Fear of housing slump may be seriously overdone - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120640528180260969.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

<comment><USER2> Things might not be as bad as assumed on the debt either: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=144294>

</comment><comment><USER3> The world is not in panic because of the US housing market. The world is in panic because of the falling dollar and inflation.</comment>


FBI Updates on Boston explosions - <AUTHOR> http://www.fbi.gov/news/updates-on-investigation-into-multiple-explosions-in-boston/updates-on-investigation-into-multiple-explosions-in-boston <comment><USER2> For me, the HN part of the story is that the FBI servers are having trouble keeping up with the traffic to their site.

Edit: Here's one of the responses I got while trying to load the FBI website

 _ERROR The requested URL could not be retrieved

While trying to retrieve the requested URL the following error was encountered:

        Zero Sized Reply

Footprint did not receive any data for this request. Footprint 4.8/FPMCP Generated Thu, 18 Apr 2013 21:42:44 GMT by 184.108.40.206 (Footprint 4.8/FPMCP)_

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I hate to say it, but my first thought was: "Is there no one at the FBI who has ever heard of a CDN or S3 or even Imgur to upload static assets to?" The issue at hand isn't a national emergency (because the attacks happened a few days ago with the suspects apparently quiet) but one of these days, they'll need a more robust way to disseminate info.

<comment><USER4> While these photos and video are the opposite of confidential, I am not the least bit surprised that the FBI wants to keep the FBI's data on the FBI's servers given the nature of their business.

<comment><USER2> The website is public. There's nothing keeping them from having using a CDN or other caching service or, better yet, setting up their own caching servers to handle the load better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So far, crowdsourcing has identified one high resolution image that shows both suspects running from the scene:

<http://i.imgur.com/I1dF69f.jpg>

(Note the guy with the white polo hat on the left and his partner not far behind in khakis and black hat)

I'm a firm believer that crowdsourcing is going to find out the details on these guys much faster than a government agency trying to collect all this digital data and do it themselves.

<comment><USER6> First off, I completely fail to see the partner in khakis and black hat in this photo.

Second, the mirrored imgur photo is much smaller and compressed than the original photo to which the New York Times linked. If a crowd of people are attempting to identify an individual, it's unfortunate if many are looking at a suboptimal image. This should be a lesson NOT to use imgur for such a task. Just throw the original on S3 behind CloudFront.

Original, high quality photo: [http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/blogs/thelede/posts/susp...](http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/blogs/thelede/posts/suspect- number-2.JPG)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's interesting that Carmen Ortiz is the (a?) US Attorney who is working on this. I would have thought they were compartmentalized by type of crime a bit more.

<comment><USER8> And I'd imagine a successful prosecution will render her completely beyond political reproach and put her on the fast track to higher legal leadership (which she must already be on to be assigned this case).

So, if nothing else, an HN angle here is that the outrage of 3 months ago is completely undone and meaningless. Moreso than even the common cynicism of that time would have charged.

I have no basis to object to her assignment to this case in isolation (I would imagine that she's perfectly competent in prosecuting a case with less moral subtlety), beyond complaining that in a just world she should have at least fallen too far out of favour to be assigned this case, and that there must be other US Attorneys in line who could handle it at least as well. But it would be public-opinion suicide for any tech causes to widely protest someone who will soon become a public hero.

<comment> jack-r-abbit If anything, her role in the Swartz case shows she is aggressive and interested more in using the full weight of the law rather than "moral subtleties". In a case that is bound to be full of race issues, having someone who can filter all the noise and see the facts is an asset.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In the video, there's a girl wearing a yellow pullover and a large back-pack that is a little behind the guy labeled as a suspect. She shows up in each of the scenes (at 0:08, 0:20, 0:29) Is there information outside of this video that makes him more suspicious than her?

Otherwise, I'd say both of them exhibit the same level of innocence/guilt.

<comment><USER10> _Is there information outside of this video that makes him more suspicious than her?_

Most assuredly. I suspect they have video of these two guys dropping their bags. The photos they released are so that people can identify them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Reddit seems to have already identified Black Hat's hat. Assume the FBI had already, but interesting how fast the crowd works on details like that.

<http://i.imgur.com/D9tSDUf.jpg>

<comment><USER12> I wonder if some sort of image processing could be done to further clear the images of the face given the belief of how the hat ought to look?

<comment><USER13> I had the same thought.

You'd think that knowing accurate dimensions and features of something so nearby could be used to gauge distortion on the face.

Likewise, perhaps some kind of computer vision could quickly search for the distinctive pattern of that hat in other images/video.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The handling of these photos has been very interesting...since early this morning, the FBI have been telling the press that they do have good footage of the suspects...but they didn't release it until the end of the day, at least 12 hours later.

Assuming that the FBI had total control of this release schedule (and that'a a big if), I don't see the strategy of this. Even if they were 99% sure that they had legit footage of possible suspects, why announce _that_ , until they are good and ready (i.e. within an hour) to release them to the public? In fast-moving crime scenes, the strategy is usually to withhold as many facts of the crime from the public until a good suspect has been nabbed...among other things, this prevents people from claiming to have witnessed specifics when in fact, they only saw them on TV or heard about it in the news.

When a witness (or suspect) tells the police a fact that has been withheld from the public, that's a tool for the police to use to determine a witness's reliability.

In the case we have now, the suspected bombers have had at least 12 hours notice that the FBI had working images of them. Even if it were a complete bluff...what would be the point? Isn't it better to keep the suspects in as much ignorance as possible? It may be that at least one of them is dumb and complacent enough to think they've gotten away with it.

But this is a new age of news dissemination, so maybe the FBI was just flying by the seat of their pants. Part of me thinks that they did have a suspect/person of interest all this time (since yesterday's erroneous reports) and that this release is a partial ruse to flush out a co-conspirator (who, if he/she believes the press conference, thinks that the FBI has no one in custody yet).

<comment><USER14> Maybe they are putting these pics out knowing full well that they are not suspects and they already have the real suspects either in custody or are on their trail. This release could be a bluff. Wouldn't be the first time.

<comment><USER15> _Maybe they are putting these pics out knowing full well that they are not suspects and they already have the real suspects either in custody or are on their trail. This release could be a bluff. Wouldn't be the first time._

Purely out of interest - and I'm possibly showing my ignorance here - when has this tactic been used before?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There's some photos on this FBI page of a 17 year old kid, who was fingered by our internet detectives - and has already come forward to clear his name

[http://news.yahoo.com/teen-am-not-boston-marathon- bomber-175...](http://news.yahoo.com/teen-am-not-boston-marathon- bomber-175755674--abc-news-topstories.html)

<comment><USER17> These are pretty clearly different people than the 17 year old. The Yahoo article is currently confusing cause it has photos of the actual two suspects and none of the person who came forward on the story, but the person who came forward isn't in the FBI photos.

<comment><USER18> are you sure?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> These photos [0] seem better as you can click on the high-res option! I am only running linux but do you think the SmartDeblur program (Mac/Win) [3] would work here? Some cool examples [1] [2]. [4] seems like the best option for the SmartDeblur.

[0] [http://www.fbi.gov/news/updates-on-investigation-into- multip...](http://www.fbi.gov/news/updates-on-investigation-into-multiple- explosions-in-boston/photos)

[1] [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2221466/Smart...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2221466/SmartDeblur- Download-app-blurs-fuzzy-images-amazing-results.html)

[2] [http://en.paperblog.com/smartdeblur-will-work-magic-on- your-...](http://en.paperblog.com/smartdeblur-will-work-magic-on-your-blurry- photos-333803/)

[3] <https://github.com/Y-Vladimir/SmartDeblur>

[4] [http://www.fbi.gov/news/updates-on-investigation-into- multip...](http://www.fbi.gov/news/updates-on-investigation-into-multiple- explosions-in-boston/image/suspect-2-full-length-front-view-high-res)

<comment><USER20> I tried it with both the stable version the github page links to and the latest beta version on <http://smartdeblur.net/>. Other than changing the blurryness to blockyness, it doesn't seem to do a whole lot. [1]

Maybe it works better on motion blur e.g. because with motion blur all of the information is still there (just overlayed or convoluted in some other way), while this image is just an interpolated version of a smaller image that doesn't contain as much information.

It's definitely possible that someone else might be able to change some program settings for the better though.

[1] <http://imgur.com/DnkbL3V> with a 100x100px kernel and 51% smooth in the v2.0 beta. Not exactly an improvement

<comment><USER21> After playing with SmartDeblur myself I concur with this finding. No betterment to be had.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Does anyone know if the crowd sourcing of suspects on 4chan the other day picked out the same suspects the FBI announced today?

<comment><USER23> No, neither of these suspects came up on 4chan or reddit.

There seem to be no real hi-res images of these suspects, except for a photo which just showed up of suspect at site #1 [1]

[1] - <http://imgur.com/a/34wtj>

<comment><USER24> Gosh that'd be eerie if it turns out to be these guys knowing they walked right past you and your friends and to have a photograph of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Their site is absolutely hammered right now. The live video feed here (<http://live.reuters.com/Event/Boston_Marathon_Explosion?live>) has details. They have video of 2 suspects, one of which set down an "unusually heavy" backpack.

<comment><USER26> Someone has an Imgur mirror of the pictures: <http://imgur.com/a/wRl0g>

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm curious, I watched the conference on cnn.com and there was some guy going off about the FBI lying and waiving around photographs that the press seemed to swarm after the official press conference was over. He said a website a few times, but I never got it. Did anyone else see this or know who he was?

<comment><USER27> I don't know who he was but the site he was screaming out was infowars.com. I think he was trying to draw attention to the photos you may have seen of the black backpack special ops guys who popped up in a few images

<comment><USER28> Curious article. Though now I do wonder why those guys were there..

