Doctors issue warning about effects of LED streetlights on health - <AUTHOR> https://theconversation.com/american-medical-association-warns-of-health-and-safety-problems-from-white-led-streetlights-61191 <comment><USER2> Title is misleading; it's not LED streetlights, it's the _color temperature_ of LED streetlights. While the article raises a few good points, color temperature isn't new; it's not like LEDs have some inherent issue that impacts health.

<comment><USER3> True, but there's a real problem with people and places using lights with _far_ too high a temperature, and even when shopping for home LED lights it's surprisingly difficult to find low temperature lights that aren't low on lumens output.

Pretty much anything over 3000K looks horribly blue at night, and if it wasn't such a massive pain to find them I'd prefer <2000K.

<comment><USER4> I have a bigger issue with fluorescent lights: They have a discontinuous spectrum[0] that can mess with your perception of colour as well as a noticable flicker that gets worse as the tubes age.

Some of the newer "warm tone" CFL bulbs appears to do better better on these aspects. [0]: [http://minerva.union.edu/newmanj/Physics100/Light%20Producti...](http://minerva.union.edu/newmanj/Physics100/Light%20Production/LampSpectra.gif)

<comment><USER5> Don't LEDs have a similar (or worse) spectral profile?

<comment><USER6> LED lights tend to have a much better spectrum than fluorescent bulbs.

[http://www.designingwithleds.com/the-new-cree-tw-series- led-...](http://www.designingwithleds.com/the-new-cree-tw-series- led-t8-review-and-teardown/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would argue that people with those crazy LED headlights are even worse. Since I often work late, I get the pleasure of being temporarily blinded as a white dwarf passes by at 45mph regularly.

<comment><USER8> And don't even get me started on the LED eye melters that cyclists are running these days. Some are about as bright as car headlights, but the spread and aim are inferior - especially since the folks that run those invariably seem to point them up from the horizontal. I keep thinking about mounting a 8 D cell maglight on a gimbal on my handlebars to give them a photon in-kind response.

<comment><USER9> If you see the biker then I think the lights did a good job. I suppose you could make an argument that it could blind people and they hit someone/something but I never heard of that happing - I only hear bikers getting hit because they were not seen.

<comment><USER10> i'm a cyclist and i sometimes have to stop and get off my bike and wait for an oncoming cyclist to pass me (eg, on a multipath). it's not necessarily the brightness, it's that it's not constructed to be visible (and/or illuminate the road) without also blinding oncoming traffic. fortunately i haven't ever hit someone or something while blinded by an oncoming cyclist, but that's in spite of the crap bike light, not because it did a good job.

<comment><USER8> Yes, me too. I'm a daily bike commuter and am quite sympathetic to the being seen aspect. This goes way beyond that in some cases. Case in point: a good chunk of my ride goes through the Portland Springwater corridor. This is a dedicated bike/pedestrian path. Much of it is unlit at night. I've seen these riders a half mile ago (~2 minutes) and by the time we're getting close enough to matter their lights are blinding. It's like a driver who refuses to dim their high beams for oncoming traffic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The article is saying "cool it and dim it" but I think they mean to say "warm it and dim it". They suggest the temperature should not be above 3000 kelvin.

<comment><USER12> That is because redder colors correspond to a cooler or lower color temperature. Colloquially, we think of blues as cool and reds as warm, but blue light is actually more energetic (or "hot") than red light.

<comment><USER13> Probably because fire is red-orange, and snow is most often seen reflecting sunlight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> And people go install 4,000 and 5,000K LED lights in their kitchens and homes because it feels modern, can you imagine the disruption. I always insist on installing 2,800K at a max with my clients.

<comment><USER15> I have a couple of 4k LEDs in my kitchen, but also have much warmer LEDs in other places around my house. The reason the kitchen is different is so it feels sterile and clean. The cooler light gives this appearance more than warmer light. I guess the same reason many places have white counter tops.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not my area of expertise by any means, but maybe quantum dots could be used to filter only a small sliver of the visible spectrum produced by streetlights. Maybe there could be very-nearly transparent foils that you could overlay over your windows that would block just that light.

</comment><comment><USER17> > "In addition to its impact on drivers, blue-rich LED streetlights operate at > a wavelength that most adversely suppresses melatonin during night."

I wonder if this ends up saving thousands of lives by decreasing fatigue in drivers. The blue light argument seems like absolute hogwash; we're exposed to orders of magnitude brighter blue light every day. It's called daylight, and the streetlights dont't even emit UV.

<comment><USER18> If you don't get tired at night, you don't sleep well, and sleep deprivation is much worse than being tired.

If you think the problem with light at night is hogwash you need to read it again. Bright light, especially blue light _makes your body react like it 's daytime_. Do you really think people have forgotten about the sun? You only hurt your own understanding by being so quick to dismiss others.

<comment><USER17> > Bright light, especially blue light makes your body react like it's daytime.

You're preaching to the choir. I'm well aware of the melatonin-reducing effects of blue light, but the streetlights are a drop in the bucket compared to phones, televisions, and tablets. The one time I actually _want_ to have my melatonin levels suppressed is when it's late and I'm operating heavy machinery.

<comment><USER18> Even when it screws up those levels for hours after you get out of the car?

We could mandate that people driving at night must drink at least one cup of coffee per half hour, and it would make them be more awake in the short term, but it would be a terrible idea for similar reasons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Blue indicator LEDs on consumer electronics are a real plague. I had to cover the LEDs on a noise machine with electrical tape because of the harsh blue glow. I had to wonder what on earth the manufacturer was thinking -- this product is marketed to parents of newborns to help their babies sleep! Heartbeats, whalesong, blinding blue LEDs, white noise: one of these does not belong.

</comment><comment><USER20> Could we just place a lens of some sort on pre existing led street lights to decrease the amount of blue light emitted?

<comment><USER21> A filter to block out a bit of the excess blue light? This would reduce the effectiveness of the light output though, unless you amped up the output to raise all of the colors and then selectively suppressed the blue to help balance it out. Then this would require extra energy, which defeats the purpose of using LEDs to save energy.

<comment><USER22> You can just use a different color of LED. Honestly people in Seattle, where these LED lamps were first piloted, have been raising these concerns for at least 4 years. This is the product of some combination of bad design, a lack of user-centered thinking at the utilities, and less than ideal incentives.

For example, daylight led's were touted as making it easier to identify cars involved in criminal activity because you can see the color of the vehicle more easily. But how many times has this actually made the difference in solving a crime?

<comment><USER23> One of the many hats that I wear at my day job is optics designer. An issue is that the white LED is a particular thing. It's a blue LED coated with a phosphor that absorbs some of the blue light, re-emits it at a broad range of longer wavelengths, while also passing some of the remaining blue light through.

The blue is special -- 473 nanometers -- due to the solid state physics of the semiconductor.

There is indeed an ongoing search for white LED designs that produce less glaring blue without sacrificing overall efficiency, but counterintuitively it's a hard design problem. People also want warmer light in their houses, so the problem is not limited to street lighting.

The safety regulations have a special place in hell for "retinal blue" light. As it turns out every wavelength from UV into the IR has a set of weighting functions for estimating the overall hazard exposure. It's possibly a rare example of a truly science based regulation.

<comment><USER22> Is it currently feasible to make LED's at that brightness that are closer to the old yellow-orange lamps?

<comment><USER23> That's the 64 dollar question. At present, they exist but are less efficient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Any sources to studies done on the effects of light at different Kelvins? I'm really surprised as I would have expected LED light with more blue and looking natural to be preferable to orange Sodium Vapor lights. The sun which is our main light source puts out a wide spectrum. I'm surprised the lower wattage LED street lamps could cause actual health problems. I'm usually in bed during sleeping hours and not really exposed to the new blue LED street lights installed recently in my neighborhood though.

As someone who has always been interested in Astronomy I do worry about light pollution. Having worked at Observatories I do know that only red light is used due to it's low impact on light pollution.

<comment><USER25> LED spectra are usually tiny, sharp spikes, the home ones are getting slightly better, but the good ones are rather pricy. Incandescent or halogen bulbs feel more natural to me and their spectra look different

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Quite a few inaccuracies in the article which indicate misunderstanding of how additive light temperature works.

You don't want to "cool it" \- that means more blue! You want to warm it with less.

<comment><USER27> "Hot" and "cold" have different meanings in different contexts. In the article, they're referring to color temperature, which is about the temperature of the source, and assumes black-body spectrum. So 3000K means a source at 3000 Kelvins. Light from a 5000K source has more blue, and so is cooler. But the color temperature is higher (5000K vs 3000K).

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Color temperature of "white" LEDs is due to the amount and type of phosphor to downconvert the blue LED spike to warmer colors. The more phosphor and conversion that goes on, the less total output (no free lunch in physics). So in markets where _amount_ of light (like exterior lighting) is a selling point, vendors sell their cooler temperature LED's for performance.

</comment><comment><USER29> What does the AMA know about LEDs and health? There's nothing in this article about _why_ they made these recommendations. And the article compares LED lighting to 'before electricity', instead of to _for instance_ existing sodium lamps?

It _is_ an opportune moment to make the recommendation, since folks are converting to LED so rapidly.

<comment><USER30> Actually they specifically say why: glare and impact on circadian rhythms. Both of these are very well studied issues with light concentrated in the blue end of the spectrum (as opposed to sodium lamps that have very little blue emissions).

