Tips for the Diagnostic Interview of Mental Disorders - <AUTHOR> https://pro.psychcentral.com/14-tips-for-the-diagnostic-interview-of-mental-disorders/ <comment><USER2> The truth is that most of the diagnosis have no accepted cure. Trauma->EMDR or exposure therapy. BPD->Dialectical Behavior Therapy. Everything else-> Social Skills Training (SST) and Interpersonal Therapy (IPT). There are other approaches (IFS was good for me) but they are not AFAICT clinically accepted treatments by the DSM. There's a reason they talk a lot about "coping strategies" \- they don't have cures.

BTW if I sound cynical it's because I am both a victim of "treatment" and a success story. The later was a side effect...

<comment><USER3> FYI, the DSM does not specify any treatments for any disorder. Its only use in treatment is as a (rather crude) assessment tool for judging the effectiveness of treatment. See [https://www.psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/practice/dsm/feedba...](https://www.psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/practice/dsm/feedback- and-questions/frequently-asked-questions)

<comment><USER4> The DSM is essentially the big book of what insurance will pay for, nothing more or less.

<comment><USER5> Many critics agree that the DSM-V has become unduly influenced by industry (pharmaceutical, insurance, but mainly pharmaceutical). However, keep in mind that the idea was that insurance base their payments off of the DSM, not the other way around.

Luckily, there are previous editions of the DSM that are far less influenced. Note that I'm not a mental health professional by any means, but even after the DSM-V was published they taught us medical students with DSM-IV-TR.

<comment><USER4> I can see how it was taken that way, but I wasn't trying to say that the DSM is bought and paid for. Rather, I was just describing its modern function, without implying anything about influence one way or another. Mostly, the DSM should not be taken for a comprehensive resource for anything other tham insurance codes for accepted disorders. The ICD-10 exists, and there is an accepted, ongoing body of ongoing research.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> While reading this, I thought of something I read on twitter [0] the other day:

      @AllenFrancesMD Feb 7

      Diagnoses should almost always be written in pencil:

      1)Patients are usually seen on their worst
        day- seem  sicker than they really are
      2)Takes time to know patient/social context
      3)Role of substances/meds?
      4)Course as important as symptoms
      5)Diagnoses=hypotheses, not proven facts

[0] [https://twitter.com/AllenFrancesMD/status/961240167628488704](https://twitter.com/AllenFrancesMD/status/961240167628488704)

Then I went to see who this PsychCentral.com piece is written by: Allen Frances too.

Psychiatry is so close to a breakthrough. The "medication management" paradigm of that the mental health industry has used for the past 50+ years are the chains that hold them back.

<comment><USER7> > Psychiatry is so close to a breakthrough. The "medication management" > paradigm of that the mental health industry has used for the past 50+ years > are the chains that hold them back.

And what is the paradigm to replace it? The old psychoanalytic stuff? CBT?

<comment><USER6> Most supposed "mental disorders" have metabolic problems as a component. "Stress" (various types) is important too. This aspect of "mental disorders" was starting to be explored 40 years ago, according to one of the books I bought recently, but psychiatrists of that era were more interested in magic bullet prescriptions to take care of their patients' problems.

<comment><USER7> I'm not so sure.

The biology is very complicated and there are all kinds of feedback mechanisms at play, this is true. What is hard to see for me is what is cause and what is effect, and what that means for treatment.

Let's say you have a patient who is moderately depressed, overweight, w/insulin resistance (metabolic syndrome)... I imagine a very common presentation.

All of these things cause each other. The patient might have started overeating because they lost their wife a few years ago, and never really adjusted - but what can you do for them now?

They might have also gotten depressed because of hormonal imbalances that caused them to be less active and gain weight, but now there's a huge pile of problems to untangle, including NEW hormonal imbalances.

It's true that throwing a Prozac and Ambien Rx at them doesn't solve very much. You can't medicate away overeating and bariatric surgery isn't really that much better.

It would also be GREAT if we could get everybody to exercise, since it treats damn near everything including depression and insomnia pretty well. But doctors have been telling their patients to exercise along with the mass media and everybody in the world for a long time, and it just doesn't work. Might as well tell someone who is depressed to cheer up.

It really is a privileged position to be able to take a sabbatical, focus on your health, have a team of doctors and therapists work with you to handle the issues, mental and physical, that have arisen.

It's no wonder there's been a search for a magic bullet prescription; that's the kind of thing there could be broad access to.

<comment><USER6> > All of these things cause each other.

Not exactly - the "symptoms" you mention feed into a destructive feedback loop, but there are always causes behind the patient's presentation.

The effigy of Ancel Keys should be ritually burned by every graduating class of medical students, so they are reminded of all the harm their predecessors have done through their gullibility.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Judge gives Universal Music 24 hours to explain takedown spree - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/12/judge-gives-umg-24-hours-to-explain-takedown-spree.ars?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+arstechnica%2Findex+%28Ars+Technica+-+Featured+Content%29

<comment><USER2> _a site must wait at least 10 days before restoring the material._

(This in reference to UMG's taking down a news show _about_ the video in question...)

That blows my mind. That means anything at all can be taken down for a couple of weeks without the slightest repercussions to the fraudulent party.

<comment><USER3> Welcome to 1998. That was when the DMCA was passed - signed by president Clinton. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Ac...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act)

It hasn't gotten any better since.

<comment><USER4> Actually, it's in the process of getting worse!

<comment><USER3> I might have used a little bit of understatement. You may not be totally familiar with the idiom.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If it's so easy to abuse the DCMA, I'm curious why the 'unwashed masses' haven't been issuing DCMA takedown requests for all the official music industry music videos on YouTube. Wouldn't that quickly highlight how broken the model is?

<comment><USER6> No one would ever attempt to prosecute a corporation for perjury (the penalty specified by the DMCA) if it sends out a piddling few hundred fraudulent takedown notices. On the other hand, I wouldn't put it past them to throw the book at any individual they catch sending one. Individuals have neither the stamina for a long legal battle nor any means of plausible deniability ("The notices were automated!", "We don't know who sent it.", "The guy who sent it has been fired, problem solved.", etc.), and prosecutors like winning cases.

IANAL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "M-E-G-A. Upload to me today"... and now this is going to stick in my head for the whole day.

I hope Universal Music is happy with the free promotion that their takedown notice is going to give to this stupid video.

<comment><USER8> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Anticipating yet another Streisand effect.

</comment><comment><USER10> Sometimes I wonder how movie studios (and music labels) make money. I watch DVD quality new releases, as well as old movies, via sites such as Putlocker or Megaupload through 1channel.ch. I think they should simply partners with such sites and figure a way to make money with them. These guys won't stop their business.

<comment><USER11> _> Sometimes I wonder how movie studios (and music labels) make money._

The vast majority of people get most of their content legally.

<comment><USER12> You mean like netflix, hulu, amazon video subscription, spotify, pandora, last.fm, turntable.fm, or all the ad-supported podcasts and blogs out there?

<comment><USER13> No DVDs et al.

<comment><USER2> What's a DVD?

<comment><USER14> It's what you buy second-hand from your local used media store so you can legally watch the video contained thereon, while giving the finger to the MPAA.

Enjoy it while it lasts.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


United Airlines sues site that found loophole for cheap tickets - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2014/12/30/united-airlines-sues-cheap-tickets/

<comment><USER2> More discussion in this thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8813138](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8813138)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure what their case would be. How can making a suggestion to buy a different product be fraudulent?

<comment><USER4> If you read closely the fare rules of the ticket, it's not allowed.

It's like going to Amazon and buying something but the terms and conditions say "You may not buy this item."

The mainframe computer systems are so utterly complicated that it's nearly impossible for their complex fare calculations to easily detect all the manifestations of these accidental bookable fares. IMHO, that's the airlines fault... and probably that way for any sensible person looking at the situation.

But, it's still cheaper to spend millions suing bloggers and anyone who tries to make the practice well known than it is to fix the system. Same with other fuel dumping techniques.</comment></comment>


How Much of a Genius-Level Move Was Using Binary Space Partitioning in Doom? - <AUTHOR> https://twobithistory.org/2019/11/06/doom-bsp.html <comment><USER2> While I am sure Carmack is a great programmer, this constant hacker hero worship is grating. The post is fawning over Carmack for using BSP trees but barely gives enough credit to the inventor of BSP. The same thing happened where Carmack was credited with inventing the sqrt fn, until it turned out that he did not.

We could use less hero worship on hn.

<comment><USER3> Did you read the article?

> _Carmack was not the first person to think of using BSP trees in a real-time > graphics simulation. Of course, it's one thing to anticipate that BSP trees > might be used this way and another thing to actually do it. But even in the > implementation Carmack may have had more guidance than is commonly assumed._

<comment><USER2> I did and this article is somewhat balanced. However, one can ask - Why didn't the author try to figure out how the original research was done instead of putting in so much effort in to figuring out how Carmack used the research. Why ask the question, how impressive is Carmack for using cutting edge research in a game - Einstein VS Simpson scale, instead of asking a similar question about the inventors of the data structure.

From the pov of computer history, is it more important to document Carmacks use of an algorithm or the invention of the algorithm itself? Would this article have made it to the front page if Carmacks name wasn't attached?</comment></comment></comment>


AWS Signature V4 to Replace AWS Signature V2 for Signing S3 API Requests - <AUTHOR> https://forums.aws.amazon.com/ann.jspa?annID=5816 <comment><AUTHOR> > S3 will stop accepting requests signed using SigV2 in all regions on June > 24, 2019, any requests signed using SigV2 made after this time will fail.</comment>


How does the authentication in the new UK £1 coin work? - <AUTHOR> http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/53673/how-does-the-authentication-in-the-new-uk-1-coin-work <comment><USER3> There doesn't seem to be a lot of information about it and the speculation is currently that there is an additive that can be seen through spectroscopy or light, a luminescence or particle based thing which is visible.

