Never mind the Star Trek computer, Star Trek engineers are stupid - <AUTHOR> http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Essays/Engineering.html <comment><USER2> I love how he first dismisses real life reactors that publicly failed before he finds an example of how real engineers work. Was TMI not designed by real professional engineers?

But it gets worse. He uses the safety of a large, stationary object as his example of how well engineers design systems. Why not hold up something that moves as his example instead? Like a helicopter? Oops, helicopters have a nasty tendency towards fatal failure modes. You can have redundant engines, but if you lose a helicopter blade, not much can be done other than provide you with an ejection mechanism.

But what about airplanes? Much better than helicopters. They can lose power and be landed safely. Heck, as <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232> documents, one plane was mostly successfully landed with no hydraulics, no control of its flight surfaces, and just 2 operational thruster engines.

But add an interesting constraint, such as desire to make it hard to spot on radar, and the next thing you know you get something like the B-2 stealth bomber. Unstable on all 3 axes, and will fall out of the sky like a rock the second the automatic computer corrections stop going. Do you think that the air force spends $737 million per airplane on something that wasn't designed by engineers? Yet they built something that will literally fall out of the sky if there is a problem with the computer!

While I agree that Star Trek has lots of plot holes that you can drive large trucks through, I don't think that their lack of engineering mindset deserves to be near the top of the list. The warp engines are unstable? Well they need to burn a lot of energy, which means you need an intense energy source. They use matter/antimatter. Doesn't take much going wrong for that to blow, and anything less energy dense won't cut it. Not really a plot hole.

They use force fields everywhere? Well it takes energy, serious energy, to get actual matter up to warp speed. By using force fields preferentially and for structural integrity they save incredibly on weight, and therefore efficiency. Those engineers are to be commended for figuring out how to strip out even more matter, and not criticized for failing to use poorly suited low tech solutions.

A lot of his "problems" just aren't.

<comment><USER3> Eh, to go blatantly ad hominem, _it's StarDestroyer.net_. It's a site devoted to arguing that the technology and militaries of one not-remotely-hard SF setting are "better" than the technology and militaries of another not- remotely-hard SF setting.

When I've looked before, there were straight-faced essays on there about the wonders of Imperial stormtrooper armor (augmented reality HUDs, sensors, etc.) that would have ended the Star Wars series about two minutes after the _Millenium Falcon_ got tractor-beamed into the Death Star. There were deadpan articles about the military skills and discipline of those stormtroopers that don't at all fit with their getting slaughtered by Ewoks or a formation of them running in panic from a single charging man in their own base.

The wacky justifications for all the "canon" they contradict with their claims make it clear - this stuff is not meant to be taken any more seriously than the puddi puddi meme. It's meant to amuse people and troll Trek fans.

ETA: I mean, really, do we want to look at the engineering practices in Star Wars? Huge walking tanks you can trip or take out with one grenade, near- absence of railings, etc... It doesn't bear worrying about. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Perfect counterexample: Battlestar Galactica (the newer one).

Bullets and nukes for weapons, CDC deep within the hull of the ship, damage control stations throughout the ship, sound-powered emergency telephones that do not require a power source (similar to the ones still in use in the Navy), pressure bulkheads, non-networked computers, emergency jump coordinates coordinated between ships BEFORE emergencies, etc.

<comment><USER5> To be fair the Galactica is supposed to be a warship, while IIRC the Enterprise is basically a science vessel with a couple self defense capabilities.

<comment><USER6> This excuse gets a lot less tenable about halfway through DS9, when the Federation is in the middle of a gigantic, potentially genocidal war against a far more powerful opponent. Especially when the Jem'Hadar ships have the exact same flaws (and for that matter, the Klingon ships always did).

<comment><USER7> The real reason is after Gene Roddenberry left in Season 2 of TNG the writers didn't stay entirely true to his original vision. When DS9 came about they had zero obligation to that vision so they went in a different direction. The writers could have done a better job putting it into context on-screen.

<comment><USER6> They couldn't exactly rewrite the fictional rules of a universe where bridge consoles explode whenever the ship gets hit and so forth. I don't know how Gene's presence or absence makes much difference; a lot of the dumb engineering ideas (like the exploding consoles) originated in work beyond his control. The first exploding bridge console in Star Trek history was in the Kobayashi Maru sequence in _Wrath of Khan_ , a film that Gene had virtually no creative control over.

Still, even in the original series it's intended that the Enterprise is a capable warship; the original show bible compares it to an imperial warship of the colonial era, and on multiple occasions (the Romulan incursion in "Balance of Terror"; the near-war with the Klingons in "Errand of Mercy") the Enterprise is deployed directly to the front line of potential combat. (The Enterprise-D would fulfill similar roles in episodes like "Best of Both Worlds", "Chain of Command", or even the first season episode "The Neutral Zone".)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Without system failures and alien possessions, life on the Enterprise would be pretty damn mundane.

I've always thought they should use more drones to do things. I mean, why do they have to drag that huge monstrosity of a ship all over the nebula to chart it?

And those shuttles. How dangerous are those? You just know when they hop on one of those things, a crash is imminent.

And for god's sake, if Scotty can keep himself alive in a transporter buffer for 80 years, why can't they keep backups of the aweigh team!

Sorry, just never got over the loss of Tasha Yar. :-(

<comment><USER4> Away team, "aweigh" is a term used to indicate that a ship is in transit (as in "anchors aweigh") :)

<comment><USER8> Standing correctedly by the anchor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've seen some valiant attempts at procrastination, but boy--this really takes the cake. Cross-examining engineering dialogue diagnosing fictional technology? Really?

<comment><USER10> A lot of it's wrong too.

 _Instead of minimizing excess reactivity, they seem to be doing everything in their power to increase it. Evidence of the high excess reactivity of a warp core can be found every time one of 'em blows up. For example, in "Generations", they knew the reactor was going to blow five minutes before it actually did, and they couldn't do anything but evacuate. In "Disaster", we saw a similar scenario; the reactor was counting down to doomsday throughout the entire second half of the episode. The only way they could stop these catastrophes was to eject the entire warp core or restore the containment field. You would think that they could simply shut off the flow of antimatter into the chamber (or at the very least, redirect it out into space), but it appears that even if they do so, the warp core contains enough unreacted fuel at any time to destroy the entire ship. It's a textbook example of extreme excess reactivity._

This is completely ignorant. Given that there's no such thing as an antimatter reactor, we have no idea how one works. Applying design principles from some trivial mechanical system to a fictional science fiction super-reactor just doesn't make sense.

<comment><USER11> Exactly what I was going to say. Maybe the warp cores are dangerous because it's simply not possible for them to build one that's completely safe. It's actually reminiscent of the accidents that we've had with nuclear power in the last century - creating a reactor that won't ever go critical is something that's only been possible recently.

Though I do have to admit the holodeck failed far, far too often.

<comment><USER12> The holodeck is one of the most-abused plot elements in Star Trek. Basically every time budget was short or the production crew felt like using other costumes, they'd just use the holodeck as magical plot element. With grave plot inconsistencies as a consequence.

<comment><USER6> Hey, at least they stopped the TOS practice of using the "it's the Roman/Nazi/postapocalyptic Cold War/Amerindian/Ancient Greek planet!" principle to use other costumes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13>
      "How are you supposed to create drama and tension if the
      technology never fails? My answer is that ... you need look
      no further than ... numerous Japanese animé series to see
      the proof."

It's probably unfair, but this part of the conclusion just jumped out at me as a hilariously stereotypical "Internet Argument". It's almost like a godwin for Sci-Fi.

<comment><USER4> I enjoyed the completely unnecessary diacritical mark over the 'e' in anime. "Pretentious? Moi??"

<comment><USER14> Actually, sometimes I wish we used accent marks more. You have no idea how hard English is to pronounce until you try to teach the "rules" to someone else.

I mean, one could claim that "ghoti" is pronounced the same as "fish."

<comment><USER6> _I mean, one could claim that "ghoti" is pronounced the same as "fish."_

Yeah, if you ignore all the heuristics about where letters are placed in a word. "gh" is only an "f" sound at the end of a word and "ti" is only a "sh" sound in the middle of a word.

<comment><USER15> What was that? I couldn't hear you over the coughing. Once I've sloughed off this layer of mucus, it should quieten down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've never really understood why it matters. I appreciate accuracy in a movie or show based on something very closely tied to technology (for example, in a movie titled "Hackers" I'd expect at least a little accuracy on the subject), but Star Trek is obviously not a technical show. It's about the people.

<comment><AUTHOR> Look at the conclusion of the piece. He agrees: it should be about the stories. His beef is with the writers lazily resorting to retarded engineering time after time.

<comment><USER13> Perhaps this stems from the fact that few writers also have an engineering background, and as such don't look at the plots they assemble the same way we might?

<comment><USER16> They're also under alot of time pressure to produce scripts so the filming, and retake after retake, can get done. IANAE but I imagine for a weekly show that's not easy. Having tried to both a regular blog and a book, it's harder than it seems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > _Worst of all, this flying disaster-in-waiting is supposedly the product of > the finest engineers the Federation has to offer._

I've thought about this one before. Imagine how bad the _other_ ships must have it. They must be failing all the time (not just when the cameras are on). For Starfleet to operate it all, they must need a fleet of repair ships, spacedocks with warp drive, which come along and rebuild the _USS Irreparable_ every time the captain forgets not to drag the boot disk to the Trash.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm sorry to all you who disagree. The guy is right. While his nitty gritty details are wrong, lets look at a few pieces of empirical evidence.

