Amazon sellers 'hijack' listings to sell face masks despite new rules - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-sellers-hijack-listings-face-masks-coronavirus/ <comment><USER2> My favourite is this one: [https://www.amazon.com/Dukal-900610-Reflections- Earloop-Plea...](https://www.amazon.com/Dukal-900610-Reflections-Earloop- Pleated/dp/B07SYJBBS4)

$46 for 100 and the "newer" version is $170 for 50. If you look at the reason for this massive price jump:

"high price caused by 1) price spike of non-woven fabrics, 20K up to 200K/ton, due to capacity issue caused by coronavirus. 2) till now, US custom will block or expropriate large quantity of mask, so we have to ship this product through small airmail package, which 5 time cost of logistic fee vs shipment in container"

</comment><comment><USER3> I've got a decent amount of n95 (both 3M and HDX HD Brand) masks that we lucked into more than a significant amount of time ago. We are afraid to list them, at any price, because I'm afraid ebay/amazon will kill our listings at any price. I'm ready to ship them for free, of all costs, I just don't want my amazon "privileges" revoked. who do i give n95 masks too? edit: they are 2024 exp dates

<comment><USER4> > _who do i give n95 masks too?_

Donate them to your local hospital. Hospitals everywhere are running short on masks and other PPE, and _a lot of doctors and nurses are going to die because of it_. Italy is already hemorrhaging medical staff trying to stop the virus.

<comment><USER5> Please do this. I had a few unused leftover N95's from a furniture refinishing project. I gave them to my neighbor who is a nurse at a local hospital. They're desperately needed. If "regular" civilians get sick that's bad, but when nurses and doctors start going down it's much much worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Machine learning my foot! I think Amazon has just admitted to the fact that they can't control bad actors from taking over their listings.

</comment><comment><USER7> > _We use sophisticated tools, including machine learning, to combat them, and > we are making it increasingly difficult for bad actors to hide._

So sophisticated that some reporter for wired could find them in the top few hundred bestsellers in a few minutes with a quick visual scan.

Let's be clear: Amazon should not be censoring legal items on their platform. However, their efforts at stopping it are purely a PR matter, not a real effort.

<comment><USER8> > a quick visual scan

Yeah a quick visual scan from a human is super easy to automate.

<comment><USER7> Amazon is one of the largest employers in the world. It's lip service, as further evidenced by the tons of fakes on their website.

[https://www.racked.com/2018/1/8/16849298/amazon- counterfeits...](https://www.racked.com/2018/1/8/16849298/amazon-counterfeits- global-entry-customs)

Anyone who wishes, Amazon staff included, can go and see the $10 "1TB" usb flash drives that are just 16GB drives with hacked firmware to report a different size. It takes about 2 minutes to find them. They don't bother.

The evidence is there if you want it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This guy got a "hand sanitizer" copper disk (??) listed as an "Amazon's choice!"

[https://www.amazon.com/Sani-Disc-GK95D-Cleaner-Wherever- Prob...](https://www.amazon.com/Sani-Disc-GK95D-Cleaner-Wherever- Problem/dp/B07SN6GW3B/ref=sr_1_15?crid=T4ILT1RNX4QD&dchild=1&keywords=hand+sanitizer&qid=1584659043&sprefix=hand+%2Caps%2C215&sr=8-15)

<comment><USER10> Many metals are contact-antimicrobial

See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimicrobial_properties_of_co...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimicrobial_properties_of_copper) -: _Copper and its alloys (brasses, bronzes, cupronickel, copper-nickel-zinc, and others) are natural antimicrobial materials._

And [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligodynamic_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligodynamic_effect) -: _The oligodynamic effect (from Greek oligos "few", and dynamis "force") is a biocidal effect of metals, especially heavy metals, that occurs even in low concentrations._

<comment><USER9> You're welcome to rub your hands with a copper disk after going out in public. I'm going to wash them with soap and water for 20 seconds.

<comment><USER11> To be fair, this would be a great fidget toy while out in public.

<comment><USER12> How about Copper-Spinner? Made from organic anti-viral copper. Heals the soul and the hands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I bought an n99 anti pollution mask last year on amazon $9.99 2 filters.

Checked the same listing now, $40

<comment><USER14> 4x price increase? That's ... reasonable? Considering the shortages and that the original price is quite low, I can't even call it price gouging, that's just normal adjusting. That's the level of price increase that would convince companies to up production and people to look into their garage for those few boxes they bought and never used.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why don't people just fire up their own domain drop in an e-commerce store and sell these face masks while answering to no one? It should be fairly easy for such a site to go viral given the pent up demand.

<comment><USER7> What is "just fire up" for you and I is an insurmountable hurdle for most people who use computers, either due to skills or ignorance, and is one of the main reasons that people use hosted, censorship platforms as default.

<comment><USER15> So this means people like us would have the competitive advantage for these sorts of business opportunities.

<comment><USER16> Why aren't you doing it and making a killing (pun intentional)?

<comment><USER17> Ethics? Humanity?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Good, let people buy face masks. Better than not being able to find any.

<comment><USER9> That's not what this article is about. It's about people listing face masks as books or other items.

And then there's the issue of items not being as described, like photos of 20-mask packages, but what arrives are single masks repackaged under unsanitary conditions:

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ETU- _paU0AIjwnK?format=jpg&name=...](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ETU- _paU0AIjwnK?format=jpg&name=large)

<comment><USER19> Indirectly, it is.

These shenanigans are only in place to circumvent the rules the grandparent commenter complains about.</comment></comment></comment>


Finding Watsi's Growth Engine - <AUTHOR> http://blog.modeanalytics.com/hacker-news-not-a-growth-engine/

<comment><USER2> Nice slides. This is what effective growth marketing looks like. Not BS "growth hacking" gimmicks, but drilling into the data and pulling out actionable information. One bit that's missing is A/B testing to verify the hypotheses they're making.</comment>


Getting Started with CRISPR Experiments – Part 1 - <AUTHOR> http://genomics.quiltdata.com/2016/01/26/getting-started-with-crispr-experiments-part-i/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN. I'm one of the founders of Quilt Data. We've started a blog series on how to run CRISPR experiments. Let us know what you'd like to see in future parts of the series.

</comment><comment><USER3> What is the iteration latency today? Eg I do this test described, learn something (maybe something as small as what I tried didn't work) and now I want to try something else.

It looks like each run requires a new order with suppliers. They may take time to produce and send. So how long from "I want to try this other approach requiring nee supplies" to "new approach is laid down for testing"? And when something gets laid down for testing, how long might a test take?

(FYI I'm personally very excited about these developments and trying to grok the real world experience a bit more. Haven't done a day in a wet lab since high school! )

<comment><USER4> Great question. In almost all cases, you have an actionable lead after doing a screen experiment. The problem is typically that you have learned too many, not too few things. And those things need to be backed with more experimental evidence.

But more generally, the iteration latency is about a week to order & receive reagents for another targeted screen. Or if you want to do a single gene CRISPR experiment, you can get the single oligo reagents the next day.

Then the cloning, virus production, cell infection, etc. will be about another week if you are rushing. We in genomics are still a far cry from the iteration latency in software dev, but given that many of our scientific forefathers/mothers in the previous generation counted on making a whole genetically engineered mouse (which could take a year+) for an experiment, we're making solid progress.

More questions about the real world lab experience are always welcome!

<comment><USER3> love it thank you so much. A back of the envelope calculations suggest 8 - <USER2> days per cycle so 25-50 cycles per year. Assuming no vacation. I can see how we just face an incredible amount of work to do. Parallelism of course will help. But it must be so amazing to be like a blind man wandering around in a dark room with a sense that there might be something warm in the distance but that's about it. At least you're doing real work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What would be more powerful instead of "comment out" debugging is if you could have println debugging.

<comment><USER4> Something like this is possible with CRISPR by tagging endogenous genes with fluorescent proteins. In this way, the output of that particular genetic line of code can be traced. It's not a perfect metaphor, and the method doesn't scale genome-wide, but its a clever thought.

<comment><USER6> Also, iirc, there are several studies under way to permit in vivo activation/deactivation of specific genes. CRISPR the switch in place and subject it to the stimulus (magnetic, light, sound). Changing the phenotype on the fly.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Turning a research paper into a startup, but it's written in Matlab - <AUTHOR> My friend is about to launch a startup based on his bioinformatics Ph.d thesis. The idea is basically to run his model as a web service.
The problem is it's written in Matlab. I don't know much about startup business and I have zero experience in deploying Matlab code to the web so my major concern is the license cost and developers available to hire.
I can come up with three ways after a quick look at Matlab's portfolio:
1. Run Matlab Production Server on AWS as a microservice. But the licensing cost of Matlab Production Server is "contact us". Scary.
2. Use Matlab Compiler to convert it to another language. I worry about runtime dependencies of the compiled output and there might be a hidden pitfall when deploying it.
3. Rewrite it in Python/numpy. We are fine with rewriting it and it might be easier to get developers, but we might run into a reproducibility problem.
Does anyone have a similar path? What is the best practice to deploy a matlab research on the web?
Thank you in advance. <comment><USER2> As someone whos has written a very large and complex toolbox in Matlab [1], and now rewriting in Python I would not recommend locking yourself in to Matlab/Mathworks. However, if you don't use any GUI functionality you might get away with it, and you might be able to use Octave which can run must Matlab code unmodified (also see Octave online for deployment).

[1]: [https://www.featool.com](https://www.featool.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much for your advice. Is there any specific reason to rewrite to Python?

<comment><USER2> Sure. As you guys seem to plan to do, I also started with some Matlab based work from my PhD years and felt that would be the quickest and easiest way forward. I also made the bet that the Octave app GUI functionality (uixx functions) would become good enough to use for commercial apps, which as great as base Octave is, it in my opinion hasn't. So as I make a fully client side app I am now dependent on users also purchasing or already having Matlab too.

