Tesla footage of braking before crash ahead [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_c5kB1qbjY <comment><USER2> They are speaking Dutch so I thought i'd translate what they are saying:

Man: Wacht even wacht even eerst kijken wat er achter ons gebeurt (Wait, wait, first take a look what is happening behind us, don't get out yet.)

Man: Blijf zitten blijf zitten. (Stay seated, stay seated.)

Woman: Niets doen niets doen niet eruit gaan alsjeblieft. (Don't do anything, don't do anything, don't get out of the car yet please.)

Man: Nu kunnen we kijken wat er aan de hand is. (Now we can check out what happened.)

Woman: Maar zet hem eerst even aan de kant. (But first put it [the car] on the side of the road.)

We now see the man running to the car in a blue shirt on the left side of the screen.

Woman to the kids: Jongens jullie moeten even in de auto blijven zitten. (Guys, you have to stay in the car for a little while.)

Kids: Ja. We willen er ook niet uit. Moet jij ook blijven zitten? (Ok. We don't wanna go out. Do you [mom] have to go out as well?)

Woman: Ja ik moet er uit, ik ben een arts. (Yes I have to go, I'm a doctor).

<comment><USER3> Thanks, the first part is also in the closed captioning if you click the CC button on the video.

Edit: just the first part of what the guy says- not the part about being a doctor from the woman.

<comment><USER2> Oh sorry, I was not aware of that. I always disable subtitles because I find them annoying.

<comment><USER4> If you have the ability, I believe youtube lets you contribute subtitles (both for the transcript and the translation) directly to the video.

It might help if you are willing and have the time (and it's enabled).

I'm not sure how to go about it though...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is great video to study on many levels beyond self-driving car. Some observations:

* The car behind didn't show turn signal so probably driver wasn't paying attention.

* A small car escaping with not too much damage while SUV rolls over many times

* From physics point of view, the car behind produced almost perfect torque that started horizontal spin on SUV

* Collisions with barrier at high speed can produce lots of rolls. Many time we see cars upside down in accident and wonder how did that happened. This is how.

* The middle barrier did its job wonderfully even against massive inertia of SUV. Cars on other side remained unscathed!

<comment><USER6> I'm feeling rather dumb, but can't really intuitively understand the physics here. I see a small car hitting a pretty huge one and yet spins the huge one several times. I always thought those bigger cars are safer / stronger / more resistant to hits?

Is it purely because it hit it at the corner, so all the force went into the "spinning axis"? (did I say I feel dumb?)

<comment><USER7> > I always thought those bigger cars are safer / stronger / more resistant to > hits?

Physics would have you start with a spherical, uniformly dense car, but cars aren't that. Crumple zones engineered for passenger safety requirement mean that intuition falls short unless you really dig into it and add stuff like center of gravity to the model.

Also think about why you believe that - looks can be deceiving, and marketing, especially for rare expensive purchases like cars, very much plays on emotional appeal rather than actual science. ("Ultimate driving machine"? Pft, really?). The original SUVs were designed off truck platforms and did quite poorly in safety tests, and their higher center of gravity doesn't help at all. (Though it looks like a minivan in the video.) Just like two objects falling will fall at different speed in the real world due to air resistance, bigger != better with cars. You can't see crumple zones just by looking at how pretty the car is; vehicle safety is one area where government regulation has made cars safer by requiring all new cars sold in the US to meet a very high safety bar, and that's improved over the years, evident in this video of an intentional crash between a 1962 Cadillac vs a 2002 model. [https://youtu.be/O-WYKYrq5FI](https://youtu.be/O-WYKYrq5FI)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One of the main causes of accidents are vehicles left on the road and other vehicles impacting them or the people as they take for granted that traffic will be fluid and are distracted or whatever.

You should never leave your children and family on a car on the left lane while you leave, never.

I have a neighbor that is paraplegic because of that. His entire family went to the hospital after a vehicle crashed from behind after a minor accident.

Your first priority is putting your car and family on a safe place. Proper triage priority number one is avoid another accident, by removing obstacles and signaling other cars.

<comment><USER9> In fairness the guy is saying that in the video. Stop, wait to see what the cars do behind, etc. Presumably he gets out when traffic has stopped behind him.

<comment><USER10> Exactly, he waits until the situation behind him is safe enough to get out. He also mentions a truck, so I think by the time he gets out, there's a reasonable 'impact' buffer between his family and any moving vehicles (far) behind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I thought this an interesting video when Elon retweeted it. Basically the car is responding faster than the people do and keeping things from escalating. That said, having been on 101 when the cars in front start dancing like that I have to say my biggest worry isn't stopping in time its having someone behind me not stop.

<comment><USER12> That's why I usually break fast initially and check the rearview; extend the braking distance to allow extra room for the person behind if they are too close.

<comment><USER13> I wish more people did this. Pessimistic bumper buffers have saved me from a couple wrecks.

<comment><USER14> I wish more people followed at a safe distance.

<comment><USER15> I've actually found a really good solution to tailgaters: put very slight pressure on your brake pedal, enough to get the brake lights on, but not enough to actually cause any substantial deceleration. This will cause the tailgater to also slow down, but more than you because they have no way of telling how hard you are braking. The result is increased distance between you and them.

Do that a few times and even the most persistent tailgater gets it and either changes lanes or stops riding your ass.

<comment><USER16> That could just set someone off and make things more dangerous. If that's happening in the passing lane, get over and let them pass.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Yesterday, I was saying that autopiloted trucks would take over the long-haul trucking industries.

 _This is why_.

Driver errors with semis on the highway kill thousands every year. This kind of technology will save lives - not just of the Tesla drivers (or other autopiloted drivers), but of the vehicles they don't hit.

<comment><USER18> Saving any lives in great, but trucks are a very small part of the problem.

Out of 33883 US traffic deaths in 2009, 3380 involved trucks, and truck driver error was listed as a cause 26% of the time.

Self driving long-haul trucks probably won't save "thousands" of lives, but certainly hundreds.

[http://www.trucking.org/ATA%20Docs/News%20and%20Information/...](http://www.trucking.org/ATA%20Docs/News%20and%20Information/Reports%20Trends%20and%20Statistics/02%2012%2013%20--%20FINAL%202013%20Car- Truck%20Fault%20Paper.pdf)

<comment><USER19> The 26% statistic is misleading in this case-- just because the death didn't involve truck driver "error" doesn't mean a different movement pattern for the truck wouldn't have made a difference.

For example, in the original video, if the Tesla autopilot hadn't braked, and the car had been involved in the crash, it's not clear to me that error on the part of the Tesla driver would have been listed as a cause.

<comment><USER20> It should be, though. Car #1 stopped shorted and car #2 hit it. Car #2 was at fault for hitting Car #1.

Car #3 (Tesla), if it didn't stop, would be at fault for not maintaining stopping distance, hitting Car #2.

<comment><USER19> You're implying that minimum following distance <= stopping distance. A brief Google search yields a stopping distance of 315 feet for travel speed of 70 mph.[0] We don't train drivers to leave a football field of space in between cars traveling at highway speed. At least where I live, the legal standard for minimum following distance is that a driver "shall not follow another vehicle more closely than is reasonable and prudent".

If Driver #3 can't see Car #1 past Car #2, and Car #2 is traveling at highway speed, I think it's a stretch to say that Driver #3 could be faulted.

[0] [http://www.driveandstayalive.com/stopping- distances/](http://www.driveandstayalive.com/stopping-distances/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Here is a video by Bjørn Nyland demonstrating the ability of the Tesla radar to detect the motion of the car in front of the car you are following: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cG3Jp5GyPoc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cG3Jp5GyPoc)

It shows, how the radar detects, that the lead car breaks first - watch how it gets highlighted in the dashboard. This ability helped the Tesla to handle this accident event.

<comment><USER22> Cool video. I guess while self driving cars may have inferior analysis to humans for a while they may outperform through better sensors like the radar here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think this accident could've been entirely avoided had the small pink hatchback been a Tesla.

My read on what happened here is that the pink car was making a passing maneuver, and just as the pink car driver checked their right-side mirror/blind-spot and hit the right turn signal to get out of the passing lane, the car ahead abruptly stopped. That explains why the pink car drifted so slowly to the right - it wasn't an avoidance maneuver, it was a simple lane change while unaware of the stopped car ahead. Presumably an autopilot in the pink car would've been able to see the stopped traffic ahead and hit the brakes even while the driver was looking to the right to change lanes.

<comment><USER24> A safer following distance is crucial too, fwiw. It honestly feels like 90% of the vehicles on the highway travel at insanely close distances to each other.

<comment><USER25> My mom got in an accident due to driving too close to the car in front of her. It caused me to really take heart to my Driver's Ed teachers word of wisdom to always leave enough space in front of you to be able to safely brake to prevent that. I wish everyone would do that. It also makes driving in traffic less stop-and-go

<comment><USER26> yeah i try to do that but then other cars just merge in between the space i leave in front of me and force me to be on their tail. meanwhile the guy behind me never leaves enough distance either. safe driving doesn't mean anything when others drive recklessly

<comment><USER27> Precisely the problem.