BTW, they also failed to mention increased light pollution due to scattering.

<comment><USER31> How well studied are these topics? How many studies involved more than 1000 people?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> And what about laptop monitors?

<comment><USER33> Someone mentioned flux but on Linux gtk-redshift is awesome time.

<comment><USER34> You saved my eyes!! And that is not an exaggeration. I too recommend gtk- redshift if you are on Linux.

<comment><USER33> I really like gtk-redshift, you can play with the settings in ~/.config/redshift.conf as well I find that a lower gamma even at midday works well and I tweaked even more towards the red than the default.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Actually, I hate LED cause it's too light.

</comment><comment><USER36> Url changed from [http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/21/health/led-streetlights- ama/](http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/21/health/led-streetlights-ama/), which points to this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!</comment></comment>


The Intellectual Property Implications of Low-Cost 3D Printing - <AUTHOR> http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrc/script-ed/vol7-1/bradshaw.asp

<comment><USER3> Here is my prediction rant:

I think there are many more interesting implications of cheap-ass, automated, and decentralized manufacturing in general than just in IP. (3-d printing, downloadable and version controlled CNC instruction sets, parts supply chains on the internet, etc.) There will be lots more custom/ private work, there will be pseudo socialist challenges to the big guys who control manufacturing (in the same way that open source software is a bid to take control of software production), there will be revolutions in logistics, and we will see lots of interesting designs created outside the for-profit + mass distribution model.

There will be lots of lawyers, unfortunately.

I think we will also see the encoding of old designs first, just as Linux and BSD and GNU started as fairly traditional designs (and personally, if I were to download any car I could choose, it would be a 1977 Volvo 244).

And in 20 years, the best designs will be the open designs, just like the best software today is rapidly being defined by OSS, for many of the same reasons (i.e. no small minded MBA's getting involved in technical shit they will never be able to understand).

Amish technology will be really important in the process of shifting to open manufacturing (somewhat ironically) since their designs are complex but not crazy, and they appeal to the same DIY hippies as OSS does (I count myself in that bunch).

I also think an open source bicycle is the place to start, not a car, since it is simple but still challenging.

I think about this way too much, actually.

<comment><USER4> Interesting rant. I do not think that 3-D printing is going to play much of a part, though. You mention an open-source bicycle; this is a good illustration of the problem.

The bicycle I rode to work today has: \- a frame made of heat-treated steel tubes brazed together \- wheels made of extruded aluminium and stainless-steel wire \- rubber tyres

... not to mention all the other bits and pieces; machined hubs, ball- bearings, etc etc.

I would be impressed at a 3-D printer that could produce any one of these things at a reasonable price, let alone all three. Small scale manufacturing of bicycle parts is confined to high-value niche areas.

I'm afraid I don't see much evidence of decentralised manufacturing here in .au, apart from offshoring, which I doubt has much to do with the sort of open manufacturing you seem to have in mind. I imagine things are the same in most Western economies, although I freely admit this is no more than speculation.

<comment><USER5> "The bicycle I rode to work today has:"

Well there's your problem. The point isn't to exactly recreate what we have today. The bike as you own it now is like it is because that's the easiest way to manufacture - rather than stamping it out of a block of steel, they take a couple of tubes and weld them together. If it's easier to 3d-print by making the whole thing in plastic, we'll have to engineer materials that allow this and still maintain enough function to be used like today's bike.

Innovation doesn't have to be constrained by today's standards. The Wright brothers didn't have to replicate the flapping wings of a bird, just building something that would fly was ok.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You wouldn't download a car!

Well, now you can. And so the same issues that have affected music and movies are now going to start making themselves felt elsewhere in the economy. If you're counting on design patents and incompatible shapes to raise the switching costs for your customers (Steve Jobs I'm looking in the direction of that stupid proprietary connector) you won't be able to count on maximising profits by preventing copycats. The most draconian anti-counterfeiting laws you can imagine will not be sufficient to keep people from building things they want.

<comment><USER7> It's the beginning of The Diamond Age.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think that we are heading for the democratisation of manufacturing, and it will be an amazing time when it gets into full swing. The current manufacturing powerhouses (e.g. China) will fade out and give way to on-demand local production and this will have a truly revolutionary effect on society. Exciting times; I hope I live to see it come to fruition.

I agree that Open Source will ultimately play a pivotal role in this revolution and it will eat away at the status quo of 'things' much as it has been doing with software for last 20 years. This will inevitably clash with the old established businesses with the same predictable results, but this too shall pass. As the saying goes, science makes progress one funeral at a time and so does society. With any luck the next generations will look back on our current attitudes to IP and regard them as archaic and curious.

<comment><USER9> And there will be oldies and IP abolitionists like me who get to say "I was RIGHT!" since we are vindicated by the history.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> _"Any lawyer familiar with copyright and trade mark law can see, however, that printing one's own birthday cards could, depending on the source and nature of the images used, infringe a number of intellectual property (IP) rights."_

In many countries private use does not constitute copyright/trademark/patent infringement.

<comment><USER5> Printing your own birthday cards is not private use. 'Private use' in a legal (copyright) context is not just 'I don't directly make money from it'. Industrialized countries who have such legislation are bound by the TRIPs and Berne agreements and 'private use exemptions' are bound by, amongst other, the three-steps-test (not sure if that is the exact term in English).

Furthermore there is no such exemption for trademark or patent infringement in any legal system that I'm familiar with, but I'm happy to be proven wrong on that (it's not in my area of expertise either).

<comment><USER10> _"Furthermore there is no such exemption for trademark or patent infringement in any legal system that I'm familiar with, but I'm happy to be proven wrong on that"_

UK Patents Act 1977, Sec. 60 (5) (a): _"An act which, apart from this subsection, would constitute an infringement of a patent for an invention shall not do so if - (a) it is done privately and for purposes which are not commercial;"_

As to trademark infringement I agree that there is no explicit exemption for private use. But on the other hand I think it is not necessary - <USER2> infringement is putting trademarked goods on the market so it's not private by definition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The best weapons in Mass Effect 2 are "protected against replication by sophisticated Fabrication Rights Management (FRM) technology"

</comment><comment><USER12> The paper only goes into the IP implications, but I think those are relatively minor compared to most implications of low-cost 3D printing.

3D prototyping makes it a lot easier for people to build and improve weapons. You could, for example, print your own AR-15 lower receiver and buy the rest of the parts. Or print your own full-auto sear. Or print your own sound suppressor (silencer). Today, building those things requires specialized knowledge and expensive tools. That will change as 3D printing goes down in price and up in quality.

The advantages of this technology outweigh the downsides, but it's good to be aware of the downsides.

</comment><comment><USER13> I work in the CNC programming and design field. I've often wondered how easy it will be to build what we now consider sophisticated weapons in 20 years. People currently build homemade cruise missiles. What will the future bring?

<comment><USER14> Better anti-weapon defenses for sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I see a similar warning over and over.

3d printed parts are relatively lo-fidelity and do not have the material strength due to their construction mechanism to do many things "normally" fabricated things do.

</comment><comment><USER16> The Future of 3D Printing: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lJ8vId4HF8></comment>


Ask HN: Hardware startup looking for good industrial Design firms - <AUTHOR>

Looking for a good industrial design firm for Proto-typing a hardware concept that has to do with 3.mm jack instalation in smartphone's. I don't see any other way in constructing this piece of hardware other then going through an industrial design firm. I want to see if its possible to construct what it is i need, it doesn't matter where they are located as long as its in the U.S. Please recommend any hardware firms if you think it will help, i'm located in the east coast. <comment><AUTHOR> hmm, thought ide get a response for this. I tried looking through the archives but no dice</comment>


Prediction Markets - <AUTHOR> http://www.gwern.net/Prediction%20markets <comment><USER2> There are several fundamental problems with prediction markets:

1) Every market participant is not a savvy investor. InTrade was notorious for political bias and emotional trading (check out the comment section). The idea is that a true insider will place a large bet that provides valuable information to the market. This is rarely the case. Most of the people bet based on what they want to happen rather than what they know will happen. [1] This problem is compounded by the fact that most of the bets on intrade in particular were rather small, hundreds of dollars. People tend to speak more accurately with their wallets as opposed to their mouths, but only with significant amounts of money on the line.

2) The markets themselves are never large enough. The system doesn't work unless the people that place big bets are experts or insiders. The majority of people aren't familiar with the concept of prediction markets, much less any particular sites. One of the best cases for an information market would be someone who works on a political campaign placing a big bet for or against their candidate based on inside knowledge. But something like this can't happen until the average political staffer has heard of a prediction market site, which we are still a long way away from.

3) The best way to make money from a market is to out think the other participants. Accurately calculating prices based on the current supply and demand situation works too, but it's slower and more difficult. Instead of asking "Who do I think will be elected president?" people might themselves "Who do the other participants think will be elected president?" This leads to a functioning market but it doesn't do much for the goal of aggregating knowledge to make accurate predictions.

I like the concept of prediction markets because I love the idea of utilizing collective intelligence. But I'm constantly disappointed by the implementations that I see. It's a very tricky thing to do but I think that whoever finally figures it out will have built something valuable for all of us.

[1] [http://go.bloomberg.com/political- capital/2012-06-29/intrade...](http://go.bloomberg.com/political- capital/2012-06-29/intrade-bettors-lost-on-health-care/)

<comment><USER3> Exactly right.

