CAP_SYS_ADMIN: the new root - <AUTHOR> http://lwn.net/Articles/486306/

<comment><USER3> Why are they going deeper with it? The more I deal with unix, the more I feel that permissions are a mistake.

That wasn't always true. In the past, it was common to have having multiple untrusted users in one system. Outside of universities that is now uncommon.

It's much more typical to have one operator own (or a small team share) a large number of unix hosts. The common models here for dealing with privileges are more an exercise in getting aroung it than leveraging it.

One model is to have an app user that everyone logs in as. This reduces the change of people making a mistake when they're root, but it's hard to know who did what.

Another model has each person have a unique user. They log in as themselves and then sudo to application users. It's a fair bit of work to set up, and once you have you still don't get to see who ran what command.

In theory you can set things up so that everyone is in the same group, but there's fiddly problems when you do this. Like you can't copy over someone else's file (even if you're in the group and it's 775), you have to first delete it and then copy in its place.

A model I'd prefer would be to have a gateway OS housing multiple VMs. A vm would have full rwx access to a mount point on a filesystem. Any user within the vm would have full permissions. The system would log into the gateway system. If you had particular security needs, you'd implement them at an application level.

Privileges make the unix code and user experience significantly more complicated. I don't see a payoff that justifies the cost.

<comment><USER4> >A model I'd prefer would be to have a gateway OS housing multiple VMs. A vm would have full rwx access to a mount point on a filesystem. Any user within the vm would have full permissions. The system would log into the gateway system. If you had particular security needs, you'd implement them at an application level.

This sounds...sort of familiar...

(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs>)

Sadly; *nix was just good enough.

<comment><USER5> Of particular interest is the paper on Plan 9's security model:

<http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/auth>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> FreeBSD 9 has another neat option - <USER2> (<http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/capsicum/>). If you're interested in a good way forward, have a look.

Authorization will always be hard because working out what each person should be able to access and then giving a meaningful way of describing that is hard.

<comment><USER7> Full marks to FreeBSD for turning research into a practical application. Sadly I'm not hopeful for the Linux community, which routinely ignores and disparages research and innovations from outside itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder if the name "capabilities" was intentionally chosen to be confused with the "object capability" security model, which is a completely different beast.

Object capabilities would bring reasonable security to the OS, so we wouldn't have to use clumsy VM's as a security model. Unfortunately, the mistake of the 1960's (ACL-based security) stuck to this day, and object-capabilities were barely put to use.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-capability_model>

</comment><comment><USER9> As many discuss the cap sys admin for _processes_ , I'd like to point out that, some framework exists to alleviate the issue. It's not perfect but it exists.

For example RSBAC (www.rsbac.org) has a CAP module and which can forbid capabilities per process.

This won't save you when the kernel request it, but it doesnt when an app require it while it doesn't need it, which is what the article is about

<comment><USER10> The problem with non integrated solutions (integrated as in in the application) is that people need different access restrictions depending on their specific use case.. This had led to what you see now in Linux with apparmor, grsec, selinux, smack, tomoyo, rsbac all with different incompatible outside solutions that don't really solve the problem or introduce a huge amount of technical overhead that only the developer of said application would have knowledge about. In short their useless due to time and effort needed.

<comment><USER9> No, actually, RSBAC does this via policy.

That is, the developer does not need to bother. The developer does what the developer does.

The policy enforces it, regardless of the code. If in certain conditions, as a user, you disagree with the user of CAP_SYS_ADMIN, RSBAC denies it (context- based too, via other modules!)

You can for example wrap that in a role-based policy, tied per binary, or simply by wrapping it in a RSBAC jail. (rsbac_jail -options /path/to/said/program)

I don't think the other ones do that, as it's quite specific. They just plain deny.

That's mostly because RSBAC has it's own framework (as does GrSecurity, but GrSecurity does not go as deep in that regard)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I always understood the point being to split off some capabilities that can be used on their own safely, and leave the rest under CAP_SYS_ADMIN. Stuff like ability to bind to ports <1024 or configure network interfaces. So if most of the stuff stays under CAP_SYS_ADMIN, the system is working as designed.</comment>


7 On Your Side: Woman loses life savings in Apple Support impostor scam - <AUTHOR> https://abc7ny.com/apple-support-scam-con-artist-chinyere-ogbonna/5956374/ <comment><USER2> The saddest part is that her life savings was $6k.</comment>


Why Are Sports Fans So Bereft Without Live Games? - <AUTHOR> https://www.sapiens.org/culture/covid-19-sports/ <comment><USER2> Question sort of answers itself, does it not?</comment>


Too Many 'a's (A poem, with apologies to Dr. Seuss) - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/svs/7fc59be7b4b0cc68b699

<comment><USER2> "I changed it to male" \- OMG YOU THINK WOMEN CAN'T CODE

"I changed it to female" \- OMG YOU THINK WOMEN ARE BAD AT CODING

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for that. To all female programmers - I meant no offense.

On a related note, when are we getting genderless pronouns for English?

<comment><USER3> > On a related note, when are we getting genderless pronouns for English?

When enough people start using them despite occasionally annoying other people. :)

(I'm a fan of ve/ver/vis for someone of unknown/nonbinary gender, but in a case like this I would have just picked he or she and to hell with anyone who complains.)

<comment><USER4> In concept it's great, the problem is that when one says e.g. "ve had 23 variables" I for one tend to read it as a bad German/Russian impression.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Really classy comment from mvasilkov there....

<comment><USER6> It was most likely a sarcastic stab at a complaint that the poem featured a female programmer in the role of 'bad coder'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> A "poem" with typos, a dearth of wit and worst of of all, questionable content: why is the terrible programmer a woman? A woman doesn't normally spring to mind when discussing programming, but oh, when we're discussing something where someone is missing a rudimentary, fundamental lack of understanding (all variables have the same name), a woman is chosen.

<comment><USER8> Wait so because women don't 'typically spring to mind' as programmers they should have changed it from the original?

<comment><USER7> I don't want to get into a flame war, but no, that isn't what I meant. In general, in the mainstream, people will typically think of men when they think of programmers. Something like 'Neckbeard Hacker' on twitter being just one obvious stereotype, however outmoded that particular one may be. I don't need to argue that point, but in light of it, it came across as a rather odd choice of protagonist, considering the normative view, and the subject being a 'bad programmer'.

I don't really think svs meant any offence, especially having now seen the original poem. I also don't think we can live in a society where everybody has perfectly-formed liberal views. At the same time, I'm not down with this "why are people so easily offended"/"turn down your offence-o-meter" argument that one hears when this comes up, mainly because it is a trivially easy card to play when you aren't the target of the stereotyping

<comment><AUTHOR> Ashley, I find your objections to be valid. If we're bemoaning the state of gender equality in tech then it is everyone's duty to provide a space where stereotypes are not indulged in, people are not judged based on extrinsic factors and the discomforts of the minority are taken seriously. Thank you for making the effort to point out my mistake and for accepting my apology gracefully.

<comment><USER7> You yourself have also been gracious. Thank you.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How the Koch Brothers Are Killing Public Transit Projects Around the Country - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/climate/koch-brothers-public-transit.html <comment><USER2> I kind of don't disagree with them. Because big public transmit projects are so incredibly expensive in the U.S., the cost-benefit analysis is totally skewed, and the result is quite regressive. Take the Silver Line in D.C., for example. Nearly $7 billion of public money spent to ease the commutes of people in some of the richest suburbs in the country. If you put that money into a fund, you could pay every impoverished kid in the _entire state_ $1,000 per year in perpetuity.

Our insane housing restrictions compound the problem. Especially on the Virginia side, you have to pay a lot of money to live within walking distance of a Metro station. So money spent on the Metro tends to go to benefiting people who are already very well off.

(And in Nashville, the transit will be paid for with a sales tax increase, which is a very regressive tax.)

<comment><USER3> >If you put that money into a fund, you could pay every impoverished kid in the entire state $1,000 per year in perpetuity.

Not saying I disagree with the rest of what you are saying, but if everyone thought that way then nothing would ever get done. Infrastructure matters.

<comment><USER2> Does _rail_ infrastructure matter (at the prices we pay for it)? Maybe it would be better if these projects just never got done, because at the inflated prices we pay there are better uses for that money.

<comment><USER4> Maybe, but it sounds like you're ignoring government inefficiency.

Tell me, how many government projects are you a huge fan of? They're not exactly hallmarks of design or execution. But we need them, at some level, and they're more beneficial to society as a public good, than a private good. And we're years behind in public transport, we _are_ improving.

Besides, if you're gonna target something that gives the least tangible gain for the cost, take a look at our monstrous defense budget.

<comment><USER5>
      government inefficiency

A classic example: the new SF-Oakland Bay Bridge.

Original retrofit estimate: $400 million

Grandiose, craptastic new bridge cost thus far: $8 billion

But wait, there's more: defective design, construction, and materials (bad welds in Chinese-made roadbed segments, defective, fragile rods/bolts, etc.) resulted in a bridge that is _less safe_ than the $400M retrofit would have produced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's a bummer. My wife and I moved to Germany and the public transit is so good here that we don't need a car and without it are saving hundreds every month. We got bikes and are generally healthier. There is at least one downside: large grocery runs like we used to do in the states: we just do many smaller ones throughout the week and find that we spend less on groceries, so win-win. I'd be for more and better public transit than less.

