Japan's rising sex aversion (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2012/04/29/opinion/reversing-japans-rising-sex-aversion-may-depend-on-a-rebirth-of-hope/ <comment><USER2> > The definition of "sexless" set in 1994 by the Japan Society of Sexual > Science, a professional organization that deals with all aspects of human > reproduction, states that this is a condition occurring when someone has had > "no sexual contact for a month or more." Sexual contact itself includes a > host of things, such as "kissing, oral sex, petting and sleeping together > naked."

Geez, I've been taking a break from women this past year but after reading this it hits kinda hard. According to this I've been sexless for a loooong time.

Is not having sex for a month really that uncommon?

<comment><USER3> About 30% of single males have not had sex in six months. It's slightly less for women, btw, 25% iirc. Rates are higher among the educated. Don't ask me how I know that.

<comment><USER4> Stats are probably similar for those who have been married more than a few years.

<comment><USER3> according to the figure I saw for married men it's about 10% and married women, oddly, 5%.

<comment><USER2> Could this be an error in self reporting or that women are more likely to cheat in marriages?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is happening in the US as well with young people, especially teens. The US is going to see the same economic stagflation as Japan due to reduced labor supply.

<comment><USER6> I wonder if the article is right about the internet being to blame for it. It's true that it's become ridiculously easy in the past few years to get access to so much content for free. I think the fragmentation of our culture might be partially to blame too. Everyone gets their own feed of news articles, videos and music completely customized to their own tastes, so much so that we end up having less and less shared culture with the people we see everyday. One thing is for sure: virtual reality probably isn't going to help.

<comment><USER7> My conclusion is that humans are poorly adapted to modern life. The specific mechanism is, I think, that our extensive media diets are scrambling the circuits that kick the reproductive mechanisms into gear. IE, we see the curated versions of other people's lives on our Facebook feed and it makes us feel like we aren't established enough to be able to properly support a family. Or we watch too much porn and then we lack the drive to do all the stuff required to actually attract a mate.

<comment><USER6> That might play a role, but it also seems clear that modern society somewhat devalues "settling down" and having children. Portrays that as boring and lame. I'm not looking to have children, but I'm honestly finding it difficult to find people who even want a committed relationship at the moment. A lot of people are only focused on short-term fun. I would guess that this is in large part a product of our modern capitalistic society being so successful. A strong family unit is no longer necessary for survival.

<comment><USER7> But I would blame the not wanting committed relationships or a family thing on media consumption as well.

Settling down and starting a family is a boring, long term endeavor that doesn't really play well in most media formats. Therefore it just doesn't get any space. The protagonists of basically every TV show do not have families. And that's because it wouldn't be feasible for them to do all the stuff that makes the plot interesting if they were tied down by a family. And people are getting cues about how their personal story arc should play out from the media they consume.

But you're right that capitalism is excellent at providing the means to life a life of self involved, hedonistic excess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> With the rise of nationalism and ending of large scale migrations the Governments of developed nations will either need to do more to encourage couples to build a family if they want to reverse this trend or they can chalk this up as a net positive since the plant can't continue to sustain a growing human population.

<comment><USER9> There's nothing inherently wrong with a low birth rate -- except that modern economies seem to be massive pyramid schemes that require a never-ending stream of fresh blood to remain solvent. It's not like the Japanese are at risk of going extinct; once the population falls below a certain threshold, the birth rate will start rising again. They'll survive. But what may _not_ survive is the economic system that borrows against its own future -- a system that is only sustainable if growth continues, unabated, forever.

<comment><USER10> You're presuming no external existential threat. The Chinese have a large, but aging population. They could move into a weakened Japan within 20 years to take their infrastructure.

<comment><USER11> Modern war doesn't work that way. In fact, today, 'war' doesn't actually work at all.

What China wants is for it's hegemony to be recognized.

Why invade Japan and risk it being highly unpopular at home; being sanctioned by every major developed economy; militarization of it's neighbourhood, etc. etc. (on top of actually being unable to actually conquer Japan)

Within 20 years, it could be well within the position of dictating Japan's foreign, or even some domestic, polices to such a degree to have it essentially as a vassal state. Japan perhaps willingly chooses to make certain concessions in return for favourable treatment for China - say if the two countries considered closer trade relations at one point.

There's also diplomatic & soft power. An aging Japan turning to immigration which de facto will largely result in an influx of Chinese (already the largest foreign minority in Japan). These chinese immigrants over time have more power within Japanese policy.

If China manages to launch it's own cultural industries to the degree of S. Korea's or Japan's, that would make room for more Chinese influence.

But in the end it works both ways. Young Chinese imitate certain aspects of Japanese culture as well. It doesn't really need to end in war or even aggression for both countries to slowly learn to have a meaningful relationship with each other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is from 6 years ago; curious if the trend continued.

<comment><USER13> Sex aversion continues to rise:

"The association released its newest survey for 2014 a few months ago. In that survey, 65.8 percent of women 16-19 were not interested in sex or felt an aversion to it, and 39.2 percent of women 20-24 felt the same way."

[http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/jun/23/...](http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/jun/23/aziz- ansari/startling-stat-checks-out-46-percent-young-women-j/)

<comment><USER14> these numbers are skyrocketing; within 10 years (should the trend reach its logical conclusion, which i doubt that it will), there will be zero japanese interested in sex.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Self-reporting about sexual activity might not be the most accurate. What we can conclude: its become more popular to claim to have an aversion to sex.</comment>


Sonic Devices Play High-Pitched Noises to Repel Teens - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2019/07/10/739908153/can-you-hear-it-sonic-devices-play-high-pitched-noises-to-repel-teens <comment><USER2> I am always so surprised and appalled that these things are still legal. Can you imagine the reaction if they were designed to only hurt pretty much any other demographic other than young people?

<comment><USER3> It's fundamentally an attack on public space and should be illegal. I'm sitting in a small public parkette right now within earshot of an establishment that has one of these things running 24/7\. I don't even know which one as I can't locate the precise source of the sound. It emits a high pitched whining noise for about 5 seconds, at which point the frequency rapidly increases until it ends in a zap, followed by about 2 seconds of silence. This differential makes it impossible to ignore. It even permeates headphones. I like eating lunch here, as it's close to my office and a nice space, but I often leave irrationally angry after being unable to relax in the midst of this omnipresent noise.

Sadly there doesn't seem to be anything I can do about it.

<comment><USER4> They are easy to locate. The sound can't pass through your hand and doesn't diffract much, so move your hand around at arms length till you can't hear it anymore in one ear, and that's the direction it's in.

Normally they're metal boxes with a grille on the front mounted above head height (because otherwise some teen would put gum in the grille to stop the sound getting out)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I keep hearing similar high pitched sounds in Tokyo in front of some stores as well, so the statement that only people up to 25 years old can hear it sounds incorrect.

The Mosquito youth repellent has even won an Ig Nobel prize: [https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/oct/06/science.higheredu...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/oct/06/science.highereducation)

I think this fits the general trend of making urban architecture more and more hostile to the public.

<comment><USER6> Ultrasonic jewelry cleaning baths, these sonic youth deterrents, and a few other super high pitched sounds give me instant splitting headaches and I'm 28. Strangely I have terrible hearing otherwise and have to ask people to repeat themselves a lot.

<comment><USER7> I was in a similar position for years and got a hearing test. Turns out I have a sensory processing disorder that I got help for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As part of the affected age group, it sounds a lot like the high-frequency sound of a CRT monitor / old arcade machine (that older people cannot hear apparently), which is very much not pleasing. I can't imagine having to deal with that all night long.

<comment><USER9> When I was younger, I thought for sure I had a sixth sense for detecting when the TV was on. Strangely, it didn't really seem like a sound to me. More like something inside your head.

Unfortunately, my super power didn't pan out to be all that unique ... or useful.

<comment><USER10> I had the same super power! (And between you and me, I can also time travel, but only in a forward direction one second at a time).

<comment><USER11> And the longer you wait in the time tube, the further you go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> These have been around for quite some time. I remember encountering them in Japan about 13 years ago. It was in a fancy store in Tokyo, next to the Palace. As soon as I entered, my 30 year old ears alerted me that they hadn't died off at 25 as planned. The one clerk in the store couldn't turn it off and apologized profusely. I decided to have fun, and in my broken Japanese, accused her of having a device to ward off gaijin. She denied it profusely as I walked out, laughing... on to the next store.

