Jimmy Wales threatens to encrypt Wikipedia if UK passes snooping bill - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/jimmy-wales-threatens-to-encrypt-wikipedia-if-uk-passes-snooping-bill/ <comment><USER2> They should do this anyways. It's well known to the technical elite that dragnet surveillance is going on— but it's not known to the general public.

It's arguably immoral that the site doesn't switch to https by default and give the public the privacy they think they already have.

<comment><USER3> What makes you think that those with the resources to implement dragnet surveillance do not have access to properly signed certificates, which let them Man-In-The-Middle the connection without triggering a browser warning?

<comment><USER2> As you say, some of the parties engaging in the drags absolutely do have the capability. But not all and stopping them has value. More importantly:

A man in the middle attack is _highly_ detectable and will leave irrefutable evidence when detected. So it can only be used secretly if it's used very sparingly. And highly overt interception, if its even tolerated by the public, at least solves the problem of people having no idea (being in denial) they're being watched.

Moreover, because MITM can be defeated by de-trusting the rogue CA or via key pinning using it for "mere" surveillance would destroy a valuable and potent weapon, so they won't do it. It simply isn't suitable for dragnet use.

Its also practically much more costly to scale. (E.g. instead of passive optical taps and cheap packet sampling for targeting they must fully intercept all the traffic and decrypt/reencrypt before they even know if its "interesting") Simply making the watchers have to spend a lot more money per unit of traffic monitored is a win for civil rights because it should result in more conservative use of the capability. Without the crypto the surveillance is maximally cheap and undetectable... anything is an improvement even if it can still be compromised.

<comment><USER4> The cost of decryption is practically 0, though. Certainly not a relevant budgetary factor.

<comment><USER2> It really isn't. It's only "zero" because you're greatly overestimating the cost of intercepting the traffic at all.

To do dragnet surveillance you need an optical tap, an expensive phy, and a fairly modest number of gates to apply a stateless filter purely from onchip memory to capture 100% of interesting flows and grab some small fraction of all other traffic, and some modest switch fabric to carry captured data to a modest amount of storage and processing to deal with it. Programmed correctly commodity network processors for switches have all the right logic already, we're talking in the <$200 per 10G port parts-cost level. Detailed analysis of the sample data and the known-interesting data gives tells you about new hosts you should be matching for detailed inspection (and you update the can filter with 50ms latencies or so). The cost of maintaining a cheap military aircraft gets your terabits of sampling capacity.

Adding a MITM attack on top of the model used for dragnet surveillance currently, which involves intercepting 100% of the potentially interesting traffic at all times, performing a costly public key operation per every single connection, and then reencrypting the results is insanely expensive by comparison. Before you even get killed by the crypto costs you've long since run out of memory bandwidth.

<comment><USER2> gah. _in_expensive phy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is one reason why enacting this kind of legislation is such a terrible idea for the very people advocating it. Right now most of the web is ridiculously open and unencrypted. If authorities get the appropriate warrants it's almost guaranteed they will be able to spy on almost anybody doing almost anything because the default mode is unencrypted and nobody really thinks about it. But that default mode is only the default because people think their communications are reasonably private anyway, precisely because this kind of logging is pretty expensive and impractical. Laws to enforce it will motivate everyone to move to encrypted connections, greatly increase use of VPNs for all non-trivial communications, and ensure that criminals become educated about how to encrypt their activities.

If governments around the world seriously pursue this, far from reaping the windfall they are hoping for they will actually kill the golden goose that could be helping them solve more crimes than ever.

<comment><USER6> This is, of course, assuming, that the government is creating this law for the reason of solving crime and not for some special interests / lobbies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Anybody have a guess of what it would cost for Wikipedia to do 100% SSL for a country like Great Britain?

<comment><USER8> Very little, they already have https support - I am sure that they could handle disabling http . that is not the point.

I see the point Jimmy Wales was making - it's the old: 'if you have nothing to hide' - and it should stand.

If you want to keep something private you have the right to do that....I don't care what I do in public....

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately Wikipedia chose to go with a separate cluster for SSL. If they ran SSL on their normal front end then it would already scale up to this: The public key crypto is free on hyperthreaded cpus because it can run currently with memory accesses for other requests, and modern CPUs have harware accel for the symmetric crypto that make it ~free.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I can almost hear the politicians now: _Oh please, Jimmy, please! Please don't enable SSL!_

But seriously, what he's suggesting is the truth. Any website that thinks it might be seen as slightly toxic for its users will move to SSL if it wants to stay in use.

The problem with this play is that turning on SSL for all Wikipedia users would be really very expensive. Encryption costs a lot of CPU cycles and entropy.

</comment><comment><USER10> The UK isn't the only trusted western country apparently synchronising internet data mining capability. Australia is seriously considering a two year retention of web traffic by ISP's.

[http://www.itnews.com.au/News/313178,public-opposes- federal-...](http://www.itnews.com.au/News/313178,public-opposes-federal-data- retention-proposal.aspx)

<comment><USER11> Not just that. They also want to make it illegal to not decrypt your data on request. I think lots of people will be forgetting their passwords soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=whatever>

Is that not encryption? Or maybe he means make that the default?

</comment><comment><USER13> Maybe a little bit of a sensationalist title, websites switching to HTTPS only isn't that much of a threat, yes the bill is bad and yes he should be opposing it but Ars seem to frame it as though it's drastic or has a negative effect on anyone. While I disagree with the bill and the concept of monitoring peoples internet, I don't think they're doing it so they can find out what you're reading on Wikipedia or who you're messaging on Facebook.

<comment><USER14> > I don't think they're doing it so they can find out what you're reading on > Wikipedia or who you're messaging on Facebook.

What makes you think that sort of information isn't exactly what they're interested in?

Even if they don't care about it right now, once it starts being collected, if any future government decides they do care about it, it'd be very easy for them to get their hands on it.

<comment><USER15> This is actually one of the more interesting things about how data is being collected these days... because we (or rather, our machines) now have the capacity to scavenge and parse so much more data than we could've dreamed of before, people, corporations, governments, etc. have already caught on to the idea that you don't actually need to know your angle before you execute. Gathering tons and tons of data may seem completely worthless or missing the point, but the reality is that "the point" no longer exists. It's all just floating data that, when the time comes, either passes through the filter or throws a flag.

Basically, the government may _not_ care who you're messaging on facebook now, but if someone discovers a correlation to some other problem in the future they'll be damn pleased that they have that data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Go Jimmy! Every site should do that anyway. The doors are closing, it's up to us the let them open.

</comment><comment><USER17> Switching to HTTPS won't help as it's just arms race between websites and governments.

Jimmy, if you think you have enough technology competance enough, try China's GFW.

</comment><comment><USER18> IIRC, under the bill they would only record which sites you visited , not which pages you visited. So this wouldn't make any difference.

</comment><comment><USER19> "Threatens"? How about "promises"?

</comment><comment><USER8> Interesting timing.

Hadn't seen your post.......</comment>


Embedded C: Struct and Union (Part 2) - <AUTHOR> http://atadiat.com/en/e-embedded-c-struct-union-part-2/ <comment><USER2> No. Please.

Struct bitfields may be useful to save memory (e.g. 1 bit for boolean-like variable) but don't rely on it when accessing register data or implenting protocols.

The biggest issue with struct bitfields is that its implementation is ABI- specific, meaning it is not even compiler-specific. For example, his "Application #2: Implementing Protocols" example is not portable across archtectures because the order of bits are _swapped_ when compiling for a Big- endian CPU. We should use bitwise operations for this purpose.

Look at his last example, "Application #3: Access to MCU Registers". The SDK source code he mentioned does not use bitfield but bitwise operations to access register bits.

<comment><USER3> But for embedded software, ABI-specific isn't (usually) an issue. I have _never_ seen an embedded project that changed either architectures ore compilers in the middle. In embedded, once you start the project, you're almost always using the same tooling until it dies. (Even moving to the latest rev of a compiler is rarely done, in my experience.)

So you can use bitfields, however they have to be defined to work with your compiler/architecture/hardware, and expect that they're going to continue to work for the duration. (Whether bitfields are a bad idea for _other_ reasons is outside the scope of my comment.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure this guy really knows what he is talking about. Bit fields are almost universally hated and not allowed in style guides. The Arm guide he links to states:

> Please note that peripheral locations should _not_ be accessed using > __packed structs (where unaligned members are allowed and there is no > internal padding), or using C bitfields.

Using bit fields for protocols is even more ill advised because often you may wish to implement the same code across different devices using the same protocol but the compilers will arrange the bit fields differently.

The only valid example he gives is the last one which is the correct way to do it: a struct made up of 32 bit values. This makes sure that everything is 4 byte aligned and the processor can access those variables in a single instruction.

If you wish to use the dense packing of bit fields but without the compiler ambiguity then you should use explicit bit shifting and bit masking (again shown in his last example)

<comment><USER5> Style guides are universally written for systems programming where RAM is in abundance. For embedded, memory usage matters and packing data in is a thing. It is ill advised because of the portability traps but portability is low on the priority chain if you just have to make it work. Any decent compiler will do what you want if you pad out the unused bits with a reserved field to guarantee alignment.

Reminds me of the C# jockey who complained endlessly about the bitfields (using manual masking) I put into an IoT data structure that was supposed to be kept as small as possible to minimize hosting costs. He had no clue about how to use bitwise operations to extract bits. They managed to bloat that into a horrendous monstrosity but I wasn't going to play their game. If they had their way, a half dozen bits packed into a 32-bit word would have consumed 20x more space with unnecessary schema boilerplate.

<comment><USER6> There's a distinction to be made between packing bits in a structure and using bitfields to access packed bits (as opposed to doing the shifts and masks manually).

