Half of all US food produce is thrown away, new research suggests - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/13/us-food-waste-ugly-fruit-vegetables-perfect <comment><USER2> Waste like this is basically a symptom of an inefficient logistics network and market conditions.

The fresh fruit you see at the grocery store all "made the cut" what didn't make the cut became canned tomatos, apple concentrate, frozen hash browns and other more processed fruits. Nobody cares if a canned tomato looks lumpy.

The problem is that the opportunities to redirect produce that doesn't pass QC are basically nonexistent after a pretty early part of the supply chain. Supply chain logistics are a mostly solved problem. This won't be fixed until the benefit outweighs the cost. The cost will most likely have to decrease for that to happen. A complicating factor is that produce optimized for one track (e.g. fresh apples) might perform more poorly if repurposed after failing QC (e.g applesauce) so in some situations it makes more sense to just discard stuff that doesn't pass QC late in the supply chain than to redirect it into role it's not optimized for.

If it was more profitable to redirect stuff that doesn't pass QC then people would do it. Many restaurants already dispose of food waste separately and give it to pig farms. Pig farmer reduces feed cost and the restaurant reduces disposal costs.

<comment><USER3> > A complicating factor is that produce optimized for one track (e.g. fresh > apples) might perform more poorly if repurposed

What optimisations do you have in mind?

<comment><USER4> An apple bred to stay crisp for a long time on the shelf and give a nice crunch when you eat it might not make the best applesauce.

<comment><USER3> Oh. I'm surprised that the difference is considered to be that great.

<comment><USER5> Growing up in the South it's fairly common to see that many people think that the fruit you won't eat from the hand, for whatever reason, are often better for certain recipes of desserts and preserves.

<comment><USER6> That's because it is. Different acid concentrations, cell walls strengths, etc lead to some apples being better suited for some things than others. Kind of like fillet vs strip, it's all the same meat, but very different, and cooks differently too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "The demand for 'perfect' fruit and veg means much is discarded, damaging the climate and leaving people hungry"

I mean, you can make a case for damaging the environment, but the thrown away food is hardly the reason people are hungry. We clearly don't have a shortage problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree there's not a shortage problem. We are who definitely need to change our mentality. As an individual customers, not wanting only the pretty and shiny ones. As a company, by not wanting only max profit disregarding environment harm. Considering that this may never happen, it would be good if there would be no logistic issues/transportation costs (maybe subsidized by the government?) in order to ship this perfect fruit to the hungry.

Once I did and experiment, here in the UK. I bought a bag of apples from Aldi (non organic ones, but not sure if this makes any difference) and stored one on top of the refrigerator. Six months were passed and it was still looking pretty and shiny. That scared my ass off.

<comment><USER8> As much as we want to blame individual consumers, a lot of this problem goes back to Big Box Retailers. In many, many places there simply isn't a choice - you go to one of either Walmart or Kroger or Safeway to get food, because that's the only market in 20 miles from your home.

Because these places put such a high demand on perfect produce, they can charge more for that produce, and Americans find it harder and harder to afford eating their fruits and veg because it's too expensive to have food that rots when you're working 10 hour days vs. something in a can that is immortal. It can be quite difficult justifying the price tag on that bag of apples when you're not sure you can get through the whole bag, and two individual apples will end up costing you just as much as the bag because they carry the bullshit "organic" label. (And those are usually the two options you get - no non-organic freestanding take-as-many-as-you-think-you-can-eat apples by the pound for you; same goes for potatoes, carrots, onions, etc.) Lose-lose for the consumer.

I've been told again and again that there's some evidence us consumers have to be looked out for and have perfect, pristine produce, and yet I happily buy from a farmer's market the most knobbly carrots and potatoes and see many of my neighbors doing the same out here in Mountain View. They're often even more flavorful than the supermarket alternative, and since they're from nearer by (and didn't go through the industrial food transportation and refrigeration system where they're battered and shocked), they often don't spoil as quickly either.

Maybe the real problem is that Big Box Retailers have overconsolidated markets so much that there's no venue to sell this "less-than-perfect" produce to people.

<comment><USER9> > I've been told again and again that there's some evidence us consumers have > to be looked out for and have perfect, pristine produce

> out here in Mountain View

It looks like you and your community are ahead of the curve on this one. You're also less than 200 miles from some of the best agricultural land in the world, so of course good fresh fruit and vegetables are easy to get. In the northeast during winter, the choice is between mushy, bland big box produce or no produce at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "I would say at times there is 25% of the crop that is just thrown away or fed to cattle" One of these is waste, one not. Perhaps their definition of waste needs to be reviewed.

<comment><USER11> Yes feeding cattle excess (over demand) crops could be called recycling for instance. Get _something_ of value out of it instead of e.g. burning it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wow. I started growing my own vegetables a few years ago, and of course, I eat everything that I can successfully produce. However, I'm always struck by how much different my own tomatoes (for example) look than the ones that I can buy at the grocery store - mine are usually smaller, and cracked in a couple of places, but still perfectly edible. It made me wonder what "professional" farmers do with similar produce - I always assumed that they sold it to companies that made tomato sauce or something and sold the better ones to consumers. I never thought they'd throw away perfectly good vegetables.

</comment><comment><USER13> For thousands of years people ate produce that often had unevenly-colored skins, but tasted good.

Food industry corporations have persuaded most people to instead eat produce that looks perfect but tastes worse. And they tell us that is progress.

</comment><comment><USER14> Food production should not be subsidized, and environmental negative externalities forced into prices, via taxes eg. (Ys, this would have to be compensated with more income transfers for the poor)

<comment><AUTHOR> For sure this could be a solution. Unfortunately I see no way of this to happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> >> Vast quantities of fresh produce grown in the US are left in the field to rot, fed to livestock or hauled directly from the field to landfill,

Only one of those I would call "thrown away". Left in the field to "rot" is a form of fertilizer. Being fed to livestock, animals that would otherwise eat something else, equally isn't waste. These are products being put to good uses, perhaps not the most lucrative uses for which they were designed, but uses nonetheless. This is farmers recycling unmarketable product. It isn't waste.

Only when product winds up as landfill, that is waste.

</comment><comment><USER16> > _scarred vegetables regularly abandoned in the field to save the expense and > labour involved in harvest._

So what? Most plants on the planet's surface are "abandoned in the field".

Where I live, there are vast areas of blackberry bush. Most of it is not picked by humans. Oh, the annual waste!

These vegetables will help fertilize the next crop. It's just not yield- efficient use of the agricultural surface area, that's all.

There is an opportunity for someone who can figure out how to grow perfect vegetables: they can make as much profit using a small fraction of the farm size.

</comment><comment><USER17> I would say 10%-15% is lost to insurance fraud. A lot of times when the crop yield is less than 50% of expected yield farmers will just disc the fields and claim 100% loss.

<comment><USER18> Source?

Do the crop insurance companies not go out and verify the claim?

Do they not correlate crop loss with other events in the area (flooding, high winds)?

<comment><USER17> It was just conjecture on what I grew up around. They do go and verify the claim but most of the time they won't fault the farmers if the field is already reseeded after all they need to make sure the cover crop comes in good if the main crop failed. There's a lot of insurance fraud in agriculture mostly because the companies don't have the resources to go and check every farm. And to your final point they do correlate it to natural disasters, those events are rarely as catastrophic as they're reported though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why I subscribe to [http://www.imperfectproduce.com/](http://www.imperfectproduce.com/)

<comment><USER20> Let me guess, it's CA only.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> make ethanol from it?</comment>


The Promise of Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning - <AUTHOR> https://thegradient.pub/the-promise-of-hierarchical-reinforcement-learning/ <comment><USER2> What I find more promising is methods where hierarchical perception and control emerge naturally from information bottlenecks.

Eg [https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frobt.2015.0002...](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frobt.2015.00027/full)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think I read about three articles like this per day.

Still haven't seen anyone actually using machine learning in any practical application yet, anywhere. Lots of neat toy demos, no real work seems to be getting done.

<comment><USER4> All the useful machine learning is under the hood of a product. Google Search and Google Translate alone are used by hundreds of millions daily. Probably millions use voice control of Siri/Alexa/etc weekly. Amazon, Facebook, Twitter all use machine learning for recommending content. Billions of people use those monthly.

It is not just practical, it is a huge industry.

<comment><USER3> Converging everything towards the median (google results) is not machine learning, and is making search results and the internet far worse.

Speech recognition on my phone hasn't improved much since Dragon in the 90s. I'd argue the tech today is worse because it never works without a network connection, so it basically never works unless you're in a big city.

Google translate is a running joke. I don't think that I'm allowed to comment further on Google's use of machine learning without violating NDAs, but manually fiddling with weights until you get the magic number you want is not machine learning.

Again, not really seeing any benefit. Lots of hype though.

<comment><USER5> You're just pulling a No True Scotsman. I'm surprised someone replied to you in good faith.

<comment><USER6> He's very much not engaging in any rhetorical fallacy: it's an uncommonly clear observation of the actual reality of the current year in machine learning. Which probably means he labors in the field.

The main businesses which seems to truly depend on ML (other than maybe FICO) is that of tech journalist and PR dweeb.

<comment><USER7> Are we talking about ML or DL in particular? Also, does ML have to be sophisticated in order for it to "count"?

