Fight fraud frugally  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.siftscience.com/prevent-ecommerce-fraud-frugally/ <comment><USER2> Quick question if Sift is hanging out in these threads: Why would you use $val arguments in your JSON API? It seems like nearly any other symbol would have been a better choice, since PHP, Ruby, Perl and others use $ in string interpolation.

Yes, developers should be smarter about escaping and using string values, but this seems like a very easy thing to get wrong.

<comment><USER3> Agreed, this was a huge pain using YouTube API v2 in PHP. Nothing crazy to work around, but why when it's easy to avoid entirely?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Makes perfect sense for a couple reasons.

Machine learning based anti-fraud systems perform asymptotically better as you get more variety and volume of data, and Sift can market it as such ("our network consists of over X merchants"). The 100 dollars of free service they are giving away is likely worth more to them in the data alone. The biggest credit card fraud solution I know of markets itself as a better solution because of its "consortium" of thousands of card issuers: [http://brblog.typepad.com/files/falcon_scoring_srvr_2519ms.p...](http://brblog.typepad.com/files/falcon_scoring_srvr_2519ms.pdf)

This arrangement also lets Sift very naturally eases merchants into being paying customers as they grow.

<comment><USER5> This crucially depends on merchants being comfortable sharing data. Data coops sometimes work and sometimes don't. I'd read the contract very carefully. And even if everything is on the up-and-up now, as the purchase of ghostery by evideon shows, it doesn't necessarily remain that way. For starters (and I haven't read sift's contracts), people tend to purchase things in spurts. Knowing someone just bought something on a merchant is incredibly valuable data. Plus this is amazing data for retargeting; amazon has built an ad business that is speculated to be well on the way to a $1B run rate [1]

[1] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2013/06/05/amazons- ad-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2013/06/05/amazons-ad-business- suddenly-looks-real/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I especially like the idea of watching the visitor's pageviews across the entire site for clues to sketchy behavior. Is that a common feature of anti- fraud systems, or something unique to Sift Science?

... and is that pageview information predictive, so far?

<comment><USER7> common, not unique to sift science.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think it's an open question if there will be enough online merchants that aren't {amazon, newegg, zappos} -- assuming that zappos has access to amazon anti-fraud tech -- to build a business on. They're not the only ones gambling there will be a large ecommerce ecosystem, but prime in particular has moved my online purchasing nearly exclusively to amazon.

</comment><comment><USER8> Doesn't a user that has Ghostery/NoScript render this completely useless?

<comment><USER9> Former Sift intern here.

Sift Science also has both Javascript and server side APIs. See [https://siftscience.com/docs/rest-api](https://siftscience.com/docs/rest-api) for info on the REST API. This allows companies to send all relevant transaction and behavioral data to Sift even for users who don't execute Javascript.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is spam. Their product isn't innovative or even interesting. They're not doing anything new. Google Analytics and Microsoft's AdCenter give merchants the same information.

<comment><USER9> I don't know anything about Microsoft's AdCenter, but Google Analytics does not do fraud prediction of any form as far as I know.

Assuming you're putting all of the relevant data into Google Analytics, how would you query GA with a pending transaction and figure out the probability that it is fraudulent? This is the sort of thing very few (or no) general analytics products do, but is the domain of fraud prediction software.</comment></comment>


Controlling a motorcycle tachometer with a Raspberry Pi - <AUTHOR> http://www.naughtycomputer.uk/controlling_tachometer.html <comment><USER2> Sort of a a circuitous way to drive a device that's ready to take a pulsed frequency input without tearing it apart. Should have tried harder to figure out how to do it in FreeBSD or just dump the OS and baremetal it.

<comment><USER3> I agree with circuitous. Most tachometers just take a pulse train from the ignition, so all you need to do is vary the pulse frequency instead of the pulse width.

On my Honda NC30 project bike, I'm feeding the stock tachometer with a variable-frequency pulse train from an Atmega328. The tacho just wants its input pulled to ground with a frequency equal to 4x the RPM, so one external transistor is all that's needed.

(The 328's main function is for talking to the wideband O2 sensors and sending that data over the CAN bus to a Microsquirt ECU, but it works nicely for also reading engine RPM over CAN and outputting the signal to the tacho.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You made the front page of HN... Hope you've got a rev limiter installed by tomorrow!</comment>


New app scans your face and tells companies whether you're worth hiring - <AUTHOR> https://www.theladders.com/p/26101/ai-screen-candidates-hirevue <comment><USER2> Some comments are focusing on this exacerbating aggregate phenomena like diversity stats and wage gaps. This is true and a huge negative.

But that's not the only thing we should be worried about. Far more damaging would be the dystopia that these "cognitive surveillance" products will bring upon us.

It claims to micro-analyze facial expressions, intonation, non-verbal signals while the candidate is interviewing. This is vile, hostile interaction in my opinion, and it is startling to see that companies like Vodafone, Intel, and Oracle are their customers [1].

At best, this is a way to sweep unaccountable decision-making under the carpet of "the software said so". Quite likely, though, is that such products will make society a living hell for everyone until these practices are entrenched in the industry and it is too late to roll it all back.

The creators of these products are not stupid, they made a conscious choice to grab low-hanging fruit (now that they have the technology available) and enrich themselves while making the world a worse place. Let's not kid ourselves that the consequences of their actions did not occur to them.

As a research student in DL/AI, I realize this may make things marginally worse for my career, but right here is the reason we should regulate AI usage _now_: not Skynet, but these attempts to "disrupt" social norms for no stated reason other than "progress" and "efficiency". We should keep some technologies out of the public sphere and make it vocally clear that they are unacceptable, lest we end up with a world where everyone is wearing google glasses and you have no way to maintain a personal facade because some combination of blood flow and facial muscle twitch betrays your thoughts.

Your only argument against this stuff _should not only be_ that it has X bug or that it's execution isn't sound due to Y bias. We must oppose such things on principle, I would rather kill myself than live in some sort of Black Mirror-esque dystopia where this is mainstream.

[1]: [https://www.hirevue.com/customers](https://www.hirevue.com/customers)

<comment><USER3> > It claims to micro-analyze facial expressions, intonation, non-verbal > signals while the candidate is interviewing. This is vile, hostile > interaction in my opinion.

Is your objection to the use of those things in general, or just to the use of an AI instead of a human to evaluate them?

I'm curious because these things are just, I think, the components that go into demeanor and humans routinely use demeanor to judge how much trust to put into what someone else is saying.

In fact, one of the main reasons that witnesses in a criminal trial in the US testify in person in front of the jury is so that the jury can see their demeanor and use it to judge credibility.

I'm pretty sure almost every human interviewer uses demeanor evidence, albeit not consciously. Short of eliminating face to face interviews I doubt that there is a way to stop such judging because it is almost completely unconscious.

<comment><USER4> My understanding is that their objection is to having a black box AI that can make or break a hire. What's to stop them from not hiring anyone because "the box said no"? What's to stop the hiring process from being entirely composed of the black box, with nobody knowing what it takes to beat? Sure you have the skills and experience, but unfortunately your facial pattern makes you seem impersonal. Don't worry, they'll keep you on file just in case.

<comment><USER5> Wouldn't the free market solve for this? I mean if the AI system leads to worse hires the company hiring using it's signals will suffer in the market and ultimately lose out to a superior competitor who picked up hot superstar rejects with facial ticks on the cheap, right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Related:

"The era of blind faith in big data must end" | TED Talk |

[https://www.ted.com/talks/cathy_o_neil_the_era_of_blind_fait...](https://www.ted.com/talks/cathy_o_neil_the_era_of_blind_faith_in_big_data_must_end)

 _" Algorithms decide who gets a loan, who gets a job interview, who gets insurance and much more -- but they don't automatically make things fair. Mathematician and data scientist Cathy O'Neil coined a term for algorithms that are secret, important and harmful: "weapons of math destruction." Learn more about the hidden agendas behind the formulas."_

...

 _" Algorithms are everywhere. They sort and separate the winners from the losers. The winners get the job or a good credit card offer. The losers don't even get an interview or they pay more for insurance. We're being scored with secret formulas that we don't understand that often don't have systems of appeal. That begs the question: What if the algorithms are wrong?"_

<comment><USER7> These same algorithms run in our brains with far more flawed edge cases than big data. Not that I am defending blind use of "algorithms," but that word is a boogeyman at best.

<comment><USER8> No, "these same algorithms" don't "run in our brains". Our brains produce thoughts in ways that we don't even have the slightest understanding of. We have conjecture and some observations (e.g. electric signal monitors) that only scratch the surface of describing what the end result of a "thought" looks like.

The comparison of how humans think and human intellect in general with poorly understood applied computational statistics really has gone too far.

Now, if you mean to say that humans themselves have biases and "wrong" behavior, that's a different matter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This invariably will identify and rate characteristics like race. It will judge their vocabulary and identify if you are a native or an immigrant. Probably also identify your upbringing and class from language and grammar composition.

Let the lawsuits begin.

<comment><USER10> Reminds me of this problem: [https://gizmodo.com/5431190/hp-face-tracking- webcams-dont-re...](https://gizmodo.com/5431190/hp-face-tracking-webcams-dont- recognize-black-people)

There are a thousand reasons why this is probably a garbage system. And chances are, it's just another AI-hype-driven thing to sell to ignorant companies/"decision-makers" who should be out of business already.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Holy shit, what HR department would _ever_ approve such a thing?! Photographs on resumes are discouraged - can you imagine the risk involved asking for a biometric scan and doing feature analysis on video interviews? How would this interact with GINA and polygraph laws? It raises far, far too many questions - unless the app makers are providing indemnity I can't see any reasonably competent hiring process professional adopting such a risky tool openly.

<comment><USER12> According to the article,

> Goldman Sachs, Under Armour, Unilever, and Vodafone are also among the > companies that have used the platform.

