Meet Hiroyuki Nishimura, the Bad Boy of the Japanese Internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-06/mf_hiroyuki

<comment><USER2> This was a pretty interesting article. Overseas, they often imitate sites that worked well in the US. 2ch is the only site I know of that is imitated in the US.

2ch is pretty wild. There's a true story of a nerdy guy falling in love with a woman he rescued from a groper on the train. He proceeds to ask 2chers for help on what to wear, what to say on the dates, and what her actions mean. The 2chers end up staying up way past their bed time for juicy date updates until he finally gets the girl. Eventually, the story and thread was made into a book, and subsequently, a movie. It goes under the name "Densha-Otoko", which roughly translates to "Train Guy"

Half the weird stuff you see on youtube with a white cat comes from 2ch. There's that weird "hardest mario game" that you see on digg with a white cat...that came from 2ch.

It's rather impressive that he can smell the air for cultural itches to scratch. Often times, when you're mired in it yourself, it's harder to see the forest through the trees.

</comment><comment><USER3> Am I blind, or where is the link to the website created by Nishimura?

<comment><USER4> <http://www.nicovideo.jp/></comment></comment>


Apple Gives Glimpses into iPad's Imminent Future? - <AUTHOR> http://www.reynoldsftw.com/2010/07/apple-gives-glimpse-into-ipads-imminent-future/

<comment><USER2> Apple has a pretty strong track record of releasing products without regard to buyer's remorse, but this short of a release cycle would be nothing short of astounding. I just don't see it happening.</comment>


Why Bitcoin Is the Most Dangerous Global Scam in 20 Years - <AUTHOR> https://www.inc.com/linkedin/vivek-wadhwa/why-bitcoin-largest-ponzi-scheme-human-history-vivek-wadhwa.html <comment><USER2> I think there is a clear difference between a hype and a scam.

<comment><USER3> Scam happens when unsophisticated people lose due to hype...

<comment><USER2> This is called speculation...

<comment><USER3> not really, for speculation, you need regulated markets...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


White House proposal: FCC and FTC would police alleged social media censorship - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/09/tech/white-house-social-media-executive-order-fcc-ftc/ <comment><USER2> This whole thing is just red meat for his base to address a problem that doesn't exist.

The social bigs aren't censoring political views, they're censoring violent hate speech. The republican party voluntarily claiming violent hate speech as their political ideology is bizarre.

</comment><comment><USER3> I really didn't expect folks opposing _Citizens United_ to get their shouts of "corporations don't have free speech rights" thrown back in their face quite so quickly.

<comment><USER4> We must be close to a proposal for a publicly owned social network.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Should be okay, FCC Republicans say your ISP can regulate what they send you on the grounds of free speech, what's the difference with Facebook? You can at least pick an alternate social media platform. Most Americans don't have that option with ISPs

</comment><comment><USER6> This won't survive a Supreme Court challenge. Red Lion Broadcasting Co v. FCC (1969) was upheld primarily because airwaves were limited. The Internet is not limited, so this revival of the "fairness doctrine" has no foundation.</comment>


"Shellshock" - <AUTHOR> http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/shellshock.html

<comment><USER2> On my Debian/Ubuntu systems (that weren't in production and that I was free to play with), I had a lot of luck pointing /bin/bash at /bin/dash and making a separate /bin/bash-really. The default scripts weren't using /bin/bash at all. Of the third-party scripts that did call /bin/bash, most of them were just lazily using /bin/bash when they could have used /bin/sh just as well. (A few that were actually using some bash-ism that it took me 5 minutes to fix, and only 1 was left that was using some very very weird bash syntax that I couldn't understand.)

Redhat apparently uses /bin/bash almost universally. That would be a nightmare to try to fix under pressure.

One lesson I've learned (and I didn't always follow it) is to write POSIX- compatible scripts whenever possible and point them at /bin/sh, which is allowed to point to any POSIX-compatible shell. If we get word that, say, a /bin/dash or /bin/ksh attack is coming, you can at least switch your default "runtime" to another shell.

<comment><USER3> > One lesson I've learned (and I didn't always follow it) is to write POSIX- > compatible scripts whenever possible and point them at /bin/sh, which is > allowed to point to any POSIX-compatible shell. If we get word that, say, a > /bin/dash or /bin/ksh attack is coming, you can at least switch your default > "runtime" to another shell.

I don't understand why more people did not accept this as a viable solution (with the exception of systems that are replete with bashisms). I had a curious discussion on the Arch general mailing list with someone who seemed to 1) have his head in the sand regarding the severity of this exploit, 2) believed bash's POSIX-compliant mode when invoked as /bin/sh was sufficient for nearly all use cases, and 3) was content with the first patch that came out as having resolved the problem even though it became obvious fairly early on that the patch wasn't sufficient but made unreasonable demands for more and more evidence to the contrary.

(Admittedly: The other side of the coin is that Arch has several scripts that rely heavily on bashisms, so I guess I can at least partially understand where he was coming from--but they all correctly use /bin/bash. The other argument I observed, that adding a dependency on dash somehow inflates the default install too much, seems absurd when dash is about 1/7th the size of bash.)

My solution so far has been to follow the advice you share (more or less) where possible: Replace the /bin/sh symlink to point to /bin/dash and fix those things that need fixing, patching bash in the process. It works well. For everything else, I really rather wish they'd stick as closely to bare POSIX-compatibility for system scripts (I'm guilty of using bash extensions, too, so it would seem hypocritical to point fingers).

<comment><USER4> > I don't understand why more people did not accept this as a viable solution

Mostly because it's a pain in the ass, I've tried doing it and not only do you have to be careful to stick to POSIX, you also have to avoid shell and binary extensions (e.g. `echo -e` would print `-e` with a POSIX echo, it won't with GNU echo or most shell builtins). Even testing it multiple posix-compatible and userland environments, you never really know whether your script actually is cross-platform.

It'd be nice to have an environment (shell and binaries) which implements only POSIX _and_ warns/errors when triggering common extensions.

<comment><USER5> That's a great idea to have a minimal POSIX distribution/environment, which contains only POSIX commands and functions (as well for portable C program testing). Is there something like this around?

<comment><USER6> You can get most of the value by keeping a VM with a minimal install of e.g. OpenBSD. SourceForge used to offer a cluster of various OSes where you could test your releases, I don't know if that's still running.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I read a few lines, and then for some reason right clicked into "View Source" intending to take a quick peek and read the rest. WOW. That is commenting your code done right.

</comment><comment> aaron-lebo Mr. Wheeler is also the person behind the loved and hated sweet-expressions, which provide a way of writing lisp using Python-style indentation [1].

1\. [http://www.dwheeler.com/readable/index.html](http://www.dwheeler.com/readable/index.html)

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure that's the thing he's most known for. I know his work mainly from SLOCCount [1] and his clever solution for Ken Thompson's "Reflections on Trusting Trust" hack [2].

1\. [http://www.dwheeler.com/sloccount/](http://www.dwheeler.com/sloccount/) 2\. [http://www.dwheeler.com/trusting- trust/](http://www.dwheeler.com/trusting-trust/)</comment></comment>


Four Tools for Crowdsourced Funding - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/four_tools_for_crowd_sourced_funding.php <comment> onreact-com The actual term is crowdfunding. See: <http://p2pfoundation.net/Crowdfunding></comment>


Russian tycoon buys Warner Music for $3.3bn - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/06/warner_music_going_going_gone/

<comment><USER2> It's helpful to think of the flow of capital acquired through privatization of Russian state property into US-based and EU-based businesses as a form of money laundering. It's about legitimizing these assets and moving them farther away from the source of their original dubious provenance. DST investments are yet another instance of that.

From the value perspective these investments don't seem to make much sense, but value is not the primary objective, or not the only objective in this case. It's also about legitimization and moving assets outside of purview of those who could potentially reclaim them.

</comment><comment><USER3> _"Having made his fortune in property and the former Russian nationalised industries, Blavatnik has faith that content companies are where future growth will be..."_

Having much experience in the profitable Russian rackets, he believes that the American racket known as "intellectual property" has far to go! I guess he'll buy some patent trolls next.

</comment><comment><USER4> The article says he made his money in property and subsidized industries. I don't really know, but I'm afraid this might mean he's even more likely to pursue stupid property laws and continue antagonizing Warner's customers. Does anyone have a better idea of what might change at WM as a result of this deal?

</comment><comment><USER5> this makes me wonder if music is about to be unlocked. all it really takes is for one of the majors to realize that music is a service and not a product and completely disrupt the music industry. similar to the monetization strategy of social games -- spend money chasing the people who will pay by giving them reasons to buy rather than throwing good money after bad by litigating against people who won't pay in trying to recoup some silly notion of a 'lost sale.'

then again... this is the self-destructive music industry we're talking about here.

</comment><comment><USER6> By "Russian tycoon" they mean "The US-based business of Russian-born, US- educated, US-residing-since-1978 tycoon"

His company has also been a significant stakeholder in Warner Music since 2004.

<comment><USER7> Does the "tycoon" hold US or Russian citizenship (or both)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I dont know about this really. Buying a record label nowadays is like buying a social networking site- Its waste of cash

</comment><comment><USER9> >>...in a $3.3bn deal. The company's $1.9bn debt is also transferred to its new owner, valuing Warner at $1.3bn.

Wouldn't [Value of Warner] = [Price Paid] + [Debts]? Or am I missing something.

<comment><USER3> "a $3.3bn deal" sounds to me like just "puff". He paid 1.3bn for the company and took on the company's debt. The transfering of debts adds to the amount of money involved with the deal but not how much he effectively paid for WB (IE, one presumes that by gaining control of WB, he gained control of the assets which hypothetically backed the 1.9bn debt so whether he owes the debt or whether warner-which-he-controls owes the debt doesn't change anything except to make some bankers feel more secure).