 _" The idea is that a true insider will place a large bet that provides valuable information to the market."_

Yes, and in practice, the true insider has every incentive to provide _false_ information to the market, so as to manipulate people's expectations. The insider seeks alpha by trading on the resultant volatility in that prediction's pricing.

Let's imagine I am the perfect insider. I have a crystal ball that somehow gives me 100% flawless predictive ability into the outcome of a particular bet (say, the next Republican primary). I could make a fair amount of money by betting on the winner, or I could make a _lot more money_ by manipulating the information in the marketplace, creating volatility in the prices of the prediction bets, capitalizing on each fluctuation, while still holding some inventory in the correct outcome. If I knew the winner was going to be Joe Blow, I could bottom out Joe Blow's price by seeding false information, buy him low, then do the same for other candidates.

Of course, the real world doesn't have perfectly predictive crystal balls. But because prediction markets are too small to cause real-world changes (i.e., there's no observer effect), manipulating information would _not_ have a demonstrable effect on outcomes (as it would in a larger, more efficient marketplace). Ergo, as the insider with better info than most, my incentive is to mislead. I do not need a crystal ball to make a killing; I just need slightly better information than the rest of the market. The smaller the market, the more likely it is that my inside information is better than the market's.

In a much bigger market, I couldn't get away with this strategy. At least not very easily or reliably. My seeding misinformation about Joe Blow would _actually hurt Joe Blow 's fundraising ability_, thereby creating a self- fulfilling prophecy, thereby causing the market price to more accurately reflect reality. If I massively short Joe Blow, Joe Blow's chances _actually_ drop. I'd get less alpha. But as you've said, the markets are way too closed and small to exhibit such an effect -- so I can rig the game accordingly.

<comment><USER4> _I could make a lot more money by manipulating the information in the marketplace, creating volatility in the prices of the prediction bets, capitalizing on each fluctuation, while still holding some inventory in the correct outcome._

And one extreme version of this is mounting a credible campaign then "throwing" the race or withdrawing abruptly. This is attractive whenever the possible winnings in the prediction market are large and the market is insufficiently regulated. In ordinary financial markets, there can be special scrutiny paid to shorts, but the zero-sum game structure of a prediction market loses the distinction.

<comment><USER3> True, although not every trade is zero-sum _per se_ , depending upon the prediction market. More sophisticated trading strategies involve profiting off of the changes in probability of a given outcome over time (or at least the changes in _perception_ of that probability), rather than simply buying and holding a one-sided bet on fixed odds. They amount to psychological manipulation of the market, buying and selling the same positions over time at local minima and maxima.

You're absolutely right about the power to "throw" a prediction market, however, provided the right parties can conspire to do so. This is essentially what Arnold Rothstein and associates did in fixing the 1919 World Series. Most people casually assume the fixers bribed the players to throw the game, then profited off the results. In actuality, their strategy was slightly more nuanced. They spread the _rumor_ that the game had been fixed long before they actually fixed the game, thereby forcing an adjustment of odds on (illegal, unregulated) gambling books. This allowed them to hedge long against their predominantly short bet, covering them adequately in the event that the fix was insufficient to adjust the game's most likely outcome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Considering that I upvote pretty much every gwern.net article I see (the guy rarely disappoints) and that there's probably a fairly cohesive Overcoming Bias/Less Wrong demographic doing the same, how long will it take before we're banned as a voting ring?

(Anyone selling futures for that?)

<comment><USER6> If I'm right about the HN readership, gwern.net articles are going to receive upvotes from a much larger population than just the intersection of HN and LessWrong. Furthermore, if there is cohesion with respect to gwern's stuff, then that cohesion would either disappear when it comes to other submitters (if it's simply tribal allegiance) or we'd see it with other articles of interest (if it's based on shared interests).

If the cohesion disappears with other submitters, then any voting ring detection would have to be overly sensitive to pick up on your love of gwern. We'd hear about a lot of false positives.

If the cohesion is strong enough to warrant mention and it persists across other domains, then you'd probably see some trouble even without gwern.net submissions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There was a prediction markets company that YC funded in its second-ever batch: Inkling Markets. ([http://inklingmarkets.com](http://inklingmarkets.com)) It's still going, from what I understand through enterprise sales.

Also, for those of you that haven't heard Intrade is shut down and going through some complicated legal proceedings. Their former founder/CEO died climbing Mount Everest a couple of years ago, and I don't think the company ever fully recovered.

(I used to do a lot of work in prediction markets.)

<comment><USER8> Not just that, their financial situation suddenly became 'murky' and they shut up shop without letting customers withdraw their balances. As I understand, it is still unclear whether or not they have the cash to pay back everyone yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> They don't, but judging from their messages on their homepage, they've gotten forbearance from their biggest creditors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd never really heard of prediction markets before this post. Does anyone know the reason prediction markets are legal but other forms of online gambling such as poker are not?

Edit: Apparently they've just recently started using real money at some prediction markets: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction_market#Legality](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction_market#Legality)

<comment><USER10> Also, do people try to influence the outcome itself? For example, couldn't you ask: "When will X person die." And then someone could bet a huge amount of money on it, and then go kill that person?

<comment><USER11> You're thinking of Assassination markets [0]

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_market](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_market)

<comment><AUTHOR> I find assassination markets a fascinating concept: I wrote a short story about them ( [http://www.gwern.net/fiction/The%20Ones%20Who%20Walk%20Towar...](http://www.gwern.net/fiction/The%20Ones%20Who%20Walk%20Towards%20Acre) ) and pondered whether they might be a successor to Silk Road ([http://www.gwern.net/Silk%20Road#future- developments](http://www.gwern.net/Silk%20Road#future-developments) probably not).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a good article. However if anyone is interested in following it, they should know that when there are multiple bets available, the simple Kelly criterion falls apart.

See [http://www.elem.com/~btilly/kelly- criterion/](http://www.elem.com/~btilly/kelly-criterion/) for a much fuller explanation of the result, and why it is true. (I keep meaning to automatically optimize the multiple bet version of it.)

<comment><USER8> Good link. I was writing a reply to make a couple of points but the page says it best:

"Many people will tell you to bet less than the Kelly formula says to bet. Two reasons are generally given for this. The first is that gamblers tend to overestimate their odds of winning and so will naturally overbet. Betting less than the Kelly amount corrects for this. The other is that the Kelly formula leads to extreme volatility, and you should underbet to limit the chance of being badly down for unacceptably long stretches."

The volatility is huge; you have a 50% chance of losing half your bank over time even if you bet correctly. Not many people can cope with those spikes in gains and losses!

<comment><USER12> That is why the JavaScript tools I wrote to go with the article can give you percentiles on where you would be after different numbers of trials. That's explicitly so that people can develop intuition about how much they need to underbet to stay within their comfort levels.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Now imagine prediction markets with the twist proposed by Jim Bell: everybody bets on a day a person will die. If that day passes or the person dies before, you lose the money to those who predicted the right day.

Now who can know for sure when somebody dies? Exactly.

Frankly I'm amazed something like this hasn't taken off on the deep web yet. Tor + Bitcoin should do it.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_market](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_market) [2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Bell](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Bell)

</comment><comment><USER14> What's the status of Intrade? Will it be back? ([http://www.intrade.com/v4/home/latest- news/](http://www.intrade.com/v4/home/latest-news/))

<comment><USER15> Tangential, but I took a class with one of the professors in the linked paper (Sethi). It was a great class - many of the homeworks and exam questions were based around Intrade. (We didn't trade any actual money, but it really helped to illustrate the concepts of financial economics, which can get very abstract).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Hey, I've created a site for making/tracking predictions called The Red Book ([http://rdbk.net/](http://rdbk.net/)). It's simple, just Will/Won't votes on predictions with a little gamification added to encourage community involvement. Just thought I'd plug it here if anyone is interested.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm still waiting for a good Bitcoin-based prediction market. I think that would be a nice application for the cryptocurrency.

<comment><USER18> Isn't this what [http://betsofbitco.in](http://betsofbitco.in) does?

<comment><AUTHOR> They do, but extremely poorly. I criticize them in the OP:

> One might wonder why I don't use the fairly active [Bets of > Bitcoin]([https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bets_of_Bitcoin](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bets_of_Bitcoin)) > prediction market; that is because the payout rules are > [insane]([http://betsofbitco.in/help](http://betsofbitco.in/help)) and I > have no idea how to translate the "total weighted bets" into actual > probabilities. Betting blind is never a good idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you are interested in prediction market type betting and got friends who like the same, you might like [http://www.bespokebets.com](http://www.bespokebets.com) which lets you setup your own market easily and for free (play-money - and yes talking my book)

</comment><comment><USER20> nice article, but I don't use the same strategy as you describe...

I was looking at prediction market recently, and tried a few free-to-play websites such as Inkling. I ended up on swissnoise ([http://go.swissnoise.ch](http://go.swissnoise.ch)). They use virtual money for trade, but with real-money prizes which is very nice! Plus I have the feeling of helping research in this field (it's developed by some university).

</comment><comment><USER21> Since your not really investing in anything, prediction markets are like gambling. You might as well bet on sports games.

As for their utility, the predictions are about as accurate as any other prediction, which is usually completely worthless. Might work ok for the boring stuff, but show me evidence that prediction markets can forecast the next 9/11, the next iPhone, or the next Arab Spring.

