U.S. surveillance laws have proven ineffective at countering terrorism - <AUTHOR> https://theprivacyissue.com/government-surveillance/united-states-of-surveillance-us-history-spying <comment><USER2> The threat of terror gives power to the State. Power seeks more power. The State does not erode freedoms in support of safety. The State erodes freedoms to achieve more power. Terror is the excuse. It is the State's greatest tool.

<comment><USER3> The state is made up of individuals. Who are these individuals that are seeking power?

<comment><USER4> The entrenched political class and those in (inevitably self-serving) government positions. See Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Two reasons why people do stuff - one that sounds good and the real reason." \- JP Morgan

<comment><USER6> [https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/03/26/two- reasons/](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/03/26/two-reasons/)

<comment><USER7> TBH after reading that it still sounds like JP Morgan or Roosevelt is a safe attribution choice there. The particular structure of the sentence combined with "commonly used by" or "made popular by", etc is sufficient IMO. Quote sourcing is always a bit vague.

Or maybe just saying "as the commonly used phrase goes" is better.

<comment><USER6> I don't entirely disagree, but I feel like quotations are so often used in discourse without any context, and with a problematic sort of "pure" attribution to the genius of the person quoted. Quotations from Einstein or Lincoln are frequent examples of this, even where the quote is not misattributed.

Of course, blatant misattribution is also so dang common that it seems better to me in general to cite some kind of context or whatever. Plus (for me, a prior editor) use of quote marks typically implies verbatim, citable quotation, so that's a factor whether the attribution is "safe", as you suggest.

Not to criticize anything here at all; I just wanted to throw in some of that sweet sweet context!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The only measure that needed to be done after 9/11, and it's surprising why this very effective measure wasn't implemented before - securing access to the pilot's cabin. Everything else is overreaction cause by power grabbing by "security agencies" and politicians trying to score. The whole security system of today's world (especially in flying) is one pointless thing after another, holding on the a fear of "what if".

<comment><USER9> Doesn't help when it's a pilot who wants to crash the plane. Further, that makes it impossible for anyone to intervene in that case.

<comment><USER10> Screening of pilots for various issues, mental and performance wise, has increased substantially since 9/11 as well.

<comment><USER11> Fuck no it hasn't...

The FAA still systematically pulls medicals for mental health issues rather than allowing treatment. If your livelihood and a couple hundred thousand dollars of debt depend on it, you'll conceal extreme depression just fine. Pilots are terrified of getting help and an absurd proportion of the community is suffering from depression as a result.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > The Privacy Issue is brought to you by the team behind IVPN. Get to know > IVPN's mission and download the app to browse privately and securely.

Ugh. It's a fine article, but I worry the VPN industry's constant mis-selling of services under the banner of privacy will eventually taint the message.

<comment><USER13> What is the mis-selling exactly? Doesn't seem to me that they're saying using their VPN will make you impenetrable to dedicated actors with nation-state resources. VPNs do help maintain one small level of privacy (namely from your ISP), and if you're using one it's a good bet you'll be interested in other privacy concerns too.

There are a lot of VPNs with really bogus claims on their websites but I didn't notice anything appalling about this.

<comment><USER14> I don't have the time right now to do this, but someone with it (and probably more technical experience than me in that field) should write up a no BS guise to what these popular VPN services really are offering. It's been hard, over the last couple months especially it seems, to wade through all the new products these companies are constantly dropping in this space.

<comment><USER15> Tom Scott recently made an video [0] you might be interested in. It's well worth the seven and a half minutes to watch it, IMO.

> _I tried to write a more honest VPN commercial. The sponsor wasn 't happy > about it._

[0]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVDQEoe6ZWY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVDQEoe6ZWY)

<comment><USER14> Thanks for this

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Law enforcement, tasked with catching the baddies, always wants more ability to complete their task: more surveillance, more laws, and more firepower. That's as it should be.

The problem is the lack of heavy-weight counter-balance, always demanding more privacy, fewer laws, and less firepower. The best we've got is "the status quo" and a few non-profits (that thankfully are punching way above their weight class).

Without such a counterbalancing agency, each small gain by law enforcement rarely reverts, so rather than oscillating between a bit too much freedom and a bit too much policing we have an arrow moving us steadily toward a police state.

<comment><USER17> Don't forget systemic pressure to make "more baddies"!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> But someone like William Barr digs the surveillance state quite a lot. It's the kind of people we had in mind when we created it.

</comment><comment><USER19> Surveillance is easy when all our communications are going through centralized services. Just another side effect of centralization.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm not sure what the alternative is. Without some form of surveillance, you're never going to catch terrorists or other bad actors. You do, however, need to make sure there are strong checks and balances in place to ensure that people don't use it for nefarious purposes or for personal gain.

<comment><USER21> The structure of your statement has problems not related to the topic at all. When you take something away that never (or rarely) happens, how do you establish causality?

Suppose I told you that taking bazookas away from people that live in the city prevents bear attacks? You might say that there aren't bear attacks in the city anyway, which would be true, but you couldn't prove it one way or another. Who knows, maybe there would have been one bear attack if people ran around with bazookas shooting up the nearby forest.

Now add in the complexity that terrorism is more like a rate than a yes/no question. What if I told you that taking away bazookas in the city reduced the crime rate? Well, the crime rate in many cities _has_ decreased, but how are those two related? Once again, we're left with a statement that might sound good to some and bad to others -- and no way to reasonably discuss it.

The only thing we can say with certainty is that no matter what we do, terrorism will continue exist. We can never eliminate it no matter how hard we try. So unless we want each new terrorist act to wreak havoc with massive changes on our societies, we're really talking about trade-offs here. How much stuff do you want to give away for a 50% reduction in terrorism? And once you come up with that answer, how would you know if your giving those things actually was the thing that reduced it?

It's one thing when a pubic discussion has reasonable people talking about the various sides. It's another thing entirely when we start injecting these semantic landmines into our conversations. I'm not saying you're wrong or right; I'm saying there is no way to know.

<comment><USER22> I agree with your general thesis. The "And once you come up with that answer, how would you know if your giving those things actually was the thing that reduced it?" seems "simple" enough in that it would result in a number of arrests involving the methodology of surveillance in question. You couldn't say they wouldn't have been caught otherwise but you could at least say "X has produced Y for these cases." no?

<comment><USER23> No. Because 1) X itself may enable Y which might not otherwise have occurred and 2) since resources are finite doing X to yield Y means that you couldn't do Z instead which you might value more than whatever utility you got from Y.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> As designed.

<comment><USER25> Present the threat. Present the solution. Rinse. Repeat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Is there any country which hasn't had this result? I didn't know anyone who was fond of their own countries efforts.

<comment><USER16> Germany seems to be moving in the other direction. I assume they can do this because unlike the US, Germans can point to their own history with secret police and authoritarian states as cautionary tales.

Not that other countries couldn't also look to Germany's example, but that would require trans-national empathy so LOLno.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Surveillance is not about security!

It's about control.

Security is just how it's sold to the public, the politicians, etc.

</comment><comment><USER28> Today we hide behind computers and algorithms to do the "dirty job"

</comment><comment><USER29> How can you prove that clandestine operations do or do not help? If it goes well, no one will ever know. If it fails, it's either covered up or is a huge scandal. It seems contrary to the entire idea of cover intelligence to claim success or failure.

<comment><USER30> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_States...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_States#Recent_trends)

This article links to a report that gives a number for terror incidents and how many were foiled.

You can see a map here: [https://www.typeinvestigations.org/domesticterror/](https://www.typeinvestigations.org/domesticterror/) which talks about the incident, and in the case of foiled incidents, links to something like court proceedings. This doesn't necessarily show clandestine operations led to foiling them vs regular police work, though...

<comment><USER29> Those are publicly known cases and just normal counter terrorism investigations. This isn't applicable to clandestine US surveillance as seen in the FISA courts. FISA courts very much fall into "US surveillance" law but are kept secret.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I remind readers that the Novichok assasins were identified via CCTV sureillance monitored by Government authorities.

<comment><USER32> And I remind readers that Russia warned us about the Boston Bombers and we ignored them. One success does not equal success at all things.

<comment><USER31> touché

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> > "U.S. surveillance laws failed to counter terrorism"

> "The patchwork of U.S. surveillance laws has proven ineffective at > countering terrorism"

Where is the proof? I can not find it in the article.

<comment><USER34> Intel work is like IT; if you're doing it right, nobody knows you're doing anything at all.

<comment><USER35> The bar is higher when you do wetworks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Perhaps the surveillance state was never meant to stop terrorists, but to trap innocents into an inescapable dragnet.