<comment><USER9> what your saying sounds like it's right, I think it makes more sense than what I said anyway. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In other news allofmp3.com has announced an expansion of its Warner Music library ...

<comment><USER10> Wow. Voted down. Does the HN crowd have no sense of humor?

<comment><USER11> i guess partly doesn't, partly does, but prefer funny things be at the last pages of newspaper

<comment><USER10> Newspaper ... what is this thing you speak of?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is really interesting.

A friend and I were discussing the other day. Apple just needs to buy all the 4 big music record labels. Perhaps other technology companies should just buy them up (Google/MS). The reasoning behind this is well, these companies have their own agenda and they simply don't get it. Record labels seem to be on this self distractive path built upon ego and short term thinking. They clearly are afraid to embrace the internet culture (see Amazon cloud player/licensing) and other innovative distribution channels.

Why do I think a tech company should buy these labels? I don't think the labels have a product mind set. What is the last innovative product apart from the CD that has come from labels. Even talking about the CD, there has been no incremental improvements in that technology over the last 10 year when it comes to music. They are simply not in the business of creating a product for the consumer.

Music is all about experience and great products can improve that experience and potentially open up more revenue streams.

Maybe this guy is on to something.

(ps - Passionate about this space. Working on a music startup @mugasha)

<comment><USER13> Apple doesn't need to buy the Big 4, they're quickly disrupting them. The Big 4 used to offer, publicity, promotion, and distribution--now iTunes does all of that. Record labels are dinosaurs who are unwilling or incapable of adapting to survive.

<comment><USER12> Apple is not competing with the record labels, so they can't disrupt them.

Labels are not going anywhere, artists need labels for various reasons. The function of labels is changing which is what is interesting. They labels are hesitant to change their model.

<comment><USER4> The Model T didn't compete with buggy-whip makers, but disrupted them all the same.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Do you care about cloud computing? - <AUTHOR> http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.785508 <comment><USER2> "Is it just going to be Azure for you?" He does not know anything about _foo_ , let alone on Microsoft's offering on _foo_ , yet he's already decided that he's going to use _foo_ from Microsoft, and asumes it's the default.

That's why I wish to see MS die in convulsions, the more the better. I probably even won't take it without convulsions.</comment>


Ask HN: Small Biz owners (ROI $50K+), how much did Tech/Stack matter in success? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> For my last 2 companies (both SaaS), the stack made a difference in 2 ways:

1\. Because we knew it well, it stayed out of the way. We usually knew how to accomplish what we needed to.

2\. We enjoyed using it. Work didn't feel as much like, er, work, and we did it more.

Our stack may or may not have been the best, but even if it was, objective quality wasn't what made the difference.

To use an analogy, imagine a painter who knows their current paints and brushes very well. We used good supplies that we knew and liked, even when they weren't the one that the art store was marketing. Our goal was to finish a painting (MVP), not re-learn how to obtain the texture we want with "the best" brushes.

For a typical small business or tiny new startup, I'd use whichever modern stack let the team work most efficiently (including hiring/staffing, if that's in the plan). The difference between "any great modern stack" and "the best stack" is smaller than the gain from the 2 benefits above.

(Tiny nit: rather than "ROI," I think the term you want is enterprise value, revenue, or profit)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the insight. I used ROI because of the char limit in the title, would have definitely used "profit" otherwise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Success is pretty foreign to me but I can definitely conclude that tech stack hasn't affected my rate of failure.

</comment><comment><USER4> I run an app with 1m+ DAU. For me, the server tech stack did not matter. What did matter was the ability to iterate quickly and identify bottlenecks. Although it was still critical, the server was not a massive component of the overall business, which may have given me better mileage than other users with a sub-par tech stack.

I originally started the server component using procedural PHP on $5/month shared hosting, which ground to a halt after receiving local news exposure. As users grew, I slowly built up the server stack to be more robust, tested, etc. For the most part, my users were okay with these growing pains (certain parts of the service had downtime as it expanded and grew) and they did not impact the overall success of the app.

When starting a new product, my biggest focus would be to put together the stack in a way which allows for the ability to expand, pivot, and change to account for unforeseen events. I feel that in a lot of cases, too much time is wasted debating tech stack factors which ultimately do not matter.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes you are 100% correct. For my last site I used a deadly combination of PHP and Perl (yes really CGI.pm) with Bootstrap3 and that site is still making good income. For my next project I had this insane idea to hunt for the best Tech/framework and I haven't gotten much done in the last 2 years. Though I think I have mastered everything from Docker to node to Lambda in the meantime.

Going back to laravel/vue again. Just wanted to confirm my suspicions. I think I'm sticking to what works even though how outdated or ugly it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's critical. One piece of advice though, don't worry about what the hottest tech stack at the time is, worry about how to solve the problems your customers are facing in an efficient and cost effective way. We thought about the type of data our customers would generate and how they would need to connect to our service to determine a tech stack that made sense. It was also important for us to pick a stack that as we grew we could find cost effective developers to work for us.

</comment><comment><USER6> Not really small business, but similar: side project building stock trading robots with simple Python scripts + my stock exchange broker free API...

Frankly this is making me more money than my salary on average and did really change my life and the ROI is astronomical compared to the monthly costs of few VPS + some money for data...

Everything is working on autopilot and I am free to do whatever I like with my time...

<comment><USER7> How did you get started learning about how trading strategies?

<comment><USER6> I went and searched the internet and did test all free trading strategies I could find...

Of course they all failed (no one in the right mind will publish a good trading strategy period), but understand why and how I did came up with my own ideas...

By gaining experience you will start to come up with your own ideas to test... and this is how I found my edge in the market...

<comment><USER8> Are you able to share any resources that you'd think would be helpful to get someone started building stock trading robots and strategies?

Thanks in advance.

<comment><USER6> Just focus on the major stock exchanges NYSE, AMEX and NASDAQ, do not waste time with crypto, options and other distractions... good luck!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For my SaaS, the tech stack mattered a lot. I resisted the temptation to pick the hottest stack, and instead went with the boring stack I've been working with for 10 years. This allowed me to spend more time focusing on the business and less time fighting with the language/framework.

</comment><comment><USER10> I did an ecommerce recipe app. It was critical to us.

We couldn't get funding, so it was important that we could build things very fast with limited resources. I also made the mistake of being a technical CEO, so dev time was very limited as I had to deal with multiple distractions from logistics to finance.

For acquisition, the tech stack was also one of the factors in the final valuation. Nobody wants to acquire something they can't maintain (although ironically this was what happened exactly).

<comment><USER11> What did your ecommerce recipe app do in particular?

<comment><USER10> It was a low carb recipe app. People would get hooked on recipes but realize that a lot of the ingredients (flaxseed, stevia, konjac, etc) were not sold in stores. So we sold them those ingredients.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Critical - Blockchain and Deep Learning landscape are changing rapidly, and you've got to pick the winners

... I suspect I'm an outlier here though, vast majority of the time the customer and the problem being solved doesn't care about the tech

</comment><comment><USER13> SaaS apps are key for my consulting business.</comment>


Apple Menlo: Snow Leopard's New Console Font - <AUTHOR> http://typophile.com/node/58625#comment-351070

<comment><AUTHOR> Yawn.

Compare to Prelude, an entire sans serif _family_ Palm commissioned from Font Bureau: <http://typophile.com/node/58935>

First Microsoft, now _Palm_ ; Apple, you really need to raise your game here.

<comment><USER2> Sorry, I don't understand the comparison? How does Prelude have much to do with Apple's 'new' terminal font? And how does Microsoft play into this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Apple has famous typographic literacy and graphic design taste.

But Microsoft, with a far worse reputation for taste, has employed famous typographers for each major release of its OS, contributing serious, important typefaces. Vista included Lucas de Groot's Calibri and Consolas, for instance.

Even Palm, a relatively minor company, has a real face commissioned for the Pre.

But Apple's new typeface is just a tweak of Bitstream Vera Sans Mono, _Linux's_ open source monospace sans?

<comment><USER3> The major difference, as I see it, is that Apple includes fonts that are good for publishing, and Microsoft includes fonts that are good for reading on a screen. For example, Consolas is designed for a screen with sub-pixel rendering.

I think this difference is apparent in how fonts are rendered on OS X and Windows, i.e. Windows "snaps" fonts to pixel grids for readability.

<comment><AUTHOR> What's the important print face Apple has released in the last decade? What have they done since Hoefler Text?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Menlo is nice. I use it as the default in Xcode, Terminal, and Safari under 10.6. It looks to have been tweaked from Bitstream Vera Sans for Quartz's anti-aliasing—like Consolas was tweaked from TheSansMono for Cleartype. The letter forms in TheSansMono are the most beautiful—if you're printing a program listing or samples for a book buy and use TheSansMono—Consolas is the sharpest, easiest to read on Windows LCDs, but looks funny on Macs; Menlo is clearer and easier to read on Macs than Consolas. If you want to use the same font set on Mac, Windows, Linux, et al, the Liberation fonts are the best plan; Liberation Mono is pretty, consistent, and doesn't morph too much between renderers.

<comment><USER5> The Droid family from Ascender, which Google commissioned for Android is uniformly excellent, renders well everywhere I've seen it and is Apache Licensed. I'm currently using 'Droid Sans' as a system UI font (on Linux) and 'Droid Sans Mono' for coding, terminals, etc... In fact I've just aliased the linux 'sans', 'mono', etc... to the appropriate Droid face.

