Norwegian F-35 Sending Sensitive Data Back to Lockheed Martin (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://fighterjetsworld.com/air/norwegian-f-35-spy-on-its-owner-send-sensitive-data-back-to-u-s-a/4113/ <comment><USER2> Apparently, in Austria, Eurofighter jets can't start until an NSA contractor on base types in an ignition key[1].

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18642194](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18642194)

>In order for the 15 Eurofighters to start, Austria's federal army paid 1.5 million euros over three years to a private US security company. Now, the costs for those two "civilians" stationed at the Zeltweg airbase have been confirmed, who have to allow every start with the current US-"Crypto-Keys" for navigation and friend or foe identification.

The ministry of defense denies that the two Americans from a not named US company are NSA contractors. They claim the jets would fly without the keys but without encrypted navigation and communication. He also mentions the same situation for Sweden and Switzerland.

<comment><USER3> That article is not entirely accurate and is based on a misunderstanding of what those contractors are doing. They're loading NATO MIDS/Link-16/IFF keys, not 'starting' the aircraft.

The Austrian Eurofighters can fly and operate without those keys, they just won't be able to join NATO Link-16 networks or other encrypted NATO communications or navigation networks. This is standard practice for all modern combat aircraft, incidentally, as encryption keys are rotated on a regular basis and need to be loaded into the aircraft's onboard systems before flight. The data can also include additional interoperability elements such as TDMA slice allocations in the case of Link-16.

The reason it has to be done by the unnamed contractor is because Austria is not a member of NATO, so it can't be given control over key handling. The same is true for Sweden & Switzerland.

It's a logical tradeoff. Austria, Sweden, and Switzerland get access to encrypted NATO networks and can therefore interoperate seamlessly with NATO forces, but they're always free to opt-out. Sweden for instance has fall-backs to national data links and communications networks to which only it has the encryption keys.

<comment><USER4> How does one know so much detailed info about this topic?

<comment><USER5> It's not a secret, despite the MIL-STD-6016 doc technically being classified one of my favorite documents on the subject is the Wireshark dissector the Australian government wrote and then published the document of how they've achieved it including pretty much the entire protocol: [http://willrobertson.id.au/resources/wireshark/DSTO- TN-1257....](http://willrobertson.id.au/resources/wireshark/DSTO-TN-1257.pdf)

<comment><USER6> Well thank you, very nice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have seen the army in my country to emphasize on having total control on each and every equipment they have. They boast on being able to completely disassemble and reassemble all the mechanical war machines.

I wonder how that works for software heavy war equipment, such as F-35. Does the seller provide full source code and control (and probably training?) over modification of the software? Do they agree on the paper only that the buyer can never get to use those weapons against the seller? Or, do they set those policies right inside the control units of those weapons?

If the seller country have significant control on the control units of the war instruments sold to another country, and if the seller country is able to update/modify/ control/restrict devices over the air, won't that make the buyer country just an outpost of the seller country?

<comment><USER8> F-35 source code is only available to a limited subset of trusted allies. Mainly the UK, but it appears that a few other countries such as Israel have at least partial source code and the ability to build custom branches.

<comment> no-dr-onboard Doubtful.

DoD/DoE contractors and manufacturers retain a large portion of military contracted IP material. For example, CNWDI in the nuclear world does not allow a anyone in the military access/knowledge portions of bombs/warheads below the maintenance plates. Sandia/LLNL/LANL keeps a (literal) tight lid on that knowledge, much less the very physical appearance.

If the same schema were applied to airframes, it's likely that Lockheed and NG retain rights to the manufacturers specific IP, which would include the source code to any avionics packages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It probably does a lot more than that. It's alway been rumored some US military tech could suddenly be turned "off" in the event of a war.

I couldn't imagine a situation that would put Norway and the US on opposite sides. Since the military allows Norway to get F-35s they probably agree.

<comment><USER10> I've heard rumors of something similar about US anti aircraft systems, and this being a motivating factor in Turkey buying S-400s.

<comment><USER11> Turkey also wanted to have a technology transfer while having patriots. So, Turkey can use it for its own missile defence system. Apparently, It didn't happen.

<comment><USER12> Yet ironically, Turkey didn't get a technology transfer from the S-400 either. Once Putin got Erdogan committed, Putin knew he didn't have to offer much - Erdogan couldn't suffer a reversal.

<comment><USER11> [https://www.defenseworld.net/news/23561/Tech_Transfer__Local...](https://www.defenseworld.net/news/23561/Tech_Transfer__Local_Production_in_Turkey___s_S_400_Deal_With_Russia#.XQApMY8pDIU)

<comment><USER12> Note that he doesn't have anything specific to point to - that's because he's merely trying to justify Erdogan. He must know that Turkey is going to get very few tech transfers:

[https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/3409158](https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/3409158)

<comment><USER11> Turkey has already a rocket-missile company [0]. So, I'm pretty sure Turkey does not need everything but only specific parts. What I think is that Roketsan will be able to manufacture its own s400-capable Triumph missiles. So, Everytime Turkey launches its own missile, It won't need Russia to replace its stockpile.

[0]: [http://www.roketsan.com.tr/en/](http://www.roketsan.com.tr/en/)

<comment><USER12> It's likely that Russia will allow Turkish missiles. However, that would not be a significant technology transfer. Technically Russia could do this merely by passing on protocols to 'talk' with the S-400, and letting the Turks create their own missile.

Even if some missile tech were to be transferred (I rather doubt it), the key part of S-400 is not the missiles - but the very sophisticated radar, control and EW systems.

Either way, it doesn't get Turkey much ahead in designing their own missile defence system, and leaves them dependent on a potential (even likely) enemy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> They only need to switch it to airplane mode!

Kidding aside, the concerns over the possibility for such actions were the primary reasons why the Turkish public was totally O.K. with being expelled from the F-35 program.

</comment><comment><USER14> One has to do wonder why a country would even consider buying a foreign plane that does this...

Data should be under the control and scrutiny of the owner of the plane, who would pass on only what they are happy to.

<comment><USER15> Norway is way too small of a country to develop its own weapons and airplanes. It has 2% of the GDP that the United States has. The cost of the F-35 project would deplete the entire Norweigan sovereign wealth fund. Secondly, what is the likelihood that Norway gets into a war with the United States versus Russia?

<comment><USER16> If Sweden can develop fighter airplanes, why can't Norway?

<comment><USER8> Sweden can't develop a _fifth generation_ fighter airplane. It's just too expensive.

<comment><USER17> It will be interesting to see if France tries next time. The UK, Germany and Italy certainly can't.

<comment><USER18> The plan seems to be to do it in common with Germany and Spain: [https://www.iiss.org/blogs/military- balance/2019/06/franco-g...](https://www.iiss.org/blogs/military- balance/2019/06/franco-german-next-generation-fighter)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This reminds me of Windows 10 being used in countless non-US governments even though it has telemetry enabled.

<comment><USER20> > you get calls from the US ambassador and it's not just economic reasons...

Do you have details/links about that.

<comment><USER19> I can't find any sources about it any more but I vaguely remember reading about it. I'm sorry. As I can't find it, it certainly wasn't covered by big press. I'll remove that part of the comment to be on the safe side. It's not what my comment was supposed to be mainly about anyway. The main part of my comment was more to point out that this is a pattern: the USA is supplier of a major amount of technology that lends itself very well to mass surveillance and the western world uses it. The US got the unique chance to make the technology spy onto the customer nations.

<comment><USER21> > The US got the unique chance to make the technology spy onto the customer > nations.

I dunno how unique that chance is any more. The whole world runs so on hardware made in China which could be compromised to do pretty much anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > "Due to national considerations, there is a need for a filter where the user > nations can exclude sensitive data from the data stream that is shared by > the system with the manufacturer Lockheed Martin," Gjemble ter.

> "Norway has entered into a partnership with Italy to jointly finance the > procurement and operation of a laboratory where we can enter nationally > sensitive data, as we currently do on F-16," Gjemble said.

</comment><comment><USER23> Why do these sites have to implement smooth scrolling - for a blog of all things? I don't understand what goes through their heads

<comment><USER24> It's annoying, but there was this fad a few years ago and many websites did it, and probably this one was designed at that time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm curious about the actual communication here. Does each plane have a satellite uplink or something? If they do, I would expect that they would be configured to use Norways military satellite comms network. I'm not sure how or why that network would be able to contact Lockheed. So are there multiple communications systems? What portion of them are military and what portion, if any, transit the public Internet? Lockheed might own their own communication satellites, I'm not sure, but I really don't think they have carte blanche to use the US military communications networks for their own products. Details might be sensitive or classified so I'll probably just be kept wondering, but the mechanics of the actual physical communication of data aren't clear to me.

<comment><USER26> A horribly shitty software package called ALIS is required to operate F-35,this software communicates from ground facilities to Lockheed servers.

Having dealt with the output of the part of Lockheed that makes logistical software, I say run for the hills.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This article is over a year old. June 4th 2018. Norwegian blogs and press wrote about similar conserns already back in 2017. Not sure why this is pushed to the top at HN now :p

</comment><comment><USER28> We've been carrying spy devices in our pockets. Now spy devices carry us.

</comment><comment><USER29> Is anyone genuinely surprised at this?

</comment><comment><USER30> I think Patriots do the same thing. But not S-400s.

