Demon in the Freezer - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/17/opinion/errol-morris-demon-in-the-freezer.html <comment><USER2> There is another fantastic book called "Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World--Told from the Inside by the Man Who Ran It " By Ken Alibek.

For example, the USSR supposedly had an annual production of weaponized Smallpox measured in tons, which is a ridiculous amount of virus.

<comment><USER3> I was under the impression that this author had been mostly discredited due to his discussions on the Soviets combining various other contagions and smallpox being highly improbable [1].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Alibek#Criticism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Alibek#Criticism)

<comment><USER2> I think he fluffed the book up a bit, but I believe some of the assertions about their research activities and production have been confirmed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > _these residual stocks of smallpox should not be destroyed because some > ruthless super-criminal or rogue government might be working on a new > smallpox_

We _know_ for sure there's such supervillain. We call it Nature.

<comment><USER5> Nature is chaotic neutral, not chaotic evil. Also it hates to be anthropomorphized ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Smallpox is a thing. Yes it is deadly and a bad thing, like nukes or taco-bell being open at 3am. But it is still a thing. It's evilness derives from the people who can use it as a thing, not itself. For instance, rabies is a very bad virus too, but is used all the time in research ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabies_virus#Application](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabies_virus#Application)). There, rabies is used as a thing in the vein of a tool for research, not as a tool to hurt others. Having some back-ups somewhere like in an internationally governed vault in Greenland would be most prudent. We all have access, in theory, then to it and it is less likely to be used as a bad thing in the future that way.

<comment><USER2> I think the control of viruses such as smallpox may become irrelevant once their genomes can be synthesized de novo ("in a test tube"). There is still the challenge of producing fully infectious virions but it is possible and has been done with poliovirus ([http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12114528](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12114528)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does anybody else get goosebumps when reading about how smallpox has been eradicated? A disease that for thousands of years killed and maimed billions of humans -- gone for good[1]. It's a great testament to human ingenuity and perseverance.

[1] Well, except for those samples mentioned in the article

<comment><USER7> I get goosebumps when I hear talk about eradicating Aedis Aegypti. Maybe I'm just a simple person, and the elimination of a macroscopic species strikes me a little harder, but there it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> As an animator and researcher on the piece, I'd want to clear up some details in the comments below:

We synthesized viruses as early as 2002,[0] and you can get the sequence for Variola right now.[1]

Ken Abilek is regarded as largely discredited.[2] Sergei Popov, seen here, made a great variety of claims, but the ones in the documentary seem to be the most consistent with other sources.

In particular, a great extra source is Jeanne Guillemin, a medical anthropologist who wrote a variety of books about the Vector institute, its accidental release of anthrax into the city of Sverdlovsk,[3] Ken Abilek and Sergei Popov's claims about what went on in Vector, and the Amerithrax case. Her analysis is largely consistent with experimentation with Variola at the Vector facility in Sverdlovsk, less so the chimeric agent making that allegedly occurred there according to Ken Abilek.

Richard Preston argued that man is the demon in the freezer. There is no compelling scientific use for variola today, and if it can be synthesized artificially anyway, there's no compelling use for it sitting around in preposterously expensive high security.

Mutually assured destruction by variola was the only reason it was kept around. The Soviet Union was alleged to have filled a handful of missile warheads with variola, along with anthrax and ricin. The Soviet Union was alleged to believe that the United States was developing anti-nuclear weapon technology (it was). But to be clear, the United States for a period of time violated the biological weapons development ban too. Weapon development is crazy business and it's the only legitimate use of variola today.

[0] [http://www.nature.com/news/2003/031110/full/news031110-17.ht...](http://www.nature.com/news/2003/031110/full/news031110-17.html) [1] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/NC_001611.1](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/NC_001611.1) [2] [http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jul/01/nation/na- alibek1](http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jul/01/nation/na-alibek1) [3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak)

</comment><comment><USER9> Should the blueprints to variola, (a single linear double stranded DNA genome 186 kilobase genome sequence), be destroyed too? It wouldn't take too much effort to generate 186 kilobase DNA sequence ("longest gene made by us >230kb"[1])

[1] [https://www.dna20.com/services/gene- synthesis](https://www.dna20.com/services/gene-synthesis)

</comment><comment><USER10> There's no way to eliminate smallpox completely now that it has been sequenced, unless you can also get rid of the _digital_ copies as well. It's getting easier and easier to print DNA and RNA. We might not be able to print a full virus yet but it's only a matter of time.

</comment><comment><USER11> There's a very good book by the same name about Smallpox eradication and the debate over destroying remaining stocks of the virus. I highly recommend it.

<comment><USER12> Maybe entertaining, otherwise I wonder how the contents could be useful to me personally.

<comment><USER13> I suppose that depends on whether you are interested in developing an informed opinion about, among other things, whether we should preserve or destroy remaining stocks of smallpox virus. If not, then no, it probably will not be useful. But that probably also means you are reading and commenting in the wrong thread.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Pretty sure that David Baltimore had access to the virus at Rockefeller University. That would be one place it would be kept in the United States. That is their thing, the rarest of diseases. Perhaps, he was worried about himself. I mean that in a abstract sense. Imagine if you had that destructive power available to you.

</comment><comment><USER15> I've never understood why these samples were maintained. I don't find "some ruthless super-criminal or rogue government might be working on a new smallpox" compelling - if some rogue government develops a new smallpox and releases it, we'll have plenty of samples to work with.

<comment><USER16> You mean more rogue governments than the ones that keep it around with the goal of annihilating another nation?

(this goes to ANY government doing that or similar)

<comment><USER15> I'm just quoting the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> mark-r Eliminating the remaining samples is an irreversible decision. It's impossible to predict what value those samples might have if kept, because we don't yet know what use they would be put to.

There's not too much danger in it getting loose again, after all we eliminated it once already.

</comment><comment><USER17> Url changed from [http://kottke.org/16/05/the-demon-in-the- freezer](http://kottke.org/16/05/the-demon-in-the-freezer), which points to this.

</comment><comment><USER18> I can't help but agree with this article's argument which seems to be 'there are some smallpox samples'.

<comment><USER19> Part 2 of the argument is that they must be destroyed.</comment></comment>


Headius: Quick Thoughts on Oracle/Apache and the Java TCK - <AUTHOR> http://blog.headius.com/2010/12/quick-thoughts-on-oracleapache-and-java.html <comment><USER2> Can someone answer this? To my understanding the OpenJDK is GPL only there is no LGPL offering. My understanding is that the OpenJDK will be Oracle's free to use JDK while the JRocket will be pay. If I understand the licensing correctly any product developed for the JDK intended for resale would fall under the rules of the GPL. Is this not correct? I am trying to understand this because it seems to me based on my understanding of licenses that this paints a lot of people into a corner. I am not trying to spread misinformation, this is truly a request for clarification. I don't trust Oracle one bit and want to know if my bias is affecting my perception of how this will go down based on licenses. Because it seems like the plan as I read it was two JVM's JRocket and the OpenJDK.

<comment><USER3> OpenJDK has a GPL+CE license. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenJDK> <http://openjdk.java.net/legal/gplv2+ce.html>

<comment><USER2> OK thanks, that makes sense. I did not know about the ClassPath exception. I have not used OpenJDK so I wanted to seek clarity because as I understand the license, my concerns would have been correct if the ClassPath exception did not exist. Again that you for the info.</comment></comment></comment>


An Amazon engineer had a little idea that turned into a billion-dollar business - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/26685/amazon-owes-a-huge-part-of-its-other-revenue-growth-to-cloud-computing/ <comment><USER2> "In comparison, Facebook uses a programming language called AJAX that taxes servers less."

...</comment>


Someone's feeling optimistic: Sourceforge advertises migration tool in Homepage - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/jacobrothstein/status/1003880881562382336 <comment><USER2> It's been a while since I visited them. Used to get popups and redirects. If not pushing malware, was certainly pushing unwanted software. That ruined their brand forever for me.</comment>


Raindrop.io – Smart Bookmarks - <AUTHOR> http://raindrop.io?lang=en <comment><USER2> This looks cool, but as terrible as this is I kind of write things off as potential malware threats the INSTANT I start seeing russian references anywhere. The stigma is pretty bad (maybe just because I have friends that work with malware all day), but the intermixed russian-english mix is throwing some red flags, which I am sure are unwarranted.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is great! I've got 40 tabs open in firefox and my browser is straining under the pressure. A lot of them is research for work (servers, services, reviews). Some of it I don't care to bookmark. And some of it I'd like to read at home but have no way to get it there except emailing the link to myself.