<comment><USER8> But you are investing _with_ something, namely your own money, and it is this that gives the prediction markets value. Anyone can shout out their silly predictions, but if they have to back them up with cash, then the predictions tend to get better. The article has a quote that sums it up well:

"The usual touchstone of whether what someone asserts is mere persuasion or at least a subjective conviction, i.e., firm belief, is betting. Often someone pronounces his propositions with such confident and inflexible defiance that he seems to have entirely laid aside all concern for error. A bet disconcerts him. Sometimes he reveals that he is persuaded enough for one ducat but not for ten. For he would happily bet one, but at 10 he suddenly becomes aware of what he had not previously noticed, namely that it is quite possible that he has erred."

<comment><USER22> _the predictions tend to get better_

Only if there is some actual predictive skill out there to begin with. For example, the article gives the example of a prediction market on coin flips: the winning strategy is to take any bet for less than $1 (assuming that the payoff on a successful prediction is $2). But in short order, everyone who does not play that strategy will go bankrupt, and then there will be no more betting, because everyone remaining in the market will only take a bet at less than $1, but nobody will be willing to offer one. In other words, if there is an obvious limit to how well something can be predicted, the market will reach that point and then _stop_ \--no further betting will happen.

<comment><USER8> Not true at all! A golden example is Betfair's 'exchange games' markets, where they let players bet on fair, computer-managed card games. The markets are always exactly prcied-up. Some punters are playing, but even without the 'mugs' you can just look at the order book to see the predictions.

For the coin flip, you'd still have people asking for odds of 50.1% and others offering odds of 49.9% - you then can just look at the spread to discover the market prediction.

<comment><USER22> _The markets are always exactly prcied-up._

Isn't this in agreement with what I said? I didn't say that the market prices would not reflect the expected predictions. I said that once that happens the market will stop moving, which appears to be exactly what you're saying:

 _you can just look at the order book to see the predictions._

In other words, there is a limit to how accurately people can predict the outcomes of these card games, and that limited predictive accuracy is what the market reflects. The real question is, how much betting _volume_ is there for a given, fixed card game, once all the players in the market learn the odds? My expectation is that volume will decrease over time for a given, fixed card game, because if the game is fair, the betting is zero-sum, so players who know the optimal strategy will never bet among themselves (since you can't make money on average at zero-sum bets), and players who don't know the optimal strategy will go bankrupt.

Obviously if you introduce a new card game, the above doesn't apply; that would be the equivalent of adding, say, six-sided dice to the coin flip betting site: now there's a new set of odds to be learned, so there will be a new period of trading as market players learn the optimal strategy for this new game.

 _For the coin flip, you 'd still have people asking for odds of 50.1% and others offering odds of 49.9%_

Would any actual bets happen at these odds? What makes you think so? An occasional new player might try this, but he would end up losing money, and all the long-term players know that would happen, so they won't try it. Why would they?

Or do you just mean that people would be posting these asks/offers, but nobody would be accepting them? If so, then, once again, this is in _agreement_ with what I was saying; no actual activity would be taking place in the market, but the asks/offers would accurately reflect the market's best available prediction--which is the best _possible_ prediction, hence no money can be made in the market because trades are zero-sum.

<comment><USER8> I was writing to highlight your seeming disagreement with the text you quoted:

 _the predictions tend to get better_

You seemed to be saying that this was not the case, citing a coin flip. My counter argument is that a real-world prediction market for (effectively) a coin flip tends towards a 'perfect' prediction. It can then stay in this steady-state regardless of whether or not any fool continues to bet; you just have to glance at the order book of unmatched bets to discern the prediction.

So, the predictions do tend to get better, even if you have unskilled participants. Or are you saying "predictions only get better if people are good at predicting", which would be stating the bleeding obvious, right?

(Disappointingly, Betfair's exchange games still seem to have money traded on them, and they run these games every minute of the day.)

<comment><USER22> I wasn't saying the predictions never change; I was saying that they will only change as long as there is knowledge about the outcome that has not yet been priced into the market. The market "not changing" does not mean it does not have a market price: it just means that the market price is constant (and that therefore there is no trading happening, except for the occasional new player entering and quickly losing money by playing a non-optimal strategy). You are saying the same thing, just in different words.

 _the predictions do tend to get better, even if you have unskilled participants_

This statement as it stands is way too strong, which is why I originally objected. The correct statement is: "predictions will tend to get better as long as it is possible for the average skill level of the market participants to increase". You're right that participants don't have to start out being skilled; but the average skill level of the participants does have to be able to change for the market's predictions to change.

In the coin flip prediction market, that can't happen (or at least it can't happen for very long), because the optimal strategy for betting on coin flips is so obvious. In the Betfair card games, there is some scope for increasing participant skill, but there can't be very much if the games are fair; people will fairly quickly figure out the optimal strategy for any given game, and soon after that the market will stop trading if the players are rational. (You appear to agree with this, since you say it's "disappointing" that Betfair's games continue to have money traded on them.)

Of course these are simple examples; what about real-world prediction markets? What about, for example, betting on sports games? My sense is that a similar effect occurs there: the average skill level of the long-term market participants is relatively unchanged over time, and therefore the accuracy of the predictions that can be extracted from the order book is relatively constant over time. The reason money is still made in these markets is that there is a basically inexhaustible supply of new players who think they know more than they actually do, and who therefore quickly end up losing their money to the long-term players--much the same thing that happens in casinos.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I predict that the sum of my cards will be closer to 21 without going over than the dealer's will.

</comment><comment><USER24> Gambling.</comment>


Sublime Text 2 Build 2139 Released - <AUTHOR> http://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/sublime-text-2-build-2139 <comment><USER3> Why is this news worth getting published for every update?

<comment><USER4> If anyone is like me, they try it out, decided it isn't ready for daily usage, and then forget about it. This replaces "Check for Updates" :-)

<comment><USER5> It's not really newsworthy though. I could see a release being posted to HN if it contained a huge new feature set but from what I can see this is just normal update ?

<comment><USER6> I upvote Sublime because its mindshare deserves to catch up with TextMate / BBEdit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Have been using Sublime for 4 months or so and really enjoying it. It strikes the perfect balance between having enough nice features and tools to make programmer happy and getting to much in your face (like many IDE's).

<comment><USER8> I like using it as a text editor but have had trouble getting it set up for Scala development. Other than getting syntax highlighting I have had trouble integrating it with an outside compiler and getting a few niceties like auto complete and highlighting errors on compile.

I'm curious, what language do you code in using Sublime and what is your set up?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The Vintage package (vi editing for Sublime Text 2) is now also on GitHub: <https://github.com/sublimehq/Vintage>

<comment><USER10> I really enjoy this feature. Instead of installing 5-10 plugins to make vim look like Sublime Text, it just takes a few steps to make Sublime Text work like vim. And it's cross-platform to boot!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I didn't know (until now) Sublime Text.

I don't want to seem inquisitive, but it looks a lot like VIM. I thought it was VIM, or a _human-friendly_ version of it.

I took a look to <http://www.sublimetext.com/features> and many of the features listed are available on a vanilla VIM. Many, if not all, except "Asynchronous file loading, so you're never blocked when loading files off slow network drives", "WinSCP integration for editing remote files via SCP and FTP" (OK, maybe you can have the last one using sshfs).

[edited, I've removed "Commenting and uncommenting blocks of text" from the features vim does not have.]

<comment><USER12> VIM supports editing remote files via scp and ftp. Just use {scp,ftp,http}://$host/$path to open a remote file though http support is read-only afaik.

<comment><USER11> Yep, you are right, but imho the fastest way to have read-write support is to use sshfs. Anyway thank you for pointing it out.

<comment><USER12> I think the direct way with scp URIs is faster in regard to the setup time as you don't have to setup fuse and fiddle with permissions.

I must admit i don't use it regularly (but i use tramp mode quite often) but you can browse remote directories, change between hosts without mounting a directory first or open files not lying in the current mountpoint. The only major drawback is if you don't use ssh keys or use programs which don't support gvfs/kio

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I went to Sublime Text because now I can have one great text editor where everything I learn applies to my Mac (home) and Windows (work) environment.

</comment><comment><USER14> Sublime Text 2 is a fantastic product, their updates are timely, and it's been my goto editor for months now. Thanks for the hard work guys!

</comment><comment><USER15> Went Sublime Text 2 over the summer and haven't looked back at Text Mate since. Supposedly we are going to have Text Mate 2 by Christmas though, and then I imagine I'm going to have a tough decision to make.

</comment><comment><USER16> I take heed when so many people are fans of something but after trying it out I feel like I'm missing out on what makes this editor so awesome.

Can someone explain to me why this is better than Textmate, MacVim or UltraEdit?

<comment><USER17> It's basically the same thing as textmate, only actively updated and with some extra features.

For me, the main advantage over textmate is split-screen layout.

<comment><USER18> And runs on Linux, unlike Textmate.

<comment><USER19> and Windows, unlike Textmate

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm using Sublime Text 2 because it's obviously the new hotness in the valley.

I was at a g2g and everyone was coding in ST2. The social stigmatism of not using the new hotness is enough to get a lot of people to conform or be an obviously bad developer.

tl;dr Code editors have more mindshare than _actually getting stuff done_.