They also mention that iSIS is made of three security types: "overt, covert and forensic".

So I don't think it's the case that luminosity is the core of the security, that is just the overt layer.

The keywords they keep using are "integrated", "embedded" and they state that the coin is "full-plate" and that they can produce blanks (for full-plating) that have iSIS protection.

They also mention (in the bottom video on this page: [http://www.royalmint.com/business/circulating- coin/isis](http://www.royalmint.com/business/circulating-coin/isis) ) that unlike electro-magnetic signatures that have variability and also can vary over time (with coin wear), the iSIS has a binary yes/no response: authentic or counterfeit. It's a signature detection technique and the signature is not related to the size/weight of the coin.

Is it possible to make the interior of the coin in such a way that a radio signal bounced off of it would produce a received signal of a certain signature?

Some of the speculation has focused on patents recognised as being held by the Royal Mint that dealt with luminosity in the plate layer. I think this is just one of the security measures, but isn't actually the iSIS method.

<comment><USER4> If it's just a simple additive with a detectable signature, then counterfeiters could obtain the same additive by grinding up real coins. Then they could apply a layer of that material to the surface of their fakes.

So I think, as you suggest, they must (also) be using an anti-counterfeiting method that's more sophisticated than a plain additive. At least an additive that wouldn't return the same signature after it has been reprocessed by counterfeiters.

<comment><USER5> The problem is, when pressing the coins it might be difficult or impossible to apply such a layer properly.

If the verification is done with a part of the electromagnetic spectrum that somewhat penetrates the coin, then you'll need a very thick, "obvious fake" layer. I am not a physicist so this is just vague speculation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Are counterfeit pound coins actually an issue? The only real security measure they're known for is patterns / text around the rim which dates back to the days when the metal was valuable enough for people to cut slivers off to melt down while keeping the coin roughly circular.

I find it hard to believe that anyone with the inclination to break the law in such a big way, and the resources to do it, would chose pound coins as the thing to counterfeit. I could be completely wrong..?

Edit: Of course I presume I must be wrong by the fact that this coin is being introduced, I guess my question is _how_ wrong am I - how is making fake coins worth the effort?

<comment><USER7> Yes, it's a big issue here.

From the Royal Mint:

 _The Royal Mint regularly conducts surveys to estimate the level of counterfeit £1 coins in the UK. A survey undertaken in November 2013 found that the rate of counterfeit UK £1 coins in circulation at the time had risen from 2.74% to 3.04%._

[http://www.royalmint.com/discover/uk-coins/counterfeit- one-p...](http://www.royalmint.com/discover/uk-coins/counterfeit-one-pound- coins)

And:

 _The move comes amid concerns about the 30-year old coin 's vulnerability to counterfeiting, with an estimated 45 million forgeries in circulation._

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26632863](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk- politics-26632863)

<comment><USER8> Ok, so there's a claim I don't understand: ""One in 30 pound coins is counterfeit, and that costs businesses and the taxpayer millions each year," Mr Osborne continued." \- but if they take ~2M of them out of circulation every year (which I assume means only a bit more are added), that means we effectively cancel (using £2.2 trillion M4 money supply in 2010) 0.00009% inflation. Since the current inflation is at ~2%, this should not even register. I mean, for others it doesn't matter who produces the new money to regulate inflation (apart from the problem of someone gaining <£2M from it, but if that's spread between many parties... who cares?). 35M 1£ coins were minted in 2013 anyway - I get an impression that the cost to businesses and the taxpayers would be lower if they just subtracted the predictions of fakes from the next year's minting.

Happy to be proven wrong of course

(I couldn't find an official estimate of number of coins lost every year, it would be interesting to look at that too)

(sources: m3 supply data [http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united- kingdom/money-supply-...](http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united- kingdom/money-supply-m3), inflation [http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united- kingdom/inflation-cpi](http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united- kingdom/inflation-cpi), minted quantities [http://www.royalmint.com/discover/uk-coins/circulation- coin-...](http://www.royalmint.com/discover/uk-coins/circulation-coin-mintage- figures/two-pounds-to-20p-issued))

<comment><USER9> Well eventually businesses have to take their money into a bank (or similar), at which point any counterfeits will be removed and destroyed. The business therefore takes the hit and loses income, which means they also pay less tax. For a bus company, for example, I'd imagine it would be a significant problem.

<comment><USER10> Bus companies in the UK have big coin counting machines. The total cash at the end of the route is tallied off at the end of a route against the charge sheet from the ticket machine which is printed out. Rejected currency is seen as an operating cost and is handed back in crates to be disposed of. It's also why you see lots of bus companies giving huge discounts on pre-paid cards etc.

The annoying bit for is that if they accept a high percentage of bad currency this is tracked and the drivers get disciplined so they tend to try and give it back as change before the end of the route (which is why you'll sometimes see them fumbling around in a pocket for change rather than the coin dispenser fitted to the bus).

Therefore always check the change from a bus driver meticulously!

Also if you know a bus driver as a friend, watch your change too as the total amount handed back to the mint for disposal is usually less than the amount collected. Some of it gets stolen usually and pocketed by staff as it's still pretty easy to use in pubs etc.

Source: I used to write route management and payroll software for bus companies that tracked this sort of thing.

<comment><USER11> Buses I've been on in disparate areas of the UK [England, Scotland and Wales] have all [so far as I recall] had a coin receiving slot - you put the coins in, they are held between plates to enable counting. The drive activates a lever that deposits the coins (in a safe box behind the drivers security screen I think). The drivers don't get to touch the coins. No change is given.

I don't ride the bus very often, it's a bit too expensive. It seems either these are being phased out or you travel on buses in posher areas than I do.

<comment><USER6> I also rarely get on a bus, but I've never come across ones where the driver didn't touch coins in either Oxfordshire or Cambridgeshire (does make it sound like a posh area thing, but both have shitty areas that buses operate in too..) nor in London (which I _think_ now requires tickets to be bought before boarding.. but could be wrong as I've only ever used my oyster card).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The formula of the additive is now a secret waiting to be stolen. Interesting technology, though I don't get why it's introduced today, since it looks like something that could have been easily implemented 10 or even 20 years ago. So, why today? Cost effectiveness of the technology? Political decisions?

<comment> k-mcgrady It's not even being introduced today - it won't be released until 2017. I believe that's mainly because every machine that accepts the £1 coin has to adapt. Apparently that's going to cost £20 million.

>> "The formula of the additive is now a secret waiting to be stolen."

True but it's possible that this, plus the strange physical design of the coin, could increase the cost of counterfeiting to make it unprofitable.

<comment><USER13> An Australian company was selling "trade secret" additives as an anti- counterfeiting measure that they said were unique to each client... but were actually bought in bulk from China and could easily be reverse engineered.

[http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/how-the-csiro- chea...](http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/how-the-csiro-cheated-a- global-drugs-giant-20130410-2hluf.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If it works how I understand it does, getting the right combination of substances is probably just a matter of solving a linear programming problem.

As I understand the explanations, the basic measurement is obtained by illuminating the coin with light of wavelength λ_1, and measuring the intensity coming back of another wavelength λ_2 - let c be a putative coin, and I_c_{λ_1}_{λ_2} be the measurement. To detect a valid coin, the machine has a set of n standard values for a real coin 'C' at a range of (λ_1, λ_2) pairs I_C_{λ_1_i}_{λ_2_i} for i in [1, n].

To pass, a coin c has to match within a tolerance, i.e. for all i in [1, n], |I_C_{λ_1_i}_{λ_2_i} - I_c_{λ_1_i}_{λ_2_i}| < ε.

I am assuming that the set of I_C_{λ_1_i}_{λ_2_i}, and the (λ_1_i, λ_2_i) values will be public knowledge, because they are needed by privately manufactured machines working with coins.

The aim of a counterfeiter is to find substances s_j and the concentrations in which to mix in α_j for j in 1..l (to a base that has no fluorescence), so that the mixture c passes the intensity tests within tolerance. If we assume the substances do not affect each other significantly, then we can expect that

I_c_{λ_1_i}_{λ_2_i} = Σ_{j=1}^l α_j I_norm_{s_j}_{λ_1_i}_{λ_2_i}.

Using an off the shelf spectrofluorometer (or even a modified coin reader) a counterfeiter could obtain the I_s_{λ_1_i}_{λ_2_i} for a wide variety of substances s, which can be normalised to be per unit of concentration.

Given a bank of substances s_j for i in 1..l (the counterfeiter can choose an l that is large enough to make the attack work), with known I_{s_j}_{λ_1_i}_{λ_2_i} values, it is easy to solve for a least squares concentrations vector α. Let A be an l by n vector such that A_ij = I_norm_{s_j}_{λ_1_i}_{λ_2_i}. Let y be the column vector such that y_i = I_C_{λ_1_i}_{λ_2_i}.

Let t(A) denote the transpose of vector A. Using the simplex algorithm, solve t(A)y = t(A)A \hat{α}, subject to all concentrations being greater than or equal to zero, yielding the least squares solution \hat{α}. If the result is within tolerance, the counterfeiter has a viable solution, if not they need a larger or different pool of starting substances.

In practice, they might want to reduce the number or cost of substances they use. They could use an optimisation method such as a genetic algorithm to find the lowest cost set (taking into account set size and the price of substances) that results in an acceptable \hat{α} solution.

Of course, these coins are fairly low value, and in practice counterfeiting the coins might not be that profitable anyway given the low value of the coins and the amount of labour needed to get any significant amount of real currency in exchange for the coins without detection, so someone capable of making a counterfeit might be able to use their skills more profitably elsewhere.

