Man Allegedly Used Change of Address Form to Move UPS Headquarters - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/10/610102872/man-allegedly-used-change-of-address-form-to-move-ups-headquarters-to-his-apartm <comment><USER2> > "Henderson-Spruce did not identify himself on the one-page form. At first, > the initials 'HS' were written on the signature line, but the initials were > then scratched out and replaced with 'UPS,' according to the charges"

Come on, this guy is a genius. The fact he managed to pull it off by literally using cartoon-level forgery is nothing but remarkable.

<comment><USER3> If he gets a reduced sentence he should be a prime prospect for security analysis/social engineering consulting when he gets out.

<comment><USER4> I think you're giving him too much credit here... I have a feeling it has a lot more to do with luck, chutzpah, and USPS incompetence.

<comment><USER5> Note they're separate things, you'd almost wonder if USPS was intentionally messing up UPS. Probably not, but that's be nefarious lol.

<comment><USER6> excellent point, you would make a great defense lawyer

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The change of address form at USPS is laughably unsecure. All it takes is $1 and anyone can write any address and forward all the mail for 1 year to any other address. There is no verification of ID and the only warning you get is a post card at the original address telling you the mail is being forwarded but by then it is already too late as mail is already being routed to the new address. Even if you called immediately to stop it some of your mail would end up at the new address

<comment><USER8> Postal mail is insecure yet companies and services like to rely on it as the authoritative form of notice and communication. That and also giving out info over the telephone.

On one hand we have PCI-compliance, SSL encryption, and on the other hand we have a phone call (unecrypted, easily tappable anywhere along the thousands of miles of wire) where companies expect to call me and assume it's secure enough for me to 1) know that it's definitively them and 2) not have some support agent steal my credit card information/private information.

<comment><USER9> This drives me mad. My health insurance company tries to call me on a regular basis, but because they have to verify they're speaking with me for HIPAA, they ask for the last 4 of my social.

To which I reply "You called me. I don't know that you are who you say you are. I'm not giving you anything." And hang up. What moron thought this was a good idea?

<comment><USER10> Just the last four? You're lucky.

One time my own bank scammed me into giving them my full seven digit SSN over the phone when _they_ called _me_. And all they had to do was ask me for it!

The worst part was that I fell for it. Of course, no harm done, because it really was my bank, but what an idiot I was.

At least I knew better when the Windows Support people started calling me a year later!

<comment><USER11> 7 digits? It's 3+2+4=9 digits in the US.

<comment><USER10> Thus proving that I can't count past seven!

You've seen off by one errors, this is twice as bad.

<comment><USER12> Would have been funnier if you said "thrice"

<comment><USER13> Which would be three quarters as bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I would /really/ like for national ID numbers to be public, and usable //as// 'addresses' for sent items. The owner of such a national ID address could update their preferred physical location (preferably also have different delivery locations and instructions for mail / packages / 'legal documents'). Maybe even electronic delivery addresses as well.

I think the best way of preventing abuse for such a system would be to include a lookup fee for it's use (part of normal postage for mailed items).

<comment><USER15> In Denmark we have electronic national ID with one-time tokens on a small piece of paper.

You can use for: government interaction, banks, utilities, health records, and lots of other things.

They also made a digital secure mailbox, where you can receive PDFs from government, banks, utilities, doctors, etc. You can also send replies.

It sucks that all of this is point-and-click web apps without a standardized API. I'm sure other countries have similar things, but most implementations are probably snowflakes.

Whereas email is universally integrated everywhere, it's not trusted for personal sensitive information.

I hope one day secure webauthn and secure email will replace all these snowflakes. But as much as I hate to admit it, the non-standard walked gardens does do a better job, with higher security than the old paper world ever did.

<comment><USER16> > They also made a digital secure mailbox, where you can receive PDFs from > government, banks, utilities, doctors, etc. You can also send replies.

Does that mean one has to constantly monitor this mailbox and is liable if something is left unanswered?

<comment><USER15> Yes! This sucks... You can get text or email notifications.

Like I said, I hate these systems with passion, but as much as I hate to admit it they are more secure than paper ever was. Probably also more convenient, as things moving fast compared to snailmail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The article doesn't mention, but the USPS no longer allows you to submit a change of address from a commercial address. I tried to do this last September when my business moved and I received a letter from the USPS denying my request. This included any personal mail that was being sent to the commercial address even if it didn't have my business name.

I am not sure when the above restriction went into effect. It appears the crime mentioned in the article was in 2016, so perhaps it is recent.

<comment><USER18> This happened to me, too. I lived in a hotel, moved out, and was unable to forward my mail. My hotel room was considered to be a commercial address. I think this was in 2011.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> When I was young I "hacked" the USPS to send free mail by putting the return address as the address I wanted to send to and leaving the actual address blank or as some invalid address. Then I would deposit the letter somewhere without a stamp and it would be sent across the country for free (but very slowly).

Was this actually a felony?

<comment><USER20> Yes, and a federal one.

<comment><USER19> So what would I be looking at, prison time?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> From the article

> Henderson-Spruce now faces federal charges of mail theft, which carries a > maximum sentence of five years, and mail fraud, which can be up to 20.

While a lot of current government processes aren't secure, they come with pretty hefty penalties that dissuade most people from messing around with them.

<comment><USER22> Same with banks/credit card companies. Credit cards are hilariously insecure, but you'll get sued/prosecuted out the wazoo if you steal someone's info and make fraudulent charges.

<comment><USER23> I would hope so but im not 100% sure - the reason is because I've had a credit card been used fraudulently in the past and I got a notification about it very quickly so could alert the bank and merchants - but the things they bought would be so easy to track to someone - e.g. Pizza delivered, online clothing sent to a house.

<comment><USER24> Pizza delivery was probably done to check if the card works and also throw the trail off, and the online clothing sent to a house was probably a shipping drop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is an amusing story, but how in the world could he have expected to get away with this scheme?

<comment><USER26> As an American entrepreneur, he could have protected this revenue stream with a consulting agreement with Essential Consultants LLC. Currently this government program is in a closed beta, AFAIK.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Somewhat related to this, you can submit an "informed delivery" for any address; and they will send you photos of every piece of mail being sent to that address. For free!

I found this out on accident when I forwarded my mail somewhere else while I was traveling and they prompted me to sign up. I immediately started receiving emails with photos of all the mail going to this address.

<comment><USER28> I signed up for it for my apartment... and starting getting e-mails with images of the envelope for every single piece of mail for _every resident of the whole building_ to me.

Huge privacy fail. (And yes, the USPS knows about each individual apartment, delivering mail into a separate USPS box per apartment...)

<comment><USER29> I was trying it out and it seems to be sort of the inverse for me - it showed only one piece of mail on a day when there were several.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Wait... how did he manage to cash checks that were made out to UPS? Doesn't the bank verify the beneficiary when cashing a check?

<comment><USER31> This was the most concerning thing to me too. How do cheques in the US work in terms of verification?

<comment><USER32> There is essentially none. You could write a check out to "Mickey Mouse" and deposit it into your bank account and I doubt anyone would notice.

If there is any verification, it occurs after the fact when someone complains that a payment got lost. Then the banks start looking to see what happened.

<comment><USER33> That seems like something they should probably fix

<comment><USER32> You would normally think so, but they (the banks) likely have a different viewpoint. They could either, for deposits into accounts in the bank:

1) slow down every deposit by an order of magnitude or more in order to perform careful identity verification, when the vast majority are correct and honest

or

2) expend effort, afterward, cleaning up, the very few that are doing something illegal using the records they keep on what happened, and the fact that they can simply reverse the transactions when they do find something amiss.

For them, the cost of #2 is likely still lower than the costs of #1.

Now, the situation is different if you go in with a check and try to negotiate it for cash in hand right then and there. They will do the full identity verification at that time, massively slowing down your one-time action of converting a check into US Dollars in your pocket. This of course makes sense, there is no way to reverse a transaction that involves handing someone a stack of fifty dollar bills that they stick in their pocket. But in this case, just the one individual that did need to be triple checked before the action completed had their time extended by the verification process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> "what we need, is a computer network, because this kind of over-the-counter social engineering attack would _never_ work online"

oh. hang on...

</comment><comment><USER35> To request a new social security card online, it takes your credit report information.

Thanks, Equifax data breach.

Good news: the SSA will only send your new card to your current address as reported in your credit report.

Thanks, USPS.

So, in summary, sounds like getting someone else's social security card is pretty easy. Admittedly there'll be a nifty paper trail, but I'm sure that's solvable too.

</comment><comment> Paul-ish I've had a similar issue where a stranger put a hold on the mail to my house. Took me a while to figure out, and I'm still not sure why it happened. If I had been expecting critical mail such as bills, things could have gone worse than they did. Fortunately it just delayed some packages and spam.

<comment><USER36> About 20 years ago I had the bright idea of saving trips to the pharmacy by having them mail me my medicine. After it was a week late, I noticed that I hadn't been getting any other mail for a week, either. I went to the post office and learned that my mail was on a vacation hold. Another tenant living in my small building had filed a legitimate hold, and the P.O. decided that it applied to the whole building, instead of just his unit. That was the last time I entrusted anything important to the USPS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> UPS should play this by sending the guy a package, addressed to UPS, at his jail cell, thanking him for the service he provided them.

Pretty funny way to go to jail.

</comment><comment><USER38> I just CTRL+F'ed and am pleasantly surprised that no one has blah-blah- blockchained in this thread. Perhaps we've turned a corner.

</comment><comment><USER39> A lot of government services have no security. Most of the time they require you to mail things in and rely on the fact that its a federal felony of mail fraud if you attempt to game them.