This same phenomenon is why I use a MacBook Pro (though admittedly, the MBP is peerless, unlike TEXT EDITORS).

<comment><USER21> A text editor is "hotness" in the valley? And that makes it worth using? Please someone assure me that "the valley" culture isn't so arrogant and full of itself that one would really be judged for not giving (frankly) two shits about Sublime Text?

(getting downvoted by Sublime Text 2 fans* it appears)

<comment><USER22> It's got nothing to do with "the valley" but it's the best text editor I've used on either Win/OSX platforms.

Just because people you dislike like it, is no reason to dismiss it entirely.

<comment><USER21> >Just because people you dislike like it, is no reason to dismiss it entirely.

I don't know how that could be taken from my post. The grandfather comment implied that I would be looked down upon if I didn't use the "hip" Sublime Text 2, which I find to be absurd. I couldn't care less if people want to use unix utilities, notepad, ultraedit, vim, emacs or Microsoft Word to edit their files, but looking down on others seems absurd.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Does anyone know how to tweak the windowing behaviour so that it doesn't open up all your previous windows (or group the new file in the same window as your other project)? Other than the lack of usable options, it's pretty nice!

<comment><USER24> Try adding

      "hot_exit": false

to Preferences>Global Settings - <USER2>

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> For some reason on OS X Lion (Sublime v. 2136 & 2139) tabs do not show up for me unless I go to the bottom right and click Spaces: 4> Convert Tabs to spaces. Then only the current window's tab is shown.

This is smooth and runs pretty fast, but back to text mate for me, I need to see the tabs, see what I have open. Textmate has a nasty 'refresh project on focus' situation that kills working over a network (remate2 fixes that), but Sublime seems to work well over a network.

<comment><USER26> I'm not on Lion, but even on Snow Leopard, Sublime will only show a tab for a file if you double click the file in the sidebar, or edit the file (which Convert Tabs to Spaces is doing). Though there might be a Lion specific issue aside from this.

<comment><USER25> Oh that works. I do not like that, even though I understand the logic behind it. Maybe there is a way to make single click file show the tab

<comment><USER27> The tab will also open if you start editing the file.

<comment><USER25> Sometimes I open files just for reference. Textmate/BBEdit: single click = new tab/new open document

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Sweet! It gets better and better.

The sidebar keyboard navigation is a big one for me that's been missing. And the folding arrows will help. I don't know why you'd want them to fade but nice that it's up to you.

</comment><comment><USER29> This update adds find and replace in files - the biggest missing feature IMHO. Refactoring without it was cumbersome.

It also adds code folding, which isn't my cup of tea but has been widely requested.

</comment><comment><USER30> Would've been cooler if it had integration with gocode.

<comment><USER31> It does via plugin - <https://github.com/DisposaBoy/GoSublime>

<comment><USER32> Awesome, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> only wish it had some emacs key bindings

<comment><USER34> There are several emacs-ish keybinding and behavior packages. Install Package Control and look through the repo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Awesomest text editor ever. (It makes me happy.)

</comment><comment><USER36> i miss tipical alt+key combinations in windows whem i'm replacing or finding text strings

<comment><USER37> Which ones specifically?</comment></comment>


Humble Book Bundle: Hacking Presented by No Starch Press - <AUTHOR> https://www.humblebundle.com/books/no-starch-hacking-books <comment><USER2> This is great. I was going to pick up _Automate the Boring Stuff with Python_ after reading [http://www.alexkras.com/review-automate-the-boring-stuff- wit...](http://www.alexkras.com/review-automate-the-boring-stuff-with-python- by-al-sweigart/)

Any reviews of the other ones from HN crowd?

<comment><USER3> _Silence on the Wire_ is a fantastic book that looks at unconventional and underdiscussed aspects of security: interesting timing attacks, subtle information leakage, fingerprinting, etc. It's by Michal Zalewski, who is perhaps better known to HN folks as the author of the American Fuzzy Lop (AFL) fuzzer.

I think that book probably did more to get me into security than any other – it's just filled with really wonderful, clever stuff.

<comment><USER4> Michal Zalewsk is a all-round polygot that also wrote "The Tangled Web", I wish I could recommend it but I don't understand 1/2 of it.

Interestingly I only became aware of him after stumbling on his "Guerrilla guide to CNC machining, mold making, and resin casting" [http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/gcnc/](http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/gcnc/), an astounding complete piece of work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "The Linux Command Line" is also free to download from here : [http://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php](http://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php)

</comment><comment><USER6> "Hacking the Xbox: An Introduction to Reverse Engineering" is now free. [https://www.nostarch.com/xboxfree](https://www.nostarch.com/xboxfree)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I particularly appreciate the fact that the books come DRM-free :).

<comment><USER7> I wonder if they track you? Some other companies who sell digital downloadable products insert your name, address etc. into the files somewhere.

Selling downloadable digital products strikes me as a bad business model. Bad for either the companies or the consumers. DRM is bad since it won't last forever. When the company goes out of business, "your" products will no longer work. Personally, I don't like tracking either. What if my computer gets hacked, stolen or that I simply forget to securely wipe a disk before throwing it away - will the company who sold me stuff blame me for pirating, if the files end up on some pirate site? On the other hand, if a company does neither DRM nor tracking, then they're very vulnerable to piracy.

Seems to me that rentals/streaming is a better business model. Would it be better if publishers like No Starch Press sold time-limited access (like say 5 or 10 years) to a website where you could read the books? Of course, dedicated pirates would be able to pirate that, but it would be inconvenient for ordinary people.

<comment><USER8> It's possible Humble Bundle may have put watermarks to trace the files in case they end up on piracy sites.

In my opinion, I find HB's business model reasonable. It trusts users to be willing to pay a bit of money to get the books. It is also upfront about where the money from the sale goes (to itself and various organisations) and even allows you to adjust the amount each one gets.

By trusting users in this way, it hopes that users do not abuse the trust by giving away the books to piracy sites. Instead, I believe it hopes to encourage more people to come to the site and pay for the books (and support organisations), rather than free-load the books via piracy.

This is, of course, just my opinion. But I have bought a few Humble Bundles and intend to continue supporting it.

<comment> rebekah-aimee I have a big soft spot for HB. I saw this bundle and immediately thought of two people I know who are very likely to want it, so I sent them an email and attached one of the books from my bundle according to what I thought they'd like best.

I told them the publisher was reputable and if they had $15 to drop on the whole thing, as I had, then they should go for it--but if they just didn't have the money, I offered to send them anything else they wanted from my own download provided they tell anyone else they thought might be interested about the deal.

This straight-up doesn't hurt anyone. If my friends don't have the cash anyway, there's no opportunity cost--but now they know about Humble Bundle and they're probably going to tell other people because it's such a good deal. (And they get at least one new book.) A common and effective marketing tactic is to put the product (or a sample) in people's hands and then ask if they want to buy it, and everyone likes freebies.

I think being DRM-free helps to spread the word more than it hurts, and it also acts as a giant "We're Not Evil" flag. I'd hazard that No Starch does this kind of thing more in order to increase its brand awareness (and its affiliation with good-karma organizations like HB) than it does to actually make money.

I found out about the deal from No Starch's web site, because I have a print copy of Clojure for the Brave and True and had gone looking for the associated files. I'd barely heard of the publisher before, but now I respect them almost as much as O'Reilly. CftBaT is actually available free in HTML form, by the way, and earned itself a big link on my blog.

Basically, this kind of thing is actually really common when you think about it! It kind of reminds me of open source, but without the ability to modify. Then again, you can always write your own book.

Anyway, if someone goes looking for something for free by questionable means and they can't find a pirated version of it, how often do you think they actually go out and buy it instead? I would say almost never, unless whatever it is is in high demand or well known--that tends to not be the case among Humble Bundle items, which are from indie developers and publishers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A bit offtopic, but does anyone know why Humble Bundle have the "Bitcoin" button look disabled? I don't understand why they would want to discourage Bitcoin payment, since it's not subject to chargebacks.

<comment><USER10> When you go to purchase with Bitcoin, it says "Unfortuantely Bitcoin orders are not refundable", so that might be why they're discouraging it for the average buyer.

<comment><USER11> Fortunately it works fine regardless, quick and painless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Make sure you disable an ad blocker. I temporarily allowed the site, but the checkout system didn't work. After I globally allowed all sites, the modal popped up.

Edit: I'm using Script Block.

<comment><USER13> It works here, with ublock origin enabled.</comment></comment>


What Google can learn from John Sculley - <AUTHOR> http://www.asymco.com/2011/01/15/what-google-can-learn-from-john-sculley-how-technology-companies-fail-by-placing-their-strategy-burden-on-technology-decisions/

<comment><USER2> This is an important article. It isn't about what it is on the surface, though, which is Apple and Google fighting over the <video> tag. It is really about strategic and tactical decisions and where technology infrastructure belongs in those decisions.

As a technologist I often get caught up in those decisions, thinking a lot about the infrastructure involved. What Horace is saying is that those decisions are not as critical to winning the big fights, not as important as partners, marketing and distribution are. This is an old story, right? We usually hear it something like "the best products don't always win." He is putting a slightly different spin on it.

Horace writes some great stuff and knows the mobile market inside and out. Well worth following if you are in the space.