<comment><USER27> I really don't think there's a big conspiracy with them. I think the article correctly identified them as members of a private security firm, but I really just think the city authorities hired them to assist with protecting the race, which probably explains why one of them appeared to be walking around with a radiation detector.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Just the fact that they're young makes me think international rather than domestic. If they're bombers they don't exactly seem the conspiratorial old bitter unabomber type.

<comment><USER30> If they're international then the FBI shouldn't need to crowdsource the identities of these people. They will at least have fingerprints and facial photographs of these guys.

<comment><USER31> Wait - what?

<comment><USER32> "U.S. Department of State consular officers and U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers collect biometric information (digital fingerprints and a photograph) from all non-U.S. citizens between the ages of 14 and 79, with some exceptions, when they apply for visas or arrive at major U.S. ports of entry."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Visitor_and_Immi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Visitor_and_Immigrant_Status_Indicator_Technology)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm amused to see that the FBI has a YouTube account, and posted the surveillance video on there. :)

</comment><comment><USER34> Mirrored on imgur: <http://imgur.com/irnkk5e>

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm disappointed in the technical solution for uploading footage at www.BostonMarathonTips.FBI.gov

It would be very powerful if they had a public-(upload-only)-dropbox where folks could drop relevant footage in a seamless manner.

</comment><comment><USER36> Is there anyway to "stitch" together the photos to improve quality? Like filling in details on the hat for instance. I could have sworn I have seen similar technology before.

<comment><USER37> I believe there actually is! Isn't this part of the new version of Adobe Photoshop?

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Surveillance video here: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M80DXI932OE>

This is from the FBI Youtube account and it's linked to on FBI.gov.

Guy in the white cap is the one who they say placed the bomb.

<comment><AUTHOR> The second bomb. The first bomb is unknown, and they haven't stated why Suspect #1 is of interest

<comment><USER39> It appears to me that the two bebackpacked individuals are together. The second one loses his backpack in the footage. I assume the first has the first bomb in his backpack.

<comment><USER40> I've watched the footage a couple of times. I don't see either of them losing their backpacks. What part of the video are you seeing suspect #2 without his backpack?

<comment><USER39> You know what you're right. Thankfully, I'm not on the investigation team.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> So I take the photos aren't clear enough and/or the FBI doesn't have the facial recognition capabilities (read not in the database) to identify these fuckers?

Can anyone elaborate on the scope of facial recognition technologies used by law enforcement? NSA surely has something powerful...

Also - cell towers - they can look at logs for the time period when these guy were on the phone and nail down a list of suspects, etc.

Wonder what their approach is here. Clearly enlisting the public to help is key but I'm sure they have a variety of technologies to find these fucks.

<comment><USER42> unless they were using burners

<comment><USER41> True good point, damn burners.

Two gigantic idiots - walking the streets together, around corners carrying heavy backpacks. Can't fathom how they didn't know with todays surveillance and a million people taking photos that they wouldn't get spotted.

<comment><USER43> Sorry, what's a "burner" ? I've no clue what that word means in this context.

<comment><USER44> A prepaid phone specifically purchased to be used briefly and then replaced is known colloquially as a burner phone or burner.

Source: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prepaid_mobile_phone>

So basically a phone that can't be tracked to you and you can get rid of and replace easily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> When the Met(ropolitan Police) or Gendarmerie Nationale or Carabinieri raid a property, the terrorists they are looking for have only household improvised weapons. Every European is today, once again glibly pointing this out (touché). When they are in the US, given the behaviour [le mot juste] of congress today, is it surprising that they can and so will shoot back? Of course they will. It is inexplicable and totally bizarre to the rest of the world that they are lethally "armed and dangerous" because they ARE LEGALLY ALLOWED TO BE.

"We don't care that the world things we are all immovably, constitutionally crazy" is such a weird position. You seem not to. One nation _demonstrably_ under the NRA.

Americans seem to actually think that these weekly gun massacres happen everywhere else too. They just don't.

It is now absolutely clear that you can kill hundreds in a day with a few of your own guns, and the federal government will spring into _not the tiniest bit_ of action.

<comment><USER46> The atrocity in Boston has not the slightest thing to do with gun policy. Any nutjob can create homemade bombs whether or not guns are legal.

<comment><USER47> And the people who planted the bombs are definitely NOT law abiding citizens. If they're willing to kill a bunch of random, innocent bystanders how much more willing do you think they'd be to kill law enforcement bent on their apprehension? Once they decide they're willing to break the law and blow up bombs it stands to reason they'd be comfortable procuring some illegal guns as well.</comment></comment></comment>


Cloud in your Pocket - <AUTHOR> http://lightarrow.com/cloud-in-your-pocket

<comment><USER2> This sounds like an interesting approach for heavy-duty mobile apps.</comment>


RedHat – Linux cheat sheet - <AUTHOR> http://developers.redhat.com/promotions/linux-cheatsheet/ <comment><USER2> This might be interesting if we could see what it was. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a web version, and you need an account to download it. I'm not going to create an account just to "download" a cheat sheet with content that could have been posted to an ordinary web page.</comment>


Big growth in Kotlin, Elm, and Elixir language communities on Reddit in 2017 - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/wiki/faq?v=6fcf9836-3692-11e6-9e72-0ef846b51e05&v2=e0b3a3f4-f80a-11e7-8114-0e35ed980fd6#difflib_chg_to0__4 <comment><USER2> > /r/groovy 1.8k > users]([http://www.reddit.com/r/groovy](http://www.reddit.com/r/groovy))

At first sight, not only has Kotlin grown from 1300 to 8000 redditors, but Apache Groovy has also grown from 1400 to 1800. However, whereas Kotlin has averaged over 100 postings a month, Groovy's reddit site has had a mere 20 postings in the past 6 months. Got to look at more than just number of users because some a language backer can easily twit "hey everyone, go join groovy on reddit and get our numbers up".</comment>


How to deal with difficult people on software projects - <AUTHOR> https://people.neilon.software/ <comment><USER2> The website is obviously humorous. On a more serious note, the most toxic developers are those who constantly talk about perceived signs of toxicity in other people.

They are also the most unproductive ones and tend to form cliques.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ever considered the idea that boiling down people to archetypes might be a core reason you'd need to consult something like this in the first place?

<comment><USER4> You cannot recognize any of those roles in your company? Really? I find this article hilarious because some of those archtypes are sitting next to me.

<comment><USER3> Maybe things are different in the US (where maybe peoples personalities are extra rigid because self image and the concept of identity is so amplified), but the people I tend to interact with are usually much more subtle than this, and can easily shift from looking or acting like one archetype to another with a little empathetic communication, without me having to characterize them into a framwork, as an obstacle I need to systematically figure out a way around.

<comment><USER5> I agree. When you're seeking to characterize unpleasant people you work with as "the dictator" or "the diva", maybe you should look in the mirror and see "the reductionist" and try empathizing with people who anger you and treating them like human beings for a minute first. What feedback would they say about you?

<comment><USER6> Talk about rigid ... it's humor.

<comment><USER7> Is it a humourous address to the issue with some real options for resolution such as introspection, or a humourous pisstakecwhich does nothing more than reinforce that people can be pigeonholed and you can deal with them without understanding what makes them behave a particular way towards you?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Difficult people can potentially be far worse than having no one in their position. They may cast a cloud over every team meeting with a bad attitude. They can be a troll under the bridge, standing in the way of movement with excuses and a million reasons why it can't be done. Everyone on the team may end up walking on eggshells around that person, and end up doing everything they can to avoid interacting with them. It makes everyone else's job twice as hard.

</comment><comment><USER9> Pleasantness is the most underrated quality in software hiring.

</comment><comment><USER10> This should come with a big warning that it applies to people's current moods rather than having them in a fixed personality.

There are extreme cases where someone is always an "Extreme Overestimator" but those are rare. People will often shift between all of this made up classifications depending on the circumstances, their goals, their past experiences, etc.

It seems to be a nice tool to raise awareness for these potential states of mind but I wouldn't use it as an objective assessment of other people.

<comment><USER6> For reasonable people who take it in the light-hearted manner that it was obviously intended, it doesn't need to come with warnings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just looking through the Product Manager section, I find it telling that almost all entries are "low" risk to the project, particularly the Sales Liason. The ones with high risk are about vague requirements, changing requirements without increasing deadlines, or being a people pleaser.

In practice, none of the six companies I've worked for has ever used anything other than vague requirements at all times for all teams, whatever gives the most fungibility to the product / sales side of the organization. Adding scope definitely requires amending deadlines, so I can agree with that, but a Sales Liason is low risk to the project? No way.

It makes me question who is writing this and what their personal perspective is for choosing the taxonomy of risks, which in turn makes this whole thing seem childish to me and certainly not any kind of broadly applicable way of analyzing people at work or risks that are posed.

Meanwhile, there is actual research literature that attempts to study things of a similar vein, e.g.

[https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55dcde36e4b0df55a96ab...](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55dcde36e4b0df55a96ab220/t/55e5f374e4b04539eab51172/1441133428448/GrantGinoHofmann_Reversing.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER11> If there is a "professor" among designers, then why isn't there one among developers?

<comment><USER12> That would be The Idealist, presumably.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Am I a diva if I think DevOps people are getting in my way from doing what I want?

<comment><USER14> No. But if you are writing software that can't be maintained in production by the team that's doing the maintenance, then you a falling short in a massive part of your job.

There are lots of reasons to have difficulty working with DevOps people, but you really _do_ have to work it out in order to provide the kind of value that your company needs. I have met people that just don't care about that. They are only interested in a fairly selfish pursuit of what they find compelling in programming. I guess one could portray that as being a "diva", but I think it's a lot more complex than that. In any case, there really isn't any room for that kind of thing if the teams wants to be successful. I've worked with people like that before and as the project inevitably dies, they are the first to blame other people. Which is sad because they are often very skillful and will have no trouble finding another group to help crash.