</comment><comment><USER6> I see a small business opportunity hear offering a service of sending weekly letters to a person's postal address just so they can be assured that their address hasn't been changed.

<comment><USER40> this reminds me of this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16867696](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16867696)

apparently that is a service people offer on the dark net

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> If it was seriously this easy to pull off, perhaps the real guilty parties here are the USPS workers who let this happen unchecked.

</comment><comment><USER42> How did he cash all the checks???

<comment><USER8> You just take it to the bank. One time my friend wrote the amount in the name field and the name in the amount field and they still cashed it. They did contact me about a week later, but by that time I could have just walked away with the cash.

<comment><USER43> You're going to need some kind of ID to cash a large amount of checks. (Sure, it could be fake ID)

<comment><USER44> He probably just put it in the ATM, deposited it to his account. Eventually someone will notice, of course... but it will take weeks, longer than it takes for him to cash out his accounts.

<comment><USER32> If you are depositing into your own account you could even take it to a human teller and likely get it deposited without so much as a raised eyebrow.

Of course, depositing it into your own account creates a "paper trail" that will eventually lead to some law enforcement officer discussing your activities with you at some time in the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Laughable that he could do this!

</comment><comment><USER46> I find it hard to believe that the post office would actually start forwarding somebody's mail.

<comment><USER47> That's... literally what the form is for.

<comment><USER46> It just hasn't been my experience that they actually do it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Now that's some tenacity!

</comment><comment><USER49> The unionized idiots that allowed this should also be investigated. I'm a little surprised this -could- be pulled off, I think it'd be worthwhile to check for inside help.

Then again, maybe the USPS is in fact, just that incompetent

</comment><comment><USER50> This is so dumb. You cant be arsed to create a more secure form of this process so you made it illegal. All he did was fill out the paperwork lol.

<comment><USER51> Being illegal is what makes it secure.</comment></comment>


What kind of jobs do software engineers who earn $500k per year do? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/What-kind-of-jobs-do-software-engineers-who-earn-500k-per-year-do

<comment><USER2> Working on some complex algo trading software..perhaps :)</comment>


Mondelez cuts ties with 12 palm oil suppliers, citing deforestation - <AUTHOR> https://www.supplychaindive.com/news/mondelez-cuts-ties-12-palm-oil-suppliers-deforestation/542100/ <comment><USER2> This is really great. I switched off products that use palm oil a while back, but I always feel so isolated when making changes like this. When a giant company does it, that has real impact. Thanks to the people out there that are making this sort of thing happen -- here's to hoping real good comes out of this.

<comment><USER3> When you buy, for example, soap, what ingredients do you look for instead?

I avoid palm oil in foods for the simple reason I don't consider anything made with palm oil to be a "whole" food. But I've never known what to do about other products like soap.

P.S. To bystanders, you may think your soaps don't contain palm oil. Check for anything like "lauryl sulfate". That's (probably) palm oil.

<comment><USER4> Soap is really tricky. The realistic alternatives at a commercial scale are coconut oil (but coconuts take twice the land to grow, compared to palm kernels) or animal fat (which you may not want in your soap). Sustainably sourced palm oil is probably the best option for soap making.

<comment><USER5> Also olive oil.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For reference Mondelez makes Oreos, Nilla Wafers, ChipsAhoy cookies, Ritz crackers and many others ([https://www.mondelezinternational.com/brand- family](https://www.mondelezinternational.com/brand-family))

<comment><USER7> It's basically the cookies/chocolate-division of Kraft foods, correct?

<comment><USER8> Yes, Mondelez bought them back in 2012.

<comment><USER9> Correction: Mondelez is a spin off from Kraft. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondelez_International](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondelez_International)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So are they just cutting ties with suppliers that are actively sawing down rainforests? How about suppliers that have already destroyed huge swathes of it but aren't currently expanding their plantations, surely they don't deserve Mondelez's business if this isn't just a PR stunt?

<comment><USER11> If you want it to keep going, support Greenpeace.

<comment><USER12> Oh the "nuclear power is bad let's keep using non-renewable fuels" greenpeace? No, thanks

<comment><USER13> I'd say the lesser evil of these two is the one that can be switched off faster and doesn't any extremely long lasting side effects even if it's less green "right now". There are various alternatives to nuclear power that are getting better quickly and will get only more popular as fossil fuels get less attractive.

<comment><USER14> So you're saying atmospheric CO2 is not an extremely long-lasting side effect?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Really impressive stuff coming out of the palm oil activism front recently. A series of victories in only a few days - a rare thing indeed in the environmental world

<comment> saiya-jin Great to see it indeed - but I don't get why now and not earlier. Deforestation of biggest and oldest rain forests due to this is known at least for last 10 years, probably more (that's when I heard about it the first time, with all the controversy that surrounds EU subsidizing this due to bio fuels).

I've been to Borneo 2 years ago, the views all over Malaysian parts of it (and actual Malaysia mainland too, you see it from plane when landing in Kuala Lumpur very clearly) were extremely depressing to me - rows and rows of palm trees in perfect grid where you expect true chaotic wilderness, and basically no other plants around it, just bare soil. That put a pretty sour taste to otherwise beautiful vacation, not sure if I want to visit that country again

<comment><USER16> "Great to see it indeed - but I don't get why now and not earlier. "

There was a story posted earlier this week about orangutan populations on decline due to Cadbury using Palm Oil.

This story made me rather angry, as they are just trying to live and we need to make sure they can.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Related: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdpspllWI2o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdpspllWI2o) an ad Iceland(company) created to counter palm oil usage.

<comment><USER17> Very sadly this ad has just been banned in the UK. The UK regulator's statement [0] said that the criteria for banning it was that it was "An advertisement which is inserted by or on behalf of a body whose objects are wholly or mainly of a political nature." Greenpeace are the body in question who created the video and have apparently been screening it on their website. Iceland (the retail organisation not the country) would have been showing it on their behalf as their Christmas ad, where I think it could have been very effective in nudging public opinion.

[0] [https://www.clearcast.co.uk/press/iceland- advert/](https://www.clearcast.co.uk/press/iceland-advert/)

<comment><USER18> I'm not sure I'd call it 'very sad'. We have very strict rules about political advertising in the UK, and I'm pleased that they get upheld.

In any case, the ad seems to be having no trouble reaching people.

<comment><USER19> It's not political, it's an appeal to morality. Just like ads to support e.g. children's hospitals, which I see all the time on UK TV. Banning this ad is highly hypocritical.

<comment><USER20> Morality is a central part of politics though. We like to think that the environment can be scientific and apolitical. But that is not the case. Caring about the rainforest or whatever is a political choice. We don't _have_ to do anything. And environmental politics is always about projecting that morality onto other people who may not agree with you. That is why it is necessary to observe the niceties of democratic society. And really the politicisation of these kind of issues ia better than apathy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Western boycotts don't affect the palm oil market much because most of the world's palm oil is consumed by India where it is prized for its cheapness, and where sustainability concerns are dismissed as a western luxury.

<comment><USER22> Could you cite a source for that? India's use of palm oil is at about 15% from what I can find.[0] It's a big number, but not as big as "most" suggests.

Moreover, the same source lists that about 95% is used as edible oil. In a country with high poverty, to claim "sustainability concerns are dismissed as a western luxury" is just a statement of fact. If you don't know where your next meal is coming from, it is hard to care for orangutans dying in another country. This is not an excuse for apathy, it is just human nature.

[0] [https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable- business/2015/aug/10...](https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable- business/2015/aug/10/india-palm-oil-sustainability-deforestation-unilever- greenpeace)

<comment><USER23> I'd be interested in seeing a source for this too. I happen to have a lot of Indian friends, and I'm a big foodie, so we talk about food a lot. Ghee seems to be the main cooking fat that's used (or coconut oil in the south), although just like we in the West were told to switch away from butter "because health reasons", Indians are told ghee is bad. Rapeseed oil ("canola" for the merkin) seems to be the main one, and Mustard oil gets used quite often too.

<comment><USER24> _( "canola" for the merkin)_

"Canola" is Canadian in origin. In fact, the "Can" in "canola" _means_ Canada.

<comment><USER23> Huh, I didn't know that, thanks for the tidbit!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I make and sell handmade soap with palm oil, among other oils. Unfortunately, palm is a special oil, and palmitic acid is an important part of the oil comp to produce a good bar. The only substitute is lard. While I don't mind using soap made from lard, it has a stigma in the marketplace (i.e. non-vegan, gross).

<comment><USER26> You can make handmade soaps with olive oil, too. So you don't have to cut any trees. Olive trees are good for environment, too.

<comment><USER27> You can make soap with lot of different oils. But different oils make different soaps. for instance a soap made exclusively with sunflower oil will be very soft and not bubbly, a soap made from coconut oil will be the exact contrary.

<comment><USER25> Yes, exactly. Handmade soaps are rarely made from a single oil. I use a blend of palm, coconut, avocado, and castor. What oils you use and what percentage each oil represents in the composition, determines the base properties of the soap. I experimented with many compositions to get to my current recipe that I really like.

<comment><USER28> Hope you're not offended, but it sounds like you simply don't care enough about this to make a change. There is a definitely a way to source from sustainable producers and/or change the recipe, but it will come at a cost. This is true in many businesses.

<comment><USER19> I think the unsustainable part is increasing consumerism. From this thread I gathered that palm oil is more edficient than e.g. coconut oil. So if people drop palm oil and switch to coconut oil, the sustainability problem will get worse.