<comment><USER3> Short version: The H.264 vs WebM battle won't be won or lost on technical merit, but on strategic partnership and market strategy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is it just me, or is this article all over the place? John Sculley and Apple and RISC vs. CISC, and in the end jumps briefly to some product I've never heard of (and probably never will again) called Flipboard (it "turns the browser paradigm inside out", apparently, whatever that means) as evidence that Google is making a grave mistake and lacking foresight. I simply don't see any way to take _either_ bit of knowledge as having anything to do with Google's choice on this matter. It seems like reaching in order to come to a conclusion the author likes and back it up with a careful study of historical precedents.

I'm definitely not coming away from this article with a sense of foreboding for Google's future (and the only stock I hold right now is GOOG).

<comment><USER5> _"some product I've never heard of (and probably never will again) called Flipboard"_

<http://www.flipboard.com>

Flipboard is an immersive iPad app that combines your Google Reader, Flickr, Twitter and Facebook accounts to create a personalized magazine. Whenever you see or read something you find interesting, it lets you comment on it or share it from within the app.

It's likely that Flipboard will branch out to other mobile platforms and the web. I'm willing to bet you'll hear more about them here in the coming year, they're funded by Kleiner Perkins.

<comment><USER4> "I'm willing to bet you'll hear more about them here in the coming year, they're funded by Kleiner Perkins."

Make the timeline five years, and specify this particular product rather than other products and ideas that the team/company may produce in the future, and I'll take that bet.

I'd be absolutely _stunned_ if "an immersive iPad app that combines your Google Reader, Flickr, Twitter and Facebook accounts to create a personalized magazine. Whenever you see or read something you find interesting, it lets you comment on it or share it from within the app" becomes successful beyond a small niche audience. No matter how much money they've raised or who invested in them. Investors, even smart ones, make stupid mistakes all the time (and this may not be a stupid investment if the team is awesome, and flexible enough to evolve their company into producing something of great value).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Pedantic: The quote from Sculley is misleading "So Intel lobbied heavily to get us to _stay_ with them… (but) we went with IBM and Motorola with the PowerPC."

Apple switched from the _Motorola_ 68000 family to the joint IBM / _Motorola_ PowerPC. I am sure Intel lobbied heavily to get Apple to _switch_ to the x86 architecture, but they definitely did not lobby to have Apple _stay_ with them.

To be more fair to Apple's decision, at the time it was made, RISC was the New Hotness[tm] that was suppose to run much faster than CISC.

What they both missed was that the memory subsystem became the bottleneck, not processor clock rates, so the winner became the processor with the biggest and fastest cache. Intel ended up with the edge due to their fab technology.

<comment><USER7> Also, I think that the Intel processor that was in the running wasn't the 486, but rather the i860 (a relatively clean RISC design). Which, although a flop for general purpose computing, was used in the NeXT Dimension graphics accelerator in later NeXT cubes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Seriously guys, why is it so hard to believe that Google is dropping H.264 for the reasons they've stated?

Why does this have to be some secret conspiracy against Apple?

<comment><USER9> Because they haven't dropped mp3. They announced it on the same day as Verizon's iPhone announcement. If it was Microsoft and WMV / OpenXML or Oracle and the Java, I would be just as concerned. Group standards seem to work better than a single companies spec.

<comment><USER10> _They announced it on the same day as Verizon's iPhone announcement._

The video codec announcement had zero impact outside of the tech-heavy sphere. In no universe would it have undermined the Verizon announcement. The MP3 diversion is spurious and irrelevant compared to the video issue: You pick your battles.

<comment><USER9> Video encoding is a lot wider than just the computer industry. One group who has a serious interest is those self-same media reporting on Verizon's event. I would trust their commitment more if they at least put a plan to sunset all patent-encumbered formats.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It'd be nice if they got the name of the codec in question right. Also, I can't see Google making the WebM decision based on technical details, as it is technically inferior (although just). Rather, I quite believe them when they say they believe in and will fight for an open internet. Whether that's a good decision for them as a company remains to be seen, but it's quite clear they won't hurt themselves as badly as Apple did with PowerPC.

<comment><USER9> I do wonder if Intel would have built a vector unit if the G4 hadn't existed.

<comment><USER12> Yes, they did. MMX predates the G4, and SSE came out the same year.

<comment><USER11> Yup. I remember buying a 200 Mhz Pentium 1 (pro?) w/ MMX back in the day. 3dfx made the improvement in 3d graphics kind of moot, but it _was_ there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I feel Google's decision with h.264 is more related to its decision to pull out of china than Apple's decision to switch to CISC. Google decided to nix h.264 because it wanted to "do the right thing".

The current internet landscape with its open standards and pretty level playing field is a fertile ground that produced innovations too many to count. Google itself is a result of that ground.

A competitive, good open codec would ensure that the fast innovation we have known in the Net for years spill over into video applications. Think OnLive for retro and amateur games, made by 1 student, taking over the world. Or countless other ideas nobody has yet thought of.

I applaud Google for aligning their decisions with their values. I hope they stand by the decision, and inspire others to follow them.

</comment><comment><USER10> "So the argument I've heard against Google's decision is that they are using an infrastructural technology decision (a new video codec) to placate or sustain Adobe Flash, at the expense of Apple, a potential or perceived rival."

The "argument" is a baseless conspiracy theory that is the desperate defensive clutching of so many Apple defenders, viciously taking up the fight against mean Google. The rest of the article is full of incorrect beliefs about the history of Apple, RISC, x86, etc, though I can't say that is all too atypical for an Asymco piece.

For all of the "it will just bring back Flash" grousing, note that Firefox will never support h264 without a major change in its licensing. Firefox is a dominant web browser. Nice that Apple, a MPEG LA member, supports h264 though, while simultaneously pushing Quicktime and iTunes junk on the web.

Sidenote -- Just went to view a movie trailer on Apple.com. What's with it trying to foist Quicktime on me? Apple _still_ hasn't given up on that, and they're still licking their wounds about having lost to Flash.

<comment><USER5> _"Firefox is a dominant web browser. Nice that Apple, a MPEG LA member, supports h264 though"_

Internet Explorer is _the_ dominant web browser, whether we like it or not. Microsoft is a MPEG-LA member, and IE9 will have support for h.264 in <video> containers. Adobe is a AVC/h.264 licensee, and mostly because of Flash support and Adobe's content creation tools, the majority of video on the web is encoded using h.264.

Chrome, Firefox and Opera have a combined global market share of 46%, IE and Safari have 52% combined, so it can go either way. What's going to be important is if, and how soon all major mobile OSes and GPUs will support WebM. Apple and Microsoft are unlikely to support WebM, so count iOS and Windows Phone out. Google will surely try to make it work on Android, even though most phones won't have hardware accelaration for it. RIM and Nokia remain wildcards, but most of their informed smartphone users use Opera anyways, which I imagine will support WebM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's amazing how a single error in the article (or typo? "H.265") immediately turned me off to the rest of it.

<comment><USER15> It's because no one familiar with the technology would make that mistake (in other words, the author doesn't know what he's talking about). There are other H.26X codecs and they're quite different. It'd be like someone writing a review of Windows 6... oops typo meant 7.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I can't understand why there is all this fuss over H.264.

Simply put H.264 looks like nothing more than a replacement for Adobes offering. While I agree H.264 is superior it doesn't solve the long term problem. So instead of Flash being the dominant video delivery mechanism it is handed to some other company.

Now please excuse me while I check my realplayer messages, install my adobe flash updates, update windows media player and why is quicktime flashing?</comment>


Embrace Mediterranean or Nordic diets to cut disease, WHO says - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/may/07/embrace-mediterranean-or-nordic-diets-to-cut-disease-who-says <comment><USER2> Link to the actual paper - [http://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/365285/h...](http://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/365285/hen-58-eng.pdf?ua=1)

Also note it's a study within regions in Europe. The WHO isn't suggesting that Japanese people or any other random country suddenly stops eating their food and takes up a Mediterranean diet or a Nordic diet.

</comment><comment><USER3> The Nordic diet? You mean beer and tacos every Saturday?

<comment><USER4> No, certainly not! They were obviously referring to cheap frozen pizzas and brown cheese on cold waffles :)

<comment><USER3> Ah, yes, of course.</comment></comment></comment>


Is it ever a good idea to perform self-surgery? - <AUTHOR> https://theconversation.com/is-it-ever-a-good-idea-to-perform-self-surgery-62569 <comment><USER2> In her speech to the Democratic National Convention last night, Academy-Award winner Meryl Streep gave a shout out to Deborah Sampson who disguised herself as a man in order to serve in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. Earning the title of: "the first woman ever to take a bullet for our country."

From wikipedia:

Sampson fought in several skirmishes. During her first battle, on July 3, 1782, outside Tarrytown, New York, she took two musket balls in her thigh and a cut on her forehead. She begged her fellow soldiers to let her die and not take her to the hospital, but they refused to abandon her. A soldier put her on his horse and took her to a hospital. The doctors treated her head wound, but she left the hospital before they could attend to the musket balls. Fearful that her true identity would be discovered, she removed one of the balls herself with a penknife and sewing needle, but her leg never fully healed because the other musket ball was too deep for her to reach. On April 1, 1783, she was promoted and spent seven months serving as a waiter to General John Paterson.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder why they don't mention [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonid_Rogozov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonid_Rogozov) It seems like in that case, it was a good idea.

