IBM bans USB, SD cards, flash drives and portable devices from every office - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/10/ibm_bans_all_removable_storage_for_all_staff_everywhere/ <comment><USER2> This is common at many semiconductor companies. Not only is it a ban at one specific semiconductor oem I know of, the usb-ports are disabled and the usb- ports on new issue computers are epoxied to prevent trying to use them.

Semiconductor technology is one of the areas of global-technological competition which surely benefit from secrecy. For example, several years ago one of the c-level executives at this specific OEM was caught taking pictures inside of one of their customer's facility. Only the engineering staff from that oem is allowed inside those facilities now, and only for maintenence activity.

It's a very secret industry, and getting even tighter now since China has been blocked from acquiring the latest semiconductor technology. China has so far invested over $40 billion in boosting their chip-making abilities, to acquire capital, IP, and knowledge-workers. Given their history of borrowing technology from other countries without attribution, if I were at the head of a semiconductor related company, I would clamp down on the secrets ahead of the danger.

<comment><USER3> How do you connect a keyboard or mouse?

<comment><USER4> An implementation I've seen had all ports locked down on the laptop itself and physically locked with a plastic plug that can't be removed without leaving evidence.

The keyboard and mouse were connected to a dock.

On the OS level only HID devices were allowed via USB you could bypass this if you had admin rights but it would leave a trail.

The idea behind these like most other security controls is to prevent accidental leakage and to make it difficult enough that intentional leakage would likely be detecte on time.

<comment><USER5> > you could bypass this if you had admin rights but it would leave a trail

A move I've seen being put in place at several locations, is removing local admin rights from all users. Those with advanced needs, like developers, gets a VM which is limited to a specific VLAN, with no access to the production environments.

The principle is sound, implementation is ... difficult, to say the least.

<comment><USER6> And if you're willing to run a lot of screencaps or re-type the stuff you see on another computer you can still get the data out. Before modems were common in the hands of unwashed masses my friend and I would transfer files on the phone by spelling out blocks in hex. Slow but with a checksum every 16 bytes it was good enough to get some work done. If the data is high value enough it would probably be worth it.

<comment><USER4> Any host based DLP will monitor and block screen caps you also need to get them out some how. Printing will also be heavily restricted and monitored. Sure no DLP solution would beat pen and paper but that's not a good way to exfiltrate data these days and a security guard checking people leaving a restricted area would be a good enough way to plug any leaks.

<comment><USER7> All of these technologies are great to prevent employees from casually stealing data but as history has proven, usually while the front is well guarded, the back end many times has quite a few holes for hackers to exploit. It's like they say, the most secure computer is the one not connected to the network.

<comment><USER4> People like to dramatize things way too much, most "breaches" are accidental there are 1000's of companies that manage to keep their data secure on a daily basis despite targeted attacks.

With a few exceptions it's much easier to either poach your competitors or simply buy them outright which is why "corporate espionage" is mainly employed by nation states these days that need to catch up. It's also important to note that stealing a design isn't that useful these days since you are too far gone what would be more important especially in the semi industry is to know the characteristics of a specific design or process in order to be able to preemptively position your offerings to compete without giving up any unnecessary ground.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> brian-armstrong Preventing exfiltration? Nobody tell them about my library [1], they'll need to ban line out ports and headphones :)

1: [https://quiet.github.io/quiet-js](https://quiet.github.io/quiet-js)

<comment><USER8> Awesome! A GMSK modem in js? Good on you. Submit for show HN?

Have you tried other modulations?

<comment> brian-armstrong Thanks!

It made the rounds on show HN a couple years ago. Also my dirty secret is that it isn't really JS, it's C via emscripten [https://github.com/quiet/quiet](https://github.com/quiet/quiet)

Currently supports everything Liquid DSP supports which is GMSK, PSK, QAM, OFDM and a lot more. Working on adding DSSS soon

edit: Here's a sort of lab/playground [https://quiet.github.io/quiet-profile- lab](https://quiet.github.io/quiet-profile-lab)

<comment><USER9> So what transmission rate can you hope to get with this?

<comment> brian-armstrong Depends quite a bit on what you have. I've seen about 10 kbps over air and 64 kbps over cable

<comment><USER10> It is pretty conspicuous over the air though. It also won't get rid of watermarks.

TEMPEST is probably easier and more reliable than this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is going to hurt everyone but really motivated hackers in there.

If I had to smuggle some data out of a PC I'd use the audio card at a very low volume but known frequencies to output the data the FSK way, leaving a phone near the speaker recording the audio, then at home I'd reconstruct the data just as old modems did 40 years ago.

Other methods could also be used: blinking a pixel (or the optical mouse led left on the phone camera), raising the cpu power usage by making it run busy loops according to data ones and zeroes (nobody would object a bluetooth power consumption measurement device connected to the PCs mains cord), or manipulating innocuous fields into IP packets such as the Time To Live: make it higher than X and it's a one, make it lower and it'a a zero; routers will ignore the trivial difference but a passive (100% undetectable) tap into the network cable still allows to sniff the data. Actually, unless the infrastructure is instructed to report Ethernet frames sent to wrong addresses, one could send malformed frames carrying data into the payload so that they could be ignored at switch level but still readable by a tap on the cable: that would allow data smuggling at blazing fast speeds, much higher than USB.

</comment><comment><USER12> Banning removable media is 100% the right direction (of course there needs to be exceptions for DSLRs and install media and whatnot, duh)

The amount of idiocy I've seen with storing sensitive and work intensive documents in USB sticks is horrible.

<comment><USER13> yeah, except this is why it's happening now: [https://features.propublica.org/ibm/ibm-age- discrimination-a...](https://features.propublica.org/ibm/ibm-age- discrimination-american-workers/t):

<comment><USER14> Fixed link: [https://features.propublica.org/ibm/ibm-age- discrimination-a...](https://features.propublica.org/ibm/ibm-age- discrimination-american-workers/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Within a business, security has to be understood in the context of risk analysis.

Will the measures taken damage the company more than the benefit of the increased security?

In my eyes, banning storage media without a practical replacement is on the wrong side of the risk analysis equation. Sure, it's not desirable that files can be moved without full access control and auditing, but if people don't have a tool that works the same way then all your employees who rely on it will suffer.

It would have been great to see a standard encrypted portable drive, probably with the decryption software on a different partition establish a foothold in the world. With the addition of DLP software, that could have allowed employees to continue to do their work while mitigating the risk of lost or stolen data.

edit: what this doesn't cover is transferring large files quickly, or transferring files to a computer that isn't currently configured with the systems required for file transfers.

<comment><USER16> With the rise of VPNs, fast home internet, and fairly ubiquitous public wifi along with laptops gaining enough power for most applications the question is what's the real use case that requires removable media that can't be accomplished with an internal FTP/network drive/email and using company laptops?

<comment><USER17> Offshore work, for instance.

Lots and lots of vessels have painfully slow satellite links - think <=64kbps - whereas the others mostly have very slow satellite links - ~512kbps.

Trust me, in such conditions you do not want to cough and ask whether you can download your training material off the corporate VPN...

(Heck, in many cases, shipowner policy prevents any third party computer from being connected to any onboard IT infrastructure, anyway.)

<comment><USER18> Working at sea; an Antarctic base; Mars; etc. is very much a niche for which specific exceptions can be made, but is irrelevant to almost all employers. In most cases security is the greater concern.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is already standard practice for several industries. For example, you'd be hard pressed to find a pharma company nowadays that allows the use of any removable media.

The likely "replacement" is that IBM employees will have to use some sort of corporate VPN to work remotely.

<comment><USER20> What sort of Fortune x00 company doesn't use a corporate VPN?

<comment><USER21> Google: [https://ai.google/research/pubs/pub43231](https://ai.google/research/pubs/pub43231)

<comment><USER22> I work at IBM and I can get almost all of my development work down without logging into the company network when working remotely - quite similar to Google's approach. This is a relatively new development within the past few months.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Office workers will be fine.

It's the field people that are going to have it rough. Even the best 4G LTE stick won't matter if you're installing in the basement of a huge complex.

<comment><USER5> First, if USB sticks are out for data exfil reasons, 4G sticks (and anything else that isn't a HID device) are out as well.

Second, such networks generally have an approved way of getting data on to them, typically involves handing your USB stick or DVD to someone with access to a particular machine with unblocked ports and specially firewalled off access to a particular shared drive on the network, and nothing else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Interesting but seems kind of late, no? Even the US State Department has banned USB drives since at least 2008. I don't think US government is particularly well known for being good at security.

<comment><USER25> It's one thing to ban stuff and another to actually provide practical solutions for people so that they can continue working. Banning stuff looks good on paper, but sometimes the clever work arounds people invent are then much worse than the original thing.

Practical example from past. Policy denies creating user accounts for externals. In big orgs you anyways sometimes have the need to have some external do work on systems. Idealistic view is that employee baby sits the ext guy and performs everything on behalf of him. But in reality people have their own work and deadlines, so it becomes tempting to just log on and let the ext work on your credentials.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Seems like the move addresses accidental data leaks through portable device misplacement. I don't think it can do much to protect against intentional leaking. I mean, they want people to be able to work from anywhere from the sake of business, so I guess this addresses 1 vector. Hopefully, they understand this.

<comment><USER27> Well, it's still not going to stop the general institutional incompetence that permeates the company when it comes to security. For example: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/25/world/europe/ibm- sweden-d...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/25/world/europe/ibm-sweden-data- outsourcing.html)

Keeping sensitive data off the cloud altogether is the more sensible option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is a security move to prevent more documents getting leaked. They're under fire for the ageism layoffs, which were partially verified by leaked docs, and so they probably got paranoid.

