How we built the Waifu Vending Machine - <AUTHOR> https://waifulabs.com/blog/ax <comment><USER3> I am trying out the app at [https://waifulabs.com/](https://waifulabs.com/) and the art style is kind of one-note. Most of the expressions are the same and the face shape skews towards loli.

I am more into "disgusted anime girl that looks at you like you're trash" type and I couldn't find a waifu (even with their refinement steps).

Really impressed that this is even possible though!

<comment><USER4> I've played with it a few times. It seems like they have you choose features in the space in the order of base -> palette -> art style (loosely) -> pose, but have locked some emotion controlling vector to be happy. Probably a reasonable step for their audience.

<comment><USER5> I think a large majority of anime art have happy expressions, so it might not have been anything that they had to do.

Edit: "disgusted anime girl that looks at you like you're trash" is the theme of a recent book that got adapted into anime, so it's a bit of a fad currently. I thought that was worth mentioning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The tech is interesting, but the concept and naming is pretty creepy. _Waifu_ , from "wife", is anime slang for female cartoon characters that people get romantically attracted to.

[https://www.dictionary.com/e/fictional- characters/waifu/](https://www.dictionary.com/e/fictional-characters/waifu/)

<comment><USER7> I guess it's creepy in a similar way as people shooting other people virtually (in shooter video games), though a making a waifu "vending machine" adds another angle of objectification to it.

<comment><USER8> I don't think the point is to objectify. I think it's the opposite. It's turning objects into something that satisfies yearnings for human company, sometimes replacing it and sometimes in addition to it. It's like listening to music often because you want to hear human voices. And one big name, Hatsune Miku, is a virtual pop star with a synthesized voice, which is based on female human voices, even though it isn't based on a single human voice.

As globalization moves on there are more and more people without romantic partners and/or close friends nearby and they'll use their imagination to fulfill desires they're missing.

<comment><USER9> Miku is absolutely based on one and only one person: Fujita Saki. Though the two don't sound like each other.

Also, just cause you find it creepy doesn't mean it's reciprocated by everyone else in the world. Besides, the usage in that booth was very tongue in cheek.

<comment><USER5> The creepy thing is funny because nerds fawning over stylized drawings is just about the most innocuous thing there is

<comment><USER6> Until things like this happen:

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

<comment><USER10> Ah, yes, surely this man killed and raped little girls because he was influenced by cartoons, and not because he was born with a deformity into one of the most collectivist societies on earth and then ostracized for his entire life. We're so lucky that sexually normative people never rape or kill anyone.

Sarcasm aside, this is one of the many, many examples of choosing a scapegoat to frame an entire sexuality, race, or any group of people with a common interest as evil while completely ignoring any and all context. People are not animals and possess some degree of responsibility and the ability to tell reality from fiction. Unless someone presents some hard evidence that stylized drawings lead to actual attacks against real children (and to my knowledge, this simply is not true; in fact, it's easy to argue the opposite) we need to stop with this puritan outrage like we stopped blaming computer games for any and all violent crime back in the late 90s.

<comment><USER6> Yes, it's a textbook example of moral panic and the WP article says so. I was primarily pointing out that to most people, especially in Japan, the image of "nerds fawning over stylized drawings" sounds about as innocuous as "Catholic priests fawning over little choir boys".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also: [https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/ch0qms/p_d...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/ch0qms/p_decomposing_latent_space_to_generate_custom/)

<comment><USER11> Looks like you're the creator so as some feedback it'd be nice to see a simple outline of the steps with "inactive" styling, the step you're currently on as bold (maybe with an arrow in from of it?), and as you go through it the previous steps have a checkmark appear next to it (and possibly go back to "inactive" styling).

The steps could be something like this: (1) Select character, (2) Select colors, (3) Select outfit, (4) Select pose

The reason I suggest this is I was a little confused on what the options were, what my future options would be, and how many options are left.

<comment><AUTHOR> To clarify, I'm not the creator.

Sizigi Studios uses a dataset I put together ([https://www.gwern.net/Danbooru2018](https://www.gwern.net/Danbooru2018)) as their primary training corpus, AFAIK, and they were partially inspired by my application of GANs to anime art (as demonstrated on [https://www.thiswaifudoesnotexist.net/](https://www.thiswaifudoesnotexist.net/) and see [https://www.gwern.net/Faces](https://www.gwern.net/Faces) for much more detail about every aspect of it), but I have never been involved with them and don't know much about what they've done other than what you can read in OP. It tickles me pink to see people following up on my anime GANs, though, especially as a startup! The Great Work goes on.

<comment><USER12> One of the creators here -- gathering the Danbooru data in one place was definitely a big help! Anime's been a pretty nice space (both personally and research-wise) especially due to the abundance of data online, and it's great that we no longer have to manually scrape image hosts (which I've spent many hours doing in the past @ [https://github.com/kvfrans/deepcolor](https://github.com/kvfrans/deepcolor), [https://canvasdrawer.autodeskresearch.com/](https://canvasdrawer.autodeskresearch.com/) etc).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Random semi-useful idea: use an SSH public key as input, giving a very memorable image for verification.

I could also see something like this having applications in [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identicon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identicon) generation.

<comment><USER14> that's exactly (in ascii, that is) the idea behind randomart, eg

        The key fingerprint is:
        SHA256:s6N0OwlTDKjDez98kZRwUGZbTYaQUArv+EYC6sigFwA ben@eshwil
        The key's randomart image is:
        +---[RSA 2048]----+
        |E   ..o=*o.+o    |
        |.   .oo+oo...    |
        |....  o=..       |
        | o+. o  =        |
        |o .oo ooS.       |
        |* ...+o oo       |
        |oo.. o+o+o       |
        | .   o+o+o       |
        |      .o..       |
        +----[SHA256]-----+

(from [https://blog.benjojo.co.uk/post/ssh-randomart-how-does-it- wo...](https://blog.benjojo.co.uk/post/ssh-randomart-how-does-it-work-art) )

<comment><USER5> Why don't we combine those ideas and use ascii waifus?

(yes, that's a thing)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm not sure how you're shipping your posters, but here's a tip:

When shipping posters, use triangle tubes, not circular tubes, it saves you money.

[0] [https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6549769...](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6549769659112054784/)

<comment><USER16> I suggest using the money saved to include some chocolate, so people aren't disappointed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm actually really surprised no one did this sooner. I also wish they had posted revenue figures for the two days.

To other people doing this in the future: bring (or order) a fat battery pack with an AC outlet for $100 so you don't have to keep swapping laptops and can use a mobile hotspot all day.

<comment><USER18> It looks like they did have these. In one of their pictures there was a stack of Anker PowerHouse power banks/battery packs.

<comment><USER12> Yeah the two batteries we lugged down to AX ended up saving the day a couple of times!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would love to replicate this. It looks like the dataset is open source. [https://www.gwern.net/Danbooru2018](https://www.gwern.net/Danbooru2018)

I don't have a sense for hardware requirements though. Does anyone have a good idea of how much time and money it would take to train such a model?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm glad you asked: [https://www.gwern.net/Faces#compute](https://www.gwern.net/Faces#compute) Figure a few GPU-weeks and a few hundred dollars if you want to go from scratch.

<comment><USER3> I saw the section about not training from scratch (via transfer learning) in [https://www.gwern.net/Faces#transfer- learning](https://www.gwern.net/Faces#transfer-learning). The Holo example is really impressive!

How expensive is it in terms of labelled data and compute? Do you know if anyone tried this for just ahegao faces?

<comment><AUTHOR> > How expensive is it in terms of labelled data and compute?

All the stuff you see in that page (except the BigGAN ones) is unconditional, no labels. You just dump the images in and it figures it out. StyleGAN does support labels via one-hot embedding as I understand it, but I don't know how to use it so none of my experiments use it. A few people have mentioned or used it, but there's no good documentation about how to make it work, so... For unconditional samples, it depends on how many you have and how different they are. You can see in the various examples transfer learning with a few hundred to a few thousand (with and without data augmentation).

> Do you know if anyone tried this for just ahegao faces?

It's funny you ask that because I was corresponding with an anonymous who was using it for just that (and ball gags). He'd run into some issues with the encoder/editing functionality and wanted advice, but the regular transfer learning worked fine. He'd compiled a small dataset of a few hundred to a few thousand examples on his own, and it worked disturbingly well: sufficiently so I didn't want to write it up. (I try to keep my site SFW.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One of the creators here, the team at Sizigi and I are glad to answer any questions!

<comment><USER19> Great work! Do you have any thoughts to share on the future of this area? Anything specific with this project, future projects you might work on, or just the idea of profiting from AI-generated art to begin with?

<comment><USER20> Nothing specific so far. We did this because we thought it would be very cool :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> All that drawing and character design practice for nothing I guess.

<comment><USER21> These things are pretty damn impressive, but I would guess like self driving cars, we're pretty far away from them displacing humans at the same task. It does seem like technology in this vein could be used to help the creative process, though on that note it's only as good as its data set, which is of course something a human has to handle for now.

Even if robots replace human illustration in short order, it will probably never stop being a fun hobby, and I imagine neural networks were bound to be at least involved in the process at some point. People still draw on paper even though it's hard to argue against the benefits of modern digital drawing.

<comment><USER5> >I would guess like self driving cars, we're pretty far away from them displacing humans at the same task

That does NOT make me happy. Self-driving cars are just around the corner!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> PSA: I get a horrific 5 GB< memory leak immediately upon opening the tool's page.