</comment><comment><USER13> Part of the reason they installed these devices is in part to reduce vandalism, but I can't imagine any better motivation for vandalism than an extremely annoying sound coupled with moral justification provided by clear discrimination. They're just asking for these devices to be destroyed.

</comment><comment><USER14> I can understand the motivation, legality aside, but the implementation seems irresponsible to me. A device like that will very likely annoy, if not anger, dogs at distance. My old cats could hear two rooms away a 40 KHz signal played by a piezo transducer directly connected to a function generator with no amplification in between. An old ultrasound TV remote had the same effect. And cats hearing although better than ours is less sensitive than dogs'. I can't imagine what level of discomfort that device could put on cats, dogs, bats and other animals.

</comment><comment><USER15> In Australia they play classical music through the sound system at train stations which has seen success in dissuading teens from congregating there.

<comment><USER16> Apparently the kids aren't into ol' Bazza... [http://www.stuff.co.nz/oddstuff/268922/Britain-looks-at- Mani...](http://www.stuff.co.nz/oddstuff/268922/Britain-looks-at-Manilow- method-for-teens)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I seem to remember this effect being co-opted by teens to turn the tables. Use it as a text notification sound on your phone and you can text back and forth in class without alerting the teacher.

</comment><comment><USER18> Such a backwards way of thinking. The youth want to be in plain sight so they can be watched but we push them away.

Behind closed doors is where people die from drugs and where teen pregnancy happens, it doesn't happen hanging out on the street corner.

</comment><comment><USER19> These need to be hacked to play high pitched techno that only teenagers can hear.

<comment><USER20> They don't have the range to be that detailed. But there was a fad where teens would use the tone on their phones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> First they came for the mosquito... but I was not a mosquito... then they came for the rats... but then i was not a rat... then they came for the teens... but i was too old to be a teen...

</comment><comment><USER22> We need more places in our society for people to exist free of charge.

</comment><comment><USER23> Reminds me of how Zoom Rooms play ultrasound to automagically pair your computer to the room [1].

For a while I thought I was going crazy hearing this incredibly high-pitched, faint chirping in meeting rooms when no one else could (I have weirdly good high-frequency hearing). There's probably a solid limit to how far into inaudible ultrasound Zoom can push this sound, though, considering that computer microphones are designed to pick up things that people can hear.

[1] [https://support.zoom.us/hc/en- us/articles/214629303-Direct-S...](https://support.zoom.us/hc/en- us/articles/214629303-Direct-Share-with-Zoom-Rooms)

</comment><comment><USER24> Guessing not long before someone fills that thing with expanding/hardening spray foam.

I don't understand how it's even legal. Certainly the sound carries beyond the boundary of the park.

</comment><comment><USER25> I fully intend to break these devices if I ever hear them. I'm over the age of 30, and can hear them quite clearly; it violates my right to be in public spaces. Even if the device is installed in privately owned property, it's not like the sound waves magically stop at the end of that property. Regardless of the law, the use of these devices within hearing of public space is against the public good, and they should be destroyed if heard.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> One of the joys of aging to me is being immune to these noises while still enjoying music to the fullest. When I was young it was often agony going into stores that had alarm systems employing these high-pitched hums. Neither of my girlfriend nor her family, with whom we spent a great deal of time, could hear them. They were patient but bemused at my reaction.

<comment><USER9> Were these some sort of deterrent? Or just an inadvertent hum from electronics that were designed and QA'd by people who couldn't hear it?

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe it was a side effect of the alarm's circuitry. No one ever gave me a sensible explanation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> When I was a kid the local 7-Eleven installed outside lights that made your skin have a slight greenish hue and which made acne stand out. Great way to get rid of loitering teens without any harm.

</comment><comment><USER26> I wonder if these things have any causal effects for developing tinnitus.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm assuming a hearing loss lawsuit (in the US) could fix this.

</comment><comment><USER28> This confused me for a second. "Why is my ISP playing high-pitched noises? Surely it is not their core competency."

</comment><comment><USER29> I am way over their age but can hear it. WTF.

<comment><USER30> I'm 53 and can still hear and feel 17KHz. I truly dislike these devices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Wouldn't earplugs negate this?

<comment><USER32> In my experience earplugs/headphones are real effective for low frequencies but somewhat less for high pitched sounds.

Thinking about it, it's probably related to the material used for the plugs, I think I've only used foam type earplugs...

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Implied at the start of the article but not mentioned until halfway down: they are only operational from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.

What hours are these parks open to the public?

<comment><USER8> The playground mentioned in the article doesn't seem to have any hours posted online. But if the sound propagates outside the boundary of the park,

> [...] said she can hear the Mosquito installed a few blocks from her > Fishtown home

I'd imagine it'd be disturbing even when the park is closed to the public.</comment></comment>


What it was like to co-found Model View Culture - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ameliagreenhall.com/post/what-it-was-like-to-co-found-model-view-culture-with-shanley-kane

<comment><USER2> I'm pretty sure my name pretty much describes Shanley's situation.

A racist, an abuser. What an amazing fucking hypocrite.

<comment><USER3> whether or not she's a hypocrite doesn't change the facts of her assertions about Linus being an abusive leader (assuming that's what your charge of hypocrisy relates to).

<comment><USER2> That's not what I'm referring to.

She is hypocrisy personified. A person with her track record has NO BUSINESS telling anyone how they should behave, let alone doing it with her flamboyant berserk style.

Deal with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> No comments on this? It was the best thing I've read all day

<comment><AUTHOR> Oddly someone changed the title I submitted, removing the reference to Shanley and making it deadly dull. No wonder no one has read and voted on it.

Does anyone else operate a site like Hacker News with a decent following? I'd like to post somewhere where my contributions aren't arbitrarily deleted or renamed. Getting a bit tired of the invisible authoritarianism of HN.</comment></comment>


Google's Marissa Mayer Checks-in On Latitude, Social And Local - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.forbes.com/tomiogeron/2011/05/05/googles-marissa-mayer-checks-in-on-latitude-social-and-local/ <comment><USER2> I dont claim to be half as smart as the minds at Google, but I have got to ask.

Why wade in after Foursquare and Facebook in to Check-Ins especially when it is fast being phased out, rejected as smartphones gets adopted by the masses?

Google can really drive location adoption and awareness if they wanted to. Jumping in to a niche, and that too one that has the broader public shying away from, is that the smart thing to do?

<comment><USER3> Google is an advertising and marketing company. Only.

By developing a location aware service they can target you with relevant ads from services in your proximity.

The creation of a social networking service would allow this -- though I think its too late for google. What they should do is build the engine that facebook then uses to deliver the ads to their users, then rev-share...

<comment><USER4> It's too bad if Google really thinks that way. Seems to me the original key to their success was providing incredible value to their users. That got the user's attention and ... eventually ... monetization.

In the mobile space, the ways to add "incredible value" to the user are only just being conceived. Sure adding the location data silo to apps is a plus. And it seems the entire planet is fixated on social. But I don't see businesses competing for my business in any significant way inside the same app...yet.

<comment><USER3> I totally agree with you, look at my post here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2518927></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Scuttlebutt – A decentralised secure gossip platform - <AUTHOR> https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/ <comment><USER2> Discussion earlier this year:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14050049](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14050049)

</comment><comment><USER3> I find myself not enjoying the video introduction, I like the technical details on a technically orientated page. I'm not a simple user, I don't need a "love story", I like the nitty gritty details.

Regardless, very cool to see something new in the space. Going to schedule some time to play with it.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, the love story was deliberately aimed at non-technical users, trying to emphasise the culture rather than the tech.

[http://www.scuttlebot.io/more/protocols/secure- scuttlebutt.h...](http://www.scuttlebot.io/more/protocols/secure- scuttlebutt.html) has a little bit of more-technical stuff about how it works, but it's not comprehensive. Technical docs are an ongoing task.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, sure it makes sense for those users. But you've put it on a site that contains mostly technical information. This isn't facebook.com. You've put a user-centered video on an engineer-centered site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't look at it without installing it, and I'm certainly not going to take eleven-and-some minutes of my life to watch a love story. I want to see what people are actually using it for, and what the tone of their conversations is, and I can't do that without installing it, which I won't.

The nice thing about a browser-based tool for social interaction is that I can go look at it and see if I want it without installing more software I don't want. If your video is going to ease me around that, it's going to have to be short and packed with real-life information, not imaginary stories.</comment>


One Handed Clock using canvas and js - <AUTHOR> http://quietcode.com/clock/

<comment><AUTHOR> It's been pretty hot here yesterday (40ºC) and I was a bit bored, so I had a go at designing a clock with only one hand. I was happy with the result, but then didn't have anyone to show it to, hence this post.