Not that they shouldn't take this measure regardless. But there's a very specific reason it's happening now.

</comment><comment><USER29> Surprised it took them so long. Outside of exfiltration, there's the issue with sketch USB sticks with malware making their way on to your network.

It's amazing how many people will plug in any flash drive they find in a parking lot.

<comment><USER30> There's a very large Cryptocurrency convention taking place in New York right now, and I wonder how many USB drives are "lost" in the area.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Worked at a financial institution ~10yrs ago, they pushed out a group policy change to not allow USB ports for storage for security reasons while I was there.

</comment><comment><USER32> I remember they came to our school to show off their new hot desk software they wrote. Look how efficiently we can use space! I saw it as saying your so unimportant we won't even give you a dedicated desk.

Now apparently you can't even use common tools to get the job done. If I had a big meeting I wouldn't take a chance on the network to keep my presentation.

<comment><USER33> >Now apparently you can't even use common tools to get the job done. If I had a big meeting I wouldn't take a chance on the network to keep my presentation.

Then you are an active threat to your networks security. You sound like you have an incentive and willingness to put in effort and take personal risks to circumvent the security protocol at your workplace. Looking at employees without bad intents, this is as bad as it gets.

This is a great example why social engineering is unlikely to go out of style anytime soon. People who think they know better and are confident in being qualified to take a risk are never in short supply.

<comment><USER32> First, using USB drives was never against security policy at my work - so your personal attacks are unjustified. But secondly my powerpoint presentation isn't exactly top secret classified material.

If we were talking about handling the private signing keys I would agree with you. Different types of data have different levels of security needed. Over classifying trivial data just makes it harder to get things done.

<comment><USER33> I am sorry if it came across as a personal attack, I didnt want to imply that you are personally negligent or unqualified to make that call. For all I know it is your job to make those policies at your place off work. The problem is a User with this attitude whos job isnt to make that call.

Strictly speaking, If a user in a workplace where this behavior is against the security policy acts like this or expresses this opinion, namely, that they wont be stopped by a security policy to hold their presentation, they are a user group that arent just a possible attack vector but a possible attacker them self.

If your company forbids the usage of USB ports, they do that for a reason, whether individual users think that is reasonable or not. This isnt just about possibly leaking data, but introducing stuff in an environment that is supposed to be closed. Differently put, as a bad faithed person, I will gladly borrow you my USB Stick to transfer your important files so you dont get in trouble for having technical hickups. I also will take you up on the "thank you" snacks and will also watch silently when you get in trouble for intentionally breaking security policies and infecting the network.

<comment><USER32> The problem with blanket policies like this for an entire organization is that they don't consider the type of work being done. A publicist for example has as their job to distribute information publicly, you aren't helping them by making it impossible to drop off a USB key to someone. A software developer has a need to install operating systems much more frequently than an average user. You can net-install but usb media is still a major vector.

The vast majority of people in an organization don't work with sensitive material. It makes much more sense to do this on a per department basis.

Policies like this that ignore on the ground reality and make it hard to get work done encourage abuse of the rules. When the rules are too draconian people will work around them and it encourages disrespect for other rules - especially the ones that actually do improve security.

<comment><USER33> That doesnt make individual users less of a security risk. This boils down how much harm an individual user can do, most of which the individual user doesnt have the full grasp off. It can be a simple as introducing something into a system and enabling an inside attacker or walking around with a audio keylogger in form of a usb stick. Your laptop with a borrowed usb stick can record the sound of someone way above your security clearance typing in sensitive data while being in the same room. This sensitive data might be a trivial as a cost center number.

Those rules arent draconian, someone somewhere was hired to make a risk assessment and found them to be necessary. You dont circumvent them period. Thats the responsibility of each an every employee. No matter if you think they are stupid, it isnt your call to make, except if someone hires you for exactly that, then they are your responsibility to do right.

Most attacks arent some espionage stuff, its plain and simply precaution against fraud and theft. And they target people who are to proud for their own good who never think of themself being at threat. Which is sadly something a lot of computer scientists have a bit of a problem with. No one wants to believe they could be duped like that, they surely would know it better. Security policies are there to not have to rely on individual egos and look at it more realisticly. Most of us will be duped when taken advantage of in a bad moment without enough time to think about it. Thats why people do it.

There is a reason even the CEO and CSO have to wear their badges. There is a reason a lot of Snowdens colleges started to get really scared once it became clear which credentials he used to access the files. And they were lucky, he could have been a criminal and sure as hell wouldnt have mentioned that those data leakages where his responsibility. He could have simply been a criminal transferring money in their names.

<comment><USER32> I would love to see the cost benefit analysis that showed a company wide ban on USB keys would save more money than it cost.

Meetings happen daily, an iffy wifi connection is enough to waste the time of everyone in the meeting (10 minutes x 15 people is 2.5 person hours). These mundane things happen day in and day out. Someone walking around with an audio based keylogger is dramatically less likely to happen (and this ban on USB drives wouldn't prevent that anyways).

If you ignore the cost of people's time then pretty much every security idea makes sense. But its not a good way to run a business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> If this is about security of leaking things out, is IBM also ending their open web policy?

Otherwise I fail to see the point, anyone could easily just send anything to anywhere over the net. Don't need a USB.

Therefore, It seems to me this is about unintentional leaks of information, not intentional.

</comment><comment><USER35> Ha! If I worked at IBM they would never catch me. My flash drive is disguised as a tiny sports car! Foolproof!

Anyways, did IBM have a big leak recently or something? This seems rather draconian to have been put into place without some fairly strong motivations.

<comment><USER36> _Anyways, did IBM have a big leak recently or something?_

Yes, this is almost certainly about leaks to publications such as El Reg. Eg. [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/26/ibm_gives_services_...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/26/ibm_gives_services_staff_until_2019_to_get_agile/)

<comment><USER37> Slack instead of email?

That's hilarious.

<comment><USER38> Not to mention sad, soulcrushing, and generally illiterate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Perhaps fairly inevitable eventual breaches of client data are more forgivable when a given firm can point to efforts such as this as evidence of having tried to keep a lid on leaks, and to elevate confidence that it is less likely to happen.

From what I've seen some firms' internal security practices in general seem more to be about appearances whereas other firms tighten and scrutinize everything as if the company's reputation and survival depended on it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Most companies that are somewhat serious about their business and the privacy of their clients (and their clients' clients) have a removable media policy. IBM's is nothing special in that respect. Besides cutting down on exfiltration vectors it also nicely takes care of some ways in which you might end up with malware on your corporate systems.

If your company does _not_ have some kind of removable media policy then you are probably working for a very small company.

</comment><comment><USER40> Right, they need to prevent the innovation from leaking out -_-

<comment><USER41> They're just trying to keep Watson contained

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Would it be possible to just disable the usb driver from the OS(or just limit it, to a very very few tasks). Without it being a burden for UX purposes. One could argue that an exploit might be written in such a way that, it could be triggered before the OS boots from the BIOS. But, at that point, any external user-land exploit would provide the same level of access to sensitive data.

<comment><USER36> _Would it be possible to just disable the usb driver from the OS_

For that you would need the capabilities of a world-class IT outsourcing company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Don't FB and Goog already do this in practice if not completely enforced (i.e. epoxying the connectors). What's the news about this?

<comment><USER44> Since USB is how you debug on Android and even flash the software, that doesn't ring true. If the Uber case is any indication, they instead give you all the freedom but essentially rootkit the system and keep very comprehensive logs and access controls.

<comment><USER45> you don't need USB, it can be done using WiFi

<comment><USER46> You do need USB. You still have to plug the Android phone into the PC every time unfortunately - then you can enable wireless debugging and disconnect the cable for that session. When you come back to your PC later, you have to plug in the cable again. I know this because I'm trying to learn Android development and it's infuriating.

<comment><USER45> Not if your device is rooted, apparently: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19117359/android- debug-w...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19117359/android-debug- without-usb/19117585#19117585)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Most android phones can function as portable storage devices, but I don't see them banning them.

<comment><USER48> But to be used in that way, you'd have to plug the phone into the computer.

<comment><USER49> BT/WiFi?

<comment><USER48> In such an environment, wouldn't those also be disabled?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> In many ways it can be stated: "the worst thing about security is too much security". People always try to find ways to bypas security simply just to do their job.

</comment><comment><USER51> $1 says they give out IBM branded USB keys at trade shows ;-)

<comment><USER6> The question is what's on them ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> So what they are saying is that every car in the employee parking lot will have a cellphone in it?

Wouldn't that cause a lot of break-ins?

</comment><comment><USER53> Well, treating your employees like middle schoolers is one way to quickly get rid of the remaining talent.

</comment><comment><USER54> This is nice until you have to transfer 78.2GB for one project and the transfer takes many hours.

<comment><USER41> Copying large files to and from USB storage is probably slower than just copying across their internal network.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I hope employees don't use sonoff wifi plugs :)

<comment><USER56> Is there something particularly bad about Sonoff (as opposed to most other IoT devices, where the saying "the S in IoT stands for security" applies)?

<comment><USER55> nah just that its the cheap mainstream model

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> This is really common and good practice

</comment><comment><USER58> How will they work with no phones?

<comment><USER59> There's no reference to them intending to ban phones in the article, at least not that I could find.

The "portable devices" in the actual body of the article is phrased differently from the title, like so:

        portable storage devices like a USB, SD card, or flash drive

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Good for them.