From a compiler writer's perspective, bitfields are one of the worst things ever proposed for a standard. The nonportability of which way bits are laid out is the least of their problems. The logic of how you actually pack bits in the struct is surprisingly nontrivial. The underlying semantics of bitfields are so weird pretty much every time they could be used, they need to be special-cased--both in the standard sense _and_ in the implementation sense. This means that using bitfields requires navigating a field of landmines of potential compiler (or, worse, spec) bugs.

<comment><USER7> The solution is just to make sure you have padding fields that result in an overall size that's a multiple of however many bits e.g. 32 or 64 bits. Use static_assert() to enforce the size.

See my earlier comment about unit testing too.

<comment><USER6> Well, to have a good chance of avoiding the landmines, you need to:

* Pack the bitfields in a struct all by themselves. Don't mix bitfields and non-bitfields in the same struct. (This means that you limit the scope of insanity to other bitfields, not potentially expanding it to other regular fields).

* Make sure that the underlying type of all the bitfields within the struct have the same type. And make it be unsigned.

* Pad the bitfields to the appropriate size of the type.

* Only access the bitfields by copying them to/from the appropriate local variable (you don't want to trip code up on the bitfields-aren't-quite-the-type-they-say-they-are logic).

<comment><USER7> I've only used bitfields for register access. I get the first 3 points you make. (I use uint32_t for all fields) What is the danger in #4 if you've followed #1-3?

You seem overly paranoid. Is there something from your experience that makes you nervous about bitfields?

<comment><USER6> I work on compilers for a living, which means I have a first-hand impression of the fallout of "the semantics seem clear until you actually think about all of the corner cases." I also have an appreciation for compilers blindly doing the wrong thing when you start mixing weird constructs together, and bitfields are very much a weird construct.

The last rule is a recognition that bitfields are weird constructs, and their interactions with other weird constructs are likely to cause problems. One example: try using a bitfield in a ternary lvalue operation, especially with clang.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This article has some issues, the first struct in Example #1 is only compiled by GCC with a size of 2 if it has the packed attribute. Other compilers may behave differently which is exactly why bit-fields should be avoided. The behavior of bit-fields even changes between compiler versions, for example:

"""Packed bit-fields of type char were not properly bit-packed on many targets prior to GCC 4.4. On these targets, the fix in GCC 4.4 causes an ABI change. For example there is no longer a 4-bit padding between field a and b in this structure:

        struct foo
        {
          char a:4;
          char b:8;
        } __attribute__ ((packed));

There is a new warning to help identify fields that are affected:

        foo.c:5: note: Offset of packed bit-field 'b' has changed in GCC 4.4

""" ([https://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.4/changes.html](https://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.4/changes.html))

Also, the code in Application #3 isn't using bit-fields at all (the definition of GPIO_P_TypeDef is here: [https://github.com/SiliconLabs/Gecko_SDK/blob/master/platfor...](https://github.com/SiliconLabs/Gecko_SDK/blob/master/platform/Device/SiliconLabs/EFM32G/Include/efm32g_gpio_p.h))

</comment><comment><USER9> Many people talking about portability of but fields, but;

The assumed behaviour of bit fields is well defined between gcc and clang with the proper pragmas. It is therefore probably a non-issue. You even get better aliasing optimisations* using union/bit fields over just using bit shifts.

*) this means, if your union contains a way to read the whole field as ie uint_32t and also to read each field individually and also write struct as u32 via pointer, compiler can properly detect which actions cause read/write invalidation of each other instead of having to assume all volatile-like.

Use case 1: [https://gist.github.com/donkeybonks/8749545](https://gist.github.com/donkeybonks/8749545)

Use case 2 (with asm showing better codegen with union): [https://gist.github.com/donkeybonks/11103152](https://gist.github.com/donkeybonks/11103152)

nb these gists are ~4 years old because I don't much care about micro- optimisation anymore.

nb2 it's a really good idea to static assert the size of all your structs below their declaration for confidence and splash a few unit tests for ordering.

<comment><USER2> > The assumed behaviour of bit fields is well defined between gcc and clang > with the proper pragmas.

From the GCC documentation[1], it says:

> Determined by ABI.

This means that it may be different when compiling for different architectures. How you can say it well-defined? Here is a good example [2] on the compability issue when using bit fields

[1]: [https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Structures-unions- enumera...](https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Structures-unions-enumerations- and-bit-fields-implementation.html)

[2]: [http://mjfrazer.org/mjfrazer/bitfields/](http://mjfrazer.org/mjfrazer/bitfields/)

<comment><USER10> > This means that it may be different when compiling for different > architectures. How you can say it well-defined?

In an immense majority of case you won't be serializing or exchanging your bitfields over the network ; this is entirely a non-problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Generally ST Micro did some fairly abhorrent stuff around mapping their registers into bit field packed structures for the Cortex M line. One of the reasons I don't use their library for coding them.

The authors use of looking at lines of assembly language code as a metric of goodness for the choices was also problematic. If they coded that stuff for a VAX they would be treated to variable length bit field addressing (see [1] below, page 8-6). Easy to implement very complex bit manipulation in just a few assembly language statements :-).

A better measure is CPU clocks + Memory Accesses (typically measured in kilocoreseconds [another VMS joke])

[1] [http://www.ece.lsu.edu/ee4720/doc/vax.pdf](http://www.ece.lsu.edu/ee4720/doc/vax.pdf)

<comment><USER4> Mapping registers into bit field packed structures is actually okay because most ARM Cortex M processors have bit banding enabled on all the peripherals. Unfortunately not all peripheral libraries use that functionality and GCC doesn't support it well.

<comment><USER12> Ya,but the newest Cortex-M chips (M7, M22, and M33) do not even support bit- banding, so I wouldn't rely on that being around forever.

Not quite sure why ARM removed it. Maybe there were performance costs to all instructions due to the extra hw/decode, while bit-banding only helped a small number of instructions.

If anyone has more info, would love to hear!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I remember a discussion on the Linux Kernel Mailing list regarding memory corruption on the ia64 architecture[1] because of a strange way GCC handled bit-fields. While oftentimes packed bit-fields are a decent way of representing/serializing data for memory-constrained devices or even network applications, it's always a good reminder how they can wreak havoc for scenarios where portability is important.

1: [https://lwn.net/Articles/478657/](https://lwn.net/Articles/478657/)

<comment><USER14> Wasn't that bug triggered in the case of adjacent non-bitfield 32-bit fields too?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> In TXR Lisp's FFI, I developed detailed support for bitfields, alignment and packing. You can comply with any kind of struct type no matter how it's declared.

In the reference manual, I added a section on what I believe are the bitfield allocation rules used by GCC, as I empirically reverse engineered them.

[https://www.nongnu.org/txr/txr- manpage.html#N-027D075C](https://www.nongnu.org/txr/txr- manpage.html#N-027D075C)

Hope someone finds it useful.

Endian considerations are not covered in that section because that topic is documented elsewhere in the document.

In a nutshell, on big endian, bitfields are packed from the most significant end of the storage word, and on little endian, from the least significant end of the storage word. Thus the lowest addressed byte of the storage unit is filled first, and so on.

</comment><comment><USER16> The only issue with C bit-fields is as KR says it: "Almost everything about fields is implementation-dependent" (bit order, endianness, padding size, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER7> An example of how not to use bitfields: [https://lwn.net/Articles/478657/](https://lwn.net/Articles/478657/)

I am not sure whether the underlying spinlock_t struct is something in memory or mapped to a hardware register. But it seems like this was being used to save space rather than to access hardware.

</comment><comment><USER17> Line 20 in Application #1 has an unfortunate typo.

<comment><USER18> :D

Also, I think the comments are off in lines 5-6 of Application #2: "0 .. 1" should be "1 .. 2", "2 .. 7" should be "3 .. 7"

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Interesting stuff.

I have been a C coder (I'm not so much any more) for about 12 years of my career, and never came across bitfields in all that time, even when doing embedded work.

One style question - why not use the stdint.h types all the way through?

<comment><USER20> weird.... most embedded platforms do something like ( following from an actual lib header, which is full of the same ). The entire interface to the hardware is basically bitfields.

      typedef union {
        struct {
            unsigned REC                    :8;
        };
        struct {
            unsigned REC0                   :1;
            unsigned REC1                   :1;
            unsigned REC2                   :1;
            unsigned REC3                   :1;
            unsigned REC4                   :1;
            unsigned REC5                   :1;
            unsigned REC6                   :1;
            unsigned REC7                   :1;
        };

} RXERRCNTbits_t;

<comment><USER21> I've seen this a lot in Texas Instruments' bare-metal BSPs for their processors that are generated using HalCoGen. Their own proprietary compiler handles them as you'd expect. Other BSPs typically follow the coding style for their operating system. I've never seen QNX BSP drivers use bitfields. I've also never seen them in Linux drivers. QNX and Linux typically use variants of GCC to compile their drivers unless you pay for another toolchain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> isn't the ordering of bitfields undefined, therefore useless when trying to map out register bitflags?

I just end up creating configuration structs and mapping those to/from register values in some get/set functions as needed

<comment><USER11> No, the ordering of bitfields is _implementation_ defined rather than undefined. So if you figure out a bitfield pattern that works on your compiler for your architecture it will continue to work for you. It is not very _portable_ but for embedded applications that often isn't a problem.

<comment><USER23> >So if you figure out a bitfield pattern that works on your compiler

More like: if your compiler is _documented_ to implement bitfields a certain way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Pretty sure nipples suppose to be nibbles in the code

<comment><AUTHOR> It's fixed now ;)</comment></comment>


Improving Dropbox Performance: Retrieving Thumbnails - <AUTHOR> https://tech.dropbox.com/2014/01/retrieving-thumbnails/

<comment><USER2> Mostly you shouldn't have to hide backend latency by reordering, and if you don't reorder, you can just use JPEG image strips/sprites, which don't need double compression. JPEGs also stream, but in an order determined by the client, not the server.

