All XKCD cartoons, now in 3D - <AUTHOR> http://xkcd.com/880/

<comment><USER2> Related previous submissions:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2395373> (1 comment (as of writing))

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2395501> (dead)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2396615> (dead)

</comment><comment><USER3> his post on how you can help make the renderings better: <http://xkcd.com/xk3d/></comment>


Searx instances - <AUTHOR> https://searx.space/ <comment><AUTHOR> To add a searx instance to your browser's search engines, visit the instance and follow the instructions on [https://searx.xyz/about](https://searx.xyz/about) ("How to set as the default search engine?").

For example, to add the instance searx.xyz to Firefox, visit [https://searx.xyz/](https://searx.xyz/) , click on the "..." icon to the right of the URL bar, and click "Add Search Engine." You can then choose searx while typing a query or can make it your default search engine (see about:preferences#search).

<comment> abc-xyz How do websites get the "Add Search Engine" button? For instance, I noticed I can do it with Gandi but not with Name or Namecheap.

<comment><AUTHOR> They publish a small "OpenSearch description file" XML document somewhere on the domain, then put the path to that file in an HTML meta tag (which enables browser auto-discovery). Here's more: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/OpenSearch](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/OpenSearch)

<comment> abc-xyz Very interesting, thanks :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Doesn't it violate google search terms? If I setup it locally, would I have to solve captchas all the time afterwards?

</comment><comment><USER3> I tried to use searx for a while, but gave up due to the lack of decent instance.

Ended up using startpage.com - it might be a tad worst for privacy but a lot better for usability IMHO. If anyone is aware of a better alternative, I'd love to know about it.

<comment><USER4> I've setup my own instance on a VPS of searx (along with git, blog, private npm and a few other bits and pieces). It isn't particularly hard if you've setup an website on a Linux box before.

<comment><USER3> If you set up your own instance and are the only one to use it, what's the point of using searx and not grogle directly?

<comment><USER4> Because my goal is to move everything to self hosting whenever possible. Also there is nothing stopping anyone else from using it.

<comment><USER3> Right, the way I see it, searx model is flawed.

I want to host my personal instance. But doing so doesn't make any sense since if I'm alone using it. So I'm better off using Google directly, unless someone can search whatever he wants via a service I'm hosting :/

<comment><USER4> Well if you use google directly, google can track what you are doing. However if you use your own searx instance that is very difficult. I also host my instance publicly (I've not added to the list because I am using the cheapest VPS from vultr) and for some things I get better results than Google, DuckDuckGo etc.

So as with many things it is swings and roundabouts and is determined on what you want to do. I wouldn't call the model flawed, it just seems that the benefits of it aren't what you want. Which is fine.

<comment><USER3> > However if you use your own searx instance that is very difficult

The whole point of searx is not to mix your google research with other people google research, hence making it harder to track you?

AFAIK being alone in using a searx instance is useless, as google will still track you via this searx instance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Are there any good FOSS projects that would let me run my own crawler?

<comment><USER6> YaCy is the only one I'm aware of. See [https://www.yacy.net/demonstration_tutorial_screenshot/](https://www.yacy.net/demonstration_tutorial_screenshot/)

<comment><USER7> YaCy is a decentralized search engine

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wrote a short quide on installing searX on a Linux system back in Feb. 2020

Non-Docker Local Installation of searX on Linux: [https://persagen.com/2020/02/02/searx.html](https://persagen.com/2020/02/02/searx.html)

I use it routinely as my default search interface to the web, defaulting rarely e.g. to Google for image seaches.

</comment><comment><USER9> I love the idea of searx. And ran a searx instance for a bit. Overall good idea. Slow search execution.

<comment><USER10> Searx is only as slow as your configuration allows it. You have to check the preferences, under engines, and deselect the offending slower engines. Some will take up to 10s to return any result. If you only choose faster engines, searx will also be faster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is there any explanation what is this?

<comment><USER5> It's a search engine that searches other search engines for you with a focus on privacy (e.g. provides direct links to results instead of Google-style tracking links, etc): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Searx](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Searx)</comment></comment>


Will humans keep getting taller? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150513-will-humans-keep-getting-taller <comment><USER2> As an extremely "average" height guy, height has been one "human variable" that has always confused me - anecdote after anecdote after anecdote from both proclamations from women, professional sports, and more importantly, our(Western) culture in general have made height seem to be the most important physical trait in a male; yet this article, along with actual research have time and time again either demonstrated this to not be the case[0] or relatively mixed [1] in preference.

Anecdotally, the answer to the article seems to be "yes" due to selective pressures, but the data suggests otherwise.

[0] (meta study) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3277695/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3277695/)

[1] [http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/ebs/7/2/121.pdf&productCode=...](http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/ebs/7/2/121.pdf&productCode=pa)

<comment><USER3> There is pretty conclusive evidence that taller men are on average more attractive than shorter men. However being more attractive does not necessarily mean you will have more kids. My theory is that people want to marry people of similar attractiveness, so if for very attractive people the pool of potential matches could actually be smaller, in part because attractive people are more choosy. Also in terms of evolution, if you have sex it doesn't matter how attractive your partner was.

<comment><AUTHOR> From the article: In fact, from a pure Darwinian perspective of fitter organisms producing more offspring, the opposite is happening with modern Homo sapiens. Impoverished, less healthy, and thus typically shorter families tend to have more children than prosperous families.

Everybody knows it, but it's pretty crazy when you think about it. However with a generally increasing standard of living that factor should still get smaller and smaller and the people thus taller and taller.

<comment><USER4> I think the confusion comes from defining what is a "fitter" organism?

and if we keep to trend, its quite likely we will bring Idiocracy[1] to fruition

[1] [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interestingly, the article fails to mention the strong correlation between height and longevity - not in the positive direction.[0]

If you want to live longer, shorter is better when controlled for other factors like nutrition.

[0][http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1071721/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1071721/)

<comment><USER6> Body size and cancer rates is correlated within a species (bigger individuals get cancer at a great rate than smaller individuals).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7>
      2004 study found that for
      each extra inch of height
      above average, someone could
      expect to earn per working
      year of his or her life up
      to $789 more (about $976 in
      today's money)

The disturbing statistic there is that in 2004, whatever you could get with $789, now you need $976 to do the same thing.

Kind of terrifying.

</comment><comment><USER8> Height can also be a pain. I'm 6'5" and have lower back and sciatica pain, probably since most of my height is in my torso. Fitting into some cars is horrible. Airline seats are hell. My son is short for his age; go figure.

<comment><USER9> I would imagine as the average height increases, from a product design point of view, cars, planes, etc. will become more accommodating for people who would be considered very tall today's standards

<comment><USER8> Cars have become worse, probably due to safety standards. The lower ceiling height, thicker pillars, and cab-forward massive dash boards with highly sloped windshields. I'm thinking about getting a Mercedes commercial van; that ought to fit, and I can sit upright.

<comment><USER10> This is the main reason I will only consider full-size pickups for my primary driver going forward. I cannot accept the limited visibility and poor ergonomics of sedans. I'm not exceptionally tall, at only 6'2".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> No.

A human being 4.12E+12 meters tall, standing on the equator, would have their head moving at the speed of light due to the rotation of the earth. At that point, their experience of time would essentially stop, and reproduction would cease. Also, cosmic rays and lack of O2 would begin to distract the subject from reproduction with cumulative effects from suffocation and radiation burns long before evolution could raise humans to the aforementioned 4 billion km height.

There are other considerations (viz. angular momentum, occasionally passing the human through the Sun at roughly knee height, lunar collisions, &c.) So, anyway, no, we can't keep getting taller.

<comment><USER12> You ignore that it's entirely possible to have an infinite, monotonically increasing sequence with a fixed upper bound. Yes, people could keep getting taller without ever exceeding some defined limit.

However we would begin to encounter problems as the sequence of heights approached said limit. The deltas would become smaller than the precision of our equipment, and later would become smaller than physically meaningful scales (i.e. length scale of an atom). In this limit, I think it would be reasonable to generalise "keep getting taller" to "probabilistically grow by the smallest physically meaningful amount on an arbitrarily long timescale", in which case this continues to be well defined as t→∞ even if it would be difficult to physically observe.

<comment><USER13> Forgive me if I've misunderstood, but isn't your proposed problem akin to Zeno's paradox of infinite distance, where we never reach anywhere because first we need to go 1/2 the distance, then 1/2 of that, etc.?

Which, of course, is resolved in math by limits, and in the real world by discrete units (i.e. atoms).

<comment><USER14> Zeno's paradox also conveniently ignores that the time chunks are getting smaller alongside the distance chunks.

An item going at 1m/s will cover half a meter in half a second, and still have half a meter to go. Then after another quarter of a meter, it still has a quarter of a meter to go... but now only a quarter of a second has passed. If you keep on making the time units smaller, then of course it will 'never arrive'. It's not much of a paradox if you take a time-based characteristic and then don't give it enough time to occur :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Can I replace your "studies" with [[citation needed]]

<comment><USER16> 6'2" here. attractive females regularly select me for mating purposes and I make a large sum of money annually.