<comment><USER4> I used dragdis and/or evernote before that. I'm gonna try this new thing but I'm scared it will be like the others and just become a place where I put things I'll never read.

* I like it better than dragdis, you don't have to drag anything to save it! Which is a pain on a laptop.

* It's too hidden and like other of its kind I might forget about it and never read what I put there.

<comment><USER5> 2 things I'd like to see in a bookmarking service.

1\. Have it email me nightly or weekly recapping what I've bookmarked.

2\. At some point (perhaps in the recap) show me if any of my friends have also bookmarked the same thing (perhaps from Facebook or g+ graph data).

I could live without #2, and might want to opt-out - there are some things I bookmark I wouldn't want other people knowing about, but some things I wouldn't mind.

<comment><USER6> " Have it email me nightly or weekly recapping what I've bookmarked."

Yes, yes, yes please.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So far, I have to say I'm impressed. I've been searching for a bookmarks solution that I will actually use, to the point where I've played around with writing my own. But from what I've seen, the date sorting, tagging, organization..it all looks pretty slick.

My only gripe is that I went to import my chrome bookmarks (which I have a lot of admiteddly) and they still are not visible from Raindrop after a few hours. I haven't received an email saying that the import was complete, and I don't want to rebuild my bookmark collection from scratch.

Anyone else having a similar problem?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi its not a problem! I have big pending list to import, need more time to analize and download releated content to every link. Please be patient. When it done you will be emailed!

<comment><USER7> Good to know! Figured you guys were getting slammed today. Nice work though, app looks promising.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ok, the "save articles from Mashable" line on the landing page made me smile. Flattery will get you _everywhere_. I'll try this out later today and probably try to write a review for the weekend (for Mashable, natch).

My concern is similar to others - will this just become yet another place I don't look?

I love Pinboard, I have Evernote and I've signed up for at least 10 other similar services (one that I noted I worried about containing to exist on an HN post on its announcement post...it died a year later), etc. But I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi! I have plans to develop Raindrop into a big business. And soon it will be very tight integration with the browser (including custom page "New Tab"). Therefore, your bookmarks will always be on hand in a browser, or mobile device. I'll be insanely grateful if you make a note in Mashable!

Rustem M.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It appears to be down for me.

</comment><comment><USER10> I already use Pinboard and it works well for my needs. What differentiates this from Pinboard?

And of course, how is it going to make money?

<comment><USER11> I don't have pinboard, but i believe some of the differences are:

It gives screenshots, It saves content for later and it's an official Opera extension (pinboard doesn't have an official one).

Edit: Raindrop.io also let's you save the content of video. That's a pretty handy feature pinboard and dragdis don't have. I don't know of anyone else that has it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why does chrome keep showing a "Translate this" button on pages (i'm on signup page). There is something which is making it think it is not in English. Just a heads-up!

<comment><USER10> Plus, the Chrome extension displays hover text in Russian. [http://www.evernote.com/shard/s27/sh/9510a5b2-4910-46c4-b52f...](http://www.evernote.com/shard/s27/sh/9510a5b2-4910-46c4-b52f-3b0a74e911c8/064352d973a83eb8050d42b55afb58f4)

<comment> andrewl-hn Raindrop outsources some of their development to Ukraine. Perhaps, someone left `<html lang="ru">` somewhere. Many IDEs and editors use system language inside their HTML templates by default. I think, WebStorm does it, maybe some others.

In addition, many companies like Facebook offer localized versions of SDK downloads and Widget scripts. Thus, when a developer somewhere in China downloads the SDK and puts the <script> tags on their page, people from all over the world will see Facebook authentication dialog in Chinese.

Localization can be tricky.

<comment><USER13> > "Raindrop outsources some of their development to Ukraine."

What makes you say this?

Their Twitter account is mostly in Russian, and its location listed as St. Petersburg (Russia).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So I've been using this service since this post on HN and I got a lot of "Link not recognized" bookmarks. I don't really understand the point of this.

[http://raindrop.io/collection/51838](http://raindrop.io/collection/51838)

</comment><comment><USER15> Ahw crap :( I was working on something similar. But this looks really good. Now they just have to get over that "hug of death" and pay for a bigger server.

As for money generation- sooner or later you will probably see ads in certain areas unless you sign up for a premium plan.

<comment><USER16> When Dropbox first launched, there were already 8 or so competitors.

<comment><USER15> Just had a chat with my designer and I think will continue. Maybe this is a good opportunity to learn.

<comment><USER17> Finding a competitor to a project you have yet to launch can be disheartening, for sure. But, take it this way.. You just got confirmation that there is a market for what you're building. Plus, you can see what they are doing wrong, and do those things right :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> How is this going to make money?

<comment><USER19> By selling your information to third parties of course :). The business model for all applications like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I loved clipboard and then it died. How long before you go away? Signed up anyway.

</comment><comment><USER21> If only I could export my links, images, etc from Pocket and Pinterest. This would make the migration process easier--but in the mean time, I'm just going to stick with what I have for my sense of laziness.

</comment><comment><USER22> When I upload my html bookmark file, Raindrop shows all of the folders within the file, but when I click on import all I get told that I have no bookmarks. Something seems to be broken.

<comment><USER23> I'm seeing this after uploading my bookmarks:

>> We unfortunately have not finished processing your bookmarks uploaded earlier! Please wait more, we will notify you at the specified E-mail. [0]

[0] [https://www.dropbox.com/s/opk0jvuvjbssc8s/Screenshot%202014-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/opk0jvuvjbssc8s/Screenshot%202014-04-18%2009.25.37.png)

<comment><USER23> Well 7 hours later and my imported bookmarks are still not done being processed. I bookmark often but I only have less that 1000 bookmarks total, I understand that they might be getting slammed with traffic ATM but I seeing how this could have been done all in JS I am a little annoyed that I can't try this out due to the delay.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is it Pinterest for men?

</comment><comment><USER25> Shame that they don't seem to have an Android app yet. I am just going to wait until they have until I consider it as a replacement for pocket.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have fully functional mobile version! Android soon

<comment><USER23> I can't seem to login via your iOS app due to the fact that is in Russian and there is no option to login with google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Unfortunately, the app on iOS works only in Russian. But other than that cool site! Ux is amazing, the images are sharp and the domain is solid.

<comment><USER23> Yeah, I just downloaded the iOS app and while I was able to guess login/signup links the login link doesn't have an option for authenticating with google (Which is what I used to sign up).

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> How is Raindrop compared to kippt and icebergs.com?

</comment><comment><USER28> Now make this self-hosted and then I'm in.

<comment><USER19> I thought the same thing! I started looking for a self-hosted alternative straight away.

<comment><USER28> The closest thing you can get that is opensource is [https://www.wallabag.org/](https://www.wallabag.org/)

But it needs more work to be useful to me. For instance, I don't always want to save the contents of the webpage, but just the link along with some notes or tags.

<comment><USER29> For that case you may use a bookmark manager. For an open-source self-hosted one, check Shaarli : [https://github.com/sebsauvage/Shaarli](https://github.com/sebsauvage/Shaarli)

<comment><USER30> I have developed a much much simpler variation for myself which is actually nothing more than a personal clone from old school del.icio.us: [http://i.imgur.com/7jnTyvC.png](http://i.imgur.com/7jnTyvC.png)

I use it now for almost 5 years and have more than 10 thousands bookmarks in it. If there is any interest, I will put it up on Github.

<comment><USER31> Thanks, I'd love to take a look at it!

<comment><USER30> Great, I'll brush it up this weekend and will put it on Github. Do you have an email? How can i let you know?

<comment><USER19> Cool. Putting a link up here will help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Exactly what I hate about pocket is fixed here

<comment><USER19> Could you expand on this?

I use pocket for 'read this later'. Raindrop.io seems very well suited for bookmarks so far.

<comment><USER32> Pocket is limiting me on articles only.. (psychologically). I always wanted an app where I can save my links, for say images on the web, or videos with a description of the timestamp I have reached at. Maybe I want to keep bookmarks for later, but it's not worthy for it to be in my bookmarks bar in my browser and it's not an article (say at top 20 list to submit your startup written by a YC user).

<comment><USER33> [https://delicious.com/](https://delicious.com/) ?