<comment><USER25> For soapmaking the efficiency difference between palm oil and coconut oil is practically the same. If you are talking about oil production efficiency, I don't know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> palm oil is the most efficient oil to extract by practically a factor of 2 [1]. So in the long term, if global supply increases or stays stable, if we replace palm oil crops with another crop, eventually we'll make the problem worse and face more deforestation.

Can someone explain why this wouldn't be the case?

[1] according to this [http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_yield.html](http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_yield.html)

<comment><USER30> I believe that with palm oil the issue is that the entire tree is cut down as the oil is inside the core of the trunk. If people were soley using farmed trees, it wouldn't be so bad, but instead people are clearing animal habitats.

<comment><USER31> The oil is in the fruit of the tree not the trunk, they don't cut down the palms to extract the oil, they cut down the rainforest to make room for the palms. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_oil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_oil)

<comment><USER30> Right, thanks for the clarification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This the kind of political action I can live with. I'd like to see it in other markets, furniture, etc., anywhere natural resource extraction doesn't include the mitigation of impact and offsetting the effects. This is Much much better than activists going vigilate and taking the violent aproach.

</comment><comment><USER33> It's a shame it takes this much damage, and external pressure to occur first, before changes are made to something that should have been in place from the beginning. Just like anything I suppose. Disaster first, then fix. When will humans ever be proactive?

<comment><USER34> Maybe when they are immortal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I suppose that attempting to limit further damage is a good start - so how's about they now actually buy some cleared land and reforest it?

Until then no more Cadbury's for me, though TBH since they sold out to this US megacorp the quality has gone to shit.

</comment><comment><USER36> I had never seen a palm oil operation.

However, I read through and started following the blog of Taneli Roininen ([http://www.gonebikefishing.com/](http://www.gonebikefishing.com/)) who is bicycling around the world before his major heart operation.

There are plenty of pictures and somehow I could relate to what he wrote, seeing vividly his pedalling, hearing the sounds and feeling the wind in my minds eye.

When his trails went by palm oil plantations, one could really feel the scale and impact, as well as his frustration. It made the whole palm oil industry more concrete in some strange way... they are big and destructive.

</comment><comment><USER37> Cynics abound on hacker news.

Meanwhile, looking at this article with a systems perspective, this is incredibly good news. Large operational entities realizing that they are most performant when accountable to the public is a very, very good sign.

<comment><USER38> I mean call me cynical but this wouldn't have happened if they didn't get bad press about it recently

<comment><USER37> I find it so odd that people complain about a system enforcing efficiency and sustainability.

For example, I would never say in a whiny voice, "that plant only grows because it gets watered!" or "that student only works hard for good grades!" or "that product is only good because the brand wants to make more money!"

My point is: the why is less important to observe than the how. In this case, the WHY is that this company is just looking out for its own interests (it's obvious, that's what they do). HOW is it looking out for it's own interests? By recognizing that it needs to be accountable to the critical, ethical public.

That is super cool and very interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> We should all add our voice to the growing consumer pressure around the world. Yesterday I contacted thrivemarket.com to complain about their carrying products using palm oil.

</comment><comment><USER40> Does making palm oil require destroying the tree? I'm honestly ignorant about this subject.

<comment> ar-nelson The issue isn't damage to existing oil palms, but tearing down rainforest (including orangutan habitat) to make room for large plantations of oil palms.

<comment><USER41> [https://www.greenpeace.org/international/publication/18455/t...](https://www.greenpeace.org/international/publication/18455/the- final-countdown-forests-indonesia-palm-oil/)

> Half of the Bornean orangutan population has been wiped out in just 16 > years, with habitat destruction by the palm oil industry a leading driver. > More than three-quarters of Tesso Nilo national park, home to tigers, > orangutans and elephants, has been converted into illegal palm oil > plantations. Globally, 193 Critically Endangered, Threatened and Vulnerable > species are threatened by palm oil production.

> The plantation sector – palm oil and pulp – is the single largest driver of > deforestation in Indonesia. Around 24 million hectares of rainforest was > destroyed in Indonesia between 1990 and 2015, according to official figures > released by the Indonesian government [1].

<comment><USER42> 3/4 of a _national park_ illegally logged and planted? What's it going to take for these places to get it together? Seriously. _What_?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I like how Europe (and USA to some extent) destroyed their forests and biodiversity long ago, and now are pushing other, poorer societies to preserve biodiversity for the whole world while staying poor.

If you're so concerned about forests why don't you grow some yourself instead of bullying other countres?

Expecting a lot of dislikes from Bay Area which is a huge plot of ecosystems destroyed for profit.

<comment><USER3> The deforested parts of the world absolutely should work to reforest. But, the rainforest is some of the most important ecosystem on the planet, containing more biodiversity than anywhere else (except maybe coral reefs) and providing globally valuable ecosystem services like carbon sequestration.

Therefore it is extremely high on the priority list. It's also usually more cost effective to avoid destroying something than to restore something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Serious question: should I stop eating Nutella?

<comment><USER45> Serious answer: yes.

It's terrible for you and contains palm oil. There are better alternatives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> The real issue is biodiesel. This is nice, but we should get the oil from wells and not not rainforests. Chopping down rainforests is not the right way to increase Indonesian income or address climate change.

<comment><USER47> Or use algae biodiesel and duckweed ethanol.

Then sell the presscakes as Soylent Green. Or further process them to make non-soy tofu.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Is there a potential for this to go wrong? I know deforistation is the problem, but isn't it just as likely that these producers will start producing oils from other sources. Potentially annuals like corn.

</comment><comment><USER49> This is great news. Now that environment policy will become a secondary issue for Brazilian Gov, just economic pressure will preserve our forests.

</comment><comment><USER50> In unrelated news; Mondelez launches a new Indonesian agriculture export subsidiary...

</comment><comment><USER51> 12 from how many?

</comment><comment><USER52> Ditched companies and products who don't respect the environment a while back... Just preparing for the future where the others won't have the choice anyways :)

</comment><comment><USER53> Well, I guess since they have the entire Brussels apparatus imposing low-to- none tariffs on raw materials and prohibitively high ones on products competing with theirs[1], they could easily afford to be generous on minor things.

Just read the quote below and imagine how would a food-processing company from a third-world country ever be able to compete? (no way).

1\. [https://brexitcentral.com/eu-thousands-senseless-tariffs- pun...](https://brexitcentral.com/eu-thousands-senseless-tariffs-punish-poor/)

"The tariff on orange imports is far from being the least justifiable of the EU's many thousands of tariffs. Consider coffee. There are a number of different tariff schedules on coffee imports and the general idea underlying them is that raw materials get zero or very low tariffs, but the processed coffee imports that compete with EU coffee processors currently attract tariffs of up to 11.5 percent."

<comment><USER54> Brexit Central's assertion about coffee is completely untrue. Most coffee producers pay zero tariffs, and it's a matter of logistical difficulties at a local level that stops coffee producing nations exporting roast coffee. Not the EU.

Here's a long thread, with references so you can fact check it, on this exact topic.

[https://twitter.com/Jim_Cornelius/status/959584192517562369](https://twitter.com/Jim_Cornelius/status/959584192517562369)</comment></comment>


A set of CSS aliases.. Thoughts? - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/lukejacksonn/Protohype <comment><USER2> I am a big fan of people making their own tools. Making tools for other people is harder because other people don't already have all the bits and pieces of experience that the tool embodies living in their head.

Over the long term, I think good "keystroke saving" shortcuts requires a help system and documentation...the forty year old example is Emacs:

      the extensible customizable self-documenting
      display editor

Otherwise, it is hard to come back and figure out the context...It's a lot of work, but pays off many times over the long term.

BTW, this might make a good "Show HN".

Guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)</comment>


Venture capitalists don't have a clue how consumers will behave. - <AUTHOR> http://whohastimeforthis.blogspot.com/2005/08/consumer-investing-2.html <comment><USER2> my take is to first know how I will behave, will I use it? Purchase it, recommend it? It was probably best that BVP past on Apple, eBay, FedEx opportunities. Sounds like they were unable to use those products, --it's more than just the financial investment, it's the viral leverage as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> No-one has a clue how consumers will behave.</comment>


Skype Files $100M IPO - <AUTHOR> http://www.streetinsider.com/IPOs/Skype+Files+$100M+IPO/5876345.html

<comment><USER2> Skype seems to have been static for the last few years. Which is surprising because 'skyping' is as much an everyday word for web-calling as 'googling' is for search. It's been under appreciated.

<comment><USER3> I've never heard anyone use the word "skyping."

<comment><USER2> Let's Skype, Skype me

Very common for me.

<comment><USER4> In particular I use this when dealing with European clients/international calls. "Skyping" is a pretty common alternative to "calling".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> With earnings of about $500 million in the first half of 2010, and 44% growth since last year, isn't a $100M IPO really, really conservative?

Does this mean the stocks will jump sky high the second it's on the market?

<comment><USER6> _Revenue_ of $400m in the first half of 2010, that's a huge difference. Their net income was $13m.

<comment><USER7> Even worse, on techcrunch it says that most of that is from interest income (they must have a lot of cash in the bank). Cash from operations for the same time period is only $1.4 million.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Well this isn't a surprise!

Good for them and all their investors, I think it's one of the most useful tools to have been created in the last 10 years.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's a shame they're doing this a decade later than they should have.

<comment><USER10> Well, not really, considering that Friis and Zennstrom sold it to ebay at a very high valuation and then managed to get paid again when they found out they missed a bunch of core tech.

If they had ipo'd a decade earlier they might not have made as much as they did.

