The CD is 30 years old today - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/media/2012/10/01/the-first-commerically-available-cd-album-player-released-30-years-ago-today/ <comment><USER2> I remember when Sun Micro decided they could give their customers CDROM drives and save money shipping SunOS on CD rather than quarter inch tape (QIC). As I recall they were the first to do that. I also remember Eric Schmidt cringing at the price of buying a 'gold master' machine that could cut a master disk for the replication services.

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://firstname.lastname@example.com>

That's the second ever mention of the CD made on Usenet, back in July 1982.

"It has no grooves, the digitally encoded recording lies beneath the disc surface, invulnerable to dirt and damage."

<comment><USER4> _invulnerable to dirt and damage_

Yeah. Who'd'a thought they'd end up being even more perishable, & _way_ more disposable than vinyl....

<comment><USER5> Compared to vinyl, the CD would have seemed invulnerable to dirt and damage. _Even more perishable?_ What bunkum. Every time you _play_ a vinyl record, you're causing a very small amount of irreparable damage. Whereas I can still retrieve a bit-perfect copy of my 20+ year old CDs, even if the underside is severely scratched.

That said, how can you resist the psychological conundrum of knowing that every time you play a record, you are forever damaging it a little bit... That you're forced to destroy what you love. That like life itself, every minute it's turning brings death a step closer. That one day your old records might match your own ears' diminished high frequency response.

There's something poetic there.

<comment><USER4> _What bunkum._

OK, let me qualify: Vinyl (when played on commodity equipment) does, almost unavoidably, suffer mild (or worse) _analog_ degradation. This is why (if you're of a certain age) you'll recall that for high-value purchases, we usually made cold replicas (uh, "tapes") to insure that the "master" got played as infrequently as possible.

CDs, however, not only degrade spontaneously (even when stored "properly"), but the degradation is pretty much "either-or" -- when they do degrade, usually the whole thing is pretty much unplayable (unless you're putting it in a very expensive player).

In any case, from my own extensive experience over the years, item for item, I've had quite a few vinyl records suffer "moderate" deterioration (aftr _heavy_ playing), but virtually all were still playable to some degree. Really - unless you leave them in the back of your car for too long, that's usually the worst that happens.

Meanwhile, an annoyingly high % if CDs simply get scuffed, or are left out in the air too long -- and end up irreparably damaged and unplayable (at least on generic players).

<comment><USER5> What bunkum.

Other than some exceptionally rare examples of "bit rot" where errors in manufacturing cause the chemical composition of the plastics prematurely deteriorate, a compact disc will survive at least 50 if not 100 or more years, even with the most exceptionally modest storage and handling conditions.

A scuffed CD is often perfectly playable, and can otherwise be polished back to near-perfect playability with toothpaste and/or ultra-fine sandpapers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Funny, I still remember buying my first CD as a kid, Motley Crue's Girls, Girls, Girls (ouch!). The packaging back then was different and they'd put the CDs in long boxes whereas now you just buy it in the jewel case. I remember how cool it was getting a boombox that had a tape deck and a CD player and being able to make better mixtapes.

<comment><USER2> Long boxes so that when you put them into the place where the store used to display LP albums the title was still at a comfortable reading height.

<comment><USER7> I remember reading that longboxes were a way to prop up the LP jacket manufacturers, since the materials and process were similar, but... "citation needed".

<comment><USER8> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longbox>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm freakin' out that /. is exactly half the age of the CD.

</comment><comment><USER10> When is the music industry going to actively promote (and select) a high definition music format? Like, Blu-Ray for audio-only?

<comment><USER11> Never. First, CD audio quality is good enough. Second, the market is in transition (already transitioned?) to a pure digital format, distributed either via flat files (e.g. mp3s), or via SaaS streaming services.

Similarly, Blu-ray is probably the last physical format for movies.

<comment><USER12> NPR mentioned this morning that digital music download sales far exceed physical media music sales already. This might explain there being virtually no record stores around anymore.

<comment><USER8> Heard that story this morning: [http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2012/10/01/162062347/the-...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2012/10/01/162062347/the- cd-at-30-is-feeling-its-age)

Made me consider stockpiling a supply of CD players to gouge future hipsters with...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This article also reminds me of where I used to pick up CD's back when they first came out - Tower Records in Mountain View, CA. CD's - still around; Tower Records - not so much. Interesting how it all worked out.

<comment><USER14> The reason we loved Tower is the reason it died: just about every one of its stores was a record museum. You could find almost anything you were looking for, which meant that they had to stock just about everything anyone would ever be looking for. If I'd damaged (or inadvertently "lent" permanently) an album that was a somewhat obscure gem in a less-than-popular genre when I'd bought it ten years previous, I could always walk into Tower and get a new copy. Great for the customer, but I can't see it being a great business model overall.

<comment><USER15> It seems to work for Amazon. Of course they don't need to stock copies in zillions of locations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Three years late to the party (because I couldn't afford a CD player) one customer instead of defaulting on a payment offered me his CD player instead. It came with this CD:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brothers_in_Arms_%28Dire_Strait...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brothers_in_Arms_%28Dire_Straits_album%29)

And I'm going to have to play it now, for old times sake. Haven't played a CD in years.

</comment><comment><USER17> After reading this I just had to check just to see if we had a copy of 52nd Street, yep - <https://www.murfie.com/albums/billy-joel-52nd-street--2>

</comment><comment><USER18> The compact disc has always felt to me to be a decade ahead of its time. In 30 years of removable storage media, we've only managed to go from CD's 700MB to BDXL's 128GB. That's only 182 times the capacity, or 2^7.5

</comment><comment><USER19> I am sad that the minidisc lost out to the cd :(

<comment><USER5> No way! The CD is almost everything you could have asked for in a pre-1995 physical distribution medium. Better-than-your-ear sound quality, cheap to manufacture, no moving parts, relatively robust, allowed for very simple playback hardware designs...

MiniDisc had audibly imperfect sound quality. The media has a complex diskette design with moving parts, is less robust, and requires more complex playback hardware. It was a backwards step in every respect except size and writability.

The perfect product given the technology of the time would have been to just squeeze the regular CD format with all 700MB of data into the 8cm "CD3" form factor. Perhaps adding a "long play" mode suitable for audiobooks (e.g. mono 12 bit/32 kHz PCM).

<comment><USER19> The cd was bad when moving, skipping due to bump was a big issues.</comment></comment></comment>


The Art Institute of Chicago Has Put 50k High-Res Images Online - <AUTHOR> https://kottke.org/18/11/the-art-institute-of-chicago-has-put-50000-high-res-images-from-their-collection-online <comment><USER3> On a technical note, the Art Institute of Chicago images are being served using an API called IIIF, which allows you to scale, extract regions of interest, etc. [1]. There are about 1-2B images worldwide being served from museums and libraries using the API [2] and viewers that can work with the content from multiple institutions at the same time, for instance to compare two van Gogh self-portraits from different museums: [http://projectmirador.org/demo/](http://projectmirador.org/demo/)

[1] [https://iiif.io/api/image/2.1/#image-request-uri- syntax](https://iiif.io/api/image/2.1/#image-request-uri-syntax) [2] [https://iiif.io/community/#participating- institutions](https://iiif.io/community/#participating-institutions)

<comment><USER4> Interesting. There seams to be no way to get a list of available images or a search though. How would one us this API without info about available images?

Or am I missing something?

<comment><USER5> Here's the link for the search API: [https://iiif.io/api/search/1.0/](https://iiif.io/api/search/1.0/)

<comment><USER6> This Search API is focused on searching within IIIF content (think full text search of a book). There is currently a Discovery Working Group[1] looking at broader discovery of IIIF resources.

[1][https://iiif.io/community/groups/discovery/](https://iiif.io/community/groups/discovery/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The link to the Art Institute of Chicago: [https://www.artic.edu/articles/713/behind-the-scenes-of- the-...](https://www.artic.edu/articles/713/behind-the-scenes-of-the-website- redesign)

From the link:

Students, educators, and just regular art lovers might be interested to learn that we've released thousands of images in the public domain on the new website in an open-access format (52,438 to be exact, and growing regularly). Made available under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license, these images can be downloaded for free on the artwork pages.

We've also enhanced the image viewing capabilities on object pages, which means that you can see much greater detail on objects than before. Check out the paint strokes in Van Gogh's The Bedroom, the charcoal details on Charles White's Harvest Talk, or the synaesthetic richness of Georgia O'Keeffe's Blue and Green Music. If you are doing research, you'll appreciate how our collections search tool makes it easier to drill down and find exactly what you're looking for.

<comment><USER7> How is it possible to release _public domain_ images using a CC0 license? That sounds completely unenforceable to me.

<comment><USER8> Why would it be in the public domain?

If I take a photograph of something, don't I own the copyright to that photo? Even if it is a photo of the Mona Lisa or the Parthenon?

<comment><USER9> In the US, no. A photograph of a 2D artwork is just a _copy_ of that artwork, and not a copyrightable original work. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel_Corp).

<comment><USER10> in Australia, yes a photographic reproduction of a 2D artwork _is_ copyrightable. this was a point of conflict between the wikimedia foundation and a gallery i used to work for, which made a significant income from licensing photos of artworks, many of which were themselves in the public domain. this might seem unreasonable but it's worth pointing out that producing _highest quality_ photo reproductions of artwork is a specialist skill requiring quite expensive equipment, and there are specific choices that must be made that are on some level subjective. to put it in hacker news language- it's a lossy operation and the photographer decides what is and is not important to keep- e.g. textural or reflective properties of the paint, vs. vividness of colours. and how exactly are you supposed to reproduce photographically the gold foil on gustav klimt's work?

