Edward Snowden: Permanent Record - <AUTHOR> https://www.amazon.com/Permanent-Record-Edward-Snowden/dp/1250237238 <comment><USER2> I can't speak for the US but this man has shifted so much of the political debate in my country and I think also in the EU in general. If you talked about the massive surveillance from governments people tossed you aside as a paranoid lunatic. After Snowden no one could ignore you anymore and privacy is an aspect in any public debate.

<comment><USER3> That's great to hear. Unfortunately, his actions haven't really done anything in the US. I wish I could say otherwise, but I haven't seen a single thing change. Privacy still isn't an issue that's on most people's radar. The government still does what it did before and likely a lot more. I have a ton of respect for Snowden, but he severely overestimated how much Americans care about privacy, spying, surveillance, or anything like that they mostly can't even understand.

<comment><USER4> encryption by default and privacy as an intrinsic good have been pervasive if subtle shifts in the culture

<comment><USER5> Yup. Even the dark fiber back haul networks used by data centers that were once thought to be private are now being encrypted (Google, Microsoft, etc have mentioned this).

This is exactly what PRISM was, not taking data from servers, but tapping into the data networks between them and siphoning off whatever the NSA wanted. And it just so happens that to mirror a fiber optic line you use a crystal prism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Customers who bought this item also bought

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EDIT:formatting

<comment><USER7> Is it even safe to buy yubikeys on Amazon given the counterfeit problem?

<comment><USER8> You can verify whether you received a genuine key at:

[https://www.yubico.com/genuine/](https://www.yubico.com/genuine/)

<comment><USER9> https is not safe against the government....

<comment><USER9> ... because they can force CAs to give them the keys to decrypt all traffic.

<comment><USER10> That's not true, since CAs don't _have_ "the keys to decrypt all traffic." They have the ability to sign website operators' public keys, but they do not have access to the website operators' private keys.

Of course, the CA could also issue a fake certificate with attacker-controlled keys, but if they tried to do so, they would get caught by Certificate Transparency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Before his story broke there was an AMA on Reddit about govt surveillance, I'm 90% this was Snowden. Does anyone else remember this?

The person spoke of these things happening in ways we "couldn't imagine". People were guessing at what he meant and his responses were mostly "it's much worse". One redditor posted some highly technical speculations to which the author responded "you're getting close".

Reddit's search isn't good enough to retrieve this but I would LOVE to find that post again.

<comment><USER12> Funny enough Google has great tools for searching within that time period. Snowden broke around Q1 2013 right? So I tried searching from Q4 2012 to Q1 2014 and the first thing that came up on government surveillance was actually this[1].

Which I assume is not what you meant but it's pretty early in the timeline of Snowden's revelations.

Setting the timeline to 2012-01-01 - 2013-07-03 is just before Greenwald broke Snowden's story and those results are very different.

Interspersed are results that were likely updated in Google's index after july 3rd so there are some false positives so to speak.

You'd have to browse more of those results. I've only got 3 pages in.[2]

Edit: Actually this IAmA from Cory Doctorow could be it.[3] He's definitely in the know about what the government is capable of and speaking from that experience. Which pretty much predicts Snowden's revelations.

Of course I remember when AT&T was implicated in mass surveillance by a former employee back around 2004, that story just got lost in the ether.

1\. [https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2wwdep/we_are_edward_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2wwdep/we_are_edward_snowden_laura_poitras_and_glenn/)

2\. [https://www.google.com/search?q=site:reddit.com+%22IAmA%22+g...](https://www.google.com/search?q=site:reddit.com+%22IAmA%22+government+surveillance&hl=en&tbs=cdr:1,cd_min:1/1/2012,cd_max:7/4/2013&ei=TyJ5XeX6EICDk74P-JawyAo&start=10&sa=N&ved=0ahUKEwil3pjemcnkAhWAwcQBHXgLDKkQ8NMDCJkB&biw=1527&bih=1336)

3\. [https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/11bm9i/iam_cory_docto...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/11bm9i/iam_cory_doctorow_writer_blogger_and_activist_ama/)

<comment><USER11> It was an anonymous AMA, author specifically stated he was "inside" so not Doctorow

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm going to 'recycle' an older comment of mine, pertaining to the comments about the book. The original comment can be found here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20583363](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20583363)

I was annoyed that someone called Ed Snowden a 'Traitor'. Hopefully it gets a bit more recognition in this thread

__________________________________

For me he made the Great Game of Privacy a lot fairer. You should read the excellent entry on Wikipedia about the aftermath of the leaks[0]. If the leaks meant that privacy-loving folk went 'dark' in light of the leaks, then this is a net plus. Snowden's actions possibly hindered NSA in catching undesirables, but it's a small price to pay for a bolstered Internet and privacy-respecting comms. And who's to say that the apparatus even worked that well in foiling the efforts of plotters? Bill Binney[1] consistently drives his message home that the NSA's surveillance apparatus is very inefficient at foiling plots, and I agree with him.

Even if it stopped one plot in all the time of its existence, it's still an enormous effort and an enormous amount of money spent just to foil one plot. Old fashioned police work is better at foiling plots because it doesn't have to rely on big data algorithms sifting through the noise of Internet traffic (most of which is innocuous). Old fashioned methods work because they employ simple detective work - it doesn't need the NSA at every choke point and decrypting countless crypto.

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

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Binney_%28U.S._intelli...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Binney_%28U.S._intelligence_official%29)

<comment><USER14> Wow, I thought Binney was just some random analysist news shows brought on to discredit the 2016 hacking thing. Didn't realize he was the key catalyst for the Snowden leak after the government shafted him when he tried to reveal the same NSA overreach using the "proper" channels.

<comment><USER15> Bill Binney is an American patriot and a hero.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This made me realize I have heard ZERO news on Assange after his arrest, and the likelihood of him being tortured and rendered and railroaded of course means our nation (US) of laws and rights is a sham.

Don't tell me it's boring, this should be a sideshow for the media like OJ. Rape trial? Russian meddling? Little guy vs the government? International intrigue?

Crickets.

A truly independent media would be tracking his case to make sure due process is followed, but we all know what media is in the age of corporate conglomeration and oligarchy.

<comment><USER17> He is sitting his 50 week sentence in HM Prison Belmarsh in UK and has access to lawyers. Media is tracking his case. There is nothing to report.

There are people who spew up conspiracy theories on the spot when they have not heard anything, from pure ignorance, yet they speak ill of mainstream media.

<comment><USER18> Hes also sitting in the medical ward due to multiple issues, including mental issues. I dont think the news wants to report on his declining health.

<comment><USER19> How did you learn that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Any links posted to amazon.com from HN should be to smile.amazon.com -> .5% of your purchase will be donated to a clarity of your choice.

<comment><USER21> Better yet, don't buy the book, and donate the money you would have spent to charity.

<comment><USER22> Can't we do both?

<comment><USER21> Nope. Because then you could donate the price of two books, and not buy one!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Or how about from a library.

[https://www.worldcat.org/search?qt=worldcat_org_all&q=edward...](https://www.worldcat.org/search?qt=worldcat_org_all&q=edward+snowden+permanent+record)

<comment><USER24> Given that there are like... seven copies in U.S. libraries, I think that's probably terrible advice.

<comment><USER25> Since Amazon says it's not available until September 17th and you can only pre-order it now, I think probably even those 7 are records inaccurately registered before the book is actually there, and there are probably 0! Or did some libraries get the book earlier than Amazon can? Possible, but my guess is not.

<comment><USER24> Fair enough! I was thrown off the fact that it hasn't been released by the Worldcat page saying that there were three editions. I assumed that it was not possible to have data quality issues of that magnitude.

<comment><USER25> Oh, Worldcat data quality is definitely very problematic.

At it's best, it definitely doesn't represent _every_ library copy.

It requires libraries to register their copies with the central database. All of these libraries are different organizations with different software, at varying stages of 'legacy', trying to interoperate with each other, usually without very well-resourced IT teams. Then WorldCat has got to figure out when copies at different libraries are copies of the "same" thing, and what "same" means.

The worldcat database is very useful, but it certainly has data quality problems.

Amazon also says "4 formats and editions": hardcover, paperback, kindle, audiobook. Technically I'd say these are "formats" not "editions" \-- the text is the same in each, although you might consider the audiobook a separate "edition" maybe, as it's not text at all, it's a whole different sort of thing. (And the Amazon UI hides it behind a 'more' link, although still just referring to the whole list as "4 formats and editions").

I'd guess Worldcat knows 3 of those 4 -- maybe all except kindle. Worldcat, like Amazon, is not really capable of distinguishing "editions" from "formats".

I'm not sure I'd consider the "3 editions" a "data quality" error exactly, in this case. It does point to some of the complexities of figuring out what's out there in the bibliographic universe, and how to model it in a consistent way that makes sense to users. (What _is_ an edition vs a format anyway?). Amazon gets data and corrections from people trying to sell books there providing some data entry/correction labor for free. And Amazon's website and data are _core_ to their business. As well as from other DBs like ISBN. Worldcat has to try to piece things together from a bunch of disorganized under-funded non-IT-expert nonprofits, who may consider "getting good data to WorldCat" not the highest among competing priorities, along with other DBs like ISBN.

Neither WorldCat nor Amazon are _great_ at determining "what separate editions/formats exist of this thing, and how do they relate to each other" in the general case. Cause it's a hard problem. Amazon does well enough to sell books apparently. They each have strengths and weaknesses. For things published decades before Amazon existed and/or no longer in print, WorldCat will do better in some ways.

<comment><USER24> Maybe the long term solution is to put together an open source library database package that serves the needs of 90% of libraries without modification, and make it convenient to make high quality data available.