<comment><USER15> However because this new coin is being touted as very secure and not falsifiable, people may not catch on to the fact that you are counterfeiting the coins, because they might just assume that they cannot be counterfeited. So perhaps counterfeiting the coins would actually end up being profitable in the end.

<comment><USER14> Also, it might even make counterfeit coin production cheaper if it replaces rather than supplements current detection methods - maybe a counterfeiter can make a plastic or wooden coin of roughly the right shape and paint it with a paint containing the appropriate mixture, and then trick a vending machine into giving them non-counterfeit change.

<comment><USER16> Usual weight, magnetic and maybe inductance tests apply.

I also wonder about someone's ability to take slices of the surface of a coin and spread that out over other cheaper coins. I guess you have to randomize the test, or make sure it covers more than just a couple predictable spots on the coin.

Anti-piracy is hard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder what the false negative rate for this coin will be in vending machines. When the coins are subjected to real-world conditions, will this reduce the coin's ability to authenticate with the vending machine? If the coins are being authenticated using a chemical marker of some kind, will the coins' exposure to other chemicals, dirt, or temperature affect the coins' ability to authenticate?

</comment><comment><USER17> So, how does this help now? I have a jar of coins (like 1M other people). If a grocer finds a coin that doesn't 'glow' right, either its counterfeit, OR I spent one from my jar. So what?

Or we all turn them ALL in for new ones by some switch-over deadline. And keep finding now-worthless coins in couch cushions, old jackets, bank boxes etc for a decade and going "Oh, dang!" Not popular either.

<comment><USER18> Cash drops out of circulation after a cut-off point in the UK. E.g. the current £20 note was introduced in 2007, and the previous one went out of circulation in 2010. If you want to use your coins you'll have a grace period to exchange them.

<comment><USER17> Talking coins here. They never go out of circulation. Can last decades, a century even. And a 'grace period' for coins is what I was getting at - <USER2> get stuck places, left for years. Billions will become worthless if there's a cutoff.

And further, coins are exactly that currency that's supposed to be intrinsically valuable! The founding myth was, they're precious metal and that's why they're tradable. A cut-off defies that myth. Unsettling.

<comment><USER19> This is hardly without precedent - the old 50P was demonetised as recently as 1998. The world appears to have coped.

(And "Billions" \- Wikipedia claims there's an estimated ~1.5 billion pound coins in total circulation. The overwhelming majority of those are going to be exchanged during the changeover period, and even after that banks will tend to accept them for a significant amount of time. There's no way that the amount of money written off is going to be anywhere near that)

<comment><USER17> 'Overwhelming majority' is speculation. Perhaps hundreds of millions in currency will disappear overnight.

<comment><USER19> Hundreds of millions would require over 10% of all pound coins to be down the backs of sofas. Does that seem even remotely plausible to you?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Casino chips use RFID chips and special edging as well as infrared marks.

Now one company wants to use plant DNA in a similar way as ISIS is used in metal coins. [2010] [http://www.casinoenterprisemanagement.com/articles/october-2...](http://www.casinoenterprisemanagement.com/articles/october-2010/gaming- its-dna-casino-chips-go-high-tech)

</comment><comment><USER21> It would be easier and more foolproof to just make the entire coin from a substance that can't be easily created. For example it's really hard to transmute one chemical element from another, and many are rare, so why not pick one to use for coins?

<comment><USER22> Presumably because verifying the composition of the entire coin without destroying it is a very hard problem.

<comment><USER21> Choose the element based on physical properties that are easy to non- intrusively verify - maybe the most dense, non-radioactive, malleable..

Joking aside, I once worked on a device to detect double-photon fluorescing marker that's probably similar to what they're using, once again aimed at anti-counterfeiting of various things. It's pretty neat to hit a substance with IR and have it glow green, and I haven't seen anything similar since. I still wonder how rare/common substances with this effect actually are versus their marketing spiel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wonder how long until we get Coins with RFID in them to verify etc. Certainly make checking and counting coins in shops much faster. Though they would probably be made out of a plastic by then.

<comment><USER24> How do you know your coin isn't a duplicate of another? You'd need some sort of distributed consensus to allow you to independently verify its authenticity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> What about diluted coins using the same fluorescent compound? Take a coin, extract the metal plating, and create 10 new coins.</comment>


The Legal Industry Is About to Get Ubered Hard - <AUTHOR> https://lawyerist.com/82778/the-legal-industry-is-about-to-get-ubered-hard-sponsored/

<comment><USER2> From the bottom of the article: _" This sponsored post is a paid advertisement. If you want to sponsor an article on Lawyerist for your product or service, learn more about advertising on Lawyerist."_

</comment><comment><USER3> High on hyperbole, low on content and nothing there new for HN users. Don't waste your time.</comment>


Google as Benevolent Dictator Yanks Smartphone Apps With Kill Switch - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-15/google-as-benevolent-dictator-yanks-smartphone-apps-with-kill-switch-tech.html <comment><USER2> Not related to the article itself, but:

> and is considering reinstalling her operating software, the nuclear option > of virus cleanups.

I'm a bit surprised this still gets framed as the last thing you'd do. If you get one virus, that means you could have any number of them using the same mechanism. You've been compromised and can't really be sure what else is affected. Why is it the final option, rather than the default action to rollback to known state (and I mean rolling back everything, not reinstalling just your OS on a disk with executables which are already affected...)

<comment><USER3> Most users don't have an automated process that regularly performs full backups of their hard drive, so reinstalling the OS is painful. Hopefully software will solve this problem permanently for us in the near future. Until then it will be too much of a bother for most users to set up an automated full backup process.

Even as a software developer who's familiar with technology, I don't do full hard disk backups for my personal machines. It's just too much of a pain, and I've decided to take it as an acceptable risk.

<comment> mike-cardwell It's not as much of a pain as you think. I just drop a couple of lines in a cron job and that gives me full disk, incremental, encrypted backups:

[https://grepular.com/Secure_Free_Incremental_and_Instant_Bac...](https://grepular.com/Secure_Free_Incremental_and_Instant_Backups_for_Linux)

<comment><USER4> Oh come on. You're _clearly_ not "most users" if you can just set up cron jobs. It's important for us to remember who most users are and that they are not us.

<comment> mike-cardwell Obviously. I was addressing his second paragraph; offering personal advice to him and anyone else here who might be interested.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pleonasm and power terms make it sound like there's something terrible happening. The option is there to purge malicious content; which appears useful to me. If "they" would purge random items/apps the hue and cry of the masses would create damage to the brand and it's continuity; which in turn is a self regulating property that such events should not occur for the sake of the companies involved.

<comment><USER6> I think the main problem with this type of technology is it's very easy to imagine the RIAA/AT&T/US Gov/whoever suing or pressuring Google to remove (Insert Non Malware App Name Here) for whatever reason.

<comment><USER7> One word: Grooveshark.

<comment><USER8> But they didn't kill the app from users phones, they removed it from the marketplace.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Call for Open Crowdsourcing Platforms - <AUTHOR> http://www.jacobsheehy.com/2014/02/open-source-software-is-important-for-modern-science/?open

<comment><USER2> I agree, but the more important thing that this article needs to emphasize is the difference between crowdsourcing and crowd _serfing_. Waze is using the crowd to hoard data about traffic, that you can use for one specific purpose (avoiding traffic) but for science its nearly useless. Want to understand traffic accidents based on the design of highways? you're out of luck with Waze data. All that the crowd is doing is making Google rich.

We definitely need open source software to power these platforms. But whats more important is to keep the work of the crowd in the open. But maintaining data servers, reliable access and developing features takes developers and time -- how was fund that work? that is the real challenge.

<comment><USER3> Great blog post jacob. Thanks for the read. To Daleks point on aligning incentives I think this is crucial to the success of any crowd-sourcing platform.

One of the things we are doing at Algorithmia.com is trying to provide a lot of the value add around the source code, so that the source itself can remain open yet paying users still have a reason to come to the platform (and the algorithm developers can get paid).

I think doing this is possible in almost every crowdsourcing platform the trick is to find those value adds are. Its on the platform creators to build something that is worth paying for yet still allows being open with whatever it is that you are crowd-sourcing - data, code, etc.

<comment><USER2> Great point and glad to hear about Algortihmia. In my own domain of mapping data, I see something similar. OpenStreetMap users put in the fundamental data openly, and firms then value-add using nice routing design, apps etc to compete on the product market and make money. It usually works out just fine.

Also would love an invite! My email is dalek2point3 AT gmail

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is exactly what we are doing at MyIRE. I've spent the past three years designing an infrastracture to open source science. If you are interested check out [http://www.myire.com](http://www.myire.com) or our Technori Pitch at [https://vimeo.com/81457472](https://vimeo.com/81457472)

If you are interested in helping, please contact firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER5> TLDR; author could benefit from being less verbose and adding more visual structure. Then again, I get slammed for the same thing!</comment>


Why I don't support or contribute to GitHub repositories (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://wubthecaptain.eu/articles/why-i-dont-support-github.html <comment><USER2> A pretty good article about how people form opinions first and then search for reasons after.

"DCMA is censorship", DCMA is being used as it should, it is not for github to decide how DCMA works, there is supposed to be a takedown, and then a response to the takedown, and then time wasting occurs at that point as legal matters usually entail. This applies to any hosting company within the US.

"Users must provide a name on signup" like any other sign up process with any other host (if you couldn't tell this was the case from the signup screen, then well) "GitHub takes no liability for account security" forgetting the part where it says "[if its the user's fault]" "github can terminate accounts whenver" is standard for a bloody obvious reason: you never want to have that "oh BUT YOUR RULES DIDNT SAY I COULDN'T DO X" conversation with anyone when X is something that no self-respecting adult should do

etc etc

"You shall defend and indemnify GitHub" once again missing the "[if its your content that caused us to get into this shitstorm]", you can still sue github without that clause coming into play

</comment><comment><USER3> There are always "bad" sides to things. Yet I personally see the good parts of GitHub largely outweighing the "bad" parts.