Safe follow distance isn't an evolutionarily-stable strategy. The number of accidents avoided by people following it is more than offset (at least psychologically in the minds of the drivers) by the perception that people are constantly cutting you off if you adhere to it. Since punishments for failing to adhere to it are few and far between, drivers get sloppy.

It's the sort of thing you could, however, program into a robot and expect the robot to adhere to it.

<comment><USER24> > It's the sort of thing you could, however, program into a robot and expect > the robot to adhere to it.

I've often wondered what people will initially do when being driven around by a robot. How anxious will it make them feel, not to give up control, but to see a robot driving "so slowly". Not going 10 over, letting other drivers in when possible, always slowing to keep a safe distance, not passing aggressively if someone is going a few miles under, etc.

In the far future, i suspect people will be so used to being driven that they won't care how fast they're going. They can browse, work, surf, do whatever they like. But the first wave of drivers being driven.. it's going to be interesting to see how people respond to it.

And that's not even accounting for the drivers who still driving, but seeing robots on the road. I bet they'll always want to pass robots asap.

<comment><USER28> The latest OS upgrade of the Tesla prevents the autopilot from going faster than the speed limit. I wonder what owners think about that.

<comment><USER29> I think that you were fooled by the news coverage. It's only on non-divided highways that the new restriction applies, and there was already a restriction to speed limit + 5mph on such roads. On divided highways, you can set any speed up to 90mph.

Here's an accurate article, which (alas) still has an inaccurate headline: [https://electrek.co/2016/12/22/tesla-autopilot-speed- limits/](https://electrek.co/2016/12/22/tesla-autopilot-speed-limits/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is exactly how Elon described the system. Forward looking radar now bounces radar under car in front, getting back location of 2nd car in front, and responding to sudden braking etc.

<comment><USER31> Exactly so. The Tesla Model S dashboard display shows the car in front, and the car in front of that. The little car cartoon goes blue when that car is controlling the speed of the Tesla, and red when that car is causing an emergency stop.

I've seen this happen, thankfully without the crash and rollover, in my car (Model S). My car has stopped when the second car in front decelerated fast.

This kind of forward-looking speed control can also contribute to the melting of compression wave traffic jams.

Radar's a tough signal processing deal: a soda can on the road can mimic a large vehicle.

Possible next step in systemic forward-looking safety control, and much cheaper than radar: a few bits of data embedded in stoplights could announce the state of the stoplights of the next car forward (and even the one in front of that). Stoplights are all LEDs now, and they're bright enough to be seen by a really cheap camera even through mist on the glass.

<comment><USER32> When you say stoplights, do you mean brake lights? Brake lights are on the rear of a car, stoplights control an intersection.

<comment><USER31> Yes, brake lights on the vehicles. I regret the confusion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Just brilliant technology at play there. I had to rewatch a couple of times to really grasp how early the Tesla recognized the emergency braking scenario.

One thing to note is that most dash cams, mine included, shoot at a fairly wide angle. The Tesla was likely following a good bit closer than it appears from the video alone.

This is also an interesting visual demonstration of why that Armco barrier between the opposing directions of traffic is so terrific. It's quite possible that having that in place saved several lives in this accident. It clearly absorbed some of the impact energy and prevented the SUV from crossing into oncoming traffic.

</comment><comment><USER34> Offtopic: 30 brake vs 12 break in this thread so far. Common typo on the way to become an accepted alternative?

<comment><USER35> A lot of non native English speakers here.

<comment><USER36> In my non-scientific experience native speakers are more likely to make homophone errors.

<comment><USER37> That may very well reflect reality, but you also point out that it might not. Would it be better, therefore, not to post the claim in the first place?

(I'm not trying to accuse you of doing something wrong. This is just a minimal, relatively harmless example of a larger and more concerning phenomenon in this age of information spreading so quickly with so little verification. I suspect we're going to need to take a sharp turn towards self- censoring those little unsupported claims, among other strategies.)

<comment><USER38> It may well be better not to post the claim, but you also seem to accept that it may be. Would it be better, therefore, not to post your claim in the first place?

(Personally, I see nothing wrong with posting anecdotal evidence as long as it's clearly identified as such.)

<comment><USER37> I was asking a question, not making a claim. Though I obviously made it clear what I think the answer likely is, I'm genuinely interested in the thoughts others can contribute. I'm not sure what the snarky response contributes, though.

<comment><USER38> I'm just illustrating that you're doing the same thing you're advocating against, so it's rather self-defeating. If this sort of vague, personal thinking is OK, then your post is pointless. If it's not, then your post is bad. Either way, it doesn't make any sense.

<comment><USER37> There's a deep difference between a conversation inviting disagreement and those with solid evidence to step in, and a strident claim that will only be addressed and corrected by people who are willing to be confrontational.

<comment><USER38> I agree, but how is that relevant? I only see the first kind here.

<comment><USER37> Go back and take a gander at the question mark in the comment you're criticizing, and the lack of one in the comment I'm addressing.

<comment><USER38> Are you thinking I said your comment is a strident claim that requires confrontation to disagree with? I said the opposite: both your comment and the one you originally replied to are conversational and easily amenable to contrary views.

<comment><USER37> No, the other way I could disagree. I thought the first one was the closed-off claim.

<comment><USER38> I gathered as much, but I don't see it. With the explicit disclaimer that it's just personal observation, it's about as open as can be to me.

<comment><USER37> Fair enough. We're making different judgments. And it occurs to me that there might be another important distinction there: I was bringing up a question of value judgment, whereas the commenter I was responding to wasaking a claim about the actual frequency of a phenomenon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> What puzzles me here is that the SUV flips over after being hit in the right- rear corner by a relatively small car and bumping into the side barrier. Flipping over in a case like this looks more likely to happen to an SUV than a lower-centered car, and makes me question the safety of SUVs.

<comment><USER40> This is a commonly known problem of SUVs, their center of gravity is a lot higher so they're a lot easier to flip over. That's why I'm puzzled by people who buy urban SUVs, that is, jeep-like cars that they never intend to use off- road.

<comment><USER41> 1: Station wagons that seat more than 5 people basically don't exist anymore (last I checked only the Mercedes Benz could do so in the US).

2: Minivans have an image problem (still associated with the "soccer mom" stereotype for Gen X; millenials appear to be less averse to them). In addition, most minivans are elevated so that they can have a flat floor, so they similarly have an elevated center of gravity.

<comment><USER38> Bringing it back full circle, the Tesla Model S can also seat 7, as long as two are children (and you buy the option for third row seats).

<comment><USER41> Yeah, if I was willing to drop $90k on a car that would have been an option. The E-class station wagon is cheaper, but still more than we were looking at. The Mazda 5 was an amazing car, but is now discontinued in the US, meaning there are now no compact cars that can seat 6+.

<comment><USER38> I didn't realize the Mazda 5 was discontinued. Too bad, it looked like a pretty practical design.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> My understanding is that a lot of recent year car models at least in Europe come with a safety feature exactly like this. Here is the video promoting Skoda's "Front Assistant" feature: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ounFkvTuobY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ounFkvTuobY)

If Skoda has it I am sure that all other models in the VW Group's line (VW, Audi, Seat etc) should have it.

<comment><USER43> That's not the same. The Skoda video only shows detection of the car in front of you and responding to that. In this case the Tesla also bounces the radar under that vehicle and responds to the motion of the car in front of the car in front of you.

If you watch the video again carefully, the Tesla alerts before the car in front brakes, because the car in front of that is braking.

<comment><USER42> You are right, this video only hints at this at the end but if you read closely the specs Skoda seems to promise exactly that - automatic breaking to avoid collision. Here is a blurb on their Front Assistant feature ([http://www.euroncap.com/en/ratings-rewards/euro-ncap- advance...](http://www.euroncap.com/en/ratings-rewards/euro-ncap-advanced- rewards/2013-skoda-front-assistant/))

"Skoda Front Assistant is a system designed to help avoid or to mitigate accidents into the rear of preceding traffic. A long-range radar, positioned at the front of the car, can detect vehicles up to 80m ahead which the car is likely to hit unless action is taken."

Keep in mind, Skoda is not an upscale brand, they are on the budget end of things. The VW and Audi models might/should have better systems.

The new Peugeot 308 also offers a 'Emergency Collision Autonomous Braking System' ([http://www.peugeot.co.uk/showroom/308/5-door/p=safety/](http://www.peugeot.co.uk/showroom/308/5-door/p=safety/)) but on closer look this is actually 'an automatic brake application to reduce speed by a maximum of 12mph to reduce the severity of impact'. Much less useful, but at least moving in the right direction.

<comment><USER44> Even a 12 mph reduction can greatly reduce the severity of a crash. Every foot per second makes a difference.

One problem with suddenly braking hard to avoid a collision in front is then you get rear ended (happened to me). Sometimes the best approach is to swerve onto the shoulder instead (also happened to me, and I watched the guy behind me plow into the guy in front).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I'm sorry but is everyone here sucked into the "reality-distortion field" that Tesla Auto Pilot seems to be generating? Nothing happens in this video that a competent driver wouldn't have done.