An aircraft carrier with destroyed pumps, engines, everything, as long as the structure is more or less ok, will stay afloat. Wait... An aircraft carrier can withstand a nuclear missile, and then keep sailing (the people are going to be dead through). This was proved in the 50s (old tech baby) when the government tested nuking a retired navy fleet of carriers and destroyers to see if they will sink. They didn't understand radiation, but the ships still sailed home. 5% of the fleet was destroyed.

Lets look at the stealth bomber example as noted by btilly. While its true if the computer dies, the plane falls like a rock. However the pilot can still eject. The ejection mechanism is not linked to the computer except for maybe the automatic mode.

I think the two "worstly" engineered vehicles are airliners and helicopters. Small planes can land without power due to the aerodynamics and weight, as long as hydrolics work. Airliners are not able to glide so well, nor are they light.

Airliners though do still demonstrate the redundant designs, each critical system has a backup which is a completely different in both their physical location and approach to solving the problem. If one fails the other can take over because a completely different set of conditions will cause the other to fail.

I think Battlestar Galactica did a good job showing REAL engineering. Those ships took a lot of pounding before they got destroyed. The only time the battlestars were just easily obliterated (like the enterprise was in every other episode) is when they were hooked up with a new computer system that connected every part of the ship to itself (and the computer was compromised) this was in the very first episode. Galactica survived BECAUSE it had all of it's systems disconnected and redundant, so when some shut down, people took over operations of that one back in manual mode. Hell part of the plot was that galactica was being sabotaged. In startrek sabotage was "opse the ship is going to explode now" while in galactica they just had some damage, or had their fuel blow up, or something (can't remember 100% of the details) but point being that you can't just blow the damn ship up. Maybe a civilian ship, not the warship. The only stupid thing in galactica was the cylon battleships had that central column which was succeptable to being blown up and destroying the ship, and that resurrection ship which if destroyed would fuck up resurrection for an entire cluster. I would have expected redundant resurrection ships/hubs.

In any case, the most unbelievable part of this whole ordeal is that you have a very large ship, full of civilians, armed to the teeth, the damn flagship of the fleet. That is all. Since when does the united states (or any country EVER) pack their destroyers or stealth bombers with civilians? Preach all you want about "exploration", in a real scenario you would have a mostly unarmed science vessel armed to the teeth with sensor gear, and a warship next to it for protection. Hell maybe the science vessel docks in the warship most of the time. The second an enemy approaches, the science vessel is already in high warp with every bit of stealth engaged getting the hell away from there until the warship signals them that it's safe to return.

<comment><USER6> _Hell maybe the science vessel docks in the warship most of the time. The second an enemy approaches, the science vessel is already in high warp with every bit of stealth engaged getting the hell away from there until the warship signals them that it's safe to return._

The _Star Trek: TNG_ term for this was "saucer separation". Not that it wasn't woefully underused.</comment></comment>


Microsoft announces Windows Mobile 6.5 features, new mobile services - <AUTHOR> http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/techtracks/2009/02/16/windows_mobile_65_features.html

<comment><USER2> The new interface actually looks fantastic, but "Windows Mobile Marketplace" will fail, unless it is shoved down users' throats in Windows 7.</comment>


Ask HN: Share Your Pain - <AUTHOR>

Great startup ideas spring from problems.
Plenty of people on HN have problems to solve.
Plenty of people on HN want to solve problems.
So, an experiment: share a pain point or problem you've had recently (even if it's more like a minor annoyance / not a tech-related problem) and maybe someone will think of a cool way of fixing it for you, prompting a slew of 'Show HN' posts to obliterate your problems.
If your life is completely pain free then more power to you, and soldier on, you lucky saint! <comment><USER2> I'd like someone to create an amazing Sublime Text 2 editor build for me. It would integrate a python debugger with stepping and breakpoints, as well as integrate an AS3 / Unity3D debugger. Failing being able to bolt the debugger on to the chrome of ST2, provide me with a nice debugger that works for all three languages and knows when i'm trying to "run" code from ST2.

It would also have amazing autocomplete for UnityScript, Actionscript and Python (e.g. for Python the autocomplete could determine return types from documentation and so forth). I've been thinking of trying to put all this together but I just don't have the time.

</comment><comment><USER3> Trivial Pain (if that): I was watching Storage Wars last night and I couldn't help but wonder about bidding patterns.

The show has such a rich data set and their bidding strategies are so simple that I would love to see someone break down the metrics on that show. It's rare that someone has chronologically recorded all bets of all competitors and followed up on the asset value after the purchase.

Strangely, this reality TV show could be sitting on valuable information about how people bid and how to predict a successful auction.

<comment><USER4> The problem is we only see a small subset of the bids. Any bids that the main characters aren't playing on won't be shown, will they? This will lead to selection bias.

<comment><USER3> This is a great point. I imagine whoever wanted to do the analysis would call Storage Wars and try to get them to work with you and give missing information such as that. It would be good PR for them to help out.

I'm mainly interested in how large the leaps are from competing bid to bid relative to the margin actually realized from liquidating the unit. My intuition says that the jumps will be larger on high margin units and they'll be more fine detailed when lower margin is present. Essentially, you're crowd sourcing the value of the unit.

While that may seem obvious, if this was proven to be true the best bets would be very small incremental jumps above the current high bid to signal low margin. If you did that you could convince the other bidder that you have information he doesn't have and since no one wants to be involved in a low margin liquidation the opposing bidder would have an incentive to bow out.

It's creating the allusion of information asymmetry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd love a Mac app that allows me to select text on a web page and copy the HTML for a link to the page with the selected text as the anchor text. It would save me a ton of time every day.

<comment><USER6> ClickBoard extension for Chrome does almost that: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bnahceedpdkaiojgdp...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bnahceedpdkaiojgdpddkkdkmjkabfgb)

I have not looked into that too much but I guess it is possible to find extension that does exactly what you need. Maybe even this extension could do that with some custom settings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> My current pain is the amount of different algorithms within the field machine learning.

And Ive also collected 20000 pains before from twitter, or needs actually: [http://www.ideaoverload.com/Find-ideas/New-ideas/Methods- gen...](http://www.ideaoverload.com/Find-ideas/New-ideas/Methods-generating- ideas/Solve-a-problem/)

Probably going to find a ml algo to sort them a little bit better

</comment><comment><USER8> We have several websites/products where we need to have fast connectivity servers. At the moment is very hard to rely on reviews/sales reps or finding speed tests on hosting provider sites to determine which hosting is faster than other - and there are huge differencess. we find it hard way by buying 1 month and then realizing its slow and moving on to the next provider.

</comment><comment><USER9> Apartment renting - CL sucks, it is filled with spammers. Brokers charge heavily, and in general, I don't feel like paying a lot of money to a broker, as I don't think they add too much value (it is different when buying a property though)

</comment><comment><USER10> My pain is having many ideas for startups and not being able to develop them for lack of coding skills and lack of interest in coding. Give me a drag&drop development system and you will make me happy :)

<comment><USER11> That's easy enough already if you're willing to pay for it.

<comment><USER10> I am totally willing. I have tried to recruit someone on oDesk and other similar platforms but the experience has been bad so far.

<comment><USER12> what is your email ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My pains:

1) Satisfying my physical/emotional intimacy needs (the physical is the bigger pain) 2) Commuting without being surrounded by strangers.

Go build a startup to solve those pains for me :)

<comment><USER6> Buy bicycle. It will solve second problem and will benefit for solving first one. While you might need psychological help on first one (I don't know you so it is hard to recommend properly).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> A way to explore pain points by industry:

Ideally a website where domain experts can share their business and industry pain points with a community of developers, entrepreneurs, etc. for us entrepreneurs to explore, give and get feedback.

<comment><USER15> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3664769>

also there are quite a few pain point threads if you run a quick search</comment></comment>


Billion Dollar Startup Ideas - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/on-startups/6ecc143afe65

<comment><USER2> The fast food idea is one that is already being explored. Former McDonald's guys are attacking it and really have some unique takes on how they will adapt their supply chain to make it affordable for the average joe to reach critical mass. They're working on expanding and are called Lyfe Kitchen ([http://restaurant.lyfekitchen.com/](http://restaurant.lyfekitchen.com/)). Wired did a really good writeup on them earlier this year ([http://www.wired.com/business/2012/07/ff_lyfekitchens/](http://www.wired.com/business/2012/07/ff_lyfekitchens/))

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm thinking much cheaper and simpler. For example, pasta with frozen veggies and some spices can't cost more than a dollar or two to make, and could be sold for like 2 or 3 dollars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Adam, may I discuss with you about a better Google idea privately? I cannot agree with you more. If you are interested in seeing some possible solutions available, shoot me an email at email@example.com.</comment>


Microsoft's SharePoint Thrives in the Recession - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/07/microsofts-sharepoint-thrives-in-the-recession

<comment><AUTHOR> Also: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=215527>

Have HN's impressions of the tool change since this discussion?

I didn't know Microsoft was doing anything like this.