> GitHub wants to control your projects on GitHub

So because they have become popular GitHub now wants to control everyone? Sounds more paranoid than anything else.

> developers have become enslaved by a large company telling them how to do > their project management

GitHub provides limited ways to manage your project, but it's not mandatory! Disable the issue tracker and wiki, and use whatever management tools you want. Also just because he doesn't like the project management tools GitHub provides, doesn't imply that everyone has been enslaved and forced to use it. It _can_ be very useful and comes at no cost and not setup required for Open Source projects.

> Censorship

Such an overused word. GitHub is not obligated to protect your rights for freedom of speech. They have Terms of Service and if they judge something as not fitting for their platforms, they have the right to remove it. That is _not_ censorship.

Whether the DMCA requests where legitimate or not, is in my opinion something lawyers should deal with and not random partially biased internet users.

> Terms of Service

The goal of ToS is to protect the company which in turn protects the whole user base from "bad" users. Again the ToS are not here to provide you security or protection, but it lays out how you can use the service and what rights GitHub keeps in case you're determined to be a "bad" user.

What I'm missing from the post is an alternative - if not GitHub what then? Because I'm sure you'll find similar points for any other Git repository hosting company, which leaves you with self-hosting. But for self-hosting people usually forget to calculate for the time spent setting things up, maintaining it and making sure everything is secure. Especially regarding security I'd personally trust a company more than co-worker who knows something about Linux and servers or myself.

</comment><comment><USER4> Reminds me of conversations I've had with people who don't understand how tax brackets and insurance premiums work. They get angry and scared based on their own flawed perspective. Everything the author cited looks like standard practice, just slightly obfuscated by legal language.</comment>


Why Tinder Can Hinder Your Prospect for Marriage - <AUTHOR> https://dyske.com/paper/1247 <comment><USER2> While I agree with some points in the article (mainly the last sentence "...Stop swiping and start sculpting") I do have to disagree strongly with:

>>" Many people are unable to get married and have kids because they can't commit. "

I do not buy into the idea that lack of commitment is the cause of lower marriage rates. Marriage today is not the same it was 50 years ago, or even 15 years ago. I believe that many people ("millennials") are turned off by the idea of marriage altogether.

With divorce rates in the 40-50% range (in the US), higher debts accrued early in life, lower house ownership rates, and higher first-time-parenting ages, it makes sense that people aren't clamoring to get married at the ripe age of 21.

I understand the articles point about quality time invested + building a relationship vs. expecting instant gratification - but I think that's a problem that exists far outside the scope of Tinder or any other dating app.

I do agree with >> "This is particularly true when they are looking for someone to marry. They focus almost entirely on who they can get."

But not for the reasoning - I think it's an over-inflated idea of "true love", "the one", "soul mates", or any other Disney-ification of the idea of love. Marriage is a contractual agreement to build a family/joined life. Any other way of looking at it can be attributed to Rom-coms and greeting cards just as easily as technology. It's unfair to place the blame solely on Tinder/Technology.</comment>


What Python learned from economics - <AUTHOR> http://lazypython.blogspot.com/2008/11/what-python-learned-from-economics.html <comment><USER3> There is a concept I've come to appreciate called "Code Debt", its the technical liabilities you've accumulated through using shortcuts and bad practices, things you've chosen to patch so they work in the short term but will bite your ass in the long term and require much more effort to fix than was originally saved.

Always remember the interest on Code Debt is brutal so the wise entrepreneur strives to avoid it.

</comment><comment><USER4> I went through the presentation he references at [http://python.net/%7Egoodger/projects/pycon/2007/idiomatic/p...](http://python.net/%7Egoodger/projects/pycon/2007/idiomatic/presentation.html):

A lot of what he says makes sense, but perhaps someone can explain why this is wrong:

        def bad_append(new_item, a_list=[]):
            a_list.append(new_item)
            return a_list

and this is correct:

        def good_append(new_item, a_list=None):
            if a_list is None:
                a_list = []
            a_list.append(new_item)
            return a_list

<comment><USER5> Expressions for default parameters are evaluated only once. So the default a_list is _the same list_ on subsequent calls to bad_append

        good_append(1) -> [1]
        good_append(2) -> [2]

        bad_append(1) -> [1]
        bad_append(2) -> [1, 2]

Presumably, keeping an ever-growing shared list is not the desired behavior.

<comment><USER6> Wow, is that by design? Why would you want such a side effect?

<comment><USER7> "Is that by design" - Well, yes and no. Try to forget the specific context for the moment.

It is by design that the default parameter to a function parameter is evaluated only once, as the alternative has bad performance implications.

It is by design that when you have a reference, that modifications to that value are still available on the same reference. (That is, Python has mutable objects with a couple of immutable exceptions.) This is obviously a fairly normal choice, very basic to the language design.

Now, take these two normal things together and you get that if you make your default function parameter a mutable object, it'll be the same mutable object every time. The relevant "import this" aphorism would be "Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules."

So, is this "by design"? Well, not _directly_ , it's a natural consequence of other aspects of the design. All languages have corner cases of one sort or another. Making this an exception would itself be a wart, after all:

          l = []
          def f(param = l): pass
          def g(param = []): pass

Shouldn't f and g have similar behavior? If you propose that the value be evaluated every time, they won't, and then people would complain about that, too.

<comment><USER5> > It is by design that the default parameter to a function parameter is > evaluated only once, as the alternative has bad performance implications.

Do people actually use the results of long-running or side-effectful functions as default parameters? It seems the only time this issue comes up is when people get tripped up by mutating simple [] or {} default parameters.

I would expect a default expression to be simple and pure. If this expression should only be executed once, requiring a programmer to be explicit about the complexity wouldn't be a bad thing.

<comment><USER8> It can be a cute hack to get around the absence of static variables.

Lists have other quirks related to mutability; there are other obscure Pythonisms that use this. If you want a nice magic-free immutable container, tuples are a better bet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That concept only works as long as the makers of python really have found the optimum way of doing things. It sounds like it could be stiffling innovation to me. At the very least it doesn't encourage flexibility of the mind - <USER2> you are trained to believe that there is only one right way.

Also, the approach sounds familiar: didn't Java have the same rationale? And of course Apple - to each their own, I guess (I don't like "the Apple way", but others love it - probably would be the same with Python).

That article is really putting me off learning python, to be honest.

<comment><USER3> There is a python philosophy that says there should be one and preferably only one obvious way to do things.

You can do things in a million different ways, monkey patch everything under the sun but in the end, having just one way to do things makes code more reliable and readable.

If you don't like the way the framework is built, and its one preferred way of doing things, select a different framework or write your own. Trying to undermine the assumptions of an existing framework has a tendency to cause subtle hard to detect bugs. And trying to support all approaches tend to create stuff that is bloated, ugly and slow.

<comment><USER10> ..having just one _obvious_ way to do things..

 _obvious_ is mandatory here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It seems like the author provides a counterexample in the article itself: `from foo import *` doesn't at all enforce good coding habits. Now, admittedly, Java (my language of choice) allows the same bad code, but it still contradicts the idea that Python enforces long-term readability.

<comment><USER7> "import this": "Although practicality beats purity."

"from X import *" is for REPL usage, where it is damned handy, not to mention a 20-line script. The community strongly discourages its use in big programs.

</comment></comment><comment> syntax-case > Ultimately, this is why I like Python. The belief that best practices > shouldn't be optional, and that they shouldn't be difficult creates a > community where you actively want to go and learn from people's code.

This place I know was one of the earliest adopters of Python, and the code they barfed up must be the buggiest, ugliest (GUI), slowest in its class software I've ever seen. It's so buggy, it's insane: typos, calling methods that don't exist, assuming arbitrary user input does not have 'keywords' in them...

They couldn't write code in C, so they thought the problem was with the language and switched to Python.

I say, lousy programmers, if they don't want to look for another occupation, should stick with Java - at least the typos will be caught more frequently.</comment>


Rewound Music Player makes your iPhone look like an iPod classic - <AUTHOR> https://apps.apple.com/us/app/rewound-music-player/id1481219461 <comment><AUTHOR> Download skin form here: [https://twitter.com/MikeCrumbella/status/1204766533957885953...](https://twitter.com/MikeCrumbella/status/1204766533957885953?s=20)

More details: [https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/11/21010953/apple-iphone- ip...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/11/21010953/apple-iphone-ipod-app- rewound-app-store-features-music-player-apple-music)</comment>


Tell HN: I Want To Make Your Startup a Free Mobile Website - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN,
I just finished my freshman year of college up and I'm working on starting my own mobile web development company. I've taken on a few clients already, but I'm trying to build up a larger portfolio.
So, I'm looking for several small businesses or start ups who would be interested in their own mobile website. All I ask is that you cover the hosting fees for the site and domain registration. If this is something you would be interested in shoot me a DM or comment below and we can get started on your mobile site.
Feel free to take a look around my website as well, but note it is still in progress and no where near finished. http://shinemobileweb.com/ <comment><USER2> I would consider showing a section of work that you have already accomplished. Coming to your site, I would likely not use your services based on the fact that I am not able to see what you are able to do.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice, that's actually what I'm trying to do now. I'm offering to build free mobile websites so that I can build up a portfolio for myself. Just out of curiosity how many examples of work would you be interested in seeing before you felt comfortable purchasing.</comment></comment>


Wide-band WebSDR: Control a short-wave receiver over the web - <AUTHOR> http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/ <comment><USER2> An index of others also online at: [http://www.websdr.org](http://www.websdr.org)

</comment><comment><USER3> I help run one for the VHF/UHF Radio Bands, located in Surrey, UK.