They have an app (for android at least, not sure about iOS) with which you can share stuff to. So from your (mobile/desktop) browser you can store anything that has a url.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Clean and Simple, I like it</comment>


How airline reservations are used to target illegal searches - <AUTHOR> http://papersplease.org/wp/2013/09/17/how-airline-reservations-are-used-to-target-illegal-searches/ <comment><USER2> "DHS lawyers claimed that international travel provides, in and of itself, sufficient Constitutional basis for detention and search of international travellers and the search, seizure and copying of the digital contents of their belongings."

Really? Fucking hell.. With every month that goes by, I am less and less inclined to travel to, or do business in, the US..

edit: I'm aware that later in the article they say the courts didn't really agree with this, but it doesn't seem to be preventing it from happening, especially when, after they got what they needed (I call bullshit on "destroy all copies"), they just back down and convince the victim to drop the case.

<comment><USER3> > Really? Fucking hell.. With every month that goes by, I am less and less > inclined to travel to, or do business in, the US..

The insinuation being that the US is the only country doing this?

I hate this sort of thing as much as the next guy, but let's not pretend the US is the only country engaging in this behavior. We can certainly expect better, but don't blind yourself to the obvious. Based on recent events, maybe you shouldn't be traveling anywhere, period.

<comment><USER4> Israel is pretty bad in this department as well. I hear that visiting Israel with an Arabic last name, or, god forbid, trying to go visit Palestine from an Israeli airport will land you in all sorts of trouble. In fact I don't plan to visit Israel any time soon.

I believe this is the sentiment of grandparent commenter, the fact that there might be other places where something like this happens is no excuse for a beacon of democracy such as the US.

<comment><USER3> > I hear that visiting Israel with an Arabic last name, or, god forbid, trying > to go visit Palestine from an Israeli airport will land you in all sorts of > trouble.

I hear that visiting Arab countries with a Jewish last name, or, god forbid, trying to go visit Israel from an Arabian airport will land you in all sorts of trouble.

Any particular reason you're picking on one and not the other? A bit hypocritical, don't you think?

That was the point of my comment. Let's stop now, ok? We're all in the same boat.

<comment><USER4> First off both of what the sibling posters said is true.

1\. Israel makes big claims of being an advanced democracy, unlike the Saudi monarchy

2\. I wasn't singling Israel in particular. I wouldn't visit Saudi Arabia for the exact same reasons.

But there is another point where your parallel breaks, there is no way to get to Palestine without going through Israel, so if you are a social worker involved with the welfare issues in West Bank or Gaza, or even a Christian pilgrim trying to go to Betlehem, you have no choice but to submit to the ordeal.

<comment><USER5> _" there is no way to get to Palestine without going through Israel"_

Can't you get to the West Bank through Jordan and Gaza through Egypt?

<comment><USER6> The Egypt-Gaza crossing at Rafah is passable, though frequently closed (due to Egyptian restrictions). The Allenby/King Hussein Bridge from Jordan to the West Bank, on the other hand, is an Israeli-run border crossing, and it is definitely the least inviting crossing I've ever been through.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "By agreeing to settle the case, the DHS avoided either any new appellate precedent limiting its borders search authority, or any judicial review of the specific basis for its actions with respect to Mr. House. As in other cases, the DHS treated the threat of judicial review of its actions as the ultimate danger to be avoided at all costs, even if that required destroying evidence it had previously claimed was vitally needed."

What a cancerous growth this DHS is.

<comment><USER8> While I can't blame them at all, it is too bad Mr. House settled. I wonder what would have been the outcome.

</comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands I heard this quote earlier this week during a discussion about the failure to stop the Naval Base shooter. He should have been picked up or at least been on someone's radar well before killing 13 people.

"When we're watching EVERYBODY, you'll never catch ANYBODY." which made a lot of sense to me. It seems like these agencies are trying to watch everybody in an effort to catch one lone person without considering any supporting data. Thus, you end up with scenario's like this where innocent people are being caught up in this wide net their casting.

</comment><comment><USER9> "TECS was the first pre-DHS database of Federal government logs of international travel. Several other "systems of records" (a term of art used in the Privacy Act) about travelers, including the Automated Targeting System (ATS) and DHS copies of PNR data (airline reservations) were originally considered part of TECS. The TECS file for an individual traveler typically includes a log of their border crossings (with record locators that serve as pointers to their PNR data ) and free-text notes on anything that customs and immigration inspectors thought warranted inclusion in the traveler's permanent file."

Example on [http://hasbrouck.org/documents/secondary.pdf](http://hasbrouck.org/documents/secondary.pdf)

Is there a way to consult this database? (FOIA?)

It could be interesting.

<comment><USER10> It's more surprising that DHS keeps copies of the PNR data. The passport/visa stuff is acceptable but you can tell a lot more about someone from PNR data. Who they travel with, payment information, itinerary, changes in travel, medical conditions, baggage, services, it goes on and on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> One of the many reasons I never fly to/from the US, and avoid ever passing through.

<comment><USER12> Canada is part of the "Five Eyes" but enjoy your placebo.

<comment><USER11> Yes but passing through our airports isn't a nightmare...

<comment><USER13> Last time I checked airport security in canada murdered Polish citizen because he did not spoke english.

<comment><USER11> That's quite disingenuous... He was tasered and restrained because he had become unruly and destructive.

Certainly the situation could have (and should have) been handled better, and the RCMP should have only tasered him once, but to call it murder, and specifically to say it's because he didn't speak english, is a blatant falsehood.

<comment><USER14> Last I checked there was no (official) death penalty for chair-throwing. Call it institutional incompetence in de-escalation and maybe we can find some common ground.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _questioned him about his political activities and beliefs_

 _confiscated his laptop computer, camera and a USB drive_

If this happened to a computer scientist abroad, say Moscow airport, there would be a storm coming from the western media about oppressive regimes and human rights. Possibly even a condemnation from the US government.

</comment><comment><USER16> The rough standard is basically that data must be provided by airlines to authorities at the point of landing at least 15 minutes before departure. In practice they probably provide it earlier.

I did some FOIAs in to this stuff with the EU recently @ [http://www.asktheeu.org/en/request/information_on_pnr_agreem...](http://www.asktheeu.org/en/request/information_on_pnr_agreements)

My interpretation was that the picture the response painted was of five eyes nations all hitting up the EU for their passenger data. Right after the US got their claws in Australia was in there and the US utilized its grand experience with bureaucracy to ensure the EU Data Protection Supervisor didn't even have time to review the proposal before it was passed.

After that query, I updated Wikipedia's info over here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_name_record#Internat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_name_record#International_PNR_Sharing_Agreements)

The lesson here is that you are wary of authorities for whatever reason (and we probably all should be), then you should seek to avoid pre-booking flights (or ships) ... just turn up and buy a ticket instead ... and preferably avoid long haul flights at all, certainly those terminating in countries with dodgy authorities, if you can afford to do so.

<comment><USER17> Amazing! Thank you for your efforts into investigating this. I find the EU FOIA site fascinating and I wish the US had an equivalent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This seems extreme but the reality is that foreigners and homosexuals are sketchy. This sort of policing is important.

<comment><USER19> What's so sketchy about them?

<comment><USER20> I suppose you haven't learnt about the ghastly things done by the likes of Alan Turing, Stephen Fry and Neil Patrick Harris.

(If you don't get the sarcasm there, please forgive me and the gentlemen mentioned above too...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't mean to undermine the effort of put into the lawsuit and this careful analysis. But... Shocking. Government has access to passenger's itinerary. I mean, with all the recent revelations, we might have just assumed that.

<comment><USER22> You have missed the point. It is not that the government has access to your itinerary, it is that low-level government officials (apparently) have access to your itinerary with no administrative oversight whatsoever. The NSA at least puts on a show of getting FISA court approval. But DHS isn't even going through the motions.

The key passage from the article:

"The implication is that rather than search its own ATS database of copies of PNR data, the ICE investigator searched the airline's own internal PNR database, using the DHS root access to the Sabre computerized reservation system (CRS) used by American Airlines. That was probably easier than searching ATS because the way DHS "ingests" PNR data from CRSs into ATS leaves the data less well indexed in TECS and ATS than it was (and still is — the airline sends DHS a copy, but of course retains the PNR data itself) in the CRS.

Notably, there's nothing to indicate that the ICE investigator needed approval from a supervisor to go into Sabre, or tried some other source of PNR information (e.g. the internal ATS database of DHS copies of PNR data) first. Root access to Sabre was apparently at his fingertips, and his use of it warranted no special comment and no recording of compliance with any authorization protocols. It was a routine tool for him."

<comment><USER21> I, personally, have no trust in any government, so I sort of assumed that too. But that's me. I think you're right and it raises an important question for others, whether the government is really what they think it is.