</comment><comment><USER23> Neat but lacks variety(all same pose and template) and too little steps to select. Resolution of final image is too low. I think same thing could be done with human images, if you can make it 7-10 selection steps(to pinpoint more fine features).

</comment><comment><USER24> Reminds me of the Deep Learning work from StyleGAN.

[https://twitter.com/_Ryobot/status/1096565388165300225](https://twitter.com/_Ryobot/status/1096565388165300225)

<comment><AUTHOR> One of the inspirations: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20511824](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20511824)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Neato. What are the copyright implications of commercializing this though?

<comment><AUTHOR> Should be safe, modulo issues about software patents: [https://www.gwern.net/Faces#faq](https://www.gwern.net/Faces#faq)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Lobster _is_ the neue Comic Sans... although maybe it's just carrying over the tongue in cheek cheese further.

</comment><comment><USER27> The dataset this is built from ([https://www.gwern.net/Danbooru2018](https://www.gwern.net/Danbooru2018)) is, simply put, copyright-infringing on a gross scale. The vast majority of the images uploaded to 'boorus' completely lack a compatible license or the artist's express consent. The redistribution via torrent of 2.5 TB of some 3 million images only compounds this problem. None of this is ameliorated by the $20 'generosity' of the dataset creator.

As a result, every single artist whose work was included in that dataset has a clear, meaningful claim that each and every 'waifu' sold ($20, if customized, or $5 if random) by Sizigi Studios is an infringing derivative work. Coupled with at least one of the project authors' ready admissions -- in this very comment section -- of scraping image sites himself, I would say that this team is playing with fire. Even in the case that an algorithm's output is somehow found to be 'creative' rather than mechanistic, AND this specific application is found to be in all cases substantially transformative, there's STILL the original massive 2.5 TB of copyright infringement up front to deal with.

All an enterprising lawyer would need to begin is to search the BigQuery metadata for the 'artist' and 'copyright' tags on these images. Note of course that the 'copyright' tag is widely misused on boorus and similar image repositories to refer to the inspiring franchise; 'trademark' would be much more accurate descriptor.

EDIT: I do not mean to suggest that litigation from the use of the dataset in this ML (as opposed to the original, clearly infringing, download & redistribution) would in any way be an easy, one-sided case --- only that this scenario would represent nearly the worst possible test case imaginable for determining the future legality of ML, short of directly antagonizing the RIAA or MPAA.

<comment><USER28> The model they use is simply a large matrix of numbers. What copyright infringement is there?

<comment><USER29> Can one make a one-to-one correspondence of such numbers to a copyrighted work of art?

<comment><USER28> The way these types of networks function results in the generation of wholly unique, never before seen images. I guarantee you will never find a single copyrighted work of art that is generated by a model like this.

<comment><USER29> It seems then that the closest analog is the network is a derived work then.

<comment><USER30> Arguably it's a derived work in the same way that a person developing a taste for art after looking at thousands of images and then going and painting their own original creation is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> ..ick

</comment><comment><USER32> I don't care about the how, why the hell would you?

<comment><USER33> This is normal per course for anime subculture today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Frankly, I refuse to believe so many people on HN have the kind of scruples about or lack of exposure to this part of AmerOtaku culture. As such, I believe many of the comments are simply 2nd-degree trolling.

Also, the post title is misspelled. It's "building", not "builing".

<comment><USER3> I think I refused to believe it too until reddit, a San Francisco company, started banning people for posting fictional high school anime characters in bikinis (not even nudes).

<comment><USER35> I'm not quite sure what point you're trying to make here. But it sounds like you're trying to say the sexual objectification of children is okay, as long as they are fictional children with a tiny amount of body covering. Is that what you meant, or did you mean something else?

<comment><USER36> What do we mean by "okay"? How do we differentiate virtual murder (for example) from virtual pedophilia in a sufficiently rigorous way? You can say that rigor isn't required beacuse Reddit can make whatever choices they like, but it's not at all clear that the necessary connection for sexual objectification _of children_ is made when these images are posted - <USER2> presupposes that the viewer sees the image and real children in the same light, which current evidence gathered of Japanese fan communities does not support (see Galbraith and McLelland's work on this). This is why researchers in the field are sometimes skeptical about calling this material "child pornography".

Morally, one can differentiate between virtual murder and virtual pedophilia and condemn virtual pedophilia while consistently enjoying games and other media depicting murder - but as Gary Young pointed out in his piece on the Gamer's Dilemma, it requires us to accept moral relativism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Walk up to the station, and you'll be greeted with a quick array of girls. After each step, the booth narrows your choices -- eventually leading to a final screen, where you can "adopt" the girl on the spot.

Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.

<comment><USER5> The world isn't going to end because of war or famine or anything like that, but because humans will be too infatuated with their artificial partners to bother reproducing.

<comment><USER38> Not even an artificial problem: [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/27/japan- shrinkin...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/27/japan-shrinking-as- birthrate-falls-to-lowest-level-in-history)

<comment><USER39> I want to point out that the linked article is hyperbolic (as most "Japanese people aren't having kids/sex/etc." articles are), and its title is outright misleading.

It claims that Japan has the lowest birth rate ever. And while it may have the lowest _number_ of births, that is to be expected in any country with a birth rate below replacement - I.e basically the entire developed world.

In fact, as opposed to the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, Japan's fertility rate has actually been _increasing_ for some years now. See details here: [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNTFRTINJPN](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNTFRTINJPN)

I really wish this meme would die, but it obviously drives clicks so people keep publishing it.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for this.

It seems to have started going up in 2005. That's really interesting and unexpected. Has anyone proposed an explanation? I know they've been trying to encourage people to form families for a while. Maybe some of their measures have worked?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> A lot of these look like children. Nowhere in the article is it mentioned that a lot of these look like children. No one in the comments has brought up that a lot of these look like children. A lot of these look like children.

<comment><USER41> You must be new to Japanese culture.

<comment><USER42> Note that this isn't actual Japanese culture; it's made by an SF-based game studio [[https://sizigistudios.com/](https://sizigistudios.com/)] for an expo in LA [[http://www.anime-expo.org/](http://www.anime-expo.org/)].

<comment><USER43> However, much of the training data is likely to be of Japanese origin.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


CA11 – WebRTC softphone - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/garage11/ca11 <comment><USER2> to author: quickstart guide not working, garage11 page shows 502.

I am working on something VERY similar. However, in my architecture I have a backend server that does the signaling with the remote part. So Bob uses web client to send info to whom it needs to connect, say Alice (you can use a custom protocol or SIP over Websockets here, doesn't make any difference since the external parties don't interact with that part), the server forwards that to Alice.

I haven't seen the documentation of CA11, docs site is down as I said, but from what I understand it provides only the web client part. So, if Bob and Alice run only their web client how do they reach each other ?</comment>


Facebook phone numbers for 2FA can be searched and there's no way to disable it - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/jeremyburge/status/1101402001907372032 <comment><USER2> Threader link: [https://threader.app/thread/1101402001907372032](https://threader.app/thread/1101402001907372032)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a gaf where you can see the greed, malice and idiocy so clearly...</comment>


Ask HN: If you were asked to design Mathematics courses - <AUTHOR> Hello Everyone!
Say, you were asked to design Mathematics courses for children aged 5 to 18. How would you design the courses? What would you include in these courses at each year?
I am also interested in hearing from participants on this forum who think that they are not mathematically inclined or have a fear for mathematics; it will be fantastic information to understand how you will design the courses so that it is made more accessible to all.
Thank you! <comment><USER2> I would start by largely imitating the courses that already exist in the country of Singapore. They are pretty good examples of international best practice, and they are available in English, the language of school instruction in Singapore.

[https://www.singaporemath.com/Singapore_Math_s/331.htm](https://www.singaporemath.com/Singapore_Math_s/331.htm)</comment>


Petition to prosecute James Clapper for lying to Congress - <AUTHOR> https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/prosecute-director-national-intelligence-james-clapper-lying-congress/HNfsgGlm

<comment><USER2> Although I fully support Clappers prosecution, his attorney is just going to say that he was protecting ongoing classified Government secrets, and the entire case will be dismissed.

<comment><USER3> _As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Wyden had been briefed on the top-secret-plus programs that we now all know about. That is, he knew that he was putting Clapper in a box; He knew that the true answer to his question was "Yes," but he also knew that Clapper would have a hard time saying so without making headlines._ [0]

That makes it sound like Wyden was attempting to force Clapper to release classified material so he wouldn't have to. Interesting that Wyden, despite knowing that Clapper's statement was false and aware of the program, chose not to dispute Clapper's statement, or release classified details of the program himself.

0\. [http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2013/06/fire_dni_james_clapper_he_lied_to_congress_about_nsa_surveillance.html)

<comment><USER4> This is exactly it. Wyden purposely put him in an impossible situation so he could hang him with it later. If Clapper has done his job well in other respects then this incident is irrelevant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Are you kidding? This was an open hearing. He was obligated to lie about issues of national security. Wyden set him up with that question so he could dump this on him later. Wyden already knew the answer since he was on the Senate Intelligence Committee and had long been briefed on these issues.

</comment><comment><USER5> Nice!!. Sheep complaining to the butcher. Who are the all these ppl wasting their time on these,are ppl that naive.

<comment><USER6> It takes all of 30 seconds to do this and does at least catch the attention of the press and the rest of us. But yes, I agree it's probably futile, exactly because of how easy it is to sign these. Petitions are neat when they have the force of law behind them, such as signing a petition to put something on the ballot to be voted upon. But, yeah, people need to be out protesting and organizing boycotts.

