Amazon demands we correct an article refering to an Echo as a "microphone" - <AUTHOR> https://nitter.net/jason_koebler/status/1303383712160190469#m <comment><USER3> This article is pretty interesting.

\- Supposedly Amazon has operated things like AWS at a loss for long periods of time (I highly doubt this - AWS has never been cheap).

"And it's through this mass adoption of Alexa devices that consumers (and the army of human beings Amazon hires to listen to consumers) can collectively train Amazon's voice recognition system, which is then monetized through Amazon's primary source of profits: Amazon Web Services."

There is no way Amazon has echo / alexa out there just so it can develop a language recognition model. They could just record their customer service reps talking to customers, train it on the millions of movies and shows with subtitles on amazon prime or train using audio book narrations. And the profits from their transcription service are not likely very high relative to other services they offer.

Whoever becomes the device that people want in their home, the one they turn to to coordinate their heating and cooling, arming their security system, getting the weather and traffic is going to be in an incredible position.

Google is also chasing this market, and apple to a degree. Google has an incredible voice recognition model already. They are chasing this market because it is THE most powerful and personal way to have a connection to the consumer. If you don't understand WHY these companies want apple siri, google assistant or amazon alexa everywhere you don't see the future. These companies will OWN consumer loyalty. A child growing up in a amazon echo / alexa integrated house may become a lifelong brand consumer including when they buy their house and setup their home automation etc.

The other thing, despite all the claims about "amazon microphones" \- people will PAY for these - by the truckload. If I could get a space already pre- integrated with home automation etc? Very appealing. And normal people do call these things echo devices or alexa.

These companies are trying to deliver things to consumers that generate high brand loyalty. It seems to be working. I noticed this when browsing for cars - EVERY salesperson emphasizes that their cars supports "apple" carplay etc. My guess - 50%+ of even CAR buyers want to have a connection to their brand loyal assistant.

<comment><USER4> While their end goal is pretty clear(brand loyalty, profiling).. i doubt that it will come to pass with our current tech.

Lets face it - IT professionals do not trust such systems, nor use them - <USER2> are inferior to any type of input mode at the moment.

Most normal people do not care about them, nor use them.

There is vocal but relatively niche group of tech enthusiasts who are really into it, but they are already a brand loyalists.

On a side note - the whole concept of brand loyalty is completely idiotic from consumer PoV. There is no merit for the customer in it.

<comment><USER5> The first line of this comment is your opinion, which can't be false, as it's just an opinion, but the other four lines are all completely false.

1\. IT professionals absolutely do use such systems. In droves. It's true that we are more likely to be wary of them, but a large number of IT pros I know and work with do use Alexa/Siri/etc. for home automation and all kinds of other things. And no: smart speakers are not "inferior to any type of input mode", at least not in a wide variety of circumstances. I can turn my air conditioner on or adjust its temperature while lying in bed, without getting up, and without even waking up all the way. Try that with another "type of input mode". I can turn on lights while I am stumbling to the bathroom in the middle of the night, but I can easily use only 10% brightness so as to not wake up my wife. Try that with another input mode. I could go on for pages, but I trust the point is made.

2\. There are at least 300 million smart speakers out there already, and the number is growing exponentially. Amazon alone already had 100 million sold by the beginning of 2019. I don't know the exact number right now, but it's a very big number.

3\. See #2. 300 million units is not a "niche".

4\. Brand loyalty, in fact, gives substantial benefits to the consumer, contrary to your assertion. Greater integration of devices and ease of use is the most obvious one.

<comment><USER6> In an ideal marketplace the best product is selected on it's merit.

Brand loyalty, vendor lock-in, financial leverage, etc. are all attempts to interfere with free market, to prevent a consumer moving to a competitor.

There is also no reason you can't have integration between different vendors, in fact thats what standards are for. Apple, etc. are notorious for refusing to integrate to protect their advantage.

The have the right to do that to some, limited, extent, but to advocate it as good for the consumer is just self-delusion.

<comment><USER7> > In an ideal marketplace the best product is selected on it's merit.

> Brand loyalty, vendor lock-in, financial leverage, etc. are all attempts to > interfere with free market, to prevent a consumer moving to a competitor

As I understand it, the only way to prevent vendor lock-in is regulation. Regulation is considered anathema to a "free market". Subsequently, I've come to expect that a free market _guarantees_ that vendors will attempt to lock their customers in.

I suspect your "ideal market" is not merely an idealised fantasy but also self-contradictory and thus impossible.

I'd love it if you could explain otherwise because it'll probably help me understand basic economics better.

<comment><USER8> Without regulation you don't have a market at all, you have war, where the best and cheapest way to beat your competitors is to murder them. Even the Mafia found it was better to establish a council to work out beefs and reduce inter-family violence. Market law goes back to the Middle Ages in Western Europe, where it was international in scope and enforced by private courts paid for by the merchants themselves.

We don't have actual war yet. But we do have a world of duopolies, in which two (or three or four) control almost all of the business between them. That's _not_ good for customers or suppliers or retailers; it's only good for the rent-seekers who own those companies.

Unfortunately, the U.S. has for several administrations now basically not enforced the antitrust laws unless a short-term rise in prices is visible. Long-time rises in prices, as well as knock-on effects like reduction in quality, are simply ignored.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Read the sentence in context: [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qj45kx/amazon-wants- alexa...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qj45kx/amazon-wants-alexa-to- move-into-your-apartment-before-you-do)

The sentence in question comes eight (8) paragraphs in, and reads: "While it's natural to be chiefly concerned about privacy when your apartment comes with an Amazon microphone pre-installed, we should also be critical about where the data extracted from us ends up."

In context, no other word makes as much sense, and the request would make the article worse.

<comment><USER10> I think people assume that the (amazon/google/apple) microphones are continuously uploading audio to the cloud. Wake word detection on these devices would be terrible/expensive if it ran in the cloud.

<comment><USER11> There was an article recently about Google service notifying owner that the batteries in smoke detector need to be replaced (based on the chirp sound noises the smoke detector does).

This shows that at very least the "wake word" can be easily changed.

I think that anyone installing device like that without having a complete control over it is just ignorant. And this is surprising, since many tech people don't see any problems with it.

<comment><USER12> This seems like such a useful feature though. I wish there was a way to know for certain exactly what the device was doing so I could have this functionality but also have certainty that Google can't arbitrarily add other wake words without my knowledge or consent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is everyone here missing the point?

Amazon aren't going to "request" just any old correction, the news is that they don't want an internet connected microphone and speaker to have any mental connection to the "m" word. Because it would have negative connotations for most people.

<comment><USER14> I'm pretty sure everyone is aware of the motivation for the correction...

<comment><USER15> I'm not. Is it because Amazon _is_ using it as a privacy-invading microphone and doesn't want that to be well known, or is it that it just doesn't want to reduce usage due to unfounded privacy concerns?

<comment> kube-system You are thinking too far into it. The simplest explanation is usually the most correct. They have a product to sell and want it to be portrayed positively.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It seems a reasonable request to me. How else were they going to suggest that you do it? There is a cut and paste here, but it isn't a demand, it is a "request".

Of course this is about to get downvoted because evil microphones.

<comment><USER17> How is is reasonable that people who don't work for Amazon be expected to speak like Amazon's marketing department?

<comment><USER18> Referring to an Amazon Echo as a "microphone" is reductionist to the point where it could actually confuse readers as to what is being discussed. A smart speaker has a microphone, but it is not "a microphone".

It would be like Tesla taking issue with someone calling their car "an electric motor". Sure it has those things, but that's not what it is.

Totally reasonable change imo.

<comment><USER19> It's reasonable in a vacuum but "having an Amazon microphone in your home" is not the same as "having an echo device in your home." There is a clear intent

<comment><USER18> Yes, the clear intent is by the author of this article to use inaccurate language in order to scare-tactic readers into thinking Amazon just wants to spy on you.

Amazon sells literal microphones in addition to the Echo. That sentence could be referring to literal microphones under the AmazonBasics brand for all I know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This reminds me of Cory Doctorow's Unauthorized Bread ([https://craphound.com/category/unauthorizedbread/](https://craphound.com/category/unauthorizedbread/)), where poor people have to rent "subsidized" apartments and in turn are forced to use the pre-installed household appliances, which only work with "official", overpriced supplies from the manufacturer.

</comment><comment><USER21> The screenshot shows a request, not a demand. The tweet's headline is clearly clickbait

<comment><USER22> It's also confusing to refer to an Amazon microphone because I am not sure what product are writing about. I think most people know that an echo has microphones and doesn't read brainwaves.

<comment><USER18> There is even someone in the twitter thread pointing out that Amazon uses the word "microphone" in their copy, as if that is some sort of "gotcha".

No, Amazon isn't trying to pretend the Echo doesn't have a microphone – they just think it's _misleading_ to refer to a smart speaker as an "Amazon microphone", and I happen to agree.

<comment><USER23> > smart speaker

That's pretty misleading as well. Speakers cannot listen, but the Echo can.

<comment><USER24> Microphones cannot speak, but the Echo can.

<comment><USER25> Actually all microphones can "speak". All speakers can be used as microphones as well. It's not like the conversion process only works one way.

<comment><USER26> >Actually all microphones can "speak".

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

<comment><USER27> Countercounterexample: [https://www.livescience.com/64619-laser-sound- beam.html](https://www.livescience.com/64619-laser-sound-beam.html)

<comment><USER26> That's a laser specifically designed for transmitting sound, not a laser microphone.

<comment><USER27> You know, I had that (extremely pedantic) thought as I was posting, but I figured someone might find it interesting anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Reminds me of 1984's _telescreens_ ; the word seemingly selected to hide the fact that they are also recording devices.