<comment><USER4> I too thought it this guy. Operating on himself to remove his appendix whilst so far from any civilisation was a seriously amazing feat of human determination to survive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is insane. Medical Licensure was just starting to take form in the early 19th century. I wonder if Liston had anything to do with it.

        A notable 19th century surgeon ... Robert Liston ... is
        the only surgeon to have achieved a 300% mortality rate
        as a result of an operation ... the patient, his
        assistant (who lost a finger while holding the patient
        down) and an observer died. The first two from
        infection of their wounds and the observer from fright,
         believing he had been cut when really it was only his
        coat that had been cut.

<comment><USER6> Note that Liston was a very celebrated surgeon -- he was a professor of surgery and developed several important procedures and tools, some of which are still in use today. Things were a lot more speedy and dangerous before the invention of disinfectants and general anesthesia!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've cut out ingrown toenails many times. Nothing a little frontier medicine can't handle :)

<comment><USER8> I've done the exact same thing - not worth it. I self-treated for years. It was usually quite painful and frequently led to infection (which always healed itself after a couple weeks). Best thing I ever did was finally go to the GP and get it surgically taken care of. 30mins in the doctors office, less pain that treating it myself, and it's never come back. Saying all this my health care doesn't cost me anything but even if I had to pay, in hindsight, I would.

<comment><USER9> One doesn't often get a chance to commiserate publicly about ingrown toe nail problems, so I'm going to take the opportunity to very enthusiastically second this. OP, go see a podiatrist ASAP. After numerous dealings with infected and painful to walk on toes, I went through a simple in office procedure where the podiatrist numbed my toes, snipped off the edges of the nail, then put some chemical at the nail base so they wouldn't grow back. I haven't thought about my toe nails since and it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say it's improved my quality of life not having to deal with those issues anymore.

<comment><USER7> I just altered my trimming style of cutting too short, to leaving some actual nail there. Problem solved.

<comment><USER8> Yeah I should've have mentioned in my original comment but obviously there are varying degrees of this. My situation was not something I could ever fix myself, only fix temporarily. The only solution was killing a section of the root with a chemical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Am I mistaken or did the article not answer the question at all? It just describes some processes, risks and examples. Most of them common knowledge of the practical man in the 21st century.

<comment><USER11> It does answer the question near the end:

"...given people who perform this type of surgery are often in life or death situations, it is sometimes worth the risk."

But this seems so obvious that the question is hardly worth asking in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Less than 3 minutes" wasn't that fast for an amputation, back when surgeons had lots of practice doing it. For example, [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Jean_Larrey](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Jean_Larrey) claims _" he operated on Marshall Jean Lannes and amputated one of his legs in two minutes."_

[http://www.napoleonguide.com/medical_instruments.htm](http://www.napoleonguide.com/medical_instruments.htm) has pictures of instruments used and even an instruction poster from the period. Don't try this at home, though; according to [http://www.napoleonguide.com/medical.htm](http://www.napoleonguide.com/medical.htm), only about a third of people who had a limb amputated survived.

</comment><comment><USER13> A friend of mine knocked out a wisdom tooth on himself, saving ~$1k.

Hammer and screwdriver, if I remember the story right.

<comment><USER14> He was lucky, that could have been a lot more expensive his way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I broke my right pinky about a year ago, and splinted it up at home with the help of a med school friend. It came in a little crooked, but I saved a few thousand in medical bills! It's not like I need my right pinky to sell software, play guitar, ski, or do anything fun :) .

I've always wondered if it made more sense to go to a veterinarian for broken bones / torn muscles... I went to physical therapy for a rotator cuff issue, and it wasn't cheap!

<comment><USER16> I also broke my right pinky and splinted it myself around 6 years ago! I wouldn't consider that surgery, but I felt like I did the exact same thing that they would've done in an emergency room minus getting an actual x-ray. (I guess I can't know if it was actually broken since I didn't get an x-ray, but the right side of my hand was completely black/purple and the pinky finger was swollen to about the size of my thumb.)

I taped my whole hand for the first week for stability and then slowly removed fingers from the tape as I felt like it was healing (swelling going down - color returning to normal). After the bandages and splint were off my finger wouldn't bend inward and it wouldn't fully straighten without applying pressure using my other hand. I started doing my own "physical therapy" on it whenever I had some free time to force it to straighten/bend. It took a few months before I could bend it by itself to touch my palm but now it's about 99% functional as compared to my other pinky.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It is like to do plumbing work by yourself. Always has unexpected and potentially catastrophic consequences.

<comment><USER18> Plumbing is super easy and very hard to mess up. There's no reason to be messing around with copper any more: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross- linked_polyethylene](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-linked_polyethylene)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm surprised they didn't mention Scrotum Self Repair.

[http://www.snopes.com/medical/emergent/stapled.asp](http://www.snopes.com/medical/emergent/stapled.asp)

</comment><comment><USER20> If i had a supply of lidocaine i'd be _sore_ tempted to dig out some superficial lumps (lipoma). There's one which removed would probably provide a decent void for some nifty implant.

</comment><comment><USER10> One could say that woman had balls =)

<comment><USER21> We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12173743](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12173743) and marked it off-topic. Please comment civilly and substantively or not at all.

<comment><USER22> Considering that the woman in question literally had musket balls embedded in her thigh, I think Kenji's response is better described as a good pun than uncivil or unsubstantive.</comment></comment></comment>


Space Colony Art from the 1970s - <AUTHOR> http://settlement.arc.nasa.gov/70sArtHiRes/70sArt/art.html <comment><USER2> Many of these pictures are based on designs described in one of my favorite books of all time, _The High Frontier_ , by Gerard K. O'Neil.

In it, O'Neil, a Princeton physicist and founder of the Space Studies Institute, goes on to describe in great technical detail the feasibility of building artificial space habitats of varying sizes. I heartily recommend it to anyone even remotely interested in space. The ideas from this book have been implemented in countless fictional universes[1], so you may find that you've seen them before.

It all started here in this excellent book.

1\. [http://gundam.wikia.com/wiki/Space_colony_(UC)](http://gundam.wikia.com/wiki/Space_colony_\(UC\))

<comment><USER3> They're also featured heavily in T.A. Heppinheimer's _Colonies in Space_ , now available in full text online:

[http://www.nss.org/settlement/ColoniesInSpace/index.html](http://www.nss.org/settlement/ColoniesInSpace/index.html)

That featured strongly in my childhood imagination. I'm no longer the technotopian I was at the time, but it's a powerful vision. Much of what it (and O'Neil) promoted should have been done by now were it possible.

<comment><USER4> O'Neill clearly wanted it to happen and let it bias his estimates. But what bothered me the most was that even if you did follow their strategy of build- powersats-in-place-out-of-extraterrestrial-materials, you could do it cheaper with workers in tin cans (and lots of automation and teleoperation) instead of livable colonies. The argument against this wasn't too convincing, but I was a teenager and figured "Hey, a _lot_ can happen in a few decades." A lot more than actually did so far, sigh.

I still think large-scale work could have been done in space, and wasn't more for societal than technical reasons.

<comment><USER3> I suspect the powersat evolved as a mission justification: so, we can conceive of human-habitable structures in space, but why would we do that. From Heppenheimer's book, it seems that the colony concept emerged first, then the powersat concept.

Once you've arrived at "orbiting solar power stations built from lunar regolith", questioning your premises and realizing that the colonies really don't make all that much sense. But then again, pragmatism and overt missions never really ruled space anyway -- see Apollo and the Shuttle.

As for the technical reasons, to paraphrase Douglas Adams: Space is expensive. Really expensive. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly expensive it is.

The ISS is the most expensive single structure ever constructed, and among the most expensive single _projects_ ever undertaken -- and that for a habitation for six people. Total cost is somewhere north of $100 billion (how far north isn't clear, the budget's spread among multiple agencies and nations).

Given that, and absent tremendous gains in efficiency and automation, the cost of solar power satellites let alone O'Neil space colonies would be in the tens of trillions of dollars, minimum. That's on the scale of the entire US GDP, if not more.

As for your observation "a lot more than actually did [happen]": _Colonies in Space_ is one of my benchmarks for rates of technological change that _didn 't_ happen. I'd anticipated that that could well be my future, but a decade and a half past when it was supposed to be a reality, it remains science fiction. It's given me a good sense of the sorts of change which are possible and likely, and those which aren't. And no, not all progress is subject to Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns.

<comment><USER5> >> It's given me a good sense of the sorts of change which are possible and likely, and those which aren't. And no, not all progress is subject to Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns.

Indeed, we may be in Vinge's "Age of failed dreams".

<comment><USER3> Interesting Vinge reference. I wasn't familiar with that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Those "real" painted pictures give me always a kind of warm feeling compared to the sharp digital paintings.

But it may have been caused by all that SciFi covers I've seen as a child.

<comment><USER7> i personally like painting/drawing over 3d rendering. There is something dull about the latest. I dont mind flawed or imperfect perspective for instance. It gives life to a painting.

And I love airbrushed pictures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "YOU PROMISED ME MARS COLONIES. INSTEAD, I GOT FACEBOOK"

<comment><USER9> Well, we also didn't have the Cold War go hot. Win some, loose some.

<comment><USER10> Maybe, but we are still stockpiling weapons that can destroy our whole civilization at any time. It's not because we are currently in a relatively peaceful era that it's going to last in the long term.