<comment><USER7> In _Influence: Science and Practice_ , Robert Cialdini makes the compelling case that (non-legally-binding) petitions have a primary effect on the people _signing_ the petition, not the explicit targets of the petition. Signing your name to a statement evokes consistency bias effects, which cause you to commit to those statements.

So they are still a useful tool for effecting change; just not for the reasons people might assume.

<comment><USER8> Huh. That's an interesting discovery; thanks for sharing it. That's going on my reading list.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any tips on giving speeches? - <AUTHOR>

I know that public speaking is a skill that has a lot of power in business. People tend to work for people that have the skill. I cannot remember where the quote came from and I am paraphrasing a bit but the quote goes something like this: "You either know how to speak well or end up working for someone who does." I think that a lot of the people on HN give speeches regularly. So I was wondering if anyone has any good advice on giving a speech. I have to give a best mans toast at a wedding so it brings public speaking to the forefront of my mind. <comment><USER2> A few tips:

* No caffeine - it makes you more jumpy, more anxious.

* No heroin - talk too slow

* Practice 10-20 times going through the whole thing

* Practice doing the first paragraph 50-100 times - nothing derails a speech more than a stumble at the beginning.

* Practice acting comfortable - don't just read/deliver

* Alcohol - you need to be prepared here. Some people are more fluid (ahem...) with a drink while it messes other people up. Decide prior to attending the wedding what your plan is

* Flirt with the pretty girls with your eyes. I find that I can maintain that "randomness" factor of scanning and including the whole audience if I look for the hotties and then make eye contact. It also makes me more comfortable looking at pretty girls than men or women twice my age.

* Look your best - confidence comes from looking good and feeling good. The "looking good" should be easy - you're in a suit - and the "feeling good" should come from the fact that you are prepared due to all of your practice.

Good luck!

<comment><USER3> "No caffeine"

Caffeine calms some people down. Lack of it can throw people off, make them edgy.

Better to just not change your usual habits unless you really know how you'll respond.

Practicing really makes a difference. I've tried, though, to be sure I know the points I want to make more so than the specific words, and when rehearsing try to see if some phrasing work better than others (and try to keep) them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Be sure you know what your goal is.

For a best-man toast, maybe it's to make people laugh, foster warm feelings towards the groom/couple, keep the party moving, whatever.

For other speeches, it might be sales, or passing on information, or political persuasion.

But know what it is you want to accomplish and plan the length, topic, style, etc. around that.

</comment><comment><USER4> I found this very helpful: [http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/html/icb.topic58703/winston1.ht...](http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/html/icb.topic58703/winston1.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> Talk much more slowly than you think is reasonable.

It will seem slow to you, but it will sound normal to the audience.

</comment><comment><USER6> Read Dale Carnegie on effective public speaking: [http://www.amazon.com/Quick- Easy-Way-Effective-Speaking/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/Quick-Easy-Way- Effective- Speaking/dp/0671724002/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252717709&sr=1-1)

Also, agree with the others that there is no substitute for actually doing it.

One thing you might try is videoing yourself giving a speech. Then watch the video and see what you like, what you don't like, what is effective, etc.

<comment><USER6> One more thing -- get comfortable with pauses. When you stop speaking and are trying to think of what your next sentence is going to be it may seem like a very long time, but in reality it is usually just a few seconds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> You will feel tense. Don't fight it.

Hold your hands behind your back as you face the audience just before you start.

Clench your hands into fists as tight as you can while also clenching up your butt.

Hold that pose and your breath for a few seconds and then relax and breath out.

Anyone facing you will not be able to tell what you're doing if you just clench your stress in your fists and your butt until you release it.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good tip for stress release. Thanks! I think I am going to use that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Fortunately no speeches for me. But the few times I had to speek to a bunch of people to do a presentation it was hard enough. The trick I picked up from a friend is to pick out one person in the audience, address them but let your eyes wander around so everybody else is included too, make eye contact if the audience is small, if the audience is larger spread your attention around.

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! The audience is 100+ so it will be the largest audience I have addressed. I think once it gets past a certain number it gets less intimidating, but only time will tell.

<comment><USER3> I think the largest crowd I've presented to was a little over 500 or so people. I would not have guessed that from my view from the stage; seemed much smaller.

But something to keep in mind is that even if you can't see people you need to occasionally direct your attention to those in the back or up in the balcony so they don't feel ignored and tune out.

Also, assume that the audience is on your side and want to like you.

<comment><USER8> I could have sworn I read 1500 there, I was wondering... must stop drinking tea.

<comment><USER3> :)

I bet the crowd size wouldn't have mattered. Last two times I gave a talk to any sizable crowd the lights were such that it was sort of hard to really see past a few rows.

Now, had the crowd gotten unruly, yeah, big mobs are worse than small mobs and you find out soon enough :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Practice, practice, practice. Record yourself practicing and watch it later.

</comment><comment><USER10> Practice. Write your whole talk out, print it out somewhat large, tape it to the wall in multiple sheets, and rehearse to the wall, marking up the parts that don't work. Repeat until you can get through it without changing it on paper again.

You won't use the written version when you actually give the talk, but you will be 10x more confident.

</comment><comment><USER11> Read your slides and notes, recite, recite, recite. You get through most of your nervousness, awkardness, blunders and the plain old issue "rushing through slides" and talking too fast practicing your speech atleast three times.

</comment><comment><USER12> Join Toastmasters - <http://www.toastmasters.org/>

There's no substitute for actually doing it.

<comment><USER13> I heard about toastmasters before. What are the meetings actually like?

<comment><USER12> My experience (other chapters may differ):

1\. Everyone who comes speaks to the entire group for 1 or 2 minutes. This was called "Table Topics". A different member is assigned each week to administer the Table Topics. I remember one time the Table Topics person handed each one of us a paper bag that we had to open, remove the object inside, and give an interesting talk. My object was a clothes pin.

2\. Everyone gets a mentor when they join to help them through the education.

3\. Everyone cycles through the program at their own pace giving longer and longer prepared talks. 5:00, 10:00, 15:00, etc. You give one of these every month or so.

4\. Every single talk is publicly critiqued by at least one judge. They are usually ruthless and very, very helpful. It took me months to stop playing with my hands when I talked. They finally got me to stop.

5\. I remembered speaking about my business in all my prepared talks. I can't imagine having a better place to practice than Toastmasters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> [http://giantrobotlasers.com/post/176847959/bill-hickss- princ...](http://giantrobotlasers.com/post/176847959/bill-hickss-principles- of-comedy-1-if-you-can)

</comment><comment><USER15> A rule I have learned from improvisational comedy: everything you do in front of a crowd is right. Don't apologize, just smile and continue, because everything you do is right.

</comment><comment><USER16> The usual advice is to imagine the audience naked.

Don't.</comment>


Why corporate IT should let us browse any way we want. - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2226279/

<comment><USER2> My company, as far as I know, has no restrictions on either internet or computer use. I'm pretty certain I could use the pirate bay while at work if I wanted to (though I've never wanted to at home either, so that's unlikely to happen).

But, and this is a big but, I'm a computer guy. I understand how to keep my computer secure and running well. The chances of my computer getting messed up by anything but a hardware failure are slim to none. This is simply not true for most employees in most companies. People click on pop-up ads and install fake virus scanning spyware all the time. I'm sure you can think of other examples.

To simply say "give them training" is ignoring the fact that it takes YEARS to gain this kind of computer proficiency. It's also ignoring the fact that most users just don't care. They just want to use their computers and have someone else (either a person or a software package) watch out for them.

It's amazing how often people fail to think like an owner when writing things like this. If I have to give 500 employees 50 hours of computer training, that's 25000 hours of training. If my average employee earns $50,000 a year (about $24/hr with a 40 hour work week), that's _$600,000_ of lost time, not to mention the cost of training. And I'm giving a very conservative estimate of 50 hours of training. To get to the average proficiency of the average HN reader would probably take much, much longer. Since most large companies need an IT department anyway, the additional cost of having them administer content blocking and virus scanning software is much less.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is another one of those techno-libertarian ideas that sounds great if you've never had any experience working in a real IT department. Installing unsupported software always results in employees who don't understand where the line of official support ends. You don't want your IT staff troubleshooting third party software or cleaning up after it.

I'm a fan of liberal web filtering policies although I do not trust client- side anti-phishing applications. I would feel irresponsible not doing some basic filtering and maybe some targeted filtering depending based on real world usage. I don't buy the morale argument at all because I always hear a lot of resentment along the lines of "oh he's on facebook all day" as a common put down of unproductive employees. And honestly, it's true often enough that people who might not go overboard can get swept up into it. That's bad morale.</comment>


RetinaFace: Single-stage Dense Face Localisation, implemented in TensorFlow 2.0 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/StanislasBertrand/RetinaFace-tf2 <comment><USER2> Model | Easy | Medium | Hard

Mxnet | 96.5 | 95.6 | 90.4

Ours | 95.6 | 94.6 | 88.5

My professors would be so mad if I submitted data like this. I already can hear "What are the units? Seconds? So yours are by one second better? Error margin? Percent? So yours is worse?"

I get that this is a very specific information for a specific audience. People who stumble on this repo should know what is that.

However we can all be better at presenting our data.

<comment><AUTHOR> as stated in the repo, its "mAP result values"

[https://medium.com/@jonathan_hui/map-mean-average- precision-...](https://medium.com/@jonathan_hui/map-mean-average-precision- for-object-detection-45c121a31173)

<comment><USER2> Don't get me wrong. I totally get it. But my professor is saying:

"So this is precision? 0 to 1? 1 being totally accurate? And you got 96.5? I assume it is percentage?"