<comment><USER23> That sort of cynicism is probably the chief enabler of such corruption. As with any other human endeavor, government will never be perfect, but that isn't a reason to give up on holding government to high standards.

It is reasonable to take precautionary steps in your personal life while at the very same time demanding that the government behave such that those steps are completely unnecessary.

<comment><USER24> Some of us believe the government can't be "fixed." Who watches the watchers, and all that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> for the sake of simplifying my point i assume many if not most of you are us- based us-citizen:

whenever an issue like this comes up everybody starts to fight and nitpick. as if nobody can see through it. as if everybody is blinded. as if everybody doesn't care about the core of the matter. as if an entire generation or two is just too dumbed down to recognize the scheme.

you know, i love you. but i'm sick of you. if you don't fix your bloody country, nobody will do it for you.

</comment><comment><USER26> Any computer with sensitive files should have them encrypted, or preferably have your entire hard drive encrypted. They should also be backed-up in case the computer is lost, stolen, destroyed, or seized.

If a person or company keeps sensitive files on an insecure computer, then that company/person should be at fault.

If you send sensitive data over the internet then it should be encrypted. If not, then companies, governments, and other organizations could easily grab that data.

In reality though, there are millions of completely insecure computers and devices which carry data that could harm companies, individuals, or governments if compromised. Educating the operators of those machines and ensuring that they properly secure them is very difficult. The best method would be to have hard-drive level encryption on all devices, make sure people know how to properly backup data, and to educate people that they can easily say, "I don't know the password, I'm suppose to call my IT manager after I arrive at my destination and he will provide the password."

</comment><comment><USER27> 1\. Light-gray on black color scheme invites eye strain.

2\. Bright orange link text is even more horrible than usual because of light gray on black color scheme.

3\. Extra tiny font size (1em) is almost unreadable against black background.

4\. There are constant readability crimes in the text with overuse of scare quotes, unnecessary abuse of the 'and/or' abomination, incorrect use of double scare quotes outside literal quotations, and overuse of parenthetical statements.

5\. Use of "beg the question" to mean "raise the question" is incorrect.

The content was fine, but you'd better be young, brave, and impervious to pain if you want to access it.

</comment><comment><USER28> The focus on that article is silly.

Of course I want law officials to have real time information about travel and be able to catch a criminal before he flees.

The issue should not be that, but that they use that to initiate illegal searches.

The focus should be on illegal searches, period.

<comment><USER25> when was the last time a "criminal" was caught during flee-by-flight and the government was NOT involved in the first place?

<comment><USER28> This is my point.

This is like those dumb fox new things saying something trivial is a crime because it 'involved computers'.

They can already do that, but inefficiently by posting your pictures all over the place and having officers look for your face. _AFTER_ they get a warrant or follow due process.

This is just a more efficient way of doing the above.

The focus should be on the lack of due process, not on the means being more efficient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> To future investigative writers: Diagrams and acronym glossaries please. If a subject is hard to understand, unclear presentation is another barrier. (People have limited attention and thoughtspace.)

</comment><comment><USER30> So this is the global stasi panopticon world that we are leaving our children with. It's just disgusting.</comment>


Sound Based Near Field Communication without NFC Chips - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/230765/soundbased_system_promises_nfc_now.html

<comment><USER2> My girlfriend's heart rate monitor uses a similar technology to transmit her heart rate data to her computer. It's a neat idea, but it also leaves me skeptical that such an idea would work well for purchases...

</comment><comment><USER3> We built an image-through-sound sharing app at IPO48 hackathon this february - one of mentors there was trying to convince us to upscale that from funny entartainment utility to an e-commerce, but we didn't see a business oportunity... Our bad :)

If you are interested, see our demo Android app at <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElkmzoqD9PM> (or search Soundwise on Android market).

Tomas Kafka from MobReactor

</comment><comment><USER4> I wonder what the maximum bitrate is, NFC is already pretty slow. Can you get a stable 9600 baud with cellphone speakers and microphones?

<comment> _-af-_ It's actually not very flexible. I've seen field trials of this. It is an interesting concept but not very implementable.

You could do the same data transfer by having the phone display a barcode and use a barcode scanner.

They claim that outfitting an existing system with an NFC reader costs $100 to $800. Which is not true. An NFC dongle is under $20. They are looking at costs of NFC stand alone terminals (w/ LCD display, etc.) and that high cost is due to secure element and certifications those have to go through to work w/ Visa/Mastercard networks.

It is an interesting technology and has its uses but not as an NFC replacement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What's really cool about Zoosh is what it does for p2p or m2m behavior.

</comment><comment><USER5> Also, I thought Shopkick would have locked up these patents?</comment>


Apple Maps, once a laughingstock, now dominates iPhones - <AUTHOR> http://bigstory.ap.org/df90458e58564f19b4b7c8510f9baa67 <comment><USER3> Speaking as a developer and as someone who spends a lot of time configuring and using iPhones, this is is not surprising and indicative of nothing. The native Apple apps on iPhones have access to resources we as third party developer's can't touch, and integration with each other that no third party developer can even come close to matching unless we reinvent half the OS. Add to it that the only way we're allowed to make, say, a navigation app is to offer a service that a native Apple app does not (we're not allowed to "duplicate functionality," per the developer agreement) and stories like this mean absolutely dick to me. Of course it dominates the iPhone platform, but stick Apple maps on any other platform and it would fall on it's face.

Better than something like Mapquest? Probably. And the integration tools are great too, as are notifications on departure time and whatnot, but the actual app, judged by it's capabilities is nothing compared to Google Maps.

<comment><USER4> Indeed. Anyone can dominate a platform if they've got the right to ban competing apps from it. I'm sure the EU will get round to this in 2025 or so.

<comment><USER5> Why whould EU do anything to makers ability to do whatever they want with their product? Don't like Apple, get Android or Windows Phone. Or will EU also do something about me not being able to run iOS apps on Android. You see, I prefer iOS versions, they are nicer.

<comment><USER6> Artificially coupling distinct products like that should be illegal, just like you can't make a car that runs on only Ford gas (you can make a car that runs on diesel, or gas, or only on high-octane, but it has to be some published standard). What the EU should require is that device makers offer a published API (and published review standards etc.) and use only the published APIs for any bundled apps, so that other app-makers can compete on a level playing field, and other device-makers can implement competitive devices for running the same apps.

<comment><USER3> Why should Apple be required to make the iPhone a level playing field for anyone? This is like when blackberry wanted the government to force people to make apps for their platform, that's not how the market works.

You're under no obligation to use an iPhone anymore than I'm under obligation to use a blackberry.

<comment><USER6> Because they're distinct businesses. Because it's in consumers' interests to have competition among app makers even if everyone's using the same hardware.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The other day I used Apple Maps to turn up at a business meeting. I didn't notice it said "approximate location". Or, if I did, I probably thought since it was in a mall that the location was somewhere in the mall. Anyway, I turned up at the "approximate address". Guess how far off it was? Almost 5km. This was on a main street in my city that goes from one end of the city to the other.

<comment><USER8> Not being a devils advocate here, but this actually isn't bad.

Some offline GPS navigation app solutions locate a specific address number you entered the same way - on the wanted street (which can be couple Km). But it doesn't indicate it's only an approximation, since it doesn't have the correct location in its maps database. Sygic is one of those from the top of my mind and it uses TomTom as mapping provider, same as Apple does.

<comment><USER7> I see. Thanks for the explanation.

We were not offline at any point, but I get what you are saying, it might just use estimates. While I get that, we really were at the complete opposite end of the street. This didn't seem like an error of factor f, but that perhaps -f.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if it's not just because it's integrated with other apps, and a top suggestion when you want maps. I still find that google maps is leaps and bounds ahead for navigation.

<comment><USER10> That, and for me personally also because i avoid Google products whenever i can since i will be paying (for these "free apps") with my privacy. I only resort to Google Maps if i can't find something in Apple Maps.

As far as i'm aware, Apple Maps is only usable for people who payed for Apple devices, which is why Apple doesn't have to sell my privacy to create a Maps app.

Google Maps however, is "free" for anyone to use.

<comment><USER11> I am curious (genuinely -- no snark) if your concern is mostly a theoretical/political one or if it's more personal? Are you worried that you might somehow be compromised because of lax privacy? If so, how? Or is it that you don't agree with the idea of your data being in the hands of Google and/or sold to others?