Just off the top of my head, 3D/HD mapping companies like HERE rely on DL- based image recognition to recognize objects at reasonable levels of accuracy -- totally infeasible to do manually at scale.

Also, one of the triggers of the renaissance of NNs is that it was shown to outperform traditional computer vision techniques around the early 2010s. USPS does handwriting recognition every single day -- maybe not with DL -- but definitely with some ML algorithm (I was at a talk given by one of the originators of said algorithm).

ML is more than just DL. If take the definition of ML encompass to statistical learning -- which it traditionally does -- production ML deployments is extremely pervasive, from industries as varied as finance to chemical manufacturing.

The exact FICO algorithm is proprietary, but algorithms of its ilk are pervasive. As you know, at least two other companies (Transunion and Experian) also have their own algorithms. And credit scoring algorithms are among the least sophisticated ML deployments.

I'm not able to talk about the ML models I work on, but they're in production and the business relies on them.

I guess I'm not seeing the finer points of the argument -- as it stands without further qualification or refinement, it does not seem to be a valid conclusion.

<comment><USER6> I haven't spoken to the Here guys lately, but while they did hire a bunch of DL weenies, it looked like they mostly put them to work doing more useful things.

I'll say it again: no company depends on machine learning, other than, maybe Fair Isaac. Many use such things. They don't depend on ML. IMO the trend is in the other direction; many companies will begin to realize what they've spent on models isn't worth the returns.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Kids App Market - <AUTHOR> https://www.bjornjeffery.com/2019/05/31/the-kids-app-market-a-strategic-overview/ <comment><USER2> The most frustrating thing to me is that I can't just find a good app for my daughter without there being some sort of dependency on 1 or 2 of the following: Ads, Links to other games/apps, microtransactions. I want to buy a full app experience for her wether it's just for fun or education and I'm willing to pay it just doesn't really exist. Even the best apps I can find always have these and they interrupt her experience to sell her/me more.

<comment><USER3> I make the My PlayHome series of apps, in case you want to try them out.

Not enough people are willing to actually pay for apps. Piracy, especially on Android, is extremely high. The few kids who don't pirate apps are constantly emailing me asking for the app to be free because they have a device but their parents don't let them buy anything.

Apple and Google are recently getting very tough and starting to regulate all apps that have children as their target audience, which is obviously a good thing. However, it seems they still haven't made much progress in actually _promoting_ apps for kids.

To give you an idea of how few people are actually paying up front for kids apps: My PlayHome is currently ranking at 20 in the USA Paid iPad kids category. That means only 19 apps in the entire app store are selling specifically to kids using the upfront paid model on iPad are more successful than this. How many USA daily sales is My PlayHome getting on iPad? Around 50.

Until something changes, and it probably won't, even though the demand for quality, non-exploitative kids apps is out there, the big money somehow isn't.

<comment><USER4> >> To give you an idea of how few people are actually paying up front for kids apps: My PlayHome is currently ranking at 20 in the USA Paid iPad kids category. That means only 19 apps in the entire app store are selling specifically to kids using the upfront paid model on iPad are more successful than this. How many USA daily sales is My PlayHome getting on iPad? Around 50.

Is this a "long tail" issue? Granted 20th isnt that long but perhaps sales are concentrated at the top few spots?

50/day is still great. about $72k/year gross. THats not huge, but thats still quite a bit

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's a bit of a shame that the shareware model has died out so badly. As a child of the 90s, I had all kinds of shareware games and sampler discs that got passed around; there was some great stuff like Carmen Sandiego, the various X Trail games, Dr. Brain, Math/Word Rescue, Mixed Up Mother Goose, Treasure Mountain, etc.

A nag screen showing the option to buy the additional episodes seems almost quaintly non-invasive today.

</comment><comment><USER6> Article author here. Happy to answer questions, if you have any.

<comment><USER7> Fantastic article, thank you.

Separately thanks for Toca Boca games! We still occasionally use the radio music from Toca Tea Party for real-life picnics :)

<comment><USER6> Fun fact - that music was custom written for the app by a musician in Stockholm! And the jazz track can be found here: [https://soundcloud.com/tocaboca/tea-party- jazz](https://soundcloud.com/tocaboca/tea-party-jazz)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The marketing aspects are particularly interesting. Kids don't really have the power to buy or convince an adult to buy. Parents are also only subject to things that are "learning" while users/kids only want things that are "fun". The product intersection of those two areas with quality are likely very small. Additionally, when kids and adults are generally excited about the same thing, it becomes less cool.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is a good overview of a complicated market. And it highlights what I'd say is one of the biggest opportunities in the space: a trusted and highly curated recommendation service for kids content. (I don't want to build it, but someone else should!)

I'm building a kids app (an interactive picture book series -www.featherbubble.com) that intersects a 5th major industry: publishing. My marketing toolkit/plans lack any obviously strong tactics for many of the reasons outlined in the article. Instead, my strategy is to build a brand on strong characters and content, as it seems like episodic tv has the closest thing to a winning model for apps.

<comment><USER10> "(I don't want to build it, but someone else should"

Me too! I'd pay for a weekly newsletter!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I used to work on a kids-friendly app and gave it up after 2 years. But I still own kidsfriend.ly. If anyone feel it's a good name and is interested, pls let me know.</comment>


A binary coder for Swift - <AUTHOR> https://www.mikeash.com/pyblog/friday-qa-2017-07-28-a-binary-coder-for-swift.html <comment><USER2> _the numbers are byte-swapped to be endian agnostic_

Regardless of how fast it is, it seems wasteful to do all this byte-swapping when the vast majority of systems today, outside of more specialised applications, are little-endian.

<comment><USER3> You can do byte-swapping in one instruction on x86, so it really isn't something worth worrying about. There aren't many big-endian systems out there, but it doesn't really matter that much. If you wanted to, you could change this so it always stores the numbers in little-endian (and does a swap on big-endian systems) but a lot of the uses of this will likely be for networking, and people generally expect big-endian in that situation.

<comment><USER4> > You can do byte-swapping in one instruction on x86

Well considering the vast majority of swift code runs on Apple's ARM chips (iDevices) rather than x86 processors (Mac), I think that's kind of a moot point

<comment><USER5> Moot twice, since ARM also has a single instruction for byte swapping.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How stable are swift releases now? What are some good resources to start learning swift?

<comment><USER7> I think, as a starting place, Apple's Swift Programming Guide is hard to beat

<comment><USER8> In my experience, it's difficult to go through because it's so comprehensive and thorough, and I guess it has to be because it has to assume the lowest common denominator audience. Personally I'd like a shorter guide that assumes you know a few languages (C#, ObjC, JS, Java) and skips a bunch of the tedium of how _programming languages work in general_ and gets right to what's different about Swift. It may seem like it does that, but look at their page about control flow[1] and tell me it's not an unreasonably long-winded way of explaining switch, for, for-in, while, break, continue, and if.

[1]: [https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Sw...](https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Swift/Conceptual/Swift_Programming_Language/ControlFlow.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40014097-CH9-ID120)

<comment><USER7> I agree but Swift is a new enough language that I'm not sure such a resource exists yet. When I learned Swift I just skimmed through the parts that weren't interesting and that worked for me. It was a good overview of the language.

As an aside, the book, Advanced Swift, by the objc folks is fantastic but assumes you already know Swift. It's not what you're looking for, but something to move onto after you grasp the basics.

<comment> unkown-unknowns Maybe there is room for a publisher that makes books for people that already know how to program?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting how this has 57 points and as of now no comments.</comment>


GoPro Acquires Virtual Reality Startup Kolor - <AUTHOR> http://www.gopro.com/news/lets-get-sphericalspherical-gopro-acquires-virtual-reality-start-up-kolor

<comment><AUTHOR> It makes sense, Kolor was already the reference in HD panoramas stitching tools and with their recent push towards video as well, they're a logical complement to GoPro.</comment>


Ask HN: Why did you choose not to have children? - <AUTHOR> Any regrets? <comment><USER3> I'm in my mid-40's, and have yet to have any desire for children. My reasoning essentially has been that if I have children, they will either be like me, or not be like me. Neither of these outcomes encourages me.

If they are not like me --- well, I don't think there is any shortage of people in the world that are not like me. Further, I think that lowering the human population is the best thing we can do to prevent ecological collapse.

If they are like me, I fear that they too would be angry, depressed, ineffectual, and continually disappointed by the world. Reluctantly, I conclude that it's better for them (and probably the world) for them not to be, than to be like me.

(I'm sorry if this is an unhelpful answer. And while I'm unlikely to change my decision at this point, corrections to my logic would still be appreciated.)

<comment><USER4> If everybody who cares about overpopulation doesn't have children, couldn't that eventually "breed away" that trait and make the problem worse?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Late 30's, female, never wanted children.

When I was very young, that preference was inspired by a conscious rejection of the roles society had set for me ("wife and mother").

As an adult, that stance has weakened (if I'm choosing something because I want it rather than because someone's telling me too, it's still my choice). But I've come to believe that I would be a terrible mother. In part because I can't stand children and the noise they make; in part because I don't want them enough to be willing to make the sacrifices of time, energy, and other resources that are necessary to raise a child; in part because I'm both uninterested in and just plain terrible at nurturing.