<comment> le-mark The other thing I found was that drinking and driving was not as much of a problem, just take the train/bus when you're going to be drinking. It's odd how this is never part of the discussion.

<comment><USER7> Welcome to Chicago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> These cities have been experiencing a significant population boom. If they don't invest in infrastructure, they're going to kneecap their own economic growth. There's a reason why the region's businesses were backing public transit, and it wasn't out of the kindness of their hearts...

</comment><comment><USER9> [https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/politics/2018/05/01/na...](https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/politics/2018/05/01/nashville- transit-vote-davidson-county-mass-transit/564991002/)

> Separately, a political action committee led by Americans for Prosperity, a > conservative advocacy group funded by the conservative billionaires David > and Charles Koch, contributed a modest sum of $10,000 for mail advertising.

</comment><comment><USER10> Previously discussed:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17346028](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17346028) \- 142 points/168 comments

Also...

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17349025](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17349025)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17346993](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17346993)

</comment><comment><USER11> The fact that public transit projects are occasionally really good and efficient and worthwhile and valuable does not mean that most of them shouldn't die a horrible death, because most of them aren't.

</comment><comment><USER12> I totally oppose large scale public transport scams that various elected politicians are proposing with other people's money. Most of these projects come at serious taxpayer costs worse that money should have gone into other basic things in first place. The California proposed world's slowest high speed train that has not progressed an in is a good example. NY subway repairs (estimated at $70B) etc. etc. reek of third world scams that I am used to seeing in India.

I think NYT is simply getting personal at Koch brothers for their consistent support for less government, more individual freedom and in general libertarian principles. NYT in this article has lacked critical thinking ability.

</comment><comment> luka-birsa Article is paywalled. Can somebody do a TLDR of why exactly do Kochs want to do this?

<comment><USER13> "The Kochs' opposition to transit spending stems from their longstanding free- market, libertarian philosophy. It also dovetails with their financial interests, which benefit from automobiles and highways.

One of the mainstay companies of Koch Industries, the Kochs' conglomerate, is a major producer of gasoline and asphalt, and also makes seatbelts, tires and other automotive parts. Even as Americans for Prosperity opposes public investment in transit, it supports spending tax money on highways and roads."

<comment><USER14> > is a major producer of gasoline and asphalt, and also makes seatbelts, tires > and other automotive parts

Oh please. Is that from the article or did you make that up?

They could just as easily make parts for buses and trains.

<comment><USER15> It's an exact quote from the text.

I verified it by clicking on the article, going to "reader" mode to bypass the blocker, and doing a text search for "asphalt."

The next sentence is "Even as Americans for Prosperity opposes public investment in transit, it supports spending tax money on highways and roads."</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Prepping for a Flood of Heavenly Bodies - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/prepping-for-a-flood-of-heavenly-bodies-20181024/ <comment><USER2> >> I'm driven by answering problems in astronomy,

\- This can be used as a guiding light, go look for interesting problems to solve where computers can help. Multi disciplinary profiles are always a better career option IMHO. when working in the right org working on the problem you like solving using the right tools and a friendly work culture, is way more fun.

>> but I want to make sure I do it in such a way that the next person can build on what I've done

\- Much simpler way of saying reuse which is so abstract.</comment>


Ask HN: Free book database? - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone know of a book database that is perhaps opensource or free?
What I'm looking for is how to access book titles, authors, ISBN, et cetera ;and if possible descriptions and covers.
If there isn't any open source or free ones are there non-free options?
Thanks. <comment><USER2> Open Library, perhaps? It's run by Archive.org and has a developer API: <http://openlibrary.org>

ETA: I see they also offer raw JSON downloads of their entire collection: <http://openlibrary.org/data#downloads>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, that looks similar to what I was looking for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Could you clarify a bit, not sure what you're looking for exactly.

On one extreme, it doesn't sound too hard to build your own db schema for this in MySQL or PostgreSQL. On the other, there's Google Books.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not looking for schema but rather access to a database of books like say you had a website like amazon without the shopping part but still had all the information on all the books, I was wondering if that information was easily obtainable.

I didn't even think about google books though I will have to look and see what their api allows.

<comment><USER3> Ah, got it. Google Books and Project Gutenberg are the only two non-commercial ones I can think of off the top of my head.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am also working on a web app involving books, and currently using Amazon to get my books data. It seems to have anything you'll need, even the book's dimension and weight.

</comment><comment><USER5> Project Gutenberg (<http://www.gutenberg.org/>) Is a good one - choice is narrow, but a lot of important stuff in there!</comment>


Ansible for Kubernetes, my second self-published book - <AUTHOR> https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2019/ansible-kubernetes-my-second-self-published-book <comment><USER2> Looking forward to reading this. Your first book helped me automate a lot of work using Ansible.

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome! I wish you great success and you'll have me as a customer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for buying the book! As I said in the post, please feel free to send any feedback about things you don't think are clear, or things you'd like to see.</comment></comment>


Android malware drops Banker from PNG file - <AUTHOR> http://b0n1.blogspot.com/2015/11/android-malware-drops-banker-from-png.html <comment><USER2> Geeze, the sentence structure in that article is horrible. Clear as mud.

EDIT: Oh, I see now. He's from Slovakia ([https://twitter.com/LukasStefanko](https://twitter.com/LukasStefanko)), so I guess it's just the language barrier.

<comment><USER3> I still don't understand what is meant by the word 'banker' but otherwise the article is interesting.

<comment><USER4> In the security industry, the typical term for malware that primarily intends to steal credit card data and bank accounts is a "banking trojan", or "banker" for short.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Are you kidding me? I remember this dice picture ...from some steganography course I read online :D

<comment><USER6> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Network_Graphics#/med...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Network_Graphics#/media/File:PNG_transparency_demonstration_1.png)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> [UPDATE] Added samples not obfuscated and protected by DexProtect

</comment><comment><USER7> Article sure wasn't what I was expecting from the title.

</comment><comment><USER8> Who would allow 'Flash Player' access to texts, location, network, draw on top of apps and factory reset? That's just asking for trouble...

<comment><USER9> Dialog ennui. The same reason UAC didn't work in Windows.</comment></comment>


If you don't take the money, they can't tell you what to do - <AUTHOR> http://thoughtcatalog.com/ryan-holiday/2016/03/if-you-dont-take-the-money-they-cant-tell-you-what-to-do/ <comment><USER2> "No ever moves to a crappier apartment by choice, no one ever wants to go back to not being someone. "

No one? Ever? I've done both, more than once. I know multiple people who have. You already are someone; having all the trappings ( in an unsustainable way ) is of questionable value at best.

I believe his point was made more elegantly in "Lawrence of Arabia" \- "the servant is the one who takes the money."

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Try to look past the typos, they are plenty and quite annoying.</comment>


Backblaze Hard Drive Stats for 2016 - <AUTHOR> https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-benchmark-stats-2016/ <comment><USER2> Backblaze's environment is abnormal. They do very little to dampen vibration amongst other things, based on their last pod design. That puts drives under stresses that don't reflect what you're likely to see in your environments.

What you're seeing is not the most reliable, but the most reliable under _their_ particular set of bad conditions. The reliability under _your_ circumstances might be wildly different.

Their pod approach even results in worse performance: more vibration results in more effort spent by the drives trying to keep the head positioned in the right places, increasing latencies and decreasing read performance. The higher density they push for with their pods actually compounds this. Drives vibrate. Fans vibrate (chassis, PSU, CPU, the works) . If you don't pad them all appropriately, the vibration of the components ends up causing the entire rack to vibrate. By the time you've got several dozen of drives in the rack, the whole rack will be feeling the effect.

<comment><USER3> At Google my colleague developed a simple test that made vibration effects very obvious (this was in 2008). In a server with a bunch of disks, do random reads or writes on all but one disk. On the final disk, do sequential reads. Back then you could get on the order of 100MB/s sequential read speed on the outer edge of a hard drive in ideal conditions. Under this test performance would dive to something like 10MB/s or worse. All of the seeking would cause vibration, which caused misreads on the disk under test. When a bad read happens a hard drive has to wait until the next rotation to try again. We eventually fixed this with better damping.

<comment><USER4> I am that colleague. While it great that Backblaze releases this information, there are many factors that you need to keep in mind when looking at this data.

With respect to vibration: we found vibration caused by adjacent drives in some of our earlier drive chassis could cause off-track writes. This will cause future reads to the data to return uncorrectable read errors. Based on Backblaze's methodology they will likely call out these drives as failed based on SMART or RAID/ReedSolomon sync errors.

<comment><USER5> HN is amazing.

<comment><USER6> Threads like this are what it's all about :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Funny how it is this exact blog post, every year, that really sets it in for me how fast the last year has gone by.

Thanks for that, I guess.

<comment><USER8> Time..../sigh

<comment><USER9> More over I can always expect "Yev from Backblaze here". Hey Yev, miss you from the mashupfm days!

<comment><USER8> Heeeey ;-) Yea, I look back fondly on them. Had much less to do, less responsibility - could spend my day frolicking on the internet...no more!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Related topic: I'd like to see an update on the enterprise vs commodity hard drives.

A few years ago, the consensus (and data) was that they were mostly the same thing and it was arguable to pay double for the enterprise one.

But... in recent years, the consumer market have moved toward ever cheaper, slower and power savings hard drives (e.g. reduced RPM and stop the disk when unused for 30s).

That calls for a re evaluation of the situation.

