Apple Apologizes and Updates iOS to Restore iPhones Disabled by Error 53 - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/18/apple-apologizes-and-updates-ios-to-restore-iphones-disabled-by-error-53/ <comment><USER2> > Apple Apologies

I am an Apple hater BUT I have to say very proud of the new Apple and actually saying they made a mistake and apologizes. This and the fight for security are both things as a self proclaimed Apple Hater applaud Apple for doing. Good job!

<comment><USER3> If you've already pre labeled yourself as a "hater of X" they you're throwing away your ability to create new opinions and judgements when situations change.

This is not a healthy mentality to have about anything.

<comment><USER4> Sometimes a company takes actions I consider to be pretty terrible (e.g. Apple Maps, Sony removing functionality from the ps4). At that point I feel justified in becoming a "hater" of that company. Going forward I lean towards skepticism of the company and put the onus on them to win me back. Maybe I'm crazy but this feels perfectly reasonable.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, there's Bad, and there's Apple Maps Bad. [1]

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVq1wgIN62E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVq1wgIN62E)

<comment><USER6> It was really bad at launch, but I find it better than google maps for navigation, though still trailing a bit on specific POI searches.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This seems like the right thing to do - disable the unauthorized Touch ID sensor, but don't brick the phone. The secure enclave is still intact and secure, and if you want Touch ID back, you can get it repaired with authorized parts.

<comment><USER8> The car industry played the same game a while a go and failed badly.

Allow repairs of the device you OWN with parts you decide and not the manufacturer.

<comment><USER7> Yes, but if you stored all your bank accounts, credit cards, and private photos in your car, and any repair shop could connect a USB thumb drive and download the contents unencrypted, wouldn't you want a little bit of cryptographic insurance that that wasn't possible?

<comment><USER9> > Yes, but if you stored all your bank accounts, credit cards

I wouldn't be surprised if Apple Pay was the actual reason behind all this stuff.

Malware is bad, but malware which can "authorize" payments is a whole new level of bad and would cost Apple actual money. So they run Pay on a separate CPU whose communications with the fingerprint scanner are encrypted to prevent the main CPU (which relays those communications) from replaying user's fingerprint many times to "authorize" unwanted transactions. Hence the "pairing" of home button to the phone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Anyone else get the impression that the head of PR at Apple was on vacation and returned this week to put out all the fires?

Seriously though, this seems like a consumer-friendly decisions, as was the iOS backdoor/San Bernadino press release yesterday and it's nice to see.

</comment><comment><USER11> Nice move, it's pretty cool of them to offer reimbursement to people who bought replacement phones in the meantime.

<comment><USER12> So, anyone who dropped the cash to buy a new iPhone gets it for free (with a working touch ID sensor), but anyone who couldn't afford to buy a new iPhone has to pay for an official touch ID sensor? Ouch.

<comment><USER13> To be fair, I'm not sure a new touchID sensor is expensive. I cracked the screen on my 6 the other day, and was investigating DIY screen replacements. $100 for screen+digitizer not so bad, but I hear the replacement is a bit of a bear.

Fortunately a friend overheard my conversation and recommended I just take it to Apple. Sure enough, screen replacements are something like $105 out the door. The replace the screen and digitizer.

When I went back for my phone, they told me they tried 2 new screens+digitizers and neither one worked, so they just gave me a new phone for the "screen replacement" price.

Needless to say, I was quite happy I didn't try to DIY. I had no idea the "official" Apple repairs would be so cheap. I guess things have gotten a lot more consumer friendly since the bad PR days of cracked screens.

I'm not sure if the home button is replaced in a screen replacement, but I can't imagine it's particularly expensive vs a screen+digitizer replacement.

<comment><USER14> Wtf? I cracked my iPhone 5S and took it to an Apple Store and they told me it was impossible to repair, and sold me a new iPhone for $400!

<comment><USER15> They can only repair it if the frame isn't bent. Yours must have been.

<comment><USER13> Also, in the early days, Apple basically said "buy a new phone". They got some bad PR about it and came up with the repair program. I think it well predates the 5S though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Some part of me believes that the old Apple that Steve Jobs was in control would have stood his ground with "Error 53." The Tim Cook Apple is a lot more compassionate with respect to these sort of things.

<comment><USER17> i used to work as a genius, and left a few years back. When i left, the genius role basically became 60-70% display replacements for iphones, and no macs at all.

When you get a display replaced, the phone goes through 2 machines, one of which calibrates the phone by launching some weird firmware while in the machine (actually kinda neat, its like a DFU mode but it doesn't wipe the phone in the process)

Since every phone has to run through the machine, it creates a backlog of phones that are waiting. These phones _work_ without being put through the machine, but sometimes the displays are fucked and the machine detects that (and the phone then gets a new display, etc etc).

The machine also pairs the display with the phone, so that Applecare have a record of what display is currently on what phone.

If you take your phone in again, they do a spot check to make sure that display matches and they're good to go. If it doesn't, then they're supposed to refuse service (cause its likely that it was done at a dodgy repairer).

HOWEVER! I've seen phones get stuck in weird loops as soon as they're restarted if they haven't been put through the machine yet. The phone basically is fucked at that point and needs replacement. Remember, this is a legit repair that has caused this, and happens way more than you think (maybe 1 in 20 when i left, its probably better now).

Therefore, they are probably taking this route because they can't be sure that they aren't the cause of the fuckups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Maybe this is a silly question, but does anyone know how secure the TouchID on the iPhone is compared to the 4 digit pin? I remember from a comment in the Android source that the android 5 face recognition is about equivalent to a 3 digit pin. Is TouchID more secure or less secure than the 4 digit pin?

Is it more tractable or less tractable for someone to brute-force the 4 digit pin than the TouchID? I.e. if someone wanted to get into my phone, and they removed the official TouchID sensor and now it falls back on a 4 digit pin, does that do them any good?

I wonder if I could get the old behaviour back - if someone was tampering with my phone by removing the sensor, is there any way of bricking the phone until I can get it to an apple store?

<comment><USER19> FYI, it's slightly difficult to brute force the touch ID, because the secure enclave will wipe the derived PIN key (that it holds in internal memory, after receiving a signed message from the touch id sensor) in a reboot or after 48 hours.

<comment><USER20> Or a certain number of incorrect attempts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I am a little torn on this given there isn't a cited source and I don't know if Apple would give TC (or anyone) an exclusive on this. If it's true we're dancing in the streets though!

<comment><USER21> > Update: A new support document on Apple's site has been issued that details > the causes and repair methods for Error 53.

Links to [https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT205628](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205628)

<comment><USER22> Last Modified: Dec 21, 2015?

<comment><USER23> It shows "Feb 18, 2016" for me. Maybe something was momentarily out of sync somehow.

<comment><USER24> I'm also seeing "Last modified: Dec 21, 2015", as is the Google Cache of the page and the Web Archive. I'd assume it was published with the wrong date, and the correction hasn't fully propagated Apple's CDN/cache.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Wow- this is great for me. I have been sitting on iOS8 for some time now because of this.

I broke my screen and home button and had them replaced before I went on vacation. Luckily I had read about the error 53 issue before attempting to upgrade my jailbroken device.

I'm very surprised Apple would respond so well to an issue typically caused by 3rd party repairs.

<comment><USER26> Apparently OTA updates don't suffer from this, so you could try soft-restoring your device (there's a Cydia tweak for that), then doing the OTA update to 9.x.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Boy, lately things haven't been going well for Apple.

</comment><comment><USER28> > This test was designed to check whether Touch ID works properly before the > device leaves the factory.

Does that mean Error 53 stemmed from Apple having distrust in their supply chain? Interesting.

<comment><USER29> Not a bad tack considering where the iPhone is made.

<comment><USER28> It's a reasonable precaution no matter where it might be made. You never know who might alter the device in transit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Anyone else find it suspicious that this comes the day after court order to backdoor their devices?

<comment><USER31> Not me (seriously...it's an odd coincidence, but I don't see the connection.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> So they pleased users and complied with that judge order in one bat?

;)

</comment><comment><USER33> Does apple make lot of money or loose lot of money on repairs? Or else they should let third party repairs.Typically for product companies it is better if they have ECO system of repairs/service by third party so that they them selves don't have to support for long which costs lot of money. Other than life safety devices others should allow customer who want to repair their product should be allowed.

<comment><USER13> I made another comment, but screen+digitizer replacement for my 6 cost $105. Not bad at all IMO. The parts alone cost $100 online.

<comment><USER34> The part cost wholesale (ordering 100+ of them at a time) is $74-$78 currently for a high quality LCD+digitizer for an iPhone 6.