<comment><USER11> these guys are some of the biggest crooks out there. fuck em

investors, I wouldn't go anywhere near this stock. you'll get burned.

<comment><USER12> I think it's more that the people on the eBay side were either morons or in breach of their own fiduciary duty to eBay shareholders. The deal terms were voluntarily accepted by eBay; terms which were insane. Plus of course the total lack of any strategic value for eBay. It was the worst tech M&A of its size.

<comment><USER13> See <http://www.quora.com/Why-did-eBay-buy-Skype>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> it's a shame this service based on a proprietary protocol gained critical mass before a interoperable open standard could have taken its place.

<comment><USER14> Unless you enjoyed all the years of usage instead of waiting for a interoperable open standard. :-)

<comment><USER11> Waiting? Open standards exist, already, today.

SIP, STUN, RTP, XMPP, Jingle, all these are recognizable open protocols. Skype, if they were truly interested in not being a walled-garden, would have either built or migrated to a network based on these.

Skype will be dead in 10 years if Apple makes good on their promise to keep Facetime open.

<comment><USER15> facetime on windows though ?

<comment><USER16> If you are willing to install QuickTime, iTunes, Safari, Bonjour and so on along with it...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Anybody know what technologies / languages they've used to build Skype?

<comment><USER18> C++ as far as I know. Skype has its roots in Kazaa's file sharing technology, they use a proprietary P2P network to get around routers and firewalls - something that VOIP services lack. It also does direct high quality connections where available.

<comment><USER19> what do you mean exactly by getting around routers and firewall? I've been working with freeswitch and NAT is really a no brainer if you have a UPnP router. Firewalls? Does skype get around firewalls that are explicitly configured to block it? As far as 'direct high quality connections' are concerned, even freeswitch does that, it only does the SIP signalling and lets the media stream exchange directly between the endpoints, given that both can see each other directlly (no NAT in between).

<comment><USER20> _NAT is really a no brainer if you have a UPnP router_

Skype does much better than that. AFAIK they can traverse NATs and firewalls that don't support UPnP; they can fall back to TCP if UDP doesn't work; if all else fails they have a network of supernodes to relay traffic.

<comment><USER19> I just mentioned a UPnP router because I think most home routers I see here given buy ISPs support it. There are other ways as well, and yes that includes falling back to TCP if UDP doesn't work.

I'm just saying that everything skype does can be done with OSS using open standards. That skype is in any way technologically superior is mostly result of excessive FUD campaigns IMHO. :)

<comment><USER21> Skype has a big 'it just works' factor. With most sip and other products you had to deal with arcane stun server setup, and other configuration that would confuse most people. And on top of that the quality was significantly better than other options at the time such as msn and others. The combination of higher voip quality, ease of use, and no tech wizardry required (and a lot of marketing after they got rid of the tech hindrances) it went off.

<comment><USER18> Indeed. Whenever I looked in magazines targeted at casual internet users over the past decade, Skype was always the service recommended as "VOIP". It works through practically any network problem, which makes it ideal for hotels and from use inside corporate networks.

The quality is high, it's highly accessible and it doesn't have an equal competitor. Even the instant messaging services that do voice and video are poor alternatives. It has also been used for several years by feature phones and smart phones - some as their main selling point.

Essentially, its a pseudo standard used by most people.

<comment><USER19> Yes, i totally agree with all of that. They had a huge 'first mover' advantage. Just that there's no tech-wizardry involved in there closed protocol.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> They're just relocating/centralizing their headquarters in Luxembourg. The IPO is from their Luxembourg office on their US office. Not a big deal.

<comment><USER23> Except look at all of the American Capital investment firms that were in on the offering - Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch.

Putting the good 'ol American dollar in good investment overseas. I'm happy for Skype, but this act doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

<comment><USER24> > this act doesn't exactly inspire confidence

Why exactly?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Skype has become for VOIP as Google is to web search.

It may not be perfect but it's pretty darn good and it Just Works. It is almost ubiquitous and the company name has become a verb for a large segment of the popultion. "Let's Skype!"</comment>


How I Learned to Program in 10 Years - <AUTHOR> http://jvns.ca/blog/2015/02/17/how-i-learned-to-program-in-10-years/

<comment><USER2> Yeah, took me about 10 years before I was comfortable dealing with whatever was thrown at me.

<comment><USER2> And I stuck with Perl cos it's fun and pays the bills.</comment></comment>


Uncovering a 30 year-old hardware bug - <AUTHOR> http://www.pouet.scene.org/prod.php?which=61024#c637759 <comment><USER2> This discovery may not seem like much to the world, but it really is a milestone for those that are intimately familiar with hardcore graphics programming of the Commodore 64. The Commodore 64 had numerous glitches and undocumented behavior that made it possible to do seemingly impossible things, such as displaying graphics on parts of the screen where it was not intended to be displayed. In the mid 1980s, a subculture formed with people who wanted to find those tricks and glitches in order to impress each other with stunning displays of hardcore hackery that produced graphical effects that everyone, up to that point, had thought would be impossible.

Since all Commodore 64 computers were essentially exact copies of each other in terms of hardware, with (almost) all the same glitches, it was possible to write code that took advantage advantage of them and still worked for everyone. Except for this VSP trick, which annoyingly enough seemed to cause random crashes on a large percentage of machines.

This VSP trick made it possible to scroll graphics across the screen in unbelievable speed. If you had ever tried writing a super-optimized machine code routine for scrolling graphics, you'd be absolutely shocked the first time you'd see the speed at which this VSP trick was able to move graphics. And it was extensible in many different ways: it could not only be used to move graphics but also to trick the graphics chip to give more cycles to the CPU, so that you could produce even more stunning and seemingly impossible tricks. So people used VSP, even though it could cause random crashes.

But now, finally, we have an explanation for something that has been bugging a small number of hardcore hackers for decades. And the discovery is by itself the same kind of stunning display of hardcore hackery that made the bug so widespread in the first place.

<comment><USER3> The Ataris had this capability before the Commodores, without the crashing. They were designed to scroll entire screens of material almost effortlessly from the beginning. When you combined it with the redefinable (and color) character sets, you could put a scrolling map of Europe in a few K of memory.

Ataris had coprocessors for 256-color graphics, sound, I/O, and intelligent peripherals. You could mix text and graphics modes on the screen line by line. They had hardware sprites. The 800 (and its successors) even had an S-video output. All in 1978.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some background. This is about "demos" and the "demoscene", which are about very, very small programs (e.g. maybe 100 kb at the high end) designed to generate comparatively very sophisticated visual effects, often using many clever tricks and hacks and typically on older hardware (like the commodore 64).

For example, here is a video of the "Super Larrson Brothers" demo: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDMNZa8KjZ4> And here is the code itself: <http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=51163> it's 170kb and runs on the c64.

One technique used in demos is VSP or "Variable Screen Positioning" which allows for displaying a bitmap at an arbitrary horizontal position, with wraparound, it's used by several demos including the one linked above. However, using VSP can sometimes cause a c64 to crash or lock up, and now the cause of that has been found, enabling workarounds which avoid the problem.

<comment><USER5> Actually, the main event at demoscene parties have traditionally been the demo compo where the typical size limit is something like max 64 MB nowadays.

Other common events are 4k and 64k intro compos.

Here's a good example of a larger demo (Lifeforce by ASD): <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9GLl6kI4hQ>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For those who don't have a C64 at the ready, here's a video of the demo: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXcA4OWx0vo>

</comment><comment><USER7> What is VSP? Made it very hard to understand what this is talking about.

<comment><USER8> VSP or 'screen offset' is a technique that allows all kinds of scrolling tricks. If you offset by a single byte you get a horizontal scroll (combine with horizontal retrace timing trickery to get smooth scrolling), offset by a whole scanline and you scroll vertically, offset by a character box height*line width and you get jump character scroll, all without moving a single byte of memory, just write a few hardware registers.

Of course that only works when the screen is not divided up into windows. Tricks like these allowed many of the scrolling games on 80 bitters, and are why you could have smooth scrolled text on a 1 MHz cpu with very little software overhead. Even in the PC era these tricks were commonplace on character generator screen modes for lightning fast scrolling. Bitmapped windows are super CPU intensive if you don't have a graphic card that can move around chunks of memory quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If I'm understanding the characterisation of the bug correctly, I think this implies that memory locations ending in 0xff would _not_ suffer from the corruption.

</comment><comment><USER10> LFT (the author of the demo and the detailed explanation of the bug) has been doing some pretty amazing hardware/software hacking for a really long time. One look at his YouTube channel and it'll be no surprise to you that he came up with this. <http://www.youtube.com/user/lftkryo>

</comment><comment><USER11> I once spent a week tracking down a bug and I felt like popping out the champagne once we got it figured out and fixed!

If they had been working on this for 30 years, I could only imagine the joy and exhilaration of squashing this bug...

</comment><comment><USER12> > The dreaded VSP crash is caused by a metastability condition in the dram.

The "dram"? Meaning a unit of volume? : <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dram_(unit)>

Or did the author mean "DRAM", i.e. dynamic random access memory? Somehow I think the second meaning was intended, in which case, as an acronym, ALL CAPS is required.

<comment><USER13> That seems to be the fault of the transcription, i.e. by whoever sat and read through the scroll text in order to enter it as a forum comment.

The scroll itself in the intro is in all-caps, i.e. all the text is shown as caps.

Also, I really think context makes it fantastically clear here that it's talking about aspects of computer hardware.