Works in Chrome and Safari and on iOS devices except the colours are a bit dark. Seems ok in FF, but the seconds take a while to sync with the hand. not sure why

<comment><USER2> I like the fact that I can read the clock without looking in 2 places, just read down a line. Well done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice work, and an ingenious take on the more traditional one handed clocks/watches:

[http://24hourtime.info/2008/11/22/the-sound-of-one-hand- tick...](http://24hourtime.info/2008/11/22/the-sound-of-one-hand-ticking/)

and

[http://24hourtime.info/2010/04/28/the-sound-of-a-one- handed-...](http://24hourtime.info/2010/04/28/the-sound-of-a-one-handed- clock/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Cool, mesmerizing, innovative! Love it!

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> With a quick and easy modification of your code, you could make a 0 handed clock where the current time is always lined up at the top-center of the screen.

That way, you only have to look at one place to find the time.

<comment><AUTHOR> done, but it's not the default. I've added a preferences dialog in the top left

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A little disorienting at first, but after I adjusted to it the concept is pretty cool. I just built an egg-timer using JS/CSS, but plan on translating it onto an HTML5 canvas as I work my way through the learning process (via Dive Into HTML5). Now I've yours as an example when I inevitably get stumped by something :)

</comment><comment><USER7> Can anyone else hear it ticking? (: Very cool.</comment>


Show HN: JavaScript Tips from ES5 to ES10 - <AUTHOR> https://leanpub.com/javascript-awesome-tips <comment><USER2> I only read a part of the sample, so my opinion is based on that. Personally, I'd not want anyone on my team to write code which utilizes many of these tips (ex: Using + to cast a date to a timestamp). These sort of tricks make reading, understanding and maintaining code a huge pain in the ass. I don't want to have to go Google what's happening every time I come across one of these tricks I'm not familiar with.

I'd still read the book once for the chuckles at the weirdness of Javascript though, so kudos for the effort in compiling this book.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with you, this old weird js stuff is a pain in the ass, but I added this weird stuff for developers learn not only the good parts, but bad too, because it's important to remenber how javascript was in the dark days and most important how this language evolved with the improvements provided by ES6/7/8/9/10.

<comment><AUTHOR> And this weird stuffs is used a lot in many projects when you minify javascript.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This reads more like a small collection of random code snippets than an actual book. I would expect a book to cover the reasons either why something works or why use one thing over another, but in this case it's mostly just here's a solution to this specific thing with no further explanation.

A good example of what I mean is the number rounding subheading, which solely consists of a single sentence:

> The use of ~~ operator for rounding numbers, in my opinion, it's very weird, > but it's also an alternative than use Math.floor() function: [code sample]

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your feedback, and you're right, this is a cookbook, but there is no small collection, and yes, a considerable list of js code snippets.</comment></comment>


AOL+HuffPo Why It is Not Really a Good Deal - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2011/02/07/aol-huffington-post-and-why-it-is-not-really-a-good-deal/ <comment><USER2> 10x revenues... what's their profit margin I wonder. For this to be a decent buy they must 50% at least.</comment>


Maryland research could improve the AI task of sensorimotor representation - <AUTHOR> https://eng.umd.edu/release/helping-robots-remember-hyperdimensional-computing-theory-could-change-the-way-ai-works <comment><USER2> Related older easy-to-read article, paper and seminar lecture:

1\. "Binary holographic reduced representations for SWI-Prolog" by Jocelyn Ireson-Paine:

[http://www.j-paine.org/hrr.html](http://www.j-paine.org/hrr.html)

2\. "Dual Role of Analogy in the Design of a Cognitive Computer" by Pentti Kanerva, in Advances in Analogy Research: Integration of Theory and Data from the Cognitive, Computational, and Neural Sciences. Workshop. Sofia, Bulgaria, July 17-20, 1998:

[http://faculty.cs.tamu.edu/choe/mirror/kanerva.ANALOGY98-kan...](http://faculty.cs.tamu.edu/choe/mirror/kanerva.ANALOGY98-kanerva.pdf)

3\. Pentti Kanerva lectures at Stanford on "Computing with High-Dimensional Vectors":

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUCoxhExe0o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUCoxhExe0o)

4\. Additional information, including the slides, for Kanerva's lecture are available at:

[http://web.stanford.edu/class/ee380/Abstracts/171025.html](http://web.stanford.edu/class/ee380/Abstracts/171025.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is probably a "publishing in the press" translation issue, but the notion that neural networks have no memory is dead wrong. DNNs encode incredibly specific histories of training data in their weights, which is both a privacy/security risk [1] and a phenomena that is actively being utilized in many dnn architectures. Overall, this has a "brand the framework before proving exceptional capabilities" feel.

[1] [https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.08232](https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.08232)

<comment><USER4> I don't think that's what they meant. I interpreted it to mean: neural networks are not trained in a continuous online manner.

That said, there are neural network architectures which have state, such as recurrent neural networks, time-delay neural networks, and long short-term memory. However, the state is used for covering problem domains with a temporal nature, rather than for reflective learning. It's typically reset between different inputs.

<comment><USER5> There are lots of examples of networks being trained online, I see it all the time in robotic control.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> These HDVs (hyperdimensional binary vectors) sound a lot like the SDRs (sparse distributed representations) that Numenta talks about with their HTMs (hierarchical temporal memory).

Wow, what a lot of TLAs.

<comment><USER7> That is probably not a coincidence. Pentti Kanerva, who does a lot of work on hyperdimensional computing, is at the redwood center for theory neuro which Hawkins (numenta) helped found.

<comment><USER8> Kanerva is also the author of the (vastly underrated IMHO) book Sparse Distributed Memory from the late 80s that set the stage for a lot of this and predates Numenta by a couple of decades...

<comment><USER6> Huh, thanks for the reference. I have heard elsewhere that the one issue with Numenta's work is that they aren't particularly proactive about citing prior art, so it's hard to know (as a newcomer) what parts are their innovations and what parts are incremental improvements on existing techniques.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hyperdimensional binary vectors??

What like:

010101010111010101010111011001

So they are encoding perceptions and actions into the same vector space. Cool. But the marketing is just gibberish.

<comment><USER10> Not really. "hyperdimensional binary vector" may sound rather buzzwordish, but it has a fairly precise definition in this context, and it may indeed be highly significant for the future of neural computing. You can learn more about it with the code (and paper) here: [https://github.com/alexanderganderson/bnn_vis](https://github.com/alexanderganderson/bnn_vis)

<comment><USER9> Err. Just read the abstract. It's a binary vector. Nothing more. That these high dimensional binary vectors behave similarly enough to real vectors for the purposes of training binary neural networks in no way justifies the name "hyperdenional binary vector". It's a vector of Booleans.

<comment><USER5> You are technically correct, it's just that when the vector of booleans gets long enough they start to exhibit certain properties that "normal" binary vectors don't have. Because of this the authors use the term "hyper dimensional vector" to let other professional researchers quickly know what they are talking about. Here's a decent blog post about some of those properties: [http://gigasquidsoftware.com/blog/2016/02/06/why- hyperdimens...](http://gigasquidsoftware.com/blog/2016/02/06/why- hyperdimensional-socks-never-match/)

I kind of agree that "hyper-dimensional" sounds like a dumb buzzword, and maybe it is. But I do think we should have a word for vectors that are big enough that they fall in this regime.

<comment><USER9> I'm slightly more convinced. But it does seem a pretty silly name. Also I have read about these counter intuitive properties of large vectors in other places without this specific name having come up. But, yeah, interesting link, thanks :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not posting your machine learning paper on arxiv.org is a red flag.

<comment><USER12> What about vixra.org?

<comment><USER13> For papers so bad that even arxiv refuses to publish them? Sure, why not...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I do not understand the point of this paper. Say, deep reinforcement learning also encodes perception/state into a large vector. Combining perceptions into a large vector doesn't seem to contribute much?

<comment><USER4> The article explains so little, so it's hard to know.

Neural networks generally don't learn by themselves, they require some kind of optimisation outside of their operation. It seems to me that they're saying this is more of a cognitive architecture which learns continuously by memorisation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Unfortunately I have very little experience with AI or ML. I did however have the lead contact on this paper (Yiannis Aloimonos) as a professor for computer vision my senior year at Maryland.

He spent most of the lectures rambling about his research, including this, rather than the course topic. I learned the course material on my own but still enjoyed listening to him.