Note that Apple doesn't sell parts directly, and any third-party repair store that says differently is lying to you. There are, however, plenty of high- quality replacement parts available from other distributors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Who actually buys the explanation that this was not intended to leave the factory?

<comment><USER35> Anybody with common sense. Do you really think that Apple, who prides themselves on having outstanding customer satisfaction, would deliberately try to brick their customers phones through something this obvious?

Apple definitely looks out of their own interests, but they jump through a lot of hoops to protect their customers from bad experiences, especially since the obvious implementation was to just disable the fingerprint sensor if can't be trusted.

Edit: additional info from the TC article: <<The update is not for users who update their iPhones over the air (OTA) via iCloud. If you update your phone that way, you should never have encountered Error 53 in the first place.>> Your conspiracy theory would really require that they brick phones through both the OTA and iTunes update.

<comment><USER22> > Do you really think that Apple, who prides themselves on having outstanding > customer satisfaction, would deliberately try to brick their customers > phones through something this obvious?

Yes I do think that they would attempt to discourage unauthorized repairs in such a way for less-than-noble reasons.

If you think it was a mistake, then can you explain why Apple wasn't bothered to do anything until someone ran an article on it and publicized it?

<comment><USER36> A thought experiment: suppose you are in charge of handling repairs for a multinational fleet of hundreds of millions of devices.

One thing you'll probably do is triage: by looking at the numbers of devices that fail in various ways, you can optimize your parts channels, training, processes, etc. in various ways. This is business 101.

Now try to guess how many people have been experiencing this error. My guess is it is a pretty small percentage of several hundred million. I also guess that there are a number of other failure modes affecting similarly small groups of users. In a device as complex as the iPhone, with a population that large, there has to be.

But wait! Now the press is hammering you over one of those small-population failure modes. Everything else equal, you're an idiot if you don't handle that one first.

Of course, thought, this is Apple. So the reasonable, simple explanation makes no sense and instead Occam's Second Exception indicates that when Apple is involved, skullduggery and shenanigans are the only reasonable explanation.

<comment><USER37> Triaging by data is just the first step. Once you decide it's an actual problem you have to be able to reproduce it. To confirm this is happening, you have to get production phones, then do an out-of-process rework, then do this for different OS versions, OS upgrade methods, iTunes version, etc... Reworking this sensor is not an easy task so you have to have someone do it for you and get their time, etc... It's actually a pretty big project to do this correctly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> If you have a smartphone and think you have any sort of privacy, you're delusional

</comment><comment><USER14> Yes, well, it probably helps to know that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commisioon (ACCC) was investigating Apple for abuse of market power over this issue.

The last time this occurred, it was over illegally claiming iPhones and other Apple devices were out of warranty when they weren't, and misleading consumers that to get any form of warranty service after one year they would need to purchase an Apple extended warranty. They were not only fined millions, but were forced into printing a humiliating retraction on their website and in the press - one that basically was reported on worldwide.

I'm not at all surprised they backed down this quickly this time around. It's almost certain they would have been found to have committed the offence of third line forcing, to which there are very, very steep fines.

</comment><comment><USER39> But wait, they earlier said it was an intended security feature. Now they're saying that it was a factory test not intended to go public?

New personal rule: never update the phone again... ever.

<comment><USER40> It is a security feature that your TouchID is disabled when the phone detects a non-official/verified sensor but it wasn't intended to brick the phone, just disabled TouchID. There was a bug that ONLY affected people who update using iTunes (this is rarer than you might think) as it's a diagnostics tool they use in factories where they WANT to get the error 53, they didn't intend that to get out to customers.</comment></comment>


A French love affair... with graphology - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22198554

<comment><USER2> It is becoming very, very rare. Given that the source for the 50% figure is graphologists, I wouldn't give it too much credit. As a french person, last time I heard about someone that needed a handwritten cover letter was in the early 2000s. At least in the tech circles this is definitely something unseen.

<comment><USER3> > At least in the tech circles this is definitely something unseen.

There's a scarcity of tech people, so it would be ridiculous to add yet another level for rejection. However I may imagine that this could be used for some jobs with high ratio of candidates to vacancies (so called "beauty contests").

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > And just because we cannot measure its success rate using mathematics or > statistics - that doesn't mean it is not a valid tool.

Wrong. It means _exactly that_.

<comment><USER5> Usually when something is _not_ statistically relevant you can also prove it. I am not sure how you would do it in this case.

It probably works to some limited extents: for example, I am sure they can guess rather accurately whether the candidate is male or female.

So I _do_ see a difference between a non valid tool and a tool whose efficiency is hard to evaluate.

Now, don't get me wrong, I wouldn't use graphology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> No different to the American love affair with Myers-Briggs. People love superstitious rituals - especially when they're drenched in the language of science.

<comment><USER7> What's wrong with Myers-Briggs? One shouldn't spend too many thoughts about it, but I find the test results to be quite stable and fitting for me and many peers. Combine that with the idea that diversity is good, and that there is no right and wrong in personality.

I'm from Europe, had some courses on MBTI and I liked it. Not sure if the American love affair goes way beyond that.

<comment><USER8> It has been widely debunked.

Many employers take this stuff seriously, so someone who may have otherwise gotten the job gets rejected on the basis of a fantasy tool.

Companies are dumping off money that could be used for hiring more people or intelligent investments that create jobs, but billions of dollars are being wasted on something that is about as useful as The Secret.

If you want to shake your head, go ahead and apply online at places like Target, Walmart, or Starbucks. Each application takes over one hour to complete the questionnaire part. So, not only is it a massive money dump, it is a time vampire as well.

<comment><USER9> MBTI shouldn't be used for recruitment, as the official MBTI guidelines mention because it's too easy to cheat.

It's a tool to assess the difference of personality within a team, detect potential weaknesses and to communicate about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder how long until the headshot photo requirement is finally put to rest. The only use I've seen for it is a bunch of guys ogling over female CVs, basically trying to hire the prettiest or least ugliest candidates; actual qualifications be damned.

<comment><USER11> I learnt about this practice from my girlfriend who is from France and was quite surprised by it. She, on the other hand, was surprised by the American practice of asking about race and ethnicity on various official forms.

<comment><USER10> This. One policy is voluntary and is to ensure companies aren't racially discriminating during the hiring process. The other sort of puts you all out there and there has been lots of news made about reducing discrimination by removing photos, names, and addresses so hiring managers can only focus on your qualifications.

As an american I sort of prefer the American method. The checkbox means ethnicity is measured so you have a metric. The french system sort of assumes equality (it's in their motto!). With plausible deniability you can say you don't discriminate and no one can argue against it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> guard-of-terra This is just stupid and I can't imagine it not being exaggerated. (I'm not french obviously)

I can't write (anything longer than a few phrases, anyway) and soon nobody will. Why if you type all the time?

This is as useful in 21-th century as using bird intestines to predict weather. We have better ways now, indeed.

<comment><USER12> "I can't write (anything longer than a few phrases, anyway) and soon nobody will. Why if you type all the time?"

I type all the time. Code, reports, all that sort of thing. I also get through about two A4 sized daybooks each year full of handwritten notes, plans, observations, minutes, analysis, calculations and all that sort of thing. The convenience and (relative) permanence of writing on paper using a pen is huge. It's not going to vanish anytime soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't know if this is exaggerated, but the requirement of handwritten letters or the presumption on the part of the job prospect that there is such a requirement is certainly still true.

I remember a friend, that was trying to find a part time student job as a clerk, writing literally a hundred different motivation letters all by hand.

At the time I found it odd and I questioned the sanity of requiring a motivation letter for a retail job, now that I read this I understand what the motive behind it could be, and I find it even odder.

</comment><comment><USER14> Hmm.

I wonder if I could make a fortune in France by writing some software that looks for patterns in typing cadence. The employers could get applicants to type something on a computer and get a score indicating what their 'personality' was like.</comment>


File System Hierarchy 3.0 RC1 Proposal - <AUTHOR> http://www.linuxbase.org/betaspecs/fhs/fhs.html#usrshareArchitectureindependentData

<comment><USER2> I'm still waiting `/Users` `/Applications`. Only Gobolinux has it</comment>


Instagram Growth Hacks to Learn from Social Media Experts - <AUTHOR> Learn how social media experts use growth hacks to master Instagram marketing for brand advertisement. <comment><AUTHOR> [https://blog.contentstudio.io/instagram-growth- hacks-2020/](https://blog.contentstudio.io/instagram-growth-hacks-2020/)</comment>


Ask HN: Number of iOS9 Ad Blocker Installs? - <AUTHOR> I heard a lot about how when iOS9 comes a lot of those users will utilize the ability to install an ad blocker.  Is there any evidence of this happening?  Whether it's the number of app installs or any indication from publishers on a drop in impressions. <comment><USER2> Looks like most of the blockers are unable to stop Adobe Analytics. Using that data I'm hoping to have some info by the end of next week detailing what the size of ad-block population.

