A.S.M.R. boyfriend role-play - ajay-d https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/02/style/asmr-boyfriend-sleep-videos.html <comment><AUTHOR> "Someone pretending to care registers as someone actually caring for us" (as revealed by MRI scans).

Mr. Rogers did that all the time. He was a genius.

<comment><USER2> *except he really did care and was not just pretending.

<comment><USER3> What's to say the you tubers don't care in the same way? It's possible to do something for profit and care about the people you impact even if you don't see each one individually

<comment><AUTHOR> The "pretending" has more to do with the fact that you're not having a one-to- one interaction. If they were giving you "individual" attention via a speech at a convention rather than an intimate TV or YouTube broadcast, it would feel cheap. The only difference is technology which enhances the illusion. I'm sure they actually care about their viewers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I haven't watched the videos, but I have listened to a bunch of songs from pop music stars who seem to alternate telling me how terrific I am and how much they love me with guilt-ridden confessions of how they've been disloyal, followed by impassioned pleas for me to give them one more chance, before slamming me with a brutal goodbye and telling me that we are never (ever, ever) getting back together.

</comment><comment><USER5> 17? That seems a bit young to be playing boyfriend to everyone online. I'm sure he isn't even the youngest aged youtuber doing this. Is this weird or just me?

<comment><USER6> Imagine if it was a 17year old female "child" doing that for a male audience.

<comment><USER7> No need to imagine, its quite common on youtube. There is no ourage... so far.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The headline is quite oblique to the article, which is about YouTube shows that are role-playing boyfriend to the viewer. Basically, G-rated pornography.

</comment><comment><USER8> "For every 1,000 views, I make $3,".

Not bad. Didn't think youtube ads would be as much as this.

<comment><USER9> I can confirm that this is accurate.

There are a few tiers and it varies seasonally. I run a YouTube channel with ~80k subscribers at the moment and I get about $3CPM (price per thousand). I actually make closer to $5 and even $6 around the holidays as ad prices go up.

But if you are just starting out on YouTube, you are given lower paying ads. You'll see yourself getting CPMs in the $1-$1.50 range. After hitting 50k subscribers it jumps up dramatically. The really premium ads are reserved for whitelisted accounts that belong to certain approved video networks and can earn $5-$8 CPM. These are generally channels with 1M or more subscribers.

<comment><USER10> Just out of curiosity, when I block ads, does that decrease your CPM? I'm doing it either way, I'm wondering how they count adblock views.

<comment><USER11> Not the person you responded to, but according to (my memory of) this[0] video youtube only counts views where an ad plays (excluding adblock users and some views from people in demographics that have low advertiser demand) and it is not immediately skipped, where the option is there.

[0]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW0eUrUiyxo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW0eUrUiyxo)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Two thoughts:

I'm in the right age bracket to make some money doing this, so hmmm,

and for some people, it helps. My girlfriend used to use ASMR when we were long-distance. It's never done anything for me, but other friends of mine also swear by ASMR to sleep.

<comment><USER13> ASMR videos trigger a pretty strong opposite reaction in me. I cannot stand those soothingly-whispering videos; it's like nails on a chalkboard for me.

<comment><USER12> Me as well. It feels like a toddler chewing rice pudding in my ears.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The next step? ASMR Hypnosis.

<comment><USER14> It's not a problem because the Listener controls the Play and Stop button. Now imagine a scenario where the listener has no control over Listening or Not Listening.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> [http://archive.is/RSW7Z](http://archive.is/RSW7Z)

</comment><comment><USER16> It looks like some sci-fi movie with virtual girlfriend.

<comment><USER17> Her (2013)

[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1798709/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1798709/)</comment></comment>


Nostalgia bucklespring IBM Model-M keyboard sound emulator - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/zevv/bucklespring/ <comment><USER2> I use this all the time now. It is the BEST THING EVER.</comment>


Lower Your Car Insurance Bill, at the Price of Some Privacy - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/16/your-money/auto-insurance/tracking-gadgets-could-lower-your-car-insurance-at-the-price-of-some-privacy.html <comment><USER2> When they installed license-plate scanners on bridges, government buildings, and roaming police cars, there was initially the claim that this system wouldn't be used to create a giant centralized database tracking everybody's movement.

We all know how that turned out.

And now with these airplane-style black boxes inside cars (the manufacturers have their own black boxes, too) ... I'm sure the NSA, FBI, CIA, etc would _never_ start drinking from this firehose of data, and mis-use it.

I'm sure Google, Yahoo, Bing, Amazon, etc would find this info useful, too ... although with the installed user base of Android phones, Google / Apple pretty likely already have quite a bit of this info.

<comment><USER3> Can you give me one example of the government "misusing" the data from license-plate scanners? I know how it "turned out"; it turned out to be an effective means of tracking people on the run.

<comment><USER4> Who has access to the database? Probably hundreds of people/engineers. What if one of them is stalking someone? What if he wants to know where his wife was last night?

<comment><USER5> I think he was asking for actual incidents, not hypotheticals. Its not hard to think of bad things that _could_ happen. But whether anything has actually happened is a completely different question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This seems interesting but they recorder is missing a lot of context. If you drive Los Angeles freeways you'll be hitting the breaks a lot for random people who cut you off in bumper-to-bumper traffic, but the data will only show you stomping on the breaks all the time and the insurance company might conclude you're a bad driver because you're not paying attention.

Also how does it distinguish between drivers? My kids often "borrow" the car and I'd like to be able to "advise" them when they're causing our insurance to go up by driving poorly.. :-)

<comment><USER7> > If you drive Los Angeles freeways you'll be hitting the breaks a lot for > random people who cut you off in bumper-to-bumper traffic, but the data will > only show you stomping on the breaks all the time and the insurance company > might conclude you're a bad driver because you're not paying attention.

That is the correct conclusion though. The insurance company could care less whether you're a bad driver—what they really care is how much of an accident risk are you.

Even a good driver frequently caught in LA traffic is a higher risk than a good driver elsewhere. Hence the device is reporting exactly what the company needs.

<comment><USER8> I've used one of these devices in my car for the last couple of years and have enjoyed really cheap car insurance as a result (variable based on my driving but usually $30-$35 CAD/month).

It is very true that if you are driving in rush hour traffic you have no choice but to appear to be a bad driver. The irony of this is that the accident happening in rush hour is probably minor, yet when I'm barrelling down the highway at a steady pace I appear to be a great driver whereas an accident would be very costly (fatal perhaps).

Also they normalize your infractions (sharp breaking, sharp acceleration, speeding, etc) by distance driven so long highway driving is even more beneficial (few infractions, long distances) than traffic jams (many infractions, short distances).

<comment><USER9> Insurance companies have a strong financial incentive to have their models be well calibrated with reality, so you should expect it more and more with time that when an insurance company thinks you're a bad driver then it really means that your driving sucks.

<comment><USER10> True, but they'll happily take 10 horrendous accidents over 1100 minor bumps if the bumps cost them a thousand each and the bad accidents cost them a hundred thousand each.

Our incentives are different. We would rather have many tiny incidents (up to a limit) than a few life threatening incidents.

Therefore, while an insurance company would happily put into place a process that turns a small number of drivers into maniacs and everyone else into placid sheep they'd take it.

Not that they are, and it sounds unlikely that such a process can even exist, but it's important to know that our incentives aren't aligned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Now people will optimize for whatever this meassure, at the cost of driving safely. Don't take the route that has slow driving traffic, take the one with fast moving traffic even though you are going to cause far more damage. Don't stop for a red light, it will cost breaking points.

You are an insurance company your job is to pay when people cause accidents - if people don't cause accidents there is no reason to have it.

<comment><USER9> > _Now people will optimize for whatever this meassure, at the cost of driving > safely._

The point is, insurance company has a strong financial incentive make the measure be as much an accurate proxy for driving safely as possible. If people start ignoring red lights to avoid braking points, insurance companies will try to get to that data (by offering you discounts for providing it). This is a good scheme; the best way to "outsmart" insurance is to drive safely. This can be a textbook example of [http://xkcd.com/810/](http://xkcd.com/810/).

Thinking about it, I'm starting to believe that speeding tickets should be sent to insurance companies directly. I.e. keep driving like a moron, and soon you won't be able to afford to drive. (also, it would be helpful to replace point&click speeding cameras with average-speed computing ALPRs)

> _You are an insurance company your job is to pay when people cause accidents > - if people don 't cause accidents there is no reason to have it._

No, if people don't cause accidents then insurance company gets free money.

<comment><USER11> If I don't cause accidents, why should I have insurance in the first place?

<comment><USER9> There's always a chance that you will. Thinking otherwise is very naive. No human is a perfect driver, everyone can get distracted, or have health problems, or somehow end up in a situation where only superhuman reflexes could help.

The only way to be sure you don't cause accident is for you to never drive, at which point you don't need car insurance, and rightly so. As you can see, the system works well - if you can't cause a car accident, you don't need a car insurance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One of my siblings had one of these. It constantly squawked/beeped at them when they went too fast/they braked too hard (which is actually a lot more often that you might think - the deacceleration threshold ).

It got to be a point of humor in their family. "Mommy, you're driving too fast!"

It did lower their car insurance considerably. Thankfully, it was a temporary deal to have it installed, not a permanent commitment.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is the future.

Electric cars and hybrids are breaking the fuel tax methodology of funding highways. Solutions using GPS mileage logging devices are already being piloted in Oregon to implement a tax per mile model.

