How I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/crypto.htm <comment><USER2> Funny story, so in 2008 I was admitted as a refugee. I flew from Amman, Jordan and landed in Chicago. Everyone that had an IOM bag had to go to a designated area to get their fingerprints taken. So when it was my turn, the officer took my index fingerprint, waited a few seconds then gave me a look, a WTF look, but didn't say anything. A couple of minutes later, two homeland security officers showed up out of nowhere and escorted me to a holding area. I wanted to find out what was going on because I was the only one out of the entire group (100 people or so) that was getting this special treatment, but the officers ignored me. I waited, and waited, and waited, then when I asked again ~ four hours later I was told "Don't worry, you're going in either way". Long story short, The FBI had a record on me because I was a translator for the US Army in Baghdad, but the record didn't say whether I was one of the good guys or the bad guys, so they had to contact the FBI to see what's up. Fun times..

<comment><USER3> Please define IOM

<comment><USER2> I apologize, [https://www.iom.int/](https://www.iom.int/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "We traced the glasses to your son from the prescription by examining the files of all optometrists in the San Diego area."

Wow, no wonder government agencies salivate at the idea of being able to monitor the whole Interwebs.

I know they now have orders of magnitude more data to process but still... that manual process must have been expensive and boring as hell.

I guess as an agent you would need to convince yourself that this was actually a very important task of defending your country or something. Otherwise I can imagine going crazy just doing this stuff for nothing...

Edit:

Another quote I found amusing:

"The friendlier one eventually described how much it had cost to investigate another recent case where a person was reported to have pulled down an American flag and stepped on it. Only after the investigation was well under way did they learn that the perpetrator of this nefarious act was only four years old."

<comment><USER5> Wait, they actually green lit a case about stepping on a flag? To what end? Does the FBI realize how many open missing persons cases there are? This whole quote is nauseous.

<comment><USER6> It was in the middle of WWII. The FBI's zeal was pretty high at that time.

<comment><USER7> My hypothesis is that the FBI knows some of its agents are useless, and keeps some busywork lying around to occupy them on slow news days.

I've had passive/aggressive managers saddle me with nonsense before, and sometimes they were just in a mood but if a pattern develops, it's because they can't find a way to fire you.

But, goodness gracious! Toying with people's lives, investigating random nobodies as if they might be criminals, as a side effect of interpersonal difficulties in the workplace? It's more likely than you think.

<comment><USER8> Just to be really clear since it seems some are missing the point -- this was around 70 years ago during World War II.

<comment><USER9> Pretty certain the comment could still apply today. Too dumb to promote to expensive to sack, give them shit no one else wants or make work to keep them out of the way.

<comment><USER5> I think the point is that it only applies today.

Also, nobody has actually pointed out an instance of this happening. The FBI has had several extremely high profile cases in the last year; if they are incompetent, they have managed not to be totally useless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> These stories from more simple times are always a great read, but for me they illustrate exactly how different and more aggressive our world is. Sure, they were rounding people up and putting them in camps. That needs to be mentioned. But visits from the FBI can no longer be waved off and childhood fun. They really do come back to haunt you. Being investigated is far less dangerous than falsely claiming that you weren't. In the past this would go undetected but today's electronic paper trails don't forget such things. They will notice.

The involvement of the school officials, even the parents, is also cute. Modern law enforcement doesn't hesitate to go strait to the kids. It is not unusual for a cop to pull a kid out of a class for a "chat" that could see them jailed. Parents often only hear about such things long after the fact.

The image of FBI agents in a black limo is precious. That is intimidating FBI man 101. They still do the 'parked in the driveway reading notes' thing today, but only where they don't feel under any threat. If there is any potential for a firearm at the location, or any hint that the suspect is in any way dangerous, they don't hang around as potential targets. If you see them doing the parked thing, wave. Say hi. Or don't. To intimidate they must first be seen. They will keep up the act until someone notices them. If you really want to make their week, get in your car and drive away. They love a good slow speed "chase" before confronting you somewhere out in the world.

<comment><USER11> The simple times in which, as you say, people were getting put in camps and the FBI routinely broke the law? There's always room for improvement but I don't think we have it quite as bad.

<comment><USER10> If you were a visible minority, those times were horrible. Few would debate that. But the average kid of any color today faces some very aggressive realities. Wozniak built a fake bomb as a school prank. Not a clock mistaken for a bomb, not a crypto scheme mistaken for a Japanese plot, a ticking bomb meant to terrify those who found it. And it did. Do that in 1973 and you can still go on to great things. Do that today and you'll be lucky to ever set foot in a normal school again. Good luck getting a passport after being investigated for bomb making, let alone the horror of being charged as an adult.

<comment><USER11> _Do that today and you 'll be lucky to ever set foot in a normal school again._

Do you know of any evidence of that sort of thing? While it certainly doesn't make your life easier, people bounce back and have fruitful careers even after outright federal convictions for computer-related crimes. Do you know of anyone being denied a passport for something they did as a juvenile?

<comment><USER10> Really? Google "Omar Khadr" (15yo). For something less extreme google "juvenile lifer". They certainly aren't getting passports, but I doubt many have tried as there is little need for passports in prison. Then for the everyday stuff google "charged as an adult". A juvenile charged as an adult receives an adult conviction and that can be reason to deny a passport.

<comment><USER11> Omar Khadr wasn't a US citizen. And yes, as awful putting underage people in prison is, that's not the same as being denied a passport for some random brush with the FBI which is your claim. I don't think 'Really?' is a license to change the subject to a completely different set of circumstances and use that as supporting evidence for your seemingly hyperbolic initial claims.

<comment><USER12> Prison is where young people get radicalized.

<comment><USER11> I'm not sure how that's related to 'kids who have a run-in with the law supposedly have a worse time than kids who got sent to camps'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Great read also lead me to his mongrel[0] post which is equally a great read. I've heard different things about getting a clearance, such as depending on the company and job position it could speed up the process altogether. I've heard different things about it from (past and present) co-workers and family. His stories are quite a decent read, will have to bookmark his site.

[0]: [http://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/mongrel.htm](http://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/mongrel.htm)

<comment><USER14> > I've heard different things about getting a clearance, such as depending on > the company and job position it could speed up the process altogether.

My experience has been the opposite. During college, I had an internship at a defense contractor and I was the only Asian intern there (out of maybe 20 people). There were a couple of black guys and the rest were caucasian. IME, people of color had the hardest time obtaining a clearance. It took around 2.5 years for me and around 2 years for one of my black coworkers. The turnaround time for the white guys was a lot smaller.

I think this experience was for the best though - I left shortly afterward, because I won't stay where I'm not wanted.

<comment><USER15> There are natural reasons why getting clearance should be harder for those who aren't 3rd/4th generation native though, right.

Like, if I apply for a job in Nigeria that needs clearances, if the other guys are all from Nigeria then investigating their backgrounds are consistent, talking to their neighbours, etc., is relatively easy. Especially if they all have parents who already have files with identity info.

If I'm from Kenya, then first up you're going to need translators, then you're going to need political accord or covert operatives, birth records in rural Kenya possibly don't exist.

Also you want to leave me for a while on observation to see if I do anything suspicious; that needs time.

It doesn't matter if the Nigerians want me, to do the same level of investigation would take far longer.

<comment><USER16> In other words, you'd readily give Snowden a high clearance?