Detailed Explanation: In the UK part of the driving theory test is a "Hazard Perception"[1] exercise that test candidates awareness of hazards around them by playing short video clips and getting the candidates to click when they first spot a hazard they would need to respond to.

When watching the linked video I 'click' at 0:04 when I see the multiple brake lights though the car directly in-front. This coincidentally is when the Tesla responds with its audible warning.

The factors that lead to the Tesla not being involved in an accident in this video were not related to Auto Pilot but due to a competent driver: 1) Maintaining appropriate breaking distance from the car ahead to i. be able to stop in-time but without being tail-ended due to fast breaking ii. have 'thinking distance' to allow for slowed reaction timing 2) Watching the road ahead and noticing solid breaking of ahead vehicles though the directly in- front vehicle. There is __NO AUTO PILOT MAGIC IN THIS VIDEO __

I do not dispute that in other circumstances and perhaps other videos Tesla Auto Pilot __HAS __prevented and accident that a human would not have. This video is __NOT __such an example.

[1] [https://www.gov.uk/theory-test/hazard-perception- test](https://www.gov.uk/theory-test/hazard-perception-test)

Edit: Please see child comment [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13272626](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13272626) clarifying my intentions with this post.

<comment><USER46> You comment describes exactly why this _is_ so amazing - the autopilot executes the same as a competent driver! It's magic because it's the first time in human history that we've had such skills available in a car autopilot.

It's like saying cruise-control is worthless because any competent driver can maintain their speed - you're missing the point.

We're achieving parity between autopilots and human drivers, except the autopilot will never be distracted or tired, and always operates with the skill of a competent driver (and many drivers are not competent).

<comment><USER47> > _You comment describes exactly why this is so amazing - the autopilot > executes the same as a competent driver!_

I can agree with this. Too bad it isn't the default sentiment instead of over- the-top optimism or cynicism.

I don't think anyone here is surprised that people get into stupid, easily avoidable car accidents _all the time_. The argument seems to be about where the technology currently sits. In this video the Tesla braked and avoided rear-ending the colliding cars; so did the vehicles with no autopilot in the right lane. This is "impressive" to some people, but it's also the bare- minimum level of acceptability for self-driving vehicles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I was very confused about this video until I watched it with the sound on. The Tesla beeps at the driver clearly before the accident has occurred, but doesn't appear to decelerate until afterwards.

<comment><USER49> I imagine it'd get pretty annoying (and dangerous) if it slammed on the breaks every time two cars got close. It knew what was happening and was ready to break when the accident actually occurred.

<comment><USER50> That's not what the article says is happening. The Tesla is alerting because the radar sees the (black) car in front of the (red) car in front (of the Tesla) is decelerating, even if the red car isn't, it's alerting because of that. It doesn't "know" they'll be an accident, it just predicts that it will have to slow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> One part of my brain is saying: Sweet piece of technology!!!

Another is saying: This seems like a very convenient piece of good PR for Tesla (and self driving car technology)...

Yet another is saying: I hope the folks in the car are alright

<comment><USER52> Relying on error-prone, distracted, slow humans to guide massive killing machines is playing Russian roulette. AI driving will no doubt be eventually better than the best human driver within a decade, in nearly all instances.

<comment><USER53> The glorification of tech/denigration of humans juxtaposition is getting old fast. This attitude may seem benign, but it's insidious, carries a hint of elitism, and spills over into labor, class, and other aspects of human life.

Why can't we appreciate tech advances without devaluing people?

<comment><USER54> Because certain types of technical advancement requires an element of devaluing people.

"Calculator" used to be a job performed exclusively by humans. Moving to mechanical & digital calculators didn't only require gains in efficiency, but also a recognition that this was a job humans were simply worse at than machines, so it was irresponsible to task a human with it.

Similarly self-driving cars can't simply be a nice thing to have, eventually we have to have the discussion that it's irresponsible to have human driven vehicles on the road.

<comment><USER53> Promoting the tech and respecting people are not mutually exclusive.

I'm not arguing that we should endanger people and my comment is not about this one instance. It's about a general attitude of devaluing people. Where do you think that road leads?

When Uber vehicles were found to have run red lights a couple of weeks ago, Uber's response was that these were human operated and served as an example of why they must rid the roads of error-prone human drivers as quickly as possible. This, as if humans were a scourge that must be eliminated. There is a strange rising anger with people for being human.

And, once we've ridded the roads, labor force, economy, etc. of all the pesky humans, then what? Who owns the tech? Who has the power? Will they be as benevolent as the machines we've learned to worship? What is the value of a human life by then?

Quote whatever stats you like, but normalizing this attitude of fallible, dispensible humans is dangerous in many ways.

<comment><USER54> What do you even mean by "devaluing"? Of course a more error prone, dangerous and expensive driver has less value.

Is pointing this out somehow wrong? I think _not_ pointing it out devalues human life.

The road of getting rid of fallible humans from boring automatable jobs leads to Utopia, and I reject your notion that this is somehow inherently different from e.g automation in agriculture or computing

<comment><USER53> > _What do you even mean by "devaluing"?_

I've been clear about my meaning. Can't simplify it any further.

> _Because certain types of technical advancement requires an element of > devaluing people_

That's your quote. What did you mean?

> _Of course a more error prone, dangerous and expensive driver has less > value._

There's a difference between preferring tech to do the driving and saying the human has "less value". You don't see that?

In any case, a hostile regard for human fallibility that approaches promotion of the dispensability of humans isn't a good thing.

<comment><USER55> A nice sci-fi trope is that the unpredictability of humanity, and when/how it will "fail" when something better would "succeed", results in the preservation of humanity itself. It's nice to consider in the wake of the elitism.

<comment><USER53> Well, I think there's something to the notion that there is value in humanity, in spite of--or perhaps even because of--its flaws and non-binary approach to the Universe. And, of course, there's the whole "I Robot" deal, wherein the robot elects to save the life of the adult vs. the child based purely on a sterile odds-of-survival calculation.

That's not really what I had in mind with my comments here, but it is an interesting point.

And maybe it is another reason to consider prudence as we rush headlong into a world increasingly reliant upon technology.

<comment><USER56> > Well, I think there's something to the notion that there is value in > humanity, in spite of--or perhaps even because of--its flaws and non-binary > approach to the Universe.

We are approaching a very scary time when this conjecture will be subject to cold empirical evaluation.

I think we'll pass the test. But wishing that humans were good on things we aren't do not help anybody.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Does a Tesla continuously record all conversations within the vehicle? The sound recording is clearly from before the warning beep of the impending crash.

<comment><USER58> The video is from a third party dash cam.

<comment><USER57> Thanks for pointing that out.

Don't understand the downvote. It was a simple question from someone who is concerned about (online) privacy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> It's nice to know that Tesla can do that, but sorry, I just don't see anything "magical" in this video -- speed wasn't that high (~110 km/h), the gap was quite wide and the two cars on the right lane also managed to pull over and stop in time too. I have personally avoided much closer encounters driving both car and a motorcycle. In such situations, you should pray that there's no truck behind you.

<comment><USER60> "speed wasn't that high (~110 km/h)" \-- That is as fast as you can go on major roadways here in Brazil> I would say it is pretty fast...

" In such situations, you should pray that there's no truck behind you." \-- So true. Wouldn't the autopilot account for that before braking that fast? It would cause a much bigger problem if not...

<comment><USER61> for highway is really not that high,

in my country the police does not even bother with you till 160 kmh. (130 is legal limit)

<comment><USER62> Where is that? Where I live there is a 100km/h limit, and the local police sometimes post on social media when they ticket someone going 160km/h+.

That said, 100km/h made sense in 1970, but now with the safety of modern cars, there's no reason that 130km/h shouldn't be the standard everywhere modern cars are prevalent.

<comment><USER61> [http://autotraveler.ru/en/spravka/max-speed-limits-in- europe...](http://autotraveler.ru/en/spravka/max-speed-limits-in-europe.html)

as you can see 130kmh is used by most countryes in europe

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Also, I think the driver deserves some credit. Note how he keeps calm and rational and tells the other adult occupant in the car to not rush out into the road and cause another accident. His first thought is to make sure he understands what is going on behind him. Cool head, good job.

This is the bit driving schools rarely (if ever?) teach and which many drivers never get a chance to think about until they find themselves in a stressful situation where they can end up making dangerous decisions. (And then, of course, most people do not think).

</comment><comment><USER64> Road and Track says no.[1] "Except, if you watch the video, you can clearly see cars stopping ahead of the driver who isn't paying attention starting at the two second mark." What you're seeing here is that radars are much better at range rate than vision. Range rate data from a radar is as good at long range as it is at short range.

Fortunately, they were right behind the accident. If the wreckage was stopped and partially blocking the left lane, Tesla's autopilot probably would have plowed into it. Like this fatal crash in China[2] and this non-fatal crash in Germany.[3]

[1] [http://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/videos/a32073/no- tes...](http://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/videos/a32073/no-tesla- autopilot-didnt/) [2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fc0yYJ8-Dyo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fc0yYJ8-Dyo) [3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqfgDrynm78](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqfgDrynm78)

</comment><comment><USER65> I don't understand why people continue to believe that SUVs are safer just because they are huge. Seems like a very common myth.