If I had found a life partner who wanted kids badly enough, I might have had them. He would probably have to have committed in advance to being the primary caregiver, though. I'm much more comfortable in the role of breadwinner than nurturer.

Regrets? Not at all. Sometimes a vague concern about being lonely and without a financial safety net in old age, but that seems to me to also be a terrible reason to have children.

</comment><comment><USER6> You should be asking the opposite question. Why does anyone choose to have children?

The answer as far as I can tell for most people is that they didn't actually choose after careful consideration of merits. They either just kinda felt like they wanted kids or were told that they needed to have kids or kids just kinda happened, or some combination of the three. But so much of the terrible part of having kids is hidden from potential parents that few people ever get to make a well-informed decision.

Have you ever looked at someone with young children? I mean really looked them in the eyes? They look miserable. Every single one of them. They deny it up down and sideways, but it's true except for rare brief moments. It's just that the rare joyful moments are they ones they remember because our brains suppress trauma. And it lasts for years; that miserable look doesn't go away until they've burned all of their youth. Do they love their children? Yes. Would they do anything for their children? Usually. And so would many pet owners. Are they proud of what their children grow into? Mmm...sometimes. Are they glad that they had children? Mmm...sometimes. Would they do it again if given the chance to turn back the clock? Mmm...sometimes. That's the dirty secret that you're not supposed to talk about.

Not having children makes everything less stressful, and by everything I mean literally every last little thing. Every single moment of every day of your entire life is cheaper and easier without children. Every decision you make involves fewer obligations. Want to DuoLingo for a couple months and then burn some cash and move to a foreign country for a while? Go for it. But good luck integrating an 8-year-old into elementary school on a one year tourist visa.

My mother and father had a bunch of amazing life adventure stories. None of them were from after I was born.

No regrets so far.

<comment><USER7> You're lucky your parents didn't share your thoughts.

As a father of a two year old boy, what you're saying is bullshit. It may satisfy your need to rationalize your decision to not have children, but it's still bullshit.

<comment><USER8> Nothing except denial in your words. Sounds like you confirm what the parent said then... We are here at HN to argue, not to deny.

<comment><USER7> Yes, denial. Having a child is unbelievable, it's the most amazing thing I could have experienced in my life.

The parent weights that against... having time for duolingo. Go figure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm 42 and my wife is 43. We've been married 20 yrs and decided before we got married that we didn't want children unless we could come up with compelling reasons to do so. We never did.

We got crap from family, a few friends (good friends were fine about it) and, lots of strangers for whom it should have been none of their business.

Basically, when most people ask why, there's no answer other than infertility that results in anything other than them telling us we're wrong. So many people who have or want to have kids see voluntarily choosing not to have them as not just a personal choice, but as an affront to everything they believe in.

That's not even to mention those who want and can't have kids who have gotten really bitter when the topic comes up. I just avoid it whenever I can.

On the plus side, as we passed 40, I think people assume that we couldn't rather than we chose not to have kids and very few people ask anymore.

If you have or want kids and that makes you happy, wonderful. But, far too many people take what's a pretty longstanding decision as a challenge to convince us to change our minds.

</comment><comment><USER10> Raising children is really hard. If you don't want them, don't have them. We don't need any more traumatized children (and then adults) from homes where they weren't loved. (It's amazing how long a bad childhood haunts you - <USER2> best buddy, 50 years old and openly successful in all ways, has tremendous anxiety easily attributes to his parent's neglect).

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm in my mid thirties. My partner and I have been together for 16 years. At no point in that time have either of us felt strongly that we wanted children. However, there are very good health reasons for us not to have biological children. So rather than risk future-us deciding we wanted biological children despite the issues, we made the choice permanent. Should that change we can always adopt. It's not like there's a shortage of children in the world.

</comment><comment><USER12> I decided not to have kids because I could not guarantee that they would have as many opportinuties as had been provided for me.

The main reasons for this negative outlook were exponential population growth, the degrading environment and the threat of nuclear war. At best all I could see was hand-wringing in response to these challenges, in general most people chose to ignore them.

Maybe things are beginning to change, but not enough to guarantee that the next few generations will not experience a degraded quality of life.

Regrets? None. You can't choose your kids but you can choose to live as you wish without the risk of getting a 'bad egg'.

</comment><comment><USER13> Maybe it has to do with my own childhood, but I've never felt the need to have children. In a sense, it's not a choice, I simply have no desire.

That being said, I like my life as it is and I don't see how it would be better with children. I can see how it would be worse though. I have a lot of freedom that I wouldn't have with kids.

Another reason for not having kids is that I'm an anxious person. I worry already a lot for no good reason, I imagine it would be worse if I had kids to worry about.

So far, I don't have any regrets. But it has been an issue with most of my ex- gfs who wanted kids...

</comment><comment><USER14> I started dating my now wife when I was 37 and she was 35. She had two kids who were 8 and 14. That was 7 years ago.

One of the first discussions we had was did I desire to have children "of my own". I said I didn't and she didn't want to "start over".

I love my step children and became very close almost immediately. I don't feel like I'm missing anything by not having my own biological kids.

But, at 37 - we married less than 8 months after we started dating - I knew I was selfish. Not financially, but I knew I wanted to have plenty of time to enjoy life with just my wife.

With kids that age, we've always been able to balance alone time and family time. We could leave our kids at home when we went out and even left them home alone over the weekend when my older child turned 16.

I'll be 46 when my younger child graduates. My wife and I have our whole life ahead of us.

I've never like babies. I wouldn't deal with babies in my own family until they were potty trained and talking. To me babies just limit what I can do in life and the freedom I enjoy.

</comment><comment><USER15> I do not know the meaning of life. I do not what to perform a serious action without knowing the reason.

My mother is urging me to have a child. Her major argument is that when I get old, no one would take care of me. But I think that's selfish thinking. The purpose of a new life shouldn't be taking care of another person.

I'm impatient with children too. I stay away from relatives' children during reunions. I hardly find joy interacting with them.

</comment><comment><USER16> Reality for a lot of people: economic reasons. Even in the bay area.

You simply can't raise children in anything smaller than a 3 bedroom apartment or house. Furthermore, because of groceries and driving around, they effectively require a car. On top of that, at least one of the parents need to sacrifice most time between, say, 5pm and 8pm every day. More than just that before they go to school (and this will put strain on the relationship, for obvious reasons). I mean, perhaps if you limit yourself to just one you might make it work with a 2 bedroom place, but ...

So you need a lot more stuff, and you must work less ...

There's massive rewards too, of course, but ... you have a lot of people that really want children, but realize it would destroy them. If you're wondering why people don't have children, imho, mostly that question is answered if they invite you to dinner.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm 30 and I have no regrets yet but the pressure is quite annoying...I guess that some people just want kinds, some don't and some want when it's too late. I hope I won't change my mind...

<comment><AUTHOR> Pressure from family? Friends? Is this more keenly felt by women v men do you think?

<comment><USER5> The impression I get is that women are more expected to want children, so not wanting them is seen as more transgressive. Additionally, women have a shorter timeframe in which to have children, so the pressure intensifies after age 30 in a way that it may not for men.

However, parents want grandchildren from their male and female children equally, and pressure from friends is applied to a couple as a couple, not as individuals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> For years I was passionate about not wanting children. I even got divorced because my ex-wife assumed I would change my mind after we got married.

Turns out wanting children is something I wanted. It just took meeting the right person to change my mind. My partner also was a never-breeder before we met.

Sometimes meeting the right person can change your outlook on life and future plans.

 _edit_ : spelling and grammar

</comment><comment><USER19> I find them incredibly annoying and I'm not willing to lower my quality of life to have a kid. No regrets at all, people told me when I was a teenager that I'd change my mind one day but nearly 20 years later I'm still of the same opinion

</comment><comment><USER20> For ecological reasons.

No regrets so far. We know we might sometimes later, after retirement. Or not.

<comment><USER9> Not making any more Americans (assuming here) is one of the most ecologically responsible things someone can do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm gay, so having biological children is out. Surrogacy is too legally complicated.

I considered adopting briefly, but the government is so unstable in the United States that I can easily imagine an adopted child of mine being taken away.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry to hear. I can't tell from your answer--how much do you want kids? There's always the possibility of moving somewhere you feel is more stable

<comment><USER21> It's not necessary.

I'm also an only child supporting my elderly parents, so moving away isn't really an option, unless things get handmaid's tale bad.</comment></comment></comment>


We Are the 1% – Alipay Cause Chinese Windows Phone Uprising - <AUTHOR> http://wmpoweruser.com/we-are-the-1-alipay-cause-chinese-windows-phone-uprising/

<comment><USER2> Is this windows phone still a thing? They should have taken android wear into consideration, though.</comment>


80Legs: A Web Crawler as a Service - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/80legs_a_web_crawler_as_a_service.php#more

<comment><USER2> _Our unique distributed architecture stitches together computers from all around the world to deliver exceptional crawling performance at an incredibly low cost._

Sounds like they've got a botnet :| Of course, I'm sure it's nowhere near as insidious. But are they piggybacking this on top of some other distributed computing platform or service? Can I contribute (and maybe get paid for my time)?

