The Future of Swift on the Server - <AUTHOR> https://www.timc.dev/posts/future-of-server-side-swift/ <comment><USER2> I understand the author's perspective on the topic, especially from where he's coming from, but I'm less excited for Swift on the server.

As things currently are you are better off with C++ on the server than with Swift. This is how bad things in reality are.

I could imagine a micro-service here or there where Swift is involved in some kind of bigger enterprise architecture, or as a hobby project, but the ecosystem, the libraries, the documentation, and the community just aren't there yet.

It's pretty easy to take Apple's HTTP implementation, add a router, integrate a template engine and have something running, but I don't see a reason for this in a professional environment, and I still don't see Apple as the company who will push a technology that isn't directly bound to their hardware.

</comment><comment><USER3> Swift is a language that I have a lot of interest on, but while its bound to iOs only, I can't justify studying it. Swift on the server would be awesome!

<comment><USER4> The article content is all about how Swift isn't bound to iOS. You can use it in Ubuntu, Fedora, and inside a Docker container — combined with the "Remote - Docker" extension, as well as some Swift-related extensions hooked up to the included-with-Swift sourcekit-lsp provider, makes editing and running Swift on Linux fairly easy.

And Swift 6 will likely see Swift on Windows, sometime next year. That work will be built upon the efforts for Swift on Linux, so you can get ready for that _today_.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Product Idea: Find community/audience relevant to your product - <AUTHOR> Problem: Business owners wanting to find communities where they can reach their possible target audience but face difficulties because it is a time consuming and tedious process with no centralized resource.
Solution: Building a product which enables the business owner to Search for a list of communities, forums, blogs, newsletters, social media influencers(Twitter/Instagram Accounts) based on categories such as Developers, Startup, Marketers, Designers, Music, Writers, etc.
Do you face such a problem? or anything similar? Would you pay for a solution like this? <comment><USER2> I've been there. It's not that hard to find communities/forums/etc that are relevant. Just dropping in with a post about your new app rarely goes over well. It's a much more nuanced problem than finding people, you have to engage them, ask questions and pay attention to the answers.

<comment><AUTHOR> So you were constantly monitoring forums? How many communities/forums were you engaging with at once?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The solution will only help in finding communities where I could post my startup. I might be interested to pay if there is something more to it, maybe like a tool for managing my brand on a particular community.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sounds interesting. I might use such a solution and would be willing to pay for it but depending on the quality and how many communities I can find.

<comment><AUTHOR> Initially I am looking forward to add around 3-4 categories with atleast 50+ communities in each category.</comment></comment>


An authentication and authorization system based on RBAC for restful APIs - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/iGeeky/wolf <comment><USER2> [https://github.com/casbin/casbin](https://github.com/casbin/casbin)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd probably rather use something a bit more broadly adopted, like OAuth2 + OIDC.

</comment><comment><USER4> The lazy me wants to use this for future projects to secure my apis, but the curious me wants to reimplement this type of project in go.

Were there any gotchas in implementing this type of identity access management system?

<comment><USER5> Lol I was thinking the same thing. Go FTW!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> In my current project we're using FaunaDB which handles authorization for you. It really makes a lot of sense moving the permissions to the DB instead of having them in the logic layer.

</comment><comment><USER7> I have built something sort of similar based using purely `auth_request` and nginx. Basically, ach nginx location (ingress rule in kubernetes)s the scopes it cares about, and the request gets sent to a small webapp which checks a JWT for those scopes, logs the user and access, etc...

The scopes look like github scopes, e.g. `read:resource`. So it's more of a capabilities based system vs an RBAC one, but we have translated roles (via LDAP group membership) to capabilities to simplify things in some cases.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is an underrated post at the moment.

Something like this is great to centralize management</comment>


Ask HN: Screencasts, emails or cold calls. How would you make first contact? - <AUTHOR>

I've a web prototype. The time is ripe to reach out to (small) businesses (such as restaurants) to pilot or test out my product. Question is, what is the best first step in order to do so? Should I send "pitch" emails to the CEOs of these companies? Should I, instead, send them a link to a screencast of my product and how it'll make their lives easier? Should I call them and ask for a face-to-face meeting? Or should I just barge in one fine day and "ambush" them?
I'd love to hear your stories of how exactly you went about getting the first customer to say "Ok, sounds interesting, let me just try it out."
Thanks. <comment><USER2> We offer a web solution for a niche to do some ERP and CRM.

We got our first customer by checking the websites of potential customers to find one that could have our mindset.

Although the setup is meant to be done by the customer himself, we did all the required setup-work to match the customers design and populated some first data from open sources. (about 30 minutes of work..)

Then we did the cold call and approached him more or less like this: 'Hi! We have this new thing and are searching for someone who would like to test it out with us. You wont have to pay us until you see the benefit for yourself and your customers, but we require a strong involvement and somebody who gets stuff done as our test customer. And then we thought of you. :)'

One thing to mention about the cold call. We have to get past a front desk. It is not that easy, but I would say it helps to provide information about how long you would like to talk to the owner/ceo. We asked for 5-10 minutes and an available internet connection.

First we explain what we do. When the customer gets the idea, we say: 'We hoped you would be interested, so we already setup a version for you. Go check it out at $sitename. Btw: there is an email in your inbox right now, that contains the link.'

This is how we do it.

Disclaimer: We are just starting and have only a few test customers by now. But once we were able to talk to the owners, all of them opened up, when they saw their own logo and design on our product.

<comment><USER3> +1 for "there is an email in your inbox right now, that contains the link." That's a great idea - I've been approaching it as EITHER an email OR a call.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I run a small business. I don't have the patience for interruptions known as sales attempts. Yet I am keenly interested in, y'know, making some money. So I have to keep open to new stuff.

So. Put yourself in your customer's shoes. He/she wants to make a profit. Your new widget is not an obvious assist to that endeavor. A vendor is a necessary evil, an entity created by evolutionary forces to steal food from his children's mouths. That's what you're facing.

Start slow. Educate. Everything you say has to tell your customer where the value is. Throw a bunch of information chum in the water. Your customer #1 will throw himself/herself into the boat with eagerness.

My suggestion is blogging. Let Mr. Google do the hard lifting. If you know actual humans who might be your customers go talk to them. After you have your blog up. After. They have to be able to go there after you talk to them.

Me personally - I hate webcasts. It is such a slow method of conveying information to my brain.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you are targeting restaurants (if not pick a good segment, small business is huge) then I would suggest going at off hours (very early or late), going in person, and talking to the owner face to face.

Most likely if its a small business restaurant the owner will be there. Even better is buy breakfast or dinner at the restaurant.

Then when you get a chance explain the problem you are trying to solve and a brief explanation on what you are doing, with the goal of getting feedback and their opinion. Only then if the owner is interested in hearing more should you follow up with an official pitch/presentation on what you can do.

It's a hard and slow process but no one said #startuplife is easy

</comment><comment><USER6> Let's back up a minute.

You've built a web prototype of a product, which means you had some idea of what the product should do, and what business problem it should solve, and who it should be useful to.

Presumably, in doing that, you relied on the input of some target customers to help you understand their business. Right? (If not, well, then we need to have a different conversation.)

My point is: you should already have personal contacts who are also prospects. And those folks should each have a rolodex full of further prospects.

So, if it were me, I'd call someone I knew (i.e, _not_ cold-call) and ask for a face-to-face. I'd offer them a free trial, in exchange for feedback after they've used the product for a while. If the feedback is positive, ask for leads.

Rinse, lather, repeat, and you should have a decent test for your MVP.

<comment><AUTHOR> > You've built a web prototype of a product, which means you had some idea of > what the product should do, and what business problem it should solve, and > who it should be useful to.

Right. Only that it's a bare-minimum prototype, built just to gauge customers' reactions and incorporate their input.

> Presumably, in doing that, you relied on the input of some target customers > to help you understand their business. Right?

Of course. But the input given until now has been purely based on conversations I had before the prototype (for lack of a better word?) was built.

I'd like to see the reaction of someone that I have zero connections with, so that I don't get a biased (towards me) review. There's still much work to be done, but I'm wondering what the best way is to go out there, and tease them into eventually using the product, once it's set for release.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Find out who your competitors' customers are (it's easy -- just look up the "Clients" page) and poach them via email first to gauge their interest, and then try to set up a phone call or face-to-face to get them to try your product. Your competitors' customers are as qualified as leads come.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, at the risk of sounding naive, my product is pretty much disruptive. There isn't a similar product yet in the market (I'm not in the US) - hence, I feel I almost have to go out there to create the need/demand before I can sell them on the deal.

That's why I'd like to plan my first move accordingly. I think it's the most crucial move I'll make!

<comment><USER8> I was figuring you wrote a schedule app. But that's doesn't sound disruptive. I run an online scheduling app. I let google do all work for me. Its mostly hands off at this point, a new feature here or there, but basically on cruise control.