<comment><USER31> That sounds overly optimistic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> The title makes the data collection sounds sinister, but this is just a case of a company wanting to make the best product possible. It's necessary to collect data to improve systems.

Norway (and all of Europe) has outsourced much of its collective defense to the United States, so if Norway and the Europeans are comfortable with the entire US military apparatus protecting them, it is quite surprising that Norway would have a problem with something as comparatively insignificant as flight data being sent back to Lockheed.

In fact, given the protective relationship the US has with Europe, wouldn't Norway want to provide as much data as possible to help improve Lockheed's technology and hence the West's future defensive capabilities?

<comment><USER33> Now say the exact same thing but referring to Huawei. How did that sound to the whole world, and especially to the US?

This isn't your thermostat sending temperature data to the manufacturer, it's a war plane sending critical information that the owner of the plane wants to keep secret.

<comment><USER32> The difference is that Norway and the US are liberal democracies and allies. China, quite the opposite.

In fact, Norway (and all of Europe) has outsourced much of its collective defense to the United States, so if Norway and the Europeans are comfortable with the entire US military apparatus protecting them, it is quite surprising that Norway would have a problem with something as comparatively insignificant as flight data being sent back to Lockheed.

In fact, given the protective relationship the US has with Europe, wouldn't Norway want to provide as much data as possible to help improve Lockheed's technology and hence the West's future defensive capabilities?

<comment><USER34> >"wouldn't Norway want to provide as much data as possible to help improve Lockheed's technology"

Given the article, I'd say that we know the answer to this and it is something of a resounding 'no' -

 _" Norway says it has become impatient with continued delays in the promised provision of a data "filter" by Lockheed Martin. So it's started its own project to find ways to block its new F-35s from reporting back to their former US masters._

 _It's also worried that it won't be able to optimize — or protect — the extremely sensitive Mission Data Files. These data packs optimize aircraft performance under different conditions, as well as provide a database of regional challenges and conditions._

 _Again, Norway wants Lockheed Martin out of the loop. "_</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Gmail users having issues receiving email (2:45 pm EST) - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en&v=issue&sid=1&iid=3b91c66f543f19c5bbca670b3d918d7f

<comment><USER2> Send/Receive does not work here.</comment>


QCSuper: A tool for capturing 2G/3G/4G air traffic on Qualcomm-based phones - <AUTHOR> https://labs.p1sec.com/2019/07/09/presenting-qcsuper-a-tool-for-capturing-your-2g-3g-4g-air-traffic-on-qualcomm-based-phones/ <comment><USER3> This is nothing new, you could do this before w/ any old CDMA/GSM phone w/ a Qualcomm chipset and getting QPST/QXDM what's cool is using non-qualcomm tools for it! :)

You'd be surprised by putting your phone in listening mode and changing around a few numbers can get you. the SMS paging channel is really cool, and you can turn your phone into a sort of Stringray from Harris Corporation.

More so, alot of this stuff is from the Phreaking Scene, which is, not dead, but very much different then its Mitnick heyday w/ the Oki900 and late 00's with ESN/MEID fun.

Most of the phreaking scene nowadays involves "rom" hacking vs the actual modem of the phone, or unlocking, or probing into the cell phones firmware to grab the 16 byte key that'd unlock the modem for you to play with and do everything from modify the bluetooth serial address, increase tx power, or more.

<comment><USER4> > Most of the phreaking scene nowadays involves...

That sounds like it's mostly just client-side attacks to get client-side effects (essentially, bypassing the DRM of the baseband.) Is there any modern phreaking that involves tower/node-side attacks, with the goal of achieving the same sorts of effects as classical phreaking (e.g. "free cell data")?

<comment><USER5> SS7, LTE Diameter attacks.

At first looks unreachable, then you see many ways to get there...

Another way is mobile radio side signaling manipulation (NAS mostly)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> They do a decent job at explaining (at a high level) the function of the protocols involved.

<comment><USER7> Yeah it's very well done from that point of view.

I've looked at such captures before and been kinda lost, the explanation is really great here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm wondering if there anything I should be looking for in traffic, like, could the carrier be querying my phone for anything that it not strictly any of their business? Then again, they already get a lot of interesting data through my browsing patterns, tower connection data (=location)...

<comment><USER3> The carrier wouldn't need too - your phone is already reporting to them everything and they can contain and go through information as needed. All routing is on their side. Your cell phone is an end client device that relies on a serial number/IMSI to access network resources tied to your identity on their network.

What you should be more concerned about, with this toolset is anyone can fetch the data around them using an off the shelf phone, and within proximity of _ONE_ tower or whatever passes your cell phone. (Bigger antenna, bigger gain = biggr net.)

Now, what's curious is if you research GSM, SMS paging channel or else - <USER2> of this stuff is cleartext, but you'd need something good to parse the information and isolate it per phone. This was w/ QCAT.

Back in the day of CDMA2000/3G, you could see whom the tower was trying to reach, what nearest handset was communicating with the tower and to/from (numbers) of text messages.

What's fun is determining what these numbers belonged too.

tl;dr you can do a very low range stingray.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The discourse on mobile traffic is all very interesting, but for a blogpost introducing new tool for capturing that traffic, I would have been more interested in hearing more about the diagnostic protocol you are using and its capabilities.

<comment><USER10> [https://github.com/P1sec/QCSuper/blob/master/docs/The%20Diag...](https://github.com/P1sec/QCSuper/blob/master/docs/The%20Diag%20protocol.md)

Now, I wonder what the cheapest rootable Qualcomm-based phone I can get off eBay is?

<comment><USER11> If you find out, post back. I for one am interested and I'm sure others are too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nice write up with simple (but informative) sketches. I'll share this post to some newcomers in our company :-)</comment>


ScratchABit 1.0 – Interactive disassembler with IDAPython-compatible plugin API - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pfalcon/ScratchABit/releases/tag/v1.0 <comment><AUTHOR> Major changes in last 2 releases: switch to YAML-based database format, allowing for git-backed collaborative reverse engineering projects, and switch to a better TextUI library, allowing for more streamlines, easier to maintain and hack on, UI.</comment>


Can I write a good CV on an iPhone? - <AUTHOR> I'm a techie, and I'm a believer in the transition from a PC to what's next.  I'm also out of a job at the moment, and this time I want to compose my CV entirely on my iPhone.  Barring what's installed by default, does anyone have experience with a good CV composition app? <comment><USER2> I don't see any reason one wouldn't be able to make a slightly simplified but still very good CV on an iPhone?

Google Docs, MS Word or any word processing app would be fine.</comment>


Jensen Huang's vision for data center dominance may destroy the Arm ecosystem - <AUTHOR> https://semianalysis.com/jensen-huangs-vision-for-data-center-dominance-will-destroy-the-arm-ecosystem/ <comment><USER2> This story is pretty hilarious in its breathless hype factor. Nvidia is going to dominate the datacenter with the three legged stool of GPUs, Inifiband and ARM?

Sounds like the bullshit that IBM salespeople were peddling about POWER circa 2008. The real strategy was licensing capacity with physical segmentation. Nvidia would probably pursue a similar strategy -- sell chips with lots and lots of cores and lease capacity on demand.

You could pave a road with the gravestones of technology vendors who pursued industry dominance with faster, more expensive chips. If IBM, Sun, Unisys, HP, Digital, SGI and a dozen others failed, why would a company with almost zero datacenter presence succeed?

Even with the pitiful state of 2020 Intel, I'd put my money on commodity ethernet and x86 in the datacenter. Most datacenter architecture doesn't require GPU. Nvidia could market with a kick-ass Oracle-like engineered solution for high-performance compute, game hosting or AI. But I don't think Oracle moved the needle in how we buy database compute, and I doubt Nvidia would do so here.

<comment><USER3> > You could pave a road with the gravestones of technology vendors who pursued > industry dominance with faster, more expensive chips. If IBM, Sun, Unisys, > HP, Digital, SGI and a dozen others failed, why would a company with almost > zero datacenter presence succeed?

I have very much the same opinion, and I think that Huang is at least aware of that.

> Nvidia would probably pursue a similar strategy -- sell chips with lots and > lots of cores and lease capacity on demand.

But this will be pretty much the same IBM thing. Some banks, and Oracle/SAP buyer types may buy in, but that will be it. It does not change anything to how the companies in the above list of "big iron" vendors attempted to do it before.

I want to remind that Huang is also, a very big "investment relations" player, and he likes to make an impression of "grandiose" plans to impressionable investor guys.

<comment><USER4> > impressionable investor guys.

Impressionable investor guys tend not to be investor guys for very long. Big- vision bluster can can work with media and some end users but it turns off real market analysts.

<comment><USER5> Seems to be working fine for Elon, Miyoshi Son & gang.

<comment><USER6> Elon seems to have delivered as opposed to Son, no?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >The datacenter is a 3 legged stool, and the remaining missing piece is a CPU. AMD, Intel, and various hyperscalers are also working to build out their own 3-legged stool.

Intel/AMD is allowed to build a moat in data center but Nvidia can't(?)