</comment><comment><USER37> Most terrorists in the US happen to be white (and really just because it's the majority race), but the media and government fail to use the term "terrorist" if they are white. That in turn results in them being busy racially profiling against colored people and foreign nationals and overlooking a lot of culprits.

Also, nobody is born a terrorist. They're overly fixated on catching terrorists instead of preventing terrorism altogether. Domestic crime, including terrorism, is the result of a broken education system. If you want to fix domestic terrorism, fix education, fix mental health, fix life in general for US citizens, and a lot of problems will quite literally magically disappear.

\- Number of gun deaths in the US in 2019: 15381

\- Number of mass shooting incidents in the US in 2019: 434

\- Number of deaths actually reported as being due to "terrorists" in the US in 2019: 0

<comment><USER38> Most terrorists in the world happen to be brown (and really just because it's the majority race).

<comment><USER37> That's probably true. However the US government should really be putting more effort into protecting its own residents at home, in terms of the most likely actual threats. Calling all forms of terror "terror", regardless of the color of the culprit, is probably a good first step.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Great informative article, but at times the posing is naive or supporting a certain narrative.

For instance: The government goes after Islamic terrorists and Mexican illegal immigrants. So what to complain about? Mix cause and effect to pose the illegal immigrants as targeting based on race. Or pose the extremist religious as vulnerable Muslims, targeted on religion. Remove their status as far away from the cold-hard reality, so you can claim racism and prejudice and use that to cripple surveillance. But the suspect is a "citizen"! All weasel words to stay away from the real dirt. Let's go after the atheists for counter terrorism, so we don't discriminate in the eyes of the ACLU...

Then the "ineffective against terrorism"-claim. This can't be supported, because no clear numbers/cases are known. Then conflate laws against terrorism with actual actions against terrorism: Sure, no law directly contributed against countering terrorists, but the surveillance certainly did. Thanks NSA for passing along information to my country many times, so we could capture really dangerous people before they could strike.

Anti-terrorism is also a red herring for surveillance efficiency. Surveillance predominantly used for other national security purposes, such as counter intelligence, foreign intelligence, border safety, crime fighting, and even economic espionage.

Sure, posing any immigrant as a bad hombre, potential MS-13 gang member, selling your children fentanyl-laced drugs, is ridiculous. But the other side of that same coin is posing bad people as vulnerable undocumented citizens who are being targeted on race. It does not do justice to the situation on the ground.

<comment><USER40> > far away from the cold-hard reality

The cold-hard reality is that states who have established a system of domestic surveillance have sent millions of their own citizens to crematoriums.

Sane nations have destroyed your political faction back in sixties.

Pro-communist, race chauvinists who look up to Mao for inspiration were thrown in the garbage bin of history, and thank god for that.

Very fortunately, America of today is not Cambodia, nor Laos, and you all have to thank Rockefeller commission for grinding the legacy of Allen Dullest to dust

<comment><USER39> You are using the same tactic I described: State surveillance has the potential to turn us all into Nazi's, so state surveillance is inherently bad. How can I ever hope to support the good of state surveillance for national security when I have to defend the Stasi? I can't. You (God)win.

It is intellectually dishonest to pose the effort of governments to combat illegal immigration as a targeting of people based on race. It is a sensitivity trap that shuts down our rational faculties. Yes... all religious extremists are also religious. Most immigrants have a different race. Yes, being an undocumented immigrant makes you vulnerable. But deserving of coddling, because they happen to also share a protected variable? No.</comment></comment></comment>


The Sad State of Web Development - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@wob/the-sad-state-of-web-development-1603a861d29f#.yj5i3eb2d <comment><USER2> Dare I say that I do web dev in C# and ASP.NET MVC and think it's great...?

Whenever I think that I need to branch out from the MS stack, articles like this make me think "nah, happy using what I'm using".

<comment><AUTHOR> Honestly I think you're right on the money! If you're happy and productive in your current workflow, there's no shame regardless of technology choice. The tendency to bandwagon every latest craze, is what lead to this mess in the first place.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Honestly, why are there so many "how to learn to program" asks? - <AUTHOR>

I'm genuinely curious why there are consistently at least 3-4 new questions about how to start programming or what language to start with, etc. etc.<p>Do you think the askers are following through, and actually learning based off of the recommendations?  Is it a band-wagon sort of thing?  Is there any way to compile the information in one place and point askers towards that? <comment><USER2> This isn't a new problem.

        Do you think the askers are following through, and
        actually learning based off of the recommendations?

Some do, but most do not.

        Is there any way to compile the information in one
        place and point askers towards that?

This has been done so many times over so many years that there's a plethora of pages out there (<http://www.google.com/search?q=learn+how+to+program>), some current and others in various stages of decomposition.

A truly motivated individual is likely to realize that this question is Googleable and will find _tons_ of information. That leaves us with the occasional capable and motivated person asking for some guidance that HN could uniquely provide, and the rest of such questions are less worthy, IMO.

Making a nice resource, perhaps with some HN flavored info, would be really great were it to be referenced. The best case to me would be that "how to learn programming" posts would get no up votes and a single comment linking the resource. Or something along those lines.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sure it's not new, it just seems to me to be flaring up recently.

 _A truly motivated individual is likely to realize that this question is Googleable and will find tons of information._

Agreed. And there are many other HN-related routes too - I've had great responses asking questions of HNOfficeHours individuals.

 _Making a nice resource, perhaps with some HN flavored info, would be really great were it to be referenced._

Do you think a compilation would be referenced enough to make it worthwhile? Sounds like a valuable side project if it would actually be used.

<comment><USER2> The referencing (i.e., the social interaction) is always that hard part. Many resources are already available, so making one more (even HN specific) doesn't solve anything. If the new resource were decent then it _would_ get referenced, I think. And that may make it worthwhile in itself. But I'm doubt it will do anything about the normal ebb and flow of "learning to program" posts and replies.

Some sites give links to such info when a user signs up, have always visible links in a sidebar, etc., and people _still_ ask, and just as often.

So I think dealing with this is like doing laundry: however well you approach the task and whatever resources you throw at it, it will need doing again in a few days, and a few days after that, forever. Realizing that, you can make the task as pleasurable and efficient as possible, but it will always be a recurring task.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think that the main reason that this question comes up so often (only to have it's answers essentially ignored) is because, "How do I learn how to program?" isn't what they really want to know. Programming, in and of itself doesn't take much to learn. A person with average intelligence can learn the syntax and basic idea of a language in a day.

I believe the question they really want an answer to is, "How do programs work?".

If you really boil down the initial appeal of programming, it isn't Python/C/PHP/Ruby, it's learning how to make the things that those languages are associated with. People are fascinated by programs that can sync files between computers (dropbox/Python), share pictures on the internet (facebook/PHP), or cause your computer to run (Linux/C).

I think the best way to help somebody with this question is to find out what it is about software that fascinates them, then suggest a language/framework that facilitates that.

</comment><comment><USER4> There are so many "How do I learn to program?" questions because:

1\. Asking the question on HN is a hell of a lot less painful than actually sitting down to learn to program.

2\. Reading the answers feels a hell of a lot more like progress than eight lines of code that still doesn't work after four hours.

3\. Programmers are more willing to answer "How do I learn to program?" questions than cellists are willing to answer "How do I learn to play the cello?" questions.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think you see this for the same reason you see people endlessly debating/discussing version control systems, GTD, IDEs, OSes, keyboards, mice, browsers, etc. etc. etc. They're all just tools, and yet we (myself included) spend far too much time talking about them, and not nearly enough time using them. True, some of the discussion is merited and is rooted in useful thought about real differences between tools, but much of it is over analyzing.

I think much of this could actually be rooted in fear, which drives procrastination in lots of people - more than most of us realize, I think. Merlin Mann's gave a great talk on fear: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lk0hSeQ5s_k>

The key is to understand that fear isn't going to go away completely, and to still keep doing, even though you're scared.

Enough talk. I'm going to go build something now.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think part of it is that everybody has their own opinion of where others should start. For example, some people think that new programmers should start low-level (such as with C) and learn how memory management works; others think that a higher-level language (such as Java) is better and abstracts away all of the things that people can learn later. And of course, there's also web app programming, which brings in another curve

<comment><AUTHOR> So maybe a resource of compiled answers could offer a flow-chart of differing opinions?

IE if you want to learn this, start here. If you think this is more important, start here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Myself, I want to learn basic programming to build stuff. Being just a designer, limited to front end – is limiting. I would think the same goes for some programmers, wanting to learn user experience and interface design. I think we'll see more people knowing how to build things, code and design. Like Shaun Inman.

