Feature extraction without learning using Hierarchical Temporal Memory - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.05131 <comment><AUTHOR> Abstract →

Hierarchical Temporal Memory (HTM) is a neuromorphic algorithm that emulates sparsity, hierarchy and modularity resembling the working principles of neocortex. Feature encoding is an important step to create sparse binary patterns. This sparsity is introduced by the binary weights and random weight assignment in the initialization stage of the HTM. We propose the alternative deterministic method for the HTM initialization stage, which connects the HTM weights to the input data and preserves natural sparsity of the input information. Further, we introduce the hardware implementation of the deterministic approach and compare it to the traditional HTM and existing hardware implementation. We test the proposed approach on the face recognition problem and show that it outperforms the conventional HTM approach.

</comment><comment><USER2> It's not hard to outperform the "conventional HTM approach", because it does not work (yet). They tested face recognition performance on 3 very old datasets (AR, ORL, and Yale), and reported accuracy of 83%-86%. To provide some perspective, these datasets have been solved at least a decade ago (> 99% accuracy) [1]

But wait, have they built some cool analog hardware with memristors? Nope, just SPICE simulations...

So yeah, from Kazakhstan, the land of Borat, with love! (sorry, couldn't resist).

[1] [http://www.coxlab.org/pdfs/ECCV_PintoDiCarloCox_2008.pdf](http://www.coxlab.org/pdfs/ECCV_PintoDiCarloCox_2008.pdf)

<comment><USER3> I'm surprised to see such blatant racism on Hacker News.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's your GDPR-compliant encrypted logging solution? - <AUTHOR> Given that files which may contain customer names and purchase information are potentially covered by GDPR, is there a good standard solution to protect them? <comment><USER2> Ideally:

1\. Use logging SaaS that takes GDPR seriously (e.g. Sumo Logic where I work).

2\. Avoid logging sensitive data (e.g. log id, not the address), use joins when you can reconstruct them.

3\. Keep logs with reasonable retention.

4\. Use logs for debugging and operational aspects, don't use those data for marketing, profiling as it is causes a lot of pain (e.g. right to forget).

GDPR is generally vague what it actually means and there are a lot of interpretations. E.g. can I log IP of my visitors without consent. Possible answers:

1\. No you can't. Never.

2\. Yes, do whatever.

3\. Yes, If you use it for security or system troubleshooting. No, if you use it for marketing, sales, etc.

The majority of interpretations, lean towards 3, but some ppl claim 1.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'v read Facebook has long-term backups on Blueray discs where each record has the user id plus encrypted data. Each user has their own encryption key. When a user gets deleted they throw away the encryption key. I haven't seen an off- the-shelf solution for this yet.

That said purchase information might be covered by other regulation, e.g. tax law, which would overwrite GDPR. GDPR also doesn't set a fixed data expiry, you can document that records are deleted X months later (as long as it's not infinite).

</comment><comment><USER4> A resource you may find useful is AWS' GDPR compliance center: [https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/gdpr- center/](https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/gdpr-center/)

This has some white papers and general advice for achieving GDPR compliance on AWS.

</comment><comment><USER5> Unless you have a reason for keeping them /dev/null is probably the best answer.

If you have a reason for keeping them think about who needs to see them again and on what timescale. As other poster mentioned legal reasons override GDPR.

How big are your logs? Do you really need them?</comment>


Ask HN: How do you explain the hacker's role to business types? - <AUTHOR>

What do you tell people who approach you asking to "just build" a site for an idea they have?
We as a community denigrate these sorts of people. And I'm well aware it would be a bad idea to just quote a fixed price or hourly rate.
But I don't think there is active malice, just ignorance.
How do you explain to business types the role of a hacker in their business and the need to involve technology and user experience at all levels? How do you politely and helpfully convince them that you are not a commodity.
I would appreciate if someone could recommend a short book or blog post that I could send to these sorts of inquiries. <comment><USER2> Read these two posts, you may find something useful therein.

[http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2010-1...](http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2010-12.html#e2010-12-01T15_45_40.htm)

[http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2010-1...](http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2010-10.html#e2010-10-28T16_27_55.htm)

There might be some inspiration here as well:

[http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/78081/sorkin- zucke...](http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/78081/sorkin-zuckerberg- the-social-network)

None of this is _exactly_ an answer; but some of the ideas may help you formulate something to give to people to help explain the role of the hacker.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is very useful to me, but I feel like it might be too harsh to direct business clients there initially. Perhaps there is need for a ijustneedaprogrammer.com with a friendly explanation of why that won't work.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, this stuff is written more for _us_ than for the business types. But you could probably take some of that and use it to help formulate a post of your own... if you're so inclined. Anyway, it's food for thought if nothing else.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your help! You're right, there seems to be a need. I should post something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why bother explaining? If he doesn't want to get it, approach it as a contract work: a limited offer where you do what he asks you within a limited time frame and he pays you in exchange, and after that you bail out.

If he already thinks that's what your role should be anyway, then you got yourself a low risk contract work.

Chances are, soon after the work starts, he himself will figure out after a while that this model won't work out, and then you can have a deeper discussion with him, where he actually has some experience to base the discussion off of.

</comment><comment><USER4> I am a hybrid, business type/ technical, however I am not a hacker (I'm an IT professional). I believe that I understand the role of a hacker in a startup and I have a great idea for a startup. How should I approach a hacker about joining my startup as a possible co-founder or to work on my project?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Partial answer to my question. Paul Grahahm's "How to Start" (<http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html>) addresses how to do it, but not why the traditional model won't work.

</comment><comment><USER5> It seems to me this is the sort of thing that needs an on "on-going conversation", not a one time lecture. Just like you build user experience and community and all that over time, you build understanding in folks who are clueless over time, not all at once. If they won't invest the time, put limits on how much of your own time/energy/whatever you will throw away on a lost cause. Yes, a good example or anecdote or metaphor may help open their eyes but it is probably the beginning of the process not the end.

Peace.</comment>


Raspberry Pi: High Quality Camera - <AUTHOR> https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-high-quality-camera/ <comment><AUTHOR> > 12.3 megapixel Sony IMX477 sensor, 7.9mm diagonal image size, and back- > illuminated sensor architecture, with adjustable back focus and support for > C- and CS-mount lenses

</comment><comment><USER2> They say it has better low light capability, but I haven't found any source that quantifies or demonstrates it. Even the Sony spec sheet doesn't say.</comment>


Nutella Lawyers Shut Down What Other Companies Would Consider A Wet Dream - <AUTHOR> http://thegist.com/news/684/nutella-lawyers-shut-down-what-other-companies-would-consider-a-wet-dream

<comment><USER2> Wow, that's sad and weird. When I was a kid some of my friends' moms bought cheaper Nutella alternatives (e.g. Nusspli). Maybe it's time for World Nusspli day. I've also seen other knockoffs in my local supermarket that look pretty tasty.</comment>


NHS England patient data 'uploaded to Google servers', Tory MP says - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/mar/03/nhs-england-patient-data-google-servers <comment><USER3> Surely PA Consulting should immediately be sued out of existence. This kind of behaviour must be considered beyond negligent, practically criminal.

I would strongly support throwing anyone involved in this into jail for a long time as a deterrent against future criminals.

This is just unbelievable.

<comment><USER4> Taking a sentient human being and throwing them in a cage is a profoundly violent act. I find it troubling that you guys so casually reach for it as a punitive tool, particularly when the subject has neither committed physical violence nor poses such a threat to others. Surely you clever people can think of forms of punishment/deterrence less destructive to both the individual and society as a whole.

<comment><USER5> _Taking a sentient human being and throwing them in a cage is a profoundly violent act. I find it troubling that you guys so casually reach for it as a punitive tool_

We aren't reaching for it casually. Some of us consider privacy a fundamental value that must be defended, and regard an attack on our privacy with the same seriousness that we would regard an attack on our physical person.

Which is more of a danger to me, someone who punches me in the face on their drunk night out and gives me a bloody lip and a bit of pain for a few hours, or someone who betrays confidences that may have lifelong implications for my employability, insurance premiums and credit levels, ability to travel freely, and for that matter my self-respect and basic human dignity, before you even get to the kinds of more extreme and very physical dangers that could be posed by invasions of privacy if we consider the lessons of history?

<comment><USER4> >Some of us consider privacy a fundamental value that must be defended

The _severity_ of a punishment can be tuned separately from the _form_ of punishment. Imprisonment is not appropriate merely by dint of your emotional reaction to the crime itself.

>Which is more of a danger to me...

Sufficient to warrant throwing them in a cage, being brutalized by actually violent criminals, imposing a direct cost burden on society, and also indirectly by depriving society of that individual's productivity?