</comment><comment><USER61> cellphones? cellphone tethering?

</comment><comment><USER62> This is a third-hand story. Most of it is lifted verbatim from the _PCMag_ article ...

* [https://www.pcmag.com/news/361098/ibm-employees-cant-use-rem...](https://www.pcmag.com/news/361098/ibm-employees-cant-use-removable-storage-anymore)

... which is in turn sourced from an article in _The Register_.

* [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/10/ibm_bans_all_remova...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/10/ibm_bans_all_removable_storage_for_all_staff_everywhere/)

<comment><USER63> Ok, we've changed to that original URL from [https://boingboing.net/2018/05/10/ibm-bans-usb-sd-cards- flas...](https://boingboing.net/2018/05/10/ibm-bans-usb-sd-cards-flash.html). Thanks!

<comment><USER64> Gosh, thanks! Certainly didn't expect the change or want to be seen as asking for it. But it's lovely that you did it so thanks!

<comment><USER63> We much prefer to have original sources. This is in the site guidelines actually: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Maybe IBM should just ban pockets instead.

</comment><comment><USER66> Just another act of IBM's security theatre, and a testament to their backwards views on employee experience.

<comment><USER67> You're not wrong on their poor employee experience, but there's very little theater involved - there's good reason to protect their IP. Any firm that invests multi-millions in original design will want to protect their property from theft. Semiconductors were mentioned, but also think about someone like Pixar.

<comment><USER66> The thing is, what's stopping employees from uploading files to a server? The physical devices are a fraction of a fraction of IP theft. Hence the term "theatre".

<comment><USER67> A business like this is likely to have a WebSense network appliance, and/or policy enforcement software on the desktops.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Product idea: a dongle with male & female USB connector, that you can place between USB drive and computer, and which catches possible security violations.

<comment><USER69> All USB data already has to go through your USB drivers. So you've got a software solution vector right there.

<comment><USER68> Yeah, but software can be mismanaged.

Perhaps a solution would be a combination of the two. E.g. dongle converts USB protocol to (say) XYZ protocol, and software converts from XYZ protocol to readable filesystem.

<comment><USER69> And hardware can't be mismanaged?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


That Time Atari Cracked the Nintendo Entertainment System - <AUTHOR> https://hackaday.com/2018/10/22/that-time-atari-cracked-the-nintendo-entertainment-system/ <comment><USER2> > One company single-handedly revived video games to mainstream prominence. > That company was Nintendo. They're ostensibly seen as the "savior" of the > video games industry, despite the fact that microcomputer games were still > thriving (history tends to be written by the victors).

Yes, there was gaming on microcomputers, but it was about half the size of the console market. Between 10 and 17 million Commodore 64s were sold, compared with about 30 million Atari 2600s. (About 8 million of the other pre-NES consoles were made.) The NES went on to sell about 62 million units.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best- selling_game_cons...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best- selling_game_consoles)</comment>


HackMIT - Hackathon for students from any school, Oct 4-6 - <AUTHOR> http://www.hackmit.org/

<comment><USER2> From someone who has to pass through Stata on the way to work every day, oh god.

<comment><USER3> You registered an account just to say that?

<comment><USER2> You checked my user page just because I wrote a comment?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'll be attending from Emory University in Atlanta. I don't know any local developers and so I'll be looking for a team to join. If anyone wants to put together an HN team my email is denverrayburn(at)gmail(dot)com.

Will this be like a normal startup weekend where the teams form there, or will people already have their teams together?

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm debating attending this, but I'm in Ontario so it'd be a full day of travel each way to get there. I also don't know many local developers I could coerce into attending. Any students from HN looking for a team?

edit: I should point out, email is in my profile or alanctgardner(at)gmail(dot)com

<comment><USER6> There's a bunch of us going from UWaterloo.

<comment><USER5> Well, I'm a humble uOttawa student, but I did get accepted to Waterloo ;)

<comment><USER6> I'm curious as to why didn't you come here then!

<comment><USER5> I visited Waterloo-Kitchener a few times before choosing, but it never felt very interesting as a place to live. People diss Ottawa for being boring, but we have a pretty good number of attractions, and it's really easy to get around without a car. Montreal makes a nice weekend trip if you want to go someplace more exciting.

Academically I do feel like I missed out on a higher quality education / more prestigious degree from Waterloo. I have to do a lot of legwork to make my co- op program work and (hopefully) graduate on time next year. Ottawa also doesn't (yet) have the startup/developer culture Waterloo has, but I think we're working on it.

On the plus side, I did all 5 of my co-op terms without leaving Ottawa, met my girlfriend of three years and have a sweet job coming out of school next year. I wouldn't have done anything differently, but it is interesting to consider.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> No love for the grad students (who should probably be working on their thesis anyways). And for those of you out there...thesis while working full time is not an easy task.

Very cool though, might stop by. Is there someone who might work as a press contact?

<comment><USER8> Email email@example.com and we'll help you out :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm thinking about heading up from the Baltimore/DC area. I was going to go up as a single but if there is anyone from the area or looking to form a team drop me a line at jhavila2(at)jhu(dot)edu or the email in my profile.

<comment><USER8> Try asking at [https://www.facebook.com/events/1374512966106958/](https://www.facebook.com/events/1374512966106958/) – someone else might be in your situation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think I'm going with a bunch of other people from UofM - we'll be filling 1 (or more) tour bus(es)! Thanks for organizing this, and I can't wait to come hack in October!

<comment><USER11> Or you could head down to Detroit and help reinvent government in Michigan. The state is releasing API's on five themes: jobs, tourism, safety, veterans and foster kids.

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

<comment><USER12> Code Michigan should sponsor a prize at MHacks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I will be attending and doubt there will be enough local interest. Send me an e-mail if you would like to set up a team. trhlavat(at)millersville(dot)edu

<comment><USER8> Ishaan from HackMIT here. Regarding interest, in the past week, we've gotten over 1500 signups –– more than we can handle, to be honest. But there's definitely no lack of interest.

<comment><USER12> 1500!? Is this going to be the largest hackathon ever?

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately, attendance to something like this won't be anywhere near 100% of the people who express interest. Especially considering the prestige of MIT and the publicity, I bet a lot of people are considering it but ultimately won't be able to go because it's really far and a long event around midterms time.

For reference (orders of magnitude different, I know), I organized a local hackathon and heard from probably 100 'interested' people. We ended up netting 30 registrations, which was the cap for our venue, but I only actually turned 2 people away. So 2/3 of the developers that I spoke to and emailed personally couldn't make it, and that was in the city they already live in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm near DC, seriously considering going if I could find someone else interested.

</comment><comment><USER15> I did t=0, if you can, I highly recommend hitting up an mit hackathon.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm coming from way out in the boonies (South Dakota State).

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm a Carleton CS student in Ottawa and thinking of going.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm a sponsor and will be there all weekend. Come say hi!

<comment><USER12> What company?

<comment><USER18> Bloomberg -- I'm planning on setting up the market data API for anyone that wants to use it as part of what they're working on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'll be there from Ohio State! email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER20> I'll be there for sure. (firstname.lastname@example.com)</comment>


Ask HN: Should Microsoft rebuild Windows as a *nix based OS? - <AUTHOR> Is it a good idea? <comment><USER2> The whole point of NT was to provide Win32, POSIX(UNIX), and OS/2 all atop the same kernel. No need to rebuild it, NT was built like that.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_3.1#Architecture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_3.1#Architecture)

Nothing stops Microsoft from putting an entire GNU or BSD userspace atop their NT kernel. They probably built the proof-of-concept 15 years ago.

EDIT: Considering that they used the BSD network code to put TCP/IP in NT 3.1, it's likely that they had at least a minimal BSD userspace running atop the NT kernel circa 1991/1992\. That could have meant x86, Alpha, or MIPS:

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


Performance-driven culture is ruining scientific research - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2018/feb/16/performance-driven-culture-is-ruining-scientific-research <comment><AUTHOR> The point being made is good, although I don't think you can blame this on the UK's Research Excellence Framework, seeing as this is happening around the world. Frankly, it's also that the researchers who end up evaluating other researchers simply have no time to evaluate the research itself [1] and are used to reaching for the Impact Factor - even though that's completely unreliable [2].

[1] [https://theconversation.com/why-i-disagree-with-nobel- laurea...](https://theconversation.com/why-i-disagree-with-nobel-laureates- when-it-comes-to-career-advice-for-scientists-80079)

[2] [https://medium.com/flockademic/the-ridiculous-number-that- ca...](https://medium.com/flockademic/the-ridiculous-number-that-can-make-or- break-academic-careers-704e00ae070a)</comment>


Ask HN: Are there any on-demand Django deployment and management solutions? - <AUTHOR>

I just ported my Drupal based community site to Django. The Drupal site has been hosted at a shared hosting for last 4 years and gets around 5k unique visitors with 70-80k page views a day. My sys admin skills are limited and I'm about to deploy my first Django app. I would like to know what would be the easiest option for me to host this app with minimal sys admin work as I have very limited time (and desire) to manage my own VPS at the moment. Does anybody provide a Django deployment platform similar to Heroku or Engine Yard?<p>Edit: I have a small internal Django app hosted at Webfaction. I really like Webfaction. However, can Webfaction's shared environment handle my traffic? <comment><USER2> Google App Engine is a scalable low-cost Platform as a Service run on Google's infrastructure. You get to use their toys (Datastore based on BigTable, large network of servers and datacenters, etc), but it will not "just work" with most Django/Python web applications. For example, you have to use their API to interact with the Datastore, and some things just don't work. Once you do the work to get your app running there, though, it turns out to be a fairly good deal.