<comment><USER13> According to the article they've used the HireVue platform, but not necessarily this new (and weird) feature

<comment><USER11> Lawsuits flying and discovery/settlement processes commencing in 3.. 2.. 1..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is there any actual sound peer reviewed research indicating the results of their predictive system will lead to more great hires? Cus it didn't seem so in the article. The article made it seem like HireVue is working off some false causal relationship assumption where the best hires performed like this in their interview therefore we should compare all new hires to them without any shred of evidence showing that this type of interview performance indicates a good hire. I.e. snake oil...

<comment><USER10> Since when has science and reason driven management decisions? 20 years ago the silver bullet was OOP. 10 years ago the silver bullet was offshoring. Now it's AI and/or blockchain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This leads to some pretty scary questions. What about different cultures? Everyone has different ways of speaking, acting, living. What if the app considers something bad behavior, and it's just a cultural difference? Or it's how someone was raised?

Maybe the biggest question we should ask is what does this solve? What problem is this trying to solve? And once we figure that out, ask ourselves... is that the problem we should be solving? Is it the best way to solve it?

</comment><comment><USER16> can we rename machine learning to "Prejudice Amplifier" now ?

<comment><USER17> I will certainly start calling it that informally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> There's no way this software is not inherently biased on very basic measures-- a lisp caused by a disability probably wouldn't pass muster, nor would a southern accent. But the real tragedy here is that it equates the way someone presents themselves--not the content of their words or the strength of their skills--with job performance. It exacerbates the worst vices of HR and hiring practices and performance reviews. It's an algorithm for superficiality.

This company should remove this product from the market immediately. How this passed off as a good idea all the way through the product development cycle is beyond me.

<comment><USER19> >This company should remove this product from the market immediately. How this passed off as a good idea all the way through the product development cycle is beyond me.

It sounds like you are assuming that businesses are supposed to act like a single human with ethics and a moral compass should. I agree with your conclusion but to ponder how this passed off as a good idea is silly. If I could come up with software to sell to businesses to replace a huge amount of their recruiting cost (people, time, operational cost) wouldn't I be inclined to do business with them?

Consider a company global company, when you look at hiring at scale it becomes easy to justify streamlining the whole process.

I still find it like a bad direction to go but what do you expect?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Incredible that they can now get phrenological measurements from a video capture.

<comment><USER21> Hell, if this system starts spreading[0], _retrophrenology_ might actually become a thing in job interview prep.

0: Think of the plague

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Fuck this. A whole company whose business model is to increase the current diversity gap in a field.

<comment><USER10> This would, if allowed to run for generations, play out like incest - a dead end.

Fortunately for US-based companies, the quarterly earnings-per-share cycle creates so many decision changes within a year that a system like this wouldn't survive more than two years max. And that's about the tenure of the average employee, so it will wash out. Meanwhile, a boss will get a bonus for implementing it, and the vendor will make some cash. All is well, right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Great plot for Black Mirror episode.

<comment><USER24> May I recommend rewatching the Waldo episode, especially if you live in the US?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> To put skepticism aside for a second - I could see this working (maybe) in a field where face to face communication is incredibly important (e.g. sales). But the vast majority of roles in a modern company don't need people that are good at communicating verbally, not to mention in front of a camera.

Can you imagine putting a scientist through this process? A janitor? No way.

<comment><USER26> I think it's hard to avoid a lawsuit. An interview process that uses visual input to help it decide who to hire? It almost doesn't matter what else it considers - you'll have difficulty explaining to folk how it is not discriminating in some nefarious way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Accessing this page results in an instant pop up box that says "Thanks for reading, like us on Facebook", even before you've had a chance to read a word in the article. What a fail. Won't read, pass.

<comment><USER26> popup blocking does still work, after all.

<comment><USER27> Really? How do you block an HTML5 element?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Looking forward to 3D mapping of the skull, it will surely open up a utopia of completely unobjectionable, final judgment of character.

<comment><USER29> Yay, phrenology for the digital age...

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm curious as to how this judges the skillset of a particular candidate. To me the only skill this would be able to judge is confidence, which also makes it very easy to trick - simply believe in your bullshit and you'll get through, no matter whether you actually have the skills.

<comment><USER31> It says right in the article. You train it on your 'top performers' and then use it to increase groupthink and tribalism in your company.

<comment><USER10> Well, according to US political polls, 35% of the population is very happy with groupthink and tribalism despite any arguments. So there obviously is some room in business for a product like this.

<comment><USER31> 35%? I think you underestimate the bad blood and ill faith in the US political system. Both major parties are mere parodies of genuine debate. I will concede that 35%, being Trump's approval rating, I assume, is an easy and valid lower bound.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> noir-york A modern take on anthropometry and craniometry. Because we know the recent history of those.

</comment><comment><USER32> What are they really testing? A candidate's willingness to go through a trendy interview format, which comes across as weirdly similar to the HR version of a video dating profile - and be chipper about it? I mean, I hate video conferencing in general, I'd probably fail just because I wouldn't like the format and it would show.

This kind of thing just provokes my bias towards only allowing recruiters, HR, etc., to handle processing paperwork, like clerks, and leaving the real decisions to the departments that have to work with the people who get hired. Something like this would be laughed out of the building where I work.

</comment><comment><USER33> Let's assume there are some people whom have many years of hiring people effectively. Whom among them is going to trust a computer at this point in time? Also, what potential candidate is not going to be immediately insulted or lose respect of a company so lazy it can't even be bothered to do one of the most critical tasks without outsourcing it? Sounds like another "something for nothing" panacea service.

PS: Just imagine all the shallow correlation biases a deep learning net will discover. People with red hair? Nope. People with insufficient bilateral symmetry? Nope.

</comment><comment><USER34> Is this a joke or a modern incarnation of phrenology.?

As society moves forward, we must not accept that just because a tool is based on AI that it is not flawless or biased.

Judging someone's competency based upon their face and its expressions is not much. more accurate than a witch test, even without the consideration of differing cultural norms and behaviors. Will American firms discriminate against Russians because they don't smile as much?

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm sure this won't instantly fail anyone with gender dysphoria that kicks into overdrive at seeing their own face. /s

</comment><comment><USER36> "Judging a book by the cover" taken to the extreme? And I'm sure this leads to great diversity in the workplace too :)

</comment><comment><USER10> Another sensational (and misleading) title...

While there can be very much debate over the long term value of an AI based filter, at least the filter here includes much more than just "your face".

Honestly, I only clicked it to see if they were really just viewing a still image of your face and then trying to determine if you would be a good hire. I knew better.

</comment><comment><USER37> *Persons with facial deformity need not apply.

</comment><comment><USER38> I always though that if the skills of a person are highly shaped by the genes, that would have a reflection in body traits. So basically you could have a good idea of the mental skills and personality of anyone just analyzing the body and other external features. One of the things that lead me to this theory is how mental illness do affect the body features.

But even if I am right in this theory, this only gives you one part of the person. Because the environment and the own decisions of a person shapes them. For example, even if a person if the perfect fit for the job position based on the analysis, and the analysis is right, the succeed of that person also depends in the attitude. If the person has developed a natural laziness over the life it wont be productive at the job. And the opposite can be true, a less genetical predisposed person which has work hard during all the life could be a much better match for the job.

EDIT: when I said the skills are encoded in genes and also expressed in body traits it doesn't mean gender or race, it could irrelevant things as the length of the fingers, or the way you walk.

<comment><USER39> This is only true if the two genes are correlated in success. I have faith such traits do exist, and many of them, but I am not immediately convinced most traits interesting to businesses would be revealed this way.

Also, your example of laziness is classic thinking yourself out of quality employees: laziness is _good_ for identifying waste and inefficiency and for creating scaling automation. So it's not even clear if "laziness" is interesting without context to businesses.

Of course, it could also entail lack of work ethic.

<comment><USER38> My point is that there are more factors that the biological capabilities (or whatever an algorithms says) to be good at something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> "Would you be nervous with an artificial intelligence evaluating your interview skills?"

Yes, because the prospective employer _should_ be evaluating my job performance skills instead.

</comment><comment><USER41> What makes a hire a good hire? Is a good hire one who sucks off management, or one who does the right thing even if it provokes management ire?

<comment><USER10> As long as the company has excessive cash flow, it's the former. Once the company must actually work to compete, it's the latter. Maybe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> We've got discrimination down to a science

</comment><comment><USER43> Who actually thinks this is a good idea?

<comment><USER10> The people funding the project with the fairly realistic expectation that they will cash out with a good profit one way or another within the next couple of years.</comment></comment>


How to know the salary of all workers under H1B visas? - <AUTHOR> Did you know that corporations hiring H1B workers are required to make the wage offered available to any member of the public who requests to look at them? At Alpenglow we made an iOS app called "H1B Insider" that allows you to access this information easily!
Check it at:
https://itunes.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1190418286?pt=118523759&ct=fb_page&mt=8 <comment><USER2> I also show all H-1B applications by the city that they are being imported to work in

[http://h1bhuntinglicenses.com/2017Top100](http://h1bhuntinglicenses.com/2017Top100)

</comment><comment><USER2> [http://h1bhuntinglicenses.com/payscale](http://h1bhuntinglicenses.com/payscale)</comment>


Erik Demaine's Folding and Unfolding Page (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://erikdemaine.org/folding/ <comment><USER2> If you found this interesting or find origami interesting, I recommend the documentary _Between the Folds_. Demaine is one of many origamist featured.

> Official Website: > [https://www.betweenthefolds.com/](https://www.betweenthefolds.com/)

> Looks like if you have Amazon Prime you can stream it: > [https://www.amazon.com/Between-Folds-Vanessa- > Gould/dp/B003DQ...](https://www.amazon.com/Between-Folds-Vanessa- > Gould/dp/B003DQ6I2C/)

Enjoy!