Also Tesla's radar which can detect vehicles 2 cars in front of you by bouncing signals off the car in front is pretty neat tech. Who else is doing this? I'd assume most of the luxury car makers with auto pilots have this too?

</comment><comment><USER66> I think the most exciting thing (and we're way behind schedule on this, a lot of this could have easily been done literally 30 years ago, no problem at all), is caravan functionality, where a group of cars moves together. If you imagine 20 cars at a standstill for some reason, if they begin to move forward slowly but at the same time (less than 50 millisecond apart) because they're coordinated then they can get up to speed almost as fast as if it were only just one car (let's say they have to speed up a bit more slowly for a safety allowance). But if you factor in human response time, it can be a phantom traffic jam. There is no reason for a traffic jam because there is clear road all the way ahead of the group - yet a traffic jam slowly makes its way back anyway. Like this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goVjVVaLe10&t=1m55s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goVjVVaLe10&t=1m55s)

coordinating this stuff doesn't require computer vision or truly self-driving cars or anything like it and could have been done 30 years ago (1986) over an AM radio standard and some kind of coordination between cars - just nobody sat down and designed that standard.

today wireless coordination technology offers dozens of choices (in the gigahertz domain) and caravans could be assembled all but "trivially", cars can know where they are via gps with no problems at all. That would be an exciting move forward. Of course, it only works when everyone is doing it, but if just a few traffic jams instantly disappear (the ones where are the cars happen to have caravan functionality and coordinate) it would improve things for everyone: the traffic jam will disappear whenever it bunches up in a way that happens to consist of coordinated cars. (e.g. a 3-car phantom jam slowly moving backward will disappear whenever it crosses 3 caravan-enabled cars - not every car has to have this functionality). But I haven't read anything about Tesla coordinating even with other Teslas, let alone some standard of intercar coordination. A shame - this stuff is way easier than the self- driving stuff Tesla and others are doing. It's very low-hanging fruit.

<comment><USER67> I think you're trivializing even the required effort to coordinate two cars, let alone multiple cars.

How do you direct the signal to only cars in your lane? In your direction of travel? How much efficiency is lost if all of the drivers don't give themselves enough space between the car in front of them and their own vehicle? Now they have to wait to move forward. How do you get all drivers to roll forward together at the same rate of acceleration?

You could have the last few questions handled by a computer, but you'd still have to overcome a lot of other hurdles (namely location awareness, peer-to- peer communication, infrastructure changes to road signals if you don't have self-driving cars which can detect light states, etc) before you could even accomplish something this simple at scale.

<comment><USER66> it's absolutely trivial compared to self-driving cars which have to perceive their environment, and I don't need to give details. I'm not an automotive engineer.

it's trivial. To show you this is trivial without pretending to be an automotive engineer I'll use the example of a screaming auctioneer who sits on top of your steering wheel. A conversation with him might go: "HEY I NOTICE WE'RE STUCK IN A JAM IS IT OKAY OF I SIT ON YOUR STEERING WHEEL AND OBSTRUCT YOUR VIEW AND THEN I'LL START PRESSING DOWN ON THE GAS TOGETHER WITH ALL THE OTHER CARS IN THIS TRAFFIC JAM SO WE ALL START MOVING AT ONCE OKAY OKAY OKAY JUST TELL ME IF YOU'VE HAD ENOUGH READY OH LOOK WE HAVE CONTACT BETWEEN THE BUMPER TRANSMISSION LED AND RECEIVER LED AND THE CAR AHEAD OF US'S REAR BUMPER TRANSMISSION LED AND RECEIVER LED OH THIS IS AWESOME THE CAR IN FRONT OF US ISNT'T THE ONLY ONE WITH THIS EQUIPMENT THE CAR IN FRONT OF IT ALSO HAS THIS AND LOOK THE CAR IN FRONT OF OF THAT ONE ALSO HAS IT SO WE'RE ALL HOOKED UP AND AND WHEN THE FRONT CAR STARTS MOVING WE'LL START GOING AHEAD TOO ALL RIGHT JUST PRESS THE BRAKE IF YOU WANT OUT OF THIS BECAUSE WHEN THE FRONT CAR STARTS MOVING I'LL PRESS THE GAS AND MOVE TOO! HEY IT'S MOVING!!! I'M PRESSING THE GAS!!! PRESS THE BRAKE IF YOU WANT THIS TO STOP!!!!! WE'RE MOVING!!! WE'RE MOVING!!!!"

it's an absurd example but shows that it's trivial. The only thing necessary to get a stalled phantom traffic jam moving is for all cars to slowly start moving together. they can maintain distance between each other.

it's trivial if it requires special equipment such as bumpers that communicate with the car in front or behind them, proximity sensors/detectors, a way to transmit this information intercar and a way for the system to collectively brake or apply gas (like cruise control).

if you're an engineer I'm sorry if you can't see how absolutely trivial it is COMPARED WITH SELF-DRIVING CARS. It could easily have been done in the 80's with zero environmental perception, zero awareness of road conditions, nothing, and not hooked up to the steering wheel in any way. You don't need the system to handle any steering, period, in order to be able to break up phantom traffic jams.

if you've never invented anything in your life then you'll have to take my word for it that this is trivial, sorry. We're 30 years behind schedule on it and have suffered 30 years of phantom traffic jams that could have disappeared whenever they made their way to high-end cars that could have been equipped with a limited caravan system to start moving together with the drivers' permission. A phantom traffic jam can disappear at every point. Even if just 5% of cars were equipped with the standard.

you don't get what a huge deal it is for a few cars to be able to start moving together, coordinated, instead of one after the other. You don't get how 500 ms - 2500 ms of human driver latency means that traffic jams form which otherwise wouldn't and that once it is formed it is impossible to brake up and snakes its way back - but could be broken at ANY point by any group of cars that briefly acted as a caravan. you'll have to just trust me that the technology for this is easily in the realm of what could be done in the 80s. self-driving cars are lightyears ahead of that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> We don't need to speculate as to the speed or proximity of the two vehicles ahead. The data the autopilot system used has it. Does Tesla own that data, or the vehicle-owner? It's collected on the vehicle, which is _owned_. I'm sure Tesla gets a copy -- do they retain the rights as well?

I would not be surprised if Tesla were subpoenaed (or otherwise requested of) for the data, in a case like this (similar to the recent Amazon Echo news, or cellular providers with geolocation in abduction cases).

<comment><USER69> If you're in the EU, you can get this data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Very impressive demo. I guess this is possible due to great sensors (radar/lidar), computing power (tesla has the most computing power in a car) and good trained deep nets and algorithms (again tesla,cruise & waymo have the biggest investment here)

Does anyone know how I can get my hands on a nvidia drive PX2 board and a quanergy lidar? It seems the lidars and such nvidia boards are only sold in huge quantities to auto makers and not as single units available for people to make their own robots.

<comment><USER71> I don't think Tesla use lidars, and I don't think the small Quanergy lidars are shipping yet. PX2 isn't widely available but you can pick up a TX1 which is pretty powerful, if you need something small/low power but still fast enough for your own robot. Runs Ubuntu and CUDA so you can run the same deep learning frameworks (and possibly models, if you optimise them) as on your desktop

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> If I see a tree branch snap off the tree, I can reliably predict that branch will hit the ground below a short time thereafter. Just saying.

<comment><USER73> "IF"

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> > software update enabled Teslas to "see" through vehicles traveling > immediately in front of them. In this case, however, the Autopilot seems > less like X-ray vision and more like straight-up clairvoyance

I don't believe the car is clairvoyant, but my guess is radar bouncing off the asphalt under the cars. And maybe a glimpse of the brakelights?

<comment><USER21> Yes, Tesla is using signal processing to detect radar reflections of the car in front of the car in front of you. They showed this when they introduced the firmware with this feature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> This video is unavailable

<comment><USER76> Mirror: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7icfs1Eedc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7icfs1Eedc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> Dupe link. More comments at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13268768](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13268768)

</comment><comment><USER78> I'm wondering when the Tesla beeps if it reacts to the behavior of the red car or instead to the cars braking in front of the red car?

<comment><USER21> It reacts to the car breaking in front of the red car - the trick is to use radar reflections of both the red car and the one in front of it, which propagate below the red car. This feature was advertised with a recent firmware update.

<comment><USER79> I have seen plenty of 3 car accidents and the last car involved in the accident is purely because it could not brake on time and the first 2 cars involved in the accident are due to human stupidity.

I live in Dubai and it is a mix of many cultures and people drive like crazy here, I have seen a single accident involving 6 cars because most of the rash drivers will drive tail-gating

At least Dubai really needs lot of Tesla cars to avoid such accidents which are very common here

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> What about the dynamics of a mixture of self-driving and humand driven cars?

</comment><comment><USER81> I watched a similar video recently, but a car ahead avoided an accident and the car where video was taken from was rammed in the back because of a sudden stop. Which make me think maybe Tesla's response wasn't the best possible.