In my experience, Dropbox is quite a bit slower (by 10-20x) than services optimized for serving images - using 1500ms to deliver a 25k file is very slow on the web, but it is very common when requesting files via the Dropbox web API. (I can only speculate about the reasons, but Amazon's s3 has big latencies too.)

<comment><USER3> We thought of spriting the thumbnails on the server, but this introduces a few problems:

\- All thumbs would have to be available on the server before the sprite can be encoded, which defeats progressive rendering. (Progressively _encoding_ JPEG might be a possibility, but this isn't something we explored.)

\- The additional cost of encoding/decoding a large image on the server/client.

\-- Ziga (author)

<comment><USER2> Yes, you can stream JPEG pretty easily as long as you know the output size.

Also to combine JPEGs into a sprite, you can avoid all DCT/iDCT/color operations and use only the Huffman portion of the codec (decode, concat, encode). Since Huffman throughput is a considerable multiple of gzip (~10x?), I think you'd be quite a ways ahead, for memory and time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't really use Dropbox, but I was randomly browsing through mine looking for a photo the other day and it was a "holy shit" moment. It's really fast to scroll through a huge number of photos. I had been scrolling through Flickr a few minutes before and it was a massive difference. Flickr was very much a scroll-and-wait experience.

<comment><USER5> For me, Flickr is basically unusable. Slideshows are impossibly slow, information is positioned outside the browser viewport, and simply bringing up an image-page is reminder of dialup. I can only blame inertial lockin for their usage numbers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> On the functionality end of things I think dropbox should be stop new feature development until heavy UX is done with large unbiased test groups. The application is simple and it works pretty well but recently I've noticed different barriers to use, notifications that I'd prefer not to see just getting in the way. It's a result of Zawinski's law, it's happening to gmail where they think adding more bells and whistles is needed but it's not, in many case user experience declines, for example playing a youtube clip now blacks out the rest of your gmail page while you watch it. Application developers need to learn that less is more.

<comment><USER7> hi there, I work at dropbox and am curious to learn more. what things did you run into that were unexpected and retracted from the UX? hopefully we can make it better!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What about a sprites-like system?

Since you pretty much know which pictures the user will request, just glue the next 100 thumbnails together into one big picture and then take it apart again on the device.

<comment><USER9> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7133035](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7133035)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Were you already serving thumbnails over https? Or were they served over http?

edit: I was also wondering whether you can skip downloading some thumbnails based on the velocity of the scroll.

<comment><USER3> We were already serving over https (we've implemented HSTS some time ago).

And good observation about scrolling -- we do in fact queue, prioritize, and skip thumbnails based on scrolling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Basically, they chunk thumbnails - client asks for the next 10 thumbnails in one request, server sends back 10 thumbnails in the response.

</comment><comment><USER12> Base64 and then gzip just to make it easier on javascript? Seems hard on dropbox servers.

Why not use a multipart binary response?

<comment><USER13> gzip is basically free on modern server hardware – if it makes life easier on mobile devices, this is a pretty easy tradeoff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think they could still do better without using SPDY. Going to try and make time to test a different approach.

</comment><comment><USER15> tldr: use SPDY, but until more universal support a similar custom hack is proposed

Neat hack though.. frustrating how much perf is lost due to HTTP sometimes

</comment><comment><USER16> I just see one problem with this solution. You can't create Retina images out of base64 strings on any web browsers today.

<comment><USER17> > You can't create Retina images out of base64 strings

Why not? There's no such thing as a 'retina image', they're just a larger resolution. There's nothing stopping you from requesting a @2x set of thumbnails</comment></comment>


2014 Personal Annual Report - <AUTHOR> http://jehiah.cz/one-four/

<comment><USER2> I love personal annual report season. Nicholas Felton's (feltron.com) and Jehiah's are the two that I've been looking at the longest.

The amount of work that goes into these — being thorough when collecting the data throughout the year and putting it together in a nice package at the end — is too daunting for me to consider, so I like observing and admiring the odd minutiae of the lives of those willing and able to put in the work.

</comment><comment><USER3> The crafting of the visualizations is impressive as ever. Particularly the coffee one.

(btw... transportation columns are swapped in firefox)</comment>


The Science of When to Get Married - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-04-07/the-science-of-when-to-get-married/ <comment><USER2> Good article and a great highlight of just how crazy brain chemicals end up making a lot of our decisions for us. I'd just add, don't even think of getting married for the sex - that all changes.

<comment><USER3> Actually I don't think the quantity of sex actually changes after getting married. I think people think "Well we spend about 10 hours a week together, and we have sex like 3 times... that should mean in a 168 hour week I'll have sex like 50 times!" No, you'll still only have sex 3 times in a week.

My wife and I used to live in separate countries (before we were married) so when we saw each other we managed to get about 4 months worth of sex into 2 weeks. I get just as much sex now that am married as I did before I was married, just now I don't have to go through 4 months of celibacy in between it.

Honestly the sex doesn't change, if anything I get more now that I'm married, and I certainly get it more regularly.

My personal advice: never expect to get _more_ sex by getting married. If you get it _n_ times a week, evaluate if that amount is enough for the next 30 years, if it's not slap yourself in the face because if you fuck it up you could well get 0 times a week for the next 30 years. C'mon we're geeks, our chances for sex aren't astronomically high.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> (Content in a single page) [http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and- stories/2009-04-07/th...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and- stories/2009-04-07/the-science-of-when-to-get-married/p/)

In the middle of all the chemical names, this is the only one that stayed

 _"Start acclimating to uncertainty as a way of life."_

:)

</comment><comment><USER5> "'The rational brain can only take in seven pieces of information at one time,' Lehrer says. 'When it gets more than that, it's like an old computer trying to run Vista.'"

Zing!

Will Vista's legacy be a pop-culture simile for an overburdened machine?

</comment><comment><USER6> it didn't really answer the question 'When to Get Married' in a concrete manner. i wish we had a way to rate these articles from 1 star to 5 stars next to the title like for yahoo movies.

<comment><USER7> Agreed, I was hoping this article would contain the distribution of divorce rate vs. age, which I found at: <http://www.divorcerate.org/>

Interestingly enough, the divorce rate is highest for those who get married between the ages of 20-24, 10% higher for women and 27% higher for men than the <20 category.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > _The men she approached as they were crossing were much likely to call her > in the coming days. Why? "The scientists attributed it to the > misidentification of those bodily symptoms of fear," says Lehrer. "They > thought they were aroused and attracted, but they were only scared." The men > she approached as they were crossing were much likely to call her in the > coming days. Why? "The scientists attributed it to the misidentification of > those bodily symptoms of fear," says Lehrer. "They thought they were aroused > and attracted, but they were only scared."_

And that's why some men marry women they're afraid of.

</comment><comment><USER8> _When it comes to romantic decision-making, neuroscientists say the rational part of our brain gets dumped._

Yes. The blood flows out of the head and into other parts.

</comment><comment><USER9>
      while(!successful) {
        successful = AttemptSuccess();
      }
      ExploreMarriage();</comment>


Three Marks Of Real Data Science? - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/06/three-marks-of-real-data-science/

<comment><USER2> I was going to criticize this submission for adding a question mark to the original title, until I read the linked article. The article doesn't try to show an association between data analysis and reality, or use the term "evidence" even once. So the question mark is entirely justified.</comment>


The Boolean Game: use boolean operations with vector graphics - <AUTHOR> https://boolean.method.ac/ <comment><AUTHOR> I love the bezier game by the same creators. I think this is an amazing follow up, because I always struggle how booleans operators work in Sketch. By doing these exercises, now I know.

I wish software vendors would sometimes create some simple exercises, so one could understand their products.

One can dream :)</comment>


Coders At Work available for purchase - <AUTHOR> http://apress.com/book/view/1430219483

<comment><AUTHOR> It's only $18.19 for the eBook version and contains in depth interviews with very interesting people.

I'm half-way through the chapter with Jamie Zawinski - it's a blast to read.

There are interviews with Knuth, Norvig, Steele, Ingalls and 10 other outstanding programmers. I can't shake off the feeling of being a kid in a candy store...</comment>


Ask HN: How to help get more women in tech as a male? - <AUTHOR> There's been a groundswell over the past few years of organizations dedicated to helping get more women into tech, along with other STEM fields.  Usually, though, these organizations are for women BY women.  As a male, it feels like it would be considered white knighting, or condescending, to try and offer help to these organizations, or to attempt to start something on my own.<p>I'm looking for your thoughts on what I can actually do to help this movement.  Any real-world experience would be greatly appreciated. <comment><USER2> I'm a female designer/dev. I got my diploma in design & then I went back & got my bachelor in CS (Maths).

Some here have mentioned interest & I agree. I think being a dev in general is a pretty lonely world. Multiply that by about 100 if you're a female dev. This is the same for anything STEM-related. I was the only girl in my high school physics class of 40+ boys, then 20 girls in 400 for CS & most dropped out by the end. I think you have to have some kind of underlying "geekiness" that makes you prefer looking at a screen vs anything else.

Most females that I know either A) don't know what a startup is at all or B) would love to learn to code, but shake it off as something they could never do. In the case of B), it would really only take one male/female to invite them to a meetup, hackathon, coworking session (or whatever) & perhaps that would be enough. I guess what I'm trying to say is, work out a way to make "tech" seem like something other than what non-tech females probably think it is - White men, incapable of non-awkward conversation, playing WoW on a Friday night in a dim-lit room.

<comment><USER3> Also female dev here - I think we all have our unique story about how we stayed in tech against the odds, rather than going with the flow. It might be helpful if we could, as women still working in the industry, compile a proper set of documents about the challenges we faced. It might help if there were just more details out there rather than the few stories we pass along when a post like this comes up.