<comment><USER2> I have to use it daily, the latest release still has the following issues:

* No friendly URLs, with HTML escaping everywhere and typically unreadable URLs of 4-500 characters.

* Well known issues with URLs longer than 100 characters, which doesn't bode well with the above issue.

* Allowing users to create files and folders that may trigger the above issues.

* Data loss when moving content between sites, particularly losing the entire revision history.

* Moves breaking all URLs due to lack of redirects.

* Problems with large files, compounded with Sharepoint exposing itself via SMB and allowing users to create shared files.

* No simple end-user revision rollback, although history is available, is typically isn't exposed.</comment></comment>


China Is Not the Next Global Superpower - <AUTHOR> http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/2014/11/10/china-is-not-the-next-global-superpower

<comment><USER2> > A superpower also needs to develop political democracy, economic freedom, > military power, legal system, quality of life and high tech creativity. In > all these areas China lags far behind the United States.

Untrue and uncited. By that logic the USSR wasn't a "superpower" which is absurd.

This article is clearly aimed at an American audience and is little more than a list of why the author feels the US is better than China. The title is click bait and the author never establishes any reasonable degree of truth behind it.

Also this is the author's first article on the site and they previously worked for a company with close ties to the NSA, DoD, and other security agencies in the US. They seem like they were hired to produced papers for the DoD on the Soviets. Additionally they also work for a neoconservative think tank called Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) who seems to spend their time producing anti-China/Iran/Syria media for publication.</comment>


Understanding Automatic Reference Counting in Objective-C - <AUTHOR> http://longweekendmobile.com/2011/09/07/objc-automatic-reference-counting-in-xcode-explained/ <comment><USER2> There's a good conversation here about dealing with objects inside structs, which is discouraged in ARC: [http://www.cocoabuilder.com/archive/cocoa/310392-struct- and-...](http://www.cocoabuilder.com/archive/cocoa/310392-struct-and-unsafe- unretained.html)

<comment><USER3> (AFAIK the Objective-C++ compiler doesn't have this limitation, as the struct can be given an implicit copy constructor and a deconstructor.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was hesitant to try ARC at first - all of the tutorials I saw started with storyboards, which was terrible nonsense, and I wrongly equated that to ARC. I still think about where my pointers are, I'm just writing less code now and I love it. ARC's very, very nice.

<comment><USER5> The best part of ARC is the zeroing weak reference. Add those to the ability to send messages to nil and it really cleans up the code.

No more if(obj != nil) [obj msg]; all over the place. Very helpful when dealing with delegates.

Oh, and I agree storyboards are nonsense :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Understanding memory management, and how things work "backstage" is always good but implementing it it's boring and very error-prone. Let's just use ARC, it's ready and it works amazingly well.

</comment><comment><USER7> The page states that ARC is not yet ready, but keep in mind this article was written in Sept 2011.

I think ARC is definitely ready nowadays, given the number of libraries and projects using it.</comment>


Ask HN: Best Explainer Video Platform - <AUTHOR> Hey HN,
What are some good exaplainer video platforms that won't break the bank? <comment><USER2> What's an explainer platform?

<comment><AUTHOR> Something like Appcues, [https://www.appcues.com/](https://www.appcues.com/)</comment></comment>


Druckenmiller: I See Storm Coming, Bigger Than 2008 [video] - <AUTHOR> http://bloom.bg/YaVM49

<comment><USER2> Nice post, as DOW hits high.</comment>


Want to irritate users? Learn from MSFT support 'engineers' - <AUTHOR>

While searching for a response to a MS Office performance issue, I encountered posts from many angry users.
(e.g.  May 15th post http://goo.gl/YdPSH6 from Jonathan and many others like http://goo.gl/vqpaEO Feb 14 response from Seiscons)
What's interesting, is that the users were not angry because of the software bug -- rather -- they were angry because of the way they were treated by MSFT support "engineers." These 'engineers,' rather than solve problems, they act like phone operators that simply put you on hold and
(BEGIN LOOP)
1. transfer you to another department
2. only to find that you were transferred to an irrelevant person
3. who will transfer you elsewhere (END LOOP)
This behavior irritates users enormously more than simply admitting you have no solution, or that the bug wont be fixed, or even to say your problem is not priority. Giving users the run around is definitely the WRONG POLICY.
Specifically Re MSFT: I don't understand why MSFT doesn't implement a policy like HN or stackoverflow where responses are downvoted if they are wrong/irrelevant or they simply link to another forum without providing the solution to the OP in their post. The 'engineers' compensation can then be based on the #upvotes minus #downvotes -- that will give them an incentive to help users. <comment><AUTHOR> Here are the live links to the post above

May 15th post [http://goo.gl/YdPSH6](http://goo.gl/YdPSH6) from Jonathan

Feb 14 post [http://goo.gl/vqpaEO](http://goo.gl/vqpaEO) from Seiscons

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> MSFT moved the MAY 15 conversation - now it's at [http://goo.gl/HgyuXf](http://goo.gl/HgyuXf)</comment>


Visualizing Cyber Threats – 3d network graph - <AUTHOR> http://metastackio.github.io/analytics/app.html <comment><USER2> No graph appears in my Firefox tab.

Looking at it in Chromium, I don't understand what I am seeing. I know it's some kind of network of IP addresses, but I don't understand its relevance.</comment>


My startup is group Chatroulette. What do you think? - <AUTHOR> http://www.famouscam.com/

<comment><USER2> The blog page doesn't work, and the main page brings up a permission dialog. Without knowing what this is about or why I should allow my video to be shared(or possibly recorded, etc), I can't click "allow".

<comment><AUTHOR> The blog is hosted at Posterous. As for the permission dialog, we've hopefully improved the messaging. Lots of people were saying the same thing about not knowing what it was and not clicking allow.

Hope you'll stop by and give it another shot.</comment></comment>


Dynamic Geography: A Blueprint for Efficient Government - <AUTHOR> http://seasteading.org/seastead.org/new_pages/dynamic_geography.html <comment><USER2> Summary: If "nations" were modular, ocean-going barges, then citizens could freely detach their modules and go live in or start a different nation for very low cost. This would provide competition to government, and therefore force them to be efficient.

It's a pretty attractive idea, but I think it needs to studied (modeled maybe?), before we can really say what would happen in a system like that.</comment>


C++ Lightweight, cross-platform, HTML rendering engine for desktop apps - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ultralight-ux/Ultralight <comment><USER3> A few things strike me immediately here:

1\. Whole sections of the license are missing, such as section 5 - it's just not possible to agree to something in this state.

2\. It's governed by the laws of Texas, so internationally that's not going to work - I'd have to hire a lawyer just to figure out what this means

3\. Most importantly, I've no idea why I'd want to use this over embedding Chrome or Servo.

4\. There's no ARM support. So no use on RPi, and potentially no use on Mac OS on Apple Silicon, depending on the secret sauce used.

That's before I even start to dig deeper - is it thread safe? Can it fall back to software renderer if needed? Will it be contentious for the GPU with other code that wants to use it?

Only the C & C++ bindings are official, the others are 'community maintained'. Whatever that means.

What I don't get, is why couldn't a dev team just embed WebKit directly - <USER2> does this really give? Can it put a browser in game in 3D, or is it a 2D overlay? Will it work with VR / AR?

The website makes a big deal over memory usage, which might be important in some cases, but what about CPU cycles? GPU cycles? Latency? Impact on framerate? Compatibility with Unreal, Unity, Godot, other engines?

I think it's a good project, but there's a lot of considerations before I'd even download for experiments.

<comment><USER4> 1\. Valid point.

2\. ?

3\. Chrome (or more specifically CEF -- Chromium Embedded Framework, the one used by Spotify et al.) is significantly more heavy than UL. Memory use is massive. Google doesn't care about API stability and ABI breakage is so common you'll have to keep up with all API changes (the ones published and documented anyway...) to get anything done. Good luck embedding Servo!

4\. ARM support is coming.

\---

> the others are 'community maintained'. Whatever that means.

I maintain the Rust binding to Ultralight [0] via the CAPI to provide an ergonomic way for people to work with it. Adam is busy improving Ultralight itself, so I find it worthwhile to maintain it. That's what it means.

[0] [https://github.com/psychonautwiki/rust- ul](https://github.com/psychonautwiki/rust-ul)

<comment><USER5> > Good luck embedding Servo!

You know, it doesn't really seem that hard to embed Servo in a Rust application [0]. It's a pretty interesting read.

Anyone know how stable Servo is for this kind of thing? It's not uninteresting as a cross-platform GUI solution or as more lightweight alternative to CEF (assuming it is more lightweight, I haven't done the science on it or anything). Given that you have total control over everything it renders, it's not massively important if it's not 100% HTML compliant or whatever.

Interesting space to watch for the future. Hopefully the Mozilla layoffs don't doom Servo.

[0]: [https://github.com/paulrouget/servo-embedding- example](https://github.com/paulrouget/servo-embedding-example)

<comment><USER4> That's a great repository, thanks.