More info here, including the link to the git repo if you want to check the fonts out: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droid_fonts>

these are in the Ubuntu repo's as 'ttf-droid' or you can do a straight download from here:

[http://damieng.com/blog/2007/11/14/droid-font-family- courtes...](http://damieng.com/blog/2007/11/14/droid-font-family-courtesy-of- google-ascender)

<comment><USER4> I think Droid and Liberation are siblings, from the same designer & foundry. Liberation has more variations (italic, bold italic) and more "flourishes" (like in the uppercase Q, lowercase a and what not).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like the fact that Apple was willing to tweak something in a fairly minor (from the outside) way in order to make it work just that much better.

</comment><comment><USER7> For console fonts nothing beats Terminus, period.

<http://www.is-vn.bg/hamster/>

<comment><USER8> FWIW, I found Pragmata to be a solid investment; best console font I've used.

<http://www.fsd.it/fonts/pragma.htm>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What is the blue/red?

<comment><USER6> He's overlaying the two fonts to compare the differences.</comment></comment>


Buy and Sell Mobile App Templates and Code with Envato - <AUTHOR> http://codecanyon.net/category/mobile

<comment><USER2> Think Apple's 30% fee is bad? Envato takes %75!!</comment>


Innovation Sex: What if Instagram and Foursquare hooked up? - <AUTHOR>

Are two apps better than one? Instagram and Foursquare are great apps, no doubt. Could their greatness be multiplied together to be exponentially better? Think the coolness and ease of Instagram mixed together with the discovery power of Foursquare.
I would go crazy for a Instagram/Foursquare feature that allowed you to PLAY hide and seek with your friends. Step 1: Take a snapshot of something cool. Step 2: Give the photo more value. Step 3: Use that picture to connect with your friends!
The possibilities are endless from the hypothetical offspring of Instagram and Foursquare. These two apps need each other. Foursquare needs more pictures, and Instagram needs to give people more things to do with their awesome photos.
We have introduce these two Instagram and Foursquare so they could knock boots...we added some gaming components!and...
http://itunes.apple.com/tw/app/id443035193?mt=8 <comment><AUTHOR> Tell me what you think about the app! Thanks</comment>


Ask HN: Does your productivity suffer because of too many phone notifications? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Put your phone on silent and leave it in your bag. Look at the notifications each app is broadcasting and turn them into silent notifications. Optionally have an override when somebody important tries to call you through your phone.

You might as well ask, does Skype/Hangouts/Slack/Email etc on your work machine interfere with your productivity? Yes if you let it.

One of the reasons I like Full Screen mode on OSX. It removes distractions.

<comment><AUTHOR> On the desktop there aren't more than a couple of apps which create notifications and the frequency is much lower than on a mobile phone. I would say there was a problem of too many email notifications and Slack is just compounding it. :/

I found this app on android called (Off Time) [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.offtime.kit](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.offtime.kit)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I generally turn off non-calendar notifications. For work email I use the Nine app which has a nice VIP option so I only get notified for messages by a few key people. Otherwise I get to my email when I open it by choice. I also enable silent time so all non-alarm notifications are muted from 10pm to 7am.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I just found this article as well [http://venturebeat.com/2014/12/27/zombification-from- notific...](http://venturebeat.com/2014/12/27/zombification-from- notifications-how-to-fix-the-problem-of-too-many-alerts/)

Is there any app that can fix this?

</comment><comment><USER4> Nope, not really. I usually check my phone if I get a notification, and once I'm done with my phone I get back to my work. If I'm swamped and I've not received a call I'll leave my phone until I'm at a natural break.

Is it really that much of a problem for people?

</comment><comment><USER5> I deleted apps such as facebook from my phone. This solved most of my issues. I turned off notifications on twitter.

</comment><comment><USER6> Nope... self control aside, I deny requests for notification privileges from all apps.

</comment><comment><USER7> Anyone got experience how this changes with a smartwatch? More or less distraction?

<comment><USER8> I use a Pebble watch. Not sure if I find it to be that much less of a distraction, but it certainly allows you to be more responsive to the notifications with very little action, as you can quickly see the them in a near zero-touch way. I've found it better for me than my phone where I need a complete context switch to get my phone out to see the message (and unlock it, if neccessary). I also use Pushbullet when at my desktop, so phone notifications are displayed on my monitor and allows you to respond to things like SMS.

I'd probably be happier and less distracted if I was "polling" for messages, but I don't trust myself to do that regularly enough so having low friction notifications suits me better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> sure. I won't allow any app send notification with sound / vibration, I will read it when I am free.

If you have any urgent issue, please phone me. Asking me by instance messenger do not mean I will response instantly.</comment>


Experience the latest image from Himawari 8 when you open a new tab in Chrome - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/domoritz/himawari-8-chrome <comment><USER2> Cool!

you might be interested in this link and especially the links in the discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10977295](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10977295)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah. That post inspired me to build this extension in the first place. I don't look much at my desktop (there is always something on top of it) so I figures a good place would be the new tab page. Earth is just beautiful and it makes me happy to have these high quality images available almost in real time.</comment></comment>


Scheme R7RS-Large WG2 Red Edition Ballot Responses - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1io_6ReAd6GIS-O0etWuJXo3a4XbrORIYxsx-wC5xo84/pubhtml?gid=1109649774&single=true <comment><USER2> HN autokills most of the URL shorteners. Remember to submit the original URL.

<comment><USER3> Thanks! We updated the submission URL.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah... I tried to submit the original URL. It... Didn't work. But that may have been user error.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Fruit Ninja Meets Pong (Atari)with cute bunny - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Raed.BunnyDunk

<comment><AUTHOR> It's got a pinch gesture that I haven't seen on a game before.</comment>


Open sourcing Sonnet – a new library for constructing neural networks - <AUTHOR> https://deepmind.com/blog/open-sourcing-sonnet/ <comment><USER2> This isn't "yet another completely different neural network library." This library just has some new layer types for TensorFlow.

Looks like there are some new layers for special kinds of attention RNNs, word embeddings, alternate implementations of spatial transformers, and so on. They also have another Batch Norm implementation that of course requires tons of fiddling to work properly, a classic tf staple :-)

As a machine learning environment, tf is so complex that different research groups have to define their own best practices for it. Using tf is like learning C++ where everyone learns a slightly different, mutually incompatible, but broadly overlapping subset of the language. We're just seeing a glimpse into DeepMind's specialized tooling along with reference implementations of the operations they use in their work.

This will be really useful for researchers who want to mess with deepmind's ideas/papers, but I'm a bit relieved that there isn't anything claimed to be fundamentally paradigm-shifting about this release.

<comment><USER3> It's nice to see people building on top of TF rather than continuing to develop completely new frameworks.

I've been working with TF in detail for several months now and it is a very nicely designed framework. It is quite low-level, as you pointed out, (and so can be a challenge to get used to, and why you see helper wrappers/libs like this and keras popping up) but ML models and methods are becoming increasingly complex and TF provides exactly the foundation and flexibility needed to implement this stuff while still being able to slap together some basic layers if you need to. It also helps that the engineering is very solid (e.g., distributed models and datasets) and most of the performance kinks by now have been worked out.

For those maybe putting off working with TF because of its steepish learning curve, I'd strongly suggest you dive in. I learned last year in the usual method (docs + google), but the new OReilly books are the first good ones I've seen if that's your style.

The analogy with C++ is a good one, and historically appropriate given how scarce GPU resources are now.

<comment><USER4> If you're already using TF, have you looked into keras? Does it not have the complexity or control you are looking for?

<comment><USER3> Keras is a wrapper around TF to make some common model operations easier (construction of linear layers of nets like a CNN) and to make common training operations easier.

So you can still do whatever with Keras by combining it with lower level TF operations, it's not really keeping you from doing anything. But more complex layer types and training might have to be rolled by hand, at which point it can be easier to just do it all at the lower level TF ops. This comes up a lot when implementing newer papers where they are proposing new training methods or Operations where you really need the flexibility to get in there and manipulate the ops directly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's definitely some examples of useful ops here:

        # 1. Define our computation as some op
        def useful_op(input_a, input_b,
                      use_clipping=True, remove_nans=False, solve_agi='maybe'):
            # ...

</comment><comment><USER6> Looks cool, but: "This installation is compatible with Linux/Mac OS X and Python 2.7."

Sad face.

<comment><USER7> Python 2.7 only is a no-go for me.

<comment><USER8> I am not a Python developer, but I do use Python occasionally.

Is Python 2.7 requirement really a big deal for mostly using other people's code (adding a bit of your own application layer code)?

I use Anaconda and just have different environments for 2.7 and 3.x, TensorFlow or spaCy, or NLTK, etc.

Really easy to switch to the environment I need.

<comment><USER9> It is more about ideology.

The 3.x is catching up, but still not fast enough as the community wants it to. But 2.7 is here for a reason, and shaming people that used 2.7 to push 3.x adoption, in my opinion is a bad practice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For us NN newbies, could some one do a comparison to Keras?

<comment><USER3> Not really, but from a look at the documentation, this seems to be geared towards recurrent nets (and their internal organization) and keras is a little more focused on layer abstraction.

Hopefully they improve the docs as they go along; I could follow along because I work in the area, but they're pretty researchy, and I would imagine most would have difficulty parsing them unless they're regularly reading papers in this area.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Making Sonnet public allows other models created within DeepMind to be > easily shared with the community

I'm looking forward to this - DeepMind has a frustrating track record of not open sourcing their code. While it's their prerogative and I know of many valid reasons for doing so, the many other researchers who publish their (sometimes terribly hacked together) models have been incredibly helpful in verifying that their work, well, works.

</comment><comment><USER12> Where does this leave Keras? Wasn't it supposed to be the new high level interface to TF?

EDIT: Also, what about TF-Slim?

<comment><USER13> Not sure. I think Keras is more meant for education and off-the-shelf models, not so much for research due to its abstraction. Or in other words, its less customizable. I think the probably best trade-off between low-level code and coding productivity would be tf.layers, which is also in tf.core now.