<comment><USER8> > Related topic: I'd like to see an update on the enterprise vs commodity hard > drives.

Yev from Backblaze here -> we wrote about this in 2013 and have honestly not bought too many enterprise drives since, simply because they were more expensive and the benefit was negligible in our usage. Lately though Seagate has had a nice run of enterprise drives and they're well-priced, so we might be giving those more of a shot in the coming months!

<comment><USER11> How is the benefit negligible? You are running consumer drives that are not designed to be run at a 100% load 100% of the time. The drives are not meant to be spun up constantly; in fact, many of them have mechanisms designed for them to spin down between use and lower power consumption. It's like complaining about a drag racer not being able to haul a ton of bricks without breaking the transmission on a regular basis.

<comment><USER12> > _The drives are not meant to be spun up constantly;_

I think having the drives spin constantly is the best for lifespan, because there are less spinups and thus components wear less.

<comment><USER13> There should be no wear at all once it's running, read: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_bearing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_bearing)

So barring any manufacturing defects that I'm soure would be abundantly clear early on, it's down to logic or electrical failures.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Always amazed on how far ahead HGST is in reliability. What are they doing that is 2-6x better in failure rates?

<comment><USER15> I've gone all-in on HGST for personal use because I've seen their results from Backblaze and also have good luck with them so far. I have 14 of their 4TB NAS and 22 of the 6TB NAS.

<comment><USER16> I'm amazed that personal use requires 188TB of storage.

That's more than my employer's Hadoop cluster...

<comment><USER17> Maybe he does his own offsite backups with "personal use" HD's in several physical locations, each in a highly-redundant raid configuration?

Even so it seems like a lot.

<comment><USER18> Someone's gotta back up that climate data...

<comment><USER15> Actually...I am doing some of that also.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'd love a set of charts made that would plot Hours Runtime vs Failure Rate and Data Transfer Rate vs Failure Rate.

These tell us little about how good these drives hold up, it tells us more of the churn cost that backblaze has.

</comment><comment><USER20> Has anyone made a failure rate vs current price chart for all drives included in these reports to help guide purchasing decisions for normal people? I'd love to find where the dollar per terabyte sweet spot is, with respect to reliability.

</comment><comment><USER21> Are there any reasonably scientific "death matches" like these for 2.5" spinning hard drives?

Edit: clarification

<comment><USER22> The 2.5" market has gone almost entirely SSD.

I, too, would like to see more regular SSD death matches.

<comment><USER23> Particularly given that almost no SSD review says a single word about reliability, which is my principal concern.

<comment><USER24> Reviewers can't really believe anything the vendors say and can't afford to run hundreds of SSDs for years to gather real data so there's not much they can say. By the time there is real-world experience with an SSD model it's probably obsolete anyway.

<comment><USER23> Yep. But that's a problem...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Does anyone have any insight into why they don't have any 10TB drives running?

<comment><USER8> Yev from Backblaze here w/ some insight -> Yes! They are expensive. We are looking to test some in our environment very soon, but may not have enough to (we want at least 45) to truly test them. Once they drop further in price and we can afford to drop them in some of our pods we'll be all over it!

<comment><USER26> Since you have many years of data, do you explicitly factor the observed the failure rate patterns of particular brands into cost models when buying drives? (E.g. more anticipated replacement cost factor when buying Seagate drives.) Or is the failure data purely for curiosity and not fed back into a spreadsheet? In other words, does every cost projection treat every brand with the same predefined anticipated failure rate regardless of brand?

<comment><USER8> > Since you have many years of data, do you explicitly factor the observed the > failure rate patterns of particular brands into cost models when buying > drives?

Sometimes. We do take it in to account but if a hard drive that costs less but fails more comes around and the failure rate in our environment is within some "tolerance" we'll get that drive, even if we might see some more failure. So we do use the data to inform our purchasing department of the "future costs" of drives, but a good deal's a good deal :)

<comment><USER26> I was worried that my question wasn't worded well enough to make sense but your calculation answer was exactly what I was looking for. Very insightful and thanks for sharing the thought process.

<comment><USER8> I got you :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> How are you generating the raw data? Can you share your scripts that are used to generate it?

I'd be very interested in generating raw data against the disks I maintain as well, might also be able to share it, which might be interesting since its primarily SSDs.

</comment><comment><USER28> I love these statistics, but I would just like some clarification on what exactly constitutes a "failure". Does the drive have to stop responding completely, or are a few bad sectors enough to consider the drive "bad"?

<comment><USER8> Yev from Backblaze here -> We wrote a bit about this in our SMART Stats blog post -> [https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-smart- stats/](https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-smart-stats/).

<comment><USER28> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Why do they buy such weird proportions of each type of harddrive? Do they just use anything they can get their hands on? If the purpose was actually to test drive failure rates wouldn't you want to buy similar amounts of every drive?

<comment><USER30> Drive failure rates can be computed across different batch sizes, provide the batches are big enough to provide meaningful numbers. There's no need to have the batches be exactly the same size to get useful and accurate data.

<comment><USER29> Sure, but a drive count of 45 is not very reliable.

<comment><USER31> a pod was 45 drives, so everything they do was in pod units. they would want at lest 45-90 of a drive to have a complete set.

pods are 60 drives per unit now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Who owns the company that produces the HGST 3.5" drives? (the former Hitachi drives)

Is it Western Digital? Is it Toshiba? someone else? (afaik the HGST 2.5 and 3.5 production lines were sold to different companies -right?)

<comment><USER33> It's complicated: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10057519](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10057519)

<comment><USER32> Thanks a lot, it's indeed complicated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Does anyone has any experience on the reliability of the Seagate 8TB archive drives? They are incredibly cheap for cold storage, but a bit concerned by the Seagate numbers in the Backblaze stats...

<comment><USER34> Yes, I run about 800 of them now. They have not been as reliable as the 6TB archive drives. I think this was related to a bad run that seagate had while manufacturing. Our numbers, overall (with 6,000+ drives now, if I remember correctly) are much lower than Backblaze's reported failures.

We also classify a drive as failed when it throws ANY SMART error, then it's diagnosed with Seagate's internal tool (which I believe they are open sourcing, if they haven't already) and put back into production

Seagate has given us good warranties on these drives as well. Yes a higher immediate failure rate (first 1 month) with the 8TB drives was annoying, but they more than made it right replacing the drives.

<comment><USER23> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I remember a bunch of people saying that seagate's drives with 15% failure rates were a 'one time thing'.

</comment><comment><USER36> Was not surprised to see Seagate leading the failure rate. Had a portable 2TB seagate drive fail within weeks. There goes my vacation photos and videos!

<comment><USER15> I had four of the Seagate 3TB drives that are listed in their ratings with high failure rates. All four of mine died in less than 3-years. They were a really disappointing purchase.

<comment><USER37> I had 4 Seagate drives of varying capacity and model numbers die on me within 11 weeks of each other, all were less than 3 years old and one of them was in use for less than an hour.

Never again.</comment></comment></comment>


Our Culture of Contempt - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/02/opinion/sunday/political-polarization.html <comment><USER2> As a lifelong liberal, I've sunk into despair at the firehose of hatred coming from the left these days. And I talk to far fewer of my old lefty friends anymore--if they've made themselves awful, I just don't want to know. I'd prefer to remember them as they were.

Maybe this is just a phase, but it feels like we're going to a place from which we won't return.

<comment><USER3> I support most of the liberal platform, but in recent years a large portion of the party's base has turned into a cesspool of hatred, cynicism, and thoughtless reactionism. We used to be the party of idealism and belief in people's basic goodness. What the hell happened?

<comment><USER4> This comment, the parent, and many others on this thread sound eerily alike and similar to those propagated by trolls and bots during the failed WalkAway campaign.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> All political mud-slinging aside, all weighing and apportioning of blame withheld, the main suggestions of the article are worthwhile.

1\. Don't allow yourself to slide easily or prematurely into contempt. We do it too often these days.

2\. Disagree better. You can disagree, but make your case and engage in the responses. Rhetoric has a place but it's being overused.

<comment><USER6> There's a real prisoner's dilemma phenomenon going on here. If the two options are "respect" and "contempt", and one side has ramped the contempt up to 11 and won the elections, what should the other side do?

I'm all for a winding-down of this process, because eventually it could escalate all the way up to violence, but like nuclear disarmament, _you first_. Or at least some plausible commitment to de-escalation that can be observed to actually happen over a period of time, as a signal of good faith for the next round of talks.

I think this is partially why people like AOC or Ilhan Omar have suddenly achieved success; they know that, regardless of what they do or say, they will never get anything less than total disrespect from Republicans and a large segment of the media; so they're free to ignore that contempt. This comes across in the other direction as contempt, when really it's just a refusal to be intimidated.

Contempt is also being manufactured by a variety of media sources from foreign intelligence agencies to all-American fraudsters like Alex Jones.

<comment><USER7> That's not a prisoner's dilemma. That's exactly what the article is talking about: saying there doesn't need to be a "you first" because both sides are equally guilty, so someone has to put down their contempt and it may as well be you (where "you" here means anyone at all). The act of one side being less contemptuous is not useless in isolation, as would be required for a prisoner's dilemma.