</comment><comment><USER8> My question is, why are so many people upvoting these threads? People should be encouraged to use Google as their first resource before posting questions on Hacker News. Even if you haven't been here long, you could probably guess that such a basic question has likely been asked before.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm betting a lot of them are people who have an idea and want to build it instead of either hiring someone or trying to find a tech co-founder.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's a good way to get a lot of karma? People don't think to do a google search?

</comment><comment><USER11> Person asking such question wants to validate he learned it right way or not.

</comment><comment><USER12> Personally, I believe they're trolling.

</comment><comment><USER13> I left one just a second ago</comment>


BufferApp Hacked - <AUTHOR>

Around 2pm EST Buffer users started noticing a weightloss post to their social media accounts through the Buffer App. Buffer has announced they were hacked, and are investigating: https://twitter.com/buffer/status/394176619122008064 <comment><USER2> From the email I got,

All updates have been paused.

Passwords and payment information have NOT been compromised.

\--

It would be sorted out in a bit.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why is this in "ask" filter?</comment>


Wikipedia processing. PyPy vs CPython benchmark - robert-zaremba http://rz.scale-it.pl/2013/02/18/wikipedia_processing._PyPy_vs_CPython_benchmark.html What PyPy can do for Wikipedia processing tasks? Speedup! <comment><AUTHOR> Can I tangentially point out without much connection to this benchmark more than any of the others recently, that one of the great things about PyPy is that if you have a thing and you run it on PyPy, you can usually pop in the IRC channel and often get even _more_ tips on how to tune it to be even faster?

There are the simple tips like "write everything in Python where possible, don't use C extensions" like the OP noticed, but even after you've made the decision on using PyPy there are often specific performance characteristics of the PyPy implementation that can be really helpful to keep in mind, and it's a great resource to try and take advantage of (human interaction with PyPy developers like fijal who care about making things fast).

<comment><USER2> Can you give an example of a tip that would speed a particular program up? Does PyPy have a lot of knobs to tune?

CPython doesn't seem to have that many knobs... You can tune some settings in GC, and maybe the GIL acquiring interval, but it doesn't seem to produce speedups in most programs.

<comment><USER3> PyPy does have a few knobs to tune, but they're not very often used (they're nicely documented, however mostly in the source code, I'll try to pull say GC parameters more prominently in the docs).

However, the way you _write_ python code can be tuned a lot. This is actually, at least to an extend, our failure. JIT can make things _really_ fast, but can get confused in places. We're trying to eliminate them as we go, but it can't be always done.

Generators vs list comprehensions. Not using sys._getframe, sys.exc_info, etc. not relying too much on dynamism like passing very general __kwargs and *args, the list goes on.

Jitviewer can be a lot of help, but it's a bit buggy and too low level to be seriously recommended.

<comment><USER4> > Generators vs list comprehensions

I'm a bit confused. Which one is faster?

<comment> robert-zaremba list comprehensions of course!

<comment><USER5> The exclamation led me to believe you were being facetious, but <https://bitbucket.org/pypy/pypy/wiki/JitFriendliness> agrees with you:

"As of now (Feb 2011) generators are usually slower than corresponding code not using generators. Same goes for generator expressions. For most cases using list comprehension is faster."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> >Moreover PyPy doesn't kill my CPU as CPython does so in a meantime I could normally use my laptop

You're not supposed to "use your laptop" during a benchmark.

<comment><USER7> Your advice is good in general. However, note the OP is reporting user time (probably as shown by the "time" command). This time is the total CPU time used by the process. It's not measuring how much wall clock time it took to complete or the time used to complete involved IO operations. I think trusting that number should be fine in this case.

<comment><USER8> It can cause problems with competing for cache space, which could have large effects on CPU time.

<comment><USER7> You're right and I stand corrected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great to see real world use cases, and very encouraging to see PyPy performing so well. I'll definitely be trying it on my future compute-intensive projects.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm reminded of when I first started following the PyPy project, and I thought it would be impressive if they could ever get close to CPython's speed. They've done something truly amazing.

I hope the python community someday coalesces around a single version. I generally can't take advantage of all their awesome work because the libraries I depend on (e.g. pandas) won't run in pypy.

</comment><comment><USER11> I wonder what would happen if you would toss a LLVM solution at it :) Seems like some are working on it according to google. No joy yet though.

<comment><USER12> I believe you're referring to the Unladden Swallow project, which unfortunately is "pining for fjords". The project didn't make the progress expected and folded.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unladen_Swallow>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> An optimisation path available to CPython is to put your inner loops into a C Extension. I think a benchmark with this would be interesting.

<comment><USER3> except it's work. and it's not that good usually because you end up manipulating Python objects anyway. It doesn't really work for anything that can't be represented as a tight semi-autonomous C code with limited connection to Python code. And then you usually can't run it on PyPy, which might or might not be an issue.

<comment><USER6> Unless that work was already done and available to you (lxml).

<comment><USER3> See comments on the blog. Majority of work is not in xml parsing so lxml does not help (and you're crippled that the rest of the code does not run as fast).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Jobs makes a valid point: intermediate layers hinder progress of the platform - <AUTHOR> http://www.stevenwei.com/2010/04/11/jobs-makes-a-valid-point-intermediate-layers-hinder-the-progress-of-the-platform/

<comment><USER2> The crux of the article is this quote:

"Vendors with slow release cycles (I'm looking at you Adobe) end up creating an additional delay before developers on their platform can take advantage of the latest and greatest features from Apple. This is no good if Apple wants to be on the cutting edge."

The author makes the common mistake of assuming a static market, in which developers on the intermediary platform are permanently fixed to that platform. In a fluid app market, what is the likelihood that those intermediary developers will stay loyal to their platform while developers on Apple's platform eat their lunch?

Even if Apple didn't have a vendetta against Adobe, they would have a strong interest in preventing a flood of ported apps that, regardless of the quality, they simply aren't equipped to deal with given the current App Store workflow.

<comment><AUTHOR> "The author makes the common mistake of assuming a static market, in which developers on the intermediary platform are permanently fixed to that platform. In a fluid app market, what is the likelihood that those intermediary developers will stay loyal to their platform while developers on Apple's platform eat their lunch?"

I would say it's pretty high, because if they wanted to learn Objective-C and get on the iPhone platform, they already could have. The exact reason so many Flash developers are pissed about this is because they want to use their existing skillsets on the iPhone platform, but _can't_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Job's point may be correct, but it is fairly obvious to even a casual observer this is not the real motivation for Apple's actions. From the get-go, Apple has done whatever it can to prevent Flash from getting on the iPhone. The purpose, of course, is to keep development and apps locked into that platform, giving Apple a major competitive advantage.

I don't see much use in all this over-analytical second guessing.

<comment><USER4> I think the reason there has been so much analysis is that not having Flash on the iPhone affects the end user dramatically, and Apple is all about user experience. If Apple wanted to "keep development and apps locked in that platform", they could do so with their app store and still show Flash content on the browser, in theory, to keep the end user happy. The meta-argument here is twofold, really: 1) Does Apple have the "right", as a business, to ban cross-compilers, which can be very efficient for developers and not necessary lower coding standards, and 2) Does this represent a reckoning for Flash, which has always been CPU-intensive at its own peril, when the GPU was the proper place for its vector calculations, and will Flash/Adobe lose marketshare and CS5 purchases as a result?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Even so, there's a difference between disallowing frameworks and disallowing bindings to other languages. Bindings are relatively simple to keep up to date.

I find it difficult to believe Apple would add a language feature to C/Objective-C/C++ that wouldn't essentially already exist in Java/Python/Haskell/etc. Not because Apple wouldn't be willing to do it, but because there aren't any game-changing language features waiting to be incorporated into modern programming languages. Blocks already exist in most languages as (more powerful) closures.

<comment><USER4> Bindings in themselves might be relatively simple to keep up to date, but binding documentation, error handling, etc, are not. Take a look at the Python bindings for Clutter (C graphics library w/Linux roots). Clutter is sponsored by Intel and well-maintained, and yet the Python bindings are several versions behind and the documentation is a mess. In a consistently evolving language and/or framework, every linkage creates delays.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This argument only really flies in my mind if you implicitly accept that Apple is the Font of All Features, and there are No Features but Apple's. If I have an iPhone problem best solved by Erlang, I'm going to be twiddling my fingers for a very long time; there's nothing like it when you need it, and it will be a very long time before they offer anything remotely resembling it if we have to wait for an Apple-Blessed version of the features. (Remember, Erlang is way more than just "green threads", there's a lot of library support, cross- process communication, OTP, etc. Nothing I know truly matches it, few things (but not zero) come close.)