<comment><USER3> It says "mAP result values on the WIDERFACE validation dataset:"

If your professor is working in on object detection they know what mAP is - all the major datasets use it as their standard evaluation criteria.

<comment><USER2> So is it mAP of 0.956 or 95.6? Why not 956?

<comment><USER3> Not to be rude, but if you can't work that out you shouldn't be working on this. I'm sure the author would take a pull request, but but it really sounds like you are nitpicking.

Figures like precision and recall are often expressed either as 66% or 0.66. Confusion really isn't that big a problem.

<comment><USER2> Not rude at all because I am totally nitpicking.

If you would write mAP: 0.9 or mAP (%): 90 or similar my "professor" would be OK with that.

I guess general rule in science (or maybe engineering) is to define units. I have no doubt that e.g. when you are building rockets (or maybe model airplanes) you would know that e.g. velocity is in m/s. Until somebody thinks in some other way and things blow up.

I just wanted to make some fun comment about missing units and that is it. I have no doubt that anybody browsing that repo would not be confused about mAP being 95.6.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The algorithm have been already shipped within the release of the PixLab Rest APIs 1.9.72: [https://blog.pixlab.io/2020/08/pixlab- api-1972-released](https://blog.pixlab.io/2020/08/pixlab-api-1972-released)

Note however that Retina does not support real-time performance on the CPU especially on IoT devices and web browsers (WebAssembly). That's why we opted for a standard cascade approach for our WebAssembly port: [https://sod.pixlab.io/articles/porting-c-face-detector- webas...](https://sod.pixlab.io/articles/porting-c-face-detector- webassembly.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> I couldn't find any license text in the repo.

Would you consider using an open source license like for example the ISC license?

[https://choosealicense.com/licenses/isc/](https://choosealicense.com/licenses/isc/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course, done !

<comment><USER5> Great, thank you :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not an expert, why is it called state of the art if its accuracy is worse than mxnet, whatever that is

<comment><AUTHOR> The algorithm is state of the art. There are several implementations of the algorithm, the original is with the mxnet framework, and my implementation with tensorflow framework has a slightly lower accuracy.

<comment><USER6> Thanks! What makes it state of the art and why is lower accuracy acceptable?

<comment><USER3> > What makes it state of the art

Generally it means something roughly like "the best known approach for this specific problem". Often it means "the best known approach for this specific dataset" (eg "SOTA on ImageNet").

> why is lower accuracy acceptable?

Lower accuracy is worse, but these numbers look close enough that it's probably acceptable for most people.

There are plenty of environments where TF is preferable to MXNet (eg, you have TPUs/want to use TFLite on mobile/want to slice the model weights up and use it for your own custom TF model).

It's probably lower accuracy because it wasn't trained as long. Those extra couple of points could take days (or more) of training.

<comment><USER6> Awesome, thanks for the explanation!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I feel much safer now.</comment>


Tanker: End-to-End Encryption SDK for JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/TankerHQ/sdk-js <comment><USER2> I keep asking, what is the threat model for end-to-end encryption in JS? Like, is there an Alice, Bob, Carol, Eve story under which E2E in JS makes sense?

The canonical example that doesn't make sense is when Alice and Bob want to communicate privately using Eve as a webmail/chat provider who wants to snoop in on the communications. Alice and Bob can't just trust Eve to provide a copy of E2Ejs in a <script> tag on EveMail.com, because then they're trusting Eve to provide a legitimate encryption implementation, trusting Eve not to log their keystrokes in JS, etc.

I can understand E2E js as a server-side library in Node (though I suspect it would be safer to run a battle-hardened library like GPG with node FFI).

But, in client-side web code, how could this ever make sense?

<comment><USER3> How about a different scenario?

Eve is not the threat. Eve is going along serving email for Alice and Bob just fine for quite a while.

Then one day Fred compromises Eve. Fred can dump data directly out of Eve's database. Depending on how Fred gains access, full disk encryption, database encryption, row-level encryption, etc. might or might not present themselves as layers of security that he must bypass. If Fred has compromised the running service, he will likely have access to the data and any keys, source material needed to derive the keys, or external decryption mechanisms (HSMs, database- side services) from within the service itself.

If the messages inside of the database have been encrypted on the clients with keys not held in the server (E2E), Fred now has another layer of defense in front of him, only this one requires Fred to inject script into the clients to scrape the necessary keys. When the client is running Javascript in the browser, this is obviously easier than on clients deployed through some other mechanism, but still more difficult than being able to get everything Fred needs in memory in the server.

Mainly, it's another layer of defense, and if the service is using it for other clients, a browser-based client would need to have it to function anyway (even if that weakens the security of the users choosing to use it).

An alternate scenario is that Eve is also not a threat, but is instead a business that doesn't want the liability of having certain material in the plain inside of its premises ever.

<comment><USER4> > Eve is not the threat.

But Eve is where the attacks are going to come from. Whether it's Eve's intention, or was under coersion by Fred makes no difference to the end user. Browser E2E encryption is at best marginally harder to break, but it gives the user a bigger sense of privacy than it deserves, may be to the detriment of the unlearned user.

<comment><USER3> I would argue that collecting keys from all of the user's browsers and dumping the database is more difficult than dumping the database alone, and that makes it worth doing.

If as Fred my window of opportunity before I'm detected is small, I might only be able to get keys from users that are active within a small window. I may have to deal with CDN TTLs just to get my code to those users in the first place. The deployment setup might make it a little harder to change the code than just modifying a plaintext file on disk on the server (personally the project I'm working on right now packs static assets into the server binary making them easy enough for Eve to update, but a bit more effort for Fred). In more complex scenarios, there may be many things standing between Fred and injecting code into the browser that aren't in the way of reading the database.

It really depends on the specifics of the threat that you're modeling for and how your environment works. For example, if we only focus on scenarios in which we are concerned about an attacker that has wholly compromised the service as you are describing here, we would similarly conclude that TLS serves no purpose as the attacker is already receiving the decrypted data at the other end of the pipe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The issue with client-side, in-browser encryption is that you cannot audit or trust the software. Without fingerprinting/certification of the entire javascript-source the server could serve a manipulated source code that exfiltrates data, targeted only at specific users, i.e. not the auditors. Think NSLs or sufficiently crafty industrial espionage. CSPs do not save you here.

You can't TOFU in-browser JS, you can't trust audits and if any 3rd-party code is loaded into the environment you can't trust the entire origin.

The browser is the wrong tool for the job here.

<comment><USER6> Could it be done with a browser extension?

<comment><USER7> You'd think, but everyone I know that explored this option ended up just implementing desktop software instead (e.g. with Electron).

<comment><USER8> Part of that is because by the time you're asking an ordinary user (not a super-opinionated "sophisticate" on HN) to install a Chrome extension, you're 95% of the way towards getting them to install a desktop application anyways, and that remaining 5% of effort is often worth the extra flexibility the Electron app gets you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Usually the first thing I check in a project like this when it ends up on HN or Reddit is their symmetric cryptography features. Not because of any particularly scientific reason, but because it's a good heuristic on whether or not it's worth the time and energy to look at the rest of the code.

Tanker's looks like this:

[https://github.com/TankerHQ/sdk- js/blob/master/packages/cryp...](https://github.com/TankerHQ/sdk- js/blob/master/packages/crypto/src/aead.js)

Seems pretty OK to me.

</comment><comment><USER9> Is libsodium WASMed for the browser?

WebCrypto is pretty good, altho its API is horrid, SEA is a nice wrapper for it ( [https://gun.eco/docs/SEA](https://gun.eco/docs/SEA) ).

It would be nice if Tanker exposed the cryptography operations, so it could be a more re-usable library. Is this possible?

<comment><USER10> > Is libsodium WASMed for the browser?

It is not WASMed yet, but we are working on it.

> It would be nice if Tanker exposed the cryptography operations, so it could > be a more re-usable library. Is this possible?

Tanker is more of a high-level library. It focuses on the ease of use, and tries to be hard to misuse, so it does the key handling and uses fixed algorithms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> For the record, we built a similar offering, cf. [https://github.com/wallix/datapeps-sdk- js](https://github.com/wallix/datapeps-sdk-js) (in my previous life).

We started the implementation after the Snowden revelations, tied to a web messaging platform called PEPS but after the sale of the company we realized that most of the value lied in the E2EE SDK itself, and not the messaging app.

We got there as many prospects were interested in the encryption part, but did not want yet another messaging platform.

I am still unsure about the market for this (disclaimer: I am no longer at Wallix, so I am not involved anymore with DataPeps although I created it). It was a tough sale, even as a part of an existing company with hundreds of customers. Many people felt the need for privacy, but were not ready to implement a new product or to involve developers to modify an existing product.

I do feel though that there is a need for a truly, non-profit, open source solution that handles E2EE. It would be highly beneficial for the whole developer ecosystem.

The DataPeps SDK (MIT license) is a good start. The accompanying service is currently proprietary.

</comment><comment><USER12> Your website and documentation is all a bit opaque.

The title reads like a new encryption library for in the browser but in reality is an (advert for) encryption service, the SDK is open source because it requires your backend with its "Trustchain", the wording on the website is vague about how the Trustchain Private Key is "obtained".

Regarding the service, my main issue is that with an open source SDK you're aiming at a certain type of people, developers, like many of us, but I see no mention of the algos used which immediately causes me to lose interest (between that and the sales/marketing heavy website). If you're really targeting developers I would suggest losing the marketing babble and get down to brass tacks.

And finally, if the private key really is generated on your service, we can just pack up and go home.

