would work better on an iron or steel pan than the aluminum one used?

<comment><USER3> From Wikipedia:

"Most induction tops will not heat copper or aluminum vessels because the magnetic field cannot produce a concentrated current; "all metal" induction tops use much higher frequencies to overcome that effect."

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

<comment><USER4> That's really interesting, I didn't realise you could get induction hobs that worked for all metals before. Would that would for stainless steel that's not designed for induction I wonder. Reading wiki it says "Stainless steel pans will work on an induction cooking surface if the base of the pan is a magnetic grade of stainless steel."

<comment><USER2> I am virtually certain it would work, as the only thing they depend on is that the pan conducts electricity well (but not perfectly). The heat is generated by inducing currents in the pan, and induction does not depend on the materials being ferromagnetic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Neat! [https://youtu.be/pCON4zfMzjU](https://youtu.be/pCON4zfMzjU) seems to use the same principle for levitation.

</comment><comment><USER5> Good thing it doesn't produce more heat, their Lexan sheet would start getting very soft above 150C!

<comment><USER6> Induction cookers don't transfer heat to anything other than the dialectric pan. The pan itself would have to transfer heat to the sheet bellow it, and I doubt Lexan would be particularly conductive.

<comment><USER7> Don't you mean conductive pan?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is an interesting alternative to residential induction stoves that use AC to create the magnetic fields.

I wonder what the power usage difference is. This style of heating up the metal instead of using AC current to generate electromagnetic fields could be better for "off-grid" scenarios.

<comment><USER9> > This is an interesting alternative to residential induction stoves that use > AC to create the magnetic fields.

No, it is not an alternative. It is an inferior method to create the same effect/current with additional losses. As an educational experiment it is very impressive though.

<comment><USER10> The experiment is not the least bit impressive. If your stove behaved like that, you would throw it out. For the cost of the components, you can buy a new, low-end stove at Home Depot or Lowes. That actually works.

<comment><USER11> Thus missing the point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> K&J Magnetics gave it a try: [https://www.kjmagnetics.com/blog.asp?p=induction- stove](https://www.kjmagnetics.com/blog.asp?p=induction-stove)

<comment><USER13> This article was written by K&J Magnetics.

<comment><USER12> Whoops. Saw it there first and didn't realize.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Isn't this leaving a lot of magnetic field on the table (literally) where you could improve by directing the fields more into the pan and closing the spacing to the pan significantly?

<comment><USER15> It doesn't spread the energy like heat, but the things which conduct will produce a force in the opposite direction of spinning, and that's where the energy is given. If there is nothing in vicinity, there won't be eddy currents, and no energy lost.

<comment><USER16> Does the same apply to wireless chargers? i was worried they would waste a lot of energy

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Very interesting indeed! But those guys could use some cooking lesson for frying eggs... :-D

</comment><comment><USER18> Efficiency?

<comment><USER19> low. you're better to just use induction plate instead(which does not need any moving parts).

</comment></comment><comment> martin-adams I misread that as maggots. I recall reading that the heat generated by a mass of maggots causes them to break out in to smaller groups. So my initial thought was whether someone had figured out how to fry an egg by harnessing that heat. [https://www.wired.com/2014/04/maggots-bring-the- heat/](https://www.wired.com/2014/04/maggots-bring-the-heat/)

<comment><USER20> With a series of heat pumps and enough maggots...

<comment><USER21> If you have enough maggots you don't even need the heat pumps.

[https://what-if.xkcd.com/4/](https://what-if.xkcd.com/4/)

<comment><USER20> Yeah... it's interesting. XKCD is such a large body of work, (hehe) that for almost any discussion, there is an apt XKCD.

<comment><USER22> Which is why it would be great if people stopped linking to them all the time. I've called XKCD the smart persons reaction gif, and just like reaction gifs they are 'fun' in small doses but get extremely annoying in larger doses.

<comment><USER20> I think a problem is there is a constant influx of XKCD readers. These will find XKCD novel and feel a need to educate everyone else. XKCD is on its way to become a real cultural thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a failed experiment that was posted.

<comment><USER23> Which is a great way to do science</comment></comment>