<comment><USER26> Worldcat / OCLC is pretty close to this. It's not fully open source, but it's widely used and pretty open.

(The fact that the API isn't publicly accessible without registration and payment is a major annoyance.)

<comment><USER25> Yeah, at one point OCLC was actually being kind of litigious with trying to make sure their db was _not_ open. I think they got over that, at about when they realized nobody actually really wanted it so much anymore. But it's debatable whether it's "pretty open" at present.

LibraryThing was sort of another attempt, that sort of still exists.

It's just a really hard thing to do, that takes a lot of resources to do well, and nobody's managed to figure out a funding model.

I don't think "Just create an open access database anyone can edit, like wikipedia but data, and books" will work (and actually, [that's]([https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_Books](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_Books)) been tried too), but you can try to start another project if you want.

There are a handful of projects with various business models and degrees of openness of data that have tried or are still trying to do this. For whatever reasons (and we can debate em), they haven't really taken off or been succesful. shrug.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> We were called "paranoid lunatics" even when we started speaking about ECHELON in the '90ies.

Same with the clipper chip. Same with TPM/DRM/ME. Same with Internet centralization.

It's worth asking why the general public keeps trusting authorities and distrusts techies, even those among us with a career in security.

<comment><USER28> I'll trust techies the day they actually are in the job of protecting people and have to deal with real danger of bad actors continuously trying to blow up Western democracies.

It's funny the tech/security/sysadmin guys complain that their work is appreciated only when things go wrong, but fail to give the same benefit of the doubt for US law and order.

<comment><USER29> You mean this "US law and order"?:

Myron W. Orfield, Jr., Deterrence, Perjury, and the Heater Factor, supra note 13, at 83:

> Respondents, including prosecutors, estimate that police commit perjury > between 20% and 50% of the time they testify on Fourth Amendment issues.

It should also be noted that many of these respondents did not consider lying at a suppression hearing perjury, infra text accompanying note 47, which would have the effect of deflating these percentages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Does anyone know how much money he gets from every book / ebook? I think buying it is, at least for some people, very much a support Snowden thought.

<comment><USER31> The publisher Metropolitan Books looks like it's part of Macmillan so they're likely a traditional publisher, which suggests he got a pretty healthy advance on the book because of his fame.

I would also guess that even if he sold enough books to earn out the advance, his take on each incremental book is really small as the publisher took most of the financial risk with the advance itself.

<comment><USER32> (Macmillan employee)

Confirming, it is a Macmillan title. Metropolitan Books is a Macmillan imprint.

[https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250237231](https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250237231)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Seems odd that every picture of Edward Snowden shows one of the nose pads on his glasses missing.

<comment><USER34> That does bug me now, having just looked at a lot of pictures, but it does appear you can find pictures where this is not the case, eg, [https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/national-security- age...](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/national-security-agency- contractor-edward-snowden-release-memoir-1228550)

<comment><USER33> I did a photo search too and decided to use "every" anyway. But hey, I got you to investigate it yourself and you'd have to agree on "most."

<comment><USER34> It also made me stumble across his interview from a couple years back talking about the "why" but I didn't dig enough to find out of the unbroken glasses are purely a time-series thing, or if he finally got tired of it and got his glasses fixed / got new glasses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I think the administration badly, badly mishandled Snowden and Assange, and allowed Russia to coopt them by isolating and threatening them. If they had treated them as whistleblowers and journalists (even if they had nefarious motivations), they could have kept them in "the west" instead of driving them into the arms of Russia. I don't believe that Assange was a Russian agent at the beginning but he was surely one by the time of the 2016 election.

There's a reason we have laws around a free speech and a free press-- they make the country stronger, even if they make it harder to govern.

<comment><USER36> I think you do Snowden a disservice when you lump him in with Assange. Snowden you can easily argue is a whisleblower. You can't argue that with Assange since he doesn't have first hand knowledge of what he is leaking and instead actively recruits people to feed him information to leak. He also seemingly encourages people to commit crimes to get more information for him. Snowden did that all himself. In addition, Assange does not have the high bar that information must meet in order to warrant a leak. He instead leaks everything that he has that fits his political goals. A whistleblower needs to be more precise and targeted with what they disclose. Snowden gave his documents to journalists to sift through, judge, redact, and publish. Assange just throws everything up on his website. Lastly, like multiple people in these comments mentioned, there is the question of their relationship to Russia. Knowingly or not, Assange has clearly been used as a tool of Russian Intelligence. Snowden being compromised is more of a conspiracy theory at this point with little (but some) real world evidence.

<comment> loup-vaillant > _I think you do Snowden a disservice when you lump him in with Assange._

Correct. Snowden is a Whistle-blower. Assange is a journalist, though perhaps not the kind Snowden would have trusted his stolen data with.

<comment><USER37> I think calling Assange a journalist is very debatable. He certainly doesn't comply with the ethical norms of the profession.

<comment><USER38> People say this on this basis of hearsay, like he "selectively released documents" for which there is no evidence.

<comment><USER36> One huge ethical red flag for Assange and Wikileaks is their view on redacting documents. They published numerous details that a traditional journalistic outlet would never make public include the names of informants. This almost certainly resulted in people being killed.

<comment><USER39> > They published numerous details that a traditional journalistic outlet would > never make public include the names of informants.

Valerie Plame would like to have a word with you.

If we keep going down this road we'd end up with No True Scotsman. The reality is "traditional" journalists have done this - Assange is not an outlier in this regard. If we tolerate the "worst" of the traditional (which US society clearly does), then we can't use this as an argument against Assange.

<comment><USER36> >Valerie Plame would like to have a word with you.

I probably shouldn't have used the word "never", but the fact that the Valieria Plame reveal was such a big deal is basically the exception that proves the rule that it is highly unusual for a journalist to reveal this information.

Assange is certainly an outlier in the number of people who he exposed and the reason for exposing them. He reportedly said on the issue that "they're informants. So, if they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it." [1] Maybe you think that is a No True Scotsman argument, but I really can't imagine a well respected journalist showing such a complete lack of concern for human life. A traditional journalist would generally required some reason of tremendous value to justify putting those people's lives at risk. Assange's reasoning instead appears to be "They deserve it."

[1] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_War_documents_leak#Info...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_War_documents_leak#Informants_named)

<comment><USER39> > but the fact that the Valieria Plame reveal was such a big deal is basically > the exception that proves the rule that it is highly unusual for a > journalist to reveal this information.

It was a big deal because people wanted to score political points, not because of a breach in standards. The more relevant point is the standing the journalist still had in society - he did not lose his job for it, let alone be prosecuted for it.

The quote you provide is taken out of context - at least from the Wiki page it is _not_ clear if he is referring to the names that were leaked, as opposed to the ones that they ultimately decided to redact. I suspect the latter because it says "initially refused".

> but I really can't imagine a well respected journalist showing such a > complete lack of concern for human life.

When you add the "well respected journalist", we really are in No True Scotsman territory. If all you mean to say is "He is a lousy journalist," then we have no disagreements. Without that qualifier, have you thought about extreme views held by existing, famous journalists? How much of an outlier is Assange compared to other "extreme" but established journalists?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Another new book just published on data privacy: Tools and Weapons: The Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age Hardcover – September 10, 2019 by Brad Smith (Author), Carol Ann Browne (Author), Bill Gates (Foreword) [https://www.amazon.com/Tools-Weapons-Promise-Peril- Digital/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Tools-Weapons-Promise-Peril- Digital/dp/1984877712)

<comment><USER26> The contrast between Brad Smith's title, and Gates's _The Road Ahead_ (1996), speaks worlds.

(Gates writes a foreward to Smith's book. I've not yet seen it.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I wonder what if he would mention anything about 5G in the book. As far as I understand, all the fuss US making against Huawei is actually due to its (future) crippling of its eavesdropping capability. Not that 5G is a panacea for that but Huawei is augmenting their equipments against such attacks, and they will be the main supplier.

<comment><USER42> This is interesting. Does anyone have further reading to recommend about this?

<comment><USER41> [https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/09/article/huawei-calls- the-u...](https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/09/article/huawei-calls-the-us-intel- communitys-bluff/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> A bit ironic that it's suggested to us to buy the book through Amazon, a cloud services provider for the CIA (and otherwise shady mega-corporation)

See: [https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/07/the-d...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/07/the- details-about-the-cias-deal-with-amazon/374632/)

<comment><USER44> Amazon controls so much of the internet that it's increasingly hard for anyone to avoid them. The deal they struck is far more involved than your typical company using AWS, but I wouldn't look to Amazon's customers to make any assumptions about Amazon's motivations beyond their lust for more money.

The reality is that this book doesn't pose any meaningful threat to the US government's mass surveillance programs and having impotent critiques of the US Government openly available as opposed to outright banned gives us a false sense of security in our freedoms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I genuinely don't understand why Snowden is treated as more shocking than things published in the open by James Bamford years earlier.

[https://www.amazon.com/James- Bamford/e/B000APPIUM/ref=dp_byl...](https://www.amazon.com/James- Bamford/e/B000APPIUM/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1)

</comment><comment><USER46> Are his broken glasses just a prop at this point? Dude, you can buy new frames in Russia!

</comment><comment><USER9> "I'm going to refrain from publishing how exactly I went about my own writing—my own copying and encryption—so that the NSA will still be standing tomorrow." Ed being sarcastic?

</comment><comment><USER47> Just in case you read this, thanks, Edward Snowden. You left it all on the line to help us. The fact that we're still talking about it 6+ years later shows it's importance.