<comment><AUTHOR> GAE is promising, however I already have an existing Postgres database which would be painful to convert to BigTable. Also I'll be using PIL for image manipulation, along with numerous long-running cron jobs which would be hard to run under GAE.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Learn how to build MVPs without Code - <AUTHOR> http://codefree.co <comment><AUTHOR> I was always a lousy developer, but I finally could make apps for the first time when I tried putting together tools like Zapier, Blockspring and Bubble. I ended making a (shaky) clone of Airbnb, and recorded the whole 10-hour process. Time-lapse video here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCgD6-FOjtA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCgD6-FOjtA)

On this platform (code-free as well), I am teaching basic design and programming concepts for the audience that usually stumbles after 4-8 lessons on CodeAcademy. It's my hope that after building some cool things without code, they understand enough about programming to feel confident to dive back in. Curious to hear what you think!

</comment><comment><USER2> Love the idea! What courses do you plan to add next?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! The "How to build a community site like Yelp" course launches in a few weeks. Then, the most-requested courses that I'll be adding next are 1) how to build an on-demand app like Uber and 2) how to build a chatbot for Slack/FB messenger. So I'm investigating the best way to teach those now :)</comment></comment>


FTC investigating Apple's iPhone ecosystem competitve advantage for sales - <AUTHOR> http://www.completemusicupdate.com/article/ftc-now-properly-investigating-apple-tax-on-music-apps/

<comment><USER2> "its control of the iPhone ecosystem" - the ecosystem BELONGS to Apple… it created it from nothing… of course it excercises control over it…

"Apple overlord Tim Cook" - really? overlord?</comment>


The Scientific Scandal of Antismoking - <AUTHOR> http://members.iinet.com.au/~ray/TSSOASb.html

<comment><USER3> Personally I don't smoke, never have, and consider it an expensive way to gamble with your life. (They might cure cancer, they might invent cloned lungs, are you feeling lucky, punk?)

But truthfully, the reason I wish people would stop smoking is not from altruistic concern for them, and not for any personal fear - I just think it stinks. It's as foul as farting and has much less excuse.

Just stop, please.

<comment><USER4> I think you missed the entire point of the article: living is as much of a gamble as smoking, statistically speaking. You inhale carcinogens daily. Your mind is slowly decaying, along with all your other organs. You could die tomorrow crossing the street or next year from a random cancer, a blood clot in your brain, or the common flu. A friend's mother died while in the hospital recovering from a routine procedure, due to a drug allergy nobody knew about and no Doctor could diagnose quickly enough.

If all it takes for you to "feel lucky" is not smoking, you live a naive life indeed.

<comment><USER5> Smoking is anti social though. It's disgusting. It's like force feeding everyone around you asparagus, just because you love asparagus.

Please stop smoking everyone.

<comment><USER4> Driving a car is like force feeding me toxic exhaust when all I want to do is walk down the sidewalk. It's disgusting. Please stop driving everyone. I don't need to drive, why do you? I am within walking distance of everything I need; you should be too. This is my city and I want to walk in it without your dirty car offending my delicate nasal passages.

<comment><USER6> Yes, people _should_ drive cars that don't produce such a large amount of noxious fumes, they _should_ drive less -- cars are the number one accidental killer at 40k deaths/year in the US.

Both of these things would naturally occur if drivers were not free externalize the significant costs of their personal choices.

<comment><USER3> To heck with driving less. Drive electric.

<comment><USER6> That's fine, but doesn't solve point 2, and doesn't take into account the "social" costs of car-dedicated community infrastructure.

Of course, these costs are really not "social" at all, as easily observed by reviewing the impact on surrounding neighborhood small businesses and property values in areas where inner-city freeways were erected in the 50s-70s, and then torn down again in the 90s or 00s. If you're interested in the pure social costs, there's always the increase of crime, in-cohesive communities, etc.

Cars aren't going anywhere, but that doesn't mean we should _always_ optimize for them above all other concerns, though I agree that we should use more efficient (and less polluting) vehicles.

This is a bit off-topic on a discussion regarding second hand smoke -- my apologies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If _this_ paper weren't biased, it would mention the chief source of evidence in _favor_ of the idea that smoking damages your lungs: Men who smoke die of lung cancer at 23 times the rate of nonsmokers.

Now, that may not be from a randomized trial. But nonetheless, I think that's an important explanandum. See Judea Pearl's _Causality_ if you don't think it's possible to get important data off of mere observational studies.

It just seems really unlikely that, you know, future lung cancer would cause people to start smoking now, or that some common cause makes people decide to start inhaling carcinogens and tar and then causes them to get lung cancer later at 23 times the base rate.

But if anyone actually believes that, we can get a group of 1000 of them together and have 500 of them start smoking with proper random assignment, and see what happens.

<comment><USER8> He didn't quite say that smoking doesn't damage your lungs, he said that quitting doesn't improve your lifespan. For example he wrote that other forms of cancer apparently are more common among quitters. Of course there are lots of plausible explanations for that, among them that ceasing use of a stimulant causes increased obesity which from what I understand increases risk of many cancers.

Actually I read that really quickly. I hope I'm not completely wrong about what he said.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> At this point I think it is well known that quitting smoking doesn't have much health benefit. I think it is exaggeration to call this a "scandal". I recall this was talked about on television a lot back when Peter Jennings died - <USER2> had quit smoking many decades earlier, but he still died of lung cancer.

However, here is the important fact: smokers die of lung cancer at a higher rate than non-smokers. The above essay makes a big deal about the fact that quitting seems to have no benefit. That does seem to be true. But never, ever smoking does clearly have a health benefit. This should not be forgotten.

<comment><USER10> Well to be a contrarian, nicotine is a mood stabilizer in people with depression and bipolar disorder. Consider it a cheap SSRI.

It also makes you look cool which can score you dates which can lead to sex, and that's a healthy cardiovascular exercise. _sarcasm_

<comment><USER11> _nicotine is a mood stabilizer in people with depression and bipolar disorder_

Citations, please? I have the best regarded textbook on bipolar disorder

[http://www.amazon.com/Manic-Depressive-Illness-Disorders- Rec...](http://www.amazon.com/Manic-Depressive-Illness-Disorders-Recurrent- Depression/dp/0195135792/)

at hand as I type this, and there is no recommendation of nicotine for any patient there. I'm quite sure that "mood stabilizer" is an incorrect characterization of the drug effect of nicotine. Nicotine has very harmful effects on the personalities of long-term users. I've seen too many examples in the previous generation to recommend it to anyone in my generation.

One study on harm of smoking:

Socioeconomic Status, Smoking, and Health: A Test of Competing Theories of Cumulative Advantage # Fred C. Pampel and Richard G. Rogers # Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Vol. 45, No. 3 (Sep., 2004), pp. 306-321

One study on personality factors interacting with nicotine use:

Nicotine dependence, psychological distress and personality traits as possible predictors of smoking cessation. Results of a double-blind study with nicotine patch

[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VC9-4TGGCWY-1&_user=145269&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1149394097&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000012078&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=145269&md5=5c57d5e2d61723d16e754e56a9665982)

<comment><USER10> Abstract Updated findings on the relationship between nicotine and depression are presented. Clinical and preclinical research on nicotine use and depression suggests that nicotine may have some properties in common with antidepressants. Updated findings involve the comorbidity of smoking and major depressive disorder (MDD), the influence of depression during withdrawal on failure to quit smoking, the course of MDD without nicotine and the neurobiology of smoking and depression.

<http://www.springerlink.com/content/101v75rn12174k61/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A couple interesting related posts from Overcoming Bias

<http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/12/smoking-followup.html>

[http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/12/animal-smoking- studies...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/12/animal-smoking-studies.html)

Robin's conclusion:

"Bottom line: a randomized trial suggests a large smoking harm on bad lungs, which can explain the entire apparently average smoking harm seen elsewhere. My best guess: smokers die ~10-30% more on average, living about 2-6 months less, but there's much less net harm to strong lung folks."

</comment><comment><USER13> People who have trouble considering this idea because of all the conditioning can take a couple of hours online to investigate the scientific evidence for the dangers of second-hand smoke. When I did, _they fell into the noise_ ... within statistical error.

What is the measured, documented percentage of smokers who contract lung- cancer? I never found that number. Furthermore, what other environmental factors were controlled for?

These numbers may even exist somewhere. My point is that they never come up as part of the arguments. Because "everyone knows" ...

<comment><USER14> >>take a couple of hours online to investigate the scientific evidence for the dangers of second-hand smoke [fell into statistical noise when I investigated]

I spent twenty seconds to help you:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoking_ban#Effects_on_health>

" _Several studies have documented health and economic benefits related to smoking bans. In the first 18 months after Pueblo, Colorado enacted a 2003 smoking ban, hospital admissions for heart attacks dropped by 27% while admissions in neighboring towns without smoking bans showed no change._ "

(I saw larger claims in a BBC article sometime for the smoking bans in British pubs, but was too lazy to go find it.)

Edit: 20 more seconds.

>>What is the measured, documented percentage of smokers who contract lung- cancer?

Here are some values for second hand smokers.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoking_ban#Medical_and_scienti...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoking_ban#Medical_and_scientific_basis_for_bans)

" _Specifically, meta-analyses show that lifelong non-smokers with partners who smoke in the home have a 20–30% greater risk of lung cancer than non- smokers who live with non-smokers. Non-smokers exposed to cigarette smoke in the workplace have an increased lung cancer risk of 16–19%._ "

Edit 2: I went and found the BBC article (or another with the same content :-).