Definitely easier now for the kids though - I've met 9 year old girls lately who are rocking python/robot dev and if they can stay in all-girl schools through secondary school (or have a very female-supported CS dept if mixed) they'll have good chance of staying in STEM.

I also have to say, because this is fairly recent for me, I've become less and less of a dev myself and more management and I'm having a blast. My years of dev has really gelled with the demands on product development and I very much enjoy the dynamics of running a team - something I never thought I'd find interesting. So it's something quite new for me, and as I know it's more common to see women building a career in management rather than thank of themselves as part of the coding team but I can see clearly how having more dev experience just makes you all the stronger. Might be a compelling argument for those going through school with their eye on an executive position for their future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The problem with getting women into tech is that so few women finish school with a tech degree, so no matter what you do, there's going to be a huge imbalance until this changes. It's very difficult to change career later in life, for both men and women.

I think the greatest benefits come from getting girls excited about STEM careers, but this is a much longer term approach. I'm really dismayed at the peer pressure I see in school that steers boys and girls in different directions, since this is something you have to fight at home and de-program your children. Get your daughters a microscope, telescope, computer, whatever. Use it with her, show her all the cool stuff in the world and talk about how it works. Don't go for "girl-friendly" approaches, since IMO, those are condescending. Treat her like a curious little scientist, not little Suzie homemaker with a science hobby.

Having kids, it really pisses me off that people say boys are "smart, strong", and that girls are "cute, friendly". Freaking double standard.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure why this is such a problem; a tech degree isn't necessary to be successful as a software developer. It may not even be all that helpful.

<comment><USER6> Agreed. I am only one data point, but i have no degree and I am a female dev. We're out there.

<comment><USER5> As data points go: male developer, serious systems programming background, 1 semester of college.

Maciej Ceglowski is, I think, even worse off than I am. He went to art school. Now he controls the Internet from his perch atop Pinboard.

<comment><USER4> I've worked in this industry for a long time, and while I have worked with fantastic self-taught developers from non-tech degrees, it seems to me that they're the exception rather than the rule. I would not hesitate hiring someone without a tech degree based on their experience, but they seem fairly uncommon. Most of the developers I've worked with seem to come from CS/EE backgrounds.

<comment><USER5> Good developers are _all_ exceptions, not the rule. The majority of CS grads are not in fact effective programmers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> 1\. Give money to organizations that are doing the work you want to support

2\. Get your company to give money

3\. Speak out when you see sexism

4\. When you are hiring, specifically reach out to women tech organizations (I have a women's college in my town with a CS dept -- I made friends with the Dean and some profs -- I send intern and job openings to them)

I think that there's work that you can do to increase the number of women applicants, so I do it. By the way, these things help to increase diversity along other dimensions, which you should also do.

<comment><AUTHOR> #4 is a really great idea, and something I'll have to try and research. #1 - #3 are very good, too, but #4 hits a chord with me for some reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm a male, I attend three Meetup events that are focused on Women/Entrepreneur. I asked the organisers first if it would be cool to attend - to avoid whiteknighting, I've been declined permission from others.

When attending I work hard to spend more time listening, hard for me, I love my voice. Sometimes I relate stories how I would handle jerk coworkers or push for things I want in the workplace. Feedback shows me that assertive women get called names :(

This condescending behaviour is core issue that keeps women as 2nd class. You don't need an organisation to work on the solution.

My new favourite hobby is to clown the shit out of males when I hear their verbal diarrhoea. It works great. I get to take the moral high-road and insult some dumbass for the entertainment of those around me. Win,win,win.

In our office gender, religious, ethnicity insults, or condescending actions or language is taken seriously. Eg: telling someone to "stop being a bitch" or a "that's gay" comment means you're buying lunch - a $200 offence. 3 strikes and you're out.

So basically I'm saying: be excellent to each other and mock ignorance at the top of your voice.

</comment><comment><USER9> Get married, have kids, invest in their lives and share with them your passion for technology. If you have daughters, they may choose tech.

<comment><AUTHOR> My wife and I have chosen not to have children - for reasons personal to us. That's why the outreach aspect (if I can't pass the torch along to my own, I want to pass it off to _someone_ ) is big to me.

<comment><USER10> You can always adopt. That's a double-win: improve lives without growing the population of Earth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> To get more women seriously involved into technology, you realistically need to get more women to be unsocial and spend the majority of their lives planted in front of a glowing computer screen.

The reality is not that "careers in computers" are too hard to get into, or that we need them to be friendlier. In fact, I have personally found working in computers to be generally unfriendly across the board. I welcome any changes to make working in computers more attractive to women, because it would make it appeal more to myself as well. Since I already work in the field, it would just make the field better.

The fact is that a majority of women don't realistically want to be in the field once they know the full story of what is required to succeed in it.

I am aware of the people who have had computer careers and found them generally cheery, friendly, and easy, but I don't think this is the common case.

</comment><comment><USER12> I really think the key problem is interest. My girlfriend got her degree in human resources for example while I didn't graduate high school and got a job in IT. Most of the people in her class were women by a decent majority. They could of went for computer science degrees, they prefered human resources, Maybe its sort of a non-problem.

<comment><USER6> This is an important point. While the industry isn't always super welcoming to women, that isn't the whole problem. Lots of women just have other interests. We'll probably see gender parity in IT when we see gender parity in nursing.

<comment><USER10> I would rephrase that further to say: are diverse interests between the genders a problem?

I have never heard anyone complain that we have too few male teachers, nurses, or airline attendants.

<comment><USER13> > I have never heard anyone complain that we have too few male teachers, > nurses, [...]

You haven't looked. Programmes exist to increase the number of male teachers and male nurses.

<comment><USER6> interesting. i'm guessing from your spelling of "programmes" that you are not in the US - where are these programs you speak of? i'd be very interested in reading about them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Mindset is important, shift your thinking from White Knight to Strategic Agility.

Recruiting women to your team or company can be a huge competitive advantage, especially given the growing importance of diversity and global markets. Keep an eye out for the most talented women-- they will be your secret weapon.

<comment><AUTHOR> (Full disclosure: I'm not part of our talent coordination / hiring efforts, everything is anecdotal here)

A predominant amount of the applicants we see (we, as in, the people who are told that there's a phone screen or interview to be done) are male. It feels, strictly from my limited experience, that a big chunk of the problem is finding qualified female applicants.

I'm not sure if it's a lack of female applicants period, or a lack of qualified ones. This also goes back to me asking for real-world experience, because I'm not even sure where to best focus my donations / efforts.

<comment><USER14> If you met someone who could use your company's product/service-- wouldn't you put them in touch with the appropriate sales people?

Same applies to recruiting talent. If you recognize a high-potential candidate-- help them connect with a hiring executive. You'll be seen by the higher-ups as a Big Picture thinker. Unfortunately, myopic corporate HR staff often fail to enlist the broader networks of existing employees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The best thing is to insist your tech employer interview female candidates. Speak out if they don't.

The NFL has the "Rooney Rule" that has been instrumental in generating more african american head coaches. Make your company have the same.

</comment><comment><USER16> Retire to create less competition for them. Then spend money on software contracts to create new seats.

</comment><comment><USER17> Is this serious?</comment>


HN Please Note: Your Votes Might Not Be Getting Counted - <AUTHOR>

Hi Guys,
I just wanted to share something with you - there's a good chance that your votes aren't getting counted on the site.
If you tend to navigate away from a page (front page or comments page) within 3-5 seconds of voting, it's possible that your vote won't get counted.
HN at many times can take several seconds to process a page load. Voting is no exception. If the site is taking a few seconds or more to load each page, that's exactly how long it'll take for your vote to go through! Be sure to wait a few seconds before navigating away from or closing a page. <comment><USER2> This is like Dade County all over again.

</comment><comment><USER3> obviously a bug. did you email pg?</comment>


Experiment Shows Plants Won't Grow Near Wi-Fi Router - Karstend-c http://www.inhabitots.com/student-science-experiment-shows-plants-wont-grow-near-wi-fi-router/

<comment><AUTHOR> Very cool science fair experiment. I'd have liked to have seen them measure the distance of those effects. For instance, does it matter if a seed is 6ft away vs. 10ft.

I know I can do the experiment myself, but I don't know that I will.</comment>


Like a tablet but on your skin - <AUTHOR> http://www.cicret.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems hoaxy to me. I reckon that kind of projection angles, and using sking instead of white projection canvas, would need a lot more juice than what you could store in a bracelet battery... Even if you could cram a projector into that size.

<comment><USER2> Agreed. This is picking up the shares on Facebook, that's for sure. I just don't belive the tech is here - yet. I don't think it's far off, but the biggest names in tech (largest R&D budgets on the planet) can't give me these features in a 3x5x.25 inch package that will last even a 24hr stint (ex:Samsung Galaxy S5)... so with that in mind (call my cynical),I just have a hard time believing the guys with a pulled indiegigo and a WordPress site asking for (free as in beer)donations are going to be the ones who bring the game changer to us. Here's to hoping I have to eat my hat.</comment></comment>


My bank has an API so I built online banking - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jamesallison/mondo-hackathon-e504883a4a05#.iye0e0pne <comment><USER2> I want a US based bank to build something like that. I believe Simple was initially supposed to expose an API to developers. The API has never come to fruition and I doubt ever will.

In order to disrupt the banking industry, you need a huge amount of capital to start and you are regulated in a way to prevent fast growth. These 2 things pretty much rule out the 'standard' way of doing startups.

I would love to see an opensource bank, open code all the way down to the core services that a bank depends on. It would help break up the stranglehold that just a handful of companies have on the market.

Too many things are just 'in the way'. The stagnation would probably need to start with regulatory support instead of using banking regulations to make it difficult for new business and ideas.