</comment><comment><USER3> Ive been working for over a year writing a algorithm for unfolding 3D models ([http://www.ministryofflat.com](http://www.ministryofflat.com)) for texturing.

Unfolding 3D models is an almost unknown task that is done mostly by hand by 3D artists. Game developers spends huge sums of money on this.

<comment> no-s that's cool. Seems like it would be useful in other fields. for example I would like to make 3d objects larger than cnc machines tool workspace - eg cnc router, 3d printer, or mill. So if I understand this correctly, the result is a .obj file with cut out surfaces nested such that the average normal is normal to the flat surface? Could it be constrained so that for example so as to split by height (z)? How should I split out the surfaces? Are the vertex normals included in the output (useful for fitting physical parts along edges)?

<comment><USER3> The source is about 700k of C, so there are all kinds of algorithms for folding and space optimizing, but out of the box it would not work too well.

3D artists have some very particular ideas of what makes for good unwrapping. In general they dont want stretching, but there are a bunch of special cases where "the right kind" of stretching is a good thing. My algorithm tries to implement all these special cases. (that are over 20 different passes that each tries to solve a specific type of geometry).

For CNC its actually much simpler, since the rules of what is and isn't permissible are much simpler.

<comment> no-s don't worry, CNC also has lots of special cases. but thanks for getting me thinking about the math.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Worth noting: he teaches (or taught) advanced data structures at MIT. It's probably worth looking into... I didn't manage to find an equivalent to his course anywhere when I was looking around a few years ago.

<comment><USER5> Yes! Highly recommended! I watched some of them on YouTube. Not only is Erik a highly skilled mathematician he is also a wonderful lecturer. Hope his students acknowledge what a great teacher he his.

<comment><USER6> It was a wonderful class! When I took it, the class sessions were basically open problem solving sessions involving said advance data structures. Apparently, the class leads to at least 2 or 3 published papers whenever its held.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Erik Demaine, the genius that plays for a living" [https://youtu.be/g4GsDJwH2yA](https://youtu.be/g4GsDJwH2yA)

</comment><comment><USER8> Just reading the title, I could have sworn this was about functional programming. So I clicked, was surprised it wasn't but still read on as it's quite interesting.</comment>


Colossal crabs may hold clue to Amelia Earhart fate - <AUTHOR> https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/2019/08/colossal-crabs-hold-clue-amelia-earhart-fate/ <comment><USER2> TL;DR: Some bones were found on an island infested with huge crabs where Earhart's airplane might've executed an emergency landing, and subsequently lost. Now they're searching to see if aforementioned crabs might've buried some of the bones that weren't found (and that therefore haven't been misplaced).

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been there (Gardner Island). In the mid 1980s, as a grad student on an oceanographic research cruise dredging midocean seamounts for phosphorites in the equatorial Pacific, sailing from Pago Pago (American Samoa) to Funafuti (Tuvalu). Our ship (the Sonne, from Bremerhaven, Germany) anchored offshore and we took zodiacs in through the reef, which I remember as tricky to navigate without mishap. Strange, utterly lonely place. Saw the crabs, along with tons of sharks. Hot as Hades. We stayed for an hour or two, hiked around a bit, ate lunch by the lagoon, and left.

</comment><comment><USER4> Still wondering what happened to Lindberg's baby</comment>


Tony Robbins hot coal walk injures dozens, authorities say - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/24/us/tony-robbins-hot-coal-walkers-burned/index.html <comment><USER3> 30 with minor burn out of 7000 ... not that bad. So a sensationalist headline.

As a person living in country where that kind of stuff is a tradition - <USER2> is very simple and safe trick.</comment>


Ask HN: Legal ramifications of linking to illegal content? - <AUTHOR>

A friend of mine asked for my help in building a really quick and dirty app that embeds movies and TV shows found on sites like MegaVideo.  It's a simple weekend project and he is confident he can build an audience for it, however I am hesitant as this seems to fall in a legally questionable area.<p>Does anyone have any experience with linking or embedding illegal content (movies and TV shows specifically)?  The better part of me says to steer clear of this but I've found a few big sites (like blinkx.com) that do this exact thing. <comment><USER3> 1\. Depends on what "embedding" means exactly. Are you talking about the same general way that YouTube videos can be embedded, i.e., providing a link and a thumbnail?

2\. You might read a July 2007 piece, "Embedded Video and Copyright Infringement," posted by Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society - <USER2> [http://www.citmedialaw.org/blog/2007/sam-bayard/embedded- vid...](http://www.citmedialaw.org/blog/2007/sam-bayard/embedded-video-and- copyright-infringement).

3\. If you're linking to pirated copies of videos as opposed to legitimate sites, check out the LimeWire copyright infringement case. In that case, a federal district judge in NYC held that LimeWire was liable for inducing others to commit copyright infringement - see, e.g., <http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=10632737>.

Judge Kimba Wood's opinion (yes, that Kimba Wood) is at [http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/051110limew...](http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/051110limewireop.pdf).

4\. Usual disclaimer: I'm a lawyer, but not your lawyer, don't rely on this as a substitute for legal advice, etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> Google indexed all the sites on the web when they started out, even though this was against 'the rules'. According to the book "The Google Story", this can be compared to knocking on everyone's door - bound to piss off more than a few people, but ultimately everyone benefited (well maybe not Yahoo and MSN search).

Recently _Wired_ liked to a Pirate Bay torrent for a movie that got buried in some studio vault because a legal dispute - "Hackers Wanted". I guess they wanted people to experience that movie whether it's makers could agree or not.

To be an entrepreneur means breaking the rules, and stepping on toes. There's a bigger chance that your friend's app won't get noticed than it is that he'll get sued. When you get successful, that's when you get sued. Getting your content to a receptive audience is a bigger problem IMO than jealously hoarding up content.

All the same, you should probably consult a copyright lawyer.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's true, chances are pretty slim that it will get very big. I may just end up hashing it out over the weekend anyways, so I guess I have until then to decide whether to make it public or not.

<comment><USER4> If it gets big, it will become the status quo! Look at what Facebook are trying to do with their attitude to privacy. Or what the internet and iTunes has done to music industry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you can't do the time, don't do the crime :)

But youtube wouldn't be here today if everybody froze out of fear for the legal implications of what they're doing.

Sometimes it works out well, even if it is illegal.</comment>


Oracle CEO Larry Ellison Rips "Vindictive" HP Lawsuit - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/07/oracle-hp-response-ellison/ <comment><USER2> This from the guy who's suing Google over Dalvik? I really have to wonder if he's that lacking in perspective or if he gets the irony of his complaint and just doesn't care.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was very happy with HP's "return to engineering" when Hurd came aboard, even invested in it. The whole Fiorina drama really left a bad taste in my mouth, but somehow Hurd brought HP back to its cultural center-of-gravity, even considering the challenging, monster acquisitions.

But WTF just happened? Why are they acting so randomly? HP's standards are double because the Board will fire an effective CEO (for mistakes that can be dealt with quietly and fairly), and yet only weeks later sues for his reasonable employment choices. Where is the high moral ground in that?

It is as if the board wants to avoid paying the market price for their impracticality.

</comment><comment><USER4> When your good friend is Larry Ellison I somehow doubt he is losing sleep over potentially losing his severance.

This article mainly just serves to add to my disgust of the politics of big business. Enough litigation already.</comment>


Cloud Computing: What Is It & Why Should I Care? - <AUTHOR> http://wikibon.org/blog/cloud-computing/ <comment><USER2> Not a bad infographic/linkbait, although these are getting a little tiring.</comment>


Show HN: Pick – Cmd line tool to interactively pick items from stdin to stdout - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bernardorufino/pick <comment><AUTHOR> Check the demo [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB_ngPuvKko](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB_ngPuvKko)

</comment><comment><USER2> This actually helps for situations when awk seems like overkill (or is just too hard to use)</comment>


Apple Terminating Music Downloads 'Within 2 Years' - <AUTHOR> http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2016/05/11/apple-terminating-music-downloads-two-years/ <comment><USER2> Apple denies it: [https://www.buzzfeed.com/brendanklinkenberg/no-apple-isnt- go...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/brendanklinkenberg/no-apple-isnt-going-to- stop-selling-music-downloads-on-itune?utm_term=.lbmeBAZoYX#.mmNQKgbnWL)

</comment><comment><USER3> This probably means a return to piracy for a lot of people. Sure, Amazon is still an option, but their quality to file size ratio has always been substantially worse than Apple's, and that's something that really matters when you're talking about downloaded music.

</comment><comment><USER4> Another lesson in corporate greed. I can't wait to see what this does to my phone bill.</comment>


HoloLens for Research: Academic Research Request for Proposals - <AUTHOR> http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/hololens/

<comment><USER2> I wish I could just fork over some cash and be allowed to have one to wear most the day for an extended period of time. Though, obviously production is the bottleneck there :(

I eagerly await a developer kit. And I am a person whose exclusively ran *nix for going on a decade now.</comment>


Does a College Degree still matter? - <AUTHOR> https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/284148 <comment><USER2> A good one does but for that to happen you probably need a good high school education etc.

A mediocre degree probably doesn't but then we're talking about mediocrity which by definition doesn't matter.

If you are Bill Gates then it doesn't matter. If you just think you are Bill Gates well then it does matter because you'll find out in short order that you're really not Bill Gates no matter how hard you try to think you are.