I've been tempted to do some cold calling, but not interested in the work involved. I'm letting google slowing grow the number of customers. It is a side effort, so I'm happy with the passive income.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Try all three (and any others you can think of). Keep doing the approaches that work best given your product, market, and personal style.</comment>


Mcdonalds copying cyriak – cows cows cows in their new commercial? - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/cyriakharris/status/760435431943053312 <comment><AUTHOR> Here's a link to the mcdonalds commercial: [https://vimeo.com/176208286](https://vimeo.com/176208286) Link to cyriak's video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FavUpD_IjVY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FavUpD_IjVY)

<comment><USER2> I know this is a ver non HN comment to make, but cyriak's stuff is amazingly incredible. Long time fan of the music and the visual arts.

Sadly, this sort of creativity stripping is rife. Did RatherGood.com not have simialar issues with Coke using their art in a foreign country?</comment></comment>


What could make a star green? - e-sushi http://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/64344/16029 <comment><AUTHOR> We can never perceive a green star with our eyes alone without some sort of substrate between the two blocking the red and blue light emissions. This is because green falls smack dab in the middle of the visible light spectrum. When a star a appears blue, most of what is being emitted by the star is photons with a frequency that appears blue, and photons with a frequency of ultraviolet or higher. Same goes for red stars, except instead of ultraviolet, it emits frequencies in infrared and lower, resulting again in light that our eyes cannot pick up. We only see the red photons that our eyes are able to pick up.

If we could see further into the ultraviolet and infrared spectrum, "blue" and "red" stars would most likely disappear in favor of whatever colors blue+ultraviolet and red+infrared look like. This is what we see when we look at a white star. It's a star emitting most of its light in the green spectrum, but also emitting reds and blues, thus appearing white.

(Fun side note: Our sun is actually what a "green" star would look like if we could actually see them. It's white when viewed from space. It only changes colors and appears primarily yellow due several factors affecting the photons in our atmosphere. Absorbption of certain wavelengths, Rayleigh scattering, ect.)

<comment><USER2> _We can never perceive a green star with our eyes alone without some sort of substrate between the two blocking the red and blue light emissions._

A doppler shift of a red or blue star would do it.

<comment><AUTHOR> How so? A doppler shift would only shift the apparent wavelengths that are already present. For it to create a green star effect, it would need to actively remove the upper and lower ends of the star's spectra.

<comment><USER3> Exactly, deeper red or deeper blue, but not green.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Completely unrelated, but the green stars reminded me of the chapter from Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman where he's judging math books [1]:

> Finally I come to a book that says, "Mathematics is used in science in many > ways. We will give you an example from astronomy, which is the science of > stars." I turn the page, and it says, "Red stars have a temperature of four > thousand degrees, yellow stars have a temperature of five thousand degrees . > . ." \-- so far, so good. It continues: "Green stars have a temperature of > seven thousand degrees, blue stars have a temperature of ten thousand > degrees, and violet stars have a temperature of . . . (some big number)." > There are no green or violet stars, but the figures for the others are > roughly correct. It's vaguely right -- but already, trouble! That's the way > everything was: Everything was written by somebody who didn't know what the > hell he was talking about, so it was a little bit wrong, always! And how we > are going to teach well by using books written by people who don't quite > understand what they're talking about, I cannot understand. I don't know > why, but the books are lousy; UNIVERSALLY LOUSY!

[1] [http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm](http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm)

</comment><comment><USER5> As an aside: there is a rather splendid explanation for stars _going_ green in Ken MacLeod's SF novel _Learning the World_ :

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

</comment><comment><USER6> Argh I'm halfway through Absolution Gap now, and there's a quote from the bloody epilogue halfway down the page!

Managed to avoid reading most of it fortunately.

</comment><comment><USER7> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_law)

</comment><comment><USER8> Would dumping enough copper into the star work or would that still glow white?

<comment><USER9> If you spread enough of it around the star, sure, it will do. But _into_ the star won't help you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If there's a redshift, there might be a greenshift?

<comment><USER11> In a non-Euclidian geometry perhaps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> greenfly

</comment><comment><USER13> envy?

</comment><comment><USER14> > You cannot [...]

Says who? This StackExchange is for people writing fiction. They can do whatever the hell they want.

It's fine to advise against certain things that might detract from credibility, but telling people they "cannot" do things comes across awfully self-important.

EDIT: Maybe I'm getting downvoted because of the self-importance of telling people they cannot tell people that they cannot do things? :)

<comment><USER15> Worldbuilding.SE is weird. People are very unclear whether they want "plausible fiction" or "hard science" answers for things, and to some extent it's also treated like a puzzle - which I think is what the phrasing means here. "You may/may not" phrasing appears in exam questions.

<comment><USER16> This hasn't been my experience. Worldbuilding has hard-science and soft- science tags, and the better posts use them. Puzzle questions tend to get flagged and closed.</comment></comment></comment>


K'nex Mechanical Computer (2011) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdT1YT9AOPA

<comment><USER2> A couple of students from Olin College did this back in 2006/2007 with a 4-bit adder, no electricity, no motors: [http://knexcomputer.blogspot.com/](http://knexcomputer.blogspot.com/)

It's up in the publicly-accessible library in Needham, MA if you live nearby and want to check it out!

<comment><USER3> Seems like a slightly more complex (has a binary -> decimal decoder) of this [1] which was made around the same time but is a bit easier to see how it operates (since it isn't made of K'nex)

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcDshWmhF4A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcDshWmhF4A)

I guess the big difference is the ball-drop adders don't require electricity or motors for one calculation, but you need some method (human or otherwise) to move the balls back to the top. Also you can only carry out calculation downwards, so your CPU might wind up being a few hundred meters tall!

Not to disparage the ball-drop adders at all, just pointing out the differences.

<comment><USER4> I made that project. The main benefit of balls is that the friction doesn't add up like it does with connected rods and gears.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is pretty impressive. I can't imagine how much my fingers would hurt after building that thing.

</comment><comment><USER6> I went to high school with this guy!</comment>


Show HN: A Curated List of Rabbit Holes on the Internet - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/torchhound/warren <comment><AUTHOR> I was inspired to compile this list by a recent Ask HN post about rabbit holes on the internet. The majority of the links come directly from that thread while others are links I have come across. Please enjoy and consider contributing!

<comment><USER2> One site that might be considered, is a fairly old site. Hotel XVR27 [http://www.com-www.com/](http://www.com-www.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I think this is a good suggestion and recommend that you submit a pull request so you may receive credit. If I don't see a PR at some point in the future I will probably add it myself. Thank you for the engagement.</comment></comment></comment>


The Missing 20th Century: How copyright protection makes books vanish - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/the-missing-20th-century-how-copyright-protection-makes-books-vanish/255282/ <comment><USER2> In other words, it has taken the ridiculous cultural productivity of the internet era to even balance out the downward drag of copyright.

Copyright and patents need to be completely destroyed. They are _not_ worth the price.

<comment><USER3> Copyright terms that are _too long_ are not worth the price. Copyright renewal would be much better.

<comment><USER4> There is no period of time that is short enough. Even a year, three months or a week is too long. Copyright can't keep up with the speed of our culture anymore. The same goes for patents and progress, essentially. It's time to get rid of this artifact of the 20th century (along with the eternally backwards industries around it), it's holding us back.

<comment><USER2> The shortest time worth considering is a full publishing cycle - from pitch to advance to raw product to publication to break-even to profit. Given all the queues in each of the pre-publication phases and the slowness of making back the cost of preparing a work, I doubt you could squeeze that under 20 years. Otherwise it's just a cruel tease.

<comment><USER4> If this way of publication can't keep up with reality anymore, then I'm afraid it's not a viable business model, and should be scrapped, not kept on life- support with increasingly ridiculous monopoly laws which ultimately harm humanity as a whole.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I haven't watched the video, so this question is just based on the article: does he take into account multiple sources for the same book?

For instance, when a book is still under copyright and is available on Amazon, it is usually available from one publisher. When a book is not under copyright and is available on Amazon, it is often available from several different publishers.

If one book is available from 10 publishers, will it be counted 10 times in his numbers or just once?

</comment><comment><USER6> If copyrights and patents are "(intellectual) property" and valued accordingly, how much revenue could the government obtain if they made companies pay annual "property taxes" on them?

<comment><USER7> How would you value it? One way would be to look at the revenue generated each year...

It turns out they already tax that, though.

<comment><USER8> They can set the value at whatever they want. And the government, or anyone, can buy the rights at that value, 5 years after creation of the work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It seems we are now in the midst of an all out assault on the concept of intellectual property. A lot of people see no reason why their right to consume should be limited or why creators should have some control over the use of their creations in an advanced civilisation.

<comment><USER10> Maybe because it's effectively free to duplicate said property without depriving the original owner of it? Intellectual property to physical property is apples to uranium. Our economic system is out of date in many aspects and needs an overhaul.

<comment><USER9> It depends on what your basis of physical property is. I don't want to expend thousands of words discussing the matter so I'll just direct you here if you're interested: [http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/patents_and_copyrights.htm...](http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/patents_and_copyrights.html)

Personally I am uncomfortable with the parasitical nature of taking somebody else's artistic creation, for its entertainment value, without any sort of consent/compensation involved.

<comment><USER10> Thanks for the link.

>An idea as such cannot be protected until it has been given a material form.