What it sounds like you have is a PKI infrastructure with open source SDK and "end-to-end" encryption of things, as much as end-to-end applies for keys/trust roots generated anywhere but locally.

If any/all of this is wrong, please clarify.

<comment><USER10> > how the Trustchain Private Key is "obtained".

The Trustchain private key is generated when you create a Trustchain. It is generated on _your_ machine. You can try it and create a Trustchain yourself here: [https://dashboard.tanker.io/](https://dashboard.tanker.io/)

> And finally, if the private key really is generated on your service, we can > just pack up and go home.

It is not :)

> What it sounds like you have is a PKI infrastructure with open source SDK > and "end-to-end" encryption of things, as much as end-to-end applies for > keys/trust roots generated anywhere but locally.

That's pretty much it. The trust root is that Trustchain key, and Tanker never sees its private part.

> Regarding the service, my main issue is that with an open source SDK you're > aiming at a certain type of people, developers, like many of us, but I see > no mention of the algos used which immediately causes me to lose interest > (between that and the sales/marketing heavy website). If you're really > targeting developers I would suggest losing the marketing babble and get > down to brass tacks.

I take note of this. The parts targeted at developers available at the moment are the documentation, the code examples, and the SDK sources. We will write and publish something that explains how it works under the hood.

<comment><USER12> Thanks for clarifying all that.

It'll really benefit from some clarity on those points in the documentation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> We have been supporting this feature on our web app for many years: [https://www.jotform.com/encrypted-forms/](https://www.jotform.com/encrypted- forms/)

Knowing only you have access to tha data is a good thing. For example, we are able to host our internal employee feedbacks and reviews on our own forms without worrying about a sysadmin or database admin having access to it.

I understand the concerns about client side manipulation but that is hard to do without leaving a trail on our code commit history. Both system and product changes can only be done by code commits.

You cannot protect systems with a single perfect security solution. You have to be paranoid and have many layers in your security model. This may not be the silver bullet, but this greatly enhances the security.

</comment><comment><USER14> [https://docs.tanker.io/latest/guide/device-unlocking/#end- to...](https://docs.tanker.io/latest/guide/device-unlocking/#end-to- end_or_zero-trust)

> If you want your app to be fully end-to-end, you can use the lower level > > unlock mechanisms, which are all end-to-end compliant

So if I want to use the SDK in a "fully" end-to-end secure way, I first need to implement by myself a secure way to transmit the user root secret (the unlock key) between the user's devices, and make sure this key is always accessible so that users don't loose access to their data. This doesn't seem like an easy task...

<comment><USER10> No, the unlock key is for the user to keep, and never be transmitted by anyone else than the user themselves. If you do the transmission, it's not end to end anymore.

This option is only for users concerned about security, the other unlock methods are less strong but still provide security.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> ELI5: this is an open source library. What is the pricing page on the Tanker website all about?

<comment><USER16> Seems like it's free for open-source projects, so the pricing should apply to commercial users. Sort of similar to what Qt does.

<comment><USER17> If it is under Apache 2 license as the repo claims, very few commercial projects are going to have an issue with using it under the open-source terms. You can't say "this is open-source under license X, but you can't use it commercially!" (well, you can, but you are creating your own license that's not compatible with open source projects either). Qt solves this by being under license(s) not all commercial users want to comply with, and selling support etc.

It seems what they are selling is not the software, but services it can use to manage exchange between users etc.

<comment><USER16> There's a server component that's not on Tanker's Github, so commercial users probably can't start using the SDK without telling anyone.

<comment><USER17> They can legally use the SDK under the open source terms without paying if they find a way of using it without Tanker's servers. For the server access, they need to pay, thus that's what they're selling.

In contrast Qt is selling licenses to the code, not access to a hosted service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> E2E encryption in JS in browser will never be secure. In a client with shared threads and untrusted content on the page it will always be vulnerable to timing attacks. It's unrealistic to create a constant-time implementation in JavaScript.

For node/backend this is great but please don't use it on a public site.

<comment><USER19> Genuine question - is this what you're referring to? Very curious.

[https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/usenixsecurit...](https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/usenixsecurity17/sec17-vila.pdf)

<comment><USER18> Hadn't heard of it actually, but side channels have been an issue in browser security for a long time.

Spectre caused a lot of changes in JS like disabling high precision clocks. But I'm afraid clock proxies are everywhere. The API surface is gigantic and all you need is a single call that reliably executes in constant time on the samr thread

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Tanker is an open-source client SDK that can be embedded in any application. Encrypt data, share it between users, create groups, etc.

The SDK handles key exchanges, cryptographic operations, and identity verification for you.

Also available for iOS and Android!

<comment><USER20> What algorithms? Pretty bare README for a cryptography project.

<comment><USER10> Tanker developer here. We use libsodium as our underlying cryptographic library. It uses XChacha20/Poly1305 for symmetric encryption, Curve25519 for asymmetric encryption and signature, and Blake2 for hashing.

<comment><USER20> Why would I use your library over the tried and true [https://github.com/dchest/tweetnacl-js](https://github.com/dchest/tweetnacl- js) ?

<comment><USER10> TweetNaCl is roughly equivalent to libsodium, on which Tanker builds. Tanker is easier to integrate into your app because it takes care of key sharing, multi-devices, user group managment, etc. These are all things you would have to handle by yourself using just a cryptographic library like TweetNaCl.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The myth of meritocracy: who really gets what they deserve? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/oct/19/the-myth-of-meritocracy-who-really-gets-what-they-deserve <comment><USER2> >Sorting people by 'merit' will do nothing to fix inequality

No one ever said it would, nor would we want it to. Concentration of capital and talent is how progress gets made after all - a million labs with $10 research budgets aren't going to be able to compete with one lab with a research budget of $10,000,000. That was one of the fatal flaws of Mao's Great Leap Forward, a billion Chinese farmers trying to produce steel in their back yards was overall much less productive than a few massive steel plants with dedicated professionals and experts on staff would've been.

Instead meritocracy hopes to fix injustice in the inequality of our world, so that those who have more have earned it and those who have less earned that too. It is an impossible ideal, obviously, but the point is to strive for it always even knowing we can never reach it.

>As wealth increasingly reflects the innate distribution of natural talent, and the wealthy increasingly marry one another, society sorts into two main classes, in which everyone accepts that they have more or less what they deserve.

The problem with this hypothetical society isn't that the most meritorious have more wealth, but rather that they have _all_ the wealth. Although those with the most merit do deserve a bigger slice of the pie (IMO anyway), they obviously don't deserve _all_ the pie. One of the benefits of meritocracy is the old phrase "a rising tide lifts all boats", but that isn't true if the top percent eats all the benefits of their own capital investments.

>The ideal of meritocracy, Young understood, confuses two different concerns. One is a matter of efficiency; the other is a question of human worth.

It's not a confusion, it's just how humans are wired. "Moron" originally had no negative connotation, but over time it gained a profound one. Similarly "plebeian" wasn't originally an insult, but now it is. Heck the ultimate evil force in most stories, the "villain", derives his name from the latin term for a low status farm hand (villanus)

Anything associated strongly with the "least efficient" rung of society will inevitably become tainted in this fashion, as human beings are inherently status-oriented creatures looking for some way to put down others and elevate ourselves. It's an unfortunate part of our nature as a species.

<comment><USER3> > a million labs with $10 research budgets aren't going to be able to compete > with one lab with a research budget of $10,000,000.

And yet, the idea that ten labs with $1M budgets might be better than either is a cornerstone of the free market. If everything is better when centralized, then why not centralize it in government (to which it would ultimately be equivalent anyway)?

> Concentration of capital and talent is how progress gets made after all

That's just way too simplistic. Sometimes concentration is better. Sometimes distribution is. It varies from field to field, from time to time, and the ideal is rarely found at the extremes. The problem Young sought to address is that various factors tend to pull us toward a non-ideal extreme, and that tendency must be resisted.

<comment><USER4> >then why not centralize it in government (to which it would ultimately be equivalent anyway)

Because most governments seem corrupt to some extent or other and we don't trust them. Free markets seem to solve this problem to some extent. The degrees to which people believe these two statements seem to be the basis for a lot of left right / politics IMHO.

<comment><USER3> > most governments seem corrupt

And a single company effectively functioning as a government (minus democratic accountability) would be better? Free markets only solve that problem through _competition_ , which precludes the kind of centralization the GP was advocating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article somewhat seems to assume that 'everyone is good at something' (although at the end it veers towards 'it doesn't matter if someone is good at anything', so it's a bit unclear at that). But anyway it seems that people only think that to make themselves feel good, as logic dictates otherwise. Say there are 10 traits in which one can be good (some of such traits are enumerated in the article, but let's say for the sake of the argument there are 10). They are more or less independently assigned; and if they're correlated at all, that correlation is positive (being good looking and athletic, for example). Then it follows there will always be people who are above average on more than 5 traits, and there will be people where it's the other way around. There will be people who are great at everything, and some who suck at everything. Yet I don't see that addressed in pieces like this. What is the counter argument from this school of thought?

<comment><USER6> That their is a lot of traits that can't really be measured. There are other traits that a good for some purpose but are a hindrance to another. Many that aren't innate. A lot of tasks that only require proficiency. And then how do you value each trait against another.

Then, there's the whole topic of values. And what values are important to your organization.