<comment><USER16> Yiannis is a fantastic professor, probably my favorite during undergrad at Maryland.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> this seems like a pretty significant step towards a sort of "holistic" agent whose past informs its present and future in a more human-relatable way.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is a very click-baity headline. I'm tempted to flag it!

Has anyone here seen the actual paper?

<comment><USER19> [https://robotics.sciencemag.org/content/4/30/eaaw6736](https://robotics.sciencemag.org/content/4/30/eaaw6736)

[http://sci-hub.tw/10.1126/scirobotics.aaw6736](http://sci- hub.tw/10.1126/scirobotics.aaw6736)

<comment><USER13> Closed access journal for machine learning in 2019? No thanks</comment></comment></comment>


Why I quit Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/better-humans/325436c2976f

<comment><USER2> A well done article. These are the same reasons why I never joined facebook.

Another reading: [http://www.waitbutwhy.com/2013/07/7-ways-to-be- insufferable-...](http://www.waitbutwhy.com/2013/07/7-ways-to-be-insufferable- on-facebook.html)</comment>


Nimble Robot tightrope walks High-Voltage power lines - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/industrial-robots/robotic-tightrope-walkers-for-highvoltage-lines?

<comment><USER2> That does seem a bit safer than this approach (the fun starts about 60 seconds in): <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tzga6qAaBA></comment>


Anchorage Has Never Reached 90° F. That Could Change This Week - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/04/us/alaska-heat-anchorage-fireworks.html <comment><USER3> My former co-founder of my SaaS was based in remote Alaska (I am in tropical Australia), and I remember one day a while back late in the year, it was +35degC here and she said it was -35degC over there. I couldn't believe we were equidistant on either end of the 0 datum, with a massive 70 degree C difference in temperature variation.

Weirdly, it is now our dry season, with temperatures around 21degC and I just Googled the weather in her area and they are expecting around 30degC - <USER2> is actually hotter than Northern Australia is right now!

<comment><USER4> But isn't that partly due to it being summer in Alaska right now, and it is winter in Australia? You said "late last year" was your previous comparison, which implies it was approaching summer in Australia?

<comment><USER3> We are so close to the equator here that we don't really have the equivalent of 4 seasons. Rather just a 'wet' and 'dry' season. Probably about a 15 degree C variation in temperature throughout the year.

My point was that I don't believe Alaska ever got warmer than we ever do here, but it has happened. My first story about the 70 degree variation in temperature is more the norm.

<comment><USER5> for reference (for everyone else). Darwin is 12 deg south of the equator, which makes it closer than Hawaii/Honolulu (which is 21 deg north), or Nicaragua which is roughly the same at 12 deg north. Darwin is typically hot and humid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Maybe that'll make them rethink drilling for more oil and gas there.

<comment><USER7> Of course not, they need that oil and gas to power the AC units everyone will be buying now. Won't somebody think of the revenue?

<comment><USER8> I don't expect Alaska residents will immediately start buying AC units just because 1 day in a year reaches 32°C.

32C is not that bad, a simple fan is more than enough to keep you cool.

<comment><USER9> The way you experience temperature heavily depends on the relative humidity.

E.g. I find 0C in London way colder than -15C in Northern Europe.

<comment><USER10> That is actually a common myth: [https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health- and-fitness/fitn...](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and- fitness/fitness/is-damp-cold-really-the-worst/article28346087/)

I also think that you wear different clothes and are more prepeared when it is -15.

<comment><USER9> Nah, he has no idea what he's speaking about.

It's not _just_ humidity. Rain just simply can't exist at -15C, so you can't get your clothes moist because it can only snow, and that snow is cold enough not to stick to you at all.

I am not even going to start on the fact that you can walk miles of snow and not get wet, while walking through miles of slush... Well, I hope you understand the distinction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There was me thinking the city occasionally travels towards the North Pole but never quite gets there.

</comment><comment><USER12> How far back is "never"?

<comment><USER13> The first sentence of the article: "In more than 100 years of Anchorage history, weather stations have never recorded a single 90-degree reading."

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If any mod could edit the title to be "90°F" that would be great, it took me longer than I'm willing to admit to understand what it meant :)

<comment><USER15> Looks like some mod already did that.

Great ! now rest of the world can't understand.

<comment><USER14> I think you're mistaken. I'm just asking to add the unit to make it clearer.

I won't enter into the unit war, and FWIW I'm used to centigrades.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> That's 32C apparently

<comment><USER17> I was wondering what is the actual unit. 90 degrees is a bit overloaded.

<comment><USER18> Perpendicular?

<comment> loup-vaillant That's what I initially thought.

<comment><USER19> Alaska Has Never Reached A Right Angle has a nice ring to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Want to make a difference on climate change as a technologist? Feel free to join these communities actively looking for support and with ongoing projects (that are alive):

\- [https://climateaction.tech/](https://climateaction.tech/)

\- [https://techimpactmakers.com/](https://techimpactmakers.com/)

\- [https://www.tmrow.com](https://www.tmrow.com)

<comment><USER21> Same copy paste on _every_ climate change post is starting to feel like tedious spam at this point.

I see from your history it's the only thing you have ever posted on HN.

<comment><USER20> Hey NeedMoreTea, you're right - so far I haven't posted so much else. Do you have any idea on how to raise awareness of community projects that you would feel are more respectful? 50+ people have joined the projects over the last week, attributing it to threads on HN, so it seems that for some users it is providing some value.

<comment><USER22> If you're only here because this place has high visibility, not because you're interested in the conversation, you're a spammer no matter how noble your goals are.

<comment><USER20> I'm (obviously) very involved in climate change and how tech (very represented in the HN community) can play a role in fixing it: many are asking themselves the question on how they can do something about it.

I want to help these people find a spot where they can find like-minded people interested on working on it - and I believe climate change posts on HN are a good match between people concerned about the climate, and who would be interested in joining tech communities working to fix it. I'm all ears to find other ways to give people avenues to work on their "climate" anxiety - let me know if you have better ideas.

<comment><USER23> I'm concerned about the starving people in sub Saharan Africa. It would still be inappropriate for me to constantly spam you about it, regardless of how hungry they are.

<comment><USER24> Yes. Absolutely. I am concerned about the security/surveillance state. I understand this and try to apologize when I start going on about it.

I love HN, but it's gotten so that if it's a weekend or U.S. holiday, it's climate stories. I'm happy to ignore them, but the site itself is beginning to look a bit preachy on this particular topic.

<comment><USER25> So, the person copy pasting shouldn't do that, but....I would expect the volume of climate stories to get larger, not smaller.

The issue is growing in urgency and severity. By social convention people treat it like any other issue, but it drawfs anything else in terms of the scale of the problem.

So it'll remain relevant to the forum, which tends to do a better joh weighting things based on importance. That said the discussions likely verge on repetitive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> In the last 100 years. Missing from the title.

<comment><USER26> "The highest temperature ever recorded at Anchorage's official station was 85 degrees"

<comment><USER17> Yes so in the last ~100 years it was the highest. How about 1000 years or 100000? Why is only the last 100 years relevant in the context of climate?

<comment><USER27> We use 100 years as a benchmark for weather events like floods. As to why I guess it's a good benchmark for living memory.

<comment><USER17> So I guess there is no scientific reason, just living memory. For me such articles just lack the scientific merit and the only purpose is trying to cause mass hysteria. Earlier it was about how we all going the freeze to death, nowadays it is how we are all going to die because of global warming. In fact Earth went through several warm and cool periods, even if you look back just few hundred years. I am all for reducing CO2 and I am pretty successfully reduced unnecessary CO2 production in my work by using more efficient solutions and not wasting energy because this is what is under my control to help mother Earth. Writing click baity articles without context and scientific merit is not going to help anybody.

<comment><USER28> Or maybe it's only you who considers it clickbait and everybody else immediately understood the article was about recorded history of temperatures, because, you know, it's kinda common sense?

<comment><USER17> I do not debate whenever it was the record in the last 100 years, I just try to understand what is the scientific implication.

If you look at the bigger picture it means nothing:

Last 65M years:

[http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/lappi/65_Myr_Climate_C...](http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/lappi/65_Myr_Climate_Change_Rev.jpg)

Lat 10K years:

[https://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/lappi/gisp- last-10000...](https://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/lappi/gisp- last-10000-new-a.gif)

Now please explain to me that how looking at only the last 100 years is relevant or it prooves anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Meh, just measure long enough and you are going to see those tails of your standard normal distribution fill up slowly.

<comment><USER6> Weird how all the hot tails fill up after 2000 and all the cold tails filled up before 2000.