And here, in the very first and central assumption, in my opinion, lies the problem. An idea is not a physical object. It does not have the properties of a physical object and does not act like one either. It has often been said that knowledge is power and, by extension, granting monopolies on knowledge also grants a monopoly on power. Funny how these monopolies are considered to be for the greater good when they directly harm it.

>Personally I am uncomfortable with the parasitical nature of taking somebody else's artistic creation, for its entertainment value, without any sort of consent/compensation involved.

As someone who creates art, I welcome this with open arms. The "pay what you want" business model for artistic creations has been demonstrated to work _better_ than the old model (e.g. <http://bigthink.com/ideas/41602>). Yet it's not just the people who pay the equivalent to the full price who benefit but everyone - rich or poor. It's an inclusive model which respects peoples' financial status and removes the cultural pay-walls. Open Source Software has also been proven to deliver robust, high quality products without bleeding everyone's pockets dry. The Creative Commons is taking off and I suspect that it will be another such success story.

How can our society be so comfortable with putting a price on culture when it's our intellectual bread and butter? By limiting the supply of food, we starve innovation and ensure that what's here today is what's here tomorrow. I don't know about you, but I want humanity to evolve, not revolve.

For further evidence, exhibit B - [http://www.fair.org/blog/2012/03/30/the- one-graph-that-expla...](http://www.fair.org/blog/2012/03/30/the-one-graph- that-explains-why-copyright-is-too-long/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you're gunning for book immortality, one of the worst thing you could do is to copyright it.

<comment><USER12> In the States, the act of copyrighting a book makes it eligible to be stored in the Library of Congress. This more-or-less guarantees its immortality.

<comment><USER13> Wait, if a book isn't copyrighted, it's not eligible for inclusion in the LoC? How does that make any sense at all?

<comment><USER14> The act of copyrighting a book includes depositing a copy with the Library of Congress. The LoC used to accept all submissions; now it only accepts submissions filed pursuant to a copyright.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Except for piracy, which gives information when the government won't allow copyrights to expire.</comment>


Some high level information about the Pony programming language - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/aturley/49b60c98306d90ffc2f981515827b005 <comment><USER2> Great compact list! This answered a question I couldn't get answered after playing around with Pony for 5 minutes, the package manager (pony stable).

Nit, I skipped over pony-stable because I thought it was the stable version. IMO, pony-parcel would have been a better name.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I get the equine theme, but I don't think "pony stable" is a very good name. It's probably especially bad for non-native speakers, who may well not know that a stable is a building for keeping horses (and ponies!) in.

<comment><USER4> If we get to throw in name suggestions, I'd suggest `pony-ranch`. Stays with the equine theme and one less letter too!

<comment><USER2> pony-parcel hints at the Pony Express, it delivers ... puns (in a package)!

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pony Programming Language link in the article gives a "404" error.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh god that's embarrassing. Thank you for pointing that out.

edit: fixed.</comment></comment>


Forensic Science Isn't Science - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/06/forensic_science_is_biased_and_inaccurate_but_juries_believe_it_and_convict.single.html

<comment><USER2> It is science, it is just bad science being practiced by inexperienced folks with nobody double-checking their works including their equipment.</comment>


How Americans Get Out of Credit Card Debt - <AUTHOR> http://blog.readyforzero.com/2011/02/04/how-americans-get-out-of-credit-card-debt/ <comment><USER3> What happened to "stop buying things you don't need"? I had a friend tell me he was considering a consumer loan because repaying his other loans didn't leave him with enough money.

I swear, it's as if people have never seen money before.

<comment><USER4> Elizabeth Warren said that in their bankruptcy study, the vast majority of people who filed for bankruptcy didn't do it because they "bought things they didn't need". They did it because they overextended themselves to get a house in a good school district and then one of them lost their job or they had a medical emergency.

It's easy to paint those people as irresponsible, but according to her, it's very far from the truth in most cases.

<comment><USER5> I remember a study on general aviation plane crashes. They found that very few plane crashes came about because the pilot made a single, obvious mistake. Instead, the common pattern was a series of missteps, each so small that you couldn't properly call it a "mistake" in and of itself, the pilot was just cutting corners on the recommended safety margin. And then something happened that was out of the pilot's control, like bad weather or distraction or mechanical failure. Because the safety precautions that make it normally possible to recover from these events weren't followed, this resulted in a crash instead of merely a nerve-wracking landing.

I think the same thing happens with finance. If you look at the _proximate_ cause of bankruptcy, it's almost always that somebody has a health emergency or a death in the family or loses their job. But many people have health emergencies, deaths in the family, and stints of unemployment _without_ going into bankruptcy. And the reason why is the same thing Benjamin Graham and Warren Buffett have been espousing in investing for years: Margin of Safety.

If you always live on the edge, then it's a given that sometime you're going to fall off. Hold back 6-12 months reserve of salary, and suddenly unemployment doesn't look so scary. Health insurance makes a sudden medical emergency not quite so scary. Have $10-20K in the bank, and you don't need to worry that totaling your car is going to send you into crippling debt.

The irresponsible part is not that these people got sick or lost their job, it's that they didn't prepare for contingencies where they would get sick and lose their job. There's this culture in America where as soon as you start earning more money, you _have_ to spend it on something, otherwise you're wasting it. But there's a tension between resiliency and efficiency, and if you're always being perfectly efficient, things tend to go very wrong when they go wrong. Make your bargains accordingly.

<comment><USER6> Man, you are clearly speaking from a position of privilege on that one. How the _hell_ do you hold back 6-12 months salary when you can barely afford the rent, utility bills and the costs of raising some kids to begin with?

Haha, just hold back 6 months salary! You make it sound so easy!

It's not that they didn't prepare, it's that many of them _have no means_ to prepare, and barely have the means to continue as is.

Many also believe that it is worth risking living on the edge to support a better school for their kids (ideally breaking the cycle), than moving to project housing and dangerous gang-controlled areas in order to enjoy their "margin of safety". I can't fault them for that.

And, if you're in such a position, and aren't fortunate enough to have your area of expertise and interest involving computers, good luck getting a job without a degree. So what do they do to pay for the outrageous tuition costs these days? Take a giant loan from Sallie Mae.

Now you have two problems.

<comment><USER7> If you're willing to move, and live with roommates, it's fairly easy to live comfortably (assuming no children) on 12k/year total. Assuming you're making minimum wage-ish, that's 8k to put in the bank every year.

<comment><USER8> yeah, what? that's a lot of assumptions. people don't live with assumptions, they live with the realities of having a kid or a spouse or a family or even a girl they just can't get over.

<comment><USER7> I was responding to a post about 'holding back 6 months salary' as a safety measure, with a simple example of how to do so. Obviously, this is something to do before you go and start a family. My point was not that it's possible for everyone, but rather that it's not as unthinkably hard to do as one might think, even on minimum wage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> i rang up about 5k in credit card debt. six months ago, i decided to put my nose to the grindstone and get it done.

i paid my last $600 off this morning.

i stopped buying unnecessary shit, stopped eating out all the time, and most importantly, made payments -every- time i possibly could. if i opened my bank account online and had $400 left in checking, i'd put $250 into the card. if i had $200 left, i'd put $100. there are a whole boatload of $50 payments and many even smaller.

just start paying and don't stop until it's gone. pay your bills, stay fed, and whenever you have money left over, move it to your credit card. try to make a small payment every couple days. just focus on that damn number and make it smaller every single opportunity you have until it reads "0".

i also made enough during this period to pay for a trip to jamaica in cash. i only make $39,500 yearly so it's not like i'm hauling in bags of dough, but focusing on my credit card debt also had some interesting side effects - <USER2> learning money management and learning how to save WHILE paying down old debts.

it got to the point that i found more joy in moving $50 to my credit card than going out and dropping $50 on drinks over the weekend. it's funny, but all that stuff that i just 'had' to buy before ...... it turns out i didn't. imagine that.

<comment><USER10> I'm sure you're up there with those who think that people who owe large sums of money should "just work harder" or "lay off alcohol and cigs".

I had a medical injury that has royally screwed up my life. I also HAD insurance, but starbucks switched insurance and I was now in preexisting condition hell. I had no money for a lawsuit, so I'm now 12k in the hole, along with basic living expenses that I had to cover while not being able to work. Its upwards of 20k and I have no way to pay it off.

So no. Quite many people in USA are just 1 accident away from ruin. I've seen it 3x before, and now with me. And there's not much at all that could be done.

<comment><USER9> 'I'm sure you're up there with those who think that people who owe large sums of money should "just work harder" or "lay off alcohol and cigs".'

You say I'm "up there" like I'm some sort of snooty asshole for working my face off for six months to pay off my debt. I have my vices (I love you, Mary Jane) and I still managed to afford them so make whatever assumptions you will about me, I just found it more gratifying to work on my debt rather than get canned every weekend (not at first, it took a few months to get to that point).

I feel for you in regards to your injury, but 20k is pretty damn far from insurmountable debt. If anything it sounds like you've given up on yourself, and that sucks because I've been there and it's a tough spot to break out of.

I worked my ass off for six months to pay off 5k - work your ass off for 24 months and you'll be well on your way to knocking down that 20k.

Oh.... and just work harder.