Also by 2020 wireless broadband will be mandatory in vehicles, and studies are being conducted re feasibility of providing remote management of vehicles from state traffic management centers.

[http://www.nhtsa.gov/About+NHTSA/Press+Releases/2014/USDOT+t...](http://www.nhtsa.gov/About+NHTSA/Press+Releases/2014/USDOT+to+Move+Forward+with+Vehicle- to-Vehicle+Communication+Technology+for+Light+Vehicles)

"The safety applications currently being developed provide warnings to drivers so that they can prevent imminent collisions, but do not automatically operate any vehicle systems, such as braking or steering. NHTSA is also considering future actions on active safety technologies that rely on on-board sensors. Those technologies are eventually expected to blend with the V2V technology."

<comment><USER2> _providing remote management of vehicles from state traffic management centers_

This was the land of the free. I'd rather control my own steering wheel, acceleration and brakes, thank you very much.

Welcome to the future.

<comment><USER13> I think there will be a very robust market for 1950-1980 cars in the coming years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> 1) Concerning privacy: I imagine that with systems like eCall in Europe drivers privacy is/will be a fiction (eCall is intended to bring rapid assistance to motorists involved in a collision).

2) Methodology for calculating premiums: in my opinion one of the most interested technology for premium calculation was introduced by UK-based company [http://mydrivesolutions.com](http://mydrivesolutions.com). The basic difference between this one and most of US solution I've seen so far is about getting context information from the environment to better calculate the risk for the insurer. They extract information from road attributes and build behavioral map to better understand driving behavior in a certain context (events are more complex than braking and accelerating).

</comment><comment><USER15> Interestingly these programs are currently disallowed in California, I believe due mostly to Prop 103: [http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/focusarea/prop-103-californi...](http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/focusarea/prop-103-california- insurance-reform)

</comment><comment><USER16> And again, Evgeny Morozov is shown to be uncannily prescient about how technology is affecting our society.

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't think that braking slower, or accelerating less (or even limiting turning g-forces) is really an indicator of "Safe Driving". Yes, it is definitely a signal, and obviously a good one otherwise insurance companies wouldn't be using it. But I think that the mark of good driving is knowing what you and your car can do, and actively paying attention to the road around you (several hundred feet behind and in front), and _thinking_ about piloting the 2 ton piece of metal you're in as opposed to blindly doing it. A better, more strict drivers licensure program is the number one way to increase safety on roads and thus lower the cost of insurance -- but it has to be all in or nothing.

On the flip side, I would find it somewhat amusing to put one of the trackers in my track car and see what they think of that...

<comment><USER9> > _I don 't think that braking slower, or accelerating less (or even limiting > turning g-forces) is really an indicator of "Safe Driving". Yes, it is > definitely a signal, and obviously a good one otherwise insurance companies > wouldn't be using it. But I think that the mark of good driving is knowing > what you and your car can do, and actively paying attention to the road > around you (several hundred feet behind and in front), and thinking about > piloting the 2 ton piece of metal you're in as opposed to blindly doing it._

If it is a "good signal" then it's an indicator pretty much by definition. The thing is, it doesn't matter what is the poetic mark of "good driving"; what counts are accident statistics going down. One constant about all humans is that you can't ask them to think, or care, or be nice, and expect them to change behaviour. You need to make them change, by changing their habits and/or incentive structures around them, of which, in the case of cars, the insurance bill is a very important part. People behave in a deterministic way, especially when you look at big groups (such as drivers). You don't yell at a river and expect it to change it's way, you force it to do it.

> _A better, more strict drivers licensure program is the number one way to > increase safety on roads and thus lower the cost of insurance_

That would most certainly help, but I wouldn't call it the number one thing (the number one thing would be banning human drivers and replacing them with self-driving cars). I'd love to see driving licenses requiring training comparable to pilot licenses.

<comment><USER17> Fair... I don't yell at rivers.

But by your same logic the number one thing isn't banning drivers and replacing them with self driving cars (have you ever written perfectly, 1000% bug-free code?), it's banning all movement faster than walking speed -- and even then requiring people to wear crash helmets and blinkers and "blind sport information systems"...

There is no perfect approach. But I don't think that insurance companies doing this is even on the 'better' spectrum. It doesn't solve people: not turning on their lights, not merging correctly, talking on the phone, keeping their cars in safe operating condition...

Yes, paying attention to a few numbers and alerting people helps -- but if you want real improvements, you have to tackle the source.

Much like trying to drive on a highway of people who's sole purpose is to "achieve the best MPG EVER!!!!" this encourages hyper-focus in the wrong direction.

<comment><USER9> > _Fair... I don 't yell at rivers._

So don't yell at drivers. They won't listen, they won't change.

> _But by your same logic..._

A small digression: that's why I hate "logic". Logic is so 1200s. We have this thing called probability theory and we really can deal with numbers other than 0 and 1.

It's all about cost-benefit analysis. Cars get people killed (random statistics time! It's about Hiroshima + Nagasaki every two months.). Pedestrians not wearing crash-helmets rarely so (I'm not counting idiots who think they can go on a highway on a bike at night without any light or HV clothing; but there it is again, they fail at basic risk/reward calculation and you need to force them somehow to behave). Self-driving cars don't need to be "perfectly, 1000% bug-free", they just have to _drive better than humans_ , which doesn't seem too high a standard and I'm confident it will be reached in few years.

> _There is no perfect approach._

Couldn't agree more.

> _But I don 't think that insurance companies doing this is even on the > 'better' spectrum. It doesn't solve people: not turning on their lights, not > merging correctly, talking on the phone, keeping their cars in safe > operating condition... (...) but if you want real improvements, you have to > tackle the source._

Well, I honestly don't know of any better way. Education doesn't work. Most of the drivers I know don't accept the fact that their reckless driving is a part of the problem (I do know exceptions, but sadly, those are mostly exceptions, and they _still_ seem to care about insurance costs more). Social expectations are really hard to manufacture, and the current one worldwide seems to be "driving is a right, drivers are the best, lawmakers and traffic controllers impose bullshit restrictions on speed to make money on us". So forcing people financially to behave seems like the only real option left.

> _this encourages hyper-focus in the wrong direction._

I think I get your point - you're afraid that our values (safety) and insurance company's values (profit) are not well-aligned. I agree. But I believe they're aligned enough to push us in the right direction some more in an effective way. But I do believe that at some point those values will fall out of alignment to the point that we might be forced to ditch dependence on insurance for behaviour forming. The question is when.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm surprised it has taken so long for insurance companies to start to do this, I was working with systems that could have done this over ten years ago.

</comment><comment><USER19> No thank you. Plus, you just know that sooner or later, this data will be used by law enforcement.

</comment><comment><USER2> Hmm.

* Old title: Safety Spies

* New title: Lower Your Car Insurance Bill, at the Price of Some Privacy

... the new title's better, but I think adding (safety spies) in parentheses at the end would be a good compromise.

<comment><USER20> The NYT changed their title, as they often do. In such cases we follow suit.

<comment><USER2> Sounds good, and I agree with the change. That said, something to convey "spying on you to keep you safe" has a nice Orwellian ring to it, which I feel this topic deserves. Just my two cents, that's all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Next: "Insurance companies warn against unsafe, self-driving driving cars." Spy on me then kill the very thing that could make car insurance obsolete. Fuck off.

<comment><USER22> Are you really getting angry about something you're imagining?

<comment><USER23> Welcome to the internet. Enjoy your stay!</comment></comment></comment>


Linus Torvalds still wants Linux to take over the desktop - <AUTHOR> http://www.cio.com/article/3053507/linux/linus-torvalds-still-wants-linux-to-take-over-the-desktop.html <comment><USER2> Linus has a serious problem understanding what products are, and what usability means.

The commands for git are an example of that -> they don't make sense. They are very poorly designed and counterintuitive.

Linus I think has this belief that 'technology & complexity = power' when really, it's 'products that do useful things' that matter.

Making seamless experiences matters. Consumers really don't care how many techies think something is cool, they don't care about drivers, or open- source, they just want it to work.

Linux could absolutely provide the foundation for the desktop, but whatever is on top of it will have to be equally innovative and provide a lot of value, so much so that I'd argue that the high level OS layer will be 'the hard part' not the kernel.

Here's an example: "system, orangeFS, bringing the number of supported file systems to 35. (Remind me, how many file systems do Mac OS X and Windows support?)"

Really? Who cares. You only need to support ONE, the right one, and support it well. Maybe there is an advantage in supporting a few others, but not really. This is a perfect example of 'engineering' that doesn't necessarily ad up to any end-user value.

"Pretty is not my primary thing." and here it is. Linux conflates 'aesthetics' with 'design'. A very common failure. They are not the same thing, not remotely.

<comment><USER3> > _" Pretty is not my primary thing." and here it is. Linux conflates > 'aesthetics' with 'design'. A very common failure. They are not the same > thing, not remotely._

Is it conflating the two? Or is it saying "I don't care about aesthetics as long as it's well designed (= comfortable to use)?" Linus is famous for rants about how the Linux Desktop requires to much technical detail to know for the average user.

> _Linux could absolutely provide the foundation for the desktop, but whatever > is on top of it will have to be equally innovative and provide a lot of > value, so much so that I 'd argue that the high level OS layer will be 'the > hard part' not the kernel._

Did anyone argue that the hard part would be the kernel?