As for Python, it is also a bet and compromise with the following specific criteria:

\- Fast and easy to develop in (as I as a bootstrapped solo-dev have to do everything by myself)

\- Reasonably simple to translate to from Matlab code

\- Good and easy to use client side GUI functionality

\- Easy for other users to use (as I want as many users a possible to use the functionality and potentially be able to write extensions themselves)

\- 3D Visualization libraries (VTK, ParaView)

with this in mind my choices were:

1) Python

2) Julia

3) (Object) Pascal

4) Web stack (Javascript + webassembly)

I almost initially chose (Lazarus free) Pascal due to its IDE, fast compilation, and easy deployment but eventually I found the fixed pixel based GUI placement not ideal (although there are probably workarounds for that). Although using a web stack would be ideal from a user and sales perspective (with no installation), my impression of web programming is "messy" and I'm afraid that for CAE simulation apps this approach would freeze the computers completely (Electron!). Although I initially thought Julia would be ideal as the syntax was very close to Matlab, it seems to become more and more complex as it matures and my impression is that there still isn't a good way to deliver (pre-)compiled client side apps which is my requirement. So all in all I felt that Python probably the best compromise. It is still a bet, but with the "Matlab engine" you can call Matlab in the background so port bit by bit. In your case though with a (web) server-client app you might fare better with Matlab/Octave.

Tech-stack aside, I've found the hardest part is the non-techy bits, especially sales, marketing etc. which I still haven't figured out.

Best of luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> MATLAB has "export to C" capability:

[https://www.mathworks.com/help/dsp/ug/generate-c-code- from-m...](https://www.mathworks.com/help/dsp/ug/generate-c-code-from-matlab- code-1.html)

Build your website however you wish, then call the C code (e.g. C# P/Invoke interop if you use .NET, Python CFFI, FastCGI, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER4> > Run Matlab Production Server on AWS as a microservice. But the licensing > cost of Matlab Production Server is "contact us". Scary.

Starting a business is scary. Contact them, figure out the cost, and figure out if it's worth it to rewrite it in a freely licensed language.

</comment><comment><USER5> Contact them and see if it really is as bad as you think :)

You can also go self-hosted while you are in customer acquisition mode?

If the cost of a software license is scary, then I can assure you labor costs are much worse. You can rewrite now or rewrite later, but hiring devs is a ways away :)</comment>


Our (Bare) Shelves, Our Selves - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/06/fashion/our-bare-shelves-our-selves.html <comment><USER2> The study showed that having more books was correlated with children being more successful, but that doesn't mean that having more books on shelves is actually the cause. It's more likely that the kind of parents that have high quality books have qualities that would make their kids successful, regardless of the books on the shelves.

<comment><USER3> This was discussed:

> _The implications are clear: Owning books in the home is one of the best > things you can do for your children academically. It helps, of course, if > parents are reading to their children and reading themselves, not simply > buying books by the yard as décor.

> "It is a big question of whether it's the books themselves or the parental > scholarly culture that matters — we're guessing it's somewhere in between," > said Mariah Evans, one of the study's authors and an associate professor of > sociology at the University of Nevada, Reno. "The books partly reflect > intelligence."_</comment></comment>


EU Blockchain Observatory Forum to Discuss Regulations - <AUTHOR> https://zycrypto.com/eu-blockchain-observatory-forum-to-discuss-regulations/ <comment><USER2> Blockchains depress me. There are so many technlogies that are _vastly_ more interesting. But most of those haven't created $120,000,000,000 Ponzi schemes, so they're ignored by politicians.

Imagine what would happen if the EU pledged 340 million Euro to database research! Or at any of the great peer-to-peer networks out there. Or at something like Git. Think of all the fascinating new technologies we'd get. But instead they're going to throw money at the goddamn blockchain.

<comment><USER3> I find blockchains very interesting, at least from a technical point of view. Distributed computing is one of the oldest and hardest problems in computer science.

However, I agree that the EU not take away 340 million from its citizens to spend it on that kind of research. Generally, top-down works very poorly in science and the EU should let the individual countries decide for themselves how the fund their universities.</comment></comment>


Creating slick intro videos for startups - <AUTHOR>

I remember seeing a startup that was doing cheapish (cost) but excellent quality videos for startups to explain their company and products.
And can't seem to find them for the life of me.  Maybe even it was a YC startup.
Anyone know where to get a video like this done fast with reasonable cost? <comment><USER2> You should have a look at this topic on Quora.com for a list of companies/freelancers doing that kind of videos.

[http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-good-examples-of- startup-...](http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-good-examples-of-startup- product-demo-videos?__snids__=21093738#ans253820)

We also do a lot of startup videos at <http://thinkmojo.net>

</comment><comment><USER3> Many startups use Epipheo <http://www.epipheostudios.com/>

</comment><comment><USER4> Check out Demo Duck (<http://www.demoduck.com>) or Brad Chmielewski (<http://www.digitalhitchhiker.com/blog/?page_id=2>).

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't know if this is what you are looking for, but they've made some great promo videos for some YC companies.

<http://grumomedia.com/get-a-video/>

</comment><comment><USER6> <http://explainabl.es/>

</comment><comment><USER7> I'd love to know too!</comment>


Show HN: Rate All The Things - <AUTHOR> http://rateallthethings.com/

<comment><USER2> As much as I love tools named after memes, I don't understand the purpose of this at all.

Maybe it's just that the website is two sentences so I don't see the use of the product. Do you plan on displaying the information by users and making a social network out of it? Do you plan on monetizing it? Was this just an application you made while learning to program Java and wanted to show off your accomplishment?

What's the story here?

<comment><USER3> I don't mean to be snarky, but I think this is what's called a "minimum viable product" or MVP around here. It's the smallest thing that does something you can explain. In this example it's "on android, download this app, and anything that has a barcode, you can scan and give 1-5 stars." Other times it's "email us a URL and when the contents there change -- for example someone replied to a comment you left on that page -- we'll email you back". Actually brb this is gold!!!

basically, the way to think about mvp's, is it's the "done is better than perfect" equivalent of a proof of concept. Whereas in the old days, someone would innovate and then put out a proof of concept, these days we skip the innovation stage and put out a proof of...ability to put a database app together? I dunno exactly. Sorry about the snarkiness here, I just think there is life outside of this particular bubble.

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, minimum viable product, just to see if i'm on the right path

<comment><USER2> What's the rest of your path? What plans do you have for this? Sorry I'm being so inquisitive but I'm an Android programmer and also an active seeker of new Android employees for my place of work, so it confuses me to see something like this with zero additional information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I ran into 11 issues: Most of them UX/UI problems. (surprise! I'm a UX/UI Designer)

1) I could NOT find your app when I searched for it, I had to finally type in your name and then the app came up in the marketplace, that's not your fault but hopefully it gets fixed. Maybe the mobile version of the app store didn't have it's search index updated or something.

2) It asked me to create an account, I almost exited the app. "Oh great", I thought, "another username and password". But it was actually very simple, you should change the screen so that it doesn't scare people away like that. All it took was to enter my email. So instead of having a button that says create account and sign in. Just have some text with "Create Account" and underneath it the text boxes for your email and password. And underneath that, a text that says "Sign in" and the text box(es) for email (and password).

3) It asked me to install Bar Code scanner. I already HAVE a bar code scanner app. Red Laser. I don't want to install another.

I thought to myself, too annoying, screw this. (exactly what a normal user would do) And uninstalled the app. I felt bad and re installed it to at least fully try it out before giving feedback.

4) When I tried to sign in it asked me for a password. "WTF?", I thought, I never gave it a password. At the top of the screen it says "If you don't know your password please visit the website" but your website doesn't have anything about my password just a tiny hidden password reset link. That's when I realized your app EMAILS me my password when I sign up. I ran to my email inbox but nothing... This isn't good. I think it's a very bad way of handling accounts. Never give me a password, let me choose my own, It's hard enough for me to remember my own passwords, let alone the ones other people give me. You need to redo this entire userflow.

5)I used the reset password feature and I got an email (in my junk folder) and no joke, it said my new password was "tg6H5FZl0kUxmoAL7pVQ". Why do you hate me so much? Are you a troll? lol. That was NOT easy to type in my phone. Entering Windows serial keys was easier (at least they were in all caps)

7) The next screen was just hideous. tiny text boxes, right aligned buttons of different lengths (please make them all at least one length), bad wording. No no no. "Update Barcode" needs to be changed to "save edit". In fact I shouldn't even see these text boxes. When I scan an item the Item name should be white and normal sized (like it currently is) and the manufacturer should be slightly grayer and slightly smaller so it doesn't distract the eye. I would recommend NOT allowing customers to update the UPC info. This is ripe for abuse. People are going to give objects racist, perverted names. You'd have people scanning and renaming Xbox 360s to "ShitBox 360", PSP to "Piece of Shit Portable", grape juice to "Nigger Juice", Gatorade Frost to "Cum Water", packages of fake nails to "Bitch Talons". Oh jeez I've heard it all. Then again, if your audience is the college crowd they'd probably love this.

8) Rating should be done with a slider UI, all the way left is 1 all the way right is 5. Six stars is not needed I think. It's one star too many. Just have 1-5. And actually use stars, not numbers. Your icon for the app is a star but you don't even use star ratings. Tsk tsk tsk. When you display ratings try to use some kind of images, stars, visuals, not cold emotionless numbers.

9) Once I rate an item I can't change it, not even right after I rate it. So if I accidentally hit the wrong button I can't fix it. That's not good.