<comment><USER29> Just reading it, I'm halfway through. I doubt anyone didn't know they had microphones or cameras. Contrasting it with the word phone, it implies it has a microphone... but we still all carry around in our pocket without hesitation. Yelling "hey Siri" or "ok google" in a crowded place will probably yield as many or more beeps and blips as yelling "Alexa".

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Here's the article:

[https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qj45kx/amazon-wants- alexa...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qj45kx/amazon-wants-alexa-to- move-into-your-apartment-before-you-do)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20200905234440/https://www.vice....](https://web.archive.org/web/20200905234440/https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qj45kx/amazon- wants-alexa-to-move-into-your-apartment-before-you-do)

<comment><USER31> And HN submission: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24418856](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24418856)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Private investigator Steve Rambam was offering $1000 to anyone who could hack/modify an Echo device to answer to "Hey Wiretap" \-- as far as I know that reward hasn't been claimed and is still valid:

[https://twitter.com/supernerdmedia/status/996778740851007488...](https://twitter.com/supernerdmedia/status/996778740851007488?lang=en)

<comment><USER33> AFAIK it isn't actually possible. This is from memory, but there's technical limitations to trying to listen for and process everything all the time, so there's a secondary processing unit whose only job is to listen for the activation phrase and activate the main unit when it hears it. I believe this was hardwired to only listen for the phrase itself and doesn't use the same speech recognition model

<comment><USER34> Devices like this aren't hardwired into anything. Echo is sold in many markets with different pronounciation. Amazon isn't going to scrap thousands of units when the Spanish market doesn't want them but the US does :) Or when they introduce a new market.

Indeed the hotword is listened for by a local CPU, not the remote cloud which interprets the rest of the sentence received. But you can bet this is not hardwired in any way.

These devices are field programmable in full. Just nobody bothered to hack them for a measly 1000 bucks :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I think I will start calling all such devices microphones.

<comment><USER36> I think they should be called "active audio monitoring devices" because microphone is somewhat missing something... or maybe "smart microphone".

<comment><USER29> Should we include our phones, tables and laptops and call them "mobile active audio monitoring devices" too? They all have microphones and cameras (not just one, but many have two) and we all carry them around in our pockets or on our wrists or even in our ears without much issue. They don't even hide the fact they have a microphone, the name of the device is literally a mobile micro- phone ("mobile phone", "smart phone"). Many phones also have a wake word (try yelling "hey siri" in a crowded place). So I really don't get the backlash around smart speakers. The main use of a smart speaker is to play music, not to record notes or make calls. And speaker-phone is already taken. I wouldn't put any evil marketing scheme to calling them smart speakers and not smart (micro) phones.

<comment><USER36> phone in smart-phone stands for telephone, not microphone

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Amazon: "Calling an Echo a 'microphone' is derivative and ignores the other functionality. It's more accurate to call an Echo... an Echo..."

Journalist: "Within the context of the sentence, the microphone is the only thing that matters."

Both are right, and both are doing their job.

Amazon PR wants present their products in a positive light, which includes using the brand name and considering all of the Echo's functionality -- not just the microphone.

The journalist is pointing out privacy concerns, so the microphone is all that matters.

\---

I'm a bit curious as to how 'Corrections requested' equates to a 'demand', though.

</comment><comment><USER38> If you're going to go for the controversy, I would have gone with "Amazon's microphone". The 's will break the idea its a new device and emphasizes who truly owns it.

</comment><comment><USER39> "...for there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about." - Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

</comment><comment><USER40> I had given up on not having a smartphone (still do not have data plan) but I am not putting any other of those spy gizmos in my house/car.

</comment><comment><USER41> They call them smart speakers. Why not name it after any of the other components..

</comment><comment><USER42> Change it to:

Often uniformed user chosen microphone based survivance device which _could_ also spy on your network, where you live and other meta information ;-)

</comment><comment><USER43> "slapping a "smart home" premium onto the monthly rent may let your landlord reverse plunging rents [...] everyone (but you) wins."

This seems clueless - if renters don't want Alexa then they will just rent the cheaper places without it. And if renters want it then they also won, by buying something they wanted. And, to head off objections, if renters "are forced to rent" the places with Alexa anyway when they don't want it, then the 'premium' isn't for Alexa and landlords wasted their money.

<comment><USER44> Ah yes, renters, that class of people notorious for having the power to influence markets.

</comment></comment><comment> jerome-jh They should do the change and add in the introduction what Amazon requested.

I can see they actually did the change with no mention of the edit, and they still dare to conclude "Amazon did not respond to Motherboard's request for comment."

It can by no way be called a "request", that was definitely an "order".

</comment><comment><USER45> What's funny is the original Vice article was very condemnatory of Amazon and AWS data and business practices. And then Amazon in response metaphorically requested ... wait for it ... that the author move a comma.

So, the rest of the article is good and on target!?

Was the Amazon correction request from an AI bot?

<comment><USER46> My guess is that Amazon reviews for trademarks, proper use of brand names, and similar, not for content.

This correction came from the same department that would ask you to replace "Amazon Kindley book readery thingy" with "Amazon Kindle® Paperwhite® eReader."

I doubt the reviewer even realized how 1984 the proposed correction was.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> A bit off topic: what is this site? An unofficial Twitter mirror?

<comment><USER48> yes (alternate Twitter frontend they call it, but same thing)

<comment><USER49> Discussed in 2019:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21849744](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21849744) (38 comments)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I wonder if Apple would demand that you not refer to an iPhone as a microphone.

Ha

</comment><comment><USER51> It's not a microphone. It's four microphones!

</comment><comment><USER52> They're microphones who can think.

</comment><comment><USER53> Or else?

</comment><comment><USER54> How is this not called 'spying'

</comment><comment><USER55> It's common knowledge of the lack of security in IoT devices.

I suspect a hacker will hack alexa and start trolling your family.

Great idea....

<comment><USER56> Are you suggesting it's not possible to build IoT devices with security in mind?

<comment><USER57> Anything's possible, but in practice...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> "The Amazon Microphone"

Let's all call it such from now.

<comment><USER58> /me waves to Amazon marketing. Glad you hate it!

Amazon Microphone it is!</comment></comment>


Norman Mailer's Fatal Friendship - <AUTHOR> https://newrepublic.com/article/140610/norman-mailers-fatal-friendship <comment><USER2> Unreadable on mobile. Was curious to read the article.

<comment><USER3> Yep, NR is terrible on mobile, probably because fewer people run adblockers on their phones.

<comment><USER4> Can anybody chime in with their experience with adblockers on phones? What can you recommend?</comment></comment></comment>


Don't wait for superman - <AUTHOR> http://plektix.fieldofscience.com/2010/10/dont-wait-for-superman.html

<comment><USER2> I'm curious, is the title of the documentary a Nietzsche reference?</comment>


Analyse Asia 60: Air Travel in Asia with Paul Papadimitriou - <AUTHOR> http://analyse.asia/2015/09/19/episode-60-air-travel-in-asia-with-paul-papadimitriou/ <comment><AUTHOR> Synopsis: With Paul Papadimitriou from Intelligencr and the host of two podcasts (Digital Loop and Layovers), we discuss the air travel and aviation industry in Asia. We started our conversation from his international relations roots and how he came to Asia and started his consultancy, Intelligencr. Paul also shared his experience as an angel investor and the interesting stories behind his investments. Finally, we spent a significant amount of time talking about why Asia has been leading in the air travel industry from premium airlines, budget airlines, airports as retail hubs and trading ports and new technologies & business models that might disrupt a highly regulated industry.</comment>


The Million Zimbabwean Dollar Homepage - <AUTHOR> http://millionzimbabwedollarhomepage.com/ I created this parody of the Million Dollar Homepage - it was mentioned on boingboing and the nytimes - I just want to get rid of the rest of the pixels so that I can say I sold them all.  They are cheap! $0.03 per 900 pixel block.  Thanks! <comment><AUTHOR> I created this parody of the Million Dollar Homepage - it was mentioned on boingboing and the nytimes - I just want to get rid of the rest of the pixels so that I can say I sold them all. They are cheap - $0.03 per 900 pixel block. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER2> For any interested souls, one million Zimbabwean dollars is equivalent to $33.37 as of this post. [1]

[1] <http://cn.quote.com/us/forex/convert.action>

<comment><AUTHOR> And that's the "official" rate. The actual black market rate is much less - one million Zimbabwean dollars = $0.20

[http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601116&sid=aARo...](http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601116&sid=aARo3NjeWP44&refer=africa)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hilarious idea. Very cool.</comment>


Ask HN: Top HN articles a day via SMS/Twitter - <AUTHOR>

I would really like to have an RSS feed that just lists the top (points) RSS feed of Hacker News articles. Ideally this would only select the top 10-20 articles in a day. Until a few minutes ago, I followed the Twitter feed via Google Reader - http://twitter.com/newsycombinator - but it has about 230 posts/week and has started to get a little overwhelming for me. It also seems to be hand-picked entries and for the most part most of them appealed to my taste.
My other issue with that Twitter feed is that they linked directly to the articles and there is no link to HN - so I miss out on the discussions as well.
I don't want to miss out on any of the HN goodness but don't want to waste much time here either.
In the perfect world, PG would have a YCombinator startup write a quick program that would have you vote the articles that interested you and match you up with others and give you the option to subscribe to a person (or two) with most similar tastes so you can supplement each other with articles that interest you.
In the mean time if anyone knows of an RSS feed (other than HN's own http://news.ycombinator.com/rss with ~750 posts a week), please do let me know. <comment><AUTHOR> Or it would be nice to set a threshold that I want to see articles with more than X upvotes or Y comments.

I used to be a fan of Digg when it first started but once the content got overloaded, I stopped visiting except for my friend's Diggs.

