Apple tells U.S. judge 'impossible' to unlock new iPhones - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/20/us-apple-court-encryption-idUSKCN0SE2NF20151020 <comment><USER2> I applaud Apple for having made it technically impossible for them to betray their customers' trust, but I was just wondering about third party applications which have been granted access to various data on the phone. If the prosecution is looking for evidence in photos, and the suspect has granted Facebook access to their photos, could a judge compel Facebook to use their access to the phone in question to retrieve photos that were never on Facebook? I ask this in both a legal sense as well as a technical sense as I am not familiar enough with iOS permissions/API.

<comment><USER3> >> "...technically impossible for them to betray their customers' trust..."

Impossible is a very strong word in this context. Let me take the opportunity to remind everyone that an iPhone is a very complicated device running nearly 100% closed source hardware and software, include all sorts of opaque cryptographic hardware and a known-to-be-compromised secondary baseband computer, such that the security of the device's entire stack, top-to-bottom, could not possibly be verified by a third party in principle, let alone in practice.

In light of that fact, security claims by Apple could be regarded as changing (reducing?) the probability of the law getting your data by technical means or collusion with Cupertino, but certainly not as insuring that the probability = 0.

Edit: This is not an indictment of Apple per se, since the same is true of literally every smartphone ever constructed, but at least e.g. Blackberry isn't out there claiming that they're unable to compromise your data, full stop.

<comment><USER2> I wasn't trying to imply that Apple has forged a perfectly secure complex system, but rather that they have (likely) legally and practically prevented themselves from being compelled to betray their users. While forcing Apple to hand over a password they have stored in plaintext is quite definitely in the legal realm of accepted behavior, I don't think a judge could reasonably order Apple to devote engineering time towards defeating their own security system in order to make the prosecution's job easier, especially when it is not actually assured that the effort would be a success and any success would preclude the same work from being used in subsequent prosecutions.

I was merely skipping the caveats (back doors, implementation error, leaky behavior, etc) and giving benefit of the doubt with regards to honesty of intentions.

<comment><USER4> I think "legally and practically prevented" is key here.

Not sure if anyone noticed but this article is like a continuation of the story from days ago [1] when the judge in the case "questioned the government's authority to compel Apple to unlock a seized mobile device using the All Writs Act" [2] and "called on Apple to weigh in about whether it is even capable of bypassing the lock screen in this case" [2].

Guess Apple has weighed in now as to its technical feasibility. Now it's up to the judge to decide whether it is an unreasonable burden on Apple, and whether it violates the Constitution, as to whether to compel Apple to help in the Justice Department's investigation.

In this one single case, the iPhone has an older iOS, so maybe it's not an "unreasonable burden".

But if it was iOS 8 or later, it might be deemed an unreasonable burden to compel Apple to brute force or otherwise crack the password, even if it was somehow technically possible. And "forcing Apple to push backdoored updates would constitute 'compelled speech' in violation of the First Amendment" [2].

So it does look as if Apple thought it through, and made iOS 8 so that they legally and practically cannot "betray their customers' trust" as you say.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10383253](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10383253)

[2] [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/judge-doj-not-all- writ...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/judge-doj-not-all-writs)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For those who have questions about "Couldn't Apple just do X or Y?", Apple has published an eminently readable whitepaper on the software and hardware components of their security: [https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf](https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf)

Of course, Apple could be implementing things differently from as described but the whitepaper lays out what is and is not possible in the described system.

<comment><USER6> The iOS Security Guide is 60 pages of technical goodness, but when dealing with encryption, it's really not enough to fully understand the system, even putting aside concerns about it being closed-source. There is such an incredible level of detail in the document, it would take a really long time to peel that onion back to be able to claim to really understand the trust model. It's some of the best technical documentation on encryption methods I've read, but even still there is plenty of room for ambiguity.

The key section I think most people really should take a look at is "iCloud Backup" starting on page 42. Almost everything you do with your device will end up in an iCloud Backup if you have enabled that, and while the data is encrypted for transport, _note well the following_ ;

      The backup set is stored in the user's iCloud account and consists of a copy of the
      user's files, and the iCloud Backup keybag. The iCloud Backup keybag is protected by
      a random key, which is also stored with the backup set. (The user's iCloud password
      is not utilized for encryption so that changing the iCloud password won't invalidate
      existing backups.)

In plain English, if you have enabled iCloud Backup, everything but your keychain itself is accessible in plaintext to Apple, and can be restored, without your password, to any new device that [you / the Feds] may provide.

I would very much love for Apple to provide an opt-in where the iCloud backup key is tied to the account password with extremely aggressive key-stretching. I would take the risk of losing my iCloud Backup over the trade-off of having my backups accessible to Apple and anyone they can be compelled to share them with. But I do appreciate for the average user, it's not uncommon for iCloud Backup to be immediately preceded by a password reset (just look down-thread for an example).

Note, Apple says that they use a combination of S3 and Azure to actually store the iCloud data, but that they have an additional layer of encryption over the data before sending it out. So while backups technically reside on Amazon/Microsoft servers, it's a black box to them.

<comment><USER5> Yup. As the celebrity photo hacking should have made clear, Apple can only offer far weaker security guarantees on the web because they control less of the ecosystem.

At a minimum, if the police get access to your email account, they can force a Apple ID password reset and then restore your data onto a new device without needing permission from you or Apple.

Note however it is still possible to backup your iphone locally using iTunes and Apple now supports encrypted local backups. If you are worried about this threat vector, encrypted local backups provides a large degree of the same usability with significantly stronger security guarantees.

<comment><USER7> "if the police get access to your email account, they can force a Apple ID password reset"

That's an interesting assertion. I mean, yes, sure, they could do that, but it's an interesting question of whether they are legally allowed to do that. Effectively they'd be misrepresenting themselves to your email provider and to Apple as if they were you. Is that acceptable 'undercover policing'? Can they reset your banking password too? Can they do this only while they have you under arrest?

<comment><USER8> They don't need to admit they did it. Parallel construction works more effectively.

<comment><USER9> If they have information that was only present on your device or your iCloud backup, and they already can't get at your device, how exactly does parallel construction help them explain the fact that their evidence includes information that could have only been obtained one way?

<comment><USER10> Because that's not the evidence they present, they use that to figure out where else to look for evidence, pretending they found that randomly or by guesswork or suspicion or following an anonymous call.

<comment><USER11> Right. "By virtue of my training and experience, I had reason to believe" is a stock statement re anything, in trying to establish probable cause for searches, stops and the like.

It's a broad, overarching, and highly vague statement that amounts to, in many cases, "I decided you do, so therefore I have the right to act as if you do".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In case anyone shares my confusion: they aren't talking about unlocking in the sense of removing carrier restrictions, but rather in the sense of disabling the security features of the device to access the data stored on it.

<comment><USER13> I believe they're talking about trying to access a phone once it has been "locked" from too many wrong tries at the lock screen.

<comment><USER14> That's what I got from the article, the key was wiped because of X many tries so Apple can't "unlock" the data on the device (excluding everything backed up to apple cloud).

In the future they will use shady FinFisher iTunes and other exploits to grab the data then seize the phone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So on one hand we're carrying around little location-aware sensors that upload all kinds of tracking data to who-knows-where, enabling unprecedented tracking of human beings and their movements at incredibly high resolution. We also voluntarily post so much data online any number of social media sites, financial institutions, etc. can see almost everything we do.

BUT on the other hand with proper use of crypto it is now possible to engage in secure communication at a distance that can _never_ be decrypted without our consent and (if certain protocols and method are used) allow anonymity at _both_ ends of the link (e.g. Tor hidden services). It is also possible to securely send money to others using Bitcoin without knowing their identity... ever.

Very interesting times... it's both a panopticon and an unprecedented age for anonymity and privacy.

<comment><USER16> Well no, you have already detailed the crucial vulnerability in this panopticon: the devices can not be trusted. Trying to do encryption and secure communication with untrusted devices then is utter folly.

I'm just astonished by the breadth of vulnerability in modern smartphones, particularly with Googles handling of Android security. We haven't even gotten into baseband vulnerabilities yet because the whole applications processor security thing is just an entirely crumbling piece of cardboard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Can someone explain how Apple has managed to render brute force ineffective if there are only 10000 possible 4-digit passcodes?

<comment><USER18> To everyone replying to this comment saying that you can set a limit and then the phone will wipe itself after the limit has been reached - that point is moot. Although I wish it wasn't so, there are a couple people who were able to setup a mechanism to brute force an iPhone pin by shutting off the device before it registered an unsuccessful attempt therefore ... giving you limitless potential.

<comment><USER19> That's patched: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9225317](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9225317) Unless you're talking about a newer instance of the same bug.

<comment><USER18> Here is what I was referring to: [https://youtu.be/meEyYFlSahk](https://youtu.be/meEyYFlSahk)

Seems more of a mechanical setup, rather than this guy's video. Like put a kill switch ON THE PATH (i.e. before signals reach) the "Okay iPhone, register this failed attempt" destination.

<comment><USER19> The automatic thing is just an automatic exploit of the same issue[0] (forcefully cutting power rather than powering off with the buttons might make it more reliable.) It's called an iPBOX and AFAICT it doesn't support iOS 8.1.1[1], when the issue was fixed.