<comment><USER5> This reads to me like someone who has never seen a project die due to being stymied by unreasonable delays and forced technical constraints coming from devops or central IT, usually for reasons of their own political control or job security. This is why the cycle gets repeated and repeated where you have to break devops rules to innovate in some way that is deeply required by your project, you do so with great maturity towards the security implications, costs, maintainability, etc., of your new tooling, and deliver the whole thing as proof that devops was hindering unnecessarily, thus basically forcing devops to accept your changes, which is a horribly antagonistic way for it all to work, but it just goes on.

The problem occurs when devops no longer takes a customer service attitude towards developer teams, especially regarding how to incorporate new technologies into production. The developer teams are the experts of whether that new technology is the right cost effective choice for the project, and that needs to be respected by devops. Their job is to get it working in production or else find equivalent solutions that meet the properties identified by the development team as necessary. Unfortunately, devops tries to be involved early on almost like a consultant to constrain what choices can be considered at each step, risking that the company can't benefit from the expertise of developer teams in identifying solutions.

<comment><USER14> If you build something that DevOps can use, then there is no problem. I can't tell you how to navigate the waters from the start of the project to success -- that's all dependent upon the people involved and requires a fair amount of people skills to do well. On the other hand I've seen enough "convenient for developers, impossible for devops solutions" to know that sometimes developers lack the background to get it right. Couple that with a bit of hubris and you get the classic, "Well, I did _my_ job. It's not my fault that devops are clueless and can't do their job".

I'm not in any way saying that this is what you do. How could I know one way or the other? I'm just saying that it's a pretty common occurrence in my fairly extensive experience (hint: all my hair has been grey for a decade and I _still_ work as a programmer ;-) ).

Thus my answer: No, having problems with DevOps is not being a "diva". Ignoring the problems of DevOps so that you can have things easier for you _is_ an unfortunately common, but none-the-less disastrous approach. Are there teams where DevOps are inflexible at the cost of everybody else involved? Of course, that's common too: hence the "No".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > The Distrusted: A Designer who has lost all credibility with the project > team, leading to their UI requirements being ignored as they are deemed to > be not in the products' best interest.

</comment><comment><USER16> Well I think today I fit in The Extreme Overestimator, The Bull in the China Shop, The Rockstar and The Hostage Taker, is this normal? :S

<comment><USER17> Ha, I'm the same, I was thinking I fit into all of those descriptions in some way or other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> There should be a Rockstar in each category (or it would be just easier to remove it from the developer category).

</comment><comment><USER19> I'd have loved to see categorised infosec folks in there as well :)</comment>


We can save Delicious, but probably not in the way you think - <AUTHOR> http://uniquehazards.tumblr.com/post/2377362882/we-can-save-delicious-but-probably-not-in-the-way-you

<comment><USER2> > _The Delicious user community could organize to save the data themselves via > a coordinated harvesting project._

This weekend I built Scrapious: a Chrome webapp to export bookmarks from Delicious

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nbahmnpelbdcmkpllm...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nbahmnpelbdcmkpllmmadklmmienpggd)

The user types in groups of tags and the app downloads the bookmarks associated with those tags.

> _The second approach could produce valuable results but would require no > shortage of cleverness in order to avoid triggering rate limiters and other > abuse mitigation mechanisms._

My app tries to behave well by \- limiting the number of requests to one per second at most \- doing aggressive local caching \- downloading only the first 200 bookmarks per tag group

This last limit is arbitrary; Delicious apparently lets one see at most 2000 bookmarks for any combination of tags (200 pages of 10 bookmarks) but I wanted to be conservative.

The article talks about the value of Delicious' memories; I don't know how to get to the most ancient bookmarks; maybe range queries are possible, or maybe one can sort results by date asc?

(This comment was also posted in the article's comment thread).</comment>


No, Microsoft's Windows 10 does not feature lockscreen "ads" - <AUTHOR> http://mspoweruser.com/no-microsofts-windows-10-not-feature-lockscreen-ads/ <comment><USER2> > While these are "ads" strictly speaking, we're not going to call them ads.

> Microsoft offering up a recommendation of Tomb Raider via wallpaper and a > near hidden link [...] The user is likely someone who likes games, and would > be interested in Tomb Raider, so he gets a wallpaper and a store link should > he want the game.

Sorry, I still call that an ad, especially if it implies it learned from my behavior/profile/harddrive content that I like games.

> This [lockscreen] offers up tips and tricks on how to use Windows and > occasionally suggests up apps for users to try out.

If it contains links to the store then that's an ad as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tvp97SMZc6M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tvp97SMZc6M)</comment>


The Supreme Court Looks at the Math of Gerrymandering - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-20/the-supreme-court-looks-at-the-math-of-gerrymandering <comment><USER2> This paper on arXiv about the proposed measure (efficiency gap) is worth reading: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.10812](https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.10812)

I still have not about EG, but in general I agree with some of the sentiment of the paper I linked: these things are difficult to properly catch with just one measure.</comment>


TTIP Leaks - <AUTHOR> http://ttip-leaks.org/ <comment><USER2> Alternative Discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11610162](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11610162)

</comment><comment><USER3> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11610162](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11610162).

</comment><comment><USER4> Yeah! Lets get the two top posts to be links to the same thing!</comment>


Will you piss off clients with your blog? - <AUTHOR> http://tracksuitceo.com/2008/04/25/my-blog-beat-up-your-website/ Will you lose clients if you disclose your likes and dislikes in your blog?  What if they don't believe the way you do or have differing opinions?  What if they're easily offended?  All the answers are here. <comment><USER2> I think there should still be a line between personal blogs and busines blogs, let your client decide their own line between the two. Give them advice; but some people need to learn the hard way.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. For anyone working with large clients, you have to be careful not to piss people off. This includes situations where it's THEIR fault for being offended.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> piss off? arbitrary on a per-post, per-client basis. come off like you have too little to say about too much? definitely.

</comment><comment><USER5> probably.

</comment><comment><USER6> only if they read it</comment>


New evidence for Majorana fermion, a particle that's its own antiparticle - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/07/170720142321.htm <comment><USER2> Most of the discussion is here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14839427](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14839427)

At this moment there are also two comments here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14817322](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14817322)

And there's another comment here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14818725](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14818725)

There are also other submissions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14833208](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14833208)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14840123](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14840123)</comment>


LinkedIn Reaches 45 Million Users  - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/12/linkedin-reaches-45-million-users/ <comment><USER2> Correction, linked-in had 45 million sign ups, the title suggests they are all using the service but that is simply not true. The article qualifies it a bit.

Figures like this should be accompanied by either the crunch rate or the number of active users.

It's a nice milestone to reach for them but there is a lot of air in that statement.</comment>


Is Twitter testing "tweet channels"? - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/#!/TwitterBooks <comment><AUTHOR> Twitter suggested I Follow that (eBooks are my thing). What's up with the Twitter trademark being used, tho? Does Twitter intend to start "official" channels like that to guide new users in? Anyone know?

EDITED TO ADD: There's also TwitterMovies and TwitterTV. I wonder how many of these exist?

</comment><comment><USER2> If they make TwitterPorn, I'll be onboard.</comment>


Some important points to watch out before you commit your code - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/calistus/some-important-points-to-watch-out-before-you-commit-your-code-26bk-temp-slug-7752263 <comment><USER2> The URL should be

[https://dev.to/calistus/some-important-points-to-watch- out-b...](https://dev.to/calistus/some-important-points-to-watch-out-before- you-commit-your-code-504l)</comment>


Bertrand's Paradox - <AUTHOR> http://web.mit.edu/tee/www/bertrand/

<comment> andrew-lucker There should be infinitely many "solutions" to this if you are allowed to define the sampling method arbitrarily.

Intuitively, one would think that random points are uniformly distributed, but that is not maintained in two of these solutions. If you randomly generate two points in [0,2pi) with a uniform distribution then you will quickly get the 1/3 probability empirically or provably by the limit.

However, if you are allowed to derive the second point from the first (such as the cross section example) or create some other dependency, then you are given great liberty as to what the resulting "probability" will be. Sure you can even guarantee that every two points on the circle will be present "eventually" but infinity is very large and how you approach it will determine your eventual outcome. Here we could subsample preferred points first and actually derive any specific probability (0,1) and maybe even make it sound reasonable. This behaviour will even be maintained into the limit, but it is certainly not intuitive, at least to me.

<comment><USER5> The other two solutions are also results of generating points from uniform distribution: radius and point on radius result from uniformly drawing pair from [0, 2pi) x [0, 1) (radius, distance from center), while "random midpoint" draws from the uniform distribution on the open unit disc. There's no "dependency" at the drawing time.

However, if one remembers the substitution formula for multiple variable integrals, this hints why the Jacobian multiplier is necessary in it: all three underlying spaces mentioned ([0,2pi)^2, [0,2pi)x[0,1], B^2\boundary) are diffeomorphic. They clearly don't have the same measure though -- the first one measures 4pi^2, second 2pi, and third pi. However, one can obtain one value from another by integrating Jacobian of appropriate diffeomorphism.

<comment> andrew-lucker On most discrete samples for the 1/4 or 1/2 case, the probability of choosing any two points in the subset may be uniform, but the location of the permitted points is definitely not. If you add the requirement that all discrete point samples should be equidistant, then you fix yourself on 1/3 and there is really no way to break that conclusion.

Sorry, in this case "uniform" is ambiguous and I didn't mean the usual definition related to probability, but rather to point spacing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I got 1/3, but with a "different" distribution. (I took symmetrized pairs rather than pairs. But I realized after I wrote this comment that folding a square in half preserves relative area so symmetrizing makes no difference.)