<comment><USER82> Link?

The Tesla would be aware of the cars behind it as well, so this sounds unlikely

<comment><USER83> At least with the original sensor suite, Teslas are not aware of cars behind them, except for within a couple feet with the ultrasonic sensors. There is no rear radar and the rear camera data is not processed.

<comment><USER84> > There is no rear radar and the rear camera data is not processed.

Erm (not a radar but cameras + CV/ML)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUw_DMaQ264](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUw_DMaQ264)

<comment><USER83> That's the new sensor suite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> the Tesla obviously expected a crash due to the small red car changing lanes crossing another small car on the right. Had nothing to do with the SUV i think.

</comment><comment><USER86> The underlying software for this mainly plugs into the Instagram servers. When it detects unusually high activity in proximity to the car, like commenting, liking, and especially video posts, it makes a cautionary beeping sound.

/s

</comment><comment><USER87> As long as there are people driving we do need such systems.

</comment><comment><USER88> What other car brands offer similar a safety feature ?

</comment><comment><USER89> do the cars have some serious computer hardware or is it really good code/cloud assisted computation? Maybe ANN's active while driving?

<comment><USER35> It must all be local. You couldn't possibly rely on any kind of network link for a hard realtime task like driving.

<comment><USER89> Yeah would-be neat to have them "globally connected" to Tesla, not sure why you would want that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> wow how many people stopped to help and ran to the cars after realizing what happened.

</comment><comment><USER91> morbid question but did they survive?

<comment><USER92> everyone was ok it said in the article

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> The original video appears to be down, here is a mirror: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_c5kB1qbjY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_c5kB1qbjY)

<comment><USER94> Thanks -- changed to that from [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APnN2mClkmk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APnN2mClkmk).

</comment></comment><comment><USER95> I bet the family of that man in Florida wishes he had AutoPilot Version 8.0!

</comment><comment><USER96> Lots of mainstream cars (Nissan, Ford erc) can already do this.

<comment><USER30> Did you watch the video with sound on? The car alerts before the car in front brakes.

<comment><USER97> What I heard was an alert go off after the first (red) car slightly veered off to the right, allowing sensors to detect the second (black) SUV's abrupt stop.

<comment><USER98> Are you sure you're viewing it with the sound in sync? There's no veering when I watch until well after the audible alarm. But if you look through the red car's tinted windows you do see the break lights of the cars in front - presumably it's that breaking action which the radar unit is picking up. My take on this is the red car wished to switch lanes beforehand and was distracted by that, thus not reacting quickly enough to the breaking. The right indicator goes on and it slowly starts to move across just before impact (but not at a speed / timing which would indicate an effort to avoid impact)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER99> I am super excited for the self driving Autopilot to be enabled! I'd love to be able to buy a Tesla for my parents.</comment>


MySQL Query Analyzer and PHP - <AUTHOR> http://schlueters.de/blog/archives/150-MySQL-Query-Analyzer-and-PHP.html <comment><USER2> More interesting (to me, at least) than the query analyzer and debug tracing (to a proprietary tool which costs money) is the mysqlnd_ms plugin, that can seems to be able to gracefully handle switching between multiple mysql connections to simplify query routing for master/slave or load balancing setups. Handling that on the driver level (I'm already a big fan of mysqlnd async) could help you ease your code into a replicated environment.</comment>


Let's make the Moon Landing a holiday. We can make it happen - <AUTHOR> http://www.change.org/petitions/the-president-of-the-united-states-declare-july-20th-moon-landing-day

<comment><USER2> This petition is misguided. The Moon Landing anniversary will be a holiday only for those eventually living on the Moon.

Other than Spain, Old World countries do not celebrate Columbus Day - see the analogy?</comment>


Webs of Trust and How To Decentralize Them (Bitcoin) - <AUTHOR> http://www.bitcoinweekly.com/articles/webs-of-trust-and-how-to-decentralize-them

<comment><USER2> 17 of this person's ~20 submissions from the last year have been about Bitcoin, many (like this one) from "Bitcoinweekly", a site the submitter actually runs.

A bad thing? I dunno. Just, maybe I think worth noting.

'kiba, you said earlier, "I hope I'm not being spammy". Maybe start to worry about this a bit more now.

<comment><USER3> kiba, if by "spammy" you mean continuing to call for focus of the hack-space's collective intelligence on one of its most fundamental problems... then spam on brother... spam on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wow. The article is significant because it identifies and proposes a solution to a fundamental problem everyone has (even if they don't recognize it yet). Craig Newmark concurs with the poster per a gigaom interview. "Newmark called some form of distributed trust system "the killingest of killer apps" for the web over the next decade" ([http://gigaom.com/2010/03/18/craig-newmark-on-the- webs-next-...](http://gigaom.com/2010/03/18/craig-newmark-on-the-webs-next- big-problem)).

A giant multidimensional karma score, a peer-based FICO score for reputation, a PKI-like vouch system, an Advogato-like acceptance scheme to cover all internet activity solves so many things.

\- Know who to trust on craigslist, airbnb, etc. \- Astroturfing/trolling disappears on your favorite political forum. \- Gamed ratings disappear from your favorite music discovery site. \- Online referendums, with the assurance of only one account per unique person, are possible. \- Promotional online giveaways with a one per person limit become easy. \- Gone are account verification hoops like sms codes to a required cel phone. \- The usefulness of consumer complaint boards is restored. \- Trolls may finally become a relics of some ancient internet past. \- Amazon-turk inflated rankings no longer can mislead ebay buyers.

Bitcoin solving it's own local problem may very well fix everything else on the intarwebs.

I would expand on the posters call for "decentralized peripherals: a decentralized exchange, a decentralized DNS, Namecoin, and also a decentralized web of trust." Open source R&D, with decentralized governance and distributed funding by the crowd, is what should be powering all this.

Hackers should crowd-fund a collectively beholden R&D outfit that churns out solutions for fundamental things like reputation and decentralized peripherals. Right now such a role is played out haphazardly?, incidentally by matured startups that donate or "give back" according to their narrow focus some other narrowly focused institution. A wider more comprehensive, more coherent approach is achieved when hackers cut out the middle steps and self- organize to solve the fundamental problems they face everyday. Open source R&D... what should we call it?</comment>


Ask HN: How to stay completely free from prying eyes? Like NSA, etc - <AUTHOR>

If they monitor traffic at the ISP level and have backdoors to all major modes of communication, can anybody give a step-by-step, full on survival guide to staying clear? VPNs? Encryption? I want 100%, or as close to it as possible. <comment><USER2> Tor. I turned my raspberry pi into a Tor proxy to hide all traffic.

[http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2013/06/18/onion-pi-pack- wsmall...](http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2013/06/18/onion-pi-pack-wsmall- antenna-make-a-raspberry-pi-tor-proxy-raspberrypi/)

<comment><AUTHOR> What's the advantage of creating one of these as opposed to just connecting to Tor with your computer?

<comment><USER2> All traffic from the computer proxy through Tor e.g. Skype, Spotify, Chrome...

<comment><USER3> What if i run tor on my computer and apply a system wide proxy through that port (9050 by default), is that any different from your setup ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> check this out : [https://prism-break.org/](https://prism-break.org/)</comment>


Infographic about Hacker News Commenters - <AUTHOR> https://infograph.venngage.com/p/52532/hn-infographic <comment><USER2> There is a current thread running on the same matter if I am not wrong -[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10412465](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10412465)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ohhhh...this is an infographic, I guess that's the article. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd like to see how HN would be without karma, voting and pseudonyms.

Just plain comments, maybe with a hide feature, so that you can remove stuff you don't care for.

I mean most people here request sources to statements anyway. And votes/karma/pseudonyms just distort the opinions of the readers. Some people even use throwaway accounts, so their opinions don't strain their main pseudonyms, which they thoughtfully form or down vote stuff they simply don't like.

</comment><comment><USER4> The majority of HackerNews users aren't startup management experts, they're developers. So we're not even the right expert crowd...

<comment><AUTHOR> Good thing it suggests not worrying too much about the comments then, right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> OT but the fact that resources were spent to prevent us from selecting text is disturbing.

is there a script to disable the disabler-scripts of any page?</comment>


PimEyes: Upload Your Photo and Find Where Your Face Image Appears Online - <AUTHOR> https://pimeyes.com/ <comment><USER2> "Enter your credit card number to see if it's been hacked for free!"

</comment><comment><USER3> Like others this returned total nonsense. Not even one remotely close. (I'm a white dude with publicly visible photos online ICYAI).

It's stupid and irresponsible that they have made this publicly available. Hopefully the fact that it's terrible will tank it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Maybe I am a "unique" looking person but I just took a grainy webcam image of the top 3/4 of my face and 4th result was me. I added another with my glasses off and then top two were me.

This is the first time facial recognition has scared the hell out of me.

<comment><USER5> Interesting. Do you have images and pictures of yourself publicly available online? It didn't pull up anything for me. But now I'm worried the pics I uploaded of myself will be used and fed in to this apps data library.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> So this found a headshot on company website. Low hanging fruit. But it also found a stock photo where I am fairly fuzzy in the background of a local event I definitely attended...this really impressed me. Then quite a few photos definitely not me.