<comment><USER17> Where are your [citations]?</comment></comment></comment>


The End of Causality - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/end-causality-constantine-goulimis?trk=hp-feed-article-title-publish <comment><AUTHOR> Excerpts from Sean T. Allen, on the pony+user mailing list:

" _tl;dr: Pony is doing fine and growing as a community._

" _Shortly after Causality shut down, a core Pony team was formed to help drive the language forward. I 'm a founding member of that core team. During the last few months, we've seen the Pony community expand in a very encouraging way. We are slowly but surely gaining contributors on a regular basis. I'm more hopeful about the future of Pony now than I was at the beginning of the year._

" _The future health and strength of Pony won 't come from a company trying to sell commercial support for it. It will come from each of you, the members of the Pony community. It will come from you telling others about the advantages that Pony brings to the table. It will come from you opening issues. It will come from you contributing code. It will come from you contributing to the RFC process. It will come from you contributing documentation._

" _Fear not, we aren 't going anywhere. We are just getting started. If you are interested in contributing but don't know how, drop me a line._"</comment>


Apple Moving from Samsung to TSMC for A6 Chips - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2387702,00.asp

<comment><USER2> Maybe start the title with "Rumor:"...</comment>


Bitcoin's Biggest Hack in History: 184.4B Bitcoin from Thin Air - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/bitcoins-biggest-hack-in-history-184-4-ded46310d4ef <comment><USER2> > If this hack hadn't been rectified, Bitcoin would likely have died then and > there, which would mean the entire crypto space as we know it would not > exist.

It would have been impossible not to rectify this hack.

<comment><USER3> When authors use such extreme wording, it makes it clear they're looking more to write poetry rather than facts.</comment></comment>


Australia Mourns the End of Its Car Manufacturing Industry - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/20/world/australia/holden-automaker-factory-closes.html <comment><USER2> I used to work at Toyota in Australia, which also shut down recently. A lot of people here are saying this is about quality, but it's really about profitability.

Australia's economy is heavily dependent on mining, and China's economic growth created a local mining boom. This resulted in heavy demand for Australian dollars, and at its peak in 2013 1 AUD was worth about 1.05 USD.

It was at this time that Ford (the weakest of the three Australian manufacturers) made the decision to close its Australian manufacturing operations. The high value of the local currency meant the factory was unprofitable and uncompetitive with other factories around the world.

The conservative government at the time, led by Tony Abbott, refused to provide subsidies to help close the gap (even temporarily).

Toyota and GM Holden had similar problems, and all knew that the local automotive parts suppliers needed at least three companies to sell to. So once Ford was out, the supply chain for parts became unsustainable, and the others quickly announced that they would pull out too. It takes time to close an entire industry, which is why all three companies closed their factories in 2017.

Around 2015 the slowdown in China's growth led to a slowdown in Australia's mining industry, and a drop in the AUD. It dropped to around 0.80 USD, and interestingly, Australia's car manufacturers became quite profitable again. But the wheels were already in motion and the decisions couldn't be reversed.

Australia's mining industry has bought in a lot of money, but its impact on the dollar has done a lot of damage to the country's export economy. There's a term that economists use to describe this: Dutch disease. Australia has a bad case of it.

Edit: s/80 USD/0.80 USD/

<comment><USER3> > This resulted in heavy demand for Australian dollars, and at its peak in > 2013 1 AUD was worth about 1.05 USD.

One of the main reasons the AUD remained at such high levels was because of the carry trade.

[http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-05-09/carrying-the- australia...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-05-09/carrying-the-australian- dollar-higher/2705140)

From the link below you can see the Reserve Bank of Australia kept interest rates very high during that period:

[http://www.rba.gov.au/statistics/cash- rate/](http://www.rba.gov.au/statistics/cash-rate/)

That allowed big multinational banks to borrow massive amounts of money in one country at a near zero interest rate and park that cash in Australia to get a guaranteed 4% return on those billions. That create the high demand for the AUD which drove up it's price.

The RBA was asleep at the wheel as it should have driven down that cash rate much faster and far sooner than it did.

Only after they finally moved and started cutting the interest rate did the dollar fall to the levels we see today.

Unfortunately, they now find themselves in a bit of a mess, since the economy really needs another rate cut to help repair the damage caused by that high dollar.

However they can't do that because it would add fuel to an already over heated property market, which is starting to look a lot like a bubble.

If they had moved earlier, the local manufacturing/export/tourist industries would be much stronger today and the RBA would in fact now be in a position to raise rates, something that is desperately need to take heat out of the property bubble.

<comment><USER4> Wouldn't driving down interest rates at that point have pumped up the housing bubble even more back then?

Ultimately there's only so much you can do with interest rates.

<comment><USER3> I think it is all in the timing.

Consider this chart of the AUD to the USD over that time:

[http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=AUD&to=USD&view=10Y](http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=AUD&to=USD&view=10Y)

From the RBA interest rate chart linked earlier you get these maximum yearly numbers over the last decade:

        Year    Rate    AUD
        2008    7.25    0.69
        2009    3.00    0.91
        2010    4.75    0.98
        2011    4.75    1.10
        2012    4.25    1.51
        2013    3.00    1.50
        2014    2.50    0.94
        2017    1.50    0.80

As the numbers show, before the GFC and even after the GFC through to 2014 (some 7 years) the RBA kept the rates very high.

Thanks to those high rates the carry trade kept the AUD high, but those high rates also put a dampener on the housing market.

Now during that time most of Australia was struggling, but two mining states (WA, QLD) where doing extremely.

China had created a commodities bubble that saw iron ore prices well over the $100 a tonne.

By 2014 the mining bubble had bursts, so much so that WA, the once booming state was on it's way to recession.

Only then does the RBA then decides to move on rates.

However those 7 years of high AUD has really hurt the local export industry, the tourist sector and the agricultural sector industry.

But even after 2014 the RBA is still slow to cut so the carry trade persists, keeping the AUD stubbornly high.

However, with the rate now at 2.50% and going even lower in the years to come, mortgages are now very cheap and only getting cheaper.

Say goodbye to the mining boom and welcome to the housing bubble.

Might point would be, if they had cut faster after the GFC they would have kept alive the other non mining sectors and then, if they had seen a problem developing in the housing market they could have raised rates to deal with the issue.

Over that time they did the exact opposite.

<comment><USER4> Looking from the outside I'll be honest you can't have everything. One of the primary aims of a central bank is to control inflation which it looks like the bank has done pretty well.

[https://www.rateinflation.com/inflation-rate/australia- histo...](https://www.rateinflation.com/inflation-rate/australia-historical- inflation-rate)

In hindsight it's easy to say what should be done but they really look like they've done a pretty decent job. No economy grows forever and Australia has had a very good run in recent history.

<comment><USER3> Those inflation figures you quote don't reflect what is actually happening in Australia.

Like most of the developed world wage growth in Australia is flat and has been flat for at least the last decade. So wages growth has not driving up inflation.

However, each time a cyclone hits Queensland that drives up the price of bananas and other fruits, which does drive up inflation.

Add to that the fact you can now buy Australian gas at a cheaper price in all parts of the world other than Australia. Go figure?

Then consider the fact we closed our oil refineries so we could import our gasoline from Singapore.

Strangely enough when the international price of oil goes up (or the AUD dollar goes down), we instantly pay more for our gasoline.

However when the international price of oil drops (or the AUD dollar goes up) the price of gasoline takes weeks to come down. Strange?

Add to that the current joke in Australia where most state governments have privatised their electricity utilities only to see the price of electricity increase by 20% in last quarter.

So yes we do have lots of inflationary pressure here in Australia, but most of that pressure is created by the multi-nationals screwing us with our elected governments providing the lubrication.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is hardly surprising when you know a little local history.

For reference: I grew up in Adelaide, about 15-20 minutes drive (15 km.. erm 9.3 miles for _you lot_ ) from the suburb where the Holden factory is located.

I remember as a student/early graduate (so, 2000 - 2003ish) having.. acquaintances who were in their early 20's, bringing home close to $AUD100K/year, for assembling commodores. People who would laugh about how funny it is to let a car leave the production line, with the wrong colour door handle fitted.

Another "acquaintance" took forever to get a resolution because his 2-door ute was delivered to him with a 20cm gap in the carpet on the passenger side. It went through the factory, through QA, through a DEALER and nobody fucking noticed a 20cm gap on the passenger side of the floor.

These were not high quality cars being built by well trained craftsmen. They weren't even average quality cars built by moderately trained craftsmen. They were pieces of shit slapped together by over paid idiots.

<comment><USER6> The labour unions were unwilling to compromise to stay competitive with international factories.

I was surprised when it was reported that Toyota wanted to reduce the Christmas shutdown period from 21 days to 10 days in line with other international factories and the union rejected this. This was in the context of other car manufacturers shutting down in Australia at the time and they had to know that this attitude was risking Toyota leaving as well, but they just couldn't accept a reduction in any conditions.

[http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/toyotas-altona-plant-to- st...](http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/toyotas-altona-plant-to-start-21day- shutdown-amid-survival-fears-20131217-2zj05.html)

<comment><USER7> While I'm not sure that this is a great example for it there's always the matter of deciding if any job is really better than no job - sure, you could stay competitive with other places/countries by matching ever worse conditions, but is that really a good idea? Is a job which doesn't pay someone a living wage really a job that should exist?