</comment><comment><USER48> Snowden is being prosecuted for being first to reveal things that everyone knows now

</comment><comment><USER49> the 1st humanity king, we should remember!

</comment><comment><USER9> anyway to avoid the middle man ?

<comment><USER50> Email him? He might send it to you for free. Or just pay the middleman, and he'll get paid too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Unpopular opinion destined to attract downvotes but: IMHO the NSA spying program was outrageous...for the colossal waste of money and time it was.

First, if you're really worried about privacy, why is it not a DEFCON 1 outrage that state DMVs are selling your info to private investigators? [1] Or if you're really worried about your personal liberty, isn't your local police force a greater threat then NSA eavesdroppers?

Back in 2013 the NSA claimed it was spying on 29 petabytes of internet data (out of 1826) a day [2], or 1.6%. That's both a trivial amount of overall traffic and an insanely large dataset at the same time (since it accumulates every day).

Isn't a big chunk of that traffic encrypted? Even if it's not, how do you find terrorists in that data? Do they self-identify? Even if they use a trivial substitution cipher ('cupcakes' instead of 'bombs') it would evade these billion-dollar supercomputers.

To me the NSA's spying program was security theater akin to airport security: expensive machines that don't even catch terrorists. They fail their own internal tests 95% of the time! [3]. I personally would like to know what algorithms the NSA was using to successfully identify terrorist data in exobytes of (possibly encrypted) datasets. Sounds like billions spent on airport scanners to me.

Finally, on a political level, Snowden seems like a massive hypocrite to me for hiding in China, which harvests the organs of political prisoners [4] and Russia, which routinely assassinates political opponents and journalists [5]. But he's mad that what, the US was reading his Gmail?

I realize he's super popular among the HN crowd and the libertarians for whom all gov't surveillance is evil but I, for one, am not a Snowden admirer. Downvote away.

[1] [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43kxzq/dmvs-selling- data-...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43kxzq/dmvs-selling-data-private- investigators-making-millions-of-dollars)

[2] [https://www.zdnet.com/article/nsa-hunger- demands-29-petabyte...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/nsa-hunger- demands-29-petabytes-of-data-a-day/)

[3] [https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/investigation- breaches-...](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/investigation-breaches-us- airports-allowed-weapons-through-n367851)

[4] [https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/china-forcefully- harvests...](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/china-forcefully-harvests- organs-detainees-tribunal-concludes-n1018646)

[5] [https://www.thedailybeast.com/russia-shows-us-what- happens-t...](https://www.thedailybeast.com/russia-shows-us-what-happens-to- enemies-of-the-people-bloodied-heads-murdered-reporters-poisoned-dissidents)

</comment><comment><USER52> <RANT>US expatriates are the only expats in the world that have to file annual taxes (and report foreign bank accounts). It's ridiculous for most of us (99% are not tax exiles or tax evaders, we just left the USA for our own reasons). </RANT>

I wonder if Snowden files taxes?

<comment><USER53> Can you give up your american passport and then stop or do you have to do it for the rest of your life?

<comment><USER54> It costs over a grand to quit the club known as "citizenship" you're going to want citizenship in wherever you reside first when you give up US citizenship (you could choose to be stateless, but that makes more problems than it solves). Doing this does not absolve you of existing debts in the eyes of the IRS. And finally, you'll be interviewed at the consulate and if your stated reason for giving up citizenship is "the overseas tax thing", you'll be denied a visa if you ever want to visit the US again.

<comment><USER55> Apparently, you can run for any government office in a foreign state and it immediately nullifies your US citizenship. I have only heard this as rumour, and I don't have time to confirm / deny this, but it may be worth looking into.

<comment><USER56> >> I don't have time to confirm / deny this, but it may be worth looking into.

Then why take the time to post it?

<comment><USER57> Because it is a interesting avenue to investigate if someone wants to know more.

<comment><USER58> Well you're wrong so there's that. You can't give up your citizenship as a result of running for a foreign office.

<comment><USER56> >> Because it is a interesting avenue to investigate if someone wants to know more.

Seems like an assumption about the value of other people's time vs. your own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Customers who bought this item also bought: YubiKey

</comment><comment><USER60> IRS is counting your book sales Edward, CIA and FBI might be the least of your worries ;)

<comment><USER61> I don't think he's ever going to come back to the US. He would be arrested on the spot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Anyone have a link to steal and read the book for free? I don't support his cause but wouldn't mind reading the book. Yes I'm admitting to intent to pirating Ed Snowden's book. It's not like I'd be stealing sensitive military secrets and selling them to Omidyar for a pledge up to $250MM. How many Russian speaking people were in his orbit in Hawaii from 2011-2013? How many of them had the operational capacity to pull off a conspiracy to guide Ed to Mother Russia undetected?

<comment><USER38> How about you answer some of your own questions.

<comment><USER62> 1) I don't have a clean link to the book

2) Yes Russian speaking folks are in our IC, military, private sector etc. and are certain to have been in his orbit

3) someone could ask mr Omidyar

Given his connections to Booz and his level of intelligence (punahou grad along with Obama etc) He could be a total patriot at heart and it would be difficult to know the difference. Shit, maybe Pierre is a triple agent, a regular Bond good guy. But I'll tell ya when I heard he bought up the secrets I was sure at that moment that he is either a total patriot or is part of a conspiracy. Probably just an opportunist though. Kind of like the geniuses who foresaw bitcoin's rise.

<comment><USER38> So, all speculation? I mean based on what he has released he's an american patriot. I haven't seen any evidence to the contrary.

Of course the US govt will try smear him and cover up after he exposed their actions.

<comment><USER62> It's impossible to tell without access to the full trove. He could be releasing things in a way that either minimizes or maximizes damage (or anywhere in between) to the US.

Yes, we can only speculate. I'm not in the intelligence community and those who are aren't likely to voice things publicly.

The whole situation seems odd. A calculating genius spends months planning what is ostensibly a haphazard plan to wind up in Russia supposedly not by choice? Then Omidyar also in Hawaii and connected to Booz buys up the secrets. Seems odd to me.

If Mr. Omidyar were patriotic maybe he would have bought up the secrets and kept 100% of them private, thus extending the oath of secrecy that military officers all take. Mr. Omidyar has come forward as an agent of the free press, not as a sworn patriotic military officer. Difficult to tell his motivations from the outside yet worthy of speculation.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Petabytes on a budget: How to build cheap cloud storage - <AUTHOR> http://blog.backblaze.com/2009/09/01/petabytes-on-a-budget-how-to-build-cheap-cloud-storage/ <comment><USER3> One of the smart guys in our (Y!) cloud team just point out something to me that hadn't occurred to me.

This system is definitely optimized for backup. That totally make sense for Backblaze. However it's important to not compare this like for like with something like S3 which is optimized for much better read/write performance.

At the basic level the cooling on this system seems minimal. Those tightly packed drives would sure get hot if they were all spinning a lot. More than that since they are using commodity consumer hardware, and they already used up their PCIe slots for the SATA controllers there isn't any place to add anything more than the gitabit (I assume) ethernet jack on the mobo. That means there throughput is limited.

Again, this is a great system for backup. Most of the data will just sit happily sipping little power. However, if you are thinking of this as equivalent to a filer, that's an unfair comparison.

<comment><USER4> Fast 120mm fans can move a pretty decent amount of air - up to 120 ft^3/min each, and they used three in parallel.

It would take about a dozen 80mm normal-speed computer fans to reach this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is unbelievably awesome. Can you imagine what we could achieve if every company had this level of transparency?

<comment><USER6> Thinking the exact same thing! While technology isn't more than any typical hacker can slap together in their apartment (minus maybe the case fab), I think the application is ingenious and the full blog post about it, like dmillar, pointed out is rather awe-inspiring. And I was all happy because my new Core i7 box has 2TB of space and 6GB of ram... sigh

That being said - did seagate ever fix their firmware issue on the 1.5TB drives that would cause random corruption? (heard about it maybe 6 months ago)

<comment><USER7> > While technology isn't more than any typical hacker can slap together in > their apartment

I think you missed the part about testing a dozen SATA cards, etc.

The attention to detail here is a lot more than something you'd slap together in your apartment.

<comment><USER8> This is what always gets in my way. It takes a lot of work and a lot of expertise to put together a home-grown system that works as well as one from the major vendors. If you're only going to be using one or two, you're much better off going to one of those major vendors because a large part of the price is their expertise and testing that went into it. For a large setup like Backblaze they can spread the cost of design over many systems, but for smaller companies it just isn't feasible.

We hacker types love to think that we could do the same thing in no time with little budget, and I'm sure we could get a first approximation. But the devil is in the details. Debugging the complex interaction of 20 different hardware components is not my idea of fun.

Hats off to them, particularly for sharing.

<comment><USER9> I did this as an inhouse backup for a data warehousing app. Just slapping 4 ide cards into a case and putting 16x250gb IDE drives on them resulted in a system that would copy about 1 disk worth before hanging with some fault or suddenly dropping to 1% speed.

Just because you can in theory hook 40 drives to n cards doesn't mean it will work - well done to them

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I always thought it was best to focus on what I did best (application software) and leave the infostructure to others. Until I saw this:

      Raw Drives      $81,000
      Backblaze      $117,000
      Dell           $826,000
      Sun          $1,000,000
      NetApp       $1,714,000
      Amazon       $2,806,000
      EMC          $2,860,000

I had no idea. Kinda makes one rethink what business they want to be in.