<comment><USER14> Keras is heavily used in research.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Tip for the project lead: A quick way to lose half of the early adopters is to release a library without Python 3 support. Luckily, fixing this is easy and shouldn't take more than a day or two. And the ROI is high if your goal is wider adoption.

<comment><USER16> It's also an easy way for an outsider to contribute.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It looks nice and I will certainly try it. But, no support to Py3? Common, guys, it's 2k17

</comment><comment><USER18> Anyone knowledgable with sonnet here mind detailing how is it different from keras.

</comment><comment><USER19> As a startup that's in the midst of hiring, I can't wait to see how quickly CVs get updated to include this.

<comment><USER20> Do you often find a significant number of CVs listing technologies that are too new for one to have gained any mastery over?

<comment><USER19> No, but we've only been interviewing for a few weeks. However we see an unbelievable number of CVs that have a full paragraph dedicated to buzzwords and python libraries.</comment></comment></comment>


Scalability and Performance Best Practices - <AUTHOR> http://highscalability.com/15-scalability-and-performance-best-practices

<comment><USER2> _It's not just you!<http://highscalability.com> looks down from here._

<comment><USER3> Ironic isn't it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Something that's missing from a lot of these is the pre-implementation aspect. P7 _prior proper preperation prevents piss poor performance_. This includes

      picking a good platform after careful comsideration (not the coolest kid in the block always)
      Design the system in detail then start implementing it

Both of these will prepare you and allow for scaling if needed later on (note: not premature optimization, just keeping it in mind and allowing provisions in case you do need to)</comment>


Whither hi-fi? - <AUTHOR> http://www.convertyourcds.com/blogs/district-media-works/1551312-whither-hi-fi <comment><USER2> There are two aspects to this problem. The first has been solved. 256-bit AAC is indistinguishable from uncompressed audio. One might argue that improvements could be made in the base rates: going 20-bit, 96Khz. Even that, is almost not enough to qualify as a "marginal" improvement. None but the best ears can tell any difference at all.

The second is a rather vexing problem: The crappy quality of DA convertors. While Apple has done a service by switching entirely to high-quality AAC in iTunes, their iPods have been a mixed bag. They skimp on the DA circuitry. The Macbook Pros are even worse. Horribly noisy audio output.

</comment><comment><USER3> Some of the concerns seem more sensible than others. Lossless audio I'd put fairly far down the list: in blind tests, nobody, not even audiophiles, can tell the difference between high-quality mp3s (e.g. lame -v0) and FLAC.</comment>


AngelList data set – signaling risks of seed-stage investments - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/02/new-angellist-dataset-sheds-light-on-the-signaling-risks-of-seed-stage-investments/ <comment><AUTHOR> IANAVC (not a vc), but i think do this is doubling down on risk.

If you take seed from VC, then: 1\. if you are mediocre then things become very difficult for you 2\. if you are successful, the VC can discount the risk premium, and push u into an even higher valuation</comment>


Free SSL with Amazon's AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) - <AUTHOR> https://dpron.com/ssl-with-aws-certificate-manager/ <comment><USER2> Like Cloudflare, it defeats the purpose of SSL. If you don't have control of the key then you should never use it as an encryption guarantee for your users.

Is it better than plain HTTP? Perhaps, but you should be aware of the pitfalls.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can you use this certificate on your own server, running on for example Apache? Or do you have to use AWS cloudfront?

</comment><comment><USER4> Oh yes please. More free SSL is very very good.

</comment><comment><USER5> if you buy a cert for the main domain it will also work for www. automatically.</comment>


Ask HN: Looking for a paper on the most common errors in distributed systems? - <AUTHOR> Bit of a long shot, but I saw a paper within the past six months on the topic of the most common "errors" made by software engineers developing and maintaining distributed systems/systems based on a microservices architecture. I'm fairly certain it was published by or affiliated with Microsoft, and the methodology was they asked a large number of developers what they thought were the most common cause of problems in distributed systems. I remember the top "error" so to speak was a lack of API versioning.<p>Has anyone else seen this paper and would be able to link to it? I've searched far and wide - I think I first saw it one of IEEE Spectrum, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, ACM Queue, or possibly even here on HN. <comment><USER2> This will not answer your question, but may be of interest:

One other omnipresent issue is the lack of security, because delegation of authority is not secure in systems with identity based access control. Maybe have a look at:

Robust Composition: Towards a Unified Approach to Access Control and Concurrency Control

[http://www.erights.org/talks/thesis/markm- thesis.pdf](http://www.erights.org/talks/thesis/markm-thesis.pdf)

Or, for a shorter introduction: [http://waterken.sourceforge.net/aclsdont/current.pdf](http://waterken.sourceforge.net/aclsdont/current.pdf)</comment>


I don't know like you, but I'm slightly tired of this site ... it's time to take holiday ... week or two. - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Yeah, me too. I'm not interested in the opinions of people who really just seem be saying the same vague shit over and over again. What's the deal with these venture capitalists giving us advice? We're just normal people trying to start off companies and ideas, if you want to tell us shit, tell us shit that we can use. Tell us how to market, how to sell, how to get good feedback from users.

Don't keep telling us how to talk to venture capitalists and what not. It's depressing. This place is a graveyard of hope - everyone here seems to be trying, and everyone seems to be advising - but nobody seems to be succeeding. And those companies that do succeed, hell, you never see them here.

This is a collection of dreamers and people hoping for that big million payout. If I'm going to fail, I'll fail with dignity trying to sell things that people want to buy.

<comment><USER3> "And those companies that do succeed, hell, you never see them here."

Well...whaddaya expect? They're too busy coding their startups to post on a glorified message board. That's probably also behind the dropoff in activity - many of the top posters here got into the SFP, so they're now hard at work on their projects.

I'll probably stick around here as long as I still have my day job. Can't really work on the startup at work without jeopardizing the IP, so I might as well at least learn about startups in my downtime. But there's eventually a time when you've learned everything you're gonna get off the web and just have to go for it and try...

<comment><USER4> "Can't really work on the startup at work without jeopardizing the IP"

1\. Take the first word of that sentence out of your vocabulary. 2\. Work at night. Forget about what might go wrong and imagine the possibilities.

There. You just won half the battle. Just my 2 cents.

<comment><USER5> Agree with point 2 (I'm all about coding all night), but 1 isn't a good idea..

If your IP agreement doesnt already claim ownership over your work inside and outside work, it definitely will at least claim what you do during work hours.

Thats a quick way to lose your job, get blacklisted from other companies, and lose legal ownership over your startup..

<comment><USER4> Agreed. My solution: don't EVER sign ANY agreement that dictates who owns what you do on your own time. Not sure? Get a lawyer. Still not sure? Take another job.

(Aside: didn't Lincoln outlaw this in 1863?)

<comment><USER6> And that, my friend, is why you want to live in California, where the law preempts the employer from claiming ownership of work done on your own time.

California Labor Code Section 2870: <http://www.unixguru.com/california_law.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I didn't take my laptop with me to this year's SXSW interactive (<http://2007.sxsw.com/interactive/)> and I think it greatly enhanced my experience.

Ironically, I think that tech conferences such as this would actually be enhanced--for (almost) everybody--if computers were generally prohibited at computer event venues. (Flame me not.) :)

If nothing else, it would increase f2f interaction..would it not??

(Wouldn't this be a rather stunning exercise/experiment...if only for a day or 2 at a major conference?!)

</comment><comment><USER8> Taking a periodic breaks from any online forum you frequent is generally a good idea in my experience. It helps keep new ideas flowing and helps break bad habits.

<comment><USER9> I think the site is a bit too focused on startups. More submissions on computer programming and computer science would add some variety.

<comment><USER8> I agree in general about open-mindedness and exploring a variety of subjects. My favorite articles are almost never from valleywag or techcrunch. But I do think news.yc should stay as startup-focused as possible.

You're probably familiar with it, but I'd recommend programming.reddit.com. You'll get a much better variety of computer science and programming articles than you will here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Seems like you aren't alone, but might be a couple weeks late. Traffic's dropped tremendously, it feels like (then again, so has the amount of startup- related news). Care to corroborate, PG?

<comment><USER8> It's the beginning of summer. People are off doing summer things.

<comment><USER10> I've often seen a forum's traffic pick up during the summer, as students have more time to slack off.

<comment><USER11> For dating sites probably.

For "work" sites like this, I'd say no.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's good to take a break every once in a while. If you make yourself not check in for a week or two YC will be very interesting when you come back.

In fact, it's an amazing experience to avoid the Internet for 3 days. Try it.

<comment><USER13> Haha, 3 days off internet, i havent done that for like a year. its prob a good idea. I like what the guy said earlier. You can read forver on the internet, you just have to do it. After reading the four hour work week, i realised how much time i spend reading stuff i dont need. Pointless reading "how to scale to a million users a day" when you havent even gone live yet. good idea, no yc-news for a week, how about that!

<comment><USER7> Try 3 weeks off the Internet. It rocks.

<comment><USER14> When I make it big I am going to not use the internet for a whole year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> interesting. I apparently took an 18 day break. It doesn't require a news flash, I think, just do it.</comment>


The Stupid Shit No One Needs and Terrible Ideas Hackathon 2.0 - <AUTHOR> https://stupidhackathon.github.io/?2.0 <comment><USER2> A couple of years ago I made a Chrome Extension that removes everyone's eyes: [https://vimeo.com/90351144](https://vimeo.com/90351144)

🇬🇧 people: let's do a Stupid Hackathon in London. I can probably get the joinef.com offices but the FB folks have candy.

<comment><USER3> Alright that was actually funny and maybe useful to help detract from serious news. Now if it only had a googly eyes option.