However, Servo just isn't ready yet. There are just so many rendering issues that it's worth waiting for it to become more mature. (If you don't believe me, open [https://psychonautwiki.org](https://psychonautwiki.org) with Servo..)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Seems kind of misleading to post a github link that contains no code and it's actually nonfree software

<comment><USER7> The code is there, but not all of it, as I understood - except the "Proprietary GPU Renderer". And yes - "Ultralight is free for non-commercial use and free for commercial use by companies with less than $100K gross annual revenue"

<comment><USER8> Not all code is there. The website [https://ultralig.ht/](https://ultralig.ht/) says "No source code for proprietary modules" for the free version. If you want to use the technology in your free application then you tnerefore have to depend on a proprietary closed-source library. And as it seems only to save a bit of RAM. Better use Qt.

<comment><USER9> To be fair, Ultralight supports the console platforms, which it cannot do with open source code (not allowed by the developer agreements.) As such, it would already have to have a way to deal with non-public binaries or sources in the tree. In addition, a GPU renderer that plays nice as an embedded library, and is performant and can properly render html is not a small feat of engineering. I cannot entirely blame the author(s) for keeping that part proprietary. I just question the wisdom of it in the face of free competition like WebKit, CEF, Sciter or Qt.

<comment><USER8> > Ultralight supports the console platforms

I don't understand that. The readme says "Ultralight is a lightweight, cross- platform, HTML rendering engine for desktop apps and games." How does this fit with your argument?

> which it cannot do with open source code (not allowed by the developer > agreements.)

Why not?

<comment><USER9> Consoles, as in PS4, XB1, soon PS5..etc. Elsewhere in the thread the author said that some of these are already supported, and others are coming soon. Access to the SDKs for those, which you would need to run something like UL, is governed by contracts that you as a developer sign with the platform owner -- Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, etc.

These agreements very rarely (read: never) allow publishing of the SDK sources in any fashion. Even simply exposing code that calls into SDK functions would be in violation.

You don't get access to the SDK unless you sign the contract, and if you sign the contract and breach it, they have legal cause against you. Usually if you want to use third-rdparty software for these closed platforms, the third-party and you must both have developer agreements with the platform owner. This of course excludes software that you as a developer ported to the platform on your own.

<comment><USER8> Ok, I see, you're talking about home video game consoles, not command-line interfaces. I'm not home console developer (nor user); one reason is that it ties one too closely to the proprietary technology of individual manufacturers. But I see your point. Your arguments do not contradict my statements. I only stated that not all source code are available in the free version and therefore it is not an open source product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Proprietary renderer (not even source-available; Linux binaries linked against god knows what version of libc, libstdc++, etc) ontop of WebKit? No thanks.

Edit: I mean, sure, you could use it in your proprietary Electron app to make it more lightweight. At least on Windows, macOS and some Linuxes, the rest of users is left out then, but those free software enthusiasts are unlikely to use your software anyway.

<comment><USER11> A lot of people really don't seem to get that users rejecting Linux binaries isn't _just_ them being idealist, it's also a big usability thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wow this is great.