>Nvidia's endgame isn't more revenue from licensing costs. Their endgame is a fully vertically integrated data center provider. They will want to make and control every part of the three legged stool. This means they slowly destroy the idea of Neoverse. Whether through making that IP extremely costly, or having their own in house designs be a generation ahead, Nvidia will build a moat around Arm server CPUs. Over time, Jensen Huang will muscle out other Arm vendors

Intel doesn't even licensed out x86. AMD is grandfathered in. So Intel is allowed to control x86 but Nvidia can't. this is like Oracle bought MySQL along with Sun and Michael Widenius cry about it. You know what you are doing when you sold MySql to Sun. another company can come along to buy it. this is what closed ecosystem/software does. MySql is saved by dual licenses so maybe its time to ditch this idea of building an ecosystem on closed hardware/software.

<comment><USER8> x86 has been (effectively) a duopoly for over 20 years but breaking the ARM ecosystem would be a new thing. Building a moat is one thing but privatizing an existing ecosystem is different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nvidia already has the ability to build world beating data-center products using the three 'legs' of GPU (where it already dominates), the Mellanox technology it's acquired and Arm CPUs (where of course with an architecture license its free to improve on existing Arm designs). It already has a potential moat by virtue of its unique access to these three technologies together.

So why would it pay $30bn+ to own Arm? Because it would have the ability to directly hinder the businesses (and customers) of its current and potential competitors who have invested in the development of Arm based products. Not just in the data center but in mobile and in products that are used by billions of people around the world. That can't be right.

<comment><USER10> > it would have the ability to directly hinder the businesses

They have _extensive_ contracts in place. It's not like ARM instruction set is provided to nVidia and then they can just revoke it because they don't like nVidia.

<comment><USER11> I think the parent is saying that the only value add for Nvidia to purchase ARM itself rather than just purchasing an architectural licence is to use ARM in an anticompetitive way.

<comment><USER12> That's not much of a value gain it would just push the industry further away from ARM. x86 has a lot of legacy power and it enjoyed being the only relevant platform for a long time in a lot of markets so there's a lot of cost in making stuff that was architecture specific cross platform. ARM doesn't really have that, people that deal with ARM already have to worry about infrastructure set portability (all of them also have x86 support) once you add ARM the way is open for other ISA

<comment><USER13> > _That 's not much of a value gain it would just push the industry further > away from ARM._

I think that's the big irony here. It's taken ARM decades to break out of embedded/mobile and get to the point where they're seriously considered for workstation or server use. If Nvidia were to acquire ARM it would likely antagonize everyone to the point where they'd rush back to x86 and Nvidia would gain nothing.

<comment><USER14> That ship sailed already, Apple selling laptops with ARM processors is a sign of the times here.

<comment><USER13> Apple is still a very small part of the market when it comes to laptops and desktops. Their ARM-based computers will be a tiny drop in the bucket when stacked against mobile ARM chipsets. Sure, I expect PC vendors to jump on the ARM train as well, but if the sale to Nvidia happens, that could stop before it gets into full swing, or not happen at all. I'm sure PC makers who are thinking about ARM are watching this deal very carefully, and are avoiding jumping too soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > The rational for purchasing Arm seems ridiculous to many, but Jensen's > vision is for the datacenter being a computer and Nvidia being the one to > build it.

The thing is, there are 3 companies that control the future of datacenter growth. Amazon, Microsoft and Google. They can move the industry to RISC-V if NVidia doesn't play ball, or convince Intel to manufacture on TSMC's process.

Nvidia won't be in a particularly strong negotiating position. My understanding is that lots of ARM licenses are perpetual, or very broad. The existing players can just keep making ARM chips, what can NVidia do to extract more money from them, new instructions?

<comment><USER16> China is having issues with Arm and has a strategic view to develop its domestic industry. This alone means that a significant challenger to Arm will rise.

<comment><USER17> Interesting point, I don't believe I've heard about Chinese ARM processor, but I do know that China has MIPS based processors, and they're using VIAs license to build x86 chips.

<comment><USER3> There was a drama at ARM China recently. The fired, but de-jure still acting CEO was caught self dealing with his own obscure fund company, some times with clients' assistance.

IMHO, it simply looked like he was was quietly moving out cash from the company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So the fear here is that nvidia becomes a major provider of arm-based server chips and the rest of the arm ecosystem is forced to move to risc-v?

Both of these events would be very positive for the industry.

<comment><USER19> > the rest of the arm ecosystem is forced to move to risc-v?

In addition to selling hardware, it seems like ARM-owning Nvidia would probably be happy to sell whatever amazing new ARM cores they cook up to whoever is willing to pay to use the design. It's not obvious RISC-V will benefit from any of this. Somebody, somewhere would need to create equally amazing RISC-V cores and find a way to sell them.

<comment><USER20> So far RISC-V market is still wishful thinking, beyond a couple of maker boards.

First get C, C++, Go, Rust, Java, Erlang, .NET,.... generating competitive native code, port all their main libraries and IDE tooling, and then it might stand a chance.

<comment><USER21> RISC-V is far past "couple of maker boards" now. The last year has seen a lot of activity.

You're right that a number of mainstream software packages are still work in progress, for example V8 doesn't target it yet.

But RISC-V is thriving in other areas like industrial controllers, and Alibaba Cloud just announced a few days ago they are using it in a new server processor, positioned as an eventual competitor to AWS Graviton.

Topically: Nvidia uses RISC-V in some GPUs as a controller (not the GPU core). Not sure if those are released yet, but they gave a presentation on it at a recent RISC-V meet-up.

<comment><USER20> Point is, how much use do those controllers get versus more traditional CPU with years of mature ecosystem, so far it looks like testing waters to me, not something that even PIC has to worry about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > With the US Department of Energy dumping money into SCYL and many in the > industry congregating around it, the software front is accelerating rapidly.

Anybody know what SCYL is? Based on the low number of google hits I'm thinking it's a typo

<comment><USER23> I would assume [https://www.khronos.org/sycl/](https://www.khronos.org/sycl/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I hope this leads to serious interest in RISC-V ecosystem. It's been what, a decade? And we still don't have a cheap Raspberry-Pi like board.

</comment><comment><USER25> I simply do not understand current demand for data centers and more specifically GPU/ASIC. Are companies really squeezing that much out of data to justify this level of investments?

<comment><USER26> Have you looked at Google's earnings? ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The text and background makes it hard to read.

</comment><comment><USER28> We should put a cap on M&A activities concerning more than 100 people on the payroll on either side.

</comment><comment><USER29> Speaking of RISC-V, does RISC-V have any real traction?

Not niche traction and announcements here and there, actual heavy investments...

Or is it more like an "open arch" fantasy thing, kind of the cpu analogous to Ogg Vorbis and Open Moko?

<comment><USER30> Western Digital is using it on their hdd controllers. SiFive licenses IP for big cores and China apparently plans to work with it in the future.

Also I don't know why you count Ogg Vorbis as a fantasy kind of thing, it's used for pretty much any conference app and it has support on most consumer hardware and softwware for playback. Programs like EAC and dbpoweramp support it. I use it for my music collection on my phone, at half the size of mp3 it sounds completely transparent to me with my earbuds.

<comment><USER29> > _Also I don 't know why you count Ogg Vorbis as a fantasy kind of thing, > it's used for pretty much any conference app and it has support on most > consumer hardware and softwware for playback._

The idea in the day was it would replace mp3/aac/etc which it obviously didn't. That players support it is also not a mark of great success, since most people don't and won't care to use it. It just means that for the rare person caring enough, it will work.

From that aspect, the fact that conference apps use it as the internal format is hardly relevant, they could license and use whatever and we wouldn't know any difference.

<comment><USER30> >The idea in the day was it would replace mp3/aac/etc which it obviously didn't.

It did for anyone that cares about it and about file size. My portable library is vorbis. Mp3 is just very popular and there are a lot of mp3 files out there that can't be converted without further degradation of the sound quality so mp3 will remain relevant for a long time.

>From that aspect, the fact that conference apps use it as the internal format is hardly relevant, they could license and use whatever and we wouldn't know any difference.

It's relevant in terms of market support. Vorbis isn't going anywhere. The random codecs that have popped over the years, open or proprietary never got a lot of support from other companies so they went away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Me being negative really I think there is significant push for an American company to purchase ARM so that Chinese companies can no longer license the ISA?

<comment><USER3> "ARM China" has got perpetual licensing rights from ARM Co. in China. This is how they keep licensing to Huawei.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Its not about Huang. Its the structure of the markets and companies that makes this an obvious anti-trust problem.

</comment><comment><USER33> The way the title of this was phrased made a little lightbulb go on:

What if Intel asked NVIDIA to buy ARM?

</comment><comment><USER34> Is there a corollary to Betteridge's Law, asserting that titles with a subjunctive verb from the set {may,might,could} also evaluate to false?

([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines))

</comment><comment><USER35> NVIDIA is famous for row of anticompetitive practices. On the other hand such a disaster will clear up the road for other, more modern alternatives - be it RISC-V or something entirely new.

<comment><USER36> Godwin's law (or Godwin's rule of Hitler analogies) is an Internet adage asserting that "as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1".

<comment><USER35> Yeah, was a bit too much. Edited.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> [https://oxide.computer/](https://oxide.computer/) has a simple mission. Build hyperscale racks with open firmware/drivers - cut the wasted components like HDMI ports that Dell/HP still throw on racks by default. ARM/RISCV/x86/GPU/TPU/storage ... those are just configuration options.

