Reverse Engineering My Home Security System: Decompiling Firmware Updates - <AUTHOR> https://markclayton.github.io/reverse-engineering-my-home-security-system-decompiling-firmware-updates.html <comment><USER2> I don't want to sound rude but there isn't anything substantial in this article - the author just found a way to extract the firmware image and mount the Linux filesystem that's in it. No actual exploits or reverse-engineering of the device's software itself.

<comment><USER3> Not rude at all -- it's a good first step though. In my opinion, it does need a bigger payoff at the end -- so close but they posted too soon. They should've also responsibly disclosed the script on github as well (eh, maybe).

<comment><USER4> _> it's a good first step though_

Not only is it a good first step, but since the product clearly runs Linux, the author should be able to download all GPL source code from Honeywell. Being able to build the device firmware yourself from source is hugely beneficial to understanding the structure of the firmware and can even help in understanding the behaviour of the device.

If Honeywell aren't providing a GPL archive for the Tuxedo with the kernel and any GPL licensed user-space programs, they are violating the GPL.

I'm not sure the author is aware that the source code for these _should be freely available from Honeywell_

<comment><USER5> True. Though Honeywell can elect to mail you the source code printed on flash cards without any particular order.

<comment><USER6> That seems a tad excessive. Does any company do this, outside of high security systems?

<comment><USER7> That has nothing to do with security, and everything to do with malicious compliance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > About an hour later it occurs to me that what if the .hdr extension stands > for 'header' and wasn't the name of any valid file type?!

I guess that's just a mindset, but I see proprietary extensions created and used everywhere.

Especially in the context of firmware, I never once made any assumptions about this being a default file-format, nor that tooling for this extension was a path was worth digging deeper into.

Ironically the author has found lots of good tools I didn't know about which more or less should automatically reveal this, before he himself arrives at this conclusion.

Facepalm, indeed.

</comment><comment><USER3> I spent the whole post thinking "binwalk ..." ... "binwalk -erM ..." to myself. Clever searching for github repos though, that was a good find.

</comment><comment><USER9> The Tuxedo Touch is a glorified pin-pad to the actual security panel, so it may be a stretch to call this the "security system". However it would be trivial to MiTM arm/disarm codes if you could run code on it and it's the interface to home automation, which could be interesting if anything is hooked up.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've done that exact "let's prepend a header" thing before. For a past project, each stage of the build and packaging process resulted in an increasingly-difficult to use "by hand" file that was increasingly-friendly to downloaders, flashers, and CMS systems. Each system wanted its own file header or format (one, for example, disliked Debian files and insisted that we post a gzipped tarball for some reason).

Aside from a stage that encrypted the firmware, if you knew the structures being prepended to the file, you could "undo" all of that with a little bit of perl.

</comment><comment><USER11> Title is rather misleading. Sounds like it is going to be some interesting binary to source code decompilation, but all the author does is extract some files from an archive.

</comment><comment><USER12> excellent uses of memes, Mark :)</comment>


Do you trust GoDaddy over SOPA? - <AUTHOR>

GoDaddy changed their position, and now they do not support SOPA.
What do you think, did they changed position because of threat of losing their customers, and can we believe them that they will not actually support it secretly?
As we already saw their stance about this topic. <comment><USER2> Clearly personal opinion but if they wanted to oppose SOPA, they would have done so on their own from the beginning. While the public rally against GoDaddy have made them publicly choose to oppose SOPA (which is a good thing, assuming they're not doing back-handed work under the table), it doesn't change the fact that truthfully they want to support SOPA if it wasn't for the outcry and loss of income.

I am against SOPA and while I disagreed with their original view of supporting SOPA, I respected their decision even if its different than my own because they were choosing to stand for what they believe in (regardless of how others may feel, myself included). Doing what they're doing now is basically compromising their own integrity and core value, not because they have a change of heart in their positioning. For that, I can't respect them. This is of course irregardless of other things I disagree with and of the type of service they provide.</comment>


Professor solves and explains over 300 Computer Science Exam Problems in a row - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/kwKj0GYTSag?t=335 <comment><USER2> You (or someone else) seem to be submitting this, and then deleting earlier submissions. The guidelines[0] specifically ask you not to do this:

> _Please don 't delete and repost. Deletion is for things that shouldn't have > been submitted in the first place._

Aside from that, you seem to submit these "Professor solves a million problems all at once" type links ... is there a reason for so many submissions?

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)</comment>


Ubuntu Edge smartphone funding levels dying off - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/news/2013/072913-ubuntu-edge-smartphone-funding-levels-272306.html

<comment><AUTHOR> As someone in the US, I'm stuck in the "normal" two year contract cycle of buying my phone from a carrier.

I would've been willing to drop ~$650 on a bleeding edge phone, but I don't have the flexibility. I'm hoping to switch to T-Mobile the next time around so I can bring my own device and avoid a contract.</comment>


Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition, or INT_MIN to be Divided by -1 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.regehr.org/archives/887

<comment><USER2> Call me dense, but why on Earth would this raise a Floating-Point exception in any compiler? That seems wildly misleading considering there are no FP operation going on, the integer division is supposed to stay in the integer domain - or return an integer NaN, which I'll admit is a rarity. Am I missing something?</comment>


Hire managers of one - <AUTHOR> http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1430-hire-managers-of-one <comment><USER2> Can't agree with this more. A self-driven and independent person is worth 3 people who are smart but require direction. They make your life easier and increase your productivity by not just helping you with your work - they help you with your thinking.</comment>


How to download videos from Qwiki? - <AUTHOR>

Has anybody figured out how to download your videos from Qwiki (Yahoo's fresh acquisition)? <comment><USER2> It actually looks extremely easy.. view source of the page (such as [http://www.qwiki.com/v/FPw12zjm](http://www.qwiki.com/v/FPw12zjm)) and look for the <meta> tag for "og:video".

Screenshot at [https://www.evernote.com/shard/s1/sh/162062d2-8b46-4065-9e44...](https://www.evernote.com/shard/s1/sh/162062d2-8b46-4065-9e44-3cefb10e296a/a040b68d62e337a7744a63a382b667ab/res/41b48b41-6098-44d4-8922-4646dd3d4331/skitch.png?resizeSmall&width=832)</comment>


Help We Got the Dreaded message from Google. - <AUTHOR> http://www.shopforbags.com/ You know this one:
http://www.shopforbags.com/: Unnatural inbound links "We've detected that some of the links pointing to your site are using techniques outside Google's Webmaster Guidelines. We don't want to put any trust in links that are unnatural or artificial, and we recommend removing any unnatural links to your site. However, we do realize that some links may be outside of your control. As a result, for this specific incident we are taking very targeted action to reduce trust in the unnatural links. Yada, Yada Yada....
We had no idea our SEO company of 7 years was in the black hat link market. We are down about 2/3rds of our traffic and we are currently unranked on our major keywords.
Our understanding Google wants our new SEO company to painstakingly document on a  spreadsheet when and how we contacted every unnatural link. After 3 different times of emailing and a possible phone call we can resubmit for the links to be disavowed.
Issue is that we have approx 30,000 inbound links of which approx 4,000 are black hat. Is there a quick way to conquer this beast or does Google realistically expect, a site that has been operating for 9 years, to go through link by link without any control of the webmaster on the other end and get this done quickly.
Any ideas or thoughts that could get us back into Google's good graces quicker?
Appreciate the help in advance -M <comment><AUTHOR> We have been contacting webmasters and putting the spreadsheet together for 2+ months and just wanted to post if there was an easier way to explain our story to Google along with the spreadsheet and/or if anyone had been through the same scenario, what can we expect.

We have gone though the links and are close to being finished. We hope this doesn't happen again as we have had to cut back staff due to our traffic loss resulting in revenue loss. Thoughts or experiences with resubmitting.

Thx -M

</comment><comment><USER2> This is just a link to the front page of a bag shop? Don't see Google even mentioned there.

<comment><USER3> But they got you to click!

<comment><AUTHOR> That was never our intent.</comment></comment></comment>


Major games publishers are feeling the impact of peaking attention - <AUTHOR> https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-02-15-major-games-publishers-are-feeling-the-impact-of-peaking-attention <comment><USER2> The last good triple A game that came out and I knew about is The Witcher 3. Undoubtedly there are others but I don't see them. The online only game epidemic is what is causing this. There are loads of people who don't care about the next Dota 2, Fortnite or whatever the next time waste is without substance. But there are barely any games for those people.

Most are moneygrabbing sequels with no actual life in them.

The only country that seems to still be producing worthwhile games is Japan.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have plenty of time, but the games these days are awful and are purely centered around siphoning as much money out of the consumer as possible. It's quite unpleasant. I'm stuck playing older games because of this.

<comment><USER4> And it's almost all sequels</comment></comment>


How the Old Spice Videos Are Being Made - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_old_spice_won_the_internet.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+readwriteweb+%28ReadWriteWeb%29 <comment><USER2> Hey guys, not sure if you know about this yet or if you're interested, but a group of people over at reddit created <http://oldspicevoicemail.com> using his voice. Go check it out if you get a chance.

<comment><USER3> If it isn't obvious from the actual content: this was suggested by a Redditor and the official TheGuyOnTheHorse Reddit account posted a YouTube video as a submission.

This is _brilliant_ marketing. They saw and seized an opportunity to let the internet hive mind further their own campaign. All they had to do was film him standing in a bathroom and multiple fan made voicemail generator sites sprung up within minutes. That is super cheap, super effective marketing, for sure... they let someone else do all the hard work! Absolutely incredible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> they should stop doing the videos today, if they haven't already. it was fun for a day (or two) but if they continue, they're just going to get stale. everyone that has seen most of them already are going to get tired of seeing links posted everywhere once they reach past the reddit/twitter crowds, and it'll become like those annoying e-mail jokes your parents forward you.