I started off with a flat torus (two ordered points on the circle) and then quotiented out by (x, y) ~ (y, x) (since the chord corresponding to both is the same) to get a triangle as in the diagram [0].

By geometric intuition/trigonometry/etc it's clear that a chord has length < sqrt(3) iff the difference between the angles x and y is less than 2pi/3\. The region corresponding to pairs with distance distance less than 2pi/3 is shaded in [0]. One adds it up and sees that the unshaded region is 1/3 of the whole.

[0]: [http://i.imgur.com/ow8Dkgd.png](http://i.imgur.com/ow8Dkgd.png)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This will most likely be helpful as well:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_paradox_%28probabilit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_paradox_%28probability%29)

<comment><USER7> I think that the most important part of the article is the following quote in the introduction:

> probabilities may not be well defined if the mechanism or method that > produces the random variable is not clearly defined.

So comparing the answer of 1/2, where the chords are generated by moving along the radius in increments of dr, with the answer of 1/3, where the chords are generated based on the angle from the starting point.

The problem doesn't specify how to pick random points, though I suspect that if you were to choose two random points on the radius of a circle by picking a reference "going around the edge" of the circle clockwise by some amount in [0, 2pi), we get the angular situation that produces the 1/3 answer.

<comment><USER8> >> probabilities may not be well defined if the mechanism or method that produces the random variable is not clearly defined.

i don't agree. Because it is too vague and contradictory. If you defined probabilities it strongly implies that you defined Borel algebra of sets in the space. This is what meant by the "mechanism or method that produces the random variable". Without well defined Borel set (implicitly or explicitly) there is no probability at all, not just "well defined".

To illustrate - lets take our example of random chord. One would think - <USER2> the set of all possible chords and assign equal probability to each. As the number of chords uncountable, one can't really do such assignment and still obtain an additive measure (one of the condition of something to be a probability). We're forced to go more coarse grained. Find or choose a set of subsets such that we can assign numbers to them such that there would be additivity when the subsets are combined and other properties making that assignment of numbers a "probability", ie. we need to define a Borel algebra. The way one builds such set of subsets, an algebra, is the actual definition of the probability and it is "the mechanism or method that produces the random variable".

So, in the Wikipedia article, for example, taking random endpoints means that we're using, as the basis for the algebra, the open sets in the space x S1, while taking random midpoints means that we're building the algebra on the basis of the open sets in the space of the 2 dimensional sphere. It is pretty obvious that these 2 algebras are completely different and thus the probabilities they define are completely different, and one can't talk about probabilities without specifying the Borel algebra defining it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It appears each approach depends on the way random chords are selected. Each approach yields different probabilities of selecting a chord with a certain property.

But my intuition suggests that constructing a proof for _all_ chords should be relatively simple, and indeed 1/3 of them hold the property that they are longer than √3.

<comment><USER10> I would put it in this way: Merely saying "random" is insufficient information.

To solve the problem, you have to know from what distribution chords are drawn. It could be equal probability per unit angle, per unit distance along the circle, or something else altogether.

Similar difficulties emerge when someone gives you a problem that starts with a "random real number."

<comment><USER11> Exactly, most of the real numbers have an infinite number of digits!

<comment><USER12> _All_ real numbers have an infinite number of digits. For the numbers that you probably meant to exclude, all but finitely many of those infinitely many digits are 0.

(This is _almost_ just nitpicking, but in another sense it's important: viewing an apparently terminating decimal expansion as actually 0-padded lets one say correctly that "a real number is rational if and only if its decimal expansion eventually repeats", full stop, rather than having to add the qualification "… or is eventually 0.")

<comment><USER11> Padding doesn't count...

<comment><USER12> Well, to be sure, one can say that it does count or that it doesn't—the axioms of mathematics are only as humans make them. I was arguing why it might make sense to have it count.

Another reason that it might be a good reason to have it count: by my definition, I can say "the decimal expansion of a number eventually repeats if and only if the binary expansion of that number eventually repeats." This becomes considerably more awkward if you don't consider a terminating expansion as consisting of eventually repeating 0's; for example, 1/5 has a terminating decimal expansion 0.2 but an immediately-repeating binary expansion 0.repeat(0011).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One could just as easily make an argument for a ratio of sqrt(3)/2\. The chord is selected by randomly picking a length out of the range [0, 2], placing it arbitrarily on the circle, and then rotating it randomly between zero and one revolution[1].

Before we can select a random chord, we must first map the set of chords onto the set of real numbers (or, equivalently, tuples of real numbers). This is required in order to meaningfully apply a distribution to them. The problem is that there are multiple ways to do this. Which mapping we select has as much effect on the outcome as the probability distribution.

Likewise, if we want to "count" all random chords, we need to do the same thing (map them onto the set of real numbers). We will get different "counts" depending on which mapping we select.

[1]- Edit: This is not a very satisfying approach, but it does demonstrate the problem well. Being satisfying isn't a requirement for a mathematical construct.

</comment><comment><USER14> Years ago I posted a question on CraigsList ([https://forums.craigslist.org/?ID=20211237](https://forums.craigslist.org/?ID=20211237)) Science and Math discussion board, that I think may be nearly equivalent, and equivalently ambiguous in it's notion of random, to this post. It went on for quite some time, and was even reprised later ([https://forums.craigslist.org/?areaID=4&ID=20432604](https://forums.craigslist.org/?areaID=4&ID=20432604)) by someone else. Helpful people went back and forth with beautiful 3d renders to illustrate their solutions, though those links are sadly broken now.

It is very gratifying to read this post, as I think it explains why we were never able to come to a satisfying answer.

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't agree with any of these solutions. In my opinion the circle should be positioned in an infinite plane, then random vectors should be drawn on the plane and ignored unless they intersect the circle. Then after making some large amount of intersecting vectors you calculate. I'm guessing that this essentially reduces to the random endpoints method.

The other two methods don't make sense at all to me. Random chords is just obviously not a random sampling of possible vectors-- it's essentially the same as sampling a gaussian(x) distribution using an equal sampling in x and ignoring the fact that a gaussian is a PDF and you can't sample that way, you need to invert it into a CDF and take an equal sampling in _y_. Very basic I think...

And random midpoint doesn't strike me as random either as it forces the orientations of the vectors to be non-random and systematically smaller than random because of the pi*r^2 area-dependence of concentric circles...

But, what do I know.

<comment><USER16> I tried to script that together after the same idea occurred to me. What's interesting is the selection plane affects the outcome quite heavily. As the plane of random line selection increases in size, the probability of a random chord having length>sqrt3 seems to approach about 0.13

My math might be wrong; doesn't seem to be a floating point precision issue.

            from math import sqrt
            from random import random

            def randomPoints(width):
                return [
                        [random()*width-width/2, random()*width-width/2],
                        [random()*width-width/2, random()*width-width/2]
                    ]

            def chordCalc(points):
                def quadraticEquation(a,b,c):
                    descriminant=(b**2 - 4*a*c)
                    if descriminant <= 0:
                        return None
                    x1 = (-b+sqrt(descriminant))/(2*a)
                    x2 = (-b-sqrt(descriminant))/(2*a)
                    y1 = sqrt(1-x1**2)
                    y2 = sqrt(1-x2**2)
                    return [[x1, y1],[x2,y2]]

                m = (points[0][1] - points[1][1]) / (points[0][0] - points[1][0])
                b = points[0][1] - m*points[0][0]

                qa = 1+m**2
                qb = 2*b*m
                qc = b**2-1

                return quadraticEquation(qa, qb, qc)

            def distance(points):
                return sqrt((points[0][1] - points[1][1])**2
                          + (points[0][0] - points[1][0])**2)

            chords=0
            largeChords=0
            sqrt3=sqrt(3)
            while True:
                if random() > 0.9999:
                    print float(largeChords)/chords
                points = randomPoints(500) #adjust me down to 0.5 and see probability go to ~0.33
                intersections=chordCalc(points)
                if intersections is None:
                    continue
                chords += 1
                if distance(intersections) > sqrt3:
                    largeChords += 1

<comment><USER15> I was wrong. My initial approach appears to be the ninja approach like sampo said above. I got 50% -_-

        import numpy as np
        import random as rnd
        import math as m

        chords = []
        samp = 10000
        for c in range(samp):
            #random point on infinite plane is described by a  single coordinate
            dist = rnd.uniform(1., 1000.)
            #DO NOT KNOW HOW TO DO INTERNAL SLICES

            #ignore all possible lines that do not intesect circle
            xsec_half = m.atan(1./dist)
            angle = rnd.uniform(-xsec_half, xsec_half)

            #make 2 points on the randomly chosen line
            x1, y1 = -dist, 0
            x2, y2 = dist, 2*dist*m.tan(angle)

            #copy and paste some shit from wolfram alpha
            dx = x2-x1
            dy = y2-y1
            dr = (dx**2 + dy**2)**0.5
            D = x1*y2 - x2*y1

            sqr = (dr**2 - D**2)**0.5

            xa = (D*dy + np.sign(dy)*dx*sqr) / (dr**2)
            xb = (D*dy - np.sign(dy)*dx*sqr) / (dr**2)

            ya = (-D*dx + np.abs(dy)*sqr) / (dr**2)
            yb = (-D*dx - np.abs(dy)*sqr) / (dr**2)

            chords.append(((xa-xb)**2 + (ya-yb)**2)**0.5)

        print len([a for a in chords if a > 3**0.5])/float(samp)

Basically make the unit circle at 0,0. Pick any radius up to infinity (infinite plane). By symmetry, we don't need 2 coordinates, just a distance from the circle.

Choose any angle from that point which will draw a vector that intersects the circle (to not waste CPU). Calculate the length of the intersecting chord.