After all, the entire reason that someone wants to use these other languages or frameworks is that they offer features Apple doesn't.

It's still naked self-interest by Apple at the expense of its developers. Which they are welcome to. Frankly, if you knew the history of Apple the company you shouldn't be surprised when they choose to do something in their interest at your active expense; they have a _long_ history of this.</comment>


Ask HN: Are you using GPU databases, what has your experience been? - <AUTHOR> eg: Mapd, brytlyt , blazingdb, Kinetica ect <comment><USER2> Only for hobby projects, nothing running in production at scale. There's some talks here at CMU for hardware accelerated databases (gpu and fpga/asic) if interested with some good q&a [https://db.cs.cmu.edu/seminar2018/](https://db.cs.cmu.edu/seminar2018/)

<comment><AUTHOR> those videos are what led me to this question :)</comment></comment>


What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic - b-man http://dlc.sun.com/pdf/800-7895/800-7895.pdf [pdf]

<comment><AUTHOR> Url seems to have an error. It should be : <http://dlc.sun.com/pdf/800-7895/800-7895.pdf>

<comment> b-man Yup, marked the pdf in the wrong place. Too late to edit it though.</comment></comment>


Show HN: 21st Century Friendship Bracelet for Watch - <AUTHOR> http://glancd.io/tugether2?s=hn <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN. This is my second experiment trying to find interesting and novel ways to communicate using wearable devices.

My wife and I use this to tell each other how our days are going, remind each other of things, and send silly little mini messages to each other. Has been fun.

Let me know what you think.

</comment><comment><USER2> In the submitted title: am I supposed to see something at Unicode codepoint U+F8FF (Private Use Area)? (Right now I see [block with F8FF]Watch.)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> What client/OS are you seeing that on? It's the Apple logo's unicode character code I suppose.

<comment><USER2> Linux. Ah I see what happened. There is no such thing an Apple logo Unicode character. Whatever sits in the Private Use Area is only defined within the context of a specific font. You are using a font that has Apple's logo in it on that position. You may want to avoid using it in normal text.

This page explains it neatly:

[http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~fine/OSX/unicode_apple_logo.html](http://hea- www.harvard.edu/~fine/OSX/unicode_apple_logo.html)</comment></comment>


Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Beta - <AUTHOR> https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/red-hat-enterprise-linux-81-beta-now-available <comment><USER2> 8.1.. perhaps reading the page it points to?</comment>


New explanation for middle-age weight gain - <AUTHOR> https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2017/05/09/muscle-enzyme-explains-weight-gain-in-middle-age/ <comment><USER2> PSA: Every legitimate long term study of non surgical weight loss shows that it doesn't happen for the vast, vast majority of people.

1) ["In controlled settings, participants who remain in weight loss programs usually lose approximately 10% of their weight. However, one third to two thirds of the weight is regained within 1 year, and almost all is regained within 5 years. "]([http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1580453](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1580453))

2) Giant meta study of long term weight loss: ["Five years after completing structured weight-loss programs, the average individual maintained a weight loss of >3% of initial body weight."]([http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/74/5/579.full](http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/74/5/579.full))

3) Less Scientific: [Weight Watcher's Failure - "about two out of a thousand Weight Watchers participants who reached goal weight stayed there for more than five years."]([https://fatfu.wordpress.com/2008/01/24/weight- watchers/](https://fatfu.wordpress.com/2008/01/24/weight-watchers/))

4) [The reason why it's impossible seems to be that although calories in < calories out works, the body of a fat person makes it extremely difficult psychologically to eat less.]([http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazine/tara-parker- pope-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazine/tara-parker-pope-fat- trap.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all)) This is borne out by the above data.

5) [The only thing that does seem to work in the long term is gastric surgery.]([http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1421028/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1421028/))

Moreover, you won't find any reputable study on the web where the average person lost 10%+ of their body weight and kept it off for five years. Not even one.

The study people sometimes bring up is the national weight control registry. But it is a heavily self selected group of people who have already lost significant weight before joining - therefore weeding out most of the failure rate. And even then, only 20% of their audience lost over 10% of their initial body weight and kept it off for one year.

<comment><USER3> So, how do those of us that manage it do it. Is it really is exceedingly rare, is it even useful studying us? According to weight watchers me and one other person out of the thousand did it. Everyone else failed. (I cut 40% weight, 12 years later, kept 25% (or more!) body fat from original cut).

At a high level I radicalized my life style. I have ups and downs, but I be and a runner and a lifter and I have run hundreds of miles e every year since. It was complete and sort of stark, but I endured.

My theory as to why people fail -- There is no such thing as will power. Everyone thinks there is and that they aren't strong enough and that is why they failed. I think in the very short term there is will power. Hours for most. Once your higher level thinking is overrun you lose.

My hand wavy theory based on my experience and knowledge; you have to believe in something with enough intensity that your brain you can't talk to gets on board and accepts its reality. You have to fight it and use tricks to move around out of sight to where the higher level you gets what it wants. This is not a linear path.

<comment><USER4> > There is no such thing as will power.

There is, but most people don't understand how it works. According to recent neurological studies, it's a lot like a muscle. In the long term, you exercise it and it gets stronger. In the short term - and this is the important part - it can become depleted. If your work requires a lot of will power (including focus, discipline, initiative) then you'll have little left for other parts of your life.

This is really what I think a lot of people mean when they say they come home tired. They're not physically tired, they're not low on energy, but they are low on _will_. Therefore they tend to settle for the easy or familiar, such as watching Netflix instead of exercising or eating junk instead of cooking real food. I can often feel the pull myself, but the fact that I understand and recognize what's happening helps me resist/manage it.

<comment><USER5> And as with any mental model there are potential pitfalls such as when you tell yourself your willpower has been depleted. You then have an excuse to slack off [http://www.nirandfar.com/2016/11/the-way-you-think-about- wil...](http://www.nirandfar.com/2016/11/the-way-you-think-about-willpower-is- hurting-you.html). I agree it's hard to make the right choice when your tired, but the way you think about it will also affect your behavior.

<comment><USER3> It is easiest for me to just pretend it does not exist. I guess it is sort of philosophical (again). When there is no will, decisions are made using a different system of values and alignment with goals. I don't need "will power" when my environment pushes me in the right direction and the choices, the ones I want are naturally aligned with multiple other aspects of my life and less healthy or negative choices are far out of alignment with that. It requires constantly remembering, setting, and working towards those goals (fitness, life, and other).

We obviously aren't just subject to the whims of our environment, we make choices and can decide things, but after a lot of reading on AI / neuroscience, and just being alive longer I am becoming convinced the environment and your perception of it is the single biggest factor. It goes beyond happiness toward fundamental outlook and beliefs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well this could end up being a sort of devil's bargain.

Lower weight, better athletic performance, but increased DNA damage leading to other problems (I'd guess cancer being high up on that list).

<comment><USER7> "...treatment with DNA-PK inhibitor protects against aging-associated decline in metabolism and physical fitness without increasing DSBs [double-strand breaks]... The most likely explanation for this paradox is that the ... DNA-PK inhibitor, like most inhibitor drugs, is a partial inhibitor at physiological doses. The residual DNA-PK activity may be sufficient to protect against the level of DNA DSBs generated naturally."

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder how this "middle age weight" gain interacts with practices such as intermittent fasting, keto diet, 1-meal a day. These practices impact metabolism.

I also wonder if FDA recommendations of calories per days should be split not just by sex, but also by age.

<comment><USER9> The FDA recommendations are mostly bogus since activity level and base metabolic rate differ enough between otherwise normal people to make some people fat on the recommended amount of calories and others too skinny.

<comment><USER10> Ignoring the fact that the FDA already says its recommendations are for an average person, it doesn't matter because people don't track calories anyway. Generally people eat WAY too much for their sedentary lifestyles.

<comment><USER9> I have a hunch that "the average person" doesn't exist when it comes to nutrition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I predict plenty of knee-jerk "We've found the fountain of youth" reactions to this. I instead think doctors should tread carefully here. This enzyme is present for a reason. While eliminating it may "cure" certain ills it may cause others (like cancer).

<comment><USER12> >This enzyme is present for a reason.

It _might_ be. There is no way to know whether it is there for a (good) reason or not. Evolution doesn't work that way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is potentially about more than weight gain. The DNA-PK-mediated pathway they've discovered looks an awful lot like something you'd design to control senescence.