I'd also say you'll need to wait for iOS9 adoption to pass 80% for any real numbers to show.</comment>


The Story of Mel - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.utah.edu/~elb/folklore/mel.html <comment><USER2> If you haven't read this by now, you definitely should.</comment>


Coding for Kids - <AUTHOR> http://codingforkids.org/wiki/Main_Page

<comment><USER2> I see Scratch was mentioned (although in unfairly disparaging terms, IMHO). For those who insist on a "real language", check out some of the stuff that Mark Guzdial has done at Georgia Tech. It focuses on what Guzdial calls "media computation" and comes in Python and Java flavors: <http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/mediaComp-teach>

Guzdial's work is aimed at teaching programming to undergrads (who may or may not be CS majors) but would make a great starting point/inspiration for designing something for younger kids.

Other things that might be interesting:

Alice: <http://alice.org/>

Hackety-Hack/Shoes (please come back, _why... we miss you :-): <http://hackety-hack.com/> <http://www.shoesrb.com/>

The Inform 7 system for creating interactive fiction: <http://inform7.com/>

Scripting languages for virtual world software, e.g., the Linden Scripting Language for Second Life/Open Sim -- it's a nasty, nasty language (even its designer agrees :-) but lets you do some really powerful and impressive things:

<http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LSL_Portal> <http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Main_Page>

Open Cobalt: <http://www.opencobalt.org/>

Open Wonderland: <http://openwonderland.org/>

I used to teach a course covering this stuff which was designed for teachers:

[http://contraterrene.com/course_outlines/VirtualWorldsOutlin...](http://contraterrene.com/course_outlines/VirtualWorldsOutline.html)</comment>


Why Isn't Amazon Dominating Online Payments? - <AUTHOR> http://gun.io/blog/why-isnt-amazon-dominating-online-payments/

<comment><USER2> I'm confused by the thesis of the article. Amazon isn't dominating online payments because if they supported OAuth, they could use their own one-click patent to put themselves out of business?

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, sorry about that, it is a little confusing.

Amazon is such a behemoth that if they used OAuth to dominate in payments, it could lead to a dip in their other sales by weakening their claims to one- click payments.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If anybody from Stripe reads this, do you guys have a better resolution version of your logo I can swap in?</comment>


Wherever You Go, Your Personal Cloud of Microbes Follows - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/09/22/441841735/wherever-you-go-your-personal-cloud-of-microbes-follows <comment><USER2> >"There are a lot of reasons why we might want to know if some nefarious character's been in a certain room in the last few hours," Meadow says. "Maybe there's a way to use microbes for that."

We have just witnessed the birth of a pseudoscience.

<comment><USER3> I swear I read a scifi novel from the 70s or 80s that had this as a plot, I just can't think which one.

<comment><USER4> michael crichton wrote Prey which is about something similar to this (i don't want to say too much so as to not introduce a spoiler). that wasnt from the 70s or 80s, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This sort of reminds me of the Silo series of books by Hugh Howey. If you have not read the books and like scifi ... obligatory spoiler alert...

One of the themes in the book is the impending terrorist doom that could unfold by using nanotechnology to target certain demographics (ie genocide). I think nanobots reading human DNA would be fairly hard but nanobots recognizing biomemes might not be. That is using biomemes might be easier than DNA fingerprinting for nanobots. I could be completely wrong on my assumptions not to mention I have no background in bio or nano tech.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm going to go out on a limb here, but could this be connected to what some people call the _aura_?

Or the reason why you might dislike or like someone when you are around him/her?

<comment><USER7> It's been suggested by at least one study[1] that we prefer our potential mates' odors if their own immune system is different enough from our own. One might indeed be translating 'odor' into 'aura' subconsciously. I suspect OP my explain how that odor is transmitted from the immune system to the outer world. Further elaboration and maybe disagreement at [4]

1 - Wedekind,C., Seebeck, T., Bettens, F. & Paepke, A. J.MHC-dependent mate preferences in humans. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 260,245 - 2491995. | ISI [2] | ChemPort [3] |

2 - [http://links.isiglobalnet2.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?&GWVersio...](http://links.isiglobalnet2.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?&GWVersion=2&SrcAuth=Nature&SrcApp=Nature&DestLinkType=FullRecord&KeyUT=A1995RJ57600002&DestApp=WOS_CPL)

3 - [http://chemport.cas.org/cgi- bin/sdcgi?APP=ftslink&action=ref...](http://chemport.cas.org/cgi- bin/sdcgi?APP=ftslink&action=reflink&origin=npg&version=1.0&coi=1:STN:280:ByqA2Mjjs1c%3D&pissn=9999-9999&pyear=2001&md5=8ef761887eeb6ef29e9dd933802f6568)

4 - [http://www.nature.com/news/2001/010307/full/news010308-10.ht...](http://www.nature.com/news/2001/010307/full/news010308-10.html#B2)</comment></comment>


Show HN: A calculator to show valuation cap impact on convertible notes - <AUTHOR> http://sharewave.com/features/convertible-notes

<comment> bjr- I'm an engineer at Sharewave in case anyone has any questions.</comment>


Outwitters Is a Financial Disaster - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2012/10/outwitters-sales-disaster/

<comment><USER2> Title is pretty linkbait: _Apple_ didn't mess up in any way.

But article is still interesting. Summary:

Free to play game. Millions of dollars in free advertising from Apple. Over half a million "sales" (downloads). But the idiots only had a total of $4 maximum of in-app purchases in the game. So they made it impossible for their best fans to pay them much, while also not taking any money at all from the masses. So they didn't get paid much by anyone.

<comment><USER3> I dislike IAP, so I simply stopped downloading any game which was free to play and required IAP. It almost always feels like a scam. There have been a few exceptions, but not many.

Had they given me the content up front and charged for the game, I'd have bought it probably.

Not sure how much of the gaming population I represent though.

<comment><USER4> Perhaps games should have an 'All-Unlocked' version along side their free to play with IAP version...?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I know it's not nice to enjoy the failure of others, but I'm really pleased to see any free-to-play failure. My most recent misery in this segment is Tiny Troopers. It's a great little game that you can play to pass 2 minutes, or dig in and spend an hour or so working through the campaign missions. The problem is, the game is tainted by free-to-play. It actually makes it a worse game than it could have been.

Gaming is, first and foremost, about balance. If a game is too hard, players get discouraged and give up. Too easy and there is no satisfaction in winning. This is not a secret. Every game developer knows it, and many game enthusiasts are acquainted with the subject once they start to investigate the question of "why" they enjoy a specific game so much.

The trouble with free-to-play is that our wallets end up on the balance scale. How hard, or easy, the game is depends upon how much I'm willing to pump in to this little game. They make the game too hard to play without paying anything, but once you open your wallet, things can easily get way to effortless.

In order to develop truly _great_ games, the developer needs to control the difficulty. I'd rather not have to guess just how much I should pay them in order to get the best experience.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think Free to Play, while a nice idea, is somewhat misled. The end goal of a project like this has to be breaking even or making a profit, and if the free version is set up to be good enough to play long-term you're not going to convert as many to sales.

It used to be that these "free versions" were billed as demos, with the implication that you try it out for 30 days, a chapter of the story, or whatever the developer chose to limit. And after you get through that, you buy the game to keep playing. Giving away 90% of the product and hoping people want the extra 10% enough to pay $15 for it doesn't seem sustainable.

I especially hate this in competitive multiplayer games (looking at you, Tribes: Ascend), where you're absolutely at a disadvantage if you haven't bought stuff or invested a _huge_ amount of time. I'd rather have the type of demo we used to get in games like Unreal Tournament, where you have the complete gameplay experience but only have one or two maps to play on.

</comment><comment><USER7> Title suggestion "Outwitters Outwits One Man Left".

</comment><comment><USER8> A lot of hater comments on the article, most bashing the IAP model. I wonder what would be a proper/good model, given the volatility of the platform (no one plays the same game for long) and the average low price...

Random thoughts anyone?

</comment><comment><USER9> Flagged for the incredibly misleading title.</comment>


Microsoft disconnects modded Xboxs   - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8354166.stm

<comment><USER2> Whenever I hear about mod chips for pirating games, I think of this story:

<http://www.actsofgord.com/Chronicles/chapter24.php>

<comment><USER3> Gord! Forgotten all about that site. Apologies for the fluff comment but I'd recommend a read if you've got time, he's a funny man.