<comment><USER4> I built a version with googly eyes last year. Was the most successful "stupid" project I've ever knocked out. [http://www.cnet.com/news/googlifier-chrome- extension-adds-go...](http://www.cnet.com/news/googlifier-chrome-extension- adds-googly-eyes-to-internet-images/)

<comment><USER5> Do you know of any extensions that put googly eyes over spiders? I really want this, but ironically I am too squicked out by spiders to go acquire a training set and tweak it myself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We just had one in Tallinn, Estonia, and the outcomes are here [http://www.garage48.org/blog/the-16-seriously-hilarious- prot...](http://www.garage48.org/blog/the-16-seriously-hilarious-prototypes- of-garage48-serious-fun-2016-hackathon) I was working on the winning team [http://placebo.works](http://placebo.works) And we are actually going ahead with it :)

<comment><USER7> That is amazing. One of the most scientifically sound products I've seen in a while. Guaranteed 30% success rate :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Are we allowed to turn up with stupid flashy well-polished projects that we've already been working on for 18 months to ensure that we win?

<comment><USER9> Six months later: [https://twitter.com/internetofshit](https://twitter.com/internetofshit)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's been three "TerribleHack" hackathons similar to this at the University of Waterloo and they've been my favourite hackathons. Making stupid shit is so much fun. See [http://www.davepagurek.com/blog/terriblehack](http://www.davepagurek.com/blog/terriblehack) and [https://medium.com/@tau/terriblehack3-1164c2541c3f#.ottw76rt...](https://medium.com/@tau/terriblehack3-1164c2541c3f#.ottw76rtg)

</comment><comment><USER11> I love knocking out stupid things no one would ever need:

[http://StanderOrSitter.com](http://StanderOrSitter.com) \-- do you stand or sit when you wipe?

[http://SwapAVote.com](http://SwapAVote.com) \-- why vote when you can simply match with an opposing supporter?

Look forward to the next hackathon in NYC.

</comment><comment><USER12> Yes! This is the hackaton I've been waiting for. Practical in its purpose, low key, and (hopefully) fun.

Wish I wasn't on the opposite side of the country ... Also wish I didn't miss the one that was on my side of the country

<comment><USER13> Dude, give yourself permission to have stupid ideas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What other types of hackathons are out there? I remember reading about TSSNON & Terrible Ideas Hackathon back in the day.

Now that I see it in the spotlight. I wonder what other kinds of niche hackathons do you guys know about?

<comment><USER15> In the cities I've lived in, there have been quite a few hackathons put together with other industries such as Hacks & Hackers (Journalists and devs) and Music-related hackathons. Take a look on meetup.com, there are probably tons of other types.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is this actually a real thing or just a play on the dirty secret of hackathons?

<comment><USER17> It's real. Last year's entries: [https://stupidhackathon.github.io/2015.html](https://stupidhackathon.github.io/2015.html)

<comment><USER18> oh my god, zippable banana and gnu pricing are both genius. these things are always so far away! i need to move somewhere with a decent hackathon scene and employers willing to let you fuck about at them for a few days at a time.

<comment><USER19> The "one dimensional CAD program" was my personal favorite. Screenshot: [https://stupidhackathon.github.io/project-images/line- cad.pn...](https://stupidhackathon.github.io/project-images/line-cad.png)

And, the best artifact from the Gnu pricing repo: [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/diafygi/gnu- pricing/master...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/diafygi/gnu- pricing/master/website/index_files/stallman-quote.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> You mean there are hackathons that aren't just trying to get me to build something with (insert company X)'s technology?

</comment><comment><USER21> A FPS bot that gimmicks a 14 year old gamer. It either camps or goes full on spray and pray, is constantly flooding chat with insults, accusing people of cheating and calling them fags, and team kills "4 the lulz!!!"

</comment><comment><USER22> > "PRIZE" "CATEGORIES"

> Peter Thiel

I can only imagine.

</comment><comment><USER23> The js on this page almost broke my chrome EDIT: works fine after disabling dashlane extension

<comment><USER24> Pretty fitting really

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> There's a Toronto version as well on May 28: [http://stupidhacktoronto.com](http://stupidhacktoronto.com)

<comment><USER26> If anyone's looking for a teammate for the Toronto one, send me an HN PM. I know C++, Java (including Android), and PHP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Funny how the sponsor is Nylas: give us all your email credentials and we will do _something_ with it :)

<comment><USER28> I actually went to college with the folks who organize this, and we just sponsor it to support some arts/comedy. We've never sponsored a real hackathon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Is it real?

I'm still not sure.

But I have a great idea for the Farm to BigTable prize...

</comment><comment><USER30> Last year I made a stupid shit social website that no one used or cared about. Wish I had used this or a similar context. Could have been a softer fall.

<comment><USER31> I'll join your stupid shit social website! What's the link?

<comment><USER30> :)

[https://thelongestchain.com/](https://thelongestchain.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Oh man, I wish someone would do something like this in Portland, OR. I'd build an app that calls you every 5 minutes to play the Macarena. :)

</comment><comment><USER33> Finally - an honestly advertised hackathon.

</comment><comment><USER34> hmmm, I've been thinking about making a website to help recruit disenfranchised millennials into indentured servitude and I'll be free and in the area (I'm about to move to the bay area). Might be fun, but i'm not sure I should blur the line between satire and terrifying reality so much.

</comment><comment><USER35> The original hackathon page is probably NSFW, by the way.

</comment><comment><USER36> I sponsored last year's. It was a blast!

</comment><comment><USER37> I read the title and thought it was about an article reviewing a real hackaton.</comment>


Trump Picks Top Climate Skeptic to Lead EPA Transition - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trump-picks-top-climate-skeptic-to-lead-epa-transition/ <comment><USER2> Anyone have anything to offer on what "checks and balances" would be put in place against dismantling the little environmental progress we've made in the past 8 years?

We seem pretty screwed. This guy seems as in the industry pocket as possible.

<comment><USER3> State level actions.

<comment><USER4> When many state legislatures are controlled by republicans? Good luck.

<comment><USER3> Here in New England we already have an interstate compact on climate action, so non-federal interstate cooperation is a pretty normal thing.

True meanwhile the red states will go apeshit, but we have to start somewhere.

And given that the Paris Conference will start discussing trade policy regarding non-signatory nations, I think even Trump will have to sit up and pay attention soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The only good news is that I'm so dead inside I don't think it even matters. "That's the thing, Will. Americans are optimistic by nature. And if we face this problem head on, if we listen to our best scientists, and act decisively, and passionately, I still don't see any way we can survive." [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CXRaTnKDXA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CXRaTnKDXA)

</comment><comment><USER6> Less than 24 hours and I've gone from being simply stressed out about work and ready for the election to be over to general depression, feelings of hopelessness for our future, and an overwhelming urge to curl up into a ball for an indeterminate period of time.

<comment><USER7> Sounds like November 2008 for the average conservative.

<comment><USER8> How many conservatives had their civil rights and equality consistently dangled in front of them for votes by the party that just won the executive and legislative elections?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> At this point, I just assume it will all go back to being as wacky as it was under Bush (very wacky). He threw in plenty of people that refused to acknowledge Climate Change too.

Now, its fascinating how much executive power Obama has used to push through policies that neither the House nor Senate would agree to. And yes, Trump will definitely roll them back.

I still don't understand why the Dem's didn't try and change this whole crappy process when they briefly had it all. None of these positions should be so easy to f-up with a new President. They should require actual knowledge and a proper skill-set for the people in them.

<comment><USER10> Organizations select for power-hungry behavior. Changing these processes would reduce the likelihood of them or their allies winning that power. An individual who reduces the power of themselves or their allies will be weaker/less desirable/less fit than either internal or external competition that does the opposite. It is a race to psychopathy that intensifies with competition.

It's the same for electoral reform or [insert your list seemingly irrational/bad organizational behavior here].

Trump himself said it was broken - but it doesn't matter because he won.

Any frustrations we have are irrelevant unless we have power.

</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>

Details here from a prior post:

1\. Iron law of oligarchy (1911 - 1700 words on wikipedia): "all complex organizations, regardless of how democratic they are when started, eventually develop into oligarchies."

2\. Dictator's handbook (2011) - Or CGP Grey's summary: rules for rulers (2016 - 18 minutes): "Bad behavior" is emergent from power structures rather than human weakness. From democracies to dictatorships, organizations select for Machiavellian and psychopathic behaviors.

I can't recommend these enough. This life altering perspective takes <30 minutes to go over - plus potentially several days of despair. The problems with the world are not user error. How can technology help?

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy) 2\. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs)

<comment><USER11> I think Bitcoin is right now the most powerful technology that can help... it got me out of despair when I understood it more. It can't help the climate short term, but at least restructure the power long term to people who hopefully have a better scientific understanding.

<comment><USER10> Interesting. Could you expand on that thought? I'm curious how it would be different from our current solutions. Taking the power away from national reserves?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Am I being optimistic in thinking that at some point the American public may flip on climate change and denying it exists will become very unpopular?

Where I live we've set multiple temperature records in the last few weeks and may break a record for latest first snowfall ever. Even if correlating the weather outside with global climate conditions is a flawed metric, people have to figure out what's going on at some point... right?

<comment><USER13> It'll happen - it's bound to. Progress tends to happen that way, if you look at any of the previously divisive issues.

The problem (and please don't misread this) is that when it's about eg. gay marriage or drug enforcement, it's "only" some people's lives being ruined. That's temporary and localized. When it's about climate change, it's about the long term fate of the entire planet. There's no "rolling back the tape".

It's already too late now. And the US just elected somebody who is ready to undo the past 8 years of its own progress on climate change.

The good news is, Greenland's pretty big and mostly uninhabited.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> So much for the "outsider not beholden to politics" argument eh? This is the GOP playbook of forcing anti-science partisans into important roles and gutting environmental regulations to please industry.