A CC0 license or some such could well be a reasonable hedge against such vagueness by making explicit the terms of use.

<comment><USER11> A Xerox machine is a complicated, specialist piece of equipment but using one to duplicate the work of someone else is not and should not allow copyright on the duplicate.

What your colleagues did is literally reproduce the work of another, and assert copyright on the copy.

What if I took the image your gallery took, used state of the art JPEG compression software on it and created a new optimized file, would I know be entitled to copyright on that?

<comment><USER12> But a Xerox machine does not add any creative aspect; if you are going to shoot a painting and do it well, you'd need to decide on what lighting you wanted, then rig that - say, side lighting to highlight the brush strokes or a more head-on, softer light to subdue them.

In your jpeg example, I think (IANAL!) you might have had a stronger case if you artifacted the heck out of it, rather than faithfully recreating the original photo - the artifacts could be argued to be some form of artistic expression.

<comment><USER11> How can it be creative if it literally is attempting a faithful reproduction? You are confusing work with creativity. It might not be easy, it might require a lot of effort by specialists, but it is not creative. Therefor should have no copyright protection.

<comment><USER12> As I suggested - the photographer may decide to highlight the brush strokes, for instance - or subdue them. Both approaches would be a faithful (as such things go) reproduction of the original artwork; its appearance would depend, among other factors, of the light you saw it in.

That being said, I am not convinced such reproductions should have full copyright protection on par with that granted an original work of art - <USER2> there ought to be some mechanism to recognise the effort and skill which went into creating it; otherwise there would hardly be any incentive to create high quality reproductions.

Tricky, that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is pretty incredible.

There was once a time when the only way for the average person to see a beautiful painting was to go to church. Later on this role was taken up by art galleries. Now anyone can see this stuff from the comfort of their own home.

What do you think this means for the future of art galleries? What are they _for_? Different ones are answering this question in different ways. Some are reinventing themselves successfully, others not so much.

I am particularly interested in the destiny of galleries in smaller markets. They are easier to sustain in large cities. In cities with fewer than a million people, the struggle for relevance makes for a challenging environment.

(My questions aren't rhetorical - I sit on the board of directors for a Canadian gallery in a city of 500k people - we have one of Canada's largest collections and an incredible program, but nothing is easy...)

<comment><USER14> I feel like reducing historical art pieces to "beautiful images" doesn't really capture what it means when something is art. For instance, you can view reproduced images of famous artwork whenever you want online, so what makes it valuable, therefore, is not just the imagery.

<comment><USER15> No one ever complained of flickr "Oh it's okay but you need to see the real thing", so it's interesting how this viewpoint is absolutely medium-specific.

I would argue plenty of paintings are better viewed online, sculptures far less so. Is it better to have a restricted view at the back of a live performance or see a perfectly edited video later?

It's hard to be moved shuffling through queues at the Louvre.

<comment><USER16> Many types of paintings are fundamentally three dimensional - something that really isn't captured in an image.

You make a good point about the different value of different presentations. In some ways the bad seat is better than the video, in others not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The Art Institute has always been very forward looking when it comes to technology. In the mid 90s I was offered a job there creating a new collection tool for curators that would allow them to view ALL of the Art Institute's collection and help them create new exhibits. I think only 10% of their collection at that time was on display. They were going to build the tool in C. They were also very progressive to hiring as I didn't know C and the team was willing to teach me. It was a very cool job but I didn't end up taking it.

</comment><comment><USER18> Is there any sort of organized, searchable index of artwork online? It's sort of a massive undertaking, but it's the kind of thing that a wiki would be good for, and there have been a handful of different museums which have made these kinds of sets available.

<comment><USER15> Google Arts & Culture [1] aspires to this, and does a great job to a certain extent, however not at scale or in the long tail. For their own reasons institutions have resisted mass uploads to Google - despite the theoretical marriage of CC licences and G A&C non-profit contractual agreements. Art Institute Chicago has been a partner with Google since 2012 yet today we see only ~1% of their artworks on G A&C. [1] [https://artsandculture.google.com/](https://artsandculture.google.com/)

<comment><USER19> Unfortunately the images cannot be downloaded from Google Art Project (original name).

It's irritating having to jump over complicated hurdles to get a seamless hi- res image capture from Google Arts. It requires some messing about, but I previously managed to grab about 100 high res images, but it took ages and was not easy. They printed out nicely in the end though, so was worth it.

A simple download link as seen on artic.edu would be appreciated but sadly I don't see Google providing this because they want people to remain on Google, logged in, while they view art.

<comment><USER15> I was deeply involved in the project for 5 years and the reason you can't download from it is because museum partners don't want you to. All the image security you find there comes from partner requests. If it's irritating, don't blame Google.

<comment><USER20> No. Don't shift the blame to other parties. Google decided to play ball with all these external requests. Google owns the project. Google is the one to blame.

<comment><USER15> Sorry, also no. Let me be clear, museum partners would not sign contracts - and thus the project would not exist - if these stipulations about preventing downloading were not met. It was a dealbreaker across the board, and Google's compromise was a good one. Without it there would not be this access to art and culture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What does high-res mean? I downloaded Hokusai's 'Great Wave' and I got a 6.2MP JPG (3k pixels horizon.). That's not high-res at all when considering the original's size. Am I missing something?

</comment><comment><USER22> A little bit of a shameless plug but for anyone interested in the intersection of art and tech, Arthena (YC W17) is hiring software engineers and data scientists.

[https://angel.co/arthena/jobs/](https://angel.co/arthena/jobs/)

</comment><comment><USER23> It's great to see museums working towards spreading the reach of their collections and reaching new audiences.

Also for folks interested: SF MoMA was doing something similar where if you texted them a word they would send you a picture related to it (from their collection)

[https://www.sfmoma.org/send-me-sfmoma/](https://www.sfmoma.org/send-me- sfmoma/)

The museums could also start selling prints online as well, perhaps create new means of funding for the museums

</comment><comment><USER24> The Art Institute of Chicago is where I appreciated art for the first time. It has an amazing collection, and it's not an overcrowded zoo, especially on weekdays.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm glad they state on their website that the images are in the public domain.

In a similar thread on HN some time ago, I was very surprised to learn some museums (and commenters) think that they own the copyright to high-resolution digital reproductions of their (pre-1923) collection: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17500312](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17500312)

<comment><USER26> Different countries, different laws.

<comment><USER25> Indeed, but for that specific case of the Van Gogh Museum in The Netherlands, the same principle from Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. was reached in the Van Dale/Romme arrest [1] and has been upheld in other cases.

[1] [https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrest_Van_Dale/Romme](https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrest_Van_Dale/Romme)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> When I was a kid my parents would take me to Chicago once a year or so and the art institute was always the highlight. This makes me really happy

</comment><comment><USER28> Is there a link to downloading copies of the images?

<comment><USER29> Here's the link, it's basically their collection page filtered by the ones they released, each artwork page has links to download the image. [https://www.artic.edu/collection?is_public_domain=1](https://www.artic.edu/collection?is_public_domain=1)

<comment><USER30> It's basically impossible to browse most of the pictures sequentially because the UI keeps loading new images on the bottom of the page after clicking "Load more" and the browser will crash after loading so many images on the same tab.

It's a shame, because it obvious that a lot of work and care was put on this project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> When I change time filter from present to 1930 it returns this: [https://www.artic.edu/collection?is_public_domain=1&departme...](https://www.artic.edu/collection?is_public_domain=1&department_ids=Photography&date- start=1800&date-end=1930)

<comment><USER32> Errr.. `date-start=1800&date-end=1930`

<comment><USER31> Yes? What's the problem? It's a normal search in a page like that

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> It gives me server errors.

Example: [https://www.artic.edu/artworks/181616/self-portrait- etching-...](https://www.artic.edu/artworks/181616/self-portrait-etching-at-a- window?q=Rembrandt)

<comment><USER34> I found an even less pretty error: [https://www.artic.edu/artists/36351/pierre-auguste- renoir](https://www.artic.edu/artists/36351/pierre-auguste-renoir)

<comment><USER33> Yeah, I got a bunch of JSON errors as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Searched for Monet, the first three paintings result in internalservererror: [https://www.artic.edu/collection?q=monet](https://www.artic.edu/collection?q=monet)

<comment><USER36> Yeah, I found about 10% of the links of the random sampling of paintings I looked at (about 30) gave 404 errors.

The images are nice, and definitely suitable for desktop wallpaper, which is what I'm interested in, but they're not all that high-resolution. They seem to vary between 2k and 3k pixel resolution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Truly my favorite museum in America.

<comment><USER38> How does it compare with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York?

<comment><USER39> It's a great museum, among the best museums (full stop) in the country, but it's less than 1/4 of the size of the Met.

<comment><USER40> True, but after a certain point size doesn't matter for the visitor. I can see only a small fraction of the Met in any visit; IIRC a prior director said he couldn't see the entire collection, including the majority which is not on display at any one time, in his lifetime. If the Met grows, it doesn't change the size from my perspective.

If you are interested in specific individual collections then size might matter; if you are interested in Polynesian art, then possibly you could exhaust the Met's or Chicago's collections (I don't know).