<comment><USER30> Illustrated [https://showyourstripes.info/stripes/NORTH_AMERICA-USA- Alask...](https://showyourstripes.info/stripes/NORTH_AMERICA-USA- Alaska-1901-2018-BK.png) Source: [https://showyourstripes.info/](https://showyourstripes.info/)

<comment><USER29> Good remarks, good sources. Still would like to see if there is no naturally sinusoidal tendency in the slightly longer term, i.e., are we just going into another Medieval Warm Period? [0]

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

<comment><USER6> With which parts of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_of_recent_climate_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_of_recent_climate_change) do you disagree?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> 100 years of temperature data isn't saying much though.

If we could show that prior to the Last Glacial Period the temperature never breached 90°F, maybe this would be compelling.

<comment><USER32> Is there a way we could do this, namely get air temperatures prior to the last glacial period?

It seems that you are setting an impossible bar rather than seeking an honest inquiry, happy to be corrected though

<comment><USER33> Sadly this is one of those arguments that are basically impossible to refute with large enough timescales.

I don't like the argument because it's unprovable with any degree of reliability (i.e. we can know the ice age was cold, but how cold? generally... this cold), but to outright ignore it is not fair either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> It has, Earth was much warmer in the past. I completely believe climate change is happening, but I don't understand why a new temperate record is scary.

Higher sea levels, higher temperates, higher CO2. The earth has had all that for millions of years in the past without triggering mass extinctions. Humans have been around for all of it except higher CO2.

And it's all happening on a slow enough time scale (generations) that I expect minimal disruption. Global warming is real but not the apocalyptic catastrophe that media makes it out to be. We as a species have better things to worry about like millions of us dying from preventable diseases every year.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you use a calendar app? - <AUTHOR> I hate calendar apps.
The entire paradigm seems wrong. That your time is 'empty' until it's filled with an event... feels backwards. Especially when other people are allowed to add things to it.
Yet, I know people live and die by their calendar as single source of truth. I've seen  schedules that are "walls of blue" stretching months into the future.
As a developer, most of my time is spent in deep creative work, with a few meetings interspersed. But I hardly need a calendar for that.
So I wonder, do you use a calendar?
- If so, how do you use it? What's your biggest frustration? Is there more you wish it could do (help manage priorities, find more time, etc)? Is there anything better out there than Google or Outlook?
- If no, why not? What is your 'source of truth' for how you plan/allocate your time? Would you put that on a calendar if it was easy and made sense (eg. didn't have to schedule down to the minute)? <comment><USER2> I use the calendar built into EM Client. The backend for that is Fastmail.

I write scripts to import events into my calendar. For instance, talks from the computer science department at my local Uni.

I am maybe 75% hacker, 25% hustler, I find the calendar a great tool for hooking up with people. For my own hacking work I tend to use a paper Kanban system and also am leaning now on getting my wife and child to stamp out "work in progress".</comment>


First study to explore language and LSD since the 1960s - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160818090035.htm <comment><USER2> Isn't it quite obvious that in any "coldwar type" scenario it's advantageous to ban _civilian_ research on anything you don't want you enemies to also get their hands on? At least if: (a) you're arrogant enough to believe civilian researches will not outsmart military ones, or (b) you believe that what you got so far is "good enough" for military applications, or (c) you think that this might be helpful forcing scientists passionate about the banned fields to work for the military.

Dunno which of do above is actually true about this topic, but for anything "banned in the '60s" it's important to think about the perspective of things in the 60s. Asides from the hippies and new age, this was the era when US military planners contemplated an unprovoked first nuclear strike on USSR simply because they knew the Russians where behind on ICBM tech but not for long. And on the other side the Russians where desperate developing bio and other unconventional weapons because they knew they were behind on nukes and needed _something_ to fill the damn "gap". Psycho-chemical weapons combined with a new level of psychological warfare could've been seen as a pretty enticing "gap filler" material.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's bizarre that LSD (among other things) have been banned from researchers for this long. Recently as research has been starting to happen again we've seen such interesting and successful applications for MDMA and Ketamine.

I can't wait to find out what these drugs can do over the next few decades.

</comment><comment><USER4> "This can lead to a loss of boundaries between the self and the environment, as might occur in certain psychiatric illnesses."

It still rings clear that altered consciousness is something seen as illness or being deficit in som way by the scientific community.

This points out a deeper ignorance within the collective human psyche and is an attitude has to go before any real study can be done.

<comment><USER5> I agree with you completely. Francis Crick was using LSD during the days when he discovered DNA's double helix geometry. To me, this means psychedelics are for more than just manic, unhinged thoughts, or illusions of grandeur. It can actually provide intelligent people with valuable perspective, insight, and creativity.

Considering societies current state, a change in perspective wouldn't be harmful. But people are afraid of change...

"Drop acid, not bombs!"

<comment><USER6> > _It can actually provide intelligent people with valuable perspective, > insight, and creativity._

Legend has it that Bill Atkins was inspired to create HyperCard by an LSD trip.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How can I sign up for a study on LSD effects? I really just want to do acid legally, and further human knowledge on psychedelics.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, the latter is definitely a plus, isn't it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Url changed from [http://time.com/4463136/lsd-research-creativity- depression/](http://time.com/4463136/lsd-research-creativity-depression/), which points to this.

Submitters: HN prefers original sources. When an article is mostly a pointer to another one, please submit that one instead.

<comment> iso-8859-1 Why not link [http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2016.1217030](http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2016.1217030) directly then?

<comment><USER9> For stories about specialist research, we've found that HN works better with the most substantive popular article, plus a link to the paper in the comments. It's true that the 'most substantive' popular article is often still rather weak, making more out of the paper than there is, etc., but HN readers tend to point this out in the thread, and the alternative (linking to the paper first) doesn't seem to work as well for discussion–the barrier feels too sheer.

It's different with papers in fields where the HN audience tends to have a lot of specialists, such as computing.

Edit: contradicting what I said above, here's a counterexample: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12361666](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12361666). There are always exceptions.</comment></comment></comment>


App Design Trends For 2013 - <AUTHOR> http://theindustry.cc/2013/01/07/13-design-trends-for-2013/

<comment><USER2> _GIFs seem to be making an uprising online and the next logical step is to use them in design._

The more things change...

</comment><comment><USER3> > The best example I have found yet is the camera icon on the iOS lock screen

Its important to remember that they didn't design it to be swiped just for the sake of having a gesture. If it were a button, you could start taking photos inside of your pocket if you managed to turn the screen on. The swiping gesture just makes it more difficult todo accidentally.

<comment><USER4> yes. and swipe to camera did not first appear on iOS but Android(maybe HTC or Samsung? I can't remember)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > less button

right. I don;t think buttons are good ones on touchscreen. On plat face, I'd rather swipe than click. swiping is more naturally than clicking and hurting less.

Also I love the new design trend, flat, simple and elegant.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm eager to see how the flat-design trend bakes out. Some designers are going overboard with it at the expense of usability, but maybe it's because I'm used to the world of abundance affordance.

</comment><comment> nezza-_- I don't think the guy writing this really knows what he's talking about.

<comment><USER6> Case in point: touting Quartz, quite possibly the worst modern UX I've ever come across in the wild.

<comment><USER7> I had mentioned Quartz due to the fact that it's a web platform built with consistency across devices in mind. I was focusing on the point that while native makes a lot of sense in most cases, with publications (with a reader base across all platforms) the way in which Quartz went about producing their product was wise. The design isn't necessarily great, as many people would say, but the solution they arrived at is one which I feel will reverberate throughout the year.

<comment><USER6> The awkward thing with Quartz is that the design itself _is_ great, but the implementation and experience is a total failure in the browser. I am 100% with you on the point you're making, but Quartz makes a better example of what-not-to-do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is what the link should have been: <http://theindustry.cc/2013/01/07/13-design-trends-for-2013/>

</comment><comment><USER9> Here's to hoping these design trends focus on helping solve business or society problems and not just the design communities desire for 'pixel perfection.'

<comment><USER10> "Here's to hoping that these new libraries and frameworks focus on helping solve business or society problems and not just the software communities desire for 'elegant code'."

See what I did there? Craftsmanship is craftsmanship.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The link is off, see if you can remove the preview part.

</comment><comment><USER12> Isn't #1 describing digital design? I associate flat design more with less gradients and box shadows.

</comment><comment><USER13> What is a hamburger button? I cannot download "the magazine" app (iOS6 req.).