I was really surprised by the distribution of chord lengths, it peaks at chord lengths of 2.0, which is the maximum chord length, and falls exponentially with smaller chord lengths. I don't know what I expected, but not that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I came up with a third -- it seemed fairly obvious after some thought. I do not quite get the 1/2 and 1/4 explanations. (Unfortunately these gif analogies do not do such a great job of clarifying.) So I decided to ask good old "Reality".

        N = 1000
        SQRT3 = Math.sqrt(3).to_r

        def point_on_circle
          x = (rand().to_r * 2) - <USER3>
          y = Math.sqrt(1 - x**2)
          y = -y if rand(2) == 0
          return [x,y]
        end

        tally = 0

        N.times do
          x1, y1 = point_on_circle
          x2, y2 = point_on_circle

          d = Math.sqrt( (x2 - x1)**2 + (y2 - y1)**2 )

          tally += 1 if d > SQRT3
        end

        puts "#{tally}/#{N}"

Oddly, it gives an answer close to a third (yeah me!). But... it is always a bit high at approx 36%.

<comment><USER11> That's because you used "random endpoints" chord selection (which has the probability of 1/3). Now try it with the "random radius" and "random midpoint" methods described here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_paradox_%28probabilit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_paradox_%28probability%29#Bertrand.27s_formulation_of_the_problem)

It's probably not wise to assume that you just easily solved a 100+ year old unsolved mathematical problem.

<comment><USER18> I'm thinking though that if you talk a fairly large area surrounding a circle, and then randomly selected two points within it. Draw a line between the two points. If the line intersects the circle, calculate the length the length of it's chord. Bigger then sqrt(3) or less get put into bins, and the probability is calculated from there. Obviously this would work better if the area was an infinite plane, but I would expect to see the answer tending to a value as the size of the area increased.

I don't believe that this approach makes any assumptions about the chords that it generates. Here's a ruby snippet that does just that (err, I think!)

plane_size = 10000.0 chords = []

while chords.size < 100 p1 = {} p2 = {}

        p1[:x] = Random.rand(plane_size) - plane_size / 2
        p1[:y] = Random.rand(plane_size) - plane_size / 2
        p2[:x] = Random.rand(plane_size) - plane_size / 2
        p2[:y] = Random.rand(plane_size) - plane_size / 2
        puts p1
        puts p2
        #gradient 'm'
        m = (p2[:y] - p1[:y]) / (p2[:x] - p1[:x])
        #y = mx + b
        # => b = y - <USER4>
        b = p2[:y] - m * p2[:x]

        #x^2 + y^2 = 1
        #sub in y from the line equation
        #x^2 + (mx + b) * (mx + b) = 1
        #x^2 + m^2x^2 + 2bmx + b^2 = 1
        #x^2(1 + m^2) + 2bmx + b^2 - 1 = 0

        #apply the quadratic equation to find the roots
        #Ax^2 + Bx + C = 0
        #=>x = (-B +- sqrt(b^2 - 4AC)) / 2A

        #in our case, A = (1 + m^2), B = 2bm, C = b^2 -1
        #the line intersects if B^2 -4AC > 0
        discriminator = (2 * b * m) * (2 * b * m) - 4 * (1 + m * m) * (b * b - 1)
        if discriminator > 0 then
            chord1 = {}
            chord2 = {}
            chord1[:x] = (-2 * b * m + Math.sqrt(discriminator) ) / (2 * (1 + m * m))
            chord1[:y] = m * chord1[:x] + b
            chord2[:x] = (-2 * b * m - Math.sqrt(discriminator) ) / (2 * (1 + m * m))
            chord2[:y] = m * chord2[:x] + b
            length = Math.sqrt((chord2[:x] - chord1[:x]) * (chord2[:x] - chord1[:x]) +
                            (chord2[:y] - chord1[:y]) * (chord2[:y] - chord1[:y]))
            chords << length
        end
     end

     smaller = 0
     chords.each {|c| smaller += 1 if c < Math.sqrt(3) }
     puts "The number of chords smaller than sqrt(3) = #{smaller/100.0}%"

If I believe the result, the real world seems to feel that the answer is 0.5

Edit: Hah! Should have read just a few comments further, and I would have seen some other posts doing exactly the same thing. Good to see we ended up with the same answer :D

<comment><USER19> Your answer will follow from the chosen "random" sampling method. Since the sampling method is not stated as part of the problem, there is ambiguity.

For this Ruby snippet, you chose random (x,y) coordinate pairs on a plane. This corresponds to selection method #2 as outlined on the Wikipedia article [0]. Scroll down a bit to see different selection methods visualized!

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_paradox_%28probabilit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_paradox_%28probability%29#Bertrand.27s_formulation_of_the_problem)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The 1/4th answer has a typo.

"The probability of being hit is the probability of being inside the area of fire divided by the total area"

No.

The probability of being hit is the probability of being inside the area of fire.

The probability of being inside the area of fire is the area of fire divided by the entire area.

</comment><comment><USER20> You and another incredibly smart human have to chose an answer (of the three) in secret.

You differ you die.

Which one do you chose?

To me this is the correct answer. I don't think the other two would even be in consideration.

I also think aliens would agree, although I'm not sure that would be fair since the original question (on this website) is being asked to me, a human.

[edit] Interesting this is also not the exact Bertrand paradox since they perhaps have added units to it to get around Edwin Jaynes solution *See Wiki

</comment><comment><USER21> IMO the most natural interpretation of "random" with no qualifiers is the one that gives you 1/3\. Pick a point, pick another point, a third of the time the second point in within the far arc of the triangle.

I'm not sure the ninja method gives you what I'd call a representative sample of possible chords. Looks like he only cuts vertically, so he can never give you a skew-slice.

Similar with the dragon.

<comment><USER19> It doesn't matter if he only cuts vertically in the animation. The pizza could be on a spinning wheel, and as long as it's a perfect circle, that wouldn't matter to the ninja's cuts.

User antimagic thought it was most natural to draw lines by picking random (x,y) coordinates on a plane, then overlaying a circle. This "natural" choice corresponds to selection method #2, so they ended up getting the 1/2 answer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It seems every methodology relies on upon the way arbitrary harmonies are chosen. Every methodology yields diverse probabilities of selecting a harmony with a certain property. [http://www.trainingintambaram.in/ccna-training-in- chennai.ht...](http://www.trainingintambaram.in/ccna-training-in- chennai.html#)

</comment><comment><USER23> The average of the provable probabilities is the resultant probability. About 36%.

</comment><comment><USER24> The Bertrand paradox is a problem within the classical interpretation of probability theory. [http://www.trainingintambaram.in/web-designing-training- in-c...](http://www.trainingintambaram.in/web-designing-training-in- chennai.html)

</comment><comment><USER25> For extra credit compute the probability under Jeffrey's prior.</comment>


Ask HN: Why does it take Apple so long to unlock an iPhone? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Is this in reference to a news event? Apple has people who coach law enforcement on accessing iPhones, and one of the things they do is get them to access the phone quickly before one of the security time delays set in and the phone can't be unlocked without bypassing the hardware encryption, which is an expensive process. One of the big mistakes the FBI made in the San Bernardino case was to ignore Apple's direction and accidentally lock themselves out.

I don't know what the response time is for Apple to return customer records such as purchase dates, iCloud login times, etc. Again, I'm interested to know if this in reference to a particular incident.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1 point by akaa 0 minutes ago | edit | delete [-]

No not really. I was wondering how the process works since it takes 72hours from requesting an unlock at the provider until the unlock itself. I read online that the request gets pushed to the unlock servers in intervals and wondered why.

<comment><USER3> All my unlocks have been pretty much instant. I think its that provider pushing unlock to Apple at intervals. AT&T does they 3 day thing but that again is AT&T time to send it to Apple.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> iPhones are not really "locked" like traditional phones are when you need to submit an unlock code (essentially a password) to the modem to allow it to connect to non-whitelisted networks.

iPhone modems are unlocked by default (so a locked iPhone will still connect and get internet access just fine) but the OS will check-in with Apple and submit the first digits of the SIM's ICCID to check if it's allowed to operate with such a SIM.

I would thus expect an unlock to be immediate, unlock request sent to Apple, a row is updated in the locked devices database, and next time the phone checks in, it gets a positive response and the OS lets you proceed. Most likely it's the carrier's stupid & outdated systems that only submit unlock requests in batches every X days or so. Could even be manual with a spreadsheet being written up by a poor slave somewhere abroad.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a tool to check the installed certificates on my computer? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Depends on your OS. In Windows you can use your certificate manager (already installed).

<comment><USER3> certmgr.msc

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Keychain Access" in the Utilities folder for OS X</comment>


Why Sons Hold Marriages Together - <AUTHOR> https://www.1843magazine.com/features/its-a-boy-thing <comment><USER2> >"I don't know how to make a little girl happy the way I fundamentally know how to make a boy happy, so I worry I'm going to somehow screw that up."

I hate that so many fathers who think raising a daughter is some kind of minefield, while raising a son is somehow so straightforward. It may come from a well-intentioned place but it seems so misguided and it feeds into a lot of the dysfunction between the genders.</comment>


Visual Studio Codespaces: cloud-hosted development environments - <AUTHOR> https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/introducing-visual-studio-codespaces/ <comment><USER2> Hey all! I'm on the Codespaces team! Happy to answer any questions you may have.</comment>


Should Npm Really Be Used as a Built Tool? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@leo/should-npm-really-be-used-as-a-built-tool-e8ff4f6cbcef#.5qrr8gjw5 <comment><USER2> Good article, I got so annoyed with all the churn in build tools for client side I eschewed them all and just use Python with Envoy to run them as command line tools.

NPM brings in the packages and I use browserify for handling require but again from the cli not via grunt/gulp

It gives me near endless flexibility, the python code is often clearer and I can pull in just about anything I need if I need it.