Probably neither.

<comment><USER6> Financial penalties have a long record of poor influence toward desired, legal behaviour. Further, they tend to simply be, sooner or later, passed on to the customers or clients who in many cases are the original wronged. Those individuals actually responsible for the sanctioned behaviour are not or only weakly punished and perhaps influenced against its repetition.

As an individual, one could well go to prison for such misbehaviour. Corporate and government employment should not serve as an impenetrable shield and dilution of responsibility against such eventuality.

Incarceration is often described as having two goals: Punishment for crimes committed, and mitigation against such crimes. For the latter, both by actual restraint and by aversion to the potential results.

It seems that stronger aversion is needed; we have a systemic problem with recurrence -- often by the same parties -- of this behaviour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's worse than that: Ben Goldacre is reporting ( [https://twitter.com/bengoldacre/status/440475049880195073](https://twitter.com/bengoldacre/status/440475049880195073) ) that the data was made publicly available.

This is beyond parody.

<comment><USER8> another update:

"No individuals directly named records online. But a massive breach of the most basic information security policies to prevent jigsaw."

[https://twitter.com/bengoldacre/status/440488463008550912](https://twitter.com/bengoldacre/status/440488463008550912)

<comment><USER9> We're going to need something longer than a tweet to explain what he's actually talking about.

<comment><USER10> I'd also assume the worst, even if there are no patient names out. There are too many examples of de-anonymization of purposefully anonymized data out there to warrant any belief that missing real world names alone should constitute much of a privacy blanket.

<comment><USER11> The dataset in question supposedly contains date of birth, gender and post code. For my family, that uniquely identifies every member, given the size of UK post codes.

<comment><USER5> If that means full postcodes, then that information will easily be sufficient to identify every member of the UK population, aside from outliers like twins or the occasional statistical fluke.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is the data in question: [http://www.hscic.gov.uk/hes](http://www.hscic.gov.uk/hes)

It is anonymised [1], publicly licensable data.

Here are a list of users and uses. [2]

[1] "We apply a strict statistical disclosure control in accordance with the HES protocol, to all published HES data. This suppresses small numbers to stop people identifying themselves and others, to ensure that patient confidentiality is maintained."

[2] [http://www.hscic.gov.uk/media/10495/Users-and-uses-of- HES/pd...](http://www.hscic.gov.uk/media/10495/Users-and-uses-of- HES/pdf/HES_Users_and_Uses.pdf)

<comment><USER13> > It is anonymised

Not meaningfully, no. A UK postcode covers 20 households or less. If you have that plus gender and date of birth (as seems to be the case here), you almost always have a unique individual.

<comment><USER14> NHS number, date of birth, postcode, ethnicity and gender.

Is about as anonymous as wearing a different hat.

<comment><USER15> NHS number is clearly ridiculous.

But, I can see why all the other data are statistically relevant in analysis.

Postcode, so you can track viral outbreak etc with a fair degree of locational accuracy.

Date of birth, so you could analyse if people born in certain seasons had higher incidences of various diseases. (You could probably drop the day and just have month, but there could be cases where there were more hospital deaths for babies born on a Monday, etc).

Gender and ethnicity are obvious.

<comment><USER16> A hash of the NHS number would give a UID without compromising the person's details. Providing a UID that is one-way linked would allow HSCIC to go to the actual data if a care situation warranted it.

I'd argue that the first half of the postcode and month of birth are ample for outside-HSCIC use. Monday-deaths is the kind of thing that's done internally anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I trust Google more than I do "PA Consulting". Which begs the question, how did we get here? Who in their right mind sends out 27 DVDs with probably unencrypted, highly sensitive medical data? Even if the recipient is trustworthy, _the transport_ isn't.

This data needs to be on a locked away government server that answers queries by 3rd party by throwing away half of the data and randomizing the remainder.

<comment><USER18> Basically. An alternative headline for this story could be "Contractor moves sensitive data from insecure, non-audited medium to secure, audited medium."

<comment><USER19> That would be "Contractor moves sensitive data from insecure, non-audited medium to secure, audited medium monitored by a foreign spy agency"

<comment><USER18> Correct. I disregarded the nationality issue in assuming that GCHQ having "NHS, please pass me your data because terrorists" access to the health records is equivalent to the NSA having "[GAG ORDER] Google, a secret court has ordered you..." access to the health records, given how closely those agencies seem to be working together based on the Snowden disclosures.

Others may place differing weights and values on their cloak-and-dagger outfit of choice. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't understand why the data being on "Google servers" is generating such outrage. Google almost certainly has superior security to this "PA Consulting" or even the government itself.

<comment><USER21> I don't think Americans get how distrustful other nations are of American- based cloud providers. It is not a matter of Google's or any other providers' behaviour but of the US Government (warrant-less searches and the like). This lack of trust predates the current NSA-Snowden affair and goes back to the Patriot Act (IMHO).

Of course I can't speak for all nations or industries (or even companies) but in my part of the Canadian Health care sector it is simply unthinkable to use a US-based cloud provider for anything to do with patient data.

<comment><USER18> As an American, I'll be a little surprised if that mistrust runs deeply in Britain, given how closely the Snowden disclosures revealed GCHQ and the NSA to be working. If the NSA had a vested interest in getting health records on a British citizen, I doubt it'd be difficult to get the British government to send them over. You know, to fight terrorism.

Of course, people aren't strictly rational actors, so I suppose one could hold the cognitive dissonance that one's private data is safer from the NSA physically stored in Europe than it is in the US.

<comment><USER5> _As an American, I 'll be a little surprised if that mistrust runs deeply in Britain_

Why? I don't approve of the NSA behaviour, and I don't approve of the GCHQ behaviour in conducting mass surveillance either. The fact that the latter is theoretically done by my government for my country's benefit doesn't make me think any better of the spy agencies or those in government whose laws and tax money allow it.

I would rather take my chances with the terrorists than put up with all the nonsense done in the name of fighting them today. Not only do I think that as a practical matter the nonsense is far more likely to harm me or those I care about, and not only do I strongly disapprove of all the time, money, media attention and other resources I consider wasted on most so-called anti-terror measures when much more deserving causes could have used those resources better, I also think the current culture of rampant paranoia and fear- mongering is _helping the terrorists to win anyway_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The report in question (linked in the article) provides "exceptional" evidence for the performance of Cloud technology by comparing a Google BigQuery search against an on-premises SQL Server query.

So, cloud is good because map-reduce performs better than relational databases...

<comment><USER23> This sounds all too like the project I am collaborating on. It will be moderately big data (a few terabytes at most). The guys developing it just now are on their third NoSQL database - Elasticsearch.

Them: "Look at how fast it is"

Me: "You only have 3GB of data in it"

Them: "Its so fast to develop, just connect Angular straight to Elasticsearch"

Me: "Absolutely no concern given to security"

Them: "The previous project used an SQL database and ended up having so many table"

Me: "So it was probably properly designed"

<comment><USER24> Ahh, hipsters.

<comment><USER23> Actually I didn't make the comment about the database being properly designed. I was at a loss as to what to say when that was the complaint.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady Why does the government repeatedly hire incompetent people?? They pay crazy amounts of money for it too.

I hope there is a very public investigation into this. We are losing privacy every day now and this is one area of our lives that needs to remain private at all costs. There is very little I can see to gain and lots to lose from losing privacy in health. Especially in a public system like the NHS.

<comment><USER25> Because they're all part of the old boys network. No other reason.

<comment><USER23> Sad but seems to be true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Good. Imo, the fearmongering here is actually quite irrational. Google have more credibility (and money) to lose from a high publicity hack than government contractors _who already act with impunity_. If they'd invested in their own own map-reduce deployment we'd only be hearing another story about government contractors wasted millions of £ in taxpayers money on Big Brother data analysis.

> The extracted information will contain a person's NHS number, date of birth, > postcode, ethnicity and gender.

Big woop? Your NHS# isn't used outside of the NHS or for anything of concern to most people, and your postcode (and address) is held on the unedited electoral roll by hundreds of organisations. Most people don't even opt-out of the edited register accessible for a small fee on 192.com

Why aren't us Brits worried about our credit histories and county court judgements being recorded and held by Equifax, an American company?

What specifically are people actually afraid of with regard to this data set sitting on Googles servers? I just don't get the regular public outcry about NHS data.

<comment><USER27> But it was a government contractor who uploaded and queried the data (PA), they just used Google's platform.

Frankly, this seems as related to Google as Nokia would be if someone used one of their cellphones to detonate an explosive. They're just the database provider.