<comment><USER11>
      Backblaze      $117,000
      [...]
      Amazon       $2,806,000

I cry foul. Backblaze's "67 TB" pods actually only hold 58.5 TB, so their hardware cost per PB of storage is $134k, not $117k; and that's without any high-level redundancy. Servers fail -- both catastrophically, and by silently corrupting bits -- and Backblaze's $134k / PB doesn't have any protection against that. Datacenters also fail -- power outages, cut fibre, FBI raids, etc. -- and any system which stores all of its data in a single datacenter lacks any protection against that. Store each file on two different servers in each of two different datecenters, and suddenly Backblaze's $134k turns into $536k. The price for Amazon, in contrast, is based on the assumption that their prices remain fixed for the next 3 years -- which seems a rather radical assumption.

Is backblaze's solution cheaper than S3? Absolutely. But they're also twisting the numbers a bit.

<comment><USER12> Interesting, but Amazon doesn't guarantee most of those things. They guarantee a 99.99% uptime, but that isn't counting a complete datacenter failure. In fact, it sounds to me as if they have a similar set up to the backblaze people.

99.99% uptime means roughly 1 hour per year of downtime. I don't know what the specific failure rates on the components are, but it seems reasonable that A) the data drives are hot-swappable, and will not cause downtime when they are replaced and B) the rest of the components fail once a year (or less) and take ~10 minutes to replace and reboot the system. With 4 main places of failure (PSU, Boot Drive, Motherboard/Ram/CPU, Drive controllers), as long as you have staff constantly on call and they can respond within 5 minutes of a failure, 99.99% uptime seems reasonable.

I don't know where you got the idea that your data was on 4 different servers when using S3. I can't find even the slightest amount of information on that. Yes, that would be nice, and it is cool to think that, but its rather doubtful that they're actually doing that (or they could probably add another 9 to their uptime).

<comment><USER13> Re. geographical redundancy, see comment <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=422574> :

"Amazon keeps at least 3 copies of your data (which is what you need for high reliability) in at least 2 different geographical locations. "

I can't find the original source supporting that statement, but I also know it to be true based on direct contact with AWS team. (I'm using AWS since private alpha of EC2 in 2005)

<comment><USER12> I can't find that anywhere either, and would be interested in seing it. In fact, all I can find is: _A bucket can be located in the United States or in Europe. All objects within the bucket will be stored in the bucket's location, but the objects can be accessed from anywhere._ which seem to imply that your data is located in one location, not 2.

In addition, looking at the actual S3 contract, they're really only guaranteeing at 99.9% uptime, which allows for up to 8 hours of downtime a year, more than enough to completely re-build the outer server once a year, as long as they can keep the data intact (which they seem more than capable of with their setup, once again assuming their data center is not completely destroyed).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> They might have missed a trick here.

To address vibration, acoustics and gyroscopic effect, what I've seen done in highly dense enclosures is to rotate every second drive around 180 degrees in a bit of a shotgun approach to balancing stuff.

Still, awesome.

<comment><USER15> This has sounded ok for me too, but when I've thought a bit about it I've realized that the drives must be synchronized so that each one would "cancel" each others vibrations. The vibrations generated by the drives might have indeed the same amplitude and (spatial and temporal) frequency, but I doubt that they'll have the same phase offset. For this to happen they would need to be started at _exactly_ the same time which I don't think that happens in practice.

Do you have some pictures of those enclosures?

<comment><USER14> I don't have pictures. I can describe, though.

Two disks were mounted in a frame linearly, both screwed to the frame, with the power/sata connectors toward the middle of the frame, and one drive upside-down.

These cassettes were removable as a unit for hot-swap, and were inserted linearly into a half-deep 19" rack enclosure.

That the two drives were physically connected to the same frame, and removed and replaced as a unit would make it seem as if they would be started in phase. Now I'm not physicist, but I'm not 100% sure that's so important - <USER2> you have two gyroscopes contra-rotating and firmly connected, running at the same speed, surely they resist movement by sheer gyroscopic effect?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> 67TB of storage, with 4GB of cache. I'd really love to see some performance numbers versus the way-too-expensive competition. If the systems are being used as tape drive replacements, I could see this working well, but as an actual NAS-like device, I can't imaging how it could perform acceptably. Of course, if those Intel motherboards have the dual 1Gb/s NICs that Intel boards generally do, it will probably take a while to fill the drives anyhow.

<comment><USER17> [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(67+TB)+%2F+(2*(1+Gb%2F...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=\(67+TB\)+%2F+\(2*\(1+Gb%2Fs\)+))

It'll take 3 days at the theoretical max of the networking equipment to read/write the 67TB. The overhead of HTTPS constrains the networking so this is too low.

I'd expect that their internet connection (i.e. in/out of the data center) is the real bottleneck.

I believe that the system _is_ being used as a tape drive replacement.

<comment><USER18> If the load is relatively sequential, then yeah. But if the load is mostly random, then there is an argument for having more cache.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This made the Beowulf list yesterday, and below is what I wrote in response:

"Seagate ST31500341AS 1.5TB Barracuda 7200.11 SATA 3Gb/s 3.5″ Aargh! Should be definitely substituted by 2 TByte WD RE4 drive.

Today I've built a 32 TByte raw storage Supermicro box with X8DDAi (dual- socket Nehalem, 24 GByte RAM, IPMI), two LSI SAS3081E-R and OpenSolaris sees all (WD2002FYPS) drives so far (the board refuses to boot from DVD when more than 12 drives are in though probably to some BIOS brain damage, so you have to manually build a raidz-2 with all 16 drives in it once Solaris has booted up). The drives are about 3170 EUR sans VAT total for all 16, the box itself around 3000 EUR sans VAT. I presume Linux with RAID 6 would work (haven't checked yet), too, and if you need more you can use a cluster FS.

Maybe not as cheap as a Backblaze, but off-shelf (BTO) and you get what you pay for.

</comment><comment><USER20> Wow.

Do they offer S3-like storage? They should. If they can offer something like S3, but at one third of a penny per gigabyte per month (heck, let's splash out - a whole penny per gigabyte per month) I know quite a few people who'll be interested in talking to them... (including myself)

<comment><USER21> Apparently they use HTTPS for input/output using tomcat and some custom application.

That's a strange choice, HTTPS would incur quite a bit of overhead for something that is essentially a (large) drive at the end of a network cable used internally only. Why the encryption ?

quote from the article:

"A Backblaze Storage Pod isn't a complete building block until it boots and is on the network. The pods boot 64-bit Debian 4 Linux and the JFS file system, and they are self-contained appliances, where all access to and from the pods is through HTTPS. Below is a layer cake diagram.

Starting at the bottom, there are 45 hard drives exposed through the SATA controllers. We then use the fdisk tool on Linux to create one partition per drive. On top of that, we cluster 15 hard drives into a single RAID6 volume with two parity drives (out of the 15). The RAID6 is created with the mdadm utility. On top of that is the JFS file system, and the only access we then allow to this totally self-contained storage building block is through HTTPS running custom Backblaze application layer logic in Apache Tomcat 5.5."

That's an odd choice for a storage server protocol stack.

<comment><USER22> _That's a strange choice, HTTPS would incur quite a bit of overhead for something that is essentially a (large) drive at the end of a network cable used internally only. Why the encryption ?_

To help prevent a network compromise from resulting in storage management compromise? Just because something is internal doesn't mean it's safe. Once a host/network segment is compromised, you don't want it to be easy to jump to the next.

Otherwise, you've built M&M security. Hard candy shell on the outside, soft gooey chocolate insides. Mmm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I have been searching high and low for something like this for months -- I have a number of clients that have been begging me for this, as well as something for my own needs.

I'm excitedly posting a link to this on my personal site, and today I have a lot of phone calls to make to clients.

Why is it that the best products and services are also the hardest to find when you're looking for them?

</comment><comment><USER24> What terrified me was the number of low-level issues they had to address. SATA protocol problems, custom-designed SATA cards? Wow. I'd have no idea how to begin with that stuff. As other posters have noted, this company's business is storage. How many PB must one host for such specialization to make sense?

</comment><comment><USER25> What a pity, I'd like to have a way to store just a encrypted backup directly (via ssh) instead of installing a app which crawls my system. Oh did I mention I use Linux? _sign_

Does somebody know any other company which provides this solution? I don't trust other people to crawl my system and to "encrypt" it for me.

EDIT: Added Question

<comment><USER26> Did you look at tarsnap (<http://www.tarsnap.com/>)? I don't use it, but read about it here quite a bit and it sounds really great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Service Idea: S3 offsite backups. Run <http://www.eucalyptus.com/open/> on this kind of hardware.

</comment><comment><USER28> These guys are very very good at what they do. Btw folks, no funding and they're already profitable. Gleb and crew rock!

</comment><comment><USER29> I wonder about the single point of failure posed by the power supplies. One failed box is not a big deal (since I assume the data is replicated over several). But, what if they get a bad batch of supplies and see a relatively high failure rate? I wonder how high a power supply failure rate they can handle.

The need to stagger the power on of the two supplies poses a problem. What if power to a data center is lost? When power is restored, all box will try to start, blowing all fuses. Granted, this is a catastrophic event, so its frequency should be very low. But, this also seems like an area that could be automated.

<comment><USER18> You should only use 75% of the rated capacity of a circuit, which means you have enough power to turn them all on at once.

some of the more expensive managed power supplies also support a staggered power on after power fail. But I don't worry about it; only using 75% of the power circuit solves that problem for me.

<comment><USER29> Unfortunately, using 75% of the rated capacity may not be enough to handle the inrush. The article discusses this point, "...if you power up both PSUs at the same time, it can draw a large (14 amp) spike of 120V power from the socket." That would mean one pod per 20A circuit. Ugh. In normal operating conditions, a 5.6A max load would allow three pods per circuit.