<comment><USER7> But that doesn't address the point. If we take two people, and one person is better at everything we can measure, the conclusion cannot logically be that the person who is worse at everything "must be good at something we aren't measuring". There's absolutely no data to support that conclusion, because the conclusion is literally based upon the idea that there is missing data. That's bad logic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "What then! Do you think the old practice, that 'they should take who have the power, and they should keep who can,' is less iniquitous, when the power has become power of brains instead of fist?" - John Ruskin

<comment><USER9> It's the only known way to organize society which incentivises people to develop and use their talents. Hence, the incredible material wealth of current Western world vs the universal poverty and misery of communist countries.

<comment><USER8> I agree. I shared the quote because I found it concise, insightful and relevant. I do wonder, though, whether meritocracy has gotten away with itself somewhat. It has enormous utility. But in its current incarnation doesn't seem to respect the dignity of those it disempowers. I think the point of the quote, and the article, is that those of us it's empowered ought to bear that in mind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> All this discussion automatically assumes that inequality is bad and equality is good. This is a subjective opinion. One that does not get nearly enough questioning nowadays.

I would argue that what is good is the presence of happiness and absence of suffering for conscious minds. Less famine, less disease, less war. And that it is not at all certain that equality helps these objectives.

Inequality can be described as one of the major drivers and consequences of progress that has in fact lifted all boats.

And if the best way for society to progress is to be extremely unequal and dictatorial (e.g. Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore in modern time; an AI-driven superdictatorship in the future; the Medici family launching the Renaissance in Florence in the distant past) then equality, democracy etc. should go away.

The best thinking on this subject recently came from Yuval Harari. Humans are biochemical machines that process information according to the laws of physics. So – what possible reason is there for us to value these biochemical machines all earning the same number of points on some abstract metric? And what happens when we build better machines? Or clone one person a trillion times?

The idea that equality to another human matters as much (or more) than technological progress, biological immortality, understanding the universe etc. is a fucking stupid remnant of our monkey ego. That cannot bear the idea that another monkey has more bananas or female monkeys.

fuck equality.

<comment><USER3> When you ignore _degrees_ of in/equality, you're basically setting up a false dichotomy. Exact equality might be unhealthy, but so is the drastic inequality of the old aristocracy or (more arguably) the new one. As with many things, the extremes are stagnant end states, but they have their own sort of gravity (think "attractors" in chaos theory). Life is found _in between_.

> The idea that equality to another human matters as much ... is a fucking > stupid remnant of our monkey ego.

Well, sorry, but it's not going away. Study after study has shown that relative affluence, not absolute affluence or any other factor, is one of the strongest predictors of happiness. In other words, relative privation is a predictor of unhappiness. It might not be _suffering_ but, nonetheless, if you want to offer a superficial and unacknowledged restatement of utilitarianism ("the greatest good for the greatest number") then you have to consider what actually makes people who are not you happy or unhappy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The conflict is simple: parents are stimulated to give the best upbringing possible to children - the prize is standing out the crowd - but at the same time it does not make much sense to be #1 in a wasteland.

<comment><USER12> In addition systems are in play that make it impossible for most people in poorer circles to give their children a kick up into a higher class. Some people get lucky but on the whole people aren't moving. Anything new that redreses the balance e.g. education is ultimately for sale to the highest bidder, plus I'll add another observation that the rich don't need to spend so much time on survival, they have more time to learn the tricks of staying rich.

To eloborate on the education for sale. Think of real estate prices near good high schools for example. Plus the high number of 1%ers in the top universities. I recently watched The Riot Club and thus film in an exagerated way sums it all up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Once we're all finally equal no one will be special.

</comment><comment><USER14> Self-awareness leading to cognitive dissonance</comment>


Ask HN: What would Steve Jobs have done after NeXT if Apple hadn't bought him? - <AUTHOR>

The man obviously has a fire in his belly, and NeXT obviously didn't have the cultural impact that he was hoping for. He launched directly into a string of incredible projects: iMac, iPod, and OS X... I can't help but wonder where that energy would've gone if he wasn't put back in charge of Apple. <comment><USER2> My guess is that Jobs would have made his killing by selling Pixar to Disney — and would be CEO of that company. The funny thing about NeXT and Pixar is that they re-energized two giant companies. By the way had Disney purchased Pixar they might also have grabbed NeXT and that company (sort of like Sony) could be in the computer biz.

It's also interesting to note that the founders of Google were interested in Steve Jobs as CEO when they first started — so they may have purchased NeXT to do that and poor Eric Schmidt would have been out in the cold these last few years.

As for Apple without Jobs my guess is that they could either have faded or "just held on" by adopting the Be Inc. operating system (and perhaps Jean- Louis Gassée as well). My guess is that if Apple was in fade mode they would have been merged with Sun or purchased by Oracle.

<comment><USER3> Do you think Google and Jobs would have been a successful combination?

<comment><USER2> I don't know — but it would have been interesting! Imagine if Apple started to really fail and then Google purchased them after Jobs had been there...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Steve would likely have ran Pixar and probably continued at NeXT. Once Apple went under(they were 90 days from insolvency when he came back) he'd have likely poached a large number of the creative team, especially Jony Ive to NeXT. Today, we'd have NePhones.

</comment><comment><USER5> He's a product guy. He would have run some kind of company making some kind of consumer-electronics item that would attempt to be the best in its class. Without the talent, resources, brand, and exposure of Apple to work with, he might or might not have been successful.

<comment><USER6> I'm not so sure.

Immediately prior to Apple he was selling Corba, OLE, Web Objects, and other enterprisey middleware, and with the exact same fervor that he would later sell iMacs and iPods.

Here [1] is a rather surreal Jobs' keynote/demo in 1995, showing Interface Builder and "Distributed OLE" on Windows NT 3.51, among other things.

[1] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu-jvAWTZ9o>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Back then Next was doing mostly OO/Web software, and Pixar was just starting. So I guess he could have done some Web/entertainment mashup a la Club Penguin, or maybe the Facebook of that parallel universe.

</comment><comment><USER8> The goose is out of the bottle.

</comment><comment><USER9> Ask Quora.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think he would've stuck with the web, which NeXT was focusing on, but I wonder if he would have eventually embarked on an iPod or iPhone device outside of Apple.</comment>


A game made with CSS/HTML only - <AUTHOR> http://victordarras.fr/cssgame <comment><USER3> I'm not OP but the creator of this "game". Nice to see my experimentation here !

Sorry for that so bad crossbrowsing, clip-path property is not easy to use. Safari and IE won't work apparently.

Ask me anything about it, I'll take time to answer !

<comment><USER4> Your game is too hard, please make it slower.

<comment><USER5> Personally I found it too easy.

<comment><USER4> Does the game become harder on a 4K monitor?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is cool, but since hover states don't update until mouse move in chrome, it's easy to cheat. Move your mouse to the start, and then don't touch it until you win.

<comment><USER7> Do you know if this intentional behaviour in Chrome? it can be annoying for some types of interaction, any good workarounds?

<comment><USER3> Here is a part of answer [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23445468/hover- state-is-m...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23445468/hover-state-is- maintained-during-a-transition-even-if-the-element-has-gone)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This totally reminds me of a game I built a long long time ago using only CSS: [http://ryan-kahn.com/static/onlyCSS/](http://ryan-kahn.com/static/onlyCSS/)

Kudos! I love it.

(edit) The game's end screen no longer works, and I built a level generator for it in php (remember, years ago) and am no longer using that host.

<comment><USER9> On Windows 8/Chrome, the car controlled by the player can get outside the browser window and overlap the taskbar at the bottom, which is absolutely mind-boggling.

<comment><USER8> Ha! That's the only image I used on the page. I changed the mouse pointer to be the image of the car. I'm really surprised you can still change the cursor to an image.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Doesn't work on Safari (OS X)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's the dude's source: [http://codepen.io/victordarras/pen/xZOqoE](http://codepen.io/victordarras/pen/xZOqoE)

</comment><comment><USER11> Not nearly as cool as OP's post, but I once created a 'game' with only CSS and HTML as well:

Street fighter rock paper scissors

[http://codepen.io/Andygmb/full/EVbRqP/](http://codepen.io/Andygmb/full/EVbRqP/)

<comment><USER12> That is ridiculous.

In a great way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I finally won after about 12 tries (and not cheating). Just the other day my daughter was asking if video games are ever made using HTML and I said yes with Javascript. Well now I have an example that doesn't even have javascript. Pretty cool.

<comment><USER5> Could also do a choose your own adventure type game using HTML on its own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Somewhat related was a challenge I set myself to create a star chart using only html and css:

[http://lee-phillips.org/skymap/](http://lee-phillips.org/skymap/)

</comment><comment><USER15> I just lose, I can't get my cursor to the white box without losing.

(Chromium, Ubuntu)

<comment><USER16> Just drag it to the white box. You'll lose while you do so, but bringing your cursor to the box resets it.

<comment><USER17> I was confused too, but discovered that on OSX, the game never starts in Chrome or Safari, but it works in Firefox.

In Chrome & Safari, even if you reload with the mouse over the white box, any mouse or keyboard event at all results in You Lose.

In Firefox, this is a very cool exercise!

It got a lot easier to win as soon as I stopped trying to only move left/right, and started moving up/down too.

<comment><USER18> Works for me on OS X Chrome. Move cursor to underneath the game area (you'll probably lose in the process); move upwards onto the white box.

<comment><USER17> Definitely tried that combo, and it definitely didn't work for me. Tried again just to be sure.

Then I started typing this comment to wonder out loud what might be different, and in the process checked my version of Chrome. As soon as I did, Chrome started updating itself, and after a re-launch, the game works. Nice!

Chrome 46.0.2490.86 (64-bit) - no worky Chrome 47.0.2526.111 (64-bit) - <USER2> fun times

I guess this game is on the bleeding edge of feature support. :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is interesting and creative. Good job.