I understand your frustrations, but to me it seems you are picking an odd target for them. Linus opinion and knowledge about UX doesn't matter very much, because he doesn't work on anything that an end-user should have to see.

<comment><USER2> I agree with your points - but in the article we're talking about Linux for the desktop - which is inherently about design.

I think it's maybe better to think of the kernel as something like a 'chipset' in terms of it's relevance to the desktop.

Linux? BSD? It's like AMD vs. Intel. The user-based OS is so abstracted it almost doesn't matter. It's a technical detail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In Ubuntu, the mouse pointer disappears after locking the screen or suspending [1], and the Fn button combo can take _minutes_ to change screen brightness [2]. These bugs have been around for months and years, respectively. You simply cannot get non-power users to use an operating system with issues like this. Perhaps there's a more polished distro, but if the one that's touted as the beginner-friendly one has such obvious user-facing problems, it's just not feasible to get past 1% market share.

[1] [https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1573454](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1573454) [2] [https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-power- manage...](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-power- manager/+bug/847001)

<comment><USER5> Ubuntu is not Linux. Ubuntu is one option out of many.

<comment><USER6> Ubuntu is the standard bearer for "just works" for ordinary people on laptops, and it doesn't achieve that.

Can you point to an option that reliably does?

<comment><USER7> Maybe you haven't tried awesome [0]. The wiki [1] provides more information. Some screenshots here [2].

[0] [https://awesomewm.org/](https://awesomewm.org/)

[1] [https://awesomewm.org/wiki/Main_Page](https://awesomewm.org/wiki/Main_Page)

[2] [https://awesomewm.org/wiki/Screenshots](https://awesomewm.org/wiki/Screenshots)

<comment><USER8> I'm a fan of Awesome, but it's just a WM, it doesn't fulfill everything that a desktop needs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In my world, Linux _has_ also taken over the desktop. For my personal needs, I would never consider OSX or Windows for that task.

The desktop feels currently like a neglected area. OSX gets more iOSified with every release, whatever Microsoft does gets booed, regardless if it's good or bad.

Much functionality that used to be on the desktop has wandered into the browser. What desktop you're using isn't as important as it used to be.

I wonder if that pendulum ever swings back.

<comment><USER10> Who even uses features exclusive to desktops anymore? I do for development, I'm sure video editors and the like do, but which ordinary consumer does?

The future of desktops I see is something like:

Chrome OS: 70% of computers for ordinary use

Windows: 20% of computers for gaming

OS X: 5% of computers for video editing

Linux: 5% of computers for development

<comment><USER11> I can't imagine using computer that can't run without internet

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "bringing the number of supported file systems to 35. (Remind me, how many file systems do Mac OS X and Windows support?)"

A bunch of fucking nerds who don't understand consumers are never going to take over the desktop. I've watched Linux for 25 years, basically since the beginning. Stop telling people you're going to take over the desktop and figure out how to get another 1%, then repeat. I'd recommend starting with "putting all your wood behind one arrow".

<comment><USER8> What's with the slur? Arguably, "fucking nerds" have been the most successful at taking over the desktop.

[https://twitter.com/billgates/status/478693050404069377](https://twitter.com/billgates/status/478693050404069377)

<comment><USER12> Bill Gates deserves more credit than just being a nerd. He was a good businessman too. He focused on building a business from the beginning:

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

He had a business goal and effectively followed though getting the job done:

[http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/05/technology/bill-gates- email-...](http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/05/technology/bill-gates-email- microsoft-40-anniversary/)

<comment><USER8> Every person is more than just a nerd.

<comment><USER12> Yes, we are all snowflakes. Anyway, you seem to be missing the point. And pithy little comments aren't adding any insight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I believe the answer about why Linux isn't dominating on desktop is hidden in the answer about why it dominates for example, servers. And why that? Because many companies put much money into Linux and server software for it. This software is not direct source of income so their is no point to hide it from other, but it's better to develop it together. Of course, top companies can create great software.

Desktop is a different story. It's pretty hard to make the same amount of money on desktop open-source software. So profit from it - and thus desktop software is developed by enthusiasts. Enthusiasm is good, but it results in worse quality of software, even though these are the best developers in the world developing it. As soon as there is way to get profit not from selling software - it can get good open-source implementation - e.g. browsers (incomes from ad) or game engines (UE4 for example is not FOSS, but source code is published because you just can't publish game and not pay). Yet no altherntive for Photoshop, or CAD, or Chessbase.

That was a bit messy, but I hope you got my point. You want to promote Linux on desktops - just invent a method to earn on OSS same amount of money es from selling software - the wave of open sourcing will be enormous.

</comment><comment><USER13> Linux won't succeed on the desktop until someone takes a commercial interest in doing so. In order to have a motivation and ability to make Linux work for the masses you need to earn money off of desktop users. It's extremely unclear to me why such a commercial actor should choose Linux over something newer and shinier like Redox. Sure, there's a bit more work to be done with Redox, but not that much (you only need one file system for desktop) and in return they'd get technology from this side of the millennium as opposed to 1970s tech.

EDIT: What I mean is that without earning money off of the end-users, developers will develop a product for themselves, not normal users. That's fine. That's FOSS developers's prerogative. But it won't make Linux on the desktop take off.

<comment><USER14> This, 100 % this. Linux hasn't succeed on the desktop because the business case for it is weak. The success of ubuntu is in large part due to the financial input of Mark Shuttleworth/canonical. For linux on desktop to move to the next step we need a way to generate revenue out of it. I do think there is a market for it ( a small one), and but that the main hurdle to a commercial desktop linux distro are cultural as opposed to anything else.

I am not sure if i agree that something like redox would make more sense than using linux. The most lucrative market for linux desktop right now would be dev/front-end and backend. Going to redox you would lose all that ecosystem. I think microsoft is realizing that which is why they are pushing the linux on windows thing.

But definitly, an desktop os based on something more modern than unix would be awesome

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder if Linus would consider a stable ABI for kernel drivers these days. Make it stable across one each major version.

So much of the kernel source code is driver code. The old approach was always to release the source code for your driver and they'll incorporate it in the major source tree.

WIFI- and GPU-drivers still are very much binary only and don't have source code released.

<comment><USER16> That would be the quickest way to allow Linux to be supplanted: being able to incorporate its drivers into your own operating system without constant maintenance would allow you to pass what's by far the highest hurdle in gaining acceptance, being able to run on "everyone's" hardware.

ADDED: it might also indeed fix one of the biggest problems with Linux on the desk/laptop. For example, in moving through Debian starting with lenny, skipping jessie (systemd) and moving to Ubuntu LTS 14.04, I've had both sound devices and my Wacom tablet stop working and start working again.

This was both _severely_ annoying and expensive in the former case (had to buy a $$$ PCIe sound card to cover for inexpensive and utterly standard USB devices to use Skype (or any other VOIP system) and play music)). Still better than Windows, which I abandoned after XP, and still believe was the right move, but....

<comment><USER17> Dunno about wacom, but when it comes to sound there are things like pulseaudio that add extra wrinkles to the issue.

<comment><USER16> That was an USB 1.x issue, had nothing to do with the sound chip behind the USB interface. Yeah, that's right, the kernel crew broke something pretty fundamental in that primarily desktop device driver (servers are going do be doing heavy duty things with USB 2 and above), and nobody noticed and/or cared enough to not ship it with squeeze.

That's also the version that broke the Wacom support as I recall, it came back with wheezy or maybe Ubuntu Vivid's kernel.

Pulse Audio is pretty awful, but I've always been able to get it to do my bidding, modulo not being able to get the Ubuntu version I'm using to multiplex outputs (I can probably make that happen, it's not a Pulse Audio issue per se I'm pretty sure, but it's just easier to switch output from stereo system to headphones the few times I use Skype).

<comment><USER17> Ah yes, USB. Could be the powersave/suspend issue. Iirc, the kernel implemented it as if there was a upper limit on how long the device could take to get ready after a resume. But apparently the time mentioned in the spec was just a suggestion, not a hard limit. And many devices would take a minute or longer to come back once resumed. Lets just say that USB is a "fun" protocol, and the latest addition has not helped much.

<comment><USER16> It was as I recall a timing/time out issue, and very possibly the one you describe, it would just have to not effect the normal keyboard and mouse USB 1.x devices, and I'm pretty sure these USB 1.x sound devices had much better than "a minute or longer" times in resuming.

And, yeah, I can imagine how much of a zoo USB in the real world is....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think this is a fine goal, and I wish Linus a good luck.

As a software developer, I'm fine with Linux,I think I can I live with a non- Windows system.

Of course the problem is I still play games on my laptop/PC :p

</comment><comment><USER19> > Despite the fact that I'm known for sometimes not being very polite to some > of the desktop UI people, because I want to get my work done. Pretty is not > my primary thing. I actually am very happy with the Linux desktop, and I > started the project for my own needs, and my needs are very much fulfilled.

Pretty much sums up why it won't happen until someone starts imitating Steve Jobs and DICTATING how The Desktop should look like. And that means more pretty than functional.

<comment><USER20> I started with amiga, windows (from 3.1 to 2000) and I've been using Linux as my main development and OS since more than 10 years now. I no longer use any other OS. I consider myself lucky I basically never interact with windows anymore. For the cross-os work that I have to do, python with qt covers me to the point that I just perform final testing. Amazing.