Also so much for the Trump supporter excuses of "Oh, he didn't really mean that, he just said that to get elected -- wink, wink, nudge, nudge," nonsense. Clearly climate change skepticism has become a mainstream view in the US government after nearly two decades of fighting these skeptics. Its incredible how much progress was lost last night.

<comment><USER15> Maybe it's because climate change is caused by something other than our cars.

<comment><USER16> Funny how many people in tech think because they're good with computers they're somehow smarter than climate scientists.

<comment><USER17> No, it's just that no one understands the failings of computer models better than we do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Disgusting. Terrifying. It was a nice planet while it lasted.

</comment><comment><USER19> And so it begins

<comment><USER20> This was my exact thoughts upon reading the article: So much so that I just sent my spouse the same words.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> What infuriates me more is the people jumping to conclusion about their futures

</comment><comment><USER22> Good. Maybe this will help to shift the focus to real pollutants, which actually harm human health, instead of CO2.

<comment><USER3> CO2 harm to human health involves a more complex chain of causality than merely breathing it in and being poisoned by it. But it is real nonetheless.</comment></comment>


Google wouldn't have run their ad if it wasn't for statistics - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.zdnet.com/Google/?p=1717

<comment><USER2> The commercial is about Google positioning itself against a growing Bing brand. Bing commercials often make fun of the numerous and nonsensical results from other search engines (i.e., Google). Notice the commercial had perfect answers at the top of each result set. As Bing hits the media hard, I expect to see more commercials from Google.

Overall, a good execution by Google on its first commercial. Putting it on the Super Bowl, all I can think is, "Go big or go home."

<comment><USER3> This explains why the flight status # changed from previous runnings of this ad (which had unrelated results in the top three). I was curious why they'd go so far out of the way, but this makes sense. [See <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1109079>]

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can we agree that it (according to the depth of the article) that this decision wasn't made based on statistical analysis, but rather just ratings? "ohhh... a bunch of people judged our video and liked it! Statistically we can't NOT do it!"

Please stop attributing everything "scientists" do as hyper-analytical. It's not like the analysis they did was more complex than what takes place in any focus group - it was just scaled by a few orders of magnitude.

Was it a success? Yes. Was it a success because of statistical analysis? No. It was a success because it was a good fucking ad.

</comment><comment><USER5> Those don't seem like quite the right statistics, though. The main risk is whether something that gets good reactions on YouTube will: 1) get good reactions from a superbowl TV audience; and 2) actually drive enough traffic to the company to be worth the cost. Just the YouTube viewer data doesn't answer either of those questions. (They might have had other statistics on that, of course, but if so, they haven't shared them.)

<comment><USER6> What's a Super Bowl audience? Doesn't everyone watch? I'm from Europe, so please forgive my ignorance, but it would be pretty absurd to claim there is a World Cup final audience. I don't know why that should be any different with the Super Bowl. Skewed a bit, sure, but practically everyone watches.

Isn't that what makes those ads so expensive in the first place?

I also would think that Google has pretty good data on who watches what on YouTube and would like to add that ads must not always be about traffic but can also be about branding.

<comment><USER7> i've never seen the super bowl, and i have a few friends who "watch the superbowl" at a get together that involves more go (board game) and cooking than tv watching.

there are few things that "everyone" does, especially when you generalize across a huge country with numerous cultural imports.

<comment><USER6> I didn't want to imply that literally everyone watches. But the ratings are pretty impressive and don't seem to be limited to one or other specific group.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I can't decide if google's love of data and statistics is a good thing, or a bad thing.

 _Looks at google stock price and earnings reports_ Hmm. Seems like a good thing.

</comment><comment><USER9> This commercial was 100% about branding - the structure, music, content etc was designed to build relationship.

The right thing to measure here would be user attrition.

</comment><comment><USER10> Why not just use <http://www.ixquick.com/> and be done with it?</comment>


AppURL: http URLs for apps, connecting apps to the web - <AUTHOR> http://appurl.org

<comment><USER2> Been waiting for this for a long time

</comment><comment><USER3> I still do not understand what this is for? If you go to some appurl.org sub directory in a mobile web browser a native mobile app opens?

Also, what is with the http? Or rather lack of https.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there an end to the dumbing down of user interfaces? - <AUTHOR> I'm noticing more and more over the years how difficult it is becoming to perform power user tasks like copy/paste, moving the cursor around, switching windows, copying and uploading files, etc. Especially with the predominance of smartphones.
This is while the number of people working on software is at a all time high.
I get that designers want to make things easier for beginners, but it comes at the  expense of those of us who want to do more. And I think future generations of users will be stymied in the potential to develop their skills in using computers because it becomes less obvious or convenient how to do things beyond the bare basics.
The programming world is no exception. The growing popularity of of Macs among developers is another example. Macs are great for many things, but they are terrible for coding: no home/end/pgup/pgdn keys, poor or inconsistent support for various keyboard shortcuts found on Linux, difficulty in accessing system library files, etc. Hell, Xcode doesn't even come with gdb, which I found out when I compiled something with gcc and wanted to locate a segfault.
Meanwhile you get questions like this:
https://www.quora.com/Why-do-most-professional-programmers-prefer-Macs <comment><USER2> Well, a Mac is needed to develop macOS and iOS software. But you can also use it to develop Android software; And in general, linux or unix software (either by installing GNU tools and libraries, or via a virtual machine); And of course, also MS-Windows software in a virtual machine. And web applications and back-end (you can run all browsers, either natively or in a virtual machine).

All this, with virtually zero system administration overhead, and nice non- programming tools for the occasional need.

So to the professional software developper might prefer to use it.

I use emacs on mac, and x11 with xterms open to various linux boxes; basically the same as when on linux. But with nicer fonts, nicer mail UA, much less administration. Granted, linux is still better by a few percent on the development tasks, but macOS compensates on the other tasks, and by its versatility. Anyways, we keep linux boxes and VMs.

</comment><comment><USER3> From a business standpoint, 80% of your users will only need 20% of the functionality of your app so for most value added, a simpler interface meets all the requirements. From a user perspective it's become expected that interfaces not be cluttered or 'busy' with clear calls to action - Users have become impatient and fickle, opting to choose apps that are clean and stylish over functional and detailed.</comment>


A Lisp Way to Type Theory and Formal Proofs (2017) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.european-lisp-symposium.org/static/2017/peschanski.pdf <comment><USER2> Looks neat but no mention of ACL2 in project about LISP and proving? Come on, now! I wonder if the author investigated it. If so, why not use it or improve it. So far, it's one of most successful in terms of industrial use with SPIN being other one (TLA+ doing similar stuff now).

[https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/moore/acl2/](https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/moore/acl2/)

Far as TCB, Jared Davis, who used ACL2 on x86 processors, built a self- verifying prover for a logic going in ACL2's direction. It was verified to assembly using Magnus Myreen's techniques.

[https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~jared/milawa/Web/](https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~jared/milawa/Web/)

<comment><USER3> SPIN and TLA+ aren't proof assistants at all - they're model checkers, that is, they simulate a model some number of times and check that the desired properties hold in all explored states. Obviously this means they're not providing a guarantee that the properties hold for all states: there's no proof, only evidence. This doesn't mean they're useless, but it does mean they're not proof assistants.

ACL2 is a proof assistant, at least, but it's not based in type theory, so that's probably why they didn't use or improve it. ACL2 looks like it's specifically intended to aid in proving theorems about models of software systems, as well, which probably makes its logic system a bit clunky to use when expressing theorems about mathematical structures.

<comment><USER4> 1\. TLA+ is a language. TLA+ specifications can be verified with either a model checker or a proof assistant. TLA+'s proof language is one of the most elegant I've seen.

2\. A model checker most certainly provides 100% guarantees. This is why it's called a model-checker: it checks that a system's Kripke structure is a model[1] (i.e. a satisfying assignment) for a formula. It's just that model checkers often fail to check infinite state spaces and so people often check a finite instance of a specification. While model checkers have occasionally found errors in (informal but peer-reviewed) "proofs", I am not aware of any cases to the converse (obviously, when a finite instance was used for an infinite-state system). Both model checkers and deductive proofs have limitations and are generally complementary, but currently model checkers are considered to be much more scalable.

Also, model checkers don't "simulate a model some number of times." (the model-checking algorithm for temporal logic won the Turing award for its inventors). Even in finite state cases, model checkers check temporal formulas on infinite behaviors (e.g. that every request is eventually matched by a response).

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

<comment><USER5> Some model checkers are bounded model checkers, for example CBMC, a bounded model checker for C. In practice this sometimes means they only unroll loops a certain number of times, so they might miss assertion violations occurring in later iterations of a loop. You're right though that there are model checkers that are not bounded and these do provide guarantees.

<comment><USER4> Yes, as their name suggests, bounded model checkers check _bounded_ models rather than models. In the literature, bounded models are virtually never mentioned unqualified (i.e., a bounded model checking algorithm won't be presented as a model checking algorithm).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The book[0] mentioned is excellent if you are interested in this kind of thing. It is available on Kindle too.

[0] [https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/type-theory-and- formal-...](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/type-theory-and-formal- proof/0472640AAD34E045C7F140B46A57A67C)

</comment><comment><USER7> Author here. If you are interested I talked about type theory at euroclojure'16\. The video is there: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5YTCY7wm0Nw](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5YTCY7wm0Nw)

... And it's not really clojure-specific except if you want to try LaTTe:

[https://github.com/latte-central/LaTTe](https://github.com/latte- central/LaTTe)

</comment><comment><USER8> Oh, Dr Peschanski. If you're interested he was also into random trees [https://github.com/fredokun/arbogen](https://github.com/fredokun/arbogen)

<comment><USER7> If you're interested... A tutorial about this topic... It's clojurescript in the browser but I think the algorithmic explanations do not require any lisp knowledge...