Addressing this would require a little bit of design, but the problem is relatively simple. If they wanted to get fancy, they could add a chaining feature--pods on the same circuit would be connected together so that they'd power on serially. This would get away from their goal of using off-the-shelf parts. It is, as with many things, an engineering trade-off.

<comment><USER18> The PDUs that support 'staggered power-on' are 'off the shelf' - if that is not an option (really, we're talking maybe $500 for each 20a circuit, retail) the next thing I'd do is set 'power on after power fail' to off, then have some remotely accessible way to trip the power button. (I'm working on a solution to that particular problem, but that's not 'off the shelf' - yeah, everything is on PDUs I can trip remotely, but there are reasons why it is much better to ungracefully reboot with the 'reset' jumper than to ungracefully reboot via cutting off the power.)

from there it would be easy enough to have an automated process turn on servers one at a time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Great stuff. Would anybody care to clarify why access is through HTTPS and not HTTP?

I presume all accesses to these pods are from within their data center? Or do they directly expose these boxes to clients (whoa!)?

<comment><USER31> BackBlaze runs online, off-site backups (like Mozy and Carbonite) at $5/month for unlimited storage. HTTPS is used to keep client data protected, I assume

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> The price comparison with other solutions isn't really fair. The cost per PB of these storage building blocks is directly compared to complete storage solutions from companies like NetApp and EMC. In the end the cost of the complete solution they assemble these building blocks into may well be cheaper than solutions from other companies and that's the number they should be using for comparison.

</comment><comment><USER33> I love how open they are about their solution, and I also want one for Christmas:)

</comment><comment><USER34> Awesome. Brings up a few questions for me (sure there are answers, just curious really).

Why a Core 2? An Atom mobo would be lower power and cheaper. Why 4Gb? Seems like an overkill. They are using a HD to boot. Couldn't they boot of a USB key?

<comment><USER35> I don't know for sure, but there might not be an Atom-based board that has as many PCI/PCIe slots.

<comment><USER34> Good point. The one I've got only has one PCI in fact.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Very interesting insight! I may try building a scaled-down version just for fun.

The cost comparison between raw drives, their custom solution, and Amazon S3, etc was a little skewed. S3 is designed for pay as you go storage so you're not paying for capacity you don't need. If you just need a few dozen gigabytes, it's a much better deal. If you need terabytes or a petabyte, a dedicated storage solution is more economical.

It's the same argument as vacation house vs timeshare. If you lived in a timeshare all year, it would cost more than buying the house.

</comment><comment><USER37> Seems along the same lines as Capricorn Tech. <http://www.capricorn- tech.com/products.php>

<comment><USER38> Not really. BackBlaze's post is about how to get on-line storage up for the lowest cost per bit. They appear to have done a great job at quadrupling the density of standard 1U setups for a similar price.

Capricorn appears to be in the business of selling standard 4 drive per 1U setups _and support_. The fact you have to contact their sales department to even get close to a price seems to indicate they're not competing on price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> What happens when one of the PSU's fails catastrophically, pushing a big electrical surge through the hard disks, frying half of them?

I didn't see anything in here that discusses that eventuality? And when you have that many servers, it IS going to happen at some point...

<comment><USER40> It's addressed in the section "A Backblaze Storage Pod is a Building Block"

From the article:

When you run a datacenter with thousands of hard drives, CPUs, motherboards, and power supplies, you are going to have hardware failures it's irrefutable. Backblaze Storage Pods are building blocks upon which a larger system can be organized that doesn't allow for a single point of failure.

<comment><USER39> Sounds to me like they haven't implemented this yet. I wouldn't want my data on that sort of solution. Backed up data would surely need a level of geographic redundancy.

<comment><USER40> In the next section they say they have implemented the machine level redundancy. As for geographic redundancy I think the idea is that you use them for that. As in you backup your data locally and then send it to them as a redundant copy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd love to hear what they are doing to monitor their system. They didn't mention that. 3 out of 15 drives failures to loose a volume seems quite likely at that scale.

I'd like to know what levels of warnings and alarms they use with which system, e.g. nagios, etc.

</comment><comment><USER41> How do you replace a drive? With so many drives it seems like a lot of effort to pull the entire server out to just access one drive.

<comment><USER40> They have three raid-6 volumes per machine, so they probably leave it in the rack until two of the volumes are unusable and then refurbish the machine.

<comment><USER42> I doubt it very much. When drives start failing out of a RAID6 array, you lose it's ability to automatically detect and correct single bit errors on disk.

With that much data, single bit errors will happen predictably.

If their usage patterns are anything like ours, disk failures are well under normal rates. Most backup data is stored and ignored. The drives just don't get much stress. Downing a machine for maintenance is probably acceptable to their usage pattern.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> effing love this.

I wonder what the reliability stats on this setup is, though. Is it really cheaper to jam all those drives in one unit without redundant PSU's, MB's, or a boot drive?

I'd guess you'd have to build at least 2 of these units and mirror them to get any sort of reliability. And, at that point, how long does it take to copy 58 TB across https?

data is hard.

<comment><USER12> I would assume they don't care about any of the hardware, just the data. If you look at the setup, and how the drives are raided, there 45 drives are sub- divided into 15 raid arrays, of which it would take 3 to die before they lost data. Essentially, they would need 20% of their drives to die simultaneously for them to lose data.

Now, for the rest of the hardware, its not that important to if it fails. If one of the other components die, you're only looking at some down time (and a possible dead hard drive or two from a PSU dying, which I assume they monitor regularly). As long as the data is secure and in one piece, it doesn't really matter whether the pod is up or down, until someone needs the data. Just send out your repair guy to replace it and reboot it, and its fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Great read! Why a seperated boot disk? Why can't that be on the storage array?</comment>


Some Venture Funds Hit 'Pause' on Big Deals - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052970203686204577116860581423438-lMyQjAxMTAyMDAwNDEwNDQyWj.html

<comment><USER2> I seem to recall some pretty clear-headed comments on this site and others questioning late stage venture funds buying into these "frothy valuations" and whether they would be able to get the returns that venture partners expect.

It seems that, at least for now, those returns have not been up to an acceptable level.</comment>


How to Make Friends as an Adult: 5 Secrets Backed by Research - <AUTHOR> https://www.bakadesuyo.com/2017/02/how-to-make-friends-as-an-adult/ <comment><USER2> This is how gay adults make friends. They hook up on Grindr and/or craigslist for (often strictly) no-strings-attached. After that sort of extreme intimacy, it's very easy to stay in touch. No dating game, no traditionalist expectations, no problem.</comment>


Ask HN: PhD, Startup, or Career?  - <AUTHOR> I'm nearing the end of my undergraduate Computer Science degree and I've been presented with the opportunity to read/study for a PhD fully funded by my University. The trouble is, I also hold job offers with two of the most prominent software vendors in the world. I'm at a cross roads as to which route to take at this point.
To add further confusion to my life, I've also been given a great idea for a startup and have the chance of working with a really cool co-founder. I really don't know which way to go with this one, any ideas?
I'll give a short description of the startup just in case you are wondering. My friend did a year long industrial work placement at a finance company while at University. He worked in the anti money laundering division. While he was there he had to use some god awful enterprise software that made use of some pretty bad pattern matching algorithms. Basically, he wants to do a startup with me where we would develop a SaaS based application to do pattern matching against bank transaction records to spot fraud, this is a big market with a few well established players. There is no doubt that we can make better software with better pattern matching algorithms, our problem is getting clients (same with everything I guess). The software is commonly refered to as AML software in case you wanted to do a small amount of background reading on it. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-money_laundering_software) <comment><USER3> Do the PhD and work out your AML software company idea while you are doing the PhD. You can drop out when you're ready to run with your startup. I personally know about 8 people who have become software millionaires this way. It's also how places like Google and Yahoo! got started.

The "Real World" is totally overrated. Entry level software jobs generally suck donkey balls, even if they sound like they won't.

However, it is very particular to your situation. If your job offer is to work on Photosynth at Microsoft Research, turn down the full ride to Toledo State U. However, if you're funded at Stanford or MIT, turn down the entry level code monkey job at Amazon or Yahoo!

<comment><USER4> Thats what I am doing except I am doing research right now on computation as an undergrad and I am auditing classes to get the information to complete the research. Its fun when you can pass out of classes to simplify your course load (self study).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well first, be thankful that you have incredible options. To be fully funded for a PhD is not unusual, especially for engineering/science fields, but in this economic climate there are far more people applying for fewer positions. The same goes for the job offers.

That being said, what do you really want to do? What are you good at?

I've written a bit about PhD life in another post (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=445082>) and of course you are welcome to contact me if you are being pulled this way. Bottom line is that I think you should do the PhD if you are completely ready. Putting off a PhD will only make coming back to do it much more difficult, especially when bills start to pile on. Getting a PhD is not setting your life in stone, rather it will open up MANY MORE doors for you in the future.

The start-up sounds enticing. If you two agree about how much work needs to be done and this is an area that you are truly passionate about...just go for it! However, know that good ideas are not finite. There will always be time.

As for the job offers... Well, I tend to hate the corporate environment so I couldn't give you unbiased feedback. If you feel you can create value, and feel like your skills are valued, then perhaps its a good match.

With any of these, I would encourage you to talk with the people you would be working with. Your community will make a HUGE difference POST-college, because life after undergrad is shockingly different.

<comment><USER6> Why will putting off a PhD make it more difficult? I had lots of options like the poster, and dropped out to do the startup. Ten years later I went back to finish my undergrad and get my PhD, this time in math.

<comment><USER7> > Putting off a PhD will only make coming back to do it much more difficult, > especially when bills start to pile on.