</comment><comment><USER2> Check this out: <http://hnsort.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I use the Greasemonkey script but forgot about this. This works well enough (for now) although I'd really prefer an RSS feed that would push the articles to me.</comment></comment>


Prison Economics Help Drive Ariz. Immigration Law - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130833741

<comment><USER2> If legislators really wanted to reduce illegal immigration they would also go after the demand, implementing tougher penalties against those who hire illegal immigrants^^ or outsource to companies that do. Of course, this will never happen as the walmarts, mcdonalds, big tech corps^, etc will never allow it because surely their costs would go up and so would their prices.

Edit: ^ work at a big tech company? A decent percentage of the janitors and cooks are illegal (and, for the record, are not just Hispanic)

Edit2: ^^Including themselves--because they do.

edit3: (sorry I was on my smartphone before). If the supply of jobs for illegal immigrants goes down, so does their influx. It's true in the US--and it's true in Europe and it's true in Asia: <http://www.eubusiness.com/news- eu/1247156221.99/> [http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/05/01/93137/recession- enforc...](http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/05/01/93137/recession-enforcement- driving.html)

But then, of course, in a global economy, cutting the influx of illegal immigrants (and immigration in general) would lead to more jobs shipped north/south/overseas.

So in the end, many of these legislators are really just pandering and contributing to the fear-mongering here and everywhere as people are, in many cases, naturally xenophobic.

<comment><USER3> And in fact, companies that hire illegal immigrants benefit greatly from stricter immigration enforcement; the more pressure from the state that's applied to immigrants, the easier it is for employers to lower their pay, subject them to dangerous and harsh conditions, and occasionally even refuse to compensate them altogether. If they refuse, ICE will deport their families.

<comment><USER4> If we cared about human rights, we should flip the situation on its head and impose heavy (in the 6 or 7 figure range) fines for hiring undocumented workers. If any of the workers are mistreated they should be able to turn in their employer.

That will give the workers an upper hand and would prevent them from being taken advantage of. Now the employer can live in fear of being exposed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This strikes me as ridiculous fear mongering. The point of the law is "attrition through enforcement" - the idea being that illegal immigrants will leave Arizona if they see that the state is serious about enforcing immigration law. Are we to suppose that people will continue to live in Arizona illegally, given the knowledge that there are now real penalties? The article also uses scare language like "The law could send hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to prison in a way never done before" to make it sound like there's some grand plan to hunt down and lock up every illegal immigrant, so that the prison companies can charge the state for their upkeep. And yet the bill only provides for a maximum of 20 days in jail for a first offender, and 30 days in jail for subsequent offenses.

<comment><USER6> >> _The point of the law is "attrition through enforcement"_

It is much more than that.

If you're a US citizen and you're not carrying proof of citizenship, you could get thrown in jail for not having your "papers".

Now, I'm sure many citizens feel that their accent or their skin color or some other attribute protects them from sent to jail and that they don't need to carry their papers with them. However, if a cop thinks that you might be a Canadian, they could throw you in jail for not proving otherwise. .

<comment><USER5> > If you're a US citizen and you're not carrying proof of citizenship, you > could get thrown in jail for not having your "papers".

...if you are lawfully stopped, detained, or arrested, you _may_ be held until your immigration status is verified. I don't see why this is a big deal. There is no grand scheme to sweep the countryside and round up everyone with brown skin or a Canadian accent.

<comment><USER7> Good job the police don't have any sort of history of arresting people on spurious charges due to their skin color.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Private prisons are an abomination and should not exist.

<comment><USER9> Why?

<comment><USER10> It creates an industry of private businesses that have but one motive: a profit motive.

They are therefor motivated to do everything they can to increase incarceration rates to create demand for their services of imprisonment. This article illustrates that pretty clearly. It also creates situations like the corrupt judge/private prison kickback scheme in Pennsylvania recently.(1)

We don't need profit-driven companies who profit from increased rates of incarceration, they have no reason to really rehabilitate people - they want them back in the system ASAP.

(1) [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13judge.html?_r=2&h...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13judge.html?_r=2&hp)

<comment><USER11> This problem is not limited to the private prison business. In California, for example, the prison guard union is similarly motivated by profits to increase incarceration rates.

In fact, organizations like prison guard unions have _stronger_ motives than multiple private prison corporations. A non-monopolistic prison corporation could easily let their competitors waste money on lobbying and reap the benefits, so any prison corp with small market share has no motive to lobby. The prison guard union reaps all the benefits since they have 100% market share.

<comment><USER12> > This problem is not limited to the private prison business. In California, > for example, the prison guard union is similarly motivated by profits to > increase incarceration rates.

I happen to think that you're both right. I'd rather not see union-owned _or_ for-profit private prisons due and I'm not convinced that we really have to choose one or the other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I guess one question is whether the bulk of the illegal immigrants in Arizona at any one time are using it as a residence or just passing through. This would definitely make it less attractive as a residence, but its advantages for transit are considerable.

The prison business has had some curious effects elsewhere a judge went to jail up around Scranton for abusing his power to send kids to jail for offenses that ordinarily might've rated probation before judgment; he was compensated by the company that ran juvenile prisons up there.

</comment><comment><USER14> Unchecked undocumented immigration is a problem. There are a lot of people that want to come here for the right reasons and some that want to come here for the wrong reasons. The goal of any immigration reform should be to parse those two groups. Make it easier to be here legitimately to avoid the ongoing exploitation of the people that are here to work. Then focus enforcement on those that are not here legitimately because they are now not hiding among the crowds of people that just want to feed their families. This is what most people in AZ want, but the only lever they have is enforcement, it's not like Arizona can decide to unilaterally grant amnesty.

The idea of "papers please" is reprehensible, but where is the anger at the federal border patrol checkpoints between AZ and CA? An AZ cop asking for a drivers license during a traffic stop is supposedly "draconian fascist evil", but stopping people for no reason driving between two states is considered ok?

Imagine that after 9/11 the rest of the country said "good luck dealing with that terrorism problem NY. We're going to put checkpoints up to make sure those problems stay in your state and not ours."

</comment><comment><USER15> What an absurd hit piece. The Arizona law simply states that the authorities in Arizona will enforce existing federal law.

</comment><comment><USER16> Interestingly I recently attended a talk by Loic Wacquant[1] about prisons in the US, the US as penal state. This somehow fits.

[1] <http://sociology.berkeley.edu/faculty/wacquant/></comment>


A proactive approach to e-scooter safety - <AUTHOR> https://onezero.medium.com/demystifying-e-scooter-safety-one-step-at-a-time-956afcf12d75 <comment><USER2> Interesting that they found cyclists are more likely to run red lights than scooter riders. Here's what a near collision between a cyclist and a scooter rider (who ran a red) looks like from the perspective of a cyclist (me): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qN_DGR7isB4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qN_DGR7isB4)

Over the years I've been amazed by the arguments other cyclists have used to justify running red lights. The "physics" argument mentioned in the article isn't convincing to me, because a cyclist's kinetic energy is lost relatively quickly to drag and friction anyway. Stop pedaling. How long will you coast? Probably not very long (i.e., over 100 meters) unless you're going downhill. Seems to me that cycling requires constant energy input and stop lights and signs aren't likely to contribute much to energy expenditures. (Maybe I should do the math...) Edit: I did the math here and the energy from stopping was higher than I expected: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22257938](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22257938)

I think the time saved from running reds is much lower than most red light running cyclists believe, because anecdotally I observed that red light running cyclists tend to go fairly slow. I can recall keeping up with or catching cyclists who run red lights despite never running them myself.

I think cyclists as a whole need to stop running red lights. Yes, there's a double standard here, as most drivers seem okay with speeding if they're doing it, but can't tolerate rule-breaking from cyclists. But we shouldn't give drivers excuses.

<comment><USER3> There's been some pack of the napkin research on this, and the conclusion is that a cyclist stopping at every intersection and then speeding up to 20mph vs a cyclist that doesn't stop and just cruises at 20mph burn 500W vs 100W. Unfortunately I can't find a link right now but based on my own experience I'd say that is spot on. Stopping and resuming at every stop sign or stop light is far more taxing, so much so that many people wouldn't even be able to do it and maintain a better than walking reasonable pace through a city.

<comment><USER4> I think the reasonable alternative then is to walk, not to dangerously run through intersections when it's not your turn.

Edit: I will admit that I rarely come to a complete stop at a stop sign. It definitely is a considerable inconvenience to get back up to speed, but a lot of safety precautions are inconvenient.

<comment><USER5> The problem with walking is the same issue. Unless the lights are timed for a walking pace you will almost always have to wait 3-8 minutes at a light for your turn. Walking in a place with a lot of crosswalks is excruciatingly slow. Especially since a lot of crosswalk signals will only add you in on the next cycle of green rather than let you cross on a green right away like a car or a bicycle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In my opinion, the reason why small-wheel (wheel diameter ~6 in / 15 cm) e-scooters are dangerous, is their small wheels. The front wheel can suddenly stop on a a pothole, crack, storm drain, curb, etc, and the rider's momentum will fling them headfirst into the ground. I do recall reading some reports that if the front brake locks up, the same can happen, but I don't know if the risk of that is greater than on a bicycle.

(edit: bad metric conversion)

<comment><USER7> You are right about the wheels. When a big cycling charity ride — thousands of people — crosses railroad tracks at an angle, there are always multiple people who catch a wheel in the tracks and take a spill. For bike wheels you need that special condition of a narrow groove the right size, but for the tiny wheels on the older scooters, it's much easier for almost any angled imperfection in the pavement to grab your wheel or simply knock you off balance if you don't take care to hit it right. Anecdotally, it's something you have to be constantly aware of on imperfect city streets, and I took a bad spill when I hit something on the street that I didn't see in the dark.