Companies like Lightedge will take on the HVAC and physical security. The future is chiplets and computational memory: [https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Michael_Stumm/publicati...](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Michael_Stumm/publication/3250200_Computational_RAM_implementing_processors_in_memory_Des_Test_Comput_161_32-41/links/02e7e530f8ffbdec94000000/Computational- RAM-implementing-processors-in-memory-Des-Test-Comput-161-32-41.pdf)

<comment><USER38> >> _ARM /RISCV/x86/GPU/TPU/storage ... those are just configuration options._

But ISA still matters. Switching from Intel to AMD likely isn't much of a switch, but switching to a different ISA _in the datacenter_ will continue to be an uphill battle.

As the article notes, the uphill battle will take longer for RISC-V and if Nvidia follows the strategy laid out they hope to profit in the intervening gap.

<comment><USER39> > but switching to a different ISA in the datacenter will continue to be an > uphill battle.

It really depends on what kind of stuff the datacenter runs.

I know of datacenters where almost all the code running is Java. For those kind of datacenters, so long as JDK supports ARM (which it does), I can't see why it would be such an uphill battle.

The uphill battle is really for sites who run lots of closed source COTS software, especially that which is written in C/C++/etc, where moving to ARM needs support from the vendors and the vendors might hesitate due to the amount of work involved. There are sites where close to everything is either open-source or else developed in-house in managed languages (Java, .Net, Python, Ruby, PHP, JavaScript, etc), and those sites are likely to find it a lot easier.

<comment><USER40> Even running an interpreted language we've found that there's just a hundred small papercuts when it comes to switching over to an ARM distro. Missing native modules, third party deps, even some shell scripts mysteriously not working properly. Over time this will hopefully ease, and having all developers on Mac using ARM will help massively, but right now there's just enough friction to make it not quite worth it.

<comment><USER39> > even some shell scripts mysteriously not working properly

I'm wondering how this could happen.

I'm guessing the script is using uname to detect the platform, and gets confused by Linux on ARM.

I used to see a lot of shell scripts which detected Linux vs Solaris vs AIX vs HP-UX and did different things on each, especially due to differences in what commands and options are available. Given those commercial Unices are now shadows of their former selves, you don't see that so much any more.

But I still see it in scripts that have to run on both macOS and Linux. I've even written a few of those scripts recently.

This shouldn't be an issue, though, if you just do `uname -s` – you should get e.g. `Linux` on both ARM and x86. Maybe some people, for whatever reason, are checking `uname -p` or `uname -m` instead or as well, or even trying to parse the output of `uname -a` – not a very good practice

<comment> vertex-four Ehh, once you get to a certain point you wind up poking things under /sys and /proc that are a little different per-architecture, or building snippets of C code that make syscalls which behave differently per-architecture. Not to mention that ARM distros are usually a little different, either lagging behind or a little ahead of what exists for x86 - although it's better than it used to be, especially with ARM64.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Telegram shuts down major Iranian anti government channel - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.twitter.com/durov/status/947179988213624832 <comment><USER2> Don't know why this isn't higher, imho this shows that Telegram is in the hands of a state-actor (in this case Russia), I haven't seen Twitter taking down any of the videos which showed people actively being violent against the police forces.

Also, it seems like Iran has "temporarily cut internet access to mobile phones, but full coverage was eventually restored." ([https://www.yahoo.com/news/iran-warns-against-illegal- gather...](https://www.yahoo.com/news/iran-warns-against-illegal-gatherings- protests-112847988.html)). I remember something similar was done by the Assad regime in Syria just before the 2011 revolt (or around that time).

<comment><USER3> Its not that simple.

Snowden had some good comments here about Telegram in Iran: [https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/947190333540061185](https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/947190333540061185)

Telegram can only exist in Iran if it allows itself to be censored, basically. The alternative is for them to not exist at all in Iran.

The Iranian government cant force Twitter to do anything, but I assume they can shut down the Telegram app completely in Iran since they control the phone network and Internet there.

As long as the technical infrastructure for these apps are centralized, they are easy to shut down.

<comment><USER4> russian shill account?

<comment><USER5> No, you don't need to be a russian parrot in order to have this (in my opinion perfectly valid) view on things.

The core problem is that the Internet is both centralized and decentralized at the same time - while the Internet is able to route traffic away from broken cables etc. easily, it is vulnerable to hostile actors who are able to control an entire country's uplinks.

Something like Tor should have been built into the Internet from the beginning... but it wasn't, as the Internet was built on the implicit trust that no one would do harm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I agree that this is bad, considering that the country will answer with violence anyway, but this seems to be aligned with telegram's position. From the FAQ about takedown requests on public content:

"Please note that this does not apply to local restrictions on freedom of speech. For example, if criticizing the government is illegal in some country, Telegram won't be a part of such politically motivated censorship. This goes against our founders' principles. While we do block terrorist (e.g. ISIS- related) bots and channels, we will not block anybody who _peacefully_ expresses alternative opinions."[0]

I believe that, if there were actually violence calls, they're being unbiased by strictly following their own public rules.

[0] [https://telegram.org/faq#q-wait-0-o-do-you-process-take- down...](https://telegram.org/faq#q-wait-0-o-do-you-process-take-down- requests-from-third-parties)

<comment><USER7> I was member of that channel and they shared guides on how to build Molotov cocktails. With 2 million people in there, I'd have taken it down as well.

<comment><USER8> It's unfortunate that a false flag operative could easily shut down a major communication channel with posts like that—although I have no idea if that was the case here. On Reddit, the role of moderators who remove content that's against site guidelines is crucial or else any community could be shut down by rogue or infiltrating members.

<comment><USER6> Only admins can post to telegram channels, they're like facebook pages. On supergroups any user can post but admins can remove content, although I don't believe it counts as public content, so they shouldn't (according to the FAQ entry I listed above) take them down anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Telegram is not the alternative to open chat systems that it's fans championed it as.

It's a shame the iPhone won't let background applications run, before it became popular even my mother was just fine using IRC to talk with the family.

<comment><USER10> Set up a family bouncer. Palaver's good for iOS. I'm sure Android has good clients too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "...for breaking terms of service by calling for violence"

</comment><comment><USER12> Yesterday was facebook for Israel. Fyi

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16035721](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16035721)</comment>


How to encrypt your entire life in less than an hour - <AUTHOR> https://medium.freecodecamp.com/tor-signal-and-beyond-a-law-abiding-citizens-guide-to-privacy-1a593f2104c3#.53fulpyly <comment><USER2> Duplicates at

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12932654](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12932654) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12932449](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12932449)

Maybe HN needs a regular expression to remove this kind of tracking stuff from the end of these URLs?</comment>


Surgeons 'are better after playing Nintendo Wii' - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2008/01/16/sciwii116.xml <comment><USER2> After hours of "Takedown", I find myself a hazard on the road.

At least there is this tiny impulse to swerve right into the smug moron in BMW and see him fly off the 520 bridge into freezing waters. _SPLASH_</comment>


The Dependency Graph of Life - <AUTHOR> http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/view/BIO-C.2018.3 <comment><USER2> This paper was discussed by the author and three scientists here: [https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/winston-ewert-the- de...](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/winston-ewert-the-dependency- graph-of-life/728).</comment>


Ask HN: Is the JVM deprecated in the x86-64 world? - <AUTHOR> In the past world of Sparc, Risc, x486, x86-64, Itanium, etc ... the JVM seemed like a great solution to the problem of recompiling code for different CPU targets. But in today's world of cloud based commodity hardware can't we just optimize for x86-64 (C/C++) and be done with it? "Write once, deploy everywhere" has come full circle. <comment><USER2> What about ARM and POWER? Google is deploying Power in its data center and I thin Nvidia is working on POWER CPUs for datacenters/supercomputers (they are both members of the recently formed "OpenPOWER Alliance").

As for ARM, I know there's a big reluctance to use ARM for the big names, because "meh, x86 is almost as good and we already have all the tools for it". But I think ARM is going to grow in a grassroots kind of way, from the very low-end (Raspberry Pi) and up. It will happen slowly, but a decade from now I think ARM will have a decent market share in the server market. x86 didn't kill the previous architecture in the enterprise overnight either - it took 2-3 decades to displace most of them.

</comment><comment><USER3> Even if there were only one important CPU architecture in the world, you would still have to deal with multiple operating systems.

</comment><comment><USER4> x86-64 isn't the only platform that matters today (as higherpurpose notes, ARM and POWER are significant in various spheres), and its _relative_ dominance in the mainstream of the market isn't guaranteed to be enduring.

The kind of native-platform independence that the JVM offers may be _less_ important right now than it was when Java was introduced, but it hasn't completely stopped having a point.</comment>


Cyberpower Crushes Coup - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@thegrugq/cyberpower-crushes-coup-b247f3cca780#.xlupv444n <comment><USER2> Not sure I buy into all this "cyberpower" thing, but what seems incredibly stupid on the military's part was that they didn't actually capture Erdogan. What kind of coup is that where you don't capture the leader you intend to dethrone? Surely one almost destined for failure?

If they would've captured him, I think calls from allies to get on the streets to defend him would've been a lot weaker, Facetime or not. However, if they were smart, they would've captured all of his influential allies as well.

So this seems more like a weak attempt at a coup, rather than it failing because of the "Facebook age" or whatever (although of course that played its part, too, but I don't think it was the biggest reason for the failure).</comment>


Internationalisation for beginners - <AUTHOR> http://vincentsanders.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/true-art-selects-and-paraphrases-but.html

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the write-up. A very interesting read. It's an area that is ripe for innovation, and a massively growing industry.