It would not make the PhD itself more difficult, but rather starting it - <USER2> are likely to have more and more responsabilities and burdens as time goes on.

<comment><USER5> This is what I meant. There isn't anything concrete that holds an older PhD back. I doubt there will be any age discrimination either on re-applying.

However, if you have a family, a mortgage, a car, and a life outside of school that is time-consuming, getting the PhD will not be a top priority. This makes it difficult to do all the logistical things of getting a PhD too--it's not all about research. You have core classes to complete, many tests and defenses to pass, and conferences to attend. Although it's entirely possible for someone to do this, I cannot imagine it would be easy or good for your studies/other obligations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some good points - I agree with hs saying 'do the scariest thing'. While you're young. I think this means either the startup or the PhD. But you sound more interested in the startup - you didn't even mention your intended research area!

A PhD is lots of really hard and thankless work, and if you're not really excited about it at the beginning, you won't finish, and that's the worst thing you can do.

So - unless you're hiding your passion for research in your post, I recommend the startup.

I'm sure you know about them, but just in case: the AML field as represented in the Wikipedia article (and the sales report PDF it linked to) missed one company I know of who's been doing AML services 'since 1993', called Logica: <http://www.logica.com/risk+and+compliance/350234053>

<comment><USER9> You could make the argument that PayPal with its fraud detection backend is primarily AML.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I went straight to graduate school, heeding advice that it would be difficult to give up the comfort of a real salary for a grad student stipend if I went and worked first. I observed in grad school that the students who had done that knew why they were there and what they wanted far better than I did.

Fundamentally, you will only know in retrospect whether or not you made the right decision. On the other hand, the stakes are not as large as they seem: 5 years is 125% of your time as an undergraduate, but only 12.5% of your career. (In other words, you have time to switch courses later, though it may appear now that you don't.)

Finally, the advice I always repeat to people facing difficult decisions. (Anyone who knows where this came from is welcome to tell me. I would attribute it if I knew the source.) .... When you have a difficult and important decision to make, flip a coin. Not because flipping a coin is a good way to make important decisions, but because in the moments while it is spinning in the air you will know which way you want it to land.

Trust yourself, good luck, and congratulations on earning such a plethora of attractive options.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm just going to take a devil's advocate role here and say get a job.

A start up is nothing without capital, and until you get funded that capital is you and your cofounder. Your savings, your time. A job means you can't put all your time into your startup, but it also means you can eat.

Having coworkers to bounce things off of, learn from and both see and make mistakes is invaluable. You can learn how to start your start up from working at your day job. You might even meet driven, hard working people who can help.

As far as continuing your education, that's awesome. Do it, but get someone else to pay for it. If you work at a big corporation they'll usually offset the cost or even give you a free ride.

That said, do what fuels you. If you like to code, get the job. If you like the theory, keep on with schooling. If you're into the startup thing, just do it. If you want it all, do it all. Just remember to eat.

</comment><comment><USER12> Get some "real world" experience first. I got bummed out doing a Masters many years ago - got distracted by money making ops. So 20 years later I'm back doing a PhD. The topic is more practical and yet breaking some new ground from the academic perspective.

Don't let money dictate your decisions. Seek to optimise your experiences and that goes for life outside of IT & work. The startup option will teach you the most. Just don't count on getting rich. It so spoils the experience.

</comment><comment><USER13> you live only once, do the scariest/craziest thing

<comment><USER14> A word of warning about web startups: what you find interesting is not necessarily what the average web surfer would find interesting.

In fact, it's even worse than that: what you find interesting is not necessarily something that the average web surfer could even understand.

Of course, academia has its own problems (e.g., your peers don't really care much about your success and have their own agendas, which causes problems with peer review). Also, publishing stuff isn't really anywhere near as rewarding as having a successful web startup.

<comment><USER15> Why _web_ startup? Just because he'll be selling 'Softwar as a Service'?

<comment><USER16> I think all of the money is in hardwar.

<comment><USER15> Why? And which kind of hardware? You don't want to be commoditized.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> 1\. Start-up

2\. PhD

3\. Corporate job

Order is from "earlier the better" to "later is better" order.

I would also suggest you read this: [http://www.amazon.com/Smart-Choices- Practical-Making-Decisio...](http://www.amazon.com/Smart-Choices-Practical- Making-Decisions/dp/0767908864/)

</comment><comment><USER18> I jumped into a startup at the end of my college career, but didn't have the burn capital to do it boostrapping. You may be better off acccumulating a bit of capital before throwing yourself into the start-up (the most rewarding, for most of us).

Remember, you can always change your mind and any software company you join does NOT have to be a career - you can quit and start your own start-up at any time if you have the courage.

</comment><comment><USER19> What do you mean by SaaS? Banks have to upload transaction records to your servers? Do they want to do that?

</comment><comment><USER20> Do you have a sense of which one you'd regret punting MOST? I can't imagine not getting a PhD gnawing at you for the rest of your life unless you love deep academia.

I can't imagine regretting punting a job offer from BigCo, but people are different.

The startup idea sounds cool, but making a better (or at least decent) mousetrap is really just an entry fee for attacking the sales/distribution problems associated with enterprise software. Hopefully you or your partner are good at sales and eager to do it.

I think most people are likelier to regret punting on a risky choice than the safe choice.

</comment><comment><USER21> You should ask yourself what you are really passionate about. I'm currently going through similar options and here's what I have to say.

If you can do PhD later, then do it later. If it's an opportunity that you must act upon immediately, then do so. You'll double-triple your salary when you re-enter the corporate job market. However, keep in mind the being a graduate student is being an adult with no money. You'll have to tough it out for a few years.

The same situation lies with your start-up. You've already let out your idea, therefore you must invest a large amount of time and effort (money) to release before any competition gets there first. At that point, what are the odds of your success?

To be really cautious, I would personally go with the PhD and tough it out. If you're confident enough in your talent, you can develop for your start-up on the side. If, for some reason you fail at either or both, when you re-enter the job market, you'll still be worth gold.

</comment><comment><USER22> My former employer also had an AML solution. You entered the name of the person as starting point, and the solution tried to fetch all related persons from the web by analyzing the name where the person was matched. These names were then associated with different keywords to create a ranking for each person and for the original person itself.

One problem will be getting the contacts. Also different banks have different systems. Maybe you can work something out with avaloq (their system is used more and more in different banks). Banks will never transmit data outside of their servers, and even people working there will not access any web service at all, if their computers are connected to customer data. So you have to sell the hardware as well. I think the biggest problem will be to integrate into the existing system.

</comment><comment><USER23> Congratulations on lining up all the top options. This may as well be a rethorical question since it covers all the possibilities!

Normally, based on my background I'd recommend the startup as #1, the job at Microsoft as #2 and the Ph.D last.

But I must say I'm not crazy about the startup you describe. Would I really advise you to join a startup I don't believe in?

Failure is a great learning experience. Looking for paying customers is a lesson that neither Microsoft nor a Ph.D will ever teach you. But isn't it a little bit early? My preference is to become an expert first and then start something. You must do your own soul searching. Are you satisfied that you are "great enough" in your field yet?

For some, it takes a few years of a regular day job. For others, they are great by the time they get their bachelor degree.

</comment><comment><USER24> As others said - don't do PhD right away. Take a break from the school and have a closer look at other options first.

For one you may discover that you can do cooler stuff in less time and to more satisfaction. For two you may notice that not all PhDs are created equal.

I had a choice of doing PhD when I was graduating (that was in Eastern Europe and it required getting an approval, a recommendation and god knows what else, so it was more of a privilege than an opportunity) and decided not to. Now, looking back, I'm pretty sure the stuff I worked on in a past 10 years would easily get me a PhD or two. It also earned me enough money so I can actually go back to school and do that PhD ... only if I wanted to :)

</comment><comment><USER25> You can narrow down the choices to two:

1\. Take the startup job. In the worst case it will fail. If so you would have gained so much valuable experience in programming + project management + finance + HR. With that experience you will easily get a Senior level job in any company. And that is the worst case. If it succeeds the returns will simply be atleast 10 times more than that of a career life.

2\. Given the market situation do your PHD, perhaps working on algorithms for detect money launder. The idea is by the time you complete your PHD (3 yrs?) the markets would have turned around surely.

And if the PHD is not in one of the top 10 universities, ditch the idea and go for the startup.

</comment><comment> puzzle-out Just one point about the phd, I noticed that some students who stayed at the same uni for postgrad grew REALLY bored with the place after being there countless years.

</comment><comment><USER26> i'd suggest you sit down and take stock of what you _need_ , first. if your situation requires you to follow a specific path, do that.

after that, figure out what you want, and follow that. you have time and little obligations (i'm assuming), so even if following what you want to do leads to a dead end, you have time and flexibility to get past that that you won't later in life.

</comment><comment><USER27> There are few times better in your life to start a company than in or right after college. Obviously you have made a positive impression on your uni and future employers, so work in the future wout be that hard to get.

I would say go for the startup idea since you see a need that could be better filled.

</comment><comment><USER28> Go to the big vendor, try it out there. In the meantime learn how to launch, promote, grow a solution with a safety net. You'll have other ideas. When you do you'll be able to do them on their own and use all the advantages of what you've learned to push it through.

<comment><USER25> That's a nice idea but the problem is it is difficult to get such chance in big company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Can you defer the Phd? If so then you can choose to give the startup a go for a while and see how that works out without closing the door on the Phd. Personally I wouldn't give preference to the industry jobs unless they're really very good.

</comment><comment><USER30> I think you can build a broader network of colleagues and will be exposed to a wider range of ideas while pursing a PhD.