[http://websdr.suws.org.uk/](http://websdr.suws.org.uk/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Come join us in #priyom on Freenode[0] if you'd like to get into number stations! We have a channel bot hooked into our schedule (which has been created over a long time of listening to number stations and tracking transmission patterns) which posts links to this SDR when a number station is on. Just to make a guess, there are number station transmissions at least several times a day, some days as many as several an hour. It's a ton of fun and we're pretty friendly! Stop by and say hi!

[0] [http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=priyom](http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=priyom)

</comment><comment><USER5> Awesome! Keep meaning to get into SDR or ham somehow.

There's chatter at 17.79MHz... but can't really make it out.

<comment><USER6> If you're interested, it has never been cheaper or easier to get into the radio hobby. You can buy an RTL-based receiver with an upconverter on eBay for less than $50, that will receive on 100kHz to 1.7GHz. With a technician class license and a $30 Baofeng transceiver, you can start working UHF/VHF repeaters.

<comment><USER7> I hate to be a buzz kill, but some of those Baofengs really need harmonic suppression filters installed. They're popular here in Australia, but I saw a friend put his on a spectrum analyzer and saw 2nd harmonic at ~-5dBc! I know they're only low power, so it's likely harmless, but it's stuff like this which makes it harder for amateur radio to retain the rights we have left on the spectrum, and raises the noise floor for everyone.

<comment><USER8> I agree, I've got a Baofeng UV-5R and while it's not a bad radio overall for the price, it's got the dreaded harmonic issue too. It sounds excellent on the band you're actually trying to transmit on, but I only use it as a backup since I don't want to cause issues on other bands.

I'd say to the prospective new ham, spend just a few more bucks and get an Anytone or Tera radio. They are well made, full featured, and still half the cost of your average Yaesu or Icom radio. Barring that, look for well-kept used gear on eBay or at hamfests, or borrow a good radio from a local ham. There aren't many of us left, but I'd still say everyone knows someone who knows a ham.

<comment><USER9> >They are well made, full featured, and still half the cost of your average Yaesu or Icom radio.

They may not have the most features, but the Yaesu FT-252's are 5W, 2M handhelds for under $100. Plenty suitable for repeater work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Every now and then you can hear US number stations kick off there.

<comment><USER4> No idea why you're downvoted. It's absolutely true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Too bad they wont open source the software.

<comment><USER12> A friend of mine recently open sourced a similar solution.

\- Code: [https://github.com/simonyiszk/openwebrx](https://github.com/simonyiszk/openwebrx)

\- Short intro: [http://www.rtl-sdr.com/openwebrx-an-multi-user-rtl-sdr- recei...](http://www.rtl-sdr.com/openwebrx-an-multi-user-rtl-sdr-receiver- with-web-interface/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> what's the periodic signal at 27 MHz?

<comment><USER6> It's a local pager service that overloads the front end on the receiver.</comment></comment>


Analysis: Coronavirus set to cause largest ever annual fall in CO2 emissions - <AUTHOR> https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coronavirus-set-to-cause-largest-ever-annual-fall-in-co2-emissions <comment><AUTHOR> > Even this would not come close to bringing the 1.5C global temperature limit > within reach. Global emissions would need to fall by more than 6% every year > this decade – more than 2,200MtCO2 annually – in order to limit warming to > less than 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures.

Incredible. Half the world will be shut down for 2-3 months and that won't be enough to slow global temperature increases.</comment>


The Macbook "Brick" - <AUTHOR> http://www.9to5mac.com/macbook-brick <comment><USER2> That article is a little garbled. What it seems to be saying is that Apple is going to CNC machine MacBook cases from a solid block instead of stamping (or maybe even hydroforming) them. This seems like an incomplete part of the story, since it would be near-impossible to CNC machine aluminum to the very thin dimensions they currently have with their stamped cases. It would also be very difficult to machine a block with the dimensions of a MacBook so that the innards are hollow, reducing the number of seams and fasteners. A great deal of scrap would be produced in the form of aluminum chips, which do not recycle well because the high surface area means there is a lot of aluminum oxide to deal with.

Water jets and laser cutters are in common usage and one or other has probably been used to cut the blanks or trim the finished case parts since the titanium powerbook. They are also excellent for parts like the bezel on the front of the MBP screen. They are not generally used to carve 3D shapes - that is done by a CNC mill, which resembles a big drill bit that can move in three dimensions if you haven't seen one. To stamp a MBP case would take seconds - CNC machining one from solid might keep a 7-figure machine occupied for several minutes. Water jets and lasers generally blow a hole right through whatever they are pointed at, limiting their usage to cutting flat sheets or trimming the edges from stamped parts.

If this article is true, I think we are more likely to see more elaborate internal bracing or complex case designs from Apple. The innards of a MBP are fairly prosaic and complex machining could be used to improve airflow and allow components to be packed closer together. Aluminum could also be strategically placed in more complex shapes to help conduct heat out of the case. But when you manufacture parts by the million, casting the parts then finish-machining them may be more efficient, since the need to tie up expensive machines is reduced. Perhaps this is a strategy to get out of the 'just like every other laptop but with OSX' trap and maintain their competitive advantage in 'design' now that their competitors are starting to lift their game.

Also, aircraft-grade aluminum doesn't really mean anything. There are many different grades with different purposes, many of which are in common use in all kinds of relatively mundane applications. No doubt the current MacBook Pros are made from 'aircraft grade aluminum', but coke cans probably are too.

It sounds like some juicy info has unfortunately been filtered through one or two levels of people who aren't familiar with machine tool jargon. It would be very interesting to hear more details.

If you want to play with these machines yourself, check out emachineshop.com - a cool startup if ever there was one.

<comment><USER3> That's interesting about the relative recycling value of chips vs. blocks. Is it possible to keep the chips covered in coolant to prevent oxidation if it is known that the aluminum is going to be remelted?

<comment><USER2> I had a look and found this: <http://www.ars-inc.com/ROI.htm> Still, buying expensive aluminum billets and then turning ~99% of the material into chips as would happen with a case design similar to the current MBP wouldn't be very efficient.

Perhaps they are moving to case designs that are a combination of CNC machined parts and stamped pieces? I'm sure Apple's design team is a lot more imaginative than me. There are some CNC-looking parts in the current MBP like the bracket that fixes the HD in place.

But let's face facts. Steve will not rest until he is selling Cube shaped computers again. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A 12" x 12" x 1.5" block of aluminum costs more than $200.

Not a very efficient method of making a computer case. I think maybe the article might be missing a few details!

<comment><USER5> 216 cubic inches, 0.098 lb/cu in, 21 pounds. Aluminum is running about $1/pound. That sounds like $20 to me. I think they can find room to bury that in the price tag. You could spend around $200 to buy a single 12"x12" plate from a metal retailer on line, but I think Apple would buy in volume.

Actual volume of a macbook is 123 cubic inches, so it is even less.

I suppose I could be wildly wrong about the price of whatever alloy they are using.

<comment><USER4> That looks like the current scrap price. Its at about $.80 at this very moment, down from a high of $1.10 earlier this year.

Pure alloys (not mixed and cast by melting scrap), even common ones like 6061 still seem to be $5-$10/pound even in large quantities. If you know of a way to get 61 or 52 for less than that we would greatly appreciate the tip.

<comment><USER5> I just talked to an automotive manufacturer, ok, my brother. He is paying about $1.60 a pound for 6000 series aluminum extrusions. It was higher but is headed down.

I think the price works.

<comment><USER5> The above manufacturer counts on getting 80% of the source price back for their scrap. So you can imagine if apple rough mills the bricks to remove most of the material as chips and gets 80% of the rate for those pounds of chips, then uses their exotic processes for the final work they will generate more valuable scrap, cutting their end cost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I thought this article was going to be about my cofounder's MBP. It, too, has been nicknamed the Macbook Brick, but for a much different reason.

<comment><USER7> Why has it been, then?

<comment><USER6> Because it's been in and out of the Apple store ever since he bought it, and generally is about as functional as a brick.

<comment><USER8> I can painfully relate. One of my computers was called the Crapple (dual inherited from cripple and crap).

I've owned four Apple computers (ibook G3, ibook G4, imac G5, macbook), and despite skipping first revisions and treating my computers very well, every single one of them has had several minor defects and all my notebooks have broken completely within a 3 year time frame.

In my personal experience, Apple is a hardware bimbo - pretty but useless. I only come back for OS X, which is the nicest desktop 'nix. I wish apple were still apple _computers_ , not apple media.

I'm waiting for the next mb/mbp's, but if anyone has tips for alternatives, I'd love to hear them.

<comment><USER9> Anecdotal evidence is not important. Quality control needs to be observed over a large sample size.

<comment><USER8> Anecdotal evidence is very important when it concerns you - if you get cancer or your parachute happens to be the one that fails, the larger statistic is really not all that relevant, unless you're in a competition for "I got screwed in the most unlikely way in the world".

Secondly, even without a larger statistic, applying combinatorics, Markov chains, Bayesian inference can yield interesting insights, even if just for nerdy fun.

Lastly, by using "I can [...] relate" and "In my personal experience" I clearly signaled that I was merely making a personal statement. Cheers.

<comment><USER6> FWIW, I've got a pretty large sample of anecdotal evidence that agrees. I had 3 cofounders with MBPs, all purchased within a couple months. Only one has run with no problems. The other 3 (one bought a backup) have been in and out of the Apple store forever, though a lot of the problem was that the "geniuses" just weren't fixing them properly.

And I know a lot of other startups that run primarily on Macs, and it's not an uncommon occurrence at all. In fact, it's so prevalent that a lot of them keep a spare handy just in case.

Again, not a statistically relevant sample, but enough to convince me they're pretty flimsy in the hardware department.