<comment><USER5> Right, it wouldn't make sense to keep creating the videos past a certain point. They're going to be able to ride the wave as these videos begin to make the rounds in the social networks.

What they need to do is come up with a second wave of something that they can pull out in a few weeks or months to refresh these videos or build off them. That way they can keep stoking the fire and the process that gets them this coverage will start again.

<comment><USER6> Wazzzzzzzzzzzzzup?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Brilliant campaign. I am glad to see they are getting rewarded. The mix of technology and creativity is impressive. I expect some copycats soon that will get ignored.

</comment><comment><USER8> My only exposure to the Old Spice campaign so far has been through HN, despite generally considering myself a relatively internet-aware individual. Interesting.

<comment><USER9> The TV commercials were played numerous times during the All-star game yesterday. Clever writing.

Look away. now look back. I'm on a horse.

<comment><USER10> I had to look up which all-star game you meant.

Baseball's All-Star Game Yields Its Lowest Television Ratings [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2010/07...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2010/07/14/AR2010071404936.html)

<comment><USER11> Over here (Uruguay) most of us do not know such a thing existed (I believe baseball gets zero coverage, even on local ESPN affiliates).

We're still on a World Cup hangover. (football/soccer World Cup, the one held in South Africa this year).

Back on topic, this is HUGE for Old Spice. Even here in South America it's making waves:

"Old Spice becomes the ad campaign of the year" on an Argentinean blog (spanish)

[http://www.papblog.com.ar/2010/07/15/old-spice-se- convierte-...](http://www.papblog.com.ar/2010/07/15/old-spice-se-convierte-en- el-caso-publicitario-del-ano/comment-page-1/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's pretty amazing how they made the original Old Spice commercial.

I thought it was mostly CG, however, in reality it's a very clever set construction.

Making of the Old Spice Commerical:

<http://www.youtube.com/oldspice#p/f/0/VDk9jjdiXJQ>

</comment><comment><USER13> I know I'm fast slipping into old-fart-hood (if not already there), but I don't 'get' the videos' popularity -- they struck me as pretentiously pseudo- cool.

<comment><USER14> I love them, mainly because they're a really fun parody of the ridiculousness that their competitors often run (I'm looking at you Axe). They built a character that all at once oozes likability while at the same time pointing out just how stupid the whole idea that using a body-wash will get you laid is.

<comment><USER15> It may have been a stupid idea, but Axe got hundreds of thousands of prepubescent teenagers using deodorant... _their_ deodorant. And men tend to stick with a brand once they are comfortable with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why not just be more direct and say why your product is better than the competition providing scientific studies as evidence?

Why advertise in this way instead?

<comment><USER17> I find that telling jokes is a better way to pick up girls than writing a proof as to why I am a superior mating candidate.

Weird, huh?

<comment><USER18> I find that writing jokes is a great way to show girls that I am not a superior mating candidate.

<comment><USER19> You need to find yourself a friend that will be brutally honest on just how bad or offensive your jokes are. I found someone like that quite accidentally and it's really improved the quality of my humor from other people's perspective.

I'm still trying to figure out what makes some stuff funny and others not. For example randomly yelling "You're fuzzy!" at a cat during a heated discussion works if I use it sparingly around my close friends. Other people just give you weird looks. (My rule of thumb: most humor is best used sparingly and definitely around the proper audience.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Introducing the new Intel HTML5 Development Environment - <AUTHOR> http://software.intel.com/en-us/html5

<comment><USER2> I'm still not sure why they care so much about HTML5? They say you can put apps on iOS, Android , Windows etc well there is nothing new about that but where does Intel HTML5 come in the picture?

<comment><USER2> I think they are just jumping on HTML5 bandwagon without any clue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Intel...guess they put the I in IDE.</comment>


Global celebration for the GNU System's 30th anniversary - <AUTHOR> http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/global-celebration-for-the-gnu-systems-30th-anniversary

<comment><USER2> The work of the FSF and GNU is one of the most important in the history of computing. We benefit daily from the values of freedom, respect, and choice it presents. We also benefit from the abundance of knowledge and technologies that is openly available to all.

However, these rights and privileges must not be taken for granted and must continue to be protected. It is also in our interest to choose solutions and businesses that respect their users and their liberties.

</comment><comment><USER3> Its pretty inspiring that writing code with a philosophy can change the world.

</comment><comment><USER4> RMS and company, changed the way I not only look at software, but at my life and my freedoms.

<comment><USER5> Rings true for me as well. Back in the day before I read the GPL on my copy of Slackware, I was a Microsoft supporter!

<comment><USER6> Me too. Got me to realize that liberty is more important than how cool the "features" be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's interesting that the worlds most popular operating systems, Windows, iOS, and Android, use almost zero FSF software (the "system"), although much of Android is GPL licensed.

<comment><USER2> You do realize that Android uses the GNU/Linux kernel, right?

<comment><USER8> While I'm sure you're getting downvoted because people think that Linux the kernel has nothing to do with GNU, this isn't quite true: Linux uses the _GNU_ General Public License and at the time of its initial announcement had to compare itself with GNU (and how it wasn't going to be as "professional" as GNU).

While Linus himself nowadays actively speaks out against GNU, he still use GNU's license and GNU's software (gcc and glibc), so even in Linux alone, without the GNU userland, we see some influence of GNU on Android.

<comment><USER9> Parent is getting downvoted because Linux is not from the FSF.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nice pictures. It was a great time and those cupcakes were delicious.

</comment><comment><USER8> Yay! Long live GNU!</comment>


Show HN: A simple Youtube downloader without ads - <AUTHOR> http://yt-downloader.herokuapp.com/

<comment><USER2> I've been using clive [1], cclive [2], and youtube-dl [3] to download youtube videos for many years.. none of these downloaded videos ever had ads.

[1] - [http://clive.sourceforge.net/](http://clive.sourceforge.net/)

[2] - [http://cclive.sourceforge.net/](http://cclive.sourceforge.net/)

[3] - [http://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/](http://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/)</comment>


Ask HN: What do you use for managing delivery of digital items? - <AUTHOR>

Hey all,
For those that sell digital products, I'd be interested to hear how you auto-deliver to customers after payment.
I've heard of a few services like PayLoadz and e-junkie, also I've seen people just auto e-mail a download page link out.
If anyone could suggest alternatives for me to look into it would be appreciated.
Thanks. <comment><USER2> If you've done any database/web development, you might find writing your own more appealing than paying a monthly fee to someone else.</comment>


Twitter for the greater good: "I will dig you out." - <AUTHOR> http://blog.twitter.com/2010/12/i-will-dig-you-out.html <comment><USER2> This, is Twitter.

It's a bit of a PR stunt too, of course. But this sort of public, real-time communication strikes me as vastly superior to, say, a call to 911 or Public Sanitation. For one thing, everyone can read it and respond immediately.

Maybe you don't want to tweet that your house is being robbed. (Maybe you do?) But for any issue of general concern, Twitter surely beats the pants off traditional media and modes of communication.

Keep it up Twitterverse!</comment>


The speed reading fallacy: the case for slow reading - <AUTHOR> https://nesslabs.com/speed-reading <comment><USER2> I taught myself the techniques of speed reading as a kid over 50 years ago. It didn't really help. Fiction has too many characters and twists and turns; I can't really read it much faster than 300 wpm or I miss something.

I'm a very fast reader of non-fiction (I have several thousand technical books). However, I don't really read every book word for word. After reading a couple of books on algorithms for example, it's possible to skim through the next one only looking for new subjects, better pictures, or new approaches. I also jump around and read the parts I'm interested in. The result is I have some recollection of what's in most of my more recent books, and if I need to look something up I can often remember where I saw it in the book—like roughly how far into the text it is and where on the page it was.

<comment><USER3> Question is also, why would people speed read fiction? To pretend that they are well read and can boast thousands of books finished? I read fiction for fun, when the book is good I don't want to finish it too fast.

For technical books, I agree it is possible to skim rather quickly through stuff that I already know with speed reading approach.

<comment><USER4> > Question is also, why would people speed read fiction?

This is a question I always ask all speed readers and the answers are always so muddled. I can never understand what they are getting at.

Perhaps I relish a good novel more than most, but to me the idea of speed reading a good novel sounds about as appealing as speed drinking a fine wine.

<comment><USER5> "speed drinking a fine wine"

You may be underestimating how many people do this as well :P

Personally, I would love anything that got me thru books faster. I've been reading A Scanner Darkly for months. Admittedly it's more of a problem of concentration than reading speed, but I do understand the appeal of reading quickly. You'll simply get thru more books.

That being said - I don't understand people who listen to sped up podcasts, as I hate burning thru my favourites before a new episode is out. So I think it's just down to personal preference.

<comment><USER4> Right, I understand the bit about getting through more books, but why? There are an unreadable number of mind-blowingly brilliant novels out there and basically no reason to read any them except to enjoy oneself.

If I am enjoying a book, I can't imagine having the urge to finish it faster. Or slower. What could possibly be gained?

Edit: also, just some unsolicited thoughts on your struggle to complete a Scanner Darkly. IIRC, A Scanner Darkly is a fairly average length novel, meaning you might expect to finish it in ~10 hours of reading. My personal experience is that it's best to enjoy a novel within a relatively limited time frame (say a couple of weeks) so that the various characters and plot lines stay fresh in your head.

If I were in your situation, I would probably question whether:

A) If I actually like the book. If you are even a quarter of the way through a book and don't like it, nothing wrong with picking up something else. As I mention above, books are for enjoyment. If you don't enjoy it, what's the point?