I used OSX around 10.4 for about four years, because it seemed like the best of both worlds: nice UX with an unix backend. That is, indeed, why OSX appealed to most geeks, right?

I became tired of OSX after a couple of years. What apple dictates might look good, but it's far from functional. It's eye candy with little substance. On the surface is pretty, but Finder under OSX was essentially a crapshot. Under Linux I could have virtual desktops, but not under OSX (that only arrived years later). Tweaking, even slightly, any default behavior is hard. That is also the reason why Gnome doesn't appeal to me. The basic OSX desktop doesn't offer anything beyond a current Gnome release. Things change if you need commercial programs, but the desktop itself is _not_ inferior in both behavior, looks and general interaction. Gnome is, performance wise, slower, but the people that use gnome do not seem to notice.

Not to mention that what every developer does on OSX is install an external package manager, and by and large replace every single userland utility and library with an up-to-date variant from Brew, MacPorts, etc. This was a massive burden. Any linux distribution is far superior in that regard.

I don't think that Gnome today is far away from OSX. Sometimes OSX is smoother, sometimes Gnome actually is.

But, my desktop today is nowhere even remotely comparable to what gnome offers. I'm using a tiling window manager with pretty much any program customized to the point of being unrecognizable. It's incredibly efficient compared to a pretty desktop. I'm aggressively disabling eye candy and animations everywhere. I'm often using CLI versions of GUI programs because the actual user interface is superior. Some TUI programs have no rivals in GUI form.

The fact is, is that if you use your computer professionally and switch to linux, you start to understand what user interface efficiency is. At some point, eye candy becomes a second, third, fourth priority. This doesn't mean the program is any less usable though. I still value presentation. I'll take a nice UI any day over a crappy one, given the interaction is the same.

I've witnessed the same happening to many people that I've suggested linux. Many of those still use windows or mac, but with completely different habits.

<comment><USER21> _The fact is, if you use your computer professionally and switch to linux, you start to understand what user interface efficiency is_

That _highly_ depends on what you do with your computer professionally though. So it might be a fact for some, but completely false for others.

 _I 'm using a tiling window manager with pretty much any program customized to the point of being unrecognizable._

I played that game for years but gave up afterwards. Maybe I was doing it wrong but I spent just too much time to my liking on it. Now I'm more in a mindest of 'if you can't build me software which I can use almost as-is, I'll look for something else'. Not always ideal either and sometimes there are no alternatives so you'r stuck with crap after all. And yeah maybe I'm not using my computer as efficiently as possible (looking at some collegues though, I'm a wizard compared to their 'let's use a mouse for everything and double-clik to make sure it hits'-style), but I'm getting work done.

<comment><USER22> Obviously do whatever works best for you. You don't have to spend a lot of time configuring your system to end up with something unrecognizable though. I've been running linux full time since 2003 and my $HOME directory can be traced directly back to then. Things start out as-is but then something would be mildly annoying so I'd spend 5 minutes reading the man page and change a setting. After a decade of that my environment evolved to suit me perfectly and even someone who knows the software I use would have trouble sitting in front of my PC and using it. However I never really spent days configuring anything. It was more of an accident.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The problem is not Linux, it is Windows.

A: bulk discounts.

B: bundling

C: embrace extend extinguish

All these combine to shore up the Windows presence on the desktop.

</comment><comment><USER23> steam OS looks promising as to get the gaming people to see that games run superior under open source Linux, specially when you need speed and accuracy in operating system functions , my hope that Linus and the linux foundation support valve breakthrough.

<comment><USER24> SteamOS is holding back the Linux community. SteamOS is still based on Debian 8 (Jessie). Steam software often clashes with existing libraries of a current system. When I benchmarked Steam games, they delivered only 65% of the Windows performance figures when run on Linux.

I am thankful that SteamOS is nothing more than a lab experiment. If _that_ became popular, Valve will not pay any attention to us, regular Linux users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> That's like expecting the Farmers Market to serve McDonalds hamburgers.

<comment><USER10> I don't see why you make that comparison. Many distros (Ubuntu comes to mind) certainly cater to the same market as Windows and OS X, and do it very well.

<comment><USER25> You do not want to refine something, for the sake of simplicity, to the point where you can no longer easily understand what it's ingredients are. You need to be able to manipulate its ingredients (and the ingredients of others), at will, if you are true developer, inventor, creator.

I've also been using the Linux on the desktop since 1994 when Yggdrasil and Slackware got started, everyday as a developer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> So does microsoft, if what they did to my parent's pc last month is any sign.</comment>


Generating License Keys in 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://build-system.fman.io/generating-license-keys <comment><USER2> You don't have to make keys difficult to type. Just generate an rsa blob of whatever data you want and then pass it through a binary-to-text converter designed to avoid confusing characters, like [https://github.com/kstenerud/safe- encoding/blob/master/safe3...](https://github.com/kstenerud/safe- encoding/blob/master/safe32-specification.md)

Then you don't leak information because it's all layered, encoded BEFORE you generate the human inputtable text, and can contain any information you want.

</comment><comment><USER3> Some issues here:

1\. RSA nowadays is a poor choice, better Elliptic Curve algorithms.

2\. Keeping in code some blocks like "isLicenseValid()" is a faster help for reverse engineering attacks, because the crackers can simply skip that code block and you're done.

3\. Security might be improved by obfuscating + applying signature verification (performed online, not offline on client) + avoiding storing any relevant status about license verification/key on the system registry or drive. Do these steps on the fly, always. In conditions of poor networking, check if you've some evidence of previously working sessions (e.g. saved files, last used ones from your app, personal settings). If not, throw an error

</comment><comment><USER4> Shorter and more secure alternative with elliptic curve zero-knowledge proof - for example with a 160bit curve you could have a 240bit (30 byte) licence key comprised of a 160bit field element and an 80bit hash.</comment>


Visual Studio Tools for Unity 3 Preview - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/visualstudio/2016/11/17/visual-studio-tools-for-unity-3-preview/ <comment><USER2> Wow, this is an amazing progress to develop your games on Windows. I usually use linux for all but if windows continue like this, i will think of giving a try to Visual Studio.</comment>


39 Developed Countries With More Vacation Days Than America (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/countries-take-most-vacation-2011-7?op=1

<comment><USER2> >UK Statutory minimum holidays: 28

It's worth pointing out that 28 days includes public holidays. The article seems to allude that public holidays are on top of the original 28.</comment>


Julian Assange hints WikiLeaks might publish next Edward Snowden revelations - <AUTHOR> http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2013/0619/Julian-Assange-hints-WikiLeaks-might-publish-next-Edward-Snowden-revelations

<comment><USER2> I'll be pretty disappointed in Assange if it turns out he's misleading on this to capitalize publicity for Wikileaks.

I have no trouble believing that he's helping out with the asylum process (having likely dealt with similar issues, he'll have plenty of relevant contacts), but it doesn't seem Snowden's style to dump data via WikiLeaks. So far, he seems to strongly prefer the respected journalist route to ensure the facts are addressed properly.

</comment><comment><USER3> Please be true.

<comment><USER4> Why? Indiscriminate leaking, without caring about anything is what will make Snowden radioactive to most people.</comment></comment>


[co-founder] Android hacker? Join us as 4th co-founder - <AUTHOR>

If you are a hacker at heart, if you can accept the challenge to be in charge of Android development for CrowdStitch, join us, we live in MD, USA, but you don't have to, you need to love to learn new stuff, you need to love to iterate, change, build, throw away, and do it again, we are bootstrapping so you need to be able to survive on your own without taking any money out for a while [have a day job, or a rich husband/wife or be rich in the first place].
What we need you to build, is a copy of our iOS app, to begin with.
Drop me an email at ⓐⓛⓘ@ⓒⓡⓞⓦⓓⓢⓣⓘⓣⓒⓗ.ⓒⓞⓜ
NO RESUME, I DO NOT READ resumes or cvs, tell me what your story is and why you like us!
In any case, DFTBA
@alimoeeny <comment><USER2> 4th cofounder means 25% equity?

How many of the current founders have a technical background?

Is the developer of the iOS app still there?

<comment><AUTHOR> I am the iOS developer and doing most of the backend stuff, no it means more like 15% or something around that, two of the three are technical, we have a web app, ios app, and android and we need all three to be able to get paying customers,

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> why do you need 4 co-founders? The best startups are 2, maybe 3 people.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question, we are bootstrapping, that means we don't have the money to hire developers, and we are all working on our day jobs, and we need all the pieces to be able to sell (it doesn't make much sense for an event planner to pay if we are covering only event attendees with iPhones but not Androids). So what other options do we have, none of us has much experience with Android, so it will take a long time and we are losing actual customers who have seen the iOS app and want to pay to use it.

<comment><USER3> yes, but everybody bootstraps when they're first starting out. You should try to figure out how to gain traction with a limited product first. It doesn't make sense to me to bring on another founder just to deploy on android.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks sixQuarks, I believe I understand your point, but our situation is more like a startup that is providing educational apps to elementary schools, like "learn the alphabet", they can't sell anything unless they have something that all the kids in a classroom can use, covery half the students makes zero money (this is obviously not a perfect analogy), so we need to have an android client, to be able to go live, we may not support older devices, or something like that, but we need to have something, at least something in progress, Does it make sense?