<comment><USER28> The Google relevance is server location, if outside of UK and if outside EU various data protection laws at each level would appear to have been breached.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The shame of all of this noise is that resources going into medical research today ends up getting spent on data security and building expensive, custom solutions that avoid using servers of a certain type or location in the name of privacy.

Sure, it would be more secure to conduct medical research without using computers at all, but what about all those people dying of nasty diseases? If I had 6 months to live, I probably wouldn't mind these "criminals" trying to find me a cure.

Instead, we have a deafening din of screaming about data privacy and little or no mention of the benefits of the medical research itself. If people could calm down a little bit about Big Brother, these guys could spend more time doing their jobs, helping sick people.

<comment><USER30> Medical data is a great tool but the problem is that these stories are poisoning public good will. There is no point telling people to calm down when they have just learned that records of every meeting they ever had with their doctor were available on the public internet and identifiable to anybody who knows their address and DOB. That is something that people rightly get upset about.

Additionally, it's not like these events are all just accidents or incompetence. The UK government made a policy decision to sell medical records to insurance companies[1].

 _Also, is it really true that release to the insurance industry is unacceptable to the HSCIC? Its own information governance assessment from August says that access to individual patients records can "enable insurance companies to accurately calculate actuarial risk so as to offer fair premiums to its [sic] customers. Such outcomes are an important aim of Open Data, an important government policy initiative."_[2]

[1] [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/nhs/10659147/Patient- recor...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/nhs/10659147/Patient-records- should-not-have-been-sold-NHS-admits.html)

[2] [http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/28/care- da...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/28/care-data-is-in- chaos)

<comment><USER22> Not underplaying at all - your point is spot on - but this data only relates to hospital attendances and not GP interactions. Currently GP interactions are not available in the database, and that's the point of care.data.

<comment><USER30> Sorry. Yes you are quite right.

When I said public internet I was actually referring to the things Ben Goldacre has been tweeting ( [https://twitter.com/bengoldacre/status/440475049880195073](https://twitter.com/bengoldacre/status/440475049880195073) ) and I'm not sure which data set he is talking about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Government privacy breaches are one of the things I despise most about current Western society. I am - day in, day out - one of those guys calling for ministerial blood.

However I have long thought that proper open access to health data could be as revolutionary as, say, antibiotics. The government can do whatever the hell they like with my data - on the condition that _anyone_ else can too.

Can you imagine what insights could be gained with canonical graph schemas for individual (but (pseudo|a)nonymised) health records and a bit of statistics/ML? I think it would change the world, but it will _never_ happen unless people like us get our hands on it. No amount of management consultants will innovate on the same scale as the tech community; saving lives through Github and AWS sounds like the only thing I'd do with my weekend.

On a side note, I think the same argument could be applied to a great many public services. I recently emailed my doctor a letter from one of my private doctors in PDF format for addition to my records. Can you guess what happened next? Yep, he printed it out and gave it to a secretary to scan it back in, because the Java app that manages this stuff has very tightly controlled boundaries. Shortly after that I overstayed on a trip to a different part of the UK and desperately needed a top-up of my meds. The solution? Print a prescription and mail it to the pharmacy by next-day post, because Scottish NHS and English NHS computers are _incapable_ of communicating with each other. How long would it be after going open source before all this BS is obliterated? I'm thinking months.

<comment><USER32> > The government can do whatever the hell they like with my data - on the > condition that anyone else can too.

Wonderful.

Now consider how a potential employer might use your data:

Have you ever seen a GP for stress or mental health issues? Oh, maybe we are dis-inclined to hire you.

Suffer from back pain? Well that's one of the most given reasons for needing time off from work, which means you are a liability and we won't hire you.

Or even a business looking for partners:

Of these two evenly matched companies, this one over here has a CEO that has seen his Dr for stress and has had heart attacks in the past... he can't take the pressure and will be taking it easy when we need aggressive, let's go with the other one.

That's before you even touch what insurance companies will do, or whether schools will look into the mental health of little Timothy's family before determining whether to let the child into the school, or what retirement facilities might be available to you at what cost when you're 75+.

Once out in the open, this data is free for everyone to use. And it's going to be hard to then restrict how it is used by trying to bolt one gate after another.

<comment><USER31> Although I didn't say it explicitly in the particular sentence you quoted, I did say (pseudo|a)nonymously just after. I'm not suggesting identifiable health records should be searchable by all!

You raise interesting points. I think you are quite correct in saying these things are likely to happen. But I wonder whether hiding such information is actually the most efficient strategy. I mean if some divine power gave us all the ability to see inside each others minds, and ergo all the bullshit, lies, and politicking that makes up a great deal of human interaction was to evaporate, wouldn't the world be a better, more forgiving place? Obviously this is all a bit esoteric, and the game-theoretical analysis of moving from the status quo to a world of almost creepy honesty would almost certainly show that it could never happen, but I find it a useful thought nonetheless.

<comment><USER33> I said before that I do want the problems with using real names to be fixed. And I am thinking that insurance for periodic doctor visits is probably flawed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> PA has a history of not looking after UK Government data very well, they famously left a USB stick on a train with alot of confidential data on it....

[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7575989.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7575989.stm)

<comment><USER3> Leaving a USB stick on a train is one thing. Spending weeks to upload 27 DVDs' worth of confidential health data to Google servers is quite another! One is negligent. The other is, imho, criminal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I shall be writing to my local MP about this, I'd encourage anyone else to do the same!

<comment><USER23> I agree its the right thing to do, but I have very little faith in it making a difference.

<comment><USER25> This. Boilerplate reply and a permanent filing in the cylindrical filing cabinet awaits. If you're lucky, they'll use it to lean on whilst writing a cheque to the guy who just installed a duck house in their pond at your expense...

<comment><USER35> Funny. I've written to several of my local MPs and always received a direct response regarding the issues I have raised.

How many times have you received boilerplate replies?

<comment><USER25> Three times now to three different MPs. Gave up then. Glad you got something more.

<comment><USER35> I'm actually sorry to hear that. What topics were you contacting them about, if you don't mind my asking? I wrote about private issues, copyright and digital rights issues, and various local council issues (fences and paths). I got a good response every time.

It would be cool to compile a list of responsive and unresponsive MPs…

<comment><USER25> So was I at the time. It dented my confidence in politicians. This was then immediately followed by the expenses scandals in which one of the MPs I contacted was implicated.

Three different MPs. The issues were about planning permission being denied for a structure that everyone else down the road has, an issue I had with the CPS who lost the evidence after I was stabbed and refused to formally charge the person and the reduction of the number of parking spaces in my area by 50% resulting in people fighting in the streets over spaces (literally!).

Privacy, copyright and digital rights issues, I vote with my feet.

With other issues, I wield a solicitor now. It's a much better use of time and money and that is saying something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I've very carefully opted out of every single program that the NHS has created for digital records going back years.

Whether that has done any good I have no idea but I do have signed letters from all relevant organisations (Doctors surgery) saying that I've opted out.

This does have legal battle written all over it.

</comment><comment><USER37> Don't the British have something like HIPAA in the US? If so PA Consulting would have had to follow those rules when using Google's infrastructure. Google's infrastructure passes many security levels and has just about every security certification (up to but _not_ including ITAR). There's nothing inherently insecure about doing this as long as they follow the rules. What are the rules about this over there?

</comment><comment> UVB-76 A second scandal is now emerging out of this, as digital mapping firm Earthware are accused of posting HES data in Google maps form on its website for all to see.

[1] [http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and- families/...](http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and- families/health-news/new-nhs-scandal-as-digital-mapping-firm-earthware-is- alleged-to-have-of-posted-hospital-records-in-google-maps-form-possibly- allowing-the-identification-of-patients-9166633.html)

[2] [http://www.hscic.gov.uk/article/3947/Statement-Use-of- data-b...](http://www.hscic.gov.uk/article/3947/Statement-Use-of-data-by- Earthware-UK)

<comment><USER38> Earthware's statement claims that they used mock data

HES Data Map Statement 3 March 2014 18:55 GMT. Earthware was contacted this morning by the HSCIC regarding a demo online map we had created to demonstrate how HES data might be displayed in a mapping environment.Earthware immediately withdrew this map from our website upon request from the HSCIC. Earthware would like to clarify the following: The map displayed mock data held by a third party who provided this data to Earthware via a web API. We do not hold nor have we ever held HES data on our servers. No patient identifiable data was ever displayed on the map. Earthware are confident that we have not breached any legal or regulatory rules regarding the licencing or publication of HES data. We will continue to co-operate fully with the HSCIC if required. [http://www.earthware.co.uk/](http://www.earthware.co.uk/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Interestingly enough, the company behind this cluster#### has previous and proven record of similar behaviour.[1][2] Sure, it takes conscious effort to upload multiple DVD's worth of data, which already rules out accidents - <USER2> because this is not an isolated incident, I wouldn't rule out corporate policy of willful neglect either.