<comment><USER11> I was 25K in credit card debt when I got out of school. I moved back in with my parents and pretty much didn't do anything outside of working and sleeping for a year, and paid it off I am still debt free (this was 5 years ago).

It takes self control and discipline, which most people don't have.

<comment><USER12> It's easy to be judgmental. What would you have done if you didn't have parents to mooch off of for a year? What if you had a family to support?

It's easy to tell yourself you succeeded all due to "self control" and "discipline". But the truth is like many judgmental types, you had considerable practical/emotional support as well.

<comment><USER13> "What would you have done if you didn't have parents to mooch off of for a year? What if you had a family to support?"

What if a cow comes stomping into your front room and demands that you feed her shredded hundred dollar bills until she's full enough to tap dance her way to victory in the upcoming school competition?

Hypothetical aren't arguments, they're just anchorless questions. You have to look around yourself, figure out what to do, and do it. It may take extreme measures and you may encounter setbacks, but you can't let hypotheticals stop you. What do _you_ have, right now? You don't have to worry about the hypothetical things happening to other people. How can you leverage it? Can you move somewhere that has more stuff? Do you need to declare bankruptcy? Do you need to find a private charity to help you out? Sometimes drastic action is called for.

Very few of us are handed life on a silver platter, and a goodly number of those people get the silver platter yanked at some time during their life. We _all_ got problems. Solve them to the best of your abilities, or don't. I'm not guaranteeing success, because _nobody's_ guaranteed success, but if you just give up on self control and discipline you're guaranteeing failure.

<comment><USER12> The difference is my hypothetical is a realistic one many people face. Yours is just pure fantasy with no connection to reality.

Yes personal motivation and attitude to succeed are large factors, ones we should encourage, but the empirical evidence heavily suggest your personal circumstances and level of support are equally as important, if not more so.

I'm a little tired of people with multiple advantges largely ignoring them in favor of the "I'm so great and awesome and all you need to do is be like me" mentality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> OT: A blog peeve of mine is when you read a blog and want to visit the home page but can't find the link. Out of years of systematic reflex, I clicked the logo in the upper left, only to get the blog home. After a little link hovering I discovered the "try it out" button goes to the home page, but to me that means sign up, not read more about it. If you're going to use your blog for marketing, make it really easy for visitors to visit the home page. Don't make me think!

</comment><comment><USER15> They have a chart showing how people get out of debt, and the chart seriously does not include the option "pay your damn bills?"

I'm reminded of statistics saying that the average wedding costs $28k or whatever. The reality turns out to be something like "among weddings arranged by a professional wedding planner, the average cost is 28k".

I hope they aren't putting together a funding pitch equating the "1/3 of American's have credit card debt" with "1/3 of Americans have enough debt that they need outside help managing it" as this chart implies.

<comment><USER16> I've been in a situation where life sucked and racked up some debt and fouled up my credit, so I can sympathize to some extent, but what I thought was pretty bad debt (including student loans) was less than that 'average' wedding figure.

After spending a year or two putting all my extra income toward successfully retiring the debt, my future wife and I looked at engagement rings and weddings and thought, "this is crazy." She has no engagement ring (wedding band though) and we eloped, and we're just as married as my brother and he spent $30k.

I have a friend whose parents offered to give them money for a down payment or to pay for their wedding. They chose wedding.

What the hell people? It's one day. The wedding madness is just nuts. "Hey, we might want to buy a house and have kids soon. Let's spend all of that money we might need entertaining a gaggle of family and friends, half of whom each one of us doesn't particularly like."

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> So my question is what about people that aren't in debt, but need help improving their credit score? I had a lot of debt from about 5-10 years ago and it killed my credit score. The debt has all been paid off for a few years, I haven't had credit cards in years, and I still have a few notices from closed accounts that won't fall off for a few years.

So I'm currently doing what I can to remove the closed notices and have had some minor success. But a lot of people don't know the _right_ things to do to improve their scores.

Having a service that tracks the 3 credit bureaus and provides guidance on steps to take to bring your score up would be mighty useful.

<comment><USER18> Go to your bank and ask about a secured loan. Basically, you put money in a CD and get 2% or whatever. The CD sits at the bank. You then get a loan for the same amount as the CD at 3% or so.

They've got your money in the bank, so it's no risk for them. You put the loan on auto-pay, you lose 1% per year to do this, but you get 12 of these kinds of transaction credits on your account which is good because they count differently than credit card.

I did it with $1100 and it cost me $10 or $15 or whatever, but I went from not eligible for a credit card with a limit over $250 to getting an uncapped charge card with good rewards in 12 months, which was very helpful in business. I don't know about getting the bad transactions off, but getting good ones on is important too. I don't know what the lowest amount you can do it with is, but I did it with two loans: one $1000 and one $100, and it worked well.

<comment><USER17> I've also heard this before but wasn't sure about the details. Thanks for stating this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> In the context of getting out of debt: Is anyone a Dave Ramsey listener here? I've been an avid listener for a few years now. I recommend his podcast to everyone -- not only for the financial advice, but also for the cultural education about what America really is.

<comment><USER20> I like his debt snowball approach. I don't have a debt problem (and plan to never have, but crises happen). The way I understand it, you pay off your smallest debt by whatever means necessary, make minimum payments on everything else. Then you take what you were paying on that debt, and apply it to the next. Over time you are eliminating debt and applying all the money you spent on the eliminated debt towards the next debt. So you start paying off faster as you go. At least that's how I think the plan works.

<comment><USER21> The fastest way to pay off debt is to pay off the highest interest rate debt first, then the next highest interest rate debt, then the next highest interest rate debt, etc.

The debt snowball approach isn't the fastest approach, but the theory is that it has a strong psychological impact: By paying off your smallest debts first, you see forward progress more clearly, which motivates and energizes you to keep going.

Another good psychological trick is to have only one credit card. Then, when you get the bill each month, you can clearly see how much you've spent. The single big statement is scarier than having lots of little statements, and leads people to spend less money unnecessarily.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "How Americans get out of credit card debt."

Don't most of them just pay it off? Sure takes a long time, but eventually don't most people pay what they owe?

BTW, there are only about 1.5Million bankruptcies in the US every year ... that's <1% of borrowers. So I wouldn't use it as the first kind of "traditional option".

<comment><USER22> It's kind of misleading to say that it's "only" 1% of borrowers file, because the scope of time is focused on one year, but not only do borrowers have a much larger average lifetime, but the impacts of bankruptcy last 10 years. If we say that the borrower pool stays fairly static over a 10 year period, that means really you're talking about AT LEAST 15% of borrowers are filing bankruptcy.

<comment><USER23> Many people also die with debt. I suspect less than 50% of people ever get back to zero after gaining significant amounts of debt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The infographic reads that 1/3 of Americans have credit card debt and further below that over 100 MM Americans carry a balance from month to month.

1\. Isn't carrying a balance from month to month the definition of "credit card debt"?

2\. As of July 2009, the US population is about 307 million people.

That would mean that virtually everybody with a credit card carries a balance from month to month. That's simply not true.

<comment><USER25> The way I read it, the two facts are redundant, they mean that virtually everybody with _credit card debt_ carries a balance from month to month. That's tautologically true.

I would _guess_ that more than 1/3 of Americans have a credit. card _account_ (not necessarily debt).

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Is their business model subscription based or recommendation (like Mint) based? I don't know if I would trust anything from a company like this if I was already in debt. Usually people already feel screwed over. They should really work on PR and branding so people feel like they can trust then.

<comment><AUTHOR> Check out our FAQs and Privacy Policy, we try to address this and other issues there: <https://www.readyforzero.com/overview/faqs> <https://www.readyforzero.com/overview/privacy>

As a datapoint, since the public launch a few days ago we are already helping people track over $35M in credit card debts. We believe trust is earned not paid for.

<comment><USER26> Nice- I should've looked. And, I appreciate the idea behind earned trust. Best of luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I got my RFZ invite code the other day and took the 10 minutes it required to get my credit cards in the system and play with its tools.

I found it to be SO much simpler than Mint, which I've just ignored for more than a year now.

With RFZ, I can quickly see that if I stopped using my cards and paid X per month for 3 years, I'm out of debt and am only paying about 15% more over what I owe. Thats not so bad when you consider the alternatives.

Now, I think I underestimated what I can afford to pay, so hopefully I look at my bank account one day and see there's a few extra thousand that I don't need to save and can immediately put that on a card. Feels like I'll be better off much sooner than 3 years.

Mint can do this, I know, but again — the simplicity of the experience of RFZ is top notch.

<comment><USER28> Ditto. I got my invite the other day. I like that it is one place focused on getting my debt down. I paid what felt like a bunch of money the other day, but on RFZ it's clear that it was a drop in the bucket of what I owe in total...

I second that. RFZ is top notch.

Edit: this thread reminded me to check if a trade cleared. Just paid another $800 towards credit card zero. Woot!

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Hi,

I don't have much CC debt right now, at all. What I do have is Student Debt, and bags of it.

I've rummaged through the relevant federal repayment and waiver options, and I don't see any efficient ways for a software engineer to deal with the debt except "push as much money at it as fast as possible". Loan management options seem to extend debt payments out to about 30-40 years, which generates some eye-hurtingly huge interest payments over time. (think 1.5x the original loan amount).