<comment><AUTHOR> Man, I accidentally spent an hour there. Thanks for the link though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That is weird, especially given that modding console is completely legal over here in The Netherlands: using it to play games you don't own is illegal. I would've guessed Microsoft would target the users playing pirated games instead of playing on modded X-Boxes. Now it seems like they're also targeting users that prefer to play using a backup DVD instead of the original, which to me seems like a pretty fair use case.

<comment><USER5> In this case the legality of modded consoles to play backup isn't an issue because it sounds like Microsoft have something specific in the Xbox Live TOS to cover all modded consoles.

Pretty smart move really, something has to be done to get on top of this before there is no longer a video game industry.

<comment><USER4> _In this case the legality of modded consoles to play backup isn't an issue because it sounds like Microsoft have something specific in the Xbox Live TOS to cover all modded consoles._

IANAL, but I believe that over here, that doesn't matter: if something is said to be legal by law, no company can forbid its customers to do so. Just like with renting an apartment: a landlord can demand all kinds of ridiculous things, but if there is a law that explicitly protects certain rights for homeowners, a landlord simply cannot take those from you.

It's the same with a TOS: a company simply cannot take certain rights away from you if a country's laws explicitly protect these rights.

<comment><USER6> I think that because it is the online service they have a much more solid footing - they can say under what circumstances you are allowed to connect to their network.

I cant comment on the specific Netherlands law but I am fairly certain most laws have solid provision for companies deciding what they consider right/wrong on their own networks.

If you want to consider another example what happens if a cheat hack appears that gives you a big advantage over other online players; would M$ be within their rights to ban you then? Is the only difference that gamers believe one to be morally wrong (cheating) and one to be floating somewhere in the middle (chipping)

<comment><USER4> _If you want to consider another example what happens if a cheat hack appears that gives you a big advantage over other online players; would M$ be within their rights to ban you then? Is the only difference that gamers believe one to be morally wrong (cheating) and one to be floating somewhere in the middle (chipping)_

I get your point, since one is a software mod and the other is a hardware mod. The difference is that our law says nothing about software modifications, while it does explicitly allow a consumer to mod consoles: you have the right to be able to make a backup disc of any game you purchase, and use those backup disks to play the games. You need to mod your console for that, and you can literally walk into any computer store and ask your X-Box to be modded.

But, I think you made a good point: the hardware in essense makes the software function differently, so if you would convert a certain software cheat to a hardware mod (if it were possible), you have a problem.

So I think the (legal) matter, in the end, is intent. This is why I think it's weird that Microsoft chose to ban all people that modded their console, instead of all the people that pirated games. One targets the fact that a hardware modification was made, the other targets the intent.

<comment><USER6> Well I guess the answer (and I dont necessarily support it) they'd give is that there is no real way to tell what the intent is and so better safe than sorry.

There is also an argument that chipping could introduce unknown bugs or weird factors that affect online games - or indeed other users. So a sort of unintentional hacking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm amazed that in 2009 you can still find this line in a news article:

"Xbox Live allows gamers to play against one another"

</comment><comment><USER8> I wonder what how much noise would generated if Apple (or AT&T) did something similar to iPhones.</comment>


Virgin Islands Attorney General Sees Too Much Secrecy in Epstein Estate - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/27/business/jeffrey-epstein-estate-secrecy.html <comment><USER2> [http://archive.is/bDoUC](http://archive.is/bDoUC)</comment>


Learning a Probabilistic Latent Space of Object Shapes via 3D GAN - <AUTHOR> http://3dgan.csail.mit.edu/ <comment><USER2> So it can map between objects and latent representations both ways, and the latent representations are disentangled (additive) - you can do vector math with them to combine concepts.

I'm wondering how far we are from using such models to boost robotics. A robot that understood the world around it would move much better and be able to perform actions.

What is the bottleneck? Could it be that GANs are too slow for robotics, or that we still can't control a humanoid to do basic tasks such as walking, grasping, pushing and other manipulations?

From watching robot videos I get that we have dexterous robot arms and legs, we just don't know how to use them to achieve useful things in unstructured environments.

I'm sure there's a bottleneck somewhere or we'd have smart dexterous robots today.

<comment><USER3> Being too slow for robotics is a extremely general statement. A robot that needs to drive a car is very different than something that has to move things.

The bottleneck is the fact that this is a ongoing research topic and integrating these things into a robotics system still requires effort.

<comment><USER2> > The bottleneck is the fact that this is a ongoing research topic

That's a general statement as well. It's like saying "the bottleneck is that we don't know how to do it" which leaves the question unanswered: what is the stumbling block, what is keeping us from being able to do it now? such as: speed / sensors / not enough robots and funds for researchers / esoteric machine learning considerations / something else.

I'm trying to understand the slow progress in robotics as contrasted to the fast progress in deep learning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's exciting to see deep learning gaining ground in 3D. I'm wondering how quickly until deep learning beats 3D reconstruction. State of the art algorithm used in practical applications still does not use deep learning: [http://www.gcc.tu- darmstadt.de/media/gcc/papers/Waechter-201...](http://www.gcc.tu- darmstadt.de/media/gcc/papers/Waechter-2014-LTB.pdf).

</comment><comment><USER5> The exiting thing for me is at 1:30 in the video. Smooth changes in the latent space lead to smooth changes in the shape (eg. the chair arms gradually recede along their longitudinal axis). This means you have good generalisability (the network is robust to input noise) and composablility (the network can produce novel results through transformations in latent space).</comment>


The Dangers of Eating Late at Night - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/opinion/sunday/the-dangers-of-eating-late-at-night.html?_r=1 <comment><USER2> "In France, for example, a serving of ice cream is typically a single modest scoop, while in America, it's often three gargantuan scoops."

This was the first thing that struck me when I first moved here. Portions for all kinds of food from ice-cream, to coffee are huge. Why are huge portions such a common thing here?

<comment><USER3> I think it was because America was the first country that could eat afford to eat like that, so we did. Look at the differences in traditional Italian food and Italian American food.

Dealing with virtually unlimited quantities of food is a very recent problem, and Americans were the first to have this problem at scale.

Most of the rest of the world now has this problem too. If you look at overweight trends, most developed countries are about were America was 30 years ago [1].

There are other differences as well. For one, America was the first country with ubiquitous car ownership--contributing to lower population density and less walking, more time sitting, and drive through restaurants.

[1] [http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/23/the-world-is- fa...](http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/23/the-world-is-fat/)

<comment><USER4> I think there is some truth to this, but it also seems to be true that on average the US is valuing quantity over quality (in food) more than many other economies that can certainly afford to overeat.

<comment><USER3> I'm sure there are some cultural differences, but keep in mind 30-40 years ago we didn't have huge quantities they way we do now, and we didn't go out to eat the way we do now. It took time for the cultural norm to catch up to our ability to overeat.

While other countries can now afford to overeat as easily as we can, they've been able to do so for a lot less time. Again the charts for percentage of the population that is overweight and obese back up this hypothesis--other developed countries are trailing behind the US by about 30 years. They have just had less time to make a habit out of over-consumption.

Also, most other developed countries still haven't caught up to the US in terms of affordable overeating. In PPP terms the US ranks 10 in GDP per capita, higher than every other major economy and higher than almost all of Europe by a very significant margin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> To add perhaps some more support to this, see how Sumo wrestlers of Japan gain weight: [http://www.diet- blog.com/05/sumo_wrestlers_this_is_how_you_g...](http://www.diet- blog.com/05/sumo_wrestlers_this_is_how_you_get_fat.php)

Particularly 3 and 4: Take a nap after eating. Eat late in the day. Probably #1 too about skipping breakfast.

<comment><USER6> > Probably #1 too about skipping breakfast.

Actually - skipping breakfast helps you keep your insulin low and promotes lean body mass.

Your body is in prime fat burning mode in the morning and holding off on breakfast (and spiking the blood sugar / insulin levels) can help you keep burning fat through mid-morning.

<comment><USER7> To a point but logically it could be concluded that skipping breakfast offers a longer period of time where the blood sugar and insulin response has a chance to drop lower which might hypothetically make a resulting spike from food intake actually higher in comparison.

<comment><USER6> That doesn't make any sense.

The point is that maintaining lower insulin levels promotes your body using its fat storage rather than food.

Yes, you will eventually eat and that spike will happen, but it's not going to be demonstrably higher of a spike because you fasted.

<comment><USER8> It makes sense - it's fairly common that we see things that get bigger/worse when postponed. It's entirely possible that this doesn't happen with post-fast insulin spikes, but it seems a reasonable thing to want to check on. At this point it's no longer a question that can be resolved without measuring things (or finding other people who have measured those things), though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So the conclusion that can be drawn from the article is that if you can't control your portions, eat early. If you can control your portions, as she says Europeans do, then it's fine to eat late.