> [https://forum.ultralig.ht/t/community-language- > bindings/20](https://forum.ultralig.ht/t/community-language-bindings/20)

``` Several awesome members of our community have created bindings for other languages!

Check them out below:

        C# – https://github.com/ImpromptuNinjas/UltralightSharp 104
        Rust (High Level) – https://github.com/psychonautwiki/rust-ul 21
        Rust (Low Level) – https://github.com/psychonautwiki/rust-ul-sys 7
        Java – https://github.com/Janrupf/ultralight-java 10
        Go (High Level, Framework) – https://github.com/ImVexed/muon 22
        Go (Low Level)-- https://github.com/raff/ultralight-go 19

Let me know if I'm missing any and I'll add it to this sticky!```

</comment><comment><USER13> There should be a list of Electron alternatives somewhere. This looks like a promising start, at least.

<comment><USER14> This lead me to think that there are huge amount of legacy HTML functionality that Electron could potentially drop if it was possible. Electron doesn't really need to care about breaking the web. So there's definitely room for alternatives.

<comment><USER15> A strict subset, chosen for the greatest intersection of flexibility for developers, simplicity and performance with good documentation on how to write directly for it might go over well.

The hardest part for maintainers would be saying no when everyone inevitably asks to expand the feature-set.

<comment><USER16> If we choose a year as a checkpoint to start deprecating old web technology without sacrificing functionality, which one would be the reasonable pick?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It looks strange to me that it tries to use HTML, because then it should be compatible with Web APIs and should render the same. Then it would be basically a browser, not very different from what is used today in Electron. But if it will differ from Web platform, why not to just make lightweight alternative DOM-like API.

<comment><USER18> Been there, done that. Qt has had a renderer for a reasonable subset of HTML4 and CSS2 since the Qt 3(?) days. If you see a Qt app and there's colored text or bold/italics inside a label or editor, that's all done using that flavor of HTML. It gets rendered through the standard QPainter engine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> In the realm of lightweight html renderers I've taken a liking to litehtml ( [https://github.com/litehtml/litehtml](https://github.com/litehtml/litehtml) ) - though it isn't quite as fully featured as this.

</comment><comment><USER20> I hoped Servo would fill that niche.

It's nearly impossible to write a new browser engine that is compatible with all the legacy mess on the wild web, but for packaged webapps a modern minimal engine is exactly what they need.

<comment><USER21> Servo isn't necessarily dead, though it is ambitious for a community-run project. There's still activity on the repo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> _Ultralight is free for non-commercial use and free for commercial use by companies with less than $100K gross annual revenue._

Something that I have always asked myself is: If the code is open source, how would it ever be possible to enforce such a licensing model?

<comment><USER23> It isn't open-source in the "FOSS" sense. You can't have such terms in a FOSS license.

However, you can have _parts_ of a codebase be FOSS licensed, if the license is compatible with non-FOSS code. BSD, MIT and Apache licenses allow this, copyleft licenses like the GPL don't.

<comment><USER24> GPL (and others) allow such a model as well. There is nothing in the GPL preventing me from selling for as much as I like. The buyer however has to receive the source code (upon request) and can share it for free (as in beer) if they like.

<comment><USER23> I'm taking about using a _license_ that has provisions such as "can only be used for free by entities with less than $100,000 in revenue" (this case) or "must not be used for evil" (jslint). Such a license would not be considered a free software license, because it restricts the use:

[https://opensource.org/osd.html](https://opensource.org/osd.html)

As a result, the license would be incompatible with copyleft licenses.

Of course, you could kindly ask your "customers" to please pay for a license in case they're using the software for some purpose. Good Luck with that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> How does it compare to Revery[1]? Onivim2[2] is built with it and it seems great.

[1] [https://www.outrunlabs.com/revery/](https://www.outrunlabs.com/revery/)

[2] [https://v2.onivim.io/](https://v2.onivim.io/)

<comment><USER17> Revery is fully native and doesn't use parts of web platform. It uses ReasonML, that is dialect of OCaml and has its own implementation of platform and renderer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> If you are considering something like this for games, try:

[https://github.com/mikke89/RmlUi/](https://github.com/mikke89/RmlUi/)

or for apps:

[https://sciter.com/](https://sciter.com/)

<comment> c-smile Sciter works just fine in games. Sciter.Lite (windowless engine) was designed exactly for that.

Here it runs in Unreal Engine: [https://sciter.com/see-sciter-lite-unreal- engine-in-theaters...](https://sciter.com/see-sciter-lite-unreal-engine-in- theaters-near-you/) \- HTML/CSS primitives are rendered directly into DirectX surface controlled by Unreal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> According to the Architecture section of the GitHub page [1]:

> Ultralight is a new port of WebKit combined with a new [proprietary] > lightweight renderer intended specifically for embedding in apps and games.

And the Licensing section:

> Ultralight is free for non-commercial use and free for commercial use by > companies with less than $100K gross annual revenue. For more info see > LICENSE.txt

Pricing [2] is available from the main web site.

[1] [https://github.com/ultralight- ux/Ultralight#architecture](https://github.com/ultralight- ux/Ultralight#architecture)

[2] [https://ultralig.ht/#pricing](https://ultralig.ht/#pricing)

</comment><comment><USER28> [https://github.com/vlang/ui](https://github.com/vlang/ui) also seems promising and more targeted to devs who're more comfortable with go lang

<comment><USER29> "pre-alpha" and it seems excessively declarative

<comment><USER30> That's the trend du jour :-) (see also Flutter, Jetpack Compose, SwiftUI, …)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> For once I want to see "heavyweight" in the sales line... Just to see how it compares to all these "lightweight" offerings. Once you add in all the corner cases and bug fixes it seldom stays "lightweight". Good job on releasing it though.

</comment><comment><USER32> How does the accessibility story look like? If there's no accesibility, the usual disclaimers apply, get legal advice before building anything professional with it. Be aware of not just current laws, but future ones, especially those we definitely know are coming.

<comment><USER33> Honest question — do I really get into jail or get sued for high penalties if a small tools I make for my clients are not "accessible" by any measure?

<comment><USER34> No developer is going to be sued for their application having no accessibility features. The one who might be sued is an employer _forcing_ some employee to use the software to perform their task without any other alternative, essentially making it impossible for that task to be performed by that employee. Unless you are in a position to cause this, you are not going to be affected (and even then, you getting sued is very unlikely unless you are said employer).

In practice the worst that can happen to you is people with accessibility needs not using your software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This looks very promising. Will there be PS4/PS5 support, or is that not under consideration?

<comment><USER36> PS already supports WebWidgets, the menu selection was done in WebGL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Previous thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17733515](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17733515)

</comment><comment><USER38> 9 MiB is lightweight?

<comment><USER23> That's RAM usage. Not sure what this measures, but a single Full-HD backbuffer at 32bpp is already 8MiB.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Their pricing model could be adjusted.

It doesn't make sense to charge $2000/yr for an app that makes $1 of revenue.

<comment><USER40> $1 revenue startups pay $0. $100k+ revenue startups have to pay $2k for the commercial license. Seems fair to me.

<comment><USER39> Ah under Single Title license it says:

> $0K - $500K : $2000

But under Free License it says:

> Free for non-commercial use.

> Free* for use by companies with less than $100K annual gross revenue

Got confused.

<comment><USER41> I think that is if you want the additional stuff like support. You can still have $5 in revenue and purchase a license, that will make you fall into the first category and have to pay $2000.

You don't have to purchase a license, but you can if you want.

<comment><USER42> Yep, this is correct! I'll update website pricing to make this more clear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> What ever happened to Awesomium? Wasn't that more or less the same project by the same author?

<comment><USER9> I'm pretty sure this is what Awesomium became. When I last looked into Awesomium (like 8 years ago now) its development seemed to have stagnated and the developer was trying to find a way to monetize it.

<comment><USER43> IIRC he shutdown the website and abandoned twitter leaving paying customers high and dry. There was some talk of it last time this project made the forum rounds.

<comment><USER42> Hi there, author of UL and Awesomium here.

We didn't abandon anything, we announced to the community that we were stopping development of Awesomium (our previous Chromium fork), are going to build something new (which turned out to be UL, I wrote the rationale elsewhere in this thread), and continued to support our paid customers for years after (all licenses came with a 1 year annual support contract with option to renew, we would be in contract violation if we didn't).

We did stop maintaining the free online support community which I think is where this sentiment came form. Users were upset that there were no new versions of Awesomium and there was a 4 year gap before the first alpha of Ultralight was released which left a number of users rightfully annoyed.

I personally couldn't promise that were _would_ be a successor project since Ultralight was so experimental (the GPU renderer alone took about 4 years to get working on all platforms). That lack of communication and subsequent gap in updates is what led users to believe the project was abandonware (luckily, I'm here to say it isn't and we're still alive!).

FWIW, Ultralight was actually built in tandem using internal feedback from our existing customers. Many of our current users are ex-Awesomium users.

<comment><USER43> Thanks for the clarification!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> If you're writing desktop apps using an HTML/CSS interface, I wonder if "lightweight" is really a concern? I don't work on any such projects, but I'd probably prefer something established with a community (electron) if the only advantage is size (they mention memory usage too, but no specifics).

<comment><USER42> It's definitely still a concern! And our community is growing (come check out our Discord [1]).

Our advantages are much more than memory usage-- it's also distributable size, low-level integration, single-process mode (no external renderer processes), GPU rasterization (and integration into custom GPU drivers), and custom modification of the library itself (most of the library is open-source and on GitHub-- it's much more amenable to "hacking" on than Chromium so it's a better fit if you need a custom HTML rendering solution than Electron).

We're still building out our desktop app runtime (AppCore) to match the API of Electron, but the low-level renderer is already finding a solid foothold inside of games (PC, macOS, and consoles) and headless server renderers.

* [1] [https://chat.ultralig.ht](https://chat.ultralig.ht)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Isn't that called a browser and already exists? How is this one different?

<comment><USER46> My understanding: It's common to use Electron to build cross-platform desktop apps, but that basically ships a browser and a web server inside every app, so it takes a lot of resources.

This is a lightweight alternative.

<comment><USER45> If I am to locally run some HTML + CSS + Javascript app, isn't it better to just give my clients exactly some HTML + CSS + Javascript files and let them use their preferred browser to use it?

As for Electron, each time I see those types of applications, they are uninstalled faster then light. One reason why I stopped used Skype in 2014, they made it Electron app. Never looked back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Why is this thing on GitHub if it's not an open source project? Seems very misleading.</comment>


Listrunner rids doctors of paper notes, texts, and privacy risks - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2014/08/18/listrunner-raises-500k-may-rid-doctors-of-paper-notes-texts-and-privacy-risks/

<comment><USER2> interesting, a hospital I'm a student at is trialing a similar paper-free service like this.

So far its a disaster and the staff are just writing paper notes anyways. Apparently the actual paper will soon be phased out, which in that case the notes will be handwritten and then sent off to the intern/medical student to transcribe into the computer.

That and patients all react in different ways to doctors/students on their phones.

Edit: and I spent 10 minutes writing up some points and the comment system just ate it. So im going to tl;dr it instead: The only effective solution ive seen is 1 standing desk-style computer per bed, next to the bed. This is so cost prohibitive it's not even funny and is only present in the ICU. Otherwise ipads and iphones arent good enough to replace paper. and to highlight the computers: pentium 4's running windows xp.

</comment><comment><USER3> So one compromised device and all the data is out there?