Other commentors have pointed out that the PIN/crypto stuff is handled by dedicated hardware designed to resist tampering, probably pretty much state- of-the-art. The issue before was a software issue. Now that it's fixed it's very hard to completely hack the hardware and would have to be done to each phone individually: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10424439](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10424439) I'm not an expert, but I imagine intercepting the signal would be just as hard, as the signal is contained within one tiny chip and it might not even be possible to reliably modify a circuit on that scale. You can't just replace the chip with a no-PIN version either, because it contains a unique crypto key to the data you presumably want from the phone. This also makes modifying the chip difficult, because if you screw up you could lose the key.

[0] [https://www.mdsec.co.uk/2015/03/apple-ios-hardware- assisted-...](https://www.mdsec.co.uk/2015/03/apple-ios-hardware-assisted- screenlock-bruteforce/) [1] [http://forum.gsmhosting.com/vbb/10720367-post1.html](http://forum.gsmhosting.com/vbb/10720367-post1.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Theoretically, couldn't Apple push an auto-update to the phone that could decrypt the data?

<comment><USER21> Where would that software auto-update get the decryption key from? If the user has enabled a passcode, then their passcode is used in generation of the key used to protect the disk encryption key. Even if apple did push an update, the user would still have to unlock their device post-update.

<comment><USER22> The update could wait for the next time the user types in that password. If you own the phone (which you do if you can push OS updates), you can own the data on it. There's no way around that, unless the phone is already confiscated or the user knows to not type in their password.

<comment><USER23> > which you do if you can push OS updates

Unless Apple already inserted a secret backdoor that allows for forced updates, you don't have to update the phone when it prompts you. The closest I've seen it get is a reminder that asks you if you'd like to schedule an update for 2:00 AM or some such time, and then asks for your passcode to do so. You still need to type it for the explicit purpose of updating for it to go through.

<comment><USER24> Was there not a huge storm when iOS 7 came out because they automatically pushed the update?

<comment><USER25> That was about iOS automatically downloading the update file in the background (and at the time lacking an option to delete it), not automatically installing anything.

<comment><USER24> Ah okay, thanks for the clarification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This sounds really similar to when the Snowden docs were first leaked. You have to listen very carefully to exactly what is said and read between the lines.

[http://www.cnet.com/news/obama-denies-that-us-spied-on- germa...](http://www.cnet.com/news/obama-denies-that-us-spied-on-german- chancellor-or-does-he/?_escaped_fragment_=#)!

"the United States is not monitoring and will not monitor the communications" means, "Was monitoring up until just now."

Here Apple says "We can't unlock new iPhones." Apple says nothing about their ability to restore iCloud backups or load software to capture evidence from a locked phone.

</comment><comment><USER27> You hear that? That's the sound of a million security researchers simultaneously shouting 'Challenge Accepted!'

</comment><comment><USER28> For users with Touch ID enabled, would it be legal for law enforcement to use your fingerprint on file to access the phone that way?

I'm not sure how easy it would be to fool the touch ID sensor on the phone. I think I remember a MythBusters episode where they made a silicone mould of a fingerprint to bypass a security system.

<comment><USER6> Yes, and there is case law that fingerprints are not testimony (since you leave them everywhere you go). However, as others stated below, it won't work because the PIN is still required after a timeout. Really, they thought this through.

<comment><USER29> Or you can quickly disable TouchID by giving it an invalid fingerprint too many times or simply shutting off the phone. Then you'll need a password and I don't believe they can compel that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Here's the actual filing from Apple: [https://s3.amazonaws.com/f.cl.ly/items/2G372p3E1D0m3806001A/...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/f.cl.ly/items/2G372p3E1D0m3806001A/document.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER31> The only direct quote in the article that offers any real context:

"Forcing Apple to extract data in this case, absent clear legal authority to do so, could threaten the trust between Apple and its customers and substantially tarnish the Apple brand"

This quote, granted taken without full context, seems to indicate a pretty clear stipulation of "clear legal authority". Not sure what to make of that, but I do think that in matters of privacy and surveillance the words are always chosen very carefully indeed.

</comment><comment><USER32> In security, _impossible_ is a marketing word

<comment><USER33> There is situational impossibility though. Apple not being able to decrypt a powered down phone is possible if they did their design work properly.

<comment><USER32> > There is situational impossibility though.

Agree, but often impossibility claims have an expiration date. They also said it would be impossible to jailbreak iOS 9 with the new rootless security... It took few months for a Chinese team to completely by-pass Apple's new design.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/antonyleather/2015/10/18/how- to-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/antonyleather/2015/10/18/how-to-jailbreak- your-ios-9-ipad-or-iphone/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> But what if some diabolical fiend attaches an encrypted iPhone to a nuclear bomb, and the only way to diffuse the timer is by asking Apple to unlock the encryption to stop the timer???

Also, "child pornography" ...what if "child pornography" is involved? You wouldn't want _THAT_ , right?

</comment><comment><USER35> what if this is parallel construction? Can it state as 'impossible' to 'unlock'(crack/backdoor) in civil level but unlock-able on DoD/NSA level?

</comment><comment><USER36> iPhone pincodes by default are very short. iPhone protects them from bruteforce with delays after unsuccessful tries. But does the hardware, where pincode's hash is stored, protects it with delays and protects it from labaratory attack? I mean, government could just open iPhone, extract that chip, extract pincode's hash and crack it. You would need quite long password to withstand such an attack.

Another vector of attack is fingerprint scanner. After iPhone turned on, by default you can unlock it with fingerprint scanner. And turning iPhone off is not very quick, you need to push power button for a few seconds and then slide over screen. If police arresting you, then will get your phone from your hands and just force your finger to open it, no pincode needed.

So yes, while iPhone is probably safe when properly configured (ruling out possible vulnerabilities), the proper configuration is hard to use and is not default.

That's from the point of goverment attacker. If attacker is just some thieve or commercial espionage, probably iPhone is a good device even with default settings.

<comment><USER37> Comments above suggest that the pincode information is managed within a HSM- esque onboard hardware device. As such, extracting that chip and retrieving the pincode hash is likely to be entirely infeasible, even for very capable orgs like the NSA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Chrome says that the page contains malicious softwares... oops?

</comment><comment><USER39> So the US wants it to be impossible for the average person to unlock a phone (via law) but Apple make it technically impossible and the US justice system cries foul. Swings and roundabouts.

</comment><comment><USER40> Anyone know how iCloud backups are encrypted?

<comment><USER41> This comment above by zaroth might answer your question: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10422952](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10422952)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> They're saying "there isn't an easy way in that we know of" not that there isn't one...

<comment><USER43> No one can never be 100% sure that their security does not have flaws, either in design or in implementation.

<comment><USER44> Righ. But a court cannot compel Apple to find an unknown flaw in something to help law enforcement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> It sounds Apple is saying "If you don't want law enforcement to to break into your iPhone, buy a newer iPhone."

<comment><USER46> Specifically they can't break iPhones running iOS8 or newer. Which is available for quite old iPhones.

I do not think this is an attempt to sell newer iPhones to the small fraction of users they have running iPhones too old for iOS8.</comment></comment>


Machine classification and analysis of suicide-related communication on Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://orca.cf.ac.uk/76188/ <comment><AUTHOR> There's also this paper: [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140366415...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014036641500256X)

"Analysing the connectivity and communication of suicidal users on twitter".

[https://twitter.com/ProfLAppleby/status/740957809924308992](https://twitter.com/ProfLAppleby/status/740957809924308992)

I think Prof Louis Appleby went to talk held at Twitter today. Was anyone there? Was it good?</comment>


Building Streaming REST APIs with Ruby - <AUTHOR> http://intridea.com/blog/2012/5/24/building-streaming-rest-apis-with-ruby <comment><USER2> Unfortunately, this approach will not work for clients using Internet Explorer (save for IE 10). WebSockets and EventStreams are fairly new, and not supported across all browsers (both for mobile and non-mobile).

This is why socket.io and its contemporaries have several layers of fallbacks, even going back to infinite iframe/JSONP polling.

<comment><USER3> Actually, it should work. If you see in the other comments, someone mentioned that rack-stream uses faye-websocket-ruby, which has multiple fallbacks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would suggest anyone implementing this take a look at faye-websocket. It was recently extracted from a production-quality project named Faye, which uses a pub-sub broadcast model based on bayeux. The websocket implementation has numerous fallbacks, and is well-tested. I'm using it in production currently.

<https://github.com/faye/faye-websocket-ruby>

<comment><USER4> faye-websocket-ruby's a great project. rack-stream actually uses it to detect websocket and eventsource requests, and stream back on those protocols.

<comment><USER3> I had no idea. Cool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is there any information out there regarding streams / chunked responses within Rails? (I'm not talking about the new template stream facility, but generating arbitrary data)

I'm currently using enumerators assigned to response_body:

        self.status_code = 200
        self.response_body = Enumerator.new { |y| ... }

I'm hitting a number of problems though, e.g unicorn killing long-lived workers.

<comment><USER4> Could you link to a fuller gist? Is self referring to an ActionDispatch::Response object? I plan on improving rails integration with rack-stream so that you can call `#chunk` from controllers and that will defer sending a chunk of content.