One of the nasty little twists in federal student loans is that bankruptcy won't affect them. They do have various deferment plans, but those can keep the interest ticking along, which can be harsh if loans are large.

So: my question is: does readyforzero.com have any plans to work on student loan debt in the future?

</comment><comment><USER30> Wondering how many people use the consolidators who promise to manage down your debt by acting as midddlemen between you and collectors? What advantages (if any) does Ready for Zero offer over this method?

It took me 11 years to pay off 2 credit cards, and I'm still petrified to go into CC debt again. Will Ready for Zero also eventually offer planning tools for saving up for a big ticket item like a new MacBook Air so that I don't have to pull out a CC to purchase it?

<comment><USER31> Try something like: <http://www.smartypig.com> (online savings accounts goal oriented) or <http://www.mint.com> (nice goals feature)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I love this idea, but I've been getting "We're sorry, our server is under heavy load. Please try again." during the verify phase for the last few days.

<comment><USER33> Thanks for checking us out - I'm really sorry about that. We are dealing with issues with some of our backend service providers. One of the difficulties of a financial site such as this is that the data which comes back is not very well normalized nor homogeneous, and we are seeing issues and response types which we have never seen before. Please send an email to firstname.lastname@example.com and we will track your issue. Thanks guys!

<comment><USER32> Sent! Let me know if I can help in any way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I wonder how many people that declare bankruptcy own a big flat screen TV with a DirectTV subscription with at least one premium package (Showtime, HBO, etc)?

</comment><comment><USER35> as long as there is money in society there always will be dept. if consumers pay off all their dept on credit cards. if homeowners pay off all their mortgage dept for property. if all small businesses pay off their dept. if all institutions pay off their dept. if all banks pay off their dept to investors, foundations, etc. if all states pay off their dept to banks, IMF and other organizations.

in other words, if every single individual or organization pays of their dept there wont be a single dollar bill in circulation which means an end to our current system, which is something most people do not want to happen (no matter how broken and inefficient it is)</comment>


Show HN: Canny, collect and organize user feedback - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/canny/introducing-canny-65998437e6eb <comment> J-H looks fantastic!

i had actually built something similar a few years ago, but ended up abandoning it as I never quite had the time nor passion to see it through.</comment>


Bill Would Let Publishers Gang Up versus Facebook and Google - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/bill-would-let-publishers-gang-up-versus-facebook-and-google <comment><USER2> I'm not sure more monopolies are good solutions to monopolies.</comment>


Linux Kernel Modules in Haskell (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://tommd.wordpress.com/2009/09/13/kernel-modules-in-haskell/ <comment><USER2> This is really neat, but I am very wary of building kernel modules with garbage collected languages especially ones like Haskell, which can has very difficult to reason about runtime characteristics due to laziness.

One approach that I find much more promising is using Haskell (or other robust and semantically easy to reason about and easy to verify languages) to generate C code which then can be used with normal toolchains for low-level development. Galois is doing a lot of work in this area that looks very promising. One of their projects is an autopilot system called SMACCMPilot[0] that uses a Haskell eDSL called Ivory[1] to generate safe C code. I am particularly excited about its integration with FreeRTOS tasks using the Tower Language[2] (another Haskell eDSL).

This makes it possible to generate code that can be reasoned about with Haskell but has the runtime characteristics of C. This is particularly interesting because embedded systems code is notoriously non-composable and difficult to reason about due to the enormous shared state of the hardware itself and the highly concurrent nature of interrupt-driven design. Embedded C makes a good target for this sort of design and analysis though, because it has very constrained memory usage (developers typically eschew dynamic allocation), very subtle potential issues (debugging race conditions with LEDs sucks), and very serious consequences for errors[3].

[0][http://smaccmpilot.org/index.html](http://smaccmpilot.org/index.html)

[1][http://smaccmpilot.org/languages/ivory- introduction.html](http://smaccmpilot.org/languages/ivory-introduction.html)

[2][http://smaccmpilot.org/languages/tower- overview.html](http://smaccmpilot.org/languages/tower-overview.html)

[3][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25)

<comment><USER3> _This is really neat, but I am very wary of building kernel modules with garbage collected languages especially ones like Haskell, which can has very difficult to reason about runtime characteristics due to laziness._

This is FUD, repeated _ad nauseum_ all over the internet as a misinterpretation of what Simon Peyton Jones said once during a talk. In case you hadn't noticed, there appears to be a tradition in programmer circles of picking SPJ quotes and turning them into memes. "Haskell is useless!" and "Avoid success at all costs!" are some others.

The reality is far less extreme than most people think. It is not at all unreasonable to write low-level code such as device drivers in Haskell. This has actually been done as part of the HaLVM project.

<comment><USER4> SPJ is a fool for making those 'clever' statements like "Haskell is useless!", because most people won't stick around to hear the twist explanation.

<comment><USER5> The explanation of this particular quote is like 5 minutes long on YouTube. If you don't spend that much time to listen to an argument, it's unlikely that you have a well founded opinion on programming languages anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is incredibly neat and I do not at all mean to discourage the development of more tools. However, is this really that much more capable than considering all of the other tooling that can help in writing a kernel module in C? That is, you have more than just the C compiler at your disposal nowdays. Valgrind and such.

Simply put, how much more capable is this? Certainly more concise and has some aesthetic appeal. Just curious if it brings a lot more to the table.

<comment><USER7> One of the main uses of valgrind is to discover undefined behavior. Haskell doesn't have undefined behavior, so you don't need it.

I don't think the C tooling is that great. Haskell has some neat tooling of its own.

<comment><USER6> I think you are misrepresenting valgrind some. Just going by the bullet list on their homepage, they do more than just undefined. Offering fairly nice analysis at the cache level. Also, has support for finding threading errors. Note, this isn't just a "do mutexes work" sort of thing, but offers analysis that shared memory is safely shared. (And, from my understanding, this doesn't require modification of the code to make it slower/larger.)

So, this really doesn't answer my question. I can't but agree that the tooling in Haskell is above that of plain C. However, what class of bugs will be prevented in the kernel, that isn't already fairly well handled with existing tooling. Consider that the kernel is actually fairly solid code, if I'm not off my rocker.

<comment><USER8> Wouldn't "class of bugs prevented by tooling" not be quite as good as "class of bugs disallowed by programming language"?

<comment><USER9> The problem is that, from a pragmatic perspective, you have to balance the benefits of a safer language and the cost of "explaining" to it that what you're doing is safe. If you want to make it accept a particular construct as "safe", you have to feed it with a lot more information, whereas in a more permissive language you can just be imperative and tell it "I know it's ok, just do it". The tooling approach is, it seems, more attractive because it adds a bit of safety at a moderate cost.

<comment><USER3> _The tooling approach is, it seems, more attractive because it adds a bit of safety at a moderate cost._

There's one cost you've ignored: feedback time. A type-checker can be run on the fly with tools such as flymake. Debugging tools and tests are (orders of magnitude) slower to run and thus dramatically slow down the feedback cycle between bug detection and bug fix. This is especially prevalent when doing major refactoring work and the code is a long way from working again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> LKM in Haskell is something i was searching for. But in my Linux system, its gives me error and in fedora i compiled it successfully, but there was some memory issue....while doing it in ubuntu... nyway will another time....

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm waiting for Ruby. Or JavaScript. It's going to happen some day.

This reminds me a lot of xmonad. I guess higher level languages are migrating downwards to the system level slowly.

<comment><USER12> It seems like kernel-space code would be one of the worst possible environments in which to use a dynamic language. A runtime error in that context can easily bring down the entire system; you're really better off sticking to languages with at least a semblance of static safety. Haskell may be a high-level language, but it's also a significant improvement over C when it comes to compile-time safety, unlike Ruby and JavaScript, which have none at all.

<comment><USER13> The difference between catching types at runtime or compile time is much less important than the common feature of catching type errors at all. A runtime type error in C simply trashes another subsystem's data. A runtime type error in Python or Ruby is caught, so can theoretically be prevented from cratering the entire system.

Sure, I (as a heavy Haskell user) would rather catch such things at compile time, but given the choice between catching them at runtime and not catching them at all, I'd almost never choose the latter unless there are other overriding concerns.

<comment><USER14> C compilers catch plenty of type errors. As soon as you start casting things into different types you have the possibility of re-introducing type errors, but presumably you're casting things for a good reason in the first place, and therefore understand the tradeoff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Slightly OT, but does someone has an introduction on how to build a minimal kernel for people who have absolutely no clue on how this works?

<comment><USER16> [http://wiki.osdev.org/Main_Page](http://wiki.osdev.org/Main_Page) is very good.

My own kernel ([https://github.com/fotcorn/kernel](https://github.com/fotcorn/kernel)) is hacked together with code from osdev.org.</comment></comment>


YC News. A Human RSS reader. - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I wish there wasn't a race for users to submit the latest posting from the top 10 tech/startup blogs. I like discovering new sites not reading a rehash of what's already in my feed.

<comment><USER3> I've noticed that and it's a really big deal. I would love to filter out all the sites that I already check. The remaining stuff is what I'm normally missing.