Edit: Do some basic research, Tim... [http://gigaom.com/2009/05/14/80legs- cares-about-your-bandwid...](http://gigaom.com/2009/05/14/80legs-cares-about- your-bandwidth-cap/)</comment>


Keylogging on IPhone and Android Using Gyroscope Data and Machine Learning - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@tomasreimers/axolotl-a-keylogger-for-iphone-and-android-a8b7b62cdab4 <comment><USER2> I was a bit disappointed by the lack of a real scenario implementation. While the data suggests it might work, I wanted to see how precise it would be in a simple implementation like the author described towards the end, where a simple game of tapping trains the NN and then uses the information to try and capture a typed password.

If I got that close to making something as cool as this, I would not stop experimenting until I found out whether it worked or not.

That is, unless I tested it, found that the imprecisions made it impossible to obtain reliable data, and decided to not write about it to not discredit all the work I had done.

I really hope someone takes the idea and tries it out to assess how viable it is, then I can be paranoid about 2 more sensors spying on me.

<comment><USER3> The Usenix paper they referenced from 2011 did exactly this.

[https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/hotsec11/tech/final_file...](https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/hotsec11/tech/final_files/Cai.pdf)

They focused purely on the number keyboard to try and extract PIN numbers and were able to achieve 70% accuracy using only a basic classifier.

<comment><USER2> Thank you for reminding me of the references, I had forgotten to check them out!

I wonder how much newer smartphones with bigger screens and more precise sensors could improve these results.

It's scary to think of how many different sensors could be used to gather even more information to make it more precise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very cool!

Also this is mindblowing, logging keystrokes from a standard keyboard using wifi.

"we show for the first time that WiFi signals can also be exploited to recognize keystrokes. The intuition is that while typing a certain key, the hands and fingers of a user move in a unique formation and direction and thus generate a unique pattern in the time-series of Channel State Information (CSI) values"

[https://www.sigmobile.org/mobicom/2015/papers/p90-aliA.pdf](https://www.sigmobile.org/mobicom/2015/papers/p90-aliA.pdf)

Edit: I wonder as an aside how precisely you could potentially use the accelerometer etc. for dead-reckoning.

<comment><USER5> Co-author here :) In response to dead-reckoning: [https://medium.com/@gregorymfoster/how-any-app-could- track-t...](https://medium.com/@gregorymfoster/how-any-app-could-track-the- indoor-location-of-everyone-magnetic-localization-acf3707716de)

<comment><USER4> Awesome thanks a lot, I'd not seen that! It looks very in-depth (which is what I wanted :), I'll have to have a good look through it.

Edit: Wow, I'm just skimming it at the moment, I'd never heard of 'Magnetic Particle Filtering' before, that is really amazing!

Also semi-related, I just found this [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_anomaly_detector](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_anomaly_detector). Apparently they degauss submarines precisely to avoid that :)

<comment><USER5> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Attacks like these can be easily dwarfed by employing a nonstandard virtual keyboard which displays a randomly permutated key layout during PIN entry. Some online banking web apps did this already ten years ago as a defense against "mouseloggers". Using a good RNG is advised though.

<comment> sid- Also Swype or Gboard would thwart it ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wouldn't the model be different for each user? and different for different typing scenarios? Like typing one handed vs two, sitting on a bus, in a car, while walking, versus just sitting on the couch.

It seems like it could be possible, but it would require a lot of training. Get it into a popular note-taking app to record keystroke + accelerometer data.

Also a simple fix for iOS as a platform would just be blocking out or filtering motion data when the secure keyboard is showing. I assume a similar thing could be done on android.

<comment><USER8> To allow for training of the ML to differences of each users the authors describe have the end-user first play a game

 _Unsuspecting user downloads "Evil Flappy", an app where they have to tap on the screen mindlessly to advance some objective. During this tapping, the app uses transfer learning to tailor the model to the user and test its own predictive capacity._

Very sneaky indeed...and I loved Evil Flappy :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> TL;DR it's possible to detect where you tapped on your phone screen somewhat reliably. Theoretically, someone could develop an app to associate screen location taps to keys and could pick out a password. Authors suggest phone manufacturers should limit access to accelerometers to prevent the attack.

This is extremely contrived and would take a shitload of skilled work to get right. It's way easier to make a phishing page coupled with social engineering to get what you want.

<comment><USER4> Would you be able to access screen taps from another app in the background?

<comment><USER10> I think step counters depend on being able to read accelerometer data. You might be able to add enough noise to the signal to make tap localization impossible while still keeping steps detectable, but that requires careful tuning.

<comment><USER11> On iOS at least, most 'step counter' apps don't acually do the step counting - they just pull the data from HealthKit, as the phone is already tracking them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Neat, though i'd call it key-estimation rather then logging, as i consider logging a very accurate, 1:1 log of what actually happened, this could have some errors in it, not making it less 'dangerous', lack of better word.

But for now i'll have to randomly rotate my device at each input... And or get one of those keyboards that shuffles the letters around the keyboard at each input.

</comment><comment><USER13> Come to think of it, I can't remember the last time I typed a password in an app, after initial setup.

</comment><comment><USER14> Quite surprising iOS allows that kind of sample rate for a background app.

<comment><USER15> I believe in iOS 8 and up (could even be earlier) Apple closed up tricks which would have allowed this sort of thing to work.</comment></comment>


How cookie cutters are made [video] - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/ValaAfshar/status/1179577770717958144 <comment><USER2> Seems like there should be a better way.</comment>


Ask HN: How plausible is it to continue becoming a lifelong programmer? - <AUTHOR> I find that a lot of the really good developers get promoted to managers by their 30s. Or similar roles that are over 50% communication/meetings, such as product, scrum master, analyst, architecture, etc.
Even though a highly productive programmer can be even more valuable than a manager, few people remain as a programmer.
What keeps people from staying on as a programmer? What should I watch for if I want to go down this path? <comment><USER2> I've been programming for 47 years. I've been offered (and refused) management positions 8 times. I know nothing about management, although I've had it done to me all my life.

Being a programmer all your life is like being a musician. It rarely pays well, it has a lot of issues. Lots of people think of themselves as programmers, just like most people who learn to play an instrument think of themselves as musicians. But there is a vast difference between being able to wrie a program (or play an instrument) and making it into a career.

There are very few musicians who perform throughout their lifetimes. There are very few programmers who write code throughout their lifetimes. You have to love the work.

<comment><USER3> I like that analogy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >What should I watch for if I want to go down this path?

Watch out for age discrimination. The best way to fight it is to start saving immediately for financial independence if you haven't already. Once you have F.U. money you can work on whatever you want--paid or unpaid, it will not matter.

Collins - The Simple Path to Wealth is a good book with the basics of how to achieve financial independence.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've found that though it takes many years there does come a time when you have mastered it. Of course you can't know every language or the intricacies of every sub discipline (graphics, audio, networking and on and on) but the core algorithms, data structures etc certainly. And then it can start to feel repetitive. It took me over 10 years as a professional dev coding everyday to reach that level. Now that I have I'm ready to do other things and have done. Nothing will stop you from continuing to be a programmer if you want to be, there are people 20-30 years older than me at places I've worked. It's you who decides when it's time to move on. They said I'll always be a lifelong programmer just not as a professional (paid) one.

<comment><AUTHOR> After knowing everything, would you consider it viable to be a specialist? Like I'm sure you could build anything, but what about, say, being able to build the most efficient ecommerce sites or specializing in building apps from scratch in the fastest speed?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is nothing keeping you from remaining a programmer as long as you are good at it. I am in my early 50's and have been programming since I was 13 years old, professionally since I was 18. I have studiously avoided management for my entire career and have survived several severe layoffs. Middle managers can be replaced far easier than a good programmer with extensive experience. You do need to be either an expert in an obscure field or be able to keep up with the latest technologies. I do both. I intend to retire as a programmer.

</comment><comment><USER7> There is an excellent book called "The Peter Principle" that is exactly about this sort of thing. The concept it uses is that people get "promoted to their level of incompetence." In other words, you are a great programmer, so you get promoted to manager because it's a promotion. You are a so so manager. You stay there until you retire, though you would have added a lot more value as a programmer.

It has a few examples of people who managed to avoid getting promoted out of the thing they truly excelled at. One gardener had a personal quirk of failing to pick up his paychecks on time. This drove management crazy and kept him gardening instead of whatever people did who got promoted.

Another individual had an office that looked like a paperwork bomb had gone off. There were untidy stacks of paper everywhere. Management was convinced he was a disorganized mess, though he had a very efficient paperwork system wholly unrelated to the mountains of papers stacked all over the place.

I highly recommend the book. After you have read it to establish a mental framework, you might need to read up on social psychology to come up with a strategy for convincing management that promoting you out if programming is a silly idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't mean being promoted out of your level of competence though.

Like in my case I make a good manager and a good programmer. But the skills needed to be a good manager are not rare. You need to have N years of experience, be a good communicator, and take responsibility.

To be a good programmer requires a lot of willpower and discipline. You have to constantly work hard and be on your toes. It's not something most people can do.

So in some regions, like Asia, someone who would be good at both would probably have a much more lucrative career as a star programmer than as a star manager.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have no particular insight, other than to say that it's certainly possible; I've met people who were programming when they retired.