That said... the biggest danger is always collisions with cars, which is the same danger you face on a bike, and the danger the article concentrates on. I almost got hit on my bike by a car turning right across the bike lane just yesterday, and the outcome was a matter of luck, not a matter of what vehicle I was on. The article mentions the "Three E's of Traffic Safety: engineering, enforcement, and education" and I think we need more of all three. The driver who almost hit me (I caught up to him and spoke to him) was an older man who looked to be from out of town and probably had no idea he needed to check his blind spot when turning right, because that simply wasn't a thing until the advent of bike lanes, not when he was learning to drive and maybe still not in the town or city where he lives.

EDIT: You're also right about braking. The wheels skid easier than bike wheels, and it's harder to keep your weight back and down so the braking force gets transferred to your body.

<comment><USER8> The danger is actually the bike lane, because it puts you in the drivers blind spot, that kind of accident is so common it even has a name, it is called right hook (in right driving countries). It is easy to learn to avoid collisions with cars while driving a bicycle, one of the main lessons is do not ride on the bike lane, specially in intersections you should be in front of the other driver not on its side.

<comment><USER9> This is only true for poorly designed intersections where an unprotected bike lane abruptly terminates and mixes with traffic. There are many intersection and lane designs that make right hook crashes nearly impossible.

<comment><USER8> The well designed bike lane does not exist, the whole idea of segregating by type of vehicle is wrong. And this is so because it contradicts the principles of traffic engineering. It is not done for safety but for political reasons.

<comment><USER9> Do you believe that banning big rigs from city streets is similarly wrong? What about separating walkers from cars with traffic, do we need to ban sidewalks and extend the automobile lanes all the way to the structure facades?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's pretty easy to observe escooters are roughly equivalent to bikes in terms of speed and visibility, and generally in terms of behavior as well. The biggest variable seems to be whether they ride on the sidewalk: I rarely see bikes on the sidewalk anywhere, but scooters seem to use it in many cities.

Just as with bikes the main problem is cars. Road networks designed as car sewers make life miserable for any non-car in close proximity. The single most important way to fix that is to lower the speed of the cars. Practically speaking you can only do that if you have a network of both streets (low speed shared use) and roads (high speed exclusive use), such that cars can get to a road and then go fast, rather than going slow everywhere.

But in North America what we have is worse, we've designed everything to be a "stroad," where houses, shops, schools, everything, are directly attached to high speed car sewers and nothing else. That's the most dangerous configuration you can make. The cars need and want to go fast, but they never know when someone is going to pop out of a driveway or into a crosswalk or there will be a bike in the road etc.

The number of scooters isn't really creating anything new, it's just highlighting the problems of Stroads by putting a lot more people into the life experience of a cyclist.

</comment><comment><USER11> > I am now convinced that the more appropriate question may be "Are our > streets safe?"

Ya think?

It's insane to mix car traffic and people.

It was deliberately normalized by a systematic campaign of propaganda. (This is true, it really happened: "The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime" (Adam Ruins Everything) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxopfjXkArM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxopfjXkArM) ) We went from "speed demons" to "jay walkers". Fast-forward several decades and more Americans have died from cars than from wars. (The rest of the world _also_ has horrific death rates from cars but more time of war.)

> These clips make the civil engineer in me cringe.

As well they should. We're looking at a system that is, inadvertently but fundamentally, designed to kill people.

> One potential solution is to add a bike box to increase visibility of > cyclists and scooterists.

And that's the Stockholm Syndrome, if you will, causing cognitive dissonance leading to blatantly illogical statements from otherwise sane and intelligent people.

Anthropologists point out that _every society_ succeeds at getting it's children to act like it's adults. Part of this is the normalization of whatever weird stuff your society/culture has going on. I'm reminded of what the New Guinea man said the missionary, "If God didn't want us to eat people He wouldn't have made them out of meat."

Putting car and non-car traffic on the same road is our cannibalism. "Once you see it..."

<comment><USER12> > It's insane to mix car traffic and people.

It is not. Non-car traffic just needs to be prioritized properly, that is being more important than car traffic. See: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woonerf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woonerf)

<comment><USER11> Okay _those_ look pretty decent, especially if they are designed with bollards and doglegs and such, so you can't get up to a dangerous velocity around people. It's still _a little_ insane, you're still going to get e.g. kids on bikes getting crushed by multi-ton metal horseless wagons, but it's not as insane as e.g. the clips in the article.

<comment><USER12> See also this: [https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2013/02/21/strict- liabili...](https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2013/02/21/strict-liability-in- the-netherlands/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> FWIW there is a law in Sweden that prevents any assisted motor transport going over 20KM/h, which is pretty normal cruising speed for a cyclist.

There is definitely a different perception here regards to safety because of it I think.

However, people are absolutely awful at parking these things. They're almost more dangerous stationary; because people just leave them in the middle of the walkway or cycle path sometimes.

<comment><USER14> 20km/h is a lot for newbies. I've seen a few users who couldn't drive their scooter safely. Curves taken too late and too wide. Also they use the roads freely and it's even worse than motorbikes.

<comment><USER13> 20KM/h is a lot for newbies? really? I don't think that's true, how do they handle bicycles (which easily exceed that).

<comment><USER14> apple and orange, a bicycle is nothing like an e-scooter and people are still learning them.

I swear you see people running into you even though the corner was 5m large.. they just mishandled the inertia and it wasn't an emergency turn. They had plenty of time they were just confused about the physics of it. Contrary to a bike, it's a tad harder to lean into the curve

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> mark-r It's a mistake to only consider fatal accidents. I fell while roller skating last year and hit my head. I had to be rushed to the hospital for brain surgery, and spent over a month there recovering. It took over 6 months to get back to work.

Obviously this experience has nothing to do with E-scooters, but it does point out how easy it is for a minor accident to mess up your life.

<comment><USER15> I'm glad you were able to recover, eventually. I hope it wasn't with too much change to your life :(

This is why I drive. All arguments aside about how cities "should" be, I don't live in one where I can magically waive a wand and make things exactly like I want them. And a permanent brain injury (or a major hand/arm injury!) would be really bad for my career.

So I also don't actively practice contact-martial-arts anymore.

<comment> mark-r Thanks for the well wishes. I think the health care professionals genuinely expected me to have more long-term issues than I ended up having. Early on they told me the key is to be serious about the therapy, and I was.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I was really hoping to see statistics regarding fatal accident per mile in comparison to other forms of transport, guess I'll have to dig deeper for it.

Makes sense that scooters would be roughly similar to bicycles though.

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't think they're particularly dangerous, the problem I have is them littering footpaths and thoroughfares (they frequently block most of the plaza in front of the BART station I use.

Then there are idiot riders going on and off the footpath essentially playing chicken with pedestrians - I had one this morning going the wrong way on the road scoot onto the footpath immediately in front of me while I was crossing the road, pushing me back into traffic.

So it's a combo of the companies littering the l scooters everywhere, and the riders being idiots and having no consequences for said idiocy.

<comment><USER9> Just curious, what is your opinion on street parking?

Since you're so mad that a public scooter for rent takes up 3 square feet of public space, you must be absolutely furious that a private car can take up 300 square feet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have a bicycle and e-scooter, so I can share how it "feels" (I strictly follow rules and never cross the road on a red light):

* Scooter is more safe than a bicycle (for a rider). In case of collision it's trivial to step off from the scooter - moving your body from the bicycle takes much more time.

* Bicycle is more maneuverable - bigger front wheel gives much more control.

* You need less of your attention to drive a scooter, so you have more "CPU time" to monitor the road situation.

* Making stops is significantly easier on scooter, so you have less temptation to quickly cross the road in a second before the red light.

* Speed should be limited on scooters and it should be "sealed" somehow to prevent "jailbreaking" \- after a few days you'll stop "feeling" max speed on e-scooter and you'll want it to go faster, even if you are already faster than any bicycle. It's really dangerous for pedestrians.

* By the previous reason, e-scooters should be restricted to bike lanes only.

* You have higher chances to sweat when walking, than when riding e-scooter. For some travelers it's important :)

Overall, e-scooter is a great tool to deliver you from A to B, but bicycle gives much more satisfaction from the process of riding itself.

<comment><USER19> > Scooter is more safe than a bicycle (for a rider).

Weird, I feel the opposite. You can't really just step off a scooter when its at any decent speed (I accidentally tried when the brakes failed on one… would not recommend.) Scooters feel way less stable, and have really weak braking compared to bicycles.

<comment><USER20> I guess it depends on what a "decent" speed is. all the rentals where I live top out just under 15mph. it's awkward to dismount at that speed, but it's not a big deal; you just end up running for a few steps.

<comment><USER19> Ha yeah, I literally attempted this and ran "a few steps" before face- planting.

<comment><USER18> Still better than face-stopping some truck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> No matter what the evidence says people will be decrying how dangers those are because they are perceived as a nuisance. Ultimately they move too fast for sidewalks, and too slow for streets making them a problem in either location. Bike lanes would seem to be the best place for them, but that comes with all of the issues with bike lanes in the city.

<comment><USER22> What are those issues? Shouldn't every city strive to create as many bike lanes as possible to improve non-car transport?

<comment><USER21> Delivery vehicles parked in the bike lanes. Cars cutting off the bike lanes at every intersection. No traffic light sensors in the bike lanes. Bike lanes that are poorly connected because they're being retrofitted into the city peacemeal and don't cover the major thoroughfares. These have been discussed to death in other articles, I didn't want to sidetrack this conversation with another digression.

<comment><USER23> At the risk of following the explicitly marked sidetrack/digression, those all sound like issues based on the assumption that only car traffic matters, rather than any issue inherent to bike lanes.