10) I have to hit a button "Display Comments" to see comments. I don't like that. Comments should be shown by default if possible. Most people are consumers not creators. They're probably here to read, not write, if there's nothing to read then they'll probably feel encouraged to rate and write. Show the 3-5 latest comments with a 100% width button at the bottom with "Show All 7 Comments"

11) Displaying comments is also illogical. I rated a bottle of juice "5" and left a short comment, but when I read my rating on the comments screen it doesn't show my rating next to my comment.

Everything works, it's just badly designed, furthering my theory of "Good programmers are bad at UX/UI". Other than that good work, you have a lot to fix up but it's very doable. Sorry for being an ass, I don't have aspergers, I'm just going through another one of my weekly, "where the hell am I going in life" depressions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> So this is like jot.ly, but with barcodes, correct?</comment>


Ask HN: Traveling to China for the first time. Would love some advice - <AUTHOR> Hi Community, This is my first Ask HN here. I'm traveling to China for a business trip. I'll be mostly around Shanghai, Beijing and other nearby cities for about 10-15 days. If you've been there before, I'd love your thoughts/advice on:
1) The great firewall: None of the Google products would work. This means no access to important stuff like Google Docs, Gmail, etc.
Unfortunately, all my company stuff is on GSuite. Is there a way around this? I know VPNs aren't reliable either. Some recommendations would be appreciated. In other words, how do you get over this?
2) Are there some meetups where I can meetup fellow HNers?
3) Language barrier - how do you manage? Google translate won't work as Google is blocked. Are there some recommendations?
4) Apart from sight-seeing and tourist spots, are there anything I should not miss in China, as a startup founder/developer?
5) Anything else I should be aware of?
Thank you. <comment><USER2> If you have the time, watch these three youtube channels by two long-term expats to understand Chinese society from a western point of view. Perhaps you can also get in touch with them - they seem to conduct frequent meetups with their subscribers.

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/user/serpentza](https://www.youtube.com/user/serpentza)

[2]: [https://www.youtube.com/user/laowhy86](https://www.youtube.com/user/laowhy86)

[3]: [https://www.youtube.com/user/churchillcustoms](https://www.youtube.com/user/churchillcustoms)

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately they both live in the far south of China and I think recently just got back from long trips so it seems unlikely that they will be in the area the submitter mentioned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Been living in China for 4-5 years. Back home these days.

1) I used ExpressVPN while I was there and never really had a big problem. We also used the GSuite for our company. Once in a while I had to change the protocol or a different country to connect through. Just make sure you configure your laptop and phone before you arrive in China - otherwise it will be a pain to download the clients for your VPN. In emergency you should be able to connect with data services on your foreign SIM, but that will cost you of course.

2) See my answer for 4

3) Google Translate was always useless for me to communicate , so I had to learn Chinese in the end.. Back in those days nobody spoke English, but I would probably download the Pleco app and use that. It will not translate complete sentences, but you can translate single words and then show that, if you get stuck in a conversations. These days, many people will probably be able to communicate with you in simple English and especially young people will be very good in English because they grew up with American TV shows and movies. They even sound like Americans some of them because they really pay attention to the pronunciation of words due to the Chinese language being a tonal language, I guess.

4) I would go to Shenzhen, if I had the time. It is 3 hour plane trip from Shanghai, I think. Go take a look at the electronics market at HuaQiangBei and go have lunch or dinner in Shekou. In Shenzhen there are a lot of maker communities, you can go check out, if you do a bit of research before hand.

5) Dont give a green hat, 4 bottles of wine or a clock as a gift. Otherwise you should be fine :D .. Also toilet paper. And if you plan to make any Chinese acquaintances you should probably install WeChat. You can use it to pay for stuff also - its a pretty good app.

I might be in Shenzhen soon for some business in fact. If it fits, we can go have a coffee and check things out together. Let me know :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. As for the VPN setup, I was planning to do something like this: [https://www.webdigi.co.uk/blog/2015/how-to-setup-your-own- pr...](https://www.webdigi.co.uk/blog/2015/how-to-setup-your-own-private- secure-free-vpn-on-the-amazon-aws-cloud-in-10-minutes/)

Worth a shot? OR should I just shut up and go with Express VPN?

> 4) I would go to Shenzhen Wow, thank you so much! That's something I > definitely don't want to miss!

> I might be in Shenzhen soon for some business in fact.

Sure, I'd love to meet you too! Keep me posted (my email is in my profile) :)

<comment><USER4> If you are not planning to spend time in countries, where VPN is required, then I would just buy a VPN service. Too much hastle with setting it up and the established providers are very good and easy to setup.

I will send you an email :)

<comment><USER5> Almost all commercial VPNs are blocked, also many openVPN style services are detected and blocked too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 1) The great firewall: None of the Google products would work. This means no access to important stuff like Google Docs, Gmail, etc.

Just set up a VPN _before_ you go.

Unfortunately, all my company stuff is on GSuite. Is there a way around this? I know VPNs aren't reliable either. Some recommendations would be appreciated. In other words, how do you get over this?

2) Are there some meetups where I can meetup fellow HNers?

Not sure, it would be cool to hear though

3) Language barrier - how do you manage? Google translate won't work as Google is blocked. Are there some recommendations?

If you download the Google Translate app before going you can add the Chinese language pack. This works in airplane mode. It has been a life saver for me there because it even does live/superimposed translations with the camera/video. Also add a VPN to your phone _before_ leaving. Sometimes there can be connectivity issues but thats the price of accessing instagram

4) Apart from sight-seeing and tourist spots, are there anything I should not miss in China, as a startup founder/developer?

Do a food tour with a western guide. Untours is pretty cool.

5) Anything else I should be aware of?

Gross air and crowds

<comment><AUTHOR> > Just set up a VPN before you go.

Thank you, this was something I wasn't sure of.

> This works in airplane mode.

Wow, didn't know that!

Thank you very much! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> 1)The great firewall: None of the Google products would work. This means no access to important stuff like Google Docs, Gmail, etc.

[https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand](https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand) installs Shadowsocks, which seems to work quite well in China, provided you find a VPS with good peering in mainland China. I hear a lot of people have good results with Vultr via Japanese data centers, other VPS providers in Hong Kong get good results too.

One of the maintainers of the project does live in China; if you have a question open up an issue in the discussions repo ([https://github.com/StreisandEffect/discussions](https://github.com/StreisandEffect/discussions)), I'm sure you'll get answers to whatever question you may have.

<comment><USER4> I used Streisand for a while and I can confirm, that it works very well in China. VPN galore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> 1\. Depending on your cellphone provider, you can get free roaming without extra charge (i.e. Rogers) . That way you can still use google products. If not, use Baidu. They have search, maps, translate.

4\. For beijing, checkout Tsinghua x-lab. Last time, I just walked in. Talked to a founder randomly, and got introduced to interesting tech spots i should checkout, as well as getting pitched on his startup :) They also organize different events from time to time.

Checkout Garage Cafe (not sure if its still open)

Meetup.com has some tech meetups or checkout [http://www.huodongxing.com/events?type=0&show=list&tag=%E5%8...](http://www.huodongxing.com/events?type=0&show=list&tag=%E5%88%9B%E4%B8%9A&city=%E5%8C%97%E4%BA%AC&page=1) which lists startup events in beijing

5\. Try out their dating apps (tantan) or even tinder to meet people even just as friends.

Stay at hostels and make some new friends.

Go to internet cafe - they call it (网吧 ). You get see how different it is when it comes to chinese gaming (you need qq or wechat), although some games require a national ID to play. In this case, may be better to bring along local friend.

<comment><AUTHOR> > For beijing, checkout Tsinghua x-lab. > Try out their dating apps (tantan)

Thanks, those are great suggestions! I'll check them out :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I went to Shanghai a decade ago, so not sure about 1/2.

3, get your hotel to write down where you want to go in Chinese for the day. Most restaurants had at least one English menu even back then.

4, In Shanghai they used to have these districts where you could buy knock-off gear. You go to an area, pick up a 'guide' and they take you to all these hidden shops. Then price quoted is 10 times higher than what they'll accept, haggling was half the point/fun. You can also smirk at the Americans who fail to do so. It was pretty cool seeing these backroom entrepreneurs there doing their thing.

Also on the island there was all this building work and massive buildings with seemingly no-one working in them. Seemed very odd at the time, but it's definitely worth checking out that area to see if it's still all paper tigers or if they actually do anything with them. The underwater tunnel ride to get there was pretty good too.

5, While I was in Shanghai we ended up in an expat bar and got to know some people in there that took us to Chinese nightclubs. Was a much better way of going out than trying to figure it out ourselves. This was like 10 years ago and I can't remember the name, but I really would recommend it as a way of seeing the night life outside of circuses, etc. It was on the river near the south end of where all the old colonial buildings are, all I can remember. We had a lot more fun after we did that. Basically finding some English speaking friends asap makes it a lot more fun, you can do tourism during the day, then have fun out at night

</comment><comment><USER10> 1) The great firewall: None of the Google products would work. This means no access to important stuff like Google Docs, Gmail, etc.

When I'm in Beijing, I usually use my company vpn.

3) Language barrier - how do you manage? Google translate won't work as Google is blocked. Are there some recommendations?

Young people speak good English there, try to communicate with them.

5) Anything else I should be aware of?

no toilet paper in public restrooms. carry a roll of toilet paper all the time.

<comment><USER11> Some additions:

1) Use the bowls when you eat, not the plates. The plate is for putting your garbage (bones, etc)

2) Wash the plates/cups with the tea they give you first.

3) Expect to squat when using the restroom for some places. No seats.