But in some respects the two museums are the same size. And to go off on a tangent, I now find that I gain much more by spending a long time, maybe 30 minutes each, with a few works of art, rather than spending a few minutes each with 100 works. So for me, a museum with 10 great (IMHO) works would be plenty big, and better than a museum with 100,000 works that I have to sort through or walk past to find the ones I'm interested in. (Though the odds that the 10-piece museum would have what I want are a bit longer.)

<comment><USER41> For the record both the Met & the Art Institute have enough great pieces to last your whole life if you are into contemplation.

For that matter I spent an hour with the Art Institutes paper weight collection one time and felt I learned something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I'm not sure what to think. It's a form of accidental post-modernism.

The translation and simulation of the art ends up being very post-modern in its implementation. There really is no one experience to viewing this collection; some of us may view it on our phones while at work, some people on a gorgeous hi-res screen to see every brushstroke, some on a washed-out $199 laptop screen, some on a $50 Kindle Fire as a homework project, and some secondhand, like the pictures on the blog that links to it. It's very much anti-modernist in that it denies the physical presence of art and is arguing a little for the death of the artist (i do not mean literally) by severing viewing his art from viewing the actual piece; that the meaning can be adequately shown by a simulation designed to be accessible to all, and that is reductionist to boot.

The weird thing is that this is accidental-the postmodern presentation is not done specifically for effect, but it's a byproduct of a very modernist idea about the importance of viewing great art. The simulation is created and is given weight and importance, but there is no commentary or reflection on it; the format is simply there because postmodernism is the only way to simulate in this media. To render physical artwork on the net will always be a simulated, reductionist project in some manner.

The person who goes to a museum, somehow records his experience on video, and narrates his thoughts is making in his own way an equal simulation yet superior. He is also reducing the art into a simulation, because its attributes cannot be fully transmitted to another medium without reducing it, but he enriches it in a sense by the depiction. There is the post-modern interplay between viewer and viewed, between work and audience, on display and then reflected again by the person watching his video on youtube.

Here there is still these elements, but in an odd situation. Maybe it would be like those old VHS tapes that tried to faithfully reproduce a Broadway show performance, or records that did opera. The goal is fidelity but the medium transforms it just by the simulation. It may be valuable in the sense simulations are, but it's also transformative due to the medium used. It creates a weird thing divorced from itself, but with no commentary or reasoning that acknowledges it.

So mixed feelings. Maybe its just my mountains of sketchbooks filled with amateurish art talking, but i'd prefer even an art book to this, I guess.

<comment><USER43> I'd be interested in reading your thoughts on a virtual museum experienced via a VR headset and room scale tracking?

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> In a case like this, would the public domain license be revocable if the copyrightable painting were transferred?

</comment><comment><USER45> Downloaded an image, it was only 3.6MB.

Is this what I should expect? Seems rather small...

</comment><comment><USER46> Cloudfront 504 error to [https://www.artic.edu/collection?is_public_domain=1](https://www.artic.edu/collection?is_public_domain=1) ?

<comment><USER47> took a dump for me too when trying to search the gallery.

its awesome and i love they are doing it!! now get your IT together ARTIC!!!

<comment><USER47> downvoted because...?

seriously try the search it just returns some json lol:

[https://www.artic.edu/collection](https://www.artic.edu/collection)

(in other words there aren't "50,000 high res works online" if nobody can actually see them...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Love the images.

But this does the not-unusual thing of not saving your place if you scroll down a few pages, click through to an entry, and then click back to the catalog.

</comment><comment><USER49> Site stopped loading many images due to hackernews effect.

</comment><comment><USER50> whoever makes artpip, can you please include these? I was disappointed from the switch to photography only.

</comment><comment><USER51> This is wonderful news. Thank you to whoever made this possible!

</comment><comment><USER52> That's so cool! I really miss Chicago some days.

</comment><comment><USER53> website is horribly slow.</comment>


Parrot returns to British owner speaking Spanish – four years after disappearing - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/weird-news/parrot-returns-to-british-owner-speaking-spanish--four-years-after-disappearing-9793170.html

<comment></comment>


Never forward email to GMail. Ever. Google 'causes' backscatter. - <AUTHOR> http://www.stormbrew.ca/2011/02/15/never-forward-email-to-gmail-ever-google-causes-backscatter/

<comment> mike-cardwell Google is doing exactly what it should do, and what is standard industry practice… Silently dropping mail is generally considered to be bad, and I don't know any major email service providers that do it. Hotmail _sometimes_ does it, but usually doesn't.

Rejecting with a 5xx code is the correct response when you don't want to accept a message. It is your server that is generating the backscatter by accepting the message and then ultimately bouncing it.

Email forwarding is just generally not very good. If you can avoid it, do so. Perhaps you could use Google Apps for your Domain?</comment>


EveryBlock source code released - <AUTHOR> http://blog.everyblock.com/2009/jun/30/source/

<comment><USER2> It's up on Github: <http://github.com/brosner/everyblock_code/tree/master>

<comment><USER3> <http://code.google.com/p/ebcode/> too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Truly amazing - giving away the source code!

This will encourage many others, using this system, to start local micro-news channels in their own communities. Instead of the local newspaper/TV channel owning the regional media turf, this could enable discussion culture in a more democratic way. The question is... aside from hackers: who is ready for this? I remember the cartoon from Gaping Void - "the future belongs to the geeks, nobody else wants it" - <http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/003301.html>

<comment><USER5> > Truly amazing - giving away the source code!

They had to as part of the terms for the Knight Foundation Grant. Not that it's any less amazing, or anything. Just saying.

<comment><USER6> Knight Foundation, as in the people behind KITT?

<comment><USER7> That was Knight Industries, silly (Knight Industries Two Thousand). Obviously, Knight Foundation is the non-profit arm of the company.

Seriously, though, I assumed it's a non-profit associated with Knight Ridder, who publish newspapers and such. Which I just noticed is only one letter off of Knight Rider. Coincidence?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not everyday that you get to see the last 2 years of internal works of the minds of 3 commiters on a major open source web framework. There's some crazy and amazing code in there. Going to take a good while to extract all of the awesome out, but it is bound to be one of the bigger contributions to open source in quite some time.

</comment><comment><USER9> They really seem to have gone beyond the terms of their funding and tried to extract the code into useful standalone pieces. Thanks for that, guys.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder beyond just city names, what extra data is needed to get an implementation running. What map data is required, how about GPS data? What is the geographic taxonomy... suburbs, zones? I'd like to get something running, but want to have the code as comprehensively implemented as possible.

<comment><USER3> I've sent some feedback to EB, but will post here especially with it being now open-source:

\--

There should be a page of installations for various countries it has been setup. This may prevent duplicated efforts for various countries, and better promote existing implementations.

Also, non-programmers would be interested ie potential webmasters or administrators. Even a hosted version could be a good business model. As such, check out <http://nationbuilder.com> when it's released stemming from <http://whitehouse2.org>

And multi-language? What if I'd like to do something for a single country in two language versions.

\--

Also, only Business Reviews, Lost and Found, and Real Estate listings, when clicked bring up actual data. Otherwise, the user sees an information measurement screen before reaching any data. This intermediary step detracts from the site - why can't there be an aggregation of all information from that category in an added feed column that's also available in RSS. This would be especially useful for cities just beginning and when there's not a lot of data, or, when all subcategories are of interest to a user. For example, an rss feed of all police calls for an entire city would be of interest to reporters.

Even Craigslist has an aggregation, per city > per information top-category: <http://telaviv.craigslist.org/jjj/> .. with rss

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Unfortunately, the HTML and CSS that makes EveryBlock so useful is not included in this release.

I'm not sure why the Knight Foundation didn't insist that these components be part of the release, unless the designers were paid out of a separate budget.

I understand that releasing these components would have led to clones of the site, but I think, to a certain extent, that is one of the goals of the project.

<comment><USER11> Here is a video of Adrian talking about Everyblock's internals: <http://blip.tv/file/1957362>

If you're a programmer (which I think you're not), after watching this video you'll know that the design is not the important thing about EB.

<comment><USER10> I've seen the video, and I am a programmer.

I understand the power of EB comes from the code that allows it to aggregate, sift and categorize data.

My point is that what makes that data useful is the interface with which people interact with the data.

Look at the interface differences between day one and day 365 - <http://blog.everyblock.com/2009/jan/23/oneyear/>. UI/UX design is not easy, and it's a challenge for most developers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if they are going to release their iPhone app code as well.

</comment><comment><USER13> what a great news!

<comment><USER14> Mamma mia! That's-a some great-a news!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Congrats! this is great!</comment>


Graph Isomorphism in Quasi-polynomial time - <AUTHOR> http://www.math.uchicago.edu/calendar?calendar=Combinatorics%20and%20Theoretical%20Computer%20Science <comment><USER2> This is a really amazing result. Scott Aaronson has a little more background info than just the talk announcement

[http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2521](http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2521)</comment>


MAME and the New Emulation Reality - <AUTHOR> http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4641 <comment><USER2> I've been following the emulation scene since the late 90s and have really come to appreciate how important a cultural preservation emulation is providing. It's more than just nostalgia, these machines were literally the focal point around which entire cultural milieus were constructed.