B) If I perhaps don't have time to read a novel now. Sure, nothing wrong with starting a movie, pausing for dinner and then finishing it afterwards. But there are limits. You wouldn't want to split a 2 hour film into a dozen ten- minute segments. And I would argue, wouldn't you want to split a 10 hour novel into a 60 ten-minute segments either. Just not a good reading experience. Nothing wrong with putting the book on hold and coming back in a few weeks once your schedule has calmed a little.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _"As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value to you than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself; because only through ordering what you know by comparing every truth with every other truth can you take complete possession of your knowledge and get it into your power."_

\- Arthur Schopenhauer (1851)

But I wanted to make an additional point myself, which is: the key part of reading for information is not consumption, but rather memory. It doesn't matter how many books you read if you only remember a small percentage of each one. Like any educated person, I've read thousands of books in my lifetime. And yet I could probably only name the details of a few dozen. This strikes me as horribly inefficient.

As such, I've been trying to incorporate Spaced Repetition (with Anki) into the reading process itself. My initial idea is to do two things:

\- add specific lines and information into Anki. E.g. quotes, statistics, and so on.

\- write a brief one-paragraph summary of each chapter or, in shorter books, each page. Then add this summary to Anki.

So far, I've been able to recall far more information about the books I've read, even if it takes 5-10x times longer to read them. Overall, I'd consider that an effective sacrifice.

<comment><USER7> Just because you can only remember specific parts of a few books, doesn't mean the information from those books hasn't been incorporated into your mental model of the world.

<comment><USER6> Of course, but I'm referring more to comprehensive works in which the details matter, rather than a "one big idea explained in 200 pages" book.

<comment><USER7> For sure. I was hoping my comment didn't come across the wrong way. I think there is definitely value in remembering what / where you read something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm pretty sure her conclusions are baloney. She admits the main speedreading takeaway: visual understanding is much faster than subvocalized reading.

As for the other statements; of course you can't read complex or deep text by glancing at it and taking it in in one line or paragraph. Imagine trying to learn topology or something that way; you will fail. You have to slow down to the point you're working problems on the side in a notebook. Same thing for learning a new language; looking at the grammar table won't help: I have to internalize it by repetition. Deeply aesthetic poetry; you have to vocalize it, or it doesn't even begin to make sense. Similarly, complex fiction you have to slow down to figure out what is going on, sometimes rereading passages or whole chapters. Sometimes this also needs to be vocalized (Modernist types like Joyce & Pound).

But for stuffing clearly written briefing type texts, speed reading is the absolute shizznizzlenuts. That's why Kennedy found it useful; that's pretty much what the man read all day at work. Low end college coursework also fit into this category of reading material. Lots of business stuff also does. Her neuroscience balognia about saccades may be true to some extent, but you can skip over or infer most simple sentences in the exact same way that Gmail and Outlook completes your sentences via semi-markov models.

Again: it works for simple texts. It also probably works better if you're smarter and a better reader in general, and so taking a bunch of average people and drawing conclusions from their results is pretty useless.

<comment><USER9> I imagine it would also be helpful to quickly determine if something is worth taking more time to read carefully. Or maybe to get a quick overview of the contents of something before you really dig into it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> 'I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It's about Russia.'

</comment><comment><USER11> There is a neat book I picked up in Highschool called _The Manual: The Ultimate Study Method_.

It was cool. It advocated multiple forms of meditation for concentration training so you could speed read a book. Using your increased concentration, which was mentioned as super important, you'd do pass 1 of 3 speed reading through using the Visual Method mentioned. Meditation and clearing your head were mentioned specifically to reduce regressing, but it was okay to regress. Pass 2 would involve creating an outline of all the topics and information. Pass 3 would be creating a visual mind map of the information.

Point for me was that speed reading helps only to filter or get a first pass on something, but I doubt anything really complicated can be understood by simply speed reading it. Or even simply reading it once.

<comment><USER12> Interesting you mention concentration and meditation. It seems, for a lot of people at least, that the highest leverage thing is alleviating distraction; self-interruption and fatigue.

<comment><USER13> There's a major extra aspect to the approach mentioned here; via multiple passes you aren't limited to the progressive/incremental mental image that a single pass, no matter how well-focused, would provide.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I do the visual reading thing that is mentioned in the article. I get a sort of "movie in my head" when I'm reading, and often become unaware of the words on the page. Sometimes I have to pause to let the action catch up to where I am on the page, and sometimes I'll be focused on one character in a story and miss incidental things that happen in the book to another character.

I can read just under a couple of pages of a standard paperback in about a minute. It's a pleasant way to spend a few hours.

I don't read non-fiction like that, though. It just doesn't happen, and I don't know how to make it happen.

<comment><USER15> _> I get a sort of "movie in my head" when I'm reading_

I think this means you're doing it right! In Polanyian terms, your _subsidiary awareness_ is on the particulars of the typography and the words allowing your _focal awareness_ to be on the fun bit, i.e. on the meaning.

This ability, I think, depends just as much on how interesting and enjoyable the content is as it depends on your reading skill.

For more Michael Polanyi I recommend this superb (audio, non-fictional) lecture:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVx8KhsZYPw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVx8KhsZYPw)

 _> I don't read non-fiction like that, though. It just doesn't happen, and I don't know how to make it happen._

This may be because the books are boring. For instance, textbooks. Here the reading is mainly about _searching_ for the relevant material, so the focal awareness is on the text itself. However, Feynman's _Hairy Green Ball Method_ seems applicable:

[https://www.e-reading.club/chapter.php/71262/21/Feynman_- _Su...](https://www.e-reading.club/chapter.php/71262/21/Feynman_- _Surely_Youre_Joking%2C_Mr._Feynman__Adventures_of_a_Curious_Character.html)

 _I had a scheme, which I still use today when somebody is explaining something that I'm trying to understand: I keep making up examples. For instance, the mathematicians would come in with a terrific theorem, and they're all excited. As they're telling me the conditions of the theorem, I construct something which fits all the conditions. You know, you have a set (one ball)—disjoint (two halls). Then the balls turn colors, grow hairs, or whatever, in my head as they put more conditions on. Finally they state the theorem, which is some dumb thing about the ball which isn't true for my hairy green ball thing, so I say, "False!"_

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm a slow reader myself. Reading fiction I'm slow. Reading non-fiction I'm very very very slow. I can type faster than I can read. I can read blog posts and news articles fairly quickly. I found in college that against other students using fashionable speed reading techniques I completely beat them academically. The speed reading didn't pick up on subtle ideas and wasn't able to capture complex ones.

I have a relative who is a natural speed reader and who has perfect recall. I realize this is a controversial claim as perfect recall (sometimes called photographic memory) is a myth. It's not a myth more likely extremely rare. I could give her a book around 300 pages she had never seen before. She would read it in about 15 minutes. I then could ask questions about the book and she would answer by exactly quoting sections and citing the page number. So... was this helpful? Well she never went to college or did anything with her life. It was just a weird thing she could do naturally which she didn't exploit except to read and remember precisely absolutely vast numbers of books.

</comment><comment><USER17> It depends on the book, really. There are some very deep books which one should totally take the time to read slowly, comprehend the ideas and retain them to some extent. But lately I've been noticing that the majority of recent non-fiction books are basically filler added around an idea which could have better been an essay. I would definitely speed-read those. My latest example would be [https://www.amazon.com/Conspiracy-Peter-Gawker-Anatomy- Intri...](https://www.amazon.com/Conspiracy-Peter-Gawker-Anatomy- Intrigue/dp/0735217645/).

Not to mention the numerous pop-sci books which are a detailed history of science in disguise. I'm actually abandoning those. I'm tired of reading about the personality quirks or life stories of Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg, Schrödinger whenever I pick up a book about quantum mechanics.

Life's too short to invest your time (slow read) in filler material.

</comment><comment><USER18> High-speed reading is a technique, and as with all techniques, it has its uses and limitations.

For reading, generally, I strongly recommend Mortimer Adler's classic _How to Read a Book_ , itself an HN perennial, see [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12209446](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12209446) (or all: [https://hn.algolia.com/?q="how%20to%20read%20a%20book"](https://hn.algolia.com/?q="how%20to%20read%20a%20book")).

 _If you 're trying to determine what to read_, or want to _rapidly get an overview of a book_ , or _are "visually grepping" for specific content_, then the tricks of speed-reading, _especially_ of chunking, skimming paragraph ledes, and _not_ vocalising or subvocalising, help.

If you're reading for deep understanding, you'll want to fully absorb the material (and work through the exercises!), though this can also involve several passes -- for textbooks or nonfiction, I'll scan the ToC, and then the chapter (especially for section/subsection titles), then read through in full.

Treating such reading as _an inquiry_ rather than simply as _data transfer_ helps tremendously.

And of course, if you're reading quality literature or poetry, you'll want to savour the language, words, rhythm, meter, and rhyme. Go slow. You'll appreciate it all the more.

Reading plays or dialogue-rich content is a particular skill -- try reading _with different intonation_ or to sort out what possible alternate meanings might exist. Shakespeare is of course excellent for this, though many other plays (or film screenplays) are as well. Realise just how much latitude the actor or director has in translating from _words on the page_ to those uttered on the stage or screen.

</comment><comment><USER19> "Speed reading" comes from a functional view of activities: You eat in order to power your body, you read in order to acquire that all-important "information", you go to school to acquire "job skills".

Which is true but so what? They are elements of life; sometimes you grab a quick bite on the go and sometimes you sit down to a multi-hour meal, yet both are "eating". Likewise with reading.

</comment><comment><USER20> Every time something like this comes up, I'm reminded of something Alan Kay mentioned, which I can't find but I'll try and remember: "I realized at an early age that to prevent needing to read a book more than once, I should read in a way so I remember what I've read". I'm very curious what method he came up with to do this. Being a genius probably helps.

<comment><USER18> Understanding the _structure_ of the book (or realising that it lacks one) helps tremendously.