<comment><USER5> Here goes: <https://gist.github.com/2823045>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is super cool.</comment>


The Immediate Future of Jekyll - <AUTHOR> http://blog.parkermoore.de/2012/12/18/the-immediate-future-of-jekyll/ Had a chat today with Tom Preston-Werner about the future of Jekyll. Here's what is in the works. <comment><USER2> While Jekyll is cool to run a blog, it could be a PITA if you want to run a marketing site or something less blog-like with it. This made me to create Punch (<http://laktek.github.com/punch>), which can be easily customized to run many different kinds of sites.

If you already have a blog based on Jekyll, but feels it takes forever to build. Consider switching it to Punch with this boilerplate (<https://github.com/laktek/punch-blog>). Basically, you only need to move the files from Jekyll's `_posts` directory to Punch's `posts` directory. Also, you would love the ease in template customizations (and ability to use partial layouts).

<comment><USER3> My preferred tool for marketing websites is <http://middlemanapp.com/> . On top of handling the markdown, erb -> html generation it also takes care of minifying of js and css, handles sass, less and setting image sizes automatically. It's not my project but I really love it :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My annoyances with Jekyll from (<http://substancehq.com/why-substance>)

        I used to be a happy jekyll user for a long time. But, bloggin using jekyll
        is frustrating when you have to make a lot of minor edits. The commit → push
        dance is too much while making small edits. Also, I don't know a straight way
        of doing jekyll redirects and allowing the use of tags/categories.
        Substance fixes those issues because it is dynamic I sometimes wonder what age
        we are living in, when we (the tech bloggers) use a static site generator for
        our blogs. Jekyll's main strength has been that it's very very flexible,
        I've tried to build Substance to give the most flexibility to the users
        without complicating things.

Substance (<http://substancehq.com/>) is a simple blogging engine / site builder without any fluff. I created it to replace Jekyll for myself. Hope others find it useful.

Also, it has ability to add custom data collections easily. If you want to build a simple site, this comes in very handy.

<comment><USER5> I'm also a heavy Jekyll user. I work on a Jekyll addon, which will allow live site edits. Imagine static site generator executed on client-side:

<https://github.com/darwin/terraform>

The main trick is to use PhantomJS to pre-generate static site for initial serving.

<comment><USER6> Fantastic, that would be a dream come true. A Jekyll site that I could update even when I'm not at my own machine.

<comment><USER7> If you keep your Jekyll site on GitHub, you can edit your site in your browser with Prose. I imagine you use GitHub for its Jekyll building and mirror the built site elsewhere.

<http://prose.io/about.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's refreshing to see that the CEO of a $100 million company can still be excited about something as trivial as a static blog generator.

<comment><USER9> Actually more than 100 million. That's just the amount they raised from a16z

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't understand why "decrease build time" receives such emphasis; isn't build time largely irrelevant to the type of sites that are appropriate for a static site generator?

<comment><AUTHOR> "Build time" means "generation time", or "compile time". It's the amount of time it takes Jekyll to build the site from the source to the static HTML, etc. Right now, it's really slow. If you have over 100 posts, it practically warrants a coffee break. We have some developed some ideas about fixing this issue.

<comment><USER11> This, 1000x times. I have over 1200 posts on my blog <http://paulstamatiou.com> and I've purposefully avoided stuff like pagination, related posts (lsi) at the end of articles, tags/category pages and other features due to slow time. I'm at about 60s on my Macbook Air now which I can deal with.

But when I'm writing a blog post and I constantly want to preview it in the browser (since lots of my posts have images and such I prefer seeing the real layout than purely in sublime text 2) I use a rake task I have that stashes every post but the one I'm working on so it only generates the one post.

Edit: and a faster generation time means I don't have to feel bad using lots of liquid filters / includes (which can help clean things up and organize my site).

Two things I'd like to see (which I've had to fork my jekyll for) and that I'll put on the github:

\- "multiviews" support (it's how I get all my links to have no .html ending, well that and some rack:rewrite rules)

\- support for different post types that are not in the main site.posts. I only have 2 types now but for a while had a regular post, a shorter "aside" style post that was not in the main feed nor homepage and had its own index and feed, and another post type for photos. These go beyond just different layouts. Though this is more of a CMS feature than a blog feature which may be a direction thing that Jekyll is not intended for. ?

<comment><USER6> I read parkr's above comment and was about to search for your blog (where I first read about the insane site generation times), but then I found your comment just below. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am a Python programmer yet Jekyll is still my preferred static blog generator. I strongly considered Pelican but did not like all the magic it came with. Pelican would consolidate all my blog posts to the same location and had various (configurable) directory conventions that I would've to follow.

I needed just a simple compiler which converts markdown to html while retaining the structure of the site. Ideally, what need not be processed should be left as is. This gives developers like me a lot of flexibility to design a site.

Jekyll has not been updated for a long time but it still serves my needs quite well. I hope future releases would support minification and preprocessors like Coffeescript.

<comment><USER13> You can add support for preprocessors like CoffeeScript to Jekyll fairly easily via a plugin. I created Jekyll Asset Pipeline for this purpose. [http://www.matthodan.com/2012/11/22/jekyll-asset- pipeline.ht...](http://www.matthodan.com/2012/11/22/jekyll-asset- pipeline.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've only recently heard of jekyll but have been searching or thinking about creating a markdown based blog for a while. I first discovered it through an article on the obama campaign, and how they used it in combination with AWS:S3 [http://kylerush.net/blog/meet-the-obama- campaigns-250-millio...](http://kylerush.net/blog/meet-the-obama- campaigns-250-million-fundraising-platform/). Jekyll is here to stay.

<comment><USER15> Me too. I saw that article. I had been using jekyll for a while. Then I decided to piece together how to replicate what the obama campaign did using s3 and cloudfront: [http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Jekyll-S3-Cloudfront-Aname- Root...](http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Jekyll-S3-Cloudfront-Aname-Root.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Why would you want to pay for people to come to your site? Don't you have to pay Amazon for that bandwidth usage?

<comment><USER15> I'm curious. Setting things like this up is my idea of fun. I use the same technique for my business. I like static site hosting, and liked the idea of things being speedy no matter where our customers are. Cloudfront does that well.

As far as cost. I'm 30 and I don't like relying on free things. Github probably wont go down, but I'd still rather pay. I set that up Dec 1st, served 100k pageviews. My Amazon bill right now is $1.25 (one dollar, twenty five cents). Maybe that'll go up, but for what I'm doing, I doubt it will be that expensive.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hm, I didn't realize it was so inexpensive. I've only ever used S3 as a CDN for a huge site with lots of images, so it was an expensive endeavor.

<comment><USER16> I've run a Jekyll site from S3 with no difficulty, at a satisfactorily low hosting cost. Cloudfront takes only minutes to setup, and the costs are competitive, so I imagine it's a promising route.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Anyone who doesn't know Ruby (like, at all) tried using Jekyll? How was your experience?

I've wanted to for a while but I feel somewhat handicapped not knowing Ruby so I've been putzing around Python-based alternatives like Pelican.

<comment><AUTHOR> Using Jekyllwothout any ruby experience should be a snap. It's all controlled by the CLI. You create posts and run `jekyll` and you're in business.</comment></comment>


Don't Learn C the Wrong Way - <AUTHOR> http://hentenaar.com/dont-learn-c-the-wrong-way <comment><USER2> >>Let me start by saying that unlike Mr. Shaw, I am not a writer. I'm an engineer.

Zed Shaw, whilst his approach to certain issues may be questionable, is _not_ "a writer rather than an engineer".

Zed is known as one of the most prolific and capable software engineers around and I have heard his C code for Mongrel 2 server [https://github.com/zedshaw/mongrel2](https://github.com/zedshaw/mongrel2) described as being amongst some of the best examples of C code to study, learn and understand (trying to find the link that said that). I hold his work in high regard.

I don't agree with everything that Zed does and think it's a pity that his combative and dogmatic nature detracts from the core message about his work, but the author of this blog post is off track if he is trying to suggest that Zed doesn't know what he is doing and is "a writer" rather than "a software engineer". Zed is a (cantankerous) _software engineer and a writer_.

The attempt to discredit Zed's credentials just discredits the blog post and its author. When criticizing, criticize the work rather than the person.

<comment><USER3> At this point people just keep trying to pick fights with Zed. He's not out there picking fights with others (well any more than anyone else).

And all of the posts pointing this out all disclaim that "while they don't agree with Zed about some things..."

It's just kind of sad from a rhetorical perspective.

It's clear that the guy who wrote this post doesn't agree with Zed's pedagogical style, but that doesn't make Zed's book wrong in detail or approach. It just means this guy doesn't agree with the style. And he's not upfront about it either due to a lack of introspection or forthrightness.

<comment><USER4> It sounds like more than a just a "style" disagreement.

In the discussion of C strings, the author is arguing that Zed's arguments are nonsensical, maybe even objectively wrong. I write a lot of C, and the author is right in this case about C strings and undefined operations. In C you must arrange your code so that you always supply valid input to functions, there is no way around it, and it is perfectly safe once you do so.