<comment><USER3> > I would love to see an opensource bank, open code all the way down to the > core services that a bank depends on

Yeah, no thanks. I would not trust my money with a bank like that. A lot of fraud prevention is based on obscurity, and multiple steps of hurdles to make it easy to reverse a transaction. There's a reason money transfer takes a few days.

Source: I work in a tangential field

<comment><USER4> > There's a reason money transfer takes a few days.

The reason a money transfer takes a few days is because ACH is based on SFTPing back and forth fixed-column ASCII text files.

In other countries there is not this delay.

<comment><USER5> SFTP or FTP?

<comment><USER4> SFTP, luckily [http://engineering.gusto.com/how-ach-works-a-developer- persp...](http://engineering.gusto.com/how-ach-works-a-developer-perspective- part-1/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ahh yes, an API on top of your bank... this was the promise of Simple Bank, one that they have now almost wholly backed out of which is quite disappointing. Don't get me wrong I still love them as my bank but I was really looking forward to an API that never materialized.

<comment> X-Istence Well, there goes the last reason to hold on to my Simple account. The API is what I was hoping for.

<comment><USER6> Simple's support is bar none IMHO but I'm right there with you, the API was a BIG reason to why I signed up.

<comment> X-Istence I've had no issues what so ever with CapitalOne 360. Simple doesn't provide me anything over them...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does anyone know of a US bank that offers an API as a service? For consumer- level access and without requiring fees or a third party service, preferably.

The hackathon this app was a part of doesn't mention developer-friendly banks: [https://getmondo.co.uk/blog/2015/11/22/mondohack/](https://getmondo.co.uk/blog/2015/11/22/mondohack/)

I'm left to assume these are private APIs. I would love to play around with APIs similarly, but don't want to depend on privatized APIs.

<comment><USER8> I've heard of [https://plaid.com/](https://plaid.com/) but have no personal experience with them.

<comment><USER9> Intuit also offer an API to gather financial data. [https://developer.intuit.com/docs/0020_customeraccountdata/0...](https://developer.intuit.com/docs/0020_customeraccountdata/009_using_customeraccountdata/0010_gettingstarted)

<comment><USER8> Oh, that's _really_ neat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wait till you guys see what sjtgraham has been up to

EDIT: teller.io

He's had to do impossible things to make it

<comment><USER11> As isomorph says I've built a fully transactional API that works with existing major banks. We currently have a closed beta supporting banks in the RBS group (RBS, Natwest, Ulster, IOM) and we'll be adding Barclays and HSBC next.

[http://teller.io/](http://teller.io/)

<comment><USER12> What prevents you from emptying my account if I use your service?

<comment><USER13> Looks like just their honour, unfortunately. If banks provided first-party support, rather than forcing people to reverse engineer mobile phone app APIs, we might see safer implementations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Awesome - love this project :-)

You can also see some of the other projects are listed here [https://getmondo.co.uk/blog/2015/11/22/mondohack/](https://getmondo.co.uk/blog/2015/11/22/mondohack/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Hi Folks, Open Bank Project is an open source API for banks that is designed to sit on any core banking:

[https://github.com/OpenBankProject/OBP- API/wiki/Sandbox](https://github.com/OpenBankProject/OBP-API/wiki/Sandbox)

We're currently introducing a Kafka layer which core banking connectors can interface with in any language. Else you can use Scala / Java code to connect to banking (or blockchain?) interfaces directly.

The core is AGPL plus commercial licenses for banks that don't want to abide by AGPL or get commercial support. SDKs etc are Apache licensed.

Regulation from EU (PSD2) and UK government Open Banking Working Group (OBWG) initiative is starting to move the API needle :-)

cheers, Simon (founder of OBP)

</comment><comment><USER16> Have been tinkering with the Mondo API myself and can confirm it's great. It's really strange building apps around your own money.

</comment><comment><USER17> How far down the FCA application process are they? As far as I know only 2 companies have been granted permissions in the UK so far this year. One is a law firm, the other a stock broker.

Their site says they are still applying, thus how can they be accepting people's money already?

<comment><USER18> Hi DomBlack, I work at Mondo.

The cards we're issuing now are prepaid debit cards backed by another firm's license (Wirecard Card Solutions Ltd).

We're aiming to have a full banking license and issue our own cards by the end of next year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The selflender team did something similar except they built a banking core:

[https://selflender.com/blog/why-fintech-innovation-is- broken...](https://selflender.com/blog/why-fintech-innovation-is-broken-at- its-core.html)

<comment><USER20> It's true! :)

Warm regards, James @ Self Lender

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Mondo looks neat. Anything like that in Canada?

<comment><USER22> [https://www.koho.ca](https://www.koho.ca)

<comment><USER21> Oh interesting. Have you used this? Any thoughts?

Edit: looks like they havn't launched. Will keep an eye out. Thanks for posting!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> What tool is that in your first screenshot?

<comment><USER24> It's Postman[1], a Chrome app for making HTTP requests/testing API's that has a ridiculously full featured free version.

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

<comment><USER25> Do Chrome apps really not get to share credentials/cookies with the rest of Chrome? Postman asked me to sign in with my google account, and proceeded to show me a login form that _looked_ like a google login page but with no way for me to verify the domain.

<comment><USER26> There is an API for Chrome Apps to get authentication tokens, and they are probably using it in interactive mode, which shows just what you saw: [https://developer.chrome.com/apps/app_identity#getAuthToken-...](https://developer.chrome.com/apps/app_identity#getAuthToken- prompts)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> A side note: The big banks expose mobile apis to their apps. However, I'm pretty sure that those are for private use

<comment><USER28> > I'm pretty sure that those are for private use

.. And do you do everything you're told? ;)

I think we put far too much weight into magic documents like Privacy Policies and Terms of Service, etc.

<comment><USER29> When we're talking about banking, those magic documents are pretty important. I wouldn't be surprised if, for example, using their private API makes you ineligible for fraud protection on your account.

<comment><USER28> Oh I am sure doing anything does, quite frankly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Will accounts be available to those of us that do not live in the UK? At least within the EU?

<comment><USER18> Hi, I work at Mondo.

We need to work through a bunch of KYC and AML issues around EU-wide signup, but it's definitely high on our priority list.

That said, our accounts will initially be GBP only, so we'd hold your balance in pound sterling.

If you sign up to our waiting list we'll reach out as soon as we know more :)

<comment><USER30> GBP is good enough for me. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I've really felt the need for an API into my bank transactions lately. There are a bunch of visualizations I want to do that Mint etc. don't support.

BTW @jamesallison The interface looks great. Good work!

<comment><USER32> You can download daily statements using a client like ofxclient[0] and then transform them into a ledger appropriate for GNU ledger. From there you can pretty much extract and export whatever it is you'd like to know.

[0] [https://pypi.python.org/pypi/ofxclient/](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/ofxclient/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> With PSD2 regulations coming in I think we will see a lot more of this with banks having to open up APIs for merchants and more and more innovative solutions using them. Good work!

</comment><comment><USER34> > Store Access Token in PHP $_SESSION

I just hope my bank never does this.

<comment><USER35> Nope. They just store your 6-8 character password in plaintext behind their huge monolithic Java/.Net/Cobol app.

<comment><USER36> They employ a clever 3-step hashing algorithm, though:

        1. Truncate user's password to 8 characters
        2. Uppercase the entire thing
        3. Convert to EBCDIC

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Another programmer giving off the impression that programming is easy and we shouldn't even get paid for our work.

Thanks, man!

</comment><comment><USER38> IMO Mondo are a proverbial rocket ship. Keep an eye on them, and join them if you're lucky enough.

<comment><USER39> They're a rocket ship IF they can get regulatory approval.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> My government has an API so I can access my data and build services upon.

Now that would be fascinating.</comment>


Michael Arrington vs Jennifer Allen (Case 2:13-cv-00810-JLR) Filed 05/07/13 - <AUTHOR> http://www.scribd.com/doc/140241091/Arrington <comment><USER2> This document, like so many other legal documents, has been scanned in.

I assume this is how it was delivered to and archived by the court, and not just a scribd artifact.

The document was almost certainly produced on a computer, but it is archived as a scanned in document. The downloadable pdf is not searchable, the downloadable txt is useless.

Scanning legal documents encourages errors (the document is tilted), and makes OCR and searching difficult for the average layman consumer of legal documents (that is in many cases, the plaintiffs and defendants) that do not have access to cheap, accurate OCR.

When will it be expected that legal documents archived by a court will be normally available to the public in "machine readable", searchable, full text behind the image, cut-and-paste form?

In my own experience, the ability to use simple, command line based, text searches to hunt through collections of legal documents is invaluable.

<comment><USER3> Having been through the scanning of a large number of personal documents, I found good success in doing very good OCR on printed documents. Further, the software that the scanner comes with can also OCR pdf documents quite nicely.

This also includes mis-registered stuff.

I am about to start playing with tesseract ORC to see how it compares. It is claimed to be very good.

<comment><USER2> I have actually had good success with the IRIS software bundled in with an HP Scanner,

But:

a) It is Windows b) It is a good (in the best sense) example of what is still cripple ware c) It is not available to people that don't purchase a scanner, even though PDFs and legal documents often come via email d) It is slow e) It makes every recipient of that document have to OCR it, as opposed to just teaching/demanding the lawyers and courts to distribute them in their original Word/GoogleDoc/WordPerfect/TextPDF form.

<comment><USER3> I am using the Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner which also has all the parts needed to run very nicely on Mac.

I agree that there is a bit of expense; the time is quite reasonable.

Insofar as

>eaching/demanding the lawyers and courts

good luck with that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> When the news people themselves become the story, at what point do we realize as a society that we have no reason to concern ourselves with it? TechCrunch used to be a great place for tech type news, but then this fellow (founder I suppose) became their main story.