<comment><USER3> OK, but how far are you going to take that? What about all the devices that are not iphone or android? Why stop there?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> this is crazy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Which part is crazy? requiring a rich husband? or not caring where you live? ... or not reading resumes? ...</comment></comment>


Encrypt Your Face: Signal Messenger - <AUTHOR> https://signal.org/blog/encrypt-your-face/ <comment><USER2> Signal does weird stuff sometimes. For a while it has been bugging me to add a last name with the only options are either to add one or to "remind me later." And they of course never forget to remind you again and again, week in and week out. Until I eventually succumb and add one I guess?

Not sure what their angle is.

<comment><USER3> It is a strange move for a company that takes user data and privacy so seriously to require last name in their user model. I've been using Telegram sometimes with friends and also found it weird how incredibly difficult it is to find where to enter a username in the app to add someone, instead of their phone number. I thought it was supposed to be a super secure messenger, shouldn't secure go hand-in-hand with anonymity? It doesn't have to, but it can be.

<comment><USER4> Though Telegram has E2EE chats, they are not enabled by default. I wouldn't consider it super secure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They should mention if these are just face obfuscating bandanas or whether they provide SARS-CoV2 protection—which it seems they might not.

I don't think people are short of face coverings but they might be short on "Covid" masks. That would be more useful.

<comment><USER6> I mean essentially unless a mask is one of the medically or industrially certified N95 and their ilk (which people are still discouraged from using due to shortages) I'd say it is hard to really quantify that one type of mask is better than another. Any covering that prevents you from spitting on people around you on accident should serve the purpose that health experts are recommending masks for. So I suspect this mask would serve both a public health and privacy protecting purpose.

<comment><USER5> They should state what it is. I think the CDC has approved some kinds of cloth masks (less effective but somewhat helpful)

They should state whether these meet the requirements and not give people the opportunity to reach misleading conclusions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I just saw an article that the AI is capable of identifying the person with 98% accuracy even with the face mask covering till eyes.

It was one of the protestors throwing something to the cop car recently, and they were able to identify her.

Trying to find the article

<comment><USER8> Even with a covered face, agencies are deploying "gait recognition", which fingerprints you based on the way you walk. Here's an article about China doing it but I'm sure the US is as well: [https://apnews.com/bf75dd1c26c947b7826d270a16e2658a](https://apnews.com/bf75dd1c26c947b7826d270a16e2658a)

<comment><USER7> also, its funny to me that how, most non-technical people share and complain about all the technological things china uses to detect and identify, and then don't even think that U.S. might have similar or even better tools.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Blur Tools for Signal" ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23414556](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23414556)) was a huge thread the other day. How close is this?

<comment><USER10> In that post they mentioned they would be distributing face masks; this is the blog post announcing that initiative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The first thing China did back then was to order mask obscured face recognition upgrade. Pretty sure US has it too. So much for the "encrypt" part. Hope Sygnal puts more meaning into "encryption" when it comes to message encryption :)</comment>


Player Permanently Banned from 'Fortnite' for Cheating - <AUTHOR> https://www.ibtimes.com/faze-clan-standout-jarvis-kaye-permanently-banned-fortnite-cheating-2860173 <comment><USER2> Cheating is so bad in freemium games, I playing warthunder and getting shot across the map with forests on both sides of a city. Instant replay shows the cheating. Looked on the forums and people talked about the flux of aimbots.

Its amazing its almost 2020, and still aimbots/wallhacks in games.</comment>


Deploying Flask in Production - <AUTHOR> http://max00355.github.io/technopy/deploying-production-flask-applications-with-uwsgi-and-nginx.html <comment><USER2> Running uWSGI in a screen session? Are you crazy?

Also running uwsgi over TCP socket as opposed to a file on the same machine is pointless.

Finally, I highly doubt you've properly tested unicorn with greenlets instead of the 4 thread worker system it normally starts up.</comment>


The Lurker: How a Virus Hid in Our Genome for Six Million Years (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/05/10/the-lurker-how-a-virus-hid-in-our-genome-for-six-million-years/ <comment><USER2> It seems plausible that our DNA hosts a myriad of capable dormant viruses than be triggered by some external activator (or binder), much the same way we have receptors for plants found in the wild (cannabis, nicotine etc...). It also seems perfectly reasonable that the (m)(b)(tr)illions of viruses on the planet are waiting in the wings for a host to get infected to start the process on a new epidemic. I'd like to think this is some form of regulation but of course that would necessitate the world as we know it as a part of a single system that can regulate even the tiniest of members.

For a hypothetical we could imagine the scenario where viruses existing in say a remote rain-forest, generally innocuous and self-contained. When deforestation occurs the virus is now open and can potentially infect whatever mechanism (human) that has disrupted it, binding to the same virus DNA that has existed for millions of years.

It's not that far-fetched to think unintelligent systems have defenses that we are largely unaware of - or cannot understand.

<comment><USER3> You're affirming the consequent. We don't have receptors for plants found in the wild (cannibis, nicotine, etc). Rather, compounds formed by those plants match up with receptors we already have.

There's an entire endocannabinoid system, and it's not because pot is natural. Nicotine broadly matches up with acetylcholine and nicotonic acetylcholine receptors.

It's far more likely that plants evolved and selected for compounds which have beneficial/detrimental effects on possible consumers, like nicotine as a pesticide, than it is that we have receptors for plants found in the wild on the off chance that we may have consumed them or that they would have been so prevalent in the past that receptors for them would have been selected for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If this topic interests you, I recommend reading "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins.

<comment><USER5> what is the book about in a nutshell? will read it eventually.

<comment><USER6> note for the future: Amazon is a tab away and will give you summaries and more of millions of books. mostly a solved problem. would not be surprised if Wikipedia had a summary of it too.

<comment><USER5> if I wanted a summary from a non HN user I would've gone there. I think people often miss the importance of someone summarizing it in their own words on a network.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It would be interesting to see if we could clean up (refactor) the human genetic code into a more efficient form with less baggage, and maybe less chance at getting hit by viruses just by virtue of having fewer random flaws to exploit.

<comment><USER8> Actually that's an incredibly terrible idea. You see single base-pair (and other) errors are very common during DNA replication. By having a lot of "useless" (allegedly) zones in our DNA, decreases, statistically speaking, chances of that error occurring in more important areas.

<comment><USER9> Could you explain why that is the case? It seems unintuitive.

<comment><USER10> Imagine a general with a finite amount of artillery shells and a Howitzer on the fritz (i.e. the intended trajectory of the shots are somewhat off the mark today). Given the choice of where to deploy the artillery, the general may choose to concentrate their fire on the narrow beachhead landing instead of upon a widely scattered formation of units approaching across a vast plain.

The artillery that lands on the plain may strike an advancing unit, or it may fall (possibly harmlessly) between a set of advancing units. The artillery that lands on the narrow beachhead is more likely to hit a unit.

This analogy is far from perfect: sometimes mutations are good, which is one primary driver of evolution. Non-coding regions and/or "baggage to be refactored" (paraphrased great-great-gp comment) in DNA (the regions of the plain/beach not occupied by an advancing unit) can absorb "errors". Also, there are other types of mutations (insertions, deletions, ...), aside from the single point mutations that this analogy was attempting to help convey.

The point is: it's like bunching up a lot of important things over a few points of failure. If you increase "the genetic surface area", you lower the chance of the important thing getting hit.

On evolutionary scales, viable DNA has been selected with a lot of non-coding (and sometimes useful) regions, we know that if we reduce that down, we are more likely to be susceptible to fatal mutations on coding regions (e.g. a region that codes for a vital protein).

<comment><USER11> I think that's not the best analogy. You're imagining a constant amount of mutations (artillery shells) spreading over the size of the genome (the beach). It doesn't quite work like that, which is why mutation rates are usually measured in errors per base pair per generation.

In fact, copying DNA is more like downloading a large file over an unreliable network. There's a certain chance that each individual bit is flipped and the file becomes useless. You can reduce that chance by sending it multiple times, or introducing checksums, both of which add redundant data. But simply adding an extra TB of junk bytes to your download won't help preserve the integrity of the original file.

<comment><USER12> Does the number of mutations in a genome increase with the size of the genome, or with the length of time the genome is "in use?" Let's assume that the mutations are evenly distributed throughout the genome. If genetic mutation count is dependent on the size of the genome then it fits your "unreliable transmission" model.

However, if genetic mutation count is time-dependent but totally independent of the size of the genome, then having a larger genome actually does protect you from individual mutations, and it would do so exactly using the mechanisms described previously.

Think of two genomes, one large and one small, both existing throughout time. Both will accumulate a similar quantity of mutations from mutagenic processes which are time-dependent like radiation exposure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Greg Bear wrote a fun sci-fi novel Darwin's Radio ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin%27s_Radio](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin%27s_Radio)) featuring these viruses.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is quite scary .__.</comment>


20 Tech Habits to Improve Your Life - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/150320/20_tech_habits_to_improve_your_life.html

<comment><USER2> Print version:

[http://www.pcworld.com/printable/article/id,150320/printable...](http://www.pcworld.com/printable/article/id,150320/printable.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> I always like to have a peek at lists for something I may have overlooked (ooh, shiny!). This one is actually pretty good -- recommends a number of quality items. The average person here may already be familiar or have their own alternatives, but this list might make a good pass-along to less geeky friends.