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8267523.stm>

" _Smoking bans cut the number of heart attacks in Europe and North America by up to a third, two studies report.

This "heart gain" is far greater than both originally anticipated and the 10% figure recently quoted by England's Department of Health.

[...]

The studies appear in two leading journals - Circulation and the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

[...]

But the latest work, based on the results of numerous different studies collectively involving millions of people, indicated that smoking bans have reduced heart attack rates by as much as 26% per year._"

Edit 3: Who votes up the parent comment?! :-) Less than a minute with Google shows his claims to be totally wrong.

<comment><USER15> Wikipedia and BBC are NOT scientific studies. I followed up some of the (VERY FEW) links from the Wikipedia article to medical papers, and they were just what the original article said - studies that claimed improvements on this or that scale with no evidence of actual life extension.

<comment><USER14> >>Wikipedia and BBC are NOT scientific studies.

Good counter to my argument that they are! :-)

Both Wikipedia and BBC referenced real studies.

You seems to claim that there is a conspiracy (with Wikipedia editors, BBC and the rest of the medias) against the tobacco companies?

I count all conspiracy theories as "extraordinare claims", so do you have any "extraordinary support"?

<comment><USER15> I don't see any need to invoke conspiracies. Most probably they are just reading somewhat uncertain and vague data to support what they think is true (confirmation bias?).

<comment><USER14> So, it is not a conspiracy theory to assume the world's complete collection of newspapers are totally wrong in their description of the research consensus? Despite decades of big advertisement budgets from tobacco companies, saying differently?

Go away, troll.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> That page is on a website offered for free from an ISP. That's the universal home for all conspiracy theories nuts.

<comment><USER17> Yes, but are the claims true? Have studies failed to show stopping smoking doesn't help you live longer?

And the Japanese _are_ fairly heavy smokers yet have very long lives.

That's not to say I don't thinking smoking is really bad for you. It's an addictive drug, reduces lung capacity and I've known people being treated for emphysema in their 30's etc. But the article makes some interesting claims about how politically charged the issue around smoking is, real science is getting squelched, people ask earnest questions and have their sanity questioned.

Don't know if any of it's true, but with the Global Warming "science" we've been seeing lately, it wouldn't surprise me if the risk of cigarettes has been way oversold.

<comment><USER12> I think the claims are true, but the headline and content is a bit over dramatized.

Here are the studies, you can draw your own conclusions:

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1573365>

"The subjects were 1445 male smokers, initially aged 40-59 years" ... 20 years later "total mortality was 7% lower" for people who stopped smoking (7% is barely significant given the sample size)

And also <http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00000487>

Showing similar results.

<comment><USER18> How about people who start smoking in their teens, and then stop in their early/mid twenties? The effects of quitting smoking then would probably far more beneficial than a smoker who's been smoking for 30 years and then quits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> See Peter Norvig's article "Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation"

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

for Warning Sign I9: Being Too Clever, which relates directly to the point of this thread.

</comment><comment><USER19> There is no doubt that there is propaganda on both sides. First, the govt taxes a pack of cigarettes at the rate of 85% over the actual cost of production, distribution and advertising with profit margin included. Since it is harmful for you, we will make you pay more for it - but we won't ban it because we want to give you the freedom of choice. On the other hand, the article goes on great length describing studies trying to find correlation between life expectancy and smoking, debunking the govt's claim along the way; However, it steers clear from talking about the high association found between lung cancer and smoking. Even if lung cancer deducts only a few months from your life, it still is a cancer and has effects OTHER than causing early death.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm curious about the points about inhaling---not being a smoker, I just always assumed that (nearly) all smokers inhaled the smoke. That's why Bill Clinton's pot claim ("but I never inhaled") was such a joke, right? Or is there something more going on there?

<comment><USER21> When smoking a cigar or pipe most smokers don't inhale deeply like one does with a cigarette. There are still health risks for heavy cigar smokers like mouth cancer, IIRC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Compulsory smoking in schools? Apparently yes, in the 1666 plague some schools like Eton made students smoke as a preventative. Huh. But the original post seemed to imply a broader requirement everywhere; this is all I found in a hasty googling.

</comment><comment><USER23> I was smoking a Partagas 1845 while reading the article. I think it made the article more enjoyable.

</comment><comment><USER24> I expect the anti-global-warming crowd to start smoking in droves now.

<comment><USER25> Do you mean the folks who are against global warming, or the folks who don't _believe_ in global warming?

<comment><USER24> the ones who don't believe</comment></comment></comment>


Why Can't We Build an Affordable House? - <AUTHOR> http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=wq.essay&essay_id=476601

<comment><USER3> I read so much about this during my Masters of Urban Planning and he's spot on. Getting land approved for development is costly, time consuming, and uncertain. This leads to lower supply, and since housing is fairly inelastic, it has consumed an increasing share of domestic income.

Here are some more points:

\- building restrictions are overturned or overruled, but only after expensive lawsuits. These are impossible for small builders to do but routine for large builders. They are also better financed and more experienced than the municipalities they are suing, so they eventually win after several years and millions of dollars.

\- With or without a lawsuit, it's easier to build get bigger houses on bigger lots approved. That's fine for the builder - all they need is an ROI - but it eliminates the low-end option.

\- People move often so resale value is a very high priority, especially for first time buyers. I live in the suburbs and would love to have a condo, but I would never want to try to sell a condo in the suburbs so I bought a house instead. Condos and townhouses are cheaper and would serve many people's needs better, but these are marginal properties that will suffer most in a down market.

\- External factors (proximity to transit, good public schools, proximity to workplaces, etc) reduce total cost of living and increase home prices by roughly the same amount. In Chicago suburbs, Naperville has excellent schools, Aurora not so much. Identical houses across the school district boundary are over $100K different. Being close enough to walk to transit saves (at least) $40/mo on parking but more like $100 when you include gas,etc, which corresponds to about $10-15K in house prices. But it saves time, which can be valued _very_ highly, so a house 1/3 mile from a commuter rail station would cost $75-150K more than a house a mile from the station. (probably a bigger deal in Chicago/NYC/Boston more than anywhere else). Ditto if you don't need private schools.

\- As supply goes down (or grows slowly), houses are competing for a smaller slice of the upper end of buyers. If only the top 50% of potential buyers can afford a house, the needs of the bottom 50% are ignored. If only the top 10% can afford it, the bottom 90% are ignored. So if most potential buyers are DINKs (dual income, no kids), then new construction will be 1-2BR condos/townhomes, with very few 3BR. The 3BR units will be much more expensive both because they are larger but also rarer. If most buyers are families, the sizes might start at 3BR and go up and there probably won't be _any_ 1-2BR at any price.

</comment><comment><USER4> We can build affordable housing. the right question to ask is: why is housing unaffordable?

First: look at more economical design philosophies: Rob Roy of Sauna fame, Lester Walker who wrote tiny houses, and somewhat less of Sarah Susanka. Oh, and who can leave a pioneer hacker out: R. Buckminster Fuller - who thought of practical solutions to house humanity and called our planet space ship earth. Bucky was so innovative he was taken as a quack by many.

The main ideas are simple: maximize volume and reduce surface skin - <USER2> makes for cheaper building and less heating/cooling energy. There are trade offs between the sphere and livability - but cubes(with slanted roofs) beat most conventional designs by far. Really think about the floorplan: rooms can serve two purposes or more, get the plumbing reduced to the minimum, bathrooms adjacent, and directly above on the next floor - these are worthwhile design constraints. All the while aesthetics can be improved - which I see evidently contributes greatly to quality of life. There is a science to living.

Then on to land. You know for all the worshiping architects and media give to Frank Lloyd Wright they don't mention his hatred of cities, and his explanations for why the rural life rules. I think there are strong media influences to keep people in the cities - while it may not be good for the majority it does keep more open land available to me. It's ridiculous to pay more than half the building cost of a home to land prices. I understand people need to work and that is an artificial draw of the city. But, maybe we need to reorganize the way we live to make everything more efficient. The centralized industrial economy where we need cities of work camps is passed. Most jobs can allow people to telecommute, and we will find more physical and service jobs done by increasingly intelligent machines.

Second: the system is designed to make us debt indentured servants. Mortgages are often no more than the chains of slaves in their sheet rock cages. Look at how the housing market is manipulated by lending: if the majority can borrow more money to out bid for houses then the price of housing will go up. And they have.

Third. Standardization. We build houses like custom artwork. I'm not saying we need to live in prefab trailers, but we can economize buildings by far.

Think of your money in terms of sheets of plywood(currently under $20 a 4"x8" section for CDX) and drywall($8) and realize what you could build. The average taxpayer could build a house with money the government demands and uses to prop up housing prices.

The bottom line is that there is no constraint on building things affordably yourself unless it's imposed the government of the powerful in the form of publicly acceptable zoning, banking, and miss-education in the public schools - what would be a more valuable lesson than learning how to shelter yourself? I'd much prefer kids learn that than fluff social studies and all the other time wasting crap they feed them.

</comment><comment><USER5> There are a lot of reasons.

1\. Asthetics: While people are comfortable all looking alike with an iPod, they don't want their homes to look alike. Such customization demands increase the price dramatically.