4) Do not be offended if people stare at you, or if you see people spitting on the street.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> 1) Setup and test your VPN before you go. If you decide to use an IPSec VPN expect it to fail around-half the time (even if properly configured). YMMV

3) Microsoft Translator works well in China and has 2-way text to speech, offline language packs (Traditional and Simplified), and photo analysis / text overlay.

5) Taking a bismuth tablet with every meal to avoid getting sick. Enjoy the street food.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Microsoft Translator works well in China

Thank you, I wasn't aware they had an app. Definitely helpful. Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Some random tips for PRC:

-download wechat. You can pretty much do everything from that app (chat, pay for things, order cars etc). -most young people in tier 1 cities speak decent English. The biggest challenge for me is taxi drivers, who often have limited proficiency. Solution is to either use Didi (ride hailing app) or carry a copy of your hotel's address in Chinese to show the driver. -if you're not staying in a major hotel, make sure you register with the local police department (major hotels do this for you when you check in). Failure to do so can result in your getting denied entry to PRC in the future.

-VPNs are now illegal in most of PRC so keep that in mind, but the laws may be different for foreigners. The last time I was there I found that if I roamed on my US cell phone service in a major city, I bypassed the firewall without needing a VPN. YMMV.

</comment><comment><USER14> 1) Grab a VPN, you can find ones that work in China quite reliably (I was there 1.5 years ago, that may have changed but I doubt it)

2) Hopefully!

3) Google Translate WILL work, just download the language for offline. And it does work well enough to say you're lost to someone or something similar.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Google Translate WILL work, just download the language for offline

I wasn't aware of that, thank you very much!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hi, I'm in Beijing, I have been here for ten years. We can meet in person if you want. I could be your local guide for free because I want to improve my English. My email is me at cpp dot io .

For your first question, you can setup an openvpn on Azure or AWS before you leave. Are you using iphone or Android? From what I know, it only works on Android and PC.

</comment><comment><USER5> 1) VPNs are also generally blocked since June 2017. Even a privately run OpenVPN without the obfuscate module will not work either. One reliable way is to use psiphon [1], also available for Android. Make sure to download it _before_ you enter China.

[1] [https://psiphon.ca/](https://psiphon.ca/)

</comment><comment><USER16> I can't say if this works in China, but Astrill VPN have a number of ip addresses that they label "China Optimized." I use them to access Netflix in the US from Ireland, but don't know if they work in China or not.

</comment><comment><USER17> Re #1, get a vps on a platform that isn't blocked (probably aws), and set up openvpn and ssh so you can have openvpn or socks5 proxies. Also as others have said baidu is comparable to google.

</comment><comment><USER18> Use your home mobile if there's a good deal.

In the UK Vodafone does £5 a day to use your tarrif in China. No speed restrictions, Google works and you have a UK IP address.

</comment><comment><USER19> 5) Carry toilet paper. Be prepared to squat.

</comment><comment><USER20> Google translate has __limited __functionality in China. Download the Chinese translation module for offline translation. As you type it will offer you a translation--this happens offline. The arrow that finishes the job doesn 't work, though, as it sends it off to Google's server.

Note that this does not work the other way around as the handwriting recognition engine isn't on the phone--you can't enter the Chinese at all without a connection.

The last time I was there I got a local sim, so long as I had a decent connection I had no problem with the VPN, but note that if your connection is marginal the VPN will be pretty close to unusable. This is also useful for using WiFi as almost all public WiFi requires you to enter your phone number and they respond with a text that either enables the connection or provides a password to use to log in. (Your username is your phone number.) This is the government trying to prevent anonymous internet use. (And note that internet cafes likewise do not permit anonymous use--you'll need your passport.)

I was using ExpressVPN on my last visit, it worked fine so long as the stuff involved wasn't too big. It would bog down into uselessness somewhere between 500k and 1mb. (And, of course, they released an update for my phone when I arrived. VPN off, blocked. VPN on, it would get stuck at about 4%. Practically every time I unlocked my phone it was nagging me about that update!)

Note that all the major cloud file hosts (dropbox etc.) are blocked over there also.

Language is mixed--the young __educated __people generally have enough English to communicate. The uneducated, though (the clerks, the taxi drivers etc) are another matter, their English is generally quite limited. Note that their written English might very well be better than their speaking--the most extreme case of this I encountered was a clerk in an internet cafe who as far as I could tell had zero English. Turns out she could spell all numbers perfectly but her pronunciation was so bad that even when I knew what she was saying it was hard to find the resemblance between what she said and English. Unless you 're in a very tourist area I figure all communications with such people will be by gesture etc, or my phone. (Unless I'm alone I leave such matters to my wife, though--she's a native speaker.)

Note: Your hotel will almost certainly have business cards. Show them to the taxi driver. Some even have English/Chinese for "please take me to <hotel> <address>".

The situation is getting better--plenty of junior high/high school kids have at least some English, if I'm alone and standing still I'm often approached by groups that want to try their English out on me. (Strangely, schoolkids __never __approach us when we are together. The only time we have ever been approached was by a few graduate students and that was in a city with virtually zero foreigners--I didn 't see a white face until we were leaving and some showed up for some sort of athletic competition.)

Note that lower end hotels (decent but nothing fancy) are likely not able to take foreigners, although some look the other way for foreigners accompanied by locals--they register the room to the local's ID (Even if the foreigners and locals are in different rooms) and ignore the registration requirements. (The government insists on knowing where every foreigner spends the night. The hotel does this registration for you, if you're staying in a private place you need to go down to the police station yourself within 24 hours. Requirements vary, supposedly you need the owner with you but we have done it entirely on our own in some places.)

Since this is a business trip, beware of industrial espionage. Don't bring any sensitive data you don't have to. The most security-conscious have separate devices used only for China.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much for the detailed advice, that was very helpful! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Went for 3 weeks as tourist and after typing this up it looks like I need to make a blog post.

For #1, unless something changed they allow chain hotels and some other big chain spots to get through it. I had no problem using any services, google, yahoo, etc at those locations. There was a couple of hotspots we went to where it would block you but I just connected to my work's VPN that runs in the States. Hopefully you are not going to China to use the Internet, you can survive without it for 2 weeks.

You can download google translate for offline translations. Have used this for Mandarin, Spanish and Italian and works great. One thing to know though is China has lots of different dialects, some of them are similar (like Mexican Spanish vs Puerto Rican Spanish) but others are quite different, to the point of someone that speaks mainland may not be able to communicate with someone from this other village or coastal town. In the big cities you mentioned this should not be a problem (I went all over so had some problems a few times). Learn things like thank you, water, bathroom, food, train, yes, no and you can survive almost anywhere. Since you are going for work you will probably have other people around you that know the area, language, good spots, places to avoid, etc.

Before you go, I would ask your company: is there going to be a translator, driver, guide? Drivers and guides can be had for cheap.

\---#4--- You can not miss going to a mall there. Hear me out, a mall is like its own self contained city. 5+ stories. Has everything from food, to tech, to salons, clothes, etc and it is absolutely humbling, amazing, wonderful and fun to walk around, window show, or actually shop.

The food. I ate better the 3 weeks I was there than anywhere else I have ever been. Go to hot pot (pay by the hour!). Go to dim sum. Eat vendor food. Find a place and have pigeon, real peking duck (where they cut it and serve it at your table for you), and jelly fish.

Find a fish / sea market. I went to one where quite literally you could not see the ends of the thing from where I was standing because it was so long (and well yes there was smog).

If you can find any sort of palace (aka mansion / estate) I would highly recommend it.

The obvious tourist traps are obvious for a reason, The Great Wall, Forbidden City, etc.

\--#5-- Unless you get some Yuans from your bank at home don't both with conversion services, just go to your bank in China or any ATM. If you use a credit card and they ask you if you want them to change the charge to USD for you the answer is always no (they charge a fee and conversion is not always accurate) - use this anytime abroad. Also make sure your CC has no foreign transaction fees and you call them and your bank to let them know where you will be so they do not block your card.

EVERYTHING is negotiable. But be aware once you show the cash or order the item the deal is locked. See something you want to buy? Point to it, and ask "how much?" or just shrug and they will barter with you by trying to speak, (unless you don't look like them) then they will write down a number on their hand or a piece of paper. You take the pen, mark thru the number and write your own number. Back and forth until you come to agreement. Circle the number and make sure the seller agrees, then you pay and get your item.

Bring a roll of toilet paper with you.

Make sure you have all your shots.

Do not make yourself a target (ie dont wave money, dont wear shirts that say "im a dumb american", don't walk alone down a dark alley at 3am).

Cash (and gold) is king.

Keep a copy of your passport back at the hotel. (some say keep the copy on you and real one at hotel but in a pinch your passport is the most powerful document you will ever touch, read the "to whom it may concern" to understand the power of it).

Do not use your hands to touch food.

If you have a weak stomach I would suggest training yourself by eating raw sushi.

Do not ask what you are eating until after you have had 2 bites.

Most meals are family style, get over it and enjoy the best way to eat.

Hope you like tea. If you pour yourself some make sure to top off your neighbors (don't ask, just do).

Use chop sticks before you go. They will try to offer you a fork behind your back but show your fearless chop stick skills; even if they are bad.

You can STAB and SCOOP with chopsticks, it is kosher I promise.

I was told that using your personal cell phone on China Cell was a bad idea as a non-resident by someone I trust. We bought burners at the market outside the airport.

Obviously bring a camera and take pictures but don't _focus_ on taking pictures.

You drink 1 (maaaaaaaybe) 2 beers and thats it.

A smile is universal.

<comment><AUTHOR> This was beautiful to read, well written and very helpful, thank you very much! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> American speaking here who spent 2+ years in China.

3) Use fanyi.baidu.com (Baidu's equivalent of Google translate) and translate.bing.com -- both work really well in my honest opinion, even for entire sentences.