<comment><USER9> 3 is not large. if you admit it's not statistically relevant then it's irrational to be convinced of anything.

<comment><USER6> It's a lot more than 3. I mentioned other startups I know, and if I did a survey I could probably collect data on a couple hundred. Also it would be 4 just among my 3 cofounders, since one was bought as a replacement and then began having problems itself.

Nonetheless, there is very likely to be a substantial failure rate for anyone to observe of 3 out of 4 Macbooks having problems. While you can't get an accurate mean failure rate from that small of a sample, you could pin down ranges for a given certainty. I'm too lazy to figure out how to do the math to get a range for say, 75% certainty, but I guarantee it's high by industry standards.

Also, you could simply Google around. Mac fans everywhere seem to consider their notebooks highly unreliable. Again, anecdotes, and probably a weighted sample too. But from Apple's perspective, it might as well be data since people will perceive it as such.

<comment><USER7> An incredibly weighted sample. That's like searching for commentary on any default Linux distro. Negativity rises to the top, because it's more urgent and more entertaining.

Again: I'm running my MBP from college, and I'd say that probably half my floor runs Mac. I've been dubbed the techie, unfortunately, and I've been asked no questions regarding Mac bugs yet. The biggest problems people've been having is with using Word 2008 to print: apparently, it messes up the margins.

And, of course, from personal experience: the only error my Mac has had was when I attempted to install Windows XP. And that was admittedly disastrous, but my computer was entirely backed-up and the Geniuses got it fixed off-the- clock - pretty top-notch customer service. When I installed Vista it happened smoothly.

Again: my evidence is as anecdotal as yours. But I'm not using my evidence to say that Apple is perfect and does no wrong. I'm just pointing out that for every "brick" story somebody has, there are a dozen "Maclove" stories that people just aren't provoked to tell.

<comment><USER6> Very true. But, if you assumed Macs failed 10% of the time, and that to be a high rate for notebooks overall, a sample of a ten of which none failed would happen ~35% of the time.

A sample of which 3 out of 4 failed would be much more rare. Thus you can glean more information from a sample of 3/4 failures than a sample of 10 with no failures.

I don't remember my combinations well enough to figure out the exact numbers, so I may be a bit off, but you see what I'm saying.

<comment><USER9> You're saying, now, that it _is_ statistically relevant.

<comment><USER6> No, I'm not saying that. I'm simply saying a small sample of failures (assuming failures are significantly less likely than non) gives you more information than a large sample of non.

<comment><USER9> Statistics take into account any valid ways of getting more information. And they also take into account what we know about how to avoid making crap up. You need to either claim to have a statistically relevant amount of information, or to know nothing about overall failure rates of apple laptops.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like 9to5Mac the best out of all the other rumor sites. They definitely have some good relationships with Apple employees since I've seen corp info (both real and fake) leak multiple times.

<comment><USER11> GO BACK TO VALLEYWAG

<comment><USER7> I might be a patsy for saying this, but you're not serious, are you? Valleywag has the highest ratio of noise to signal of any site that I've seen - with the exception of the other sites in the Gawker portfolio. I try to avoid that entire branch of blogs unless I've got good reason to, or unless I'm recommended one article in particular.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> And this is what it will look like being made: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=323877>

</comment><comment><USER12> For those who are being fooled into this nonsense, the "brick" is a new and smaller mac mini without dvd drive.

Shhh, I could get fired if they know I told you.

</comment><comment><USER13> I was hoping the code name brick would refer to something you throw through windows to break them.

The first 21st century telepathically assisted alien technology computer factory is pretty good too though.

</comment><comment><USER11> haha keep chasing the "high end" apple. you'd think losing 50% share price would shake some sense into you. let me summarize:

2008: COMPUTERS ARE DISPOSABLE

you need to start thinking about $399 laptops, not $3999 laptops

what do i or anyone else really care if the laptop case is designed to last a decade? i am going to be using this thing 24 months, not 24 years

apple's competitors would be stupid to chase this pointless luxury. users don't know and don't care about better cases

<comment><USER14> You are wrong. I generally buy a new laptop every 3 years. I tend to buy a bit up the curve and get 1.5 years where the beast is fast, one year where the beast is "adequate" and half a year where the beast is "slow". To me, it is not about _performance_ in laptops. It is about keyboard stability, robustness and weight. I have a blindingly fast desktop-computer and my laptop is for when I am not at home or when I want to hack code in the recliner. I don't need prime performance for that.

<comment><USER11> i can safely say that you, seeking not performance but "keybaord stability" in a laptop, are a market of one. its so sad to see the fanbois try to justify their iSlavery, almost like a battered wife telling the judge she reaaaallyyyy stiiiill loooooves hiiiim.

<comment><USER14> The advice I consistently give people when buying laptops is: Remember that you can't change the hardware. If you hate a trackpad, you will be stuck with it. If you hate the keyboard: though luck. Too slow a CPU? oh god, no chance in hell you'll be able to change it.

I write code and analyze problems for a living. Hence, my need for a fast CPU is not that important as I spend most of the time in emacs and use languages that can compile _fast_. Do we happen to be a minority? Perhaps so. Had I been a media executive, then my priorities would probably not be on the keyboard at all but on how much RAM i could cram into the beast.

Apple is selling a brand as much as they are selling a laptop and an OS. Notice that the marketing focuses on what _you can do_ with an apple mac. They know how much you are buying an identity for your money in addition to a computer. The Apple marketing is primary recruitment unit for the "fanbois" you mention because _what they can do_ with the Macs matter to them.

If you look at Lenovo's sales pitches, you will see an entirely different focus as they are targeting a different user base.

And for the record:

      jlouis@succubus:~$ uname -a
      Linux succubus 2.6.27-4-generic #1 SMP Wed Sep 24 01:30:51 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux

      jlouis@succubus:~$ dmesg | grep thinkpad_acpi | grep model
      [   26.622322] thinkpad_acpi: IBM ThinkPad X40, model 23716EG</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Donald Trump might be more popular than you think - <AUTHOR> http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/donald-trump-popularity-polling-234630 <comment><USER2> I stayed at a hotel in a small town in Arizona recently when traveling home from visiting my father. The town was hosting a 'tractor rodeo' and the hotel was full of participants and fans.

I was surprised by how strong the pro-Trump talk was in the public lobby and breakfast room. I am a life long Democrat, but I believe in respecting other people's viewpoints. I thought it was sort of cool how enthusiastic people were about Trump.

The article was making a hypothesis that people hide their support for Trump, and thus he can poll lower. I can believe this since since there seems to be a lot of over the top verbal aggression by some democrats who can not accept a political loss.

I think that Trump's large victory in the electoral college should motivate those of us on the left to get our political act together. I am still pissed off at the DNC.</comment>


Viewert on Its Way to Become the Best Note-Taking/Publishing App for Developers - <AUTHOR> https://www.viewert.com <comment><AUTHOR> It's free and clean. The policy is data security first, no ads or tracking. Developer team is hungry and eager to hear from you and iterate to make it better every single day.</comment>


Satanists release dox cake - john-zman

Apparently, Satanists have released a magazine and in this magazine they have doxed the following people/groups:
Bernard McGuirk (said satanists need to be shot) Gary James (restaurant owner in news for not serving gays) The WBC (westboro baptist church) The Vatican (the fucking vatican)
Edit: Theres also some stuff about i2p. <comment> john-zman Magazine:

[http://safe.mn/anonfile](http://safe.mn/anonfile)</comment>


"a dribbling selfish jerk" – an analysis of getting on the front page of HN - <AUTHOR> http://afatefulhaven.com/2012/12/an-analysis-of-getting-on-the-front-page-of-hacker-news/

<comment><USER3> There is a large percentage of users on HN who are neither tactful nor socially competent.

I've been here for 6+ years and while much of the time the discussions can be insightful, many other times you get people who are overly aggressive and downright mean because they're either unable to control their jealousy or throw away all decency for the pursuit of Truth and Accuracy.

I really don't know if it's because of something like Aspergers, or that maybe hackers tend to be overly analytical and take pride in that over being civil. I find myself complaining about it from time to time.

This is the norm here.

Edit: OP, "A Dribbling, Selfish Jerk" should be the title of your blog from now on.

<comment><USER4> It appears to be a hardware limit - humans can only consider a given number of other humans as individuals. Everyone else composes "the others" and are treated less favorably.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number>

<comment><USER5> It is possible for one to group somebody outside our Dunbar number and not be a douche[0]. Empathy is not as strong for people we don't know, but it is still possible to have it (or even convincingly fake it as many on the Autism spectrum[1] do).

In fact that empathy is what allows normal conversations to occur "in the real". That people lose that empathy online isn't surprising, they are talking to a screen, after all. But I also believe that those who can see past the pixels and into the virtual eyes of the person they are talking to make better real-life people. It also makes for much better conversations[2] online.

0\. I'm going to go Godwin here just by saying I'm going Godwin here. You know what I mean!

1\. My wife works for a pediatrician and has told me they are no longer considering Asperger's as its own syndrome (disease, disorder, I always get those mixed up); it is just a place on the spectrum. I have no separate source and just thought it was interesting. I also realize trusting what a single doctor says is a really stupid move on my part, so please feel free to shred me.

2\. If for no other reason than you don't have to read a bunch of self- effacing, defensive crap, such as I wrote in the above footnote.

<comment><USER6> 1\. I heard that too, actually. It looks like they just dropped it from the DSM-5: [http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/dec/02/aspergers- synd...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/dec/02/aspergers-syndrome- dropped-psychiatric-dsm)

I guess it makes sense in a way, but it'll probably just confuse popular conception of autism even further. Ah well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm just amazed someone is a sad enough individual to take time out of their day to write a nasty email to someone they don't know. Don't sane people just close the browser window and move on?