I'd rather see discussion of the actual arguments, rather than complaints about the article's tone. :)

<comment><USER3> Zed's book is concretely about introducing programmers (particularly new ones or ones going from higher level managed languages down into C) to where and how C can be dangerous especially around string management.

And that's why this _is_ a style issue. Even if he disagrees with Zed's approach (and in particular how undefined behavior is discussed) it's just mendacious to claim that Zed isn't introducing his readers to the idea that one needs to be careful with strings and understand what kind of inputs one will receive.

This is a critically different behavior when compared to Ruby or Python where string management is done for you, and coming from the POV of someone who's familiar with those languages... Zed's approach makes sense. Especially when the alternative being suggested is "you absolutely must go read the C spec and K&RC".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Part 3:

"Wait a tic... Where's the Makefile? I've got just about as much chance of finding it as the FBI does of finding Jimmy Hoffa. Am I just supposed to imagine it into existence?"

I think the point is that the make command can use implicit rules even if there is no Makefile. It knows how to compile C source files. (This could be confusing if you know about "make" but don't know about implicit rules.) For example:

        $ ls
        hello.c
        $ cat hello.c
        #include <stdio.h>
        int main(void) {
            puts("hello");
            return 0;
        }
        $ make hello
        cc     hello.c   -o hello
        $ ./hello
        hello
        $

Later: "So, I'm just supposed to poke in some code, go to my terminal, type this magic 'make' word, and expect a built and working program, right?"

Yes, that's exactly what you're supposed to do. Try it, it should work.

Part 10 mentions strncpy() as a safer strcpy(). It isn't. [http://the-flat- trantor-society.blogspot.com/2012/03/no-strn...](http://the-flat-trantor- society.blogspot.com/2012/03/no-strncpy-is-not-safer-strcpy.html)

(Disclaimer: I haven't read Zed Shaw's book, and I don't intend to.)

<comment><USER6> I'm glad you posted the article on strcpy; I did not know about this behavior of strncpy and am a little surprised I never ran into it before.

That being said; it is a safer alternative to strcpy, but it seems like it isn't the _safest_ alternative to strcpy.

<comment><USER7> What about strcpy_s ??

<comment><USER5> strcpy_s is not universally available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The entire article reads as a thinly veiled diss on Zed by someone that (badly) skimmed LCTHW.

Things like:

1\. Griping about format strings not being explained until it's necessary to understand them even though it's suggested that you look into them right away in the extra credit section.

2\. Griping about non-existent Makefiles even though they are explained in multiple sections, one where he chose to spend time dissing on the section title instead of actually reading it and seeing that you write a makefile.

It feels like the author believes that there's a "one true way" to teach a language and that Zed's way isn't it.

I for one am grateful for alternatives to textbook-style books, be it Learn X the Hard Way or the O'Reilly Head First books.

</comment><comment><USER9> > C was designed on UNIX, and was basically made for UNIX. That's a matter of > historical record. But to say that on Windows everything is a little "off", > doesn't quite do it justice. I understand that the book is aimed at the > uninitiated, but to put it that mildly is an understatement of epic > proportions.

Yeah, this was the fist sign I wouldn't read to the end, and I was right. The author just says this, and leaves it at that. As if we are to just take his word for it. This is essentially what this argument boils down to:

"He said X, I say X++." No explanation, nothing to backup what he says, nothing other than a to suggest it's a epic understatement.

Let's put this another way: my comment is has more to backup what I say than this article. The author might be right, but he doesn't back it up.

<comment><USER10> And I don't even understand why he doesn't agree that C is a second-class citizen on Windows. Microsoft would rather have you code stuff in C++ or .Net and MSVC is stuck with the C90 standard (although apparently that is finally improving)

<comment><USER11> On the bright side, the author's hate for implicit make-rules, and inability to grasp the pedagogic value of showing implicit includes first, and -Wall later made me go and test the following in a "command prompt for VS2013" on windows:

      >more hello.c
      int main(int argc, char *argv[])
      {
        puts("Hello world.");
        return 0;
      }

      >cl hello.c
      Microsoft (R) C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version
      18.00.31101 for x86
      Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

      hello.c

      Microsoft (R) Incremental Linker Version 12.00.31101.0
      Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

      /out:hello.exe
      hello.obj

      >hello
      Hello world.

Things are getting better.

<comment><USER12> >Things are getting better.

In what sense? MS platform had a working C compiler for decades.

<comment><USER11> Working, and "easy to use" isn't the same thing. For one thing, this is a gratis compiler from MS.

<comment><USER13> Not quite sure what is new here. The MSVC compiler has been available for free for close to a decade at least and command line compilation was available ever since I first used it (in the mid 90s)

<comment><USER11> I wasn't aware of that. I suppose it came with the driver dev kits? I've not really been into windows development, but I thought I'd at least have brushed up it accidentally if one could use the official MSVC compiler to produce shareware and commercial software for free?

Were there any (free) IDEs that took advantage of this? I thought one of the reasons Stevens used DJGPP was that MSVC wasn't available for free? I suppose I could just be that it wasn't freely distributable, which makes it hard to bundle with a book (at a time when people can't just go and download megabytes of data from microsoft.com).

Or maybe MSVC was free, but not the c++ part? See eg:

[http://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue162/52_Windows_pr...](http://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue162/52_Windows_programming.php)

(It's not my intention to move the goalposts, you say close to a decade, which means 2005 -- it's quite likely that I'm just biased due to my old age...)

I did find this: [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2006/06/08/622485.asp...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2006/06/08/622485.aspx)

Which reminded me of VS express -- which isn't the same as a full version (but should/did work for "hello, world!"). See also eg: [http://www.i-programmer.info/news/89-net/7976-full-visual- st...](http://www.i-programmer.info/news/89-net/7976-full-visual-studio-now- free.html)

How did you get a free c-compiler from MS in the mid 90s?

<comment><USER13> I did literally mean a decade for the compiler (so 2005). While it is not a full IDE by any means, VS Express did include the standard VS compiler. You could compile most standard C programs on windows with that. For some time prior to that you could get a compiler with the DDK as well (but I don't remember since when; it has been a long time). Of course express didn't pack some of the libraries that came with VS; you could get most of them via the SDK and DDK however.

In the 90s though, I used the non-free VS for the most part along with some Cygwin until Mingw's appearence in the late 90s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> To me this read like a long list of nitpicks. Sounded like the author was just angry that Zed said bad things about the K&R book.

<comment><USER14> Yup. He does not offer alternatives to Zed's work either.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm looking for an alternative. I found this article in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9635230](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9635230)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _Learn C The Hard Way_ is more like opinionated tutorials not a textbook. It's great for someone just getting started. If I were to hand someone K&R - The C Programming Language, their interest would instantly vanish. Why not start with something small (like The Hard Way) and work your way up from there.

To get good at anything, you have to constantly read and apply your knowledge. Why should this be any different?

</comment><comment><USER15> I wonder if this was the last straw the spurred his latest blog post?

[http://zedshaw.com/2015/06/01/dear-paul/](http://zedshaw.com/2015/06/01/dear- paul/)

</comment><comment><USER16> Here's my 2 cents. Learn any language any way you want and don't give a shit for pretentious blowhards who tell you otherwise. Peace and love ! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIJdFxYlEKE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIJdFxYlEKE)

</comment><comment><USER17> Transcript of Scott Hanselman's interview with Zed Shaw:

[http://s3.amazonaws.com/hanselminutes/hanselminutes_0407.pdf](http://s3.amazonaws.com/hanselminutes/hanselminutes_0407.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER18> I just read the entire article and I can't find one decent comment about why Zed's teaching methodology is wrong or why he shouldn't be writing a book on C.

All I see is the author fussing about coding style and some such.

</comment><comment><USER19> Ok, now this piece of crap of an article is exactly WHY I am going to learn C the hard way. Obviously, not the only reason, but certainly one of them.

</comment><comment> a-saleh I'd like to hijack part of this discussion and ask, if any of you know about a good modern c programming book.

Because I'd like to read the K&R C destructuring book, not just a removed chapter at the end of the book :-)

I somehow thought that notion, that K&R C is somewhat outdated in their code examples is widely accepted (biggest gripe is little to no input sanitation, afaik (?)), so a book about "this is what we learned about c in past 30 years" would be splendid :-)

<comment><USER20> [http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920033677.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920033677.do)

Hope this helps....

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Somehow the critique lost clout at "Winblows"</comment>


The Internal Yahoo No-Work-From-Home Memo - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20130222/physically-together-heres-the-internal-yahoo-no-work-from-home-memo-which-extends-beyond-remote-workers/

<comment><USER2> It must have taken a lot of $$$ and planning to get the employees back into the office. Companies usually profit by making their employees work from home.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is that even legal? If you negotiate as a condition for your employment the ability to work from home... I don't know. I am of two minds on this.

<comment><USER4> There is no chance any regular Yahoo employees have that negotiated as a condition of their employment.

<comment><USER5> Sure there is...they just get bought out.

<comment><USER3> That's exactly what I was talking about. If I got aquihired while in a work environment that I was successfull in, you had better believe that I would be bargaining about that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well, Mayer finally gets her wet dream: No one to mitigate her absolutism.