<comment><USER7> <https://twitter.com/gannonburgett/status/288463363053334528>

<comment><USER13> Oh those, thanks.</comment></comment></comment>


I'm terrified of my new TV - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/2014/10/30/im_terrified_of_my_new_tv_why_im_scared_to_turn_this_thing_on_and_youd_be_too/

<comment><USER2> Considerable discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8537039](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8537039)</comment>


Healthy Labs (YC S12) Wants To Be Go-To Site For People With Chronic Illness - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/20/yc-startup-healthy-labs-wants-to-be-the-go-to-site-for-people-living-with-chronic-illness/

<comment><USER2> I signed up as a physician(because I am one) to give some feedback. I got sent to an account page where I can't do anything at all.

Perhaps browsing permissions would be nice? I just wanted to see the site from the user perspective...

<comment><USER3> ah yes, sorry about this. we'll get some user permissions up soon for non- patients. most of the stuff we've programmed is patient focused right now. luckily, as soon as we do get something up for you (or just for you to see if you'd like), i'd love to email you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks nice! I've been thinking about a project like yours and bought peerhealth.com several years ago with the hope of doing something like you have done. For other companies (which I'm sure you're familiar with), see also <http://patientslikeme.com> and <http://curetogether.com> (just bought by 23andme).

</comment><comment><USER5> There are a lot of health startups out there. But only a few thats founders convey an impression of personality and authenticity.

Knowing Sean and Will at least via Skype conversations, I always had the feeling they are a perfect team and make a difference to a lot of products as they try to tackle a problem. I mean a _real_ problem.

Some initiatives do their best to improve the lives of patients with IBD. But the more empathy you have for the patients with his needs and the less you think about the market size or exit opportunities of your product, the better you might perform. While social proof in medical communities is the far biggest challenge of all, I´m convinced, they are the right people at the right time.

Maybe, the chances for patient driven innovation and exchange have never been better. Sean, Will and team - you know that our team is trying to contribute to that movement with a different idea and approach. Let´s build a beehive and feed the honeycombs with new solutions ;)

</comment><comment><USER6> Hey Guys, Great stuff!

You might want to check this out: <https://www.crohnspromise.org/> \- It is a 'clinical trial' (case-control study) to evaluate whether such "self-reported" outcomes and tracking can actually help in managing crohns disease. Its been going on at Cleveland Clinic since 2009.

</comment><comment><USER7> Happy to see this name in the news again, and excited to see them blossom out of YC. Good luck guys. Any metrics on total users?

Are you guys monetizing yet? Would love to talk re: clinical trial recruitment.

Last question: Can anyone provide the citation behind the giant prevalence numbers thrown out by TC?

I work for a startup in drug development in IBD and those numbers are the biggest I've seen. (1.2m US and 2.5m worldwide are biggest I've come across). Would love to know if they have merit.

Email: briggsbio {at} (Buchheit created me)

</comment><comment><USER8> This looks really good, but as a Web Dev with Cystic Fibrosis who was developing a site based on virtually the same idea (the graphs, the health and medication logs - almost all identical), the quote...

"The next vertical they hope to launch is one dealing with auto-immune conditions such as Multiple Sclerosis and Cystic Fibrosis."

...was a real kick in the balls. Guess that'll teach me not to hang about next time!

</comment><comment><USER9> This is a great idea, with a compelling story behind it. I'm wondering what the thinking is behind making it a funded startup. Wouldn't the pressure of returning investors' money in a limited timeframe make it hard to focus on solving the actual problem? Wouldn't this work better as just a community website?

</comment><comment><USER10> Signed up as 'patient' (with UC), and am looking forward to contributing (both as patient and with site feedback if you like also).

</comment><comment><USER11> Clickable: <http://crohnology.com/>

</comment><comment><USER12> Sounds like onehealth.com</comment>


An email to the authors of JSCrypto - <AUTHOR> http://corte.si/posts/security/jscrypto.html <comment><USER3> I remember a discussion on here before of why using JS crypto (different implementation) was a bad idea (in short, a mitm could give you a broken jscrypto functions which don't really encrypt).

So no, you wouldn't want to use this in place of TLS, but the authors give some decent reasons why you actually might want to do this:

 _One major reason is the need to encrypt data before uploading it to a server; this is useful where the server needs to store data but doesn't wish to see it in the clear. It can also be used in desktop applications written in Javascript - for example, Firefox extensions._

Can anyone think of other good reasons?

<comment><USER4> You can't generalise MITM and injection attacks to "Javascript crypto is bad". There's an idea floating around called "host proof hosting" - or in the Clipperz parlance, "zero-knowledge applications" - that I think could be potentially very important in future, and that relies entirely on Javascript crypto. The only problem is that I haven't seen it done right yet - <USER2> application I've looked at that claims to implement this paradigm has some enormous, glaring shortcoming.

I'm working on an epic tldr; blog post and an associated project release related to this - keep an eye out for it next week.

<comment><USER3> You're right about that, I certainly over generalized the issue. I should have just stuck with "javascript crypto shouldn't be used in place of TLS."

The host proof hosting stuff is pretty interesting. Some people implement something similar when using dropbox, by encrypting the files before they are synced. A disadvantage of this method (other than being cumbersome), is that you lose the bandwidth savings of Dropbox's deltas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Javascript and cryptography are two words that should never be used together. I can't believe people think this provides some decent form of security. Instead of worrying about the security of some javascript crypto implementation you should be more focused on wtf kind of problem this actually solves without introducing a slew of new weaknesses. TLS/SSL provides end to end encryption and doing any random crypto in javascript doesn't provide anything on top of that. And if you aren't using TLS/SSL then the code is still coming from your server in plaintext. If it is sent in plaintext then it can be replaced by an attacker therefore requiring you to send it over https and since you are already doing that why bother with javascript crypto when you can just send the data over the secure connection you already made?

</comment><comment><USER6> The paper is worth reading: <http://crypto.stanford.edu/sjcl/#paper> It reads fairly well.

Interesting how they built their CSPRNG, using mouse movements gathered as the user interacts with a page (and optionally cookie data):

      Since we extract 2 bits of entropy per mouse move sample,
      we need 128 samples to generate a 256-bit AES key. Our data
      shows the that median time for the generator to be seeded
      to the default level of 128 samples is 9, 28 and 41 seconds
      on the survey, forum and blog, respectively.

I wonder if there's a good way to buffer the entropy securely so it doesn't have to wait so long for every encryption.

<comment><USER4> In a nutshell, that's almost what the Fortuna family of PRNGs do. In the JSCrypto implementation, entropy is collected from the mouse movements continuously, and like all Fortuna implementations it uses a clever dance using a block cypher and multiple entropy pools is to "buffer" the entropy. Google "fortuna" for more information.

<comment><USER7> Edit: Sorry. I deleted my comment. I thought you were being redundant and hadn't read the article. I didn't notice that you were the author. can someone vote this comment's parent up?

<comment><USER4> That's a bit over-zealous - even if I hadn't been the author of the article, noting that Fortuna PRNGs can be thought of as "buffering" entropy would have been worthwhile in this context.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Reading this is another reminder that I was not cut out for computer programming...

<comment><USER7> How can that possibly be a discussion-enhancing comment on a news site lovingly called "Hacker News"?

Please mind that signal to noise ratio is something that we have to all work hard to maintain.

<comment><USER9> "This doesn't belong on Hacker News is signal?"

(Even less signal-ish is this post. But I don't care about signal-to-noise. What I care about is when there's no longer any signal, like Reddit and Digg.)

<comment><USER7> I suspect that unmitigated habits of noisiness contribute more noise than the combination of noisiness and inverse noise.

"I don't care about signal-to-noise. What I care about is when there's no longer any signal, like Reddit and Digg."

Disregard for standards leads to digg.

<comment><USER10> Four monks decided to meditate silently without speaking for two weeks. By nightfall on the first day, the candle began to flicker and then went out. The first monk said, "Oh, no! The candle is out." The second monk said, "Aren't we not suppose to talk?" The third monk said, "Why must you two break the silence?" The fourth monk laughed and said, "Ha! I'm the only one who didn't speak."

Edit: Source: [http://thelab.fisica.unige.it/grosso/modules/news/article.ph...](http://thelab.fisica.unige.it/grosso/modules/news/article.php?storyid=38)

<comment><USER9> Sure, but I never agreed not to speak. The rules apply to everyone _except_ me. Duhhhh.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


OS X Lion's Internet Recovery tool is one more nail in the DVD's coffin - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/90602-os-x-lions-internet-recovery-tool-is-one-more-nail-in-the-dvds-coffin

<comment><USER2> "Recovery partition" is misleading. This feature works even with a fresh hard disk. I assume it's some kind of netboot built into the EFI bios, but I'm just wondering how long it will be before someone hacks it to load other software, or even hijack it for malware.