It might be good to think instead about leaving your options open? After all, how do you know this is what you'll want? After programming for 10 or 20 years, maybe you'll want to try something new? Presumably you'll know more then than you do now.

</comment><comment><USER9> Mid forties and I've been programming all my life. If you don't want to be in management, don't take a management position. Same goes for architect or whatever else they throw at you.

You will make less money. You may get tired of learning new stuff all the time. I've gone from Domino, PalmOS, C, C++, Java, web stack, Objective C, Swift, and more. It can be exhausting or exhilarating. But no hiring manager cares that I worked on PalmOS back in the day.

</comment><comment><USER10> The hardest part will be getting people to take you seriously if you want to switch companies</comment>


Ask HN: Privacy Wrappers for Messenger - <AUTHOR> I'm a student and have to use Messenger since everyone else is on it (really want to use Signal but can't). Are there any privacy wrappers for Messenger that possibly add more functionality to the webapp/mobile app? <comment><USER2> Caprine promises to be a privacy focused client for Messenger: [https://github.com/sindresorhus/caprine/](https://github.com/sindresorhus/caprine/)

</comment><comment><USER3> manual PGP over WhatsApp

<comment><USER4> That sounds too usable, how about a one time pad? ;)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One- time_pad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad)</comment></comment>


Are you in a Techstars/Y Combinator dilemma? - <AUTHOR>

Are you a YC finalist who got accepted into Techstars and find yourself in a position to make a decision before the 25./26./27.? Feel like TS is trying to skim away YC finalists? If so, we'd like to talk to you.<p>further08 at gmail <comment><USER2> We'd like to talk to you too. Though we're a bit busy preparing for startup school today, we're happy to talk to anyone who feels like they're having undue pressure applied to them. We may be able to help.

<comment><USER3> I'm a few years older than YC's audience. But for those of you contemplating this decision, hear me out. My few years out in the real world are more valuable than you think.

First, approach choosing between startup schools much the way you approached choosing between universities (or colleges... I'm Canadian). When I was choosing a university to attend, I had a choice between the top computer science school in Canada, the University of Waterloo and the top rated overall school in Canada -- a misnomer as this was simply determined by a well-read publication in Canada, Maclean's -- the University of Toronto. The U of T's program was not bad; far from it. The curriculum, insofar as I could tell, mimicked Waterloo's. I was accepted into both co-op programs, though Waterloo had the edge here as it seemed to have the better reputation. Socially, I had a girlfriend and going to the U of T would mean I could continue a relationship with her (being a dumb teenager geek I gave much more importance to this factor than I should have). Financially, I pretty much would have to work my way through university. My parents are not well-off and while they had saved up some money to get me through 1st year, subsequent ones were financially up-in-the-air. When the U of T gave me a generous first-year scholarship and Waterloo didn't -- I had messed up Algebra and had earned an average score on Waterloo's math contest -- my decision was essentially made. Both schools, in my check-point analysis were neck-and-neck. Academically speaking they were both good, although Waterloo was probably better for my subject. In terms of co-op, Waterloo was better but U of T was not far behind either. So, knowing that I was essentially settling for second-place, I went to U of T.

That turned out to be the biggest mistake of my life. I don't regret a lot of mistakes I have made, but this decision is one. You see, the difference between first place and second place, while it might appear to be miniscule, is actually immense. Don't get me wrong. I was very much correct in my analysis. Academically, I was learning the same stuff that my friends over at Waterloo were. We were both kept busy working on projects, learning the same algorithms, and pulling our hair out over the tough math courses. For a while, I was quite happy with my decision. But there was an unsettling feeling. I didn't seem to have as many interesting peers for one. I was hard pressed to find somebody that was genuinely interested in programming or computing theory. I gave up asking people why they had chosen to study CS because I was tired of hearing "because that's where the jobs were" (we're talking just before the dot com bubble burst folks). I was further disappointed when it came time to do my co-op term. My co-op facilitator just didn't seem to get it. I had been courted by a startup (of 7 Waterloo grads ironically) and I wanted to work there. But she wanted me to go work at a "major company" like IBM and actually laughed at me when I said I'd already signed the papers in January with this startup to work for them in May. The big problem was that I had found this position on my own, not via the school. They had agreements with a bunch of companies, but mostly B players like IBM and ones that I just was not interested in. Waterloo had skimmed the better companies like Microsoft (back then guys!) and RIM for its students and left the U of T to settle for seconds.

So, my peers didn't seem to be as focussed on CS as the ones my friends told me about at Waterloo, and my co-op experience had turned out to be second- rate. The reality of my decision was beginning to set in. But what really convinced me I had made a catastrophic mistake was what happened one day after being really impressed with a 2nd year computer architecture (i.e. let's all learn assembler) lecture. While everybody dashed out of the lecture as soon as it was done having been bored silly, I rushed to the front and caught the prof while he was shutting down his laptop. "This is really interesting, the only problem is I can't actually program anything on my computer with it because, well, it's in imaginary ISA. I've heard x86 is ugly but can you recommend me some good x86 tutorials?". I had anticipated that he might say "Not off the top of my head, but I'll email you some good book titles/websites" or "uggh x86, why not learn PowerPC it is so much more elegant". I had NOT anticipated what he actually responded with, which was "Sorry, I don't know x86...actually the ISA in the textbook is the only one I'm fluent in". I was absolutely shocked. The only ISA he was familiar with was an imaginary one that served no practical purposes. Gutted, I left. You see, those are the sort of professors that can get along perfectly well at a 2nd place school.

Ok, so if you're still reading, you're probably wondering what the moral of the story is. Well, first off, ignore financials. Those ended up being the least of my problems. They'll be the least of your problems too. The most important things you can get out of startup school are:

-being introduced to the most interesting and intriguing peers

-having access to top-notch business opportunities

-and being mentored by passionate people

Being in my mid-20s I can call this one from the gut. You need to go with the original startup school, the #1. It's the only one that will get you all 3 of those. Sure, you will meet interesting people at other startup schools, but not THE most interesting ones, the cream of the crop. Similarly, you're just not going to have access to as good of a business opportunity in a tier 2 startup school (e.g., just pickup Founders at Work and look at all those RECOGNIZABLE leaders). And finally, you're just not going to have access to as passionate a set of mentors as you would have with YC. Again, proof of this is in the pudding: Founders at Work, PG's essays, this website (for crying out loud, another school used a freaking blogger hosted solution for their site and ripped off YC's application form). Just trust me guys. Don't let my mistake be in vain :-) There is nothing worse than wondering where you could have been if you had been able to maximize your potential by running with the lead pack. Miniscule differences are magnified over time, so don't settle.

<comment><USER4> mid 20's? i don't think you are too old for the YC audience :)

<comment><USER5> LoL yeah Im in my early 30s and doesn't stop me from applying to these great opportunities!

32, single, no kids... startup is life!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Who are you? I'm not doubting your intentions, but it seems strange to solicit this information without mentioning at all who you are.

<comment><USER6> It's telling that further08 hasn't responded. It's even more telling that further08's account on News.YC was created just minutes before making this post.

<comment><USER2> They seem to be legit, actually. After reading <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=167497> I got paranoid and grepped in the logs for the IP address. This is from genuine founders.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> While I've defended folks emulating YC in the last few threads, I do have to say that this is rather disingenuous -- not because I don't think that business-wise that it's fair game, but because since variations on the YC theme are so new there's a huge amount of space for differentiation.

For instance, the Seattle guys seem to be doing something pretty different and I think that's wonderful. They want people in Seattle and they want them to stay there. It seems that they're more interested in building a community than giving startups a jump-start.

YC, really is pretty narrow in scope. You could change the amount of money, the time, the industry focus (YC seems pretty media-ish-web focused), the country ... and I think you could _still_ snap up a good chunk of smart startups with the core of the YC philosophy.

I recently read _Blue Ocean Strategy_ \-- the crux of the book is to find a way to redefine your market and dominate your segment, rather than ending up in a race to the bottom. In other words, don't play to win: change the rules.

<comment><USER8> I think something like YC for films would be really cool, obviously it would have to be more than 20k but I bet some great work would come out of it. The hardest part would be finding a forward-looking person in that industry to start it.

<comment><USER9> totally jamie, i've been thinking about how to push business innovation into film. let's do it after xobni and snaptalent.

<comment><USER10> Sign me up, too. :-) I was in LA long enough to get to know a few people in "the Industry". (Hard at work on Insoshi for now, though.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> They've done this with previous groups of founders.

Luckily, the choice right now isn't too hard. TechStars hasn't yet proven they can provide significantly better outcomes for their startups...they might, but they haven't done it yet. YC has definitely proven they provide better outcomes, and Silicon Valley and Boston are both better places to start a tech company than Colorado (though Boulder is lovely--too cold for me, but many folks like it). Of course, having neither backing you is probably an even worse likely outcome...so maybe it's not such an easy choice, after all.

But, if you make it to the interview with YC your odds of getting in are quite high (greater than 30%, certainly, and probably closer to 50%).

</comment><comment><USER12> It's is pretty cool that pg is willing to listen to you guys.

We were in a similar position. Fortunately, when I told my family I'd have to move to Colorado of all the places I got weird looks.