Shouldn't this be restricted to on-premise-wifi only, highly locked down tablets that only allow the user to run the specific apps?

</comment><comment><USER4> Secure? Really?

Ot: i would say a tablet with character recog but i dont think theres any THAT good to read a doctors writing haha.</comment>


Ask HN: Alternative jobs to take a break from being a developer? - <AUTHOR>

I love coding, but I'm burned out and want to switch to something else for a while.  Something that will bring some more meaning to my life.  Or even just give me a break from the stress of being a software developer.
But I have a family to feed, so I can't just take a year off and travel or do anything crazy.
What's a good alternate career path I could take for a while to get a breath of fresh air? <comment><USER2> The answer depends on what you mean by "for a while". If its a few months or a year or two, it does not matter what the alternative career path is, as long as you do land a job that pays enough for you to support your family. If you are looking for alternate career paths for more than a couple of years, why think of this as temporary? Just switch to a different path and reevaluate when you stop having fun. Check this list to see which of the following helps:

1\. Take a week or two off. Go on vacation. Maybe you just need a short break.

2\. Find a new job as a developer. The change in environment (people and/or technologies that you work with) may do the trick.

3\. Switch to a PM role for a while.

4\. If you think being a developer is no longer fun, consider a career change.

Whatever you do, do not wait too long for the problem to fix itself. Do something now, before you start to drain out and find yourself unable to muster the energy and enthusiasm to come up with a solution.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestions, that gives me a lot to think about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I worked in a department store filling shelves for a couple of months and I actually enjoyed it. The work is boring, but what happens inside your mind belongs to yourself, all day long. Made a nice change for prostituting my brain. The social interaction is nice too. You would be amazed how many old people come to department stores just to have a word with another living soul.

<comment><USER4> > come to department stores just to have a word with another living soul.

That hits home. I have periods in my life where I have had less of a social life, and during those I definitely found myself going to the grocery store more. Reading your comment I realize just how much of that was to see other folks. Same with the coffee shop

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The simple answer is to work as a developer for half the year then take the other half off to go do whatever gives your life that meaning. It's simply more cost effective to do it this way than to try to find a "meaningful" job that you can pick up with zero experience that will still bring in enough to support your family.

Incidentally, if there exists a job orthogonal to your skill set as a developer that you can jump into and make upwards of half your current salary, that's a good sign you're not billing enough today.

<comment><AUTHOR> I love this idea. And it sounds like I'm not charging enough, heh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Teaching is incredibly rewarding. Depending on your qualifications you might find an institution willing to put you on their payroll but if not you can always advertise yourself as a private tutor.

</comment><comment><USER7> I was semi-involuntarily faced with the same situation this year. Giving a meaningful answer will depend on situational things, ie:

\- How old are you? \- How senior are you in your profession? \- Are you the sole provider for your family? \- How much savings/equity/etc do you have floating around? \- What other skillsets do you have that you could leverage?

The problem (I found, anyway) with 'alternative careerpaths' are that they either require some sort of previous experience (to get them, or earn a good wage, depending on where you live), or the ones that don't will have 1e10 other people lining up for it (again, depending on where you live).

It may be more productive to find a way to cut down on expenses and tap into savings, and try and learn something new, or get in touch with your inner geek again. A side benefit might be getting to spend more time with the kids/wife, or discover a talent or skill you didn't know you had.

My experience has shown that I don't want to get out of development, but having to do seemingly meaningless drivel for other people sucks the life out of our profession. I'm going to try and actively keep that spark alive going forward (not sure yet how, but at least it's a start).

I'm happy to chat privately if you're interested...

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank, how did things end up for you? Did you find anything particularly helpful during that time?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Its winter soon, at least here.

Time to maintain motorbikes or sailing boats. Do you know any craft, e.g. sewing, that could be used to make money in that market. Motorbike saddles, tarpaulins, seats and cushions are things I produce when tired from coding. Hand crafted quality sells well, and builds up a customer base that is even more loyal then a mainframe service contract.

Especially the biker scene has the tendency of regular up or outs. Some bikers move up, others move out, when ever a club closes, or is patched over. Same happens to good quality saddles also. So even if you do not sell to the Angles right now, they will might ride your saddles in 10 or 20 years, and they will be top paying customers.

Same same but different with sailing boats. Even if one can not move a tarpaulin from one boat to an other, like you could do with a Harley saddle, the sailors themself move up or out regular. They either buy a bigger boat, or quit sailing. Selling quality ensures a loyal customer, who tells his club.

You'll soon be invaded by wanna be customers every winter, if done right. Do not take to many, keep it to a maximum of 2-3 month of 20 hours work per week. Some of the sailing club customers might even become software customers next summer.

</comment><comment><USER9> If you have some time - you could create a udemy course based on what you know. Making screencasts is very fun and will provide you with a stream of passive income.

Other than that - I think it's hard to give an advice about career that would be both fun and wouldn't require a lot of skill to start with.

But if you are willing to invest time and effort - writing, painting, and computer graphics are the thing that I massively enjoy in my free time. I bet you could use your programming skills in 3D graphics as well.

Also - some sort of internet marketing. It isnt usually considered fun or worth doing among programmers, but it can actually be fun and profitable, and obviously a useful startup-related skill that you can utilize to make/sell your own products if you ever want to.

<comment><USER10> What do you mean by internet marketing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I understand whole heartedly - I've been there. If you are a family provider, and don't want to get too far out of your comfort zone (every personality is different) - you could look at consulting, software consultants, software architecture, sales, etc. These would provide a rough average income of what you're earning now. Or, as an aside - you could also teach yourself a new skill or do a side job at night/weekends. Find what you are yearning to do, and incorporate it. Are you feeling isolated coding too much? Find a more extroverted position, etc etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Find what you are yearning to do, and incorporate it.

Maybe that's where I've been failing. Nothing I've done lately has been inherently meaningful. May I ask what you ended up doing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Do what I did: join the Army as a linguist. Now I have served 1 out of the six years of my commitment, and I've learned Arabic while I got paid for it with all my living expenses taken care of.

Also when I get out I can go back to school and I'll have a huge leg up on government jobs. OTOH, if I can become a warrant officer I'll just stay in.

Yes it's risky/dangerous. I can't deny that. But I can say for sure it will get you in shape and builds a lot of discipline and character.

</comment><comment><USER13> Man, I can really relate to this. I sometimes consider taking a development job at a small, non-IT company. Just an easy, get-it-done type of place. The kind of place where the users will love you for saving them from spreadsheets and access databases and their manual processes. Job satisfaction without the other stuff for a while.

So I guess what I am saying is that maybe you can find a place where you can continue on your career path while saving your sanity.

<comment><AUTHOR> That sounds nice... Know of any places like that?

<comment><USER13> I don't think these types of places are the ones you find on HN. They're more likely mom and pop places, family run and really just waiting to benefit from automation.

I did consulting at an HVAC company that had the vibe I am describing. I am not saying these positions are abundant, but if you check craigslist, depending on where you live, you might find these either under the software/QA jobs or under the computer gigs sections.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> When I'm tired, I do gardening. But where I live I'm happy to have a lot of sun, most of the time and my place kind of in the suburbs so whole thing is perfect for gardening / taking care of plants, flowers, etc.

EDIT: Sorry didn't read the question well enough. Gardening isn't an _good alternative career path_ to programming IMHO, just a nice distraction. Even helps you _think_ about programming and/or other problems.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, that sounds awesome. Thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Project manager, front end designer, QA, or DBA maybe? Depends on your background and passion.

</comment><comment><USER16> You could try writing your experiences in a book.

</comment><comment><USER17> deliver pizza or bartend, good tips :)</comment>


Should I pursue a masters in computer science? - <AUTHOR>

I have about 8 years experience in the software industry with an electrical engineering degree.I am seriously considering pursuing an advanced degree in computer science to get more advanced knowledge in the field as well as more recognition for my skills. I am getting very diverse opinions about the idea , and  it's starting to get confusing!! Any personal experiences or stories will be greatly appreciated. <comment><USER2> If you want to get more advanced knowledge then independent study will be way more efficient use of your time. Masters degree isn't all that advanced (after 8 years of programming you should know much more than a masters degree can provide) and in addition to teaching stuff you might be interested in, there's also a lot of wasted time on things that are not very interesting (in general and/or to you). Not to mention massive cost (you not only have to pay the tuition but also are not being paid for doing software work).

If you want more recognition, blog about technical topics and create useful open-source projects.

I can tell you that no company ever has contacted me after seeing that I have MS in CS. That's not indicative of anything and after few years of professional experience, you're judged on your past performance and not your degree.

Plenty of companies contacted me offering job interviews after seeing my open source work that I wrote about on my blog.

<comment><USER3> Just curious: you have a lot of interesting work on your blog, could you say which posts resulted in companies contacting you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I did it in one go with the rest of the studies. But I did work at the same time - not sure if I'd do MComp otherwise.

From my experience:

1\. With 8 years of experience you're unlikely to learn anything new and interesting. Unless you have only coding-to-a-spec experience with no research and learning involved.

2\. With 8 years of experience, I don't think anyone will even look at education field anymore. I didn't when I was doing interviews.

3\. You've got 2 very different goals listed: "more advanced knowledge in the field" and "more recognition for my skills". You can easily do the first at any point without the second. EDx, published MIT courses, published research papers, etc. are available to you right now. Are you using them already? The only thing that a degree will give you is someone to talk to in person about those things - this may be a great thing, or not. Depends how you like to learn and who is available at the university you're thinking of.

Personally I had a few years of work experience already by the time of starting MComp and looking back: It was rather boring to spend time on stuff I already knew. It was cool to get really advanced people give you specific papers to read. The final project was painful - I never want to write ~80 pages on anything ever again. I don't think it helped with my hiring either - it was more just the professional network.

These days I try to pick up one EDx course at a time, every once in a while, or do some Rosalind problems to learn new things.

</comment><comment><USER4> For your stated goals: One, you can get advanced knowledge in the field while being in the industry. IMHO a Masters isn't needed, after 8years of programming. It's a different story for Mech/Elect etc. And two, you won't get any more recognition for your skills. Actually you might get a slight hit. Instead of being compared to 10 year experienced guys, you'll be compared to 8 year experienced guy.

Gates, Zuckerberg, Spiegel are college dropouts(ivy league of course!). Don't think the industry cares as much about degrees as you are assuming it to be.

However, you would find something else that you aren't looking for. You'll get back to univ life, breaking away from the monotony of regular work. That's fun. You'll have time to see things in new perspective, come up with new ideas. You might find some excellent peers with whom to team up for a potential startup. Also depends on the country/culture/school you're in.