<comment><USER17> Yep! TBH I think it really says alot about the general failure of the US whistleblower statutes/protections that Snowden had to release information in the way that he did and has subsequently been so easy to vilify. IMHO ol' Eddy actually went about the leaking of classified info in a pretty responsible way with the whole Poitras/Greenwald "Big Trouble in Little Hong Kong." However you feel about the guy personally the import of his revelations is pretty undeniable insofar as it stimulated legitimate reforms of the systems he was criticizing (see: [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275019554_The_Conse...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275019554_The_Consequences_of_Edward_Snowden_NSA_Related_Information_Disclosures) [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-the-nsa- spying...](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-the-nsa-spying- programs-have-changed-since-snowden/)) which seems to me to be the basic test for legit whistleblowing. So, yeah, I would give the little eccentric a pretty high clearance given his track record... I'd probably let him out of russia too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> A year or two after 9/11, I had a run-in with the FBI. I was living in an apartment, and one day at work, I got an email saying the local police were trying to contact me. I called them, and as the story went, the apartment people had come in to check my smoke alarm, and found some "suspicious items". It was never specified what the items were, but I think it was either my keg- o-rator or some of the electronics stuff I was always screwing with at the time. Or they just didn't like me as a tenant because my cats were tearing the place up. Anyway, I gave the local cop a tour of my apartment, thought everything was OK, then a couple of days later found a business card of an FBI agent on my porch, with "Call Me!" written on the back. So I called him back and arranged an apartment tour for him. (And here's how it ties into the article...) He showed up in a nondescript, white minivan, with another agent in tow, and they gave me what was, in retrospect, the most obvious good-cop, bad-cop routine you could imagine. He was a big, smiling, easy-talking buddy of a guy, and she was a harsh, suspicious hag of a battle-axe. I didn't have anything to hide, but looking back, if I did I might have totally fallen for it...

<comment><USER19> Yeah, thats the beutifull thing about police states, noone wants to be responsible, so everytime some suspicious stuff is found (which in todays clueless society, running on black magic and fairy dust includes nearly everything) it has to propagate up the clueless chain to somone able to make a judgment and dismiss. So lots of people will waste your time - for nothing. So you better hide your soldering iron from idiots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I love how the story ends with a loving discussion of cycling competition and thinking of safety by way of helmets. Meanwhile, as smart as the narrator might be, it's funny how easily things can be overlooked.

Cycling is one of the most cheating, dirty sports in the world. Sprinting is close, so is swimming. But talking about cyphers and codes and then somehow getting into a discussion about cycling just reminds me so much of Dr. Ferrari and Lance Armstrong.

If you're not cheating, you're not trying. If the FBI is on your tail, you've screwed up somewhere. The devil's in the details...

</comment><comment><USER21> Les is quite something. He helped setup SAIL, the AI lab in Stanford with John McCarthy, wrote the first search engine in 1961, and made the first self- driving car.

[http://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/](http://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/)

[https://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/sailing.pdf](https://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/sailing.pdf)

Oh, and he made the first social network: FINGER

</comment><comment><USER22> I want to read a book by the guy.

Amongst other achievements, Les Earnest was an actor, basketball manager and inventor of the search engine.

[http://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/vita.htm](http://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/vita.htm)

</comment><comment><USER23> > Two years later I regained my seat on the board as the riders finally > figured out that the strong helmet rule was a good thing. It then started > spreading around the world and has since become standard in racing > organizations almost everywhere, saving hundreds of lives and preventing > thousands of serious head injuries. I'm proud of that.

Such a small section of this brief biography for such a valuable contribution.

I guess your most important life's work doesn't make as interesting a story as when you've gotten yourself into trouble.

</comment><comment><USER24> > However about twelve years later I learned by chance that putting slightly > provocative information on a security clearance form can greatly speed up > the clearance process.

I remember reading this decades ago and wondering what this might be. Now he's explained it! I'm glad I looked at this again.

<comment><USER4> If you haven't yet, read the linked article. It's a very entertaining read that expands on this, although a bit long.

[0] [http://www.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/mongrel.htm](http://www.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/mongrel.htm)

<comment><USER25> Yes, the linked article, "Can computers cope with human races?" is the funniest thing I've read since Richard Feynamn's book "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman" [0].

[0] Courtesy of Northwestern University

[http://www.earth.northwestern.edu/~amir/files/Richard_P_Feyn...](http://www.earth.northwestern.edu/~amir/files/Richard_P_Feynman- Surely_Youre_Joking_Mr_Feynman_v5.pdf)

<comment><USER26> You could take this guy's stories and insert them into _Surely You 're Joking..._ and hardly notice honestly. Totally the same style and outlook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm glad the government wasn't as good at monitoring things back in the 90s. I downloaded every version of PGP I could find once it was declared illegal for export. They don't even know what a dangerous guy I am, willing to use cryptography to keep them from reading my stuff.

</comment><comment><USER28> Hasn't it been shown that mandatory helmet use has significantly reduced bike usage in the US?

<comment><USER8> Is there mandatory helmet use (other than for kids?)

The article in question is about mandatory use in bicycle racing.

<comment><USER29> Helmet use is mandatory for adults here in Seattle. I don't know how common such laws are in other areas.

I haven't had a bicycle since the law was introduced - not _because_ of the law, specifically, but I feel grouchy about the idea of being forced to wear a helmet while doing nothing more dramatic than tootling around my neighborhood, and the law has therefore helped reduce my enthusiasm for bicycling generally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> There is a recent video of him where he did a speech after being designated as a "Significant Sig" by Sigma Chi Fraternity [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEx9R0quRR0&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEx9R0quRR0&feature=youtu.be)

He seems to have created a YouTube account just to post the video, so I got the chance to become his first subscriber!

What an interesting person, and what a life he have lived!

<comment><USER31> In Hoc Signo Vinces!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Bet this guy would've got along well with Richard Feynman.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.saildart.org/FINGER.SAI[P,SYS]13](http://www.saildart.org/FINGER.SAI\[P,SYS\]13) is the SAIL source code to Les Earnest's finger program.

</comment><comment><USER32> I love how he just throws in that story about running into "Alabama" and how she looked sexy. From a younger man I might have been tempted to call it a "humble brag" about how he chatted up a cute girl but didn't bother pursuing anything. But from an older guy, it made me smile because it's the sort of thing we sometimes just remember for years.

</comment><comment><USER33> OT my uncle does underwater passive listening for the Naval Electronics Laboratory, same as in the fine article. Apparently whales can mess up the sound analysis.

<comment><USER15> Is this comment some sort of honeypot?

<comment><USER34> How would that work?

<comment><USER15> Watch all attempts to procure further information, make info available to track said "uncle" see who uses that info? I'm not a spook. It just seemed like a really strange thing to mention, the only use for the information I could think of was to find a naval worker who probably has a clearance rating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Is your position that immigrants should be expedited through the immigration process?

<comment><USER36> ... I think those who risked their lives by being translators for our armed forces are probably due a bit of a fast lane.

<comment><USER37> Why wouldn't they have that information easily available on file then? Why the whole detaining process for 4 hours when it should have been something easily checked?

<comment><USER38> 4 hours was fast, sheesh. You instatwitter generation... :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Ok, I get it you're a prolific hacker and well respected... But why does your website have to look like it's from 1994?

<comment><USER40> I had to tinker with the CSS on Chrome developer tools just so as to read the story. Regardless, a very interesting story with one of the most important part of his life story buried down there somewhere - his success in advocating for strong bike helmets.

<comment><USER41> Preferences aside, that says more about Chrome honestly.

<comment><USER42> Better at running Javascript "Apps" than rendering HTML.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Yes, Clinical Trials Work - <AUTHOR> http://simplystatistics.org/2013/07/15/yes-clinical-trials-work/

<comment><USER2> A great book RTCs is Ben Goldacre's Bad Science ([http://www.badscience.net/](http://www.badscience.net/))

He points out that some of the first clinical trials recorded were in the bible. I couldn't find his quote, but I found an NEJM piece that references the same thing, although I think its in a nutrition debate.