<comment><USER10> I rather pay for services with money instead of privacy, unless i know my data is being used for a good cause. For example i don't mind sharing my data in a hospital with a university for educational purposes.

However, for example, I don't like sharing my data with LinkedIn, who then sells it, makes a huge profit, and even tries to sell the gathered data back to the users themselves in order to get full access to search results.

Also this is a good example which explains how people don't seem to value digital privacy equal to "real life privacy" (probably because they don't fully understand?) : [https://ar.al/notes/schnail-mail-free-real-mail-for- life/](https://ar.al/notes/schnail-mail-free-real-mail-for-life/)

PS. to all the people downvoting, it's rather childish to downvote, without replying/communicating at all, just because you don't agree with my opinion. If you think facts are wrong then reply something constructive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I use Gmaps in South Africa a lot. The traffic detector feature is super useful however it hass got me into some hairy situations. Just a few months back there were protesters burning tires and stoning cars on a road, so there were no cars on the road, so Google Maps took me straight through it. That was intense, no damage luckily.

Then not much after that an area in the Cape Town CBD became flooded due to heavy rains, and Gmaps directed me and a few other unsuspecting victims straight into it due to there being absolutely NO traffic.

Suppose the warnings take longer to filter through the system than the traffic updates.

<comment><USER13> We (my girlfriend and I) had the same same experience in the UK, on different phones. She has an iPhone, which directed us down a seemingly low-trafficked and very direct-to-destination road. I have a Lumia with Here Maps (Windows 10 version), which directed us on some crazy detour on roads showing heavy traffic. Turns out the road the iPhone recommended was closed for construction. Here Maps was on the money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> When I was in NYC last month, Apple Maps walking directions were consistently better than Google Maps. It was shocking. Overall, it's still not nearly as good as Google but I'm much more likely to try both now and compare, than just assume Google is always better.

</comment><comment><USER15> This doesn't surprise me at all. If something's installed by default, that's what most people use.

In fact, I've found that the very idea of using a mapping app to navigate is still foreign to a large percentage of people. If someone is wondering how long it will take to walk somewhere and I suggest they check using Google Maps, I still get a confused look about 50% of the time.

</comment><comment><USER16> There's another way to look at it : the fact the apple maps is tightly integrated to iOS also means that it "contaminates" all the other services for the OS with its bad quality.

I would love to have siri use google services to guide me on a map. Or calendar show me locations on google maps. Yet, every time i use those great services, i have a bad experience because of Apple Maps.

</comment><comment><USER17> What's good is that Apple Maps is slowly improving. They do seem to be fixing inaccuracies and problems. However, it's still crap. In my local streets, I can see countless mistakes (businesses in the wrong place, out-of-date entries, etc)

There's also now a problem with _too much_ information, of the wrong kind. For instance, I opened up Maps the other day to discover that it listed a children's clothing shop just opposite my house. I live on a residential street, there's no shop there!

Intrigued, I clicked on the marker, visited their web page and found out that yes, the company does exist, but it's an online shop and the owner just happens to live near me. So Apple have scraped a database of companies and found lots of registered addresses, but putting this information on the map unfiltered is completely useless.

They've got a lot more improvements to make...

</comment><comment><USER18> I still have a lingering distrust of Apple Maps, thanks to its disastrous launch. It's good to hear that it's getting better, because Google Maps - <USER2> least around London - seems to be getting worse. Some road names that used to be correct have been renamed incorrectly (e.g. Upper Richmond Road now shows up as South Circular Road) and others have changed to use a correct but uncommon name (the M25 - probably the busiest motorway in the whole of the UK! - shows up as "London Orbital Motorway", which is a name I don't think anyone has used for it since before Google even existed). I've reported all these of course, but as always there's no way of knowing if the bug report will ever be seen by a human. Maybe it's time to give Apple Maps a second chance.

</comment><comment><USER19> Just yesterday, I made the mistake of asking Siri where the closest UPS store was. After a 15 minute drive, there was no UPS store at the destination. Had to use Google Maps instead, which took me to the correct location.

</comment><comment><USER20> > But ultimately, Apple Maps doesn't need to be the best. It just needs to be > good enough that its users won't look for something else.

Spot on. Being given the default spot will keep Apple Maps in the same position as Internet Explorer 6 was in the noughties and iTunes has been for the past six years: Since the app is the default and there is nothing to gain by improving it, with time any ambitious developers will migrate away and it will stay barely good enough not to be an embarrassment.

</comment><comment><USER21> I had a go at showing an iPhone user where something was on Maps - I failed... (after i had just done it on my phone)

I use Android and Google Maps just works, has stars and is awesome. Finds everything when you search for it and just works. Plus browser to device or device to browser via stars is great. There are some annoying things, however the big things work well.

Apple Maps is a pile of junk :/

</comment><comment><USER22> Slightly off-topic, but I can honestly say I've never once used Apple's Maps application that now comes with Mac OS X (not iOS). Does anyone use this? It probably ought to be faster or better integrated or _something_ than opening Google Maps in a web browser, but, despite being in the dock, I just never, ever remember to use it...

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm not in a big city and not in the USA, and Apple Maps routinely sends me to the wrong place when I lookup addresses.

</comment><comment><USER24> This shouldn't be surprising. It has primary position on iOS and has tight integration with Siri, Apple Watch, Continuity, Contacts etc.

It has a terrible navigation backend (has no qualms about suggesting destinations in other countries) but you only notice it if you compare it say Google Maps.

</comment><comment><USER25> I actually make an effort to regularly use Apple Maps in order to fix their bad data, and it still hasn't quite replaced Google Maps for me.

Google Maps is still way better by every metric (accuracy, design, user experience, navigation, etc) except NYC subway entrances.

</comment><comment><USER26> The power of default.

Never underestimate it - Dropbox should be worried about such a move.

</comment><comment><USER27> The mighty power of defaults.

</comment><comment><USER28> Waze</comment>


CloudFoundry.org launches - Fully Open Source PaaS - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cloudfoundry.org/post/13481011418/the-new-cloudfoundry-org-gerrit-jenkins-github

<comment><AUTHOR> It looks like vmware is really starting to figure out 'the open source way'. There were a lot of problems at the beginning - disparity between cloudfoundry.com vs .org distributions, inability to pull community features, lack of .org documentation, no strong leadership, _zendesk_ for support (no mailing list!) - but they've brought on some really good people (like Patrick Chanezon) who definitely seem to understand developer concerns.

Hopefully this new open workflow should make upping the code quality a much smoother process, as it's a medium-sized codebase that could use a bit of polish.

I'm actually surprised vmware was able to stick with CloudFoundry this long until they started to get it right - are there other examples of 'open source' (in quotes) project by huge companies that ended up finding their way?</comment>


'Did I miss anything?': A man emerges from a 75-day silent retreat - <AUTHOR> https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2020/06/04/did-i-miss-anything-a-man-emerges-from-a-75-day-silent-retreat-in-vermont <comment><USER2> The mind is difficult beast to tame and Simplicity is hardest thing to achieve.

Try to sit in meditation and focusing on breathing, first 10-15 minutes monkey mind does not even calm down and can't sit more than 30 minutes. Back starts hurting. Sitting on chair for so long and back muscles have become weak.

However, there are so many unprocessed emotions which keeps popping up when I try to sit down idle or try to 'not think', ranging from things read on social network (twitter) upto childhood emotion. Total Emotion roller coaster. Plus, awareness about shallow habit of mind of continuously judging and having opinion on everything. Worst is realisation that I don't event have control or influence on what is going around.

Blessed are people who have achieved control over thinking. The momentary calmness and freedom, I feel is simply liberating. But it does not last long. How can you live in this world and not be affected but it. It's tough battle with 'self' for now for getting into bad habits just because of not being self aware.

For guidance, that quote - "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away". Getting rid of bad habit one by one is starting point.

Sigh.. may be someday, will become truly free.

<comment><USER3> with love,

at each stage, it is fruitful to inspect the rate-limiting factor.

if the body is the limiting factor, then it makes sense to invest in yoga until it is no longer the thing in the way.

it's difficult to confront multiple challenges at once (monkey mind and pain in body), so divide and conquer.

may you find happiness and peace.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "And so, less than two hours after ending his silent retreat, Thorson logged back onto Twitter."

Like breaking a long fast by binging on candy.

<comment><USER5> Right, and if youre doing a Buddhist retreat just so you can tell everyone about it, you're doing it wrong

<comment><USER6> Well, at least in modern western society, that usually is the end goal...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Anyone gone so long on silent retreats? Can you talk about the experience?