The XLIFF and TMX formats also offer flexibility in the handling of translated data, as with .po files, but there are many problems still to be solved, as contingencies mentions.

As you mention "Real people are still required to do the translations and verify them" and the army of professional translators and agencies in the market is on hand to do that, but developers often work in formats they are unfamiliar with.

The bulk of a freelancer's work is in MS Office files, run through a CAT (computer assisted translation) tool, and the resulting file (and translation memory, TM) is delivered. When a developer needs a bunch of strings translated they stray into unfamiliar territory for the average freelancer.

Specialists are out there, but a common format approach would help here. Most professional CAT tools (costing from 200-1000+ of your local currency units) can process .po files, which is a bonus, but doesn't solve many of the remaining problems out there.

A multi-language translation memory (i.e. several source/target combinations) would be useful in many cases, as would a simple 'export translatables' button in the admin dashboards of apps.

I hope more HN readers dig in to the problems mentioned here, as technical solutions could have a big influence on the future of globalisation(-ization!).

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for the write-up, I deal with the same issue in our company and while we do work in Gettext with UTF-8 (that solves most basic issues just fine), it seems every project that does i18n is cooking it up in their own way and I have not been able to find many references online. I will probably make an article describing our setup when I get around to polishing it.

The concensus around Transifex in #i18n@freenode seems to be that the open source version is old and not maintained and should not be used. The SaaS offering is much newer and packs quite a bit more features.

The "good" open source offering appears to be Pootle [0].

Honestly, I would be very worried about depending on a cloud service such as Transifex for something that is so deeply embedded into our (pretty continuous) development process. This requires automation, and all the time invested in integrating with release processes and continuous integration can easily go overboard. Of course, if Transifex were seamlessly integrated with project management applications out of the box, then it wouldn't be such a risky proposition.

\----

An interesting point about i18n that is quite independent from the tool selection is how you write your message identifiers. You can basically use labels (i.e, an ID for the string) or use the "original" string.

Here's the tradeoff: if you use an ID, you must reference the application constantly to understand what the translation should say (and in any non trivial application, this is a huge burden for translators), and there is either no string reuse (because places with the same intended content have used different IDs), or the need for an anal curator to go around chastising developers ("the OK button should always be ACTION_BUTTON_LABEL_OK!! fix it!!"). On the other hand, if you use original strings in English you will find that you experience language collisions (two places where the original string in English is the same, but the translated one is not), so you end up resorting to introducing artificial differences to make them unique (i.e "Request (verb)" and "Request (substantive)" instead of just "Request").

A hack that goes a long way if your engineering team is based off a country that uses a latin language, is to use that instead of English for original strings. Latin languages are typically more complex than English so collisions are greatly reduced. Chances are your translation team is also based in that country as well, so no harm done.

\----

If you are doing branchy development, I put together a wiki page [1] on the Mercurial wiki with a script I use to merge translation catalogs (.po) seamlessly when doing branch merges. It can easily be used with git as well.

\----

Links

[0] <http://pootle.translatehouse.org/>

[1] <http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/MergeGettext>

<comment><USER4> > An interesting point about i18n that is quite independent from the tool > selection is how you write your message identifiers. You can basically use > labels (i.e, an ID for the string) or use the "original" string.

> Here's the tradeoff: if you use an ID, you must reference the application > constantly to understand what the translation should say (and in any non > trivial application, this is a huge burden for translators), and there is > either no string reuse (because places with the same intended content have > used different IDs), or the need for an anal curator to go around chastising > developers ("the OK button should always be ACTION_BUTTON_LABEL_OK!! fix > it!!"). On the other hand, if you use original strings in English you will > find that you experience language collisions (two places where the original > string in English is the same, but the translated one is not), so you end up > resorting to introducing artificial differences to make them unique (i.e > "Request (verb)" and "Request (substantive)" instead of just "Request").

The PO format uses the field "context" to differentiate among the various uses of a word/phrase. You should also add a comment for your translators in this case.

Also, using an ID messes with the PO format itself. E.g., fallbacks in case of a missing translation will not work.

But there are other formats that are ID-based, like .properties in Java.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great blog post about l10n and i18n! I'm working on improving that process in our company and currently I'm choosing Zanata [0] as a (Java-based) translation platform because out of Transifex's no longer maintained community edition (how unfortunate!) and Pootle, Zanata's installation actually was painless and the community around it is very responsive!

Too bad I didn't stumble upon Weblate [1] first though, it looks promising (thanks onemorepassword).

I've set up an independant "localization server" that executes the following process:

1) Regularly pulls new revisions of the code and updates to the latest revision.

2) A mercurial hook [2] is thus called and the source strings are extracted from the code with xgettext [3] so that new POT gettext files are generated.

3) The POT files are finally pushed to Zanata's server via its API.

We currently do in-house translations for one locale, while others are managed by an extenal translation provider. Employees in our company can just login (Zanata provides OpenID authentication) and collaboratively translate and review the application strings. Whereas Zanata can be used to export ressource files and push projects to our external translation provider's platform via their API.

But as others have said in this thread, l10n automation curently involves a lot of manual code glueing and adapting with your version control system. There's definitely potential since available solutions only address the translation problem and haven't gone very far in the whole process.

I'd be more than glad to exchange about the subject with others who have gone through the same experience!

\---

Links

[0] <http://zanata.org/>

[1] <http://weblate.org/fr/>

[3] <http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/Hook>

[4] [http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/xgettex...](http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/xgettext- Invocation.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> "Finally the Java property file format was used (with UTF-8 encoding) which while having bugs in the import and export escaping these could at least be worked around."

The java property file format is ISO-8859-1 not UTF-8. I have to wonder if that's the bugs you hit? While you can have something that is UTF-8, there's a couple of wrinkles with trying to use that with java i18n.

See: [http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/util/ResourceB...](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/util/ResourceBundle.html#getBundle%28java.lang.String,%20java.util.Locale,%20java.lang.ClassLoader%29)

... when you load a resourcebundle, it tries to load a properties file, and it ends up calling this method:

[http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/util/Propertie...](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/util/Properties.html#load%28java.io.InputStream%29)

... which mentions the encoding.

There's a couple of ways around this - one is to write a bunch of code to change how resourcebundles are loaded, the other is to use java's native2ascii tool in your to provide files that are correctly escaped.

<comment><AUTHOR> Transifex have extended the format and allow resources to be UTF-8 encoded (see [http://help.transifex.com/features/formats.html#java- propert...](http://help.transifex.com/features/formats.html#java-property- files) ) however the importer does not correctly cope with single quote characters, backslash n (newline) and several other characters being encoded when they ought to be (as per the document you referenced which I also used to begin with ;-)

If you look at the script Vivek wrote [http://git.netsurf- browser.org/netsurf.git/tree/utils/split-...](http://git.netsurf- browser.org/netsurf.git/tree/utils/split-messages.pl) he clearly documents the odd importer issues which is why we called it the transifex resource format and not Java resource format ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Transifex looks nice, thanks for the tip, but it seems like you have to add a lot of glue to connect your own version control to their proprietary version control via their API.

What I would really like is something like Weblate (<http://weblate.org>), that you can hook in directly to your code repo. Is there anything like that out there?

<comment><USER8> Disclaimer: I work at Transifex.

The perl script written by the user in the article is about 100 lines of code. Doesn't seem like a lot of glue...

Another nice thing that Transifex provides which is not described in the blog is the Transifex client[1]. I wonder why he didn't use it.

[1][http://support.transifex.com/customer/portal/articles/960804...](http://support.transifex.com/customer/portal/articles/960804-overview)

<comment><AUTHOR> I did not use it because it was an unverified python script with a bunch of dependencies, as a rule I generally do not like executing untrusted code without at least a basic review.

As you mentioned, the Perl script was 100 lines and was easier at that moment in time to integrate than to review the python.

Of course once the python client has been reviewed perhaps it would be a more general solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Whilst the key/value approach is solid, the 'industry standard' .po (GNU gettext / <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettext>) format supports more features, like complex plural and ordinal/cardinal number support that is a requirement in some languages.

In addition, some of the biggest issues with internationalization in my experience (~exclusively i18n projects for 10+ years) are generally missing/broken support in certain components (great reasons to contribute resources upstream for open source projects!), managing translations over time, cultural issues, right-to-left, differing program-level logic (eg. maximum SMS message length variations based upon character set requirements), differing seasons/days of operation/holidays. Calendars are of course a pain (though a solved one), as are timezones - for which a truly synchronized, global approach is frustratingly hard to deploy at the best of times.

<comment><AUTHOR> The gettext PO file format does indeed provide many other features, I do not disagree, but there does seem to be an over reliance on it within the platforms I looked at.

The format does have some pretty major drawbacks too, like the msgid can become "fuzzy" which leads to a differing set of issues related to the unique keying between translations.

It also tends to lead to developers English (C locale if you like) being selected as the default language and it turns out developers like myself are sloppy and sometimes produce barely parsable messages.

Your remaining points are really valuable to someone inexperience in the field, like myself, so thanks for pointing those out.

It is interesting you call out cultural issues, did you have any specific examples?

<comment><USER4> > The format does have some pretty major drawbacks too, like the msgid can > become "fuzzy" which leads to a differing set of issues related to the > unique keying between translations.