<comment><USER24> Until the police enforce other rules the reality is only car traffic matters. Bike lanes and the like are a cheap distraction to shut up a few noisy voters and look green.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Washington, DC doesn't seem like a great sample city from my experience. I don't have any empirical data but travel quite a bit and the density of scooter deployment in DC is significantly less than in cities such as Austin, TX. This is based exclusively on my ability to find / use these scooters and the density I've seen on the maps they provide.

I suspect there will also be cultural elements to each region they're deployed in that will have a significant impact on injuries (New Jersey drivers/scootees are wildly more aggressive than Minnesotan drivers/scootees).

Once again this is all anecdotal but trying to infer anything from one city is likely going to be just as flawed for any meaningful conclusion.

<comment><USER26> > Once again this is all anecdotal but trying to infer anything from one city > is likely going to be just as flawed for any meaningful conclusion.

Well, DC-based data is quite relevant to DC. You're providing reasons to do similar work in other areas, not reasons to dismiss this work.

<comment><USER25> The article is attempting to infer general safety data from a single intersection in Washingtion, DC. In that context I hold by my statement. Even for Washington, DC in general it likely isn't representative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> We have a ton of these in Austin. If they just dropped the allowed max speed by ~25% it would be a lot less horrifying to have them flying around.

<comment><USER22> Here in Germany all scooters have to be capped at 12.4mph. What's it in Austin?

<comment><USER25> They used to be able to hit 30mph when they were first deployed. They've reduced the max speed a couple of times and I think its now limited to about 15mph.

<comment><USER9> Lol what delusional bullshit is this? There aren't any electric scooter models that go above 15 and there never have been. Maybe the $2000 ones can get up to 20, but that's it. The Xaomi m365 that most rental companies have been using since their inception can go up to 15, and they all add a limiter that keeps it below 12.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Portland's Bureau of Transit did a 120-day study of scooters here which has some interest bits of information. The PDF is here: [https://www.portlandoregon.gov/transportation/article/709719](https://www.portlandoregon.gov/transportation/article/709719)

Findings include that injuries did rise, but most didn't warrant a hospital visit. There were no deaths during the study period.

Another interesting finding is that scooters strongly prefer riding on cycling infrastructure, especially neighborhood greenways and protected bike lanes, and are unlikely to ride on the sidewalk when those are present. As the degree of protection increases, however, more people ride on the sidewalk.

</comment><comment> jerome-jh No mention that e-scooters lack braking power to be safe. Many only have a rear brake, which is much less efficient than a front brake for stopping, for any vehicle. But having a front brake on a scooter would be very unsafe as well, because it would be too easy to flip over the front wheel. E-scooters cannot be made safe beyond 10mph/15kph.

Ever wondered why bicycles have large wheels?

</comment><comment><USER28> What do you guys think about e-bikes? I feel like they are a good compromise between bikes and these escooters

<comment><USER29> I own two scooters (cheap Xiamoi, pricey Boosted Rev). Between the two of us, we have two mid-upper range e-bikes. I've ridden both extensively to work and elsewhere. My conclusion is that e-bikes are the future.

Scooters are easy to ride, but hard to ride _competently_. If you know how to ride a bike, you're unlikely to fall off unless you hit something. Not so on a scooter. I hit a manhole cover on the way to work one morning, and ended up standing next to my scooter with a broken helmet in my hand, while not being 100% sure how to get to work (I'm fine now). I fall of bicycles only when I a patch of black ice, or something solid.

I can load my bicycle up with front and rear panniers, a trunk, and carry enough to do some shopping. Scooter: whatever fits in the backpack.

Scooter: hands on the handlebars at all times. If you get good, you can carefully choose the smooth spots in the road to take a quick second and scratch your nose. Bicycle: go ahead, take another sip of that coffee from your handlebar coffee cup holder while you cruise down the trail. Hell, take _both_ hands off the bars to zip the jacket up.

I love my Boosted Rev, it's well made and a hoot to ride. But it's a recreational vehicle. It's the impractical Lotus Elise that has room for two people and a messenger bag, but what fun to drive. For real transportation work, the bike comes out.

<comment><USER30> I own an ebike (Ancheer) and a escooter (Xiaomi) as well; cool to see your analysis here.

You're dead right about ability to handle bumps. With my scooter, I will watch the road in front of me very carefully to scan for rough areas; there's a fair bit more of cognitive load. And this is even with air tires. I might disagree with on what's the future; there's two things that make them so amazing:

\- Their ability to coexist with pedestrians. I'm very easily to weave in and out of traffic on sidewalks and maintain my safety and that of those around me. It's a lighter foot print with much lower clearance.

\- Portability. I can fold it up, take in an uber, take it in a train (without doing the excuse me dance in and out). Bikes, electronic ones especially, aren't there yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I wonder if those stats should be normalized for velocity. Bikes can go 20MPH, scooters less, pedestrians 1-3.

Velocity means less time in the intersection. But it also means less time to observe their approach, less time to react and less likelihood to even know you are going to have to react.

<comment><USER9> It doesn't mean less time in the intersection if the cyclist is starting from standing. Bicycles are slow to get up to speed, motor vehicles, cars and e-scooters, will always get through the intersection before a cyclist will. That's why they run red lights so often: cold starts take more effort and time and can be less safe than running it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I lived directly in the scooter epicenter. Mission Beach, CA.

They are dangerous if not throttled down and geofenced from walkway.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQv6YP5UGV8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQv6YP5UGV8)

</comment><comment><USER33> Of course they're not, and anyone concern-trolling about e-scooters while accepting cars as a normal and irreplaceable part of our streetscapes isn't really concerned about safety.</comment>


Show HN: Minimalist VPS Provider with Project Atomic / CoreOS Images - <AUTHOR> https://kihihosting.com <comment><AUTHOR> To note, I started this as a frustration to current VPS providers. I wanted a minimalist, straight to the point, fast deploying VPS service with no bullshit.

Myself and another developer ended up creating our own provider from scratch with our own equipment co-located at a reliable DC.

In all we used: Back-end: libvirt + kvm virtualization + ruby + go Front-end: siantra (control panel), WHCMS (billing), all integrated into one (sinatra is reversed proxied via lighttpd) Background / workers: resque + goworkers + some ruby workers

We're the first to introduce Atomic Project images.

We're still developing and continuing to add features. One of them being hourly billing as well as scaling.

<comment><USER2> Interesting options, I like that you offer CoreOS and other "fancy" options. Also nice that you accept an SSH key, way to many services mail passwords around.

From the FAQ: > Is this a contract?

> No it is not, you may cancel at any time.

Then how would you call it/what legal construct does describe the relationship with your customers? Maybe wording it as "Can I cancel anytime? Yes." would work better.

EDIT: removed second question, misread something

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I just want to say that this VPS provider is _fantastic_. It's so cheap and easy to get running. I'm just discovering CoreOS and Docker, and having a lot of fun in the process. I highly recommend this service.

</comment><comment><USER4> I used Kihi a few months ago. The only reason I stopped using them is because I went on vacation and forgot about it. In ~1 month of using their service, I had one problem that was resolved within an hour.

</comment><comment><USER5> How is this different from something like Digital Ocean?

<comment><AUTHOR> At the moment, there's not much difference other than Atomic Images / Canadian location.

As we move forward however, we'll be focusing more on containerization- oriented features such as integrated support for clustered deployments (RancherOS, Kubernetes) and the ability to deploy multiple master/minions at once with metric collection.</comment></comment>


New Pinebook Pro Will Challenge Google Chromebooks for $199 - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2019/01/30/the-new-pinebook-pro-will-challenge-google-chromebooks-for-199/ <comment><USER2> If this actually retails for 199, I will be very surprised.</comment>


Getting Started with Python for Data Scientists - <AUTHOR> http://datacommunitydc.org/blog/2013/03/getting-started-with-python-for-data-scientists/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=getting-started-with-python-for-data-scientists

<comment><USER2> You can get all these tools easily from the Anaconda Python Distribution, which is free, well supported,and includes all packages mentioned plus way more, including things like scikits learn. I work for continuum

<http://continuum.io/downloads.html>

<comment><USER3> I can't tell from the front page or the documentation, but which version of python does it install? (I have a bit of a fragile setup at the moment and too lazy to spin up a VM)

<comment><USER4> Here you go:

        $ python --version
        Python 2.7.3 :: Anaconda 1.4.0 (64-bit)

It installs to a directory so you basically just add it to your path to get it working it doesn't change anything else on your install.

Beware though that you don't use virtualenvs with it but you use their tool conda to create your environments

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The list appears to be missing the great scikitlearn (<http://scikit- learn.org/stable/auto_examples/index.html>).

</comment><comment><USER6> The Enthought Python Distribution (EPD) includes most of these packages including but not limited to

        sklearn
        pandas
        numpy
        scipy
        matplotlib
        statsmodels

and much more. It also has a 1-click installer. It has a free academic version.

<http://www.enthought.com/products/epd.php>

PS - I am not associated with Enthought in any way whatsoever.

<comment><USER7> Does easy_install not install these them for some reason?

<comment><USER8> scipy/numpy has compile time dependencies which can take some time to resolve.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Python Tools for Visual Studio <http://pytools.codeplex.com/> is one of the best Python development environments out there and wasn't mentioned. The code completion is probably second-to-none. Nice video on the editing experience [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CoGsSlrxKk&hd=1](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CoGsSlrxKk&hd=1)</comment>


How China Became a Cigarette Superpower - <AUTHOR> https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(19)31187-0/fulltext?rss=yes <comment><USER2> This is one aspect that the rest of the world lags begin the US: smoking regulation and anti-smoking campaigns.</comment>


Electronic music reduces host attack and mating success in dengue mosquitoes - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30922800 <comment><USER2> Fuck you to elsevier link to full text: [http://sci- hub.tw/https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/p...](http://sci- hub.tw/https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0001-706X\(19\)30120-2)

<comment><USER3> Do you have a general technique for finding full papers? I often find myself at such a crossroad

<comment><USER4> Copy url to sci hub, simple as that. Or contact one of the authors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Im not much into the kids music these days, but I looked this one up on Youtube and I'll admit, if i had to listen to it, I'd reconsider coitus as well.