<comment><USER3> <http://www.apple.com/macosx/recovery/>

"newly-released Mac starting with the Mac mini and MacBook Air."

The low-level "Internet Recovery" is custom firmware. And the malware could happen, but it would be like chopping off somebody's head, then re-growing the brainstem into a hijacked mind. Unlikely.

It's much, much easier to hijack an existing install, than to exploit the install, corrupt the hard drive, force a complete re-install of a custom OS built with a malware kernel from somebody else's servers.

<comment><USER4> I think you're overestimating how hard this is, modulo how they implement firmware updates.

EFI is an almost completely open spec, and it's easy to write code that runs within the EFI environment. Combine that with something like the approach taken in Stoned Bootkit and you have a viable option for persisting malware across reinstalls.

In traditional PCs, BIOS reflash does not require any special signing key, or suchlike, and its trivial in a very small amount of code to splice an option ROM (code that executes automatically during power-on) into the BIOS of the running machine, and reflash it (slightly harder to do reliably). As far as I know current generation Macbooks don't perform any kind of signature check either.

Unlike with traditional PCs, Apple has a relatively small number of hardware revisions, making this kind of attack even easier to implement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This works great until 10 years down the road you pick up an old Mac at a thrift store and discover that the internet recovery for Lion has been ended and the newer OS's aren't supported by the hardware.

</comment><comment><USER6> The time when I bought a computer with a CD or DVD drive was more than 10 years ago. During the last years I've mostly used X-Series Thinkpads.

Most Linux distributions have been installable via USB stick or Internet for a long time now and the only time when I was missing the drive so far were the scientific conferences where the proceedings were distributed on a CD.

Good to see that also mainstream operating systems don't require this antique method of data transfer anymore.

</comment><comment><USER7> Does this mean you'd have to reload the entire 4GB file? Because given the quality of my home internet connection, that's about a 20 hour download. That's the reason I'm waiting for the USB drive. As an aside, I wonder if Apple has any plans to release a special Thunderbolt drive for Lion? I'd happily pay extra for that option.

</comment><comment><USER8> I for one wish they had never been invented. The WORST consumer data storage medium ever was the CD/DVD. It had capacity, but was ridiculously fragile for a consumer product.

<comment><USER9> What do you do to your discs? I've never broken or damaged one by accident. They're not that fragile.

<comment><USER10> Personally I've never damaged a disc. I've a few that have the foil flaked off (they're about 10 years old but have been kept out of sunlight and were brand name ones too).

However a certain child damaged one of my GameCube Zelda discs recently ... scratched to hell in 15s. It's not like I can run cdparanoia on it either ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What happens if the hard drive crashes and the partition is not available? A visit to the Apple Store I guess?

<comment><USER12> As stated elsewhere, its not a hard drive partition. The download software is built into the EFI firmware, so it'll work even with a completely blank hard drive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> DVD's coffin? well, there never was a coffin, the DVD is long dead and rotted into nothingness a long time ago. but there never was a coffin, it just died by the wayside and nobody to bothered.

<comment><USER11> That's strange, I seem to recall seeing DVDs in stores just the other day. Maybe the reports of its death are exaggerated?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Who is firing? - <AUTHOR>

Though there are lot of companies hiring compared to year before, there are bunch of companies firing as well. <comment><USER2> Yahoo. Right before the holidays, too. Guess they want to avoid paying bonuses to soon-to-be goners.

[http://kara.allthingsd.com/20101130/yahoo-layoffs-coming- dec...](http://kara.allthingsd.com/20101130/yahoo-layoffs-coming- december-13-and-not-this-week-though-its-still-bad-news/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Ask.com laid off search engineers within the last month.

Limewire had a big judgment against it recently. They have another product in the works, but they may be doing some downsizing.

Sorry for the lack of sources. I'll try to come back with them later.

<comment><USER4> I used to get plenty of phone calls from Limewire hiring in their New Delhi office. After the shutdown, I haven't received a single call.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For California, you can often find out who's having layoffs by looking at the WARN notices: [http://www.edd.ca.gov/jobs_and_training/layoff_services_warn...](http://www.edd.ca.gov/jobs_and_training/layoff_services_warn.htm#ListingofWARNNotices)

I imagine other states have their own listings as well.

</comment><comment><USER6> Comcast has been laying off people (learned about it through a friend who was laid off from Comcast). Not much media on it, but I believe the layoffs are part of this: [http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=200690&s...](http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=200690&site=lr_cable&f_src=lightreading_gnews)

</comment><comment><USER7> Lockheed Martin is shutting down a plant in Eagan, MN...by 2013. Possibly transferring 650 employees and dropping 350.

[http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/dpp/news/lockheed-martin- clos...](http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/dpp/news/lockheed-martin-closing-twin- cities-plant-nov-18-2010)

</comment><comment><USER8> My mother worked for a subsidiary of a certain $87 billion a year health insurer. They are closing the office she worked at this month and firing [edit: "laying off"] all the employees.

<comment><USER9> My own understanding of what "firing" meant was termination because, essentially, the employer didn't _like_ the employee anymore, usually because they did something "wrong". Whereas if a batch of employees had to be let go, ostensibly purely for financial reasons, nothing very personal or direct, then they are "laid off", not fired. Every once in a while I hear somebody say fire when I think it was layoff, and it irks me a little. Firing generally means "you suck" whereas laying off means "we suck" or "the economy sucks". I _hope_ that's how we collectively use those terms anyway. Because if we instead use them to mean the same thing, it's a waste of words. A distinction without a difference.

(Not criticizing what you said directly, just reacting to that term.)

<comment><USER10> If you're in the business of concealing responsibility, then by all means, use the word "lay off".

Employers like to use "lay off" to imply that it was not the fault of the management team, it's not because they're bad guys, it's just the unfortunate reality. That's partly true, it's partly bullshit, and the fact is that it affects people profoundly, and calling it a "lay-off" doesn't help things.

Employees who have been terminated like to use "lay off" to imply that it wasn't their fault, to avoid impacting their hireability. But if the ex- employee had been a net asset, they wouldn't be laying that ex-employee off, unless they were liquidating the entire company.

In practice, lean times give management, whether soft-hearted or black- hearted, an opportunity to make hard calls, in the equityholders' favour, at the expense of the employees. You can like that, hate that, whatever.

I prefer to eschew both "lay off" and "fire", and use the word "terminate", as in "one employee was terminated yesterday, and two thousand were terminated at some point last month". I do this in the hopes of being starkly clear about the simple fact of the termination, and avoiding the sugar coat. You can also use "terminated with cause", which is a legal distinction in some jurisdictions, and I think it's an interesting one.

Oh, but... if I wanted to start a thread that contrasts threads called "who's hiring", then I'd be clever and rhyme and call my thread "who's firing". And if I were responding to that thread, I'd use the word in the topic question. And I wouldn't whip out the pedantry unless someone else did it first.

end-of-rant

<comment><USER11> "lay off" says it _is_ the fault of the management team.

"fire" says it is the fault of employee.

In the US, the standard is employment at will, which means you can terminate without cause at any time (unless you are actually terminating for a disallowed cause, confusingly), so "terminated for cause" is a small minority of "fired".

Of course, within those people who are more or less interchangeable, of course the ones let go are the poorest value, but there's a significant gap between someone who was let go because the company wanted to reduce the number of engineers they employed and someone who was let go because he is incompetent and the employer turns right around and starts advertising to replace him.

<comment><USER12> A shareholder takes the opposite view, layoffs can be a great thing for a companies bottom line (at least in the short term).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ebay had a large lay off at their Shanghai facility a few weeks ago

<comment><USER14> I guess those people won't be out of work for a long time though. Auctions are booming in China, just not eBay ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I work for Canada's largest bank and they're turfing contractors at a pretty rapid rate. Shoveling lots of work offshore.

Edit: FTE's seem safe for the moment.

<comment><USER16> This is a trend going through large Canadian businesses right now.

They seem to think that by outsourcing work to overseas mills that they can save money. Sales and support aside, it's the companies that are outsourcing engineering that are really hurting.

<comment><USER17> I'm not sure I agree with this. I work for a "global organization", and the people we hire in the US are just as incompetent as the people we hire in India. (We have good people in all the locations too, of course... but living in the US or UK or Canada does not mean you are going to do a good job.)