</comment><comment><USER5> Unless you are wanting to get into compiler development, get certain government positions or work in specific scientific fields of development 5-8 years of experience is worth more than the MSCS.

Unless someone has < 3 years of experience in the field I basically ignore the education section on their resume. I will look for relevant certifications, and any job/technical related training, but experience is worth so much more than a degree in my book.

As for getting recognition for your skills, you'd be better of doing any of the following:

1\. contribute to open source projects 2\. start a blog, write guest posts 3\. contributing to conferences as a speaker. 4\. publish white papers on work you have done/been a part of (with permission of course)

If you just want it for personal development though, go for it, I can't think of any reason it would hurt anyone.

</comment><comment><USER6> Having been a hiring manager for a few years... I can say that degrees have only really mattered to me when the applicant hasn't any real experience to speak of in the industry.

Experience is king, plain and simple.

That said, the best post-experience education I've received is self study in algorithms... If you haven't had the exposure from your time achieving your EE degree, do yourself a favor and hit up Kahn Academy or Coursera (or others) for a course, you won't regret it.

Lastly, build yourself a strong LinkedIn profile if you haven't already, as my best leads have come from there almost exclusively.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is there a particular algorithms course you'd recommend in there? I did some intensive reading recently on algorithms, but a well structured course will definitely help. Most of the material I came across so far aren't very close to practical life

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> No, but maybe something in another field (like applied Math or Science) and you might find yourself in a position to be doing something meaningful/valuable.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks everyone for the feedback, that is extremely helpful</comment>


Rediscovered EDSAC diagrams reveal secrets of first computers - <AUTHOR> http://www.tnmoc.org/news/news-releases/lost-edsac-diagrams-reveal-secrets-one-earliest-computers

<comment><USER2> Would really like to see some scans of these...

I've looked at schematics of early computers, and although many of the implementation details are quite different, it's often amazing how similar they are to modern machine architectures. One of the biggest differences is that these early machines were more like programmable calculators than general-purpose computers, with really wide registers, support for floating- point, and math-oriented instruction sets.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Delay_Storage_Automa...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Delay_Storage_Automatic_Calculator)

<comment><USER3> I think that was a necessity. The machines were built to do math, and at the time they didn't have fancy modern compilers that could do pure magic transforming human-convenient expressions into amazingly efficient machine code. So they had to either design the machine to do the required operations in hardware or make programmers do similar magic in their heads.

<comment><AUTHOR> You might be interested in reading _The preparation of programs for an electronic digital computer_ (1951) By Maurice V. WIlkes, David J. Wheeler and Stanley Gill. That's the textbook they used for the first programming course (in Europe) using the EDSAC. The interesting thing to me about this book is that the topics discussed can still be found in some way in "modern" introduction texts to programming.

Part I

1\. The design or programs for electronic computing machines

2\. Input of orders

3\. Subroutines and parameters

4\. Library subroutines and their use in constructing programs

5\. Pitfalls

6\. Use of the EDSAC and its associated equipment

7\. Examples

Part II

8\. Specification of library subroutines

Part III: Appendices

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not old enough to have used a vacuum tube (or valve, the lovely British word for them) computer, but I've developed an interest in these early systems. I hope these circuit diagrams are scanned and become available some day.

When reading about the EDSAC a while back, I realized that this was the computer on which Fred Holye based the computer he describes in "The Black Cloud", right down to it being housed in a former Anatomy School in Cambridge. I've wondered if Hoyle actually used the EDSAC or was just familiar with it enough to use it as a model for his fictional computer.

<comment><USER5> Thomas Gold¹, who co-developed the Steady State hypothesis along with Hoyle and Hermann Bondi, helped design EDSAC's mercury delay line memory, as he had worked on delay lines for radar during the war.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Too bad we don't get to see the actual diagrams. I wonder if that's because they are patented.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I never understand these news articles referring to reports, digital objects and whatnot, but not actually linking to the material.

Still, this EDSAC recovery project ([http://www.tnmoc.org/special- projects/edsac](http://www.tnmoc.org/special-projects/edsac)) seems mighty interesting. When I'm in the neighborhood of the museum, I'll plan paying them a visit.</comment></comment>


Pros and Cons of Using Embedded Android for a Non-Mobile Device - <AUTHOR> https://stanfy.com/blog/pros-and-cons-of-using-embedded-android-for-a-non-mobile-device/?utm_source=news.ycombinator.com&utm_medium=community&utm_campaign=embedded-android-for-a-non-mobile-device <comment><USER2> Few other Pros:

       You have access to very cheap prototype boards such as raspberry pi and few others.

       You can easily get CPU/SOC, camera, sensors, for somewhat low price curve of the cell phone ecosystem.

<comment><USER3> And some cons:

* Instead of writing for Linux, you write for Android. Forget about prototyping on your desktop with plethora of debugging tools (strace and ltrace being the most basic ones), you'll also need an emulator or the target device even for something that doesn't talk to hardware.

* You're pretty much stuck with any brain-dead Android behaviour you hit. OS needlessly killing your service when network cable is disconnected? Fsck you, suck it up.</comment></comment>


2.5M Medical Records Leaked by AI Company - <AUTHOR> https://securethoughts.com/medical-data-of-auto-accident-victims-exposed-online/ <comment><USER2> I'm a medical researcher, and I've worked with exactly this sort of data. The number of hoops I had to jump through to even be allowed on the project was insane. Background checks, legal forms of all kinds, trainings on how to keep the data secure. Fingerprint locked rooms. Access control. And most importantly: the data themselves were air-gapped.

If I fucked up on this scale, jail would be the least of my worries. I'd never work again. I'd be professionally shunned forever, with no hope of redemption once my name is attached to the incident in some Google search. No more grants, no more collaborations, no nothing. I'd be ruined. Frankly I'd be begging to be let into prison; where else am I gonna be able to eat?

Nothing will happen to these people.

<comment><USER3> This is a wild exaggeration. First of all, everyone is insecure. Work as a pentester, and you'll see that the whole world is insecure. After the 30th project with an SQL injection vuln or misconfiguration, you'll never be phased again.

Secondly, this seems to be a straightforward database misconfiguration. The database was set to public with no restrictions. It likely wasn't accessible to anyone who wasn't explicitly looking for it, i.e. security researchers or black hats. Yes, this was horrible, but nothing bad happened here. The database was simply set to private.

Third, my friend, chillax a bit. Yes, it's extraordinarily important to protect people's medical data. But no, you're not personally liable if a fuckup happens. _Everyone_ fucks up. That's why the fuckups are covered by legal protections. You take your job seriously. Good! But you also take your job way too seriously. Bad. You're gonna burn yourself out within a decade with this mindset.

None of this is to say that what happened didn't matter. Of course it matters. But you are literally saying you'd be begging to be let into prison. That's not proportionate, and feels like a reflection of the current social climate of retribution-as-forgiveness.

<comment><USER4> > This is a wild exaggeration.

It isn't. I get that experience as a pentester can make you jaded to security practices, but the healthcare space is extremely regulated and much of what the grandparent said is a direct result of that.

> Secondly, this seems to be a straightforward database misconfiguration. The > database was set to public with no restrictions. It likely wasn't accessible > to anyone who wasn't explicitly looking for it, i.e. security researchers or > black hats. Yes, this was horrible, but nothing bad happened here. The > database was simply set to private.

This isn't just a minor misconfiguration. Again, this is a regulated space, with rules. There should be multiple layers in place to make sure that this is not opened to the public. There's risk assessments that needed to be carried out when the database was launched, and on a regular cadence afterwards. "It wasn't accessible to anyone who wasn't explicitly looking for it" isn't reassuring. Look at access logs on any device with a public IP address and it's clear that people are _constantly_ looking.

> But no, you're not personally liable if a fuckup happens.

Under HIPAA, you can be held personally liable. This includes jail time for certain classes of violations.

> But you also take your job way too seriously. Bad.

People working in this space are required to have regular training and undergo audits of their activity, what information they access, risk assessments on how it is stored, and long, drawn out compliance activities just to get access.

<comment><USER5> >Under HIPAA, you can be held personally liable. This includes jail time for certain classes of violations.

Has anyone ever been actually sent to jail under HIPAA for something comparable to an honest DB config mistake? Has anyone been credibly threatened with it in the court of law? Has anyone come remotely close?

<comment><USER6> Not even close. The only case I could see it happening was if you purposefully exfiltrated data and sold it, or got some sort of personal gain out of it.

It's the same thing with PCI. They say you can go to jail for violations but exactly 0 people have ever been prosecuted, despite constant negligence in the payment industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This happens because execs are cheap, farm out everything to dev shops, and the beleaguered, underqualified devs power out nonsense code to keep up with the arbitrary point quota for the sprint. No one knows how the whole system works, reqs change constantly so poorly-planned updates degrade the whole thing, and all the while actual patient data gets mixed into the big soupy pot of bullshit. Anyone who raises concerns about the situation gets to be the "compliance officer," thus passing responsibility from the people benefitting from the situation to the people who just want to keep their job.

I wonder what would happen if devs could say to their boss "no, this won't be released until we're confident in it" with legally enforced immunity to consequences.

<comment><USER8> What you're describing is a professional licensed engineer who has to among other things take out insurance because they are ultimately responsible for their decisions.

<comment><USER9> Software development is long overdue for a legally professional software engineer license and certification process. I imagine it's going to happen down the road after something important gets burnt.

<comment><USER10> Every time this comes up, people (some of whom are in this thread) end up talking about how this can't/shouldn't happen for software. After all, what, is every high-schooler or green college grad that ever wants to code their own app for a startup going to have to be professional certification?

I guess I'd argue that those people shouldn't be legally allowed near this kind of thing without that kind of a certification. Looking into all of the other engineering disciplines, that's exactly the kind of thing you see. I have a BSME, but I haven't taken the Fundamentals of Engineering exam to get my FE cert, in part because getting a PE certification requires working underneath a licensed PE for a certain number of years, which isn't the case for my current job.

I also know that by not doing so, there are certain projects that I simply can't work on. I have to imagine that there's a way to create a legally enforceable framework that falls into the same category for software engineers. Want to build a company that creates a digitally-synced notepad? Have at. Want to touch personally-identifiable medical data? Better have a licensed engineer working on that project to sign off, else your company is wide-open to liability claims _with teeth_. If something unreasonable gets by the signed-off engineer, they're on the hook too.

Obviously, it's a complicated problem, and reducing things to a first-order solution rarely is a catch-all, but there _has_ to be some more professional/personal responsibility taken by the individuals building these systems, and a requirement of licensure is a way of empowering engineers in those positions to the point where it actually matters.

<comment><USER11> I think this is a bad idea.

I developed software for medical devices and you have to do a risk analysis, formalize the software development process, declare qualifications of people, make it revision proof, have a formal testing process, ... everything is already accounted for.