I would also caution against concluding that one side "ramped contempt up to 11". As a foreigner observing the US elections from afar, I saw a lot of contempt in both directions, but especially towards conservatives in the USA who were being routinely described as if they were mindless cattle, good for nothing at all beyond slowly dwindling industrial production. Compared coldly to the rest of the world, Trump's policies (some trade protectionism and enforcement of immigration laws) are nothing special or unusual, not in contemporary times nor historically. But somehow this position became held with utmost contempt and was routinely described as the most hateful forms of racism. You can see that as well with Brexit in which the majority of the voting population has been routinely described as racist.

There's no word for this kind of rhetoric other than contempt - it's literally what the article describes, in which the complexities and motives of millions of people are considered in trivial moralistic terms of "you hate, i love".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article is about how motive attribution asymmetry leads to contempt, first for the "other political side" then eventually to individuals within that other side.

But I think it could go further and question why things get polarized into 2 sides. Our modern society is way more complicated and contains way more nuance than what a binary system can offer.

I don't know what the answer is but I feel that political parties as a shortcut for evaluating individual policy goals is tremendously reductionist, and increasingly harmful to society.

<comment><USER9> > But I think it could go further and question why things get polarized into 2 > sides. Our modern society is way more complicated and contains way more > nuance than what a binary system can offer.

It's not that great for the masses, but it's wonderful for the elite. If you can persuade the vast majority to pick a side, then you don't have to worry about engineering public opinion to your own benefit on each and every issue. All you need to do is control both the red and blue teams. Then you can regularly shit on the proles and retain their support, simply by blaming the "other side" for their misfortune.

<comment><USER10> I think this is probably the main point. By dividing people into two camps you help solidify your own grasp on power. Again the 2016 election is full of just so many interesting lessons. How many people voted for Clinton thinking 'Yes, this person genuinely stands for what I believe in and will make a great president!' How many people voted for her because the alternative was simply unacceptable meaning they feared 'wasting' their vote? And the exact same is true of people that voted for Trump.

Think about how 'great' an achievement that is in terms of population control. You, as a player in the entrenched powers, have managed to get people to not only participate in 'your' democracy, but to actively vote for people they don't even want in office, and to actively attack people that vote for third parties. For instance already see the (rather orchestrated) massively negative reaction against Starbucks' Howard Schultz announcing his intentions of running for the presidency as an independent. How dare you run for president unless you declare yourself one of these two parties that fewer people than ever actually identify as, and that are ever more out of touch with the population! How dare you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is an argument you can make regardless of what is actually going on on the ground. "The problem isn't policy, it's actually polarization" \-- but the article completely fails to examine the causes of said polarization: What are people feeling angry about? Which people feel angry about what? Are those people justified in feeling angry? Are those angry people just doing it for show or are their lives being actively ruined?

You end up having to view the conflict through an ideological lens, but claiming there is some enlightened non-ideological view and the "real problem" is contemptuousness is mega disingenuous.

<comment><USER12> Created a throwaway account for this. As a foreigner who has spent significant time living the US, indeed this seems like the kind of mealy-mouthed, somewhat vapid meta-commentary about "unity" that offers nothing more than some soundbyte call for some abstract value (in this case "better disagreement").

It doesn't address, for example, the fact that the two political factions in America now accept _different versions of reality_. You cannot square that circle with "better disagreement". You cannot paper over a disagreement on the nature of fundamental facts with simplistic calls for a better discourse.

To offer the most salient example: the question of whether or not the President of the country, with the help of his party and a major media outlet, is conspiring with a foreign dictatorship to undermine the democratic integrity of the country.

One demographic believes the above to be true. The other either does not believe it to be true, or alternatively does not believe it to matter even if true.

This is not some issue that can be simply bridged with "better disagreement". I'm sorry, that's just something you don't get to do.

To offer another example: whether the former President of the united states was indeed an illegitimate candidate due to not being a natural born citizen.

One side believes this to be true, the other does not.

This disconnect on reality exists across the spectrum, and the lines are harshly drawn.

If Americans cannot acknowledge that this schism in their country is arising out of a fundamental and deep disconnect on _facts_ and _reality_ that is widening on a day by day basis, not some mere "communication issue", they will never truly be able to understand and address it.

<comment><USER13> None of my conservative friends believe that nonsense about Obama, and none of my democrat friends believe that Trump is a Russian spy. Both sides agree Trump is a swindly buffoon, and everyone agrees the Russians have higher standards when recruiting spies.

The difference is that some of my conservative friends think it's ok - or even funny - to have a swindly buffoon as president, and my democrat friends find this appalling.

The New York Times on the other hand is making mad bank promoting a big culture war, so make of that what you will.

<comment><USER14> But the liberals think the conservatives are dumb enough to actually believe that Obama is Kenyan. And the conservatives think the liberals actually think that a guy like Trump is suitable material for a KGB asset.

<comment><USER15> > But the liberals think the conservatives are dumb enough to actually believe > that Obama is Kenyan.

The Republicans elected a prominent birther so this should not be especially surprising. To look at it a little more precisely, depending on which polls you prefer, somewhere around half of them are, in your words, "dumb enough to actually believe that Obama is Kenyan:"

[https://www.newsweek.com/trump-birther-obama-poll- republican...](https://www.newsweek.com/trump-birther-obama-poll-republicans- kenya-744195) [https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/poll- persiste...](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/poll-persistent- partisan-divide-over-birther-question-n627446)

<comment><USER15> Sorry for the meta, but it's interesting that the "points" on this post have fluctuated up and down quite a bit more than my others (that I've noticed). It's interesting to me because while that sort of thing isn't rare with political posts, this was the post where I was actually sharing data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I chalk a lot of this up to the fact that journalism is no longer such a great career and increasingly a precarious career choice due to layoffs. This leads those in our society with the largest megaphones to increasingly spout discontent because they feel discontent.

I bet you that if journalism suddenly provided a comfortable and safe living, that within 5 years the entire attitude of the country would change just because the attitude of the cultural influencers would turn to contentness and they would spread that contentness.

<comment><USER10> I don't think it's the journalists in and of themselves. Journalists do not have much power. An individual on here posted about being contacted by the NYT to write an "opinion" piece based on a comment he wrote related to cryptocurrencies. [1] He followed up and eventually did publish the piece. I'm going to avoid commenting on that other than to say that the NYT forced him to endorse opinions he did not hold in an article that was supposed to have been written by him. It's best to read the exact examples than my probably biased tl/dr. And that sort of stuff is what they do to one-off writers. Imagine what they do to (and whom they recruit) for their regular staff! The journalists are just mouthpieces for the executive team.

I think the problem is that the media is dying, but they've found that in the mean time provoking and agitating for a 'culture war' is sending profits skyrocketing. So you don't need to change the media, but you need to change people that eat this nonsense up. Unfortunately, that's probably impossible.

[1] - [https://www.rosshartshorn.net/stuffrossthinksabout/nyt_opini...](https://www.rosshartshorn.net/stuffrossthinksabout/nyt_opinion/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is a superficial and unhelpful piece from someone who, despite appearances to the contrary, is in fact a US political partisan. That doesn't make his opinion worthless! But it does make his high-horse stance a bit much to take, to say nothing of the ahistoricism of his thesis (ask someone who appeared before HUAC if partisanism is boiling over in 2019).

That said, I come not to bury Arthur Cooke but to praise him, for while his arguments clearly have not survived condensation into an NYT op-ed, they're at least thought-provoking in longer-form media, and I can recommend as an alternative to this dumb article his lengthy podcast interview with Ezra Klein on many of the same topics:

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

<comment><USER7> He starts his article by saying he's a political conservative who works for a think tank in DC. What 'appearances to the contrary' do you mean? I've never heard of him but having read his article knew immediately he was a political partisan, because he told me so!

I'm also unsure why his arguments have not survived. The op-ed appeared cogent and internally consistent to me. If you wish to argue his writing is superficial, unhelpful, ahistoric etc, why not do so directly instead of just asserting that these things are so.

<comment><USER17> I disagree that he made his background clear. The first graf is written flippantly, in a "you say potato, I say potəto" sort of way (also, "I'm not a politics junkie"). The second graf buries the lede --- he's a professor, a former symphony musician, heads a think-tank... and, oh, by the way, that think tank happens to be AEI, one of the two most prominent centers of Republican conservative thought.

I also made a direct argument as to the ahistoricity of the piece.

I don't think this is especially important --- my original comment stands on its own --- but I'm a nerd and can't resist clarifying and defending my arguments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Notice that it all got really serious when the fight fired up between ethnonationalists and xenophiles. It seems to hit people at a more basic level than merely arguing about health policy or gay marriage.

Plus, you get the extra magic of this same schism happening in the West generally.

I'd say there's a lot more to this than US domestic politics.

</comment><comment><USER19> I wonder if the president of the American Enterprise Institute felt it so important to stress how both sides have "contempt" for one another back when a plurality of his politcal party of choice thought the president was secretly a Muslim born in Kenya.

</comment><comment><USER20> The author of this article is a conservative. Noticed how he went out of his way to appear politically neutral. Notice how one of the two comments to this post is attacking him on a reputational basis.

This is the problem I see and likely the problem the author sees even if he's veiling it. The left wing specifically keeps disregarding other peoples views wholesale on a reputational basis. When I make posts online left-wingers regularly dig into my post history to find a reason to discredit me while right wingers don't even bother looking. If I'm making a right-wing point just like the author I go to pains to obscufate the fact I'm making a conservative argument. Otherwise making the argument is pointless because your intended audience, those with left wing views, won't read it.