In summary, there are worse things in life than a good college education. Hell, you could even learn something.</comment>


Google Failed at Smartphones. Can It Really Build Smart Homes and Robots? - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-01-30/google-failed-at-smartphones-dot-can-it-really-build-smart-homes-and-robots

<comment><USER2> How well was Motorolla doing prior to being bought by google?</comment>


What kind of logo can you get for $200? - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2295526/pagenum/all/#p2

<comment><USER2> When Steve Jobs wanted a logo for NeXT he hired Paul Rand. If you think your company is just average than there's nothing wrong with branding it that way — but if you see your brand as important than don't skimp.</comment>


Customer Lifetime Value techniques: be careful with cohort analysis - <AUTHOR> http://blog.custora.com/2012/02/customer-lifetime-value-techniques-why-you-need-to-be-careful-with-cohort-analysis/

<comment><USER2> Makes an interesting comparison to the page where they "sell" cohort analysis: <https://www.custora.com/home/feature_cohort_analysis>

<comment><USER3> Hey, Corey from Custora here. We're huge fans of cohort analysis in general - it provides all kinds of insights into how customer behavior is changing. It's a powerful way of viewing historical data.

However, we need to be careful when using cohort analysis as a technique to predict lifetime value. There are many situations where cohort-based CLV predictions miss the mark by quite a bit.

<comment><USER2> I respect that you guys are not just trying to hype your tools but giving in these blog posts actually a very balanced portrait of them. Would love to see some postings on how you cope with the aspect that the data is somewhat always historic or how to overcome that problem.</comment></comment></comment>


My conversation on secrecy with a Super Spook - <AUTHOR> http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2016/03/18/conversation-with-a-super-spook/ <comment><USER2> I liked this picture [http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/03/JV...](http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/03/JV4_7763-600x401.jpg)</comment>


Ask HN: Having Trouble with Google Public DNS? - <AUTHOR>

There seems to be something intermittently wrong with this since approx 7pm GMT 7th April - maybe a bit longer. I'm not seeing any announcements, but several others having similar issues - https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=google%20dns&src=typd . Doesn't seem to be geographically isolated; I'm in UK, seeing complaints about US ISPs as well. Anyone know what's going in? <comment><USER2> Thanks for the heads up, was thinking Cloudflare was down or something.

Switched to OpenDNS @ 188.8.131.52/18.104.22.168

</comment><comment><USER3> Just had DNS trouble from Chicago. Switched to openDNS.

</comment><comment><USER4> Longer. I had to switch back to my ISPs DNS.</comment>


I Have No Enemies (Nobel Lecture in Absentia, December 10, 2010) - <AUTHOR> https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2010/xiaobo-lecture.html <comment><AUTHOR> "Hatred can rot away at a person's intelligence and conscience. Enemy mentality will poison the spirit of a nation, incite cruel mortal struggles, destroy a society's tolerance and humanity, and hinder a nation's progress toward freedom and democracy."

\-- an excerpt from the article

Note: This article was written by Liu Xiaobo for his final statement at his trial in the winter of 2009. It was later read, on his behalf, as his laureate lecture when he was awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize in absentia.</comment>


Updating Torrents Via Feed URL - <AUTHOR> http://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0039.html <comment><AUTHOR> Apparently, the people from Archive.org are very interested [1] in this feature.

[1] [http://forum.deluge- torrent.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=45839](http://forum.deluge- torrent.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=45839)

</comment><comment><USER2> I would find this very useful for downloading TV episodes of currently running shows. You could have a single torrent for a TV show, and all new episodes would download automatically.

My current method involves some hacked together RSS feeds and regexs that are less than ideal.

<comment><USER3> You could check out [http://tvshowsapp.com/](http://tvshowsapp.com/)

<comment><USER4> Or Sickbeard.

<comment><USER5> or [http://ezrss.it](http://ezrss.it)

<comment><USER6> or [http://showrss.info](http://showrss.info)

<comment><USER7> does this service work for you? My feed never downloads anything.

<comment><USER6> it works great with [http://put.io](http://put.io) for me

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As cool as this is, isn't it a rather glaring security risk? Who is to say that the embedded URL isn't malicious? Or a nefarious tracking link inserted by RIAA/MPAA/whatever?

Besides, isn't this rather old news? The page is dated October 2012...

<comment><USER9> Well, it doesn't seem like a well known concept (and it was new to me that torrents can do such a thing).

How is the proposed concept in any way less secure than the given model? You already have to trust the source that the file is the promised one and not a infected, and you already have to trust your peers not to log your ip and sue you. An update-url shouldn't change much.

<comment><USER8> Afaict, you don't actually need to be downloading the content in order to check for updates and the signing is not mandatory ("should be signed" not "must be signed"). Don't the content providers already pose as peers and even share (sometimes corrupted) torrents in order to track down infringement? The feed could even be legitimate in and of itself, even when signed, but still pass on user information to a centralised server.

I'm no security expert and it's quite possible that it's all quite safe, but to my layman's eyes it seems there's substantial potential for abuse, especially to unsuspecting users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm not sure why this needs to be solved in the bittorent protocol itself. It would be easy to build a solution _on top_ of bittorrent.

Many clients already support downloading from RSS feeds for instance. It would be nice to have a decentralized way of handling that kind of periodic contents but if I understand TFA correctly the proposal embeds an URL for the updates, so it's centralized as well?

If that's the case I don't see the advantage over RSS. I'm a firm believer in the unix philosophy of having one tool do one thing and do it well.

<comment><USER11> Maybe it's easier to formally standardize a feature like this if it becomes a part of the protocol.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> How will that work with magnets?

magnet => torrent => update_url => new torrent (bis)?

</comment><comment> a-priori A big advantage this would have over the current one-torrent-per-episode model is that every person following a series would automatically be a seed for every prior episode.

<comment><USER13> Assuming that they keep the files longer than a few days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The security implications of this are staggering. Or am I missing something?

<comment><USER15> The torrents are signed so you can use a reputation model just like now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This definitely has some potential for abuse through bait and switch schemes. When you go to the torrent download page and see that no one has reported it as being fake or malicious, you feel safe in downloading it. Then, once it has got sufficient downloads, you send something out that is more malicious. Of course, a quick visual scan would make it easy to detect outliers in cases like TV shows (you would expect each download to be roughly the same file type and size, with a consistent naming pattern).

</comment><comment><USER17> I designed (any many others did too) something similar in like 2004 to 2005. Several Public Access TV stations used it to sync content between themselves, and AFAIK it is still in use.

</comment><comment><USER18> Do you already know Bitlove [http://bitlove.org](http://bitlove.org)? It turns classic podcast RSS feeds into torrentified podcast feeds.

</comment><comment><USER19> Cool, but please make sure you torrent safely: [http://www.greycoder.com/?p=5799](http://www.greycoder.com/?p=5799)

</comment><comment><USER20> "If a response with a 200 status and a valid torrent file is recieved, the client should download that torrent."

This isn't possible in this order, right?

</comment><comment><USER21> and my dreams become reality! 1: create a torrent for every package on archlinux using bep 39. 2: sign them with maintainers keys 3: ??? 4: PROFIT!!!</comment>


The Original 'Lambda Papers' by Guy Steele and Gerald Sussman - <AUTHOR> http://library.readscheme.org/page1.html

<comment><AUTHOR> A google docs link to original scheme manual, in case the site bogs down. [http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Frepository.re...](http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Frepository.readscheme.org%2Fftp%2Fpapers%2Fai- lab-pubs%2FAIM-349.pdf)</comment>


Ask HN: How do VCs behave when you fail? - <AUTHOR>

They treat you like you're the best man on the planet when you're making them money right. But what what do they do when things go south? What is the best way to deal with them?
Do they force you to sell every asset? What about IP? What about virtual assets? source code? Will they make you take pennies on the dollar?
I have heard horrible stories about this, so I am curious about your stories. <comment><USER2> You're probably not going to care about the (likely negligible) value of your "IP" and source code if you've failed after taking an A-round, since liquidation preferences will dwarf them.

If you reach a point where you can sell your IP at a number where you actually net some cash, I'd call that a "success".

In the one VC-funded failure I was closely associated with (as a true cofounder), nobody gave a shit about the physical assets.

<comment><USER3> As far as monetary value of the IP/source-code I agree, but I know one failed company whose founders are now extremely regretful of the whole situation, because they produced a bunch of interesting stuff that's now locked up. They'd like to open-source it so what they spent 7 years of their life on can at least influence other software, get them some recognition, and maybe be used by someone, but the investors aren't willing to, and aren't willing to sell it for anything close to the market value (which is pretty close to zero). There isn't really any prospect of a buyer, but from the investors' point of view, if they keep ownership of the IP of failed companies, they _might_ get lucky with one of the IP bundles turning out to be valuable. Even if the chance is very small, it's at least a better chance than the guaranteed zero chance they'd have if they open-sourced it or sold it for peanuts today.

<comment><USER2> At Sonicity, we built a content distribution network in a box, optimized for RTP-style streaming delivery and FEC file transfers with FLID/DL-style congestion control (we did this before there was a FLID/DL, so I'm kind of proud of it). I owned the "router" component, which was tens of thousands of lines of Quantify-optimized asynchronous C++ and ran multicast routing over an IS-IS-style link state routing protocol (the product started out as "IRC without netsplits" and, uh, metastasized).

In the last 6 months at the company, we managed to refactor the design so that the hairiest routing and group management code could get hoisted out of C++, and most CDN participant hosts could just run a tiny stub forwarder that was simple enough to be kernel-resident (a design I awesomely rejected when one of my cofounders proposed it at the start of the company).

The whole source tree was many hundreds of thousands of lines; it was cross- platform Win32 and Linux with graphical clients on each platform and IE integration. There was a lot of good stuff there. My friends Danny, Kneel, Andy, and Tim all worked on it at various times and they are, unlike me, ridiculously good.

 _Poof_. All gone.

This is what happens when you take VC and your company fails. What's better is that by taking VC, you drastically increase your chances of failing; VCs need you to shoot the moon. Our VCs decided what we should do with all that code was to go head to head against Akamai.

You may get lucky with a very, very cool investor who gifts your IP back to you. But you're not entitled to that and you probably won't get it.

<comment><USER4> I hope those guys aren't still VCs. I've never heard of something so stupid.