The first thing that comes to mind for me is licensing. This is software. Normally when we think about software on the web, we think about JavaScript--- users will disable JavaScript or use LibreJS or something along those lines if they wish to avoid downloading these programs, or avoid using nonfree software.

I can also imagine CSS compiler targets for these types of things, if they don't exist already.

Something to think about in the coming years (or now).

<comment><USER20> >I can also imagine CSS compiler targets for these types of things, if they don't exist already.

This is a bit of a stretch. CSS is not turing complete in the traditional sense and is only suitable for a narrow range of "programs".

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> For a second I thought this was a joke and the game was to figure out how to get the cursor on the white dot (ex. impossible) but its just this not working on Safari.

<comment><USER22> The author had said there are crossbrowser issues and adding polyfills may involve introducing JS. Hence losing the entire purpose of a CSS only game

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Basically:

1\. CSS transitions to slowly move the scenery

2\. Hover states for the two walls (and the "game over" screen)

<comment><USER6> Actually, they're CSS animations, which is why it's able to start over instantly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's really hard on a track pad. I lasted 3 second on 10 attempts.

<comment><USER25> Good argument for a hardware mouse :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Due to perspective projection, it is much easier to play staying as back as possible rather than forward!

<comment> ju-st The game becomes easier too with Ctrl + Mousewheel (because the tunnel will get bigger but not the cursor!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> So it's settled at last, CSS and HTML are programming languages. Or at least one of the two is.

</comment><comment><USER28> Pretty cool, reminds me of CHASM: [https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=5&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjDk- GrnqzKAhXJKB4KHTgUDR0QjBAIJjAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spikything.com%2Fgames%2Fchasm%2F&usg=AFQjCNERg0rJdc8i27JviuxdTkTJVkYtFw&sig2=3N7ucF1B37gK7zj0VOZdIg)

</comment><comment><USER29> Cool. Now I will spend the rest of my Friday and all weekend trying to get in the end. My wife will hate Victor (the dude) very soon.

<comment><USER29> Oh no, I got to the end. "Congratulations ! You win"

<comment><USER30> By your post timestamps, looks like it only took 3 minutes. Not bad!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Can't help but wonder whether or not it's gonna scare the pants off me when you get near the end.

<comment><USER32> Don't worry, I myself have made that leap and my pants are still attached to my body.

<comment><USER33> That sounds painful

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Really easy to beat on mobile. Just tap the white box, then sit back and watch. :)

</comment><comment><USER35> The ship's hitbox is the top left of it's sprite (which is above the ship). Turning off the custom cursor made it much easier.

</comment><comment><USER36> lol, I wish every game had such a good collision detection :(

</comment><comment><USER37> If you have a touch screen this game is really easy.

</comment><comment><USER38> Delete both wall right and wall left elements. You will win! ;)

<comment><USER39> Right click is more elegant

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> COOOOOL :) LIKE!

</comment><comment><USER41> First try! :) I like it

</comment><comment><USER42> click and hold</comment>


Is Google Reader next on the chopping block? - <AUTHOR> http://www.micropersuasion.com/2009/01/google-killing-products.html <comment><USER2> A resounding a perfectly clear - NO. You can't even compare Reader to any of the other shuttered projects Google closed. Reader is a mecca for information for Google to use in their secret sauce.

If you're a newspaper company, would the pure cost be worth knowing exactly what columns your subscribers are reading? Absolutely.

Google Reader is a internal service where ads will only muck up what they have going for them.

</comment><comment><USER3> One of these things is not like the others.

(hint: Google Reader is extremely popular)

</comment><comment><USER4> While I would hate that, Reader's disappearance would strongly boost my productivity :)

<comment><AUTHOR> notice the trend in the world diving into a recession as google reader gains more and more features?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I hope not. Reader and Gmail are two that I cant live without. They are so well designed and super powerful.

</comment><comment><USER6> Tech Bloggers are blogging themselves into a corner. Instead of covering things that are happening of relevance, they're constantly making wildly inane speculative entries because x and y happened without factoring why z has/has not happened.

 _Enter Google Reader, one of my favorite products and by far the best RSS reader on the market._

If it's the best RSS reader on the planet, why even make the suggestion that such a service would just go away?

</comment><comment><USER7> Erm, yeah right. That's why they only just updated the look of it a month ago. So they could shut it down.

Google Reader is here to stay. I'm not worried.

</comment><comment><USER8> This would be a disaster of biblical proportions. GR isn't just a aggregator of feeds, it is a feed-based social network! I can see, in real time, what my friends are reading, what they find interesting, and their thoughts on the issues. I can break up my content by subject, tag items as I see fit, then publish feeds of specific tags and shared items. No other tool has allowed me to so easily share what I am READING, not just thinking. Since I am not a very interesting person, my thoughts are not often that significant, but as a voracious reader I can function as a filter on other people's content, and my contacts do the same for me. Losing Reader would devastating to my info-vore ways.

</comment><comment><USER9> I use google notebook intensevely... I started using it, because I wanted to store my great findings on the cloud, so I never, ever loose them... Knowing google notebook is about to close I wonder how safe my data is... Is there any way I can save easily all of my google notebook notes?

<comment><USER10> [http://lifehacker.com/5131781/where-to-go-when-google- notebo...](http://lifehacker.com/5131781/where-to-go-when-google-notebook- goes-down)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> How will Google Reader ever make money? Bloggers will not allow RSS readers to run ads near their content. While I don't think Google will kill Reader, I have to wonder where the revenue is here.

<comment><USER7> The same could be said about many products that Google isn't likely to kill. How will they make money from Chrome, for example? (which is probably a fair bit more expensive than GReader).

Google has deep pockets. The reason they killed those products was not because they weren't making money, but because they weren't popular.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> They need it so Feedburner can make money.</comment>


Document What You Decide Against - <AUTHOR> http://uberblic.com/2012/11/document-what-you-decide-against/

<comment><USER2> Interesting idea--thanks for bringing this up. Would have been cool to add how OP implemented this idea and interesting findings.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks. I'll write a follow-up on my implementation of the decision diary</comment></comment>


1 Mo. Treasury Jumps from 10 to 27 bps in 7 days - <AUTHOR> http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/interest-rates/Pages/TextView.aspx?data=yield <comment><AUTHOR> This is a confusing situation. When I call D.C. they say an impasse blowing through 17 October is likely. When I call my rates and bond dealers on Wall Street I'm told that it shouldn't be too unsettling. The truth is likely in the middle.

Past 17 October the U.S. Treasury can prioritise payments, i.e. make interest and perhaps Social Security payments while blocking others. This makes the U.S. plunging back into a recession probable. It also virtually assures Federal Reserve (The Fed) intervention.

Some time before 1 November all bets are off. There are big payments due that will force the Treasury to be creative (e.g. minting a $1 trillion coin, issuing original-issue-premium debt, or blatantly ignoring the debt limit) or default. The Fed could open swap lines with the banks in an attempt to de- couple the U.S. financial system from its political system. The odds of success are low.

An unknown number of pieces, with uncertain capabilities on a shifting board, collectively daring or being dared to test new limits. This is an interesting situation.

<comment><USER2> The $1 Trillion coin thing was never a serious plan.

Ex-Treasury official: "As a straightforward matter the Federal Reserve wouldn't give Treasury a trillion dollars for that coin."

That said, he's keeping with the party line that the US "always pays it's bills on time", so take it with a grain of salt (the US defaulted twice or more in the 20th century, depending on how you count)

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/03/w...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/03/why- we-wont-mint-the-coin-why-we-cant-just-pay-off-bonds-and-other-scary-debt- ceiling-facts/)

<comment><USER3> No national government of an English speaking nation has defaulted on its debt since the "Great Stop of the Exchequer" of Charles II Stuart in 1672:

"Here in the Anglo-Saxon world—never mind how few of us in it have any substantial proportion of our ancestors coming ashore with Hengest, Horsa, Esc, Ella, Cymen, Wlenking, and Cissa to loot, pillage, rape, and burn—we have not seen any government default since the "stop of the exchequer" of Charles II Stuart, when he simply got sick of paying his bills and decided to balance his budget by defaulting on his debt and then accepting bribes from Louis XIV of France, who was desperately anxious that Britain not help the Dutch resist his invasion."

[http://delong.typepad.com/files/20120221-the-budget-and- macr...](http://delong.typepad.com/files/20120221-the-budget-and-macro- policy.pdf)

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure if he's using an esoteric definition of "national government", "English speaking", or "default", but if you consider the "Failing to make a payment on a US government issued bond as agreed" then he's wrong. The US failed to pay out on inflation-adujsted WWI War bonds (paying them in nominal dollars rather than gold contrary to the bond terms, a substantial haircut) and during a previous unprecedented debt ceiling crisis in 1979 the US tried to dance too close to the edge and wasn't able to pay all the bonds due on time.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_bond#Default_of_the_Fou...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_bond#Default_of_the_Fourth_Liberty_Bond) [http://www.npr.org/2011/07/11/137773341/looking-at-when- the-...](http://www.npr.org/2011/07/11/137773341/looking-at-when-the-u-s-last- defaulted-on-treasury-bonds)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> To the people speculating the the US will default, and that the Treasury won't prioritize payments, I think you are, understandably, misdirected by the idea that Wall Street cares whether this is resolved legally or not. The market gives only the slightest of shits whether this is resolved legally.

The administration will make sure that we won't default if Congress can't act, and will most likely be dragged into court for doing so, where it will be determined that they acted illegally, but only on some technicality that nobody cares about and allows people to keep their money. Wall Street wants money, it doesn't care if your system has inner logic to get it.