I don't mean to make a completely partisan shitting on the left post. I have voted left wing in every election I've been a part of. I blame the uptick in politically motivated violence on the right. I believe "scientific racism" is increasingly becoming mainstreamed on the right through "red pills" as an explanation for say why inequity in employment/crime stats exists and is fair.

However holy shit merely talking to the right these days can cause a whole bunch of people to hold you in contempt. It ultimately will and has backfired because it's entrenching intellectual blindness which is bad for the left and bad for society.

<comment><USER2> > the uptick in politically motivated violence on the right

I haven't looked closely, but it seems like the preponderance of such violence has been coming from the left these days (ignoring people with obvious mental health problems). Charlottesville is the obvious exception, but clearly overbalanced by the guy that attempted to assassinate a bunch of Congressmen at that ball game.

Are there lots of examples I'm missing?

<comment><USER21> Pittsburgh massacre.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/27/us/active-shooter- pittsbu...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/27/us/active-shooter-pittsburgh- synagogue-shooting.html)

Also, the bombs sent to a number of democrats, funders of democrats, and Trump critics:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/10/25/bomb- timeli...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/10/25/bomb-timeline- list-people-targeted-with-packages-devices/?utm_term=.8a62f06173f1)

That said, individual events aren't particularly helpful, the media might be omitting major events (or more likely, a lot of smaller ones). So you can refer to this study by the Cato Instititute:

[https://www.cato.org/blog/terrorism-deaths-ideology- charlott...](https://www.cato.org/blog/terrorism-deaths-ideology- charlottesville-anomaly)

After Islamic Terrorism (9/11 unsurprisingly had a pretty big impact), you have right wing nationalists being the biggest contributors to murders by an order of magnitude.

<comment><USER2> I'd chalk Pittsburgh up to mental illness rather than politics.

The Cato study is interesting, but unfortunately covers a period of decades. I was referring to the last couple of years or so, which unfortunately this does not break out.

<comment><USER6> There seem to be an awfully large number of mentally ill people who read rightwing material, post on rightwing message boards, and then engage in political murder.

<comment><USER2> I guess. How many political murders are there in the US each year, though?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Ben Shapiro acts respectfully when answering students and debating BLM or other persons. I've seen so many instances of bad behavior on the part of his conversation partner, yet Ben remains cool and professional. The worst I remember is that instance where he refused to use a pronoun on Television. If I recall the trans person in that situation behaved very badly.

Jordan Peterson remains cool, even with interviewers that treat him badly.

Dave Rubin says repeatedly he's willing to talk to people, and that people refuse him and don't invite him.

Tim Pool keeps his cool in the midst of online and real-world dust-ups.

Tarl Warwick is also calm cool and collected. He'll talk to anyone.

Any leftist who wants to engage others productively can look to Pool as a good example.

Jimmy Dore is on the left (according to himself at least), and he's civil.

My impression is that most anyone on the spectrum will talk to anyone else, except for Resisters, who seem to have a visceral dislike for Trump that clouds their reason; and the far left, who object more or less to the entire western way of life, or capitalism, or something that would require a large amount of dismantling. It takes a lot of dissatisfaction to want to start from scratch, and these persons seem to be the most badly behaved. So my guess is they feel most of the contempt and also are the ones who receive the most contempt -- because of their abusive behavior. In fact, if the far left has any lasting principle at all it would appear to be that contempt is a wonderful club to use against anyone who isn't responding properly to their dogma.

<comment><USER23> > Jordan Peterson remains cool, even with interviewers that treat him badly.

I had no idea about Jordan Peterson until his name popped up in the pronoun controversy. Being sick of all the bickering in this space I never watched it until I stumbled over some old lectures of him on addiction last week. Some of the best content I've ever come across to understand human psychology. His dissection of Pinocchio¹ is absolutely top. I can't say that I agree on everything he says (e.g. his view on abortion gets me riled up like nothing else), but nor do I have to. Whatever his views outside his work in psychology have little bearing on his work and should be judged independently. If society nails everyone to the cross that we disagree in 1/20 topics then there won't be any people left. Peterson actively reaches out to right wingers in order to help them and include them in the conversation. I think this is the way to go - the alternative can only lead to violent outcomes.

¹ [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN2lyN7rM4E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN2lyN7rM4E)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hillary's "deplorables" comment was the embodiment of this problem. And I wouldn't be surprised if it was what tipped the election for Trump in the end.

<comment><USER15> > Hillary's "deplorables" comment was the embodiment of this problem.

I'm always fascinated by the fact that some people believe this.

I remember a decade ago, in a heated time during an actual war, Sarah Palin would go on and on about "real Americans," a group which she made clear does not include me. Just one memorable example of the rhetoric she used toward those outside her tribe. She was a huge hit and hugely influential in her party.

Clinton let fly _once_ with a comment exhibiting the same level of contempt that prominent Republicans use _all the time_ and she suddenly became exactly half the problem.

<comment><USER3> I would say "deplorable" is far more contemptuous than "not a 'real' 'American'". It suggests that one isn't even a valid person, just something to be hated. And even if it were the same, the entire point is that saying "but look what _they_ did" is a race to the bottom.

<comment><USER15> But that's not what I said, is it? "They" constantly, intentionally do what Hillary did on her worst day. In light of that, nothing you're saying makes any sense.

<comment><USER3> It's my experience that the average person - or an entire 50% of the population, if you prefer - isn't a monster. "They" aren't fundamentally worse people than "us". That's the mistake that underpins this whole problem. Maybe on a given dimension, or in a given span of years, you could construct a score sheet that puts them in the red (so to speak). But those on the other side are not holistically morally inferior. Not in parties as old, far-reaching, and evenly-populated as ours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is rich coming from the head of AEI, an organization which is part of a network of think tanks funded by the likes of Koch that have been bootstrapped to promote corporate interests and a worldview where there is no society only 'wealth creators' and workers. [1]

Wendy Brown, Philip Mirowski and Nancy Maclean [2][3][4] have gone into immense detail on how these organizations are created and operated behind the scenes to fund and spread self serving ideology and propaganda.

They have huge problem with collectives of workers but see no problems with organizing themselves into 'groups' to not only lobby Congress, but sponsor university economics departments and hire thousands of people to push these self serving views in the press for decades on end. This itself compromises this project for untenable self serving hypocrisy. Its for individuals who buy into these narratives to question if organizing to promote and further their interests for decades is good for the wealthiest why is is not good for workers?

There are thousands of people whose job it is to come up with decontextualized words like 'wealth creators', 'job creators' to create a halo narratives for corporate interests and undermine society, citizenship, the social good, the environment that make 'wealth creation' even possible. So all those take a backseat to 'wealth creator' interests. Since you can't create wealth without society these two cannot be separated but since there are no civil, citizen or worker groups and structures to counter these anti-social narratives you don't get balance but a one sided self interested perspective.

In the AEI world the only thing that matters is people like Kochs business and personal interests and making sure government is not 'impinging on their freedom'. And to achieve this they propagate a fundamental anti-human narrative and create an environment where ordinary people and workers are held in contempt for even expecting living wages and conditions and their access to basic achievements of western democracy like education, health care and living conditions is consistently hollowed out to promote privatization and become 'entitlements'. And we are left with a decontextualized unstable individualized view of the world that exists in a collective but is forcefully detached into a context less existence.

[1] [https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/American_Enterprise_In...](https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/American_Enterprise_Institute)

[2] [https://www.ineteconomics.org/uploads/papers/WP23-Mirowski.p...](https://www.ineteconomics.org/uploads/papers/WP23-Mirowski.pdf)

[3] [https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/undoing- demos](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/undoing-demos)

[4] [https://www.theoryculturesociety.org/review-wendy-browns- und...](https://www.theoryculturesociety.org/review-wendy-browns-undoing-the- demos-neoliberalisms-stealth-revolution-by-nicholas-gane/)

[5] [https://history.duke.edu/book/democracy- chains](https://history.duke.edu/book/democracy-chains)

[6] Wendy Brown - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eowEmcS75JM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eowEmcS75JM)

[7] Nancy Maclean - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqQ_dIjr3uU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqQ_dIjr3uU)

<comment><USER25> The appeal to civility is the last step before starting the cycle of rhetoric anew. Rinse, lather, repeat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Just FYI: "Mr. Brooks is president of the American Enterprise Institute". Many people find the agenda that AEI pushes to be loathsome, and I'm not surprised that Mr. Brooks finds himself the object of contempt on a not-infrequent basis.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes, "both sides" lie incessantly, embrace dictators, attack our norms and institutions, engage in voter suppression, and deploy bots and trolls to engage in earnest, non-contemptuous discussion (including right here on this thread).

<comment><USER27> This is kind of an amusing list, because you clearly meant it sardonically, but it's literally true.

Embrace dictators - check; remember Obama rushing to Saudi Arabia?

Attack our norms and institutions - check; Dems are talking about killing the filibuster in the Senate for good right now, and of course they were the first to start the process of dismantling it back when they removed it for non-SC judicial appointments under Obama.

Engage in voter suppression - Maryland is one of the worst gerrymandered states in the Union, and it wasn't done by Republicans. Democrats controlling the state are fighting against the courts (which slapped their scheme down) right now, in a lawsuit filed by Republicans.

Bots and trolls - I dunno about bots, but there's no shortage of left-wing trolls.

The usual answer to all this is, "but it's all for a good cause!", or sometimes, "but we're doing less of it than they do!".