2\. Land. People want to live in places already built-up. You aren't going to be creating new housing in a desirable Boston neighborhood without knocking something down first (assuming you could ever get permission to knock a building in Boston). For this reason, most property purchases are trades of currently erected buildings rather than construction of new buildings.

3\. Labor. On one side, it's hard to find skilled construction workers today. The 20-somethings of today have been programmed that it's college or bust. That has left a short supply of electricians, plumbers, carpenters, etc. As such, wages are huge because property is valuable and people who want to build can't find enough workers. On the other side, we're a lot safer in our construction than we used to. Workplace injuries aren't as common and that's a good thing.

4\. Regulations. There are a lot of them and they are meant to improve the quality of houses, but they cost money.

5\. Improvements in Quality. Do you think you're going to build a house today without cable and Cat-5 jacks everywhere? Of course not! Old homes have similarly been retrofitted with such amenities. Double-paned windows are now the norm in colder climates, dishwashers and garbage disposals, garage door openers, etc. all add to the price of homes. Heck, even the number of electrical outlets in new homes is quite different from homes built in the 70s.

5\. US tax laws. It makes sense to buy as much house as you possibly can scrimp for due to US tax laws which treat home ownership as this panacea of good citizenship. That drives prices sky high.

So, housing prices are a combination of factors.

<comment><USER6> Cat-5 jacks are a silly idea for proprty, since they will become obsolete when the next network technology comes along.

<comment><USER7> Obsoletion doesn't come from nowhere. What's the problem with current LAN- cabling that warrants the coming of a new network technology? Yeah, wireless, but it's still nice to have some places to easily plug in the access points.

Pairs of copper wire is, if anything, a proven technology. And it's not like we're anywhere near pushing the limit of Ethernet technology for domestic purposes.

Even if a new technology will come along, the fact that entire cites are wired from top to bottom with cat-5, you're guaranteed that any new technology wil be heavily biased towards backwards compability on the physical layer.

<comment><USER6> The house I live in was built 120 years ago. Wanna bet that Cat-5 will still be around several decades from now?

<comment><USER8> Yeah, why build a garage when we'll all be driving flying cars in 30 years, right?

<comment><USER9> To house your startup?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here's why we _wouldn't_ : cheap houses = poor neighbors = various social pathologies and stigmas. You can get an affordable trailer now, but most people don't if they can afford not to.

<comment><USER11> not necessarily true. there is a distinction to be made between cheap and affordable. around where I live, there are no affordable houses being built anywhere. every new home is at least $600k, far outside the wage of the average resident. I can remember in the late 1980s you could buy a new home for less than $100k. Good luck doing that now!! I find it incredible that people can afford to buy, and live in, these huge homes. They pay hundreds a month just for electricity. Astounding.

<comment><USER10> I was thinking more in terms of a Bucky Fuller-style $10,000 house that would be as good as a house that costs $100,000 to build. If you can't find anything around $100,000 in your area, that probably is due to a land shortage.

There are actually still affordable new homes going up in areas with lots of land and few regulations on construction. As you can see, you can easily find a new home in the Houston area for little more than $100K: [http://www.lennar.com/findhome/city.aspx?CITYID=HOU&_kk=...](http://www.lennar.com/findhome/city.aspx?CITYID=HOU&_kk=pearland%20house&_kt=cbf8ce79-ad19-4f87-9de2-a8ab420cb21c)

I'm sure you could buy an older house for much less.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> We can, there's just a lot of factors making it hard to gain market acceptance (is that the appropriate term here?)

I would jump at the chance to live in something like a Dymaxion house* in a walkable community.

*<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_House>

EDIT: For more awesome houses, have a look at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_building>

<comment><USER13> I think a lot of the market-acceptance factor is that many people, when they hear the term "affordable housing", immediately think "double-wide."

<comment><USER12> I agree.

That, and when a lot of people think "I'm going to buy a house," they are thinking of that one house that's in every single suburb. That one that is functionally the same but might have a different room layout.

I think the trend may be shifting (part of me thinks that the trend will _have_ to shift), and that would be good. I know that I, and most of the people I know, would like to be living in a walkable community in housing that is as sustainable as possible.

I mean, if I had the capital for it, I'd get on building an awesome little town. I don't though, and probably won't for a while - maybe someday though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> People didn't "buy houses they couldn't afford". They bought houses who's value was 40-50% inflated and then had that value disappear, almost overnight.

I love how this 'crisis' is blamed on over-reaching Americans, but only one side of the transaction. It takes two to tango, but don't forget the millions of Americans who made billions selling homes at grossly inflated values.

<comment><USER15> > People didn't "buy houses they couldn't afford". They bought houses who's > value was 40-50% inflated and then had that value disappear, almost > overnight.

If they can't pay for their houses, they can't afford said houses, no matter what said houses are worth or how said worth changes.

Mortgages aren't "called" when a house's value changes. Mortgages aren't "called" when the lender goes bankrupt (someone else buys the mortgage). The terms don't change when the house value changes.

They're losing their houses because they can't afford to pay for them.

<comment><USER16> It is technically true that the terms don't change when the house value changes, but it is misleading to suggest that house value doesn't affect affordability.

The distinguishing feature of most subprime loans is that the interest rate changes after a few years. A typical subprime loan could be 3 years at 8%, then 27 years at 12%. The assumption (made by bankers to justify the subprime model) was that after paying lower prices for a few years, the borrower would have some equity built up in the house, so they would be a better credit risk, and they could refinance at that point for a lower rate.

But, when housing prices dropped, many of these houses were now worth less than the outstanding amount on the mortgage, even after a few years of paying down the loan. So the plan of refinancing after a few years didn't work any more.

Basically, it is easier to afford a house if it maintains its value after you buy it, because the equity gives you more flexibility in refinancing.

Sorry if this is too boring ;-) But if you are curious to read more about the particular characteristics of subprime mortgages I recommend this paper -

[http://www.kc.frb.org/publicat/sympos/2008/Gorton.08.04.08.p...](http://www.kc.frb.org/publicat/sympos/2008/Gorton.08.04.08.pdf)

<comment><USER15> > The assumption (made by bankers to justify the subprime model) was that > after paying lower prices for a few years, the borrower would have some > equity built up in the house, so they would be a better credit risk, and > they could refinance at that point for a lower rate.

No, that's not what happened. Folks got loans where they could afford the teaser rate but not the regular rate. Even if they'd put down 20% and the house didn't go down in value, they couldn't afford what they'd bought.

If housing prices had continued to appreciate, they could have done a cash-out refinance and used that money to help them pay for the new loan, but that just delays the inevitable. ($50k doesn't go very far when a payment that you can't afford goes up by $1k/month.)

Or, they could have sold and taken the equity to buy something that they could afford.

The only way that they could have kept those houses (without significantly increasing their income) is if they'd been able to do no-cost refis with teaser rates until they were paid off. Since many/most of those loans were interest-only....

Note that most of the teaser-rate loans had prepayment penalties.

The amount of equity that one has in a house has very little effect on the interest rate. The big driver is interest rates in general.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Ask city councils that set minimum square footage restrictions for new housing.

<comment><USER18> And have 5000 regulations for safety, external prettiness, etc... Those may be good things, but they cost money, and poor people aren't given the option to choose which features they can live without.

<comment><USER19> There was a study done back in the 80s, I think, about the cost of regulation in housing. As I recall, regulation amounted to 35% of the cost of a house. I would guess that the trend continued.

<comment><USER18> Wow that's terrible. And I think it did get worse:

[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/200...](http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2004181704_eicher14.html)

> Between 1989 and 2006, the median inflation-adjusted price of a Seattle > house rose from $221,000 to $447,800. Fully $200,000 of that increase was > the result of land-use regulations, says Theo Eicher — twice the financial > impact that regulation has had on other major U.S. cities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The whole article is based on the failed idea that the burbs are the way to go. Many people who have read A Pattern Language understand that the neighborhood is also key, though they often can't realize it alone, so they instead build really fancy and eclectic single-family two-story homes, (how novel /sarcasm).

I would be interested in connecting with more people who understand and want to realize Christopher Alexander's ideas, and encourage anyone who reads Hacker News to get A Pattern Language. It's not really made to be a straight read. It's more like a library of architectural functions with comments on how to apply them. Good to have at hand. The problem is that to fully realize what is clearly a better solution than the burbs, you would need to collaborate with dozens of other people, who all understand the ideas.

Here's a couple of starting points for those unfamiliar with the architectural ideas:

<http://www.livingneighborhoods.org/>

<https://www.patternlanguage.com/>

<comment><USER21> I can't resist posting some patterns observed by a neighbor at Alexander's actual residence in Berkeley:

"Another Pattern Language: Real Life Patterns Chez Christopher Alexander"

<http://internettime.com/Learning/alexander.swf>

<comment><USER20> For some reason, I can't imagine he'd be terribly proud of that. Do you think he's just really stupid? I wonder if maybe he's working on other stuff, or found he couldn't afford everything he wanted on a professor's salary, or maybe this is what the house looked like two weeks after he moved in? I'm not an apologist for the guy, but that flashpaper is basically some guy trying to gain some reputation by lampooning someone better known than himself, which belies a moral corruption that far exceeds the unfortunate physical corruption of Mr Alexander's house.

Have you read the book? Its merits are fairly self-evident if you read a few pages, regardless of the author's choice of paint colors for his own house.

<comment><USER21> I don't see the 'Another Pattern Language' presentation as any sort of serious critique of Alexander's oeuvre. It's just a bit of humor generated by the contrast between Alexander's professional image and personal circumstances.