<comment><USER5> I'm guessing the Republicans are saying "Oh please, oh please," at the prospect of impeaching Obama for spending and borrowing without authorization. And they don't even have to win, they just need a forum that will be covered on the nightly/daily news to call Obama names and gum up his administration until the next election.

I'm guessing the administration is saying "Oh please, oh please" at the prospect of default that they'll justifiably lay on the Republicans, and use to make the Reps look bad and gum up their lives until the next election.

I'm guessing we're fucked.

<comment><USER6> That's my opinion as well. The Republican hardliners are echoing what I've heard many "normal citizens" say for quite a few years. I am sure they are ringing up the votes every time they declare no compromise.

The Democrats, on the other hand, get to point at the Republicans and say, "They are screwing you!", and have that more or less be true. I am sure they are ringing up the votes every time they declare that the Republicans are screwing the popularion.

Yeah, I'm not seeing how the parties have serious incentive to actually do their job.

<comment><USER7> they don't, and we should get rid of parties, or get a multitude more in power.

<comment><USER6> > we should get rid of parties,

The US tried that in the 1790s, as I remember. Didn't wind up working out in practice. I gather the current electoral system (winner take all) trends towards a two-party system. At least, that's what the poly-sci folk say.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is notable because the change in perceived risk (as measured by the yield) of default appears greater in the shorter term government debt (1mo) as compared to the debt maturing later (3mo). It would indicate that "the market" believes there may be some technical non payment scenario over the short term (so, government shutdown related), but there appears to be no fear-mongery shaking of the faith in the nation. As you can see in the link the 30yr bond's yield has in fact fallen over the same period.

As this is a technical crowd, and there are requests for layman explanations, I'll elaborate some: Yield = Interest rate. This is inverse to the price of the bond. If you hold a bond and the yield rises (say, from 10bps to 27bps), you have lost money on your holding since the market price fell. The unexpected yield increase (price fall) on short term treasuries is notable because short term government bonds are held in large quantity by very risk averse investors (e.g. money market accounts) that not expecting to take losses. The unlikely downside scenario of a one off non-payment or deferred payment may cause settlement problems in short-term bond markets, or even a "freeze" as happened after Lehman collapsed.

Typically the yield of a bond increases over longer maturities because there is more time for something to potentially go wrong leading to an inability to pay. Thankfully, the United States is a sovereign nation that prints its money on keyboards, so that is only possible if a decision not to pay is made.

<comment><USER9> > Yield = Interest rate. This is inverse to the price of the bond.

Why is that?

Isn't the interest rate of a bond a constant that is set by the seller of the bond? So if the bond becomes more risky, the interest rate doesn't change, but the market value of the bond goes down.

Put differently, the Treasury could offer a bond with a higher interest rate, but for the same "amount," in order to raise more money.

I don't know anything about bonds or the Treasury, and I am just trying to reason it out, so please let me know if I have a mistaken premise.

<comment><USER10> Bonds are a contract saying, "I'll pay you a fixed amount of money after a fixed amount of time". They then try to sell that contract on the open market.

Depending on how risky the market perceives the contract to be, the price could be a lot lower (increasing the effective interest rate)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Edit/Clarification: this is a negligible spike.

Can you spot the movement in 10y series? [http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/DGS1MO](http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/DGS1MO)

The risk premium isn't nearly the main determinant for such government securities unless you have an actual default. Lets hope we don't get to see that mayhem.

EDIT: Some FRED Data Not Updated Due to US Government Shutdown

OK, so you'll not see, for a different reason...

<comment><USER12> So that graph is only updated through 10/7 and the jump to .27 happens on 10/8.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Feels like we're about to have a Seldon Crisis:

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

<comment><USER14> What do you see as the external pressure?

<comment><USER13> If I had to pick one, it would be the global recession set off by the United State's last financial crisis... and the risk that another crisis could cause the collapse of the nascent global recovery.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/08/us/politics/default- threat...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/08/us/politics/default-threat-makes- impasse-in-washington-a-global-fear.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The headline would have been much more impressive if they just looked one day earlier. It went from 0.03 (9/30/13) to 0.27 (10/8/13). Being that the 0.03 number was much more the norm before the shutdown October 1st, it paints a better picture. What that picture means... I haven't a clue.

<comment><USER4> That a default will technically happen, but will happen in such a way that the market won't care all that much in the long term.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can someone explain this to me in lay men's terms?

<comment><USER17> BPS - Basis Point(S) (1/100th of a percentage point per Basis Point)

This is the interest on the bond, and the Fed sells these Treasurys to the public in order to raise money on an interim basis.

Effectively, it reflects the cost of borrowing money by the Federal Government of the United States to borrow money for ONE MONTH. This is a very short time period, as Treasurys are for sale in 1-mo to 30-year periods. So you'd only charge a high interest rate if you think the likelyhood of non-payment is actually an issue (that's risk vs. return).

Typically, 1 month is very not-risky, as it's highly likely that the US Gov is still around and solvent in a month. But with the recent debt ceiling / government shutdown rhetoric the market is beginning to get a little worried, so the premium the government must pay in order to borrow money has increased.

Basically by the Congress/White-House being deadlocked and having such fiery rhetoric it begins to appears as if there is a chance of default, and that chance is slightly higher than normal, so the risk/return on the 1 mo treasury has increased, as reflected in the increased interest rate the government has to pay to its bond holders.

<comment><USER18> Does this mean it would be a good idea to invest in a one month bond if you can wait out the chance the government would be delayed in paying you back?

<comment><USER19> the absolute interest rate is still very miniscule

<comment><USER20> Yes but what hedge funds would do (are undoubtedly doing) is raise a huge amount of money on margin and use it to arbitrage the spread between these and related instruments with other durations. Of course this can go horribly wrong; read the book "When Genius Failed".

<comment><USER21> Oh god, LTCM. Beware of investors that have no demonstrable controls against automated/HFT pouring of more of my money into a black hole trying to "win" back their losses.

The Trillion Dollar Bet is also a good, high-level documentary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> But what happens to the bank's asset value if TBills are suddenly no longer liquid (or at least desired)? Wouldn't that trigger some kind of valuation crisis, since banks are required to maintain a certain level of asset value?

<comment><USER23> Perhaps even more important than strict valuation is that banks (and especially institutional investors) have strict rules on the type of investments they can make. One of the most important issues is the level of risk carried. T-bills have historically been considered a (or the) risk-free asset. Suddenly they are not which potentially leads to a lot of selling (lowering prices) or attempted selling (if markets freeze).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The Treasury Secretary is charged with paying the interest on the US debt.

It doesn't need the approval of President Obama, nor can he explicitly prevent it.

</comment><comment><USER25> ahem : [http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/10/08/the-un- terr...](http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/10/08/the-un-terrifying- treasury-bill-market/?dlvrit=60132)

</comment><comment><USER26> Never have I seen so much speculation over 14 bps.

Wake me when it gets back over 1%... I might buy some.</comment>


Pandora hits 20 million registered users - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/19/pandora-hits-20-million-registered-users-via-twitter/

<comment><USER2> I hope Pandora realizes how much people love them. It would be such a tragedy if they died. I'm sure they've considered it, but it seems to me that a freemium model would work much better than their current ad-supported service: something like a few free hours of music a day, and unlimited music for $10/month. I for one would be happy to pony up the cash---especially if it meant that Pandora would survive.

<comment><USER3> I agree. Pandora has literally changed my life. I am a musician as well as a coder, but I have recently fell in love with jazz fusion. Billy Cobham, Chick Corea, Tribel Tech, etc... but I don't have a friend who is really in to jazz that would be my portal into this world. With Pandora I can just type in "Billy Cobham" and have a whole new world of music that I want to hear come right to me. This has increased my practising both in time and quality. I just has opened a ton of doors to me. I would happily support them because their service is that good.

What is sad is that because their service is that good, the radio lobby in America is after it, big time. They hate losing any control they have over the current state of music and Pandora is a "threat" to them. If it's 10, 20 or 50 years, soon wireless will be everywhere and there will be no need for them. They know this and they will fight it. Hopefully we can win this one.

<comment><USER4> _but I have recently fell in love with jazz fusion. Billy Cobham, Chick Corea, Tribel Tech, etc..._

Amen. Pandora...machine learning gone right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was an early user of Pandora and signed up and enjoyed it too until they dumped a big firewall around the US. They'd be way over 20 million if it weren't for arcane laws preventing the rest of the free world enjoying their awesome service.

<comment><USER4> Is that all of Europe or selected countries?

<comment><USER5> I suspect all. If I go to Pandora.com it says this (amongst other stuff):

 _We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for listeners located outside of the U.S. We will continue to work diligently to realize the vision of a truly global Pandora, but for the time being we are required to restrict its use. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative._

<comment><USER4> I wonder why. Is the music market outside the US _that_ much more lucrative that they restrict it?

<comment><USER6> It could very well be the single biggest one. In europe they'd probably need deals for each and every country. (Which require money and time.) The same would go for the rest of the world.

(Also, the farther away from American culture the less precise their classification base would get with regards to the local culture's. Think of Chinese music - which sounds atonal to a lot of westeners.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I know they have a $36/yr pro account, but I think it should go in increments of hours listened 10 hours free per month .50 per an aditional hour up to 10$ then .20 an hour after that with a cap at $30 month

</comment><comment> jim-greer Quantcast says they have 8.2M monthly active users in the US. That's really impressive...

<http://www.quantcast.com/pandora.com></comment>