<comment><USER6> I am into good (read that, musical, non-repetitive, not mindlessly derivative) electronic music, and can't agree more. I tried to like Skrillex. I don't get it.

<comment><USER7> I would love some recommendations.

<comment><USER6> Above and Beyond, Odesza, Axwell, Steve Roach (if ambient is your thing), Kaskade, Daft Punk, Armin Van Buuren, Ferry Corsten.

By the way, by "non-repetitive" I don't mean no repetition at all, but that there is movement in the music. It may carry the same theme and beat, but it's evolving and going somewhere, and not just the same exact bar repeated 15 times in a row.

<comment> atom-morgan Good recommendations and I'd add an additional upvote for Above and Beyond. I feel like it's a good entrance into EDM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's official, mosquitos rather face extinction than listen to "Brostep"[1]... I heard ya little guys..

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubstep#Brostep_and_American_d...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubstep#Brostep_and_American_developments)

</comment><comment><USER9> The article didn't mention anything about the volume at which they played the music. It'd be interesting to know because I live next to a lake and could benefit from less feeding mosquitoes!

<comment><USER10> Solar power this, and it would be even more environmentally friendly!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEsQ4_KiBWQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEsQ4_KiBWQ)

<comment><USER11> Not from a noise pollution perspective :)

<comment><USER10> In the city, I find the noise of a fan relaxing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Weird, it causes the same reaction in humans...

<comment><USER13> You seem to be ignoring the rave scene

<comment><USER14> Always a smart move.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > The observation that such music can delay host attack, reduce blood feeding, > and disrupt mating provides new avenues for the development of music-based > personal protective and control measures against Aedes-borne diseases.

And what about the effects of noise pollution on insect populations?

<comment><USER14> Never mind that. How about the effects of noise pollution on the human populations?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not the best day to post a headline like this one :)

<comment><USER17> Why?

<comment><USER18> Because it sounds like an April fools joke

<comment><USER17> Man im so out if it. Had flu all week, barely know the date.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Link to the music in question (Skrillex - Scary Monsters And Nice Sprites):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSeNSzJ2-Jw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSeNSzJ2-Jw)

You know, for science.

</comment><comment><USER20> Maybe this is the real reason they moved the Ultra Music Festival to Virginia Key haha

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't always look for the publication date before I skim the abstract, but...

</comment><comment><USER22> On the other hand, earworms reproduction is explosive in presence of electronic music. You can't have all.

</comment><comment><USER23> Dancing is better than sex

<comment><USER24> Having sex in the rave-family from the electronic scene in berlin of the 90s is still worth a minute to remember (at 250bpm), of course.</comment></comment>


Netflix's Letter to Shareholders [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://s22.q4cdn.com/959853165/files/doc_financials/quarterly_reports/2019/q2/Q2-19-Shareholder-Letter-FINAL.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> > Paid membership grew by 2.7m, less than the 5.5m in Q2 a year ago and our > 5.0m forecast.

> Much of our domestic, and eventually global, Disney catalog, as well as > Friends , The Office , and some other licensed content will wind down over > the coming years, freeing up budget for more original content. [...] From > what we've seen in the past when we drop strong catalog content (Starz and > Epix with Sony, Disney, and Paramount films, or 2nd run series from Fox, for > example) our members shift over to enjoying our other great content.</comment>


Sail Programming Language Tutorial (1976) - <AUTHOR> http://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/decus_20tap1_198111/01/decus/20-0002/sail.tut.html

<comment><USER2> If the use of the underscore character ("_") for assignment statements seems odd, keep in mind that the Sail computer's native character set included a left-arrow character, and it's what was really used for assignment. The present document is clearly an ascii-ized version of the real manual, for use on non-Sail machines (such as regular Dec PDP-20s running Tops-20). Other special characters included less-than-or-equal, not-equal, intersection, union, etc. Check out [http://www.saildart.org/allow/sail-charset- utf8.html](http://www.saildart.org/allow/sail-charset-utf8.html) for the details. And if you want to see what the tutorial really looked like, there's a scanned pdf at www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA042494

<comment><USER3> My language uses left arrow* for type annotation, it is simply typed as <\- and the editor renders it as a unicode left arrow. Assignment is =, but it is rendered as a unicode :=; equality is == but rendered as a more compact unicode ==. Check out:

[https://youtu.be/__28QzBdyBU](https://youtu.be/__28QzBdyBU)

Back the future, I guess.

* I wanted to use Pascal-style ":" for type annotations, but I based my syntax on Python, which uses ":" for blocks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> The precursors to TeX (1978-82) and Metafont (1979-83) are good examples of complete, non-trivial Sail programs. Both were written by Donald Knuth; the sources for prototype-TeX are in [http://www.saildart.org/[TEX,DEK]](http://www.saildart.org/\[TEX,DEK\]) (see the latest rev of each TEX*.SAI file); while prototype-MF is in [http://www.saildart.org/[MF,DEK]](http://www.saildart.org/\[MF,DEK\])</comment>


We Are In The Collaborative Soft Era & The Mail Client Is Still In The Stone Age - <AUTHOR> http://blog.frontapp.com/weve-entered-the-collaborative-software-era-and-the-mail-client-is-still-in-the-stone-age/

<comment><USER2> Can we expect an integration with HipChat/Campfire for notifications ?

</comment><comment><USER3> Can we expect an automatic integration with Trello?

</comment><comment><USER4> Time to change!

</comment><comment><USER5> Nice one!</comment>


Physicists build fractal shape out of electrons - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2018-11-physicists-fractal-electrons.html <comment><USER2> It's not really fair to call fractal dimension a real spatial dimension- the sierpinski triangle is still a 2d object but the fractal dimension (a heuristic metric) is 1.58</comment>


Hyundai's 2015 Genesis will automatically brake for speed cameras - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/185365-hyundais-2015-genesis-will-automatically-brake-for-speed-cameras-awesome-or-a-terrifying-misuse-of-technology <comment><USER2> Fatal accident lawsuits in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...

Reasoning: people are going to rely on this to save them from speeding tickets. So they're going to drive too fast. Meanwhile, other idiots who _don 't_ have it will also drive too fast. It's only a matter of time before someone in a Genesis enters a camera zone and auto-brakes while another speeding idiot on a cellphone is tail-gating them. Result: a high-speed pile- up.

Something not-dissimilar happened with the first roll-out of ABS on cars; drivers who knew their brakes were super-strong drove too fast and actually ended up with a _higher_ accident rate, at least at first. But ABS was a pure safety feature (to prevent your brakes locking up on a slippery surface or if engaged too hard). This ... I lack words to describe how inadvisable I think it is to seek to avoid a small fine in return for an elevated risk of high- speed vehicle-to-vehicle collisions.

(The risk can be reduced if the Genesis has _rear_ facing radar to prevent shunts, or begins to brake gently some distance ahead of the camera zone. It's also mitigated if tail-gating idiots drive cars with adaptive cruise control -- that maintains constant separation from the vehicle ahead regardless of speed. But as not all cars have the latest features it'll take an automobile generation for this stuff to spread out and become ubiquitous. Meanwhile, sooner or later, people will die.)

<comment><USER3> Seat belts and bicycle helmets cause the same phenomena: accident rate goes up when introduced/required before going back to normal after people adjust their risk taking to the increased safety envelope.

<comment><USER4> Do you have a reference to this? I've heard this argument before, but haven't been able to find any hard stats.

<comment><USER5> The buzzword is "risk compensation". There's a whole article on Wikipedia about it (and lots of studies) but, to make a long story short, "measures, designed to improve traffic safety, may bring along negative consequences in a way that individuals increase the riskiness of their driving behaviour because they feel safer (Dulisse, 1997)"

<comment><USER6> With cycling, in particular, it's not just individuals making judgments about their own safety, either; a 2006 UK study shows that drivers passing cyclists give helmet wearers less clearance, perhaps out of some subconscious sense that they'd do better if they get hit, or maybe that, being risk-averse helmet-wearers, they're less likely to lash out and do something unexpected. (see [http://www.helmets.org/walkerstudy.htm](http://www.helmets.org/walkerstudy.htm) )

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Every GPS unit sold in South Korea already come with a database of every speed camera in the country, and the database can be easily updated every few weeks. Connecting this to the speed controller is only the logical next step. I'm actually surprised that it took Hyundai so long to connect the dots.

I don't know about the US and UK, but whenever the Korean police installs a speed camera, they put up a clear warning sign 500-1000m before the camera. There is absolutely no secret or surprise about the location of a speed trap, and the police apparently doesn't care to catch drivers by surprise, either. Someone probably figured out that drivers tend to slow down when they see the warning sign, and do so gradually instead of suddenly since the actual camera is still a quarter mile away. In other words, transparency about the location of speed traps actually increases road safety, even though it probably reduces police revenue.

<comment><USER8> > I don't know about the US and UK, but whenever the Korean police installs a > speed camera, they put up a clear warning sign 500-1000m before the camera. > There is absolutely no secret or surprise about the location of a speed > trap, and the police apparently doesn't care, either.

Of course they care. That's why the sign is there.

The objective of a speed trap is to make drivers _slow down_ , not punish them. If it's hidden and the driver _does_ get ticked it means it failed at it's goal because you had a speeding car on the road anyway.

<comment><USER9> Then these signs would be all over the states, and cops would be putting up signs around their speed traps.

<comment><USER10> In the USA, speeding tickets are about revenue, which is why they hide their speed traps.