</comment><comment><USER7> It just found a bunch of other Asians (none of them me) LOL

</comment><comment><USER8> Seems like Clearview AI for the public?

</comment><comment><USER9> I like the fact that you have to certify it is a picture of you. Reminds me the "Are you over 18?" on pr0n websites.

<comment><USER10> Speaking of which I uploaded a screen-clip from an, ahem, webcam site (so not pre-existing image), and it did indeed find related only-fans images. Definitely a privacy concern.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reading the comments here, it seems like the service is hit or miss. It doesn't seem to find anything online of pictures of me. I tried celebs and athletes, that seems to work and it actually finds and returns back the exact pictures that I uploaded.

</comment><comment><USER11> This gave me acceptable results for an image taken from _thispersondoesnotexists.com_ \-- something which now makes me question both the services and their offerings.

</comment><comment><USER12> For me it just pulled up a bunch of photos of Steve from Blue's Clues..

</comment><comment><USER13> This is fascinating and well done. I wonder who is behind the site.

<comment><USER5> [https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/technology-53007510](https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/technology-53007510)

Looks to be based in Poland

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Lol not accurate at all. Nice try</comment>


Cyanogen partners with Microsoft to integrate Bing, other MS services - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/04/cyanogen-partners-with-microsoft-to-integrate-bing-other-ms-services/

<comment><USER2> Very interesting move, I think. It's going to be fun to watch someone take this theoretical road and actually try it.</comment>


Teensy weensy crypto - <AUTHOR> https://blog.goeswhere.com/2015/11/nano-rc4/ <comment><USER2> > With this (and your computer) you can secure a message with a password in a > way that's unbreakable. I can't break it, your government can't break it, > other people's governments can't break it. Secure.

Argh. No.

> Should you use it? No. There's many important missing features that are > present in proper symmetric encryption tools, such as proper key derivation, > protection against modification, IVs, and fewer bugs.

This (buried) warning makes these things sound like bells and whistles. The truth is they're essential to security.

Here are some good reasons not to use this for anything:

1\. It conflates passwords with keys. Users will not choose high-entropy passwords when left to their own devices.

2\. It doesn't take an IV. This means a given password will always generate the same key stream, which means password reuse will lead to plaintext recovery by simple statistical methods. There are no warnings about this.

3\. It's not authenticated. An attacker can modify messages in flight with unexpected consequences that very often include plaintext recovery.

4\. RC4 is irreparably broken. Dropping 1024 bytes from the key stream might help in the author's intended use-case (assuming users adhere to it), but this is not an effective mitigation in general. The best attacks on RC4 rely on periodic biases that persist over the entire key stream.

<comment><USER3> Right, but the goal isn't to make a strong or useful encryption tool. The goal is to show that cryptography is, at it's core, rather simple. It's simple enough that we can cram "real" symmetric encryption into the size of a tweet.

It's like building an electric motor out of some scrap wire and some fridge magnets - the motor isn't really useful for anything, but it teaches the basic idea in a way that anybody can appreciate. A useful motor would have bearings, a commutator, multiple windings, an iron core, etc., but adding all that stuff just obscures the basics. Criticizing a school-kid's motor for being weak and inefficient is completely missing the point.

This program isn't supposed to be useful. It's supposed to prove a point.

<comment><USER4> _Is RC4 secure? For this use-case, yes._

That was the point where I went to go write an HN comment, before seeing that Sean had already written it.

Is RC4 secure? No.

<comment><USER5> I initially thought the article was satire.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Surely some of the folks here also wore the Perl RSA implementation on a t-shirt back in the mid 90s:

[http://www.cypherspace.org/rsa/](http://www.cypherspace.org/rsa/)

A lot of comments here are talking about how the author is mistaken about the security of RC4.

The point of this post, and the t-shirt, is that it's dumb on many, many levels to ban cryptography.

<comment><USER7> It looks like this is the next step in the British tech community's long road of denial to hell: smug overconfidence tightly coupled with plain ignorance.

The blog post makes an absolute fundamental mistake about security in cryptography, and even when corrected you trivialise the correction! Let me make it absolutely clear: _the blog post author has no idea what he is talking about and his words disqualify themselves_.

"Is RC4 secure? For this use-case, yes."

This is absolutely _not_ an even faintly correct statement to make. NO IT IS NOT SECURE. When a cipher is developed, there is some belief on the cost of attacking it. As time goes on we gain more knowledge about it, and the believed cost for RC4 today is pretty much trivial. "Cost" refers to the cost of an attack, not the cost of research. What, you think that because the research (that has already been done) was hard, that attacks are hard? Classic naive "[in]security argument" fallacy. Also, what the fuck does it even mean to say "For this use-case" on a public blog???

There are actual formal precise definitions of "security" in crypto. Learn them. If you don't know them, you can't possibly hope to draw the correct conclusions about what cryptography actually is, and what one does with it, and you should not make wildly inaccurate public blog posts that only serve to further confirm the ignorants' own beliefs.

Yes, it is possible to make lives so hard for non-ignorant real cryptographers doing actual research, such that the economy effectively has no strong cryptography. Then you don't need to ban it outright. So dismissing this attempt by the UK government is extremely naive and dangerous.

But hey, this might backfire as good cryptographers leave the UK and head elsewhere, and the UK economy ends up with people that don't know shit about what security means.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> My initial disassembly: [https://gist.github.com/anonymous/af0d79474929340a7bf0](https://gist.github.com/anonymous/af0d79474929340a7bf0)

</comment><comment><USER9> Just in case anyone is tempted to actually use this and hasn't gotten the memo: RC4 is broken and has been for some time now.

<comment><USER10> Let's say you wanted to implement a more modern, not (yet?) broken algorithm instead of RC4. Are there any which could fit into a similarly small amount of code?

<comment><USER11> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speck_%28cipher%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speck_%28cipher%29)

Speck's pretty nice and tiny, but who knows if it's backdoored or not :)

<comment><USER10> That is a pretty sweet reference implementation. Thanks for the link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The writer of this is confused. The UK politicians don't care about whether something is trivial or not, all they want is to ban it.

Sort of like making a fire is trivial, and it's illegal to do so in many places.

<comment><USER13> This isn't about the triviality of implementing rc4, it's about the absurdity of banning information in a general sense.

Information can be copied at zero cost, transmitted instantly over vast distances, and stored permanently and undetectably in the human brain. Information spreads like a virus in a very literal sense - you overhear a scrap of plot and suddenly a whole film is spoiled. Trying to ban information is a futile as trying to arrest people for catching influenza. This isn't like banning campfires, or even like banning firemaking implements, it's like banning the very idea of fire.

<comment><USER12> Again you are missing the point.

We see it that way, they don't. We certainly won't win this battle by trying to teach them information theory (good luck! :) )

<comment><USER14> I don't agree at all, I would even think that you are missing the point by saying "they don't see it that way". Well, they don't see it that way because they are ignorant. I agree with the author: Finding a way to communicate this, to educate the ignorant (politicians and voters both) is in fact the crucial battle right now.

Whether this little technical demonstration does that or not... well, we'll see. But I absolutely can't fault the effort.

<comment><USER14> Responding to your edit, "We certainly won't win this battle by trying to teach them information theory (good luck! :) )":

I think your goalposts are shifting here. A simple example that is easy to spread and easy to demonstrate sounds at least plausible. It certainly doesn't sound to me like teaching them information theory, it sounds more like a challenge: "How will your laws prevent me doing _this_?" Perhaps they'll block Twitter too?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > As the UK's politicians continue to fail to understand what "strong > cryptography" or "banning" even mean, I thought I would have a look at how > simple strong cryptography can be.

Not that I think it's a good idea or believe they have a good understanding of cryptography but: if they are being rational about it, I'm guessing they think making strong cryptography less convenient will lead to less encrypted communications between parties they're interesting in snooping on. In this case, WhatsApp would be a considerably more convenient to use than using DOSBox.

<comment><USER16> Yes, the UK gov argument is basically "You can keep your PGP, just run Gmail, Facebook, Skype, etc over HTTP - or at least let us automatically remove the HTTPS encryption for anyone we want in real-time".

They want it this way because:

1) many people will indeed slip when using whatever left is there of "strong encryption" afterwards, especially if it's hard to use - that's _pretty good_ for the UK gov.

2) while they may care about terrorists and whatnot, they care at least as much about spying on many of the people who will never use PGP or even Signal, so again this plan is _perfect_ for them in this regard.

<comment><USER17> In fact, this plan's _only purpose_ is average-citizenry monitoring. Terrorists and child pornographers already have such an understanding of how to use crypto (or how not use electronic communications at all, like Osama staying offline most of the time -- this is also what mafia bosses do, btw) that they will be completely unaffected. If that weren't the case, bombs would be going off every day all over Britain, and they just don't.