I love it when someone emails support and gets an answer like "plz read wiki"... and then you realize the person that wrote that is a white dude from Chicago that speaks no languages other than English. I can forgive lazy writing if English is not your first language. But if it's your only language, please spell please correctly and use "the" when appropriate. A complete sentence would also be nice.

But I digress.

<comment><USER18> The outsourcing of activities generally has less to do with quality than with cost. Of course, the cost is relative too.

A company I used to work for outsourced a large chunk of the work force to Poland. Poland was chosen because they were technically sound, generally, spoke above-average intelligible English and, most importantly, valued the American dollar about 6 times more than we do.

This meant, generally, that they could hire 6 Polish workers for every American worker we laid off (if you ignore the fact that many of the American workers were longer in the tooth, and hence higher on the salary scale, which made it even more profitable a deal.)

The main worry about moving somewhere with an economy that isn't horribly weak is that as our American dollars infuse their economy, and more Polish outsourcing companies are stood up to attract more American dollars, we inflate their economy. The cost of living goes up, the value of our dollar becomes less strong, and the benefits to having moved work there becomes less appealing. This could well lead to a tipping point when American companies pull out, which I worry could 'burst the bubble' and leave Krakow Poland in worse shape than if we'd never been there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I just got laid off. Boss said he couldn't afford my £25k pa. When I pointed out I'm on £18k he was initially shocked but still unable to afford it :(

</comment><comment><USER20> Bank of America had a round of layoffs today

</comment><comment><USER21> Maybe you mean layoffs...

Every company should be ready to do a firing if it's required that the employee and the company part ways.

<comment><USER22> I'm guessing the title name was meant to complement the usual "Who's Hiring" posts that show up every month or so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Nokia laid of people close to Cambridge, UK. We hired a few of them at Citrix.</comment>


The Power of Mechanical Turk - <AUTHOR> http://mittermayr.tumblr.com/post/12783989865/the-power-of-mturk

<comment><USER2> This is actually in violation with Mturks TOS. You cannot ask for personally identifiable information. They could ban your Amazon account.

<comment><AUTHOR> really? oh man, those TOS are killing me. let me check that... thanks for telling me!

<comment><USER3> You could ask people to remove personally identifiable information (names, phones, etc.) and inform them that if they'd like to upload their full resume, they're welcome to at the full site.

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, that sounds like a much better approach even. thanks man!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Help me understand the Uber cancellation scam? - <AUTHOR> https://onemileatatime.com/uber-scam/ <comment><USER2> I've faced similar scams with drivers. Sometimes they'll call and encourage me to cancel, saying all sorts of things but commonly "Where you going? Oh, I'm not going in that direction", etc. But then they don't cancel the ride and wait for me to do it. I do wonder if they get the cancellation fees.

<comment><USER3> Maybe they are route optimizing.</comment></comment>


Leaked ICE Manual Shows Gov't Allowing Informants to Engage in Illegal Behavior - <AUTHOR> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180623/17171740098/leaked-ice-manual-shows-govt-allowing-informants-to-engage-illegal-behavior-impersonate-lawyers-journalists-doctors.shtml <comment><AUTHOR> Full headline: Leaked ICE Manual Shows Gov't Allowing Informants to Engage in Illegal Behavior, Impersonate Lawyers, Journalists, And Doctors.

Wow.</comment>


Seven Unusual Ruby Datastores - <AUTHOR> https://blog.engineyard.com/2015/seven-unusual-ruby-datastores

<comment><USER2> Didn't know about Set, thanks for the article. I really appreciated the "when you use it" part under each datastore entry.</comment>


Ask HN: How to fill holes in my knowledge - <AUTHOR> Hi everyone,
I finished CS Uni, after that I worked at a startup as a generalist, and after that I worked as a freelancer on a couple Android projects (and now I am in between projects).
I feel like a really bad programmer (28yo atm), and no I don't think this is impostor syndrome. I never had official Android dev education, but I have had learned JAVA at Uni. On Android projects I worked I always worked alone and never have I had an opportunity to work with someone more experienced.
I think I am missing some parts of knowledge. It is like I have holes, so I am missing some basic stuff, but I know a bit of advanced, but holes are there also, I hope you understand. On projects I worked on I just googled away and created applications that worked BUT behind the scene is a Frankenstein monster code of bad programming practices (or at least I feel so even thou I don't know what a good programming practice is for android).
Is it possible to acquire a good Android dev knowledge without working in a team and/or company?
I could probably find some 'entry level' job at a company, but I don't think I could join as a freelancer on some team because of lack of skill.
I am trying with some tutorials, and books, but not sure how successful I am being. <comment><USER2> > I am trying with some tutorials, and books, but not sure how successful I am > being.

What tutorials and books? First off I totally get you. For several years after graduating I felt a hole in the pyramid of knowledge I felt university should have provided me. Our program leaned heavily on how to use Java and Microsoft technologies to fix problems big companies had. There was little room to stretch our foundation and dive deeper into algorithms or understanding programming without a language or framework attached to the material.

I've been fixing this by reading books and doing simple projects to fill in that base layer of knowledge in that pyramid. These don't really dive into frameworks or even languages, but the basic building blocks of what we do.

Being effective with languages like Java or frameworks like the Android SDK is nice. But I know for myself and many people that feel a tinge of imposter syndrome that it's due to lacking foundational knowledge. We either rushed through this period or skipped it entirely. But it's this through this period where we develop on confidence with our craft.

There's plenty of Ask HN threads on what to read to develop a good baseline of programming knowledge (SICP, Code Complete 2 and Pragmatic Programmer will be mentioned a lot). What I think is important is also to have a clear goal or reason for wanting to read a tutorial or book and only follow through on material that actually helps you accomplish your goals. Assume most tutorials and books are fluff that will not actually move the needle for you.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you're trying to fill holes in your android development skills, you should consider doing the android nanodegree on udacity.

It was developed by Google, so you know it'll cover almost everything and give you best practices approach to developing android apps. It's also well structured and can be done in your free time.

[https://www.udacity.com/course/android-developer- nanodegree-...](https://www.udacity.com/course/android-developer-nanodegree- by-google--nd801?v=ad2)

If you don't want to pay for the nanodegree, you can also take the courses individually for free (without getting credit).

<comment><AUTHOR> I already started this a week ago. But thank you for confirming the validity of this course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well, perhaps you can find a mentor to help you understand your holes and how to fill them.

Do it slow and methodically. Don't try to cram to fill all the holes at once. Go slow. Identify one hold and learn how it is filled. Do examples, write a small program to get practice. Ask someone to review your code.

Programming now-a-days is a marathon, not a sprint. Programmers need a pretty deep understanding of their language of choice along with how to use it correctly. I think the last piece lacks in a uni education alone.

Practice, practice, practice. I don't know java or I would offer to help. If you get around to C or C++, email is in my profile.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, will definitely try something along that path.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You could run your code through a code analysis tool and then fix and understand the mistakes. It should point out bad programming practices.

The best thing you can do is keep programming and aim for best practises. Ask questions on stackoverflow, programmers stackexchange and codereview.stackexchange.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I never used tools like this, but honestly I am not sure if a code analysis tool can show bad practices. Maybe it can show badly implemented algorithms or something like that. Anyway I will look into in, thanx.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I currently work as a Junior Developer--straight out of uni-- and I find it really helpful to have someone more experienced review my code and give me feedback. So in your case I would say try to work on open-source projects or just join a team environment.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I think that would be the best approach. The only problem being that I live in a country where difference in pay when you work in a local company and if you work freelance is 7-8 folds. Literary. If it were like 2-3 folds I might think about sacrificing that for knowledge but this is just crazy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I haven't finished uni yet, but I feel just the same. I've come to the conclusion (at least in CS) that uni isn't enough to become a programmer. Experience in a job and coding together with more skilled programmers are more important than passing exams. Uni gives us a general understanding on the subject, while specific skills we need to develop by ourselves. This is just my point of view, sorry if it doesn't help much.

</comment><comment><USER8> Open source projects seems to help if you know what to look for (like search for top 10 android project/plugins/whatever) - breakdown each part you would like to learn (architecture/codeStyle/asyncTasks/compatibility/images/UI/tests/perf). Concentrate one at a time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, I think this approach will be useful as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Practice Hacker Rank challenges until you can't anymore.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hacker Rank can teach you algorithms, a bit of programming way of thinking, and how to solve problems. But not how to actually organize code and have best practices implemented.</comment></comment>