"The first published report of a clinical trial has biblical origins. In the Book of Daniel,5 reference is made to the unwillingness of the Israelite Daniel to accept the diet offered by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar. The king's official had put a steward in charge of Daniel and his three friends (Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego):"

"Daniel said to the steward . . . "Test your servants for ten days; let us be given vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then let our appearance and the appearance of the youths who eat the king's rich food be observed by you, and according to what you see deal with your servants." So he hearkened to them in this matter, and tested them for ten days. At the end of ten days it was seen that they were better in appearance and fatter in flesh than all the youths who ate the king's rich food. So the steward took away their rich food and the wine they were to drink and gave them vegetables."

([http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM200301023480120](http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM200301023480120))

<comment><USER3> Maybe I'm mistaken, but the historical bias fat=healthy seems to be visible there. It's doubtful that by eating only vegetables they could be 'fatter' than those who drank and ate rich foods. It's obvious the writers were trying to make a point, but I'm not persuaded by the accuracy of the findings.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I don't really care one way or the other about the context. I more care about the fact that there was a clinical trial thousands of years ago before concepts of statistics... I like that it can all be boiled down to: split people into two groups at random. Do something to one group, do nothing to the other, measure the results.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the blog post missed the most important point of the NYT piece: _Too often, he says, trials are against "a straw-man comparator" like a placebo rather than a competing drug. So the studies don't really help us understand which treatments for a disease work best._

The _standard_ is usually a placebo. This is done when you are not even sure the drug will have an effect.

The _standard_ should be a competing drugs, otherwise you have no measure of whether the drug under trial is better than current drugs.

The financial incentives are not present for any of the parties (including the regulators) to use the higher bar.

<comment><USER5> I wonder if this will have unintended economic consequences. Clinical trials are astonishingly expensive - if we required all players to clinically test against competitors (or just the current leading competitor), it seems this would create a perverse incentive to be first to market. Not only would you rake in the early profits, but you'll also significant raise the bar for anyone trying to unseat you.

I'm not convinced this will actually be the case, but it's a possible outcome worth thinking about.

One thing I'm wondering: if all clinical studies are quantified via efficacy vs. a fixed placebo, shouldn't that make the results comparable? If Drug A is 200% more effective than a placebo, and Drug B is 300% more effective, does that not suggest that Drug B > Drug A?

<comment><USER6> Yes, it is possible to compare two placebo controlled trials and get a rough estimate of the relative efficacy of the two drugs. Many of the prescribing decisions that physicians make are based on these indirect comparisons.

However, it's only a rough estimate. Even if the patient populations are nearly identical, you can often see different outcomes.

To give you an example: Crohn's disease is an autoimmune disease of the large (and sometimes small) intestine. If you look at the clinical trials for the biologics used to treat the condition, you'll see remarkably varied outcomes, even in the placebo arm.

In other words, if drug A show 50% vs. 20% efficacy vs. placebo and drug B showed 70% vs. 40% efficacy vs. placebo, which is the more efficacious drug?

<comment><USER7> > _" drug A show 50% vs. 20% efficacy vs. placebo and drug B showed 70% vs. > 40% efficacy vs. placebo"_

Which raises a further (or more basic) confounding factor: the placebo effect _isn 't_ fixed.

It _does_ vary between trials and even appears to be steadily _increasing_ in potency over time. [1]

So first-to-market drugs have an added advantage when naively considering "improvement vs placebo" \-- as their test were run years ago, when the placebo effect itself was a weaker opponent.

[1] [http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/magazine/17-09/ff_placebo...](http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/magazine/17-09/ff_placebo_effect?currentPage=all)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This defensive blog post perhaps misses a crucial point that is made by the NYT through a haze of lay-person journalism.

By placing the focus on an 'average' patient, there is a danger of missing drugs which work effectively but only in sub-populations while having costs in other sub-populations (as drugs generally do in practice).

"Some who take Avastin significantly beat the average" is probably indeed worth noting because the naive RCT may be disguising significant effects of clinical importance.

<comment><USER9> The article is completely misleading in this regard. Every modern clinical trial looks for these sub-populations. The article even states:

       Sixty percent of the new drugs in the works at
       Genentech/Roche are being developed with a companion
       diagnostic test to identify the patients who are most
       likely to benefit.

That said, it is extremely frequent that clinical trials that follow up on these sub-population observances find them to be statistical anomalies. When you have 100 ways to subdivide your populations, you expect to have some anomalies at a typical 5% confidence level.

The article points to I-SPY 2 as the future of clinical trials, making it sound like bayesian analysis is something novel to solely this clinical trial. As is alluded to in what you call the "defensive blog post", this is now standard practice in clinical trial design at most pharma companies. These companies don't like to throw 9 figures down the drain and they recognize that adaptive trial designs can get them statistical significance at lower cost while determining optimal treatment.

<comment><USER8> I call it "defensive" because the answer is _not_ simply "yes" and I think it's a poor position to view clinical trials uncritically.

Clinical trials may indeed work, but it's absolutely not clear that they are optimally designed.

Although few people on this thread are experts, there are a plethora of different comments which illustrate the impossibility of perfect clinical trial design - there are always improvements that could be made and subjective decisions that have to be taken.

The point that you make about pharma companies being profit-making companies could equally be phrased as a very strong criticism: that any pharma clinical trial design is likely to be heavily biased by their desire to sell their most profitable ("optimal") products.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What I found most worrisome about the NYT piece was the idea that _" the payoff for a successful Phase 3 trial can be so enormous that drug makers will often roll the dice"_.

Now, IANAStatistician but from what I understand there's an inherent (small) chance of any given trial showing a drug is effective. Wouldn't that mean that since there's such an incentive to test unpromising drugs, it's more likely some would get through by chance and get to the market?</comment>


Global warming 'not real' claims Weather Channel founder - <AUTHOR> http://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/526191/Climate-change-is-a-lie-global-warming-not-real-claims-weather-channel-founder <comment><USER2> And now the demonization of him shall commence.</comment>


How Researchers Realized Research 2000's Daily Kos Data Looked Faked - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100629/14033810006.shtml <comment><USER2> Dupe: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1473239>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes I realized it later. Unfortunately, I have no idea how HN let it through. I was under the impression that there is a dupe detector and I think the URLs are same :-/

<comment><USER3> techdirt.com vs. www.techdirt.com</comment></comment></comment>


Gource: a software version control visualization tool - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/gource/ <comment><USER2> This epitomizes eye candy but I can imagine that it might be a nice way of grabbing people's attention at a conference when introducing an open source project that has had a lot of recent activity.

I am interested in hearing what other use cases people here can come up with.</comment>


Nukes ready to fly - <AUTHOR> https://nationalpostcom.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/fo0505_nuclearweaponsw25001.gif <comment><USER2> That's got to be one of the saddest infographics ever made. I don't like infographics, they tend to simplify complex things to the point of uselessness. But this one is in the 'food for thought' category, one of those things that we think is solidly in the past when actually it is very much in the present.

Pakistan/India is the most worrisome combination in that graph.

<comment><USER3> > Pakistan/India is the most worrisome combination in that graph.

why, you chose to include 'India' is kind of interesting. may you please elaborate ?

afaik, India (and China) are, still, following the NFU ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_first_use](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_first_use)) policy.

<comment><USER2> Because they've been in a low level war for a long time.

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

<comment><USER4> This war has most likely stayed low level because both countries are aware of their nuclear capability.

Probably not the happiest of developments but an all-out war is unlikely between nuclear powers.

<comment><USER5> Except that India and Pakistan did have a low-intensity war _right after_ their reciprocal nuclear tests in 1998.

Also, India has whooped Pakistan's ass every time they have been at war, both before and after nuclear weapons, so Pakistan has a much smaller incentive to trigger an all-out war. India isn't interested in capturing Pakistan and tilt its own demographic balance.

<comment><USER4> Nothing of that contradicts the premise of what I said.