The Snooper's Charter exists just to keep uppity citizens and low-rent drug dealers under control.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wouldn't Solitaire [1] be a better argument (of this vein) against banning encryption? It's reasonably strong and doesn't even require a computer. Much more practically memorized.

[1] [https://www.schneier.com/solitaire.html](https://www.schneier.com/solitaire.html)

</comment><comment><USER19> This reminds me a little of [edge|base|corner] cases in programming. It's easy to handle normal parameters. But if you're at or beyond the limits of expected parameters, then what? If you ignore [edge|base|corner] cases, you run the risk of enacting a bad law.

So if a government wishes to restrict encryption, does that mean criminalizing only the distribution of commercial products with strong crypto? Or knowing possession of them? How about if you distribute free software? Possess free software? How about distributing an algorithm that's printed out? On a t-shirt? Set to music? In a sonnet? On a blackboard in a math lecture?

A crypto-ban proposal discussed in the U.S. Congress stopped short at targeting possession, but did target "import[ing]," which presumably would include downloading from an offshore site:

 _" It shall be unlawful for any person to manufacture for distribution, distribute, or import encryption products intended for sale or use in the United States..."_ [http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi- bin/cpquery/T?&report=hr108p4&dbna...](http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi- bin/cpquery/T?&report=hr108p4&dbname=105&)

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm unsure why all the ranting against DOSbox - why not just run MS-DOS in a VM? what are you gaining out of using DOSbox, aside from copy-paste support?</comment>


What Every Software Developer Must Know About Unicode (2003) - <AUTHOR> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html# <comment><USER2> This article deals mostly with Windows and is from 2003 so it fails to emphasise the current standard practice as much as it should:

        Use UTF-8 everywhere you can.

UTF-8 is:

* the most backwards compatible (can be passed through many tools intended for ASCII-only with a few limitations – including avoiding composed latin glyphs)

* most likely to give an appropriate result if the end-user incorrectly interprets it

* the most space efficient encoding (on average)

* avoids endianness problems

* de-facto encoding for most Mac and Linux C APIs

* verifiable with a high degree of accuracy (unlike many other encodings which can't be verified at all)

Specifically:

* If you have to pick an encoding, always try to use UTF-8 unless you're only storing text to pass into an API which requires something different.

* The Winapi (aka Win32) is the only commonly used API that regularly requires something other than UTF-8 (the Windows Unicode APIs use UTF-16 – not UCS-2 as indicated in the Spolsky article). Windows' UTF-16 requirement a pain for platform independence -- be careful. However, you should still aim to use UTF-8 for all text files on Windows and only use UTF-16 for the Windows API calls (never use the locale specific non-Unicode encodings).

* There are a few language+environment combinations that literally _can 't_ open Unicode filenames. These include MinGW C++ which has no platform independent way of opening file streams with unicode filenames. You need to fall back to C _wfopen and UTF-16 to open files correctly.

Note: you don't always have to choose the encoding. e.g. the Mac class NSString or the C# String class use UTF-16 internally, you don't normally need to care what they do internally since any time you access the internal characters, you specify the desired encoding. You should usually extract characters in UTF-8.

<comment><USER3> Agreed with what you wrote except "the most backwards compatible (can be passed through many tools intended for ASCII-only)"... That amounts to knowingly sweep bugs under the rug.

If a tool is intended for ascii-only, don't pass it utf-8 strings. Else, you'll probably expose yourself to malformed utf-8 strings and potential problems (e.g. php's mysql_escape vs mysql_real_escape).

<comment><USER4> Technically, it's not that it can be passed through tools intended for ASCII only. It can be passed through tools which assume an ASCII compatible character set (character set for which ASCII is a subset), which are 8 bit clean, and which don't make incorrect assumptions about being able to truncate strings at arbitrary points and be left with two valid strings.

Which is actually generally true of any tools which had been internationalized with legacy, pre-Unicode character sets like the ISO 8859 series.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A good summary, but for one imortant detail: In UTF-16, some code points (laying on the so-called "astral planes", ie not on the "basic multilingual plane") take 32 bits.

The Emoji, for example, lie on the first higher plane: 🍒🎄🐰🚴. Firefox and Safari display them properly, Chrome doesn't, no idea for IE and Opera.

UCS-2 is a strict 16-bit encoding (a subset of UTF-16), and it cannot represent all characters.

It is the encoding used by JavaScript, which can be problematic when double width characters are used. For example, `"🐙🐚🐛🐜🐝🐞🐟".length` is 14 even though there are only seven characters, and you could slice that string in the middle of a character.

<comment><USER6> I wonder how hard it'd be to get JavaScript/ECMAScript onto a better encoding.. Do we actually have a "better" encoding?

<comment><USER7> Depends what you mean by "better". UTF-8 generally ends up using fewer bytes to represent the same string than UTF-16, unless you're using certain characters a lot (e.g. for asian languages), so it's a candidate, but it's not like you could just flip a switch and make all javascript use UTF-8.

<comment><USER8> I think the size issue is a red herring. UTF-8 wins some, UTF-16 wins others, but either encoding is acceptable. There is no clear winner here so we should look at other properties.

UTF-8 is more reliable, because mishandling variable-length characters is more obvious. In UTF-16 it's easy to write something that works with the BMP and call it good enough. Even worse, you may not even know it fails above the BMP, because those characters are so rare you might never test with them. But in UTF-8, if you screw up multi-byte characters, any non-ASCII character will trigger the bug, and you will fix your code more quickly.

Also, UTF-8 does not suffer from endianness issues like UTF-16 does. Few people use the BOM and no one likes it. And most importantly, UTF-8 is compatible with ASCII.

<comment><USER9> There is absolutely no situation in which UTF-16 wins over UTF-8, because of the surrogate pairs required. That makes both encodings variable length.

UTF-32 is probably what you're thinking of.

<comment><USER8> I know that both encodings are variable-length. That is the issue I am trying to address.

My point is that in UTF-16 it's too easy to ignore surrogate pairs. Lots of UTF-16 software fails to handle variable-length characters because they are so rare. But in UTF-8 you can't ignore multi-byte characters without obvious bugs. These bugs are noticed and fixed more quickly than UTF-16 surrogate pair bugs. This makes UTF-8 more reliable.

I am not sure why you think I am advocating UTF-16. I said almost nothing good about it.

<comment><USER10> Bugs in UTF-8 handling of multibyte sequences need not be obvious. Google "CAPEC-80."

UTF-16 has an advantage in that there's fewer failure modes, and fewer ways for a string to be invalid.

edit: As for surrogate pairs, this is an issue, but I think it's overstated. A naïve program may accidentally split a UTF-16 surrogate pair, but that same program is just as liable to accidentally split a decomposed character sequence in UTF-8. You have to deal with those issues regardless of encoding.

<comment><USER11> > A naïve program may accidentally split a UTF-16 surrogate pair, but that > same program is just as liable to accidentally split a decomposed character > sequence in UTF-8. You have to deal with those issues regardless of > encoding.

The point is that using UTF-8 makes these issues more obvious. Most programmers these days think to test with non-ascii characters. Fewer think to test with astral characters.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Crocodoc (YC W10) Closes Angel Round, Launches New Document Collaboration Tools - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/14/crocodoc-edit-pdf-online/

<comment><USER2> I wonder how crocodoc would behave if we integrated with HN so that each HN user showed up in crocodoc (and anonymous users were unable to comment)...

<comment><USER3> this would be really handy for the "review my startup" style posts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's an example of what we mean by document collaboration: <http://crocodoc.com/O3Za0>.

This is a link a snapshot of our newest homepage. What do you guys think of it? Critics welcomed.

<comment><USER5> The horizontal scrollbar covers part of the document (even when scrolled all the way down).</comment></comment>


How technology disrupted the truth - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/12/how-technology-disrupted-the-trutht <comment><AUTHOR> As I'd just commented on another HN article, the answer to crap on the Web is not simply blocking ads. That's a necessary but not sufficient condition. A media environment based on eyeballs and clickthroughs, on weaponised viral clickbait, and without sufficient reputation management tools _especially_ for adherence to truth and relevance on the part of authors and publishers, is destroying the primary function of media _of telling true and relevant facts_. The consequences for a democratic society, predicated on an informed, educated, and thoughtful public (and some rightfully add: a politically and economically enfranchised one), is enormous.

From Viner's excellent essay, you'll find the lede buried in the middle: "Increasingly, what counts as a fact is merely a view that someone feels to be true – and technology has made it very easy for these "facts" to circulate with a speed and reach that was unimaginable in the Gutenberg era (or even a decade ago). A dubious story about Cameron and a pig appears in a tabloid one morning, and by noon, it has flown around the world on social media and turned up in trusted news sources everywhere. This may seem like a small matter, but its consequences are enormous."

</comment><comment><USER2> Broken link. [https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/12/how- technology...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/12/how-technology- disrupted-the-truth)</comment>


The Problem Is Capitalism - <AUTHOR> https://www.monbiot.com/2019/04/30/the-problem-is-capitalism/ <comment><USER2> Ok, so this makes a lot of sense, but let's get real - the chance of a wholesale change to economic fundamentals is very close to zero. Look at who is getting elected lately.