Boston and YC went better with everyone.

</comment><comment><USER13> Funny, no replies by further08 to the comments here.

</comment><comment><USER14> Sounds kind of shady to me.

<comment><USER15> Perhaps it is a secret reporter from valleywag who is preparing a scathing article about the fight between YC and TS, looking for a few victimized startups they can quote out of context.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think there is a "equity of 1st offering" here, which ever selected you first should have at least a small advantage over the other; simply because they 'believed first'.

<comment><USER17> Why do you think this should be the case?

<comment><USER16> goes back to my own moral system, probably a weakness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have many tough decisions to make before the 27th.

I do feel like TS may be trying to take YC finalists!

What would you like to talk to me regarding?</comment>


FEARCE: Twitter Uncensored - <AUTHOR> https://fearce.co <comment><AUTHOR> Twitter is awesome, but censorship sucks.

For the past few weeks, I've been tracking trends which Twitter manually removes. I also wrote a script to guestimate users being blacklisted by Twitter.

FEARCE show censored trends plus gives you the tweets of hundreds of blacklisted activists, artists, authors, hackers, historians, scientists, trolls and politicos.

Cheers, Kyle Duck

<comment><USER2> I appreciate you creating this, looking at what is being censored is always a great way to understand the world around you.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


A Startup Slump Is a Drag on the Economy. Big Business May Be to Blame - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/09/20/business/economy/startup-business.html <comment><USER2> Good article, and it's one of a number I've seen in the last 30 days touching on whether or not there is a bubble, or a long-term decline on the horizon.

The problem with bubbles is people will call them as soon as things are overly valued by 200%, or even overly valued by 10x,20x, whatever. While those people might be right, bubbles have this incredible sustaining force to go on for years afterwards. There were lots of high-profile investors who were forced out of Wall Street in 1996 and 1997 for accurately calling a bubble, but under-estimating euphoria.

There was lots of talk 2 years about issues like this, but those never materialized. Who knows this time.

If anyone saw the controversy with Bodega a few days ago, that was a good sign of trouble. Why in the world are 10 year+ Googlers applying machine learning to VENDING MACHINES. There are thousands of fields they could have applied that to, many of which would have made them famous and declared geniuses if they could have gotten it to work. Their focus on vending machines though suggests that maybe AI isn't all it's cracked up to me (not long term but for now).</comment>


Arguing on the Internet is Worthless - Ask Mark Suster and Paul Graham - <AUTHOR> http://robbieabed.com/arguing-on-the-internet-is-worthless/ http://robbieabed.com/arguing-on-the-internet-is-worthless/ <comment><USER2> That Suster article was a real eye-opener for many!</comment>


Test Induced Design Damage? (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2014/05/01/Design-Damage.html <comment><AUTHOR> I'm interested to hear the patterns that users of MVC frameworks like Rails and Django have adopted when "fat models" start to become unwieldy.

The video "Decoupling from Rails"[1] that's linked in this article was quite interesting, and argued a complete separation of business logic from the model code, to allow the business logic to be tested (and reused) more easily.

I've definitely found fat-model code to be tricky to mock and test at times in Python/Django, as mocking out the ORM is gnarly. But if the business logic operates on proxy objects, then it would be much easier to do so.

On the other hand, DHH's retort to this approach also makes some good points regarding the introduction of excess complexity[2]. It's a fair point that architectural decisions should not be motivated by the speed of the UTs. But perhaps there are other benefits to the Hexagonal architecture, as well.

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg5RFeSfBM4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg5RFeSfBM4) [2]: [http://david.heinemeierhansson.com/2014/test-induced- design-...](http://david.heinemeierhansson.com/2014/test-induced-design- damage.html)</comment>


Who (Specifically) Is Behind the N.S.A. Mass Surveillance Program? [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://cryptome.org/2015/03/NSA_surveillance_program.pdf

<comment><USER2> It's unfortunate that this article starts to ramble and become onfocused. The first mistake is pg 10-11 and makes it obvious that the writer is not an insider in domestic and foreign intelligence consulting. It pretty much falls apart after that.

If you want insight on the companies that are working with the government to spy on you look here: [http://www.indeed.com/q-Top-Secret-Clearance- Management-Cons...](http://www.indeed.com/q-Top-Secret-Clearance-Management- Consultant-jobs.html)

They're mostly military contractors and communication companies.

<comment><USER3> While that list is valuable, it's only telling us who is _implementing_ and _operating_ these programs. That's like implicating Smith&Wesson in a murder. Yes, it was done with a Smith&Wesson gun, but who was holding it? Why?

<comment><USER2> The article is trying to implicate old rich men in wheelchairs that get together once a quarter to complain as running the intelligence services.

Most of the direction comes from the deputy director level and below. Basically the long-termers and generals that aren't removed with every administration. They also have close ties to military contractors and are able to receive consulting fees while doing their jobs.

The people mentioned in the article aren't in the loop and don't really have the passion.

<comment><USER3> > The article is trying to implicate old rich men in wheelchairs

In other countries we call such individuals 'oligarchs.' They probably are not involved much in the day-to-day nuts-and-bolts operation of these programs, but I'm sure they are involved in high-level goal setting and direction.

There's really nothing all that new or surprising in the original linked article. We've known for a long time that there is a revolving door between every level of state and federal government and any number of business interests. Basically this is regulatory capture on a massive scale -- possibly up to and including the executive branch, NSA, DOD, and the entire government. While some of the information about the Business Roundtable is new, the CFR is a well-known old boy network club for power brokers.

The article does contain some dubious speculation, but it's not central to the core thesis or to the long view.

America like all large-scale complex societies is an oligarchy. Democracy is largely an illusion, or only operates at a low-mid tier level. The big decisions and long sighted policies are set by career bureaucrats, special interests, top CEOs, etc.

The question we should be asking other than "who" is "why?" Is it just the natural tendency for bureaucracies to accumulate power, maybe a desire to suppress any future labor movement, and exaggerated fears of terrorism? Or is there a specific rationale, something that these people expect to see coming down the road in the future that they're preparing for now?

One thing I've wondered for a long time is whether the Internet is seen as deeply threatening by high-ranking powerful individuals. The last time there was a major revolution in communication, namely the popularization of the printing press, the result was a flurry of revolutions that saw quite a few oligarchs lose their heads.

Another potential threat I've wondered about is fossil fuel depletion. If additional sources of energy can't be brought online fast enough, it would basically necessitate the decommissioning of the middle class -- so-called "power down." The end result would look not terribly unlike the first of the Hunger Games films, with a few high-tech enclaves and a vast population living in medieval squalor. There's your civil unrest requiring over 400,000 troops.

<comment><USER4> > _The question we should be asking other than "who" is "why?"_

Well both could be important for different reasons. If the "public" is the "enemy" for whatever reason as to why, if members of the "public" wanted to act in some way, the "public" would probably be more effective, in whatever their aims may be tactically, than do so otherwise without having a "who".

> _…The end result would look not terribly unlike the first of the Hunger > Games films, with a few high-tech enclaves and a vast population living in > medieval squalor. There 's your civil unrest requiring over 400,000 troops._

And such a force would be reliant upon and even larger supportive effort of some population. For such force could be initially effective, but if the "enemy" is all around such a force and one is reliant upon that "enemy", long term it isn't an effective solution. I think sun tzu works might be more informative as a source on such compared to works generated for dubious entertainment value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> TL;DR: the Council on Foreign Relations, the Rockefellers, the Bilderberg Group, and the Corporations.

How he overlooked the Reptilians is beyond me.

The problem with this kind of conspiracy theory is that if the various participants had even 1% of the control and power the author attributes to them, they would be able to trivially stop the author from exposing them.

</comment><comment><USER6> tl;dr: Author claims the Bilderburgers and other secretive groups control everything.

Disappointing article, and it looked promising in the beginning. Too full of conspiracy theories and straw men, position taking, lots of framing and ad- hominem attacks. Strauss studied with Heidegger, corporations are waging warfare on American citizens, dividing media into "corporate media" and "democratic media." I had to quit reading because the arguments were so poor. It's the kind of document that takes a few hard truths and mixes them in with so much framing and rhetorical manipulation that by the end I was sorry I wasted time on it. Don't have time for a point-by-point takedown of it, but wanted to offer warning to anyone else before taking on the 52 page pdf.

Consider reading "Who Falls for Conspiracy Theories?" instead: [http://www.psmag.com/books-and-culture/falls-conspiracy- theo...](http://www.psmag.com/books-and-culture/falls-conspiracy- theories-98243)</comment>


Solar power system that works at night a renewable energy game-changer - <AUTHOR> https://research.curtin.edu.au/story/solar-power-system-that-works-at-night-a-renewable-energy-game-changer/ <comment><USER2> The sterling dish isn't exactly new. Was first introduced and patented by a German company "Sunmachine" in the '90s. And why not store the energy in hydrogen right away?</comment>


How To Beat Luck: A First Time Entrepreneur's Guide   - <AUTHOR> http://datainsightsideas.com/post/1132194695 <comment><USER2> Well, UCLA sure couldn't figure it out.</comment>


37 Signals' Book -- Getting Real -- Free Web Version - <AUTHOR> http://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc.php <comment><USER2> Dupe: <http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=574></comment>


Chinese leaders control media, academics to shape the perception of China - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fred-hiatt-chinese-leaders-control-media-academics-to-shape-the-perception-of-china/2013/11/17/1f26816e-4e06-11e3-9890-a1e0997fb0c0_story.html?hpid=z3

<comment><USER2> > it also limits information and analysis for China's decision makers

In China, the officials read Internal References(, which is not to be mistaken for the Reference News, which is openly published by Xinhua News Agency, and can be browsed at public bulletin for free as it usually publishes translated and selected articles from foreign news agencies to support the propaganda, IMHO). These 'Internal References' provides news from home and abroad for certain officials with respective clearances and the subjects discussed may be sensitive and critical. You can try to imagine a printed version of Bloomberg Service provided by the System. So it may be too naive to get the conclusion that decision makers have insufficient information.