"Fined and fired" is not a sufficient deterrent.

1\. [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/11/pa_consulting_home_o...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/11/pa_consulting_home_office_plea/)

2: [http://www.scl.org/site.aspx?i=ne9297](http://www.scl.org/site.aspx?i=ne9297)

</comment><comment><USER40> 27 DVDs = not a lot of data. What were they doing, transcoding through paper tape?

<comment><USER26> > The data set was so large it took up 27 DVDs and took a couple of weeks to > upload.

27 * 8 GiB (DVD-9) / 2 weeks = ~1.5 Mbps. Yep, that's British broadband bought from the lowest bidder.

<comment><USER41> I think it's tough to say. There's considerable overhead to packeted traffic. Also it sounds like they had a simple setup so there would be a delay in exchanging the DVDs after each one finishes. Uploads probably finished over the weekend with nobody there to start the next one too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Once the data enters the US, it is subject to HIPAA. PA is criminally liable.

<comment><USER43> So, that's an interesting question, right?

If it's UK data, from the UK .gov, being stored to a server whose hardware is in the US, to be worked on by a UK consultancy, should it actually be subject to HIPAA?

Jurisdiction in the Internet is tricky business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> The risk of a "privacy disaster of unprecedented proportions" for NHS data was predicted by Glyn Moody just 3 weeks ago on TechDirt:

[http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140207/09552726132/uk- pol...](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140207/09552726132/uk-police- companies-will-have-access-to-database-all-englands-medical-records.shtml)

</comment><comment><USER45> > The data set was so large it took up 27 DVDs and took a couple of weeks to > upload.

Really? 27 DVDs worth of data is only about 127GB of data and it tooks weeks to upload? I'm on a standard Comcast cable line and I could probably upload that in a few days at most.

</comment><comment><USER46> All that is now needed is to cross reference it with the ridiculously extensive CCTV footage that the Govt. in Britain has collected & continues to collect everyday.

Perfect Surveillance at a granularity that was not possible before.

<comment><USER47> No no no - perfect _healthcare_ at a granularity that was not possible before! Plays much better with the voters!

<comment><USER46> You may have a great future in Politics!

</comment></comment></comment><comment> UVB-76 Official statement: [http://www.hscic.gov.uk/article/3948/Statement-Use-of- data-b...](http://www.hscic.gov.uk/article/3948/Statement-Use-of-data-by-PA- consulting)

</comment><comment><USER48> For fuck's sake.

I opted out of 'care.data' (what a stupid name), and now I find out my data was breached anyway?

I wonder if leaked people can start a class action lawsuit.

</comment><comment><USER49> "Nonsense! We never uploaded any data to Google servers, we just put it in the cloud!"

</comment><comment><USER50> It took weeks to upload? Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes...

<comment><USER23> We were shipping hard disks between the States and Spain. Unfortunately Spanish customs can make the delay unreasonably large (especially when someone put the value of the drive at $100).

<comment><USER51> > _(especially when someone put the value of the drive at $100)_ //

Is that wrong? I see a Seagate Baracuda 3TB on Amazon at $110. Do you mean it should have included the data value or that they inflated the price or what?

<comment><USER23> Yes, but the drive wasn't what had the value (it was second hand). It got sent back afterwards.

It was publicly funded research data, to be processed and uploaded to the Genome Browser at UCSC. Had someone just put zero on it I think it would have gone a lot more smoothly.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Reycling Plastic from the Inside Out - <AUTHOR> https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2019/05/06/recycling-plastic-from-the-inside-out/ <comment><USER2> This is probably a dumb question, but what essential products use plastics and for which no other material is an adequate substitute for the plastic components?

<comment><USER3> Lots of medical and lab supplies, such as tubing, tools, and stents. For some applications glass is too fragile, metal can be too reactive. Even "inert" metals like titanium or nickel eventually develop bio-films.

Various plastics' combination of temperature stability at both high and low temps (cryo / autoclave), non-bio-reactivity (body doesn't attack or reject over short spans), and corrosion resistance makes plastics perfect for these situations. Especially wet situations. And since plastics can be fine tuned for application specific needs they can be iterated on quickly with a materials but not manufacturing process change in some cases.

My wife and I had this conversation a couple weeks ago asking this very question which ultimately boils down to: "Are plastics worth it at all ever?" And the answer we found, surprisingly, was yes.

edit: a typo.

<comment><USER4> Aren't plastics usually reasonable to burn as well? As in burning mostly produces CO2 and water? Or do common plastics contain some nasty atoms we dont want in the air in any way?

<comment><USER5> They can be burned safely in an incinerator. Ad hoc burning can produce very toxic chemicals, though, including dioxins, hydrogen cyanide, vinyl chloride and furans. It could release lead. It depends on the type of plastic (PVC? Polyethylene? Polypropylene?). This is why it's troubling to see people burning bags of trash and tossing in plastic bags and soda bottles as if they magically disappear.

This is a good rundown: [https://www.directplastics.co.uk/about_plastics/post/whats-i...](https://www.directplastics.co.uk/about_plastics/post/whats- in-those-fumes)

MIT says... [https://engineering.mit.edu/engage/ask-an-engineer/can-we- sa...](https://engineering.mit.edu/engage/ask-an-engineer/can-we-safely-burn- used-plastic-objects-in-a-domestic-fireplace/)

"When plastic is burned, it releases dangerous chemicals such as hydrochloric acid, sulfur dioxide, dioxins, furans and heavy metals, as well as particulate."

<comment><USER6> To be fair, aren't soda bottles and plastic usually PET, which should not release nasty stuff? Or am I just misinformed?

<comment><USER7> See TehCorwiz' response below. It seems it never is JUST plastic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Unlike conventional plastics, the monomers of PDK plastic could be recovered and freed from any compounded additives simply by dunking the material in a highly acidic solution. The acid helps to break the bonds between the monomers and separate them from the chemical additives that give plastic its look and feel."

Anyone know if any acid will work or if the solution is somehow special? Sounds like a big downside to lose acid resistance.

<comment><USER9> Looks like they use sulfuric acid at 0.5 to 5 M over a 24-hour period to depolymerize the plastics. So highly acidic, but probably better to keep your acids in polyethylene containers!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Look as though the polydiketoenamines themselves are also quite easy to make;

>"Surprisingly, polydiketoenamines could be made simply by mixing ketones and amines. 'It's a click reaction that works at room temperature, without needing catalysts, additives or even a solvent,' says Helms. 'They just require a few minutes in a ball mill.'"

[https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/new-family-of- polymers-c...](https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/new-family-of-polymers-can- be-easily-recycled-and-even-upcycled/3010439.article)

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm kinda curious if this "new" plastic is going to be flexible enough in the number of applications to replace most common plastics in common applications, or if it's going to have the same issues (ie, needing fillers or other things to make it work for certain applications).

What is it's heat resistance? How well does it work in extreme cold? How flexible is it? Impact resistance? Can it be made clear?

Maybe any fillers, etc can also easily separate out?

If it can replace most uses of PP/PE/ABS/PVC - it would be huge on the consumer market (also, providing it doesn't have a similar BPA-like issue).

</comment><comment><USER12> Hmmm, last I checked concentrated sulfuric acid is not commonly available to or advised to be used by the public . . . so forget about the common man recycling this stuff, just another development of "big corporate" to keep this product and the system surrounding it all within their clutches. On the other hand, my son and I just filed a patent for a low melt temp polymer system that is flexible, recyclable merely with low heat, biodegradeable (without acids), repurposeable, NON TOXIC, and all processes can be done at home safely by the public, no corporate involvement necessary.

<comment><USER11> > Hmmm, last I checked concentrated sulfuric acid is not commonly available to > or advised to be used by the public

IIRC, lead-acid batteries, common in automobiles, contain a somewhat concentrated form of sulfuric acid; they are also made of plastic, so assuming they continue to be available, I doubt that such batteries will use this new plastic.</comment></comment>


The Sarcmark: punctuation for sarcasm - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/6995354/Sarcasm-punctuation-mark-aims-to-put-an-end-to-email-confusion.html

<comment><USER2> Clever, but a few limitations: It only works for some applications (AIM, Word, Outlook, etc., but not Twitter) and requires a font download for each computer.

Someone should figure out an alternate sarcmarc that already exists as a special character in common fonts and ascii, IMHO. Set up the keyboard shortcut, and voila! Instant sarcasm.