        ./front.py js --debug
        ./front.py css --debug
        ./front.py deploy

I also like that the python code to handle tasks is largely self-documenting if you know python.

Since they are just python files I can setup filewatchers in intellij and call them when something changes giving me a high degree of automation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome idea! Thank you for sharing it :) Haven't worked with Python so far, but it looks pretty straightforward.

<comment><USER2> For that kind of stuff it really is straightforward, Python is a pretty orthogonal language and it has lovely tooling.

If you do go that route look into using virtualenv and pip which allows you to 'freeze' requirements into a requirements.txt file.

Then on deploy you can just

        pip install -r requirements

Which allows you to install python stuff locally without messing up your global space (it's pretty similar to npm and composer over in PHP land).</comment></comment></comment>


Former Go champion beaten by DeepMind retires after declaring AI invincible - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/27/20985260/ai-go-alphago-lee-se-dol-retired-deepmind-defeat <comment><USER2> This brings to mind the occasion where an anthropologist introduced a camera to a remote tribe.

Once the tribe realized they could record and play-back their 'coming of age' ritual, they stopped doing it.

What is lost?

<comment><USER3> Interesting. I know what you mean, but to speculate: maybe they saw the ritual as a requirement to perform, rather than a privilege, as evidenced by their giving it up so fast.

So perhaps their satisfaction with a playback signifies that nothing, in their minds, is lost.</comment></comment>


The Peacock-Tail Theory of AP Calculus - <AUTHOR> https://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2016/07/20/the-peacock-tail-theory-of-ap-calculus/ <comment><USER2> Poor example to choose; calculus is critical for several fields.

There are a lot of AP courses that are taken largely because students need that feather in the cap for college applications, but at least calc comes in useful down the line for a substantial number of people.</comment>


Google Chrome: Bad news for Adobe - <AUTHOR> http://counternotions.com/2008/09/03/badnews/ <comment><USER2> So, basically, Google is adding more wight to open-source web efforts and that's confounding those that would like to put the web into their proprietary box.

A good amount of the commentary over the past couple days has been about what Chrome means for other open-source projects. It's nice to see an article whose premise (as I saw it) was that Chrome's arrival signals the triumph of the open web rather than competition for current open web products (Safari and Firefox). Sure, some Firefox users may switch to Chrome, but as long as the browsers are open source and have a commitment to standards (HTML, Javascript, CSS), it works out in favor of the open web and all those who are creating the open web (whether they be website programmers/designers or open-source browser makers).

<comment><USER3> True, if one were to describe I.T. innovation trends in two words they'd say "Creative Destruction" (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction>) in this case it's not exactly Google creates Adobe is destroyed, in my take, it's more like Google creates, Firefox/IE/Safari/Opera is destroyed. But I have to admit that Open Source projects are very responsive and, consequently, we may see a response from Firefox soon.

What I do admit is that at the end of the day, it's the consumer's experience that counts and, whoever makes the product that works the best for the consumer deserves to win, although victory is not promised. Look at Opera. So, is Google Chrome good for Open Source? If they open source the browser, hell yeah, otherwise, I'll be the skeptic.

Note: Chromium is not Google Chrome, it's PR.

If I were Steve Ballmer, I'd get John Lilly and Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner on my speed dial, right now.

I for one, begrudgingly, welcome our new browser overlords.

<comment><USER4> Why is Chromium just PR? You can build it yourself and run it.

see: <http://dev.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/getting-started>

My impression was they packaged it separately to make it easy to have Google- owned icons, etc in the Google Chrome download.

<comment><USER3> It's not that you can't build it, it's not that it's not Open Source, but it's still PR, here's why.

I'll use the comparison of Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise, or openSuse and Suse. These are truly open source. If you are going to base your proprietary technology on an Open Source project, please build the Open Source version and distribute it if you are building the Proprietary one, otherwise, you don't want people to actually use the Open Source version, it just means you have a good PR consultant and you don't mind "free help".

I bet you $100 they got the idea from a focus group, and Google Chrome has things that Chromium doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> After my experience trying to get flash on ubuntu ppc, i'll take just about anything that hurts Adobe.

<comment><USER6> As much as I hate to agree with such a malicious statement, I do have to agree that Adobe has not helped their case for community support in their lack- luster support for the Linux and open source communities.

I have used Adobe products for many, many years and have used Flash since it was a Macromedia product and can say that some of the interesting things done with the internet in its earlier days would have likely not been possible without Flash. On the other hand, as a developer and a FOSS user, I am ready for another tool to accomplish what Flash does without all the headaches that we have been forced to endure over the years with flash and proprietary plug- ins in general...

<comment><USER7> If Google also pushed/developed some open media player and animation technologies and integrated these into Javascript or into browsers, why would we need Silverlight and Air at all?

<comment><USER3> Actually, all they have to do is make their Lively "plugin" work from all websites and you would have your animation technology. Why the had to keep this one to themselves I don't know, but I'm glad they did because it leaves that opportunity available to some other innovative organization.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some good points, but the reality is that flash is still the most painless RIA platform, due to a mature IDE, the complete lack of cross-browser issues to deal with, and cross-platform market penetration greater than any single browser.

Chrome benefits flash as much as js/ajax, as well. In my tests, flash executes faster in chrome than firefox. And flash can take advantage of the possibility of a larger installed based of gears as well.

It's sort of a win/win for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm less concerned about competition for Flash/Flex and Air than I am competition for the over-priced and bloated CS3.

<comment><USER10> amen.

due to a project i'm working on, i was recently pretty much forced to become a flash developer. 700 bucks is an awful lot to pay for flash cs3, but i'd be willing to pay it, if it made my job easier. alas, it was the worst piece of software i've ever installed on my mac. eighty billion buttons and toolbars and palettes and menus, which completely takes over the screen, making it impossible to find what i'm looking for.

i found a way to make do with the open-source flex sdk compiler, even though adobe has gone far out of their way to make that difficult. for example, the .swf file format is free and open, but the .fla format -- used to store gui controls and layouts -- is not. so i've decided not to use flash gui controls. me and my cohorts are using javascript controls instead.

<comment><USER11> Therein lays the problem. If Adobe would release an affordable version of Flash, or if any of the open source SWF compilers out there could keep up with the latest Actionscript specs, then more developers would get hooked on it. But I guess Adobe is fat, dumb, and happy with cornering the market on graphics tools that it doesn't need to concern itself too much about growing the Flash developer community. Adobe should think it over because the growing popularity of <canvas> and next generation HTML is going to take large chunks of mindshare away from Flash development.

<comment><USER10> i think adobe's position is: if they completely opened up the flash format, then they couldn't make any money off of it. they give away the player for free, so they make their money from the developer tools. if they opened up the .fla format, then they'd get killed by competitors, because flash cs3 sucks.

so it wouldn't help them any to grow the flash platform, if they lose their ability to make money off of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Which is good news for us all really!...im fine with hurting Adobe.

</comment><comment><USER13> Chrome is a browser...and flash is a plugin for browsers.

Lets look at it this way: I highly doubt "javascript games" (I think I've seen ONE, and it was from here in fact,) will come and take over flash games. In the same way, javascript can't overtake flash in many aspects.

Flash will inevitably (if Chrome wants to be a widely used browser) be compatible with the Chrome browser. And people will use it and life will go on. Chrome does not in any way affect what happens to flash.

Silverlight on the other hand, is a piece of shit because Mac adoption rate is quickly picking up, because people like ME use LINUX, and because none of us were able to watch the fucking silverlight videos on NBC for the olympics.

That makes me just a tad angry.

</comment><comment><USER14> Isn't Google chrome just a browser? How can this be a threat to a runtime like AIR? Looks like the author is trying to compare a runtime with browser. Does that make any sense? Please correct me if i am wrong.

<comment><USER15> It does actually. If you are thinking of offline-enabling your web app, you are more likely to do it with Gears rather than AIR, if Chrome is installed on 90% of the computers

<comment><USER16> "Chrome is installed in 90% of the computers" is a big if. Still, I like the idea.

<comment><USER15> You won't actually need to wait for that. I read somewhere that Gears is based on the HTML 5 specs. So once the other browsers go about supporting HTML 5, there's no need for Gears/AIR if you need offline capability.

<comment><USER17> But IE won't support HTML 5 any time soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> to me there's only one problem for Chrome, that I haven't figured out how Google is going to solve: distribution

AIR is being distributed through Adobe Reader and Flash is pretty much ubiquitous (whether you like it or not). Silverlight can sneak in via MS Office.

What MS and Adobe have in common is that normal people outside of the valley already grab 'x' software (whether they know it or not), while the only thing normal people do with Google is go to their search engine...

<comment><USER19> > to me there's only one problem for Chrome, that I haven't figured out how > Google is going to solve: distribution

A link on www.google.com might reach a few people.

<comment><USER18> yes but will they install it? Installing something is very different from just visiting a web site.

How many people use Google's toolbar vs Flash (or MS Office)?

<comment><USER20> Well this is the challenge. Chrome needs to be compelling for 'normal people.' As you say that's not easy.

Most 'normal people' haven't tried Firefox on someone else's machine & said 'I want this not that.' In fact, many are still on IE 6. So the bar for 'compelling' is high. You need someone who does not find the difference between IE6 & FF compelling to find Chrome compelling. Big call.

FF got to >15% on that sort of steam without much marketing (but still some). Google can probably out-market Mozilla.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Chrome will probably not be shipped standard on any of the millions of Linux based MIDs in the next few quarters that AIR will.

</comment><comment><USER22> i think this whole flash killer stuff is still overblown. 1 word: video. how about another: sound.

adobe has a strangehold on web-media and that's not changing anytime soon.

truthfully as a geek i'm excited about chrome, but as a web developer annoyed that now I need to test with another browser.