<comment><USER12> The author had two choices -- fix the problem at the source, or downvote the well-intentioned correcting post. I see which he chose.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What cities are good for mobile developers beyond the Bay Area? - <AUTHOR> There seems to be a decent amount of roles for fullstack web developers, IT specialists, and enterprise desktop software engineers throughout the U.S. and much of the world. However, what cities are specifically good for mobile developers beyond the Bay? <comment><USER2> You might have to define "good". There are plenty of jobs in cities all over the world. Some, like Jakarta, have a booming tech industry, but may not be as livable or high paying.

What are your goals? To sit on a million dollars? Or buy a house by the lake, send your kids to Harvard? Creative independence? I make a good sum off a $25k salary, but living quality is high enough that I'd probably turn down a $150k salary at the Bay.

<comment><USER3> where in the world are you?

<comment><USER2> Malaysia. $25k is about median _household_ salary for Kuala Lumpur. If my wife made the same salary, we'd be in the top 20% for the city.

The rest of Southeast Asia is similar, in different ways. We've got lots of people who migrate over from the UK, Estonia, Japan, Australia, for various reasons. Sometimes it's just more political stability, sometimes it's the lack of pressure, sometimes it's just being able to have a more diverse international team.

<comment><USER3> Nice, makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> All the big companies hire for mobile in the Seattle area. There's some startups too, but nothing like the Bay Area.

</comment><comment><USER5> While not specific to mobile, D.C. seems nice for developers if you are okay with working for a government contractor.

</comment><comment><USER6> Anywhere with an internet connection is good if you get a remote job

</comment><comment><USER7> you can easily live anywhere if you are a mobile developer and work remotely from any city even outside the states. however if you are looking to work in office Seattle, NYC, Portland, DC

</comment><comment><USER8> Seattle, LA, New York

</comment><comment><USER9> Minneapolis</comment>


$50,000 to keep Symantec source code private - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/news/hackers-50000-to-keep-symantec-source-code-private/6342977

<comment><USER2> I feel like episodes like this give Anonymous a bad name...[ sic ;) ]....not that their name/reputation is so stellar in the first place.

But this isn't Hacktivism or whatnot. This is pure outright theft and extortion. It's not "fight the man" or "prevent censorship" or even WikiLeaks- style "information wants to be free".

It's profit-motivated organized crime syndicates trying to extract some $$ from a company. They hacked Symantec because the virus-writers of the world want to be able to write more viruses so they can infect more machines and create more botnets and send more spam and/or do more phishing...and make more money. That's it.

It's frustrating because part of the problem with a group like Anonymous is that you don't get to declare who is and who isn't a part (by definition).

I suppose human nature is human nature - in the real world or online, the same scenarios play out time and time again....

<comment><USER3> I've always found a lot of correlations between Anonymous and Al Qaeda. Not because of terrorism or exploding vans but because both are relatively unorganized collectives who appear much scarier than they are because independent operators/cells will claim they are flying under the group's banner, leading to headlines like "Anonymous Hacks Symantec".

The media eats up the concept of an organized global conspiracy group so it works out for everyone; the media makes money, the independent operators have a convenient, catch-all banner to fly under and the collective gets publicity for their cause.

<comment><USER4> Funny you should say that, I always saw anons as CIA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The source was leaked last night: [http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/7014253/Symantec_s_pcAnywhere...](http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/7014253/Symantec_s_pcAnywhere_Leaked_Source_Code)

Has anyone heard of an official response from Symantec?

<comment><USER6> Now that the code is available I wonder if the product will get better. Although I'd imagine any community that tries to form around it might get smacked down with a lawsuit. It'd be interesting to allow one to develop though.

<comment><USER7> I doubt anyone will attempt to form a community around 3rd party builds/modifications to it. Malware authors will look for vulnerabilities, and curious people might study it (though you should be extremely cautious about doing so)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So what's the legal environment around downloading the now-leaked source? I have to say I'm pretty curious about the code quality and possible backdoors...

Are there even protections for the press in this case? Or is every who pulls this torrent guilty of receiving stolen property or something along those lines.

Excuse my ignorance, but frankly I'd like to poke around.

<comment><USER9> You can't be convicted of a crime without evidence. It's pretty easy to obtain public content and look at it without leaving behind any evidence. Tor, full disk encryption, and anonymous remailers are your friend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> According to this source, Symantec's reply was law enforcement posing as Symantec:

[http://blogs.computerworld.com/19695/antisec_leaks_symantec_...](http://blogs.computerworld.com/19695/antisec_leaks_symantec_pcanywhere_source_code_after_50k_extortion_not_paid)

</comment><comment><USER11> I know nothing about antivirus software, but isn't security software supposed to be open? Otherwise, it's just security through obscurity. It sounds to me like Symantec just wants to hide all their vulnerabilities.

<comment><USER12> There is a large market for antivirus software - obviously Symantec is one of the biggest - but there are trade secrets in how their heuristics engines work and other secrets that give them a possible competitive edge.

<comment><USER11> Seems to me like they would also get a competitive edge by ignoring the expensive antivirus programming and just sending the occasional false alert to the user to make them think their software is actually doing something. When they get a real virus: "Well, we can't catch all of them, sorry. Go ahead and pay for an update, that might fix it."

How would you even know, unless you saw the source code?

<comment><USER13> Aside from the difficulty in uncovering the truth, I think this would be a clear example of criminal fraud. It would take a pretty large effort to cover up something like this, as well (disgruntled ex-employees would be hugely incentivized to speak to prosecutors).

So while you probably wouldn't know via technical means, my gut feeling is that a conspiracy in a company that large would quickly surface.

<comment><USER11> I agree. My point was that you don't know _what_ they're doing. It probably isn't as bad as "nothing at all", but you can't say where along the spectrum between that and "rock solid" they actually lie without taking a peek under the hood. Which is why I'm a proponent of free and open-source software wherever possible, especially for security applications.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> AnonymousFlorida's side of the story:

\- in 2006, anon members steal Symantec source for the lulz

\- Symantec contacts the FBI and sets up a pretty transparent attempt to sting those responsible

\- Anonymous punishes Symantec for the sting attempt, after some internal debate, by releasing the source as a torrent

Has the ring of truth to it, IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER15> This will set a bad precedent for such things (unless it is orchestrated as a sting operation).

If genuine, it would be interesting to know the primary motivation -- does Symantec not want the world to see its source because it is afraid its competition will steal its ideas ("our source code is full of awesome ideas") or its source code is pretty bad, sloppy, with backdoors for Uncle Sam that will pretty much shame the company ("our source code is awful and we'll be embarrassed if it was revealed").

<comment><USER16> I'm pretty sure the "let's send you $1000 over Paypal as a sign of good faith" was a trap.

Looks like the hackers didn't fall for it.

<comment><USER17> Giving in to not quite what they're being asked to do and trying to buy time does smell like 5-0. If I were them I'd release it at the first signs of stalling and then move on to blackmailing the next company, who will know better than to contact police and just pay the 50K.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> 5 year old code poses a security threat to PCAnywhere users? All the more reason to not use any of their products. Source code should never pose a security risk.

<comment><USER19> Perhaps – but it's certainly the case that if one wanted to find an exploit, it would likely be easier with the source code in hand.

Now, this isn't an argument against open-source software – much to the contrary, in fact, because, I'd argue, OSS has, by virtue of being developed in the open, had much more opportunity for bugs to be seen by contributors and by those looking to crack/exploit it. As exploits are found, they get patched. Closed source, code, on the other hand, faces a lot of catch-up when its code is released into the wild.

I'd argue that's a bit like what happens to one's immune system if it's not regularly challenged (particularly as a child). Frequent exposure to pathogens tends to make one's immune system better, whereas living in a bubble only works as long as nobody lets you out.

Also, as much as codebases change, many parts stay the same, so yes, 5 year old code may well still be similar to currently shipping code that unexploited/unpatched issues may well still exist.

<comment><USER18> I understand your immune system analogy but it isn't really accurate. Symantec is a billion dollar international corporation which markets itself as being security oriented. They should be doing rigorous security testing, including 3rd party code review. They should be paying the best of the best to crack their code. If their not they're doing it wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> @AnonymousFlorida says "Anonymous NEVER asked for money"

Really?

"How much do you consider ENOUGH to pay us in order to work all the issues out"

"we shall give you our account number within the LR system and you send money from your LR acct to ours"

Considering these snippets from the email exchange, what am I not understanding about the claim that they did not ask for money?

<comment><USER15> They are probably both stringing each other along and playing a game to see what the other side does. This is might be not unlike the HBGary incident.

If Anon are at least mildly intelligent they'll figure out this is a sting operation. Slowly trickling in money then following it to the source is most likely an FBI setup.

Now Anon could keep playing this and accept money but provide some random bank account just to see what Symantec does.

Actually, to think about it, their best possible exit out of this is to ask this money to be sent to a charity, or a foundation. For example, "Donate $50k immediately to EFF and we'll promise we'll erase the source files".

But then going by their previous patterns they'll probably release the source anyway.

I don't know, but if this is an FBI sting they are not very ingenious. "We'll give you money in the course of 3 months as continuous payments... you'll have to provide proof you deleted files.. really?". A 10 year old can figure out what this is. Kind of disappointed at the quality of their work (and our tax money's use).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> <http://hackerne.ws/item?id=3560533> original submission, not zdnetted

</comment><comment><USER22> _Yamatough demanded that Symantec transfer the money via Liberty Reserve, a payment processor based in San Jose, Costa Rica. But Thomas appears reluctant, calling it "more complicated than we expected." Thomas instead suggests using PayPal to transmit a $1,000 test as "a sign of good faith." Yamatough rejects that offer, saying, "Do not send us any money (we do not use paypal period)_

Could someone comment on how it is possible to use Liberty Reserve to receive money anonymously?