If you didn't grow up when arcades were healthy, there's literally nothing similar to them today. The local Dave and Busters has the games, but the mood and setting is all wrong. Stepping through the entrance at your local mall arcade was like walking out the backside of a magic wardrobe. The lights and sounds instantly drove parental units away and a curious kid could wander around with pocket change and try a few games and take control of skilled fighters, jet planes, space ships, skateboarders and on and on forever.

Forging skill, he could become a minor celebrity in this world, if he could top the high score, or compete harder than all challengers, a crowd would literally gather and start cheering the player on..and soon you had this [https://youtu.be/07Upyd9EVog?t=84](https://youtu.be/07Upyd9EVog?t=84)

With so many people in one place, all doing the same things, with competition and champions, losers and cheaters, how could a culture not spontaneously emerge?

I can't really think of any similar phenomenon today and work like this, and a few scattered preservationist barcades and personal collections might be the only thing that comes close.

I'm just sad I never made it to Luna City before it closed [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2008/02...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2008/02/01/AR2008020103933.html)

<comment><USER3> Ground Kontrol ([http://groundkontrol.com/](http://groundkontrol.com/)) has generally done an awesome job imparting the vibe I remember. And The 1-Up ([http://www.the-1up.com/](http://www.the-1up.com/)) has given me similar goose-bumps.

Of course, now that I can enjoy a beer, the fact that both these arcades serve fantastic beer and some food sure doesn't hurt. I'm only sad that I don't live in Portland or Denver near these arcades...

<comment><USER2> Ground Kontrol is absolutely awesome. I've only been there once, but it was as close to those glory days as I've ever experienced. Absolutely amazing place to go hang out for a few hours. I can't believe the ages of some of the hardware they have working there, stuff that would normally be in a museum behind glass, you can walk right up to and play in anger.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I did some fun work on MAME back in the day. I managed to get a hold of a PAL fusemap that was used in the Jr. Pac-man ROM encryption hardware. From there I created a little schematic and then implemented it in software inside MAME. The logic was stateful (it had registers) and so it wasn't something I could just run the ROM image through, so I ran the game with the encryption emulation running for each ROM fetch and built an unencrypted ROM image for the game while playing. After that I just released the unencrypted ROM image, but the decryption stuff was still sitting around in the MAME source last time I checked.

I think I may have done the actual game emulation stuff for Jr. Pac, too—it was basically the same as Pac-Mac/Ms. Pac-Man with the addition of scrolling hardware and a bit that controlled whether the sprites showed up on top of or underneath the character/text graphics. That bit is so that during the cutscenes the sprites could be on one side of a fence or the other, or go inside a house. It's a single bit for _all_ the sprites though, so if you pay attention to the cut scenes, when a character sprite goes behind something, all the other character sprites are away from the text graphics so that they don't go behind things as well.

<comment><USER5> Do you still have that PAL fusemap (or .jed file)? The MAME team could use it for the jrpacman.c driver for preservation purposes at the very least.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It is good that they are changing the license for MAME/MESS so that the code is more free and open. They have to get permission of the original programmers and if not they have to rewrite those parts so that they are free and open.

This is a key to emulation history. A lot of arcade machines no longer work and with the rise of the video game consoles with Internet access nobody plays arcade games anymore. With MESS a lot of the old video game consoles and home computers are emulated even if they are no longer supported or made anymore.

With the JavaScript versions of MESS and MAME once they finish them you can play all of those games in the web browser.

ROMs and Disk Images can be found on web sites and BitTorrent sites, but be aware some of the DOS floppy disks and EXE files might be virus infected, hacked, or modified in some way to make a crack work. I say this as a warning because when people archive these DOS games they don't check for viruses and other stuff. In QEMU there is a Venom vulnerability for floppy drive emulation: [http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=QEMU- VENO...](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=QEMU-VENOM- Vulnerability) there might be a similar one in MESS.

<comment><USER7> _They have to get permission of the original programmers and if not they have to rewrite those parts so that they are free and open._

How considerate. I wonder if the programmers and copyright holders that published these games are getting the same consideration...

 _" ROMs and Disk Images can be found on web sites and BitTorrent sites"_

Nah, fuck that.

<comment><USER8> They are emulating the hardware, not pirating the software.

I don't think DOSBox needs to get permission from id Software because it can run Commander Keen.

If the game publishers want to sell their ROMs, they are free to. In fact, because MAME exists, they actually might find some customers to sell to!

<comment><USER9> Or to take a concrete example, I believe several re-releases on GOG take advantage of DOSBox to ensure games are playable on modern systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> MAME is the answer to preserving our culture through preserving the ability to use older media. We save the original bits of the media, and write an emulator for the player hardware. 6502 lives.

</comment><comment><USER11> MAME is great. I can play all the arcade games I used to enjoy when I was younger.

Another good bit is MESS and the emulators for the older consoles. Retroarch is another good collection of emulators.

<comment><USER12> RetroArch is commonly used with emulators but it's not an emulator itself. RetroArch is just an A/V frontend for software using the libretro API ("libretro cores"). It's well suited to all applications that need very low latency and tight A/V synchronization, using only limited types of hardware device (libretro cores are not sandboxed so they can technically access any hardware, but they work best if they use the libretro abstractions).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I did some Mame hacking the other day. Basically, I added code that would let me automatically reload a state and record my inputs at the touch of a button on my fight stick. I wanted this functionality so that I could test various glitches in games and then replay and record the event.

While I'm not the biggest fan of Mame's source code (it's still got a _lot_ of macros from it's C heritage), it is fairly simple to understand, and you can gain a lot of insight into how the hardware worked back in those days. I hope this project lives on for a very long time.

</comment><comment><USER14> Let's not forget to praise MESS, MAME's little brother which emulates old computers and was merged back into MAME a little while ago. This allowed me to revive my old 8-bit games I wrote as a kid in the 80's for an obscure East- German home computer line, and even put the demos on my web page (reminds me that I should try to update them to a newer MESS and emscripten version) :)

([http://www.flohofwoe.net/history.html](http://www.flohofwoe.net/history.html))

<comment><USER15> MESS is awesome (and was praised in the article, btw) .. incidentally what was your obscure East-German home computer? I'm a huge fan of 8-bit emulation and am always interested in hearing stories from folks who return to their code from 30 years ago ..

<comment><USER14> These were KC85/3 and KC85/4, small and neat Z80 machines with 16 to 128 kByte RAM, and a BASIC interpreter and pretty nice 'modular' OS in ROM. Unlike later machines (like the KC Compact which was a CPC clone), the KC85/2 to /4 haven't been straight copies of western 8-bitters (the chips were Z80 bootlegs, but the actual system and OS were quite unique, similar in performance and capabilities to the ZX Spectrum, but better color resolution (you could give a block of 8x4 or 8x1 pixels one out of 16 fore- and background colors) and completely different OS.

There's a bit more info about these machines on the About page here: [http://flohofwoe.net/about.html](http://flohofwoe.net/about.html)

And I wrote a couple blog posts about the topic:

[http://flohofwoe.blogspot.de/2013/11/messing-around-with- mes...](http://flohofwoe.blogspot.de/2013/11/messing-around-with-mess-and- jsmess.html)

[http://flohofwoe.blogspot.de/2014/11/new-adventures- in-8-bit...](http://flohofwoe.blogspot.de/2014/11/new-adventures-in-8-bit- land.html)

Enjoy :)

<comment><USER15> Cool - thanks for the links, I'll check 'em out! Love to hear about these obscure systems. I was an Oric-1 user back in the day and am thoroughly enjoying its revival .. new stuff being made for it every few months!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder what documentaries he's editing.

<comment><USER17> A documentary on the 6502 chip, a documentary on the place of arcades, and a documentary on the medium of tape.

<comment><USER16> Thanks! You know the titles and where I will be able to find these documentaries when released?

<comment><USER18> see [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/textfiles/the-jason- sco...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/textfiles/the-jason-scott- documentary-three-pack) for the detail of each.

you will find them on his site, once they are ready.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'd love it if the MAME project produced an emulator for the Motorola 56k DSP models .. anyone know of any effort to do that? I know its a gargantuan task, but .. so?

If this were to happen, MAME could start to take over the synthesizer (musical instrument) world as well .. imagine a Virus in MAME! :)

<comment><USER5> MAME does already emulate the Motorola dsp56k, IIRC. It is used in the Polygonet driver.

<comment><USER15> Wow, thats very interesting .. off to port some code!</comment></comment></comment>


Do not let your domain expire with Google Apps - <AUTHOR> http://benreyes.posterous.com/do-not-let-your-domain-expire-with-google-app <comment><USER2> A few weeks ago I tried to register Google Apps on a domain I purchased, and found that it'd already been registered by someone else. I sent an email to the support team explaining that there was a previous account and that I was the new owner, and upon proving that the domain was now mine they deleted the old account and had me start anew.

Obviously, while the email-support method is safe, the automated system for unlocking admin access based on "proof of ownership" is pretty scary! Seems like this could be solved by requiring you to prove ownership and then releasing new auth info to a linked email account on a different domain. That helps to establish both present ownership and a chain of ownership back to the last time you had authorized access and were able to adjust the "emergency email account" setting. It's not perfect, but it's a heck of a lot better.

It also seems to me like someone wanting to abuse this right now could do so pretty easily: you can confirm that a domain is available and that it has had a google Apps account set up in the past before you spend a dime, so you can just set a computer to trawling known Google Apps domain names (e.g., by looking at traffic on large mailing lists) to find ones whose registration has expired.