</comment><comment><USER23> The Olympic videos available at nbcolympics.com using Silverlight are beautiful - large, high res and fast.</comment>


VisiCalc's Spreadsheets Changed the World - <AUTHOR> https://thenewstack.io/how-visicalcs-spreadsheets-changed-the-world/ <comment><USER2> Nice to see VisiCalc getting some recognition. A lot of people seem to credit Lotus 1-2-3 as the original spreadsheet, but people had already been buying Apple computers primarily to run VisiCalc for _four years_ when 1-2-3 came out. It's hard to appreciate, looking back, what a mind-blowing thing it was to make changes in one part of a spreadsheet and have the other parts automatically update, and for this capability to be in the hands of _ordinary people_ instead of specialists (or those who could afford to hire specialists). No programming required. Suddenly, a whole lot of people could do a kind of modeling and projection that had been out of reach before. "Killer app" definitely applies.

<comment><USER3> I felt ashamed that throughout my career I never got to know Visicalc. I recently read 'The innovators' and got to know from it. It's good that some authors putting effort in researching better to attribute the credits in the right way.

<comment><USER4> My introduction to spreadsheet applications was through SuperCalc. Didn't hear of Visicalc until recently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Man, I remember my Dad excitedly showing me Visicalc on our Apple II when he came home from working at Kodak. He _loved_ it and I remember playing with it a bunch as well. There's something pretty magical about it.

And I still think there's room for innovation. Not something cloud-based, but something that lies in the middle between a classic spreadsheet, and other concepts like Jupyter or the Mac's "Calca" app.

What I don't like about spreadsheets is that you can't document them, like literate explanations about what the calculation is or why. You can do that in Jupyter documents, but bringing in reactive calculations to Jupyter is still a very hacky affair, akin to invoking "recompile entire document" after every adjustment.

If I could have something that was _more_ like a spreadsheet, meaning reactive calculations as a first class concept, but still one step away from the grid UI with room for documentation and explanation, I'd be very happy. Literate Spreadsheets, basically.

<comment><USER6> I believe mbostock's [https://observablehq.com/](https://observablehq.com/) is trying to do that

A guide was linked the other day: [https://observablehq.com/@observablehq/observables-not- javas...](https://observablehq.com/@observablehq/observables-not-javascript)

<comment><USER5> This is encouraging and I will try it out for some purposes, but without the ability to run it privately and offline, it means there are some documents and data I'd never use it for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think spreatsheets (nowadays Excel and Google Docs) are a much underappreciated tool. I neither fully appreciate nor fully understand them myself, but I'm starting to see the potential. Accountants and other business people already know them well, but I don't think the average HN user realizes what they could do with them, even for personal use. I think they're useful for all things of tracking, from to do lists to even recording time spend. Combine that with some simple scripts that work with csv, and you have a powerful setup with little programming.

<comment><USER8> Whatever you (justifiably) think of the guy, Martin Shkreli is insanely good with Excel. He uploaded quite a few videos of himself doing stock analysis. For example: [https://youtu.be/jFSf5YhYQbw?t=211](https://youtu.be/jFSf5YhYQbw?t=211)

I have a few decades of experience writing software, but I still aspire to one day be as good with my tools as he is with his.

<comment><USER9> I skipped through it and the only impressive stuff I saw is his APM with clicking, copying and reformatting. I also saw him copy and paste whole columns of values and then manually replacing some with new values, which is super error-prone. What should look at to understand your impressions?

<comment><USER10> Well, maybe what's he's doing isn't just moving data around and copying formatting.

Maybe try answering a similar question using code and see how easy it is

<comment><USER9> If it is more than that, and you sound very sure of it, _please_ show me. I am honestly interested.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Some older threads on VisiCalc:

2017 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15587048](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15587048)

2016 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10830686](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10830686)

2008 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=176783](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=176783)

<comment><USER12> last month [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19980548](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19980548)

<comment><USER11> Thanks! I almost added that I'm sure there have been others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I got my first computer (Apple ][+) by conning my dad into thinking he needed VisiCalc.

The rest is, as they say, history.

</comment><comment><USER14> You can download VisiCalc from Dan Bricklin's site at [http://www.bricklin.com/history/vcexecutable.htm](http://www.bricklin.com/history/vcexecutable.htm) and run it using dosbox. Tip: a formula is something like "+A1" instead of "=A1".

<comment><USER15> There's also this online emulator from PCjs: [https://www.pcjs.org/apps/pcx86/1981/visicalc/](https://www.pcjs.org/apps/pcx86/1981/visicalc/)

You can see some behavior differences compared to modern spreadsheets, notably: there's no operator precedence in VisiCalc. 1 + 2 * 3 = 9 (instead of 7), because this imitated the behavior of simple calculators. Bricklin realized VisiCalc was competing against people with paper and calculators, and anything that made it harder or slower than that would hurt adoption.

<comment><USER14> Neat! Looks like that site also has Lotus 1-2-3 [https://www.pcjs.org/disks/pcx86/apps/lotus/123/1as/](https://www.pcjs.org/disks/pcx86/apps/lotus/123/1as/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Things I miss in modern spreadsheets:

      - Formula references (to be used as function references)
      - Formatting formulas (directly in formula section, not via conditional formatting)
      - Format-querying functions (as isBold, cellFontFamily, textcolor)
      - better non-macro controls
      - in-cell controls (instead of floating control objects)
      - dynamic ranges (ie. you can paste any number of input values and all connected ranges will expand to the needed size)
      - better external data handling
      - serialization formats native support (json, xml) - no more error prone string pseudoparsing and manual concatenation without proper escaping
      - HTTP(S) client for executing API calls from formulas
      - (above requires selective manual re-evaluation instead full-auto/all-manual options we have)

</comment><comment><USER17> I have an original copy. The best is the leather so thick and such great quality. Now we are lucky to get a plastic thin case.

</comment><comment><USER18> Planet money has a great podcast about this that goes into more depth:

[https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/25/389027988/epis...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/25/389027988/episode-606-spreadsheets)

I think that a lot of the efficiency gains and economic growth that computers introduced are from spreadsheets. Where would business be today without them?

</comment><comment><USER19> I sometimes wonder if the spreadsheet (or really the modern office suite with word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation maker) form was more or less inevitable given how desktop/laptop functionality evolved. And how much they influenced each other.

Obviously, these aren't the only programs that people use but individual bells and whistles aside, all the products in this space looked more alike than different by the early- to mid-80s. Even the advent of Windows didn't really change the basic model all that much.

</comment><comment><USER20> I worked at Arthur Anderson around this time, and when Lotus 1-2-3 came out it was like accountant crack -- they could start building complicated models and optimize for return value.

While efficiency is normally considered good, I think that this set the stage to reduce human activity to a couple of cells on a spreadsheet that can be easily deleted to bump up the numbers. It's the equivalent of killing people by high-altitude bombing -- they're not people anymore, and the only concern is "yield".

<comment><USER21> I can't help thinking whenever I see a "be wary the coming automation/AI" article, that they missed the root cause and disruption by decades, as spreadsheets were the fundamental abstraction & automation advance needed apply algorithms economically with less and less regard to impacts on individual humans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> To me, its a real shame he's not making more money from this, as they don't hold a patent because because at the time of invention (1979) it just wasn't common for software to be patented. He would be crazy rich otherwise. [http://www.bricklin.com/patenting.htm](http://www.bricklin.com/patenting.htm)

<comment><USER8> Thank god. Can you imagine how far behind our current technology we would be if people had patented fundamental concepts in computer? That would have been financially ruinous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I recently enjoyed Rich Harris' talk "Rethinking Reactivity"[0]. He nicely ties spreadsheets into the current trend in "reactive programming".

[0] [https://youtu.be/AdNJ3fydeao](https://youtu.be/AdNJ3fydeao)

</comment><comment><USER24> VisiCalc is really cool. I think it was probably the earliest "killer app" — you would buy a computer literally to use VisiCalc.

As an engineer... I've always struggled with understanding spreadsheets. To me, it always seemed that writing code was strictly better. For example, as somebody mentions further down the thread, spreadsheets don't a) connect to external datasources easily, b) are very limited in terms of their UI (cells only!), and c) are impossible to manage, version control, and distribute.

It's why I started working on a project called Retool ([https://tryretool.com](https://tryretool.com)). It's basically Excel, but every cell is a React component. And we don't store any data ourselves — we connect to whatever datasource you want to connect to — whether a database (postgres, mysql, etc.), or a HTTP / REST API (stripe, salesforce, etc.). And it's hosted by us on the cloud (or by you, in your own AWS), so distribution is easy: we handle deployments, authentication, authorization, etc. for you.

The goal is to let developers build a certain class of software really fast (for us, custom internal applications). Most internal applications are incredibly boring (tables, textinputs, buttons, etc.), and all do similar things (CRUD, basically).

It looks like there are a lot of hardcore spreadsheet users + engineers here... if you guys have any feedback, that'd be really appreciated. We just got started, and are looking for literally any feedback :). Thanks!

<comment><USER25> I'm not an engineer, but my father was -- a mechanical engineer -- and back in the 80s if you put a spreadsheet in front of him he wouldn't know what to do with it. Maybe some basic home finance stuff. He took to BASIC, though, and that became his MATLAB. He used it to run calculations and physical simulations and plot charts, it was awesome. All with 1-2 years of mainly self-teaching. There do seem to be technical people (not necessarily in software) for whom code > spreadsheets, but finance people take to Excel like ducks to water.</comment></comment>


How InfoSec Security Controls Create Vulnerability - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/johnla/2016/02/20/how-infosec-security-controls-create-vulnerability/ <comment><AUTHOR> Our management thinks that sysadmins should not know admin / root passwords and when they need it, they should get it from a privileged identity management [1] software for say 15 minutes. However, I think having an software / appliance that has administrator rights on your all infrastructure is more problematic than a disloyal employee. Since it is the master key that opens all the doors, attacker would love them. If an attack succeeds, its result would be global. For a disloyal employee, effect should stay local for a large organization. Also I don't understand the idea of trusting some random company's employees and their closed source / un-audited software but not trusting your own employees. Our management say that this is the industry best practice. Is this really the case? Do your companies also follow this practice?