I know the creator of the presentation, and do not see him as someone who tears down the famous for cheap notoriety, as you accuse. He truly lives not far from Alexander; his professional reputation as an author/consultant/educator is secure; he hasn't promoted his wry little parody widely.

I suspect neighbors did resent the 'curb appeal' of Alexander's property (and still do if circumstances remain similar). The Berkeley hills are fairly upscale real estate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> patrickg-zill The argument is "land" combined with restrictions on converting other kinds of land into residential homes.

However he does not follow through on the regulatory costs and sort of buries them in the article.

</comment><comment><USER22> _Side Note_ : This is an example of how war fuels economic growth through technological innovation. The production line house produced by a war veteran is an example of wealth creating technology.

</comment><comment><USER8> Well, if you look at it from a capitalist point of view, the real question is "Why would we?".

</comment><comment><USER23> Land.

<comment><USER24> Well yes, that's what the article says, eventually, except you have to wade through a whole bunch of BS about construction costs to get there.

It seems to be mostly wrong about _why_ land is more expensive than it's ever been, blaming it on various policy initiatives. Really though, land is more expensive than ever before because there are more people than ever before. Also, because we're richer than ever before (in terms of the amount we have left over after paying for groceries etc) and hence are willing to spend a higher portion of our income to secure one of the limited number of blocks of land which are in a convenient location.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Who says we can't?

<comment><USER3> It turns out that "Why can't we..." means "Why aren't we allowed to..."

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nimbys.

</comment><comment><USER11> we can, we just don't want to build one smaller or less opulent than the neighbors have. in fact we have to build bigger!</comment>


How I Made $0 Selling My Video Series - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiehackers.com/@cmorgan8506/how-i-made-0-selling-my-video-series-d715529d1e <comment><USER2> So I was curious about your video series, and managed to find a link to it: [https://practicalapps.fullbit.ca/](https://practicalapps.fullbit.ca/)

I'm considering signing up, but would like to review your privacy policy first.. do you have one?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you're still interested I've updated the site to include the privacy policy.

<comment><USER2> Awesome, thank you!</comment></comment></comment>


Google offers JPEG alternative for faster Web - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20018146-264.html <comment><USER2> Wait, so Google took a bunch of JPGs, re-compressed them with a lossy format, and claims to have gotten them 40% smaller with no loss in quality. Either the lossyness in the format is _entirely_ in aspects of the image that the JPG compression already removed and they're just better at compressing the residue (possible, but I am skeptical), or else the image is altered, but in a way that Google claims is subjectively a sidegrade in quality. I'm not putting much faith in their quality claims until I see side-by-side comparisons of a JPG and WebP compression of the same TIFF (or other uncompressed) image at the same compression ratio. A double-blind study is probably too much to ask, but it would be nice.

<comment><USER3> I agree that we should expect side by side examples to support the claims, but my first thought is that they're making an analysis of the JPEG compression and using improvements on computing power to encode the information more efficiently. Consider that JPEG is using a (or more) Huffman table and a (or more) quantization table. (I'm getting this from wikipedia, IANA compression expert)

What if you analyzed all those images and came up with a composite huffman compression that was more efficient than the best guess in the 70s? Then, you did some magic on the quantization table to make the most common vales correspond to the lowest numbers, relying on processing power to decode the compressed quantization table before you started?

<comment><USER4> I note that WinZip 14 does decode JPGs and reencode them smaller, but without further loss of quality:

"The main trick those three programs use is (partially) decode the image back to the DCT coefficients and recompress them with a much better algorithm then default Huffman coding." - <http://www.maximumcompression.com/data/jpg.php>

<comment><USER5> Most lossy image compression systems use a transform that does not reduce the data size but makes transformed data that is more compressible. This means the final layer of compression is a traditional compressor. These, like the transforms themselves get improved upon over time. JPEG is old.

When I did some experiments with various compression techniques, I found that DCT with a LZMA base compared quite well to newer compression systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Have they explained their reasons for not backing JPEG-XR instead? This seems to be a step back from JPEG-XR:

\- No alpha support

\- Not lossless support (Useful for the alpha channel, and could encourage more cameras to support lossless images)

\- No HDR support

JPEG-XR also allows different regions of the image to be encoded independently. See wikipedia for more features: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG_XR>

I have no idea what the patent landscape for JPEG-XR is, but I'd be disappointed if we replaced JPEG and didn't get some of these features.

The lack of alpha support in JPEG is especially a pain for web developers. PNG does not do photos well.

<comment><USER7> I've seen the 'no alpha' repeated a few times, but can you give your use cases for alpha _in jpeg_? I understand the need for alpha channels in gif/png, and have fought the lack of alpha support for years, but for jpg's I don't remember ever needing it, nor can I easily imagine a situation where it would be needed. So I'm interested to learn about where you'd use transparency in jpgs.

<comment><USER8> why not? I mean, why should I be forced to use a lossyless image format just because I want it to blend with the background (if the image compresses better with jpeg and the image quality is fine)

Are there technical reasons to not implement an alpha in jpeg-like compressions?

<comment><USER7> Features shouldn't be there 'just because it's possible', at least not if they may impact other features(1). If greater compression can be reached by leaving out the alpha, and if there's no compelling reason to put it in, it should be left out. 'why not' is not a reason, there needs to be a business case for each feature, in everything.

In my experience, and this seems to be a widely held position, the main use case for jpgs is in pictures, as in photographs. The main use case for png (gif) is for graphical elements: borders, menus, etc. Those last ones you want to compress with a lossless format anyway - you need to be sure that a flat menu background is not dithered or doesn't have other artifacts. I understand the question mostly as 'do you need transparency in photographs' and 'do you need non-rectangular photographs where the non-rectangular nature is encoded in the photograph itself, and not part of another rendering in stage in the presentation layer'.

Thinking about it more, maybe things like drop shadows or other fancy borders could be case where you need transparency in photos. Otherwise you have to work around it by having the picture as jpg and the border as a separate (or several separate) png's. More requests, harder layouting, etc. I'm not convinced yet that this use case alone is a compelling argument.

As for technical reasons to not implement it, I don't know - I'm assuming there are because I'm quite sure that someone at Google must've thought about it and decided against it, they must have had their reasons.

(1) I'm reasoning from the assumption that including transparency has adverse effects on file size and/or decompression complexity. Maybe there aren't in which case balancing features becomes a different matter and most of my argument is moot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was hoping Jpeg2000 would take over because it is so flexible. It encodes really well at the low end and really well at the high end. You can target a specific file size and have it produce it. Instead of the blocking artifacts caused by the 8x8 DCT grid, you get smooth blurring.

<comment><USER10> [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/JPEG_JFIF...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/JPEG_JFIF_and_2000_Comparison.png)

JPEG looks better to me. It's only a data point of 1, but it's the most important data point to me. ;)

<comment><USER11> I've seen that picture before, and it's pretty indicative of its lower settings, yes. And I agree - the sharper & more accurate edges of 2000 make the less detailed / smoother textured interiors look disproportionately worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This has other implications.

* a save in bandwidth is huge on mobile speed, google believes that speed effects web use, web use effects revenue

* a save in bandwidth is cheaper for google

* att, verizon, sprint, and tmobile are limiting mobile data plans, smaller images means more web page loads

* net neutrality might fail, you might have to pay for data

* google runs a lot of content via app-engine, gmail + chrome, google should be able to make the switch for the stacks they own to develop an advantage.

* others will follow in adoption like facebook if it saves them on one of their largest costs cdns.

* openness an open format can go on more devices.

* open devices might appear faster on the web.

</comment><comment><USER13> JPEG (and many image/video coding algorithms) are really made up of a couple pieces -- transform, modeling and entropy coding. In the case of JPEG, the transform is handled through breaking the image up into eight by eight blocks that are then run through the DCT and quantized. This is where the loss comes from.

Modeling and entropy coding are handled on the coefficients generated above. However, this is done on each 8x8 block (note, I am making a slight simplification ignoring the use of differential compression on the DC coefficients between blocks. Since the algorithm is relegated to encoding at most 64 coefficients at a time, there isn't much "modeling" that can be done.

If one reorders the coefficients of the 8x8 blocks to resemble a non-block based transform -- you can perform better modeling to get much better compression with the exact same image quality as the original JPEG image. However, in this case, you lose compatibility with a JPEG encoder since the format of the coefficients is not JPEG.

<comment><USER14> One simple way to be able to throw more CPU at image compression/decompression, and thus save space, could be to use bigger blocks than 8x8.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Won't the on-line Porn Industry have to adopt this for large scale adoption to take place?

I'd think that the size decrease alone would sell the Porn Industry.

<comment><USER16> Are galleries that important? I thought right now it's all about videos.

<comment><USER17> Soft / "art" sites focus much more on stills, and headline pixel counts, e.g. met-art etc. I would expect them to prefer large file sizes, to aggravate people who like to scrape content.

<comment><USER18> I would expect them to prefer smaller file sizes, especially in public preview galleries, to lower their bandwidth costs. Someone scraping high-quality images incurs a small one-time bandwidth cost, and they can re-encode the images at a lower quality if they want to save bandwidth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Just a note to anyone using Adobe software to produce their web PNGs: Make sure to run PNGCrush to remove all extraneous information in them! <http://pmt.sourceforge.net/pngcrush/index.html>

<comment><USER20> Just be sure to test your crushed pngs under all the situations in which they'll be used. I've had a few situations where PNGCrushed files couldn't be opened by certain programs, but the uncrushed files could. In particular the Python image library tends to choke on files that have been run through PNGCrush.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'd be very curious in seeing a comparison with JPEG-XR, which has a number of nice advantages for photography.