I've no involvement in Yahoo, but personally, this raises my gorge -- a reaction to my own past experiences with Management dictates and ultimatum from on-high. Very often a blind cudgel of personal prejudice, often mixed with Management best-practice du jour.

Mayer may be smarter than the last, but apparently not than the rest.</comment>


Everest through the eyes of a Sherpa - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48464030 <comment><USER2> Summiting Everest, as a tourist, is basically unimpressive and a strong indicator you're an empty box-checker. Any moderately fit person with $100k lying around can get short-roped or crawl up the fixed lines to the top while sucking down bottles of oxygen, endangering the lives of the people helping them on their way.

If you meet someone who has climbed Everest, don't validate their ego.

<comment><USER3> Did you read the article? The sherpa is saying the exact opposite of this.

> "Climbers need to wake up and understand that climbing a big peak like > Everest is extremely risky. They need to stop believing just because they > are with a 'Sherpa guide' who has summited Everest 10 times that they will > be rescued if they get in trouble," says Alan.

<comment><USER2> Yes, I read the article, and am a mountaineer, and stand by what I said. It's tricky to talk about difficulty with those not versed in the sport, because with mountains like Everest (which are non-technical high-altitude walkups) it's about objective risks like weather or avalanches or HAPE/CE rather than subjective risks like lack of strength or fitness or coordination or whatever.

<comment><USER4> I'd like to piggy back on this comment and ask you: what do you see as your aspirational mountaineering accomplishment(s)? Or is that even the right way to look at mountaineering? And what would you suggest to a beginner how to get more into the sport safely?

I'm getting pretty into mountaineering (or at least setting myself up to be), I rock climb outside about once a week now in Clear Creek, Colorado. I hike as many 14ers as I can a summer. I also back country ski in the winter and am getting my AIARE 1 this winter.

Currently I aspire to do the seven summits once I'm confident I'm prepared and ready. So I'm wondering about the above because I'm starting to see this as a flawed accomplishment.

<comment><USER2> It's certainly worth examining what you want out of the sport, because at some point you'll get seriously injured, or have a near-death experience, or have a friend die, and will have to justify your participation to yourself. I won't go so far as to say that if a traumatic incident changes your approach to the sport then you were living/climbing inauthentically (trauma has real mental effects), but it shouldn't send you into too much of a crisis.

Mountaineering is a very personal sport and I don't want to gatekeep it saying you're approaching it the wrong way. Having a list of peaks you want to climb is fine, but I do roll my eyes a bit at the box-checkers. It's a fine line.

It sounds like you're taking a good approach into mountaineering (I'm really not much of an authority here, honestly). Personally I went the route of joining a local volunteer-run mountaineering club, but independent close-knit groups of climbers are just as good (assuming you have similar attitudes toward safety, risk, and technical education).

My personal goal with mountaineering is to be climbing well into my 70s, just like some of the older people in my club. This requires avoiding routes with higher objective risks, but there are more than enough mountains in the world with which to fill one's heart.

<comment><USER4> I definitely struggle with the idea of box checking, it is however one of the easiest ways to show progress to myself. Which is why I think many people start with it. I think I'm going to reevaluate how I show personal progress, as well as always double check that safety is my number one priority vs summit chasing. Even though you aren't an authority, this is great info, thanks for this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "It's pressure on young climbers by some companies describing Everest as easy. Everest is never easy."

Not just companies - it's 'common knowledge' now that Everest is just a hike with rich clients being dragged up by poorly paid sherpas.

</comment><comment><USER6> I remember hearing a talk by Ed Viesturs who was the first American to climb all 14 eight-thousanders

He emphasized that his rule was that going up was optional, coming down wasn't and told a story of this one mountain climb where they spent weeks getting ready to the point where they were ready to summit. I don't remember the details, but for some reason they were not able to get the start they wanted and it would be close to being dark by the time they got back from the summit. Instead of risking it, he aborted and came back the next year.

Sometimes knowing when to abort an endeavor is one of the most important skills.

<comment><USER7> I dive (albeit new) and knowing when to abort is taught over and over again. In general, from both theory and practice, the threshold is pretty low. Any kind of physical and mental stress means you surface.

I guess what makes Everest so different are the costs involved. I imagine the sunk cost fallacy is magnified.

<comment><USER8> Yeah. With diving an abort is not a big deal. Just do it again tomorrow. With Everest you have already put in a lot of effort and money and you may never get the opportunity to do it again.

Also, when you do stupid things there is often a good chance to get away with it. I have done things I shouldn't have done but I have fond memories of overcoming the hardship.

<comment><USER9> Aborting a shallow sport dive is no big deal. But some of my acquaintances go on major expeditions doing deep, complex technical dives on shipwrecks and in caves. Just getting to the dive site can be a major logistical undertaking, and there's often a large group of surface crew and support divers just to assist the push team. Sometimes permits to access a particular site are time limited, or there's only a narrow window of good weather. So those exploration divers are subject to the same mental pressures to go ahead and dive even when it's risky.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Everest has become a freakshow.

Humans are not built to climb that high, even with supplemental oxygen there is a non-trivial risk of brain trauma from blood vessel leakage even if you don't die from it. When the final push from camp 4 to the summit is a human traffic jam, the risks multiply. Because of the logistical difficulty of getting there and preparing, and the perceived (not real) "accomplishment" of reaching the summit, people take excessive risks rather than quitting when they start having cognitive impairments, the weather turns, or they're moving too slowly or using too much oxygen on the ascent, making the risk severe during descent. It's not a good situation.

Anyone with a death wish should take on one of the other peaks in the Himalayas, without all of the route prep that goes on on Everest and turns it into fast food mountaineering.

Anyone without a deathwish can find plenty of challenge on more convenient mountains elsewhere, climbing only when weather and avalanche risk are very low, since there's less pressure of feeling, like many do on Everest, that it's a once in a lifetime opportunity and they've paid lots of money to get there so they have to keep going. Or take up rock climbing. Excellent technical challenge and strength training, lower risk (with rope and prudence).

Everest used to be at real challenge. Now it's more of a contest of luck and whether you have the money. People climb it for the status, but look at the damned lines! That's not status, people. That's being a lemming. Wake up.

<comment><USER11> I agree with your sentiment mostly but I think rock climbing and mountain expeditions are just different ballgames.

I think you can't just label mountain expeditions as deathwish, a big reason people are pulled towards mountaineering is the sheer thrill you get not just battling the knowns(technical climbs, routes) but also the unknowns(weather, AMS). Mountains can be unforgiving(8 climbers died in Nanda Devi a week back) but the accomplishment you get is also something worth savouring.

Once you start, you can hardly go back. I have only done six thousanders but even I want to do more.

<comment><USER12> I read it as GP saying that rushing Everest specifically is a death wish, but that mountaineering elsewhere responsibly is what a sane person ought to look for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Has anyone here climbed Everest? What drove you and what it's like up there? How did you feel afterwards?

</comment><comment><USER13> My favorite quote on the subject still is "Every corpse on Everest was once a highly motivated person".

</comment><comment><USER14> Something about this reminds me of school shooting stories: it's meamt to discourage Everest trekkers, but it will probably end up encouraging them. Misconceptions abound.

Some argue that people shouldn't climb Everest because it's not that impressive anymore. This is irrelevant: people aren't dumb or arrogant enough to believe they'll convince their friends they're great mountaineers. They're obviously not great mountaineers and they're at least minimally self-aware.

Some argue that people shouldn't climb Everest because it's crowded and not exclusive. But Mecca is crowded and the hajj rolls on. Explain.

Still others argue that people shouldn't climb Everest because it's dangerous. This is the worst argument of all! Dangerous things are cool! Half the stories I tell at parties involve me almost dying. Or at least I try to make it sound that way.

There is one single fact that makes people climb Everest: _people don't like to explain their accomplishments._ Everyone knows what Mount Everest is. Everyone knows it's dangerous to climb. What you gain is having done something everyone else can recognize. Stories like this only increase the notoriety of the peak. Nobody's going to be impressed if you summit _Kangchenjunga_ What's that? Aconcagua? Never heard of it. Nanda Parbat? I think I had that at an Indian restaurant once. And so on.

Every time someone tweets a news story about deaths on Everest, two more idiots decide to buy a trip. I guarantee it.

<comment><USER15> Climbing Mt. Everest became a ticket to upper strata at many corporations these days that want "cool leaders".

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> For people interested in the topic of Himalayan big wall climbing, do checkout the movie Meru - [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2545428/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2545428/) it's excellent!

<comment><USER11> Jimmy Chin, the guy who directed this and went on the climb also directed Free Solo featuring Alex Honold.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've always thought of "climbing Mount Everest" as being a literal figure of speech for something incredibly difficult and potentially very dangerous.

Why do these people think it's going to be anything less than that?

<comment><USER18> Because most of these people are accustomed to throwing money at people to solve their problems.

<comment><USER8> That's probably it. Also, there are climbers who do it for the love of climbing but for most of these people it's something to brag about. " Not only am I better because I am rich but I am also physically better and I do harder things than you."

<comment><USER19> It seems like many of the debates on HN seem to quickly devolve into classism. I am pretty sure not many people have ever met an Everest climber, let alone got to know any in order to make these sweeping generalizations.