</comment><comment><USER3> "The Michigan company behind the SarcMark have applied for a patent to protection their invention." Let's hope for all our sake that that isn't accepted. I have these doodles...

Perhaps next the Guardian will patent their grammatical errors.

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_mark>

</comment><comment><USER5> Why not use something we already have?

^ya, it's a great idea to pay these guys 1.99 for a symbol^</comment>


Show HN: What do people think of webblygems – should it be continued? - <AUTHOR> http://www.webblygems.com/

<comment><USER2> It's a nice looking site but I don't see how this is an efficient means of getting information across. It seems a bit to broad to deliver useful information. Given it's an unknown brand earning consumer trust will be hard. Without specific articles it will be hard to gain organic traffic. And generally its functions seem covered by a quick google search.

I cant see this taking off. That said I'm a sample of one so take my comment with a pinch of salt.</comment>


Where Will The Next Pandemic Come From? And How Can We Stop It? - <AUTHOR> http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-08/out-wild <comment><USER2> tl;dr: bats.</comment>


Amazon imposes limit on reviews - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-38130838 <comment><USER2> Great, but doesn't come close to solving the actual problem: Amazon's retail catalog is flooded with fakes, drop shippers, bots and low quality products with fake reviews.

I almost entirely avoid using them for purchasing home goods at this point, the risk is too great and the customer service is too poor. For things that Amazon itself sells, the cost is often not competitive. For everything else, I can get it cheaper by shopping locally, getting from big box stores or by using Alibaba. "Prime" two day shipping is often inexplicably 3-5 day shipping (and I live in a major US metro).

All this saddens me, a former Amazon employee who was a loyal user of their products for a long time. But at this point it doesn't seem like Amazon is too concerned about the quality of their retail catalog. My business will go elsewhere.

<comment><USER3> I haven't had this experience at all. Prime ships in two days almost always. Same day prime does was it says. I've had refunds without having to ship back products, and when I did have to ship back a product (shoes) I got the refund right away and free return shipping like they advertised. I'm also in a major US metro area.

Prices don't seem too bad. My latest purchase was head and shoulders. Looked up the price at Walmart and it was 10 cents more expensive than Amazon. This is my experience for most home goods. For anything not home goods, they're certainly cheaper than any in-person store that I can think of.

I'm not sure which of our experiences is the outlier. One thing that might be different is that almost all my purchases are Prime shipping items.

<comment><USER4> In the UK Prime was supposed to be 'next day' but this seems to have slipped back over the past year or so? My pet gripe is the 'preparing for dispatch' black hole that generally (in my experience) means 'you're going to be waiting a long, long time'.

Recently ordered a keyboard in UK to be delivered to Spain. Despite being in stock it stayed in 'preparing to dispatch' for a week and I couldn't cancel.

In frustration I ordered another one thinking I could just refuse to accept delivery of whichever didn't arrive first and get a refund.

Sure enough, that time I left the office for half an hour I returned to find two packages on my desk waiting for me :)

<comment><USER5> The service you experience with Prime definitely depends on where in the UK you live, or rather where the item is going.

I live in a city centre, within 50 miles of an Amazon distribution centre, and it often offers me _same day_ delivery. Like, order at 3am, items arrive at 8pm.

But if I change it to my parents' address (more remote but still in civilisation), it takes them 1-2 days to deliver.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Contrary to a lot of comments I've seen lately I haven't had any issues with Amazon (is this wrong to say?). Maybe I've just not been purchasing the right (er, wrong) things but I've never had an issue with their customer service or item quality. One time I received an item a day late, got a full refund and a second item was shipped out to me next day.

I've been a prime member for the past 6 years or so and I think prime is just getting better for my needs. I noticed my mouse wheel was making noise at 2 am Saturday morning. I ordered a wireless G403 and a sleep mask and had both by 8pm that night for no shipping cost (other than what I pay for Prime).

I'm not too price conscious when it comes to small items, but the mouse was $20 cheaper than at Microcenter.

On topic: I'm glad to see this review change. Personally I think they could go even more strict on non-verified reviews. I am extremely skeptical of products that provide reviews for a discount. But if it's an item that quality really matters, I already know what I'm buying when I get to Amazon -- I've done my research.

Interesting that this doesn't apply to books. Is that market just vastly different?

<comment><USER7> > "Interesting that this doesn't apply to books. Is that market just vastly > different?"

Maybe people don't return books when they aren't happy with them?

They don't care about fake book reviews anyways. I noticed a "Top 100" book reviewer was just writing the same exact review for every book they reviewed. Reported that and just got their standard "We're sorry you didn't like the review" response.

<comment><USER8> I was really pissed once when I got a Steve Alten book, it was terrible, then when I looked at the glowing 5-star reviews they were transparently written by him or a delegate. I've never returned a book before, but that time I wanted to do it out of principle.

<comment><USER9> I sort by Top Critical and read those reviews instead.

It seems to work pretty well to answer the question "Is this book _not_ worth buying?" Or, if I'm not in a rush to read it, I just check out the book from the library first instead, then buy it only if I really really like it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I hope this cuts down on negative reviews from obvious competitors too. I've seen that a lot on products where the product literally shows up on Amazon (a product I am selling) then within 12 hours has like 3-4 1 star reviews from non purchasing people. Obviously it hit some keyword they are searching for and then they go in and spam it. This is one of the reasons people are so crazy about trying to figure out how to get paid reviews and whatever because you very very often get spammers who work for a competitor who are trying to lower your rank to help themselves.

</comment><comment><USER11> It does not address my latest issue with reviews -- the reviews don't apply to the actual item in question. Looking for a copy of "Don Quixote," the first 5-star review discussed two different translators -- neither of which was the translator for the edition in question. Most of he reviews were for other translations of the book.

This is not limited to books, either, as every now and then I see a review for a different model number of a piece of equipment I am looking at.

<comment><USER12> That or customers write reviews for things like the way the product was packed, or the shipping method that brought the product to their door.

Not only does it not have to do with the product, but same SKU is often sold by multiple sellers. So your packing/shipping experience will differ depending upon whether you bought it "sold by Amazon," "sold by $COMPANY and fulfilled by Amazon," or "sold and shipped by $COMPANY."

A rating for a book shouldn't be affected by the fact that one buyer ended up buying it from some rando third party retailer who fulfilled the order by packing it poorly and sending it media mail.

<comment><USER13> Right, I really wish when you clicked "Write a review" Amazon would explicitly ask: "Is this review about the product or its packaging / delivery to you?" and that the latter would then leave the review with the seller, not the product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have no complaints about prime's two day shipping but having worked at one of these Amazon Fulfilment centers, I'd personally not buy clothing or furry toys, even non perishable food.

The experience up to opening your package is great but it's seeing boxes crumpled up or package nearly destroyed with item inside it intact that really pisses me off but having been a picker before _it 's really hard to give a shit when you are paid a capped hourly wage walking for 10 hours in steel toe shoe and actively timed against your peers where failing to keep up means termination_

I never want to work for Amazon ever again. Not even their software or tech or HQ, it totally ruined it for me. I don't give a shit, it's built on human misery and our escapism through materialism. We are voting with our "things" everytime we shop on Amazon to structurally oppress low-income bracket folks.

But I feel hopeless. I'm chained by their consistent 2-day free shipping and overall an okay experience in helping me procure "things", "stuff".

In fact as I'm writing this I get PTSD thinking about Amazon Fulfilment and the only remedy as pathetic as it is, is indulging in Amazon's Cyber Monday sales extravaganza palooza, contradicting my own gripes about Amazon but unable to overcome the general comfort of buying things on it. It's almost as if buying on Amazon on my Kindle Fire is now an entertainment of some sort :/ which shocks me to write it.

</comment><comment><USER9> > In a bid to put a stop to false feedback, people can now write only five > reviews a week of items not bought via the online store.

> Users can still review as many items as they like if the goods are purchased > via the website.

"High end" fake reviewers also get reimbursed for buying the product via Amazon so that they are considered a verified purchase.

</comment><comment><USER15> IMO, Amazon should consider hiring a team of professional reviewers to generate curated reviews for select products. I understand they couldn't/wouldn't review everything, but given the stakes of public perception, it appears it might be a good investment.

<comment><USER8> That's a big conflict of interests and Amazon can't be trusted with it. The last thing I want is Amazon reviewing Hachette books instead of real readers. There are likely few categories where Amazon couldn't find a way to "optimize" profit based on the success or failure of certain products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> If someone started faking Amazon Basics products I find it hard to believe Amazon would allow themselves to suffer the same fate others manufacturers have.

You know a platform has reached sufficient lock-in status when its "killer app" (reviews) can go to shit without hurting the business

</comment><comment><USER9> Speaking of verified reviews, does anyone happen to be an Amazon Vine [1] reviewer? That program appears unchanged by the new limitation.