That being said, a PhD is a long haul and a lot of work. The good news is that you can always leave after getting a masters.

</comment><comment><USER31> General rule of thumb is, recession is the best time for academics. But since you already have job offers, I guess it would not apply to you. But if you are in doubt, always refer to the first rule -- you do not talk about...

</comment><comment><USER32> This question reminds me of Howard Rourke's (Fountainhead)advice to Peter Keating when Peter is presented with a similar choice after graduating from Stanton. Rourke ranks them as 1.startup 2.corp 3.continued study

</comment><comment><USER33> I'd say do the startup. It'll be the one you'll most regret not doing. Whether you fail or succeed, you'll be ten times more able to tackle whatever you choose to do after.

</comment><comment><USER34> How about work for a year, save as much money as possible while working on your idea. Then quit to start your startup. If that tanks, go for the PhD.

</comment><comment><USER35> Life is all about taking chances. Do what you think is best to further your career.

</comment><comment><USER36> If I had a cofounder with an interest in finance, I would choose the startup path.

</comment><comment><USER37> PhD or Startup

</comment><comment><USER38> startup would be best, but most risky. job will be good if they let you innovate and reward you for it. phd is good if you like to be tortured.

<comment><USER39> Let me underline this part: Do not do your Ph.D. now. There is no rush.

At best, you would be wasting the extremely valuable "get out of industry free" card that an as-yet-unearned graduate degree represents. If you find yourself two years from now, trapped in an industry job which you hate, or in the aftermath of a failed startup, or -- worst of all -- laid off in a really down economy, you can go back to school then, reinvent your resume, revisit academic fields that have made progress in your absence, and meet an entirely new set of fellow students/potential co-founders.

At worst, if you go to grad school without sampling the actual world you could spend another half decade or more getting an advanced degree in a field that, once you graduate and the rubber meets the road, you might discover that you hate working in. Academic computer science and the software industry are rather different things. Being a grad student and being a professor are rather different things. Shop around a bit before committing yourself too hard to any of these paths.

<comment><USER5> We all have different perspectives depending on the school, the subject, the adviser, the project, and how many years you're currently at in your PhD career.

To speak purely from experience, I would have to say that I had similar choices coming out of my undergrad. I went directly into a PhD program. The first two years I hated my life, and I would have agreed with you then. Now, my life has completely changed.

First of all, it takes a while to build a new community. Grad school (and just life after college) is just different. You are no longer a part of the same social groups. You also have to find a project you are passionate about. For the first two years I was working on something I hated. I made a critical decision to switch and I haven't looked back.

Second, coming back to do PhD is not easy. As more time passes from undergrad, the more bills you have to pay, the harder it is to get recommendations, and the higher expectations will be. Passing your qualifying exam may be tougher.

Third, a PhD does not rail you to anywhere. It OPENS doors. American students do not fully comprehend this fact, and as such, American PhD students are the minority in most PhD programs.

<comment><USER40> _"Third, a PhD does not rail you to anywhere. It OPENS doors. American students do not fully comprehend this fact, and as such, American PhD students are the minority in most PhD programs."_

American students are a minority in PhD programs because the risk/reward is traditionally awful, relative to the other options available to US citizens. The calculation is different for foreign students (particularly those from emerging economies), which is why you see more of them in graduate schools.

<comment><USER39> _the risk/reward is traditionally awful, relative to the other options available to US citizens_

Mind you, this is not true for every US citizen, and it could change. If you can't get a job, getting a graduate degree is a lot better than taking to drink. (Unless your graduate degree drives you to drink, which I have seen happen. Try to remember that doppelbock is not a food group!)

But the original submitter is fortunate enough to have _three_ job opportunities, at least, so that doesn't seem to apply in this case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Considering you have a masters or at least an undergrad, you could probably ride the recession out inside a classroom.

A startup seems like a relatively quick return but its a gamble.

As for a career, both other options constitute as elements of one. If you mean striving to have some polished, dignified social timeline in your field, I say screw it, live for now.

</comment><comment><USER42> Go for a PhD, the older you get the harder it is to pick up the books again. You know, family, kids, and once you taste money you will want more and more, spending less time in other activities.

If you don't do it now, you will never do it.</comment>


Obsidian = markdown editor and wiki links - <AUTHOR> https://obsidian.md/ <comment><USER2> I already use markdown for my notes through the Journal plugin in VS Code. I love the system I have going.</comment>


Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Legend Max Levchin Joins Yahoo Board - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/13/silicon-valley-entrepreneur-legend-max-levchin-joins-yahoo-board-intuits-smith-and-weather-channelss-kenny-leave/

<comment><USER2> This move isn't really surprising.

From what I've heard/understand Daniel Leob wanted David Goldberg and Max Levchin 'on his side' when he was launching his proxy battle with Yahoo. He gave up the battle in exchange for a board seat as well as, an additional seat which - again from what I've heard/understand - he was going to give to one of them to help "spearhead the talent" at Yahoo. Since Goldberg has joined Washington Posts board, the obvious choice was Max Levchin (although he may have been the choice regardless).

Either way, it's a great move for Yahoo and helps gives them ability to attract the talent they're after.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm really enjoying the shifts in yahoo at the moment. Hopefully it leads to better products and services for us the users and consumers.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yahoo: optimizing executives and board members through stochastic hill climbing since 2005.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is an excellent move by Yahoo and a sign of real fundamental change within the company. Having super intelligent, capable people leading the company and on the board is the only possible catalyst to transform the company from the lethargic political fustercluck that it has been for many years.</comment>


The origin of circuits (2007) - <AUTHOR> https://www.damninteresting.com/on-the-origin-of-circuits/ <comment><USER2> "Five individual logic cells were functionally disconnected from the rest— with no pathways that would allow them to influence the output— yet when the researcher disabled any one of them the chip lost its ability to discriminate the tones. Furthermore, the final program did not work reliably when it was loaded onto other FPGAs of the same type.

It seems that evolution had not merely selected the best code for the task, it had also advocated those programs which took advantage of the electromagnetic quirks of that specific microchip environment. The five separate logic cells were clearly crucial to the chip's operation, but they were interacting with the main circuitry through some unorthodox method— most likely via the subtle magnetic fields that are created when electrons flow through circuitry, an effect known as magnetic flux."

This is absolutely incredible. Makes you wonder how much potential the real world has compared to the simulated environment usually used to test theoretical solutions.

<comment><USER3> It's an example of overspecialization and finding weird local minimum trough loophole in the way the problem is encoded.

Genetic algorithms have the ability to capture the imagination of public and computer science students because they can find very messy and random solutions if you run them long enough.

In the general context of search and optimization algorithms they are not impressive. When you can't use anting better, like Mote Carlo or simulated annealing, evolutionary algorithms are often the last hope before brute forcing it. GA can be very impressive when you can restrict the search space and find good representation for the problem.

<comment><USER2> I get the advantages of generic algorithms. But sometimes overfitting can be very useful. Imagine wind or water turbines where this method could be used to increase their efficiency based on the individual hardware.

<comment><USER4> Its also likely the solution it found would not work across the operating temperature range of the device. To do it properly would take a lot longer and need a lot more test cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _> These evolutionary computer systems may almost appear to demonstrate a kind of sentience as they dispense graceful solutions to complex problems._

Stanislaw Lem wrote about this in Summa Technologiae. He looked at evolution as an alternative way to acquire knowledge (alternative to intelligence). Interestingly, this implies there could be other ways too. But the point is, he postulated that both are examples of the same class of phenomena, which is a fascinating way to look at it.

(He did write about artificial evolution as well. And simulation. In 1964. That book aged extremely well and is full of interesting ideas.)

<comment><USER6> And now I have to read that book again. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> One of my favorite articles on the Internet.

I remember thinking this was a powerful confluence of genetic algorithms and reconfigurable computing, two pretty hot topics at the time, and was sure that real applications of this were on the horizon.

GA's seem to have been generally replaced by various facets of machine learning (although I'm hard pressed not to see GANs as Darwinian in nature) and the whole reconfigurable computing thing just seems to have dropped off the map. I sort of get the former but am curious if anyone on HN knows what happened to the latter.

Still love the article.

<comment><USER8> Me too! Some followup here on why not much happened:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/2t5ozk/wha...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/2t5ozk/what_ever_happened_with_the_evolutionary/)

Incidentally, GA's (specifically, novelty search/NEAT) are creeping back into the picture again:

[https://eng.uber.com/deep-neuroevolution/](https://eng.uber.com/deep- neuroevolution/)

<comment><USER7> Great links! Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For those who are interested, there is a much more thorough technical treatment of this experiment in Richard Gabriel's article "Design Beyond Human Abilities":

[http://richardgabriel.org/Files/DesignBeyondHumanAbilitiesSi...](http://richardgabriel.org/Files/DesignBeyondHumanAbilitiesSimp.pdf)

<comment><USER10> For the interested, this FPGA experiment is discussed from page 21 and beyond.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Posted many times, but only one small previous discussion, from 2015: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9885558](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9885558)

</comment><comment><USER12> The subject matter of the article is amazing, but there seems to be some weirdly out-of-place sexual innuendo in the writing.

Like, what is the purpose of comparing evolutionary algorithms with forced breeding programs - or mentions of the researcher penetrating virgin fields of research?

<comment><USER13> Author of the article (sheepishly) here: In my mind at the time of writing, the innuendo was an informal experiment of sorts. I wondered whether such suggestive writing would attract or repel readers; who would applaud and who would protest; etc. If you read the other articles on the site, you'll see this one was an outlier, the other articles don't have this tone.

In retrospect I was probably just being juvenile. But then, I always shake my head when I read my old writings, so I may not be the best to assess.