Neither India or Pakistan would jeopardise the very existence of the other nation, because rather than just lie down and die they'd get a farewell message from the other side.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's interesting that the UK uses solely submarine-launched missiles and the rest of the world isn't represented by nuclear submarines at all. I would imagine there are a few advantages to submarines, such as stealth, range, ability to lie dormant or operate far from home for long periods, etc. Why only the UK? Are plane-delivered warheads 'better' in some tactical capacity? Or does the delivery essentially not really matter and each country is using their most economical technology?

Also, it's a really sad infographic. I visited Hiroshima last year and it was heartbreaking (also a very beautiful city).

<comment><USER7> The UK _had_ plane-launched warheads in the 50s: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_bomber](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_bomber)

The rationale for the Trident fleet was for "second strike purposes": in the event of nuclear war, the UK is small enough to be completely obliterated. The sub fleet provides a single submarine at all times capable of retaliating in this event.

This leads to the letters: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_of_last_resort](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_of_last_resort) . In the event of surfacing to the horrible silence of not being able to contact HQ and the BBC having ceased transmission, open the letters and follow orders.

<comment><USER8> I think the really interesting thing about the "letters of last resort", is that the captain can decide what he wants to do when he opens the letter in that horrible event.

I'm looking for the source, but I read an article with a few former captains and they pretty much unanimously said that they wouldn't launch and would seek sanctuary in the nearest friendly harbour instead. Because what would be the point, the UK would essentially be gone, and all they would be doing would be adding to the misery. Can you imagine what that knowledge would have done if it had been known in Soviet circles, for instance?

We may as well launch, because the captains won't retaliate. Scary stuff.

Edit: this is an excellent discussion about these letters on Radio 4: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0210spf](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0210spf)

<comment><USER9> The Soviet Union was for the majority of the cold war and before on the receiving end of the aggression. For the most part it reacted to existential threats, like in the case of the Cuba missile crisis, which was preceded by the US placing mid-range missiles in Italy and Turkey. In most of the proxy conflicts each side behaved in approximately equally despicable ways, in most cases the US backed dictatorships, like Suharto in Indonesia murdered hundreds of thousands.

There also is no evidence that the Soviet Union ever intended to use nuclear weapons as an offensive measure, whereas the US toyed with the thought on multiple occasions (Cuba crisis, Korean war).

<comment><USER10> Right, because on the soviet side of iron curtain they weren't extensively training for an attack at all Also, soviets were never heavily investing into first strike capability, both nuclear and conventional So much sarcasm. Please don't revision history

<comment><USER9> They did train for fighting back in case of an "imperial aggression". Their strategy was to push back any offensive with overwhelming conventional force (massive amounts of tanks). See for example here: [http://www.isn.ethz.ch/Digital- Library/Articles/Detail/?lng=...](http://www.isn.ethz.ch/Digital- Library/Articles/Detail/?lng=en&id=107840)

Pretty much all their nuclear arsenal was deployed in a way that ensured excellent retaliation potential (mobile ICBM launchers etc.), their nuclear subs etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Despite, or maybe because of, the several thousand nuclear weapons ready to be deployed at short notice we get this from Steven Pinker in his book 'The Better Angels of Our Nature':

• Zero is the number of times that nuclear weapons have been used in conflict. Five great powers possess them, and all of them have waged wars. Yet no nuclear device has been set off in anger. It's not just that the great powers avoided the mutual suicide of an all-out nuclear war. They also avoided using the smaller, "tactical" nuclear weapons, many of them comparable to conventional explosives, on the battlefield or in the bombing of enemy facilities. And the United States refrained from using its nuclear arsenal in the late 1940s when it held a nuclear monopoly and did not have to worry about mutually assured destruction. I've been quantifying violence throughout this book using proportions. If one were to calculate the amount of destruction that nations have actually perpetrated as a proportion of how much they could perpetrate, given the destructive capacity available to them, the post-war decades would be many orders of magnitudes more peaceable than any time in history.

Amazing.

<comment><USER2> > Zero is the number of times that nuclear weapons have been used in conflict.

 _Two_ is the number of times that nuclear weapons have been used in conflict.

<comment><USER11> Pinker is making the distinction that the two cases you refer to weren't used in conflict, as such. They were used against civilian targets, not on the battlefield.

<comment><USER7> This was the second world war, that distinction wasn't really maintained for air bombing. Use of incendiaries against cities was already widespread, and the firebombing of Tokyo killed more people than either of the two nuclear bombings.

<comment><USER12> Not just Tokyo. Most large cities of Japan were by large totally destroyed by fire bombs. That's why in most Japanese cities there's virtually no pre-WW2 builds left anywhere, with Kyoto and Nara being notable exceptions.

<comment><USER2> See also: Dresden.

<comment><USER12> Of course. And Dresden was especially horrific since there was no military target at all in that city at the time. It was purely for the pleasure of killing civilians and wounded people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> On a positive note: those Nukes are probably what has stood between many state v state wars which may have taken place over the past 60 years had the assured destruction not been there.

<comment><USER12> That's a difficult assumption to prove, and we have had extremely bloody conflicts nonetheless (Vietnam for once) during the Cold War even without the use of nukes.

<comment><USER14> I think it's reasonable to assume that a larger land war would've taken place, had there not been the threat of nuclear war limiting the cold war to a very localized region. I would prefer proxy wars over all out war, all said.

<comment><USER12> > assume that a larger land war would've taken place,

You seem to forget that wars are expensive, very expensive. The US was already running bankrupt before the end of WW2, nobody in any sane state of mind wants an all out war unless they can avoid to do so.

<comment><USER9> The US emerged as the wealthiest nation in Human history fro m WW2 (~50% of the worlds wealth), so this statement is somewhat surprising.

<comment><USER15> We emerged as the wealthiest nation because _the rest of the civilised world had been reduced to rubble_. It's really easy to have the best, most productive economy in the world when one's manufacturing base is untouched and one has suffered a relatively small injury to one's workforce.

Germans were starving to death in 1946; Brits were still rationing meat and food in 1954, and cheese for decades to come.

Wars are not in general good for the economy: they result in the destruction of capital and of labour.

<comment><USER9> I was merely replying to the parent comment, globally WWII was a disaster, economically the US profited massively, not just relative to the rest of the world and it could probably have carried on fighting the longest. For instance the war effort lead to the industrialization of a much larger part of the country than before and immigration of skilled labor towards the west coast.

As you said it did not suffer any damage to its industry and took over from Britain, France and Japan as the imperial power in the Middle East and Asia.

There have been plenty of conventional land wars in the following years with US involvement, the difference was that while WWII was fought to establish large American spheres of influence, the following wars were fought been to maintain the American empire.

It is pretty hard to quantify, but I'm confident that people in power thought that the net benefit of maintaining hegemony in South East Asia (Korean/Vietnam war) and the Middle East (financing Israel, the Iraq wars), outweighed the cost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I seem to remember that the UK downgraded the yield of its Trident warheads to be in the range 0.3, 5–10 and 100 kt - Wikipedia has this as "speculative" but I do remember it being reported a while back.

[The wildly different yields apparently coming from unboosted primary, boosted primary and full "multi-stage" \- presumably the latter being achieved by removing the secondary].

<comment><USER17> > I seem to remember that the UK downgraded the yield of its Trident warheads

Only some of them, guessed at roughly half on each boat.

A partial replacement for tactical WE177.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Martin Hellman (yes, the co-inventor of public key cryptography) has a fascinating blog about the risks of stumbling into a nuclear war: [https://nuclearrisk.wordpress.com/](https://nuclearrisk.wordpress.com/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Oh? I thought the Israeli arsenal was a closely kept secret. What are the sources on that?

<comment><USER20> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordechai_Vanunu](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordechai_Vanunu)

<comment><USER19> Thanks. So this basically means that this data dates from 1986, right?