I am not sure how much of an issue this is in practice. The main problem of the PO format AFAICT is that it is quite outdated. For instance, it has no support for genders and you cannot "mix" plural rules within a phrase.

> It is interesting you call out cultural issues, did you have any specific > examples?

The wikipedia entry on l10n[1] has some examples.

The process of localization is not merely about translating some strings, but adapting them to a specific language and culture, which is the hardest part. For instance, your home page is one of the most important pages in your app and is geared to make as many people as possible sign up. Do you think a simple translation would have the same effect on British, French, Arabs, Japanese etc people?

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalization_and_local...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalization_and_localization)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: PHP and Audio.js playlist generator - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/superjamie/playlist-generator

<comment><AUTHOR> Before you say it, I agree this isn't very technical at all, it essentially just lists files and relies on the fantastic Audio.js to do the heavy lifting, but it is convenient.

You could use it to stream some self-hosted music to yourself and your friends.</comment>


Spatial Interfaces - <AUTHOR> https://johnpalmer.site/#/spatialinterfaces <comment><USER2> _> It seems that the only way to build an app that replicates the full functionality a deck of cards is to build a 3D simulation or game. Model the cards in 3D and put them on a 3D table. As long as you have controls for reaching out and picking up the cards, and moving them in space, you can do anything you can do in real life._

Unless you also want to enable castle building, no, I think a 3D interface would only add unnecessary complexity and cognitive burden. A 2D UI on desktop with keys for moving, flipping, looking at cards, and stacking, splitting, shuffling decks seems feasible.

On the other hand, if you spend time surveying the state-of-the-art in 3D input and real-time 3D physics engine, it will be clear how far away a functional deck of card simulation is. We simply don't have the tech now, and won't for the next 10 years.

3D games work because their focus is extremely limited (racing, shooting games), and/or low resolution (minecraft). As soon as you try to emulate the real world, you get things like Surgeon Simulator[1], where the awkwardness of the medium becomes fun in and of itself, albeit extremely unproductive.

[1] [https://store.steampowered.com/app/518920/Surgeon_Simulator_...](https://store.steampowered.com/app/518920/Surgeon_Simulator_Experience_Reality/)

<comment><USER3> Tabletop Simulator [1] provides a pretty functional 3D interface for playing board and card games. It has easy commands for shuffling and dealing cards, to one or to multiple players, and it gives each player a hand which allows them to prevent others from peeking at their cards in an otherwise unrestricted 3D environment.

Early on in the history of TTS it was pretty clumsy but it's gotten much nicer since they added scripting facilities to let you automate game setup.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> we're working on a 3d avatar-based communication platform at mozilla called Hubs (hubs.mozilla.com) that is predicated on the idea that shared spatial awareness and use of media in a shared space will be a common utility in the future, especially in VR + AR.

<comment><USER5> This is super neat! Thanks for the heads up :) there seems to be a bug where mic audio isn't transmitted on mobile (iPhone X Safari, iOS 12.4)? Other than that works shockingly smoothly on mobile. Nice work.

<comment><USER4> Ah thanks! That's a bummer to hear. We've had to do a number of things to work around weird issues with Safari iOS's WebRTC implementation. I thought we had these issued licked -- I just tested on my device which is actually same as yours with no issues. Would you mind stepping me through a reproduction case if it's easy? Also, were you using any kind of audio peripherals on either side? Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > _I could place my personal site on a street near the websites of my friends. > We could form a little village._

Wasn't this the thought behind the addressing of pages on GeoCities?

<comment><USER7> There is NeoCities now, but it lacks the village aspect. [https://neocities.org/](https://neocities.org/)

<comment><USER8> I hope it to be the next move in the industry, transforming text webpage into 2D RPG-like interface.

Perhaps that is why webassembly as been create for, to leap forward helping the emerge of new ( 2.5D) interface.

If not, then A13 iphone 11 will only help the mega bytes of poor dev reactjs interface sur-comsumming giga watt of power for no reason, and brutalism will then succeed ;) ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Oi. I'm guessing the author is young and doesn't know that much work was put into spatial UI in the 80s/90s and flopped for good reason: we might live in a 3D world, but that doesn't mean computers should emulate that... the world doesn't change dynamically in front of me like with a computer. Turns out that computers are hard and complicated, and simplifying their interaction works best.

That and most of these problems can be solved in other, better ways... for the actual parts that are worth answering (no one is asking who is everyone meeting with now, and tiny avatars don't answer that any better than a simple list).

<comment><USER10> There's new ways today to interact with digital media than in the 80's and 90's, and it's a little short-sighted to say "some smart people tried it a while ago so leave it alone."

Deep learning was a cool but impractical idea in the 80's and 90's. In-browser payments were laughed out of the room when Netscape and Microsoft tried proposing them to banks and credit card firms in the 90's.

Part of what the author is saying is that, maybe with our current toolset, we can find that the "simpler" interactions are more physical and interactive now than tapping and clicking.

Sometimes people actually are asking questions like "Who has meetings right now? Which rooms can I bump people from? Did half my group go somewhere that I should be joining?" and a list in Outlook doesn't always fit the bill. Sometimes I need to know where activity is in a building, and just giving me a list of zones or spaces in the building is indeed simpler, but less contextual than, for example, seeing a map with avatars.

There's something good about making what's old new again. It does happen that things we've decided are out of reach or impractical have a novel solution waiting in current capabilities.

<comment><USER11> > _There 's new ways today to interact with digital media than in the 80's and > 90's, and it's a little short-sighted to say "some smart people tried it a > while ago so leave it alone."_

It's the core idea that is bad, so the passage of time won't really change much...

We might built real-world like 3D-UIs to view with Oculus-style goggles, but 3D UIs in the 2D monitor / desktop (outside of gaming and modeling) has been proven a bad idea time and again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Skeuomorphism can be horrible. Just give a glance at what Microsoft attempted a couple of years ago [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5teG6ou8mWU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5teG6ou8mWU)

Why should we have to emulate real world interactions, the whole idea of computing is to make tasks easier, less of a cognitive burden, not replicate them in a virtual world. Sure there are specific kinds of software that are in need of a more humane approach but I'm not sure skeuomorphism is the answer.

<comment><USER13> I hate to be pedantic but 1995 is more than a "couple of years ago".

<comment><USER8> ;) ;) ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I was going to comment about an older link that came up about skeuomorphic interfaces in Apple's apps, but I didn't want to look it up. Now, I just ran into a video with multiple layers of it within the first 23 seconds that I've watched it. So, I switched tabs back over here:

Caravan to Midnight interview on John & Yoko

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

I remember now thinking about it when talking to a friend about why he doesn't like electric cars. The acceleration lacks the intensity, mostly sonically as we discussed. And I said we could skeuomorphicly add it back in.

</comment><comment><USER15> The Sococo example is bang on. I used it for a contract way back and the spatial interface is extremely useful. Teams colocate virtually, dedicated meeting rooms, etc.

The problem is the software is _so bad_. Someone like Zoom needs to buy this and fix the software.

<comment><USER8> I am not zoom, but I will try to fix it ! Please tell us all your worries about it

<comment><USER15> It's just not polished.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can a "spatial interface" make something 10x (not just incrementally) better? Are there spatial interfaces only possible in VR/AR that meet this threshold?

</comment><comment><USER8> Thx very much!! You just puts words on my theorical researches upon making new kind of interaction in our constraint SaaS admin world (from now on Bootcamp CSS like UX is the believed limit).

From my point on view, using classical old school RPG-game type interface will be one of the possible next move ;)

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't think computers will be a good place for digital spatial interaction until there is a tactile element. Haptic holograms seem promising, or some kind of nano/graphene sphere 'goo' can provide a meaningful digital interface in meatspace.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm immediately reminded of BumpTop ([https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=BumpTop](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=BumpTop))</comment>


Performance-Based Celebrity Endorsements - Swagsy Investor Deck - <AUTHOR> http://investors.swagsy.com/ Looking for feedback on the investor pitch deck I just finished creating for Swagsy. Any help to get the word out would be greatly appreciated :D <comment><USER2> This looks an awful lot like the Everest pitch deck: <http://investors.evr.st>

Coincidence? Are both of these built from the same public template?

<comment><USER2> Come to think of it, the Swagsy home page looks a lot like the Everest home page too.

<http://swagsy.com/> vs. <http://evr.st>

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, it's really just the font on the header that is the same on the homepage. But again, had Francis' blessing and he just raised money from Thiel... so go with what works right?

<comment><USER2> Fair enough. Though adding a larger dose of originality couldn't hurt.

Interesting business proposition. I may have missed this in the deck, but do you already have preliminary/pilot relationships with celebrities and brands/retailers?

Francis and the Everest team are top notch!

<comment><AUTHOR> Ouch about the originality - but you're right.

Francis is going to make it big. He has it.

<comment><USER2> A savvy audience (e.g., Peter Thiel) will remember the Everest deck. In fact, I've heard it discussed in several circles over the past few months. Going with what works is generally a smart approach, but you don't want to look like a carbon copy/an also ran. This is why I bring up the question of originality and suggest you add a bit more of your team's personality to the deck.

Otherwise, it's a great start. My two cents.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback :D Genuinely appreciated.

I'll keep working away at it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Making Swallowing Safer for those who have trouble swallowing - <AUTHOR> https://physics.aps.org/articles/v12/11 <comment><USER2> My girlfriend had brain surgery a few months ago. Afterwards she was unable to properly swallow for a few weeks.