</comment><comment><USER5> Sucks to require a lawsuit to settle a bad breakup. The filing actually includes direct quotations that Arrington contests are defamation which at least means the suit potentially has substance (versus a scare-suit just to stifle Allen's discussion of the relationship).

<comment><USER6> There seems to be quite a bit of substance[1].

> just to stifle Allen's discussion of the relationship

She accused him of multiple rape. That's not a "discussion of the relationship."

[1] [http://uncrunched.com/2013/04/11/jennifer-allen-false- defama...](http://uncrunched.com/2013/04/11/jennifer-allen-false-defamatory/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can't parse anything Ms. Allen writes. There needs to be some sort of textspeak/Twitter babble/missing characters translation after the original statement. Arrington's lawyer does a good job trying to pick up the pieces of her ramblings, but still.

</comment><comment><USER8> Talk about airing ones dirty laundry.

</comment><comment><USER9> And it escalates.</comment>


Managing 10x Engineers – The Wolf - <AUTHOR> https://randsinrepose.com/archives/the-wolf/ <comment><USER2> I asked a question about what to do if your founder is a Wolf here [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23576657](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23576657)</comment>


Firefox 3.0rc1 is now available for download - <AUTHOR> http://en-us.www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.0/whatsnew/

<comment><USER3> I use FF3 Beta 5 and it really is a great browser compared to FF2. Doesn't use up as many resources and is powerful enough to have multiple tabs open, w/o major slow down. Sometimes I have 250 tabs open at the same time and it doesn't crash.

The only thing with it, is it doesn't seem to like old javascript. Any time it goes to a page from the 90s it slows down biiiig time.Sometimes even crashes.

I'll wait a couple of weeks for RC version to be out though, because I hated not being able to use any of the add-ons I had installed when I upgraded to Beta 5. Seriously without adblock the internet is impossible to use I didn't even know the sites I used had so many useless ads taking up so much real estate.

<comment><USER4> 250 tabs? Literally?! _I_ get majorly bogged down when I have more than 10 tabs open (I usually have no more than 4)... And my agility decreases exponentially, not linearly.

<comment><USER5> <http://piro.sakura.ne.jp/xul/_treestyletab.html.en>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's the download page, which curiously isn't linked from the 'what's new' page above (as far as I could tell):

<http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-rc.html>

<comment><USER7> This page is meant to be displayed on first load after the browser is installed, so that's probably why there isn't a link to download. This isn't a promotional page advertising the download itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I just installed it in a separate directory, looked around and decided that I wanted to upgrade to it. uninstalled it, so I could install it on top of my regular install.

it asked if I want to remove all my bookmarks and such during uninstall. I assumed it would delete the new profile only. Apparently it does not.

</comment><comment><USER9> The only thing I'm waiting for is firebug.

I tried that beta version (of firebug) back with firefox 3.0b4 I think - <USER2> it crashed firefox like crazy.

Anyone know if it's better yet?

<comment><USER10> latest version works great.

<comment><USER11> If by "latest version" you mean the 1.2 alpha, which is only accessible from the Firebug website, not addons.mozilla.org. See <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=411814#c60>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Downloaded it and it looks nice. I also appreciate that they seem to have plugged the memory leaks. Wake me when StumbleUpon works with it, though.

</comment><comment><USER13> Looks nice. SearchStatus works, delicious works, all my old stuff got imported, and its a bit faster. I think I'll be staying with firefox 3.

</comment><comment><USER14> Awesome. Been stuck with FF2 at work as the Firefox beta's would crash uncontrollably (but at home, they work great). Time to download!

</comment><comment><USER15> Nice. I hope they get this up on the *buntu repositories soon (I'm running Xubuntu but also have Ubuntu and Kubuntu installed).

</comment><comment><USER16> Stability is great as is performance improvements. I look forward to the final.

</comment><comment><USER17> Been using FF3 since an early beta. One of my fav things is being able to open numerous tabs and instantly go back to any of them without waiting. Every other browser forces you to mercilessly wait.

<comment><USER18> What browser makes you wait? Opera certainly doesn't. I have limited exposure to IE and Safari, but their tabs seem to work just fine as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Now, I'm just waiting for the Memrom optimized build.</comment>


Beyond god and atheism: Why I am a 'possibilian' - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727795.300-beyond-god-and-atheism-why-i-am-a-possibilian.html

<comment><USER2> It's called agnosticism. It's not new.

"...in regard to the Olympic gods, speaking to a purely philosophical audience, I would say that I am an Agnostic. But speaking popularly, I think that all of us would say in regard to those gods that we were Atheists. In regard to the Christian God, I should, I think, take exactly the same line."

-Bertrand Russell

<comment><USER2> Here's a link to that Russell essay by the way. It's a good one.

[http://www.scribd.com/doc/8299499/Am-I-an-Atheist-or-an- Agno...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/8299499/Am-I-an-Atheist-or-an-Agnostic- Bertrand-Russell)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What happened to being a good old agnostic? I think that in attempting to fight against being pigeonholed as either a believer or a denier of god/gods, he lights on the notion that somehow being a better (or real) scientist by being open to possibilities is an alternative. With respect, there's already a reasonable alternative to being either a believer in or denier of god/gods: agnosticism. The open mind stuff just makes you a good scientist.

Edit: Oops, markstanbury beat me to it.

<comment><USER4> I don't think agnosticism can really be called reasonable anymore. We now know so much about the universe that believing in any specific deity, or even just a general sense of the supernatural, seems akin to believing into Russel's teapot. Being atheist and being open minded are not mutually exclusive.

<comment> mike-cardwell I don't quite get agnosticism. It's perfectly reasonable for me to say "Superman doesn't exist" so why isn't it reasonable for me to say "God doesn't exist" ? They're equally sensible statements...

<comment><USER5> It's actually _more_ sensible for you to say "God doesn't exist," because at least it's possible to get two people to agree on exactly who or what Superman is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you ascribe a very low probability to the existence of a god, then I'd say you're justified in just calling yourself an atheist. And vice versa for theists. The big problem I notice among a lot of people who identify as agnostics (or "possibilians", if you prefer) is that they're treating lack of absolute certainty as synonymous with lack of _any_ certainty.

Of _course_ we can't be completely certain. But the same goes for most everything else outside of mathematics, and I usually don't see people being so exaggeratedly careful to withhold judgement like this except on really touchy, emotionally charged subjects like religion. This is a double standard.

<comment><USER7> Probability and religion are not well suited terms to use together, probabilities are for stuff you can measure, religious stuff is usually something you cant measure.

The math would go something like this X is gods existence with given definition of god, Y is all the possibilities where god may or may not exist. Then probability of god is X/Y and you should get somekind of percentage for it.

Example, Let's define god as creator god, plus there is the possibility of no god, wikipedia has 109 different entities for creator god and there is roughly eight(?) different breeds of atheism. So we have 109/(109+8)

We get 93,2% probability of god existing.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Creator_gods>

I'm not really trying to say anything about gods existence. I'm trying to say that don't use math where it's not applicable. To me probability is highly mathematical concept.

<comment><USER6> That's just obvious misuse of probability, and if you made such silly assumptions in a probability class you would be hard pressed to get any partial credit. Who says that all the god-possibilities in Wikipedia are equally likely? You could misapply probability to the proposition that various forms of transportation would come crashing through my wall, and come up with a fairly high probability of some form of automobile crashing through my wall. The fact that you can do math wrong doesn't mean the math doesn't apply.

However, if you see (for example) someone turn into a pillar of salt, and hear a booming voice from the sky proclaiming itself god, then that should make the existence of that god more probable in your estimation. Ditto for cars crashing through walls: if it happened more often, then this evidence should raise your estimate of the probability of suddenly having your wall knocked down by someone's car. This doesn't have to be complicated; it's actually very straightforward.

To you, probability may be a highly mathematical concept that doesn't apply to everything. To me, probability is how we express uncertainty. It's a powerful way of describing the way the universe works, and we ignore or misrepresent it at our own peril.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I like his take on this. I normally describe myself as an atheist but only because I don't believe that any of the religions I've studied are true. But I am open to other possibilities and I think this guy describes that well.

<comment><USER5> Is there anyone outside of a mental institution who _isn't_ open to other possibilities? There has to be something seriously wrong with you if you are willing to state _a priori_ that you will not consider unequivocal evidence of a new phenomenon, should it appear.

<comment><USER8> While it's true that few would explicitly state that, there are certainly people on both sides that feel free to ignore inconvenient evidence.

Not exactly a shocking revelation, but humans aren't purely logic-driven beings.

<comment><USER6> Could you name some inconvenient evidence that people on the atheist side tend to ignore? I'm not claiming that there isn't such evidence, but often when people criticize "people on both sides", they're committing an equivocation fallacy because it sounds wise. I'm curious to see if you did, too.

<comment><USER8> The argument from morality is the first that comes to mind. Few atheists are willing to really embrace the moral nihilism that a materialist philosophy seems to require.

<comment><USER5> _Few atheists are willing to really embrace the moral nihilism that a materialist philosophy seems to require._

My dog does OK with a philosophy of pure materialism, I figure I can, too.

<comment><USER8> Unless your dog is uniquely talented, it is incapable of holding any philosophy, materialist or not.

<comment><USER5> And yet he doesn't kill and eat my family the moment I turn my back. He doesn't need philosophy as a source of morality, and he doesn't need faith... he only needs socialization.

<comment><USER8> I think you're confusing moral nihilism (the philosophical proposition) and moral/immoral behavior. The two are not directly correlated.

<comment><USER5> Perhaps; can you elaborate on the difference? What exactly would be the property of a social animal -- dogs, humans, whatever -- that allows it to restrain its own baser instincts? In humans the term morality is often used to describe this property, but I'll admit I don't know how correct that is.