<comment><USER8> I snapped and wrote to Gruber once, pointing out exactly how he was factually wrong about some Android issue. I believe he continued to write and be wrong about it.

Clearly a waste of my time. I was at least polite, though.

<comment><USER9> High-profile bloggers' priority is not to get the facts right. It is to generate traffic.

<comment><USER10> It sounds like bloggers are devolving into the Angelyne's of the web (famous for being famous).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I actually think you got unlucky with this one. I've been fortunate enough to get a few posts onto Hacker News over the years and I've never received any remarks like the one you had.

Once bitten, twice shy (though also it appears twice on the front of HN so not all bad ;) however my experience is that most of the discussion and feedback from Hacker News is very good and that which is rude or genuinely unfair gets downvoted pretty aggressively. That doesn't of course account for private messages but for one reason or another I don't tend to receive those.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's better for the future of this site and "community" if it didn't become people's goal to get on the front-page, or some such idiotic achievement.

<comment><USER13> This is wrong. Making the frontpage === making something that is interesting to hackers and gets upvoted.

<comment><USER14> No, it's wrong to make this the goal in and of itself. The purpose, according to the guidelines, is to post something that is intellectually stimulating to oneself. If it makes it on the front-page, then this is an indication that others share the same perception. This is perhaps a fine distinction. One more thing, your suggestion encourages groupthink and is something that I have been observing on HN since I've signed up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Were I to have written this, I would have included a link to the post in question. That seems a pretty obvious traffic acquisition strategy to me. When you write a followup about how _this_ post was included on the front page perhaps that will be a point under "The Bad" :-P

The few times I've been on the front page of HN I've had a fairly consistent 1000 visitors per hour, FWIW.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Noel,

Thanks for the tip! I've made that edit now, can't believe I overlooked that. Too much Christmas cheer in my system!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I was on the front page the day I released my "blog" website. I ended up being on the front page for a few hours, but that is partly because I released on a Saturday evening. The traffic was shocking.

I didn't end up with any really bad feedback. In fact, I was immensely pleased with the feedback I received and the commentary I had here on HN. I think it was obvious to those who visited that the site was brand-new and rusty. I considered adding a comment area to the site, but I decided against that for several reasons I don't want to get into here.

I also thought I missed out on the social media stuff, but I don't think I did. The traffic was very healthy from social media because people _wanted_ to share my article, and I don't think that any real reminder would have caused people to share that would not have. I did add social sharing buttons on the site for about a week and the sharing decreased during that time. Also, there was a lot of traffic from "other" social media outlets, so how many buttons would I really need?

Congrats on front-paging again. It really is a nice feeling.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi dizzystar,

Thanks for your congrats - it does feel good, although I'm sure some of that is the pre-Xmas drinks!

I'm surprised that when you added sharing buttons that sharing decreased - <USER2> you have any idea why?

<comment><USER16> There could be several reasons, but my research suggests that the practice of using social-sharing buttons blows up in your face more often than not. It may have been partly because of the location of the sharing buttons (this apparently is the number one issue). It could also be a matter of timing: I would have to get front-page here again with social sharing so I have proper data to work with.

I did have significant traffic from another site I won't name here and that didn't generate any social sharing. I honestly think people will share only if they want to. I've recently been paying more attention to the counters on other websites, and it is quite surprising anyone would publicly advertise such low numbers.

I guess you'll now have some gAnalytics to look at and you'll get a more clear picture of where your traffic comes from.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm surprised that he got fewer than 1000 hits. I always thought that HackerNews and Slashdot (probably much larger, I guess) would send way more people, for some reason.

I guess HN traffic is quite targeted and valuable to some people though.

<comment><USER18> I'm sort of surprised by this too. Perhaps it comes down to titles and time of day? Most of the posts I've had hit the front page get >20k hits the first day, but I also word my titles carefully (no linkbait, but make it catchy) and time the submissions when I know that the maximum number of people will see them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've been on the front page a few times and got around 10,000 to 20,000 visits from it. It often brought many more comments on the posts that made it than when people find it another way, but I saw no real increase in social sharing. Opposite that, if a post makes it to a fairly popular subreddit, I get a lot less comments from that kind of traffic, but on the other hand the posts will tend to be picked up again by other blogs or sites. I found that interesting.

</comment><comment><USER20> If you make a comment that's downvoted, it gradually becomes invisible to the extent that people have to select it to view it.

I know from experience that either people do just that and then downvote or else downvote unread. Either way it smacks of kicking a dog when it's down.

It seems anomalous that when a comment is upvoted no one knows it except the person voting and the person getting the vote but when you're downvoted everyone knows it.

</comment><comment><USER21> We were on the front page briefly the other day (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4916201>) and got about 2,800 visitors. The comments were largely helpful and the experience a positive one overall.

On the other hand, nobody succeeded in earning the $2,500 bounty yet.

</comment><comment><USER22> PG's hierarchy of disagreement should be a sticky post on the front page for this reason. +1. Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm guessing that someone posting like that on HN would quickly be downvoted and then shaddow-banned.

Comment systems are baffling, and it's an important problem that needs some work.

Don't say what it is, but did they use a real name or an obvious psydonym or pseudoanonymous?

</comment><comment><USER24> My unseemly ranting about a popular hosting service was pinned to the top of HN for about a day. It was good for about 20,000 visits.

If you think 20,000 visits in 24 hours is a lot, it's not. It just isn't. It hasn't been since 1998.

But the audience is valuable.

<comment><USER25> Surely it's all relative? Sure, 20,000 people in a day might not be a lot when compared to 'total people using the internet every day' or even 'total people looking at HN every day' but it's a huge number when compared to 'total people looking at my blog on an average day'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Now that you have all your analytical installed, I'm interested in seeing what they produce :-)

</comment><comment><USER27> Congrats you're on the front page of HN now! Nice insights on the post though.

</comment><comment><USER28> Heh, now you've gotten on the front page twice. Yay?

</comment><comment><USER29> I've honestly struggled with how to give feedback to other users on HN. It's not hard to be civil, but my automatic reaction is to look for things to _criticize_ , not because I'm overly critical, but because I assume that's the purpose of submitting your work to HN in the first place...if you're confident enough to do so, I guess I just assume you have a decent amount of self- validation going and more patting-on-the-back is going to be less helpful than critique.

*

Having read your original post on HN, I noticed you didn't actually fix the problem that the rude user complains about. The rude user is definitely out of line, but are you really much better by just dismissing their point as simply "sheer mind-numbing stupidity"? Is the user wrong because he/she was an asshole or just wrong period? Because I think the user had a good point: you refer to an off-site video that you don't show until the very end, and you don't even link to the indepth NYT article that includes the video, which would be common courtesy for any SEO specialist.

<comment><USER5> There was nothing broken. Why should he fix it? Putting the video at the top would result in people watching the video, then ignoring the words, because, hey, they just watched the video. Putting it at the bottom makes it an extra treat for those who put in the effort to read the words.[1]

And that is exactly the problem with feedback online. Instead of assuming something is the way it is for a reason, people assume it is that way because the author, who spent who knows how much time thinking about things, was too selfish to cover my own particular need.

I think selfish is the right word for how people view it. If it was just incompetent, people would be more willing to help. But people take it _personally_ , and that implies people see open hostility.

On the other hand, when competence in the author and humility in ourselves is assumed, the dialog is much more interesting and useful. Instead of just shredding the work, helpful language and reasons for the concern are used.

1\. I have no idea if this is the author's actual thought process, but when I viewed the page, I immediately thought, "Wait, it makes _sense_ for the video to be at the bottom. Anywhere else would be highly distracting to the article."

<comment><USER29> Well, yes, something _was_ broken. The author makes reference to a video without saying where it exists, even though it seems to be a video that exists on the Internet. This leads the user to believe that maybe his browser is broken or that the JS on the page is broken.

Is it really an either-or situation here? If it's not right for the video to be at top (which would go against a lot of other user-studies showing how important it is to have imagery leading the text, and how especially important it is to have assets close to where they are referred to in the text) then there should be a link. This is how the web was meant to work. If the readers end up clicking through (there's no reason you can't just have it anchor to the bottom instead of going externally) and never come back to the text, then that is an issue of the author not fulfilling his first rule of advice: "I like the first line to be funny right away" (replace "funny" with "compelling").

And you may be right, just because the author did it this way doesn't mean that he is "selfish". But it's hard to have any sympathy for him when he rips on someone for being ad hominem with an ad hominem attack.

(Also, it's worth pointing out that if the OP author had explicitly made the argument that it's good SEO practice to put the source material at the bottom and force the reader to discover it at the bottom, the OP would never have been upvoted to the front page. I don't think that's a design philosophy shared by many at HN)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What open source projects are you working on this weekend? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> My C# monad and parser combinator library (based on Haskell's Parsec). Still very much v0.1 but coming along nicely :)

[https://github.com/louthy/csharp-monad](https://github.com/louthy/csharp- monad)</comment>


Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out – The Startup Genome Project - <AUTHOR> http://steveblank.com/2011/05/29/tune-in-turn-on-drop-out-the-startup-genome-project/ <comment><USER2> I don't mean to be too harsh on a well-intended project, but the startup genome reminds me of Feynman's _Cargo Cult Science_ :

 _In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head to headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas--he's the controller--and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they're missing something essential, because the planes don't land._

[http://www.gasresources.net/Cargo%20Cult%20Science%20-%20by%...](http://www.gasresources.net/Cargo%20Cult%20Science%20-%20by%20Richard%20Feynman.htm)

There's a reason why scientists use controlled studies to disentangle causal effects from mere correlation. I'm sure there is some value in the startup genome for people with the right mental framework, but I would be careful about interpreting the data as "guidelines for success".