<comment><USER6> I think you've moved the goal posts a long way there.

A living wage as defined by the Harvester judgement, which seems to be what you are referencing, was based on begin paid enough money to be able to afford food, shelter and clothing for a family.

In the case I'm referencing the dispute is over whether the workers should have their standard break for Christmas reduced from 21 days to 10 days. I can't think of any other companies within Australia that offer such a generous Christmas break, but maybe there are some; i think it would be a very small number. What they were being asked to give up seemed very generous and the replacement of 10 days instead doesn't seem onerous - it still seems generous compared to many companies.

You'd have to ask the workers that lost their jobs if they are now better off having lost their jobs rather than stay competitive with other places by bringing their conditions in line with what is typical even within the country they live in.

<comment><USER8> I don't believe he moved the goalposts at all, he made a valid point. The argument that you have made about staying "competitive" IMO is a classic example of bandwagon fallacy. Just because other countries allow companies to treat their workers like shit does not make it ok for our country to start doing it.

I also disagree with the way you phrased your point, on one hand, you mention that the unions would not budge on conditions, but then state that they should have because "no other company that you know of" allows 21 days of holiday over the Christmas. First of all drawing to the fact that the Union represents workers, not companies, it makes sense why the companies have an interest in shortening the holiday break of the workers. It is not in the interest of workers however. To counter your point that their breaks should have been cut in line with that of other countries, then we should keep in mind that some Northern European countries are going further in terms of workers rights, in the opposite direction, so all of us a sudden, your advice that we should follow the lead of some countries leads us to question which way we go.

I would also like to highlight that the CFMEU (Construction) enforces a 17 day shutdown over the Christmas break, so there are other's who do lengthy breaks.

I also struggle to understand your last point about bringing conditions in line within the country they live in, Australia has Union representation across most industries. If you wish to do business in Australia, then you surely understand this, I would hazard a guess that given this, then good conditions and decent pay is the typical situation. Why would anyone want to degrade that?

Winning a race to the bottom is a zero sum game.

<comment><USER6> But we're not talking about treating workers badly by any reasonable definition. These are workers that were paid more than the average Australian worker, they got far more Christmas holiday leave than the Australian worker. They weren't living on the minimum wage.

They weren't forced to take a reduction in Christmas leave. They company asked if they could, considering the local and international conditions in their industry. The workers weren't forced, it was their decision and they said no, presumably knowing that the consequence might be that this may be the straw that shuts the factory down permanently.

If the company had made a draconian decision that cut workers pay unreasonably, regardless of the current economic circumstances and pocketed this money, I'd agree strongly with you. But, this isn't what happened. The workers kept all of their conditions and the factory shut down.

There have to be some circumstances where you would see that it would be reasonable for workers to give up some conditions in the industry they are working in if it is under some economic pressure, either internally or externally? They may only agree to give them up temporarily until conditions improve, or make some other offer to help the company to increase output or reduce costs.

The reality is that Australia is an open, market economy. Its companies have to be competitive with the rest of the world in order for those companies to survive.

You say that companies only have an interest in shortening holiday breaks. But if this is the case, how did the holiday break end up as 21 days in the first place? Companies have to compete for workers too - there must have been a time when it was beneficial to the company to attract and retain workers with a longer Christmas break. You point out that some European countries have more workers rights, but this misses the point that the competitive pressure at the time wasn't for workers - it was on total cost of production.

Nobody wants to degrade good conditions and decent pay for workers. However, for many people that work in small business and haven't had a pay rise in several years can only look on with bemusement when highly unionized industries demand 4% pay rises plus extra Christmas holidays and then demand tax payer money when their industries falls over.

It seems like every time a unionized industry is asked to make a small concession that it's seen as a zero sum game, the thin end of the wedge, a race to the bottom and the apocalypse. It's blown completely out of proportion. Most industries go through ups and downs. The inflexible ones go broke.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I studied abroad in Melbourne in 2008 and it's crazy to see this happen. I guess I left a few months before the GM bailouts got started in the United States and the whole recession kicked off after that.

It was really neat to see a uniquely Aussie car culture that felt really vibrant. I loved that El Caminos and Rancheros, long gone in the US, were alive and well as Holden and Ford Falcon Utes. It was neat that Toyota had its own Camry-ish car, called the Aurion, made in Australia. It was neat that Pontiac in the US was getting the Commodore, which was a great-looking car. Even though it was still Ford, GM, and Toyota on some corporate level, they had their own unique thing that I was able to discover while I was there.

<comment><USER10> Aurion is not quite a Camry-ish car - it is a bit more up market and more importantly came with a much more powerful engine. The Aurion was probably the best car ever made in Australia, although it was never a great success.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Aussie here: Good riddance. This country is at the end of Earth in terms of supply chains and export markets, has a small local market and has extremely high labor costs -- all in all, a terrible place to build the kind of megafactory you need to stay competitive these days. The only reason they managed to survive even this long is massive government subsidies, and I applaud the fact that the government had the guts to finally pull the plug.

All that said, the transition away is going to have a high human cost, particularly in Adelaide which just doesn't have a whole lot else going economically. But my wife used to work for a Ford supplier in Melbourne, and that city has managed to absorb Ford's shutdown a few years ago without too much pain. (Nearby Geelong, though, had both the main factory and a steel mill, and is having a harder time.)

<comment><USER12> So, without value-add industries, how will the economy of Australia function long-term? As an exporter of raw commodities? That has not worked out well... For pretty much every nation that's tried it.

<comment><USER13> Works ok in Norway.

<comment><USER12> How well is it working in Sub-Saharan Africa?

And, uh, Norway is diversifying its economy, instead of doubling-down on resource extraction. It's not actively de-industrializing.

<comment><USER14> I'm guessing that OP is referring to the publicly owned $1trn oil fund that the government has only recently dipped into. They're actually now claiming they're going to minimise withdrawals due to an increase in revenue (1).

Wish my own government here in Australia had the brains and chutzpah to do this a few years back. We've never been much cop when it comes to visionary economics (apart from, arguably, rum being our first legal currency).

(1) [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-02/norway-s-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-02/norway- s-withdrawals-from-sovereign-wealth-fund-now-falling-fast)

<comment><USER15> Maybe not on the same scale but there's the Australian Government Future Fund[1] which is a sovereign wealth fund founded in 2006.

It's about 10% of the size of Norway's so not especially impressive but it does exist.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Interesting detail is that the, for American market created, Chevrolet SS was basically a rebadged Holden Commodore built in Australia. Together with the Dodge Charger, it was the "cheapest bang per buck" performance sedan with a V8. Although the Charger still for sale, the Chevy SS died with the closure of that plant making the 17' model year it's last.

<comment><USER17> I got really confused for a minute because I confused the Holden Commodore with the Hudson Commodore! [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_Commodore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_Commodore)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The Aussie economic model - export bulk raw materials to China, buy manufactured products back - is a curious inversion of the old British Empire economy. And it's one that is not even remotely viable over the long term. Countries whose only source of wealth is raw materials get eaten alive by manufacturing economies, then left to rot when the mines are exhausted. There is a ton of historical precedent.

<comment><USER11> The sheer scale of Australia means that they're not about to get exhausted anytime soon though. Only something on the order of 1% of the continent has even been prospected yet.

<comment><USER19> The best data I could find is here: [http://www.ga.gov.au/scientific- topics/minerals/mineral-reso...](http://www.ga.gov.au/scientific- topics/minerals/mineral-resources/iron-ore#heading-1)

That document lists 51GT of 'accessible economically demonstrated' iron ore, with an production rate of 0.81GT per annum, and 86GT of inferred resources (ie. yet-to-be-prospected).

So there's _at least_ half a century of ore left, even if production ramps-up steadily. 1% prospected doesn't seem supportable though; it's more in the range of 50% based on the ratio of the inferred to known figures above.

<comment><USER20> Australia will always have whatever resource is in demand next. Three lithium mines are coming online every year for the next few years starting this year.

Australia will become the largest natural gas exporter - it will overtake iron ore in value in the next couple of years.

Then you have tourism, education and becoming the food bowl for China's growing middle class

Everyone likes to complain about being resource-export dependent but it has never been more than ~10% of GDP and is quiet an enviable position to be in

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Holden - better known as GMH or GM Holden - where the GM stands for General Motors, a famous US-based company that bought Holden in the 1930's.

The other 'famously Australian' car manufacturer is Ford. Indeed.

The kinds of (Australian) people that find cars interesting tend to polarise between these two manufacturers, adopting the beliefs that it's patriotic, and that it can be economic to produce (in most cases components were _built_ overseas but _assembled_ within AU) cars in Australia. A country with breathtakingly high labour costs, small population, and low population density. Specifically a relatively small market, container shipping costs flatten out across the country.

That the designs of allegedly Australian cars, even recently, have focused on ICE sedans hasn't helped, though that presumably ties in with the nostalgia aspect for potential consumers of those types of vehicles.

The Monthly published[1] an exquisitely written article middle of last year, describing the history of the Australian car industry, and the self-sabotage exhibited. It's a depressingly sober read.