</comment><comment><USER3> It sounds like Google have changed their policies on this. Just a few months ago I was caught on the other side of this issue. Basically I bought a domain and wasn't able to get Google Apps set up because someone else had used it in the past. Here's the full story: [http://www.onlineaspect.com/2010/11/12/issues_with_google_ap...](http://www.onlineaspect.com/2010/11/12/issues_with_google_apps/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks JoshFraser, I have appended a note to the blog post to check your comment on here. Although the Google Apps team may have altered their policies according to my blog post which I contacted them about 2 months ago. This issue is still a serious matter. I would have still been able to access the person's Amazon account using a wildcard email address. Although it does lessen the blow if a social engineer takes a hold of your domain as they might not be able to get into your GMAIL, but the real lesson here is you shouldn't let your domains expire with any form of identity or online accounts still attached to them.

It's also a cautionary tale of what you leave up on the cloud when you abandon your email account. I could have potentially found a lot more damaging information from gaining access to this persons email.

<comment><USER4>
      > This issue is still a serious matter. I would have still been able
      > to access the person's Amazon account using a wildcard email
      > address.

That's just a general 'loss of domain' issue. It would also be much harder. This Google Apps issue allows you to exploit everyone using that domain without any prior knowledge. Without access to the previous Google Apps accounts, you would have to be specifically targetting someone. (Note: This is the same for any service similar to Google Apps.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It took me about 10 minutes to write a python script that grabs a list of recently expired domains and checks each domain to see if it's a valid Google Apps domain. This is a pretty serious issue, if indeed it's still possible to take ownership of accounts as the article suggests. Hopefully Google has added some mitigating steps to keep this sort of thing from happening.

<comment><USER6> How do you verify if a domain has a google apps account? I actually need this for a different, legitimate purpose.

<comment><USER5> The off the cuff way I was doing it was to go to <https://mail.google.com/a/DOMAIN_NAME/> and see if I get a login screen or an error saying that the domain wasn't using google apps.

<comment><USER6> I see. Some domains use SAML authentication, so it doesn't work as well for them. E.g. uw.edu

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I want to point out that as a ICANN registrar not a day goes by where some tech person working on behalf of a customer will contact us and request an auth code to transfer out a domain name. Just like that. As if we will send one to anyone that asks. Later when the customer makes the request many times the domain ends up at another registrar in the name of the tech person, isp, web designer etc. who has been told they need to be able to login and make changes. The name subsequently is deleted for non-payment (customer isn't notified and invoice goes to new contact) and they loose control of their domain.

</comment><comment><USER6> You have likely broken the law by accessing that Amazon account which was not yours, and now you blog about it. It might be a good idea to talk to a lawyer.

not a legal advice

<comment><AUTHOR> I accessed the person(s) amazon account to find contact information. They are now fully aware that I accessed the account as I left a voicemail. I offered full access to the GMAIL account and gave the password on the Amazon account so it could be shut it down and alert amazon who could also further do a full audit of what I accessed.

There does not seem to be any alarming distress in the situation. It has been over 2 months since the incident, I made sure that the person(s) involved was fully aware and of the blog post. No issue was raised about me writing it up and posting it. I also waited for a period of time to hear back from the Google Security Team. I believe I have taken the correct response here.

<comment><USER8> The philosophical nature of criminal law in common law countries is that offences against a person are offences against the Crown or People (depending on your jurisdiction).

The practical outcome is that the Crown or People can choose to independently charge you of a crime, regardless of what the actual 'victim' wants.

Be careful.

Of course, IANAL, TINLA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> While it may add an extra step on their end process wise, it seems like the obvious solution to this matter is to simply enact a policy such that if domain ownership changes hand the associated accounts are reset unless a signed transfer of ownership and proof of identity is provided by the original owner.

<comment><USER8> Everything I've ever read about Google's customer support infrastructure is that they don't "do" person-to-person transactions. Hardcopy? You must be joking.

<comment><USER9> I was simply supplying what a solution was--which has nothing to do with Google's likelihood to implement it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Making sure to renew your domain name is a good solution if you actually want to keep your domain. But what if you are done with that domain, and purposely let it expire? Is there a way to delete your Google Apps account entirely before letting the domain name expire, so the next person to register that domain can start from scratch with Google Apps, as if that domain had never been used before?

<comment><USER11> There is an option in the Google Apps cpanel: "Delete Google Apps for mintcake.com". Underneath which it reads: "You can close your Google Apps account and delete all user accounts and data associated with it." It's in Domain settings > Account information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Notice that you will have the same kind of trouble if you're using OpenID on your own domain and let it expire...

(An attacker could buy the domain name and set up a page at your OpenID URL which would delegate the OpenID to something under their control.)

</comment><comment><USER13> Google's problem isn't in their authentication, it's in the whole idea that having a domain name now means I should have access to the previous google apps account. They're separate entities.

This is probably related to why google isn't able to move an apps account to a new domain (our real domain is just an alias to our google apps account on previous company name's domain).

</comment><comment><USER14> Any idea if this applies for a domain that's an alias to your primary domain?

For example, if you have foo.com as your Google Apps domain, and you have foo.us as an extra domain that was aliased but then expired, does that expose the foo.com Google Apps account?

<comment><USER4> If Google Apps doesn't know about foo.us, then I think that answer would be no. (Though I would confirm this with someone more knowledgeable)

<comment><USER15> I haven't used the alias feature, myself, but I believe the grand parent post is asking about a circumstance where your Google Apps account specifically _does_ know about and supports the second domain (as an alias).

<comment><USER14> Exactly. Thanks for clarifying :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Any thoughts on how Google could prevent this? Seems important they provide a way to reclaim domains.

<comment><USER17> I think that the trust model for Google Apps account recovery is wrong. The domain name is a separate asset from the Apps account and the data in it.

The owner of the domain name should be able to create a brand-new Google Apps account for it. Recovering access to an account should be done through another channel (secondary email address, SMS, postal mail).

<comment><USER18> This isn't practical since any Apps admin account has by definition access to modify/reset all regular accounts belonging to that company/domain, so if you don't use things like wipeouts upon whois creation date modifications, the potential to expose a lot of private data from the former owner still exists.

<comment><USER17> Maybe "account" is the wrong word. I think that the domain's owner should be able to create an entirely new "instance" of Google Apps (with separate users and separate data), whereupon the old instance would be detached from domain.

An admin of the old apps instance should be able to get into it to access data, delete it, or attach it to a different domain name.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Thanks for pointing out this issue, Ben.

I am curious why you did not mention whether there is an option to simply delete your Google Apps account before letting the domain expire?

</comment><comment><USER20> I originally registered one of my primary domains through Google, but I transferred the domain to my primary registrar before I had to renew it. --Back then there were some problems with people not being able to renew some domains and running into problems as a result.

</comment><comment><USER21> You did not completely censor the last screenshot.

</comment><comment><USER22> Google should remind you that your domain is expiring and offer to switch to a regular account or clear your data.

<comment><USER23> Is it really Google's responsibility though? You'll already be getting emails from your registrar telling you that the domain is about to expire. And it isn't just Google, any service that is linked to another account/service in this way would be vulnerable, so the headline should be "don't let X expire while you have important stuff in Y that can be accessed through it".

That said, a warning message on login would be nice. They could check the whois records on initial registration to see when the domain is due to expire, and verify that (in case it has been extended) before giving a warning.

There is an easy way to detect a domain expiring that would stop accidental access to data like this by new domain owners. IIRC on signup for Google's apps you add a TXT record to the domain to prove that you control it - if a domain is expired and renewed by someone else then this TXT record will be gone. Again there is no need to check on every login, just when the domain is due to have expired. Of course this does not protect against intentional access, as the TXT record could be remembered and re-entered by the attacker if they are registering the name specifically to get access to the data on accounts like Google apps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Great post ben i'm amazed this can happen with such ease.</comment>


Graphics from BBC Hitchhiker's Guide on eBay - <AUTHOR> http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/H2G2-AW-011-Babel-Fish-Sequence-early-design-/290584173244?pt=UK_Collectables_AnimationArt_SM&hash=item43a82a9abc#ht_500wt_1156

<comment><USER2> several others listed too if you check sellers other items ;) owning these would be truly awesome!</comment>


Algebraic Data Types in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://w3future.com/weblog/stories/2008/06/16/adtinjs.xml <comment><USER2> I've written something like this, essentially just providing sum types, but it'e currently embedded in some code at work. If anyone is familiar with putting ES6 NPM libraries together and would like to help, I'd be happy to open source it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for reminding me that I really should write an updated version of that library!

</comment><comment><USER4>
      Color = Data(function() ({ Red: {}, Green: {}, Blue: {}, Yellow: {} }))

Is this JS or pseudocode? There are some extra parens in there and the pattern repeats everywhere.

<comment><USER5> Those are the JavaScript 1.8 (FF-only) "expression closures" the author mentions. JavaScript 1.8 introduces a succinct syntax for anonymous functions:

        function (a, b, c) a + b * c;

which is the same as

        function (a, b, c) { return a + b * c; }

Of course, this syntax breaks down if you want to return an object literal from your anonymous function. Curly braces are too overloaded in JS! Adding parentheses disambiguates between the new and the old function syntax.</comment></comment>


Tout – How My Weekend Project Turned into a Real Lean Startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.tawheedkader.com/2011/03/tout-how-my-weekend-project-turned-into-a-real-lean-startup/ <comment><USER2> This is something of an aside, but: if you're blogging about your product, put a great big highlighted link to it front and center. There is a link to it in the sidebar, but it could be way more noticeable.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I went to another blog post just to find the app. He kept saying "tout" and never linked it. I didn't think to check the sidebar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think I'm gonna be your customer, this seems to be exactly what I need, but it somehow escaped my attention before. Two things that are not clear from the screencast: do I reply to emails through Tout or through my gmail interface and does Tout automatically detects replies from people I emailed, stores them and archives them in Gmail?