The first one can be valid, depending on one's perspective, but then it would be hypocritical to attack the other side for doing all the same things. If your problem is their goals rather than their methods, then just say so: "they're bad because they want to suppress the minority voters, and we want to suppress racists and bigots".

The second one is broadly true (i.e. left vs right as a whole, as opposed to comparing distinct subcultures in either), but it's not an excuse - it just sets up a lesser/greater evil dichotomy. If those things are valid reasons for contempt -- and I'm not saying they aren't, by the way - then both sides deserve it, just in different proportions.

<comment><USER4> These what-aboutism arguments are so disingenuous that they are the product of either bad faith or a pathological measure of rationalization.

Whatever the reason, such facile rants are now the go-to technique--an entreaty to engage in a tit-for-tat, ignoring context and degree, thus normalizing awful behavior.

But I won't do it. I think you are well-aware of the difference in degree and of who is clearly and presently wielding power in a manner that runs roughshod over our norms, values and institutions.

<comment><USER27> That I'm well-aware of the difference in degree was explicitly spelled out in my original comment.

My point isn't that "both sides are equally bad" or some such - I don't believe that. It's clear that Republicans, by now, are engaging in all of these practices to a far greater extent.

My point is that you didn't make any distinction about the degree at all. You just said that these are all the things that those people did, and that's what makes them contemptible. I merely showed you what happens when that bar is applied consistently - Republicans end up looking really bad, but Dems still end up looking somewhat bad. If you don't like that result - and reject the notion that your team engaging in those same things on a smaller scale is still bad, just less bad, but enough to feel contempt over - then consider that perhaps your bar isn't where you articulated it to be.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Prejudice Isn't Just a Trump Problem – It's a Tech Industry Problem Too - <AUTHOR> http://bostinno.streetwise.co/2016/11/15/column-prejudice-a-problem-not-just-for-trump-but-tech-industry-too/ <comment><USER2> lol no</comment>


Ask HN: can you control your reactions? - <AUTHOR>

I am a passionate man, but I can get a complete control of my reactions when I need it. I can scape from feelings and get a cosmic perspective for a given situation.  I'm able to disconnect completely from any given emotion: fear, passion or violence in one second, that is an instantaneous  abrupt transition.
When I want to think about a problem I can concentrate on it for days or months, but I can also spend months doing nothing interesting.  If I were with the most sexy girl in the world in an intimate moment and  I wanted to think about something crucial I could put my passion aside and devote my mind to that crucial problem without hesitating for a moment. I can feel an ardent passion  but I have keep a complete control when it is needed. Can you do that, do you feel the same?
I can imagine a world in which people have a inhibitor switch that allow then to get that cosmic perspective, and I think that would be a better world if they use it to control violence, think straight ahead and avoid being manipulated. Perhaps this is the way to be not only human. <comment><USER2> I believe Mr Spock also has such self control.

</comment><comment><USER3> and your point is?</comment>


Ask HN: Do you use earplugs and/or headphones to better concentrate? - <AUTHOR> If so, which ones work best? <comment><USER2> I recommend the Bose QC headphones. I currently use the QC35 wireless ones but have also used the QC15 and QC25 before that. Open office plans are terrible for my concentration and wearing noise canceling headphones makes a huge difference.

I usually listen to lyric-less music such as Focus@Will, Spotify playlists, or use a white noise generator.

<comment><USER3> How do they feel on your ears? Not sure if you can relate to this but all headphones I've tried so far end up hurting my ears after a few minutes to a couple of hours of wear. My ears are small-to-average, but stick out slightly and many headphones create uncomfortable pressure there. Is there some space between the actual ear and the ear-cup with these?

<comment><USER4> The Bose QC series come with a very good "over the ear" variants that don't rest directly on the ear, but instead around it. That comfort issue was bigger to me, personally, than any noise cancelling options. I actually opted against a noise cancelling model because I found the over-the-ear configuration alone cuts down enough noise that I'm happy, and the cost and weight savings was a useful bonus.

I spent hours in a Best Buy trying to find headphones I would be comfortable wearing for hours and the over-the-ear Bose models won out by far as the most comfortable I could find.

<comment><USER3> Thank you, this is encouraging. I've just ordered the QC35; now hoping for some peace in the open plan office.

<comment><USER3> Update: Just got these. Where have they been all my working life? These make the open plan office considerably more tolerable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When I was moved cross-country for my job, the tech guy gave me some nice noise cancelling head phones. I was moved from quiet remote work to an office filled with 50-100 people all in the same room, so it took some adjustment. Especially when you get people who feel the need that a conversation needs to be had right by your desk.. and somehow its an important conversation that you don't really care to hear about?

I need my music to focus and write code, but what bothers me is when the supervisor will start talking to me and I don't hear a word he says.

I've gone all day without headphones... no one said a word to me. Minute I put them on? Someone has something to say in the office. For the most part, however, they are always on and I'm always listening to music... classic rock or indie or techno usually.

<comment><USER6> One of my past offices made a headphone rule that if someone has headphones on, you only interrupt them through Slack vs walking up their desk besides the rare exception. Very helpful.

<comment><USER5> We use Slack as our main form of communication. I was moved across the country because of the excuse that our "communication was lacking", so while I haven't really told people to message me through Slack - because I don't want to tell my supervisor that he needs to message me in order to talk to me - but it is just common courtesy to message someone through a LIVE instant message and ask, "Hey, I noticed XxXx, can I come over to your desk so we can discuss it?"

Your office policy is one of common courtesy and I completely agree with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Earmuffs work well too. I use these: [http://www.homedepot.com/catalog/productImages/1000/14/14841...](http://www.homedepot.com/catalog/productImages/1000/14/14841be9-369a-4cf9-a76e-08234c65c910_1000.jpg)

I get some pain after 30 minutes so I take them off for a bit and then wear them again.

<comment><USER6> Upvoting this because someone downvoted you without explanation. This is a trend I keep hearing about from other devs - all we really want out of headphones is isolation from office noise and conversation, not necessarily to listen to anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> One of my offices had a rule where if you have your headphones on then the only way someone could bug you is via slack.

If headphones were off then it was open game to bug the person.

I liked that rule.

<comment><USER9> There's that one guy in the office who'll totally disregard the emailing, bug system, and chat system in the office because he just HAS to come to your desk and stop you in your tracks, instead.

I bet you have that person, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would recommend against sound cancelling headphones. The thing is that they only block out constant background hum like a fan. They don't stop talking.

What does stop talking though is a set of headphones call the 'Oppo pm-3'. These ones are like earmuffs, they have foam padding built-in, and the sound quality is pretty decent too.

Unfortunately I only discovered these 3 weeks after I burnt out of my open plan job and quit.

</comment><comment><USER11> Earplugs. I don't like thinking and listening at the same time, usually silence is what I need. I've also found that earplugs make my breathing more apparent, which tends to make me breathe more deeply and regularly, which feels good.

<comment><AUTHOR> What're your preferred earplugs? I'd like to use them more often, but I've yet to find a pair that's comfortable enough to wear for long periods of time.

<comment><USER12> I use [https://www.guardian.com.sg/antinois-ear- plugs-3pair/p/22916...](https://www.guardian.com.sg/antinois-ear- plugs-3pair/p/229167) which is silicone-based. Works really well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I use [https://www.amazon.com/Shure-SE535-V-J-Isolating- Earphones-I...](https://www.amazon.com/Shure-SE535-V-J-Isolating-Earphones- International/dp/B003YOH8RW) with [https://www.amazon.com/Comply-Foam-Premium- Earphone-Tips/dp/...](https://www.amazon.com/Comply-Foam-Premium-Earphone- Tips/dp/B00AQU2W1Y/)

Extremely comfortable. The sound quality is awesome, but they also do a pretty good job as earplugs. I've slept with them on when my neighbors were doing construction.

<comment><USER14> The 535s are overkill unless you have crazy great ears, media, dac, and amp. I rolled with a pair of 530s, eventually replaced with 535s via warranty. When I ran those through a washing machine they were replaced with 215s, and honestly I cant tell the difference. I strongly suspect even the 115s are sufficient for the majority of folks.

<comment><USER13> Absolutely correct. The _awesome_ comply tips will work just as well with the more reasonably priced versions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I use noise-cancelling headphones.

Depending on how much focus my current task requires, I'll listen to different genres. For intense concentration, I'll blast ocean waves. For medium- difficulty tasks, I listen to classical music or pop music in a language that I don't know (so that I'm not distracted by the lyrics). For easy tasks, anything goes :)

</comment><comment><USER16> Even inexpensive earbuds can be very effective at blocking out noise, especially when combined with music. But they have to fit snugly and make a seal with your ear. The ones with silicone tips or those squishy foam tips are most effective.

Wearing earbuds all the time was causing me ear problems, though, so I switched to over-ear noise-canceling headphones. Because I wear glasses, I couldn't get the ones that basically form a seal over your ear.

The noise-cancellation, especially when combined with instrumental music or white noise, is very effective for stuff like construction and traffic and engine and air conditioner noise. But it makes human voices more instead of less distinct, so in the office I usually disable the noise cancellation and just play music.