<comment><USER7> Whoa! Just stealing an opportunity to thank you for writing this, both the subject matter and your style of presenting it are very compelling to me (in context that probably says a lot about my own way of thinking lol). I've shared this with many people over the years as a gentle and sensible introduction to two very cool topics. Thanks!!!</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: TAO, a simple alternative to XML, JSON, S-expressions - <AUTHOR> https://www.tree-annotation.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> A discussion on reddit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/hyw0d4/tao_a_s...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/hyw0d4/tao_a_simple_alternative_to_xml_json_sexpressions/)

</comment><comment><USER2> Yeah I like how TAO uses less quotes than JSON so you would need less " when encoding TAO in HTML.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, TAO is most likely the most minimal syntax, even more minimal than S-expressions. It has only 3 special symbols: the brackets [] and the grave accent `.

They are among the rarest to be found in any kind of text, but at the same time the most ergonomic to enter on a typical keyboard (no need to hold shift).

In this way it gets out of the way almost completely while still being a complete syntax.</comment></comment>


The Mysterious History of the MIT Licensed - <AUTHOR> https://opensource.com/article/19/4/history-mit-license <comment><USER2> Fascinating Article!</comment>


Street Farmer - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/magazine/05allen-t.html?ref=magazine&pagewanted=all <comment><USER2> As one of the ten million folks trying to grow their own garden this year for the first time, I can attest to the difficulties that exist. Pests are the number one problem I am having, followed by soil conditions and water. I am not giving up, but I think it is going to take me several years to figure out which crops I can grow well, and which pesticides to use. It's a fun experience though for me and my kids.

<comment><USER3> i've been wondering about pests, too. where do you live, what are you growing and how much land are you farming?

we have a small plot in Cambridge, MA--at most 12 ft by 5ft. we've had a good run of (snap?) peas and kale. zucchini and tomatoes should be producing soon. watermelons never took hold and sprouts never produced radishes, but those were somewhat experimental plantings.

pests have been eating our basil. right now we're seeing how much loss this turns into. we're not sure what the next step is, other than identifying the pests. we're an organic coop to begin with, so unless we can find friendly pesticides, i expect we'll get creative with nets or some other mechanisms. or grow other plants.

<comment><USER2> I live in Durham, NC. You can check out my blog for more on the garden. The latest post, which I wrote tonight, details some of our successes and failures.

<http://www.beechtreetech.com/about/josh-pearce-blog.aspx>

Love them snap peas too!

<comment><USER3> nice blog! i grew up near durham, so it brings back memories.

i hadn't heard of lime conditioning, either. at least i can learn from your mistakes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This guy seems pretty awesome.

</comment><comment><USER5> Nothing quite helps you to understand the vibrance of an ecosystem like witnessing decomposition and rebirth first-hand. I live on the lower floor of a duplex, and last fall people blew leaves from their lawn that ended up on my stoop which is about two feet below ground at its lowest point and is well- sheltered from wind.

Most of the leaves have now decomposed into what appears to be a rich soil about half an inch thick with a fine covering of very dry, remaining leaves. You wouldn't believe how many earthworms I find if I explore even a small patch of this new terrain. Clover-like lichens are spreading down the three steps and have begun to take root on the stoop itself.

All on top of brick!

What this guy is doing is pretty awesome.</comment>


Sir Michael Atiyah to Announce Proof of Riemann Hypothesis on 24th Sep - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/HLForum/status/1042670700652318720 <comment><USER2> [https://old.reddit.com/r/math/comments/9hl35w/sir_michael_at...](https://old.reddit.com/r/math/comments/9hl35w/sir_michael_atiyah_announced_a_proof_of_the/e6cxbin/)</comment>


Beyond Einstein: Physicists find surprising connections in the cosmos - <AUTHOR> https://discovery.princeton.edu/2018/12/02/beyond-einstein-physicists-find-surprising-connections-in-the-cosmos/ <comment><USER2> AdS/CFT correspondence is a pretty old idea, whether it will yield something useful is still to be seen. Our world is not an N=4 Yangs Mills CFT, and our space is not AdS, so both sides of the correspondence are basically toy models that have been known for a while and haven't produced verifiable predictions (other than supersymmetric partners we haven't seen).

<comment><USER3> Neither of these models predicts superpartners. The AdS theory doesn't include the standard model. The N=4 theory doesn't even have particles. They're toy models, albeit rather sophisticated ones. Their utility is that they can give us concrete demonstrations of various conjectures about gravity, holography, and gauge theories.

<comment><USER2> > The AdS theory doesn't include the standard model

I never said AdS includes standard model?

> The N=4 theory doesn't even have particles

Yang Mills is a super symmetric CFT used as a toy model for other super symmetric models (which do have super partners; Yang Mills informs us about our real world only in as much as it informs us about other supersymmetric CFTs).

> Their utility is that they can give us concrete demonstrations of various > conjectures about gravity, holography, and gauge theories.

Sure, but there is significant concern about how meaningful those demonstrations are since the theories that are most similar to the toy examples are themselves probably dead ends.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The 5th dimension have already been experimentally conducted.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HYw6vPR9qU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HYw6vPR9qU)

I won't give away the spoiler but this article is written within a few months of the above video (oct vs dec).

The paper in reference is: "Limits on the number of spacetime dimensions from GW170817" Pardo, Fishbach, Holz & Spergel 2018 [https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.08160](https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.08160)

<comment><USER5> Did you mean "experimentally ruled out"?

From the paper: "gravitational waves propagate in D=3+1 spacetime dimensions, as expected in general relativity."

<comment><USER4> Yep it was ruled out there is an extra dimension that's hiding gravity's strength that was the conclusion of the paper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's difficult for a non-specialist to place this article in a broader historical context. I thought string theory was by now more or less considered a dead-end, so I wonder if this article is an attempt to revive it, or the first sign that it may actually go somewhere after all. Maybe someone knowledgeable can weigh in?

<comment><USER7> I've worked on string theory briefly (published one paper that got a respectable number of citations). It is not considered a dead end by people working on it obviously.

Many of the best people in theoretical physics with Edward Witten being the most prominent example have been working on it for ~40+ years now. None of the public detractors have nearly the same stature that Witten has. Of course this is basically an argument by authority and there is a chance that once titans like Witten leave the playing field the following generations will lose more and more influence.

I think there is a fair bit of criticism of String Theory among very good people that is not voiced publicly because there would be no point to it, they have nothing to gain. In many ways it is the "Only Game in Town" (literal quote from my supervisor), just doing high-energy particle phenomenology is not that much more exciting.

String theory has already led to a number of very high profile successes in mathematics (Perelman's Proof of the Poincare Conjecture, Monstrous Moonshine etc.), so it is not like the techniques that have been developed are totally useless.

<comment><USER8> > In many ways it is the "Only Game in Town" (literal quote from my > supervisor),

Aren't there a few alternatives such as Quantum Loop Gravity?

<comment><USER3> Yeah, loop quantum gravity is pretty badly broken as a theory of gravity. It doesn't have the right classical limit (i.e., general relativity). Doesn't even have thermodynamics compatible with the right classical limit.

I'd be extremely hard pressed to name a significant result loop quantum gravity has exported to the rest of physics and mathematics.

There's also the asymptotic safety program, which isn't completely implausible, but is kind of stuck in the 'steal underpants' phase.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "black holes have a temperature that arises because each particle that falls into a black hole has an entangled particle that can escape as heat"

o_O

<comment><USER9> I believe this is referring to Hawking radiation.

I'm not an expert, but normally particles don't have an entangled counterpart. Only virtual ones do, and those which fall in can have a counterpart which ends up being "radiated".

Perhaps the confusion is caused by the current understanding that any information (and mass?) that comes in will eventually get emitted back away.

<comment><USER5> "virtual ones .. a counterpart which ends up being "radiated"." \-- but this is not how Hawking radiation works.

<comment><USER9> Care to point out the error?

<comment><USER5> It's a form of redshift effect in curved spacetime. Any massive object stretches the spacetime in a way that the spectrum of the light emitted by that object shifts down from the point of view of a remote observer (remote - this is important). The larger the mass, the stronger the effect.

A black hole would create an infinite redshift (due to singularity inside of it) -- but only if infinitesimal EM frequencies were possible, which in turn would imply continuous spectrum. The energy of photons is quantized, therefore no truly infinite redshift is possible. The same applies to other particles.

Basically it's a raster effect that becomes apparent when you zoom up on a magazine photograph, or equivalently -- when you stretch a photograph printed on a rubber sheet, the only difference is that you stretch spacetime, not just space.

<comment><USER10> That's part of it, but then you have to account for the role the event horizon plays, and inherently complicated things like wave packets scattering off of it. I can't pretend to understand the process well enough to talk about it without resorting to heuristics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Given this explanation of gravity, can anyone hint (to a layman) how the- force-due-to-acceleration works in this model?

</comment><comment><USER12> Does assuming some ultimate law ruling the universe what mainly drives research?

Or, what if our so-called laws of nature, just like life, only emerged from the initial big bang? Was there a natural selection of the fittest particles after the big bang?

<comment><USER13> M-Theory posits that yes, the laws of nature and physics have evolved as the miltudimensional space evolved, they may not always have been the same as now.

<comment><USER12> Thanks, didn't knew about M-theory, I'll look it up!

Science taught me about how everything is made of particles while their interactions follow the laws of nature. Much later, reading Wittgenstein, I understood that the world is not so much about it's particles but more about how things interact together. Because if something never interact at all with anything, it may as well not exist at all. So the very existence of something always comes with its interactions to the world and whatever rules they happen to follow...</comment></comment></comment>