<comment><USER8> I have talked to a guy who had climbed Mount Everest that way. He had the goal of climbing all the highest peaks on all continents and Everest was one of them. He also came from a wealthy family. He had the time and money to put in the time preparing and then paying >50k for the Everest climb. Who can afford this money and taking off months for an expedition? From what I have read Everest climbers are either basically very poor people who put all they have into climbing or they are rich enough to take time off and pay for that hobby. For a regular guy with a regular job it's very difficult to do.

<comment><USER20> A lot of 8000-meter-plus climbers are ordinary middle-class people. The huge expenses of getting to the Himalayas, paying for permits and gear are covered by sponsorships. In some small European countries, no one from there has yet climbed Everest, Nanga Parbat etc. without supplementary oxygen. That means any expedition will get big coverage in national media, and consequently it is easy to obtain sponsorship from local subsidiaries of multinationals (e.g. Pepsi, Johnny Walker, etc.)

<comment><USER8> "In some small European countries, no one from there has yet climbed Everest, Nanga Parbat etc. without supplementary oxygen."

Isn't that a totally different level? I thought most paid climbers use oxygen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It would be better to ban oxygen on Everest. A much more limited number would summit, and there would be no more discarded oxygen tanks. I've been up to 6400m and climbing up there was the most physically difficult thing I'd ever done, I can't imagine 8800m. However, people can and have climbed it without oxygen numerous times.

<comment><USER11> I personally think it would be wrong to ban it. Also, the criticism the Nepalese government will face in case someone dies because of lack of oxygen will be immense. I have heard stories of experienced climbers suffering from AMS on some climbs. No one would want that to convert to HAPE.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Does anyone know why that Sherpa's face has that distinctive tone? Is it frostbite or some kind of sun burn?

Great article by the way!

<comment><USER11> Sun burn and tan. When you spend most of your time at high altitude and don't use some kind of sun block you get that tone. I have seen that tone in local populations at altitudes > 3000m

<comment><USER23> Thinner atmosphere where they live and snow definitely contribute to a higher incidence of solar rays

<comment><USER11> Yeah. You can definitely feel the sun there. It is hard to adjust to these areas, but definitely some of the most beautiful I have been to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Could one invent a protocol to eliminate almost all deaths? The article mentions a prudent Sherpa aborting summitting for a client who would be unable to descend. But can anything be done about sudden failures of the body in high altitude?

</comment><comment><USER25> 30-130k per person, but a sheep make 8k a season?

The Nepalese government should mandate payouts to Sherpas much higher than that.

</comment><comment><USER26> The thing that gets my blood boiling is the discarded trash scattered around everywhere. They removed 3 tons of trash a few years back in a big cleanup attempt. If you can't carry your trash back, you shouldn't be climbing up in the first place :/

<comment><USER27> I wonder if tourism shouldn't be considered a form of pollution, and if the countries that export the most tourists shouldn't also pay a tax similar to a carbon tax towards cleaning the damage they do to the local environment.

<comment><USER28> Many places have a tourist tax already. In this case, like the article says, there's a $11000 tax for each person climbing the Everest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> BTW, a small hint, anyone climbing 8,000+ peaks should get a large dose of Viagra ;-)

EDIT: For those that didn't get it, it significantly helps with altitude sickness.</comment>


Google's 404 page. - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/117112812812053005865/posts/VRGKs6Vz8d1

<comment><USER2> I assume with a site the size of google, they serve a few 404 pages in a day. I'm surprised they don' automatically take the url path as a search term with a 'we couldn't find xyz, were you looking for...' message at the top.

</comment><comment><USER3> Probably a joke.</comment>


Tell HN: Google needs a web developer; position has been open for 8 months - <AUTHOR>

Link to job posting: http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/jobs/uk/swe/web-application-developer-googleedu-learning-solutions-london/index.html
This is an engineering position within the PeopleOps (HR) group at Google, which may be why it remains unfilled after 8 months. Nobody has been able to find it! Also the job as posted is in London, but if you are a strong candidate I know Google will either move you to London or let you work in Mountain View (or possibly New York). The position is with my girlfriend's team so I have a pretty good idea of the problems they are solving and what skills they need. Feel free to email me with questions.
Clickable link is below... <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link: [http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/jobs/uk/swe/web- application-...](http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/jobs/uk/swe/web-application- developer-googleedu-learning-solutions-london/index.html)</comment>


Strategist says markets have 'nothing to do with fundamentals anymore' - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/video/2019/12/16/strategist-says-markets-have-nothing-to-do-with-fundamentals-anymore.html <comment><USER2> "...it's going to carry on..."

Perhaps. For a year? Maybe two? Then what? What happens when the party is over? How much of a drop? And finally, aside from The Fed, who else is in on this charade?</comment>


I got hacked mid-air while writing an Apple-FBI story - <AUTHOR> http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/2016/02/24/got-hacked-my-mac-while-writing-story/80844720/ <comment><AUTHOR> Doesn't disclose how he was hacked...I assume he had to accept a forged SSL certificate at some stage?</comment>


The LG G5 and Galaxy S7 won't support Android 6.0's adoptable storage - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/02/the-lg-g5-and-galaxy-s7-wont-support-android-6-0s-adoptable-storage/ <comment><AUTHOR> The feature has been disabled so that users will not get confused.</comment>


After 37 years, Voyager has fired up its trajectory thrusters - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/12/after-37-years-voyager-has-fired-up-its-trajectory-thrusters/ <comment><USER2> Voyager is probably the _most_ badass awesome thing ever.

Every single aspect of space travel is an engineering/mathematic/scientific marvel. Not only did we plan, build, launch these, (before I was born) but we're still communicating (until we can't).

I'm reading links people have posted here, trying to understand _how_ we communicate with these probes. It's fascinating.

<comment><USER3> What I find more amazing is the fact that a lot of what could be referred to as "space-age technology" is actually many decades old, and thus was accomplished with a fraction of the processing power and knowledge we have today. Voyager was launched in the late 70s, but based on technology of the 50s and 60s. We visited the Moon almost 50 years ago, using that technology.

If you look at old spacecraft hardware, one thing that stands out is its apparent simplicity and down-to-earth (no pun intended) design --- and I'd argue that this is at least partially responsible for its extreme reliability.

From that perspective, I feel as though developments in modern technology just can't compete for impact; we constantly search for new ways of designing things, wrapping ourselves in endless layers of abstraction and high-level thought, yet aren't really "getting off the ground" and _accomplishing something concrete_ , so to speak.

<comment><USER4> _From that perspective, I feel as though developments in modern technology just can 't compete for impact; we constantly search for new ways of designing things, wrapping ourselves in endless layers of abstraction and high-level thought, yet aren't really "getting off the ground" and accomplishing something concrete, so to speak._

I'm not really sure this is true, though I understand why it might feel that way sometimes.

I'm currently travelling at about 180mph on board a high-speed train in Japan. I flew here on a jet which is something like 20% more efficient than the equivalent from a few years ago. Using the ubiquitous LTE network, I can make a real-time HD video call to my family back in the UK, using my palm-sized, battery-powered computer. I used the same device earlier to do some research about cities as we passed through them, and also to check the CCTV system at home. Over the past couple of weeks I've used a similar technology stack to locate my position to meter-level accuracy, to read and translate foreign language text from images in real time, and to record hours of 4K video.

Modern technology is _astonishingly_ powerful - and in some ways, the examples I described above are even more impactful to me on a day-to-day basis than space exploration is. Don't get me wrong - the latter is still important and exciting! But it's sometimes too easy to forget the impact of the somewhat more mundane technology that's all around us.

<comment><USER5> You may have missed the last word of his previous sentence. _reliability_. Which is at least to me, the way I understood it.

Something built back then _and_ still works.

Edit: fix markdown syntax.

<comment><USER6> But they're different systems, designed very differently. A high speed train and a space craft are both designed carefully to maximize their possible life. A cellphone is, unfortunately, been phased into the economy of consumption and planned obsolescence.

Consumer electronics from a few decades are not quite cellphones, but not quite high speed trains or nuclear reactors or space rockets. Many old C64 systems still work or can be restored, and I bet most of our current high end laptops will continue to work a decade from now (you might need to replace the battery).

The OP might have been talking about efficiency, and we have gotten a bit sloppy with that in the consumer world (why does Slack/Atom/Discord need to be a 100MB+ app bundled with its entire web browser and framework? It's like we're in the 2000s with 15 copies of the JDK on your system again!), but once again .. different uses.

A modern SpaceX craft is going to have custom real time operating systems designed specifically to preform much more complex calculations than we've done in previous space missions, hopefully increasing reliability and the amount of sensors we can read, record and transmit data for. The software engineers might be less space efficient in their code than the previous generation, but if the hardware is cheaper and we can increase readability at the expense of memory, why not do it?

In Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy (highly recommend; best Sci-Fi I've ever read), humans eventually create AI so complex it can manage space factories designed to build from asteroids. The most advanced AI ever created is used to maneuver an asteroid into orbit of Mars while also mining the interior and constructing the cable that would eventually turn into the space elevator over the course of a decade.