<comment><USER11> In the UK, fixed speed cameras are often preceded by warning signs. Not so in Australia - I think we've had cases of them being hidden in roadside bins. It's common to see a police car with speed gun behind bushes at the side of the road.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is going to confuse the hell out of people who buy it second hand in 10 years time, especially if the maps go out of date.

<comment><USER13> Well to be honest I was expecting something more advanced, like a military grade LIDAR detector of optical lens & cams.

And some cams emit infareds so there are many means to detect them.

<comment><USER14> Usually detecting them can be too late. They can clock your speed and take your picture extremely fast and work in a very focused area usually.

The detector would have to catch "Scatter" from it from cars going through it or whatever. Which, IR is emitted from many sources, so it couldn't be used as a reliable way to detect it.

Also, a lot of the triggers are by video cameras. If you have ever setup any basic home security system(Like Q-See), you can choose areas as "Triggers" for recording. The operators of the cameras basically draw out areas that act as trigger zones. See this as something of an example: [http://rhythmtraffic.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/10/WebUI.jp...](http://rhythmtraffic.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/10/WebUI.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder how they did their market research to arrive at a position where it avoids being detected breaching a limit but doesn't avoid breaching the limit when there is no camera around. It seems a fairly cynical position to adopt to appeal to a specific segment of the market. Seem very similar to a DUI insurance policy that was briefly offered in Australia (you pay premiums, caught out DUI, no problem, insurance pays).

I'd much prefer to have three options:

1 _Turned off_ \- I'll take responsibility for the vehicle myself and bear the consequences myself

2 _Their proposal_ \- I'll let the machine avoid the tickets and when nobody is looking do what I please

3 No speeding - The vehicle will never speed, _I 'll never get a speeding ticket under any circumstances_, camera there or not, in fact Hyundai will pay the fine as it will be simply impossible to incur one and they'll put their money on the line to make sure the damn thing works.

</comment><comment><USER16> Surely if the intention of the car manufacturer was honest it would simply prevent the car from ever exceeding the speed limit _anywhere_ , not just when you're passing a speed camera. Just autobraking for cameras is a ridiculous case of overfitting for the wrong fitness metric.

<comment><USER17> Nobody, including the police, thinks that is a good idea. It isn't illegal to make a pass over the speed limit, for example. Or if it is, it doesn't matter.

Judicious application of speed, including over the speed limit, makes the road safer for everyone.

<comment><USER16> "It isn't illegal to make a pass over the speed limit"

... I think you're probably mistaken. Seems unlikely the police will overlook your driving at 50 in a 35 zone just because you're doing it on the wrong side of the road towards oncoming traffic to pass someone dawdling along at 30. That would be an odd loophole.

Also would suggest that freeway speed limits only apply in the 'slow' lane, since all the other lanes are technically passing lanes....

<comment><USER17> Ok, I didn't claim it's legal to make a pass at 200mph in a 35mph zone. I am not about to look up the statutes, especially as they are different in every state, but my memory is that at the end of the day speed is legally up to your judgement and the officer's judgement.

95% of the time the posted speed limit is treated as "The Limit", but in circumstances like passing we continue to use "judgement" as the metric, both on part of us and the officer.

So if you pass at 70mph in a 35mph, an officer can say "That is reckless", and if you pass at 40mph he can say "That is reasonable".

Remember, it behooves no-one for passing speeds to be +0.5mph. If you want to overtake someone and you cannot have an appreciable speed differential, the pass will take a very long time which is more risky.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You could imagine drones of various kinds being pretty good at taking auto speed readings while still being way cheaper than officers with radar guns. My money's on that as the next strategy once fixed camera placements become completely ineffective.

</comment><comment><USER18> Of all the possible reasons to introduce intelligent breaking, this is the worst. Risking accidents to save money equivalent to 3 large coffees?

<comment><USER7> That would depend on how quickly the brakes are applied. Hyundai ain't stupid. They'll probably try to make it as smooth as possible so that the car behind you has enough time to react. The occupants of the Genesis probably won't appreciate a sudden jerk, either.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, I mean the computer would be aware of the speed trap miles BEFORE reaching it. It has plenty of time to a soft slow down of the car.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So what happens when it detects a speed zone in the middle of winter when I'm on a patch of black ice? The result is often a spinout resulting in totaling the car on a guard rail or a tree or a snowbank. I'll pass. Braking and acceleration are too important for maintaining road traction. Why would I compromise that to avoid a speeding ticket?

</comment><comment><USER21> First, get past the obvious benefit of a seemingly unfair advantage for avoiding traffic tickets, such as reduced costs due to traffic fines or insurance premiums.

Then get past the obvious harm of a seemingly unfair advantage for avoiding traffic tickets, such as reduced freedom to drive "too fast" and reduced revenues for law enforcement budgets [1].

The end result of tech like this (including the ultimate step of speed governors preventing speeding) really _seems_ to be all of us sharing safer roads, and fewer of us getting hurt or dying in traffic accidents.

This seems pretty good at first sight, but unfortunately, it leaves open one problematic question; if everyone drove at the speed limit (and fully stopped at stop signs/lights --feasible to enforce with tech), would there be fewer accidents?

Also, I wonder if there would be more or less traffic congestion?

[1] [http://www.networkworld.com/article/2226966/opensource- subne...](http://www.networkworld.com/article/2226966/opensource- subnet/driverless-cars-could-cripple-law-enforcement-budgets.html)

<comment><USER15> The odd thing is that once the automated/autonomous vehicles reach above the 10% level the consensus is (cant find a stellar ref but [http://www.usfav.com/publications/TAVI_8-CapacityPinjari.pdf](http://www.usfav.com/publications/TAVI_8-CapacityPinjari.pdf) will do for a start) that we'll see marked improvements beyond 10% expected in

\- less traffic congestion and increased roadway capacity beyond what can be obtained with human drivers

\- 28% reduction in fuel usage on the whole fleet

\- marked reduction in crashes beyond a 10% reduction expected

<comment><USER21> Thanks for the link to that white paper. I've skimmed the intro, and then skipped to the end for their conclusions. I'll read the whole thing later tonight, but as expected, the conclusion states itself to be speculative, without supporting data, and in need of more research. From the pdf:

> _" many experts speculate that the overall benefits outweigh the potential > negative externalities."_

> _" Additional research is necessary on a number of aspects related to AVs, > including ..."_

Like everyone, I _really want_ to believe having more automated and autonomous vehicles on the road will result in fewer accidents, reduced congestion, and other benefits, but all we really have at the moment is (seemingly well reasoned) speculation since we lack supporting data. Until we have supporting data from repeatable experiments, whether the speculated benefits will both materialize outweigh the negative impacts should remain open questions. The open questions will get answered, eventually, but it will take a few decades and buying into the all the speculated hype at this early and unproven stage is harmful.

I guess I'd rather be cautiously optimistic until we have more useful and repeatable results.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> On the one hand this is fucking terrifying on the other I'm off to tag everything with stupid speed limits. Five mph on the motorway and 70 outside schools.

<comment><USER23> I can't locate it now, but there was an article I read somewhere that talked about the un-expected side-effects of speed cameras.

Was along the lines that people get used to where speed cameras are located (along their daily commute, etc), and either slow-down in that one particular area (positive effect), or slam on the brakes and cause accidents (negative effect). Both resulting in fewer traffic citations, andd causing the cost-to- maintain the cameras (often contracted to 3rd parties) to increase. Some cities in the Bay Area of California have removed the camera inside the boxes, stopped paying the contractor to maintain the cameras, and just left the metal enclosures in place -- with the same results.

(maybe hidden moral - humans are creatures of habit?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> So if I was a local council member, I'd be starting up a cyber warfare division to deliberately insert false camera locations and remove legitimate ones, along with a program of moving the actual cameras around on a random rotation.

Well, that and ensuring that there are more marked police cars patrolling the roads.

</comment><comment><USER24> Stupid.

Speed cameras exist to stop idiots killing innocent people.

Yeah police profit. Who cares. They need all the help they can get with crystal meth literally turning a fair slice of the world into psycho zombies.

<comment><USER14> Speed cameras solely exist to generate profit. A road can, and does, have speeders all day and not a single accident.

I'm still going to hit a person/car if they do something stupid on the road if I am speeding or not.

If you need any supporting facts that they are only for profit, there is more research in red-light cameras. They have shown that they can cause _more_ accidents because people try to avoid going through the intersection "just in case" they don't make it all the way through and get a ticket. This causes aggressive braking and accidents. It also doesn't help that a lot of states will shorten the length of the Yellow light at these intersections to ensure more people will go through them. Yay for safety.

As for speeding cameras, my state recently took one down due to backlash because they installed a camera 100ft before a speed increase sign. The "tickets" (I quote that because they are usually fines, and not really tickets, and usually do not cause points to be put on your license if your state has that system) included a photograph of their car passing the new speed limit sign.

The state admitted no wrong doing, and believe it was a great spot to put the camera. If I remember correctly it was in a 25mph zone that went to 45mph. It would ticket cars upto the 45mph sign for going 30mph in a 25mph zone. While "technically" correct, it's pretty obvious the motivation of wanting to put it there.

edit: found it for you, [http://www.wtop.com/58/3423357/Police-question- College-Park-...](http://www.wtop.com/58/3423357/Police-question-College-Park- speed-cams-fairness)

<comment><USER25> More directly, there are devices that have been shown to increase safety far better than speed cameras -- those electronic signs that ready your current speed back to you (and flash if it's too high).

<comment><USER26> The problem with fines and fees is that it puts a price on things, which is why those electric signs work so much better than speeding cameras.

Sure, a $100, $200, or more ticket is expensive and a lot of money to some people it allows the people who can afford it to easily rationalize the behavior.