VCs aren't in the business of holding onto IP.

<comment><USER2> They don't think they're in that business either. That doesn't mean the founders get the company's IP when it fails, though.

<comment><USER4> My experience and of those around me is quite different. Maybe Silicon Valley is different. It's quite easy to liberate IP from a worthless company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Their business model assumes most of their investment doesn't take off, with a few rock stars that make up for the losses.

Incidentally, which is one reason cash flow positive startups should really think before accepting VC money. VC's are happy with a 10% success rate. You on the other hand, need a 100% success rate. Interests are not wholly aligned.

<comment><USER6> So you're saying that the founders should be wary that VC's aren't as risk- averse in this sense?

<comment><USER7> No, he's saying the VCs are much _less_ risk-averse.

<comment><USER8> Agreed 100%. VCs aren't in the risk game. They're in the risk-mitigation game.

<comment><USER9> In addition to risk-mitigation, VCs are also in the "find things that are much less risky than they appear" game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've been apart of two failed (or mostly failed) startups.

Wesabe closed down recently and they did open source almost all of their code. I think that speaks well for their main backers, OATV and Union Square.

Odeo struggled for five of the seven months I was there. I think it was pretty clear we were a bit lost and the board was very kind about it, i.e. they knew they weren't going to come up with the the innovation that was going to turn into a big success. George Zachary from CRV was the primary guy there. I like him personally a lot.

For some reason I feel like the board gets crazier the more success you have, in other words they're not going to fight with you over how you lose your last $100k, but they're damn well going to fight you to make sure you don't blow your $100M valuation. I don't have much more than anecdotal evidence for that though.

<comment><USER11> > Odeo struggled for five of the seven months I was there. I think it was > pretty clear we were a bit lost and the board was very kind about it, i.e. > they knew they weren't going to come up with the the innovation that was > going to turn into a big success.

Humorous considering Twitter was launched by Odeo (though I'm not sure how the IP ended up, I know there was a clever spin off fairly quickly). When were you there?

<comment><USER10> It supports the idea that boards should be easy going before "product market fit". I think if the board had pushed for milestones we would have locked ourselves into podcasting. I was there for the last seven months of Odeo, which included the first two or three months of Twitter (it was a simple product but we had to wait for the SMS application process).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> He who has the gold makes the rules. You don't like how VCs operate, then don't take their money. The choice is yours.</comment>


Are Software Developers Naturally Weird? - <AUTHOR> http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/features/print.php/3844291

<comment><USER2> An hour ago an actor was in my room trying to get a printer to work. He bounced all over the place, broke out into song and maniacal laughter, made a bunch of bizarre hand gestures while speaking, and talked to himself in full question-response format. ("What should I do now? You should click that. But what if it doesn't work? Trust me, you should..." etc.)

Software developers are among some of the least weird people I know. They are more normalized in personality and have similar mannerisms, even at the very extremes of the group. The difference is that they have a sort of solipsism that persists in thinking they are somewhat standout and unique in large groups. They aren't. In fact, they're rather the opposite.

</comment><comment><USER3> Are people who spend all day helping animals get better naturally weird? How about those that spend all day looking at tax forms?

Every job has its quirks. People tend to choose jobs where they have quirks that fit. This isn't exclusive to people who write code.

</comment><comment><USER4> But coders are ranked and rated on their cleverness. When expressed in public, its called weirdness.</comment>


When to incorporate - <AUTHOR>

I have developed the web app for my business idea and released it to friends to get feedback. I am now working on the executive summary to get a small angel funding.
I want to ensure my idea is feasible before investing money into incorporating the business. But some websites I have been reading say this is wrong and incorporating should be the first thing to do.
Could I run into potential tax issues if I don't incorporate asap? <comment><USER2> What country are you at ?

<comment><AUTHOR> US (Northern VA)</comment></comment>


Use BCrypt for passwords - <AUTHOR> http://coderwall.com/p/sjegjq

<comment><USER2> Here's a longer article on using the same bcrypt-gem inside the Authlogic-gem, useful if you already deployed a system and want to switch from SHA512 or similar to bcrypt: [http://www.binarylogic.com/2008/11/22/storing-nuclear- launch...](http://www.binarylogic.com/2008/11/22/storing-nuclear-launch-codes- in-your-app-enter-bcrypt-for-authlogic/)</comment>


The First Annual Objectify A Man in Tech Day - <AUTHOR> http://www.newstatesman.com/sci-tech/2013/01/roll-first-annual-objectify-man-tech-day

<comment><USER2> I'm curious about whether this is an actual grammatical rule and what it's called if it is. Shouldn't that be, "The First Annual Objectify-A-Man-in-Tech Day?"</comment>


WikiWikiWeb Static Mirror - <AUTHOR> https://imode.gitlab.io/projects/c2/index.html <comment><AUTHOR> working on converting these markup dumps to HTML.

if anybody has any insight, please let me know.</comment>


WebGL presentation in WebGL - <AUTHOR> http://fhtr.org/

<comment><USER2> Most useful thing I got out of that:

<http://www.iquilezles.org/apps/shadertoy/>

Kinda fun. Though I'm getting a fair number of errors on the presets, only about 2/3 of them work properly.

edit: tried in Webkit + WebGL: nice whale. Is it really 80k triangles? Gotta love the render speed :)

Definitely more interesting in a WebGL browser, but could really have used more fun with that cube. It just seems... random. Like there wasn't enough _3D™_ or something.

<comment><USER3> Older ATI card too? I'm getting problems with what looks like an nVidia extension on a fair few of these demos.

<comment><USER2> nVidia here, renders smooth as butter. Or other smooth things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hmm.. In Chrome space means "move 80% of a slide down" and space means "back to HN".

</comment><comment><USER5> The title should be; A regular ol' HTML presentation about WebGL

<comment><USER6> View it again in a WebGL enabled browser:

[http://www.khronos.org/webgl/wiki/Getting_a_WebGL_Implementa...](http://www.khronos.org/webgl/wiki/Getting_a_WebGL_Implementation)

<comment><USER7> Even using such a browser (Minefield 4.0b7), I get results that are best described as mixed on my machines when I view the presentation:

\- MacBook running WinXP Pro via BootCamp - works fine

\- Dell Inspiron 1110 running Win7 Home Premium - falls back to HTML version (gfx is Intel GMA 4500MHD, which claims to support OpenGL)

\- Fedora 11 machine with nVidia drivers - works, but I get <10fps (CPU is Atom 330, gfx card is a PCI 8400GS)

\- Fedora 12 machine with nouveau driver (gfx card is an ancient FX5200) - crashes browser

I'm sure I'm an atypical case, but are there any published stats on what proportion of machines out there should run WebGL if they have a capable browser?

<comment><USER8> Apparently Minefield is set up to require recent drivers. I was getting nothing on my laptop until I worked out that I had to go to intel's site, run the driver installer, ignore its error message telling me to go to the laptop manufacturer, and manually tell windows to use the driver now in my temp folder.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Instagram Killed the Tabloid Star - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/24/arts/celebrity-instagram.html <comment><USER2> The writer says "we" this and "we" that, as if everyone is enraptured by . . . I don't know who the Kardashians are beyond their name. I can't name a song by Justin Bieber.

I can't be the only one who doesn't pay attention or care about this world. I posted about six pictures to Instagram a few years ago and can't be bothered to do more.

It looks like a world of craving and dissatisfaction. I see people scrolling endlessly on the subway and don't see how it improves their lives. Maybe I'll get it one day and get sucked in.

It looks like all "want more" and no "tastes good," as I described in this old post: [http://joshuaspodek.com/noticed-distinction- flavors](http://joshuaspodek.com/noticed-distinction-flavors)

<comment><USER3> This is a big problem with the culture section of the Times. They really don't think/write for the average consumer. Last week a saw them use the word "Staning" in an article, it's really baffling editorial decisions. (Staning refers to the song the character Stan, from a 20 year old Eminem song, whose an obsessed fan)

<comment><USER4> Here's a fun thought - what if you (or the readership you defend) are no longer the average consumer?

<comment><USER5> Newspapers don't tend to target the average consumer though. They carve out a readership, because people want to read what they want to read.

<comment><USER4> Sure, and when you get down to it, there is no single prototypical average consumer that it's profitable to market to. Publications create their own average consumer. Fair to say though that the Times's own 'average' has definitely shifted over the last decade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't like the idea of everything now being centralised under the control of Instagram/Facebook/Zuckerberg, but the concept of giving the control away from the paparazzi and their invasive up skirt photography and back to the people they harass is a pretty nice switch.

There's something to be said about the desire for celebrity news being better satiated with a direct line to the person rather than a third party tabloid. I guess fake news and outrage based clickbate is now the modern incarnation of the tabloid trying to shift copies with celeb photos and gossip.

<comment><USER7> I have to assume that the "invasiveness" of paparazzi is greatly overstated - a game that some tabloid stars and celebrities are willingly signing up for, in exchange for free publicity of sorts. Because if that weren't the case, you'd see people being sued for harassment, invasion of privacy etc. all over the place, and that just doesn't seem to happen.

<comment><USER8> Laws in most countries allow for "public interest", more or less precisely defined, so even people who want to opt-out of the game are typically unable to do so. Even the UK royal family, who _do_ often sue, are not always able to stop the paparazzi. The UK phone-hacking story resulted in a massive trial but didn't really stop anyone from hammering the likes of Emma Watson.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> [https://outline.com/CYg43t](https://outline.com/CYg43t)

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't consider this plausible. Although I don't have anyone who would consume celebrity gossip or tabloids among my acquaintances (or at least they pretend no to), I doubt that the kind of people who does consume it will be satisfied with meticulously constructed self-presentation of celebrities when they can have the "raw reality" brought to them by paparazzis. Tabloids are here to stay.