At first they thought it was from the intubation but since it continued for several days they referred her to a speech therapist which is who handles this sort of thing. Her neurosurgeon gave her actively dangerous advice that both the nurses and speech therapist told her to ignore ("just chew the food more, then everything turns to oatmeal")

It turns out swallowing is really complicated. After neurological damage you get mobility back much more quickly than sensation and since swallowing is very sensation-intensive there was the real possibility that it may never go back to normal. I'm not a doctor so I'm probably getting some details wrong but there's a semi-voluntary component that kicks off the process, then the involuntary actions kick in. The involuntary bit is a delicate ballet of neighbouring semicircles in your throat contracting simultaneously, then one after the other. In her case, some of those semicircles were not firing or were firing at the wrong time, but only on one side. That made food that breaks into particles or is too thin get pushed around instead of down, so it would get stuck in her throat. If you inhale food particles this way, particularly with a weakened immune system, you're at risk for pneumonia so they take it very seriously

The food she could and couldn't have was pretty surprising. She could have shredded chicken, but not ground beef. She couldn't drink regular water, but could have jello (she could handle jello or augur both, though many people with dysphagia can't handle jello because it melts at body temperature and then runs down your throat). She had to have thickened water which I'd never heard of but was in every drug store I checked. She could have soups that were viscous enough, and vegetables that form fibrous strands when you chew them (like celery), as long as they didn't also form tiny leaves (like broccoli). She could have peanuts but not walnuts.

A good friend saw the weird puzzle of which foods she could have as a fun challenge and flew across the country to stay with us for a couple of weeks and experiment. We went through dozens of dishes a day, mostly in small quantity and then scaling it up if she didn't have trouble with it. I've never washed so many dishes in my life

She's fully recovered now but a challenge definitely helps you definitely learn to appreciate the little stuff :)

<comment><USER3> Interesting that a speech therapist was involved, because swallowing is in some ways the opposite of vocalization. The larynx goes up and eustachian tube briefly opens. This is the opposite of what you want when speaking.

<comment><USER4> Speech therapists are actually the most qualified clinicians for swallowing interventions. Entire courses on swallowing are required for the degree. Source: my wife is finishing her masters in speech therapy, spent an entire semester doing swallowing studies at a psychiatric hostipatal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As someone who is young (mid 30s) but suffers from Dysphagia, this is interesting to see. As instances of eosinophilic esophagitis continue to increase, more and more people will experience this.

If you have trouble swallowing sometimes, or it feels like food or pills get stuck, you may want to go see an allergist to get tested for food allergies. Don't procrastinate it thinking it will go away or is just in your head. If you do that, you'll get be at huge risk for Dysphagia, which is Hell. If you distrust the medical establishment, want concrete results (medical tests have false positives/negatives all the time) or would rather save the money, check out the book "The Elimination Diet" by Tom Malterre and Alissa Segersten.

<comment><USER6> I have difficulty swallowing pills! I've been hospitalized for it twice and just barely avoided a third. I had an unrelated allergy test after I thought I developed a food allergy but didn't test positive on any of the food tests. Do you have enough experience to know what that might be?

<comment><USER7> Are you, by chance, allergic to mold? Most people don't think of mold as a food allergy—I certainly didn't used to. But many foods contain mold (especially aged cheese). There seems to be some controversy around whether mold-allergic people need to follow a special diet, but anecdotally, I find that I must. Otherwise, I get chronic migraine headaches and a whole laundry list of related problems that I won't list here. (I tested positive to mold allergy on a skin prick test.) I was also having difficulty swallowing at one point.

[https://www.webmd.com/allergies/mold-allergy- basics](https://www.webmd.com/allergies/mold-allergy-basics) (Note: The list of foods here is pretty good, but some of the foods only need to be avoided if they've been dried/aged/preserved, such as meat, in my experience.)

<comment><USER6> I am indeed allergic to mold! But I've never noticed any symptoms. The incident that caused me to get tested by an allergist was a slight itch in my throat after eating some mac and cheese I made. But there wasn't any aged cheese and aged cheese hasn't given my cause for concern before.

I later felt that same itch eating pre-cubed grocery store cheddar. They add cellulose to those packages, which I'm guessing could be too blame.

<comment><USER7> Most cheeses contain mold: [https://www.bonappetit.com/story/is-moldy-cheese- okay](https://www.bonappetit.com/story/is-moldy-cheese-okay)

Only fresh cheese don't, such as cream cheese, mozzarella, and queso fresco.

One last tip that might help you if mold is your problem: I find that I have to scrub my faucets clean about once a week with an old toothbrush. I'm sensitive enough that a bit of mold in my drinking water can cause a coughing fit. (But I also live in a pretty humid place where mold grows easily.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't normally have trouble swallowing but a couple of big pills I take daily would give me trouble. A trick I learned recently was to turn my head to the side as I swallowed them. This video on youtube also describes different techniques besides turning your head: [https://youtu.be/NUzRGKx79k4](https://youtu.be/NUzRGKx79k4)

<comment><USER9> I got into a habit of putting water in my mouth first, and then popping the pill in to swallow. It's weird cause now I can't put the pill first and add water, but it helps me with bigger pills, I find it easier when it's floating in the liquid.

<comment><USER5> I've successfully used a variation of this technique, essentially holding the pills in my mouth until they are coated well with saliva. This has helped immensely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Fantastic, dysphagia is a special kind of hell.

</comment><comment><USER11> twss</comment>


Fluctuations in silver prices can predict the probability of terrorist attacks? - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/benmarrow/status/1180140772387168256 <comment><USER2> I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that they talked to absolutely no one local (Pakistani or Muslim) before they published this. The threshold before people pay zakat is like $300 so fluctuations in silver price has very low effect. Do you think someone with $300 in savings is giving donations?

Government only deducts the zakat from the checking account. I am from Pakistan and very few people(basically salaried employees for corps/govt which is a very small portion of population) have bank accounts and the main use is to just withdraw the salary immediately every month. People who are on the threshold of $300 lifetime savings have almost negligible chance of owning a bank account.So I am going to call BS on this paper. There are so many problems with the data in this paper that I can't even. Also quite racist to say factually that a lot of charity money goes to fund terrorist attacks and the proof for this is nada. They are using metrics for terrorist attacks in Pakistan (most of which used to happen indiscriminately in public places in metros where most people with bank accounts live). Do you really think that people living in metros are bankrolling indiscriminate terrorist attacks against themselves?

<comment><USER3> There is a cottage industry within academia for this kind of sophistry around terrorism.

I studied IR at a uni with a fairly good research reputation, one of the hot projects (funded to the tune of 7 figures) at the time (some time ago now) was the physical identification of terrorists i.e. by various body measurements...I am 100% serious. And this guy was not an idiot, in the conventional sense at least, PHd in Biology from Oxbridge, "genius", who (at the time) was talked about in breathless tones of wonder by the science departments (and ridiculed everywhere else).

Every few years a scientist will say: "Terrorism isn't solved...but I have a formula"...stop, we know why terrorism occurs but it isn't as simple as your calculus homework.

And I agree, it is totally unfounded to suggest that charities are funding terrorism (or that people who would give to charities and somehow be unaware of that fact, if it was the case).

<comment><USER4> I think it may be possible to get some signal from body measurements. Skin color, sex organs, teeth health (wealth proxy), scars/injuries (been in fights before?), maybe you could find some marker of chronic stress.

But yeah it's going to be pretty poor and not really actionable.

<comment><USER5> >Skin color

I see we are playing with fire today

<comment><USER4> I mean, he is predicting whether someone is a terrorist... based on physical measurements. It's pretty much the definition of prejudice. What could he otherwise be doing?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Correlation is not causality!

Also,...

Over-fitting data.

My god these things drive me crazy.

If it's real, then he should be able to answer this question posted on Twitter by Gregory Allen Perry ( @gallenperry ):

 _What is the payout on a $1000 bet that a terrorist attack in will occur in Kashmir in the month of February with no less than 20 victims killed if the price of silver drops by 5% immediately prior to Pakistani tax assessment in the year before?_

If he can't answer a question at least somewhat in the same vein as that, then this is crap. If he can (within any reasonable degree of confidence), then I'm wrong.

<comment><USER7> That would be if the price of silver _increases_ by 5% then.

According to the post if the price of silver is higher, the tax threshold increases and more people have extra money to support whatever organization they want.

<comment><USER8> Actually no, the lower the price of silver the more people are eligible to donate since the criteria to fall in that group is lower.

Despite the lower price of the silver, the "tax" is a static fiat-based % so basically more people are donating the same %. All the people that were donating 1.5% if holding a balance over $380 would still be donating it (and the same $amount) if the threshold were $360 (silver price drops), more people would be donating since now everyone between $360 and $380 would also be donating a 1.5% in addition.

If the donation was in silver then it might even itself out, but you'd have to look at a distribution curve of income to know for sure.

<comment><USER7> But if I understand correctly people donate when they _don 't have_ to pay tax.

From the twitter posts:

> Individuals who fall _just_ below the threshold one year due the chance > price of silver suddenly avoid a 2.5% gvt tax. Those people then increase > their private donations to charity (since they have more disposable income + > islam calls for alms-giving).

Or in clearer terms:

> ↑silver price → ↑tax threshold → ↓taxes → ↑charity → ↑terrorist financing → > ↑terrorist attacks!