<comment><USER20> Following the source links, it seems they may be using this comment from here [http://bos.sagepub.com/content/71/1/85.full.pdf+html](http://bos.sagepub.com/content/71/1/85.full.pdf+html):

>"Most recently, in December 2014, the Notebook did an exhaustive review of Israel's nuclear arsenal and concluded that claims it has 200 to 400 warheads are probably exaggerated and that the country's stockpile is more likely in the range of roughly 80 nuclear warheads (Kristensen and Norris, 2014b). Getting the size and composition right is important because it hints at Israeli intentions, and can therefore have a significant effect on threat perceptions in the Middle East and the potential nuclear aspirations of other countries in the region"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> North Korea is missing from the infographic.

An interesting aspect: behind all those nukes, are plans of how to deploy them with maximum destructive power over an enemy, within minutes.

If you live in western city, then it is probably targeted to receive a couple of nukes.

<comment><USER12> It's missing but I wonder how many nukes they actually have. And the way they use them is rather like terrorists. They threaten their use, and get financial aid and food in exchange of not doing anything with them. It's like International-level racket.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The colors are just like back in the cold war. The blue are the "good" nukes and the red are the "bad" nukes. That's what it looks like.

</comment><comment><USER23> Its complicated. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nye](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nye)

</comment><comment><USER23> You don't need nuclear weapons; Just Drop A "Heat bomb" In Antarctic Ice Sheets. You'll Drown The World.

<comment><USER24> > You'll Drown The World.

No you wouldn't, it would only increase the sea level by about 65m. You'd indiscriminately kill a lot of people (including your own) making it a useless weapon. There would be hefty amounts of survivors (billions), again making it useless if you were going for all-out genocide.

The ruined climate might do something to kill off the human race, though.

<comment><USER4> Some landlocked nations would be virtually unaffected but the sea level itself, though. There's also countries that have most of their main cities in the interior (Russia being one).

<comment><USER25> Also remember that a "main" or "important" city before the crisis is a mere refugee source after a worldwide crisis.

Before a crisis, the capital of the worldwide financial system and a major world trade port is kinda important. After a crisis ends both the financial system and world trade, its little more than a source of refugees.

If you want to wargame it out, look at the effects on agriculture. The US would be pretty much unaffected, sure we'd lose Florida and N.O. but we'll still have wheat and corn in the midwest, uninterrupted. Rice cultivation and historical hydraulic empires like egypt might have a little more trouble. Of course it depends how slowly it happens. The total solar energy striking the poles, even if it magically 100% perfectly went into ice melting, would take a heck of a long time. Its not going to be like tossing an ice cube into a campfire, no 65 meter tidal wave of water would result.

The capital effects would be interesting. So... your nuclear plant is 40M ASL today, and after the melt it'll be 25M below sea level. Well, at least it'll have plenty of cooling in an accident.

<comment><USER4> Some cities are important in every category though, just by virtue of concentrating a lot of the population. For instance the US would be pretty much in complete disarray for decades if the coastal cities of California and the East Coast were just wiped. They concentrate a lot of the power in every single respect, and also the brains.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Why would a country need several hundred (or even thousand) nukes, surely a handful would be enough?

<comment><USER25> The numbers seem mostly made up. 288 trident II... well OK at 24 per Ohio SSBN thats implying 12 subs are ready to launch 100% of their missiles at all times.

However there are only 14 Ohio SSBNs. And the rotation is 2.5 months on patrol (figure maybe 2 months effective?) and 1 month in port. I imagine a giant crane lowering supplies into the sub might block launched missiles... I don't think they have the compressed air online to launch while in port, although maybe... So more realistically, assuming no long term refits the navy has maybe 7 or so in position ready to launch. So WRT the infographic, maybe 168 ready to launch.

However. Everything from here on is classified so I'm speculating. There are tactical conditions where trying to launch will merely get yourself sunk before launching. So you've got a ASW destroyer and helos overhead pounding the sea with active sonar because we're having a nuclear war here. Speaking of nuclear war, during a nuclear war being on board a deployed SSBN is probably somewhat hazardous duty, so "we" probably don't have 14 floating SSBNs for very long. Also peculiar range issues and launch geometry issues, if theoretically we're at war with China, a launch trajectory passing directly over Moscow is going to totally freak out the Russians at the worst imaginable time. Also from a strategic standpoint using up your entire force in one attack is really dumb. Also there are weather related issues, if you're in high seas you might have launch issues. Sure you can pop a missile out the tube but if it starts its launch in the air sideways thats a mission failure. So I think in actual warfare maybe only 2 subs get to launch, at best. Suddenly we're down to 48 missiles in the air from the 288 infographic. Best case. Good argument for one. Or 24 missiles.

Again more classified BS. The best NASA and the russians can do under ideal conditions is launch maybe half of the time on time without a failure. Of course they put a lot of money into being reliable, but... I feel 50% successful launches might be semi-realistic? I mean, every attack sub and ASW helicopter is going to be all over you the instant the first missile launches, the odds of surviving until the 24th missile launches seem low, which is why we don't deploy subs will 500 tubes because tubes 200-500 will never survive to fire... If some 50 cent integrated circuit fails or some valve, its non trivial to fix the missile while underway and you might not have the spare parts. I stand by about 50% estimate.

The MIRV thing means at re-entry you can attack nearby targets, so the equivalent of Saint Paul and Minneapolis are both in big trouble, but for trajectory and aerospace reasons its hard to hit Seattle and DC at the same time. So you can pack multiple warheads on a missile, but you really only get maybe 30 targets outta 24 missiles. Why do you think we spread our missile launch fields all over the upper midwest instead of putting them all in one county in Texas?

Finally we know from semi-public test results that not every test goes perfectly, so I have a gut feeling that in a real nuclear war no holds barred, high radiation environment, 25 or so hits is reasonable. Hopefully thats enough to discourage any belligerent from starting a war they'd lose.

You can see the motivation to not decrease stocks by 10x or 100x because that takes the odds of 25 hits down to 2.5 hits or 0.25 hits. Decrease the number of nukes by 100x and we'll kill dozens of millions within one generation in WW3, guaranteed, not much changes in human nature. Compared to dozens of millions of human lives, building a couple hundred ICBMs is really cheap insurance!

<comment><USER27> I think you're underestimating how big the ocean is. Most of the time a strategic missile submarine is not followed; attack submarines or helicopters may be heading there after you've launched but at that point it's too late.

In a first strike scenario overwhelming force is absolutely the way to go. You're trying to completely eliminate the ability to retaliate. It's not a scenario where "holding back a reserve" makes sense.

ICBMs are routine, proven technology; the fair comparison is with commercial satellite launches, not with interplanetary probes. And those have a success rate a whole lot higher than 50%.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> How many times can each countries' nuclear weapons cover the land area of the Earth?

<comment><USER14> enough times to not need to count.

<comment><USER29> Wrong. Zero. Do the math, they're not even close.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> It seems a lot of world leader's words are backed by nuclear weapons...</comment>


40% of publications on bt GMO plants present a financial conflict of interest - <AUTHOR> Three INRA researchers have analyzed the scientific literature on the efficacy or durability of Bt transgenic plants in terms of the possible link of interest between this research and the biotechnology industries. They published their results in the journal PLOS ONE of 15 December 2016. They showed that 40% of the publications studied present a financial conflict of interest1. More importantly, the findings of these publications are more often favorable to the interests of the seed industries in the presence than in the absence of conflicts of interest. This general trend is also true at the level of the researcher. <comment><USER2> I'm curious how you're meant to conduct a study where nobody involved has any financial interest in the result.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's no link.</comment>


The Perfect Nap: Sleeping Is a Mix of Art and Science - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323932604579050990895301888.html#project=SLEEP0902&articleTabs=article

<comment><USER2> I started experimenting with different nap schedules when I found myself too worn out after work to get to the gym, run errands, or do other things I had planned to do that afternoon/evening. It became a huge bottleneck in my productivity until I started to get it right because I would either nap too long, or at the wrong time, which would throw me into a useless haze for most of the night.