<comment><USER3> If you think about it isn't the success of YC and other venture firms predicated upon doing something roughly the same?

<comment><USER2> In as much as you're trying to predict which startup will succeed, the data from the genome project is perfectly acceptable. The problem comes when you decide "I will do X because that's what successful startups do." If you don't understand _why_ they do it, then it's a cargo-cult. But maybe... Maybe imitating successful people is the best you can do when you don't know what you're doing?

You have a point, and I softened up the language in my post.

<comment><USER4> "Maybe imitating successful people is the best you can do when you don't know what you're doing?"

I've done this before with good results. I think the ideal strategy is to pick someone better than you, imitate them, and then once you surpass them to pick a new person to imitate, and so on. It's only after imitating five or six different people that you're able to develop your own theories, which is ultimately necessary if you want to reach true mastery.

<comment><USER5> I don't know... I've been walking around in a polo shirt and shorts and my millions still haven't materialized :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think if you look at their findings as a cookbook recipe for success you won't do well — but if you take what they're saying as advice to be applied if it makes sense then it has some value. Some of their findings I've also heard echoed before (like doing it full time, having a technical co-founder) so there's also a bit of a confirmation value there. Although on the flip side you should keep in mind that "scientific research into success" can be flawed — I keep thinking about reading about Freddie Mac in "Good to Great".

<comment><USER7> Yeh Good to Great has levered it's validity to the success of those companies. When I was reading it Merck was being eclipsed by Pfizer as the market leader.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a very interesting conjecture:

 _...the world's biggest problem isn't poverty or disease or any oft-stated major problem, but that we don't have enough people engaged in trying to solve these problems._

I'm not sure if there is any way to prove or disprove it but if it's true then we should be looking at those problems very differently. Great concept to discuss on a lazy Sunday.

<comment> T-R This also meshes well with this article from the other day:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2591367> ("The problem is that we don't understand the problem")

Perhaps we need to iterate over potential solutions faster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> With regards to startups with tech cofounders having more change for success -

One thing I've been wondering lately is how a "technical cofounder" is defined?

I graduated from my college with a degree in economics. My career thus far (in Internet startups and companies) has mostly been on the biz dev and marketing side. However, I have always created and managed websites on the side. I have a deep passion for hacking (more than biz dev & marketing) and I'm pretty good at it.

So my question is - at what skill level can you be considered a technical cofounder? Do you have to be an expert-level coder on the cutting-edge of technology? Is there a cutoff point with skill level to where you would need a tech cofounder?

I know when I create my first startup I will want a technical cofounder. It's not so much that I don't think I could get good enough to code a large-scale website, it's more that the biz dev and marketing stuff comes easily to me so why would I need someone else to do that?

<comment><USER10> I think "technical cofounder" is usually defined as someone who has the capabilities to create the entire product vision themselves.

If you feel confident that you can code almost anything you can dream up, then you are probably a technical founder with business skills. If you feel like you would need help in accomplishing your vision (like hiring a programer or outsourcing the development) then you are probably not a technical founder.

<comment><USER9> I would think product vision and actually implementing that vision could be considered separate things, right?

<comment><USER10> Absolutely. But a technical founder is someone with the capabilities to implement product vision themselves.

<comment><USER9> That's a good definition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why do they use the word "Genome"? I expected an article about startups in biotechnology, but was disappointed.

</comment><comment><USER12> I find the title of this article to be completely irrelevant to its contents. Dropping out of school and starting a business does not relate to Timothy Leary's famous tagline which was about opening your mind via drugs and dropping out of society at large.</comment>


OpenSSL SSL3_AL_WARNING undefined alert remote DoS - <AUTHOR> http://seclists.org/oss-sec/2016/q4/224 <comment><USER2> > An attacker could repeat the undefined plaintext warning packets of > "SSL3_AL_WARNING" during the handshake, which will easily make to consume > 100% CPU on the server.

> It is an implementation problem in OpenSSL that OpenSSL would ignore > undefined warning, and continue dealing with the remaining data(if exist). > So the attacker could pack multiple alerts inside a single record and send a > large number of there large records. Then the server will be fallen in a > meaningless cycle, and not available to any others.

SSL3 is vulnerable and should be banned in the webserver's configuration. It stopped being supported by major browsers years ago.

The article doesn't say if webservers are vulnerable when they block SSL3 entirely. If so, it's the hell of a critical vulnerability! Otherwise, [http://disablessl3.com/](http://disablessl3.com/)

<comment><USER3> There is a fair bit in common between the different versions of SSL/TLS, and functions and constants in OpenSSL tend to get get named with the version of the protocol they were introduced in.

So "SSL3_AL_WARNING" isn't necessarily exclusively used in SSLv3, if the format wasn't changed in TLS.

<comment><USER4> This is why I consider merging SSLv2 and SSLv3 into the term "SSL" a misnomer. The two are really completely different protocols.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "All versions (SSL3.0, TLS1.0, TLS1.1, TLS1.2) are affected." according to [http://security.360.cn/cve/CVE-2016-8610/](http://security.360.cn/cve/CVE-2016-8610/)

It would be helpful if the researchers clarified how potent this DoS attack vector is. Is sending "a large number of these large records" more efficient at denying availability than a naive flood using e.g. SYNs or UDP?

<comment><USER6> That's a per-site/victim question, how big is your pipe, how big is your CPU, what kind of networking devices do you offload traffic on?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This seems like a pretty... weak vulnerability.

Sure -- you can send an SSL server a bunch of junk data, and it'll try to process that data. But from what I gather, it's not as though it takes an unusually long time for it to process these warnings either. Any attacker with the resources to perform this attack could probably just as easily saturate the host's network connection without involving SSL at all.

<comment><USER8> Not necessarily, DoS is all about asymmetry if it's 1:1 then yeah but if this only requires a handful of packets to cause the same resource exhaustion as 1000s or 10000s of normal SSL sessions then this is an issue.

You can't bring a site down from your phone normally if there is a CPU eating bug on the other hand you can.

<comment><USER7> Right, of course. I just don't see any reason that there would be an especially high "multiplier" on this vulnerability. A spurious SSL warning doesn't require the server to do anything particularly expensive; it just requires it to look at the ID, realize it's something weird that it doesn't recognize, and move on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> there's currently no post on openssl.org but i expect them to publish one soon. Also, now with all the OpenSSL sh*tstorm this year, I really wonder if LibreSSL is vulnerable to this security problem...

<comment><USER9> LibreSSL has removed SSL3, so I'd guess it doesn't do "SSL3_AL_WARNING"

<comment><USER10> And Firefox 52 is proposed to default to TLS 1.3 for safety and performance reasons: [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.platform...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.platform/sfeqeMkyxCI)

I wish it was still possible to override these per profile. Last time I tried, the knobs were gone and had no effect whatsoever to enable safer defaults. I used to be able to force a minimum TLS version and enable only select few ciphers.

<comment><USER11> Still possible:

security.tls.version.min security.tls.version.max

security.ssl3.<cipher_suite>

<comment><USER10> Thanks, you're right, found and disabled all but two specs and tuned minimum to 3 which is TLS1.2. Will put those in the locked config file, so that they're read-only at runtime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> so far nginx is the only server which is affected by this issue, but the latest version wasnt affected.</comment>


KrebsOnSecurity Hit with Record DDoS - <AUTHOR> http://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/09/krebsonsecurity-hit-with-record-ddos/ <comment><AUTHOR> Interesting to note that much of the traffic was not the standard amplification attack as you would expect.

 _That is, with the exception of one attack method: Preliminary analysis of the attack traffic suggests that perhaps the biggest chunk of the attack came in the form of traffic designed to look like it was generic routing encapsulation (GRE) data packets, a communication protocol used to establish a direct, point-to-point connection between network nodes. GRE lets two peers share data they wouldn't be able to share over the public network itself._

 _"Seeing that much attack coming from GRE is really unusual," Akamai's McKeay said. "We've only started seeing that recently, but seeing it at this volume is very new."_</comment>


Doctors aren't accepting new patients with private insurance either - <AUTHOR> http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/doctors-arent-accepting-new-patients-with-private-insurance-either/

<comment><USER2> It is interesting to note that some private plans are more restrictive than Medicaid. That's not what most people think and certainly not what we often hear.</comment>


The Halving of the Centre: Covid and Its Effect on London Property - <AUTHOR> https://zwischenzugs.com/2020/07/25/the-halving-of-the-centre-covid-and-its-effect-on-london-property/ <comment><USER3> Interesting analysis. We have talk of a "Polo" shaped recovery in the UK. Polo is a 'mint with a hole' \- so a rebound on the periphery but nothing in the middle.

One important point that I don't think is mentioned at all is the impact of Canary Wharf. Lots of institutions have moved out of the City and into Docklands in search of lower rents and bigger floorplans. Expect to see some move back if rents fall.

I do think that we are possible that we see some sort of rebalancing of the City - the statistic that there are very, very few residential properties is telling and the City is actually a very pleasant place to live - <USER2> pedestrian friendly, has lots of shops and good cultural venues (eg the Barbican) but is almost deserted at the weekend.

Disclosure: long central London property (my home).

<comment><USER4> Author here. I adore the Barbican and dream of retiring there. My analysis may reflect wishful thinking.

The CW point is an interesting one. Most people that work there don't like it so I could see a move back in for high value work.

<comment><USER3> I hope you manage to fulfill your dream!

The relationship between CW and the City is interesting. I have a theory that the insurance bit of the City has tended to stay there (e.g. in the area around Leadenhall) because it is more bespoke, less automated and hence face to face contact is more important. Whereas banks have moved to CW for lower rents and larger floorplans (which are seen as desirable for certain activities). I expect that the larger banks will probably stay in CW but as you say some professional services firms could move back.</comment></comment></comment>