The DNA-PK inhibitor used, NU7441, is orally active and the press release even calls it drug-like. The human-equivalent dose based on bodyweight is about 3g/day (three pills worth). The actual HED is probably smaller. Currently very expensive.[1]

1 [http://www.selleckchem.com/products/nu7441.html](http://www.selleckchem.com/products/nu7441.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> "While we await the results, the best course to help fight that middle-age spread hasn't changed. Eat right and follow an exercise plan that you know you can stick to—it will make you feel better. Take it from me, a guy who decided eight years ago that it was time to shape up, stopped eating honey buns, got into a regular exercise program with a trainer to keep me accountable, and lost those 30 pounds. You can do it, even without a DNA-PK inhibitor!"

I'm glad the article finished with the above paragraph because while the study is interesting, Americans don't seem to have unique physical traits that cause them to gain weight, we just don't have healthy habits. I wonder what the weight gain in the same time period is in different regions of the world

<comment><USER14> We have pretty successfully engineered almost all physical activity out of the normal daily life of a middle-aged suburban American, who move from bed to car seat to desk chair to car seat to couch to bed with as little walking as possible in between.

Most other societies make walking (including to and from public transit) and bicycling much bigger parts of their transportation landscape, rather than designing new communities to make driving as easy as possible and other means of transportation impossible, either intentionally or implicitly.

<comment><USER15> I work from home, so it's doubly bad for me - I don't even have to walk to a car, just the couple steps from bed to my office.

I went to Boston for Red Hat Summit last week and it amazed me just how exhausted I was after all the walking to/from the train stations and around the convention. I used to bike every day to/from work when I was just a couple years younger and never felt as sore and tired as I did every day during the event. I really need to start getting out more, even just walking to the coffee shop 1/4 mile away on occasion and working from there.

<comment><USER16> If it's practical for you, consider getting a dog. Dogs need to be exercised every day so it forces you to get out and walk or run at least a couple miles every day. And by "dog" I mean a real dog, not some fragile inbred abomination that can't handle a run around the block.

<comment><USER17> And don't have a yard, or if you do, don't allow letting the dog into the yard be a stand in for taking the dog for a walk. Obviously that defeats the point for you, but it also doesn't do the dog any favours either.

My large inbred abomination (Bernese Mountain Dog, cute, cuddly, overbred) has never lived anywhere with a yard, so gets real walks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Apparently vanillins are DNA-PK inhibitors. Maybe an extra shot of vanilla extract in my morning coffee and I'll start losing weight??

</comment><comment><USER19> getting loose on your diet and eating all sorts of crap without abandon or exercise to burn it off explains middle-age weight gain

</comment><comment><USER20> While there are many "unfair" variables at play, your weight is one of the few parameters you can control in your life. You won't get more hair, rich parents or strong health. You can't get taller, smarter or good at writing comments. But you can always decide not to be overweight, or even be in good shape. (but being an asshole fet shamer is also a decision)

<comment><USER21> Why is other peoples weight so important for you? You choose to spend time in gym focusing about how you look like instead of doing something useful, learning new things or working or simply spending time with your children.

Serious, despite all stereotypes, male dominated tech site seems to put way more importance on look and talks way more about dieting then female dominated sites I frequent. When did the switch happened and dudes started to be like that?

<comment><USER22> There are very few things in my life that are as productive as the gym. It helps my memory, my mental well being, my cognition and my health. I'm unsure of why you don't consider exercise to be useful. Can you explain? Below I have included a quote and link to a study that looks into exercises effects on cognition. As for people's zealousness for exercise on this site, I think its a result of people wanting to help others. For many, getting into exercise was the single best decision they felt they've made in their life. And since almost anyone can make that change, and do it for free, they're trying to spread the news. If I spend the time to recommend something as small and inconsequential as an application to someone, it seems absurd that I wouldn't recommend something like exercise. But that's just my two cents

"The evidence accumulated so far indicates that exercise is a strong promoter of cognitive health in humans. "

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3951958/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3951958/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> insulin imbalance will also cause weight gain.

<comment><USER24> doesn't override CICO

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Wait, so it's not my constant over-indulgence in free office snacks that did it?

</comment><comment><USER26> > While the enzyme is known for its role in DNA repair, their studies show it > also slows down metabolism, making it more difficult to burn fat.

Already known factor and a completely misleading sentence. All this means is that you have to consume less to get the same results. We already knew that metabolism slows down as you age. It's a factor in BMR (base metabolic rate) TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) calculation.

Sadly, articles like this mostly give overweight people another excuse, rather than a greater understanding of their predicament.

<comment><USER27> You're misreading this. The novel claim isn't that metabolism slows down during middle age, but that DNA-PK levels increase during middle age and the enzyme negatively effects metabolism.

<comment><USER28> In other words it is an explanation, but not an excuse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It isn't really a new explanation, the explanation is still "your metabolism slows and you can't eat like you're 22 anymore". It's a tough adjustment to make and I'm not even that old yet. The best thing I've found that actually works is a mostly plant-based diet.

<comment><USER30> > _It isn 't really a new explanation, the explanation is still "your > metabolism slows and you can't eat like you're 22 anymore"_

The new part is identifying the cause and specific enzyme etc.

As you put it its an almost tautological description of the situation, which is not what the article is about.</comment></comment>


Corel confirms it has acquired virtualization specialist Parallels - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/20/corel-confirms-acquisition-of-parallels/ <comment><USER2> Corel still exists?! Good for them!

<comment><USER3> One of the first Linux distributions I tried (after the venerable Slackware) was the short-lived Corel Linux way back in 1999 or thereabouts.

<comment><USER4> I installed Corel Linux on the family computer when I was 13. It was my first Linux distribution. Someone from school got the disc out of a magazine if I remember correctly.

I couldn't get the modem to work and the installer didn't add a boot option for the Windows 98 partition (LILO bootloader), so my family was understandably pretty pissed off. I ended up figuring out how to restore the Windows MBR, and eventually figured out how to dual boot.

To this day, when I mention Corel Linux was my first Linux distribution people tend to think I'm confused since "Corel makes graphics software, not Linux distributions!"

<comment><USER3> Probably you had one of those 'winmodem' monstrosities that were prevalent at the time. I experienced similar problems.

<comment><USER5> There's nothing inherently wrong with a software modem. It's just a different way of implementing the hardware. Some software modems were effectively programmable DSPs, almost like a software defined radio for a wired connection.

I doubt they ever claimed Linux driver support so it's not their fault people weren't able to get them working.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Like Kaspersky, parallels is Russian software and on the list of "domestic" software by the Russian government. Parallels has been erasing references to its Russian roots since the hackergate began. Trying to avoid Kaspersky fate and escape sanctions and bans especially when US federal funding is involved? It is not clear who is buying what in this case.

<comment><USER7> Just wait until the Americans figure out that JetBrains is basically soviet technology!

<comment><USER8> What?

<comment><USER9> JetBrains is registered as a Czech company but is basically Russian: most of its employees are (were?) russian, and it's two main offices are in Russia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "From our highly complementary product portfolios to our shared business models and strategies, Corel and Parallels are a great fit. Thanks to the combined power of our technologies and teams, we see tremendous opportunities to drive continued growth and success for our businesses and most importantly, our customers."

Where do people learn to write like this?

<comment><USER11> Business bullshit by Andre Spicer will be a good read for you

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I just started using a Mac this year, and I need to run Linux and Windows for testing reasons. I'm starting to do more freelance work now, so I'll have some Windows-focused work as well.

Right now I have separate machines for each OS, but I'd like to just use a Mac and get rid of my other machines. I've played with Virtualbox, but I haven't used Parallels or VMWare. Does this acquisition make Parallels any more or less appealing as a virtualization solution for macOS? Does anyone have any clear recommendations for doing professional work in various OSes on a Mac at this point?

<comment><USER13> I use VirtualBox myself.

I started out using Parallels at first, but can't see having to continually pay to upgrade, especially when I'm mainly using Linux images although I do run a copy of Windows periodically.

VirtualBox is free and supported by Oracle.

<comment><USER14> > VirtualBox is free and supported by Oracle.

What people are learning, though, is that nothing from Oracle is ever really free, it's simply deferring time evaluating licensing terms and legal costs into the future.

<comment><USER15> For example, Oracle's interpretation of "personal use" in the VirtualBox Personal Use and Evaluation License (which applies to the Extension Pack) changed completely sometime in late 2016 / early 2017, without notice. Compare [1] with [2].

Before: "Personal use is when you install the product on one or more PCs yourself and you make use of it (or even your friend, sister and grandmother). It doesn't matter whether you just use it for fun or run your multi-million euro business with it." [1]

Now: "Personal Use and/or Educational Use expressly exclude any use of the Product for commercial purposes or to operate or run a business, organization, governmental organization, or educational institution." [2]

Oracle does track downloads and will make inquiries if they suspect commercial use.