When I started taking shorter, more controlled naps(similar to the suggested in the article) I found it much easier to come out of the nap refreshed, and not nearly as tempted to roll over for another 15 minutes of sleep (as we all know where that leads).

I used to avoid naps, primarily because the block of sleep wasn't worth being up all hours of the night and dragging myself out of a funk once I woke up, but if you start playing around with different schedules and durations that work best for you, they can be very helpful for focus and productivity.</comment>


The return of Ada - <AUTHOR> http://www.gcn.com/print/27_8/46116-1.html

<comment><USER2> Trust a site called Government Computer News to publish a glowing review of Ada. :)

I recall reading about Praxis a couple years ago and was impressed by their low bug counts. It seems like it would only be useful in situations where the software's purpose is prespecified in detail, though -- a way to make rock- solid software, slowly.</comment>


Building an HTML5 WebGL game with GLGE, Part 1 - <AUTHOR> http://statico.github.com/webgl-glge-game-part-1.html

<comment><AUTHOR> The game itself is here: <http://statico.github.com/webgl-demos/ducks/></comment>


Ask HN: What is the most enjoyable language to code in? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a self taught web developer working primarily with advanced PHP and wanted to get an idea of what you guys think is the most enjoyable language to create something with? I tend to feel "comfortable" coding things with PHP but hate the fact it's one of the poorest languages to have in the toolkit. Looking for prospects... <comment><USER2> I'm pretty much a self-taught programmer in my 50th year of programming, and the languages I've enjoyed most aren't so much languages as environments. They all provide one thing: quick feedback: not necessarily a REPL, but very close.

They've included: assembly language on III Comp-80/FR-80, Basic and Modula-2 on DEC Vaxen, Oberon-F/Black Box on 68K Macs, and Octave, Racket, and Scala(in Eclipse) on current Macs. My favorite is still the Black Box environment, and I mourn the fact thet Oberon Microsystems hasn't seen fit to port it to Intel Macs.

</comment><comment><USER3> Clojure (or any Lisp dialect). Because there are few simple powerful abstractions (so it puts less cognitive load in terms of language so you focus on problem) and of course you can change the language to suit your problem (whereas with other language you have to change your problem to suit the language)

<comment><USER4> Gonna second the Clojure. Made a thread-safe concurrent "RequestContext" mechanism for Ring apps in like 15-30 minutes of putzing around. No surprises. Very enjoyable.

Not the most remarkable Clojure story I have, just the most recent one.

I use Python in my day job, but Clojure is the only time I really feel like I'm enjoying myself or that my time is being spent well. Or that I'm not profoundly limited.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Like you, I was a self taught developer working on PHP. I switched jobs to a Python shop and love it. It is so clean and nice to write.

That said, I think I like JavaScript the most. Simply because I know it the best, it's simple, and flexible.

I picked up Objective-C last year and really liked it too.

All that to say, there's a lot more out there and I think you should definitely explore outside of PHP. Once you get comfortable with a couple the rest come much easier and it doesn't really matter anymore.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd suggest looking at Perl with Mojolicious for web apps - great fun.

Just stay away from dated Perl tutorials - Perl development has evolved a lot over the years. (perlbrew also recommended)

</comment><comment><USER7> For me it's always been the language that gets the job done. If you are a hobbyist programmer you can pick whatever feels fun or interesting, but if someone is paying you to code they usually don't care about programming languages. In most real work you won't get to choose the language anyway, because the decision has been made already or you are working with a big base of production code.

I enjoy getting things to work and making clients happy. The programming language doesn't really enter into it, though some tool sets can be more frustrating than others. I charge more if I have to work with something I know in advance will be tedious or painful.

As for saying PHP is "one of the poorest languages to have in the toolkit," that's only true for bragging to other programmers. PHP is what the majority of web sites are written with. If you want to make money programming you'll find that the uncool languages and tools such as PHP and MySQL (like Visual Basic and Access before them) are the richest vein of paying work.

Keep your eye on new things but don't forget that professional programmers -- those who get paid for programming -- shouldn't hobble themselves by insisting on only using their favorite language or tools.

<comment><USER7> And then to answer your actual question: for me C has been the most enjoyable, but that is largely a function of my age and career experience. One of the most fun applications I've written in my 30+ years was in Fortran IV.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I agree with a lot of you about PHP being quite great for the applicable job. I just tend to feel the hn community can be pretty biased at times. Either way, I appreciate the input. Lots of great points made, particularly:

"You can make a masterpiece in any programming language."

and

"Keep your eye on new things but don't forget that professional programmers -- those who get paid for programming -- shouldn't hobble themselves by insisting on only using their favorite language or tools."

I actually enjoy javascript better than PHP even though it tends to be more tedious.

</comment><comment><USER8> C# for backend stuff (servers, DB access, business logic). LINQ, Lambdas, await and all the other syntatic sugar is unmatched.

MXML + AS3 for frontend stuff. MXML with the easy (two way) databinding, event system combined with a strictly typed language like AS3 are so fast to get things done and maintainable. (For the notes: I am not using FLEX witch is kind of bloated, just MXML)

</comment><comment><USER9> Self-taught like you and by no means a coding genius (I can only really code Ruby/JS) - but I really enjoy Ruby's syntax, its super clean and simple. I think Python has a similar approach.

Well written Ruby just reads like plan 'ol English.

</comment><comment><USER10> I like Python and JavaScript. But I code in Java because of robustness, speed (runtime and ... development speed, yes!) and because here (in Germany) Java is first choice language and because of good salaries.

</comment><comment><USER11> A poor coder blames his tools (or language). You can make a masterpiece in any programming language. For that matter though I love PHP, been using it for over 10 years. I've used other languages extensively too but for my own projects it usually falls back to good old PHP.

I definitely wouldn't say it's one of the poorest languages to have in the toolkit though; [http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2013/01/31/php-just- grows-...](http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2013/01/31/php-just-grows- grows.html)

Most enjoyable for web : php,

Most enjoyable for apps : c

<comment><USER3> Language are not just tools. A tool has a specific purpose like Excel is a tool, hammer is a tool. Do you create only "Text editor" using programming language OR only "Database systems"? No, you create various kind of other tools using programming language and hence it is a kind of meta tool and thats why it matters a lot. A language is a kind of cognitive model for you to think about and build other tools. "You can make a masterpiece in any programming language" : Sure you can (make be you will take year's in the effort), but you need to consider the cognitive load it will have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> For me its C# - but maybe because I've become 'fluent' in it, so I now find it easy to churn out decent code. Also I find the Visual Studio IDE a great help.

<comment><USER13> I have to agree. Visual Studio + Reshaper makes coding an absolute pleasure. The best investment I made was actually getting a book and really learning how to use the VS IDE - time well spent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I am not a great programmer but when I tried Lua I was actually having fun coding and it was working really easily!

</comment><comment><USER15> I will vote for ruby.. Few reasons collection here - HTTP://myloveruby.herokuapp.com

</comment><comment><USER16> Haskell.

</comment><comment><USER17> Python by far...

</comment><comment><USER18> JavaScript

</comment><comment><USER19> > I tend to feel "comfortable" coding things with PHP but hate the fact it's > one of the poorest languages to have in the toolkit.

Well, then you've already lost, because you're accepting what the herd is telling you without any form of critical insight.

Enjoy wasting the next five years chasing fads.

<comment><USER4> Quoting "Beating the Averages" written by the creator of the community you're ostensibly participating in, emphasis mine because I know reading is hard:

Blub programmer wouldn't use either of them. Of course he wouldn't program in machine language. That's what compilers are for...