[1]: [https://www.amazon.com/gp/vine/help](https://www.amazon.com/gp/vine/help)

</comment><comment><USER17> Related discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13037024](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13037024).

</comment><comment><USER18> Good start but it should be zero right?

<comment><USER19> Why? I bought a book direct from the author, and I liked it enough that I wanted to leave a review. The only place I could think of was Amazon. That was an "unverified purchase", but it was still legit.

<comment><USER20> Because letting you post your one legitimate review opens the door to spam reviewers who each post five fake reviews a day.

If Amazon can get a sufficient number of verified purchase reviewers, why do we need your review, especially if it opens the doors to abuse?

<comment><USER19> I'm not saying you should be able to post unlimited numbers of them, but saying zero is very limiting to consumers and creators.

Even 5/mo is probably enough for most legit use cases</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The ABC conjecture has still not been proved - <AUTHOR> https://galoisrepresentations.wordpress.com/2017/12/17/the-abc-conjecture-has-still-not-been-proved/ <comment><USER2> Terry Tao's comment in the comments section is particularly worth pointing out, I think:

> I do not have the expertise to have an informed first-hand opinion on > Mochizuki's work, but on comparing this story with the work of Perelman and > Yitang Zhang you mentioned that I am much more familiar with, one striking > difference to me has been the presence of short "proof of concept" > statements in the latter but not in the former, by which I mean ways in > which the methods in the papers in question can be used relatively quickly > to obtain new non-trivial results of interest (or even a new proof of an > existing non-trivial result) in an existing field. In the case of Perelman's > work, already by the fifth page of the first paper Perelman had a novel > interpretation of Ricci flow as a gradient flow which looked very promising, > and by the seventh page he had used this interpretation to establish a "no > breathers" theorem for the Ricci flow that, while being far short of what > was needed to finish off the Poincare conjecture, was already a new and > interesting result, and I think was one of the reasons why experts in the > field were immediately convinced that there was lots of good stuff in these > papers. Yitang Zhang's 54 page paper spends more time on material that is > standard to the experts [...] but about six pages after all the lemmas are > presented, Yitang has made a non-trivial observation, which is that bounded > gaps between primes would follow if one could make any improvement to the > Bombieri-Vinogradov theorem for smooth moduli. [...]

> From what I have read and heard, I gather that currently, the shortest > "proof of concept" of a non-trivial result in an existing (i.e. non-IUTT) > field in Mochizuki's work is the 300+ page argument needed to establish the > abc conjecture. It seems to me that having a shorter proof of concept (e.g. > <100 pages) would help dispel scepticism about the argument. It seems > bizarre to me that there would be an entire self-contained theory whose only > external application is to prove the abc conjecture after 300+ pages of set > up, with no smaller fragment of this setup having any non-trivial external > consequence whatsoever.

(Comment link: [https://galoisrepresentations.wordpress.com/2017/12/17/the-a...](https://galoisrepresentations.wordpress.com/2017/12/17/the- abc-conjecture-has-still-not-been-proved/#comment-4563) )

<comment><USER3> Every time I read about Perelman and the Poincare conjecture, I feel compelled to link this excellent piece from the New Yorker:

[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/08/28/manifold- desti...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/08/28/manifold-destiny)

It even has a Wikipedia article on it:

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

<comment><USER4> The piece is inaccurate and most of the mathematicians quoted have distanced themselves from it. It's journalism at it's worst.

One of the key figures in the article sent this to the New Yorker after it was published -

[http://www.doctoryau.com/hamiltonletter.pdf](http://www.doctoryau.com/hamiltonletter.pdf)

 _Dear Mr. Cooper_

 _I am very disturbed by the unfair manner in which Yau Shing-Tung has been portrayed in the New Yorker article. I am providing my thoughts below to set the record straight. I authorize you to share this letter with the New Yorker and the public if that will be helpful to Yau._

 _As soon as my first paper on the Ricci Flow on three dimensional mani- folds with positive Ricci curvature was complete in the early '80's,Yau immedi- ately recognized it's importance;and although I had proved a result on which he had been working with minimal surfaces,rather than exhibit any jealosy he became my strongest supporter.He pointed out to me way back then that the Ricci Flow would form the neck pinch singularities,undoing the connected sum decomposition,and that this could lead to a proof of the Poincare conjec- ture.In 1985 he brought me to UC San Diego together with Rick Schoen and Gerhard Huisken,and we had a very exciting and productive group in Geomet - ric Analysis.Huisken was working on the Mean Curvature Flow for hypersurfaces,which closely parallels the Ricci Flow,being the most natural flows for intrinsic and extrinsic curvature respectively.Yau repeatedly urged us to study the blow-up of singularities in these parabolic equations using techniques parallel to those developed for elliptic equations like the minimal surface equation,on which Yau and Rick are experts.Without Yau's guidance and support at this early stage,there would have been no Ricci Flow program for Perelman to finish. _

_Yau also had some outstanding students at San Diego who had come with him from Princeton, in particular Cao Huai-Dong,Ben Chow and Shi Wan- Xiong. Yau encouraged them to work on the Ricci Flow,and all made very important contributions to the field.Cao proved existence for all time for the normalized Ricci Flow in the canonical Kaehler case ,and convergence for zero or negative Chern class.Cao 's results form the basis for Perelman's excit - ing work on the Kaehler Ricci Flow,where he shows for positive Chern class that the diameter and scalar curvature are bounded. Ben Chow,in addition to excellent work on other flows,extended my work on the Ricci Flow on the two dimensional sphere to the case of curvature of varying sign.Shi Wan- Xiong pioneered the study of the Ricci Flow on complete noncompact manifolds,and in addition to many beautiful arguments he proved the local derivative estimates for the Ricci Flow.The blow-up of singularities usually produces noncompact solutions,and the proof of convergence to the blow-up limit always depends on Shi's derivative estimates; so Shi's work is central to all the limit arguments Perelman and I use. _

_In '82 Yau and Peter Li wrote an exceedingly important paper giving a pointwise differential inequality for linear heat equations which can be inte- grated along curves to give classic Harnack inequalities. Yau repeatedly urged me to study this paper,and based on their approach I was able to prove Har- nack inequalities for the Ricci Flow and for the Mean Curvature Flow. This Harnack inequality,generalized from Li-Yau,forms the basis for the analysis of ancient solutions which I started, and which Perelman completed and uses as the basic tool in his canonical neighborhood theorem. Cao Huai-Dong proved the Harnack estimate for the Ricci Flow in the Kahler case,and Ben Chow did the same for the Yamabe Flow and the Gauss Curvature Flow. _

_But there is more to this story. Perelman 's most important is his noncol- lapsing result for Ricci Flow,valid in all dimensions,not just three,and thus one whose importance for the future extends well beyond the Poincare conjecture,where it is the tool for ruling out cigars,the one part of the singular- ity classification I could not do. This result has two proofs,one using an entropy for a backward scalar heat equation,and one using a path integral.The entropy estimate comes from integrating a Li-Yau type differential Harnack inequality for the adjoint heat equation,and the other is the optimal Li-Yau path integral for the same Harnack inequality; as Perelman acknowledges in 7.4 of his first paper,where he writes "an even closer reference is [L-Y],where they use "length" associated to a linear parabolic equation,which is pretty much the same as in our case". _

_Over the years Yau has consistently supported the Ricci Flow and the whole field of Geometric Flows,which has other important successes as well,such as the recent proof of the Penrose Conjecture by Huisken and Ilmanen,a very important result in General Relativity. I cannot think of any other prominent leader who gave nearly support to our field as Yau has._

 _Yau has built is an assembly of talent,not an empire of power,people attracted by his energy,his brilliant ideas,and his unflagging support for first rate mathematics, people whom Yau has brought together to work on the hard- est problems.Yau and I have spent innumerable hours over many years work- ing together on the Ricci Flow and other problems,often even late at night. He has always generously shared his suggestions with me,starting with the obser- vation of neck pinches,never asking for credit. In fact just last winter when I finally managed to prove a local version of the Harnack inequality for the Ricci Flow,a problem we had worked on together for many years,and I said I ought to add his name to the paper,he modestly declined.It is unfortunate that his character has been so badly misrepresented.He has never to my knowledge proposed any percentages of credit,nor that Perelman should share credit for the Poincare conjecture with anyone but me; which is reasonable,as indeed no one has been more generous in crediting my work than Perelman himself.Far from stealing credit for Perelman 's accomplishment,he has praised Perelman's work and joined me in supporting him for the Fields Medal.And indeed no one is more responsible than Yau for creating the program on Ricci Flow which Perelman used to win this prize. _

_Sincerely yours,_

 _Richard S Hamilton_

 _Professor of Mathematics, Columbia University_

<comment><USER5> If the article was that bad, how come he went through the trouble of hiring attorneys to draft letters accusing the author of defamation, threaten action, and never took it any further?