[x] "Don't display Submissions for .techcrunch.com, ..., ..."

Do I smell a Greasemonkey script?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If you think about it YC News is nothing more than a RSS reader, but an intelligent one. Users search and find information all over the web (not only where you tell them because you sure do not know all the places where good info resides) and bring it to you. Nice. And all you RSS reader wants you to do is submit an interesting comment or story every now and then. Sweet.</comment>


ModernHumanBeings – a site with info on finance, cooking and being an adult - <AUTHOR> https://modernhumanbeings.com <comment><USER2> Wok stir fry: the key to a happy, long, and inexpensive life.</comment>


Twisted String Actuators: Surprisingly Simple, Cheap, and High Gear Ratio - <AUTHOR> http://www.hizook.com/blog/2015/01/13/twisted-string-actuators-surprisingly-simple-cheap-and-high-gear-ratio

<comment><USER2> I avoided clicking this title for hours, thinking it was something to do with the Twisted framework.

Using "actuator" about software is uncommon of course, but considering other terms in use in Twisted ("deferred" as a noun, "errback", "reactor" pattern) it didn't surprise me.

</comment><comment><USER3>
      We spent a fair bit of time evaluating twisted string
      actuators to build low-cost robots. Unfortunately, [...]
      their lifecycle is measured in the many thousands instead
      of millions -- despite our best efforts at material
      engineering.

I'd be interested to hear more about the materials they tried and what the failures typically were.

</comment><comment><USER4> how similar is this to the string actuated spider here? [http://www.tested.com/art/makers/467630-tested-show-jamie- hy...](http://www.tested.com/art/makers/467630-tested-show-jamie-hynemans- racing-spiders-project/)

<comment><USER5> Not at all, the string actuated spider just uses strings because they're flexible (i.e. they can make linear actuation go around a corner aided by a pully).</comment></comment>


Apple, Cisco, and Dow 15000 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.adamnash.com/2012/02/13/apple-cisco-dow-15000/

<comment><USER2> The big point to know about the Dow is that it's basically arbitrary and not rigorous, but has a long history, so enh.

I personally watch NASDAQ Composite, S&P 500, and Vanguard VTI (<http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSEARCA%3AVTI>) a lot more. If you _just_ want to track large caps, Vanguard MGC. The Vanguard funds track MSCI indices and have super low expense ratios.</comment>


Sloppy PhD Hires - <AUTHOR> I am a mid career and recently starting working full time and doing my PhD in ML.  I'm 2 years in and my advisor expects 2 more years to go (i'm funded through my job).
We recently hired 2 recent PhD ML students who were very much held in high regard by our EECS department. One of them I share advisers with.
In both cases, the 2 hires ended up in disaster with both quitting within 6 months.  I am trying to be introspective and understand what our group did wrong, but there's too much evidence pointing towards the sloppiness of the new hires.
In both cases, the new hires had sloppy desks, wrote sloppy code, and presented horrible slides with lots of mistakes (units missing, illegible axes, etc).  Our undergrad inters faired a lot better than these two.
In talking to other folks at our laboratory, it seems they run into this too.  Many PhD students are not ready to work in the "real world" and they are baffled how they do well at places like FAANG  (perhaps they arent?).
Are other folks running into this as well?  What do you do about it? <comment><USER2> > the 2 hires ended up in disaster with both quitting within 6 months. I am > trying to be introspective and understand what our group did wrong

Leaving aside perceived quality of work, can you give more details about what happened, and how your employer interacted with the new hires? It will be difficult for anyone on HN to give accurate input that is not just speculation without more information.

E.g.

* did they actually quit or were they fired?

* did they give any explicit reasons for quitting?

* did they voice any concerns about not being happy in the role to colleagues/management in the months before quitting?

* was there conflict between the new hires & colleagues/supervisors?

* did they get job offers for more attractive jobs?

* did management share your concerns about quality of work being produced by the new hires?

* were the new hires on some kind of performance plan or otherwise notified by management that they were underperforming?

* what hiring process does your org use? Are candidates required to write code during an on site interview?

</comment><comment><USER3> I feel your pain. I'm working with a physics PhD who's now doing software development and he's the same. Sloppy desk, sloppy code, sloppy abstractions. He also has the habit of talking over me and is not at all interested in my input, always plowing on in the wrong direction.

Unfortunately, I work in an academic setting and that seems to give someone with a qualification in an unrelated subject more authority. I feel a little powerless to influence the way we do things.

I've made peace with the fact that this guy is never going to change, but will eventually move on to something else.

</comment><comment><USER4> > Many PhD students are not ready to work in the "real world"

There are exceptions, but this is largely true.

I would go a step further and suggest FAANG are easier environments for ML PhDs because they go into research groups like FAIR and Google Brain, where legitimate software engineering (and general professional practices) aren't required. In other companies -- i.e. ML startups -- those training wheels need to come off, quickly.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd always test for the role and not rely on a PhD implying they can do the job. Unfortunately that means a coding test, but it can be short.

</comment><comment><USER6> What did you do to test they had the experience you expected? What is your hiring process? How did you make your expectations of them clear?

> In both cases, the new hires had sloppy desks, wrote sloppy code, and > presented horrible slides with lots of mistakes (units missing, illegible > axes, etc). Our undergrad inters faired a lot better than these two.

I don't think it's worth it to overgeneralise. You shouldn't generalise about senior developers with a decades of experience either because you don't know what they spent their time focusing on.

From personal perspective as well, it can be really demeaning when people try to attribute any oversight or lack of experience you have to you having done a PhD. Each PhD is radically different. Some do very concrete research, others do very abstract, others present a lot, others very little, some code a lot, some don't etc.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is a failure in your hiring process as well. How are you vetting your candidates? Are there gaps in your process that are allowing people who are a bad fit through?

Where I work, we had a PhD leave within 6 months. She was not able to deal with the lack of structure. Frankly, neither can I, but my motivations are a little different from hers. The team leadership could have done better in focusing on specific deliverables and letting her gain confidence through small victories before leading her down an open ended death march with few tangible criteria for success.

</comment><comment><USER8> I wouldn't expect people who are genuinely bad to work with in an academic research lab to be good to work with in an industry research lab.

On the other hand, I wouldn't expect PhD students (or any new hires) to be perfect out of the gate. Assuming the content (algorithms, approach, analysis) was correct and the main problems were with code style and presentation, perhaps they needed to be instructed regarding proper code and presentation style and directed to follow that instruction.

Messy desks are probably not the root cause of poor code or presentation.

</comment><comment><USER9> PhDs are often singularly focused (although that can change over time) and it seems likely that _your_ priorities were not _their_ priorities. They probably do very well in larger companies because they can a) find a niche that fits their interests and b) there are more non-PhDs to pick up the slack.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is very known issue across the globe with broiler PhD's. They will never be ready to get down to real job.

</comment><comment><USER11> This isn't a PhD hire problem, this is a hiring someone out of school / college and not giving them enough structure to succeed problem. It's just you have higher expectations because they did great at undergrad / masters.</comment>


Valve's flat structure contains "hidden layer of powerful management" - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcgamer.com/valves-flat-structure-contains-hidden-layer-of-powerful-management-claims-ex-employee/ <comment><USER2> I'm tired of seeing these headlines based on one employee's departure. I'm not here to defend Valve by any means, but _any_ sufficiently large organization will have the feature in Ellsworth's words that "it is human nature that they will minimize the work that they do and increase the control that they have," regardless of the structure. With that in mind, I think it's equally naive to think that (a) Valve has done something wrong with its organizational structure and (b) any other organization with "more" structure than Valve is doing something wrong. As much as it's become a line for dismissing people in Silicon Valley for a variety of reasons, "lack of (cultural) fit" can be a real thing.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is pretty interesting. It's unfortunate she went through such an experience, but its insightful to see some new perspective on valve's structure.

Also: there is a difference between fired and laid off, but the article confuses the two:

> 'Did you hear so-and-so was laid off?' It was someone on our project. I was > mad. I hopped in the elevator and went straight up to our team - and I found > Rick, and he said 'I was fired. You too.'

A little disappointed about their bonus incentives, and i think it hurts them in the long run. Working only on what gets visibility is not how you advance your field or company. When you've got the capital, you give your people the freedom to take risks and explore new ideas. Investing in visibility is how you end up as Microsoft.

Seems like yet another reason to stay small; or at least have a shallow hierarchy. I don't think a company should ever feel like highschool for anyone. Or maybe it just needs an element of design and attention, like anything else that you want to succeed. It's pretty clear what happens when you let it grow on its own; the same thing that happens everywhere else.

Its understandable she's bitter about it; who wouldn't be if they were driving a project at a company they liked working for, and then its all uprooted? Firings/layoffs suck for everyone involved.

Also, good on Gabe for letting her keep the hardware.

</comment><comment><USER4> Get's downsized and walks away with ownership of the hardware she was developing within the company and is "really, really, bitter."

<comment><USER5> To respond with a quote or two: "I am really, really bitter. Because they promised me the world and then stabbed me in the back." "I couldn't believe it. The handbook said that if you get too far off course they will tell you about it."