</comment><comment><USER17> I once used wired ($200?) Sony noise cancelling headphones to listen to music in the office (and on airline flights). They wore out a few years ago, and instead of replacing with another pair of big $ NC headphones, I bought "Sentey LS-4560 B-trek H9 Bluetooth Wireless Foldable Headphones with Carrying Case" for $40[1]. They obviously don't noise cancel, but since I listen to music anyway, and get great non-cancelling isolation from the new phones, I don't really miss the NC aspect; the only place where I believe NC is dramatically superior to these headphones is on airline flights. And I take so few of those these days, I can't justify the expense.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00PYW5X1A/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00PYW5X1A/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Doesn't matter what I use, it's what I play through them. If I don't want any music, I will play pink noise. If I want music, I'll play instrumental only music. Cheap $15/20 headphones does the work for me.

</comment><comment><USER19> I think I'd go nuts in my open office without noise cancelling headphones.

I'd recommend the Bose QC line. Sennheiser wins in audio quality, but the noise cancelling on Bose can't be beat. Both the headphones and earbuds work great, so go with your preference.

<comment><USER20> I switched from Bose QC to Sony MDR-1000x when my 2nd Bose in a row died from manufacturing defects. The noise cancelling works much better IMO, and the right side is touch sensitive so you can pause NC to speak to people and adjust volume. Not going back to Bose anytime soon.

<comment><USER21> I have the MDR-1000x as well and can't recommend them enough. I was already quite happy with Bose's noise reduction, but the sound quality of the 1000x is so good it seems you're not making tradeoffs.

It also has a special noise cancelling optimisation function where it apparently adjusts to the shape of your head, whether you're wearing glasses, etc. I can't honestly say whether this actually works or it's mere placebo.

The only downside is that sometimes I try to pause a song and it forwards to the next one instead, so I'm either an idiot or the touch sensitive controls could be improved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I might be an odd one. I lease an office and am working by myself there. So I really miss noise. I can't work without turning on some podcast or a twitch channel in the background.

<comment><USER23> You're fortunate to be in control of your environment. My poor opinion of open plan offices is that I am not in control (psychologically safe) making it difficult to concentrate when needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I got some Sennheiser gaming headphones that were supposed to have noise cancellation, but I'm not happy with them. I can still hear outside noise enough that it makes me think they're not working.

Buddy showed me his Parrot Zik headphones, and they were pretty good. I'm open to suggestions if anyone has any. I want to be able to have clear sound for conference calls, as well as excellent noise cancellation.

</comment><comment><USER25> I do, it's pretty much a necessity in an open office where I'm surrounded by several people talking loudly into several different conference calls on speakerphone.

Right now I use Beyerdynamic DT770s because I heard they were very comfortable (I wear glasses, and I hate in ear phones). The ear cups are fantastic but the headband digs into my scalp. So I'm on the search as well.

<comment><USER26> If they're totally fine apart from the headband, you should find the padding of the headband is removable. You might find eg. Canford do a variation on the part, or you could use some alternative of your choosing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I use the 3M OPTIME 105 ear muffs. The are around $17-$22 online. I sometimes also put a pair of headphones in then put these over top.

Last week, there were some people grinding concrete right outside my office window. I ended up using the bright orange foam ear plugs then putting on the OPTIME 105 ear muffs. I could barely hear a thing.

</comment><comment><USER28> I use earplugs in our workspace--find myself using them for sleeping, on the train commute, airplanes. Much nicer for concentration. I don't know why these aren't handed out at the door of open workspaces.

</comment><comment><USER29> I actually sometimes use headphones and a white noise generator simultaneously. Simplynoise.com on the brown noise setting is my favorite, helps block out office conversational chatter etc.

</comment><comment><USER30> Bang Olufsen H9, worth it.</comment>


Your Baby's Mama's Mama - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/a226a42e2cc5

<comment><USER2> It all seems a bit regimented. What if I don't want to have a child with the first person I meet when I'm 22. No offense to her, but I really wouldn't want to have a child (or two) with my 22 year old selfs girlfriend.</comment>


Making Music: When Simple Probabilities Outperform Deep Learning - <AUTHOR> https://towardsdatascience.com/making-music-when-simple-probabilities-outperform-deep-learning-75f4ee1b8e69?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWTJVNU1HUXdPVEJtWkdaaCIsInQiOiJSZ1lpUFE3bG94c3Z3Z3R4bExLdmNTaDlHTllCbGxPNG8yNXMrZ1NSZDZpcGNwNE8rU2tPcGJaUGFwQjlyVXRsSFZaSnBPWEE1NzJFU2xWNHZkZkhHd2J6YWp5d3pCXC9QMjd3Qzhsb0hmUHQzWjllVGxaQVFXcUFGYTRLWXoyaW4ifQ%3D%3D <comment><USER2> Having worked on procedural music for some time, I really can't see how simple Markov-style approaches like this are likely to have interesting results. You can certainly create sequences of notes that have statistical similarities to the notes in a training set, but we don't hear statistical similarities, we hear phrases and refrains and call-and-responses and whatnot - higher-order structures that markov models seem really ill-suited to.

It strikes me as analogous to generating text from an ML model trained on a bunch of short stories. A short snippet of the results may sound convincing, but obviously a whole story generated that way would be gibberish. I think the same sort of thing is happening in the example songs - any given chord change or three-note phrase may sound musical, but over the course of several measures it's not distinguishable from random notes.

<comment><USER3> > _You can certainly create sequences of notes that have statistical > similarities to the notes in a training set, but we don 't hear statistical > similarities, we hear phrases and refrains and call-and-responses and > whatnot - higher-order structures that markov models seem really ill-suited > to._

You can have markov models at various levels of granularity...

<comment><USER4> You can, but OP didn't.

And you need to understand what you're Markovising - which apparently OP didn't either.

<comment><USER5> OP built a whole song self similarity matrix and regularised on that, which forces the model to adapt this kind of high level structure.

<comment><USER4> Neither transition tables nor naive self-similarity searches are an effective way to model this domain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 20-30 years ago groups/artists like Autechre were already making generative music much more musical than this without sometimes even computers. The metrics in this article seem wrong, but even without any metrics the clips sounds like something a first-year student in Computer music could throw over the weekend in MAX/MSP. The result is bad from music perspective and the method is uninteresting from data-science/machine-learning perspective.

</comment><comment><USER7> Two problems that come to mind when writing a good music generator: 1) What's the metric? Can we have a metric that's not based on human judgment? Imho the best idea is to have a parametrized generator that creates music within manually set bounds, that way we can have a goal to compare against (we need to vary the music enough so that it's new); you apply the length, the structure (draw the ups and downs of your music), maybe even what chords to use, etc. (how many parameters you find necessary), and then set how much variety you're looking for against your trained net; 2) Good music is often like a structure within a structure within a structure; it has internal links several bars away from each other that are out of reach for simple Markov chains; there are patterns and progressions on every level of music, and a slight change to that pattern can make a big difference; every abstraction level has its own logic (previous chord against the next chord vs. previous melody vs. the next melody, previous ornament vs. the next ornament), and if you omit one layer, the whole tower of music won't be in balance.

</comment><comment><USER8> So, the guy just put randomly generate notes over a chord progression ... ? and then created his own metric stating that it sounds better?

<comment><USER9> It's a little more complex than that. The metric I've created is built on an existing literature of self-similarity matrices vis-a-vis music, though at this point I suspect it's been dead due to the rise of GANs networks for signal extraction. If you have any suggestions of your own on how to objectively compare generated elements, I would appreciate the opportunity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've been attending a lot of edm festivals lately. I can't help but think popular music has moved to become much more timbre based opposed to harmonic based due to the complex human subjectivity. Its much harder to model timbre to harmony than melody to harmony.

<comment><USER11> It's not due to the complex subjectivity. It's due to the medium, I.e daw's which discourage complex time and harmonic arrangement in favour of encouraging massive sound design, via their UI's

<comment><USER12> That's an interesting point but I don't think it explains why music as a whole is going where it's going: from melodies and harmonies towards a more general art of sound. After all DAWs are created to accommodate the need, not the other way around. One of the reasons why it's happening may be that harmonies are pretty much exhausted and most of music in this sense is just a reiteration of the past. Apart from some innovation in jazz and progressive rock music, both being in stagnation (i.e. practically dead), nothing else is new in terms of melodies and harmonies.

<comment><USER13> > After all DAWs are created to accommodate the need, not the other way > around.

DAWs _were_ created for this point. But for a lot of artists nowadays, their whole window into the music-making world is their DAW, and as such, the roles have somewhat reversed, the DAW serving as inspiration for the work and providing the limits of it.

I remember reading a paper a few years ago where they showed that just the color skin used for your DAW had an effect on the music you produced. Humans are fairly influencable.

<comment><USER14> > I remember reading a paper a few years ago where they showed that just the > color skin used for your DAW had an effect on the music you produced.

I'd love a link for this.

<comment><USER13> I can't find exactly the one I'm thinking about but here are a few on this topic :

\- a whole phd on exactly the subject of this debate: [https://yorkspace.library.yorku.ca/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10...](https://yorkspace.library.yorku.ca/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10315/34478/Macchiusi_Ian_A_2017_PhD.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y)

\- [http://www.arpjournal.com/asarpwp/experiencing-musical- compo...](http://www.arpjournal.com/asarpwp/experiencing-musical-composition- in-the-daw-the-software-interface-as-mediator-of-the-musical-idea-2/)

\- [https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Josh_Mycroft/publicatio...](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Josh_Mycroft/publication/308078381_The_Influence_of_Graphical_User_Interface_Design_on_Critical_Listening_Skills/links/57d9492a08ae0c0081efaaff/The- Influence-of-Graphical-User-Interface-Design-on-Critical-Listening-Skills.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "all models are wrong, but some are useful" George E.P. Box.