1 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reference_News](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reference_News)

2 [https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh/参考资料_(出版物)](https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh/参考资料_\(出版物\))

</comment><comment><USER3> That post is rather tone-deaf about the same circumstances in the USA. Yes, China is a lot less refined and advanced about how it controls message and impression, but it's behind in many aspects, one of which is propaganda and state control. The USA is the reigning master of propaganda and image fostering; it is, essentially, even an official technique of our foreign and domestic policy.

I can't stand people who blatantly and ignorantly lack anything even remotely like self-awareness.

<comment><USER4> As usual, any post about China is accompanied by a post saying "the US is even worse". One would think that the only difference between China and the US is that the US is even worse.

<comment><USER5> Again, context is everything. You're missing the point entirely. OP's point was regarding the hypocrisy of one government, criticising another government, for extremely similar policies/goals/implementation.

That said, I'm sure if we were in Russia, and an anti-US article was published, you'd see a few persons argue that it's nothing special as well, with "stop criticising my country" demagogues coming out of the wood work just like you have.

<comment><USER6> This isn't "one government, criticizing another government", this is the Washington Post.

<comment><USER7> Compare and contrast Bloomberg's stance on investigations regarding another government: [http://nypost.com/2013/11/15/bloomberg-boots-china-leak- scri...](http://nypost.com/2013/11/15/bloomberg-boots-china-leak-scribe-as- staff-layoffs-loom/)

Jeff Bezos made a point when he said he wanted the Washington Post to survive as an independent voice. Bloomberg is subject to its customers, which is increasingly in China, which they have decided makes certain stories off- limits.

Due to the generosity of Jeff Bezos[1], the Washington Post does not need to worry about being beholden to its customers like that, at least not for the short-term future. We'll see how it turns out in the long term over time. This is not saying that if it were not for Jeff Bezos, the Washington Post would do similar things, because it's not like they have a lot of readers in China anyway. Just saying that thanks to Bezos, the Washington Post does not need to be beholden to its customers for now.

[1] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/jeff-bezos-on-post- pu...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/jeff-bezos-on-post- purchase/2013/08/05/e5b293de- fe0d-11e2-9711-3708310f6f4d_story.html?Post+generic=%3Ftid%3Dsm_twitter_washingtonpost)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nothing surprising here either. Same thing happens in USA and everywhere else. The media plays to the tunes of whoever pays the most. In case of China no one else has actually bothered to pay the media to do the opposite. May be if India was not in the hell hole of self inflicted poverty and servitude they could have countered Chinese propoganda.

Even Google shows paid ads on the top of the search.

</comment><comment><USER9> As an American who grew up during the Cold War, this article really isn't news. We were always accusing the Commies of hyper-sensitivity to international perception.

And yes, the US denies entry to "radical" figures.

Academics and political experts engage in self-censorship here also, lest their dreams of tenure slip away or they find themselves uninvited to the DC cocktail circuit.

</comment><comment><USER10> Implying U.S., Russia or any other powerful country doesn't control their media?</comment>


Ask HN: Mobile developers, how do you do testing? - <AUTHOR>

I would want to know how do you do testing right now for your mobile apps across multiple devices, especially in the world of Android when there are tons of devices with many versions of configurations, pixel density, screen size, etc.<p>Do you use any tools? If yes, how good are they? <comment><USER2> I develop my apps with phonegap[0] and ember.js[1], this way I can use tools like firefox's responsive design view[2] to make sure it works on different screen sizes/resolution.

In terms of testing, I use all the current tools that are available to web developers (automated tests for my javascript code with mocha[3], chrome developer tools for debugging, etc)

I do testing on an actual device as late as possible, when my app is actually already finished and well tested. In case I need to debug on the device there is remote debugging with chrome on android[4], which lets you debug your android app with chrome developer tools.

For automated integration tests there is also appium.io[5]. You can write integration tests and let them run for ios and android.

[0] [http://phonegap.com/](http://phonegap.com/) [1] [http://emberjs.com/](http://emberjs.com/) [2] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Tools/Responsive_De...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Tools/Responsive_Design_View) [3] [http://visionmedia.github.io/mocha/](http://visionmedia.github.io/mocha/) [4] [https://developer.chrome.com/devtools/docs/remote- debugging](https://developer.chrome.com/devtools/docs/remote-debugging) [5] [http://appium.io/](http://appium.io/)

</comment><comment><USER3> The company I'm currently working with purchased 30+ mobile devices.

I'm getting more and more convinced that this is the only way to guarantee that your site/app will work perfectly on all of these phones and tablets.

Some emulators can be a pita to install (iOS emulator only works on OS X, windows phone emulator needs Visual Studio on Windows 8 on hardware that supports HyperV) and they're still not 100% consistent with what will happen on the real device.

</comment><comment><USER4> The developer tools in Chrome are a good starting point, you can emulate the screen size, user agent and orientation of a number of devices. A quick Google surfaced this article about the emulation: [http://www.realeyes.com/blog/2014/02/19/a-quick-guide-to- chr...](http://www.realeyes.com/blog/2014/02/19/a-quick-guide-to-chromes-new- built-in-device-emulation/)

Having a range of devices at hand helps too.

</comment><comment><USER5> I recently tried genymotion.com. I am pleased with it so far in terms of testing on android. Of course, it is not the same as testing on real devices. For now, I am just testing using this. Later, I am going to ask friends and family to test my app on their various devices.

I haven't tried this this but another suggestion I read somewhere is to go to Bestbuy and test it on as many devices as you can :)

</comment><comment><USER6> You could take also take a look at Nokia Remote Device Access [http://developer.nokia.com/resources/remote-device- access](http://developer.nokia.com/resources/remote-device-access) (Android Nokia X , Windows Phone Lumia , Nokia Asha).

</comment><comment><USER7> 1\. Make a list of current target devices for this project (depends on project). 2\. Buy a representative set of them (like 5 or 10) 3\. Test on those real devices.

</comment><comment><USER8> on android, I use genymotion as a quick test tool. But my company also own many devices Os * density * size for final tests.</comment>


Show HN: Binocs – a personal search engine for all your cloud services - <AUTHOR> Hey HN!
The beta signup for Binocs just launched this morning at: https://www.getbinocs.com
Have you ever had trouble finding one of your files—trying to remember the name or where you saved it?
Binocs is your own personal search engine. Quickly search for your emails, files, and attachments across multiple cloud services and find results that Dropbox, Gmail and Drive normally miss.
Head over to getbinocs.com to sign-up for an invite, and if you'd be willing to show us some love at Product Hunt, we just announced the beta there as well!
https://www.producthunt.com/tech/binocs <comment><USER2> Hmm. Could be useful but how is the authentication done?

No offence, but I'm not sure how I'd feel about giving access to all my cloud services to an unknown third party...</comment>


Django 1.5 works on Clever-Cloud - <AUTHOR> http://python-django.cleverapps.io

<comment><USER2> It's nice to see they support Python now :)

It is already really nice for Scala apps.

</comment><comment><USER3> I cannot see on your website why would i use you, and not Heroku.

<comment><USER4> Hi,

I'm the CEO of clever cloud, and and try to give you severals arguments :

\- We handling provisionning in our side : the app will scale up and down automatically, related to your real needs

\- Our pricing is base on real consumption : what you really consume on our resources, due the auto scalability feature

\- We have a good performances reverse proxy ;-)

\- we support a lot of platform

\- We're not based on AWS (down 6 time per year) and we provide a friendly EU laws compatibility

\- we are responsible of application running : if your app fail, we will restart it automatically

\- we provide file system support (VERY usefull for php apps) in a clusters way

\- we are cheaper

\- We are cool :-)

At last, we are trying to make a new PaaS with other features and another vision, with a lot of respect for the Heroku work

If you want you can mail me on firstname.lastname@example.com explain your project and I will give you what you need to test it and answer more precisely on your case :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> :-)</comment>


Alexis Ohanian calls out 'fellow geeks' for ostracizing, sexist behavior - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/25/4146078/reddit-co-founder-alexis-ohanian-calls-out-fellow-geeks

<comment><USER2> I'm a little confused how he is calling out 'fellow' geeks if he is a product guy?