<comment><AUTHOR> You reply through Your email client (for now). We focus on your outbox. As for replies, we'll be releasing a gmail integration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A great story (thanks for sharing) and product. I look forward using it to tout my startup.

</comment><comment><USER6> Odd question, but is tout incorporated? Wondering about your transition from weekend project->taking money. Presumably you need bank accounts/merchant accounts/gateway accounts and so forth. Seems like the step of incorporation alone could eat a big chunk of time.

And there is no about/company page anywhere on Tout. Which seems a bit suspect [FWIW].

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't understand why Tout has the feature to send emails later. You say you can send your emails so they only arrive at a time convenient for the recipient, but isn't receiving an email always convenient? The recipient doesn't have to do anything when they receive it, it just goes into their inbox for them to read whenever _they_ decide it is convenient. That's one advantage of email vs. instant messaging: the conversation can be delayed until the other person has time to continue. Or are most people so bad at reading their email that the only way to get them to read it is to email them at a time when they will hear their smartphone or computer chiming, if they have that set up?

<comment><USER8> Some folks I know found that the best time for an email to reach someone's inbox to give it the maximum chance of being read was 8am Tuesday. Then it'd be at the right place in their inbox to get read! Wanting to catch execs for a sales pitch in the morning when they are fresh, rather than at 5:30pm when they're likely to just bin your mail.

Second, perhaps you don't want them to see it now, or reply to it now, but after some other event.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Pretty cool. I like this part from the FAQ regarding phone support: " We do not outsource our support overseas or employ low paid, unqualified support staff."

</comment><comment><USER10> Not so important advice: Please don't put your picture on every page (braintrust.co). It's kind of disturbing : it's company's web site not yours..

</comment><comment><USER11> I'd love you to A/B test the solo pricing between $30/month and $1/day. When I went to the plans' page I saw the $30 price tag and thought it was kind of expensive for what it does. Then I read the "Tout costs about a $1/day out of your marketing or advertising budget" line and I thought of how cheap it actually was.

</comment><comment><USER12> Tawheed: It doesn't take away from the coolness of the product or your blog post, but I wanted to point out that you used the word "Still" twice in a row when you wrote "Still still kept costs less than..."

Just wanted to bring that to your attention :)

</comment><comment><USER13> Great write-up. I expect to be using Tout in the future.

</comment><comment><USER14> Can someone give me a tl;dr for this article?

<comment><USER15> <http://toutapp.com>

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Great job with Tout. As someone who has emailed a lot of people it's nice to have the ability to have templates for different groups of people. I watched the video and was curious if there is a way to bulk message again a pre- defined a group of people. For example let's say I messaged the "bloggers" group about a product launch. Then 3 months later we do a big update and I want to message them again.. can I just message that group with a different email? Without something like Tout the process is pretty annoying (going through individual email address and crafting a message and then sending off)</comment>


Wordpress on a Retina Display - <AUTHOR> http://tatx.me/wordpress-on-a-retina-display/

<comment><USER2> Is there any benefit to providing specific customisation beyond pleasing a subset of users who have a proprietary retina display?

I feel slightly at odds with providing something that can only be enjoyed by people who choose to purchase from a single manufacturer.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. Retina displays are catching up really fast and it is not tired to Apple at all (although the term is). A retina ready blog will look better on most new HD-ready Android tablets, like the Nexus 7 and the Kindle Fire HD, and phones likes the Galaxy S III many others.</comment></comment>


Make DuckDuckGo your default Firefox search engine - <AUTHOR> http://help.duckduckgo.com/customer/portal/articles/216441-firefox

<comment><USER2> Not while it's hosted in AWS/USA.

</comment><comment><USER3> Done.</comment>


Apple Just Killed The 'GrayKey' iPhone Passcode Hack - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2018/10/24/apple-just-killed-the-graykey-iphone-passcode-hack/#7fa224f05318 <comment><USER2> Url changed from [https://gizmodo.com/apple-reportedly-blocked-police- iphone-h...](https://gizmodo.com/apple-reportedly-blocked-police-iphone- hacking-tool-and-1829974710), which points to this.

<comment><USER3> can you also do something about the clickbait title?

>Apple Just Killed...

iOS 12 was released weeks ago, so the exploit wasn't _just_ killed as the title says.

<comment><USER4> It's using the title of the article directly. Go yell at Forbes for being click-baity.

<comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

>Otherwise please use the original title, _unless it is misleading or linkbait_ ; don't editorialize.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Nobody knows how?" They have a pretty plausible explanation in the back half of this very article:

> With iOS 12, Apple implemented a highly-anticipated change called "USB > Restricted Mode." This shuts off lightning port access on the iPhone if it > hasn't been unlocked by a user in the last hour. This was widely believed to > be Apple's solution to foil companies like GrayShift and Cellebrite but we > don't know for certain if that did the trick. Apple did not return our > request for comment.

That would definitely do it. If Lightning goes down they cannot differentially backup/restore while attempting to guess the user's passcode.

<comment><USER6> How do you backup your phone after you smash your screen?

<comment><USER7> _How do you backup your phone after you smash your screen?_

Isn't that kind of like asking "How do you put your seat belt on after you've been knocked unconscious in a car accident?"

<comment><USER8> No, more like: "How do I get my luggage out of the trunk after a brick goes through the windshield and smashes the trunk lever?"

<comment><USER9> You pull down the back seat and get into the trunk from inside the car of course. Snark aside, if your phone is dead, the only way to get data out of it will be to get to the "disk" on the device, if that's even possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > GrayKey, which counts an ex-Apple security engineer among its founders

How is it possible for someone to start a business built on breaking the security systems they had a role in implementing? It seems like a huge ethical breach, and I'm surprised there would not be contractual considerations to prevent this in the security field.

<comment><USER11> Why would it be unethical to get a job trying to break the security you previously helped implement? Security is not accomplished via obscurity so it's not like there's a trade secret issue here.

Really the only problem I can think of is if you put backdoors or weaknesses into the system with the expectation of being hired later to defeat the same system. But the problem there is the fact that you deliberately crippled the system you were building and not the fact that you were hired later to defeat it.

<comment><USER12> It becomes unethical as soon as you discover the vulnerability and refuse to disclose it.

It's like if you have a key to an apartment and you move out without the landlord asking for it back. It's not unethical if you then discover that the key still works. It becomes unethical when you do not disclose this fact. Worse still if you start making copies of the key and selling it to people who intend to break into that apartment.

<comment><USER13> I think the ethics depend heavily on when a flaw was discovered.

If this person knew of a flaw when at Apple, and did not disclose it to Apple (his employer), but instead left to go exploit it--that would be clearly unethical and possibly even illegal.

But if they left, and then, as an ex-employee of Apple, discovered a new flaw in Apple's security... how are they any different from a random person who never worked at Apple?

Do security researchers have a general ethical obligation to disclose a product's security flaws to the company who created it? I think most security researchers would say no... the obligation is more rightly put on the company itself to produce secure products.

Company managers don't generally have an ethical obligation to their ex- employees after the employment period ends. It doesn't seem fair to say that ex-employees should be obligated toward their former employer. The exception would be if they acted unethically _while employed there_ and then reaped the benefits later.

Or look at it this way--imagine an employee of GrayKey went to Apple, and then learned how Apple is defeating GrayKey. Does that employee have an ethical obligation to tell GrayKey about that? If ethics don't work the same in both directions, they're probably not strong ethics.

That is, unless there is some higher moral at stake, like "breaking security is always wrong." But even that is problematic because if you never try to break security, it never gets better.

<comment><USER12> _I think the ethics depend heavily on when a flaw was discovered. If this person knew of a flaw when at Apple, and did not disclose it to Apple (his employer), but instead left to go exploit it--that would be clearly unethical and possibly even illegal. But if they left, and then, as an ex-employee of Apple, discovered a new flaw in Apple 's security... how are they any different from a random person who never worked at Apple?_

They are still different from the average person on the street. Security is more than just the binary flaw/no flaw distinction. Perhaps while working at Apple the researcher knew about some old libraries that were still in production release but had not been worked on, let alone updated in years? That sort of insider knowledge could help them find exploits the average person wouldn't think of.

GrayKey is a completely unethical company. They are selling unauthorized access to people's devices. The fact that their main clients are law enforcement officers is irrelevant.

I can't believe you'd suggest that Apple is in the wrong for hindering GrayKey's efforts. Am I in the wrong for changing the locks on my door to hinder burglars?

Security flaws are ticking time bombs that threaten all of society. Discovering them and exploiting them rather than helping to fix them is ethically akin to discovering chemical or biological weapons and helping to put them into use.

<comment><USER13> > GrayKey is a completely unethical company. They are selling unauthorized > access to people's devices. The fact that their main clients are law > enforcement officers is irrelevant.

I'd say this is an example of a higher ethic or moral at stake. Not everyone agrees with you that law enforcement access to a device is always unethical. It certainly can be, if the police are acting unethically (which some do). But if they are properly investigating a crime and get a warrant, that's going to cross into the OK zone for a lot of people.