I like the way he presented his explanation, and his approach to finding a solution.

However, listening to some of the songs I would say that he needs to find a better model, or like mister Burns would say: "Smithers, continue the research!".

</comment><comment><USER16> It's so unfortunate that the author didn't feel much the need of humility. He worked on some pretty cool stuff, it could have been great to present it differently.

<comment><USER17> IMHO, the author doesn't understand the subject domain deeply enough to address it.

<comment><USER9> Darn, I was hoping my 20 years of musical experience would give me enough domain knowledge. If there are specific gaps in my understanding of music theory, please let me know; I'd love to learn.

<comment><USER17> I'm sorry to have offended, but I stand by my statement. IMHO, you've conflated the guidelines of musical grammar for rules of musical composition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Without any human assessment or blind testing, claiming one method outperforms another using an ex post facto unsupervised metric is not scientific.

</comment><comment><USER19> The problem with algorithmic music creation is that compositional models are always going to be limited to baked in technical parameters. If you're working from analysis, your analyzer needs to be able to recognize a compositional technique before it returns any useful data about it. Which means it needs to recognize a wide range of techniques, even for pop music.

Is this project the result of a high school computer music assignment?

</comment><comment><USER9> Hey guys! The original author of the article here. I didn't know my article was generating so much attention here. There are great complements, criticisms, and external points I don't have enough hands to address individually. But if you guys have specific questions, please send it my way. Would love to further the discussion in hopes of expanding the frontiers of my project! Thank you --Haebichan.

<comment><USER10> I really respect & enjoyed your post. I've been experimenting with similar ideas but in my case I've used multiple RNN & CNN trained for different aspects of the music. For example train one NN just to identify compatibility between bass lines and rhythms. One NN to generate chord progressions. One RNN to generate melodies on top of the chords etc. check it out:

[http://treblemaker.ai/](http://treblemaker.ai/)

[https://github.com/shiehn/TrebleMakerDocker](https://github.com/shiehn/TrebleMakerDocker)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> If anyone is interested in taking these explorations further, Crowd AI has a long running music generation with AI challenge. Input to the black box you design is a single MIDI sample. And output is a generated MIDI file that extends and "riffs" on that initial piece. Win condition is based simply on which piece sounds better to the judges ;)

[https://www.crowdai.org/challenges/ai-generated-music- challe...](https://www.crowdai.org/challenges/ai-generated-music-challenge)

Also check out the recent work from Google's Magenta team. Their MusicVAE seeks to model not just the instrument, but the expressiveness of the musician. With "style" emerging from the MIDI representation alone.

Latent Loops Beta

[https://teampieshop.github.io/latent- loops/](https://teampieshop.github.io/latent-loops/)

</comment><comment><USER21> I've been exploring some of these ideas as well. I'm almost done with my product, sign up at [http://ngrid.io](http://ngrid.io) if you want to be notified when it's ready.

<comment><USER9> would love to learn more about how your model works. Would appreciate the explanation!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Yeah trying to make a RNN learn about simple (but "complicated") priors is an exercise in how not to do deep learning.

Just think how big a model should be to understand self similarity in 2 different parts of a song.

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately a bigger more complex RNN learns the songs by heart and doesn't generalise. Beta-VAE units seem essential and they're not doing well either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Link for the lazy [http://popmusicmaker.com/](http://popmusicmaker.com/)

<comment><USER24> Aaand it's dead. Drat.

(500 internal server error when clicking on Generate Pop Music.)

<comment><USER9> Yea, the machine is on a T2large EC2. It just got too much server requests I think. Some haven't been following directions too, like giving empty requests for lyric generation, and for some reason that doesn't reflect programming, it's crashing my EC2.

<comment><USER24> Oh! I didn't realize I needed to specify anything before clicking "Generate". That could have been why.

<comment><USER9> No problem. And have fun! It was super fun to make this project</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How many of you grew up with entrepreneurial parents? - <AUTHOR>

Something I often wonder, how many HNers grew up with a parent who founded their own company or were founding their own while they were growing up. Or better yet, grew up with SV founders from back in the 80s or 70s.  How was the experience growing up and what long term lessons did you learn from the effects of the lifestyle from your unique perspective as a child of one? <comment><USER2> My father owned a real estate company, an ISP and a CLEC while growing up. All turned into lifestyle businesses, even though they were meant to be big exits in their respective industries.

* I learned that you're up some years and down others. The trick is to just keep pushing forward.

* Some people have it, others don't.

* You won't be able to recognize whether you have it or not, until you're actually doing it.

* Marry the right person (and make sure they have health insurance that covers you and your family).

* Keep your personal expenses low and maintain the ability to live off of your partners salary while you're bootstrapping, if that's the path you take.

Bonuses:

* You get to have great discussions around the business every time you're together.

* You're able to lean on your dad (or mom) and ask for advice about what they would do in particular situations. Basically a built in mentor.

* You have a #1 fan that in some ways are living their own dreams through you. And they actually "get" what you're doing.

You have to be careful though that you don't fall into some of the same traps that they may have. As a great example: the typical small business mindset is to never, ever give up equity. For what we do here, it's silly to think that way. Equity is another tool in your toolbox, and should be used when appropriate.

</comment><comment><USER3> Quite the opposite. My parents are both professors in social sciences and are mostly disgusted with capitalism. Sometimes I wish I was born in an entrepreneurial friendly background but I guess I have the benefit of having seen both sides of the table. Plus, I have some interesting debates with them once in a while :)

</comment><comment><USER4> My mother and father were successful musicians in their early life. Since then, my mother inherited a jewelry store from her father (who built it from scratch in 1945). My father owns a restaurant and motorcycle store. His father owned a very large elevator company, who sold it and retired. My mother's father's father was a self taught dentist. (I still have his study books from his early years). My father's father's father was a musician who was tough as nails on his kids. They played the Grand Ol' Opry back in the day.

I have to say, my entire family tree is filled with entrepreneurs. That is all I know.

</comment><comment><USER5> My dad was definitely entrepreneurial, but he wasn't a technology guy at all. The businesses he ran when I was a kid included: running a pulpwood truck, cutting down trees and hauling logs to the mills; building docks and bulkheads for people with houses on the water; building a selling crab traps; running a dump truck, hauling fill dirt and doing ground grading / leveling / etc; running a small-time shrimping operation, and uh, probably a couple more I'm forgetting. He never made it "big time" doing any of the above, although he would sometimes go years at a time making it OK doing one of those things, but he always wound up going back to a "day job." Then, after hurting his back on the job and being forced to more or less retire, he started a business doing cement pouring / finishing, and that's the one where he kinda "made it." He is very well established now doing that and makes pretty good living at it.

So yeah, watching my dad as a kid definitely taught me something about persistence and the value of hard-work; and certainly contributed to my desire to do my own thing.

</comment><comment><USER6> My father had an aircraft building/rebuilding business for most of my childhood. One of the earliest photos of me was me sitting on the nose cone of a BD-5 with a screwdriver in my hand. One of my brothers started his own business when he was 16 (I was 5 - 6) and was very successful for his age. My mother ran an upholstery business for many years and most of her family were entrepreneurs.

I guess what I learned from that is a business is a series of ups and downs but at the end of the day it's always more satisfying to do your own thing. I started my first business in college and founded my first 'real' one at 25. While I don't think there's anything wrong with working for other people, I can say I'm hardwired to start new things and I'm sure my childhood had a lot to do with that.

</comment><comment><USER7> I grew up watching my dad work his ass off day after day in a corporate setting. I always admired how passionate he was about his work. Hes 52 now and the CTO and supply-chain head for one of the large pharma giants.

He is gona quit the next month to launch his own venture because he doesn't feel a sense of satisfaction with what he has done.

I just graduated from college and this just reaffirms my thinking - I want to do more than walk the path other people have laid out for you. Just not satisfying enough!

</comment><comment><USER8> Sorry - parents were both in exceedingly regulated industries (medical and telecommunications)

</comment><comment><USER9> My dad started a sewing machine repair store when I was a kid. I don't know too much. I think he worked for someone else for a time and/or worked from home and decided to open a shop. Once he opened a shop, then my mom, who sews, got involved as well and it became a place where they also sold patterns and material and sewing supplies. I don't think they ever did very well and I think they really couldn't get on the same page. There also weren't the resources there are today for assisting small businesses. The store eventually folded. My mom brought home leftover material, thread, patterns, etc and stocked her sewing room with them and spent years using up some of that stuff.

My mom also took in sewing at home for years and years and later became self- employed as a cleaning lady. Her skills were in high enough demand that when my dad went through chemo about 16 years ago and she had to mostly be home to care for him, she could make one phone call and have work on her terms for the hour or two she had available on some afternoon when he was doing well enough to be left alone briefly. This helped them enormously. I think my mom fundamentally has better business sense than my dad. She also sometimes sews stuff (or did a few years back) for my cousin's gift shop, to help support their success.</comment>


Two weeks of SIOC wishes - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/sioc-dev/browse_thread/thread/d006ce5bc2487b73

<comment><USER2> Just to fill in come context, SIOC is an RDF vocabulary that describes web content and communities. In my mind, any site that's based on a CMS or a database should export a version of itself in SIOC: SIOC, for instance, makes it possible to separate comments from the rest of a page, so search engines can separate comments from "official text", so we don't need to put a silly nofollow on comment links.</comment>