[1] [https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2016/may/1462024800/rich...](https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2016/may/1462024800/richard- denniss/crunch-time)

</comment><comment><USER22> I was reading a piece lamenting that Australia was leaving a club of only "8 other nations" where a car could go all the way from conception to mass manufacture. I will track the source down precisely if anyone expresses interest. So I started mentally listing the 8 countries: US, Japan, Germany, South Korea, China, UK, France, Italy. But surely also Sweden? India? Brazil? Spain? Eight seems low to me.

<comment><USER23> \- Sweden: Volvo is Chinese-owned now and Saab is gone, I think, at least for now.

\- Spain: Is there anything other than SEAT, which is part of VW?

\- Brazil: I think they assemble a lot of cars, but I don't think I've heard of a local company, despite there being an Brazilian aircraft maker.

OTOH, Tata Motors Cars would make India count, right?

<comment><USER20> Sweden is the smallest nation in the world still doing end-to-end car manufacturing. Australia was the second smallest.

The difference is Sweden sells cars all over the world, and in Australia despite decades of attempts and popular Top Gear segments they could never convince anybody else to buy an Australian car

<comment><USER22> No, GM did successfully sell Holden Commodores in the US (as Chevrolets). And Aussie cars have always been popular here in New Zealand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> We asssule that protectionism is bad because the consumer has to pay a higher price when those goods are not optimally produced. The irony is that less local consumption = less local labor, reducing competition for labor and pushing down pricing power. But the second aspect of this that doesn't often get talked about is quality. If making a 65" TV in the US is going to cost twice as much as when it's made in China then I as the consumer will just by a cheaper TV — probably spending the same amount of money I would have. We can often buy cheaper substitutes with the same functional properties.

</comment><comment><USER25> Another great story from NYT in a similar vein that does a great job (I think) of humanizing all of the people involved: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/14/us/union-jobs-mexico- rexn...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/14/us/union-jobs-mexico-rexnord.html)

This is a tough issue for me because I consider myself a liberal, and in _theory_ I am OK with globalization but it obviously has negatively impacted many economies in similar ways.

I want to be pro-globalization but to me you really only have two (vastly simplified) options:

1\. Be more isolationist or micromanage global trade to maintain your own industries even though they can't compete globally. 2\. Find a way to make globalization benefit everyone, not just the owners of companies who can cut costs and increase profits. This most likely means some kind of universal income and large education investment and vocational training built on top of the profits of globalization.

We appear to be moving towards #1 and I'm afraid we'll all suffer as a result.

My biggest issue with globalization is that, while it makes sense in theory, in practice most of the "efficiencies" come from dirt cheap labor due to exchange rates, poor workers rights and working conditions, and lack of environmental regulations (among others). Not because other countries have developed _better_ ways to make things better or faster, they can just abuse their workers in a way they can't here. You would think we would all benefit in some ways even if we're just consumers by cheaper goods, but are they really cheaper or cheap enough to offset the reduction in good jobs? Does anyone know of some good data-sources for the prices of consumer goods vs household income over time? My guess is our purchasing power has gone down in general for the middle-class.

I can see honestly how this issue has given rise to nationalism in America, I somehow hoped that people would see that isolationism is not the answer and we instead need to rethink our economic model. Somehow Americans have been sold (among many other things) that something like universal income is a handout. I'm afraid we'll take the route that the UK is moving towards of being poorer overall and reducing globalization out of spite without it actually benefiting us.

I feel like as a liberal in America I live in a game of political jenga. Want to stop abortions? We can only do it in a way that doesn't involve decent sex ed or contraceptives (which leads to _personal responsibility_ ). Want to prevent gun massacres? We can only do it in a way that doesn't restrict access to guns at all and doesn't cost any money (which leads to more _personal responsibility_ ). Want to help out those impacted by globalization or those who have never been on sound economic footing? We can only do that in ways that don't involve _wealth redistribution_ (which pretty much means _personal responsibility_ of people to despite the fact that that already happens in many ways (so we're left with more _personal responsibility_ and people like Shannon are responsible for a late-in-life pivot to a new job with anemic vocational assistance).

A lot of the people that have been hurt by globalization are the same people that support the party in our system that has taken most of the solutions to our problems totally of the table. We're in a straightjacket and could get out any of 10 ways but those would involve tools, all of which are (claimed to be) morally/philosophically unacceptable.

I know this was a rant but its been stewing since I read the first NYT article and this one just compounds it.

<comment><USER26> Don't take this the wrong way, but I think a more accurate description of your politics might be something like "an economic nationalist" instead of a liberal.

By any global metric you look at globalization is doing amazingly. "A U.N. goal to halve the poverty rate in the developing world between 1990 and 2015 was nearly achieved twice over."[1].

The whole process of relaxing limitations on trade has been a huge boost for developing countries who are currently on a runaway growth trajectory. E.g. look at the GDP growth graphs for the developed v.s. developing world in this[2] article.

Yes we could do better, but it's already great. Yes as some jobs move to developing countries people in developed countries are temporarily displaced, but there's no suggestion that we can't continually recover from that situation.

After all our societies aren't overflowing with jobless ex-steelworkers, ex- textile workers or any other industry you might want to name which has predominantly moved abroad.

Instead we continue to lead the charge in economic development, but because of globalization we're increasingly dragging the rest of the world with us.

1\. [https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2016/01/20/the- globa...](https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2016/01/20/the-global- poverty-gap-is-falling-billionaires-could-help-close-it/)

2\. [https://oneinabillionblog.com/energy/energy- policy/a-common-...](https://oneinabillionblog.com/energy/energy- policy/a-common-fallacy-in-the-energy-and-climate-debate/)

<comment><USER25> I might not have represented myself that well, I'm trying more to address the people who are affected domestically. I'm not arguing against globalization at all (with words or votes) but we're seeing an increasing gap between the haves and have nots domestically and that divide is, I'm afraid, going to rip our country apart (and others, since it seems to be happening everywhere to some extent but the US has a weaker and weakening social safety net).

I don't see any way to micromanage the economy and to pull away from the world and have it actually benefit us, I might not have made clear that I don't consider that to be an actual option. I think its nuts that increasing taxes on those who benefit massively from globalization is a total non-starter and might lead us to disaster. In fact, we're about to potentially slash taxes on those same people and cut services to the rest of the country, we're moving totally backwards and the divide is just going to get larger.

So on the one hand, people losing their jobs is a shame but I wouldn't reorient our entire economy just to make sure people can still have factory jobs, but at the same time its up to us as a society whether or not simply losing your job because of changes in the global marketplace is a life- altering disaster or simply something we all deal with together.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> dis-sys Some facts not mentioned by the news article:

1\. Australian federal and state government spent billions to save the car industry. AUD$2.7 billion tax payer's hard earned $ was spent between 2001-2013.

2\. Unions asked for huge pay rises every single year. For example, in 2011, they forced car manufacturers to provide 18.3% pay rise in 3 years, that is 6% a year non-stop for 3 years.

3\. Car makers were forced to continue to provide pay rises when they were weighting the decision whether to shut down their production in Australia.

Take a look at the following The Australian article, you'd probably feel happy that you don't have such unions screwing local economy in your country.

[http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/pay- rises-a...](http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/pay-rises-at- stressed-holden/news-story/d3cb0cba03b227ef28ce35ac0bbcfae0)

Australian is an unique country, a ticket inspector makes $100k AUD a year ($80K USD) from his/her unskilled job. With such background in mind, it is not hard to imagine how much you need to pay those workers to build cars.

</comment><comment><USER27> Fun fact: The Chevy Bolt was designed at the Holden plant, kind of poetic that they designed an EV as the industry here came to a close.

<comment><USER28> And it was never sold in Australia :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Holden (GM) killed themself by building cars no one wanted anymore as the Australian iconic car has 6-cylinder engines and some maybe 8 cylinder.

Australian government couldn't subsidise cars that where losing sales year on year to smaller cheaper to run cars.

GM just wanted the handouts to keep it running when that dry up they pull the pin

John Cadogan is a bloke that called the end of the Australian Car Manufacturing many years ago and has a great video on why it died here. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uFYW5tMoeg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uFYW5tMoeg)

</comment><comment><USER30> Not all Australians. I'm glad my taxes won't be used to prop up yet another company that's "too big to fail".

</comment><comment><USER31> Just remember that at its height, Australia had at least 5 car manufacturer. We had Nissan, Chrysler, Mitsubishi, Ford, Toyota and Ford. Now we have nothing.

I was with a Tier 1 supplier in Australia before transferring to Germany, the market place is so different. Looking back, it's a wonder that it actually lasted this long.

</comment><comment><USER32> I've always wanted a Holden Ute. Shame they couldn't find a way to keep it in Australia.

<comment><USER33> > Ute

oh god why?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> What is fun is how if there is an oversupply of say lithium, the demand for electric cars can restore demand. If the dollar collapses though for example, it will take until car loans are restored before there are any demand.

</comment><comment><USER35> The Chevy SS is a great car for the price, but most people in the US would mistake it for an Impala. In California I think the reputation of a car is more important than the actual performance.

<comment><USER36> Which is logical, because traffic here is so bad that regardless of how powerful your car is you can't drive any faster than the jerk hogging the road in front of you. So why pay more for a Chevy SS?