> I can't believe you'd suggest that Apple is in the wrong for hindering > GrayKey's efforts.

I did not suggest that and I don't believe that. I think it's great that Apple is fixing their device security.

<comment><USER12> _I 'd say this is an example of a higher ethic or moral at stake. Not everyone agrees with you that law enforcement access to a device is always unethical. It certainly can be, if the police are acting unethically (which some do). But if they are properly investigating a crime and get a warrant, that's going to cross into the OK zone for a lot of people._

Not for me. There's nothing sacred about the police. They spend a heck of a lot of time and effort acting as foot soldiers in a class war against the impoverished. They engage in widespread legalized highway robbery in the form of civil forfeiture. And if you want to include customs and border patrol (I do) they also spend a ton of time breaking up desperate families and conducting dragnet surveillance against innocent travellers. And their effectiveness in all these endeavours? Abysmal, if you take their stated aims at face value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Any sufficiently popular "hacking device" is doomed in the long run. In this occasion this is good. We have observed much more massive battles for game consoles chipping, which were all lost at the end by modchip makers. They are just training defences.

<comment><USER15> Inverse logic is valid too.

Any sufficiently popular "thing to crack" is doomed in the long run. ... They are just training offences.

<comment><USER16> > _Inverse logic is valid too._

Actually it's not.

> _Any sufficiently popular "thing to crack" is doomed in the long run. ... > They are just training offences._

No, because these are not symmetric operations. There is nothing mathematically impossible about bug free software. While the Halting Problem means that we can't just formally take any arbitrary program and solve all its states, it is possible to formally prove small programs and additively build up, and to approach a limit of zero with enough brute force over time particularly in simple programs. If they are not changing and actively gaining new informal features then they will not be automatically gaining new vulnerabilities either, and for all these very reasons it's standard practice to try to separate security core code and make it as simple and static as possible beyond bug fixes.

So unlike the real world in software defense is actually in a naturally stronger position if managed well. Software history is a spiral not a circle, security practices are improving and legacy is being reduced over time. A lot of easy mistakes of the past don't happen so much or at all anymore, and Apple has definitely benefitted long term from the hunt for exploits in hardening their ecosystem. Bugs still exist, but they're not low hanging fruit anymore, they're harder to find and more restricted in scope and more must be chained together for wider access.

<comment><USER17> > _No, because these are not symmetric operations. There is nothing > mathematically impossible about bug free software._

To me this is like saying there's nothing mathematically impossible about a perfect vacuum. There's always something leaking energy/attack surface.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > You can't even view [GrayShift's] website without a login given to members > of law enforcement

I would _love_ to see some leaked screenshots of even just the main page after login.

<comment><USER19> GrayShift is targeting government and large companies as customers, it will likely not be a quality website.

<comment><USER20> Amen to that. My company does very large cyber security contracts for DoD and has a god awful home page. It's almost like a badge of honor to someone how bad it is.

<comment><USER21> Maybe there's a style guide for the US intelligence/cybersecurity apparatus that demands ugly design straight out of the 90s? Maybe that style guide is also top secret ;-)

I've been wondering about that since Snowden afforded us a glimpse into the internal PowerPoint world of the NSA. That stuff - all of it - looked just like I would have designed presentations around 1996. When I first discovered PowerPoint. As a kid.

<comment><USER22> I imagine a lot of government agencies are still using IE6 internally which probably explains this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is it even known how graykey broke iPhones? Like details of the attack, how they bypassed pin-code delay? I thought that those delays were hardware implemented by secure chip, but obviously that's not the case.

</comment><comment><USER24> The screenshot in the article which is supposed to show how to make sure the feature is enabled, seems to be showing the setting _disabled_?

<comment><USER25> The screenshot is actually showing a section called "Allow Access When Locked". In order to have your content secured, you'd want USB Accessory access turned off when the phone is locked. The screenshot is correct. Their description of the feature has it backwards.

<comment><USER24> Ah, I guess in that context it makes sense...

Does the description change as you flip the toggle? Otherwise it certainly seems the like description implies it should be ON in order to achieve that behavior, not OFF.

<comment><USER25> Yes, it does. When it's off it says something to the effect of "Turn off to prevent devices from accessing your phone's contents without requiring your passcode."

<comment><USER24> Wow, when they word it that way, you wonder why it's an option at all!

But in any case, from the screenshot it seemed confusing but with the full description of the UI it sounds like they got it as right as a cryptic security setting buried 3 menus deep could ever be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Previously I remember seeing some speculation that having tools like GrayKey available can be in a sense good for Apple. If the tools are hard enough to get and limited to law enforcement, that should not affect too much the public perception of iPhones being very safe and secure. If these tools are available in some form, it reduces the pressure from the government towards Apple to provide access to data in the devices.

<comment><USER27> If GrayKey exists as a real tool, it will eventually be stolen and leaked or sold online.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'd really like a clone of this device that functions as a charger.

</comment><comment><USER29> The problem is that Apple can now start locking the USB after a single failed attempt. Eventually the entire technique of brute forcing would be moot.

</comment><comment><USER30> I assumed it was the tweak they made to ARM pointers

<comment><USER11> The tweak made to ARM pointers is a protection against return-oriented programming attacks. While it's conceivable that GrayKey's operation relies on attacks of this nature, in all likelihood this is not the answer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> You can be sure that more than a few people at Apple know how it was done. Just as you can be sure they are not talking.

</comment><comment><USER32> This makes me happy. While I am not anti-police... I feel like there is far far FAR too much abuse of power going on.

</comment><comment><USER33> Great news, now can apple fix that problem where nearby nfc hid readers auto open Apple Pay.

<comment><AUTHOR> Isn't that the entire point of Apple Pay?</comment></comment>


Viral mediums, Viral products, Viral Marketing and Viral=Good - <AUTHOR> http://immadsnewworld.blogspot.com/2007/03/viral-mediums-viral-products-viral.html <comment><USER2> Well I do enjoy you using the "Viral=Good" thing. I think a lot of people and advertisers who try to make something viral forget that the entire reason something becomes viral is because people like the content, not because you have some sort of voodoo.

If you want to make something viral, make something good. :D

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thats something I wrote a minute ago.

Feels like self-promotion to put my own blog post on here, but I am interested in peoples views on it.</comment>


LinkedIn Introduces Follow Feature for Influencers - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2012/10/02/linkedin-follow-super-influencers/

<comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4601705></comment>


Grumpy Cat has died - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-48308638 <comment><USER2> At least she was well loved. I'm going to use this as a reminder for me to give my kitty urinary tract support supplements. They aren't super expensive and are basically cranberry or root extracts.

I had a scare years ago where my kitty wasn't able to go to the bathroom and was becoming lethargic and she looked miserable. I took her to the veterinarian and I was shocked by how few options they had. They were very experienced and genuine people, but it was clear they had a very limited set of options and sadly most roads don't lead to great places. What the vet did determine by poking a small plunger thing up her butt (no joke) is that what very likely happened is that she jumped from something and fell onto something which caused temporary swelling. The plunger thing pulled some discharge from her rectum that shouldn't be there and is basically what causes the swelling. Thankfully she was back to normal in a day and I've never seen her that miserable.

(For anyone wondering, she is an outdoor kitty with fields and trees to climb and mice to hunt)

Obligatory cat photos of her now:

[https://i.imgur.com/W1M2hzW.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/W1M2hzW.jpg)

[https://i.imgur.com/Jz9K65a.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/Jz9K65a.jpg)

[https://i.imgur.com/DFPpFfy.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/DFPpFfy.jpg)

<comment> yc-kraln I would be very interested to know what breed of cat that is, as it looks just like one of our rescues: [https://i.imgur.com/Mbe89HT.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/Mbe89HT.jpg)

<comment><USER2> I'm pretty sure she is a Maine Coon and some of the other kitties from the same litter ended up looking like a Bombay. I could be entirely mistaken since I'm not an expert.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've never been too much into memes, but that cat put a lot of smiles on my face, so I'm saddened to hear this.

RIP Grumpy Cat, and give no shit to anyone in the next life.

</comment><comment><USER4> The owners say the name is "Tardar Sauce" but is this backsplaining why they called her Tard? I remember the early meme as only Tard, but can't find references to any other reason for calling Grumpy Cat Tard. Is Tardar Sauce a non-offensive explanation for why the car was called Tard?

<comment><USER5> Ok, non-English speaker here, what is wrong with Tard then?

Edit: thanx for the replies, retard does not sound very bad to me but if I understand correctly from all replies, it is similar to our Dutch cancer- sufferer (as in, one insults real cancer patients) in terms of social unaccepted-ness...

<comment><USER6> Short for retard. A clinical term for developmental delays that fell out of favour and became more of an insult.

<comment><USER7> "Developmental disorder" is the icd 10 term.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> She could get more attention than many artists, writers, musicians, victims, researchers, majority of the HN users...

</comment><comment><USER9> A really sad moment. She died with only 7 years, very young for a cat. House cats mostly live 16 to 20 years.

[https://www.instagram.com/p/Bxjs_9zBmjU/](https://www.instagram.com/p/Bxjs_9zBmjU/) The official announcement at her ig account.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'll miss GC, but she was _very_ well taken care of and had a great life. Go hug your cats/pets and loved ones today life sucks and is short.