<comment><USER22> I've been googling for examples of that format to no avail. I just wanted to see if Google's browser supports it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Not sure about this one google. Firstly, Worst. Name. Ever! Secondly, what kind of browser support do they think they'll get? I know ie is covered via google chrome frame but will Apple and Mozilla jump on this? Both issues have alloyed this one on me.

<comment><USER24> Chrome is a given, Firefox (and isn't webkit) is open source. Google has the devs to write the needed code/extension and give it to those projects.

<comment><USER23> Okay, I'll buy that Chrome and ie are a shoe-in, and that FF is probably easy. So that leaves Apple and Opera. Not bad, not bad...

<comment><USER25> Chrome and Safari both use WebKit. If Google releases an implementation, it shouldn't be hard for Apple to adopt it. That just leaves Opera.

<comment><USER26> AFAIK Opera supports WebM, I assume they wouldn't have problem doing the same with WebP. IE and Safari might be a different story though, they wouldn't be so keen to support a format from their big competitor. If I would be in MS' shoes I would use that as an occasion to put a support for JPEG XR into Chrome/WebKit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> As a regular person, I really can't see a 40% decrease in size (of which I'm skeptical) for _just_ jpeg images (not nearly the full "65% of the bytes on the web") being worth the huge switch-over costs. The ubiquity of jpeg is just too valuable.

<comment><USER28> If you understand how to use content negotiation (which basically no one outside Google does) then there's virtually no switching cost.

<comment><USER27> I mean cost beyond just web development. As mentioned in the article, there is a massive range of consumer and non-consumer products which have adopted jpeg as a universal format.

<comment><USER28> So those devices just keep on using JPEG and thus bear no additional cost. Even if WebP is only used between Google and Chrome, it will be worth it for Google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Given that most JPEG images are generated by digital cameras, I don't think WebP will get any traction until Canon, Nikon et al support WebP natively.

And hopefully attaching metadata to WebP images will be saner than it is for JPEGs.

<comment><USER18> It shouldn't be too long before Android phones start supporting WebP natively, and image-hosting sites like Picasa and Flickr already do re-encoding to lower the image size; adding WebP to that shouldn't be a serious problem. I can see this getting traction even without support from most digital cameras.

As for metadata, the container format is based on RIFF, which consists of tagged binary chunks. Metadata chunks follow the image data, and consist of null-terminated strings. No word yet on whether or not you can use Unicode.

<http://code.google.com/speed/webp/docs/riff_container.html>

<comment><USER29> > No word yet on whether or not you can use Unicode.

You should be able to use UTF-8 since it doesn't include embedded nulls.

<comment><USER18> Sure, but I'm worried about the guy who decides that his decoder will use ISO-8859-1 by default, or UTF-16 if that's specified in some meta-metadata chunk somewhere. If this were written down in a spec, we wouldn't have to fret about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Looks like they didn't bother to seize the opportunity to add an alpha channel. Being stuck with PNG for transparent/translucent images sucks.

<comment><USER31> Lossy compression for alpha channel isn't that good idea, I think. Brightness and color compression artefacts will be multiplied by alpha compression artefacts.

<comment><USER32> Then provide baseline support for an uncompressed alpha channel. Not being able to store one at all in an image limits the usefulness of the format.

Artifacts for lossy alpha compression are already, to some extent, well understood and dealt with, since compressing video game textures that contain an alpha channel is already done lossily using the DXTC compression formats.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> There's no way this will catch on; the slight image quality per bit improvement is not nearly enough to counteract the huge momentum of existing JPEG use. Certainly JPEG isn't the best possible image codec or even all that good, but it's good enough, and it works _everywhere_.

</comment><comment><USER34> But there is a loss in quality! The dithering is noticeably worse. Notice the light outline on that red-ish thing in the top middle of the image. I bet I could've gotten the 10kb decrease by just lowering the JPG quality.

<comment><USER35> Umm...how can you claim a loss in quality without looking at the original? The linked page shows two lossily compressed versions of an unknown original image. You're commenting on which image subjectively LOOKS better to you, not on compression quality.

<comment><USER26> Take a look at those red and orange "things" in the center of the image in the PNG/WebP version. My bet is on a loss in quality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Our CPUs are so much faster than even a few years ago, but bandwidth hasn't increased that much (at least not here in Canada). I'd gladly trade some CPU cycles for bandwidth (or same bandwidth, but better quality).

</comment><comment><USER37> The article is quite light so far. I am sure it brings other improvements than just a reduced file size. I would hope that at least some features of JPEG2000 would make it in this format. Maybe also a convenient way to pack several images in a single file without resorting to css clipping tricks.

</comment><comment><USER38> At 8 times longer to compress, this reminds of Iterated Systems FIF, but article claiming based on WebM suggests it's still DCT compression.

Adoption by just Flickr and Facebook could push a new image format fast.

Google has much to gain since they archive a copy of indexed images. Hence their interest in "recompression".

</comment><comment><USER39> With OLED/IPS etc. taking over in the next few years, will this really support >8bpp or HDR?

Interesting move, Google

<comment><USER29> WebP uses the same color model as WebM which "works exclusively with an 8-bit YUV 4:2:0 image format" so seems like WebP will not be HDR capable, which is a pity.

<comment><USER40> Considering it basically is 1 frame of WebM it isn't exactly a surprise either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I love this site! Reading the comments here has taught me more about image compression in 45 minutes than I've learned from reading random articles on the web for the last few years...

</comment><comment><USER42> There's a conversion tool available for WebP now: <http://code.google.com/speed/webp/download.html>

<comment><USER43> They have only Linux binary. I've compiled one for Mac OS X: <http://pornel.net/webp>

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Why is the performance of PNG so disappointing? The WebP sample image from the article (top image) is shown here as a PNG of 234kB...

<comment><USER45> I'm surprised that in 2010 people _still_ don't understand the difference between PNG and JPG and that each is better for different kinds of images.

<comment><USER4> _There are no surprising facts, only models that are surprised by facts; and if a model is surprised by the facts, it is no credit to that model.

It is always best to think of reality as perfectly normal. Since the beginning, not one unusual thing has ever happened.

The goal is to become completely at home with [a world where people don't understand the difference between PNG and JPG in 2010]. Like a native. Because, in fact, that is where you live._ \- (paraphrased) <http://lesswrong.com/lw/pc/quantum_explanations/>

\--

 _Calling reality "weird" keeps you inside a viewpoint already proven erroneous. Probability theory tells us that surprise is the measure of a poor hypothesis; if a model is consistently stupid - consistently hits on events the model assigns tiny probabilities - then it's time to discard that model. A good model makes reality look normal, not weird; a good model assigns high probability to that which is actually the case. Intuition is only a model by another name: poor intuitions are shocked by reality, good intuitions make reality feel natural. You want to reshape your intuitions so that the universe looks normal. You want to think like reality.

This end state cannot be forced. [..] But it will also hinder you to keep thinking How bizarre! Spending emotional energy on incredulity wastes time you could be using to update. It repeatedly throws you back into the frame of the old, wrong viewpoint. It feeds your sense of righteous indignation at reality daring to contradict you._ \- <http://lesswrong.com/lw/hs/think_like_reality/>

<comment><USER46> _Whenever I hear someone describe quantum physics as "weird" - whenever I hear someone bewailing the mysterious effects of observation on the observed, or the bizarre existence of nonlocal correlations, or the incredible impossibility of knowing position and momentum at the same time - then I think to myself: This person will never understand physics no matter how many books they read._

Well, that rules out Einstein.

<comment><USER4> No it doesn't, Einstein died years before that author was even born. He will never hear Einstein bewailing anything.

<comment><USER46> Point being, Einstein spent a large part of his career completely unable to deal with the sheer weirdness of quantum physics. ("God does not play dice," "spooky action at a distance," and so forth.)

Ultimately he was able to adapt his worldview to include the implications of quantum theory, but until then he was most certainly not in a state where he would "never understand physics."

It was a great essay, actually, just a terrible lede, as EY himself acknowledged in the comments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Please, if anyone can figure out a format so my mom doesn't attach 10 mb files that should be 750k, I'm all for it.

<comment><USER48> An actually helpful suggestion (I hope): help her change the settings on her camera. Explain that she'll be able to take more pictures without filling up the memory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> The Jpeg shown is of a higher fidelity than the WebP image; look around the top edge of the red quadrilateral. In the Jpeg image, the edge is sharp, in the WebP image it looks a bit like the coloured sprinkles you might put on ice-cream. It would be better to show two versions of an image, having the same file size, so that we can look for any difference in quality.

Read more: [http://news.cnet.com/8618-30685_3-20018146.html?communityId=...](http://news.cnet.com/8618-30685_3-20018146.html?communityId=2140&targetCommunityId=2140&blogId=264&messageId=9908776&tag=mncol;tback#ixzz113sUDAa0)

<comment><USER49> I suspect that the improvement is not good enough that this image format would be adopted, when jpeg is already established.</comment></comment>


What Will Happen to China's Economy If Xi Jinping Continues to Lead - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/douglasbulloch/2016/08/30/the-economic-consequences-of-xi-jinping/ <comment><USER2> > hints at both how widespread this intuition already is, and how important it > has become to everyone that Xi's authority is not openly doubted.

Is that a joke? Didn't he arrest his main opposition last year? This is like saying "Putin attained his power smoothly and unopposed." Yeah, by eliminating his opposition first.</comment>