<comment><USER4> Gina is an awesome, thoughtful writer - no idea why she's writing for PCWorld though. This should have been on lifehacker or a publication that isn't dying.

<comment><USER5> Ideally the value of Gina of PC World over some underpaid blogger at Lifehacker is that we assume she's actually _reviewed_ each of these, weighed the results then wrote the article.

<comment><USER4> Honestly, I bet she makes more at Lifehacker than PC World.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tech Firms Surrender Their Crucial Billion-Dollar Tax Deductions - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-02/tech-firms-surrender-their-crucial-billion-dollar-tax-deductions <comment><USER2> I wonder when these companies and employees will realize they are tax donkeys for welfare extortionists. Seattle is great. 13% raise. At least I can retire... have fun being poor in SV and "living the dream." It's a house of cards.

<comment><USER3> The 13% raise means that there's 13% less jobs and the current employees have to work 13% harder. Business owners won't get stuck with that tab, I guarantee it.

Edit: Source - I'm a business owner.</comment></comment>


Chaos Communication Congress Call for Participation - <AUTHOR> http://events.ccc.de/2014/07/12/31c3-call-for-participation-en/ <comment><USER2> > _As a speaker, you will have free admission._

That wasn't the case in the last years and i think it's a _bad_ change. Congress had always had this kind of community feeling and you could always hit up speakers in the hall ways and they'd treat you as equals.

I kinda liked the rule that everyone has to pay the entrance fee, but maybe that's just me.

I hope this doesn't change too much, but the kind of "huge family" feeling was already kind of going away when the event scaled from 3k to 10k people. Probably unavoidable at this scale though. Nevertheless, looking forward to another awesome c3. It's still my highlight of the year.

<comment><USER3> > That wasn't the case in the last years and i think it's a bad change.

It's bad form to ask speakers to donate their research, time, and breath, and then also ask them to pay for the privilege.

When I spoke at the CCC, this miffed me a bit.

<comment><USER4> Paying for the privilege to speak could deter less qualified speakers from leading the discussions, though. It would keep the quality of conversation high I think. Thoughts?

<comment><USER5> If you're really interested in hearing someone, why not reduce the barriers to having them come speak? And if you're not interested, why let them speak at all?

<comment><USER6> If I am not mistaken the ticket price was 80 EUR for four days.

Believe me, I'm all for offering speakers travel reimbursement, but arguing about that ticket price is kind of out of place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Such an astounding event, and they do their online presence so well.</comment>


Inside the Google News algorithm - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.computerworld.com/14861/inside_the_google_news_algorithm <comment><USER2> A lot of has gone into Google News and it was really 'best in class' for a long while. But progress has gone into reverse over the last year, to the point that I've been trying to spot which competitor will disrupt it. Of course, I have no idea what weighting is given to the various coefficients, but the ones revealed at this talk seem entirely consistent with the cruft I see on my news page.

 _Volume and originality of content produced consistently about a topic._

This would explain why I see so many blogs, one-note websites, and even press releases from lobbying groups or those obsessed with a particular topic. It works OK for broad categories like 'Business' or 'Sport' but allows niche subjects to be gamed easily.

You know the most annoying one that keeps coming up? I have a search for 'legal' because I'm interested in news about the legal industry, major court cases and suchlike. 20-30% of stories in my daily news feed about about how someone arrested for drunk driving had 3-4x the legal limit of alcohol in his bloodstream. Not anyone famous, it's just an easy story for local newspapers - 'you won't believe how drunk this guy was!' Well yes I would believe it, because I get this story several times a week.

 _Links around the Web._

Content/policy affiliates networks defeat this easily. I just game up and removed my political news feed a few months ago because both left and right bloggers seem determined to live in an echo chamber of ideological allies, and quote endlessly from each other to drown out any other perspectives. The same thing happens with non-ideological topics that have a strong overlap with large commercial markets; instead of news about health and medicine, I often get information about new services available under medicare that are thinly disguised plugs for commercial products aimed at the elderly, such as mobility scooters. Health & wellness is as favorite topic of content farmers since readers and searchers of these topics are usually highly motivated to learn as much as possible.

 _What users do in response to links to that source on Google News._

To the point where sometimes I prefer not to click on a story, but open up an incognito tab in Chrome and retype the headline to read the story. Earlier this year, I clicked on two stories within the same week, referring to lawsuits involving sports injuries. Although I like my local baseball team, I really don't care for sports in general, and even less for sports writing. I have Google News configured not to show me any sports stories. For months after reading the two articles mentioned above, I kept getting stories about pro football players in my 'top stories' news feed - who was being traded, how well they played, who they're having affairs with, and what-all else. I'd select 'fewer stories from ESPN' if it was a sports-centric website, but WTF. I'm OK with seeing things like who won a major championship or somebody famous getting arrested, but those sort of things are relatively rare.

I know I'm not the typical news consumer and frankly I'm not 'where the money is' from Google's perspective, or that of the media in general. But I desperately want less automation and better input/configurability.</comment>


Visual Studio Code February 2018 Update - <AUTHOR> https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_21 <comment><USER2> > Faster VS Code start-up by using asar

> We are now packaging the core node_modules into an Electron Archive (asar) > for faster start-ups by up to 5%. The file count on disk for a VS Code > installation also gets reduced by approximately 25%.

Seems quite noticeable here, unless there's other things changing open speed.

<comment><USER3> Same here.

Of course, there is _real_ and _perceived_ performance. I noticed that VSC shows a screen first, then starts filling it in with content, then syntax highlighting and other features. I captured it in a GIF and reduced the speed to make it really visible:

[https://imgur.com/V9MZRM1](https://imgur.com/V9MZRM1)

I don't recall if it always did that. If not, then it probably appears to be faster because spends less time being "frozen".

If the absolute start-up time really improved by more than 5%, then perhaps the particular slowdowns fixed here were also bottlenecks for starting up installed extensions? If the VSC team benchmarked the performance on a clean installation (which would make sense, since they're not responsible for other people's extensions), then they would have missed the knock-on effects of code (not) waiting for other code.

I also wonder if the reduced file _count_ makes an impact. What system are you on? I'm stuck with Windows 10 for the moment, and I have a vague recollection that Windows is less happy with tons of small files than Linux. If the devs who implemented this were on Linux machines and benchmarked on that, they might not have noticed this boost.

Anyway, I'm sure there are tons of other possible reasons. In the end what matters is that it's better, no? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Mmmmmm, Terminal Splitting...

[https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_21#_split- terminals](https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_21#_split-terminals)

<comment><USER5> Hot damn...that's some nice terminal splitting right there.

<comment><USER6> How is ~1 second or more to get a prompt "nice"?

<comment><USER3> Well, if you're stuck on Windows like me, you save more than that second due to not having to search for and open a separate terminal emulator (which probably also takes some time). I'm sure the story is different on Linux with a good tiling window manager though.

<comment><USER6> When I was forced to use windows a few years back, cygwin + tmux was a decent solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This software is headed in an amazing direction.</comment>


Russia Displays a New Military Prowess in Ukraine's East - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/22/world/europe/new-prowess-for-russians.html?hpw&rref=world&_r=0

<comment><USER2> Looks like Russia has learned well from US tactics :)</comment>


OctoMouse 1.5 released open-source - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Takohi-Jona/OctoMouse <comment><USER2> If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good "Show HN".

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


The Best Way to Save People from Suicide - <AUTHOR> https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/how-to-help-someone-who-is-suicidal <comment><USER2> [Off topic] My god has web design totally crapped the bed. The amount of scrolling I had to do just to get words and then ... get to the point...

</comment><comment><USER3> tl;dr - Send text messages.

My personal opinion: don't ask "What happened?" That focuses on the problem. Say "Are you OK? What can I do for you?"

If someone replies with more than "fine", they trust you. (This is also a good way to find out how close a friend thinks you are).

I've started asking for help (see my past comments), but received a lot of criticism. I don't know what else to try, though. I'm not trying to complain that life fell apart, I just want to rebuild it, but I don't know where I'm welcome.</comment>


Clinicians' Expectations of the Benefits and Harms of Treatments and Tests - <AUTHOR> http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2596010 <comment><AUTHOR> Findings In this systematic review of 48 studies (13 011 clinicians), most participants correctly estimated 13% of the 69 harm expectation outcomes and 11% of the 28 benefit expectations. The majority of participants overestimated benefit for 32% of outcomes, underestimated benefit for 9%, underestimated harm for 34%, and overestimated harm for 5% of outcomes.</comment>


My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward - <AUTHOR> http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/lovely-wife-psych-ward-95567/?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits <comment><USER2> Some people can manage being under a lot of stress. Some people can't. It sucks that you can't take preventative measures--such as eliminating the stressful environment indefinitely--if you suspect serious psychological harm.

<comment><USER3> I think you misunderstand mental illness. While it is true that mental illness does come out in times of stress and a stressful environment doesn't help out, stress doesn't cause it except in select illnesses. (and even then, stress doesn't actually cause it).

I do agree with preventative measures, and there are some that can be taken, but this includes things like regular psychological screenings and physicals since some mental illnesses have biological markers: teaching people warning signs: teaching coping skills early on and making sure medication and real help are available to those that need it. A society with some empathy helps as well. But those are a long long way off and I'm not sure of the effectiveness of such things as a preventative measure: these might simply be a tool to catch mental illness early. Still positive but hardly preventative.