<comment><USER37> Where is "here" for you? California is a big state, and outside some major cities traffic is not the issue you make it out to be. CA also has world class roads for enthusiasts.

<comment><USER38> Along with mostly great weather that doesn't rust cars and regulations that allow lane splitting for motorcycles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Interesting to see how much was expensive energy costs.

Australia has tonnes of gas but unlike USA has not transformed that to cheap energy and the industries that come with it.

</comment><comment><USER40> They were just seriously bad cars with a poor reputation and worse resale value.

It got to the stage where when buying cars, people I knew would check the VINs to ensure that they were not made in Australia.

Fords made in Australia were particularly bad. Toyotas made in Australia were not up to the standards of the Japanese built Toyotas, but were far better than the pieces of rubbish turned out by the Australian subsidaries of American firms.

Driving one of the US branded cars, was like having a big sign saying " I am a bogan _"

_ Australian slang for chav / redneck

</comment><comment><USER41> A changing taste, competition from European cars and more disposable income is what killed this off. They're really fun cars I will miss them.

</comment><comment><USER42> > said it was the workers over 50 that were particularly struggling to find > new employment

I always think it should say - there are some workers who've been cruising for 30 or so years and picking up a pay packet without reskilling. They probably won't be able to get a job without spending a bit of time learning some marketable skills

</comment><comment><USER43> Can we at least get a [paywall] tag on these posts?

Edit: Down votes. Really? I give up.

<comment><USER44> Right click, 'Copy link address', ctrl-shift-N, ctrl-L, ctrl-V, enter.

Make sure to ctrl-W when you're done.

<comment><USER43> Thanks.</comment></comment></comment>


WPA2: Broken with KRACK. What Now? - <AUTHOR> https://www.alexhudson.com/2017/10/15/wpa2-broken-krack-now/ <comment><USER2> WPA2 has been around since 2004 -- it's really surprising that there's not a newer alternative developed and deployed in the last 13 years.

What _is_ around as a potential next standard?

In the meantime, do we just revert to open wifi and use a VPN tunnel overtop?

<comment><USER3> _We_ could. What do the remaining 99.999% of wifi users do?

<comment><USER4> Tell them to use SSLEverywhere (or equivalent) and/or get them onto VPNs, I think.

<comment><USER3> Good point - given a sane set of trusted CAs (sic!), the need for a trusted last hop mostly goes away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Paper appears to be out [1]

[1] "Predicting, Decrypting, and Abusing WPA2/802.11 Group Keys" (PDF) [ [https://kryptera.se/assets/uploads/2017/10/usenix2016-wifi.p...](https://kryptera.se/assets/uploads/2017/10/usenix2016-wifi.pdf) ]

</comment><comment><USER6> Already discussed at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15478750](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15478750)

<comment><USER7> No, that article is a less significant problem from over a year ago. This is a new issue.

</comment></comment><comment> anti-thought Looks like it will be another pretty branded CVE: [https://www.reddit.com/r/PFSENSE/comments/76ksdi/core_protoc...](https://www.reddit.com/r/PFSENSE/comments/76ksdi/core_protocollevel_flaw_in_wpa2_possible_impact/)

They mention it will be at [https://krackattacks.com](https://krackattacks.com)</comment>


Chrome, Firefox extension that blocks NSFW images using TensorFlow JS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nsfw-filter/nsfw-filter <comment><USER3> > _All the images remain hidden until they are found to be NSFW or not_

The demo screenshot/page seems to only show NSFW images, so the demo doesn't convey how quickly this classifier can operate. The demo page should have some non-NSFW images to show off how quickly SFW images are revealed, since the default is to block all images.

<comment><USER4> We will change that. Seems like a good idea

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've jokingly / seriously been waiting for things like this. I'm the type to go overboard with filtering and mute lists on twitter, but images are harder to deal with. I did have a 60,000 line pastebin that was used in conjunction with a Chrome extension to block Wojack and Pepe memes on 4chan using md5 hashes, but something not rely on specific hashes is obviously superior.

One day someone will release the 'detect and block anything resembling kpop' extension for Twitter and I'll be happy.

<comment><USER6> I expressed some interest at some point of hiding profiles which contained a certain phrase in their bio and got downvoted. Does anyone know of any extentions that can do this?

<comment><USER7> I would use this for sure. Certain phrases are great flags for me to know "I won't be interested in anything this person has to say."

<comment><USER8> Do you think the issue with hyperpartisanism is that people's existing bubbles and filters just aren't strong enough?

<comment><USER7> I don't know about all of that, but I do know I want to use twitter for tech and not politics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> From experience 99.9% of the time unless I visit a porn site purposely or some warez site by accident, or questionable reddit channels, I see no NSFW. However I do see some benefits if this was for kids.

<comment><USER10> Sound like you have ad-block or avoid sketchy (pirate) websites.

<comment><USER11> Adblock is a far simpler and probably more effective solution than this, with a host of other benefits such as speeding up websites, whereass presumably this extension will slow down the browsing experience quite a bit. Given that, the only reason I can see for using this is if adblock was not doing a good enough job alone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Shameless plug - I've been working on something similiar, but with a different aim.

[https://github.com/nmurray1984/porn-blocker-chrome- extension](https://github.com/nmurray1984/porn-blocker-chrome-extension)

I found that the hardest problem to solve was the prevanlence of false positives. Even if you have a low false positive rate, it's still very likely to have an image blocked regularly just due to volume.

For that reason, the focus of my plugin is - for users that are OK with it - contributing URLs that are not NSFW but have been blocked. The extension includes a right-click menu option to do so.

<comment><USER13> Assuming you meant some SFW images are mistakenly blocked, it is an easier situation than with true negative.

Once an image tested positive with your first model, you could run a second more CPU intensive model (but also more accurate) on it.

<comment><USER14> Assuming you have a notably more accurate algorithm. It's a difficult problem even with infinite computing power.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is great, except it'd be really, really great with some sort of placeholder image for the blocked images if possible.

<comment><USER4> We had that in the first version but we kind of removed it. We will try to add one option for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why would I care about not seeing NSFW images?

What I really _do_ care about is not seeing worthless clickbait. That makes me endlessly angry. Could you build a filter like that on top of this?

<comment><USER17> Uh, because I'm at work and wouldn't mind an additional layer of protection.

Because I live stream and people try to trick me into viewing NSFW content on stream.

Is this really a question?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This extension reminded me of that Black Mirror episode where a mother filtered what her daughter could see and hear.

Great work with TensorFlow by the way, can't wait to see this technology maturing over the years.

</comment><comment><USER19> Missed opportunity - where is the browser extension that makes all of the images NSFW?

You leave your laptop unlocked and suddenly it looks like the nude bomb went off ([https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0081249/](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0081249/)).

</comment><comment><USER20> I've been wanting for something like this ever since we by accident looked at our 9 year old daughter's screen. She likes to draw characters from her favorite cartoon and searches for images on the web. Apparently there's a porn actress with the same name as one of the characters... DDG was set to "strict", so no full nudity or any explicit act, but still _very_ NSFW.

<comment><USER21> DDG is kind of fascinating. Ever since I switched to DDG as my main search engine, I feel like the internet is 90% porn. Although that's probably not far off, I'd prefer seeing relevant search results instead.

<comment><USER22> Far from that bad IMHO, but it has a weird tendency to surface NSFW results, yes.

<comment><USER21> Its not that bad with the regular search results. Sometimes porn makes it to the first result page, usually its on the second or later.

The real problem is when searching for images. I recently had to search for a lot of images and for basically any search term I entered DDG was able to find porn. Ultimately, this made me switch back to Google since constantly having to risk showing NSFW results on your workplace in an open plan office isn't exactly a great experience.

I'm now using Google at work, Ecosia on my mobile phone and DDG/Google on my PC/Mac.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I want this but for ads.

<comment><USER24> Adblock extensions already exist, like uBlock origin

<comment><USER23> Yes, but do they treat the content as an image? Or do they merely hope that the content is identifiable as an ad through other means?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Does the Tensorflow model run in JS? How fast is that?

Would it be feasible to run the model in wasm or in the GPU?

<comment><USER26> I can't speak for this specific model/extension, but "most" neural networks aren't that big at the end of the day, and you are just a few matrix dot products away from getting your classification (of course, I'm drastically simplifying).

Its the training that takes forever, due to the fact all those numbers need tweaking. However one you have the model, classifying is pretty fast.

<comment><USER27> Are there tools to visualise trained model,?

<comment><USER26> Something like this: [https://www.tensorflow.org/tensorboard](https://www.tensorflow.org/tensorboard)

<comment><USER27> Something to visualise the models, the one in this link

[https://github.com/nsfw-filter/nsfw- filter/tree/master/dist/...](https://github.com/nsfw-filter/nsfw- filter/tree/master/dist/models)

<comment><USER28> Use netron to visualize model:

[https://lutzroeder.github.io/netron/?url=https://raw.githubu...](https://lutzroeder.github.io/netron/?url=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nsfw- filter/nsfw-filter/master/dist/models/model.json)

<comment><USER29> > Wait, it's all a DAG?

>> Always has been.