</comment><comment><USER11> > Instagram is often accused of producing artificial images, but there's > something very honest about its commercial system

I think the author has mistaken brazenness for honesty

</comment><comment><USER12> good.

<comment><USER13> not good, replaced with something worse.

<comment><USER14> It is shallow as it always was - but at least it is not mean.

<comment><USER11> I think Instagram is harmful in different ways

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Not well enough, everywhere else just became inescapably tabloidal.</comment>


Enhancing Your eCommerce Site's Credibility: Part 1 - <AUTHOR> http://www.uxbooth.com/blog/enhancing-your-ecommerce-sites-credibility-part-1/

<comment><USER2> "Studies carried out by both McAfee and VeriSign independently show that online sales increase from 10% to 36%"

I read this as "Vendors showed that their own products are great for you, buy them!"

I've seen other "studies", posted on HN, which showed that these seals can decrease sales.</comment>


The Brownie Camera Page - <AUTHOR> https://www.brownie-camera.com/ <comment><USER2> I have a Brownie Hawkeye stashed away. Solid, smooth, and bulletproof. I'm hoping someday, my grandkids will have access to some actual film and someone who can develop it, so they can play with it.

Anyway, if you look in the junk shops, the going rate on those seems to be about $24, which might be surprisingly low until you realize how many were made. Millions?

<comment><USER3> Is nobody at all making film anymore? I know the big companies have all moved on to digital but I figured there had to be a niche market for film.

<comment><AUTHOR> Some Brownies use the physical format of 620 film. It is no longer manufactured.[1] People can respool 620 spindles from commercially available 120 physical format.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/120_film#Other_similar_6_cm_ro...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/120_film#Other_similar_6_cm_roll_films)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a topic where a big chunk of the highest-quality information is available only offline. A recent book has an entire chapter (22 pages) about the history of Brownie cameras:

Old Fields: Photography, Glamour, and Fantasy Landscape by John R. Stilgoe (2014), ISBN 978-0-8139-3515-7.

This has a side question: is there a business model for curated information about what ISN'T online (not even in Google Books)? I want a product that intercepts my Google web searches and tells me "You're wasting your time. Searches for this topic prove satisfactory in only 12% of cases. Consider buying some books or hiring an expert."</comment>


Ask HN: How to lead a stable, happy career as a bad interviewee? - <AUTHOR> Most of my acquaintances and friends have, in their careers, mostly staying in one place and focusing on their personal lives and families. How do I get into a stable career track like this? And not through these distractions of job searches and interviews. Their budgeting challenges are not related to being underemployed, and they seem to have their employment on auto-pilot. I'd be happy if I can put away the need to job hunt for the rest of my life.
The more time I spend looking for jobs and practicing interviews, the more I see them as a distraction, because I don't see them paying off. A distraction from my progress in my finances, career and my life. I want to free myself from that so that I can focus on building my own life, get into a relationship and starting a family. Therefore I do not want to focus on getting better at interviewing anymore.
For context I am a self-taught SWE having done numerous jobs in a professional capacity (90% in web, 10% other). I am frequently required to look for work because the only offers I can get for now are low-ball temp contract jobs.
If I completely avoid applying for these temp contract jobs I would never be hired (since no full-time offers come around). That's why I keep applying to them even though they're not my best option, because I have no choice but to take the money. <comment><USER2> Your ability to solve leetcode problems fundamentally determines your job prospects, just as being attractive/rich/famous fundamentally determines your dating prospects. Whether or not this is a fact to be lamented, it's still a fact. Trying to get a job without doing leetcode is like trying to get more dates without being more attractive. Doing leetcode is _how you get a job._

Here's a formula for stable job prospects: walk into the interview, in 30 minutes solve the challenge that most candidates can't finish in an hour, spend 15 minutes talking knowledgeably about your solution, then spend 15 minutes shooting the shit and building rapport with the interviewer. Your pass rate will exceed 95%.

To consistently pull that off, you have to do leetcode.

<comment><AUTHOR> >Your ability to solve leetcode problems fundamentally determines your job prospects

For those companies that make you do leetcode problems.

For better or for worse, 95% of the places I apply to don't make you solve problems about algorithms or data structures. It's mostly about concrete knowledge in specific languages or frameworks.

<comment><USER2> I'm using the word leetcode loosely. The broader point is that doing well on job interviews is how you get a job and thus a worthwhile skill to practice. Leetcode is just what big SF tech cos ask in their interviews.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The best way to get a job, without needing to do well at all on the interview, is to have someone already on the inside who can say "they interview very badly, but I've worked with them, and they are very good to work with". Doing temp contract jobs sometimes (not always) leads to exactly this. Even if the actual gig in question is not at such an organization, sometimes a person who worked with you on that will later on be working at a place you want to work at.

HOWEVER...while I sympathize with your distaste at interviewing, don't get too attached to the idea of not having to interview in the future. The labor market has, for almost half a century now, been moving in the direction of more fluidity, not less. Some people find a spot that allows them to avoid that trend, but don't count on it.

But, if that's what you're after, then doing as well as possible (including on the "easy to work with" aspect) in the temp jobs you get now, is the best way to compensate for being bad at interviewing.

<comment><USER4> This is a great point. In all the temp jobs OP has had, how have they not built up a good network of contacts? I suspect there is more to this situation than just a distaste for interviewing — it sounds more like a distaste for people.

The fact is that it's not realistic to want to keep your head down and code. You need to deal with the human side of things, or you'll end up being and feeling marginalized.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm pretty much set on wanting to apply a "set and forget" strategy to my career. Being collaborative with others at the job really isn't an issue for me, but I'm not into the whole thing about juggling professional acquaintances. I prefer my career to be low-maintenance.

<comment><USER4> But if you're not getting the results you want, then you need to change your approach. This often means realizing that you need to give more importance to things that you currently think are not important. Making connections with people at your temp jobs would be one of those things that, if you prioritized, would help you get to your goal of a stable career. You can't keep doing the same thing and expect to get different results.

I'm not saying you need to stop coding and spend all your time shmoozing with people, just have a conversation here and there, go out to lunch with people, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My solution to being a bad interviewer was to be a company cofounder -- an option available to me due to the confluence of

\- having a reasonable network from college of entrepreneurial folks who trusted in my abilities and wanted to start something new

\- confidence in working quite well with people (can be reasonably replaced with a confidence in being driven and getting things done by yourself)

\- confidence in learning what i need to do get things done

\- low stress coefficient: i tend to work well under pressure

\- a good appetite for risk: i don't balk at the instability and existential risks of building a company from the ground up.

Doesn't necessarily work for everyone, but I also think being a founder is not often considered as an option when the interview/job landscape is looking bleak (it was a last resort for me too, after struggling for too long trying to get a cubicle somewhere).

</comment><comment><USER6> If you have trouble finding full time SWE roles after all your numerous jobs, maybe you are lacking critical skills employees want to see, or don't have personal projects that showcase technical depth.

Are you applying for junior dev roles? Maybe finding a career counselor of some sort can help. Reach out to your friends and ask for their honest advice of what they think you should do/add. Leverage your personal connections to get your first first full time job!

Ultimately, you have to persevere and be scrappy to find your first job. IMO the hardest part in your career is when you first enter the workforce. Always try to stand out and market yourself on how you would be a huge asset to the employer.

Last thought, if you are looking to join a great school/community of aspiring junior engineers and web developers, apply to Lambda School. I recommended my own brother and friends, and I have seen huge growth in their dev skills and abilities. I hope this helps!

</comment><comment><USER7> Interviewing is a skill in of itself. Practice. Grind Leetcode, HackerRank, and interviewing.io.

It's not the best answer because institutionally we are incentivizing the wrong behavior. But unfortunately until we make that change your best bet is to continue to practice, practice, practice until your skills at interviewing are refined.

<comment><AUTHOR> Practicing while job searching has become a distraction for me, from planning out my career and my life and taking other actions that would bring actual results. Continuing to practice interviewing when I make no discernible progress would be a waste of time I would think.

The more time I spend applying to jobs and practicing, the more I see it as a red herring- a mindless diversion. After 2 years straight of doing that stuff, I'm clearly not cut out for most interviews. I have to seek alternatives to financial stability.

It's better to use my time and energy finding a solution that does work for me. It's fine, interviewing isn't for everyone. Tenacity may be a good trait to have but it doesn't pay the bills :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Where are you located? Maybe open up the job search wider and be prepared to move to a place where devs are desperately needed and your chances are better.

Also get your CV looked at by people who know what to look for. It might need a spruce up. Make sure it sells you well.

Get a good cv, get to a good city and apply for every good job you can see. You need a good system then of qualification, deciding which leads to prioritise, bullshit detection, dealing with recruiters etc, so come up with one and continually improve it. Use any waiting time to learn standard interview answers both technical and behaviourial and coding puzzles.

In your situation you must be seen as super keen on every job regardless of what you feel. Get offers. If they say is it ok that you work 60h a week the answer is yes. You can reject them later but get offers. Really think of it as a sales job to get the coding job.

<comment><AUTHOR> Located in Chicago. On occasion I apply to companies in other cities, but I have a preference to live in the Chicago area unless I can find an offer in another major city.

<comment><USER8> I am not from the US, but I imagine Chicago has more than enough opportunities for software devs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A few blunt options:

1\. Ask your friends for referrals or to hire you.

2\. Go balls to the walls studying and cut your expenses then don't screw up. probably not the one you want to do but crashing on a friend's couch and studying does work.

3\. Get a government job. They take a long time but your employment is definitely on auto after that.

<comment><USER10> 2\. is a bad idea because this will remove your negotiation leverage and they will end up low-balling you.

<comment><AUTHOR> I already have poor leverage anyways, because over half of my jobs I lose/finish before I could get another offer ready.

<comment><USER11> Why do you end up losing the jobs?

<comment><AUTHOR> They're temp contract jobs. They "lose" themselves once the time is over.