So then the issue really at hand isn't eating time, it's portion size.

<comment><USER10> I disagree. The issue at hand is both, and they are handled in different ways by different people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sorry but like basically every other scientist's guess about nutrition, this latest guess is anecdotal, with huge assumptions built in, a lack of control subjects, making it, like all fad pop-diet articles spouting the newest half- baked discovery about nutrition, vague bullshit at best.

Also it comes with the huge caveat that it's only true for those in the USA with their poor impulse control and huge portions.

It would be good to apply "Nakedrobot2's law of nutrition articles" which states that they are ALL A BUNCH OF LIES :-)

</comment><comment><USER12> The idea that serious health problems can be cured with lifestyle changes is compelling, but unfortunately often wrong. This is a big problem in medicine in my opinion, because doctors often come into a relationship with a patient with the assumption that the patient's own behaviors are the root of the medical condition. This is essentially blaming the victim, and often absolutely incorrect.

My personal anecdotes relating to this are as follows. I have had serious acid reflux for years. It is generally the "silent" type and one of the main symptoms I have is asthma, especially night-time or sleeping-time asthma, triggered by the reflux.

I have tried various diets, including abstaining from caffeine, anything that could possibly contain wheat or trigger a wheat sensitivity, Atkins, fasting. None of those changes make my acid reflux or other related symptoms go away. I have also done experiments with strictly reducing my intake of food and drinks after certain times of day. This was also ineffective.

What does seem to help, to some limited degree, is taking large doses of acid reducer pills, and staying as upright as possible while sleeping.

Also, when I had a TIF surgery to repair my minor hernia and supposedly eliminate the reflux, it was significantly reduced, but never went away completely. And unfortunately after a few months I must have done something to undo much of that surgery because it is probably almost back as much as it was before. And I know my sliding hiatal hernia is back.

<comment><USER13> I'm sorry you're in pain. Bro hug.

While I agree, I'd still consider contributing lifestyle factors after addressing structural, physiological, and so forth.

Though my diseases cannot be cured by better nutrition, its certainly helped. To my surprise and delight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I suffer acid reflux a lot of times. One trick I read some years ago proved to be magical: eat a teaspoon of dry, milled coffee. It works instantly and lasts for at least 2-3 hours. It can be tough to swallow the coffee at the beginning, but once you get used to it, it isn't that difficult.

<comment><USER15> I found a cure that works perfectly for me.

My doctor prescribed a truckload of antiacids and proton-pump inhibitors for me, until they stopped working. Then, as a new year's resolution, I decided to stop eating potato chips... after avoiding them for about 3 weeks, the acid reflux completely went away. Whether it was because of all the salt, or the oil, I don't know, but it solved it for me. Give it a try!

<comment><USER16> Greasy and oily foods definitely seem to make acid reflux worse for me.

<comment><USER15> It could be just that. I was at a point where I could not lie down for 5 seconds without feeling like I was choking in my own acid until I quit eating chips.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> For me it wasn't when or how much but what. At it's worst I was taking prescription medicine ate what I thought was healthy food (whole grain bread, oat cereal) and still had heartburn every night. I am not celiac but eliminating beer, whole grain wheat, and oats got rid of my acid reflux. Wheat, especially the modern variety, is not well tolerated by humans [http://news.discovery.com/human/why-you-should-probably- stop...](http://news.discovery.com/human/why-you-should-probably-stop-eating- wheat-121214.htm). If you can't give up bread eat Sourdough [http://cookusinterruptus.com/blog/?p=4245](http://cookusinterruptus.com/blog/?p=4245)

<comment><USER18> I found that chlorinated water _or_ high-fructose corn syrup triggered mine. That took a long time to isolate.

<comment><USER19> This. I live in a major city and our water is majorly chlorinated. I read a bit about this online and thought, sure, what the heck, I'll try eliminating chlorinated water and see what happens.

Now I have an under-counter water filter and all our drinking water has a significant amount of the chlorine filtered out. It made a huge difference for me. YMMV, and of course doesn't mean much for well water.

<comment><USER19> In what world does this comment get down-voted?

This is the basis for an elimination diet, which is key to discovering food sensitivities.

Seriously...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> here:

"...two bottles of good red wine for the table [...] her reflux was serious..."

Too much food and drink is bad for you. that's all.

<comment><USER21> On top of this, certain foods may be worse than others. Through experience I've found out that the following foods seem to increase symptoms related to acid reflux: dairy products, red meat, citric products, chocolate, alcohol, soda drinks and coffee.

<comment><USER22> In other words, anything that tastes good.

<comment><USER23> that's just _way_ to general and way too much depending on the objective thing called taste. Next to chocolate/coffee/... I also really like the taste of vegetables like carrots, broccoli, fennel, pumpkins, ... I really doubt they would fall under the category of stuff which is likely to increase reflux.

<comment><USER24> The only food I've found gives me heartburn is black olives.

Conveniently, I don't really like them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Ori Hofmekler for years has been promoting his evidence-based Warrior Diet [1], which claims that humans have always been nocturnal eaters and that only the slaves were eating during the day and warriors were feasting at night. I reduced my meals to two a day (within 6 hours), mostly at night, and have since lost a few pounds although I've increased my caloric intake from fats. I slowly want to shift to a single meal at night with the help of healthy fats during the day (ghee and coconut oil). Ori says that some protein and carbs (berries) during the day are fine.

[1] [http://www.warriordiet.com/](http://www.warriordiet.com/)

<comment><USER26> I hope this warrior diet is a good diet, and the things in your description that make me cringe are just marketing gimmicks. What was the average life expectancy of a warrior at the time and place this diet was based on? Likely under 35. Your description makes it sound like the diet's creator started with a bad premise and unhelpful constraints and used (hopefully) good science to hill-climb his way to some local maximum in some scoring function that's hopefully not particularly far from the global maximum in that scoring function.

An appeal to nature is a terrible line of reasoning that underlies way too many diets I hear friends promoting these days. The usual implied or explicitly stated premise is that there was some time and place of peak human fitness in the distant past, brought about by evolution, and we should return to the diet of that time and place and apply scientific methods to improve upon that diet.

There are at least 3 huge flaws in using evolutionary arguments to base modern diets on what humans ate thousands or tens of thousands of years ago. Let's start with the flawed premise that after the explosion in variety of foods available when we learned to domesticate both animals and plants, that evolution rapidly converged within a few thousand years the human body to be optimally tuned for all of the foods available at whatever time the diet's creator has chosen. (1) A human at the global optimum for a given diet does not imply that the diet is a global optimum for the human. (The implication arrow goes the other way. Evolution has not optimized plants and animals to be the most fit food source for humans.) (2) Evolution tends to converge to pretty good working solutions, not optimal solutions. (3) There hasn't been enough time since human domestication of animals and plants for evolution to produce more than a hand full of adaptations.

The only two human dietary-related beneficial mutations I'm aware of in the past 10-15 thousand years both happened to have arisen in Europe. One is a mutation that makes a high wheat diet less harmful and the other is a mutation that causes toleration of lactose late into adulthood. The way some people construct diets, they would then start with the premise that people whose ancestors mostly came from Europe should mostly eat wheat and dairy products. The diet creator would then do some reading of dietary studies to scientifically improve the quality of the starting diet to some local maximum based on some set of starting constraints and some limit of research effort. This might actually produce a decent diet with whole grains, yoghurt, and lots of fruits and vegetables added through a healthy dose of hand waving combined with good scientific research.

It would be much better to throw out the flawed starting point. If you're going to pick an arbitrary time and location in human history as a starting point for constructing a diet, don't pick a time and location that had a life expectancy less than half that of modern first-world countries. If I were to design a diet, I would probably look at modern diets in countries with the highest life expectancies or lowest rates of whatever diet-related maladies you're trying to avoid, and scientifically improve the diet from there. I might even try to find a set of countries that had very different diets and yet all ranked highly in my selection criteria and try to find commonalities in their diets as a starting point for designing a diet.

EDIT: I should point out that there are cases where an appeal to nature is a reasonable line of reasoning, but I have never seen such in the context of diet.

<comment><USER25> Warriors died young from violent deaths or infectious diseases, not from a chronic diseases. The appeal to nature is simply following the idea that we are what we're best adapted to, but I agree that working solutions and not always the optimal ones. In this case though, it's more of an attempt to avoid poorly working ones. That's why I strongly believe in having a solid base as a diet and optimize using "hacks" like turmeric and coconut oil, for example. I'm not adapted to those as my predecessors didn't eat those foods, but I eat them and they optimize my ancestral diet further.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Does this include Europeans? My experience is that most western Europeans are their meals quite late, do they have the same problems that this article purports?