As long as our hypothetical Blub programmer is looking down the power continuum, he knows he's looking down.

Languages less powerful than Blub are obviously less powerful, because they're missing some feature he's used to. But _when our hypothetical Blub programmer looks in the other direction, up the power continuum, he doesn't realize he's looking up._

What _he sees are merely weird languages_. He probably considers them about equivalent in power to Blub, but with all this other hairy stuff thrown in as well. _Blub is good enough for him, because he thinks in Blub._

When we switch to the point of view of a programmer using any of the languages higher up the power continuum, however, we find that he in turn looks down upon Blub. How can you get anything done in Blub? It doesn't even have y.

 _By induction, the only programmers in a position to see all the differences in power between the various languages are those who understand the most powerful one._ (This is probably what Eric Raymond meant about Lisp making you a better programmer.) _You can't trust the opinions of the others, because of the Blub paradox: they're satisfied with whatever language they happen to use_ , because it dictates the way they think about programs.

Edit:

Your crab-in-a-bucket mentality will not be welcomed warmly here. You might consider encouraging other people to learn new things instead of being a sour asshole to somebody asking the community for advice.

Please go back to lurking.

<comment><USER19> > Your crab-in-a-bucket mentality will not be welcomed warmly here.

Excuse me?

All I said was "you shouldn't be taking for granted that PHP is terrible, when you don't know other languages, just because a bunch of people have told you so."

I have actually been here quite a bit longer than you have; years before I created my account. I've also been a professional developer for more than 20 years.

Just because you disagree with my position doesn't mean you get to insult me and announce that a community which has received me better than it has received you (take a look at our score averages, please) is not going to like me.

.

> You might consider encouraging other people to learn new things

Maybe you should calm down and re-read what you're arguing with. That's exactly what I did.

.

> instead of being a sour asshole to somebody asking the community for advice.

I think maybe you should also consider whether you're speaking to yourself by accident. I didn't curse, or make any personal attacks.

What I did was say "if you make this assumption, and choose not to learn directly, it will cost you."

.

> Please go back to lurking.

I would appreciate it if you don't speak to anyone in this fashion anymore. Your tone is far beyond appropriate, you don't appear to have taken the time to figure out what I was actually saying, and you have been really quite unacceptably aggressive.

If anything, your tone encourages me to speak out more often, because I find this sort of lynchpin "anyone who disagrees with the herd is just being a crabby asshole" nonsense to be one of the most direct ways to challenge people's intent to grow.

I mean, yes, you've managed to quote a blub article. Very nice.

But I don't think you've received the impact you were going for. I was _not_ an asshole by saying "don't take for granted what the crowd tells you; learn for yourself." And I don't need to be told, in response, that I should be encouraging learning.

The next time you feel like being this severely critical in public, it may help for you to take a few hour breather, and then come back and make sure the person really actually did say the thing you thought, and that your tone in response is at least somewhat appropriate.

I hope you will consider the possibility that you're just yelling at your own imagination. I'm kind of mortified by what just happened here.

I don't know how to walk away from this supportively. I realize you're trying to defend someone, but it's from an attack that didn't exist, and in response, you've gotten just astoundingly vulgar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Ruby</comment>


GRPN IPO - <AUTHOR>

Quick Poll, what do you think the price is going to close at today? <comment><USER2> I have never short selled stock. I will today/next week.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hmmm just like any good IPO, upswing followed by afternoon sell off, stabilizing around $16

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm going with $28.21

</comment><comment><USER4> I thinking 38.50</comment>


John Lasseter to leave Pixar - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/06/08/business/media/john-lasseter-leaves-disney.html <comment><USER2> The company (as viewed by its product) had already changed so personally I don't expect significant change to bottom line, but the design sensibility and ethos has been muting slowly. The Pixar playbook is still a good playbook: clear simple moral outcome and at least one Randy Newman song?</comment>


Git Submodules: Core Concept, Workflows And Tips - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.atlassian.com/2013/03/git-submodules-workflows-tips/

<comment><USER2> Nice post. Last day, I had to search around to remove a submodule. This would have helped.

To add to the post, `git submodule foreach` command is invaluable when there are multiple submodules added to one project.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Indeed `git submodule foreach` is quite useful.</comment></comment>


Facebook to Offer Free Classifieds - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/11/business/11facebook.html?_r=1&oref=login <comment><USER2> Facebook's core value proposition is in organising the information around you. Secondly their objective is to maximise user retention.

So if a startup can build a product leverage facebook's network effects which falls outside of facebook's stated mission but can serve to keep users glued to the site it can do something of value that Facebook is unlikely to replicate.

For example see MosoTo - they are doing things on facebook that facebook aren't doing because it falls outside of its stated mission and so would be deemed a deviation from its product (chat + photo and media sharing).

For Facebook hackers out there - heres the rationale for building valuable products off of the facebook platform.

<comment><USER3> How long do you think it would take facebook to build an app better than Mosoto? You could say "why won't facebook just buy them?" - they could, but nothing says facebook has much inclination to acquire; they do have inclination to expand their mission.

Like its been said before, startups that rely on other networks without explicit agreement are calling for trouble.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So now that the big guys are demonstrating that they can quickly recognize opportunities and take advantage of them, of how much value is it to stay "under the radar"?

How can a new startup bring unique value that facebook couldn't just duplicate with a few outsourced coders overnight?</comment>


The Stoic Resilience of PDF Within a Digital Ecosystem - <AUTHOR> https://www.overleaf.com/blog/509-the-stoic-resilience-of-pdf-within-a-digital-ecosystem <comment><USER2> It's like asking why HTML hasn't been replaced. The business value needs to be greater than the switching costs for both publishers and consumers.

However, as someone who spent the last 5 years working for PDF companies, I predict that a new final form, fixed layout standard will take hold within the next 5 years. The format will be able to adjust itself to multiple form factors. Both Adobe and W3C are working on competing standards currently.</comment>


You are listening to San Francisco - <AUTHOR> http://youarelistening.to/sanfrancisco <comment><USER2> Listen to live Wikipedia updates: [http://listen.hatnote.com/](http://listen.hatnote.com/)

Listen to live Bitcoin transactions: [http://btclisten.com/](http://btclisten.com/)

Listen to airports: [http://listentothe.cloud/](http://listentothe.cloud/)

Listen to train ride: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pVWfzsgLoQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pVWfzsgLoQ)

Listen to driving through NY: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kV4zowtJC8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kV4zowtJC8)

<comment><USER3> Oh! Happy to see Listen to the cloud posted here! It's been a crazy ride since I built it last November. I went viral in Russia and Kazakhstan And were interviewed by a Spanish newspaper called El Mundo together with Eric (who made youarelisteningto). The best outcome of it was receiving an email from a developer who had a lot of problem with ADD and anxiety and he told me about how listentotheclouds helped him focus while at work and expressing the gratitude. It's very humbling to hear that something you built just for fun actually helps others in ways you had no idea it would.

<comment><USER4> Thank you, this is really nice! Tho, one question: Why does the ISS Space Station channel ask me to install Flash, while all the other channels seem to work just fine?

<comment><USER3> I need to use a video stream which is embedded through flash :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Why (special agent) Johnny (still) Can't Encrypt" [https://csrc.nist.gov/CSRC/media/Events/ISPAB- OCTOBER-2012-M...](https://csrc.nist.gov/CSRC/media/Events/ISPAB- OCTOBER-2012-MEETING/documents/ispab_oct2012_mblaze_p25-security-analysis.pdf)

(Warning, slightly terrifying paper)

P25 is very vulnerable to jamming, decrypting encrypted traffic, traffic analysis, and geo tracking of individual radios.

-

Because of the design of P25, commonly used in America, if you enable encryption, a tiny bit of noise in the signal makes it unusable. One problem is that there are separate error correction codes for different parts of the packet, and very few error correction bits were allocated for the important encryption bits.