[1] [https://web.archive.org/web/20161108235524/https://www.virtu...](https://web.archive.org/web/20161108235524/https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Licensing_FAQ) [2] [https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Licensing_FAQ](https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Licensing_FAQ)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Isn't Parallel's business more or less entirely x86 virtualization products for MacOS? Do their other non-MacOS product lines bring in much revenue?

Interesting time to buy such a company when there are so many strong rumors pointing to the Mac's impending ARM chip future...

</comment><comment><USER17> Interviewed at Corel a few years back. Surprised the company still exists given how dated the product line is.

</comment><comment><USER18> Corel seems to be one of those places where software goes to die. Almost like Yahoo, but withering, instead of going with a bang.

With Oracle at the realm of VirtualBox and now this, it's not a pretty landscape.

I hope I'm wrong though.

<comment><USER19> I'm surprised Oracle has kept virtual box going this long, but with the licensing and aggressive behavior they seem to be doing their best to kill it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Will Parallels still work well if Apple switches to ARM-based cores in many of their machines?

<comment><USER21> I was wondering this too, and if it might be a factor in the timing of the acquisition.

Parallels used to make Windows & Linux versions of their product [1], so there might still be ways that Corel can continue selling a product even if Apple's new hardware lineup prevents virtualization.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallels_Workstation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallels_Workstation)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Can someone with inside-knowledge (or just knows) explain how is Corel still in business?

</comment><comment><USER23> Corel... Now that's a name I've not heard in a long, long time.

</comment><comment><USER24> Corel are really killing the Software Museum business model.

</comment><comment><USER25> If their photo development product had decent library management, I'd have bought it recently. They have Linux version.

</comment><comment><USER26> Corel bought my favorite photo editor ever. Never found a replacement (PhotoImpact). Just to discontinue it. I hate them!!

<comment><USER27> Adobe and Autodesk have done that countless of times. Eg: Fireworks, Freehand, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This takes me back to Corel Linux. My first Linux, it was based on Debian and very quickly lead me to Debian.

</comment><comment><USER27> I imagine Corel survives from its hardcore fans... but why would it buy Parallels?

<comment><USER29> So you can run Corel software in it?

<comment><USER27> But you could already do that?</comment></comment></comment>


How did a Texas plumber's truck end up with Syrian rebels? - <AUTHOR> http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2014/1217/How-did-a-Texas-plumber-s-truck-end-up-with-Syrian-rebels

<comment><USER2> Supply and demand. There are very few items that nobody wants. You just have to make the price right for a win-win situation.

</comment><comment><USER3> Globalization never ceases to amaze me.</comment>


Ask HN: What's some favorite recollections of your earliest days of computing? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I don't remember how I got into this situation, but the neighborhood kids and I were sitting around my computer when I was about 7 or so. We were on some AOL-like chat program -- compuserve, maybe?

TJ typed something, and someone asked him to take off the caps. He looked confused for a moment and then took off his hat. I shrugged, having no idea what it meant either.

Another one: There was an incredible video associated with [http://developer.amd.com/wordpress/media/2012/10/Tatarchuk-I...](http://developer.amd.com/wordpress/media/2012/10/Tatarchuk- Isidoro-Rain%28EGWNph06%29.pdf) that inspired some of my graphics programming career. Unfortunately it seems lost with time.

</comment><comment><USER3> One day in Spring of 1983, I was a junior in high school, and the whole school was supposed to be gathered in the gym for some sort of pep rally or something. I and a fellow computer geek had absolutely no interest in this, so we spent the time walking around the empty halls talking about the programs we were working on (in 6502 machine language on the school's Apple ][+ machines). We ran into a teacher, who asked us why we weren't at the rally. We waved our diskette boxes (the badge of a computer geek at the time) at him and mumbled something to the effect of, "Oh, we're doing computer stuff", and he let us continue on our way rather than dragging us to the gym.

</comment><comment><USER4> When the Commodore 64 came out, I ask myself what in the world would anyone do with all of that ram.

</comment><comment><USER5> * Playing a handheld golf game at my godfather's house

* Then he got a C64! Playing the Hobbit!

* Playing Elite on a friend's BBC

* Typing in 10 PRINT... in Dixons or Boots

* Getting a Vic 20 and writing some simple graphics and sound programs

* Granny's garden on the BBC at school although I can't believe they are still trying to sell it!

* Amiga! F18 Interceptor, Deluxe/Photon Paint, Sountracker, Amos! Yes!

* Seeing the Internet and Sun Workstations at uni in 1994, Doom, MUDs, Gopher...

</comment><comment><USER6> typing BASIC code from Byte magazine into a Vic20 all Sunday, then debug into the evening. then joy! a game to play! No storage, keep it in ram until I get back from school.

</comment><comment><USER7> Going through homebrew Apple 2 software in unlabeled floppies. The parents bought a few used Apple computers and each time they came with huge boxes full of these disks, much of them unmarked. Sometimes the disk would load a complex program that seemed very useful. Sometimes it would load an animation, and sometimes that animation could be controlled by (guessing) keys. Sometimes it was a game. Most did something!

</comment><comment><USER8> 3.5" disks. They were so rugged compared to 5.25". Installing OS/2 with 11 or 12 of them. A few years later using the internet for the first time (university green/black unix terminal running netscape), loading something I'd heard of called Amazon using my first credit card. Getting a CD delivered two weeks later from the US. The world instantly got a lot smaller.

</comment><comment><USER9> Learning Fortran II programming in 1965 on a super-computer at a local university. It had almost a megabyte of memory!

Actually, it was a CDC 6600, which had 131,072 words of 60 bits each, which is kinda the same as nearly a megabyte. I was so impressed that the number 131,072 is still etched in my brain.

</comment><comment><USER10> In college I was able to use my Tandy Color Computer BASIC for Numerical Analysis instead of fighting for a terminal and using Fortran. It was great time saver, plus it had games.

</comment><comment><USER11> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsNaR6FRuO0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsNaR6FRuO0) (The Sound of dial-up)

</comment><comment><USER12> Not mine, but the story of Forth is amazing: [https://colorforth.github.io/HOPL.html](https://colorforth.github.io/HOPL.html)

<comment><USER13> Mine. Writing my first Spectrum Forth program. I seriously haven't been the same since!

<comment><USER12> Oh Spectrum one of the first computers I've touched with the Amstrad CPC 464 :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My first adult .gif downloading all the way at 300 baud!</comment>


Age-Partitioned Bloom Filters - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.03147 <comment><USER2> This is really great!

For those that don't know, bloom filters are really good at determining when something is not in a set. So if says "not in set" that's 100% accurate and super fast.

We used this to our advantage at reddit. When you load a comments page, we had to determine if you've voted on anything. So with the bloom filter in front, the query for "have they voted on anything here" was very quick if the answer was no.

But we still had to make the query. So another hack we did was to put a value on your user object to track the last time you interacted with the website. If the comments page was made after your last interaction, then we didn't even have to do the query.

With this, we wouldn't have to do the two step process -- it sounds like this would be super fast when it was time boxed. Maybe...

<comment><USER3> BloomFilters make for good indices, too. My first encounter with them was from the BigTable paper.

We used it in front of a Radix Tree that at places had too much depth. The filter took something like 2MiB at 7% false-positive rate vs 100+ MiB for the Radix Tree. We later bitmap-compressed the Radix Tree [0] to under 5MiB at the cost of making the lookups very very slow (P99 at 4ms, P50 at 1ms compared to P99 at 400ns before, iirc) but added a TinyLFU-based [1] lean-HAMT [2] cache of 512KiB in the front to speed lookups of popular items and a Robinhood cache [3] of 256KiB to take care of the long-tail KVs.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2348619](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2348619)

[1] [http://highscalability.com/blog/2016/1/25/design-of-a- modern...](http://highscalability.com/blog/2016/1/25/design-of-a-modern- cache.html)

[2] [https://blog.acolyer.org/2015/11/27/hamt](https://blog.acolyer.org/2015/11/27/hamt)

[3] [https://blog.acolyer.org/2018/10/26/robinhood-tail- latency-a...](https://blog.acolyer.org/2018/10/26/robinhood-tail-latency- aware-caching-dynamic-reallocation-from-cache-rich-to-cache-poor/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Aether ([https://getaether.net](https://getaether.net)) also uses a roughly equivalent version of this I had thought, up to this point, that I 'discovered'. I call it 'Rolling Bloom'. (Not sure which implementation is first.)