See Mortimer Adler's _How to Read a Book_ for an excellent guide. Most of the techniques it describes are ones I've long used -- it's been an excercise largely in validation, though with a few additional tricks and bits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Today I had _yet_ another user complain that our program didn't do the right thing, when in fact it was doing exactly what the user had told it to.

The issue seems to be that while this dialog is crystal clear when you read it slowly and understand all the words, most users appear to read what they think it says, and select the dialog option according to that.

It's not a wall of text or anything, it's a medium length sentence on the form "Select Yes to [...], press No if you want [...]". I ran it past the support guys and they thought it was clear as well. But apparently it's very easy to get wrong.

In all cases the users go "oooohhh, that's what it's saying" when they get told to read it carefully, and after that they select the correct option and make the program do what they want.

I spent a fair amount of time figuring out the most clear and correct way to present the choices, but apparently I failed hard... oh well, that dialog is getting rewritten tomorrow!

<comment><USER22> This is one of the parts of Apple's Human Interface Guidelines that I appreciate the most when I use other operating systems, in particular Windows.

> Give alert buttons succinct, logical titles. The best button titles consist > of one or two words that describe the result of clicking the button. [...] > To the extent possible, use verbs and verb phrases that relate directly to > the alert title and message—for example, View All, Reply, or Ignore. Use OK > for simple acceptance. Avoid using Yes and No.

Suppose opening a document gives me an alert that says, "This document contains macros. Macros may contain viruses that could be harmful to your computer. Do you want to disable macros before opening the file?"

With simple Yes/No buttons, I might hastily jump ahead after reading the first sentence and think that affirming the dialog means, "Yes, I know it contains macros."

Or I might hastily jump ahead after reading the second sentence and click, "No, I'm scared, don't let this malware infect me."

Or I might mistake it for another pop up that happens all the time and also has Yes/No buttons, and not realize until it's too late that I've accidentally enabled macros.

Yes, users should read dialogs, but good UI design can help.

[https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface- guideline...](https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface- guidelines/macos/windows-and-views/alerts/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> That web page only loads the first paragraph for me but there is a huge advantage to being able to read very fast with comprehension for certain material - the gauntlet of standardized tests American kids go through is much easier for both verbal and math skills tests (essentially most of them - because they have to use some words for most problems) and a lot of tests going through university level because one has time to go through an entire test once, answer all the questions, and go back and double and triple check your answers and evaluate multiple choice answers several times. At least when I took those tests a generation ago, the time allotment is overly generous if you can read fast. I read slow when reading for pleasure or learning something.

</comment><comment><USER24> For non fiction, I do best with a quick read to get the overall picture of a book and its organization and argument, then think about whether there are any interesting questions to ask of the book, and zoom into those portions to read more carefully.

</comment><comment><USER25> I vary my reading speed based on the material I'm reading: it's important to understand that not everything you read is worth 100% of your attention, and it's not a big deal if you can't recall every detail of the last article that ended up on Hacker News. As such, I "skim" most of the things I read–what's important to me is 1. knowing when to slow down (the thing I'm reading is interesting/complex/the details matter) and 2. keeping enough "metadata" to be able to find the actual content later if I need it.

<comment><USER26> > can't recall every detail of the last article that ended up on Hacker News

In fact, many commenters take this speed-reading model of hacker news articles to its logical conclusion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I have always felt read slow helps you make connections intentionally and helps in better retention. Slow reading is an intentional choice. But it is a choice between when to do or not. With so much information around today through various mediums, speed reading/skimming helps to go through information quickly to get an understanding if you have to proceed further or not. I guess we switch between both of these modes time to time based on how important the information we are taking in.

</comment><comment><USER28> It would be better to teach non-fiction writers about concise writing so we don't have to read 300 pages when they could deliver the same info in 100 pages or less.

</comment><comment><USER29> If I want to truly understand something and retain information, I slow down my reading to a crawl and start taking notes on index cards.

I then later transfer those index cards into notes on my computer into equivalent "cards", which let me edit or rework the information on the fly.

Sometime, I transfer some of the information into Anki SRS, requiring yet another rework into flash cards, and permanently anchoring the information into my brain.

</comment><comment><USER30> I speed read 'naturally' particularly I've been told that I 'chunk' & 'visual read'. I have to take the reading experts word for it as to me it's just reading.

All told I'd say it's neither positive or negative. I've had to teach myself techniques to slow down especially on technical material but I can get through business style reading extremely fast. Different texts and contexts require different techniques.

</comment><comment><USER31> i went to school with many kids in what were called "k-level" courses (high school courses in early grades before courses with dual credit were offered)

I often noticed how they could read MUCH faster than i could, and appeared to be actually retaining the information.

Me personally, if i read too fast im literally just "seeing" the words on the paper pass my eyes. I could read a sentence very fast, out loud, and not understand it.

I've always been a slow reader. My sister took speed reading "lessons"(?) when we were younger, apparently she had a problem with reading so my parents felt the need to enroll her in some type of weekend (speed?) reading program that was held at a hotel conference center in a trendy area of our city... it was probably snake oil because i only recall her going once or twice then never returning (perhaps the program was only a day or two long? even worse? how do you really learn anything?)

And I had her share the speed reading techniques with me in an attempt to learn to read faster myself but never could do so.

I dont think that speed reading is all that its cracked up to be.

</comment><comment><USER32> For whatever reason, I do auditory reading at a much faster pace than is usually listed in articles like this (over 500WPM for typical paperback fiction; technical content is limited by my thinking, not how fast I can read the words. The same is true for more poetic narratives). Anyone know of any studies on that?

</comment><comment><USER33> Speed reading, or not subvocalizing, is analogous to touch typing, or not looking at the keyboard. Both are needed for peak WPM metrics, but particular WPM isn't that relevant. Relevant metric is "faster". Even for things that 'need time', it'll take less time with those skills.

</comment><comment><USER34> Google scholar search term. Find highly cited paper with title that resonates. Read abstract. If interesting, load, look at pictures and captions. Discussion. Scroll between intro and conclusion. Lit review & results. At somepoint, check cites or citations. Ad infinitum.

Speed reading.

</comment><comment><USER35> Read the first sentence of a paragraph, and the last. You'd be surprised how much crap goes in the middle. Not so great for important stuff, but if you need to zip through something quick it's a good trick.

<comment><USER36> > Read [..] trick.

Oh, it works with single words too!

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Using less-legible fonts leads to slower reading, but better recall. [1]. There's clearly a case for slow reading if comprehension and/or recall are primary goals.

Generally speaking, there's a continuum of activities from glancing to skimming to reading to 'close reading' (a term of art in education). It's not surprising that for most people, there is a tradeoff between speed and comprehension/recall.

EDIT: are the downvotes for the first paragraph or the second? Comments would be more helpful!

1: [https://hbr.org/2012/03/hard-to-read-fonts-promote-better- re...](https://hbr.org/2012/03/hard-to-read-fonts-promote-better-recall)

</comment><comment><USER38> Regardless of how fast (or not) you read:

Understanding > Knowledge

Effective =/= Efficient

Etc.

</comment><comment><USER39> I've read really fast since I was a kid, I usually read 100 to 150 books a year, but I def read non-fiction a lot slower as its a dif reading exp.

</comment><comment><USER40> Whew this is a long article, does anyone have the tl;dr?</comment>


Brazil Bolsonaro: Facebook told to block accounts of president's supporters - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-53625728 <comment><USER2> I am glad that Brazil's court still remains independent.

Looks like Bolsonaro, should borrow couple of tips from his friend Narendra Modi. Modi, dismantled the institutions in India systematically to guarantee his long lasting power.

e.g.

The only official from the election commission who didn't give a clean-chit to Modi for his election campaign violations during last election was greeted with Income Tax raids on his family members after the election, now he has been transferred to Asian Bank(He was next in line to become Chief Election Commissioner).

Look at the current Chief Justice of India, posing with limited edition Harley Davidson[0], which apparently was brought to him 'just for a demo by a local dealer and definitely does not belong to the son of a ruling party member'!

Former Chief Justice of India, has been given membership in parliament!

[0][https://theprint.in/india/photos-of-justice-bobde- astride-a-...](https://theprint.in/india/photos-of-justice-bobde-astride-a- hunky-harley-davidson-reveal-different-side-to-indias-cji/450849/)

<comment><USER3> Brazilian here. Unfortunately I wouldn't call them independent. They simply represent the other side. Brazil is not as united behind Bolsonaro as the media makes out to be.

<comment><USER4> I'm originally from Turkey, and that's also the case with Erdoğan. I mean, they wouldn't be dictators if everyone agreed with them, no?

The big problem arising from the stark polarization is that there's no uncontaminated news sources anymore. Many argue that news should be political anyway but I really miss reading stuff that doesn't fit 100 percent to a single agenda.

<comment><USER3> Hold on, Bolsonaro is not a dictator. Federalism even recently screwed him over. He didn't act on COVID but individual states imposed their own measures and thankfully countered his opinion.

<comment><USER5> That's like saying Mussolini was not a dictator in 1922, because there were still so many factions competing against him in Italian politics. Possibly true, but it's also clear what direction he was heading. By 1925 he had largely consolidated his power.

<comment><USER3> Well I'm also super concerned that he has expressed dictatorial aspirations. But as of right now the constitution holds.

<comment><USER6> "Super concerned?" The guy wanted to celebrate the coup that started the last dictatorship. Stop splitting hairs.

[http://www.iconnectblog.com/2019/04/bolsonaros- unconstitutio...](http://www.iconnectblog.com/2019/04/bolsonaros- unconstitutional-support-for-the-brazilian-civil-military-dictatorship- of-1964-1985/)

Note: Trump's call for postponing the election is exactly the same thing. Evidence they have no interest in constitutional democracy and will, at the earliest possible moment, impose total control on the country.

<comment><USER3> Read what I said. I said I'm super concerned about it :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There seems to be some confusion in the comments regarding this decision.