Additionally, use Pleco. It's the world's biggest Chinese-English dictionary and it's all offline with a plethora of example sentences. You will love it.

In tourist spots, be extremely suspicious in anyone approaching you AND speaking english. They 99 % try to rip you off. Most Chinese are lovable and inviting and hospitable indeed, but they will NEVER 1) approach YOU and NEVER 2) speak English.

5) Download the Beijing and Shanghai Metro app, such that 1) You always know where you are (GPS) and 2) know which line to take if you have no internet

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, those apps are super useful! Thank you very much :)</comment></comment>


V8worker – Minimal Go binding to V8 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ry/v8worker <comment><USER2> By Ryan Dahl: the guy that created node.js. I wonder what else he's been up to.

</comment><comment><USER3> I find it interesting that many high profile "noders" have switched to Go (example [0]), but now its very creator? Wow!

As someone who's switched from (C++/Java to) node to (Python then) Go, I can understand where they're coming from though.

0: [https://github.com/tj](https://github.com/tj)

<comment><USER4> Where are they coming from?

Javascript seems like the future, not Go (speaking as a python engineer).

<comment><USER5> This feels, apologies, slightly uninformed. JS obviously has a bright near- term future with so many engineers working on the runtime side, from Google, Mozilla, etc.

But the speed at which Go has been picked up - especially by high-traffic, massively-concurrent systems and companies like Google (obviously), Cloudflare, 6Wunderkinder, BBC, bitbucket, Digital Ocean, Disqus, Dropbox, ngmoco:), Heroku, Shopify, Tumblr, Zynga...

I realize a list doesn't a language make, (and these are just off the top of my head) but for each of these companies Go sits at the heart of the most mission-critical systems, often for extremely fast injection and analysis of huge data streams. (Funny enough, many come from a Python core, like Disqus and Dropbox, among others).

I don't think Go's splash was as big as node's, but it's found its way in to more organizations than not.

<comment><USER6> > I don't think Go's splash was as big as node's, but it's found its way in to > more organizations than not.

I'm having trouble understanding the second half of this statement. The two most clear readings are that over 50% of organizations use Go, or that over 50% of the organizations that have used Node now use Go (while still possibly also using Node). I doubt you intended either of these meanings. How am I misreading you?

EDIT: do you perhaps mean that over 50% of the organizations that use Node and have experimented with Go have decided to move forward with more Go projects?

<comment><USER7> I think the statement themartorana is probably contextually inaccurate.

That being said, there are plenty of stories coming out about how companies are evaluating Go and seeing performance increases in mission critical application; as opposed to stories of people ripping out pieces of Go and replacing it with something more optimal for their situation.

<comment><USER5> _...is probably contextually inaccurate._

Yup, those should have been two separate statements:

1\. Node made a bigger initial splash than go

2\. A large number of organizations that deal with high-volume, highly- concurrent data sets and API traffic are either in production with Go, or are experimenting with it. (All the companies I mentioned have Go in production)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can someone explain motivation for this? Why would someone need Go bindings for V8? What's the practical applications of this?

Not trying to be a jerk, just plain curiosity

<comment><USER9> Embed javascript as a scripting language into a Go app.

Build bindings to system functions in Go (e.g. write the common parts of an app in JS, run it in V8, write platform-specific things in Go).

Write the next Node.js/Io.js in Go?

<comment><USER10> > Embed javascript as a scripting language into a Go app.

Sure, but you could already do that. There are several V8 implementations in Go you could use directly to invoke javascript code, but you'd have to pass values directly in and get return values directly out to interface between the two languages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I imagine there would need to be some work getting this to work with Node.js/node-gyp/nan. Can anyone speak to the implications of this project and using Go bindings with node? Is this something that could possibly be done with a current version of Node/iojs? Or will it require a new version to ship with Go support built in?

> which will trigger a build of V8

This part gives me the impression changes will need to be made in Node/iojs to support Go bindings, rather than individual modules being able to plug into an existing build of V8 in Node. But perhaps I just don't understand exactly what node-gyp is doing with today's C++ bindings..

</comment><comment><USER12> Will V8 objects that reference Go objects, and vice versa, be properly garbage collected? How are these cycles handled by the GC?

<comment><USER11> There are shared references? I got the impression the bindings were for message passing.

> This exposes a non-blocking message passing interface to the V8 javascript > engine. Go and JavaScript interact by sending and receiving messages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if something like this could be paired up with ReactNative?</comment>


Ghislaine Maxwell had ex-British military as security at New Hampshire estate - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/ghislaine-maxwell-british-military-new-hampshire/2020/07/13/3987e922-c531-11ea-a99f-3bbdffb1af38_story.html <comment><USER2> I'm no fan of hers, but this seems like sensationalized click bait.

Why is it important or noteworthy that she employed ex-military as personal security? Many (rich) people do and many private security firms actively recruit ex-military. US citizens can and do serve in the British military and even for the SAS.

Is there any suggestion that that she was knowingly employing people who were not entitled to work in the USA? That might be relevant to her case.

I don't see the reality that she had private security to be relevant in any way.</comment>


Capture and Replay User Interaction on Your Site with Spion IO - <AUTHOR> http://spion.io <comment><AUTHOR> As front-end frameworks constantly improve, more and more responsive and complicated UIs are in demand. With all the long hours spent in developing UI/UX, wouldn't it be great to have a way to gauge the UX of your site? Spion IO is a lightweight focus group management API that can capture and replay a user's interaction on your site so you can easily review sessions and improve the UX of everything you build.</comment>


You Might as Well Be a Great Copy Editor - <AUTHOR> https://blog.regehr.org/archives/1471 <comment></comment>


Supercentenarians are concentrated into regions with no birth certificates - <AUTHOR> https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/704080v1 <comment><USER2> I am reminded of [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/study-questions- ag...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/study-questions-age-worlds- oldest-woman-180971153/) which lays out the case that the oldest woman on record, Jeanne Calment, was actually her daughter Yvonne who substituted herself for her mother in 1934 to avoid inheritance taxes.

<comment><USER3> Yes, there's an interesting philosophical question here about burdens of proof and Humean 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence'. Calment's claim is to be the oldest person out of billions of people, and she is the oldest by a truly extraordinary margin - no one has even come close to reaching her record before or since. So, which is more likely: that her claim however improbable ( _someone_ has to win the lottery) is completely correct (and she simply had some unique luck or mutation enabling her excess longevity), or that some highly unusual (but still more likely than '1 in tens of billions') circumstance (such as a complicated tax & insurance fraud) has led to a mistake? Indeed, how would one ever be sure of such a claim, short of the isotopic testing advocated in OP - which will, incidentally, stop working in the future?

(This is a general problem of priors and evidence and model uncertainty I think about occasionally: [https://www.gwern.net/Modus](https://www.gwern.net/Modus) [https://www.gwern.net/Littlewood](https://www.gwern.net/Littlewood) [https://www.gwern.net/Mail-delivery#on-model- uncertainty](https://www.gwern.net/Mail-delivery#on-model-uncertainty) [https://www.gwern.net/Research-criticism](https://www.gwern.net/Research- criticism) [https://www.gwern.net/Everything](https://www.gwern.net/Everything) [https://www.gwern.net/Turing-complete#on-seeing-through- and-...](https://www.gwern.net/Turing-complete#on-seeing-through-and-unseeing) )

<comment><USER4> I really wouldn't say "nobody has come close" \- she was 3 years older (122 vs 119) than the next oldest verified person, and around five years from most of the next top ten - most of them died at 117.

If she was, say, 132, I'd be more suspicious, but 122 sounds more reasonable for statistical outliers in an incredibly complex process.

<comment><USER3> The problem is, 3 years is a huge gap. If you look at all the other centenarians, they really do cluster within months of 117-119. And then you have Calment, who is the only outlier and who is like 30+ months past them all (and this is at a time of life where the annual mortality rate is like >50%). I plotted the age gap between the record holders once, and it looks basically like a flat line and then a single dot at the top of the graph corresponding to Calment. It may be a complex process, but at least for everyone _else_ they die on schedule.

<comment><USER5> It's also worth pointing out that all the Abrahamic religions predict a 120-year limit, which prediction dates back thousands of years (Genesis 6:3). So regardless of your opinion of Abrahamic religions, there are a lot of people who would care a great deal about verifying those extra three years!

<comment><USER6> >all the Abrahamic religions predict a 120-year limit

Do you have any more information on this? It sounds like interesting reading, but all I can find on Google is a link to this post.

<comment><USER7> [https://www.versebyverseministry.org/bible-answers/are- peopl...](https://www.versebyverseministry.org/bible-answers/are-people- limited-to-120-years-of-life)

from [https://www.google.com/search?q=bible+120+year+age+limit](https://www.google.com/search?q=bible+120+year+age+limit)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A few years ago, the government of Japan decided to have people visit everyone over the age of 100, to see how they were getting along and what they were doing right.[1] They found 231 cases where pensions were being paid out but the person could not be found.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/world/asia/15japan.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/world/asia/15japan.html)

<comment><USER9> Thanks for finding that link! I saw this on the news at the time and I've never been able to find something in English to talk about it. One of things that shook out from this is that they redid the longevity studies in Okinawa and discovered that people in Okinawa have the same life expectancy as everyone else in Japan (which is not much different than the rest of the world). All of those nutrition studies in the 70's were based on government census data -- which turned out to be massive pension fraud.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> There is also the reverse process: people who are older than officially recorded. When my in-laws came to the USA from Vietnam after the war they wanted to be able to work for a long time before anyone forced the to retire, so they just said they were 25 years old, an understatement of quite a number of years. Upheaval and displacement tend to wipe out government records.