Here's the Go implementation: [https://github.com/nehbit/aether/blob/master/aether- core/aet...](https://github.com/nehbit/aether/blob/master/aether- core/aether/services/rollingbloom/rollingbloom.go)

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the pointer. I took a look at the code and it's different. Looks like Aether maintains several bloom filters, each link to a given time range. In contrast the paper builds a different kind of bloom filter where hash functions can overlap.

<comment><USER4> Interesting, thanks for taking a look. That is correct. Aether also does some partial merging in the cases where the time range required does not exactly match the filter sequence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've used something like this before, thank you for characterizing it. :- )

I used mine for authentication rejection.

<comment><USER7> Do you suppose there's a timing attack where someone can figure out if any particular users (target user, or admins) are currently online and get up to nonsense if they aren't?

Not sure if your app is big enough to care, but it might be you want to normalize the response times, so server load is reduced but auth time is fixed.

<comment><USER6> It was a general rejection system, so all valid (and recently invalidated) tokens were in the same bloom. If we rejected your token, your connection was cut immediately without response. The normal mechanisms for limiting short- lived connections from a given address apply, so your ability to sample for that would be severely limited, and chances are you wouldn't even have a well- formed token to sample with anyway (since the tokens were authenticated).

I don't work on that anymore though. I might do something similar in the future, but being able to detect when admins are snoozing is low on my list of concerns; if it's designed properly, it'll be cheaper to hire PIs to just look and see when they're snoozing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Missed opportunity to title this paper "OK Bloomer".

</comment><comment><USER9> An interesting hack is to use a count-based bloom filter, maybe 8-bits per count instead of 1-bit.

As long as the "count" doesn't overflow to the max size (in this case: 255), you can always "remove" items from a Counting Bloom Filter. In effect, a traditional 1-bit bloom filter is simply a counting-bloom filter that "overflows" on the first hit.

If people really need deletion on their bloom filter, do realize it is possible! (as long as you select a proper bit-size).</comment>


A new analysis of how the world's wealth is distributed - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/business-and-finance/21710771-new-analysis-how-worlds-wealth-distributed-you-may-be-higher-up?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/ <comment><USER2> _the world's households owned property and net financial assets worth almost $256trn in mid-2016. That is about 3.4 times the world's annual GDP. If this wealth were divided equally it would come to $52,819 per adult._

I can understand why it's tempting to perform this calculation (you've got two numbers, may as well divide them), but I kind of wish people would stop doing so then trying to draw conclusions about the result. Especially if they work for an organization that calls itself "The Economist", which implies that the author knows something about Economics.

Because all it serves to do is convince people who _don 't_ understand how economies work that there is in fact some big fixed pile of "wealth" out there, and that all those rich people have hoarded it already and are now sitting on it, preventing anybody else from having any of it.

... which is, of course, silly. And the author should know that.

<comment><USER3> The biggest factor being real estate. As houses appreciate in value, home owner become wealthier on paper, but that doesn't change anything to their way or quality of life. They can't afford a nanny more than before. They can't buy a bigger car than before. But these statistics would suggest the contrary. The only way home owner can monetize their asset is by selling it and go live in a cheap place. That's only a meaningful argument if tens of millions of people do that which they do not.

<comment><USER4> > They can't afford a nanny more than before. They can't buy a bigger car than > before

If they want to inherit their house to children, that might be the case. But that is the case with any asset - it is irrelevant whether any jewellery or painting you own is worth $1 or $1 million if you never intend to sell it, ever.

But the house is real wealth and that wealth can be unlocked - a reverse mortgage is not unusual, and the more valuable the house, the higher the annuity you can earn from releasing the equity from it step by step. And that allows you to get a nanny or make car payments or go on cruises or whatever.

<comment><USER3> A mortgage is not creating wealth. You are merely borrowing against your future revenues. The house is merely used a collateral.

The only way you can release this wealth is by selling it and moving to live in a cheaper place. But to a family who lives in London, always had and has no plan to leave, this is only theoretical wealth. It doesn't really say much about wealth inequality between different cities or countries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _It includes a surprising number of Americans (over 21m), whose debts outweigh their assets._

Coincidentally there are 20.5 million college students in the US. That 21 million number actually seems small to me just from college students and grads alone, let alone other sources.

[http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372](http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372)

</comment><comment><USER6> Once I ran my salary in a statistical tool, I was in the 8% highest salary of the country. That felt strange, I live in a rented 3 bedroom apartment, no car, no savings.

<comment><USER7> Well it depends on your age, doesn't it. Project earnings and savings potential into the future, look at you at median age, then assess again.

<comment><USER6> I'm 37

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm a poor moocher, on long term unemployment (for reasons I won't talk about here), and honestly, life could be much worse if I was not living in a developed country.

That's how I must view things if I don't want to die from desperation.

<comment><USER9> Shared between us, we can afford to keep you ticking over. Good luck to you. Don't waste it.

I grew up poor on welfare, and I will never forget what it was like, nor will I forget the generosity of the society that educated me and kept me in food and shelter. Thank you all for taking care of me and my sister when we were children.

Now I'm doing OK. I teach your college kids and make robots a little better. I'll pay far more in tax than I ever cost. I'm proud to pay those taxes and vote to support the next generation of people who need a little help.

<comment><USER10> > I'll pay far more in tax than I ever cost.

Not if you end up living a very long time.

<comment><USER8> So are you saying we should "unplug" people who are too old, so that young people can have better lives?

<comment><USER10> Among other things, yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> 750K only gets you to top 1%?

<comment><USER12> The really wealthy people are just _really wealthy_ , beyond what most of us here can probably conceive of. Even if you strike it big in Silicon Valley and make $10M-$50M from your startup, you're still nowhere near all the Chinese real estate magnates, Saudi oil magnates, the people whose family fortune has been accumulating for the past hundred years or so, etc.

I was actually surprised to find that the net worth of many celebrities that most of us imagine as really wealthy is not all that much compared to the aforementioned. For instance, let's pick Benedict Cumberbatch, an actor who just had the lead role in a Marvel movie being shown around the world that a lot of people would immediately recognize on the street - a cursory internet search indicates his net worth is about $20M. Not a crazy amount by any means.

<comment><USER13> It's surprising not because of how rich it makes the richest, but because of _how many_ rich people it implies. In order for that to be true, 75 million people out there make $750k or more.

<comment><USER14> It's not revenue, it's wealth.

s/make/have

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I can't believe The Economist of all things published this garbage.

The article doesn't even mention if the numbers are PPP adjusted, how the wealth was measured and how much of the wealth is simply sitting in the bank account versus being invested.

Is this for real?

</comment><comment><USER15> If there was one constant in the human history it got to be injustice. What the current economical system does is just organise the injustice through a just livable repartition of a very small part of the wealth.

</comment><comment><USER16> Trump could possibly be the great equalizer.

Under him, higher interest rates will crush global property values (which are disproportionately held by the ultra wealthy).

Global warming, which he doesn't plan to do much about, will be a great threat to coastal real estate (also controlled by the global wealthy).

</comment><comment><USER17> The thing is, there should be no pyramid.</comment>


Raspberry Pi 4 Review - <AUTHOR> https://www.electromaker.io/blog/article/raspberry-pi-4-review-hands-on-with-the-raspberry-pi-4-a-true-raspberry-pi-desktop <comment><USER2> I hate the profiteering feeling of the Canadian resalers. I want a Pi plus a case and the heat sinks that I think are mandatory. To get that they want to sell me crap I don't need like yet another SD card and power supply. Suddenly the price hits $100CAD and the sexiness of the low price is gone.

<comment><USER3> I don't think that the heat sinks are mandatory.

<comment><USER4> While I don't know about the Pi4, I've found that heatsinks are absolutely required for my uses of the Pi3s. In every situation where I've used a 3 I've had problems with them thermal-throttling down to a basically useless clock speed or just straight-up overheating and blowing. And I'm not overclocking. I don't feel safe using them in embedded applications without _at least_ a heatsink on the main CPU. My workbench Pi also has a small 5V fan on it.

Are the 4s different somehow? Or has every 3 I've purchased (somewhere around a dozen) been defective? (I don't have this issue with the Zeros.)

<comment><USER5> My experience is that the Pi 4 gets very hot. You touch it anywhere (USB port, Ethernet port) and it hurts.

I got a 40mm 5V Noctua fan for it and 3D printed a case that takes it. The thing now runs very cold. Idle CPU temperatures were about 60 degrees before, now loaded temperatures are around 40. Airflow is a big deal. (I am not using any heat sinks.)

<comment><USER6> Any chance you'd be willing to put up the files for the case somewhere? I have a 40mm fan and a Pi on the way that I'd like to put together.