This is not an arbitrary decision made in a vacuum. There's an ongoing judicial inquiry, and the accounts suspended were linked to persons of interest. They're currently being investigated for crimes in both civil and penal spheres.

The accounts were not banned, they are temporarily suspended for the course of the investigation. Also, it's explicitly mentioned that, given the evidences (which the accused parties have access to), some individual rights are being suspended, as they're not shields for committing crimes or avoiding responsibility. The decision also mentions that Constitutional rights don't exist on their own, they find their limits in the other equally important rights and guarantees contained in the Constitution. This is not some exotic feature of Brazilian law, it's something also mentioned in the Declaration of Human Rights (which is also cited).

Having said that, all affected parties have the right to contest the measure, this is not an autocratic decision.

Finally, if Facebook and Twitter wants to operate in Brazil, they need to comply with Brazilian laws, including complying with court decisions. You can definitely argue against blocking the information world wide, but similar decisions were made by other democratic countries (like Canada).

<comment><USER8> > This is not an arbitrary decision made in a vacuum. There's an ongoing > judicial inquiry, and the accounts suspended were linked to persons of > interest. They're currently being investigated for crimes in both civil and > penal spheres.

Except that this "judicial inquiry" is anything but lawful. The offended side (the supreme court) is also the inquirer and the judge. There is nothing in the law that allows this, and the constitution plainly prohibits it. They are abusing their power and are censoring activists, journalists and politicians, plain and simple.

> (which the accused parties have access to)

Even the OAB (brazilian akin to advocates' guild) recognized this wasn't the case for at leas two weeks. And when the accused were given access to formal accusation, they only had access to a small chapter of it.

<comment><USER7> It's arguably lawful. By the Brazilian Constitution, investigation on crimes committed against the Supreme Court are to be presided and supervised by the court itself. Furthermore, it's been established that the whatever case comes out of the investigation will be sent to the Attorney General. It's up to him follow prosecution. So no, they're not the inquirer and the judge.

Questioning procedures is a healthy part of the democratic game. But it doesn't change the fact that there's evidence that crimes we're committed, and legal action is being taken.

<comment><USER8> There is a internal regiment that postulates the court investigates crimes within the court. Justices then, by their own, and extrapolating interpretation of the law, came out that the Supreme Court abroads national territory, thus any act against it is considered "within". Does it seem fair to you?

Also, can you enlist a single of said crimes against the court?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The technical argument from the court is quite intriguing.

The Supreme Court justice only wants to prevent access to the blocked profiles within Brazil. However, he says Facebook should not allow Brazilians themselves to view such profiles by "subterfuge" (by changing their registered country on Facebook settings or using VPNs, according to the Court's tech advisors).

In the end, the most efficient way for Facebook to comply with this order is a worldwide ban.

Facebook may have a shot at reversing the ban and the fines on its appeal. But it certainly doesn't help that several previous orders on this case had been ignored before.

<comment><USER10> Where did you read the technical arguments? The article doesn't mention them. In fact, the article is very light on information, and only left me confused about the situation, like why are the presidents supporters calling for a coup? And how does blocking a dozen accounts change anything, really? Would the people behind them not simply open more sockpuppet accounts?

<comment><USER11> _> why are the presidents supporters calling for a coup_

Acts asking for a militar coup have been happening for the last few years among the radical right. Their demands are not clear enough, so most news reports are about them happening and events surrounded them, such as the president appearing in some of them. [1] [2]

\---

I'm not going to guess what they want, so let's just translate what their banners say. Hopefully I can be unbiased.

\- "Military intervention / Close the supreme court and congress / With Bolsonaro as president" [3]

\- "Military tribunal", "Criminalize Communism", among others I can't read [4].

\- "Military intervention so that Bolsonaro can govern". In the back: "criminalize communism" [5].

\- "AI-5 with Bolsonaro in power" [6].

The last one is about AI-5. AI-5, according to Wiki:

"resulted in the forfeiture of mandates, interventions ordered by the President in municipalities and states and also in the suspension of any constitutional guarantees which eventually resulted in the institutionalization of the torture commonly used as a tool by the State." [7]

The previous reference is in english.

\---

 _> And how does blocking a dozen accounts change anything, really? Would the people behind them not simply open more sockpuppet accounts?_

Some of them are under house arrest and forbidden from using social networks. [7]

The others are stopped for different reasons, but according to a news website "there's still no information about the reasons". [8]

If they open sock puppets, this will probably be dealt with in a case by case basis.

\---

Sorry for the excessive number of sources. This is still ongoing and very hard to explain, so I have no recourse.

[1] [https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/brasil-52353804](https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/brasil-52353804)

[2] [https://g1.globo.com/politica/noticia/2020/04/19/bolsonaro-d...](https://g1.globo.com/politica/noticia/2020/04/19/bolsonaro- discursa-em-manifestacao-em-brasilia-que-defendeu-intervencao-militar.ghtml)

[3] [https://media.gazetadopovo.com.br/2020/04/22162620/manifesta...](https://media.gazetadopovo.com.br/2020/04/22162620/manifestacao- intervencao-brasilia-sergio-lima-afp-960x540.jpg) / [https://mediastorage.cnnbrasil.com.br/IMAGES/00/00/00/3368_7...](https://mediastorage.cnnbrasil.com.br/IMAGES/00/00/00/3368_745E8B537C8E0C3D.jpg)

[4] [https://conteudo.imguol.com.br/c/noticias/c0/2020/06/21/2106...](https://conteudo.imguol.com.br/c/noticias/c0/2020/06/21/21062020 ---ato-de-apoiadores-de-bolsonaro-tem-pedidos-anticonstitucionais-de- intervencao-militar-1592766183921_v2_450x337.jpg)

[5] [https://static.poder360.com.br/2020/06/Apoiadores- Bolsonaro-...](https://static.poder360.com.br/2020/06/Apoiadores-Bolsonaro-QG- Exercito-IntervencaoMilitar-Constituicao-comunismo-27-868x644.jpg)

[6] [https://static.poder360.com.br/2020/04/bolsonaro- AI-5.jpg](https://static.poder360.com.br/2020/04/bolsonaro-AI-5.jpg)

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

[8] [https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/brasil-53570792](https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/brasil-53570792)

[9] [https://economia.ig.com.br/2020-07-31/luciano-hang-da- havan-...](https://economia.ig.com.br/2020-07-31/luciano-hang-da-havan-tem- conta-retida-no-twitter-pela-justica.html)

<comment><USER12> > \- "AI-5 with Bolsonaro in power" [6].

Brazilian living abroad here. This one is particularly hilarious/concerning because they keep screaming "censorship" against the supreme court orders and censoring the press was one of the policies instituted by the AI-5 decree.

I lived through the second half of the dictatorship. I'd rather lock up those who ask for one than see my country under one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Very glad I'm not Facebook. No matter what choices you make, millions (or billions) will hate you. Is decentralization the only solution, if it even is one?

<comment><USER14> I agree. You may not agree with Zuckerberg's position of not censoring content (beyond the obscene), but it's probably the smartest position for the business.

As soon as you start saying "well, we'll censor stuff that isn't accurate", you've opened a Pandora's box of every single interest group hammering you on every single decision and in the end everyone thinks you're screwing them over.

<comment><USER15> > beyond the obscene

I mean, that's pretty arbitrary too, e.g. FB censors female breasts, which is not considered obscene in many places.

It's a difficult line to walk.

<comment><USER16> Where I live even full nudity would not be considered obscene at all, unless something sexual was going on.

However it is becoming more and more the case. With American platforms and media, their learned attitude of being overly prude also made their way here. Though I'm not sure whether "prude" is the right word to describe the crippling self-consciousness many experience when faced with nude humanity.

I suspect it has be actively instilled by your parents and society around you while you are still young, or you won't ever have it.

<comment><USER17> As an American, I don't think it's "crippling self-consciousness", we're just trained to think of nudity as sexually provocative in itself.

<comment><USER18> "It's not the nudity that's bad, it's the sexual provocation! I mean, I don't care if they're topless in their own homes, but do they have to _flaunt_ it? They're so in-your-face."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What is it going to take for facebook to voluntarily exit a country? Courts/governments all around the world are pushing the limits on what their jurisdictions cover, and facebook is being spineless. With this case it's somewhat reasonable, in the sense that the action mainly affects Brazilians, but how long until countries try to use its citizens as leverage to get facebook to conduct foreign influence? eg. country A (50M population) wants country B's (5M population) president to be blocked _worldwide_ because he badmouthed country A. Will facebook exit country A, or cave to their demands because they got more leverage?

<comment><USER20> I would do anything for Facebook to leave mine. If this is a step in that direction, I'm all for it.

<comment><USER21> To be immediately replaced by a local imitation founded by a politically- connected mogul. But at least it'll be local.

<comment><USER20> I don't see how that's any worse than the politically-connected mogul from a foreign country we have now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If you can read Portuguese, you can get more information here: [https://www.conjur.com.br/2020-ago-01/facebook-bloqueia- aces...](https://www.conjur.com.br/2020-ago-01/facebook-bloqueia-acesso- perfis-bolsonaristas-mundo-inteiro)

Follow the links to older articles, and several of them have at their end the original court decision. The latest one (found at [https://www.conjur.com.br/2020-jul-31/moraes-aumenta- multa-f...](https://www.conjur.com.br/2020-jul-31/moraes-aumenta-multa-forcar- facebook-bloquear-perfis)) is [https://www.conjur.com.br/dl/decisao-alexandre- moraes.pdf](https://www.conjur.com.br/dl/decisao-alexandre-moraes.pdf) and the previous one seems to have been (found at [https://www.conjur.com.br/2020-jul-31/facebook-informa- nao-c...](https://www.conjur.com.br/2020-jul-31/facebook-informa-nao-cumprir- decisao-bloquear-perfis-fora-pais)) [https://www.conjur.com.br/dl/decisao- alexandre-moraes-twitte...](https://www.conjur.com.br/dl/decisao-alexandre- moraes-twitter.pdf)

Finally, the original decision seems to have been (found at [https://www.conjur.com.br/2020-jul-24/decisao-alexandre- twit...](https://www.conjur.com.br/2020-jul-24/decisao-alexandre-twitter- apaga-contas-aliados-bolsonaro)) [https://www.conjur.com.br/dl/inq-4781.pdf](https://www.conjur.com.br/dl/inq-4781.pdf) (a cleaner copy of this last one can also be found at the Brazilian Supreme Court website: [http://www.stf.jus.br/arquivo/cms/noticiaNoticiaStf/anexo/ma...](http://www.stf.jus.br/arquivo/cms/noticiaNoticiaStf/anexo/mandado27maio.pdf)).