<comment><AUTHOR> He's a geek even if he's not a (full-time) developer. I mean, wouldn't you consider Elon Musk a geek? Or Steve Jobs?</comment></comment>


A selection of Bloomberg's millennial coverage over the past three years - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/hey-bloomberg-which-millennial-hurt-you-1788469056 <comment><USER2> Apparently boomers hurt them too:

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-12/the- riche...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-12/the-richest- generation-in-u-s-history-just-keeps-getting-richer)

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-24/aging- bab...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-24/aging-baby-boomers- push-spam-diaper-stocks-to-record-valuations)

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-17/boomers-a...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-17/boomers- are-making-sure-the-divorces-keep-coming)

"Baby boomers screwed up our kids": [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/b/9ee9d0c4-94a4-4bf7-98...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/b/9ee9d0c4-94a4-4bf7-98ad- ee5955e5631f)

"Boomers new retirement plan is millenials paying rent": [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-04/landlord-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-04/landlord- nation-boomers-new-retirement-plan-is-millennials-paying-rent)

"Here's a Reason Baby Boomers Will Curb U.S. Growth This Decade" : "[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-29/here- s-a-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-29/here-s-a-reason- baby-boomers-will-curb-u-s-growth-this-decade)

Maybe they just hate poor people? Maybe they'd prefer it if grandma had a reason to blame the kids and kids have a reason to blame grandma because neither one is doing well economically. After all, the _last_ people they could blame are the actual culprits.

Because _they 're_ Bloomberg's primary customers.

Fun game: count the number of people who write negative remarks about the older generation in this HN thread. And we all thought we weren't easily manipulated...

</comment><comment><USER3> I imagine Bloomberg is largely aimed at people who're doing well financially, probably lots of Boomer, empty nesters with lots of cash who've politically and economically screwed their descendants.

If course it's writing articles that blame the people who their readership screwed. They're hardly likely to make much hay from something like "Boomers, your pension security is unfair and the rigged housing markets are a travesty" are they?

<comment><USER4> I've seen a lot of millenials articles in the globe and mail (newspaper). I've always figured it was click bait to get subscriber counts up among millenials.

These millenials articles are so frequent in news and press that I immediately ignore them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is a long tradition in the US (World?) of blaming everything on "the younger generation". Don't you fret millenials, soon they will move on to whoever's next and you will be forgotten.

In the meantime, try not to be so sensitive about it okay? It's really nothing personal.

<comment><USER6> "Don't you fret millenials, soon they will move on to whoever's next and you will be forgotten."

"they" will be the millennial's blaming generation Z.</comment></comment>


YC W2016 Interview Invites - <AUTHOR> Does anyone know around what time are the invites/rejects sent out? <comment><USER2> Seems lots of us are still waiting, reports in both of these threads...

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10467290](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10467290) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10466754](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10466754)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think they send them at the end of business Pacific Time.

</comment><comment><USER4> Got email couple minutes ago and unfortunately we were rejected. Best of luck to you all!

</comment><comment><USER5> Did anyone get actual invites to the interviews?

</comment><comment><USER6> Anyone want to share what you're working on?

<comment><USER7> Customized Nootropic Stacks. www.mindfyl.com. You?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just got our rejection email

</comment><comment><USER8> I am waiting for it too.

</comment><comment><USER9> I am still waiting .

</comment><comment><USER10> Just got it.

</comment><comment><USER11> Nothing yet?

<comment><USER8> yup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Waiting</comment>


Ask HN: Little Snitch but with centralized rules? - <AUTHOR> We use little snitch in a small (10 people) company and everybody is running macbooks. I love little snitch, but for the non-technical persons in our company its near to impossible to identify "good" from "bad" connections.<p>Question: Does anybody know something like little snitch (application firewall) but with centralized rules support (something we can "push" to every macbook?). <comment><USER2> Now, what would a non-technical user even benefit from Little Snitch?

Also, what are you trying to protect against using Little Snitch in this way? Are you a paranoid group of journalist dissidents who are suspecting targeted spyware, or are you just frustrated that installed apps "call home" to check for updates and whatnot?

Perhaps you should better invest in setting up a traditional firewall on the lan for central configuration. Then you also have the option for other IDS systems, such as [https://www.snort.org/](https://www.snort.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Non-technical people benefit from the application-level firewall just as well as technical users. Indeed the calling-home and also as an extra layer of protection against generic nastyness.

Of-course we also have a "traditional" firewall on the LAN. But this is not on the _application_ level but on the network level.

<comment><USER2> > Non-technical people benefit from the application-level firewall just as > well as technical users.

This can't be right, as you yourself originally stated `for the non-technical persons in our company its near to impossible to identify "good" from "bad" connections.`.</comment></comment></comment>


How I found an exploit in a Paypal vendor ticket server - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pentestbegins.com/2017/07/21/hacking-into-paypal-server-remote-code-execution-2017/ <comment><USER2> Better title: "How I found an exploit in a Paypal vendor ticket server."

Clearly the title is meant to bait an interest in financial vulnerabilities. A "Paypal server" is as meaningful a name as a "Google webpage".

<comment><USER3> Is it though?

Who knows what kind of "soft center" is around the "hard shells" of these organisations?

For starters, the "uname -a" he ran shows the server's kernel to be from Jan 2016. Right from the top of my head, this is probably vulnerable to "dirtycow" (for which there are weaponized exploits on github).

Who knows where root on this server can get you? You're not allowed to check. Legally that's black. No bug-bounty program allows you to go beyond the "/etc/passwd" print.

<comment><USER4> > For starters, the "uname -a" he ran shows the server's kernel to be from Jan > 2016.

Who lets an Internet-facing production server run for a year without updates?

(So, okay, it is possible that whoever is responsible for that machine did install updates but did not reboot the server. But that still leaves that server running with a known vulnerability.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This smells strongly like farmed out to 3rd party creative agency work. Different domain, basic off the shelf PHP help desk software etc.

A lot of time organizations don't have developers, and rather than work with the product organization within their company to get an idea pitched and approved and implemented, they just contract it out to an agency. The end result is some server running AWS, not connected to the real companies network, but with your brand on it, and no real support from a security and administration perspective.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm not crazy about the form of the blog post but it does have some content so I posted it.

<comment><USER6> Right. It's hard to see the text between all the gifs.

<comment><USER7> $('img').hide() worked nicely

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Really he got access to a sever running php help desk software. Nothing really important or crazy. The exploit was as simple as uploading a command executor script.

</comment><comment><USER9> tl;dr:

Meme-heavy read about someone finding a way into some internal ticketing system unrelated to Paypal's financial systems.

<comment><USER10> you forgot "without adding anything novel to a well understood class of bugs from the 90s"

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I love reading write-ups like this, it gives me so many ideas about how to attack my own applications. Distracting gifs aside, it's well presented and easy to follow and reproduce on similarly vulnerable platforms.

</comment><comment><USER12> he hacked into [https://www.paypal-brandcentral.com/](https://www.paypal- brandcentral.com/) \

not paypal.com

</comment><comment><USER13> Awesome find and excellent writeup.

But I have to say that I find those flashy gifs and memes a little bit distracting.

</comment><comment><USER14> My wife's credit card used to be tied to her PayPal account. It was stolen 4 times in 2 years and we had no idea why until our bank asked if she's been using it with PayPal and so she removed it and we haven't had a card theft event for about a year now...

<comment><USER15> Not to say that Paypal's security is flawless, but it also depends on your wife's behaviors as well.

Not having it attached to her PayPal reduces the attack surface a bit which isn't a bad thing.

It's also completely possible that it either wasn't stolen from PayPal or that an unrelated breach (reused passwords on a compromised site etc) allowed someone to access the PayPal account.

</comment></comment><comment> mck- Would love to see more of these articles on Hacker News; very educational, almost adventurous, Kevin Mitnick style (obviously not quite).

I know that Paul Graham had a different definition of "hacking" in mind when he started HN, but still. I love these hacking write-ups.

</comment><comment><USER16> The incompetence of those responsible at PayPal is startling. This is such a basic exploit, my goodness. At least they acknowledged and fixed it in a timely manner.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wouldn't be too hasty to blame the employees. A lot of times, bugs are a result of organizational structure. As they say, you ship your org chart. It can happen very easily that a feature relies on collaboration between many teams and more often than not there isn't a single person who has a good understanding of the whole pipeline. Bugs sneak in easily.

<comment><USER16> Someone, or a group of people, is responsible for deploying this server in its configuration. These people are incompetent. I don't care if it's an engineer or leadership or corporate structure problem - it is a problem caused by incompetence. If you have a potentially lethal car accident because the car was faulty, nobody's gonna say "Oh well, it's just the corporate structure, nobody is responsible."</comment></comment></comment>


New Project Plans to Send a Spacecraft to Alpha Centauri in 20 Years - <AUTHOR> http://www.iflscience.com/space/stephen-hawking-reveals-plan-send-spacecraft-alpha-centauri-20-years/ <comment><USER2> How is the nanocraft going to transmit images and data back to earth?</comment>


Did They Invent Hair Gel? Caesar's Footprints: Journeys to Roman Gaul - <AUTHOR> https://literaryreview.co.uk/did-they-invent-hair-gel <comment><USER2> Just a warning: nothing really to do with hair gel.

One minor tidbit:

      The Gauls [...] credited with the invention of
      sapo, which was less an early form of soap, notes
      Omrani, than a pomade that brightened the hair.

</comment><comment><USER3> Everything I know about the ancient world I learned from Asterix.</comment>