<comment><USER7> Will deffo check the book out.

Electronics aside, voyagers nuclear energy supply fascinates me.

I'm still very optimistic that someday we'll figure out safe micro nuclear reactors.

The energy density of nuclear fuel is just amazing.

<comment><USER8> Marry such a nuclear reactor to something like VASIMR engine, and suddenly the entire Solar System opens-up to us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For anyone with an interest in Voyager, I highly recommend Emer Reynolds film, "The Farthest". This documentary is brilliant, beautiful, and funny - and I guarantee that you will learn something that you didn't know about Voyager!

For those in the UK, it's currently streaming on iPlayer - though it should ideally be seen in cinemas to be fully appreciated.

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6223974/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6223974/)

<comment><USER10> Torrent link for where it's not available: [https://1337x.to/torrent/2379692/The-Farthest-2017-WEB- DL-x2...](https://1337x.to/torrent/2379692/The-Farthest-2017-WEB- DL-x264-RARBG/)

<comment><USER11> .onion link to torrent:

[http://uj3wazyk5u4hnvtk.onion/torrent/18374376/The.Farthest....](http://uj3wazyk5u4hnvtk.onion/torrent/18374376/The.Farthest.2017.DOCU.1080p.WEB- DL.AAC2.0.H264-PreBS)

Magnet link:

      magnet:?xt=urn:btih:cb7b9a2f7f318c9f84da467e3963c0fd8a31eb3d&dn=The.Farthest.2017.DOCU.1080p.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H264-PreBS&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.leechers-paradise.org%3A6969&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fzer0day.ch%3A1337&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fopen.demonii.com%3A1337&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.coppersurfer.tk%3A6969&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fexodus.desync.com%3A6969

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So, they have all the codes and manuals to be able to control the probe after 37 years. More than that people able to operate those manuals.

DOCUMENTATION FTW.

<comment><USER13> Meanwhile, after two years my Android phone will brick itself.

<comment><USER14> > _Meanwhile, after two years my Android phone will brick itself._

I understand the sentiment, but your phone was not made to exit the solar system.

<comment><USER6> But they should be .. or at least last as long as an old C64. You can put newer Windows on pretty old hardware, and for really old hardware you can always slap Linux on and it will still be useful. There are still Kernel forks to support 386 processors!

Cellphones are a mess because we can't even have a nice base hardware platform. ARM isn't a platform. It's a SoC spec with random shit soldered to random pins by different vendors with completely non-upstreamable kernels. Google could just mandate UEFI on OHA phones like Microsoft did with theirs, but instead we're just getting this /vendor partition in the next release.

I don't think it's unintentional either. It's an aspect of planned obsolescence. The cellphone industry wants you to upgrade every two years, when we should not be destroying the planet and creating gear that lasts 10 years. Fewer factories, less pollution, longer life .. but we're in a consumerist economy hardwired the opposite direction, where any type of profit shortfall or lack of growth is seen as a problem, not the result of a good product.

<comment><USER15> Agreed, but if a public company makes stuff to last 10 (why not 20) years then they'll go bust because capitalism requires profit and sustainable ideals are contrary to profit.

What we need is a privately held cellphone company that will forgo profit in favour of creating long lasting, repairable, maintainable devices. [I've been working on this thesis for the transition from capitalism to communism]

Meanwhile I'm wearing a 25 year old tshirt, whilst tshirts bought much more recently wear out and get holes in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In the Epilogue of "Murmurs of Earth" (1978), Sagan writes:

"It is a difficult computer task to calculate what stars might by chance be along the Voyager spacecraft trajectories 50,000 or 100,000 years from now. Mike Helton of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory has attempted to make such a calculation. He calls attention in particular to an obscure star called AC+79 3888, which is now in the constellation of Ursa Minor -- the Little Bear, or Little Dipper. It is now seventeen light-years from the Sun. But in 40,000 years it will by chance be within three light-years of the Sun, closer than Alpha Centauri is to us now. Within that period, Voyager 1 will come within 1.7 light-years of AC+79 3888, and Voyager 2 within 1.1 light-years. Two other candidate stars are DM+21 652 in the constellation Taurus and AC-24 2833 183 in the constellation Sagittarius. However, neither Voyager 1 nor Voyager 2 will come as close to these stars as to AC+79 3888.

"Our ability to detect planetary systems around other stars is at present extremely limited, although it is rapidly improving. Some preliminary evidence suggest that there are one or more planets of about the mass of Jupiter and Saturn orbiting Barnard's star, and general theoretical considerations suggest that planets ought to be a frequent component of most such stars.

"If future studies of AC+79 3888 demonstrate that it indeed has a planetary system, then we might wish to do something to beat the odds set by the haunting and dreadful emptiness of space -- the near certainty that, left to themselves, neither Voyager spacecraft would ever plummet into the planet-rich interior of another solar system. For it might be possible -- after the Voyager scientific missions are completed -- to make one final firing of the onboard rocket propulsion system and redirect the the spacecraft as closely as we possibly can so that they will make a true encounter with AC+79 3888. If such a maneuver can be effected, then some 60,000 years from now one or two tiny hurtling messengers from the strange and distant planet Earth may penetrate into the planetary system of AC+79 3888."

We know so much more about exoplanets today than we did in Sagan's time, and have so much more computing power to bring to bear. Knowing the trajectory thrusters still work, it would be a fitting tribute to try one last interstellar bank shot into the corner pocket, and see if we couldn't honor Sagan's last wishes, and give the Voyagers a destination worthy of their journey and their cargo.

<comment><USER17> 60,000 years ago, humans were just leaving Africa. So I would be impressed if 60,000 years from now, anyone remembers that Voyager is still out there!

<comment><USER18> I really wish I could see the progress humans make over the next 60,000 years. Shout out to all my ancestors in 62017!

<comment><USER19> I think you mean descendants.

<comment><USER20> There was an accident involving a contraceptive and a time machine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Kudos to Aerojet Rocketdyne on their thrusters lighting up after 37 years. That's genuinely impressive engineering.

Certain Volkswagen models apparently have an even more amazing MTBF. It's a real sleeper. [1]

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo2kSu6O8cU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo2kSu6O8cU)

But Voyager's got it beat on mileage...

<comment><USER22> Not just 37 years, but 37 years in near absolute temperature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Can somebody with knowledge of radio communication explain how we are able to send a radio signal to a destination that is 21 billion Kms away? How powerful does the signal need to be? What kind of technology is used to generate such a powerful signal?

<comment><USER24> There are high gain antennas on both ends, and use of error correcting codes, as well as _extremely_ high grade low noise amplifiers on the Earth side.

The Voyagers have a 3.7m diameter parabolic radio dish, larger than the Hubble space telescope's mirror even. That alone provides a huge amount of gain on communications. Additionally, the spacecraft have 10s of watts of power available for transmitting signals, which is a fair bit considering (while on the other end the ground stations have up to hundreds of thousands of watts to transmit). The ground-stations in the deep space network (DSN) are tens of meters across, a small antenna is 34m, the biggest ones are 70m across. That also provides a _huge_ amount of gain alone. It means that there is more area to collect signals from the spacecraft and it means that the beam from the ground station to the spacecraft is much tighter, concentrating the total transmission power into a smaller cross-sectional area at the distance of the spacecraft.

The spacecraft also uses error correcting codes, which involve transmitting many more bits than the underlying data, but in such a way that errors due to noise are not only detectable but correctable.

On top of all of that you have the state of the art low noise amplifiers in the DSN antennae. A typical low noise amplifier is a carefully built electronics assembly made by experts. The DSN amplifiers? They use 99.95% purity ruby rods chilled to 4 degrees above absolute zero to form microwave MASER based amplifiers.

There's a neat little video (series) here on the DSN and contacting the Voyagers: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzRP1qdwPKw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzRP1qdwPKw)

<comment><USER25> There's also a neat book for those interested in the engineering details of their receivers:

"Low-Noise Systems in the Deep Space Network" Edited by Macgregor S. Reid

[https://descanso.jpl.nasa.gov/monograph/series10/Reid_DESCAN...](https://descanso.jpl.nasa.gov/monograph/series10/Reid_DESCANSO_sml-110804.pdf)

It's published by the JPL as part of the "Deep Space Communictions and Navigation Series". The rest of the books in the series, listed in the book's front matter, have some fascinating titles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Remarkable. I'm vividly reminded of that scene in the movie, Apollo 13, where this is said: _[Gene Kranz:] I want you guys to find every engineer who designed every switch, every circuit, every transistor and every light bulb that 's up there. Then I want you to talk to the guy in the assembly line who actually built the thing. Find out how to squeeze every amp out of both of these goddamn machines._

NASA has a remarkble group of engineers who know how to get every last erg of energy out of that machine.

<comment><USER2> I think Apollo 13 did a lot to show what talented engineering teams can do. They also didn't shy away from real terminology and rarely stopped to explain it. No other movie has done that in my experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Very impressive. Every day still the envelope of what mankind has touched is still expanding because of this craft. It's a tiny mark on a vast universe but for some unspecified reason it makes me feel very happy to know that it is out there and still ticking, I am not looking forward to the day that it eventually will shut down but even as an inert man-made mass that far out it will be an amazing accomplishment.