The stakes are really high for getting caught, and receiving the money is the weakest point for the hackers. So I'm curious why Liberty Reserve is the payment processor of choice for these cyber-criminals.

</comment><comment><USER23> At this point Symantec has probably come to the conclusion that their source code is compromised. I don't think it's possible for them to assume that anon won't use the source for themselves. The whole thing is a sting operation. If it wasn't then Symantec's future is dependent on an agreement that has no way of being verified. Anon probably knows this too and there just having a laugh.

</comment><comment><USER24> Just $50k?

<comment><USER23> Yeah seriously, their turnover in 2010 was $6 Billion. I mean if your gonna take all that risk ask for a least $50 million.

<comment><USER25> It was just for one product, pcAnywhere.

<comment><USER23> Yes but there are probably lots of code blocks that are used throughout their entire software line. Like how they establish secure connections between the client software and the update server.

<comment><USER25> Still, the code is worthless for anyone if your product is secure. And I would imagine that product by security company would be secure.

Antivirus software might be something different as you might learn how to trick it. But "remote desktop"? It doesn't require any "security by obscurity".

<comment><USER8> The source is still pretty valuable to a competitor right?

<comment><USER25> I would say no. Although I might be mistaken as I don't know what exactly is the application capable of. But from the brief description I think it doesn't contain any magic; something that competitor would love to see. The only benefit I see for competitors is the bad press.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Anonymous say it was Symantec trying to bribe them.

[https://twitter.com/#!/YourAnonNews/status/16689812134180454...](https://twitter.com/#!/YourAnonNews/status/166898121341804544)

</comment><comment><USER27> How is blackmailing to not release data something Anonymous would want?

<comment><USER28> Because of course everything _else_ Anonymous has done is totally legal, above board, and not at all disreputable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Has anyone on here even looked at the source code?

</comment><comment><USER30> one of the article's comments links to pastebin that appears to be the source code already posted - as of last night

</comment><comment><USER31> Is the code so embarrassing? If I wouldn't avoid them already, I would do so now.

</comment><comment><USER32> This makes Symantec look a lot worse than "Anonymous" IMO. Symantec is supposedly a reputable computer software company. The fact that they have to resort to legal means to secure their own source code is not a positive indication that they do a good job.

<comment><USER33> > The fact that they have to resort to legal means to secure their own source > code is not a positive indication that they do a good job.

Really?

So if I, a supposedly reputable citizen have to resort to calling the police after my house is broken into that reflects poorly on me?

Symantec may have doen things that reflect poorly on them, but I don't think calling the police in is one of them. That's what you are supposed to do.

Remember that pretty much every tech company has had some of their code broken into, whether it's microsoft's OS, to Google's Chinese gmail back doors to oracle's db leak.

<comment><USER34> >So if I, a supposedly reputable citizen have to resort to calling the police after my house is broken into that reflects poorly on me?

No, if you as the CEO of ADT had to call the police after a home break-in, that would reflect poorly on you. Symantec is not a "reputable citizen", they're a security vendor. It's not the fact that they called the police, it's the fact that calling the police was necessary at all.

<comment><USER33> > No, if you as the CEO of ADT had to call the police after a home break-in

Really?

That's a really silly point of view. Break ins happen at the most secure places, and a police report is required to collect any insurance.

Calling the police is not only the smart thing to do, it's also the right thing to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> How did the source code end up on servers not belonging to Symantec?

</comment><comment><USER35> These people need to be found and they need to go to jail for a very, very long time. The best possible response from the hacker community is to help dig these people out of their caves and turn them in.

Why?

Because this represents yet one more step towards the criminalization of the Internet. And this provides yet more fuel for politicians to get behind nonsense like SOPA. Keep this up and the Internet as you know it today will not be for long. There is no possible good outcome from these kinds of actions.

Either we police our own ranks or they will do it for us. The difference is that politicians will use a sledge-hammer for surgery rather than a scalpel. Be the scalpel.

<comment><USER35> I find the downvotes interesting. It seems that some in the HN community are OK with crime and intellectual property theft. Sad.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Designing a REST API - <AUTHOR>

I am in the middle of building a REST api using Rails. Basically a client app can post to the api with a message and an author. The service then figures out what to reply and who to reply to in a background process.
My question should I design it so that the api posts back to the client's callback url when the reply message has been calculated (similar to Paypal IPN) or should the I design it so that the client must poll the server to see when the reply has been generated?
e.g.
Polling solution Client app: POST myapi.com/messages
then poll GET myapi.com/messages/2324
Callback URL solution
Client app: POST myapi.com/messages
server: POST clientapp/messages
My initial thoughts are that a callback url is better because less requests have to be made from the client to the server. And the client app will also be simpler and more responsive since there is no polling required. But this doesn't seem very RESTful? Should I care? Are there any advantages of having polling solution that I'm overlooking? <comment><USER2> pollback is definitely not RESTful, but that doesn't mean it's bad. Both methods can work for different scenarios.

Also, you could look into long polling using redis or something.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can you think of any APIs that use the pollback method?

<comment><AUTHOR> Paypal use a callback method for their IPNs

<comment><USER3> I meant the mentioned method by which the client polls back to the API for request/transaction status.</comment></comment></comment>


A Lynching Memorial Is Opening - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/25/us/lynching-memorial-alabama.html <comment><USER2> Architecturally that looks a lot like the Berlin holocaust memorial.

<comment><USER3> It says in the article that it was source of inspiration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> After reading that, I realized I've never known a historical number as it pertains to how many lynchings occured in the US.

The NAACP pegs the number at 4,743 total lynchings between 1882-1968. 3,446 were black, with 1,297 being white. 79% occurred in southern states.

[http://www.naacp.org/history-of-lynchings/](http://www.naacp.org/history-of- lynchings/)

<comment><USER5> The usual assumption seems to be that it was 100% black.

Fundamentally, a lynching is just a fancy way to refer to mob justice. People get frustrated with the slow and methodical justice system. Rules of evidence can and do let many perpetrators free, and people are well aware of this. There is disagreement over what constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment", and plenty of anger when punishment seems insufficient for the crime. Frustrated angry people tend to take matters into their own hands.

This is something to think about when considering making punishment less severe or easier to avoid. There is a point at which ordinary people won't stand for it. Our justice system largely exists to appease angry people who would otherwise dish out their own idea of justice.

<comment><USER6> 'Rules of evidence can and do let many perpetrators free' \- yeah, justice lets people walk away from the heinous crimes of "walking behind the wife of his white employer" and "denouncing her husband's lynching by a rampaging white mob". This is so jaw-droppingly idiotic you must be deliberately trolling. Did you read the article at all or you were to busy single handedly rewriting history to read any of it?

<comment><USER7> Of course the article can point out all the people lynched for essentially being "other". As an expression of hate, or fear. There was a _lot_ of that (and may still be some to be honest).

There were also lynchings where the mob simply believed the victim to be guilty but unprovably so. Or where the punishment would not be sufficient to the crime in their eyes. Those are the ones which the GP seems to refer to, and it's not necessarily trolling to bring up the relationship between those and a justice system that is _seen_ to work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Gotta love how far "The Grey Lady" has fallen with these BuzzFeed-style headlines.

<comment><USER9> Wow, that was your takeaway</comment></comment>


Woods first athlete to earn $1 billion - <AUTHOR> http://www.ohio.com/sports/63381677.html

<comment><USER2> I have nothing against golf as a game, and I've played it a few times myself, but the idea that there's _this_ much money floating around just in sticking logos on the shirts of guys who hit balls into holes to persuade other guys to buy new sticks with which to hit other balls into holes makes me feel like there's an awful lot of money being wasted.

<comment><USER3> Golf is the most popular sport for wealthy people. Ever watch (and not fall asleep) a golfing event on TV? Advertisements are for ridiculous luxury goods and asset management services.

<comment><USER4> Profitability of an advertising franchise = (value-per-impression) x (Number- of-Impressions)

Online social networking has an extremely low value-per-impression.

Professional golfing has an extremely high value-per-impression.

Which explains why Tiger Woods has generated more in profits than the entire history of the online social networking business.

<comment><USER5> And Woods alone attracts a not-inconsiderable portion of the audience: TV ratings for this year's US PGA Championship were around 50% higher than for the same tournament last year, the principal difference being Woods' absence in 2008 due to injury.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Tiger Woods should be lauded. No crazy spending sprees. No expensive divorces. No being taken advantage of by friends and "business associates." No loss in risky business ventures.

He not only earned the money. He retained it too.

<comment><USER7> Do you actually know any of this other than the divorces part? I have no evidence that Tiger goes on wild spending sprees or has lost money on bad investments, but I have no evidence that he hasn't either.

FYI I am about as big a Tiger Woods fan as you'll find and if you made me take one side of a bet, I'd take yours, but this seems like an odd statement of fact.

<comment><USER8> I know his Dubai golf course is tanking. But I'm not sure he's not just lending his name to it.

<comment><USER9> He designed it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I found this amusing and a little thought-provoking:

"Forbes says Tiger Woods has become the first athlete to surpass $1 billion in career earnings.

"The magazine estimates that golf's top-ranked player crested the plateau when he earned $10 million for winning the FedEx Cup on Sunday.

"Forbes reported on its Web site on Tuesday that Woods entered 2009 having earned $895 million since he joined the PGA Tour in 1996. Prize money, appearance fees, endorsement fees, bonuses and his golf course design business were calculated to have pushed him over $1 billion.