<comment><USER9> Yup. That's a reason why I'm a big fan of the High Frontier, space exploration, and settlement.

So when something goes boom, here, there will be some people, elsewhere, to help rebuild.

Worst case, the species will carry on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The torus design really makes it so that it's uphill both ways. That would change the "Back in my day" jokes forever.

<comment><USER3> Except that it's _not_ "uphill" in a force sense, since the attraction is the result of centripetal force, acting outward perpendicular to the ring at any point, not gravity, which would focus in toward a center.

So, visually, yes. In fact, no.

<comment><USER12> I genuinely love HN for bits like this...both with an amusing quip, and then someone who can explain that technically, the amusing quip is inaccurate. It nicely stimulates both left and right side of my brain.

<comment><USER3> I'd say "'pedantic' is my middle name" but for the fact that it isn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I remember some of these, which were reprinted in magazines like _Odyssey_ (and maybe even _Omni_?) in the 70s and 80s. The images, along with colony/exploration books by Larry Niven, Ben Bova, and James P. Hogan, really had the power to set one's imagination on fire.

<comment><USER14> The cylindrical colony is basically Arthur C Clarke's _Rama_. One of the images of the spherical colony shows a human-powered vehicle, which IIRC featured in the first Rama book.

<comment><USER15> You do remember correctly!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> OMG, so this is where the Elysium creators got their inspiration from!

Elysium art:

[http://actionflickchick.com/superaction/wp- content/uploads/2...](http://actionflickchick.com/superaction/wp- content/uploads/2013/08/elysium.jpg)

[http://www.geeksofdoom.com/GoD/img/2013/08/2013-08-09-elysiu...](http://www.geeksofdoom.com/GoD/img/2013/08/2013-08-09-elysium_interior_concept_art.jpg)

<comment><USER17> Or any number of other SciFi movies, cartoons, etc. For example the many Gundam[1] series have similar colonies (maybe inspired by the same material).

[1] Example: [http://www.darkmirage.com/blog/wp- content/uploads/2007/12/16...](http://www.darkmirage.com/blog/wp- content/uploads/2007/12/16_gundam00_ep11n.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> More discussion from the early HN:

[http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=428312](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=428312)

</comment><comment><USER19> [Don Davis]([http://www.donaldedavis.com/](http://www.donaldedavis.com/)), one of the illustrators whose work appears here, was part of the team of artists gathered to provide the visual effects for [Cosmos]([http://hypertexthero.com/logbook/2014/03/cosmos/](http://hypertexthero.com/logbook/2014/03/cosmos/)).

[Some of his recollections]([http://www.donaldedavis.com/PARTS/SAGAN.html](http://www.donaldedavis.com/PARTS/SAGAN.html)) of working with Sagan.

</comment><comment><USER20> I believe that "Toroidal Colonies" inspired heavily the movie Elysium (2013)

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1535108/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1535108/)

<comment><USER21> My thought too. There are some really nice renderings here: [https://www.solidangle.com/news/elysium/](https://www.solidangle.com/news/elysium/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Slideshow mirror: [http://imgur.com/a/eus5K](http://imgur.com/a/eus5K)

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm pretty sure that I have seen most of these images in my Dad's old Popular Science magazines. I'm really glad to see this art again.

</comment><comment><USER24> Ahhhhh now I want to go back and read Rendezvous with Rama. But I'm scared to reread it, I don't want to tarnish my memory of it.

</comment><comment><USER25> I like how in the future everyone will still have 70s hair and fashions.

DISCO WILL NEVER DIE!</comment>


Trusted certificate authority Certigna leaks its private key - <AUTHOR> http://www.thinq.co.uk/2011/6/9/certigna-publishes-ssl-private-key-mistake/

<comment><USER2> This would actually be a problem.... if the private key was good for anything. Certigna's response says it is not:

"Certigna has issued a response claiming that the file represented a 'test' certificate that had long since expired. "The private key available on the server corresponds to a test certificate used on our website certigna.fr," the company claimed. "It is impossible to generate new valid user certificates from this key. Moreover, it is encrypted and is an SSL certificate expired since July 2010. This key does not affect our infrastructure security. The Certigna SSL authority's private key is stored in HSM (Hardware Security Module) and hence can never be recovered. This useless file has been removed."

<comment><USER3> Just some sensationalist reporting without proper fact-checking, then. Again.

<comment><USER4> Somebody stole a key from a Certificate authority server? Sensationalist? yeah, sounds pretty sensational.

"They only stole junk from my house. So Your stuff is safe, somehow"

Anyway, they Did fact-check - and the company didn't respond. So they reported what appeared to be a significant breach. Then, when the company responded, they reported that too. Which has a name, which is "Responsible Journalism"

<comment><USER5> Beware of metaphors when trying to understand computer issues. What happened (assuming this is the truth) is that a useless key was left on a public server in a public directory, and it could be downloaded by anybody, at which point it is useless. There is no helpful physical analogue to this situation. Just understand it as it is directly, it's not that complicated.

Your metaphor clouds the issue, it does not bring understanding. "Breaking in" to a computer network doesn't give you access to a "whole house", and what occurred wasn't a break in, there's no part of that metaphor that actually helps you understand the situation.

At best this shows a bit of carelessness, but then, a useless, expired key doesn't necessarily require much care in handling, either. The only damage here is PR, if what the company says is true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That level of blurring is almost certainly insufficient to actually redact the information, as discussed in <http://dheera.net/projects/blur.php> (discussed here <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1939607>)

<comment><USER7> I don't think so, it'd take way too long to dictionary attack/bruteforce the missing 64 x 9 characters of the blurred image. Which gives 64 ^ (64 x 9) combinations judging from the base64 encoding.

That is assuming you have the blurring algorithm and font perfect.

<comment><USER8> No - we already know that the same blurring algorithm was used for all the characters. The font can be found and matched quickly and you only need to calibrate the blur for one character. The blurring algorithm will give you a pixel perfect representation for character match so its more on the order of 64 * 600 (600 is the approx number of chars blurred). This could be cracked in a day or less by someone motivated enough.

<comment><USER7> How do you know that blurring one character produces the same effect as blurring two characters close together?

<comment><USER9> You don't need to know this. You make an image of the text for every combination possible, apply the blur algorithm, and see which one is a pixel- perfect match for to the image on the web site.

Or rather, you don't do this, you write a program to do it :)

<comment><USER7> But you'll have to go through 64 ^ (64 x 9), combinations which will take years which was what I said in the first post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Of course, "just revoke" doesn't actually work: serving a outdated certificate revocation list, or preventing a connection to the OCSP ("is this cert revoked?") server causes browsers to trust "revoked" certificates. Worse, lots of software doesn't even bother to do this check. This is why the browsers hardcoded a list of compromised certificates last time.

This is even worse, though, because a lot of "real" certificates depend on this CA. Also, there are no logs to make a blacklist of "bad" certificates, so you can't just revoke a handful...

<comment><USER11> "a lot of "real" certificates depend on this CA"

How many? did you estimate from sequential serial number allocation?

I am surprised (even if it turns out this is "just" an encrypted webserver key) that they aren't using hardware keys: (a) it's their core business (b) they appear competent (CTO posts to technical mailing lists) (c) they have a /29 so aren't just a single IP on an inaccessible low-end VPS.

ssllabs.com gives them a C rating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't think this leak has included their own certificate authority key to allow you to generate your own key signed by the CA (which thinq claims), just the private key for the website, but it's certainly embarrassing for them.

They seem to have modified all the files in the directory overnight, and removed the offending www.certigna.fr files from <http://www.certigna.fr/crl/> (unless the website has an archived directory that the thinq.co.uk writer was looking at)

<comment><USER13> Well, unfortunately there are also other .pem files in the list.

<comment><USER12> But that doesn't mean their CA trusted root key has been disclosed - sure, the pem files could contain their trusted root key, but they normally wouldn't.

For example, the file named certigna.pem exists on most Linux machines, it's the public key not the private one, look at the ca-certificates package on debian.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> You can find the Certigna's explanations at <http://www.certigna.fr/archives/2984>

</comment><comment><USER15> Bad show, thinq, that I had to read right through this story to get to the bit that says 'all of the forgoing is a crock of shit'.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm not terribly familiar with private key formats, but it appears to be encrypted (the `Proc-Type` and `DEK-Info` lines). Is the `localKeyID` the password used to encrypt?

<comment><USER17> (1) Yes, the key is encrypted.

(2) This is not necessarily the private key used to sign other certificates.

(3) If they're lucky, this is a private key only used for their web server. OR, this key is an intermediate key. In which case they can invalidate it, create a new one, and reissue certificates for all the affected customers.</comment></comment>


What it's like to travel on a stand-up airplane seat - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/standing-up-airplane-seat-testing/index.html <comment><USER2> The idea of a stand-up seat seems interesting, like a stand-up desk until I realize that 23" leaves no room for a laptop.</comment>


The education of Karl Witte[pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://ran-raz-knigi.narod.ru/The_Education_of_Karl_Witte.pdf <comment><USER2> About Karl Witte and why the book may be culturally relevant: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Witte](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Witte)</comment>


Are Pop Lyrics Getting More Repetitive? (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://pudding.cool/2017/05/song-repetition/ <comment><USER2> Discussed at the time:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14323762](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14323762)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14335987](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14335987)</comment>