<comment><USER28> The brain is a heavily cyclic graph. We're not there yet ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> disappointed this is not called "hotdog / not hotdog"

</comment><comment><USER31> This would be too late in my workplace, as they'd be logged that I downloaded the images. That I didn't see them in my browser would be irrelevant.

<comment><USER32> I'm curious how workplaces do this. Does they have a root cert installed so they can MITM SSL traffic?

<comment><USER33> Yes exactly. And, ironically, many of these solutions can make you less safe; at one of my former employers we had something like this, but the problem is that since you're getting a cert from the MITM server, you're not able to inspect the cert from the real server, and at least in the case of the Cisco product we were using, the MITM server wouldn't bother to inspect it either; expired certs, certs with the wrong CN, self signed cert, didn't matter - <USER2> MITM server would ignore the problem and happily replace the cert with a valid one signed by the company CA.

<comment><USER34> That is more often a configuration issue than a technology issue. MITM proxies can be configured to reset connections to sites with invalid/expired certificates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I was qurious about the classifier, and as expected it appears to be based on crawling to get the unsafe images - I doubt it's quite in compliance with neither copyright or gdpr..

The classifier lib:

[https://github.com/alex000kim/nsfw_data_scraper](https://github.com/alex000kim/nsfw_data_scraper)

Announcement points to this data source (while the readme hints at a "premium" classifier):

[https://github.com/infinitered/nsfwjs](https://github.com/infinitered/nsfwjs)

</comment><comment><USER36> Anyone know of a tool which can process videos (movies) and black/blur out nude scenes and make the film "family friendly"? The processing doesn't have to be realtime...

Just to expand: there are many excellent films which are not "family friendly" only because of 1 or 2 nude scenes which aren't even germane to the overall plot in many cases. I often wished there was a tool or SaaS that could detect such scenes and cut or blur them out. Would save a lot of manual processing.

<comment><USER37> There is a company that was trying to work in this space called VidAngel. [https://www.vidangel.com/](https://www.vidangel.com/) I used to use them quite a lot and then they got sued by everyone and now I'm not sure what they are up too. It's unclear if a company has the right to offer others content in a modified form - ie filtering out unacceptable content.

My favorite thing is that they had a JarJar filter for the Star Wars prequels.

<comment><USER38> They do on the fly skipping in streaming services. Rather than reselling modified content, they're skipping time codes.

<comment><USER37> This must have been their pivot after getting sued. They used to rent filtered movies for $1.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> If you want to make videos family friendly, it's probably better to aim for removing violence than nudity, as one is clearly worse for the psych than the other.

Expansion: how are nude scenes not family friendly? Not trying to start any flame wars here, just trying to understand how one or two scenes with nudity suddenly means the video is not family friendly? We all go through life seeing nudity, so should be fine. Violence however is something we both strive and should avoid as much as possible.

<comment><USER40> Surely it's not that hard to understand that for religious, cultural or other reasons some people and/or members of their family may feel uncomfortable seeing nudity.

<comment><USER39> Yeah, as far as I know, no religions or cultures forbid people to be naked or see other naked people. What other reasons are you referring to here?

It is indeed hard for me to understand how someone can feel uncomfortable seeing nudity, as it's everywhere in life and always has been.

<comment><USER40> Nudity isn't "everywhere in life", so what is the point of this, since it's not to start a flame war?

<comment><USER39> I take a shower in the morning, nude. I go to the beach, there is nude people. I go to the gym and after taking a shower, nude people. I look at Instagram/Facebook/Any social media, there will be almost nude people, same with ads all over the place. Sometimes I sleep naked too. If you have a family, there is plenty of nudity and can happen at any point. Anyone who raised a child will give you an idea of how much nudity there really is in life.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's like saying you are always nude under your clothes so nudity isn't a problem. Nudity in movies is like softcore porn and they often come with bed scenes. Of course if your family is just you and your wife it's fine but I don't think any sane person would consider that ok for kids.

<comment><USER41> Why not? I'd definitely be more ok with a soft core scene than some brutal violence. Sex is normal/good part of life. One should educate kids about sex (and when it is appropriate) rather than pretend it literally doesn't exist.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would say keep kids away from both. Sex isn't something that needs to be taught, your kids will figure it out when they are ready and old enough.

<comment><USER41> Yes and no. Teens/young adults will have sex whether you accepts it or not. However, how they do it and how they feel about it definitely depends on education.

1\. Sex safety ed needs to be taught, otherwise you get STDs and pregnancies. A couple of hour lecture in school is not enough. Safe sex practices is something that has to be reinforced and encouraged.

2\. Respect of consent (and situations where consent cannot happen no matter what either party says) and understanding how to properly express yourself to the opposite sex is extremely important. Our society is full of people who do not treat the opposite gender fairly and do not understand the importance of enthusiastic consent in intimacy.

3\. Normalizing sex positive attitude. Many people feel shame from sex/shame others for sexual behavior/repress their own natural desires/etc, this needs to be counterbalanced, especially in a puritanically perverted society like the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Now just make a version that whites-out NSFW text in e-books and market it to Utahns as a way to read PG-13 versions of Game of Thrones books and you'll be rich.

However, you'll probably also be sued into oblivion by angry authors/publishers who don't like people modifying what they read in any way.

<comment><USER43> I know that's tongue in cheek, but I'd really appreciate having a NSFW text filter.

Some of my CX team is getting harassed by trolls who send profane messages and racial slurs through the Zendesk Chat interface. Zendesk does not have a way to filter out profanity (for Chat at least; there are options for emails or tickets).

I've found simple client side extensions that can censor words, but a better approach would use NLP to grasp the context.

"I hope you die" contains the same words as "My <product> got wet, I hope it didn't die", but with vastly different intention.

<comment><USER44> Google Jigsaw might have what you are looking for, under the "Harassment" headline [1]. Note however both Google (Alphabet, really) and the tool specifically, were accused of various forms of bias [2] by various sides of discourse.

\--

[1] [https://jigsaw.google.com/issues/](https://jigsaw.google.com/issues/)

[2] for example [https://boingboing.net/2019/08/14/white-aligned- english.html](https://boingboing.net/2019/08/14/white-aligned-english.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I happen to not be afraid of boobs, so ever since my days on Reddit I wish for blocking of random gore instead. This is weirdly pertinent sometimes on DDG's image search.

Edit: to clarify, I'm not afraid of some killing either, thanks to the pop culture of the past seventy years or so. Now, why eye-hurting images of bodily damage pop up on rather innocent searches—that's a haunting mystery. On Reddit, the 'NSFW' label is used equally for a vaguely sexually suggestive shape or a close-up more suitable for a surgical journal. As if I didn't get plenty of suggestiveness just from music videos anyway! So my long-standing wish was for an 'NSFL' filter instead.

<comment><USER46> I have never understood how acts of love (at best) or reproduction (at the least) are considered in some societies to be dangerous, shocking, and in need of the strictest censorship -- or at the very least, not on prime-time TV. Yet acts of war, killing, maiming, and violence in general are often the mainstay of entertainment.

Sex is part of human nature – and, I would argue, a much bigger and better part of it than violence and aggression. Why do we hide from it?

<comment><USER47> People want to avoid the porn industry because it's sleazy, predatory, and reduces sex to a commodity.

<comment><USER48> And murder is ok?

<comment><AUTHOR> You deduced that from his comment?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I'd rather have every news about the Trumpeteer blocked.

</comment><comment><USER50> My kid would just turn off the extension and keep his business going... :'(

<comment><USER51> This is not a parental control software. It's made for you to be able to browse the web without worrying about NSFW images.

<comment><USER52> Luckily in Europe, that is hardly an issue as most countries are quite alright with their bodies and sexualities.

<comment><USER53> I'm curious: how would you boss react to such an image appearing on your monitor? Is this considered "OK" in a European workplace?

<comment><USER51> That depends.

If you're doing your work and something NSFW pops on your screen I doubt your boss will give a fuck.

If you're spending your time watching NSFW stuff in your work time he'll probably be mad, not because of the NSFW stuff but because you're not doing your work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Has anyone confirmed it isnt tagging non-pornographic images? Breastfeeding, breast exam tutorials, sand dunes, etc

Has anyone tested to see if it correctly handles PoC? That demo site it points to almost exclusively light skinned folk.

These are the basic things I'd want confirmation of.</comment>


Show HN: Tribes - A new community of people building great things together - <AUTHOR> http://www.techendo.co/posts/tribes-a-new-community-of-people-building-great-things

<comment><USER2> Good idea, but needs more info pre-request. I click on 'Genesis', it tells me 'Request an Invite', but doesn't give me any incentive.

Why should I sign up? What are you doing? What projects are going on? Entice me :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea. the value prop needs work. I guess I'm too close to the original source to properly abstract it out into a service. I need to rethink the value prop.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is evolved from our tribes meetup we have every Sunday. This was made to help it scale. :) Our first tribe is named 'Genesis', related: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FH-q0I1fJY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FH-q0I1fJY)</comment>


Are Programmers smarter than Lawyers? - guard-of-terra http://alamar.livejournal.com/349165.html <comment><AUTHOR> What?

        > What are programmers famous for?
        > Programmers disrupt.

What a load of self-pretentious crap. Programmers program.