<comment><USER8> Well, to cite Wikipedia, "Moral nihilism is the meta-ethical view that nothing is moral or immoral."

The primary opposing viewpoint is moral realism, which holds that statements like "Intentionally killing an innocent person is immoral" are both meaningful and capable of being evaluated as a truth claim.

In general, I believe the ability of a social animal to restrain "baser" instincts would be referred to as social cooperation. For humans, a moral realist would say that while morality is closely related, it also can't be reduced to _merely_ social cooperation.

<comment><USER5> _For humans, a moral realist would say that while morality is closely related, it also can't be reduced to merely social cooperation._

Sure, I'd buy that. But I will also stand by my assertion that what you're calling "social cooperation" is _sufficient_ for a workable morality to emerge. At no point is there a necessity for religion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Atheism is in response to theism. One can be a believer and be agnostic, likewise you can be atheist and agnostic as well.

The existence of god is as yet unverifiable in the same way the existence of Bilbo Baggins is unverifiable. So what?

</comment><comment><USER10> I think this is a good example of meta-contrarianism. (see hn discussion/link at: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1730731>).</comment>


Julius Caesar's Last Breath - <AUTHOR> http://econ161.berkeley.edu/movable_type/archives/001392.html

<comment><USER2> That's great, but one problem: molecules don't stay molecules over two thousand years. Certainly not oxygen, which is extremely chemically active. N2 somewhat less so (but <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_cycle>), but the chances of any particular nitrogen molecule retaining its identity over two thousand years is incredibly low.

Redo this calculation with atoms, and I might believe you. But it'll need to be a bit more complicated, since I don't think the amount of oxygen and nitrogen getting sequestered in the ocean or the soil is actually "trivial" as stated.

<comment><USER3> As long as there is some component of air that stays the same: both in identity and proportion, the calculation should hold. Is there such a component?

Simplifying assumptions, even those seemingly false, are common in fun math problems. The point is just that, the math. I'm sure the traveling salesman had issues to think about other than the classic math of the problem.

Just for my information, any references to strengthen your last statement?

<comment><USER2> _As long as there is some component of air that stays the same: both in identity and proportion, the calculation should hold. Is there such a component?_

Atoms, as long as the amount being sequestered in the water or the soil isn't significant. Oxygen is probably a write-off, since there's far more oxygen atoms in the oceans than in the atmosphere, and since O_2 to H_2O is part of animal respiration. Nitrogen, perhaps, might be more constant, but honestly I just don't know enough about the nitrogen cycle to have a good idea.

Ah, but the third most common component of the air is argon, which is deliciously chemically inactive. You could at least compute the probability that you're breathing in some of Caesar's argon.

 _Simplifying assumptions, even those seemingly false, are common in fun math problems. The point is just that, the math. I'm sure the traveling salesman had issues to think about other than the classic math of the problem._

Of course. And the other thing that's common in fun math problems is that as soon as you're done someone's gonna say "That's great, but..." and point out something you've ignored. It's all part of the game, and I'm just playing along, not being critical.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a _really_ cute little Fermi calculation, and so I hesitate to say this...

(I also hesitate because it will kick off a storm of People on the Internet Arguing about Physics...)

but this is just wrong. It is irreparably wrong. The idea that a given oxygen molecule (or an oxygen atom, or an electron) in BCE 44 can be identified with an oxygen molecule (etc.) in the present day runs fundamentally counter to the way the universe works.

Put it this way. In python, we have mutable variables, which have identity. so we can say

>>> a=b=[]

>>> c=[]

>>> a is b

True

>>> a is c

False

>>> a.append(5)

>>> a, b, c

([5],[5],[])

Starting out, a and b are _the same_ empty list, and c is a _different_ empty list. It seems naively that we could say the same of particles or atoms. That though we couldn't see it, or hope to trace its history, there existed some electron in 44 BCE that "was the same electron as" some electron today. But that is not how the universe is _implemented_. Every electron is the same as every other electron. Think immutable, not mutable variables. The state in 44 BCE is not "electron #4892489 is here, and electron #4892490 is there", it is "there exist electrons here, here, here (etc.)" (and they have thus-and-such spins, momenta, etc. etc.)

Edit: <http://lesswrong.com/lw/pl/no_individual_particles/>

<comment><USER5> While that is an useful idea, I don't see how it applies to something as large as a molecule. Something that size does not coalesce, does not overlap. You can bombard it with light and track its progress indefinitely. It won't have the 'same' electrons at the end of the day but those are no more than the sails on our ship of Theseus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What is more mathematically interesting about this is that if the "assumptions" are off by a factor of 10 or so (say, the atmosphere actually has more like 10^45 molecules instead of 10^44, and a breath contains 1x10^22 molecules, not 2x10^22), the result is reversed:

[1-10^-23]^[10^22] ~ [e^(10^-23)x(10^22)] = e^(0.1) ~ 0.9

-> 90% chance that any given breath contains none of Caesar's last.

<comment><USER7> The atmosphere numbers seem correct: [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=mass+air+earth+%2F+mass...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=mass+air+earth+%2F+mass+nitrogen)

The breath numbers seem correct as well: [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=volume+breath+human+*+d...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=volume+breath+human+*+density+air+%2F+mass+nitrogen)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This assumption alone holds OP's argument from folding:

> To determine the probability of not just one thing but of a whole bunch of > things that are causally unconnected happening together, we multiply the > individual probabilities

You can multiply probabilities of individual events only if you know they are independent, i.e. their correlation is zero (as opposed to anything involving causation). I am not convinced that the molecules that were once in one place would get distributed to zero correlation even after 2000+ years. Well, this at least requires an analysis on its own.

</comment><comment><USER9> Anyone liking this sort of thing should have a look at _A Mathematicians Miscellany_ by Littlewood [1]. It is an exceptionally enjoyable collection of mathematical anecdotes and some such. It covers Caesar's Last Breath topic, but it also goes over the probabilities of highly unlikely events such as an upright drumstick not falling over during a long train ride.

[1] <http://www.archive.org/details/mathematiciansmi033496mbp>

</comment><comment><USER10> Unfortunately similar calculations apply to Hitler's urine.

</comment><comment><USER11> This puzzle was printed in college application brochure for (I think it was) Princeton in the 1990s. It was an example of the stimulating and irrelevant academic university culture, or something like this.

<comment><USER12> I think you probably mean 'irreverant'...</comment></comment>


Taiwan bucks world trend to be No. 1 in semiconductor equipment spending - <AUTHOR> http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2019/06/05/2003716336 <comment><USER2> New backend house company opening, TSMC fab 18 and upgrades at few minor fabbers.

If you take fab 18 and ardentec away, you will see that Taiwan did not reverse the trend, and semi spend keeps going down industry wide for 4th year straight.

<comment><USER3> Newer nodes are hellishly expensive to develop, ballooning in cost over previous nodes. Global Foundries and most others are not working on more advanced nodes than 14nm, leaving just TSMC & Samsung with 7nm fabs. Intel has 10nm kinda crappily working, turning out low end chips that are mostly dead silicon (due to process issues).

We're definitely hitting a silicon bottleneck, the physical barriers are very real, and exceedingly costly to attempt to work around. AMD's strategy of using 14nm chiplets for components that don't scale down well (eg: analog interfaces, DRAM, etc) is likely to become much more common.

<comment><USER4> Global Foundries has a 12nm for most of the new AMD CPUs.[1] I've heard the difference between processes at different companies is just marketing talk but I'll let someone knowledgeable chime in.

[1][https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/amd/microarchitectures/zen%2B](https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/amd/microarchitectures/zen%2B)

<comment><USER5> It's more about future developments, and GF seems to have given up on that front: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17854065](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17854065)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> aside: Taipei Times please get a tls site.

<comment><USER7> This may have something to do to with making sure mainland doesn't block them.

<comment><USER8> They don't seem to stricly rely on the mainland for connectivity, if you look at [https://www.submarinecablemap.com/](https://www.submarinecablemap.com/)

Although, after a quick check, my own access route seems to touch on Hong Kong (EU -> US -> Pacific).

<comment><USER7> Good analysis! I was thinking more about being accessible to mainland residents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> TSMC is selling chips to Huawei under war pressure of the Chinese government. TSMC should stop the supply.

<comment><USER10> I'm just curious why you think a Taiwanese company should stop selling to a Chinese company based on statement/policy of a foreign country?

It is obviously in their best financial interest to sell to Huawei. Why should they stop?

<comment><USER11> Because all this "national security" is really about trade not national security. Trump declared national security on steel, cars and pretty much any important industry that US didn't lead.

<comment><USER12> Incorrect. While the Trump administration is more enthusiastic about aggressive intervention in commerce in general, the recent sanctions are the culmination of over a decade of bad behavior by Huawei, recognized by many countries:

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

<comment><USER11> How were the mini-vans from Canada a national security threat?

As far as technology is concerned US is using its corporations(Apple, Cisco, microsoft etc) for espionage as well so there is nothing new here.

<comment><USER13> I think the assertion is that US has lost core competency at things like steel and cars, so by making it harder to bring in mini-vans from Canada or whatever, they're proposing a magic rebirth of those industries in country. Those are the same competencies we'd need if we wanted to build tanks or battleships or bombers for another assault on Normandy. Which we don't, that was important 80 years ago but not now.

The reality of course is probably more like pandering to steel and auto workers.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Instagram is acquired by Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://blog.instagram.com/post/20785013897/instagram-facebook <comment><USER2> Can someone please tell me how Instagram's actual content is worth anything? We're talking about photo-filtered cell phone camera shots here. Facebook doesn't need a user acquisition ploy.

I guess maybe it's a move to keep users in Facebook, but I'd be willing to bet a million bucks that almost everyone is discovering Instagram content via Facebook or Twitter.