(Edit missing link)

[https://github.com/fredokun/talk- clojureD-2018/blob/master/R...](https://github.com/fredokun/talk- clojureD-2018/blob/master/README.md)

<comment><USER8> Hello, didn't see that talk, thanks</comment></comment></comment>


How to Stop Tailgating If You Don't Have a Tesla - <AUTHOR> https://www.wavyn.com/post/how-to-stop-tailgating-if-you-don-t-have-a-tesla <comment><AUTHOR> At one point or another, most people have tailgated (followed too closely) the vehicle in front of them. While you may be frustrated that the motorist in front of you is driving under the speed limit, the reality is that tailgating is extremely dangerous.

In fact, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) says that rear-end collisions make up over 40% of the approximate 6 million traffic accidents each year in the US; this results in about 2,000 deaths and just under 1 million injuries per year solely from rear-end collisions.

By understanding how to keep a safe following distance while driving, you can lower your chance of an accident and make the road safer.

The 3-Second Rule

The following distance rule of thumb for good driving conditions is to leave at least a 3-second gap between you and the car in front of you; that way, you have enough time to react and potentially avoid a crash.

Built-in Safety Features

In recent years, automakers have started putting Forward Collision Warning (FCW) into their vehicles. Inside these vehicles are several cameras and/or sensors that scan the road ahead for impending collisions. It then uses audible, visual, or tactile stimuli (such as a beep, flashing light, or vibration) to alert the driver that they need to brake.

The Secret to Keeping a Safe Following Distance

Fortunately, you can get Forward Collision Warning in your car without buying a whole new car by using Wavyn app on your own smartphone.

Wavyn monitors your following distance as well as your speed and alerts you when you're too close to the vehicle in front of you. When used in conjunction with your own judgement, Wavyn can help you stay accident-free, even if your car isn't equipped with Forward Collision Warning.</comment>


Ask HN: How do hyperlocal startups attend Y Combinator school in Bay Area? - <AUTHOR> If you are a hyperlocal startup, say in India, obviously the most important thing for you to be in the same locality where you are trying setup the business.<p>How do these startup founders take the timeout to attend YC school in Bay Area? Or, YC has some other arrangements for such startups? <comment><USER2> I've asked the question to YC people before. There is no remote possibility. You are supposed to flight back and forth often.</comment>


Paul Graham praises applications from Waterloo students - <AUTHOR> http://www.techvibes.com/blog/paul-graham-y-combinator-waterloo-2013-01-22

<comment><USER2> I'd imagine it's related to the fact that Waterloo not only has very high academic standards (probably comparable to UC Berkeley, CMU, Stanford, etc...) but that they also require an industry coop for all undergrads.

<comment><USER3> Having been to a few universities, including UW, I'm going to suppose that it's due to a well-tuned culture in the math faculty. There's not so much BS; there are good, committed and intense instructors; the curriculum is great; the resources are good; the faculty is small even to the extent of being 'tight'.

Probably, too, it sits atop a Canadian culture of higher learning.

I mean, the reasons it's good and gets props are extensive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe this praise is due to the Velocity program really helping students solidify their ideas/business models before pursuing YC. I believe Pair and Bufferbox were apart of Velocity no?

<comment><USER5> As well as Pebble, Kik, and Vidyard.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Who are the most influential thinkers of this century (so far)? - <AUTHOR> List whoever comes to mind. I've got a few in mind already but just curious to see who I've left out or who I haven't discovered yet.<p>Hope this list serves this community well. <comment><USER2> Taleb, Naval, Munger

</comment><comment><USER3> Kripke, Putnam, Minsky</comment>


A Hard Lesson About Planning for Scale - <AUTHOR> http://reprogramming.com/planning-for-scale/

<comment><USER2> I'm getting a 404, and I can't decide if that's actually the lesson.

<comment><USER3> Oh the irony...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cached: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:oTcbfZR...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:oTcbfZRq72gJ:reprogramming.com/planning- for-scale/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Did you try to sign up with Stripe instead? You could get instantly approved and start processing that level of volume without any blockers from them.

<comment><AUTHOR> This story actually happened years ago; it was pre-Stripe.

The merchant account company simply had no clue about online businesses. Today there are a lot more options.

I actually wonder how Stripe does what they do -- I've heard nothing but great things about them. They must have some great banking connections behind the scenes.

<comment><USER6> what's the name of the Merchant company?

<comment><AUTHOR> Innovative Merchant Solutions, a division of Intuit

[http://www.innovativemerchant.com/](http://www.innovativemerchant.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why didn't you hop on a plane to the US early?</comment>


Face-recognition technology is the new norm - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/15/opinion/facial-recognition-police.html <comment><USER2> Let's say you're arrested (so fingerprinted, DNA-swabbed, mug-shotted, etc) but then not charged or convicted.

Is there a way to get those records expunged?

(IMO the innocent—and maybe those who've served their sentence—ought to be able to do this.)

<comment><USER3> > Is there a way to get those records expunged?

Really?

"Yes sir, we have entirely expunged your data and you have the US government's solemn promise that we didn't make a copy of the files we're not telling you about."

Effectively, there is no such thing as expunging digital data. There's always probably some extra copy somewhere.

<comment><USER2> Sure, don't trust them but still make it legally clear what's allowed and isn't instead of this grey area we have today. Then they'd have to do parallel construction because they can't admit there's a still secret biometrics database out there. And secrets love to be whistle-blown about so that'll happen eventually and reset their progress.

There's no silver bullet, just a long battle of attrition.

<comment><USER4> How would that reset their progress? The leaks have revealed that our secret organizations are pretty open (at least among themselves) about parallel construction. For instance this article [1] reveals some slides of the more harmless surveillance data on a target. Nonetheless, in a giant disclaimer at the top the NSA reminds their agents "This information is provided for intelligence purposes in an effort to develop potential leads. It cannot be used in affidavits, court proceedings, or subpoenas, or for other legal or judicial purposes."

And as the leaks have fallen off the news cycle, along with an interesting rise of misinformation in social media, you gradually see people beginning to understate what was revealed and to show ever less concern over it. It's actually a phenomenal demonstration for how a secret agency should handle a leak to avoid any meaningful consequences of what is ostensibly ground- breaking information on programs that are, at best, in legally grey areas, all being released to the public en masse. Snowden no doubt felt that his leaks would change our approach to intelligence if not our entire nation. In reality, next to nothing changed.

[1] - [https://theintercept.com/2016/08/14/nsa-gcsb-prism- surveilla...](https://theintercept.com/2016/08/14/nsa-gcsb-prism-surveillance- fullman-fiji/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> dawg- I was flying to Germany from Atlanta earlier this year. I enter the international terminal, start waiting in the security line. As I get to the front there is this little screen with a camera on top and a TSA logo on it. There's a sign on it that says something to the effect that it must register my biometric profile, to prevent terrorism, I guess.

I think there was an option not to consent and still make it through security, but the instructions seemed to be purposefully unclear. If they make it unclear, they know that 99.9% of people will not bother to ask questions. They know how stressful airport security is in the first place and how people just want to shut up and make it through the line and not miss their flight, and they use that as an advantage. I consider myself to be more informed and concerned about digital privacy issues than a vast majority of people, just like most of you who will be reading this comment.

Even so, in the moment I gave in and let the stupid thing scan my face. And now my face is somewhere in a server at the Pentagon probably. The social engineering around it made it very hard to figure out whether or not there was any real risk of resisting it or asking questions. I was with my wife and we didn't want to miss our flight.

I applaud the person who in the same situation would have turned around and walked out of the airport and skipped their expensive, non-refundable trip to Europe. But when my big moment came to be a heroic activist for digital privacy rights, I wasn't the same person I am when complaining about Facebook and Google on the internet. Oh well, I guess travel is how we learn about ourselves, right?

And that's exactly why facial recognition is going to become completely ubiquitous without much fuss at all. The risks are too abstract for most people to really care in the moment, even if they know the issue fairly well. Real social movements don't gain momentum until people's lives are _directly_ impacted - and the issues are just too nuanced, and the whole infrastructure of surveillance too byzantine, for people to really want to take action.

<comment><USER5> It was the same with opting out of the backscatter scanners when they started rolling them out. They had signs up saying you could opt out and instead receive an "enhanced" pat down, but TSA would make a big deal about it. They'd shout "We have an opt out!", pull you aside, and you'd have to wait for someone to be available to pat you down (which was itself an unpleasant experience). The vast majority of people don't want to go through that and just accept the scanner.

These days I don't even know if it's still possible to opt out. I haven't seen a sign saying you can in ages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't like this tech in the hands of the state but I'm more worried about criminal use of this.

I think we're going to see a massive increase in extortion as people are able to collect large amounts of data on people based on facial recognition. Sure now it's expensive and slow. But it's going to get cheaper and quicker.

I'd recommend trying to avoid anything that can link your face to your identity being public and online. Sextortion is a big thing at the moment. Who knows what will be next when facial recognition becomes available to the same scammers.

<comment><USER7> I believe that a heavily survived society is doomed to insanity.

The constant pressure to look good, feel good, make sure information doesnt get out will become a massive mental crisis.

We can already see the edges of this with Facebook envy and other similar mental health issues on the rise.

<comment><USER8> >survived

typo?

<comment><USER9> Probably "surveilled"

<comment><USER7> Yea, thanks... too late to fix it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Question: do we know if police are using "find this face in a crowd" software or "log all faces and compare them to all people". The former is the same as was happening before only faster.

<comment><USER11> Sometimes, "what was happening before but faster" alone is what can cause something to cross the line of legality (philosophically.)

<comment><USER10> > Sometimes, "what was happening before but faster" alone is what can cause > something to cross the line of legality (philosophically.)