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> related to company structure, I recently read "Turn the ship around!" and found it to be a great book on leadership (its Harvard business school meets the red october, if you're not familiar)

Anyone have any experience with Leader-Leader at a company? I feel like it would mostly work, but there are some variables I think that might need attention.</comment>


Thesis's Next Opportunity: Un-WordPress Itself - <AUTHOR> http://garrickvanburen.com/archive/thesiss-next-opportunity-un-wordpress-itself

<comment><USER2> I say this as someone who a) doesn't know anything about the actual interaction between WordPress themes and the "core" WordPress code and b) doesn't fully understand the implications of the GPL in situations like the one I'm about to propose, but...

Instead of developing a clean-room WordPress clone, could someone write a sort of adapter library that abstracts away the pieces of WordPress needed by templates? That way, the templates could make calls to this hypothetical "fakewp" library, which would essentially just pass those calls along to the "real" WordPress code.

I'm assuming templates have code along the lines of:

      foreach ($WP->get_recent_posts() as $post) {
        display_post($post);
      }

that could be adapted to

      foreach ($FakePress->get_recent_posts() as $post) {
        display_post($post);
      }

(please forgive any PHP syntax problems)

Is that not feasible, for some reason? Or would the GPL mandate that this wrapper library also be released under the GPL, along with any themes using the wrapper library?</comment>


Airport security in America discovered more than seven guns per day in 2015 - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2016/02/concealed-carry <comment><USER2> "The number of Americans trying to smuggle guns on to planes keeps rising"

Is the actual headline. And it's one I find fault with. The mere presence of a gun in somebody's bag does not imply "smuggling".

As alien as it seems to us in the UK (and elsewhere), there are certain parts of the US where people think absolutely nothing of carrying a gun around with them all the time. I have little doubt that some percentage of these finds are just due to forgetfulness, and not to any malign intent.

<comment><USER3> Maybe you're right but I think that you would have to be very absent-minded to accidentally bring a gun with you into airport security.

<comment><USER4> Have you ever accidentally brought a bottle of shampoo or scissors? You are vastly underestimating how common it is to have a gun in some parts of the country. It is just an everyday item like anything else to some people.

<comment> yoz-y Even though understandable this does not explain the rising numbers. We do not know whether they are normalised or simply due to the fact that more people have guns, but it could be a trend. Also, the whole point of airport security is to find weapons, so it is also reasonable to think that people would be more cautious about accidentally bringing a gun rather than a shampoo bottle (which you can actually bring if it is small enough).

<comment><USER5> Are we sure the numbers are rising? Maybe airport security just got better at detecting guns in the recent years?

<comment><USER6> Some other options: people started traveling more; people are carrying guns more; people have become more absent-minded (smartphones?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Last year, undercover TSA agents managed to smuggle concealed guns and bombs past security 96% of the time."

So does that mean that thousands more weren't detected?

<comment><USER8> You can't extrapolate from the two facts of "2,653 firearms discovered by TSA" and "undercover TSA agents managed to smuggle concealed guns and bombs past security 96% of the time" to an expectation that some ~63,500 total firearms were not detected because it is likely that many if not most of the firearm discoveries were not attempts to smuggle the firearm onto the flight. It is not especially uncommon for someone who routinely carries a weapon or other non-TSA-approved item in his or her purse or briefcase to forget to remove it when flying. I've done this twice with a Leatherman multi-tool (among its tools are a pocketknife blade that is obviously not TSA-approved) that I used to keep in my laptop bag. In areas where guns may be carried, this happens with guns. In these cases, the travelers had simply forgotten to remove the weapon or unapproved item and were not attempting to smuggle it onto the flight. When it's pretty clear that there was no intent to smuggle the item onto the flight, the traveler is generally asked to remove the item and there is typically no penalty. I was asked to return the Leatherman to my car or pay to have it Fedex'ed back to my house.

<comment><USER9> ... so TSA is probably really good at preventing people from accidentally carrying weapon onto a plane.

<comment><USER10> When you do it by accident, you're not exactly trying hard to conceal it. So, yes, they probably are really good at preventing this. The 96% statistic suggests that they are _not_ good at preventing concealed, hidden weapons from slipping through...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My gf forgot to take out her pepper gas from her bag before flight. Her bag was scanned twice and no one noticed. We found it out at home. The can was opened, used once before. Well done security officers and billions dollar market for security scanners.

<comment><USER12> I once carried a small penknife onto a plane just by forgetting I had it.

<comment><USER13> I shave using an old-fashioned razor. From (not sure when, but most likely 2004) to 2010 I travelled with a pack of razor blades in my hand luggage most of the time. It sailed through dozens of inspections. I found it myself when I got a new laptop bag and emptied out the old one.

I was so angry about all the hassle (hours of queuing, dozens of examinations, all for zero success) that I decided to go on, and have done it another 100-200 times since. Whenever I fly somewhere without checked luggage but will want to shave, I just take along my razor and a blade or two. My blades have been found twice and confiscated once.

A tip for other security-minded travellers: There's a brand of toothpaste called "one drop only" whose tubes are small enough to pose no risk to aircraft security, yet last long enough that you don't need a tube for each trip.

<comment><USER11> My friend had toothpaste confiscated, because it's a liquid pack of more than 50ml... He was arguing for 20minutes that toothpaste is not a liquid and they let him go. I was allowed to take 75ml of honey.

<comment><USER14> I once gobbled down what was remaining in a jar of Nutella at security because they wouldn't let it on a flight. Apparently it's a paste.

<comment><USER15> I once drank 10oz of tequila at 9am. Fuck em.

Frankly there should be shipping boxes at the molest-station, with the cost paid by the thugs that insist on stripping you of your personal property.

<comment><USER16> If anything deserves an upvote, it's this :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This might be a good time to point out that _finding the weapon_ is an idiotic way to conduct security. What you want to find is the _dangerous person_

There are probably dozens if not hundreds of guns every day flying around the skies. Yet there is no danger. In fact, you could fill a plane with a fully armed Marine platoon, and there would be no increased danger.

The TSA collecting oddball trinkets and weapons and then reporting about them has always struck me as one of the weirder aspects of the war on terror. Since it's obvious that armed terrorists aren't being arrested at checkpoints, and since it's also obvious that the population has been traveling with these weapons for as long as there has been air travel, what, exactly are we proving? That people forget and leave scissors and knives in their carry-ons?

We are in the same spot here as we were with electronics just ten years ago. Everybody brought electronics on planes. Tons of people forgot to turn them off. We were given dire warnings about why turning them off was necessary. Yet planes kept taking off, flying, and landing safely. It wasn't that we were unsure whether or not these things were dangerous. Hell, we were conducting live experiments many times an hour that proved they were not.

Same goes for some business guy who left his pistol in his computer case. We already know these guys are not security risks. We've been testing it with real, live, people and weapons for many decades now.

TSA needs to be abolished. Immediately. Yes, we need flight security, but there are many drastically better ways of providing it.

ADD: Of the many things that concern me about the TSA is what we're seeing in this article. In order to continue justifying its existence, it will need more and more to make us afraid of our fellow travelers. This is the terrible consequence of 9-11: we're turning the Defense Industrial base against the very population it is supposed to be protecting. Very, very bad stuff.

<comment><USER18> So you're in favor then of psychological profiling and no fly lists? Because those certainly block people who the government "thinks" are dangerous, regardless of the actual danger posed by the items on their person.

<comment><USER19> > So you're in favor then of psychological profiling...

Reasonable people are in favor of police and intelligence work that identifies people with both the _genuine_ motive and _actual_ means to seriously endanger the lives and/or property of others and provides reasonable assurance that those people will fail to harm others. This sort of policing is nothing new and has worked _spectacularly_ well for many, many, many decades.

So, if that's what you mean by "psychological profiling", then yes. If -however- you're referring to TSA's SPOT teams and similar low-to-no-effort quackery, then no.

<comment><USER18> You're essentially banning people from flying for possible crimes they might commit.

<comment><USER19> > You're essentially banning people from flying for possible crimes they might > commit.

They will be banned from flying because they will be _in jail_ awaiting trial for conspiracy to commit murder, or similar such charges.

If someone _actually_ , _legitimately_ poses a _serious_ "danger to aviation", they should be charged, jailed, and stand trial. Do you disagree?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> And the number of shootings on board airplanes has been ... zero.

<comment><USER21> The implicit danger is that someone will fly to another part of the world and start shooting _there_.

<comment><USER22> And why would this be any more danger than of him using it while there?

Note that if declared, it's legal to transport unloaded in checked baggage in the US, and unless things have drastically changed the airline etc. isn't going to wonder if possession is legal for you at your destination.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> 4% of all shipping containers are inspected by customs at The Port Of Rotterdam.

1% contain things that shouldn't be there (that's all they would say when telling us).

The port I was at (there are 25 I think) unload 14 million containers per year.

Those are pretty good odds for smugglers.

EDIT: they said random inspection but they would, wouldn't they

<comment><USER24> Depends how the shipping containers they inspect are selected. It could be that they are targeted inspections.