Notified bodies ensure compliance. They have the problem that they cannot really evaluate the work of software engineers of course. Not even another software engineer could do that within feasible time limits. No software engineer can make sure there aren't exploits that could endanger user data. You can at most test if due diligence was ensured.

The manufacturer is responsible for ensuring safe operations of devices and yes, that includes keeping personal data safe.

But again, the problem wasn't the engineer at all, the problem is the wish for amassing data like this. Paper license or not, it rarely ensures competency and wouldn't have solved this problem.

Aside from legislative issues that ensures that user data belongs to the user the data is about, ensuring that companies don't sell and share medical data with "friends and family", ... this is probably the last step, if it is even required at all, which I would dispute. There are no guarantees if you amass data like it was done here.

<comment><USER12> Make it prohibitively expensive to leak data (compliance fines, lawsuits) and the problem will solve itself. Companies that collect data will then be begging for certification and regulation.

<comment><USER13> It would be even better if people learned to refuse to give data irrelevant to the service that they are seeking and/or if there was some sort of regulation about this (I should not have to give my name and address when returning a product for example).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > _Medical data is the most valuable and it is bought and sold daily on the > Dark Web. The infosec company Trustwave published a report that valued > medical records at $250 per record on the black market, while credit cards > sold for $5.40 per record._

Why can medical records be sold for so much? What value do they provide to the buyers?

<comment><USER15> You can bill insurance companies for fake treatments.

<comment><USER16> And when you get caught, you lose your medical license.

Can you really fake bill enough before getting caught to be worth burning an M.D.?

I never really understood this angle. Say the insurers use a phone call to verify 1% of treatments with the patient. Say 20% of those calls are answered and produce a coherent reply. That ought to be enough to make the expected payoff negative.

Either way, this problem isn't unique to the medical world. Every other industry has to prevent fraudulent invoicing.

<comment><USER17> I assume that if you do fake billing, you wouldn't do that with your own identity, so the risk of losing a medical license isn't there.

<comment><USER16> Nobody accepts anonymous medical invoices.

<comment><USER18> But they do accept ones with forgef credentials and redirected bank payments ^.^

<comment><USER16> If you can "redirect" somebody's money you don't need to bother stealing patient medical records.

<comment><USER18> Then you'd be surprised to hear about the income tax return scam back in the day where even lay people were able to achieve just that, for 2 million bucks specifically ^.^

[https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nydailynews.com/news/nation...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nydailynews.com/news/national/woman- arrested-falsely-claiming-2-1-million-tax-refund- article-1.1093171%3foutputType=amp)

<comment><USER16> And they didn't need any medical records to do it!

... which was pretty much my point.

If they can steal money out of doctors' bank accounts, or redirect it on its way in, they don't need patient data. The doctors already have patients. And payments coming in. This isn't like income tax refunds where the payer pays each individual.

In fact, if they have patient data, it's stupid to use it. What insurer isn't going to notice some doctor suddenly getting a thousand new patients all in the course of one week?

Sorry man, it still doesn't add up. If you're equipped to do this at all you're equipped to do it without needing patient data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The issue with such highly sensitive data is that it's just data. Probably a few GB. Many AAA game downloads nowadays are much bigger than that. Even if they protected their database (article says they didn't), it's easy to break into a place that has all the data collected compared to collecting it yourself from doctors all over the country. There's an easy solution to this: don't concentrate highly sensitive data.

With nuclear material, the IAEA has set up a sophisticated surveillance regime to make sure that countries use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. Everything that contains nuclear material is video surveilled. They collect probes and check composition to prevent someone taking, say 1%, replacing it with filler material, and then mixing it again.

If we concentrate data, we should employ such surveillance regimes for highly enriched sensitive data as well.

<comment><USER20> Decentralization and self-sovereign identity are the only way to solve this, IMO. I'll sing the praises of Estonia on this one: their X-Road system for storing sensitive data is brilliant.

I'm working on a team writing an in-depth whitepaper on this topic right now, I'd love to link it. Perhaps when it's published.

<comment><USER21> Please do. Would love to hear success stories for data security.

<comment><USER20> Would you mind sending me an email at firstname.lastname@example.com? I can't find any contact info in your bio.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wow, let's just say from their website I'm impressed they got anyone to give them data at all. That site just screams "Take some programming tasks that require a minimum of data analysis and call it AI." From their product page I'd take they easy bet that they're just wrapping some cloud providers bot SDK and calling it their chatbot. Given the lack of professionalism on this site I am unsurprised about their security issues.

<comment><USER23> I'm not surprised in the least. I've sat in multiple meetings with execs whose boards have told them, "We need to get into this AI game, it could solve all our scaling problems!" Often both the board and the exec are clueless as to what AI is capable of or can offer their business specifically, they begin talking with vendors.

The execs feel they need to show they at least made an effort, and these companies branding themselves AI are easily able to take advantage. They market their products as these complex decision-making/analytical systems, but most of them are either glorified reporting dashboards or just an integration point/pipeline builder for a set of services.

The business buying this stuff doesn't need any of it to become more efficient, they are effectively spending the money to be able to generate the hype of saying, "We're in the AI space".

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> HIPPA authorities are going to fine them into oblivion right? Right?

<comment><USER25> Jail is on the table for HIPAA violations. I am always afraid to mess with medical data.

<comment><USER22> Jail is on the table if you purposefully steal the data. I was interested so searched for examples of actual HIPAA jail time, and in all the cases I could find the conduct was egregious and with clear intent (e.g. [https://mazarsusa.com/ledger/jail-time-for-a-hipaa- violation...](https://mazarsusa.com/ledger/jail-time-for-a-hipaa-violation/) ). Misconfiguring your S3 buckets isn't going to hit that level, though that could still result in a hefty fine. This of course all assumes that the AI company got access to the data legally to begin with.

<comment><USER26> Is there any personal liability for the directors Or investors below jail? Going to be a shame if the company is able to just bankrupt out of this

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > This database was set to open and visible in any browser (publicly > accessible) and anyone could edit, download, or even delete data without > administrative credentials.

> there were multiple references to an artificial intelligence company called > Cense. The records were labeled as staging data and we can only speculate > that this was a storage repository intended to hold the data temporarily > while it is loaded into the AI Bot or Cense's management system.

</comment><comment><USER28> We need some kind of monetary punishment for not protecting user data. Simultaneously, we need to give tax breaks for companies that have had a streak of many years of taking security seriously without leaks.

Increasing bug bounties doesn't happen when the executives do not have a culture of security in their company. That's a loss cost center for them. We need a different incentives that go beyond just rewarding hackers with bug bounties.

<comment><USER29> Mandatory data breech insurance with prescribed penalties paid to affected parties by the insurance companies.

Insurance is a great aligner is financial incentives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> And in this scenario of technical and political incompetence, more so in some places than others, the Indian government has recently proposed to compile the medical data of ALL it's 1.3 billion citizens into a single database.

It's only a matter of time before the whole thing gets leaked out, not to mention that compiling such data in the first place ought to be none of the govt's business. Such data is simply too powerful to be entrusted into the hands of any single party, political or corporate.

</comment><comment><USER31> I wonder what it will take for data security to ever be taken seriously.

<comment><USER32> Well somehow PCI compliance seems to work well enough for credit card payment processing. But what happens is, the payment handling is passed off to a vendor, so not every company has to get things right in house.. I wonder if that can be a solution here.. medical data is handled by external vendors.

<comment><USER29> PCI compliance works because of the aligned financial interests of the actors.

Most kinds of compliance are linked to legal costs as the ultimate source of consequences, not so for PCI.

The ultimate costs for failing to comply with PCI are the actual costs of card fraud which don't depend on anything in the legal system. When your regulations are designed and enforced by the entity that actually loses money when they aren't followed, motivation lines up and they work better.

<comment><USER32> Good point. It seems like it might be hard for regulations to be designed and enforced by the losers of personal medical data leaks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> It's insane that medical data has become so highly valued on the black market (I guess because of the amount of information stored with a single patient such as SSNs, maybe billing info, addresses, etc). Yet, it seems that the healthcare industry is not well prepared to deal with a huge amount of sensitive data (and doesn't seem to be obfuscating it when sharing with vendors). Ironically, I feel that the most secure way of doing patient record keeping is keeping everything physical.

<comment><USER29> The healthcare industry is prepared just fine. Regulations exist for how you can share data with vendors, when you are required to remove identifiable information, and how to share unredacted information with legal agreements, audits, etc.

When this doesn't happen right there are penalties and notifications. If correct, a breach of this magnitude is entirely possibly a death penalty for the businesses involved, and criminal liability.

If it isn't, then it isn't the business sector being unprepared or the regulations being missing but the legal system failing to follow through.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Does anyone know of a "shame wall" for people/companies responsible for PII leaks?

I think if there are at least social consequences some managers will start taking these stuff more seriously.

Just asking, probably it is not even possible with all the blanket "right to be forgotten" laws.

</comment><comment><USER35> The significance of medical records - and the importance of maintaining their privacy - is often overlooked. This is far different than leaked password hashes or addresses or credit numbers - it's information that cannot be changed or effectively de-identified. Any company that accumulates medical records on that scale must be very careful. I'm biased (as a co-founder of a major healthcare secure cloud software compnay), but it is hard work and all- too-often neglected work.

</comment><comment><USER36> It's my understanding that you can go to jail for HIPAA related breaches.

</comment><comment><USER37> Question for devs working in the medical industry: what are the regulations and standards that you have to follow when storing and handling patient data in your country/region?

</comment><comment><USER38> Send the executives to prison and shut down the company.

</comment><comment><USER39> If this sort of incompetence bothers you, I suggest sending a CCPA (if you're in California) or a GDPR (EU) deletion request to this company. This will protect you from the next time it happens (and it will), as well as incur some not-insignificant cost of handling you're request.

Here is a simple way to do this: [https://yourdigitalrights.org/d/cense.ai](https://yourdigitalrights.org/d/cense.ai) (disclaimer I'm the co-founder of this free, nonprofit service).

<comment><USER40> Minor nitpick: It does not actually guarantee that the data is deleted, but they could face a very high fine, if it turns out that they didn't respect your request.

<comment><USER39> You're right, though I still think it's worth the effort.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Incidents like these are the reason why I opted out of our e-health record effort.

</comment><comment><USER42> Cense is an Indian outsourcing outfit.

</comment><comment><USER43> This could be somewhat prevented if companies acquiring the data are legally barred from sharing it to other entities without getting a written statement from that entity that they have a secure mechanism to store and use it. Right now the company that did the shitty job is going to get a slap on the wrist at best. But the company that shared that data with this one is going free and even got to keep the money they got from this.

<comment><USER44> What you are referring to is a Business Associate Agreement, and is indeed already required by law.</comment></comment>