"It's only $200 bucks it's clearly not that big of an issue, if it was a real danger it would be more expensive"

However the speed blinkers let you know you're doing something wrong and these condition you to feel guilty therefore slowing down.

<comment><USER3> Most people don't worry about the speeding ticket cost, but the increased insurance premium that goes with it.

<comment><USER27> Agreed, insurance premium hikes are big compared to the fine. It's usually cheaper to hire a lawyer...though that also costs more than the fine.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Nokia is buying digital health firm Withings for $191M - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/26/11507226/nokia-acquire-withings <comment><AUTHOR> Found out about it this morning when I got this via email from Withings assuring me that everything will keep working: [http://www.withings.com/us/en/withings- nokia](http://www.withings.com/us/en/withings-nokia)</comment>


Attack Gave Chinese Hackers Privileged Access to U.S. Systems - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/21/us/attack-gave-chinese-hackers-privileged-access-to-us-systems.html <comment><USER2> > "This was classic espionage, just on a scale we've never seen before from a > traditional adversary," one senior administration official said. "And it's > not a satisfactory answer to say, 'We found it and stopped it,' when we > should have seen it coming years ago."

Doesn't the NSA doesn't operate at such scales? Or is it just that the US doesn't expect adversaries to be as capable?

>[Ms. Archuleta's] performance in classified briefings also frustrated several lawmakers. "I don't get the sense at all they understand the problem," said Representative Jim Langevin, a Rhode Island Democrat, who called for Ms. Archuleta's resignation. "They seem like deer in the headlights."

They were arguably asking the wrong person. But it is a bad sign if no security experts report to her.

> At the personnel office, a set of new intrusion tools used on the system set > off an alarm in March, Ms. Seymour said. The F.B.I. and the United States > Computer Emergency Response Team, which works on network intrusions, found > evidence that the hackers had obtained the credentials used by people who > run the computer systems.

That's standard procedure for the NSA. No surprise there.

> "They are casting a very wide net," John Hultquist, a senior manager of > cyberespionage threat intelligence at iSight Partners, said of the hackers > targeting of Americans' personal data. "We're in a new space here and we > don't entirely know what they're trying to do with it."

They're looking for vulnerabilities. Again, no surprise.

There's also the fact that most hardware comes from China now. As they get up to speed on firmware exploits, the fit will really be hitting the shan.

<comment><USER3> > Doesn't the NSA doesn't operate at such scales? Or is it just that the US > doesn't expect adversaries to be as capable?

NSA does. And the USG is well-aware that China and Russia and even Iran could do this too.

So regarding _why_ things were left way at OPM, your guess is as good as mine... I mean "just don't let China hack in" is pretty unachievable (they even got Google a few years back, after all), but at least structure your networks to make it so that hacking one database doesn't give away the keys to everything, move highly-sensitive material off-network completely, etc.

But these things require changes, which requires money (and brainpower), and buy-in from dozens of other government agencies, and probably more things besides.

None of this is to _excuse_ OPM--I would expect my government leaders to suck resources from elsewhere if need be, accept temporary degradation to other systems that interfaced to this personnel database, or in short to _do whatever they had to do to pro-actively address the threat they knew was out there_. And they didn't.

> That's standard procedure for the NSA. No surprise there.

Should be "That's standard procedure for state espionage agencies". I mean, if you're approaching this from the perspective that China is doing this only because NSA is out there you're already misinformed. Half of the reason NSA _has_ been doing this is because Russia and China and friends will be doing things like this anyways.

In China's case especially they drastically re-oriented their entire military and geo-strategic outlook following the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis. This incident occurred between 1995-1996, and culminated in the U.S. sending _2_ full carrier strike groups near Taiwan, one of the groups actually sailed through the Strait of Taiwan, sending a pointed message about who had military supremacy in the South China Sea.

The rise in Chinese military power many of spoken of effectively started here... but they didn't limit their buildup to "hard" forms of national power.

Indeed, given the reliance on so much of the global electronics supply chain on Chinese factories there's a lot of opportunity for appearances of SHTF...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not a fan of the Times so take that into consideration, but this strikes me as an attempt to play up the cyberwar angle and whitewash the astonishing incompetence at the OPM. Namely, Ars has a source saying that sysadmin roles were outsourced (!) to at least one person in Argentina and one other person _in China_ :

[http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/06/encryption-would- not...](http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/06/encryption-would-not-have- helped-at-opm-says-dhs-official/)

> A consultant who did some work with a company contracted by OPM to manage > personnel records for a number of agencies told Ars that he found the Unix > systems administrator for the project "was in Argentina and his co-worker > was physically located in the [People's Republic of China]. Both had direct > access to every row of data in every database: they were root. Another team > that worked with these databases had at its head two team members with PRC > passports. I know that because I challenged them personally and revoked > their privileges. From my perspective, OPM compromised this information more > than three years ago and my take on the current breach is 'so what's new?'"

This is speculation, but I'm going to guess that the sysadmin in China either was an intelligence agent from the beginning, or was coerced into handing over root access to the Chinese military. Not very sophisticated at all, as is the case for a depressing number of high-profile hacks.

<comment><USER5> This is a good example of journalists forcing stories into the narrative most likely to get eyeballs rather than the narrative that fits the most.

You make this a political incompetence story, you lose probably 25% of the readership, including the writing and ediforial staff at the times. But hey, powerful politicians of all stripes love a good cyberwar story.

Meanwhile the PRC will funnel money into both parties during the upcoming election so that they keep influence no matter the results.

No conspiracy required, just a few big players acting in their own local best interests.

<comment><USER4> Do me a favor, any time you are inclined to read "conspiracy" in what I'm saying look up how Julian Assange famously used the word here:

[http://cryptome.org/0002/ja-conspiracies.pdf](http://cryptome.org/0002/ja- conspiracies.pdf)

I think you'll find we have a similar understanding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Imagine if some of the NSAs offensive budget had been used to update and secure these old systems instead. In terms of security I believe that the pay- off would have been much greater.

</comment><comment><USER7> Well, that certainly gives me boundless confidence in the idea of expanding the reach of the US security apparatus to encryption backdoors. They can clearly secure and manage all that data.

</comment><comment><USER8> Chilling testimony where the OPM director is being grilled.

Apparently this information was accessed due to mere OPM incompetence. One has to wonder how she's not fired yet:

[http://adam.curry.com/enc/20150618193418_opmdirectorkatherin...](http://adam.curry.com/enc/20150618193418_opmdirectorkatherinearchulettacyberencryptionconsultant.mp3)

<comment><USER9> This audio clip doesn't prove anything about her personal competence, and the congressman grilling her is grandstanding.

What's she supposed to say? If the OPM shut down their systems until everything was rewritten from scratch up to some security auditors' standards, the same congressman would be flipping tables because all the agencies relying on OPM's systems' operation would also grind to a halt, costing the precious taxpayers X gajilion dollars per day.

Anyone else put in as director of the OPM would have done the same thing she did, and high-level decisions are being made as an institution based on internal discussion, not imposed from top down. There's really nothing satisfactory that someone in her position is going to be able to say after an incident like this other than "we're doing a thorough investigation of the break in and we're doing everything we can to fix this as soon as possible."

Does the OPM undervalue security? Clearly. That's an institutional problem though, not the director's personal problem. More generally, most institutions don't sufficiently value security, including government agencies everywhere in the world at every level, corporations, etc. Doing security right is expensive, and fixing up systems from the 70s and 80s without service interruption is really really expensive.

As another commenter mentioned, it would be pretty great if we could divert some substantial portion of the ridiculous budget the NSA has been getting to build a massive database of everyones nude photos and web search history toward securing domestic computer systems instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I was affected and compromised by this.

In response I was given 18 months of credit monitoring, where during registration it confirmed my identity by asking me questions like "What street did you grow up on?" and "What city does your nearest sibling live in?"

I find that pretty ironic. I'm just grateful that I don't have children yet.

</comment><comment><USER11> How long before they roll back to paper?</comment>


TFS MVP Deleted Comments on His Blog - <AUTHOR> http://flux88.com/blog/a-deleted-response-to-a-tfs-blog-post/

<comment><USER2> Why is this news? Why would anybody be expected to care that a blogger deleted a comment?

Reading this guy's complaint, it sounds like he even got a nice email explanation of why the comment was deleted. What more could he possibly expect?

There is no absolute right to free speech on the internet. This author doesn't appear to realize that. The "mvp" in question gets to decide what shows up on his website. That's the end of the story.

<comment><USER3> > Why is this news? Why would anybody be expected to care that a blogger > deleted a comment?

Oftentimes, when stories do well on one news site (see link below...), people cross post them to others, because hey, why not get more HN karma too?

I agree with you. Not very newsworthy. It even sorted itself out.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/954yd/no_offens...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/954yd/no_offense_but_i_deleted_your_comment_i_make_way/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For the non-MSFT crowd, "TFS" = Team Foundation Server, a Visual Studio suite of testing and development tools (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Foundation_Server>). "MVP" is MSFT's voted position that is a recognized person who contributes to the community. MVPs are for a particular piece of software so to be an "TFS MVP" means the original blogger supposedly contributes to the TFS community.

<comment><USER5> MVP == Most Valuable Professional

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> An update: The original blogger, Ben Day, posted a mea culpa here: <http://blog.benday.com/archive/2009/07/27/23233.aspx>

</comment><comment><USER6> It's his blog. He can do what he wants. Personally, I would no longer visit.</comment>


Founder of Russian social network caught in web of criminal accusations - <AUTHOR> http://rt.com/news/durov-vkontakte-police-purchase-015/

<comment><AUTHOR> The fact that in most of the ex-USSR countries there is too much non-sense in business just pisses me off.

Durov is most probably being threatened due to his disagreements with the Russian government.</comment>