And the stress bit is a little misleading. My exhusband had schizophrenia and was on disability for it. Some days, it was ok. I worked, he did stuff around the house and took care of the dogs. Some days, the stress of having to shower was too much. It was impossible to eliminate the stress enough since so much of it was misreactions to very low stress levels. Unmedicated, it was all he could do to get the voices to give him mental peace - this led him to a suicide attempt. luckily, after that he always had the option to check himself into the hospital and go somewhere safe if it got to much for him (and I had the option to call and get him there if needed). Medicated, the voices were less, but didn't go away. He took his medication out of fear of things most of the time (most... ).

<comment><USER2> I don't deny there's a genetic component and I don't believe stress is the single cause. I'm not well read on mental illness. But in the context of this story, stress was a cause (or trigger, whatever you want to call it) for a certain kind of behavior. It didn't seem like Giulia had any problems before her job.

"Some days, the stress of having to shower was too much. It was impossible to eliminate the stress enough since so much of it was misreactions to very low stress levels."

That's sad.</comment></comment></comment>


Related pages widget shown on Wikipedia using Directed Edge engine - <AUTHOR> http://blog.directededge.com/2008/08/23/related-pages-on-wikipedia/

<comment><USER2> Very nice use of graph theory, and well implemented.

Will you have anything to show soon on other (non-Wikipedia) datasets?

<comment><AUTHOR> We've got a couple of pilot customers (one a social network for culture and entertainment, the other a music site) that we're just starting to work with.

I've also got a non-Wikipedia demo that I'm banging on as time permits that should be another fun application.

<comment><USER2> Excellent. Keep us apprised of the results-- it's cool stuff.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Switchboard – open-source email processing in Erlang - <AUTHOR> http://switchboard.spatch.co <comment><USER3> I worked with Spatch to make Switchboard, and will be around to answer any questions.

Our motivation in building and continuing to build Switchboard is to make it easier for developers to process emails. Looking forward to more ideas!

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the nice product, and well done on a polished release - I've been playing around with it for a few minutes and I'm finding that its not only a great tool, but I'm learning erlang to boot. :)

Since I sent my first email in the 80's, I've wanted to build business-logic systems with mail-based interfaces - things like, have an address such as "firstname.lastname@example.com" which can be cc'ed on emails which might contain future scheduling events, and have the calendar@ client automatically work out the details of reminding everyone of the date-target that was set .. Seems to me that Switchboard would be the ideal platform upon which to develop such services .. among other things too. See any gotcha's?

Its always amazed me that automated email is not used more and more for basic business processes - sure, we have mailing lists and autoresponders and all sorts of things like that, but the fact that most language/tech stacks don't really treat email as the human-maintained message queue, with first class priorities, seems a little lacking .. I guess Switchboard is an attempt to make up for that. Anyway, thanks again - I'll certainly be devoting some research time to this tool, and I hope I can build something useful on top of it ..

<comment><USER5> It should work very well for specifying the logic around the calendar example: Switchboard would accept the credentials of the accounts to monitor, e.g. firstname.lastname@example.com, and then notify a "schedule notification" worker of new messages. The burden of scheduling reminders for participants would be on the worker, but there are a lot of tools for that. I like the idea!

One note: Switchboard is especially useful relative to a bare IMAP connection when you're monitoring many accounts. This is because it provides a lot of the boilerplate around restarting failed connections and issuing IMAP commands while an IMAP connection has an active IDLE continuation.

I agree that there's tons of room for more automation around emails. I think the lack of automation is due to not having high-level tools, which is where Switchboard comes in, and that emails are typically natural language. I'm personally excited to see Switchboard get used for email classification -- imagine if your business-logic could include the email "class", e.g. "sent by a human", or "marketing", ... etc. A bit like Gmail's categories, but open and accessible to developers.

<comment><USER4> So Switchboard will basically take the IMAP pain away so I can focus on the business logic? Great!

I'll play with it .. hope you won't mind if I contact you in a week or so in case I have questions or maybe even to give you feedback/demo of what I've come up with in the meantime..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I did a project like this a few years ago and here are my takeaways:

1\. Building on top of IMAP is very difficult. It's not a technology that is really designed for the mobile world of today (e.g. streaming, sockets for chat)

2\. Threading is a bitch. The old folder tree layout is formidable.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>----

That said, it's so cool to see something like this in the wild. As an engineer, I would've used this as a boilerplate for my project years ago, and it would've saved me literally six months of efforts.

Kudos to this. It's gods work.

Free startup idea: Use this to help larger businesses collaborate more efficiently (much like if Yammer and GTasks had a baby).

<comment><USER7> It seems to me that this _is_ the startup idea, built on top of this tech.

<comment><USER6> Seemed to me that it wasn't particularly meant for internal business comms. Just random comms.

<comment><USER8> Would be a good idea to market it for those two verticals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a really neat tool, and I look forward to using it. I can think of a number of uses, already - analyses of mailbox activity, statistics and metrics collection, business-processes being interfaced with email, and so on. Heck, I guess I could use this to replace my recent interest in PlanLeaf (email-based todo manager) with my own custom version.

On a side note - its funny how things flow on HN sometimes - yesterday I played with PlanLeaf, and had the thought 'nice, but it'd be even nicer to just have the code to process emails properly', and now .. along comes a stack that gives me a way to do just that ..

</comment><comment><USER9> I worked on an email application for a year that was on top of imap. It was slow as hell. How does switchboard get around that?

On another note, I think context.io provides a decent paid solution. How is this project different?

<comment><USER3> For Switchboard's intended task of as-they-arrive email processing, speed is not a huge issue. That being said, there are plans for using more than one IMAP connection to parallelize some requests.

Switchboard is fairly different from context.io. Switchboard is open-source -- being able to keep in control of services accessing emails on your users' behalf is great. Also, Switchboard is intended for processing emails as they arrive using worker processes, as opposed to context.io which appears to be primarily a proxy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does anyone know how this compares to Lamson (which has been around for quite some time) ?

[1] [http://lamsonproject.org/](http://lamsonproject.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Lamson is an SMTP server which acts as the gateway for emails from the outside world to be put in your mail store.

Switchboard doesn't have any direct connection to SMTP. It monitors changes in your mail store using IMAP IDLE and issues events to workers which can then do basically whatever your heart desires.

(btw, we host our switchboard mailing lists on librelist.com which is a showcase for Lamson. cool project)

<comment><USER10> Correct me if I'm wrong, but Lamson enables those hooks/workers as well - <USER2> integrates with an FSM and a queuing mechanism (Celery) to get this done.

Additionally, there is Apache James (Java) which does something similar.

<comment><USER3> You're correct that Lamson provides tools for processing emails, but it doesn't include a mechanism for feeding it emails from IMAP servers. Switchboard actually complements Lamson -- Switchboard could manage IMAP connections, collect incoming emails, and feed those emails to Lamson. You'd be able to use Lamson in front of Gmail/Yahoo/etc

I'm not super familiar with Apache James, but it appears to be a mail server with pluggable components. Switchboard fits in as a layer between any mail server that supports IMAP, and its version of pluggable components [processes connection over the interface].

Thanks, this really helps us see where the documentation needs to be improved :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think I haven't clearly understood where to use Switchboard. In my normal mail stack (postfix, dovecot) where would Switchboard be placed?

<comment><USER12> It would sit along side your Dovecot server. The Switchboard core subscribes to events in a folder (using IMAP IDLE) and issues change events to connected workers.

<comment><USER13> so is this like zeromq for mails?

<comment><USER5> I can't give an unqualified yes, but Switchboard is similar to zeromq in that it fans out events [new emails] to subscribed processes [workers].

We actually thought about using zeromq, but went with a simpler solution for now, i.e. using websockets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can't wait to see what's built on this

</comment><comment><USER15> Why is this based on IMAP? When I see "server-side email processing" I think SMTP.

<comment><USER12> The wording is a bit ambiguous — "server-side email processing" refers to processing emails which are stored with an email provider, e.g. Gmail. IMAP is used to interact with the email providers because it is a mail retrieval protocol, and is widely used.

If we were doing "server-side email processing" of emails as they were sent, SMTP would have fit in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Looks nice so far, worked with IMAP for a while, not fun... So is it on top of IMAP or ... ?

<comment><USER17> It seems to be, as far as I understand.

If that's actually the case, how do you handle the case where someone read a new mail (and thus, mark it as read) before app processed it ?

<comment><USER3> The application uses IMAP UID/UIDVALIDITY values, typically along with IDLE, to identify new emails in a mailbox. These don't change when an email is read, so marking as read doesn't introduce any race conditions in this case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Looks great. Any future plans for implementations or API in other languages?

<comment><USER5> Currently, there are worker/client implementations in Python, Ruby, and JavaScript. New languages can be added in response to demand -- is there a language you'd be interested in using on the client-side in particular?

Also, because it uses JSON over websockets, it's fairly easy to implement a new worker/client that follows the Switchboard interface -- here's the Python implementation in 132 LOC: [https://github.com/jtmoulia/switchboard- python/blob/master/s...](https://github.com/jtmoulia/switchboard- python/blob/master/switchboard/__init__.py)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Could this be used for automatic GPG encryption before storage on disk?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm guessing that you want the emails to be encrypted before being saved to _any_ disk? In that case, Switchboard isn't sufficient: it runs in front of email providers, and can't prevent them from saving an email to disk.