<comment><USER12> Sounds like this is your problem. The interviewing is more of a sympton rather than a cause.

I'm not the US, but I find it hard to imagine it is much different in Chicago to where I am in Northern England - companies are dying to find good developers. Every company I've worked for, they always ask me "do you have any developer friends that would work here?". So why aren't they asking you to stay on as a perm employee once your contract is up? It sounds like you need to work on getting better at your job and delivering value to the companies that you work for.

If you don't make the football team - is it because you are bad at try-outs or are you just bad at football itself? (Sorry, brutally honest.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> You don't say where you are located, or why interviewing is a distraction. Without these bits of information, it's hard to give you specific advice.

I'd say that avoiding interviewing entirely is unrealistic. You will always be required to do an interview, even if you go through referrals.

I'd suggest reframing your CV to match the kind of job you want, and starting from there. You'd be surprised how the same experience can be written in vastly different ways.

From there, what helped me with interviewing is thinking of it as me trying to help the interviewer get to a good answer, rather than me trying to impress them. It suddenly became more natural and wasn't so challenging from then on.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm located in the Midwest, Chicago area. I find the job search grind a distraction because I can't extract any quantifiable progress in my ability to get offers. I've changed my resume multiple times, and got feedback from peers from a few mock interviews.

Big takeaway from the mocks is that I come off as too junior or entry-level. Applying to junior jobs with my 10 years experience will lead to sticker shock for the employer so this is a tricky spot that I'm in. Even if that wasn't a problem, they would think I'm slow as a turtle to work and learn.

A very overlooked topic is how brutal the software industry can be for a person who has that prolonged junior phase. I fell into a 'perpetual temp worker' career by accident, and a contractor cannot expand their role in a company, esp. if they only work for 6-12 months at a time.

<comment><USER14> You need to study more. You need time for yourself. That might sound rude, but to be honest, that seem to be your issue. As you even mention, you want to get a good job position. A lot of people also want to have a good position where they can invest time on their family. It's actually the #1 adults want.

I suggest that to get out of this situation(which will possibly get worse over time), you set aside AT LEAST 1 hour a day to dedicate yourself to study.

Also, try to find a company that does B2B, preferably not startup. They usually involve VBA, Java and sometimes they can even have some "forward looking" tech for you to work with. On B2B, everything is slower and sometimes you mind find that you are actually pretty good in comparison to your peers. So you can take care of you family.

You probably know places where you could improve to not sound Junior. A few of them which most of the people I interview with doesn't grasp or can improve a lot:

\- Learn some computer networking basics. Do you know where is HTTP in the network stack? TCP/UDP?

\- Learn algorithms. Get a programming language you don't know, but would like to work with, and there is a good B2B market. That solves the problem "BUT I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO BUILD!11" problem, as you can just write algos and learn data structures

\- Contribute with small and simple tasks on Github. That generally counts.

\- Work on a idea, make a low-running webapp. If you show this to people, that'll make you stand out. Also use it as your playground, make it very well tested on some places, so you can show your possible employers that you can test well when you want/need, but can also be pragmatic for things you don't mind.

Try to divide this hour into like 30min dedication to each Item you consider important. Also, accept that not always you will solve a problem, or maybe it could take you a few weeks to really get things going. Use the alarm clock on your phone.

It's the same as going to the Gym.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> You will get there. Keep interviewing and learn what companies look for in a candidate. It's a bit of a numbers game to land a full time job and it can take some perseverance.

</comment><comment><USER16> > The more time I spend looking for jobs and practicing interviews, the more I > see them as a distraction, because I don't see them paying off.

I'm wondering why this is. As a programmer, presumably you are good at learning. Also, it's generally accepted that getting good at interviewing provides a high return on investment. Are you confident that you've been focused on the right aspects of interview skill improvement?

<comment> Fire-Dragon-DoL I might be able to answer that. I have terrible memory, so it's hard to remember in every detail, all steps for certain algorithms. My brain is great at indexing (I remember where I can find a link to a given article explaining that), and I'm good at offsetting my disability with bookmarks, tags and notes on the books I read.

All this works great on the real job and sucks terribly for interviewing (and school tests)!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> You need to build a network of people who will support you. The only way I know to do that if you don't already have one is by doing outstanding work. You need to squeeze some time out and do something great. It is harder to find that time if you're taking care of a family, but a lot of people do it. Elon Musk is a good example.

</comment><comment><USER18> For reference, whiteboarding in Europe is rather uncommon and, if it is done, it's more common for entry-level jobs. In my experience, the highest paying jobs pretty much don't do it at all.

</comment><comment><USER19> If you come off in your interviews like you do in this post it's no surprise. All you're doing is saying what you want and virtually nothing about what you have to offer.

<comment><AUTHOR> I never talk about what I wrote here to an interviewer. I do the opposite- I convince myself that I don't even _need_ the job when I walk into the interview. I tell them what I've brought to the past companies I worked for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > The more time I spend looking for jobs and practicing interviews

Maybe you should stop practicing interviews, and start practicing being better at your job?

</comment><comment><USER20> Assemble a portfolio. Show people what you can do. And then network.

</comment><comment><USER21> In one of the tightest markets for software devs (and labor in general) of all time you can't land a full time job? And you are refusing to date and get into relationships because you can't pass an interview?

1) Maybe software isn't the right career for you, and 2) Don't let being unable to land a software development job prevent you from saving money and getting a girlfriend / boyfriend.

There are many other careers out there.

<comment><USER22> I am not sure why this is downvoted - but I second this opinion.

> I want to free myself from that so that I can focus on building my own life, > get into a relationship and starting a family.

Leetcoding is not preventing OP from doing any of that. This sounds like just an excuse for not doing the hard work. It really sounds like OP doesn't enjoy coding.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best, Safest Interest-Free Ways of Investing 100k? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
Assuming one is making enough from a startup to put aside all income from a day job, but not yet ready to quit the day job, what are some recommended ways of investing that money?
The catch is, the investment should be interest-free. As far as my limited knowledge in investments goes: Stock market is OK, bearer bonds are not. Micro-investments are based on interest, so they too are not allowed.
That said, what are some of the safest and some of the best ways to invest? Obviously 100k isn't a "fortune" but it's not a small about either. Split it in half and go risky with part and safe with other? What's the return on the "safe" investments over how long?
I guess I'm all questions here, would appreciate any help you guys could give :) <comment><USER2> I'm assuming you mention interest-free for religious reasons. If that's the case, there are mutual funds designed to comply specifically with various religious requirements (meaning the only invest in appropriate companies and revenue streams, etc) that you may want to look into. I don't know any names off the top of my head, but sometimes they go by "virtue funds."

</comment><comment><USER3> Take a look at the permanent portfolio.

[http://crawlingroad.com/blog/2008/12/22/permanent- portfolio-...](http://crawlingroad.com/blog/2008/12/22/permanent-portfolio- historical-returns/) <http://crawlingroad.com/blog/tag/permanent-portfolio/>

</comment><comment><USER4> You've said you don't want interest, so you're not Why not invest in yourself? Go on a nice holiday? Buy a house? Get a facelift. Spend the money to make your life better?

Or invest in some 'social capital'. Buy your parents/siblings a house, or a car. If times go bad, you'll be able to call in some favours.

</comment><comment><USER5> These are all excellent questions to ask a financial advisor. Go to your bank and tell them you have 100k to invest, and you'll get all the answers you need. They'll set you up with a financial advisor who can help you map out a personal investment plan that meets your needs.

</comment><comment><USER6> Given your restriction, I'd say stocks. But stocks are inherently risky. And unless you're willing to put in the effort, I'd recommend you stay away.

Further, many companies have cash and some of it will be earning interest. They will also hold bonds of sorts which would also be earn interest. They may raise money in the bond market which would require the company to pay interest. This would severely restrict the amount of companies you can invest in.

Mutual funds typically don't do very well, not when consideration is given for their fees and their performance benchmarked to the S&P.

I would buy commodities like gold and silver except that they're at an all time high. And what your timeframe here is important.

</comment><comment><USER7> Kaching.com is pretty cool, allows you to get 100% transparency on the track record and day-to-day moves of different successful investors. You could put a portion of it following an investor whose strategy aligns with your goals.

Why no interest? If you put a portion of the money in tax-free municipal bonds (which technically pay you interest) it'd be a good place for generating a decent yield while keepng your balance relatively safe.

There's always an annuity too, which is where you pay a lump-sum for a guaranteed income for life, which is dependent on a bunch of factors (your age, current interest rates, type of annuity, etc.)

good luck!

</comment><comment><USER8> Take a portion and buy actual physical gold and silver.</comment>


University may have to pay to review a paper that will be sold back to them - <AUTHOR> https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/93341/if-i-request-a-paper-through-my-university-library-must-they-pay-a-substantial <comment><AUTHOR> TL;DR: An academic referee wants to check out a paper referenced by a paper under review. This may cost $39.95. By doing this work he adds value to the paper being refereed, and hence enables the publisher to sell that paper back to the University for an equally stiff fee.</comment>


Better cell phone battery life? Recapture wasted LCD backlighting - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2011/08/better-cell-phone-battery-life-recapture-wasted-lcd-backlighting.ars

<comment><USER2> Related - much discussion:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2871501></comment>


After protest, Lenovo adds Linux compatibility to Yoga 900 and 900S laptops - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/3139812/laptop-computers/after-protest-lenovo-brings-linux-compatibility-to-yoga-900-and-900s.html <comment><USER3> Intel submitted a patch to the linux-nvme mailing list to support the original raid system used in the Lenovo Yoga.

However, the kernel maintainers turned down the patch because the hardware itself was bizarre, underspecified, and unreliable in common cases.

This is an ongoing story and i expect there'll be a resolution in a few months.