</comment><comment><USER23> Brazilian here. I sincerely dislike those who were blocked, but don't be fooled, what the Supreme Court is doing here is completely dictatorial.

</comment><comment><USER24> Brazilian here. Our law is incompatible with the Internet as we know it.

Below is a brief excerpt from our 1989 Constitution, translated by myself:

Art. 5º Todos são iguais perante a lei, sem distinção de qualquer natureza, garantindo-se aos brasileiros e aos estrangeiros residentes no País a inviolabilidade do direito à vida, à liberdade, à igualdade, à segurança e à propriedade, nos termos seguintes:

(All men are equal by the law, without any distinction, guaranteed to Brazilians and foreigners living on the Country the inviolable right to life, freedom, equality, safety, property, on the following terms:)

(...)

IV - é livre a manifestação do pensamento, sendo vedado o anonimato;

(The freedom of speech/thinking is allowed, __but anonymity is not __)

(...)

<comment><USER25> Yes. Courts all over the world are discovering and dealing with the difficulties of imposing their own nation's laws on an _international_ communications network. Currently it is relatively easy to become anonymous on the internet and avoid the consequences of free speech, especially since brazilian law enforcement is not as sophisticated as organizations such as the FBI when it comes to cyber crime investigation.

The end result will be the regionalization of the internet. Instead of one global network, we'll have several national or regional networks. This will be possible because internet providers are centralized services which are easily controlled by the governments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Censorship is so repugnant, yet so complicated.

What should be prohibited to be said, if anything? Who draws the line?

<comment><USER27> Don't prohibit speech. That's it. Repugnance is part of life. If you suppress speech, you only push it underground. Light is the best disinfectant. Daryl Davis, a black musician, attends Klan rallies ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORp3q1Oaezw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORp3q1Oaezw)). By knowing who to speak with, he's helped people out of that racist pit.

I extend speech so far to include calls to violence. Then you know who to watch and who to protect. Hiding this does nothing but make intel harder to get. You can't try to prevent radicalization, because you've pushed it so far out of the light, it might as well be a mole. They'll still eat the roots of your modern democracy, but you'll be surprised.

<comment><USER28> Honestly I think this just doesn't work out this way in reality. First of all, we know that deplatforming racists/fascists does actually help to stop the spread of racist/fascist ideas.

Secondly, and I think this is the more salient point, encountering racist/sexist/transphobic/whatever speech as a person who is the target of such rhetoric is immediately harmful and othering, especially when these views aren't actively challenged or disavowed by society. This doesn't even include the possibility that hearing hate speech might trigger some prior trauma experienced because of one's identity.

By taking this stance, you're implicitly advocating the allowance of direct threats to other people's very existence, under the justitification that everyone will be better off that way because it's all out in the open. To me, that just sounds like you don't really understand the impact that hate speech can have on a person's ability to live with the same freedoms and opportunities that other members of society enjoy.

Example: You have a job interview downtown, but you're black and the Klan has a parade scheduled that day, and you're scared of the calls for violence. You don't make the interview, so you obviously don't get the job. You were denied the opportunity to because of the 'free speech' of others.

I for one would like to see more focus on Freedom of Association alongside Freedom of Speech in discussions like these - you can argue whatever you like, but nobody has to listen to you or give you a platform (and if you're a fascist, they shouldn't, and should be actively deplatforming you because your ideas are so awful/dangerous).

<comment><USER27> My response is that everyone should carry. If the Klan goes nuts, the Klan gets shot. Eventually the system will react an equilibrium.

I agree with your freedom of association. My only note would be that removing people from the means of financial transactions is the same as limiting speech.

<comment><USER29> I tend to prefer solutions to social problems where no one gets shot.

<comment><USER27> As do I. The fact of the matter is that the cops average 11 minutes to respond in good areas. They take longer in high crime areas. Further, we've seen that the cops are generally bad people. So leave policing to the average person.

If the Klan attacks people, they can freely be shot. If the Klan parades around in their sheets, meh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I sure hope they can reverse it in court. Otherwise this will be a precedent for that judge to block any account it sees fit under the threat of imprisoning a Facebook or Twitter employer.

> Given the threat of criminal liability to a local employee, at this point we > see no other alternative than complying with the decision by blocking the > accounts globally, while we appeal to the Supreme Court.

<comment><USER31> > I sure hope they can reverse it in court. Otherwise this will be a precedent > for that judge to block any account it sees fit

The ruling was based on track records of conducting libel campaigns targetting anyone who could jeopardize Bolsonaro's political goals, not to mention supporting military coups to allow him to become president for life and silence any critic.

And it seems you're missing the fact that the ruling specifically targets sock puppet accounts controlled by a couple of Bolsonaro Minions, such as the leader of Bolsonaro's party and one of Bolsonaro's main backer.

The judge didn't based his decision on whims.

<comment><USER30> The issue here is, as stated in the article, facebook was ordered to block worldwide access to facebook accounts based on brazilian law.

I couldn't care less about what said accounts were posting if they were protected by the 1st amendment.

The problem here is the precedence of an overreach.

<comment><USER31> > The issue here is, as stated in the article, facebook was ordered to block > worldwide access to facebook accounts based on brazilian law.

It really isn't. ISPs are also required to cut access to illegal content. Facebook is a service provider that willingly provides access to illegal content, thus it is required to take it down.

That's the whole point of the ruling.

<comment><USER30> Not sure I follow the logic.

The content is illegal in Brazil only for now.

The ruling explicitly tells facebook to take down content worldwide.

<comment><USER31> > The content is illegal in Brazil only for now.

There is no such thing as "only for now". Either it violates the law, or it doesn't. The court deemed that it breaks the law, thus the law should not continue to be broken. Hence the ruling.

> The ruling explicitly tells facebook to take down content worldwide.

The court determined that Facebook hosts content that violates the law. Therefore Facebook should remove the offending content. That's it.

<comment><USER30> The #Brazilian# court deemed that it breaks the law.

As far as I know no other court addressed the matter so far.

Facebook argues that content should only be taken down where it breaks the law, which is reasonable.

Otherwise you'll see, for example, Facebook and Twitter silencing accounts of Turkish dictator Erdogan's opposition worldwide because that specific country deemed their speech to be illegal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I hope Facebook is able to revert it. To globally block an account, could lead to some court in the country A, blocks accounts in the country B. For example, Venezuela could block politic opposition posting something in US.

</comment><comment><USER33> You know what's next when they take constitutional rights from journalists and citizens.

<comment><USER31> > You know what's next when they take constitutional rights from journalists > and citizens.

Bolsonaro's supporters were caught calling for a military coup to allow Bolsonaro to become Brazil's dictator, as well as fabricating accusations and stories that targetted anyone who was inconvenient to Bolsonaro's political agenda.

You should check where you base your slippery slope fallacy because any journalist who did the same would be out of a job for plenty of good reasons.

<comment><USER34> Mainstream media journalists regularly fabricate accusations and target people based on political agenda.

Nick Sandmann sued several of them successfully for defamation, because they ruined the life of an innocent underage high school student based on politically biased reporting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> If China demanded that its great firewall apply to Chinese citizens abroad, this would be considered a shocking authoritarian overreach by most people in the west. Yet a judge in Brazil can order that, and it's just taken at face value?

Put another way: if the BBC can identify Bolsonaro as "far-right", why not call the judge "far-left" for doing something that not even the Communist Party of China does? Or far-something, at any rate.

<comment><USER36> The second paragraph doesn't follow from the first. "Rule of law" and "stop taking the piss" aren't left- or right-wing.

Also:

* China achieves the same goals with the Great Firewall

* Despite this, "Gap apologised to China for selling a shirt in its North American outlets featuring a map of the country without Taiwan and Arunachal Pradesh included" - [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-maps-des...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-maps-destroyed-taiwan-arunachal-pradesh-india-territory-disputed-south-tibet-a8840836.html)

* Even in liberal democracies: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libel_tourism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libel_tourism)

<comment><USER35> I think I have more of a European (civil law?) conception of "rule of law", centered on the law itself: it must be clearly written, it must apply equally to everyone, etc.

Americans seem to use the term for something that should more properly be called "rule of magistrates". Judges can order pretty much whatever they want (unless overruled by a higher judge); prosecutors can charge or not charge different people for the same crime at their discretion; the Supreme Court just grabbed the power to decide what is constitutional, which the constitution nowhere grants it; etc.

<comment><USER37> > "rule of magistrates"

A legal system where judicial precedent has the force of law is called a Common Law system, as opposed to a Civil Law system.

Common Law is less of an American thing and more of a former British empire thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Sounds like they were engaging in straight-up slander—-even worse than if they had "cancelled" their victims, whatever that actually means.

<comment><USER39> Slander is a reason to have slander suits, not a ban on a class of people imposed on a social network.

I'm all for the free market (i.e. users) pressuring social networks to ban certain groups, like pedophiles or neo-Nazis.