</comment><comment><USER11> Bob Hawke, IM Pei & Grumpy Cat dying on the same day, what a weird Rule of Threes.

</comment><comment><USER12> Black bar?

</comment><comment><USER13> "The cat from Arizona had "helped millions of people smile"."

It always made me cringe as it was a freakshow caused by selective breeding.</comment>


Analysis: What Windows 8 Should Become - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2011/09/analysis-what-windows-8-should.php

<comment><USER2> Yes, killing the most lucrative market by making Windows "consumer brand only" would probably the silliest idea ever. Targeting enterprises and server market is what makes Windows DIFFERENT from Apple and thus giving Microsoft a market without serious competition. For MS to limit themselves only on Apple's market would probably be the stupidest idea in history of business decisions.

Not are companies are supposed to be Apple. Get over yourselves already please.</comment>


Singapore to test facial recognition on lampposts, stoking privacy fears - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-singapore-surveillance/singapore-to-test-facial-recognition-on-lampposts-stoking-privacy-fears-idUSKBN1HK0RV <comment><USER2> Someone that does not want to be tracked by facial or gait recognition, either because he's a criminal or a political activist, will always be able to do that. There might be a race between the recognition software and the circumvention technology, but a dedicated individual will always be able to avoid that. Normal people without any criminal, terrorist or activist intentions will be victims of this massive surveillance. I would actually hazard the guess that it will be easier for a dedicated individual to circumvent automated surveillance than the current status quo, being observed by individuals. A smart circumvention device will not be identified as such by a surveillance system, however, a human observer will.

Regardless of circumvention possibilities, the ultimate aim of these ubiquitous surveillance systems isn't really reducing crime, but social engineering: create a panopticon, an all-observing system, and the population that knows this will avoid potentially incriminating behavior in the first place. A system designed to make people censor themselves and self-reduce their social degrees of freedom.

<comment><USER3> > Someone that does not want to be tracked by facial or gait recognition, > either because he's a criminal or a political activist, will always be able > to do that

I wouldn't be so sure. How well can you control your stance or manner of walking for example?

Someone (human) trained to differentiate authors of handwritten text can often still do so even if an author is actively trying to write differently.

I think ML is great for comparing these highly subtle traits.

<comment><USER4> > how to control your stance or manner

Quite "easy". Put a pebble in your shoe, or some scotch tape on your skin. You'll behave differently

> Someone (human) trained to differentiate authors of handwritten text can > often still do so even if an author is actively trying to write differently.

That was never proven. Please cite a (good) source or I'll take it to be false

<comment><USER3> > Please cite a source.

I can't, though I think you could argue about it deductively.

> That was never proven.

I guess you can't provide a source either :)

> Put a pebble in your shoe, or some scotch tape on your skin.

If someone you know well did that, would you be able to differentiate his limp from someone else's? I am sure you could. I think it's intuitive that our "limp" betrays features of our normal behaviour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Yes we can so this", technically, facial recognition is now there.

"Why are we doing this?" Singapore is an already incredibly safe place with pride in the effectiveness of the rule of law.

The screenshot, as captioned:

> SenseTime surveillance software identifying details about people and > vehicles runs as a demonstration at the company's office in Beijing, China, > October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File Photo

Improve people's lives how?

> plan to use cutting-edge technology to improve people's lives and has > pledged to be sensitive to privacy

All of this is possible without using personally identifiable information.

> The government also hopes to use other sensors on the lamp posts to monitor > air quality and water levels, count electric scooters in public places, and > collect footfall data to aid urban and transport planning, GovTech said.

Should a European citizen visit Singapore, would this be GDPR compliant?

<comment><USER6> >Should a European citizen visit Singapore, would this be GDPR compliant?

I'm sure Singapore doesn't care. The truth about Singapore is that it pretty much is a police state, which has pretty extensive restrictions on individual freedoms. But... they do actually deliver on the supposed benefits of organising a society in that manner. Singapore is safe, clean and orderly. I wouldn't say that's the best way to run a country, but Singapore does mostly make it work.

<comment><USER7> And yet crime still does occur, and lifestyle choices are severely punished by jail, death, loss of career and loss of residency.

And by lifestyle choices I mean being gay, smoking weed, or being Malay.

I would quite literally live in any Chinese city before chosing Singapore. At least China would be cheaper.

<comment><USER8> There are many openly gay people in Singapore. I'm glad weed is banned, as is every other drug. Malay people are not stigmatized in Singapore.

I would quite literally live in any Asian country before choosing any Western country.

But hey, each to their own right?

<comment><USER9> > I would quite literally live in any Asian country before choosing any > Western country.

You'd choose North Korea over Sweden?

<comment><USER8> Oh hell yes!

<comment><USER10> Maybe your government can work out some deal where NK gets you and they get some North Korean who doesn't want to live in NK.

<comment><USER8> Lol. I live in Singapore. But my statement still stands. I would pick any country in Asia over a country in the west. I like Swedish people but the country isn't all that it's cracked up to be, it's not somewhere I would want to live.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It doesn't matter if it works or not. What matters is that the presence of surveillance creates an impression that you are in some sort of danger, and the syphoning of public money in the name of security is justified and can continue to happen with minimal scrutiny

<comment><USER12> Also it creates an overbearing psychological impact on people like big brother's telescreens in 1984. Slavery is freedom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Worst part is, you can't just go and destroy them because they will know who did it.

<comment><USER14> Wear a mask?

<comment><USER15> Depending on coverage, this might not be enough. People with masks can be tracked as well. E.g.: At some point, persons A, B and C enter an area without surveillance; Person B and C come out, A remains unseen but new person X comes out, wearing a mask. Even if they all don't leave during the period when X is out destroying government property, the problem is reduced from finding the needle in a haystack to identifying a ~1.75m lean person with a brisk walk, blue Sneakers and specific political views out of a relatively small set of individuals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Black-box attacks using specially crafted glasses that can mess up the facial recognition software already exist, leading to invisibility and/or misclassification.

[https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sbhagava/papers/face-rec- ccs16.pdf](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sbhagava/papers/face-rec-ccs16.pdf)

"In this work, we show how to perform invisibility attacks while attempting to maintain plausible deniability through the use of facial accessories. We defer the examination of the physical realizability of these attacks to future work."

"In this paper, we demonstrated techniques for generating accessories in the form of eyeglass frames that, when printed and worn, can effectively fool state-of-the-art face-recognition systems."

</comment><comment><USER17> I see an opportunity to create an apparel or accessory line to hide you from being recognized by facial recognition software

<comment><USER18> [https://cvdazzle.com/](https://cvdazzle.com/) has got you covered.

<comment><USER19> Other research has that covered [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4063065/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4063065/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm wondering if the system can track people with face masks (like one in the article picture)? And if they can track people who were recognized and later put on the mask and vice versa. That would be really scary.

<comment><USER21> They might not be able to recognise, but they can definitely track you.

<comment><USER22> Assuming the network has no blind spots people could hide into change their appearance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Sensors on lamp posts is straight from Deus Ex (game of the year 1999).

We live in an increasingly cyberpunk future; I wonder how many other predictions will turn true soon.

</comment><comment><USER24> Well that won't work, lampposts don't have faces...

(sorry could not resist)

</comment><comment><USER25> Singapore's government is one of, more or less, benign authoritarianism. _Should_ we expect privacy in such a place?</comment>


Actors Who Are So Similar That They Were Indistinguishable from Each Other - <AUTHOR> https://pictolic.com/en/article/17-actors-who-are-so-similar-that-they-were-indistinguishable-from-each-other <comment><USER2> I find this fascinating. It wasn't until embarrassingly late that I realized Jon Voight was not, in fact, Anthony Hopkins.

I also didn't explicitly understand the distinction between Rottweilers and Dobermanns until I looked for it.

I wonder what else I'm still lumping together.</comment>


On Android : FCM Messages Test Notification - the-dude https://www.reddit.com/r/androidapps/comments/iftf1o/fcm_messages_test_notification/ <comment> the-dude Removed exclamation marks from title, added 'On Android'.

I got these messages on one of my dev-devices. Totally creepy.</comment>


Ardour 4.0 released - <AUTHOR> https://community.ardour.org/node/8725

<comment><USER2> I'm glad it finally runs on Windows, but I can't help but get a wistful feeling. Ardour was the program that made me try Linux for the first time, a good decade ago.

I was really getting into multitrack recording and was using the best Windows freeware I could find ("Kristal", if you want to compare). I hungered for more and a Google search turned up Ardour. The screenshots looked amazing, but it only ran on Linux at the time. One "Musix" ISO later and I was busy being awed by the power of the system. Now here I am, free *nixen on everything I own. Thanks Ardour!</comment>


Apple forgot to encrypt parts of iOS beta 1 - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/i0n1c/status/742568394290036736 <comment><AUTHOR> Apple confirms this was intentionally [https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/22/apple-unencrypted- kernel/](https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/22/apple-unencrypted-kernel/)</comment>


Ask:how do you manage high and low performers - <AUTHOR> Some examples please <comment><AUTHOR> I will be taking management role and have been IC for long time. In my team I will have a mix of high and low performers and wanted to see what's the next way to manage this team. I will be doing some management training as well but wanted to see how others manage the team by examples and approach.

<comment><USER2> I would find out how they are underperforming and why.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Can someone please share how they manage this is technical team/projects in a competitive environment

<comment><USER2> Can you be less vague, a lot less vague?</comment></comment>