<comment><USER11> > _When my in-laws came to the USA from Vietnam after the war they wanted to > be able to work for a long time before anyone forced the to retire, so they > just said they were 25 years old_

God bless your parents. I don't care much for the immigration debate in our country, but we should be actively recruiting people like this.

<comment><USER12> >> I don't care much for the immigration debate in our country, but we should be actively recruiting people like this.

Just to be clear, you're indicating that the criteria we should be selecting for is people willing to falsify information on official documents.

<comment><USER13> I think what he was getting at is that we should be selecting for people willing to work hard for long periods of time.

I also suspect that if you posed a force-choice question to most Americans, "Who would you rather have in this country: people who are willing to falsify official documents so they can work hard for longer, or people who stick to the letter of the law so that they can work as little as possible?", they would choose the former.

<comment><USER12> The criteria mentioned seem both parochial and specious.

I'd prefer meaningful criteria that result in new citizens who would make positive contributions to a community, not criteria that would encourage otherwise ethical people to falsify official documents nor ones that equate toil with virtue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Thousands of Japanese centenarians may have died decades ago

> The justice ministry said the survey found that more than 77,000 people > listed as still alive in local government records would have to be aged at > least 120, and 884 would be 150 or older.

> The nationwide survey was launched in August after police discovered the > mummified corpse of Sogen Kato, who at 111 was listed as Tokyo's oldest man, > in his family home 32 years after his death.

> Kato's granddaughter has been arrested on suspicion of abandoning his body > and receiving millions of yen in pension payments after his unreported > death.

> Soon after came the discovery that a 113-year-old woman listed as Tokyo's > oldest resident had not been seen by her family for more than 20 years. > Welfare officials have yet to locate Fusa Furuya, who was last seen in about > 1986.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20627021](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20627021)

<comment><USER15> > 884 would be 150 or older.

It is kind of disturbing that these people are officially thought to be that age, but that nobody had been looking them up before despite them literally, albeit theoretically, being the oldest people alive on Earth!

<comment><USER16> Winston Churchill had special shipments of cigars from India with associated paperwork. The paperwork persisted a few decades after Indian independence and his death. Depending on data keeping, it will take a crackdown to find suspicious pensioners.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Boy this may change some recommendations about the "blue zone" diets and lifestyles.

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

<comment><USER18> I doubt that: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Zone#Characteristics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Zone#Characteristics)

Pretty standard, unanimous lifestyle advice. Stay social, stay active, not too much alcohol, lots of plants, avoid stress, don't smoke.

<comment><USER17> How much of those are based on erroneous correlations based on blue zone data though?

>In his book, Buettner provides a list of nine lessons, covering the lifestyle of blue zones people:[13]

>Moderate, regular physical activity.

>Life purpose.

>Stress reduction.

>Moderate caloric intake.

>Plant-based diet.

>Moderate alcohol intake, especially wine.

>Engagement in spirituality or religion.

>Engagement in family life.

>Engagement in social life.

We don't know which ones of those are real and which signify you live in a zone which has bad records for birth certificates.

<comment><USER19> Also what does "high vegetable intake" or "Plant-based diet" mean? These can mean wildly different things to different people.

For example, how many people over 100 are lifelong vegetarians? Vegans? I bet the number is extremely small (or zero in the case of vegans, a term coined in 1944), but that's what many people think of when one says "plant-based diet".

<comment><USER20> Plant based diet?

Well, that means lots of HFCS and starch, fried in vegetable oil, of course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Note that the introduction of birth certificates in the US only reduced supercentarians, it didn't eliminate them.

I would be willing to accept that most are frauds, but I do think it is possible for someone to live to be a supercentarian. I have met a couple people who are around 100 who seemed healthy and had it all together mentally. I'm sure some decent percent of people in that position have the ability to live for another 10 years

<comment><USER22> Of course, but that isn't what this study is about or why it (and other's like it) are important.

Researchers have spent tons of time trying to discover why certain areas are ripe with supercentenarians - what is it about their diet or environment or genetics or social structure. As a random person in the US, I have particularly heard about Okinawa in this regard.

This study is strongly implying that the only thing special about those areas is their ability and desire to commit fraud.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> When the grandmother of, let's say a friend, passed away at 96, I was surprised to note the local newspaper mention her age as 106, no doubt due to the political influence of said friend's relatives. I didn't realise at the time that this is a sort of thing people like to brag about.

<comment><USER24> You don't think it was simply an arithmetic mistake by the editor of the local deaths column? Given a birth date of 19xx and a death date of 20xx, an off- by-10 error doesn't sound too far-fetched.

<comment><USER23> The family didn't know her date of birth. They had an estimate of her year of birth because she'd said she was x years old when her first child was born.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I guess i'm gonna start planning moving to a no-birth-certificate region. Hoping the somewhat late move will still have a positive effect on my life- and healthspan.

<comment><USER26> Avoiding refined sugars and grains will go a very long way towards this, which is likely a large part of the longer lived combined with modern medicine availability.

<comment><USER27> Right now the data is correlating better with no-birth-certificate regions so I'll follow the data.

<comment><USER28> Looks like the Antarctica continent has a large ratio of those regions. Time to pack the bags.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I've wondered about this for a long time. Finally somebody investigated, and lo and behold, a good chunk of this phenomenon is simply the result of lying.

<comment><USER30> [https://dilbert.com/strip/2013-03-07](https://dilbert.com/strip/2013-03-07)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Odd, since a birth certificate is not actually a valid proof of identity.

There is no biometric associated with a birth certificate created in year X that can be used to prove that the baby named in it has grown up to become the person claiming that identity in year Y.

An actual background check has to establish a chain of evidence linking the birth to the person being checked. This requires interviewing relatives, friends and acquaintances, collecting school and business records, drivers license records and any other public or private records.

<comment><USER32> > This requires interviewing relatives, friends and acquaintances, collecting > school and business records, drivers license records and any other public or > private records.

We are talking about people born before 1910 here. Friends and acquaintances are all dead by definition. Drivers license won't come into play for decades. Other mid-life documents like marriage are also going to be decades later.

It's a hard problem. Especially when identity fraud for other reasons may be involved (a chield taking the identity of a parent to bypass inheritance taxes).

We need a biological test. Is there a biological marker that can attest of someone's age?

<comment><USER22> > Is there a biological marker that can attest of someone's age?

No, especially when you'd expect that the same qualities that might allow someone to live a very long time would also make them appear "biologically" younger. We don't have rings like trees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> While I've also congettured in the past that at least a good chunk of extreme supercentenarians are due to anagraphical errors if not outright fraud, I do not think that the paper support the thesis well.

For starter they do not have a global model, it seems that they handpicked different statistics for different areas that support their thesis (they do not even show anything concrete for Japan).

Regarding Sardinia, their numbers seem actually wrong: looking at the raw Istat data the numbers for 55 year life expectancy for the Sardinian provinces seem in line with the rest of Italy (95-96%) putting Sardinia somewhere in the middle of the (quite tight) Italian distribution.

It is possible that the researcher averaged the data over a longer period of time that I bothered to look is possible, but the paper doesn't discuss the methodology.

Their fitting, p value not withstanding, also seem a bit adventurous; the fact that all and almost only Sardinian provinces are extrme outliers shoud have been a tell. The rest of the Italian bprovinces are in a tight uniform cluster.

Sardinia, except for a very brief period in the mid 2010s,has only 4 provinces, so it is possible that messed up their data extraction (they show 8 provinces).

Also Sardinia is not particularly poorer than the rest of Southern Italy and actually has a lower crime rate (which they suggest but not outright state is a factor).

A better paper would probably try to build a single model for Japan, Italy and US using actual mortality, crime and poverty rates.

</comment><comment><USER34> Did anyone pull the full study? Does it come out and take the supercentenarian-ship claimants to task for lack of probity?

<comment><USER35> It explicitly mentions pension fraud -- who wouldn't want to retire a little earlier?

> _The hypothesis that these relatively low literacy rates and incomes are > generating age-reporting errors and pension fraud, and therefore remarkable > age records, seems overlooked. ..._

> _This issue presents a substantial problem for remarkable-age databases, > embodied in a deliberately provocative, if seemingly absurd, hypothesis:_

> _Every 'supercentenarian' is an accidental or intentional identity thief, > who owns real and validated 110+ year-old documents, and is passably good at > their job._

<comment><USER36> Interestingly the holder of the record for oldest human being remains Jeanne Calment and there's a lot of evidence for her record. Wikipedia mentions a theory that her daughter might have assumed her identity in the 1930's[1] but it doesn't appear very credible.

So I guess it _is_ possible to live that old, just extremely unlikely.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment#Scepticism_rega...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment#Scepticism_regarding_age)

<comment><USER37> There's a very detailed analysis of Calment showing that it is most likely that the daughter replaced the mother, since the facial features of Jeanne Calment as a middle-aged or elderly woman don't match her earlier photos at all...but are a splitting image of her daughter's facial features.

Also, a lot of her photos feature her wearing clothes that were not in style at the ages she appears to be in the photos--but would have been right for her daughter.

And there's the bit where she keeps calling her putative husband her father...

And finally it's just plain weird that her son-in-law (i.e., her daughter's husband) moved in with her after her daughter's supposed death and lived with her in a common-law relationship for decades. But it makes perfect sense if it was actually just the daughter assuming her mom's identity for tax evasion purposes.

<comment><USER36> I replied to this in a similar comment above, I disagree that this analysis is very detailed, or at least that it's more detailed than the evidence _in favor_ of Jeanne being who she claims to be.

I looked at the picture comparisons, it's not like they had 20Megapixel HDR cameras back then, the quality is not great. Besides only a handful of pictures exist, with a lot of variations in lighting and exposition. It's possible that it's true, but it's not exactly overwhelming evidence in my opinion.