"The magazine says former NBA great Michael Jordan and former Formula One driver Michael Schumacher, at $800 million and $700 million, respectively, are Woods' closest competition in career earnings.

"More golf: Watson takes 2-shot lead"

So we have this stupendous amount of money discussed for four paragraphs, and then the cliché "And in other news..." is that Watson has taken a two shot lead somewhere or other. The implication that both datums are of roughly equal interest to the reader is amusing and makes me curious. Is it a machine that decides that? Or does a human actually believe that after reading about Tiger having earned a billion dollars the reader will next want to turn back to the details of a match instead of thinking more about investments and careers?

<comment><USER11> It is the sports page. Even if it wasn't, how would a journalist segue from this to investment and careers?

"In other news, no matter how shrewd you are, you will never achieve a fraction of Tiger Wood's net worth. But let's talk about 401k plans, anyway."

or maybe

"If you happen to be rich, remember, Tiger Woods got there by playing golf - you had to spend 20 years trading natural gas futures in Calgary."

There doesn't seem to be a great angle...

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I guess Lebron didnt have his wish come true of becoming the 1st Billion dollar athlete. But he's got many more years to come. Im sure he will surpass that number. As it is whatever his new contract is after this season, and whereever it is, is going to be worth a ridiculous amount. Try the possibility of a $50 million per year deal with a European team. Not to mention the Nike deal, the movie being released this year, the management company, a profitable and public relationship with the greatest rapper on the planet (Jay-Z), and many more endorsements. Who knows, maybe he'll be the first $2 billion dollar athlete. He taking a page from the book or "Jordan". Brand yourself, and take away from the game, more than just championships, and shoes. But a name that is worth even more.

Its like his friend Jay-Z said, "Im not a businessman, Im A Business, man."

<comment><USER13> He would be able to make twice as much in salary if he went to Europe but he'd probably lose more money in the long-run by not playing in the NBA.

I get the feeling that Lebron will be able to leverage the Chinese ties which a new minority owner of the Cavs has and find a way to tap into the fledgling basketball market in China. Yao Ming has opened up a gigantic market for the NBA and someone is going to make a lot of money off of it.

<comment><USER12> Good point. That new Cavs Chinese ownership can definately be capitalized on, and their is a lot of Global money to be made from that deal. They loved him in China during the 08' Olympics in Beijing. Will be exciting to see what he's gonna do come next summer. Europe, Stay with the Cavs, NYC, Jersey (Brooklyn), etc. His options are endless. At one point, I thought the Jersey move was out because the team was having so much financial trouble with the possible Brooklyn move. But now with the new Russian ownership, along with his relationship to part-owner and friend, Jay-Z, that may be a viable option again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm quietly pleased that the world had a billionaire author before a billionaire sportsperson.

</comment><comment><USER15> Can someone point me in the direction of why this is HN worthy? I'm missing the connection here.

<comment><USER16> This way -> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=225879>

<comment><USER15> I'd understand your point if this story was even remotely associated to HN, technology, or "hacking the system".

<comment><USER16> From <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>:

 _What to Submit

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off- topic._

I personally don't find this terribly interesting, but billionaire athletes are certainly a new phenomenon.

<comment><USER15> Worm holes, black holes, supernovas, big bang, the million other galaxies outside of ours — those are phenomenons.

Billionaire athletes (through endorsements) are the result of a sharp rise in consumer consumption, media saturation, and globalized market place the last 20 years. How is that a phenomenon?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Some Entertaining 404 Error Pages - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2010/09/04/404-error-pages/

<comment><USER2> For me, <http://www.plinko.net/nevermore.asp> is still the best</comment>


Ask HN: Received a bolt in the mail – what kind of scam could this be? - <AUTHOR> Yesterday my wife received in the mail (USPS, not FedEx or UPS) a bolt that had been mailed to her from a PO Box in Fiji.  The bolt was a tiny thing (bolt as in screw, not a deadbolt) probably costs a few cents at most wholesale.  Needless to say, we had not ordered anything of this kind, certainly not from Fiji.  The sender was a PO Box from Fiji and there was no other tracking information.  The doorman received the package and may have signed for it (unclear - the one is duty is not back yet).<p>My wife shops online a fair bit and has had an incident in the past where her information was stolen – and since then we have been extra careful with respect to alerts etc.  We have reset our alerts after receiving this bolt from the blue.  In this case, we are extra perplexed as to what sort of scam this could be.  What would someone achieve by sending us a "test" package in the mail?  This was clearly not a fake amazon order sent to us in a review scam (happened to another friend) – clearly seems like a set up for something more insidious.  What would someone send next and why?  Any ideas as to what could be happening?  Thanks! <comment><USER2> The term for this is "brushing".

An actual seller made an actual sale and sent it to your address. The actual buyer was obviously not you. The actual buyer was either in cahoots with, or simply is, the seller.

Whatever platform they placed the order with (Aliexpress perhaps) will now give them (1) next to their name instead of (0), or more likely, (10001) instead of (10000).

Whether illegal in fact or not, I don't think it goes against the spirit of the law: Aliexpress and other platforms (even Amazon) incentivize this sort of behavior. In sending you that throwaway screw, they now are closer to qualifying for (or keeping) preferential seller status which is essential to survival on those platforms (better rates, etc.).

Throw the screw away, or keep it as a reminder that the 21st century's weird little perverse incentives drive people to do very illogical things.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've seen shipping fraud where a third party in the same ZIP code is sent a package weighing about the same as the fraudulent (and nonexistent parcel) would weigh.

A bad guy in Fiji was the seller of something that weighs about the same as a bolt. The victim is in your ZIP.

Actual street addresses are not stored by the USPS for Delivery Confirmation (only tracking # and ZIP of delivering Post Office), bad guy is able to provide a tracking number to the victim and "prove" his package of diamonds, a Rolex, or drugs was delivered to his victim. I'll bet nobody signed, as Certified and Registered mail include an address as well as a signature.

A call to the Postal Inspection Service at 877-876-2455 and a request to speak with a Mail Fraud Inspector may help clear up some crimes.

</comment><comment><USER4> It could be related to this: [https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply- all/brhow4/124-the-magic...](https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply- all/brhow4/124-the-magic-store)

Basically, amazon sellers will send actual items to legitimate addresses to mask fake amazon reviews.

</comment><comment><USER5> Can the sender see proof of delivery online, e.g. scan of the signature?</comment>


Options are the devil — Medium - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/what-i-learned-building/8459f3801bb3 <comment><USER2> The paradox of choice.</comment>


What Are Digital Doppelgängers and How Companies Use Them - <AUTHOR> https://choosetoencrypt.com/privacy/what-are-digital-doppelgangers-and-how-companies-use-them/ <comment><USER2> It's scary what companies, governments, etc. can do with data.</comment>


Tegra K1 "Denver" Will Be First 64-bit ARM Processor for Android - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2014/08/11/tegra-k1-denver-64-bit-for-android/ <comment><USER2> What a peculiar design. They went for an in order design instead of the out- of-order design that has been standard in high-end ARM cores for years. Out- of-order usually brings more instructions per clock cycle ("more efficient"), but makes the chip more power hungry and makes it harder to achieve a high clock speed.

So the in-order design they have now allows them to scale up to 2.5 GHz which is very high for such a constrained chip. They also have this weird "code optimizer" that appears to sacrifice some RAM and a CPU core to dynamically reorganize processor instructions to run better on this in-order design. It seems as though they want to have their cake and eat it too, but at the same time they appear to paradoxically introduce complexity to achieve simplicity.

I wonder if someone more knowledgable about chip design could comment on this design?

<comment><USER3> One of the more interesting bits of speculation about the design's motivations that I've seen so far is an anonymous comment on the Slashdot version of this story: [http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5519563&cid=476...](http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5519563&cid=47653679)

<comment><USER4> This is another good post, despite the appeal to authority: [http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5519563&cid=476...](http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5519563&cid=47654085)

Saying "When an in-order CPU stalls on memory, it's still burning power while waiting, while an OOO processor is still getting work done" seems deceptive, though. The OOO processor is (often) doing speculative work, which may be unneeded, and a stalled in-order CPU won't be using quite the same amount of power as if the execution units were actually switching.

Though I'm pretty sure the NVIDIA design must speculative prefetch and hoist memory reads aggressively to be performance competitive (see the huge cache sizes!), which also burns power.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Background on Project Denver, including x86 vs ARM ISA, [http://semiaccurate.com/2011/08/05/what-is-project-denver- ba...](http://semiaccurate.com/2011/08/05/what-is-project-denver-based-on/)

"Denver is just one of the variants in that line. T50 was going to be a full 64-bit x86 CPU, not ARM cored chip, but Nvidia lacked the patent licenses to make hardware that was x86 compatible."

<comment><USER6> I'm surprised nVidia didn't buy VIA, or at least Centaur Technology from VIA, to make this happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Neat. On Android it's easy to believe Dalvik/ART generated code leaves more performance on the table compared to other platforms.

Another "what's different this time" point: compared to Transmeta era, CPUs now typically have idle core(s) waiting for work to do. This may enable more ambitious optimizations as you're not constantly stealing cycles from the app.

Does anyone have a link to the paper?

<comment><USER8> Why do you lump Dalvik and ART together? The whole point of ART is that it's compiled to native code, is it not? Therefore it's "not leaving anything on the table".

Not sure why I'm being downvoted:

> _The big paradigm-shift that ART brings, is that instead of being a Just-in- > Time (JIT) compiler, it now compiles application code Ahead-of-Time (AOT). > The runtime goes from having to compile from bytecode to native code each > time you run an application, to having it to do it only once, and any > subsequent execution from that point forward is done from the existing > compiled native code._

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/8231/a-closer-look-at- android-...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/8231/a-closer-look-at-android- runtime-art-in-android-l)

That sounds like native code compilation to me.