<comment><USER28> I've been thinking about difference between Poland and UK. When I lived in Poland my day look quite different.

8:00 breakfast

11:30 2nd breakfast

15:00 Dinner (soup + main)

20:00 Supper (something light like sandwiches or boiled sausages).

I think this and more process food are the reasons why there are 2x more obese people in UK.

<comment> k-mcgrady How did you fit that around work? I could do the 2nd breakfast if it was something I could eat at my desk (fruit for example) but the 15:00 dinner would probably last too long to fit in on my lunch hour (and it's quite late for lunch too when most employees break at 12:00 or 13:00).

<comment><USER28> That was in school. Can't do really at work, unless you start at 7:00.

<comment><USER29> Well, I was sleeping midday in the kindergarten. I really wish I could still do this at work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Well there is a ritual in Jainism which says not to eat after sunset (remember: this was written/said generations before all science and research came into existence). Being Jain, I am just amazed by how precise our religion/literature is. Like many other ritual, this one is also backed by science now.

FYI: It's called "Chauvihar" ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasting_in_Jainism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasting_in_Jainism))

<comment><USER31> > I am just amazed by how precise our religion/literature is.

Or just a coincidence/accident.

<comment><USER32> Possibly coupled with an observational confirmation bias [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias)

<comment><USER30> maybe.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where are cheap regions to live with fast internet? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Come to Malaysia. Don't stay in Kuala Lumpur or Cyberjaya, especially if you're working remote. An hour's drive out of town and you can get a two story house for $400/month. There's enough comforts too - cinemas, malls, KFC, pizza, Starbucks, swimming pools, barbeques, educated people who speak English, plenty of parks and gardens, and low pollution.

Tax is capped at about 25%, including for businesses. We also give entrepreneurs startup visas even for just an idea, where verified startups could get 0% tax under the previous system (which is being revised because people were abusing it to set up call centers). There's also a generous program if you want to bring in foreign engineers.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this limited to regions within the United States? If not, I think Romania would rank quite high in Europe by cost of internet/housing.

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://nomadlist.com/places-with-fast- internet](https://nomadlist.com/places-with-fast-internet)

It's a good place to check for these types of metrics, regardless of whether you ascribe to the "nomad" way.

</comment><comment><USER5> Romania is not too bad. You can get Ethernet to the home for very cheap. The only problem is that it's using CGNAT and the majority of the IPs seem blacklisted for fraud or online game cheating so I recommend having some place you can VPN into.

<comment><USER6> I live in Romania and the main ISP (by market share) doesn't use CGNAT for the residential plans (FTTH). And I also never had any problems with any IP blacklists.

That being said, I wouldn't necessarily recommend Romania to the OP as a place to relocate to. Internet is just too small a factor, and today there's good internet just about everywhere.

<comment><USER7> I think you underestimate how good the internet here in Romania is. There are not many places in this world where you can get unlimited internet at 500Mbits for a few euros a month.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In or near small/medium Appalachian towns are a choice. Some examples of larger ones to look around are Indiana, PA, Prestonburg, KY, and Charlotte, NC (I know, it's a city but still a cheap area).

</comment><comment><USER9> Bulgaria sort of fits this - low cost of living, flat 10% income tax, fast internet, reasonable number of tech companies and startups.

</comment><comment><USER10> Medellin, Colombia. Keep the same U.S. time zone. Affordable living, can get fiber direct to your apartment/house.

</comment><comment><USER11> South East Asia. Generally peaceful, good and cheap internet and cost of living is relatively low for Westerners.

</comment><comment> non-entity I'm not sure if you're in the US, but I've heard good things about Chatanooga.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm sure Czech Republic, Hungary or Croatia outside of the capital city centres would be cheap and beautiful countryside nearby.

</comment><comment><USER13> India

</comment><comment><USER14> Romania, Vietnam, are your best bets</comment>


U.S. Government creates jobs for data warehouse experts and recent CS grads - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2013/06/06/u-s-government-creates-jobs-for-data-warehouse-experts-and-recent-cs-grads/

<comment><USER2> I guess when you're illegally collecting trillions of pieces of information per year from American and overseas citizens, you need people to help figure out where to store it all, right?</comment>


121 Megapixel true color photo of Earth from Japan's new Himawari-8 satellite - <AUTHOR> http://www.jma-net.go.jp/sat/data/web89/parts89/himawari8_first_image/trc/trc_LL.jpg

<comment><AUTHOR> More information: [http://www.jma.go.jp/jma/jma- eng/satellite/news/himawari89/2...](http://www.jma.go.jp/jma/jma- eng/satellite/news/himawari89/20141218_himawari8_first_images.html)

<comment><USER2> Seems like this is the link that should have been used.

Most normal sites have trouble handling HN load and directly linking to such a ridiculously large image is punishing them for releasing it.

Maybe a mod can edit the link.</comment></comment>


OpenID: A Contrarian View - <AUTHOR> http://webworkerdaily.com/2008/05/21/openid-a-contrarian-view/

<comment><USER2> I recently ripped standard accounts out of my web app and put in OpenID support with the ability to assign a password optionally in case all your OpenID providers magically go down at once. I'm very sold on some kind of login/password non-proliferation treaty and the general idea behind stopping the DRY nonsense around avatars, favorite books, favorite movies, quotes, yada yada.

I have two problems with OpenID. First, big service providers seem to be offering OpenID but not allowing you to use it on their site. I know the market reason behind this, but that's just disrespectful to users. Until they change this, I don't see it getting enough exposure to convince non-early- adopting mid-tier or low-end sites that they should support it as well.

Second, OpenID doesn't seem to really carry any of that other repetitive profile data with it and only solves the username/password situation. Until more value can be achieved, it seems like finding a good username and trying to sign up for new services before someone takes it isn't that bad.

I just don't see OpenID making it yet. I was hoping Clickpass would make some headway, but that definitely hasn't made it out of the technical circle and I don't see their list of supported sites increasing these past few months which makes me nervous. I also find OpenID hard to explain to people who are actually smart and fairly technical. It seems to fill people with low-level dread and confusion. I try explaining it as "a way to log in to a site using an account you already have at another site." That's the most condensed I can get the explanation.

<comment><USER3> OpenID does have support for other profile data: <http://openid.net/specs/openid-attribute-exchange-1_0.html>

Also, for simple avatar sharing, check out <http://gravatar.com>

<comment><USER4> Or more in the spirit of decentralization, <http://pavatar.com/>

<comment><USER2> I'm planning to switch from local avatars to something else. Thanks for the link. I'll check it out.

Regarding OpenID, all the services I've tested with so far don't even return email, let alone anything else. Is this a heavily under-used aspect of the protocol on the provider side?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't understand most of the arguments centering around "single point of failure."

Not too long ago I was a victim of partial Identity Theft; somebody gained access to my credit card information and started making random charges. My credit card was a single point of failure for my finances. It took me a long time to figure this out and to fix it considering I was stuck in Afghanistan at the time, but a phone call and explanation to American Express is all it took to get my card reissued and the charges removed.

 _You can't do this when you're using passwords._ If somebody compromises your "strong" password and changes the password at important sites before you find out, you're pretty much screwed. You could use "I forgot my password," but that same password is likely on your e-mail, so forget that.

 _With OpenID, there are fixes for this._ Say, for instance, the ability to completely disable it if you've used it recently and have the browser cookie. Okay, so now you can't get to your bank account, but neither can the person using your OpenID. You could then use some sort of other verification method to ensure you're the actual owner and reset it.

 _But forget all this; consider probability!_ A SSN is basically a single point of failure for your identity; it identifies you specifically and could not possibly represent somebody else. That doesn't mean that the military actually _worries_ about the fact that your SSN is used for _everything_ , including signing into chow. I can't even fathom how many thousands of documents out there have my Social on them. The reason they don't care is because being a victim of identity theft is pretty rare, even when hundreds or thousands of people see your SSN every single day.

<comment><USER6> _I don't understand most of the arguments centering around "single point of failure."_

Part of the problem is that the terminology is misleading. You can, in fact, have _multiple_ "single points of failure".

A better term is "central point of failure". Your email account is a central point of failure -- once it is compromised, an energetic black hat can use "forgotten password" links all over the web to compromise many other things. (Assuming that your usernames are guessable, which they often are.)

If you only have one central point of failure, it's also a "single" point of failure. Unfortunately, once you link a bunch of logins to your OpenID provider it becomes a _second_ central point of failure. The black hat can compromise a slew of accounts by _either_ getting your OpenID password _or_ your email password.