<comment><USER8> I stand corrected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Reminds me of these charts: [https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious- correlations](https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations)

<comment><USER10> Damn you beat me at it :) makes you think about what unsupervised AI training can lead to... imagine not having insurance because you bought some Nutella on amazon during a full moon or any other crazy scenario

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Link to the actual paper

[https://t.co/s0NZ1PcpQf](https://t.co/s0NZ1PcpQf)

Is it normal for econ papers to use the first person? Super weird to read. His Latex formatting is a mess too. Check out page 37 for a scatter plot of rock solid correlation, lol. Not going to read the full 56 page mess because that's a job for an unpaid reviewer, not an unpaid commentator.

That being said, there's a shit ton of easy hidden variables here. Mountains of them. People are going to talk about spurious correlations, which is fine, but there' s a more subtle trick here, the hidden variable.

Sunscreen use is correlated with an increase in shark attacks and increase in hot dog sales. Are sharks attracted to sunscreen? Is there a secret ingredient in hot suncreen that makes people eat hot dogs? I can come up with pretty good explanations, that pass a qucik sniff test, all day long.

The answer is of course not. More people are simply at the beach. More people --> more collisions with sharks, more hot dogs shoved down gullets.

Not familiar enough with the culture of Pakistan to point out the specific variables, but that's the guess.

<comment><USER12> Got a good chuckle "that's a job for an unpaid reviewer, not an unpaid commentator."

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > predict the probabilities

Yeah that's all I needed to read to know that this is BS.

On a more serious note, if charities are indeed funding terrorism, you wouldn't have data on them. Especially in Pakistan where keeping data is something only the reputable orgs do.

This "paper" is not peer-reviewed and it will never get published. Just a usual case of a smartass thinking they can justify that their correlation means something when in fact it doesn't.

</comment><comment><USER14> Fluctuations in stork births can predict human births. Sidebar: Did you know that's why storks carry babies in cartoons?

"Correlation is not causation."

</comment><comment><USER15> 612 grams of silver is $342 today. Those who have life-savings of $342 in bank or more, get auto-taxed. At this level, we are talking about the un-banked mostly, so they don't have accounts in the first place. In other words, nearly all bank accounts get auto-taxed, so silver price fluctuations do not really affect this.

Second, try to calculate the silver price fluctuations, and calculate the ACTUAL dollar amount that becomes disposable to spend. Its peanuts.

Finally, this category of people do not give charity. They take charity.

<comment><USER16> The paper is not arguing that the people that go from zero tax to some tax are driving the charitable giving tax. It's arguing about the people in higher income brackets & it shows pretty robustly that charitable giving is linked to the price of silver.

<comment><USER15> He talks about "nisaab" which is the minimum amount you must own before you are auto-taxed, and that amount, based on today's rate is $342. See tweet 3 of 9: [https://twitter.com/benmarrow/status/1180140774127742979?s=2...](https://twitter.com/benmarrow/status/1180140774127742979?s=20)

<comment><USER16> And here is the actual author describing the link [https://twitter.com/nicolalimodio/status/1181581317596745728...](https://twitter.com/nicolalimodio/status/1181581317596745728?s=21)

You could also read the paper. The part linking silver prices to charitable giving is straightforward.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Full paper here: [https://www.aeaweb.org/conference/2019/preliminary/paper/A5f...](https://www.aeaweb.org/conference/2019/preliminary/paper/A5fDSNfK)

<comment><USER17> "This page isn't working"

Anyone else have a link to the paper/data?

<comment><USER18> [https://www.dropbox.com/s/8x66xc3wcvfns4a/Limodio_TerrorFina...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/8x66xc3wcvfns4a/Limodio_TerrorFinancing.pdf?dl=0)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> [https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious- correlations](https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations)

<comment><USER20> As I look at the page (which I believe changes randomly), I especially appreciate the 0.81 correlation between "letters in winning word of Scripps National Spelling Bee" and "number of people killed by venomous spiders".

It's a good one in two ways. First, it's nicely obvious that these things are unrelated. Second, these are two variables that fluctuate (together) over time -- a lot of the spurious correlations turn out to be two things that basically just increase or decrease more or less constantly over the period in question.

<comment><USER21> >I especially appreciate the ...

And you missed this > 0.99 one (a bit dated, still ...):

Apple iPhone sales

correlates with

People who died by falling down the stairs

[https://tylervigen.com/view_correlation?id=28669](https://tylervigen.com/view_correlation?id=28669)

<comment><USER20> Sure, but like all the 0.99+ correlations, that one is just two lines moving in the same direction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This seems extremely far-fetched, see for example comment on Twitter pointing out some flaws.

Reminds me of that company that revived millions of dollars for their software for finding hidden messages on the internet and somehow predicting terror attacks.

<comment><USER23> No one sells silver in this story. It's a benchmark currency used to set the tax baseline.

The main flaw is that the graph doesn't show a correlation of fluctuations, it just shows two high-variance metrics increasing over time.

> [https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious- > correlations](https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations)

> 2.5 million terrorist chat board messages from the dark web

Now that's fascinating.

<comment><USER22> Sorry, removed that part before I saw your comment :(

I agree with your comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Relevant: In the words of master data visualist Edward Tufte, "Correlation isn't causation, but sure is a hint."

</comment><comment><USER25> Not anymore. They now know that you know.

<comment><USER16> I suspect that this was meant as a low value comment but it's pretty important here that the paper is decidedly not saying that the people giving to charitable organizations are intentionally funding terrorist attacks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Correlation, causation. So similar, so different.

</comment><comment><USER27> So, Silver Causes Terrorism?

<comment><USER28> The paper suggests that cheaper silver causes more terrorism, yes. Hilarious how people try to explain spurious correlations with a far-fetched chain of causation.</comment></comment>


Essential Math for Games Programmers - <AUTHOR> http://www.essentialmath.com/tutorial.htm

<comment><USER2> A few years ago, the Wolfire team (AKA, the Humble Bundle originators), put together a great set of articles on linear algebra as it applies to game development. I think it's one of the most plainly-written and practical guides out there. I still mentally picture the diagrams when I've been out of the loop for a bit.

[http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/07/linear-algebra-for-game- deve...](http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/07/linear-algebra-for-game-developers- part-1/)

<comment><USER3> this is absolutely wonderful, as someone who dabbles in gamedev on the side this is immensely useful (just like gameprogrammingpatterns.com).

I love math, it is my favorite subject (numbers are beautiful) but sometimes I don't know the concepts for the math I am trying to apply, this definitely helps fill in some gaps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Don't panic. The _page_ is titled "Essential...", but unless you're beginning a new AAA engine by yourself, much of this laundry list is more like "Interesting"

<comment><USER5> Indeed. All this is hardly essential.

<comment><USER6> but knowing it makes you a more versatile developer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It would be nice if this were in some sort of curriculum order. It was disconcerting to see that the first topic was Grassman [sic] Algebra.

Honestly, based on my 20+ years in game development, the one essential piece of math I wish all game programmers had in their toolbox is to know basic linear algebra backwards and forwards.

<comment><USER8> > _basic linear algebra backwards and forwards_

On that note, here's a short tutorials about linear algebra on fast forward: [http://minireference.com/static/tutorials/linear_algebra_in_...](http://minireference.com/static/tutorials/linear_algebra_in_4_pages.pdf)

It's aimed at students who are in a rush so it doesn't cover too many applications (the cool parts of LA), but the essential ideas are there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Am I the only one who can't stand people trying to deliver technical information via power point slides?

<comment><USER10> Not at all. Slides are to support a talk. I find most of them fairly useless without the speaker audio/video.

<comment><USER11> The quality of a talk is probably inversely proportional to the "stand-alone- ability" of the slides. If you can get all the information from the slides they're way too dense. The best lecturers use the slides for pictures and as an outline, but deliver most of the information through speech.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am going to reveal a bit of ignorance here. I code simply because I am horrid at math and since my work only entails business math I rarely have to even search for good examples. Balancing books, invoicing, etc, doesn't seem to stretch my math skills.

So which areas are still math intensive outside of engineering related work?

<comment><USER13> Most people have a wrong conception of what math means. Math encompasses large parts of pretty much any engineering discipline including programming. At the end of the day the foundations of programming are boolean logic, turing machines, lambda calculus, etc. Those are all technically math so when you say you're horrid at math and that's why you code that doesn't really make any sense.

More generally, using any kind of analytical approach to solve problems is math.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Another resource, titled "Coding Math", but covers such topics as tweening, easing, ballistics…: [https://www.youtube.com/user/codingmath/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/codingmath/videos)

</comment><comment><USER15> I have developed some games on my own and these math resources are far more than essential.

</comment><comment><USER16> How come is it essential if I don't really need most of that to build games these days? Correct title: "Math that might be useful for 2d+3d games with custom engines".

<comment><USER17> Even if all development moves over to a selection of a few engines (which won't happen), you'd still have to have people who make the engines, and they don't pop out of nowhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> there's a very long list of videos on youtube on maths for game devs: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKCF8A3XGxQ&list=PLW3Zl3wyJw...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKCF8A3XGxQ&list=PLW3Zl3wyJwWOpdhYedlD- yCB7WQoHf-My&channel=BSVino)

i watched some of it - quite educational, albeit a bit dry.</comment>