Switchboard could be used to fetch the email, encrypt it, and then replace the unencrypted email with the encrypted email on the server. However, replacing emails is invasive if the user doesn't expect it, and other than the email provider's word you have no guarantee that the unencrypted email was actually deleted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I fuckin love it. I have a huge hard on for Erlang lately.

</comment><comment><USER21> will evaluate this thoroughly , needed something like this .

<comment><AUTHOR> Great, I hope it's a good fit!

If not, please let us know about any sticking points either through the mailing list, switchboarddev _at_ librelist.com, or the GitHub issues page.</comment></comment>


Show HN: A Simple TOTP CLI App Written in Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/w8rbt/goathgen <comment><USER2> I presume the ..OTP end of that acronym refers to 'One-Time-Password' but I'm not sure what the first T is. Not helped by the fact that, for anyone of a certain age who grew up in the UK, the initials TOTP can only ever stand for 'Top Of The Pops'

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_of_the_Pops](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_of_the_Pops)</comment>


Proposed Unified GNUradio Architecture for SatNOGS Client - <AUTHOR> https://community.satnogs.org/t/proposed-unified-architecture-of-satnogs-client-on-gnuradio/499 <comment><USER2> What is SatNOGS? I know that GNU Radio is a software defined radio toolkit. From the diagrams and "Sat" part of the name it seems like SatNOGS is some kind of thing for keeping antennas pointed at satellites. But it's hard to figure much else out about what this is and why this is relevant to anyone not already part of the community (in which case they would likely already see it by following the forum).

The link at the upper right doesn't help, since that just brings you to the front page of the forum. I have to Google for "SatNOGS" (or guess that I can delete "community" from the URL) to get to the landing page: [https://satnogs.org/](https://satnogs.org/) which describes: "DIY Satellite Ground Station and Network - SatNOGS is an open source ground station and network, optimized for modularity, built from readily available and affordable tools and resources."

This helps a little bit, but it still doesn't describe what it does and why. Does this just let you track satellites? Read data being transmitted by them? What types of satellites? What kind of data?

Posting this to HN feels a bit like posting a link to a discussion about a refactoring of the internals of the block device driver in MINIX on its mailing list. Maybe technically interesting to a few people who have context, but a bit puzzling for a wider audience, and with very little context.

I don't mean this to be negative, I'm mostly trying to give constructive criticism that it can help to provide a bit more context, and links to make it easy to find more context, when posting an announcement to a more general audience like HN.

<comment><USER3> My cynical take is that SatNOGS was a publicity stunt designed to win the Hack-a-day prize. Polished websites; not much substance.</comment></comment>


Sam's Laser Repair FAQ - <AUTHOR> https://www.repairfaq.org/sam/lasersam.htm <comment><USER2> This FAQ got me the behind the scenes at a concert.

I'd never owned anything fancier than a Radio Shack laser pointer, but I'd read Sam's FAQ cover-to-cover out of sheer curiosity.

Sometime around 2010, I found myself dropping some things off at a convention, where I was not involved but knew some of the staff. This landed me in a conversation with one of the A/V crew for the dance (happening a few hours hence), specifically the guy who did the laser show equipment. Pretty fancy stuff, especially for 2010.

We end up talking a LOT about lasers, most of which I know from the FAQ, never having touched any of the stuff in the flesh. He takes me down to the ballroom to check out the setup, we play with it a bit, and I'm totally fascinated, not just with the hardware, but the controls that sequence the various show routines. Then he says something like "You seem to have a handle on this.. listen... I never get to GO TO the dance because I'm always back here. You wanna take a shift on the board?", and next thing you know, the lights are down, the fog is up, and the DJ is giving me hand signals to know when to change the laser wibbly-wobbly as he switches songs.

Mid-show, a costumed figure walks up to the board, laser-guy peeks out from behind the mask, "How ya doin? Need a breather?" and I'm like "Nah this is awesome, have fun out there!", and he disappears back into the crowd.

<comment> v-h-z More like unpaid onstage than backstage ;) Awesome though

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> One of the most useful aspects of this is it's longevity. It's longevity is mediated by the simplicity of the site. It's just HTML and files on a file system. There's nothing to break (except links, which he covers in the introduction). I've been using it for 20+ years.

<comment><USER4> At this point it's ancient history, but at the point I first came into contact with various electronic bulletin boards (FidoNet, Usenet) in the mid-90s FAQs were a ubiquitous thing. For many topics, just reading the official FAQ for that subject gave you a very good overview of whatever you were dealing with extremely efficiently. I've honestly never quite figured out why we moved away from that as the internet grew in popularity, but it's nice to see at least one relic still exists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The links page (remember those?) is a gold mine of high quality ancient internet archaeology. I definitely remember Sam's site from the altdot days. I do miss the sheer quantity of irresponsible electronics that was on the internet 20 years ago. It's been ages since I've seen a furby electrified with the wrong end of a utility pole transformer.

[https://www.repairfaq.org/sam/sambook.htm](https://www.repairfaq.org/sam/sambook.htm)

</comment><comment><USER6> Laser professionals in both academia and industry frequently use this site as an important reference. It's an immensely valuable trove of information, and not only for hobbyists.

</comment><comment> the-dude Disappointed to miss "Don't look into laser with remaining eye".

</comment><comment><USER7> Honestly my favorite website on the entire internet.

The laserfaq is what got my hooked into optics, which sent me down the career path that I am on now.

I owe it all to you Sam

<comment> non-entity > The laserfaq is what got my hooked into optics, which sent me down the > career path that I am on now.

What do you do now?

<comment><USER7> Quantum computing

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow. Totally forgot about this. I studied photonics for my bachelors 15 years ago and this was incredibly useful. Everyone in the department knew about it.

</comment><comment><USER9> Thrawled through this site when trying to understand how stimulated photons knew how to copy the direction of travel of the incident photon as this was the only source of information at the time which did not require a lifetime of commitment to studying quantum mechanics.

I still don't understand it.

</comment><comment><USER10> My favourite from there:

DED - Dark Emitting Diode

</comment><comment><USER11> > So the 1 mW laser has the potential to produce an intensity on the retina > 167 times that of direct sunlight!

I really don't understand why laser-pointers are even legal.

<comment><USER12> Depends on the optics. "1 mW" isn't enough information. Focus that down enough and it could burn, but so too can sunlight. It also depends on the time of day. In the dark of night your iris will be open, making a laser much more dangerous. Sunlight is more powerful but as a general rule your iris isn't going to be open during sunlight. A billion years of evolution have made our eyes rather good at handling sunlight. We have no natural defense againse lasers, especially invisible IR lasers. (Stay away from the cheap green lasers from china. They often pump out huge amounts of IR.)

FYI, the general legal limit for "pointers" is 5mW.

<comment><USER11> Did you read the section on laser safety?

[https://www.repairfaq.org/sam/lasersaf.htm#saftoc](https://www.repairfaq.org/sam/lasersaf.htm#saftoc)

EDIT: I read it again and the crux of the matter seems to be this:

> The ability of the retina to dissipate heat is not dependent on the area > covered, but the periphery (circumference) of the exposed area! The blood > vessels are in the retina and not the sclera (the surface under the retina) > - it is the blood flow that dissipates the heat and so can only act on the > _edge_ not the middle of the exposed area. In circumference terms, the ratio > drops to 7 times. Furthermore because the larger spot is less efficient at > dissipating heat, the effective power delivered by the laser beam is only > about 2 times greater than that of the spot formed by the sun.

<comment><USER12> Ya. The cited math is very short, missing many environmental variables.

Lasers safety are also a small part of my job (military). I've got a pile of "pointers" that would blind in an instant, several in the watt-class (ie >1000mw). Anyone can buy 50,000mW laser "pointers" for a couple hundred bucks. I had everyone at work bring in their kid's laser "pointers" a few months ago. Almost every one of them tested above 5mW. 10-20mW was the norm. Assume that everything on ebay/amazon is above 5mW.

I refuse to stay in the same room as a working laser engraver/cutter. They are generally in the 2000-4000mW class, enough for even a slight reflection to instantly create a colour-specific blindspot.

<comment><USER13> Do you mean 2000 - 4000 watt, rather than milliwatt?

The one I work with is 4000 watt, capable of cutting up to 20mm carbon steel, 20mm stainless, and 12mm aluminium.

It's fully enclosed with dual electromechanical locks on each door, and an air extraction system with dust and collector.

<comment><USER12> That one isnt handheld. It isnt part of a 200$ machine being sold to highschools. Danger is always both technical and situational. I did mean mW. A mW-class laser is more than enough to do instant damage, damage that would put an end to a person's career as a pilot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I just love the old school look of this, but at the same time wish he had a YouTube channel to explain all this.

<comment><USER15> It would be completely against the point of the site.

I'm surprised it even bothers with HTTPS.

<comment><USER16> Agreed, I hate YouTube videos for instructional content. I can read much faster than the instructor can speak, I can ctrl+f, and webpages don't tend to pad their content to fill a 12-minute video for 10 seconds of actual content.

My only gripe is that the page's margins aren't a bit more narrow.

<comment><USER17> A lot of videos on Youtube have automatically generated transcripts available via a menu item in the three-dot menu. Once the transcript is opened, you can use your browser's search function to search it.

<comment><USER15> The problem is that (most) Youtube videos are not people reading a technical document. It is geared toward "speaking" meaning that a lot of information is not covered due to time constraints.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>