There was never any apology or retraction seeming to remove settlement an a possible result.

I have no reason to doubt the claims against the article, at first glance there are a significant number of credible sources supporting the idea the article was flawed, yet the claims were ineffective legally.

Of course it's not easy or cheap to pursue a case of defamation, however, I think it money was the issue he could have rallied some public support. If I were asked, it's certainly an issue I would do the due diligence on and contribute something to if it made sense.

edit: btw why is no one making a movie about this? There are so many fascinating aspects, the grand challenge, the controversy, the mathematician who declined a million dollar prize. I'd love to do even a documentary on it, or watch one if it's been done.

<comment><USER6> Probably because at the end of the day, he doesn't want to fight some legal battle, he wants to do mathematics.

<comment><USER7> In addition (not a lawyer here, but I believe this is well established territory), defamation is difficult to prove, and suing someone over an article almost always carries some negative press, regardless of the merits.

<comment><USER5> That's the point, I mentioned the difficulty in fact. But he chose to step across that bridge and then abandon it. What else can we conclude other than, heat of the moment emotional decision, or that the merits were, if morally strong enough, not legally strong enough?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Mochizuki is a badass, elitist rock star of mathematics and he takes his time to roast the entire field in his papers [1].

P.115 >The adoption of strictly linear evolutionary models of progress in mathematics of the sort discussed [previously] tends to be highly attractive to many mathematicians in light of the intoxicating simplicity of such strictly linear evolutionary models, by comparison to the more complicated point of view discussed [previously]. This intoxicating simplicity also makes such strictly linear evolutionary models — together with strictly linear numerical evaluation devices such as the "number of papers published", the "number of citations of published papers", or other likeminded narrowly defined data formats that have been concocted for measuring progress in mathematics — highly enticing to administrators who are charged with the tasks of evaluating, hiring, or promoting mathematicians.

> Moreover, this state of affairs that regulates the collection of individuals > who are granted the license and resources necessary to actively engage in > mathematical research tends to have the effect, over the long term, of > stifling efforts by young researchers to conduct long-term mathematical > research in directions that substantially diverge from the strictly linear > evolutionary models that have been adopted, thus making it exceedingly > difficult for new "unanticipated" evolutionary branches in the development > of mathematics to sprout.

I also recommend reading page 114 where he lists some 14 breakthroughs made in his paper, and how many years earlier they could have been made. The audacity of this guy!

[1] ALIEN COPIES, GAUSSIANS, & INTER-UNIVERSAL TEICHMULLER THEORY ([http://www.kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~motizuki/Alien%20Copies,%20...](http://www.kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~motizuki/Alien%20Copies,%20Gaussians,%20and%20Inter- universal%20Teichmuller%20Theory.pdf))

<comment><USER9> Sounds like a way of justifying the fact that his results are totally silo'd off from the rest of the mathematical cannon

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This got me thinking about human cognition and the meaning of mathematical truths, or even how does one know that something is true (and I assume that probably none of this is original).

At which point would Mochizuki's work be considered proof? If another person regarded as an authority would claim to fully understand it (but couldn't explain it better to their peers)? If only 10% of mathematicians specialising in this field could understand it? If 40%?

What if only a few percent understood the proof, but managed to "prove" to others that they understood it by using this knowledge to unlock other difficult problems?

This seems to point that even in mathematics we can never claim to know what is true. At most, we can hold a belief, an assessment based on some parameters that increases our degree of belief that something is true.

In fact, there's no need for a controversial proof to show this - it occurs with the simplest of mathematical proofs - after all, everything we believe in is based on the ability to detect consistency or lack thereof, which in itself is based on the ability of a system (in this case, our brains) to have a memory and notice where something happening now is consistent or inconsistent with something stored in our memory. Now this is quite problematic in terms of proof, because how can we trust our memory with a 100% certainty? The answer is that we can't. We attribute a high probability that what we know is true based on the consistency of other things we remember, but we can never prove _anything_ .

<comment><USER11> "What if only a few percent understood the proof, but managed to "prove" to others that they understood it by using this knowledge to unlock other difficult problems?"

Check the Terrence Tao comment below the post (also posted by someone else in here).

I think if those who claim to understand the proof could use the techniques to proof other things, or even to provide new proofs of known results, the level of trust would immediately go up dramatically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> tl;dr Until someone can explain the proof in something under 100s of hours, it's not considered proven. It's not useful until someone uses IUT as a tool.

It reminds me of other fields of science (like genetics) where many people have made a similar "discovery", but one person finally discovers and reports the results so clearly (e.g. Gregor Mendel) that everyone recognizes them as the discoverer... even though others came before (e.g. Imre Festetics) with similar concepts.

<comment><USER13> Mendel was a monk and high school teacher whose work (he spent a decade hybridizing pea plants in the monastery garden) was published in small regional sources and languished in obscurity for decades. Nobody at the time understood the importance of his work, and biologists continued under mistaken models of how inheritance worked. Decades later other botanists did similar experiments, and then stumbled over Mendel's papers, and credited him for first developing and experimentally validating the correct model. e.g. Correns [http://www.esp.org/foundations/genetics/classical/holdings/c...](http://www.esp.org/foundations/genetics/classical/holdings/c/cc-00.pdf)

As far as I know Mendel's model was much simpler and more clearly defined than anything that came before.

<comment><USER12> Yes, exactly, he discovered it well enough that people who read his papers years later didn't need for it to be discovered again. I agree, those at the time of publishing didn't even consider it to be about inheritance, but those later did, because his careful work could be replicated... even though Imre Festetics coined the word genetic and did similar work on sheep in the same town many years before (he's mostly forgotten).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Here's an article on IUT that shows that progress is being made: [http://inference-review.com/article/fukugen](http://inference- review.com/article/fukugen)

</comment><comment><USER15> This. Mathematics is not really the study of what is the case, it's the study of why. Even if this was accompanied by a full Coq proof it would be unsatisfactory because absolutely no insight is being provided.

<comment><USER3> Things that provide no insight _now_ may have theoretical or even practical applications in the future.

[https://mathoverflow.net/questions/116627/useless-math- that-...](https://mathoverflow.net/questions/116627/useless-math-that-became- useful/)

I'm not saying that this is the same of Mochizuki's work, but I would not dismiss it solely on the basis that it's "useles".

<comment><USER15> I don't think anything on that list was bereft of insight, even at the time. This is a context issue: the problem with Mochizuki's work is that no-one has managed to point to a single insight other than the abc conjecture. Whilst it's possible to prove certain results by brute force manipulation, it's not common. High profile results tend to be accompanied with subsidiary insights. The applicability of these insights to real world problems is, for the purposes of this discussion, beside the point.

Anyway, I'm basically repeating what people have already said. So I'll stop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I posit that there are, in fact, times that one should be doing things other than closing.

<comment><USER17> "Close" means different things to people in different roles. To a salesman, it means make the sale. To a mathematician in academia, it means publish. To a product team, it means ship.

<comment><USER18> "The primary thing when you take a sword in your hands is your intention to cut the enemy, whatever the means. Whenever you parry, hit, spring, strike or touch the enemy's cutting sword, you must cut the enemy in the same movement. It is essential to attain this. If you think only of hitting, springing, striking or touching the enemy, you will not be able actually to cut him."

[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Miyamoto_Musashi#The_Water_Boo...](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Miyamoto_Musashi#The_Water_Book)

<comment><USER17> "All warfare is based on closing. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must close; when using our forces, we must close; when we are near, we must close; when far away, we must close." \- Sun Tsu

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's worth revisiting this very nice article (2013) by Caroline Chen, which gives a vivid impression of the situation at that time.

[http://projectwordsworth.com/the-paradox-of-the- proof/](http://projectwordsworth.com/the-paradox-of-the-proof/)

In a way, the only "news" since then is that the mathematical community _hasn't_ made any real progress with understanding Mochizuki's theory.

</comment><comment><USER20> Comments now by Terry Tao and Peter Scholze (PS). That's some heavy fire power.

<comment><USER21> Scholze's comment is particularly interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It sounds a little like the opposite of Fermat's famous statement about his last theorem. "I have a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition. It only takes 300 obscure pages to explain."

<comment><USER23> I like that story, too, but note that the actual quote was:

"I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain."