Some programmers have the desire to launch businesses that will change the world. For them, programming is one part of a large collection of tools, abilities, and activities. But just one. The author mentions Paul Graham who also talks of the requirement for "schlepping" - a critical part of running a start-up, and nothing to do with programming.

Some programmer will succeed running a business, some will succeed in running a successful business that makes a lot of money. Some may even succeed in disrupting and existing market.

But "Programmers disrupt."

Please, spare me.

<comment><USER2> This article is full of "What?"s.

In the next section, the claim of lawyers not being able to disrupt is quite short-sighted. _Brown v. Board of Education_ , _Roe v. Wade_ , _Plessy v. Ferguson_ , etc. etc. are all court cases, brought by lawyers, that have caused a significant amount of disruption.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The answer depends on how one defines "smarter". If "smarter" means being able to organize things that naturally tend to become disorganized, then yes, programmers are smarter than lawyers.

Programmers thrive by creating local violations of entropy. Lawyers _are_ entropy.

</comment><comment><USER4> Because of my own myopic, self-interestedness I actually do think some programmers are smarter than most lawyers. But this article is not evidence or argument of that.

Knowledge wise they are on a par, though having said that you can't be a lawyer without knowing x > massive amounts of law, and you can be a programmer (not necessarily a good one) without knowing x amounts about a language, structures, and low level.

The kicker is abstract/mathmatical knowledge/ability. Lawyers require none. To my mind abstract problems require the most 'intelligence' as it were. But again that's personal bias.

</comment><comment><USER5> How is being disruptive any indication of smartness?

It is the field which enables you to change industry standards, not the people who populate it.

If anyone is well known as being disruptive I would say it was the scientist. Science research has a waaaaay longer and more impactful history of being disruptive to society than anything else in the (recorded) history of mankind. We programmers are a new breed and are still in our infancy. Programming technology is still in its respective dark ages.

</comment><comment><USER6> >Do lawyers get to disrupt? I think they don't.

I could go on ad nauseam, but compare Jim Crow Laws and Plessy v. Ferguson to Brown v. Board of Education.

A more modern example is the fine disruptive work being done at the EFF.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is a very stupid question! So I guess you are not a programmer :)

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra peterwiese if you are reading me, you are hel lbanned and all your comments are marked [dead].</comment>


Show HN: Global sailing navigation simulator using real weather/ocean data - <AUTHOR> https://8bitbyte.ca/sailnavsim/ <comment><USER2> [From someone that can barely distinguish the top and the bottom of a boat ...]

Nice captcha. I guess it's easy for the people that are the target of the site, but uncommon enough to be difficult for robots. (Adding some decorations may make it more difficult for robots, if they become a problem.)

Are robots really a problem or the problem are just morons that create too many boats?

How many boats do you have currently? If I don't log in for a month, is my boat sink/rescued?

When I read race, I expect at least two boats. Is there a record board when I finish the race. [I have to go from Sydney to a random point in the middle of the sea in the East, but there is too much wind and my boat is going north ... I don't expect to finish soon.] Do you organize some kind of events where people can race against other people?

It would be nice to see the target area in the map [I had to open Google Maps.] and the trajectory. (And perhaps a log of the commands.)

How do you calculate the direction. From another post, I remember it is a mix of the direction of the wind and the direction of the boat (and the direction of the sail?). Is this a standard boat model? Is it a good idea to add more models of boats?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback and questions!

> Are robots really a problem or the problem are just morons that create too > many boats?

I don't have much evidence of bots actually being a problem so far, but with that being said I didn't want to start off by making it too tempting to begin with. Without the captcha it would be trivial to write a bot that generates a large number of garbage boats. Every boat adds to the server load, however small the marginal amount may be.

> How many boats do you have currently? If I don't log in for a month, is my > boat sink/rescued?

There are around 500 boats on the server at this time, but the number is still growing as I type this (many new boats today certainly coming from HN users). Currently, if you don't send a command to your boat (course change, start/stop) within 14 days, it gets garbage collected to free up resources...whether you consider that getting "sunk" or "rescued" is up to you. :)

> When I read race, I expect at least two boats. Is there a record board when > I finish the race.

When you race other boats, there is a table at the bottom of your boat details page that shows information about all the boats. When a boat finishes its race, this will be clearly shown in this table, along with the time it took to finish.

To race other boats, you need to create a race with custom parameters (the form is at the bottom of the start page) and choose a start time in the future, with as little as 5 minutes or perhaps as long as several days, to give others time to join.

> Do you organize some kind of events where people can race against other > people?

So far I've raced just with a few friends myself (including some races lasting weeks, between continents), but anyone is free to create a public or private race and invite anyone else to join. Public races are published on the Races page [1], where anyone else can copy the race ID and join before the race begins.

> It would be nice to see the target area in the map

There's a "click here for maps" button on the boat details page, which will take you to the maps page for your boat/race.

> How do you calculate the direction. From another post, I remember it is a > mix of the direction of the wind and the direction of the boat (and the > direction of the sail?).

The boat attempts to follow the true course commanded to it, subject to wind direction and the boat wind response [2]. The ocean current vector is also added to the result of that calculation, which gives the final course and speed over ground.

> Is this a standard boat model? Is it a good idea to add more models of > boats?

The boat modeled here is just a contrived boat model that seems reasonable enough for perhaps some sort of 30-40 foot boat which may or may not exist in the real world. I've created a polar plot [2] showing its wind response so participants know what they're dealing with when racing. I would like to add more boat models in the future (including models of real-world boats), possibly even allowing for custom boat models to be uploaded by the user for any given race.

[1] [https://8bitbyte.ca/sailnavsim/races.php](https://8bitbyte.ca/sailnavsim/races.php)

[2] [https://8bitbyte.ca/sailnavsim/img/wind_response.png](https://8bitbyte.ca/sailnavsim/img/wind_response.png)

<comment><USER2> Perhaps you can add at the top some links for people like me that don't scroll.

Quick Start | Go to Your Boat | Join Race | Create Race

Now I see the box where I have to go. I missed it in the first time I went to the site. It is in the second map! [My boat is going in the correct direction. Perhaps not at the optimal speed. [https://imgur.com/a/yE1Tfre](https://imgur.com/a/yE1Tfre) ]

Perhaps you can offer to save the boat key in a cookie, so it's easier to return to the site.

<comment><USER3> > Perhaps you can add at the top some links for people like me that don't > scroll.

Why do you not scroll a webpage? Do you honestly only view a website based on what fits in the initial viewport? How do you shop on sites like Amazon, or browse Netflix, or any other single website on the entire internet?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sailing tips from a novice:

\- To get past captcha: Find N on the compass. That's 0 heading. Now go clockwise and add 30 for every notch until you get to the needle. So 0 (N), 30, 60, 90 (E), 120, 150, 180 (S), ... 330.

\- Once sailing, find the wind angle. You _cannot_ sail within 45 degrees of the wind. So if wind is coming from, say, 140 degrees, do _not_ set your course between 95-185 or you will come to a stop. (Because physics.)

\- Sailboats are fastest when sailing 90 degrees to the wind. So if wind is 140, the fastest course would be 70 or 230. Just keep in mind that might not be the direction you need to go.

\- More wind = faster sailing.

<comment><USER5> > \- Once sailing, find the wind angle. You cannot sail within 45 degrees of > the wind. So if wind is coming from, say, 140 degrees, do not set your > course between 95-185 or you will come to a stop. (Because physics.)

> \- Sailboats are fastest when sailing 90 degrees to the wind. So if wind is > 140, the fastest course would be 70 or 230. Just keep in mind that might not > be the direction you need to go.

Sorry if this sounds rude, but this isn't how a sailboat works at all! I don't know enough english vocabulary on that topic to provide a detailed explanation but I'll try something anyway:

First, the angle between your boat and the real wind isn't what matters: it's the angle between _relative wind_ and your boat that does, this angle depends on the real wind and on your speed.

The limit angle is about relative wind, not real wind, and it's not a fixed number: in depends on your vehicle (boat or other devices with sails like windsurf or iceboat) and how much "grip" it has on the water (or ice). Iceboats can have a really tiny angle for instance (few degrees).

> \- More wind = faster sailing

In theory only, because at some point when wind gets stronger, you'll need to reduce your amount of sails to avoid breaking your ship. Also once again, it's the speed of the relative wind that matters, not real one, and that's how you can sail faster than real wind! (I don't know how practical this is with a boat, but with iceboats it's easy).

Sailboat dynamic isn't that hard (it's mostly basic trigonometry) but it's pretty counterintuitive. Main takeaway, sails works like wing.

Sorry for bad English.

<comment><USER4> You are nitpicking details that don't matter in this game.

There is no "apparent wind" indication, only true wind. And the boat in the game is modeled like a regular sailboat, which means a typical 90-degree no-go zone.

<comment><USER6> He sounds like he knows what he's talking about, in terms if real sailing. To me, that's more interesting than the navigation simulator.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Thanks for sharing! Neat idea, and kudo's on creating a concept I haven't seen before! I like the technical nature of this with the weather integration and other technical sailing details implemented.