Now, at some point, mud is mud, and you can't make it muddier by dumping mud on it. And, at some point, insecure is insecure, so it really may be silly to object to OpenID on central-point-of-failure grounds, because you've already got an even bigger problem with email. But I think it depends on the details. And, at best, you're playing for a tie: "OpenID -- at least as secure as the insecure thing you're using now." is not a great rallying cry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I use Clickpass all the time to log into News.YC now. I didn't think I was going to, but it's so much easier just to click on the orange button.

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't use OpenID because multiple accounts would be compromised if my single set of OpenID credentials were compromised. This seems like a bad idea.

<comment><USER9> I don't know your specific situation, but most people use password-based sites that have an "I forgot my password" feature that authenticates based on email. Thus most people have a single point of failure already: their email account.

<comment><USER8> If there's a security question I use a string of random characters as the answer and don't record it (which effectively disables the feature on most sites).

You're right about email being central to authentication on the Web. This makes it important to protect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would say "a typical web user" uses the same passwords or slight variations on at least 3 different sites... that being said I wouldn't want my openID hacked...(single point of failure) are the at least demanding strong passwords?

</comment><comment><USER4> One aspect that's been overlooked is that single sign-on is only the beginning of what OpenID makes possible. Once you've got an identity that you can use across website boundaries, all kinds of network effects open up.

<comment><USER9> A common identity would be powerful, but also dangerous, for the same reasons people oppose national ID systems. I notice that by default Clickpass creates separate OpenID URLs for the different sites you authenticate to.

<comment><USER4> You're still free to have multiple identities though, which is very different from a national ID.</comment></comment></comment>


On facing two years for protesting Stop-and-Frisk - <AUTHOR> http://www.theneoprogressive.com/2012/10/on-facing-two-years-for-protesting-stop-and-frisk/

<comment><USER2> Stop and Frisk is based on so called Terry stops. There doesn't have to be suspicion of a weapon to stop a person, just to frisk them. However, such stops (even before a search) must be based on specific and articulable facts... basically if a cop stops a person, they have to be able to say why, exactly, they stopped them. Further, those facts have to be enough to make a reasonable person believe a crime has been, is being, or will be committed by the individual.

That's just to stop a person. The pat down is if they believe the individual has a weapon. If they can plainly tell that the item found by feeling it is contraband (by feel), then that's legit.

Now in practice, this isn't what seems to be happening in NY. The stops and the searches don't meet the requirements that courts have set. However, young poor people don't generally get their day in court. Instead, they get plea agreements, which are substantially lighter then what they would get if they went to court. Public defenders and pro bono lawyers for the urban poor often don't have enough resources to do much else but advise their client to take the plea.

There is good news however, in that class action status has been granted to a law suit (or at least one) against the NYPD. Class actions can mean that the NYPD can be forced to change their policy.

Anyway, if you are stopped while driving, that is also an extension of the Terry stop doctrine, save that police have the power to make people exit their vehicle in most cases.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can I ask, what was the form of protest that he engaged in? I can't find it in the article and the brief google search I did was also unsuccessful.

<comment><USER4> FTA:

> We held a community rally and march through Jamaica, Queens, which ended at > the 103rd Precinct. As our march arrived at the precinct, it was completely > barricaded on all sides – on lock-down in anticipation of the protest. An > officer slides open one of the metal grates and motions us inward so that we > may protest at the precinct doors. After minutes of chanting and singing > outside of the precinct steps, 20 of us were arrested, quite quickly, but > held for hours late into the next day. For less than ten minutes of > protesting stop-and-frisk outside of the doors 103rd precinct, which houses > the NYPD officers who put fifty shots into Sean Bell, 12 co-defendants and I > now find ourselves facing two years of jail time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> They're in court now if you're nearby the courthouse in Queens and want to offer support.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is a good video for those unfamiliar with "stop and frisk" -- <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rWtDMPaRD8>

</comment><comment><USER7> I'd like to know how many of these stop-and-frisk cases result in discovery of a crime.

<comment><USER8> > In 2011, in New York City, 685,724 people were stopped, 84 percent of whom > were Black and Latino residents — although they comprise only about 23 > percent and 29 percent of New York City's total population respectively. > 2011 is the highest year on record for stops. The number of stops represent > an over 600 percent since Mayor Bloomberg came into office. In 2011, 88 > percent of all stops did not result in an arrest or a summons being given. > Contraband was found in only 2 percent of all stops. The NYPD claims their > stop and frisk policy keeps weapons off the street – but weapons were > recovered in only one percent of all stops. [1]

Just the sheer number of stops is pretty crazy. That's an average of almost 1,900 stops per day, which makes the 1% of stops that recover a weapon a substantial number, as well.

[1] From <http://ccrjustice.org/stopandfrisk>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Stop and Frisk" has been the defacto policy in low-income areas for as long as I can remember. On Chicago's South Side (where I grew up) many young black males walking or driving could expect to be stopped and searched one or more times per week, in some areas.

For those who have never lived what I'm talking about you might doubt it exists, but it's real and it's in your backyard.

I'm glad that activists are taking up the cause. It's long overdue.

<comment><USER10> > but it's real and it's in your backyard.

Unless you're white and live in a predominantly white, upper-class neighborhood in NYC, in which case it's in someone _else's_ backyard.

Which is the entire problem. If NYPD tried that around Carnegie Hill, you bet the practice would stop instantly. But it's in East New York, etc., so the right people don't care.

New York has a ridiculous number of stop-and-frisks, but they're so unevenly distributed that some neighborhoods have more stop and frisks annually as they have people - ie, on average, each person is stopped and frisked more than once per year.

(Sidenote: It's not a matter of changing the law: stop and frisks, as they are practiced, are already illegal by law. The problem is that the victims rarely take the issue to court, for obvious reasons, and so NYPD has no reason to stop.)

<comment><USER11> _stop and frisks, as they are practiced, are already illegal by law_

If that is the case, how can anything found in those frisks be admitted as evidence in court? If the search is illegal, anything found would be poisoned and therefore inadmissible. Or do the people being stopped never actually fight any charges being brought against them (understandable, given whom the PD targets)?

Regardless, it is a disgusting practice that needs to be stopped. Along with all the other practices of our para-militarized police departments.

<comment><USER10> > Or do the people being stopped never actually fight any charges being > brought against them (understandable, given whom the PD targets)?

For those who aren't found to be in possession of drugs (the main excuse here), that's exactly the problem. For the rest:

> If that is the case, how can anything found in those frisks be admitted as > evidence in court?

They're only legal if the police have reasonable suspicion[1] of _illegal weapons_. Not drugs. Not prostitution[2]. Just weapons.

Of course, given the neighborhoods they target, it's easy for them to fabricate an excuse after-the-fact. So most people don't bother to challenge it, because they know it's, at _best_ , a case of one person's word against the other.

[1] It may be probable cause instead; I'm fuzzy on the details, but I know the general idea is correct.

[2] In New York, having many condoms in your possession is evidence enough to charge you with prostitution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I just typed out a big post, hit add comment - "link has expired", highlighted the text, forgot to copy, refreshed and lost it. Fix this already, HN!

Similar laws also exist in the UK. Unfortunately both our politicians and activist organisations such as 38 Degrees completely ignore the effects of them. I've tried taking political action against this and have been met with canned responses and ignored outright.

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2012/jan/14/stop-search- racial...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2012/jan/14/stop-search-racial- profiling-police)

> Analysis by the London School of Economics (LSE) and the Open Society > Justice Initiative shows during the past 12 months a black person was 29.7 > times more likely to be stopped and searched than a white person. That > figure was 26.6 the previous year.

We also have a "stop and account" law, where a police officer may ask you what you are doing and why you are where you are. Recently, the obligation for police to record these encounters has been removed.

<http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/police/powers/stop-and-search/>

> From 7 March 2011 we have removed the national requirement to record stop > and account, in order to reduce police bureaucracy. Instead we have allowed > police forces to make a local decision on whether they feel that recording > stop and account is necessary. Those forces with little evidence of > disproportionate use and little community concern should no longer need to > spend valuable police hours completing forms, monitoring records and > collating statistics.

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/sep/22/police-record- race-...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/sep/22/police-record-race-stop)

> Five out of the 10 forces most likely to use stop-and-account powers > disproportionately against black people – West Midlands, Avon and Somerset, > Thames Valley, Sussex and Hertfordshire – have halted recording the race of > people they have stopped.

> One experienced officer said colleagues could use the power, which does not > require reasonable suspicion of criminality, to justify searching someone, > which does: "It could lead to a suspicion to arise. Why are you not talking > to me? Why aren't you answering questions?"