<comment><USER25> Yea, they pick the 4% most likely to contain smuggled goods. 25% of them do. That does not mean 25% of all containers contain smuggled goods.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> daniel-levin >> Last year, undercover TSA agents managed to smuggle concealed guns and bombs past security 96% of the time

The system for gun/bomb detection is only as good as the agents responsible for it. For example, I saw my friend _accidentally_ sneak a knife onto an plane two years ago. The metal detector flagged him, and he confidently told the official present: "Oh, it's my belt!" and after taking it off he walked through, with no further probing. He literally forgot about his EDC knife and wound up with it on the flight. It must be noted that this _was_ in South Africa, but having travelled to both the USA and Europe, I know it could have happened there too.

The current system is not robust to human error, and this is its fundamental flaw. Con artists and psychologists know how to systematically induce human error [1, 2]. It is conceivable that malicious actors (or TSA people pretending to be) can do exactly that and reliably subvert a human detection system. As an aside, it would be interesting to see TSA people try sneak weapons onto an El-Al flight [see 3, 4, 5 for why]. A humorous anecdote: once when returning from Israel, I had my bag full of dirty clothes thoroughly man- handled by an irate woman from El-Al security. I had two books inside, each with a metal inset in the spine. As soon as this was found out, I went from being treated like a terrorist to a non-threat in a few seconds. It was remarkably efficient.

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

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

[3] [http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1001458258397595640](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1001458258397595640)

[4] [http://edition.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/11/yeffet.air.securit...](http://edition.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/11/yeffet.air.security.israel/)

[5] [http://www.tabletmag.com/the-roll/102229/the- gatekeepers](http://www.tabletmag.com/the-roll/102229/the-gatekeepers)

</comment><comment><USER26> What are the penalties associated with these 2,555 incidents? I assume it's not legal to smuggle a loaded gun onto a flight, and these numbers are staggeringly high.

<comment><USER27> The TSA will refer you to the local police. What happens next depends on the local laws. In some states you will be arrested (e.g., Massachusetts, where a law prohibits most people from carrying guns into three of the state's airports). In other states, forgetting to take a gun out of your bag is no different from forgetting to take a water bottle out, and you will be allowed to return the gun to your car before going through security again and boarding your flight (e.g., Georgia, which passed the Safe Carry Protection Act in 2014).

<comment><USER28> > allowed to return the gun to your car

Ha ha! What an American comment! Not only having a gun, but driving your own car to the Airport. Americans love guns but hate public transport! Hilarious!

<comment><USER29> We non-motorists also don't carry guns around, for the most part.

<comment><USER20> For the most part, no one carries guns around. In the US, some 3%ish of the population has concealed carry permits. (In some states, permits are not required at all, but the overall percentage won't be hugely higher.)

<comment><USER22> 5.2% as of last summer, and the numbers continue to skyrocket, I would bet at least 6% as of now, 5.2% represents a 15.4% increase in just one year. 7 states also have Constitutional Carry, no license required (Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Kansas, Maine, Vermont (never banned carrying) and Wyoming (for residents)). Gun sales, both total and type, are reflecting this.

Since some very populous states, including #1 California and #4 New York are mostly no issue, the percentages are even greater in the 43 Shall Issue or better states, a number are getting up to 10%. The percentages are even greater when you adjust to the age eligible population.

So quite a bit higher than "no one", although of course having a licence does not equal routinely or always carrying.

<comment><USER20> Oh sure, the more the merrier. Just pointing out that the "for the most part" is kind of a silly criterion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I remember accidentally taking a massive pair of scissors onto three flights while travelling from NYC to SYD. Arrived in Sydney for an Australian domestic leg and they were immediately found. I was very confused as to how the TSA had missed them so many times.

<comment><USER31> You should be more outraged at the fact scissors are banned, not happy they were found by the Aussies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Suppose what would be headline if 7 guns will be from Middle Eastern guys, "Terrorists are attacking America"

Hoping not to get downvoted for honest opinion

</comment><comment><USER33> give me a break, what a joke. typical gun-grabbing economist article. turns out in all the states they are harping on, a gun is considered a tool and not some black, metal object of death, like they want you to think.

and if i want to take a gun with me on a trip (where i'm legally licensed to carry, which is most states), i can already do that by checking it, like the majority of LAW ABIDING citizens do.

if there was actual INTENT to "smuggle" a gun on a plane, with which to do harm, then there's a news story here, but there isn't. it's liberal, gun grabbing, troll bait and an attack on legal firearms owners. move on.

</rant>

</comment><comment><USER34> With the amount of guns in the US and the way people forget what they carry it is not out of ordinary or newsworthy.

</comment><comment><USER35> Just wait for a hijacking with a gun, the NRA will start insisting people open carry on planes to protect themselves.

<comment><USER36> Math puzzle:

What are the odds that more than half of the passengers want to die in a terrorist strike?

So if we equipped all passengers with tasers, all terrorists would be caught. Of course, sometimes there might be some minor accidents, but they're not (very) lethal or harmful to the aircraft structure.

One change would result. You would have to pay the cabin attendants a lot more :) Also the safety instructions would take a while longer. They would show how to operate the taser in case your neighbor starts doing something suspicious.

<comment><USER35> Minor incidents? People would be letting their kids play with them and shoot other kids/people with them, police would have to meet every plane landing to arrest people for tasering the people behind them kicking their seat.

BTW if you let all passengers have them, you'd be arming terrorists, sooner or later - all they have to do is use it on a pilot going to the bathroom, if they are ready to die they don't need anyone to land the plane.

<comment><USER21> The parent comment's point is that the terrorists would be outnumbered. Incidentally, one of the planes involved in the 9/11 attack--the one meant to hit the White House, IIRC--was grounded by unarmed passengers who overwhelmed the terrorists who hijacked the plane.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


AMD Zen 4 CPUs Rumored On Track For 2021 Release - <AUTHOR> https://hothardware.com/news/amd-zen-4-cpus-on-track-for-2021-tsmc-5nm <comment><USER2> Very cool. For me this hopefully means higher end Zen 3 CPUs will bomb in price so I can upgrade my 2600X

<comment><USER3> I'd first like to see what Zen 3 CPUs are like though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Holding out hope for PCIe5 and DDR5 too...

<comment><USER5> I wouldn't count on it. There aren't even that many pci-e 4 devices on the market.

<comment><USER6> In the server market where the extra bandwidth is actually useful, the transition from PCIe 3 to PCIe 4 is pretty far along. Switches, NICs, SSDs and FPGAs supporting PCIe 4 are all either available or announced, and server- class GPUs should also show up next year. Most of those products have good reason to continue on to PCIe 5 as soon as suitable hosts are on the way.

<comment><USER7> Server-class GPUs kinda showed up first, or at least at the same time: Radeon Instinct MI50 was the first PCIe 4 GPU ever. (The consumer Radeon VII is the same chip)

<comment><USER6> Ah, I forgot about that one. Possibly because they didn't enable PCIe 4 functionality on the Radeon VII.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Perhaps 2021 will be the year I upgrade. I've been rocking an i5-4690k stably overclocked at 4.5GHz for the past 5 years without issue, but I'd like to get some more threads

</comment><comment><USER9> The note that Huawei's Hisilicon is one of the three customers for TSMC 5nm is interesting.

The US trade ban is still in effect for Huawei. If we don't lift it, we will likely be blocking out the fastest Android.

<comment><USER10> Huawei is accused of state-sponsored spying using their position as a major LTE backend equipment vendor.

I don't think worrying about who has the fastest Android phone is important here.

<comment><USER11> Accused, but still no proof, right?

<comment><USER12> It's not actually been accused, has it?

The proposed rules are on the basis of _hypothetical_ future spying capabilities.

(Personally and technically, I don't think the ban is a terrible idea. Non- audited software, from a country without an independent legal system, running on privileged network hardware seems a reasonable concern. Especially deployed by rural ISPs who can't perform security due diligence. Even if the public debate is being framed poorly)

<comment><USER9> It is at least not hypothetical for the US. [https://arstechnica.com/tech- policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa...](https://arstechnica.com/tech- policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa-upgrade-factory-show-cisco-router-getting- implant/)

<comment><USER12> The US NSA TAO implants are a bit different ball of wax.

Fundamentally, they illustrate that the NSA (government) can't / won't ask Cisco (vendor) to directly install backdoors for them.

So in many ways a validation that checks and balances are working as intended, whatever you think of TAO separately, if supply chain interdiction is required.

The Huawei bans are predicated on the belief that Huawei is _not_ an independent vendor, separate from the interests of the mainland Chinese government.

<comment><USER9> Sure. But, of course, most cell phones and network equipment is made in China. Vendor cooperation doesn't seem to be needed.

<comment><USER12> This is an argument of nuances, but I would make the point that the _design_ and _software / firmware_ stages provide fundamentally different capabilities than manufacturing.

You have entire industries around supply chain assurance, so manufacturing corruption is still an issue (although usually more targeted at lower-cost, replaced components).

But as the post-SuperMicro reporting laid out, it's an order of magnitude more difficult to embed physical components on a board, in an undetected manner, that create covert communication channels. Vs doing so at privileged software layers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Current Intel is so f#%$ed! Either someone at the company has the power and knowledge to make deep foundational changes or not even their size and "business prowess" will be able to maintain the current structure and culture.</comment>