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/Diophant...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/Diophantus- II-8.jpg)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_Last_Theorem#Fermat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_Last_Theorem#Fermat%27s_conjecture)

<comment><USER23> Wow, being downvoted for correcting a misquote. That's HN at its best.

<comment><USER24> The vote was very harsh, but parent was laying out some kind of opposite to the quote, not misquoting

<comment><USER23> Thanks for pointing this out.

BTW, I really wish that short explainations were mandatory for downvotes. This would have cleared this up early on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> If only we had automated proof assistants that could check the proof quickly. Oh wait.

<comment><USER26> This comment does nothing other than demonstrate your own ignorance of research mathematics.

<comment><USER25> Please keep going.

<comment><USER6> I have never seen a theorem prover applied to even basic 100-year-old results in Algebraic Number Theory. I think you underestimate the difficulty in translating a mathematical idea into a format a computer program can understand.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Docker: Deploy ELK with Docker – Exoscale Blog - <AUTHOR> http://docker-software-inc.scoop.it/t/docker-by-docker/p/4066238166/2016/07/12/deploy-elk-with-docker-exoscale-blog/original <comment><USER2> what's the point? it looks more "deploy elk in our cloud infrastructure" than "deploy elk with docker". Plus, there are images already built on the docker hub, and the added value of the post should be explaining the docker-compose file.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, deploying an ELK stack in docker in anything other than development is probably not a great idea anyway.

Specifically the elasticsearch piece. Elasticsearch uses a lot of memory for the jvm heap and also off heap, it needs a lot of resources. When it OOMs, you want to be able to easily check out whats happened, and recover the instance, on the same instance with ephemeral instance storage. You dont want to operate ES in a scheduled environment, unless you have scheduling rules that stick it to a single instance.

Elasticsearch aside, Kibana is fine for a docker container, its stateless and very little config. However, logstash config is more involved and not trivial, I still use CM for this, but would like to deploy it in containers in future using something like habitat perhaps...

<comment><USER4> I'm curious - can you please share a bit of details on how Docker complicates debug and recovery of an OOM-killed process (be it ES or anything else - personally, I have Redis in mind)?

I've assumed it's almost no different from non-isolated case. If the container dies - it would just get to "stopped" state and can be restarted. Exactly the same as if process had died and I run it again, except for process is wrapped. And if all the non-ephemeral data process writes goes to host-mounted directories ("volume"), then a container can be safely discarded as it's nothing but read-only layers. Guess, I just don't see something because I haven't yet got bitten.

(I never used Docker besides toy/tiny stuff, but considering its images as a sort of quick-and-dirty good-enough packaging system - just because proper .debs would take much more time and effort to produce and maintain. So, really curious about hearing the possible drawbacks I don't know yet.)

Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> dang: can we change the url to [https://www.exoscale.ch/syslog/2016/07/11/elk- docker/](https://www.exoscale.ch/syslog/2016/07/11/elk-docker/) which is the actual post</comment>


Ask HN: Testing in production, do you do it, and if so, how? - <AUTHOR> At our company, we've neglected our "staging environment" for quite some time, and are feeling the pain. It is hurting our iteration speed, and even though we do rigorous unit and integration testing, undefined (or badly-defined) business logic still ends up causing problems in production. It has resulted in a culture where (client-)developers and our support team create "fake" accounts in our production environment to validate customer complaints, or to test newly built customer flows.
It has to be said that our systems are pretty stable, and the amount of bugs we ship is minimal, but the real pain is in the time it takes to validate whatever you are currently working on in an end-to-end environment, outside of your unit-tested world.
We are designing a plan to make real-world testing easier for our different teams, and asked them what their biggest pain points were:

  - Missing real-world data to mimic production-usage
  - Missing (or broken) key systems in staging, causing missing functionality
  - Difficult to start testing from a particular customer state onwards
  - Sometimes you really want to test the actual payment flow of customers, without using the sandbox environment of a PSP
 We've been thinking on possible solutions, but wanted to survey the land first, and see how other companies (of different sizes) tackle these problems.
I'm interested in your thoughts on this topic, how do you handle testing functionality outside of using unit and integration tests? Do you maintain two (or more) environments? Do you allow testing on your production environment, and if so, how do you model such a system to keep garbage data from impacting other systems? <comment><USER2> I've had good results with a script that sanitizes a subset of production data for use in a staging environment.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> We've been discussing potential solutions, and came up with three avenues, listing their pros and cons. We're leaning towards a "Sandbox accounts in production" approach at the moment, but recognize that none of the solutions are free, and whatever we decide on will have a big impact going forward.

Production-like environment

      + Clear, separate environment
      + No impact on production data / users (events, emails)
      + Not a problem if we mess up data without cleaning up afterwards
      + Runs the same code as on production
      + Requires very little changes to existing code

      - non-production code can (and will be!) deployed, making it no longer "production-like"
      - data needs to be kept in sync, to be usable by clients
      - every service needs to run both a production instance, and a production-like instance
      - all external services need to work with this production-like setup (payments, emails, etc...)
      - higher ongoing maintenance overhead
      - requires "manual agreements" on how to manage/manipulate this environment

Individual temporary environments

      + all the pros of the "Production-like environment"
      + even more isolated, higher guarantee of your expected state of the environment

      - requires a lot of CI/operational changes
      - requires ongoing maintenance to keep working
      - requires "operational" knowledge to make new changes work with this setup
      - requires more syncing of data
      - higher costs of running

Sandbox accounts with special "capability" flags, in production

      + All test-data is scoped to a (sandbox) user account, single "source of truth" on wether some piece of data is test-data
      + One single environment to maintain, no divergence
      + Data is always the same as production
      + Whatever code runs on production, is what you test
      + Because you want to test your changes, you automatically make sure your new code works with sandbox accounts / capability flags
      + You deploy your pre-production changes behind a capability flag, for testing
      + A preference page allows you to enable/disable certain capabilities to enable real/fake PSP environments, pre-release functionality, etc...

      - Much more complex to realise
      - Only works (well) for user-scoped test-data
      - Might result in higher learning curve to ship a feature that works with sandbox+capability flags
      - Production data can be changed accidentally, there's nothing but our own code between test and production data
      - Other systems need to be able to handle (and/or ignore) test data
      - Only suitable to the specific use-case of testing user-flows, not for testing f.e. if a library upgrade broke anything</comment>


The Surprising Importance of Stratospheric Life (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/37/currents/the-surprising-importance-of-stratospheric-life <comment><USER2> > If the rigors of air travel can prepare microbes to thrive in Antarctica, > why not the atmosphere of Venus, where relatively mild temperatures and > pressures may be able to sustain Earthly life?

Maybe the _upper_ atmosphere of Venus. I gather that there's a narrow band at ~55 km, where the temperature is moderate. But then there are the sulfuric acid clouds. So maybe more like hot springs.

<comment><USER3> >So maybe more like hot springs.

And we now know that hot springs do support life: [https://teara.govt.nz/en/life-in-hot-springs](https://teara.govt.nz/en/life- in-hot-springs)

So yeah, searching for microbes in Venus' upper atmosphere sounds like a great project for NASA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So I know the organisms likely for after a week in the stratosphere, but the resiliency of the cells mentioned make it seem impossible that we didn't take life to mars.</comment>


How WSL2 Works - <AUTHOR> https://thenewstack.io/windows-subsystem-for-linux-brings-the-full-4-19-kernel-to-windows/ <comment><USER2> New technical details for the impatient:

 _WSL 2 runs a very lightweight Hyper-V VM (the same type we use for Hyper-V isolated containers) with a full Linux kernel so there is no syscall translation occurring.

The lightweight Hyper-V VM, the 9P filesystem bridge and even the kernel is heavily borrowed from the kernel we use with LCOW in Azure.

these VMs use virtually allocated memory, start up in under a second and stop even faster

the Linux filesystem is now just using EXT4 directly over a virtual pmem device

sharing files/folders is fully maintained by use of a filesystem bridge using the 9P protocol, so WSL 2 sees all your Windows files and folders and you can see your Linux mounts from Windows

there is now a NIC in WSL 2. We used our NAT network mode so that NIC is fully managed and coordinated by the host, but it does have its own IP_

</comment><comment><USER3> The key question is, why would you give Windows control over your computer? (It makes me queasy just thinking about it.) Instead, boot into something trustworthy, and run Windows bottled in a VM if you still need it.

Windows actually runs faster in a VM than natively, because a host system can be overwhelmingly better at managing a file system than Windows is. The article suggests that Windows is better with big files, but the truth is that it is just better with them than with small files, not better than something else.

Microsoft could make things better for users by enabling Windows to boot without the host being obliged to emulate real hardware. Maybe that comes with this new thing.</comment>