Mitigating Capitalism's greater evils seems like the only feasible option. The two things that stand out are stopping the incredible concentration of wealth in single entities (eg Saudi Arabia), and preventing perverse economic incentives (see American Health system).

<comment><USER3> Saudi Arabia isn't a single entity.

Just like "America" isn't.

But yes... we do need to deal with the 1% issue that is overbalancing the system

<comment><USER2> "Saudi Arabia is an autocratic absolute monarchy."

\- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabia#Politics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabia#Politics)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are plenty of towns and villages where people can live in the economic conditions of the 1800s or 1900s. Almost no one chooses to do so.

Economic growth is overall strongly correlated with human prosperity, higher life-expectancies, and higher standard of living. If we ever do run low on a natural resource, capitalism softens the blow by gradually increasing prices, thereby increasing incentives for finding an alternative.

<comment><USER5> ... Until there are no more alternatives

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> While I tentatively agree that its a problem, viewing Earth as our only finite resource is not entirely correct either.

Capitalism will be what pushes us to the infinite resources of space.... then I imagine it'll run into new problems that no one has yet realized they need to solve problems for. I'd rather have a reliable, tried and tested capitalism (devil we know) to deal with the the new issues Space will present than some fledgling new system.

<comment><USER5> Space is almost certainly permanently inhospitable to what we call life. Apart from far flung oasises like Earth. Which would likely require entire star systems worth of resources and eons of time to send anything tangible between them.

<comment><USER6> I would generally agree with your second point; without a fundamental change in our understanding of physics, interstellar travel is unlikely. But I don't really follow the logic of your first point, earth is just one of many bodies _in space_. What exactly would make orbital habitats, Lunar or Martian colonies, Martian terraforming, etc, fundamentally impossible?

Also, in regards to "what we call life", I would note we are already familiar with organisms that can survive in space (tardigrades), and our rapidly growing knowledge of biology and genetics opens a future in which we may be able to apply biological changes that would allow us to thrive in a wider range of environments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Capitalism's failures arise from two of its defining elements. The first is > perpetual growth.

It's not just perpetual, but exponential. However it has nothing to do with capitalism. How do free markets and private ownership over the means of production demand perpetual growth?

It's our monetary system which demands this growth. Bitcoiners have been harping about this for years, but that message tends to get lost in zealotry.

As long as you have a debt-based monetary system and a central bank that targets 2% inflation per year, you can happily have a communist economy that requires the same exponential growth. And similarly that would not be the fault of communism.

<comment><USER8> The perpetual growth per se is not a defining element of capitalism but a consequence of something else:

The ongoing struggle to compete for profit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Well there is a simple counter for this issue with the continuous growth requirement. Expand to space.

<comment><USER10> A constant growth rate requires exponential growth. Expansion into space is O(t^3) because you're limited by the speed of light in each of 3 spatial dimensions. Therefore, while expansion into space could buy us some more time, it's not a sustainable solution either.

<comment><USER9> I am not sure how this is relevant. Operate a large interstellar empire with slower than light space travel. The limits that article is alking about are there because Earth has its limits. Most of those limits are related to production of products and energy. If you could solve these outside of Earth (not even outside of the solar system) you are already in a much better position.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This man, is a complete nutcase. Japan and China didnt build their wealth on slavery. Neither did the arabic countries. Even though they got as many slaves as the americas (look it up). They still have modern slavery btw. The author belong to a group og greedy envious people. We should tax the 1%... Are you in IT? then chances are high that you yourself belong to the top 1% richest persons in the world. Now, consider how much you think rich people should pat more, then donate a proportional amount from your own income...</comment>


Ask HN: How common are stock bonuses/grants at publicly-traded firms? - <AUTHOR> This practice is very common at GOOG, FB, and AMZN, but what about publicly traded companies in general? Does this happen at banks, and other more traditional firms, etc.? Or is this more of a tech/silicon valley thing? <comment><USER2> This is much more a tech thing than it is a BigCo thing.

Finance is a funny duck; they historically allocate a _huge_ percentage of revenue to variable employee compensation, but it is not generally issued as stock. Note that "finance" is a bit bigger than "banks" \-- the Banking Associates or whatever they call them at Bank of America are not receiving either huge stock awards or huge bonuses.

Elsewhere in the economy, many companies have employee stock-ownership plans where they will facilitate employees purchasing the stock at market or at a slight discount to market (which is, effectively, compensation if the plan allows you to sell shares immediately), but rather few issue meaningful amounts of compensation in shares.

</comment><comment><USER3> A large portion of Apple employees get them, to some extent: [http://9to5mac.com/2015/10/14/tim-cook-memo-apple- launches-r...](http://9to5mac.com/2015/10/14/tim-cook-memo-apple-launches-rsu- shares-program-for-all-employees-to-retain-talent/)

</comment><comment><USER4> It happens for managers and executives. Equity sharing with individual contributors is very much a Silicon Valley innovation, although over the years options/rsus have filtered down from senior management and become a standard part of the middle-management and even line management comp packages at old- school public companies.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm in finance. As a developer, I get hugely variable company performance dependent bonuses (10-30% of salary). Executives get a similar deal, but the percent bonus doubled or higher.</comment>


3-D printer with nano-precision sets world record - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/emergingtech/3-d-printer-with-nano-precision-sets-world-record/3187

<comment><USER2> Breaking news of a world record isn't really that spectacular to me if it's a year old. Especially in a business growing as quickly as 3D printing. Is there something we're supposed to comment on specifically?

</comment><comment><USER3> This article is a year old...</comment>


What's the return on investment for supporting open source? - <AUTHOR> http://divio.ch/en/blog/why-we-support-open-source-software/

<comment><USER2> I love python community, but i always thought that it is built only on people's enthusiasm...

<comment><USER3> It's hard to be enthusiastic if you don't have a job that pays you enough and gives you enough free time in which to be enthusiastic. Enthusiasm is a luxury!

Even if people start out being enthusiastic when building open-source projects, they quickly lose the enthusiasm if when they are faced with an on- going choice between working for nothing and earning a living.

Most successful open-source software contributors have decently-paid jobs. The people who don't get paid enough are too busy struggling to earn a living to work for nothing on top of that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Definitely, there are some valid points!

</comment><comment><USER5> thanks to all companies supporting open source software!

</comment><comment><USER6> Very interesting!

</comment><comment><USER7> Good read!</comment>


Facebook suggesting security app – it secretly owns – that tracks usage - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/12/facebook-promoting-onavo-protect-without-disclosing-ownership.html <comment><USER2> So, your're in the Facebook app, and all other links in the menu that houses "protect" lead you to Facebook properties. Why is there an expectation for this one link to lead you elsewhere?

As for the permissions, that's an Android thing - many apps request all sorts of permissions. One generally needs to be vigilant about granting them. You can always disable permissions, once installed.

I'm not for privacy invasion, but this article suggests misdirection and deceit from Facebook. I disagree

<comment><USER3> There seems to be a VPN element too, which is being discussed here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16363694](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16363694)

<comment><USER4> Looks like they're trying to get for free, all that information your ISP is collecting about every website you visit, that the FCC gave the go ahead to resell. While also cutting the ISPs out of the equation.

[https://gizmodo.com/do-not-i-repeat-do-not-download-onavo- fa...](https://gizmodo.com/do-not-i-repeat-do-not-download-onavo-facebook-s- vam-1822937825)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Secretly? [http://www.onavo.com/about/](http://www.onavo.com/about/) first paragraph</comment>


Sunscreen Chemicals Soak All the Way into Your Bloodstream - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/sunscreen-chemicals-soak-all-the-way-into-your-bloodstream/ <comment><USER2> The best sun protection is still to _go out in the sun_ for a few minutes each day.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Now, don't panic and toss your tubes. There's no evidence yet that they're doing anything harmful inside the body."</comment>


Best-designed websites by popular vote - it's like Hot or Not for web design - <AUTHOR> http://commandshift3.com <comment><USER2> More comments on resubmission:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=88726>

</comment><comment><USER3> pxigorth, why did you submit this site? now I can't stop clicking!

:P</comment>


Press X to continue – the hedonic treadmill - <AUTHOR> http://www.kmeme.com/2015/12/press-x-to-continue.html <comment><USER2> Basic problem with video games: output keeps getting better, but input doesn't. Moving and shooting work well. Everything else is hard.

Even the Kinect, which is an impressive technical achievement, hasn't helped much. Probably the most successful nonstandard input device is the guitar for Guitar Hero/Rock Band games.</comment>


Develop Web Components and Use Them with Angular and ReactJS - <AUTHOR> An interesting talk about building a simple button web component with Custom Elements v1 and Shadow DOM v1 API and also consuming it in Angular & ReactJS.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71JdaRofCgA&t=396s
https://github.com/mappmechanic/super-button-web-component <comment><USER2> super talk! & simple to understand!</comment>


Problematic business relationships – part 2: the cult of the one big client - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/problematic-business-relationships-part-2-the-cult-of-the-one-big-client-aff671cc14ea <comment><AUTHOR> Part one here (HN): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9484840](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9484840)</comment>