<comment><USER28> I am not looking forward to the day when it somehow returns, starts blowing up star ships, ultimately taking over one of them, and tries to seduce the crew

<comment><USER29> That's actually the plot of the first Star Trek movie (without the seduction part).

[Spoiler below, hopefully not a huge deal for an almost forty year old movie)

Voyager returns under the name v-ger.

<comment><USER30> Back in the early 90's I wondered why so many Unix boxes had 'vger' in their name. Not until this year, when I watched the original Star Trek with my youngest, did I realize what it was all about.

Sad thing is I saw the movie in the theater when it was first released...just didn't put the two together.

<comment><USER31> The first two Linux machines I ever had to admin back in the 90's where called Picard and Kirk (Picard was the primary, Kirk the secondary (no guessing which series I preferred)).

The NT machine was called Locutus.

<comment><USER32> The "Locutus" is so perfect!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The round-trip request/response time for a command is 39 hours (!) ... I guess the team has normalized to that latency, but when asking a system to fire with paths of execution plus hardware plus propellant/etc that haven't been used for 37 years ... I can only imagine the tension and celebration.

Related question ... can an easily amateur listen to response transmissions like this that come back from probes?

<comment><USER34> I had a chance to visit the Deep Space Network facility at Goldstone several years ago (definitely worth a visit if you can arrange one). The antennas they use vary in size from 26 to 70 meters in diameter, and even then they need to use lots of process gain because the signal is still several dB below the noise floor. Amateur tracking would probably be incredibly difficult.

<comment><USER35> You will definitely want to be doing cryogenic cooling of your receiver front- end to reduce the noise figure[0].

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> In the spirit of what this community's name suggests it's about, how hard would it be for someone to hack into the spacecraft by sending it a signal to turn on its thruster too soon given the technology is 40 years old?

Has anything like this been tried before with other spacecrafts?

<comment><USER37> Know the big dish from James Bond? Used legit: [http://observer.com/2014/08/civilians-in-abandoned- mcdonalds...](http://observer.com/2014/08/civilians-in-abandoned-mcdonalds- seize-control-of-wandering-space-satellite/)

<comment><USER38> Nope, Arecibo is not used for this. The Chinese FAST would be perfect for this also.

<comment><USER37> You are correct this wasn't the article I was looking for, didn't read it to verify. I can't find it now but 1-2 years ago some people used that dish to reactivate a "lost" satellite that had not been used for several years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Wild engineer's dream: where can I work on something of the same coolness level? High scientific content, total quality, no compromises whatsoever.

<comment><USER40> I'll burst the quality bubble now:

There were absolutely compromises, and the engineers who shipped it knew myriad ways in which it could be better.

To answer the question:

Find something you think is equally cool, learn what you can about the field, be open to the possibility of a pay cut, and start knocking on doors. Sometimes doors open. Work really hard when they do.

<comment><USER24> Two months before the Voyager probes were shipped for launch it was found out that Jupiter's magnetic fields and radiation environment were a lot stronger than anticipated, in excess of what the spacecraft were designed to tolerate. They ended up wrapping many of the cables on the spacecraft with aluminum foil bought from a local supermarket as a protective measure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I love that every time I read one of these articles it is extending the life of the mission by 2-3 years. :)

My favorite use of tax dollars ever.

<comment><USER42> What do you mean? Any context here?

</comment></comment><comment> mark-r When you're far enough from the sun to avoid thermal cycles, in the vacuum of space, what forces will cause things to deteriorate? If I wanted something to last forever, deep space would be the perfect place for it.

<comment><USER40> \-- It is a tough radiation environment. Materials are embrittled and altered over time.

\-- Many materials age on their own; plasticizers outgas from plastics. You're probably familiar with how once-pliable but now old/aged plastics, even kept sealed in a box, can become crunchy and brittle.

\-- Chemistry doesn't stop in space. The thrusters are likely to involve chemically-reactive materials. Any little bit of corrosion, stress-corrosion cracking, etcetera could cause anomalous performance.

It is wonderful when things still work.

<comment><USER27> And then there are vacuum welding and interstellar dust.

<comment><USER43> Interesting, I didn't realize cold welding was a problem in space. I assume it can be solved by applying a coating to surfaces that might come in contact with each other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> How does Voyager know where Earth is, such that it can position the dish correctly? Does it use inertia to keep track?

Also, at such an enormous distance, I'd expect very minor dish positioning errors to result in the loss of the line. It's awesome that they had the skills to build something like that in the 80s.

<comment><USER27> It doesn't need to point its dish at Earth, it can simply aim for the Sun. It is so far away they are as good as in the same position relative to itself. And the Sun conveniently lights up making aiming a lot easier.

<comment><USER44> Did they have digital light detectors in the 70s? I mean, it's trivial now to aim something at the sun now, but they didn't have image recognition then. A primitive heat sensor perhaps?

<comment><USER27> Yes, CDS cells are much older than that, and Ge diodes are light sensitive too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Primary source here: [https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2017-310](https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2017-310)

</comment><comment><USER46> Voyager's antenna is aimed at the sun (because at its distance, earth and sun have close angular separation). So this means the command signal has to overcome microwave noise from the sun.

So this is the same problem as SETI. I know for SETI they reduce stellar noise by assuming that aliens are transmitting in very narrow bandwidths.

</comment><comment><USER47> Fascinating. Now, that's what I call Engineering. And +1 to the author for using the metric system :)

</comment><comment><USER48> Lisping at JPL (Jet Propulsion Lab) is an interesting read: [http://www.flownet.com/gat/jpl-lisp.html](http://www.flownet.com/gat/jpl- lisp.html)

It is written by lisper at HN who submitted this article :)

</comment><comment><USER49> The speed of light sucks. What patience.

<comment><USER50> It's way too slow :)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AAU_btBN7s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AAU_btBN7s)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> 19 hours and 35 minutes * speed of light is a long way.

It's not pointed in the right direction, but it's interesting to think of this as just over 1/2000th the distance to the nearest star.

</comment><comment><USER52> Would it be possible to use these thrusters, or even the main thruster, to speed Voyager or slingshot it around something right before it loses power to communicate back to us?

It'd be cool if right before we lose contact of it for good, we got it to go as fast as possible so that it will reach who knows where someday... just slightly faster.

<comment><USER53> > slingshot it around something

It's in interstellar space. Barring a really lucky encounter with another interstellar body, it'll be another 40,000 years before it's close to anything.

<comment><USER52> I mean, we are finding Pluto sized objects right outside our solar system all the time now.

<comment><USER54> It doesn't seem like it's all the time. Pluto is the largest, Eris is close. Haumea, (225088) 2007 OR10 and Makemake are the only others at least 1/2 the diameter of Pluto.

We are finding more trans-Neptunian objects. There's about 2,500 of them. But as Adams said, "Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is."

Voyager can only be angled a smidgen from it's current path. There's nothing it can reach to do a slingshot.

If Voyager could change its path by 0.1 degree (which it can't), and if all of the trans-Neptunian objects were equally distributed around the Sun (which they aren't - and Voyager is going out of the plane of the ecliptic), then that's still only a 0.2% chance of having something in its path.

Even if there were, Pluto gave New Horizons about 5-6 m/s boost. That's effectively nothing compared to Voyager's 17 km/s speed. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm6ga-g9ACU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm6ga-g9ACU) via [https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/10087/did-the- plut...](https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/10087/did-the-pluto-flyby- give-new-horizons-any-significant-gravitational-boost) .

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> just as a scale, this distance is not even a light-day away ! i am just _amazed_ that we can still "hear" it.

anyone have more info on the power with which the signal arrives here at earth ? and how do they make sure that ambient/thermal noise does corrupt it ? thank you !

<comment><USER56> You can normally see them communicating here: [https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html](https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> There's a wealth of fascinating information including book series on deep space communication at the JPL DESCANSO Deep Space Communications and Navigation Center of Excellence:

[https://descanso.jpl.nasa.gov](https://descanso.jpl.nasa.gov)

</comment><comment><USER58> What does it fire out when firing the thrusters? How come there's propellant left?

<comment><USER59> All the references I found Wikipedia said it used Hydrazine thrusters.

As to why there's propellant left: it's a sealed system and NASA has intelligent engineering practices when it comes to resource planning.

<comment><USER60> No seal is perfect, especially without standard pressure surrounding it.

<comment><USER61> The fact that there is propellant left implies that the seals were good enough

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> I'm too old now: but I so wish I could have been a young engineer on such a project. The title is literally "37 years later." (And that's not from launch.)

Amazing.

</comment><comment><USER63> Those that make it humanity's farthest controlled object? literally, humanity's furthest influence

</comment><comment><USER64> > This week, the scientists and engineers on the Voyager team did something > very special.

I would say if you still manage to run sophisticated system that is 37 years old, even more challenging when its out in space, everything you do is special.

</comment><comment><USER65> Everybody wept when they read this, right?

</comment><comment><USER66> Voyager mission is so epic. A miracle.</comment>


Redesigning the classroom chair - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dinohusejnovic.com/someone-finally-does-an-awesome-redesign-of-those-awful-classroom-chairs/

<comment><USER2> Nice. How much?</comment>