If I may suggest an improvement, if you desire more than the smallest of audiences, you may want to enlist help from someone with more user interface or design experience. As is, even this extremely geeky and intellectually curious HN audience is struggling just to get the simplest race started. I finally got my boat started after quite a lot of clicking and fiddling -- these were the most confusing steps if it helps:

1\. Figuring out what exactly the site does. The help page really helped, but it took me a while to realize it existed. I'd suggest adding more help content to the home page.

2\. Passing the captcha took me a bit of Googling - this is unnecessary friction if you want a broader audience.

3\. Once I started a race, it was very confusing that I had to just wait a minute and continually refresh the page before I could even enter the heading for my boat to use.

4\. It's weird that the maps aren't on the same page as where I enter my boat's heading. It's also unwieldy to refresh all of these pages constantly - a continually updated page would be a natural improvement.

5\. After entering a heading and pressing "Change course!", I expected my boat to start moving. It took me several minutes to figure out that I also needed to press "Start!". It's unintuitive to me that a boat wouldn't move when you set its heading and the wind is blowing!

Thanks for a fun concept and good luck in your project. I hope this feedback is useful and not a discouragement. With some interface tweaking, this could be neat!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the feedback!

There's definitely a tradeoff to work with when it comes to keeping things technical and finding a broader audience. I suppose there's also room for a "simple" mode vs. "expert" mode interface or something along those lines to try to cater to everyone, while keeping the underlying mechanics of the simulation the same. Nevertheless, I acknowledge there's still room for improvement here for all audiences. :)

As for the maps (and at the risk of sounding a bit paranoid here), I put them on a separate page to keep the embedded map pages from possibly getting access to the users' boat keys (since they're GET parameters and therefore part of the URL). I fully realise that putting "secrets" in GET parameters is bad practice, but in this case the bookmark-friendliness of having your own boat page URL seemed to be worth the tradeoff of putting something semi-secret like a randomly-generated boat ID/key in the URL itself. On the other hand, I didn't find it worth the tradeoff of potentially leaking everyone's boat keys to third party sites (however trustworthy they may be) through embedded components by putting the maps on the same page.

<comment><USER8> I wish other sites would treat my email with the same respect that my boat key is getting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is great. I've been wanting to do something similar for simulating attempts against the Microtransat Challenge[1] using realtime ocean conditions, sailing physics, etc. In fact I was just writing down the "feature" list yesterday, so very happily surprised to see this pop up on HN today! :)

I was working with sailsd, boatd and similar packages from "sails- simulator"[2] repo but wanted to simplify and make it simpler to jump in.

This looks like very similar work, could you comment as to how your simulation compares if you're familiar with the "sails-simulator" packages?

[1] [https://www.microtransat.org/](https://www.microtransat.org/)

[2] [https://github.com/sails-simulator](https://github.com/sails-simulator)

Edit: formatting

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't heard of the Microtransat Challenge before, but this looks interesting, so thanks for sharing that!

As for sails-simulator (first time looking at this as well), there appears to be, not surprisingly, quite a bit of similarity, but with one notable difference that I can see so far...

One of the goals of my project was to simulate a large number of boats at the same time with realistic large-scale navigation, geographical and weather effects, so there is much less focus on the individual aerodynamic and hydrodynamic sailboat physics (as these can also get computationally expensive). The "boat physics" in my case consists of four lookups from a "wind response" table (using angle from wind and wind speed as inputs) with interpolation between the four points to get the final result (boat speed over water). With some profiling and optimizations, I've found through load testing that it can simulate (on a modern machine) several hundred thousand boats per CPU thread with a simulation timeslice of one second. I'm certain this would be far more difficult to achieve if I was trying to simulate more "real" physics against the surfaces and masses of every boat. The tradeoff then is that the boat controls are very crude (basically just selection of course over water), and you don't have finer controls over sails/rudder, etc.

<comment><USER9> I see. That all makes sense for the race scenario. I appreciate the thoughtful response, thanks!

It's a really neat project. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a terrible captcha. I am a human and have sailed significantly and failed the captcha a few times and it frustrated me enough to not want to be on your site anymore.

<comment><USER11> Agreed, the captia is excessive. Ended up giving up on the site after trying to add in a second boat (not a sailor).

It's very difficult to have a positive experience when the first thing that greets you is a source of frustration. It's also silly to put something like this between the user and the meat of your site.

A significant number of people will just elect not to do this, and as a result never see what you wanted to show them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The race map seem only keep the race start and current boat position. It would be better if the whole historical locations of the boat are kept and drawn on the map. Otherwise, nice!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks!

The boat's historical track is shown after some time (within an hour of starting), but it will only draw the lines between the positions at the top of each hour (so intra-hour positions are lost, but this isn't that interesting anyway for more long-distance races). But you're right, it's a bug that it doesn't show you any track within the first hour. :)

Also, when you have more than one boat in a race, you'll see your historical track and all the other boats' tracks shown on the same map. This makes it interesting for long-distance races with multiple boats.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm already failing at the robot detection, so I guess that game is not for me ;)

<comment><USER14> Same here, even when using [https://www.nauticed.org/images/basicsailtrim/degreesoff.jpg](https://www.nauticed.org/images/basicsailtrim/degreesoff.jpg) as a guide to pass it, I cannot get it to accept me as a human.

The captcha seems easy for a program to overcome though, so maybe it's meant to stop humans and allow robots?

<comment><USER15> you just need to know that there are 360 degree in a circle. now do:

\- count the segment dividers and divide 360 by that amount, let's call this X.

\- count at which divider the pointer is pointing, multiply that by X and be good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is awesome!

Do you plan on adding different types of boats with varying sailing characteristics?

Adding a multihull could be an amazing second option for those who want to compare downwind/upwind characteristics as usually debated.

Oh and if you ever feel like adding in internationalization to this, I'd love to help with a Turkish translation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks!

Yes, different boat profiles is on my list of things to add at some point. There are some impressive global races [1][2] that happen every few years using some interesting boats, so it would be neat to follow along virtually in this way.

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

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vend%C3%A9e_Globe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vend%C3%A9e_Globe)

<comment><USER17> If you ever get tired of sea-going vessels, I read an account of the Graf Zeppelin's 1929 circumnavigation which claimed that daily route planning was very similar to sailing in that taking advantage of weather patterns gave them significant deltas on top of the motors.

[https://www.navytimes.com/news/your- navy/2019/08/19/globetro...](https://www.navytimes.com/news/your- navy/2019/08/19/globetrotting-leviathan-graf-zeppelins-amazing-voyage/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I created a public race that begins shortly (apologies if it's already started by the time you read this comment!), if anyone would like to join and try out the "multiplayer" mode: [https://8bitbyte.ca/sailnavsim/races.php](https://8bitbyte.ca/sailnavsim/races.php)

Just copy the race ID (809d3260e3e6b76da6282842cef7a342 for this one), and join the race from the start page.

Also a note that anyone can create a public race with custom parameters, and anyone else is also free to join that race by using the published race ID.

<comment><USER18> The race is on :) I'm live streaming myself sailing against you guys. [https://www.twitch.tv/ikrisoft](https://www.twitch.tv/ikrisoft)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Haha that captcha.

It would be interesting if you could input things like LOA, LWL, P, E, etc..

</comment><comment><USER20> I used to play a similar game some 10+ years ago. There were thousands of players doing 2 / 3 weeks races. I can't remember the name or Google it. Maybe the site doesn't exist anymore.

The site didn't show the wind, we had to find our sources. It did show the boat (not much better than this one) and it's heading. We could choose a few types of sails according to the wind. It detected when the boat hit land and stopped it. Fun things happened to people sleeping at home when sailing through areas with many islands :-)

To win one should wake up a few times at night or cheat and play with mates in different time zones. Or take safer and longer routes and sleep well. Fun game.

</comment><comment><USER21> This looks amazing!!! Thank you for creating and sharing this!

</comment><comment><USER22> As a sailing addict, I actually find this very nice :)

</comment><comment><USER23> If this were packaged as an iOS App with only minor additions I'm sure it would be very successful, like other 'slow games' (Desert Golf)

</comment><comment><USER24> Helm does not respond to input STOP Have tried colorful language and strong drink STOP Crew annoyed STOP Abandoning ship STOP

</comment><comment><USER25> Nice anti bot detection, im not able to try it because i dont know shit of heading degrees

</comment><comment><USER26> I just found this on MetaFilter and I'm already a big fan.

</comment><comment><USER27> Thanks for sharing! My family really enjoyed our race this evening!

</comment><comment><USER28> Al-right! I'm taking _this_ thing to Mexico!</comment>


Assange's Xmas address from the Ecuadorian embassy in London - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Adx5vSC32vY&feature=youtu.be

<comment><AUTHOR> Relevant:

<http://www.orbooks.com/catalog/cypherpunks/></comment>


Google Opens 'Classroom' to All Teachers - <AUTHOR> http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2014/08/more-teaching-less-tech-ing-google.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I saw a talk at a conference last week (BSidesLV) focusing on the technical problems with educational technology. BSidesLV is a security conference, so the talk was mostly focused on the privacy and security of student data, but the message was clear: educational technology is (in general) poorly funded, poorly secured, and, in many cases, poorly developed.

It's exciting to see Google Classroom going out into the wild, because (given Google's track record), it will probably be none of those things.</comment>