<comment><USER5> It's this one: [https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3723481](https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3723481)

I printed it honeycomb infill and no top/bottom layers (and also rotated it so it printed with the top and bottom on the bed, instead of upright; having to change that might be an artifact of the slicer I used, though; Simplify3D)

<comment><USER7> Is it possible to order without a facebook account? I'd like one but I don't use facebook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yet another review without benchmarks comparing the The raspberry pi 4 to other SBC's on the market.

Comparing a product to its previous generation provides some information but does next to nothing to inform how product stands within the rest of the market.

<comment><USER9> If you want to find out what these do I would head over to Youtube and look for a channel called "ETA Prime". He benches almost all of these boards for Emulation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> So is the Rpi 4 susceptible to Spectre? There is no information about it even though the chipset is apparently

<comment><USER11> Like your PC and smartphone it is vulnerable in theory without software mitigations but have there been any documented practical Spectre attacks in the wild?

AFAIK Spectre implementations have been limited to security researchers in universities ATM.

So I'll ask, is it worth worrying about this for you? In terms of vulnerabilities there are lower hanging fruits.

<comment><USER12> >Like your PC and smartphone

This isn't necessarily true for your smartphone, because some ARM CPUs don't do the speculative execution that Spectre/Meltdown exploit. For example, CPU in the raspberry pi 3 didn't have these vulnerabilities which I assume is why the parent was asking this question.

<comment><USER11> Most modern smartphones have Arm based chips with speculative execution which are vulnerable without software patches.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ordered mine from Element14 at 5:30am Eastern the morning it was announced, and my order status has constantly said "Shipping " \+ two days out from whatever date I check. Still hasn't shipped! The demand for this thing must be incredible.

<comment><USER14> I'm pretty sure the 4GB boards have not been shipping yet. Most places only have the 2GB right now and not even the 1.

<comment><USER15> Well, I've had two 4 GB boards for almost 2 weeks. They were also available on the launch day, but sold out very fast.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Before you rush buying Pi4, check this more extensive technical review from MickMack: [https://youtu.be/AHIld3cjmTM](https://youtu.be/AHIld3cjmTM)

</comment><comment><USER17> Dont buy the official case. They will run hot.

Get one off amazon that has a fan. - "Acrylic case for raspberry pi 4"

edit - well it might not matter actually, I'd rather not spread false concern.

<comment><USER18> The official case is fine. The Raspberry Pi 4 is thermally stable. It may run a little hotter but far below the throttle limit under normal loads and no longer uses incremental thermal throttling like the Pi 3.

<comment><USER19> This is commonly repeated but it really depends on what is meant by "normal use" and caused me a lot of headache when I thought my board was defective. If you mean watch youtube videos on one display at regular quality, the pi4 hits 80+ degrees c, at which point the metal is burning hot to the touch and starts throttling.

Desktop / gui use requires either hanging the board so there is air passing on all sides or a cooling solution.

<comment><USER20> Didn't the thermal situation radically improve after the first firmware update?

<comment><USER15> Didn't see any improvement. I think the fix was about the USB chip temperatures only. I'm planning to get heatsinks on the hottest chips + fan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm working on developing a programming course for teenage students from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds, some of whom will not have access to their own laptops. I was thinking the Pi could be a great option here (of course it requires separate display/keyboard, so I'm still weighing the value prop here). Does anyone have experience with something like this?

<comment><USER22> Pis can be connected to TVs if no proper screen is available and even older models should be good enough for a programming course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Seems the site went down, here is Google's cached text-only version:

*edit - wayback link below is a much better cached copy. thanks manchoz.

<comment><USER24> Wayback Machine: [https://web.archive.org/web/20190716140109/https://www.elect...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190716140109/https://www.electromaker.io/blog/article/raspberry- pi-4-review-hands-on-with-the-raspberry-pi-4-a-true-raspberry-pi-desktop)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Really looked forward to reading this. The gray on slightly lighter gray color scheme makes it difficult. iPad Safari doesn't seem to have a read mode if there's no rss feed. Ow.

<comment><USER26> Dark Reader makes it readable. Though I am unsure this/such extension exists for iPad Safari.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I do light baking in Unreal Engine 4 using a program called 'Swarm' [https://docs.unrealengine.com/en- US/Engine/Rendering/Lightin...](https://docs.unrealengine.com/en- US/Engine/Rendering/LightingAndShadows/Lightmass/UnrealSwarmOverview/index.html)

Swarm only uses CPU power so you cannot take advantage of GPUs to bake lighting.

I wonder if I could get 100 RPi4's to run Windows + Swarm and create a render farm for $3500...?

<comment><USER28> Probably cost much more than that once you figure in the power and networking equipment.

If I had the expertise, I would make large clusters with a bunch of the RPi CM3+.

<comment><USER29> Even with CM3+ I don't think the numbers add up. The 8GB CM3+ is $30, so after buying a hundred you're left with just additional $5 per board for power, interconnect and cooling (just like R.Pi 3, the compute module without additional cooling gets thermally throttled really quick).

Since you can't run CM3 standalone, you'll be making custom hardware. Even if you don't count your development time, my gut feeling says that $5 is not enough to cover even just BOM costs for such a project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> who thought grey text on a white background was a good idea?

<comment><USER31> Apple?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> The site appears to been hugged to death by HN. The rate of such incidents makes me wonder whether there are good reasons for so many websites not to use CloudFlare or if it's the result of plain old incompetence of the respective webmasters.

<comment><USER33> Centralising all web sites by proxying them all through Cloduflare doesn't seem like a great idea either.

<comment><USER32> Does this problem have a solution that you would approve of (aside from switching the CDN from CloudFlare to some competitor)?

<comment><USER33> I think adjustment of expectations that all sites (including personal websites) need to achieve five 9's of reliability / availability is the way I'd go. Sometimes websites go offline. It's okay, there are plenty more, and they'll be back later anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I am still annoyed that there's not a proper audio-in capability on the RPi4. I've been wanting to use a stack of Raspberry Pi units when building a podcasting studio featuring a recording setup for linking several remote participants, but lacking proper audio hardware support for audio-in, it's a no-go (USB audio adapters and "hats" are either too flaky or so expensive as to make it not that much of a deal to go this route). I really hope a future Raspberry Pi addresses this shortcoming.

<comment><USER35> Genuine question. Aren't most mics now USB anyway? At least any mic that is better that a 5 euro one?

<comment><USER36> Most professional mics have XLR connectors. Condenser mics require phantom power as well (unless they are battery-powered) which a "normal" 3.5mm audio jack will not provide.

<comment><USER20> The poster can't possibly expect the RPi people to include an XLR input.

<comment><USER7> Agreed, I'm not sure what they want out of the rpi.

If it's only 1-2 (xlr) mics, I would use a Scarlet 2i2 audio interface if possible and connect via its usb out. Although I have no idea how well it works with raspbian / ARM operating systems. There may be another type of interface that works with the rpi.

Either way, this is rather niche and goes beyond the rpi is intended for. You can still achieve rather good sound on a budget with a usb microphone depending on the room setup, etc.

<comment><USER37> It's strange how since the Raspberry Pi is so capable now, people expect them to build in all kinds of professional features into a $35 educational computer (PXE boot, pro audio, etc.).

<comment><USER38> The Pi can network boot.

<comment><USER37> I think maybe the 4 dropped that feature or maybe they're adding it via firmware? I remember reading a story about a company hosting dedicated servers on Raspberry Pis and complaining how they couldn't network boot on the 4, which is just ridiculous.

<comment><USER39> It's not implemented at launch, but the boot loader code is no longer in ROM so can be changed, and they said they will bring network booting later this year.

[https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberry...](https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/booteeprom.md)

"Support for these additional bootmodes will be added in the future via optional bootloader updates. The current schedule is to release PXE boot first, then USB boot."</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Are You a Problem-Finder or a Problem-Solver and Why This Matters - <AUTHOR> http://leanb2bbook.com/blog/are-you-a-problem-finder-or-a-problem-solver/

<comment><USER2> This is a pretty significant issue for research done over 50 years ago. (according to my reading of the article)</comment>


When Capitalists Go on Strike - <AUTHOR> https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/02/capital-strike-regulations-lending-productivity-economy-banks-bailout <comment><USER2> Businesses invest when they _need_ to. No business is going to add another production line just for the heck of it. Why haven't many corporations with lots of cash and cheap credit made more investments? _Because there is a lack of demand._

When people are poor they don't buy things.

</comment><comment><USER3> Power that does not come from the people and is not exercised for the people... What a great idea :-(</comment>