<comment><USER8> During my years as a Buddhist monk, we regularly did two 90 day silent retreats(Summer/winter) and two 45 days (fall/spring) a year. It's mostly a survival type period where you slog through the days, until you have a week or so of a breakthrough, with hyper awareness and enlightenment-like insights. They all pass and it's back to surviving the rest of the retreat.

<comment><USER9> Very cool to see an ex-monk here. I've had a regular 2hr/day practice for a decade now but no retreats yet. What kind of meditation did you practice? Would you say that you achieved some level of Awakening, and that any of these insights/benefits have improved the quality of your consciousness in a permanent sense?

<comment><USER7> 1 hour per day? Wow, that is insane!! In a good way, of course.

How long did it take to reach an hour?

<comment><USER10> About 60 minutes

<comment><USER11> Brrrm tsss

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So he spent 2.5 months locked in a cabin? Sounds ... familiar?

</comment><comment><USER13> For something like this, would you set up power of attorney for anything that comes up?</comment>


Convert paper-based notes to HTML content with Google Vision API - <AUTHOR> https://itnext.io/convert-paper-based-notes-to-html-content-with-google-vision-api-e398fdb45cb9 <comment><USER2> Google Vision API is quite awesome.

I wrote this app to scan the labels and read them out loud so my grandpa can manage his life.

[https://www.helpmereadthis.com/](https://www.helpmereadthis.com/)

It's open source, so feel free to steal code.

<comment><USER3> That's such a lovely and heartwarming thing to do. Kudos to you and thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sidenote: around half/a third of the article is on how to deal with Google IAM Auth. This is one of the things that puts me back the most from the modern Big Cloud and keeps me on Heroku, that it's such a behemoth of services and combination that you need such a complex setup for a very "simple" tool.

I like/prefer it a lot when you can simply put up a script, press 3 buttons and voila you have a fully working url. Even Google used to do that, I've built two libraries around Google's services, npm's `translate`[1] and `drive- db`[2], the former I no longer test on Google Translate even though it's supposed to be supported and the later it's using a more obscure plain JSON API to avoid Google Auth.

[1] [https://www.npmjs.com/package/translate](https://www.npmjs.com/package/translate)

[2] [https://www.npmjs.com/package/drive- db](https://www.npmjs.com/package/drive-db)

<comment><USER5> Cloud Authentication and Networking are the modern lock-in.

<comment><USER6> That 'privacy' stuff everyone rants about is pretty annoying, i guess

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a great idea and wouldn't be too hard to port to a local solution, e.g. using Tesseract or similar. The idea of tuning your handwriting and using a markup language designed to be easily written by hand to make it easier to do the OCR, instead of trying to be perfectly general, is actually a great idea.

I can imagine one necessary enhancement (I would find it necessary anyway) would be to support crossing-through words with a line to "erase" them.

<comment><USER8> Google Vision API is eons ahead of tessaract in its OCR capabilities. I was quite impressed how good it was when trying to read ID numbers from scans.

<comment><USER9> Ha I was going to say, I was trying to read receipts and Tesseract was having problems, those are machine-printed not hand written. Granted supposed to clean up/up contrast/etc... but yeah. Scanning a screenshot of a website though accuracy is almost 100% every time eg. just black/white text.

<comment><USER10> It's usually better to segment the text on the image (and twek the perspective if necessary) to help tesseract extract the text. All the "easy" preprocessing that can be done beforehand helps a lot. I understand that Google Vision Services doesn't need these kind of adjustments (or maybe they do them automatically?), which makes for an easier time/less code, but setting up the account sure looks like a lot of work from the article!

<comment><USER9> That's a good tip about the segmenting text, will have to keep that in mind next time.

I like the local aspect, one project I have in mind is a hand writing to printed letters for note taking/tablets. Not a new concept I think one drive has it, but it would be neat to train it on your own writing.

Why not Zoidberg

<comment><USER10> If you want to train your own net for handwritten letters, you can start with EMNIST[0] and then move on from there.

[0] [https://www.nist.gov/itl/products-and-services/emnist- datase...](https://www.nist.gov/itl/products-and-services/emnist-dataset)

<comment><USER9> Thanks, yeah it's an ambitious project. It's cool but has no real gain immediately. Maybe if I was a student/used a tablet everyday.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nice tutorial, but seems like it would be much easier (and more user friendly) to concert to markdown instead of using his pseudo-tags for HTML. The only thing perhaps you'd need to handle differently than native Markdown is significant whitespace, but that seems like it would just need some minimal changes.

<comment><USER12> I completely agree, this would be suited so well for Markdown! Funnily enough I have been wanting to add this feature into a knowledge management app [1] I've been building. There have been so many times where our users have written something on paper and want to save it digitally to work on and organise later.

[1] [https://supernotes.app](https://supernotes.app)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> _Convert paper-based notes to HTML content with Google Vision API_

The title is funny to me, because I know people who deliberately take paper notes to keep them safe from Google.

I guess now they have an option should they change their views on privacy.

</comment><comment><USER14> I used rocketbook for a time and it worked really well. Just the erasing and having to use specific pages to take notes on meant I couldn't just grab anything to take notes on and archive it with search capabilities.

This seems like it could be nice to tinker with building something similar.

I prefer hand written notes but prefer to be able recall the notes digitally from a search.

</comment><comment><USER15> How long will Google keep supporting this API, though?

And, it's getting old, but why does Google need to know any notes I write down. My desktop computer and phone seem powerful enough to do any OCR with the right software.

<comment><USER16> I am looking for a great OCR software I can run locally instead of using Cloud Vision. Do you have any suggestions?

<comment><USER17> Are you on Mac or iOS? If so, then I developed apps for them which does OCR 100% locally:

MacOS:

[https://apps.apple.com/us/app/image-text-ocr-photo-pdf- scan/...](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/image-text-ocr-photo-pdf- scan/id1495787023?mt=12)

iOS:

[https://apps.apple.com/us/app/image-text-ocr-photo- scanner/i...](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/image-text-ocr-photo- scanner/id1499292605)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Your really made me want to try the API. Also, awesome write up. Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER19> I counted 12 steps to just get the demo going. Not for the faint of heart!

</comment><comment><USER20> Beware, it's in fact a medium article ... Do someone have a good trick to skip their paywall?

<comment><USER21> Outline might help a bit [0] - it preserves all the text but pictures are really small [1] and all headers are lost.

[0]: [https://outline.com/KZqa5L](https://outline.com/KZqa5L)

Edit:

[1]: Images on Medium can be resized by changing the expected width param, as in [https://miro.medium.com/max/{width}/{filename}](https://miro.medium.com/max/{width}/{filename}) URI.

\- Outline-generated link (width = 60 px): [https://miro.medium.com/max/60/1*rNmb72I6rBUckbJuI6hRFw.png?...](https://miro.medium.com/max/60/1*rNmb72I6rBUckbJuI6hRFw.png?q=20)

\- Resized to 1024px width: [https://miro.medium.com/max/1024/1*rNmb72I6rBUckbJuI6hRFw.pn...](https://miro.medium.com/max/1024/1*rNmb72I6rBUckbJuI6hRFw.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> They lost me at "Google".

I don't want to have to use a Google account and to share my images and notes and text with Google and the US government.

Also - I agree with other commenters that it'll probably be a better idea to obtain the "unparsed" markup (or should I say - markdown?) rather than generating HTML.</comment>


Sulake (Habbo Hotel) To Begin Talks To Reduce Workforce By Up To 2/3 - <AUTHOR> http://www.arcticstartup.com/2012/10/29/breaking-sulake-to-begin-talks-to-reduce-workforce-by-up-to-23

<comment><USER2> The link to the Kernalmag article has the following quote:

 _Channel 4 discovered sexually explicit messages on Habbo within minutes of logging on to the site. Among the messages discovered were: "Hey licky your v a g i n a. There you go darling. Sticks diick jn you. You've lost your virginity. Right NEXT", "Hey do you have a webcam? You got msn or skype?.. you take off your clothes" and "I want some cute girls not gay faggots"._

So, it's like every other platform on the planet where adolescent boys hang out? I understand that there are some valid concerns regarding sexual predators in games like Habbo, but I'd bet large that 99% of this behaviour is merely preteen boys being incredibly distasteful. How do we hold Habbo responsible for that, rather than the parents who raise these monstrosities, or the parents who allow their kids to frequent Habbo unattended?</comment>


AI4R: Ruby Artificial Intelligence lib - <AUTHOR> http://ai4r.rubyforge.org/

<comment><USER2> I'll wait until this gem reaches self-awareness and moves itself to github.