Not that I don't believe you, but I can't think of any examples off of the top of my head. Can you give me one?

<comment><USER12> One that comes to mind is the Supreme Court enforced ban on creating a firearms registry. Firearms dealers are required to retain sales records with serial numbers for some amount of time (I don't have the number handy, it's several years) so technically the data exists currently. However they have ruled that it would be illegal to centralize that data for easier access.

Another is those automated speeding cameras. In several states they are unable to write tickets without a police officer present. My understanding is that this means the machine operates the same way and still writes tickets, the officer just has to be there as a "witness" and play phone games or whatever while the machine works. The end effect is the same, but the law requires an officer to be a witness to the crime in order to generate tickets.

<comment><USER13> _One that comes to mind is the Supreme Court enforced ban on creating a firearms registry._

No, that's not the Supreme Court. That's the Firearms Owner Protection Act of 1986.[1]

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

<comment><USER12> I stand corrected, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Data-driven classification systems has made automatic encoding of technical images into symbolic form possible and in great efficiency. This will bring a fundamental, unprecedented change in society we have never experienced before. People need to start looking more at the political and philosophical aspects of images to understand what data-driven AI system does and can be used in nefarious ways.

If you want a more in-depth analysis of how classification systems performed on people can have wild consequences, and that it cannot be fixed by just tweaking the algorithms or methodologies, Excavating AI is a great article on it ([https://www.excavating.ai/](https://www.excavating.ai/))

</comment><comment><USER15> I disagree with the premise that facial recognition technology is inherently evil, and that there should be a blanket ban on its use by law enforcement. For example:

Imagine a system where facial recognition technology supplements, but does not replace, manual recognition. Isn't it better to guide mugshot lookups with the best available technology rather than wasting hundreds of hours on manual searching? Without treating automatic results as final and authoritative, can't they still be used to drastically hasten manual look-ups?

<comment><USER16> When most people hear "mug shots", they think of photos taking during incarceration: a database of photos from when someone has been convicted of a (implied serious) crime and is being jailed for it. (trivial crimes usually having a monetary and/or community service sentence)

The issue at hand is about those who should be presumed to be innocent. The many who are in a crowd, the majority that are probably not at all related to whatever search is happening.

I've read science fiction where the opposite extreme happens. Where there's an AI that implicitly interfaces with everyone at all times, but it isn't a surveillance nor advertising state. If anyone does actually do a crime there's an actual sentient witness, no need to track down video, and that witness is also able to get help on the way right away. Further there's no backlog of unprocessed data, no file of all of the various normal day to day things that really aren't important.

I could go for a future with benevolent partner AI(s) and no actual surveillance state even though there are cameras and microphones everywhere. I can also see some public spaces (schools, courtrooms, other places people are required to mingle) having observation and storage for a limited (days/weeks) time for manual review in the case of reported incidents.

However the power as it currently stands is much more likely to be used for leveraged persecution and partial enforcement against specific people, and classes of people (IE not rich), rather than for all the people.

<comment><USER15> >However the power as it currently stands is much more likely to be used for leveraged persecution and partial enforcement against specific people, and classes of people (IE not rich), rather than for all the people.

I don't see how this is any more or less true of facial recognition than other evidence-gathering technology.

>The issue at hand is about those who should be presumed to be innocent. The many who are in a crowd, the majority that are probably not at all related to whatever search is happening.

Maybe so, but the laws which are getting passed and proposed as a result of all this journalism are much more broad:

[https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Oakland-bans- use...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Oakland-bans-use-of- facial-recognition-14101253.php)

[https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/19/20812032/bernie- sanders-f...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/19/20812032/bernie-sanders- facial-recognition-police-ban-surveillance-reform)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> And finally we found an utility to wasp stings, trolling this Sauron's eye system for fun and profit

On the other hand for some people addicted to lip implants the system will need a perpetual and constant fine-tuning and upgrading (that will divert resources just to adjust the eyelid position and nose shape). I don't see plastic cirugy being forbidden in a near future if we take in mind the number of rich clients that use it.

</comment><comment><USER18> With most all of these privacy and anonymity stories, we're told of the types of data collected, then the type of group taking the data, then the reason the data is collected. Finally, there's some promise of the strict guidelines on how it is planned to be used.

The tech community needs to start calling bullshit on these kinds of stories.

Once data is collected, it's collected. It, for all intents and purposes, exists forever. So it's impossible for the group taking the data to promise what the data might or might not be used for. And that's assuming that the group is the only one who ever owns the data. In a world of ultra-high speed internet, that's almost preposterous. It's not _if_ , it's _when_ the data gets out. Once it gets out, it's everywhere.

While I understand that traditional property fits into a format like this, data does not. Trying to pretend that it does? In my opinion it's doing a great disservice to the readers.

</comment><comment><USER19> > Our privacy, our right to anonymity in public

Who says these are rights? I agree free speech is a right, but who (legally) grants me the right to privacy and anonymity in public? Does me recognizing someone in public violate their right to anonymity?

<comment><USER3> Privacy is a recognized legal right, anonymity in public isn't. But government spying on people in public is forbidden in many/most world states.

Specifically in the US, amendment IV to the constitution says:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated"

Key phrase: "Unreasonable searches".

<comment><USER20> That's not my understanding of it. I can't be frisked, house searched, be forced to hand over documents or other items for review without a very compelling reason is my understanding.

A government worker watching me walk from my car to the grocery store, come out and load groceries into the car, let out an expletive and walk back into the grocery store to buy the bread that was forgotten, and then head back to my car isn't something I'm protected against. Not sure the value in it, but there's nothing preventing them from doing so.

Similarly, if someone made a public post on Facebook or some other social media site threatening someone at the city council, facial recognition picks them up at some government building and they linked the facial recognition to name which linked back to their social media and that post showed up, I don't think they'd be in the wrong for then searching them. Constitutionally. Does it feel weird? Sure, but everything there is public and at that point it creates the basis for a reasonable search so searching them for weapons and/or charging them with communicating a threat seems fair now.

Now if we're talking about someone pre-emptively scouring a person's cloud storage and finding something worth investigating, that'd violate it in my book.

<comment><USER21> There's at least a reasonable argument that the scale plays a role. It could be somewhat similar to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Jones#Justice...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Jones#Justice_Alito) \- the expectation of privacy is violated because digital tools allow a larger breadth of surveillance that crosses a line.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> this is probably flawed logic but how are things today different from say 4000 years ago in a city where the ruler might employ local people known to have a good memory for faces to provide their services ?

<comment><USER23> 1\. People were (are) not able to remember more than maybe 5000 faces.

2\. Each person back then would know their data is being collected, and exactly which kinds, because they are present and engaged when it happens.

3\. We can sort of, kind of trust humans and sort of, kind of predict their decisions because we're not _that_ different. We are nowhere near that stage yet with computers. We also know that putting that sort of information into people's hands, with the economy we have today, incentivizes misuse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> > Congress must declare a national moratorium on the use of face-recognition > technology until legal restrictions limiting its use and scope can be > developed. > America's future is closer to a Chinese-style surveillance > state than we'd like to think.

Uh, yeah, whatever. I mean, it's not like I disagree or anything.

But it's not like surveillance is only just now becoming a problem, right? Go and roll back the surveillance state revealed by Snowden that would have been a wet dream of the USSR. Roll that back to before Bush II and put a moratorium on that shit.

America's PRESENT. IS. A Chinese-style surveillance state. China is a perpetual preview of what will follow in the so-called "free" world in 3-5 years.

<comment><USER19> > America's PRESENT. IS. A Chinese-style surveillance state.

Maybe in cities, but my rural town just barely got stop light cameras, so I highly doubt this is true of rural America.

Plus, use of the surveillance is more reactive than proactive. In China it is proactive. Drive around in a car with a taiwanese flag bumper sticker and the secret police will disappear you in the night. In America no one will bother looking at the footage unless a bank robbery happened and your car was the getaway car.

<comment><USER25> I think the "no one is looking" argument is valid, but can be damaging in the long run. The same line of reasoning was applied to the Snowden Leaks by those who wanted to spin it as a "nothingburger". The reason nobody is looking is because it requires a lot of money to build the systems that can derive facts from data while "no one is looking". As advances continue to be made in ML, then the visual data most people are currently taking for granted will become more easily parsed systematically. A system that pre-processes and stores all the recorded locations of a given list of faces is competely possible by today's standards. A database of mugshots and a continuous stream of CCTV data is all you'd really need to get started.

<comment><USER26> "no one is looking" quickly becomes "no one _was_ looking" when an individual or group becomes problematic in the eyes of an authority. Recording everything allows a government's executive branch to selectively and successfully prosecute more or less anyone at will, which defeats the purpose of having an independent judiciary.

Ideally the legislative process would step in and curb back the excessively restrictive laws and surveillance, but it don't seem to have much incentive to do so. Plus, legislators are subject to the same onerous regulations which everyone breaks all of the time because "no one is looking".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Just sign our newsletter and we tell you how you are tracked... I cannot really condemn this attempt.</comment>


How Draft Grew Paying Customers by 200%  - <AUTHOR> http://insideintercom.io/how-draft-grew-paying-customers-by-200/ <comment><USER2> Getting a 404 :-(

<comment><USER3> To what? The article? Draft? There was a bad link to Draft in the article. It was fixed pretty quick.</comment></comment>


Review my "hail mary" project - <AUTHOR> http://rivalgrams.com

<comment><USER2> I could see this doing really well, if marketed well so that people besides HN readers hear about it. With college football season starting, perhaps there is great opportunity for use.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder how many of these "call you or a friend and tell them something simple" apps there will be? I guess if these actually make money the possibilities are endless.

</comment><comment><USER4> I just ordered ....</comment>