>And finally it's just plain weird that her son-in-law (i.e., her daughter's husband) moved in with her after her daughter's supposed death and lived with her in a common-law relationship for decades.

Wikipedia says: "By the 1954 census, she was still registered in the same apartment, together with her son-in-law, retired Colonel Billot, Yvonne's widower; the census documents list Jeanne as "mother" in 1954 and "widow" in 1962. Frédéric Billot lived next door with his wife Renée."

Doesn't make it sound quite as weird as you make it out to be.

<comment><USER37> _Wikipedia says: "By the 1954 census, she was still registered in the same apartment, together with her son-in-law, retired Colonel Billot, Yvonne's widower; the census documents list Jeanne as "mother" in 1954 and "widow" in 1962. Frédéric Billot lived next door with his wife Renée."

Doesn't make it sound quite as weird as you make it out to be._

That is extremely weird, and the simplest and most logical explanation is that Yvonne was committing estate tax fraud to avoid a ruinous tax on her inheritance of the family store.

 _Besides only a handful of pictures exist, with a lot of variations in lighting and exposition. It 's possible that it's true, but it's not exactly overwhelming evidence in my opinion._

Yes, but pictures of the _two_ of them are available and the older pictures of Jeanne clearly match the younger pictures of Yvonne. Jeanne would have needed to have had face surgery or some serious facial structural changes to have the face she did in her old age. The simplest explanation, again, is that Jeanne died young(ish) and Yvonne pretended to be her.

And again, this also explains why for decades, despite otherwise being sound of mind and coherent, she kept referring to her husband as her father in casual conversation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Easiest way to live past 100? Just say you did. 2nd easiest: use your grandfather's birth certificate.

</comment><comment><USER39> Man, I must be old--the first thing to come to mind was the Dannon yogurt ads from the 1970s with the old people of Soviet Georgia. And, at the time, Dannon actually caught some flack because there was no documentation of how old these people really were.

<comment><USER40> Do not condemn those people as liars or frauds. They did what any sensible person would have done, avoided death by conscription during the Great War by assuming the identities of their older cousins, brothers, uncles and fathers.

<comment><USER39> Probably some of them didn't really know for sure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Dealing with my somewhat prematurely elderly father of 73 and his issues (my gps all lived relatively heartily into their 80 and 90s) I have to conclude my options in a few decades will be self-limited to driving my car off a cliff if I can't upload myself into a robot husk.

What I'm saying is that supercentenarianism seems heavily overrated.

<comment><USER3> If you are in bad shape at 73, you are probably not going to make it to 100. This is called 'compression of morbidity'. As people age better, the period of disability & lower quality of life shrinks, so you tend to live longer in good health but then once something goes wrong, you'll be dead quickly. A lot of centenarians are pretty active, even driving cars, until months or weeks before they die (and they may simply die in their sleep unexpectedly). It's the people who are in bad health in their 50s or 60s who can look forward to decades of expensive & painful ill health before they finally die... In any case, most centenarians I've seen interviewed seem happy to be alive, and don't wish for the sweet mercy of oblivion, so I am happy to take them at their word that they find their life worth living.

<comment><USER41> Most definitely, my father has recently been falling which is understandable with his Parkinson's but concerning as it is a recent development. My mother is exhibiting far more vitality and will probably outdo my gps as they all lived relatively unhealthy mid-Century American lives but into their 80s and 90s.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> > relative poverty and short lifespan constitute unexpected predictors of > centenarian and supercentenarian status, and support a primary role of fraud > and error in generating remarkable human age records

So I think for lack of birth certificates I can imagine the underlying process of unregistered people not being aware about their true age.

The claim that high poverty and crime rates produce such fraud feels prejudiced. also why would Sardinia be different in that regard compared to Sicily or poor regions on the Italian mainland?

Also I would be interested in how many hypothesis these researches tested on the data set and on whether they performed proper adjustments of thresholds (bonferroni correction)

<comment><USER43> As far as I know, all of these records are maintained at the comune[1] level in Italy, so high crime/corruption in one comume might manifest itself differently from how it does in another comune.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> > Finally, the designated 'blue zones' of Sardinia, Okinawa, and Ikaria > corresponded to regions with low incomes, low literacy, high crime rate and > short life expectancy relative to their national average. As such, relative > poverty and short lifespan constitute unexpected predictors of centenarian > and supercentenarian status, and support a primary role of fraud and error > in generating remarkable human age records.

Or, bureaucracy kills.

</comment><comment><USER45> I think the point is that any dietary or lifestyle recommendations to achieve a long life need to be reassessed.

Do recommendations to reduce intake or intermittent fasting rely on unverified population ages?

My personal take on living long is to get regular health checkups and seek medical care early if there are any issues.

What do people like Queen Elizabeth, Warren Buffett, Rupert Murdoch do to remain healthy and still working at their age?

</comment><comment><USER46> Interesting enough, the article doesn't mention that in a lot of places (and possibly a bit too long ago for any of those to be affected), baptismal certificates substituted for birth certificates

Sure, there might have been some time difference between date of birth from date of baptism, but it was usually short enough (even if it might have been a couple of years)

<comment><USER32> But surely you are baptised after you are born so it would skew the data in the other direction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Another explanation could be that all the young people have moved away from the poorest areas and older people stayed and kept getting older. It depends if they are dividing supercentenarian population by today's population or by the area's population when they were born.

</comment><comment><USER48> One thing I heard (not sure whether it's true) is that in Ottoman empire, when I child died, parents often used the his or her birth certificate for the next child. That way they could avoid all the associated paperwork.

</comment><comment><USER49> I found suspicious data when looking at voter records: [https://enki.org/2018/12/07/finding-unusual- voters/](https://enki.org/2018/12/07/finding-unusual-voters/) [https://quark.cards/voters/Florida/oldest](https://quark.cards/voters/Florida/oldest)

</comment><comment><USER50> Proof that bureaucracy kills!

</comment><comment><USER51> Elephant in the room...no birth certificates.

<comment><USER52> I also have been thinking of ways that I can extend my life. I'm not sure this is what I'm looking for. Perhaps a therapy animal such as a dog or a cat... It seems like the probability of an accident occurring with an elephant in the room would be very high, and only a small percentage of people would live past a hundred.

<comment><USER53> Just claim you were born years earlier, tada!

<comment><USER51> How old was this guy?... man he was so old, it was before written history. well then, he must be a centenarian then. for sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> The lawyer in me suggests removing that comment asap. Lying on immigration forms, no matter the reason or timeline, can be a big deal. The US recently setup a "denaturalization task force" to look for technical reasons to deny/deport and generally be evil towards immigrants who have done things like lie on immigration forms. But maybe you really hate your in-laws.

"A United States Citizenship and Immigration Services team in Los Angeles has been reviewing more than 2,500 naturalization files for possible denaturalization, focusing on identity fraud and willful misrepresentation. More than 100 cases have been referred to the Department of Justice for possible action." (2018)

[https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-ln- denaturali...](https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-ln- denaturalization-20180812-story.html)

<comment><USER55> I see your point, but are there records to verify his claim? If not, what's the government going to do?

<comment><USER56> Oh, I dunno, lock people up and/or deport them anyway?

[https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-citizens- ice-20180...](https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-citizens- ice-20180427-htmlstory.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Homer: "Oh Lisa! There's no record of a hurricane ever hitting Springfield."

Lisa: "Yes, but the records only go back to 1978 when the Hall of Records was mysteriously blown away!"

</comment><comment><USER58> I guess that means the secret to a long life is the lack of government paperwork.

<comment><USER59> Bet they claimed there benefits _nudge_ _nudge_ _wink_

Sorry to be cynical.

<comment><USER60> It's odd you're down voted when other comments in this page say they did exactly what you're implying.

<comment><USER61> I'd rather people said what they mean, instead of trying to be witty. Also typos.

<comment><USER59> Aww diddums

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> >Instead of prompting skepticism, under the relatively safe assumption that smoking, drinking, poverty, and illiteracy should not enrich for remarkable longevity records, these contra-indications of survival are routinely ignored. In contrast, it could be suggested that the abundance of supercentenarians in these regions reflect high rates of undetected error.

One bluezone is loma linda, california. Why was this not factored in this study. I find this study to be quite biased as well.

</comment><comment><USER63> so it's time for Carbon-14 then ...

<comment><USER64> Carbon-14 datings works because once an organism dies, it stops exchanging carbon with its environment, so C14 stops coming in. Carbon dating any living organism will come back with "it died 0 years ago/hasn't died yet", give or take whatever details make it more complicated in reality than it is in theory, as it always is.

<comment><USER65> Is there any dead carbon, like perhaps in the teeth? Have never heard of it being done, but would be neat.

<comment><USER66> Apparently it is possible to do radiocarbon dating on tooth enamel. Enamel contains 0.4% carbon and is indeed frozen at time of development. Unfortunately, we're limited to post-nuclear testing because without the atmospheric diffusion C14 has very low precision due to the half-life of 5730 years.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2957015/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2957015/)

[https://www.nature.com/articles/437333a](https://www.nature.com/articles/437333a)

<comment><USER65> Thanks! That's interesting, to use the post-nuclear curve as a modern clock, instead of using C14's half life for an ancient clock. For a given tooth they seem to assume all enamel was from one date, during childhood.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> I live in Sardinia. We have both birth certificates and supercentenarians.

<comment><USER68> From the first paragraph of the abstract:

> In Italy, which has more uniform vital registration, remarkable longevity is > instead predicted by low per capita incomes and a short life expectancy.

> Finally, the designated 'blue zones' of Sardinia, Okinawa, and Ikaria > corresponded to regions with low incomes, low literacy, high crime rate and > short life expectancy relative to their national average.