<comment><USER3> <https://github.com/SergioFierens/ai4r> Been on github a long time. I was working on a constraint propagation fork till I got bogged down with work/life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's nice to have this available but a lot of AI techniques are fairly computation-intensive. A language like Ruby isn't going to be very efficient for non-trivial datasets.

<comment><USER5> I think everyone needs to differentiate language, ruby, from implementation, aka the standard mri vm.

The stock mri vm has a gil, and historically, with 1.8, a very naive iterpreter+garbage collector. 1.9.x helps with this, but still suffers performancewise unless you get into massive object creation/etc...

The difference is alternative implementations like jruby+rubinius can drastically shave time off of computation. Much like the difference of CPython to pypy. If however you're overly worried about computational speed and need to have the fastest possible speed bar none, then do the right thing and use c++/java/c. But for exploratory learning or non-time critical computation, why not use a language like Ruby or Python or Lua or whatever?

<comment><AUTHOR> 1) I'm beginning to move into the computational biology field... Your thoughts on using Ruby in this capacity? Its not high frequency trading, but yeah I'd like it to be fast... Is the answer jruby+rubinius?

2) Will learning to program C++ throw off my ruby mojo? Can you speak from the perspective of someone whos fluent in multiple languages?

<comment><USER5> 1) You'd be better off with Python most likely due to library support. (numpy etc...)

2) Why would it? I won't say I'm fluent in c++, but thats mainly due to not having to use it daily. That and I prefer straight c normally, I tend to dig into kernel source and drivers often so c++ isn't a big deal most times.

But don't let language preferences of anyone guide you, evaluate what works best and use it for your problems. I like ruby in general but sometimes python is a better choice, other times perl, other times c, or even shell. Don't optimize code you haven't written yet. Explore the domain with ruby if you want and write a faster version in c once you understand the problem. Or java or whatever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Might be a nice companion for the Stanford Engineering AI Class that is offered this fall. <http://www.ai-class.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually I've began petitioning for a 4th complementary class. If you're interested:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/aiclass/comments/jkg6v/stanford_open...](http://www.reddit.com/r/aiclass/comments/jkg6v/stanford_open_bioinformatics_class/)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> including stochastic Models, and sigmoid curves =]</comment>


Shoppers Frustrated on Amazon Prime Day - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-36776114 <comment><USER2> Maybe they should switch to a cloud host that can scale on demand. Err, wait...</comment>


On the (im)possibility of obfuscating programs - <AUTHOR> http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2160159 <comment><USER2> A better link: <http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~oded/p_obfuscate.html>

I always enjoy linking to this every time I see a "how do I obfuscate my .net app?" question on StackOverflow.

Always gets me downvoted, yet I keep doing it.

Must. Spread. Reason!</comment>


Ask HN: Where do you buy your SSL certificates? - <AUTHOR>

I've bought SSL certificates before from vendors who I no longer trust or respect based on their stance towards SOPA & PIPA.<p>Which SSL vendors do you trust both with regards to security and their approach to the open web? <comment><USER2> If you do a search you'll find a number of threads about domain and ssl purchasing. Most are inspired by the same concerns you have. There's a common list that keeps showing up. namecheap.com isn't the only one that gets mentioned a lot, but it's the one I picked

<comment><AUTHOR> I found a previous discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3556796>

I used HN Search, looked for "SSL Certificates", and sorted by Points.

Thanks for the tip.</comment></comment>


How Pinterest's friendly culture has slowed decisions and hurt growth - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/10/pinterest-overly-nice-culture-has-hurt-growth-ex-employees-say.html <comment><USER2> Reactions to this headline (not necessarily to the article's contents):

Even if the decisions have taken longer, perhaps they've been better decisions? And even if the growth could be greater, they've been successful with specific types of users for specific, lasting reasons?

At other companies, "growth teams" have been given permission from the C-suite to overrule all other product teams. Sounds like at some companies the growth teams have even been given tacit permission to overrule the corporate counsel's office. These are certainly ways to speed decisions, increase growth, and attract a certain type of highly skilled and motivated employee -- and they may not necessarily be in the best long term interests of the company, all of its employees, and its customers.

</comment><comment><USER3> There are no priorities in life more important than financial growth and making quick business decisions. /s

<comment><USER4> "This often translated to slow decision-making by committee and lack of commitment to strategic direction. Instead of being straightforward and advocating directly for what they wanted, employees were encouraged to try to gain consensus through politicking and endless rounds of meetings." -

That sounds like hell to me.</comment></comment>


Novius OS: One single tool to manage all your digital communication - <AUTHOR> http://www.novius-os.org/

<comment><USER2> Whoever told you that nice vertical scrolling effect is awesome should be shot. Honestly, what the fuck is that? Can someone actually read that page?

<comment><USER3> It looks kinda neat when I scroll the page too fast to read anything. When I scroll a little, pause to read, scroll a little... it hurts my head.</comment></comment>


How Cable & Satellite Can Save the Newspaper Business - <AUTHOR> http://blogmaverick.com/2009/02/22/how-cable-satellite-can-save-the-newspaper-business/ <comment><USER2> When you let the old guard control the revenue that the newcomers receive you never get change. Cable and satellite having a spigot on online video revenue is a VERY disturbing development that will seriously hinder the march toward unfettered media. Disruptive technologies can only make for progress when they aren't quashed by the old regime.

</comment><comment><USER3> In order to 'save the newspaper business' you must first understand why the business is failing. For years, newspapers have been giving discounts to national corporations who run full page ads in publications. Local advertisers advertise less and usually pay more for ads. In the past, there have always been more local advertisers paying more $ and this is where traditional publications received the majority of their revenue. So when big businesses like Home Depot, best buy, petco, walmart, papajohns, target, etc... start becoming more and more popular, the small local mom and pop shops are forced to close up shop. Less mom and pop shops = less local ads = less revenue for publications. Industry turned upside down (not to mention the million other factors in play here ie. economy, increased cost in supply, etc...) Cable and Satellite can't 'save the newspaper business' the newspaper business need to diversify their portfolios. Investing in products that can complement their publications and help them adjust to the crazy world we now live in.</comment>


Hands Off Our Houses (follow up on the $300 house idea) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/01/opinion/01srivastava.html?ref=opinion <comment><USER2> > "While businessmen and professors applaud the $300 house, the urban poor are > silent, busy building a future for themselves."

That's for me the most telling sentence of the article. As someone familiar with the realities of developing countries, I am frankly tired of seeing those kind of "feel-good" type of projects that helps only the ego of those who are "giving".

What is fundamentally missing in those kinds of projects is the SACRIFICE aspect of it. The willingness to get out of your bubble, put your career (or life) on the line and go live the harsh reality of those who you (supposedly) want to help.

* _Lack of understanding_ : Poverty is a deep, complex social, historic and economical problem, and very often the solution is not technical at all (example: OLPC, and the project mentioned in the article). Unfortunately people think they can learn remotely, or with a simple two-week slum tour (more like a vacation).

* _Lack of commitment_ (again connected to sacrifice): "Good-heart" people come, work on the "world-changing" thing for 3 months, get some international awards and then leave. As a result, the community is left feeling manipulated and tired, and that ruins for any other serious projects in the future.

* _Lack of respect_ : Often people approach these projects from a stance of privilege (like Dr. Cornel West likes to say). What I mean by that is that they may demonstrate humbleness with their choice of words, but the general attitude is actually very elitist. Something like: "oh, poor them, they don't know any better". Getting the community buy-in is VERY HARD, and it involves you first showing that you are 100% committed to them (i. e.: sacrifice).

Interestingly, the willingness to sacrifice is also true for start-ups.

</comment><comment><USER3> I feel like this article is an example of how a lot of charity and social businesses are half-baked at best.

First is the idea, mostly held by people at places like Dartmouth, that because these problems exist it must mean that nobody is trying to solve them. In reality, plenty of people are trying to solve them, its just difficult. This leads people to start their own charities that end up competing with each other for donations and thus it is difficult to develop the economies of scale that makes this stuff efficient.

The article mostly talks about the lack of market research. Its not difficult to ask someone 'What do you need' or 'Why don't you have running water' or 'Do you need your house to double as a workshop' and this would have helped guide the designs. A simple walk through and critical thinking would have shown designers that many people lived in apartments, and perhaps a 3000 dollar apartment building would get more use.