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


Why the CBC banned Creative Commons music from its shows - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2010/10/cbc-radio-fans-crabby-over-creative-commons-snub.ars

<comment><USER2> But there are non-noncommercial CC licenses, and I'm sure there is a lot of content licensed using them. The "mildest" CC license merely asks for attribution. So why the blanket ban?

On a related note: the definition of noncommercial use is quite malleable in that it is not defined in detail in the license. In the 3.0 version of the license ( <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/legalcode> ) , it states:

[You may not use the Work] _in any manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation._

I've found that what that actually means in practice is a bit of a grey area. A very insightful survey was conducted by Creative Commons asking "What is non-commercial use?". The results make for very interesting reading:

<http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/17127>

My favorite gem: _On a scale of 1-100 where 1 is "definitely noncommercial" and 100 is "definitely commercial" creators and users (84.6 and 82.6, respectively) both rate uses in connection with online advertising generally as "commercial"" However, more specific use cases revealed that many interpretations are fact-specific._

<comment><USER3> Don't think of it as a _blanket ban_. Think of it this way: They paid a service a flat fee to give the producers access to a big library that is 100% cleared. If you are a producer, and you surf that official library, you can use anything you hear. No danger of mistake. No danger of misinterpretation. It's effortless and guaranteed. Economy of scale, baby.

Creative Commons? Not so much. There's nobody to pay a flat fee to. [1] So you have to look at the license of every piece of music, and you have to make sure you've correctly matched the music up with the license. ("Oops, I thought that I was using the music from this webpage, but...").

And then, if we believe the public statement, the majority of the CC music will have some kind of "noncommercial" restriction. At which point you can just forget about it. Sure, a lot of the music will have a cheap sticker price, but just as with patents (where trolls with _prima facie_ frivolous claims can nonetheless extort money from you) you've got to deal with the overhead. At minimum, you need to get some of the legal department's time, and they need to identify the correct rightsholder, and fax them the paperwork, and get the signature back. But maybe you also need to offer money. Maybe you need multiple rounds of back-and-forth. You are a public radio station. You are not awash in money for staff lawyers. You are going to beg your boss for permission to go through this process, and your boss is going to tell you to use the music library that you've already licensed with the flat fee.

\---

[1] Actually, I don't know how the music industry works, but presumably you can license your music under multiple licenses, just as with software. So you can have a CC noncommercial license _and_ license your music for commercial use via a music service. Of course, when someone uses the music service they don't need to mention the CC license, and they don't.

<comment><USER2> Interesting point about having an industry body for CC-licensed content. I know someone at CC and I just forwarded this dicussion to him. Maybe they can do something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > "Hard to imagine this kind of give and take on a National Public Radio > page."

What? Why? That seems like a cheap shot. NPR has an ombudsman who addresses issues with programming, and the producers of various public radio programs are easily accessible and responsive. If nothing else, All Things Considered and Weekend Edition frequently air letters that are critical of their coverage and respond to concerns that listeners have raised.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think I'm missing the point here, it sounds like what has been banned is the use of non-commercial CC licensed music in places which may qualify as commercial sometimes. That sounds pretty sensible. It's either that or go to each individual artist and negotiate a commercial license which sounds like a pain to do.

<comment><USER6> Yep. Seems like the whole issue was blown way out of proportion.

<comment><USER7> Nope, they banned all CC works instead of noncommercial ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Creative Commons should never have considered the notion of 'Non Commercial' licenses, for this very reason. They should have learned from the software world that non-commercial means non-free. [Edit: the CBC response is of course misinformeed, and they could simply have filtered out non-commercial licensed CC material]

<comment><USER9> The problem is that creative professionals have to be a lot more protective about their work than software developers.

While a software developer who's good enough to write successful open source code will always find a well-paying job, creative professionals have to fight very hard to get jobs, especially if they don't have a very wide network of connections yet.

<comment><USER10> There are also a few big specific issues that come up in music a lot, like use of music in advertising. Musicians generally either: 1) don't want their music to be used in advertising, seeing it as cheapening it; or 2) want to be paid for it, seeing it as a major revenue stream. A CC-licensed work without an NC clause would allow use in TV ad jingles for free, which a large proportion of musicians don't like the idea of, even if they're otherwise pro-sharing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The NonCommercial licenses are popular -- four times as popular as non-NC on Flickr -- exactly because they're not generous. And that's including ShareAlike licenses which the CBC would presumably be excluded from using as well.

And for all we know, out of that less than 20%, many may not turn out to be comfortable with commercial use anyway. On the other hand, you can guarantee that nearly everyone in a commercial licensing pool knows what the deal is.

I also think of probably the most notable cultural "remixing" of the past few years, the Obama Hope design, famously discovered to be derived from an AP photographer's image.

Would its designer, Shepherd Fairey, been any better off using a photograph with a CC-NC license? No, since in fact the first thing he did after creating it was to make hundreds of posters and sell them on the street. He would have been much better off using a licensing pool, like the CBC uses, or iStockphoto (where the Twitter whale debuted) rather than a CC-NC, or even another CC- licensed photo. Indeed, iStockphoto has arguably done more good for creators of cultural works than Creative Commons has.

</comment><comment><USER12> Maybe someone working with Creative Commons Canada can make a similar catalog available to them? Artist could sign up online with their music and right there provide the rights to their song and a link where to find them.

Just an idea but it might solve their main issue with the music.

<comment><USER3> It's a great idea, but the question is: Who is liable when the catalog makes a mistake?

If I just run an open wiki for artists I'll be sued to death when some joker submits an obscure John Lennon track with a bogus name and an equally bogus CC license attached.

So I've got to do _some_ due diligence, and charge a fee to cover the cost of that due diligence. And I've got to take out insurance to cover the risk that I make a mistake, and to cover the inevitable lawsuits. (Because, even if I employ perfect lawyers, my company will be sued. Baseless lawsuits happen, and they still need to be defended.) Lo and behold, now I'm in the music licensing business. Just like the company that the CBC is employing.

The question is: Can my CC-music-licensing business be run at a profit? Or is it doomed to go bankrupt? Apparently the CBC hasn't found a supplier who has solved this problem. Maybe that's because they haven't looked very hard; maybe not.

My take-home lesson at this point is that CC licensing is great as far as it goes, but it isn't a substitute for an actual public domain, or even for a compulsory licensing scheme. I believe Lessig warned us about this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> CC blogged about the CBC issue here: <http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/23766>

</comment><comment><USER14> What the CBC seems to miss however is that even NC CC music can still be used for commercial purposes- you just have to get a licensing agreement, as you would for any other music out there.

Most CC artists would be thrilled to be used on the CBC and would probably charge very little for that usage. They just won't want it on a Budweiser Superbowl commercial without their knowledge, consent or compensation. Or at least that's my view on commercial usage of my work.

<comment><USER15> You seem to be missing that the CBC buys One Big Library (APM), and thus isn't in the business of talking and negotiating with individual artists at all.

I'm not going to defend that kind of approach to radio - particularly not taxpayer funded radio which has the potential to have far more breadth and depth in its content than commercial radio - and I suspect it is a relatively new innovation, inflicted by the current clueless management at CBC.

Like many Canadians I still mourn the loss of the amazing Brave New Waves (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_Waves>), and there's _no way_ that all or even most of the obscura that was being played on that show was in some giant pre-licensed library of music. I suppose that cancelling one-of-a-kind shows like that is an aid to 'getting greater efficiencies out of the content management pipeline' or some such nonsense.

<comment><USER16> I dunno. Brent [Bambury] would go through moods where there's be nothing but long-string ambient installations playing for a week or two at a time, and that could be really annoying. I preferred the weekend show out of Vancouver that occupied the same time slot on Friday and Saturday. In any case, yes, that music was royalty-paid through ASCAP/BMI who handled further details. That was true even if an indie musician dropped by that afternoon with a fresh basement-recorded cassette. Things were much simpler then...

<comment><USER15> My recollection is that Patti Schmidt ran a more rigidly structured ship: 1 hour of broad and relatively palatable stuff, 1 hour artist profile, and then 2 hours of miscellanea, with the final hour often being the _really_ out-there installation stuff. Even when that last hour was unlistenable chin-stroking stuff, though, I still greatly appreciated that a show that would play it existed on the dial.

But yes, things were much simpler then. The demise of BNW seems to have coincided with the transition to satellite / podcasts / streaming for the CBC, at which point I can only assume that navigating licensing issues got a great deal more difficult. Even the single archival clip of BNW that CBC offers for streaming, from 1984, bears the notice _Due to copyright issues, there are no songs in this clip._. That's just dismal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Damn you, Cambridge Brewing Company!</comment>


Ask HN:  When did Facebook truly beat Myspace? - <AUTHOR>

In your opinion, when was clear that Facebook was the winner?  I'm sure most everyone here would agree that facebook was better than myspace all the way back to 2004, but myspace was "winning" then. <comment><USER2> As soon as MySpace let users autoplay music in the background and have flashing background images.

Sort of the internet version of the broken window theory, if you will - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory>

</comment><comment><USER3> Locally, it was a week ago today that the final round of retrenchments at MySpace Sydney office happened.

More realistically, MySpace has been considered just a music/band marketing avenue amongst my peer group for several years now - I'd say at least since '08 or so.</comment>


Where Is the Who Is Hiring for April 2017 Thread? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> It's not 11 am Eastern Time yet.

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