I'm deeply against a government telling a social network that any broad class of people should be banned, especially if they're mainstream enough that their leader is in office.

<comment><USER40> > I'm deeply against a government telling a social network that any broad > class of people should be banned, especially if they're mainstream enough > that their leader is in office.

Even if those people are calling for a coup d'etat to change the democracy into a dictatorship and place this leader at the top?

<comment><USER39> > _Even if those people are calling for a coup d 'etat to change the democracy > into a dictatorship and place this leader at the top?_

If they are calling for violence, I support govt censorship only of the violent speech and only if each case is considered individually.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> It is worth noting that both Facebook and Twitter have appealed, citing that the measures have been too drastic.

Given Twitter's and FB's history, and the fact that Bolsonaro supporters tend to be more "right wing", that's when you know that the Brazilian court order is WAY out of line ...

<comment><USER42> that's pretty funny, but no they just don't want to deal with it, all they hear is "what do you mean, lose users?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> How long before Facebook is forced to be sold to a Brazilian company?</comment>


Astronauts Identify Mystery Microbes in Space for the First Time - <AUTHOR> https://www.space.com/39254-astronauts-sequence-microbes-dna-in-space.html <comment><USER2> Ha - the title is linkbait - the microbes were FROM earth, but they were 'sequenced' in space.

</comment><comment><USER3> The title needs a comma to clarify it's testing of terrestrial microbes was done in space. Sigh.

</comment><comment><USER4> Probably the most expensive identification of aspergillus sp. ever.</comment>


China Wants to Build a Deep Sea 'Space Station' - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/china-wants-to-build-a-deep-sea-space-station <comment><USER2> Deep sea mining and more importantly thermal vents mining is probably the next frontier in terrestrial resource exploitation and its considerably more likely to happen within the next 5 decades than asteroid mining even if we limit ourselves to near earth objects.

The environment aside China is really making smart moves.

<comment><USER3> It sounds like a major pollution risk. Especially problematic for animals and plants that live on the sea floor near such operations, which will be occluded by particles in the water. Not to mention anything that was living on the sea floor where it is effectively stripped.

<comment><USER4> The sea floor is quite large. The building you are sat in doesn't leave much opportunity to whatever used to roam across the land it is built on.

I think you are being oversensitive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It has been interesting to see the reaction to this from different parts of the Internet. Some people are absolutely convinced it must have military or intelligence use and their stated cause is bullcrap. They think it's about as believable as harvesting manganese nodules[1] from the ocean floor.

Meanwhile HN commentators are sure this is a brilliant move that will catapult them ahead of the world in deep sea exploration.

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

</comment><comment><USER6> "Welcome to Pathos II, your expressway to the stars. What started as a geothermal mining operation in the 60's has now become home to the Omega Space Gun."

<comment><USER7> We need those rifters down there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think something like this was a plot point in the recent novel 'Ghost Fleet', portraying a high-tech non-nuclear war between China and the US.

</comment><comment><USER9> I just hope they find that last vending machine that has Mingus Dew...

<comment><USER10> Hopefully their robots are a little more helpful and a little less interested in teeth [http://i.cdn.turner.com/asfix/repository//8a25c3920ef1568301...](http://i.cdn.turner.com/asfix/repository//8a25c3920ef15683010ef214f9770177/thumbnail_10336.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you're looking for me You better check under the sea Cause that is where you'll find me Underneath the ...</comment>


Bootcamp Reviews - <AUTHOR> http://www.programmingisnothard.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Any feedback for this site? I'm hoping to help prospective programmers find the best bootcamp for them!</comment>


Why you haven't switched your business to VoIP - <AUTHOR> https://telzio.com/blog/why-you-still-havent-switched-to-voip/

<comment><USER2> Blatant advertising aside, this is nice timing for me. I'm currently trying to get our business number switched over to SIP. My first approach was to go with Plivo, a YC startup -- but their documentation is _awful_ and their UI doesn't make up for that.

I had just decided to give up on Plivo and look for another service when this came along.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ad that made it past screening, nothing to see here.

</comment><comment><USER4> How did they make 2 posts to the front page?

</comment><comment><USER5> It's great! Quite informative</comment>


Someone's spreading an MBR-trashing copy of the Christchurch killer's manifesto - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/03/28/new_zealand_manifesto_malware/ <comment><USER2> >> While the manifesto – a meme-laden soup of troll-tastic nihilistic nonsense – has been outlawed in New Zealand

I haven't read this particular manifesto, and won't. But I do disagree with writings being outlawed.

That probably seems like an odd position to take, but the extreme counter- example is there was a year when the US Declaration of Independence was a violence-inciting manifesto.

I'm not saying this guy's manifesto is like the Declaration of Independence of course. What I'm saying is, if I live in a society that has to outlaw BOTH or NEITHER, I choose neither.

<comment><USER3> The censors are ultimately scrubbing history clean. If we can't know the history, how are we supposed to learn from it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How can a Visual Basic macro executed as a regular user write to the MBR? Maybe it's asking for elevation?

<comment><USER5> I believe the VB was used to download a binary which accomplished the overwrite.

<comment><USER4> ...which would still need to be elevated.</comment></comment></comment>


Remove Moving Objects from Video - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/syncedreview/magically-remove-moving-objects-from-video-dfc789fe092d <comment><USER2> Related better implementation of the inpainting, though I wonder how it'd look with the automasking in this.

[https://nbei.github.io/video-inpainting.html](https://nbei.github.io/video- inpainting.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> There is a related issue that I have some personal interest in: removing specific audio from video.

Background:

There are streamers on Twitch who will play copyrighted music as part of their streams. Twitch allows them to do this, but then Twitch will scan these videos for copyrighted music against some music fingerprint database and mute that section of video entirely (the part of the video that played that audio). The other parts are unaffected unless they played some other copyrighted audio. YouTube does something in terms of recognizing copyrighted music, but will demonetize the entire video as a result. Needless to say, demonetization does hurt the streamer.

Alternatives:

I don't want to get into whether or not Twitch and YouTube are right in doing the copyrighted audio matching and the subsequent actions they take. Some streamers who've been affected by this have started playing royalty- free/copyright-free music or music from lesser known artists that are less likely to be in these music fingerprint databases.

My question:

Is it possible to just _subtract_ the audio of a copyrighted track from a video after it has been detected to having being played in a video?

<comment><USER4> It's possible, but the quality isn't that great even with state of the art machine learning:

[https://towardsdatascience.com/audio-ai-isolating-vocals- fro...](https://towardsdatascience.com/audio-ai-isolating-vocals-from-stereo- music-using-convolutional-neural-networks-210532383785)

<comment><USER5> The only tool in the audio toolbox is essentially the fourier transform.

It would be a game changer if someone were to come up with a novel method of decomposing audio into discrete components (e.g. people speaking, specific instruments, background noise).

Likely this would require completely new hardware to capture different audio attributes in addition to simply capturing a stream of vibrations from a microphone.

<comment><USER6> The tools to do this exist. It's usually called 'blind source separation', as in "What are the N distinct audio signals which sum up to best explain a given compound signal, without knowing the possible source signals ahead of time." Usually it's done with some sort of matrix factorization, Principal Component Analysis, and/or Independent Component Analysis. It's also used for non-audio signals, like pulling the discrete firings out of noisy EEG signals. It's definitely not a foolproof solution but in a lot of applications it can get you going, at least.

<comment><USER7> By the problem setup it isn't blind source. It is sound = song plus other. A mixture model with 2 components

Edit. If you know the song it should be something simple like do cross correlation of audio with known song. Find peak. Solve for the gain and subtract away scaled and shifted song from original track. Will be rubbish if gain and timing have errors. Might need to do it in little chunks and interpolate the gain and shifts.

Edit 2. More generally, you might want to worry about the song having passed through some unknown transfer function (i.e. it is being played and recorded through shitty equipment). Then you have an interesting inverse problem. If everything is linear it will involve a regularized deconvolution. Will be tricky then.

<comment><USER4> It still is reduce-able to the more general blind source problem, right? We can conveniently "forget" that we know what the sources are so now we are blindfolded and can still use the same techniques to solve it.

<comment><USER7> It will do worse with less assumptions. The more you know the better you can estimate

<comment><USER6> Sorry I didn't see your responses until now. Indeed, there are many ways to slice the specific problem. I was specifically responding to the parent's statement:

> It would be a game changer if someone were to come up with a novel method of > decomposing audio into discrete components

It's something that has been generally addressed and ~works. It will obviously depend on the specifics of the application, and yes if you can constrain the problem space further you ought to do better!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was looking for a decent inpainting implementations for photos earlier in the week and it appears there are no decent open source implementations.

</comment><comment><USER9> Second thing that's felt like a genuine, useful, innovation coming out of the last wave of AI hype. (The first being deep-fakes.)

</comment><comment><USER10> That looks fantastic! I believe that Adobe Premiere and After Effects already offer that feature called content-aware fill for video and it seems to work very well [1].

Of course those are not open-source but it's really inspiring to see such uses of AI. Another very interesting one when it comes to video has been [2]

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25ltIoHtiO4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25ltIoHtiO4) [2] [https://github.com/avinashpaliwal/Super- SloMo](https://github.com/avinashpaliwal/Super-SloMo)

<comment><USER11> The technique you refer it is "inpainting", but such sophistication isn't necessary. If the object of interest is moving across a largely static background (pans and rotations are easily compensated for), then the missing background image you need in frame N is available in adjacent frames.

I've used such a filter to remove dirt and dust from 8mm films via avisynth, a program that goes back more than 20 years, though the filter in question is not quite that old -- at least 10 years.

Here is the filter in question: [http://avisynth.nl/index.php/RemoveDirt](http://avisynth.nl/index.php/RemoveDirt)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Fascinating. Is this based on an earlier still-frame method or is it entirely unique to video?