The article brings up putting local laborers out of business. I'm not sure I buy this argument against charity. The authors had spent previous paragraphs explaining the need for customization. The builders would not automatically be out of work if people bought prefab houses.

I guess in conclusion I think a lot of people who go into charity have the 'saving the world' attitude that makes them arrogant. This leads to people trying the same thing over and over again, and while competition is great in a market economy, when non-profits are competing for donations it leads to the non-profits viewing the donators as their customers and the most important people to please rather than the people they claim to help.

<comment><USER4> Yes, many plans to do charity work are half-baked. But I'm actually pretty pleased with this story since they're publishing their failures rather than sweeping it under the rug.

Market incentives aren't really there to reward charities for being really effective; most charities raise money by telling a good story. Few people dig deeper because digging deeper is hard.

As far as I know, <http://givewell.org/> is the best thing out there when it comes to evaluating charities. Also, I highly recommend reading _Poor Economics_ , a book that just came out that describes some more solid research using randomized trials.

<comment><USER5> You might also appreciate <http://charitynavigator.org/>

<comment><USER6> Particularly, the CEO pay reports. Why should I donate money to pay someone richer than me?

Lead by example, charity CEO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article mentions that land is scarce. It is often the case that the high cost item is not the obvious one, but the scarce one. California had very high housing costs, not so much because construction costs were high, but because land costs were. I would surmise that, in the case the article mentioned, a $300 house would not help much, because the cost of acquiring the land to put it on is so much higher.

My town is a bizarre case of scarcity pricing. Just before the crash, larger houses were going for well over a million and more modest houses were over $500K. Land was cheap. A lot could be had for $15K-$30K. The scarce item was water hookup. A Chevron station with leaking tanks had contaminated the water source and there has been a decade long moratorium on new hookups. To build a new house you needed a cheap lot and a $350,000 water meter. One man had actually accumulated 15 of them.

<comment><USER8> I looked into building a house in my town. Estimates for getting a permit were 2 years and $50k-$100k in costs. I bought a condo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> TL;DR - Shack designers who submitted for the competition failed at "customer development". They didn't ask how the customers use cheap dwellings now (store tools, build stuff, & upgrade).

<comment><USER10> Those who like their current homes will stay in them. Those who think the 300$ house is a good idea will use them.

Whats the problem? name any product and I can find an argument on the side of nobody choosing to use it.

I, for one, have a use for a 300$ house. I have a piece of land on which I would love to be able to place a few smaller cabins. Currently doing so would run me around 15-50k per building.

<comment><USER11> I understood from the article that the concern is that the house will be purchased by local government and forced on the poor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a difficult and really deep problem with no clear answers. Sure the local population are doing their best "building a future for themselves", but they are also driven to build structures that are totally unsafe in a serious earthquake. This is the main difference between one country's 7.0 quake killing tens or hundreds, yet another country's 7.0 (or even 6.0) killing tens or hundreds of thousands.

The solution is definitely not just marching in and offering a new cheap design for a single family house. The solution has to include an answer to the question: how do you get the local government to see the real equation. (economic cost of reduced economic output from early death from early mortality) MUCH GREATER THAN (cost of making sure everyone has a safe and secure home).

</comment><comment><USER13> Often times customers use your product in a way you didn't intend. A $300 house may have value, just maybe not the way the builders envision it.

<comment><USER14> Sure! I'd buy a $300 house and use it as a garden shed.

<comment><USER15> ...go to Home Depot and buy one then? They make nice, even potentially livable drop-in outbuildings.

No solar panel for tablet computer charging, but really now.

<comment><USER16> Not for $300 they don't...

<comment><USER17> Well, not a luxurious one, but: [http://www.homedepot.com/Storage- Organization-Sheds-Garages-...](http://www.homedepot.com/Storage-Organization- Sheds-Garages-Outdoor-Storage- Sheds/h_d1/N-5yc1vZbtz2/R-100211354/h_d2/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Good article about always the same problem in development politics.

Simple ground rule: If it does not create business for local companies, its usually not a good idea in the long run.</comment>


Learning hurts your brain - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/03/learning-hurts-your-brain/

<comment><USER2> I've always felt there are two types of learning.

The first kind is where I'm learning how to do something completely new: ride a bike, multiply matrices, juggle, regular expressions, whatever. My brain must be building new algorithms--it's creating new brain software.

The second kind of learning is where I'm learning new facts and figures: the state capitals, the characters on Game of Thrones, the top fifty dirty jokes, etc. This is my brain filling in a database or hash table.

The first kind of learning definitely hurts a lot more than the second.

<comment><USER3> You're referring to (1) procedural memory/learning and (2) declarative memory/learning.

<comment><USER2> Added to the database.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Assuming this is true ( I tend to doubt popular science articles by default at this stage) it seems that permanent damage is speculation and the response could be analogous to hypertrophy. Saying weight lifting damages your muscles is also true but its only part of the story.</comment>


Ask HN: Any place where you can get paid for writing about technology? - <AUTHOR> Except medium, it is not open for all countries <comment><USER2> For writing blogs about Tech -

CSS TRICKS - [http://css-tricks.com](http://css-tricks.com) \- They just say they pay on their website

SMASHING MAGAZINE - [http://smashingmagazine.com](http://smashingmagazine.com) \- $200 for new authors or else $250

SCOTCH IO - [http://scotch.io](http://scotch.io) \- $150

TREEHOUSE - [https://teamtreehouse.com](https://teamtreehouse.com) \- $100-$200

TUTS+ - [https://tutsplus.com](https://tutsplus.com) \- $100 for quick tip & $250 for regular tutorial

A LIST APART - [http://alistapart.com](http://alistapart.com) \- $200 for 1500-2000 words

SITEPOINT - [https://www.sitepoint.com](https://www.sitepoint.com) \- $150 for articles & $200 for tutorials

For more info, checkout -

[https://www.technig.com/pay-per-article-to-write-for- us/](https://www.technig.com/pay-per-article-to-write-for-us/)

[http://justlearnwp.com/make-money-writing-articles- websites/](http://justlearnwp.com/make-money-writing-articles-websites/)

[http://www.jeffbullas.com/20-amazing-sites-that-will-pay- you...](http://www.jeffbullas.com/20-amazing-sites-that-will-pay-you-100-per- article/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Define "writing about technology."

A how-to (e.g. here's the steps in accomplishing this task)? A review (e.g. I tried this product and here I share how well it works and if it's worth your money/time)? Tech explanations (e.g. need to come up to speed on TechThing? I explain)? Something else?

And for whom? Developers, consumers, enterprise CIOs?

There are all sorts of ways to get paid for writing about tech. But it's easiest to guide you if you tell us more!

</comment><comment><USER4> I came across this opportunity for Java Developers to write some articles: [https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/157697/java-spring- developer-...](https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/157697/java-spring-developer-to- work-on-articles-baeldung?so=p&pg=1&offset=13&l=Remote&u=Miles&d=20)

</comment><comment><USER5> Envato Tutsplus if you want to write a tutorial:

[https://tutsplus.com/teach](https://tutsplus.com/teach)

</comment><comment><USER6> Maybe become a Forbes contributor, look for blog writing jobs on Upwork, apply to content creation agencies, or write analysis of trends you can sell to hedge funds, investment banks, or private equity firms.</comment>


Sparking Joy with Python - <AUTHOR> https://maxwellforbes.com/posts/spark-joy-python-why <comment> t-vi So we've had type hints for a lot of PyTorch in Feb 2019 after working on it since Oct 2018.

I must say that of the 140 or so features and bug-fixes this was the singular most draining thing to work on, mainly from the comments on the bug reports.

But I'm glad if it sparks more joy now.

The shape vs. type is something that many people want, part of the problem is that shapes do depend on inputs. Often on input values (often constant ones) rather than types (convolution padding, "kernel" size in pooling, ...). But you would also need to know the constants from class members. For other bits it's completely unpredictable (like value-based advanced indexing or nonzero or so). So one would really need to be more "dynamic" than the static type annotations (meta-programming).

There is a bug open around that, but I haven't really followed along.

The other part is that I personally think that stubs (pyi) rather than inline type annotations are 1) wrong, because they'll go out of date, 2) ruin the joy. But the Python 2 compat everyone wanted last year kept us using them.</comment>


A New Center Being Born - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/20/opinion/centrism-moderate-capitalism-welfare.html <comment><USER2> [https://niskanencenter.org/blog/policies/opensociety/](https://niskanencenter.org/blog/policies/opensociety/)

It seems the break is between redistribution and regulation. They argue that redistribution tend to result in lower regulation.</comment>