Seems like mostly a huge waste of cash.

<comment><USER3> IMO Instagram had a huge potential to be the next big social network. I think Mark noticed it too and bought before it became too big.

<comment><USER2> You might be right that was their thinking, but it's a long trek from photo sharing to ubiquitous social network.

<comment><USER4> Photo sharing is something that everyone is trying desperately to solve. When I open the G+ app on my iPhone it wants to upload all the new photos it can find on the phone. I would imagine the Facebook app does the same thing, but I don't know. The OS has cloud storage for photos baked in. When I plug the phone into my computer, Dropbox wants to automatically find and upload the photos.

Everyone is trying to get into this, and for good reason, I think.

My family is filled with people that always have access to a camera and to the internet via their phone. We're spread out geographically and don't get to see each other very often. There is a HUGE opportunity to bring us closer together that would be greatly valuable to us. I would love it if part of our daily routine included looking at all of the photos anyone in the family has taken in the last day.

There are lots of solutions for us to do this, but for whatever reason, nothing has taken hold. Maybe everything is too manual, or maybe social networks are still focused too much on the browser and not enough on mobile. But for whatever reason, it's not happening for us. I suspect we are not alone and I think the explosion of people trying to get me to buy into putting my photos on their free service is indicative of this.

<comment><USER5> > _Photo sharing is something that everyone is trying desperately to solve._

Honestly - is this not a solved problem? I have a hard enough time _choosing_ what service to use to share pictures on, there's not exactly a dearth of services in this space.

<comment><USER4> It's something everyone knows how to do from a technology standpoint, which is why so many services are trying to do it. But from a user experience standpoint I don't see anyone really nailing it. And I think for this you really want to nail it even for people who are not very good at all at using technology.

<comment><USER6> I think the problem stems from that no one actually have any pictures they want to share on a daily basis (exception might be pictures of babies). Instagram solved it by inventing shareable pictures of nothing.

While I can appreciate the idea of a "daily picture" (or whatever) in a more diary-form this is a completely different beast than a family photo / vacation photo / group activity photo etc., such photos only get better with time where an instagram is useless a social-minute after it was shot.

<comment><USER7> I've got the photos-that-get-better-with-time problem nailed, but I don't think it can be as viral as daily-nothing apps. Nostalgia tends to be more individual; daily-nothing is entirely social.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Sound of a good app flushing down the toilet_

Uninstalled. Congrats to founders though, well executed, guys.

<comment><USER9> Why? Just on principal that as soon as a big company buys a little company, the product will inevitably get worse?

Nothing has changed for the end user yet, has it?

<comment><USER10> Yes. The instant Facebook bought them, user trust went out the window. There is active, intense, well-founded mistrust by users regarding Facebook's ability or desire to protect user privacy in any way.

Indeed, anyone paying attention can see that Facebook actively and systematically attacks user privacy. Instagram just became part of that.

So yes, something has changed.

<comment><USER11> What exactly is it about Instagram that requires excellent user privacy protection? It's twitter for photos.

It never ceases to amaze me how much lip service people pay to the need for privacy on social networks that are fundamentally based on the premise of broadcasting your private life to a fairly large audience. If you REALLY don't want that photo of the sunset that you took to be seen by the wrong person, why post it online in the first place?

<comment><USER10> I see the following flaws in your comment:

1) Twitter is inherently much more public than Instagram. 2) "to a fairly large audience" is your personal assumption. Not all people use social media that way. 3) Photo of a sunset? That sounds like your being obtuse. Obviously many photos are much more personal than a sunset. 4) To be seen "by the wrong person"? Again, seems obtuse to me. The larger concern is the photo being permanently stored by the wrong corporation(s), to the eternal detriment of user privacy. 5) You are assuming that the user him/herself posts all photos of a given user. That is obviously not the case. Your photos, or photos picturing you, can be posted by others as well.

Suffice it to say, many users who do enjoy social media nevertheless do not want Facebook using everything they post for the next 25 years for marketing purposes. They don't want that content sold to other corporations, either. And there are many other possible legitimate privacy concerns.

<comment><USER12> Seems like you have your own "personal assumption as well".

It all depends on which "circle" or "bubbles" we live in.

In my mind, your arguments are flawed: my friends shared everything. My friends tweet their instagram food pictures. My friends posted their instagram sunset pictures on Facebook (seriously, I'm not joking).

Many of my friends and their friends enjoy social media and use Facebook heavily almost for everything including selling dresses, cupcakes, foods, services, shoes, lingeries, etc.

I'm not done yet: some of my female friends do have conversation about lingeries that they were tagged to on Facebook in Facebook.

Based on my "bubble", your "bubble" is the minority: a very small group of people who seem to be overly concerned with nothing.

It's probably cultural.

<comment><USER13> "your arguments are flawed: my friends shared everything"

(1) that doesn't respond to his argument.

(2) no they didn't share _everything_. Presumably they shared what they wanted to.

And here's the problem with Facebook, explicitly: If you upload something to facebook by mistake and it's something you didn't want to share, Facebook winks and says "ok we deleted it" but this has been shown false too many times for users to trust that they actually have control over their own content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The front page of HN is a brilliant example of why you should use the active voice when the passive is unnecessary. 403 points (active) vs. 150 points (passive).

Great A&B testing, guys.

<comment><AUTHOR> No worries ;) To be fair the facebook announcement was posted 10 minutes prior to the instagram.com post and so generated discussion quicker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> For those of you that are looking for alternatives now:

[http://lifehacker.com/5899690/dont-bother-with-instagram- her...](http://lifehacker.com/5899690/dont-bother-with-instagram-here-are- five-better-alternatives-for-android)

</comment><comment><USER16> I know they're saying they won't do another acquisition like this, but why not Pinterest too? It would make more sense to me than Instagram.

[http://www.privco.com/research/top-5-reasons-facebook- should...](http://www.privco.com/research/top-5-reasons-facebook-should- acquire-pinterest-and-quickly)

</comment><comment><USER3> After only one week using Instagram for Android it was already my favorite network. Congrats for the Instagram team, but I cant deny that I just lost much of my sympathy for the network, since I can´t stand the way that Facebook handles privacy anymore.

</comment><comment><USER17> Well done to the guys at Instagram, they've accomplished a lot in 2 years I think.

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely. It'll be interesting to see how Facebook take Instagram forward, and how features from Instagram will make there way into Facebook's photo product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This Wired article[1] states that the first co-founder owned 40% of the company and the second co-founder owned 10% of the company at the time of acquisition.

This might suggest they started out with an 80/20 split.

Why? How did that split come about?

[1] [http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/04/facebook-buys- instagr...](http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/04/facebook-buys-instagram/)

<comment><USER19> Kevin Systrom went all in at an earlier point. Discussed in more detail by the two of them here: <http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2745> (video)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> If photo filters are worth this much, I'm in the wrong business.

<comment><USER21> 30,000,000 people using _anything_ has got to be worth at least 9 figures.

<comment><USER22> $33 per user? That's optimistic.

<comment><USER23> $33 per user could make sense if this was a defensive acquisition as other HNers have suggested.

If G+ bought Instagram and it made enough of a difference in G+ activity to make G+ competitive with Facebook, I could see how it could knock $1 billion or more off Facebook's IPO price.

Remember, it's 30 million of the more active social network users. These are the same type of core users that Facebook had back in its early days that helped attract the other 750 million users it has.

<comment><USER24> My app has 7 users. Can I haz $200?

<comment><USER25> Is Google likely to acquire you? If they do, is it likely the acquisition will lower Facebook's IPO price?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Oh crap.... Facebook got their dirty hands on this one. :(

</comment><comment><USER27> I wonder if Instagram has any patents that can be used in Facebook's patent war with Yahoo.

As a mobile social network, Instagram has no equal in the photo category.

It would be foolish to think that after a year and half a tech company with vc backing would not have at least 5 solid patents that could be used for defensive purposes.

Even if Instagram has patents that would in some way affect any yahoo holdings (specifically flickr), I don't see a $1 Billion value.

<comment><USER28> They have only been around for 2 years so they certainly have not been granted any patents. It is very unlikely they have even filed for any patents. Most startups will only file patents in their first few years if patents are a critical part of defending their business. Patents take a lot of time & money with very little payoff (they mainly protect you from being sued). It is not a good investment of a startups resources to be filing patents unless the patents are critical to the success of the business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I think it is ridiculous. No need for user base, no need for technology. Even no serious business model. Anything I missed?

</comment><comment><USER30> Does anyone know if Instagram will require facebook credentials to log in now? One major reason I have enjoyed Instagram is that it's a separate network away from facebook etc.

</comment><comment><USER31> The big question is for how much?

<comment><USER17> One billion dollars. Seriously.

<comment><USER32> I don't want to live on this planet anymore

<comment><USER33> Ha... Want to get more depressed? Alexa reports that Instagram is ranked as the 6,534th most popular site on the Internet. Compete.com said it had 331,529 users last month. Seriously, what the heck? What kind of reality distortion field did they have to come up with to convince the Facebook guys that this was worth $1 billion dollars?

<comment><USER34> What's Zynga.com ranked at?

<comment><USER33> 740

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Congrats guys. This is really exciting stuff!

<comment><USER35> The last exciting acquisition I remember is Mint. One of those "must work hard" events.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> And now google will notice that it needs decent photo integration on plus and do more innovation there than instagram ever dreamed.

or it will stagnate everything in the market like youtube did to video (and is slowly trying to repair recently).

</comment><comment><USER37> Just get deja mi instead, way better app anyways!

</comment><comment><USER38> F*ck Facebook... evil corporation of evil. Harbinger of a world without privacy, it dooms us all.

<comment><USER39> Although I agree, this goes without saying.</comment></comment>