</comment><comment><USER13> Just like with that face blending (is that the correct term?) seeing this I'm getting even more afraid how this technology can be use for malicious purposes, especially in media.

It still looks amazing of course

</comment><comment><USER14> This is pretty awesome, to say the least.</comment>


New ransomware variant uses false child porn accusations - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/new-ransomware-variant-uses-false-child-porn-accusations/9406

<comment><USER2> I understand that spoofing one's identity is an easy enough task with tor, fly-by-night VPS's, etc., but when transfer of money is involved, could not security experts set up "honeypot" traps to get at the origin of these attacks? By seeing where the money is essentially ending up?

<comment><USER3> In theory, probably yes. In practice, good luck getting the police to do cross-border investigations into a crime they don't understand and that causes ~$16 in damage per victim.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wouldn't the following be nastier?

"We have hidden child porn somewhere on your hard drive. If you send $25 via >this paypal link<, this will all go away. If we don't receive the money in 48 hours, this program will remove itself without trace - after notifying the police."</comment>


How Symantec upsells Internet Explorer 5 SSL support in 2015 - <AUTHOR> https://certsimple.com/blog/sgc-ssl-certificates <comment><USER2> Worth noting that CertSimple is a competitor of Symantec, and can't offer SGC certificates, so they are basically whinging that their competitor is marketing their certificates on a feature people don't need.

That's basically par for the course when selling to businesses, especially where non-technical people are in a position of deciding whether to buy, and which vendor to chose from.

It'd also be nice if HackerNews wasn't quite so populated with thinly veiled ads for companies disguised as blog posts.

<comment><AUTHOR> We sell SSL certificates and we're quite proud of it.

> can't offer SGC certificates

We could sell SGC products today if we wanted to - we have the API keys, a partner account with another certificate provider (not Digicert), and a node module written for the relevant REST API. We don't want to.

> are basically whinging that their competitor is marketing their certificates > on a feature people don't need.

Marketing certificates on a feature people don't need - and making it seem as if they need it - is wrong.

> That's basically par for the course when selling to businesses, especially > where non-technical people are in a position of deciding whether to buy, and > which vendor to chose from.

Being common does not make it right.

If you think it does: what's the name of your startup? Your bio is empty, and I think most of HN would be interested in knowing the name of a business that thinks this is OK.

Furthermore it's not 'par for the course': many other CAs don't sell IE5 support as hard as Symantec does. Here's DigiCert writing against SGC (we use DigiCert as our CA) [https://www.digicert.com/sgc-ssl- certificates.htm](https://www.digicert.com/sgc-ssl-certificates.htm), here's their competitor GoDaddy writing against SGC: [http://agrihortico.com/freedownloads/SGC.pdf](http://agrihortico.com/freedownloads/SGC.pdf)

<comment><USER3> _what 's the name of your startup? Your bio is empty, and I think most of HN would be interested in knowing the name of a business that thinks this is OK._

Ugh, seriously? I was vaguely fine with the blog post before (though it is a bit advertisement-y for HN in context), but this is reprehensible (at least in the context of judging companies by the stances their employees take...).

<comment><USER4> It's also reprehensible to say that it's OK for companies to cheat their cusomters. I don't think the CertSimple guy was _actually_ trying to boycott that guy's company, he was trying to make a point.

<comment><USER5> I read it as a mixed call to boycott (and shaming) together with an appeal to CertSimple's expertise; "I don't see you actually having any startups, and thus your opinion is meaningless. If you do have a startup you certainly are a bad startup."

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a simple statement that companies shouldn't cheat their customers, nor should we support companies (including HN startups) that think it is OK to cheat their customers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think this is less malicious and more lazy... Isn't this just a super- outdated marketing webpage for a certain global market that was never taken down or redirected to the updated version?

I'm able to load the site, but when I click on __any __of the menu options I 'm given a redesigned site with an updated version of the SSL options. [1] I thought it might be a regional thing since this was in Asia-Pacific so I switched the "aa" to "uk" and that tab doesn't even exist anymore. [2]

Although I was only able to get to a few pages before my browser session was blacklisted as well. Sigh. Pretty annoying. [3] Luckily it is cookie based and not IP based. (I don't think it needs to be said but I have no relation to Symantec or Certsimple.)

[1] [http://www.symantec.com/en/aa/ssl- certificates/?inid=aa_ghp_...](http://www.symantec.com/en/aa/ssl- certificates/?inid=aa_ghp_cont1_vrsnsslcerts)

[2] [http://www.symantec.com/en/uk/page.jsp?id=how-ssl- works&tabI...](http://www.symantec.com/en/uk/page.jsp?id=how-ssl- works&tabID=3#)

[3] I'm now greeted with: Access Denied You don't have permission to access "[http://www.symantec.com/"](http://www.symantec.com/") on this server.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah it's weird: some locales for 'Introduction to SSL' have the old copy, some have a newer version with SGC removed.

(edit: removed ref to Secure Site Pro page - as yuhong points out below, it looks like the Pro product has been redefined to be non-SGC now)

<comment><USER7> But notice there is no mention of SGC anymore, and instead they mention ECDSA now. And you can only actually get SGC by getting a SHA1 certificate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> VeriSign, GeoTrust, Thawte and RapidSSL are all Symnantec? What a racket. Clever work, Certsimple.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes: [http://www.netcraft.com/wp- content/uploads/2010/05/certauth_...](http://www.netcraft.com/wp- content/uploads/2010/05/certauth_all4.png)

And thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> For those doing their own research. This is some data I pulled together last year.

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jzZqGzvtHe4egYNnp1L4...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jzZqGzvtHe4egYNnp1L4-df_avGjEqMZiv0FWFP4d4E/edit?usp=sharing)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice! The main point of CertSimple is 80 second EV application process (including generating the CSR) and EV issuance in an average of five hours - this could be a worthwhile addition to the the 'Notes' column.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Author here.

Asides from the 'Introduction to SSL' page mentioned in the article, there's a few other places Symantec mention SGC/IE5 support, including [http://www.symantec.com/ssl-certificates/](http://www.symantec.com/ssl- certificates/) \- the 1st and 3rd products include SGC/IE5 support and are more expensive than the equivalent (non 'Pro') products without SGC/IE5 support.

Hopefully this results in Symantec (and the resellers who use their marketing materials) making it clear that SGC technology only applies to very old browsers, rather than Symantec sending a nastygram to my office.

<comment><USER7> They at least have finally began to switch to marketing ECDSA certificates as the main difference now, especially as SHA1 certs becomes obsolete. Last time I checked Symantec's site I actually have to specifically look for SGC to find this stuff now.

<comment><USER10> You are right Yuhong. Symantec's "Pro" products used to advertise SGC, now they are using ECDSA instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Thawte have at least began hiding the SGC option. Also note that Netscape Step-Up (not to be confused with MS SGC) depends on insecure renegotiation, which is disabled in many servers now (I have a few pcaps I did with Netscape 4 showing this, and I really should factor the 512-bit RSA keys in some of them at some point). Another trivia is when VeriSign began selling EV certs in 2007 they only sold it with SGC, even though it was becoming obsolete even back then.

</comment><comment><USER11> SSL will never be good, Encryption which only a few can afford is mostly not good. Also most SSL Providers have their seat in USA, which also means that we NEVER knew if the encryption could be decrypted. Encryption which will be held by any "bigger" company will also have this flaw, even from germany or any other european company (any company in any country will have that flaw). The only encryption that would work, would be self made encryption, which is barely supported by browsers. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS- based_Authentication_of_Nam...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS- based_Authentication_of_Named_Entities#Applications)

<comment><USER12> Regarding your first point, the people at [https://letsencrypt.org/](https://letsencrypt.org/) are working to address that.

<comment><USER13> letsencrypt.org seems to be the new GNU Hurd or Duke Nukem Forever.</comment></comment></comment>


Why Super Nintendos Lose Their Color: Plastic Discoloration in Classic Machines - <AUTHOR> http://vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/189

<comment><USER2> Also see here: <http://retr0bright.wikispaces.com/> \- they've put their method in the public domain.

"The problem was finally cracked in late July 2008 with a mixture of hydrogen peroxide, a small amount of an 'Oxy' laundry booster as a catalyst and a UV lamp; we believed that this could do the job in hours instead of days."

</comment><comment><USER3> I love that this got posted because of a comment on 'Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore' article which argued that the Japanese smoke too much and as a result, it discolors their plastic game cases.

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Yellowing>

The Transformers fan community has been dealing with this for a while.

</comment><comment><USER5> With such a distinct yellow-brown look, I'd just tell all my friends I had a special Legend of Zelda edition.</comment>


How much to pay your startup lawyer - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestartuplawyer.com/startup-issues/how-much-to-pay-your-startup-lawyer

<comment><USER2> If you're in the valley, get an intro to a fee-deferred lawyer...</comment>


Best online Stanford course - <AUTHOR> http://cm.dce.harvard.edu/2011/02/23228/L01/seg1/index_FlashSingleHighBandwidth.shtml Tolkien as Translator *) The Lord of the Rings and Linguistic Anthropology <comment><USER2> harvard.edu -- but maybe you mean the online classes that Stanford Engineering recently popularized?

<comment><USER3> Without explanation from submitter, I would imagine that he is drawing attention to the fact that harvard.edu offers similar classes and (tounge in cheek) their classes are superior to Stanford's. Much like an old MIT hack (read prank) where <http://www.mitrejects.com> would redirect to Caltech's homepage whereby Caltech then did the same, with <http://www.caltechrejects.com> redirecting to the MIT homepage. Mostly it appears our submitter is drawing attention to the fact that he's a Tolkein fanatic.

<comment><USER4> Also <http://stanfordrejects.com>.</comment></comment></comment>