<comment><USER69> I didn't really understand what the point was there - are they saying it's because of fraud? Or a real thing?

<comment><USER70> I think they are implying that it could be fraud, but since there are birth certificates available, you couldn't commit this fraud by simply making up a birth date. So a fraudulent supercentenarian would likely have assumed the identity of someone older, perhaps to claim a pension earlier.

As for the correlations, low incomes would provide a motive for age pension fraud. Short life expectancy being correlated with more supercentenarians suggests it's not because people in those areas are naturally healthier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I would guess the biggest factors are very limited consumption of heavily refined foods (in particular sugar and refined grains) as well as some access to modern medicine (antibiotics, hospital births).

edit: And, of course, there's a lot of fraud cases.</comment>


Querying an RDF triplestore using SPARQL and Relational pipes - <AUTHOR> https://relational-pipes.globalcode.info/v_0/examples-rdf-sparql.xhtml <comment><USER2> For research, I created experimental RDF storage on top of Parquet and Apache Spark for querying big graphs[1]. It converts the RDF graph in a sort of property graph, where we have a row for each entity and where the columns are the all possible properties. The trick is to use a columnar format with the proper encoding (in our case Parquet), to solve the problem of having a lot of columns and a huge NULLs space. With this representation we can eliminate costly joins for most of the common queries, but also reduce the size of the necessary ones.

[1] PRoST [https://github.com/tf-dbis-uni- freiburg/PRoST](https://github.com/tf-dbis-uni-freiburg/PRoST)

</comment><comment><USER3> Wikidata has a great SPARQL editor with plenty of examples and built in visualizations:

[https://query.wikidata.org/](https://query.wikidata.org/)

<comment><USER4> My experience is that it's a opaque query tool and the wikidata editing process does nothing to make it easier. Maybe if you know the ins and outs of your data and at least a basic understanding of the query language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is an awesome post! I'll be rereading this a couple of times ;-)

> Several ways of connecting to an RDF triplestore

There is another way to connect to an RDF triple store [1]. It's done by a company called Triply.

Triply made a product that is basically a GUI that allows you to host RDF data and use SPARQL to query it. You can also query other public datasets [2]. Currently, it's a B2B offering only, but there is a consumer version in the works. I wouldn't know when it comes out.

For now, you can try out the SPARQL querying feature on public datasets [2].

Disclaimer: I work there recently, this post is my own opinion, not of Triply.

[1] That uses Virtuoso or Jena under the hood.

[2] This example uses DBPedia: [https://triplydb.com/wikimedia/dbpedia/sparql/dbpedia](https://triplydb.com/wikimedia/dbpedia/sparql/dbpedia)

</comment><comment><USER6> I was wondering if there're use cases for this in the real world where relational database doesn't cut it?

<comment><USER7> I work in the energy space. A relatively common format for information exchange is the Common Information Model ("CIM")[1] which is usually serialized as RDF XML documents.

In Europe, this format is used as the standard data model for transmission system operators (TSOs) to share network information needed to run the Europe wide electrical grid. ENTSO-E [2] publishes a set of RDFS profiles that more tightly scope the data model to their use cases. [3]

With that use case in mind, why would an RDF database be useful in this case: data size. It's quite easy to get into millions of objects in the data graph for a single distribution feeder. A large utility might have thousands of such feeders, plus associated sub-transmission & transmission infrastructure (the hierarchy is nicely shown in [4]).

This can be represented in a relational database, but a lot of the queries start to become recursive. If object A connects to object B which connects to object C, and you want to query everything connected to A, you don't know that C exists until you've found object B.

Refs:

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Information_Model_(elec...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Information_Model_\(electricity\))

2\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Network_of_Transmissi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Network_of_Transmission_System_Operators_for_Electricity)

3\. [https://cgmes.github.io/](https://cgmes.github.io/)

4\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_distribution#/m...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_distribution#/media/File:Electricity_Grid_Schematic_English.svg)

<comment><USER8> > This can be represented in a relational database, but a lot of the queries > start to become recursive.

Recursive queries are natively supported in SQL, via Common Table Expression (CTE's). It's not like a triplestore is doing anything different underneath.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Social bookmarking for comments - <AUTHOR>

Any HNers know of a social bookmarking website that lets you submit a comment instead of a headline, and then have that comment link over to the parent article?<p>Thanks. <comment><USER2> I'm not 100% sure what you are asking for, but try kippt.com

<comment><AUTHOR> My question was a little vague. Many bookmarking sites you visit let user submit a headline that is then linked to an article. Let say you are reading the comments for a post and you come across a helpful comment that you want to share with the masses. You would visit "x.com" and submit the comment and link that to the article instead of a headline.

Does that make sense?

<comment><USER2> I don't know of any sites that do this directly. Are you looking for personal bookmarks or a way to share sites with people? The two are a little different in my mind.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was looking for a way to share sites with people. I think MetaFilter is probably the closest thing to what I'm looking for.

Thanks.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


LastPass teaches Sony how to handle a data breach - <AUTHOR> http://www.securecomputing.net.au/News/256558,lastpass-warns-of-possible-data-breach.aspx When LastPass, the popular and respected online password vault, saw an anomaly in its network traffic, it jumped. When it couldn't ascertain why there was slightly more output than input, it issued an alert for users to change their master passwords. It also installed better security measures like PBKDF2 and SHA-256. The notification happened in less than a day and its fast tracking the crypto roll outs. So Sony (and Epsilon), what's your defence now? <comment><USER2> Please don't editorialize in your submission title. What LastPass did is in no way related to Sony. The article's last paragraph only mentions Sony and Epsilon as examples of lax disclosure efforts.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wait. Why are they repeating SHA-256 10 __N times? What's the point? (I know about key derivation and why you want it to be slow. I'm wondering why they're doing that, when the article already mentions PBKDF2. Why it's PBKDF2 and not scrypt or bcrypt is probably about buzzword compliance.)

<comment><USER4> Repeating a SHA-256 (or other hash) many times is essentially what PBKDF2 is.

Though since 100 million SHA-256/sec is apparently doable on GPUs, even with 100,000 rounds, you currently need at least an 8-character random password to be secure from someone attacking without much budget.

<comment><USER3> Yes, I know -- the question stands: why would you have both of these concurrently in the same system? Either you want a KDF, or you don't want a KDF -- pick one, and don't start reinventing your own (potentially poorly), please :-(</comment></comment></comment>


Working While Female - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@nickyknacks/working-while-female-59a5de3ad266#.lplkdlvui <comment><AUTHOR> The previous post[1] to this has been baselessly flagged, so I'm reposting it.

[1][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13836588](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13836588)</comment>


Ask HN: Am I one of the few JavaScript programmers who didn't realize this - <AUTHOR>

I'm currently reading "Data structures and Algorithms with Javascript" and I had a WTF! moment when I got to page 9 and read "...Javascript does not have a block scope..."
Meaning this piece of code works! Blimey!

  for(var i=0; i<=10; i++){
    // do nothing
  }

  // access 'i' out of for loop
  console.log("i = " + i); // i = 11
 <comment><USER2> ES6 introduces the 'let' keyword which gives you block scope: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Statements/let)

Browser compatibility isn't too bad, but no Safari support it seems: [http://kangax.github.io/es5-compat- table/es6/#let](http://kangax.github.io/es5-compat-table/es6/#let)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This post from stackoverflow explains the language design choice a bit further: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17311693/why-does- javascr...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17311693/why-does-javascript- not-have-block-scope)

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes, it should be one of the first things you learn when learning JavaScript. JavaScript only has function scope, meaning that you only get new scope inside of a function.

<comment><USER4> Yep, this and hoisting is something I expect any JavaScript developer to know.

<comment><USER5> And semicolon insertion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Blimey is right. Although I would guess for most people their first encounter would be something like this:

      var foo = function(callback) { callback(); }

      for(var i=0; i<=10; i++){
        setTimeout(function() {
          console.log("i = " + i);
        }, 100);
      }

Which, if you don't know what to look for, is a bit of a brain melter. Between that and [1,2,10].sort(), there are lots of great reasons to yell at your screen when learning JS.

</comment><comment><USER7> Correct me but, atm, it would be possible to use the keyword "let" to declare a local variable with a block scope if I remember well, isn't it?

</comment><comment><USER8> Yeah, but there's this:

      array.forEach(function(value, index) { ... });

<comment><USER9> Yeah, that's a function call.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hopefully, but probably not. There are probably only slightly less bad JavaScript programmers as there are bad PHP programmers.

</comment><comment><USER11> Hey, cool. I guess I knew that but didn't really 'know' it. Thanks.

</comment><comment> workhere-io Same thing with Python and PHP.

<comment><USER12> Am I the only one who doesn't see a huge problem with this? Its actually kinda handy sometimes to have the last value / index of your array defined outside after the loop. Same goes for variables defined within the loop.

Aside from that: Function scope makes sense to me but I dont think I've ever gone and thought "damn it all, if only I had block scope!"

<comment> workhere-io _Am I the only one who doesn 't see a huge problem with this?_

I don't think anyone really sees a problem with it, although it might be somewhat of a gotcha for people coming from languages where variables are local to the loop.

<comment><USER12> And it doing the opposite would be a gotcha for anyone else. Is anyone able to explain why a language would have block scoping in the first place? Is it a good thing and I just don't know? I really hope its not because of the braces.. That would be kind of silly.

As it is, without that explanation, all I can think is, so weird language x does something weird and then its a gotcha when a language (funnily enough javascript) does it in a non weird way? I'd say sounds more like a gotcha for language x, than anything else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I hate Javascript... and recently I have gone mad over Node.js "server side javascripting..."</comment>