<comment><USER9> Dalvik and ART both generate native code. ART does it at app install time and Dalvik, being a JIT, does it at app runtime. He was speculating about quality of the generated native code, not its existence.

Google has been very quiet about ART generated code quality. I haven't found any benchmarks that would compliment its performance either. It's probably better than Dalvik but worse than mature optimizing compilers.

<comment><USER10> I don't think they have been very quiet about ART. They had a whole I/O session and they recently dedicated a whole dev backstage podcast to ART and its future evolution (btw, some nice things are planned : suppression of the 65k limit, code hot-swap, ...).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Oh, Transmeta. Back in the heyday of Slashdot, Transmeta had a massive cult following for many months before the product was even released. I remember the dissapointment when they did finally ship. My dad bought one of the little Sony laptops with their proc and it was a dog (although power-efficient).

<comment><USER12> That was because Linus Torvalds did a keynote speech with live streaming when he was employed there, he was pretty stoked himself.

The only detail I remember from it was :

"Linus, what Linux distribution do you use?"

"Debian, of course"

I wonder if he still uses that on his Mac Book Air

<comment><USER4> Whenever one of the most well known open source technologists joins a (pretty secretive) firm, it's going to generate interest and speculation.

Also remember John Carmack joining Intel to work on Larrabee.

<comment><USER13> Maybe you're thinking of Michael Abrash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I asked it when apple announced 64 bit support for the iPhone, and I'll ask it again now: what is the point in 64 bit cpus in devices that will be deprecated and replaced before we get around to having more than 32 bits worth of addressable ram in these devices?

These aren't $1500 desktops with user upgradable components. They are sealed, non upgradable, relatively disposable devices that are intentionally obsoleted by their manufacturers every 12-18 months. It makes for a nice marketing bullet point, but are we actually getting anything besides a bigger number to impress the impressionable customer with?

<comment><USER15> It's not only about memory:

"In short, the improvements to Apple's runtime make it so that object allocation in 64-bit mode costs only 40-50% of what it does in 32-bit mode. If your app creates and destroys a lot of objects, that's a big deal." [1]

One example: in 64bit NSNumber and (short) NSString objects on iOS can be stored completely in a pointer (tagged pointers) on the stack without having to create anything on the heap. That's possible because the size of a 64bit pointer is large enough to contain the required information. Creating and accessing one of these objects becomes far faster. Based on what I gathered at WWDC this year, Apple is also inclined to move as many various objects there as possible (as long as they can be stored in a 64 bit pointer).

[1] [https://www.mikeash.com/pyblog/friday- qa-2013-09-27-arm64-an...](https://www.mikeash.com/pyblog/friday- qa-2013-09-27-arm64-and-you.html)

<comment><USER2> It is worth noting that this is likely to be an iOS-on-AArch64 specific tweak. Apple doesn't do this on x64 OS X (right?).

Furthermore, nothing has been said (AFAIK) about similar tricks Google is doing with Android on AArch64 or 64 bit architectures in general. From what I've heard they just made the Android runtime capable of emitting AArch64 (and x64, MIPS64) instructions instead of 32-bit ARMv7 ones.

That alone gives plenty of a performance boost as AArch64 instructions are supposedly quite a bit faster than the old 32-bit ones. It remains to be seen though whether Google can make as much use of clever allocation tricks as much as Apple can: Android is much more platform agnostic and uses a garbage collector for some of these tasks.

<comment><USER16> There is nothing iOS specific about it. MacOS X has been benefiting from this optimization since 10.7.

<comment><USER2> I stand corrected. So it's a feature of Apple's runtime on all 64 bit systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I really hope Nvidia will open up their K1 driver completely following Intel's approach.

<comment><USER18> Won't happen.

Intel 3D hardware is crappy anyway.

<comment><USER9> Less crappy than many people think. Intel and AMD are about head to head in game benchmarks. See eg. [http://www.anandtech.com/show/7677/amd-kaveri- review-a8-7600...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/7677/amd-kaveri- review-a8-7600-a10-7850k/12)

<comment><USER18> The ones that have to program for them beg to differ:

[http://richg42.blogspot.de/2014/05/the-truth-on-opengl- drive...](http://richg42.blogspot.de/2014/05/the-truth-on-opengl-driver- quality.html)

<comment><USER19> He's programming for 200W+ dedicated AMD cards. It may surprise you that AMD can't match that level of performance in their 65W SoCs either.

<comment><USER18> Last time I checked, even AMD's Brazos were better than Intel's offering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Considering the Tegra K1 is the first CUDA-capable mobile processor, does anyone know if we'll be able to leverage CUDA bindings on devices that run on this?

<comment><USER21> Yes! CUDA on ARM has been available for quite some time now. [http://devblogs.nvidia.com/parallelforall/cuda-arm- platforms...](http://devblogs.nvidia.com/parallelforall/cuda-arm-platforms- now-available/)

In fact the most recent version of OpenCV already leverages this on ARM platforms that support CUDA. [http://code.opencv.org/projects/opencv/wiki/CARMA_platform_c...](http://code.opencv.org/projects/opencv/wiki/CARMA_platform_compilation_and_testing)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> They says first 64bit arm for android, I thought that Qualcomm and mediatek already have 64bit arm CPUs?

<comment><USER23> Qualcomm has 64b chips, but AFAIK there's no Android device using them in the wild. The HTC "A11" was announced yesterday and will apparently sport a Snapdragon 410, I don't know that other devices exist yet.

Of course there's no device using Denver in the wild either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Will this ship before the MediaTek MT6752/MT6795? They're claiming later this year, too.

</comment><comment><USER23> Am I the only one weirded out by the supposed Anandtech quote figuring nowhere in the linked article, and said article being nothing more than the announce and display of some NVidia marketing material?</comment>


Firebug-like CSS editing (for Chrome) - <AUTHOR> http://peter.sh/2010/12/deferred-printing-stylesheets-text-emphasis-and-firebug-like-css-editing/

<comment><USER2> HOORAY! With CSS editing web inspector now has feature parity with firebug as far as I'm concerned. Now they need to work on making the "resources" panel less arduous to get information from, I'm sure it's significantly more clicks to get at HTTP headers than in firebug.

EDIT: Missed the header overriding thing, I need to read harder. That is amazing, and will prove so very useful. Now all we need to do is wrap up the common caching headers into some sort of simple menu...

</comment><comment><USER3> Also for those who dont know. Firebug lite version is available for Chrome <http://getfirebug.com/releases/lite/chrome/>

</comment><comment><USER4> Using arrows key to adjust numerical values in css is a substantial time saver when tweaking css. Just great.

</comment><comment><USER5> Great, that was one of my main complaints about the Inspector. Now, how about functionality like the DOM tab?

</comment><comment><USER6> I am even more happy about support for adding and overriding HTTP request headers! Hooray</comment>


Ask HN: What Eclipse plugins do you use? - <AUTHOR>

Recently at work someone has suggested using the PMD plugin to analyse our code quality. I started to think about what other plugins people are using, that might also help our development process. <comment><USER2> I'm using the Eclipse color theme plugin[1]. Changing the color theme from the default white to Zenburn made writing code for several hours easier on my eyes.

[1] <http://marketplace.eclipse.org/content/eclipse-color-theme>

</comment><comment><USER3> We use the pmd plugin more on our jenkins build side.

Personally I've been looking for a good vim emulation plugin, I'm trying out Viable right now. There's also a plugin I used to use that would not let you use the menu for anything that has a shortcut key, that was nice for getting used to eclipse.

</comment><comment><USER4> I haven't tried PMD yet but recently come across 'findBugs' plugin and it seems to solve my current purpose. Other than that JavaDecompiler plugin sometimes comes in handy.

</comment><comment><USER5> VRapper is fantastic! And I use the Scala plugin, of course.</comment>


Ask HN: Is Apple becoming the next Sony? - <AUTHOR>

In today's edition of "I, Cringely", (http://www.pbs.org/cringely/) Robert Cringely suggests that Apple is deliberately withholding Blu-ray support on their hardware in order give itself a leg-up in its own iTunes-based HD video distribution.
This type of behavior got me thinking of another company that blurs the borders between the content and hardware industries: Sony. Sony started buying movie studios after it lost the VHS vs. Betamax war, believing that it could win next time if it only controlled the content. The problem with Sony now is that the tail often wags the dog. The hardware division often makes questionable decisions (PS3 Blu-ray) in order to satisfy the content division.
Did Apple bite the forbidden fruit and become "tainted" when it launched the iTunes music store? Will Apple eventually buy Pixar and/or Disney outright in order to have full control of the content? Can we expect to see stupid decisions (a la Sony rootkit) result from the left hand, which affects the reputation of the right? <comment><USER2> whenever company grows the chances of becoming arrogant also grows and this is what is happening with all big companies which includes apple and sony ... apple made a big mistake in trying to control the iphone market by locking the phone and having only one service provider --- on the top of that they pushed another program to make unlocked iphone useless - this has created a very bad taste in consumer's mind. This is the world of free market - the sooner u understand the better... apple could have instead sold the unlock iphone to begin with ... and with the help of unique marketing and distribution channel it could have profited big time - this would have also stopped the smuggling of millions of iphones to other countries.

<comment><USER3> "apple made a big mistake in trying to control the iphone market by locking the phone and having only one service provider"

Apple doesn't think so, and the market doesn't seem to either. iPhone is selling great.</comment></comment>