So you're not officially obliged but in practical terms, you are.

The worst thing is the heavy duty denial by the authorities that there is anything wrong with this.</comment>


Is this idea prone to lawsuits? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> I have been thinking some more about an idea to help people better understand their books. However, there's a chance that the information submitted by users would allow people to infer the contents of some books sufficiently such that they would not need to buy them. Would this be viewed as a copyright violation? Of course, it may turn out the other way around with the service resulting in more people buying books.

<comment><USER2> If the author voluntarily submits the text, it wouldn't be a problem imo. You could then/also require that any quote over 1 sentence (which could be safely covered by fair use) or maybe even any quote at all is simply a reference to the book itself- maybe even formalize the referencing system. If they are not copying the text, there is no copyright problem. Copyrights do not act like trade secrets or patents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This would not violate our copyright laws.

Refer to Amazon.com's product reviews as an example. There is plenty of information available on a book or movie, submitted by users -- spoilers too. As long as there isn't verbatim material provided in whole contexts, I see no problem. People review books all the time; they even summarize its entire content.

If I misunderstood your idea's intent, let me know.

<comment><AUTHOR> People will probably copy some material verbatim even if the terms of usage policy says otherwise. And if sufficiently many people are contributing to information associated with a book, after a while those copied parts can add up to a significant portion of the book.

But even if material isn't copied verbatim, what happens if significant portions of the book are revealed anyway? This may not even be a summary. The contributed content may end up being larger than the book itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> if you can get enough bits of books posted to your site that publishers start to notice and want to sue you, then you would be wildly succeeding. even so, this all sounds like fair use to me.</comment>


SugarSync ditches freemium - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/10/idUSnMKWXYzy4a+1f0+MKW20131210

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks like they are following after google. Offer freemium until you have a following then axe it and squeeze em for cash. However google makes it hard to find an equivalent alternative. I don't think sugarsync has done that here.

<comment><USER2> That's the reason I'm intending to quit my account. Sugarsync is OK, but there are many better alternatives (paid/free) in the market.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, actually did a little research and Baracuda's copy.com looks pretty cool, they even have a tool for sugarsync users to migrate their data, they offer 20gb free with 5gb free per referral, no limit. Found the link for sugarsync migration: [https://www.copy.com/sugar?r=0ruZ2r](https://www.copy.com/sugar?r=0ruZ2r)</comment></comment></comment>


The hunt for an immutable, type safe data record in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://blog.stephanbehnke.com/hunt-for-immutable-type-safe-record-in-javascript/ <comment><USER2> > I was hooked on the idea of having a type safe data record that was also > immutable

Me too, thus I wrote [https://github.com/gcanti/tcomb](https://github.com/gcanti/tcomb)

<comment><AUTHOR> [Author here.]

That's very cool! But it's runtime checking only, right? I was aiming for compile-time checking.

<comment><USER2> Yep. However static and runtime type checking are not mutually exclusive. Actually there's a TypeScript definition file included in the repo. Moreover such a runtime type checking brings additional features like refinement types and runtime type introspection</comment></comment></comment>


Multicore version of bzip2 compression utility - <AUTHOR> http://www.cilk.com/multicore-blog/bid/9185/A-Parallel-bzip2

<comment><USER2> Tried it before and found it completely useless. The only place I cared about using parallel compression / decompression was on large files, and since it does everything in memory it dragged my system into a swapping hell every time that I used it.

<comment><USER3> You tried it, although it was just released today?

 _since it does everything in memory it dragged my system into a swapping hell_

Well, it just keeps pending blocks in memory. It should be quite easy to bound the worst-case memory consumption (at some cost to parallelism), as they note in the article.

<comment><USER4> > You tried it, although it was just released today?

The version from clik was released today. Parallel bzip2 has been around for at least a couple of years. In fact, just doing a search for parallel bzip2 will lead you right to both an SMP/threaded version as well as one that uses MPI. I am guessing this is what was being referred to regarding the memory- consumption issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Jeff Atwood (from Coding Horror) ran a comparison of bzip2 on 8 cores against 7-Zip on 2 cores in February. bzip2 ran faster but generated larger files.

 _"The only reason to go bzip2 is if you need the file compressed as rapidly as possible to a reasonable size.

On pure efficiency / energy, 7zip wins, despite bzip2 using 4x the CPU time."_

<http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001231.html></comment>


Those Xobni guys are ballsy - <AUTHOR> http://zellunit.com/those-xobni-guys-are-ballsy/

<comment><USER2> > _1\. Support a whole range of email clients and become the de facto email > analytics plug-in across the board._

Yes, this is a good direction for Xobni to go in, and they're already making moves in this direction with the Yahoo! Mail "leak". There is great value in aggregating a user's contacts and relationships across accounts, and being a central platform for relationship management.

> _2\. Produce an email client themselves when their value proposition gets > good enough._

I doubt it. Their core competency is email analytics, and there's not really a reason for them to create their own email client. Why create Xobni webmail and get a 10% market share of power users, when you can create a Xobni plugin for Outlook, Yahoo, hotmail and Gmail and get over 50% of email power users. Eventually Xobni will expand beyond power users.

> _3\. Don't build a social network, just make email fun to use and make it > easy for people to see what their email graph looks like._

Yes, it's fun, but that fun is hard to monetize. This could be a cool feature, but not the focus of Xobni's efforts.

> _4\. Become the all-in-one contact threshold tool, and by that I mean users > should be able to see their activity across all aspects of communication and > set personal alerts for when their interaction level with somebody drops > below or goes above a certain level._

Becoming the all-in-one contacts & relationships management tool? Yes. But, I think the idea of completely automating interactions with "Level 1" and "Level 2" contacts is taking it a bit too far. Being genuine is hard to fake, and Xobni shouldn't try to fake that.

> _5\. Sell employee analytics to HR departments via the huge amount of > mailbox data that they can parse and interpret._

Lots of potential here. The value is less in the data, and more in the interpretation -- HR departments aren't statistical consultants. One option would have to develop a consulting arm to maximize the value here. Another, more scalable, option would be to develop a killer product that does the analysis for the employer.

> _6\. Attack other verticals on the local machine_

Maybe. But there's more money in email analytics than in file system, IM or iTunes analytics. As for gathering data from other consumer activities, email is still a far from solved problem (and offers far more valuable data). Let Xobni focus on that!

</comment><comment><USER3> The choice not to sell may very well have not been theirs. No VC I know would want to sell a company that's doing well for a 2.5 to 5 times return.

This has been mentioned before: <http://mattmaroon.com/?p=361>

</comment><comment><USER4> "They have already started doing this with Pine and I am sure others are to come"

I thought that whole pine thang was an April Fool's joke... Was I fooled, or were you?

<comment><AUTHOR> of course it was. per your post i added the (joke acknowledged) in case people took that to heart. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If I was the xobni guys...

I would make email a platform; as in, make it easy to develop apps for e-mail.

Like To-do lists, contact lists, crm's, etc...

<comment><USER6> Which is exactly what IBM Lotus Notes/Domino has been since 1989.

<comment><USER5> > _Which is exactly what IBM Lotus Notes/Domino has been since 1989._

No, like gmail, yahoo & hotmail.

<comment><USER6> Those are applications, not platforms. Platforms are intended to make it easy for independant developers to build value-added applications. For example: MySQL, MS Office, Common Lisp, Amazon EC2, etc.

<comment><USER5> Yes, and I was saying that xobni should build out a platform for developers to create VALUE ADDING applications to gmail, yahoo & hotmail, like To-do lists, contact lists, crm's, etc...

Kind of like how facebook is a platform...

<comment><USER6> It's generally unwise to a build a platform on top of something controlled by third party. Any little change that third party makes is likely to break your platform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> thanks for the ballsy urban dictionary definition link. that really made the post for me.

</comment><comment><USER8> Getting people to switch email client is tough.

<comment><AUTHOR> yea completely agreed. but keep in mind they can wean them off it it since they have access to all the data, and they can instantly port it over. they could even let you use their client and your existing client in the interim, or just use each in different cases. obviously this poses new technical challenges, but not out of the realm of possibility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I would have sell, MS can just get someone to work on those widgets.

<comment><USER10> If so, why haven't they? There is a common misperception about how well large companies can respond to threats to their cash cow products (and thus many people opt not to enter markets where they will be competing with those theoretical products from the large company).

That said, I definitely believe the single biggest threat to the growth and success of Xobni is their absolute dependence on Outlook in the current iteration. But, by the time MS releases a tool that does some of what Xobni does, Xobni will (I would hope) have a multi-platform version with a dozen additional features. Xobni obviously doesn't plan to stand still waiting for MS to catch up to them.</comment></comment>