To get around this, sometimes just the dispatchers will have encryption on, since those packets are traveling over fiber to the transmission towers, where they are broadcast at high power levels. The other direction, personal radio to repeater tower, is almost never encrypted because of the much lower power of the personal radios.

P25 has some nice features - our local area has perhaps a hundred different public safety organizations, all of which can talk to each other at any time, and often coordinate for any major incident. But security is not one of them.

<comment><USER6> "P25 has some nice features ... but security is not one of them."

And that is just fine.

Police and firefighters/medics[1] are civilians and are in their role to serve civilians at the pleasure of civilians. There is no need for secret comms and, in fact, it is often quite valuable for the public at large to have visibility into their operations in real time.

There is no need to encrypt public safety radio comms and you should be quite suspicious of anyone who claims that there is.

Those radios _belong to you_. The frequencies belong to you. The people who use them are your own servants.

[1] I am a firefighter/medic in the SFBA.

<comment><USER7> Agree, it is probably good for police / fire / EMT etc. to be open.

However, the linked talk above notes that the researchers accidentally discovered that some "sensitive tactical law enforcement operations" were unwittingly operating in cleartext, and divulged to the open air "names and/or identifying features of targets and confidential informants, their locations, descriptions of undercover agents, [...] plans for forthcoming takedowns and operations," and a few other things you probably don't want to widely announce.

It also notes that radio locations could be easily discovered, even if they're not communicating. Bad guys could therefore build a map of possibly-federal- agents in the city, and learn things they're not supposed to know even if they can't hear what's being discussed.

Again, PD/Fire/EMT are great to have open and mutually communicating. But there are (life and death) reasons why you might really need a secure channel in other cases.

<comment><USER8> >However, the linked talk above notes that the researchers accidentally discovered that some "sensitive tactical law enforcement operations" were unwittingly operating in cleartext, and divulged to the open air "names and/or identifying features of targets and confidential informants, their locations, descriptions of undercover agents, [...] plans for forthcoming takedowns and operations," and a few other things you probably don't want to widely announce.

We expect block headed 18yo infantrymen not to send sensitive information over insecure channels. I don't think asking the same from our public servants is unreasonable.

<comment><USER7> Then we agree that secure channels should exist?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> juicy-fruit Can someone explain to me why police scanners are so popular? I recently came across some guy ([https://www.reddit.com/user/regoapps](https://www.reddit.com/user/regoapps)) who made millions off of making a police scanner app. Is the demand really that high? What's the appeal?

Edit: Why am I being downvoted? It's a genuine question... I see listening to police scanners is a popular thing and I just want to understand why

<comment><USER9> I think the downvotes might be because it seems you haven't explored possible motivations on your own and it comes off as dismissive. While it may not be appealing to you, it pays to spend a bit of time thinking about what might be appealing to others. That's not to say you haven't done this; sharing what you had thought about may have staved off downvotes.

<comment> juicy-fruit Okay I understand. I see from this thread and a thread from a couple of years ago that some people are using this as a background noise. I tried doing this but it's too sporadic and the talking is distracting for me to focus on programming. It also makes me feel a little anxious for some reason.

I didn't mean to offend anyone's interest, I just wanted someone to maybe show me a side I'm not seeing. I should word my questions with more thought and empathy in the future.

<comment><USER10> J-F, I would generally ignore the downvoters. Because you have to 'read the tea leaves' to try to know why somebody downvoted you, and you can only 'make stuff up' as to the potential reason. THAT means there is no objective feedback mechanism to learn how to avoid downvoting; or, in particular, why your specific contribution was downvoted.

In my world, posting a well-reasoned on-target opinion on a website is not isomorphic with a video game, where I need to score XP or some other adolescent incentive.

So, given the lack of specific feedback, I suggest you ignore the downvoters, and do what I do, which is to imagine them as ignorant youngsters who actually think anybody cares what they think. They lack power in their own lives, and so they get the illusion of power over others with their downvote button. We should feel sorry for such creatures.

Perhaps one could try Buddhism? ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As an amateur radio geek, the first thing that stood out in my home state was the apparent massive disparity between LA and SF police radio traffic. SF appears to still be analog, and still uses "10-4" as a code??

[http://www.radioreference.com/apps/db/?sid=60](http://www.radioreference.com/apps/db/?sid=60) looks like motorola type II is still preferred, although AP25 is...available?

</comment><comment><USER12> I thought that police is using encrypted channels in bigger cities practically everywhere now? Is this live?

<comment><USER13> They have the gear but few implement encryption. Most police departments are more worried about not beimg heard than of bad guys listening in. Normally only drug squads use encryption.

<comment><USER14> Also: key management is difficult. Also: information sharing has benefits too

<comment><USER15> blasting out all internal communication is a bad way to share information (with the public)

<comment><USER16> OTOH, censoring what info you let through is, well, censoring.

<comment><USER15> encrypting police radio would not be censoring.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Are US police radio still broadcasting unencrypted on public frequencies ? I know for a fact eavesdropping is forbidden in some european countries and the broadcasts are encrypted in some.

<comment><USER18> Yes, with some exceptions. We lean much more heavily towards open/public records and "sunshine is the best disinfectant" than privacy. The ability of an independent press to observe and audit police activity is considered by many (myself included) to be foundational to liberal democracy.

<comment><USER19> Unless they're broadcasting "just planting some drugs on this suspect, over", having the transmissions unencrypted probably isn't a very useful way of auditing police activity.

<comment><USER20> On the contrary, there have been several high profile incidents where police radio traffic was used to demonstrate ill intent. It's difficult to use a tool day in, day out like that without getting complacent.

Open radio also makes it more likely the news media is there when the action is still happening instead of giving cops time to paper over their mistakes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Did anyone else immediately think that should read "you are listening to Los Angeles" because of the Soul Coughing song? Nice to see that it's an option on the site.

<comment><USER22> And the man laughs...

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> A thread from 2014: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8349655](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8349655).

<comment><USER24> I revisited that thread, and upvoted a few comments from almost four years ago. Good luck figuring out which comment got the upvote when your points count goes up. :-)

Worth noting, though, are the SomaFM links to similar stuff over there. I'm a big fan of Mission Control myself.

<comment><USER25> +1 for SomaFM:

Ambient music mixed with the sounds of San Francisco public safety radio traffic: [http://somafm.com/sf1033/](http://somafm.com/sf1033/)

I also recommend their DEF CON channel, which has (usually humorous) snippets from various talks between tracks: [http://somafm.com/defcon/](http://somafm.com/defcon/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The Linux way - use "cat /dev/urandom"[0]

Also here is cool simple shell script - "noise.sh"[1]

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11238247](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11238247)

[1] [https://gist.github.com/rsvp/1209835](https://gist.github.com/rsvp/1209835)

</comment><comment><USER27> Related, does anyone know how to listen to maritime channel 16 vessel traffic in any city, especially San Francisco?

</comment><comment><USER28> That background is an awesome pre Sales Force tower night shot.

</comment><comment><USER29> How reliable is the .to TLD?

<comment><USER30> I've been serving up a [http://pimen.to](http://pimen.to) sandwich since the late 90's.

<comment><USER31> OMG - second only to [http://isabevigodadead.com/](http://isabevigodadead.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> no clue what this is, anyone can explain? thanks

<comment><USER33> A police scanner with ambient background music. It's perfect.

<comment><USER6> soma.fm has a "mission control" station that has NASA mission chatter over the ambient music - and I prefer it to the police scanner overlay channels:

[http://somafm.com/missioncontrol/](http://somafm.com/missioncontrol/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Is there anyway to turn of the music or switch channels? Ambient music is not my cup of tea, I'd rather just have the scanner play without Yanni in the background.</comment>