ML discussion thread is here: [http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/linux- nvme/2016-October...](http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/linux- nvme/2016-October/006800.html)

<comment><USER4> Is the unreliable hardware causing problems for Windows users?

<comment><USER5> Nope, because Intel can just push some binary drivers out and everyone will down it with a gargle.

The kernel patches are refused because the kernel devs expect to maintain the code for as long as there are devices in active use that need it once allowed in.

Thus they demand a proper spec for the device behavior so they can test for breakages down the line. And apparently the patches are already violating AHCI behavior expected by the kernel.

Or at least that is what i got out of reading the short ML thread.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Locking specific hardware to Windows has emerged as an issue in recent > years. For example, Intel's Kaby Lake chips support only Windows 10, so will > AMD's upcoming Zen chips.

> Another option is to buy Linux-based laptops with the latest Kaby Lake > chips, like System76's Lemur laptop, which starts at $699, or Dell's XPS 13 > Developer Edition, which starts at $949.

So, which is it? Can Kaby Lake chips support Linux or not, because those statements seem contradictory.

<comment><USER7> Misleading line. They do not support any version of window before 10 (that is, neither MS nor Intel or AMD will release drivers for other windows). Linux (and other OSs) should support them just fine.

<comment><USER8> I'm curious, what do the CPUs need drivers for? I thought x86 processors are always backwards-compatible, in theory all the way back to DOS.

Or is it the chipset driver? Here also I wonder what would have changed dramatically since the previous generation.

I've found the only thing I needed to install chipset drivers for was for mainboard-specific features, like LED and Fan control, and for (back then) bleeding edge features like USB3. Granted, this was because basic chipset support was integrated into windows. Still, I wonder what the breaking change or new feature in Kaby Lake is.

<comment><USER9> It's the "chipset" drivers, yes; but in the modern world all that hardware is on-chip and not meaningfully separable from the SoC. So sure, x86 code will run fine on the chip in any OS (e.g. Linux in virtualization under Windows 10). But you still can't boot Linux on it without drivers for the hardware.

In this case it's the SATA storage controller, which is configured by the BIOS in a mode that isn't compliant with the AHCI spec.

<comment><USER10> > In this case it's the SATA storage controller, which is configured by the > BIOS in a mode that isn't compliant with the AHCI spec.

Not quite. It's the PCIe bridge, configured in a thoroughly nonsensical way that makes it pretend that an NVMe device (which is a PCIe device in its own right) is hidden behind a SATA controller.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Too late, I will never buy Lenovo again, there are too many other reasonable choices of companies who don't make anti-Linux decisions then backtrack when they get covered in shit. Once bitten..

<comment><USER12> I have a lenovo thinkpad x140e and I love it. It's underpowered and "bulky", but as a healthy adult I really don't care if a laptop is a few hundred grams heavier. I've dropped it once or twice as well.

But I am not going to buy a laptop that won't run Linux. have any recommendations?

<comment><USER13> >But I am not going to buy a laptop that won't run Linux. have any recommendations?

Just keep buying Thinkpads. They are fine and support Linux. I would stay away from regular consumer laptops anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > This is a Linux-only BIOS, meaning it should be used only by those who want > to load the OS. If you want to continue with Windows, do not load the > firmware. "This BIOS is not intended to be used on machines running Windows > operating systems," Lenovo said.

One step forward, two steps back.

<comment> Johan-bjareholt The "Linux only BIOS" also works for Windows though so you can dual boot with it. The reason why they say it doesn't is because they don't want to spend money on officially supporting it and AHCI gives a slight performance decrease from their default RAID configuration.

<comment><USER15> > "and AHCI gives a slight performance decrease from their default RAID > configuration."

Is that actually true, or is it really that using Microsoft's AHCI driver instead of Intel's driver hurts performance? Last time I checked, Intel's driver could be used even when the controller is in AHCI mode.

<comment><USER16> I've seen speculation that it's about forcing Intel's custom driver which supports some nonstandard power management features.

[https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/44694.html](https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/44694.html)

Apparently, there isn't much difference between AHCI and RAID modes in the hardware itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Seriously, why isn't Linux higher on the priority list of vendors? A huge portion of devs have Linux as their main OS but support is so scarce.

<comment><USER18> The Stack Overflow developer survey would suggest that's not correct[0].

Mac OS X 26.2%

Windows 7 22.5%

Linux 21.7%

Windows 10 20.8%

Windows 8 8.4%

Windows XP 0.4%

Though it is possible that the sort of developers that use desktop linux don't use Stack Overflow.

[0] [http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer- survey-2016#tech...](http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer- survey-2016#technology-desktop-operating-system)

<comment><USER8> Huh, 21.7% is a surpizingly huge portion in my book. I would have suspected a much smaller number.

One fifth is a market segment that is large enough to cater for. If you even put a small team on the task of ensuring that Linux installs on your notebooks, and make the minimal neccessary changes (like this BIOS change... or better revert of a breaking change), then you could claim Linux support as your unique selling point, and grab a huge fraction of those 20%.

<comment><USER19> _> One fifth is a market segment that is large enough to cater for_

Keep in mind that that's 21.7% of stack overflow users (i.e. developers), not users in general.

According StatCounter (based on browser stats), GNU/Linux represented 1.44% of desktop/laptop OS as of last month. Perhaps developers are more likely to use these laptops in particular, but they're unlikely to be 100% of users.

<comment><USER20> > Keep in mind that that's 21.7% of stack overflow users (i.e. developers), > not users in general.

The unfortunate reality is that while this number is largerish, whenever a company comes out with a linux-based "developer edition" laptop, folks don't buy it.

The Dell XPS 13, for example, is a great looking machine - but too many folks were busy buying macbooks to help Dell learn this market segment does indeed want more products like this.

We need to vote with our wallets, in order to reinforce this behavior.

Perhaps this may change now that developers are feeling disenfranchised with Apple over the recent model releases.

<comment><USER21> To back up a step, why should there even be a "linux developer edition" model? Why can't they just make a solid laptop to begin with, that also just happens to support Linux? What's honestly different? The icon on the meta key?

To answer your question, as a picky hardware nut I have yet to see anything worth paying extra for. Give me a 4lb 15" 1080p matte IPS with user-expandable RAM and a PCIe m.2 slot, a SATA drive bay instead of a cdrom, _no_ dedicated graphics card, a non-chiclet keyboard, a high quality trackpad _centered under the space bar_, and a user-replaceable (hot-swappable?) battery that gets 8-10hrs on a single charge and I'll think about forking out extra money. Otherwise eff off, I'm happy with used Thinkpads.

It's a tough crowd to please, to be sure, especially when half of us are perfectly capable and willing to put in the extra effort to get random finicky component X working.

<comment><USER22> I think it was a little bit cheaper because it didn't come with a Windows license.

<comment><USER23> It's probably more expensive, as they don't get the moneys from the "Special Offers" preloaded on the computer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I have been thinking about whether the distinction between "consumer" (eg IdeaPad) and "business" (eg ThinkPad) machines even makes sense. This is not even limited to Lenovo of course.

</comment><comment><USER25> So if I'm understanding this correctly, Lenovo isn't actively blocking Linux, they're just using a newer RAID mode in their storage controller that there are no existing Linux drivers for?

This doesn't seem like that big of a deal actually. It's nice of them to provide a legacy mode bios, but this will perhaps encourage the community to write open source drivers for the storage controller in its native mode, expanding the hardware that the linux kernel can support. That would be a win win.

<comment><USER26> Well, they initially only released a custom BIOS with a goto statement added to jmp out of the disk controller mode setting (which is normally present and allows the user to change back to AHCI mode). Reverse engineers on the Lenovo forums discovered this modification while studying the disassembly.

Then, one user patched the BIOS and manually reflashed it using an SPI flasher and some soldering, and Linux worked just fine by detecting the drive.

Yes, the ideal solution is that Intel gives specs to OSS devs to build a driver (or even builds on themselves), but the path of least resistance is to have Lenovo unblock that BIOS setting, which amounts to changing one line of code, or 15 minutes of one engineer's time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Woah, that is truly big.

I remember that stuff like this used to quickly be redirected to /dev/null like five years ago.

Great news then! Something _has_ changed then :)

</comment><comment><USER28> This is interesting, considering I'm running stock ubuntu 16.04 on a lenovo yoga 900. Didn't have to do any magic at install. I was under the impression that newer kernels already supported The Thing That Is The Problem. It's either that or my laptop is magic...

</comment><comment><USER29> At least it's something, but good luck getting any refund from them for the Windows tax. Unless you summon them to a small claims court, they staunchly refuse to refund you, even if you don't plan to use Windows and don't accept the Windows EULA.

<comment><USER25> Wait, why would they? The Windows license is bundled with the cost of the computer. You bought the license, whether you plan to use it or not. They are under no obligation to sell the license separately or offer you partial refunds, that's not how sales work.

Good on them if they do, but I feel like you'd be laughed out of Small Claims court. What's your argument? You weren't forced to buy a Lenovo computer, you could have bought any machine, including one with Linux preinstalled and no "Windows Tax."

<comment><USER29> _> Wait, why would they?_

Because they are obligated to. Forced product bundling is illegal - <USER2> violates anti-trust law.

<comment><USER25> Hrm! IANAL, I was entirely unaware this was even a thing, and now I'm deep down the Wikipedia rabbit hole. The more you know!

Looks like the legality of it varies by state / region / country. Maybe it's not illegal where I live; I'm in South Texas. I'll research it though, thanks! [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_(commerce)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_\(commerce\))

<comment><USER29> This case is especially bad, since you can say it's an anti-competitive practice which benefits Microsoft - it helps them to retain their OS monopoly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> So Lenovo only fixes bad stuff they do after vocal protest. Which time in a row is this now?

</comment><comment><USER31> Those are some nice looking laptops. With this development, I may be getting one. The 900S with QHD looks like fun!</comment>