Feds Threatened to Fine Yahoo $250K Daily for Not Complying with NSA's PRISM - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/09/feds-yahoo-fine-prism/ <comment><USER2> This is nothing compared to what allegedly happened to QWest. When the US Government was forcing telecom by telecom to install taps into their business's core routing hubs Joseph Nacchio, the CEO at the time, dug his heels in demanding legal avenues to avoid turning his back on QWest's customers. The US threatened to pull out large contracts that made up a large part of QWest's business.

Furthermore, having been served a National Security Letter, Nacchio was not able to speak to his company or shareholders about the situation.

Nacchio continued to insist on legal avenues and Uncle Sam did exactly what it threatened. Nacchio warned major stakeholders that all of the major QWest contracts were about to go belly up.

The US government threw Nacchio in prison for insider trading.

Oh and then QWest went bankrupt and was bought by competitor CenturyLink (who presumably had fewer difficulties complying).

Sometimes the market has more than one invisible hand.

Edit: A good point by a fellow commentor - no independent investigation has been performed into the QWest story. I looked but could not find FOIA information online.

<comment><USER3> Reprising a comment from a long time ago:

Nacchio was convicted of running a pump-and-dump insider trading scam that netted him ~$100MM at the expense of common public shareholders. If there's an award for "most obnoxious implication of NSA's wrongdoing", it should go to the attempted rehabilitation of people like Nacchio.

Here's the indictment. It's quite straightforward.

[http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site36/2007/0307...](http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site36/2007/0307/20070307_030947_nacchio_indictment.pdf)

Here's the cliff notes:

"No later than December 4, 2000, through and including September 10, 2001, NACCHIO was aware of material, non-public information about Qwest's business, including, but not limited to" [litany of distressing concerns about Qwest's bottom line which ultimately proved dispositive in valuing Qwest].

Note the date.

Now, look at this table of Nacchio's stock sales:

[http://oi60.tinypic.com/2n1tgr6.jpg](http://oi60.tinypic.com/2n1tgr6.jpg)

Nacchio claims to have believed that secret national security government contracts were going to rescue Qwest from their financial problems (note the implicit concession that Qwest had problems from which its financials needed to be rescued). One tie-in between Nacchio and NSA is the notion that by refusing requests from NSA, Nacchio lost those contracts. Stipulate that this is true; it's a plausible complaint. Nacchio still took the money and ran.

<comment><USER4> As has been noted below: an _indictment_ is not a legal finding of fact. It's the worst possible case that the prosecution can make against the defense (in a criminal case). In a civil case, this would be the circumstance of the opening briefs of either side.

An indictment will read very clearly, _because that 's how it's written_.

What it _fails_ to do is take into account _any exculpatory evidence or claims_.

This _isn 't_ proof against Nacchio. You've mistaken a court finding for a lawyer's filing.

<comment><USER5> But wasn't he found guilty?

<comment><USER6> Presenting an indictment as fact is dangerous and highly questionable, whether or not the person got convicted.

That doesn't mean the indictment is accurate, it is written at a point where it hasn't been scrutinized by the courts. They are pretty much always written as the very extreme position of what could have happened. They always present the offender as having clear intentions of breaking the law, when reality is much more complex. For example, they always throw in extra charges. In this case:

> Nacchio was convicted in 2007 of 19 counts of insider trading and acquitted > on 23 counts. [1]

Prosecutors have to prove it's plausible the guy did it, they don't have an obligation to present an accurate or realistic scenarios in their original pre-trial arguments in order to win. Even the judgement by the courts can be inaccurate, this is why appeals courts are super important:

> The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that the trial judge > overstated the amount of Nacchio's alleged financial gain.

[1] [http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=8226761](http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=8226761)

<comment><USER5> OK, fair enough. But, uh, he is guilty of insider trading right?

<comment><USER6> Yes he was on 19 counts. But to the OP's point he is also notable for this:

> Joseph P. Nacchio was the only head of a communications company to demand a > court order, or approval under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, in > order to turn over communications records to the NSA.

His conviction doesn't disprove he lost government contracts for fighting back against the NSA, only that he attempted to financially benefit from his unique knowledge of it. As even tptacek admits, it's a very plausible complaint. And one now effectively derailed.

<comment><USER3> I do not think the complaint is plausible. I think that even if you stipulate that it is, the case is strong on its own merits. There's a difference between stipulating a point and conceding it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Weren't these requests, which Yahoo objected to, intended to stay secret, by the wishes of the government?

Consider if Yahoo refused to honor the requests, and began accruing the fines. Presumably, if they didn't pay the huge bill for their fines, what would happen?

Surely, $250k/day would rack up fast... As I see it, eventually Yahoo would rack up such a bill that they couldn't afford it, and any collection of the fee by the government would force Yahoo to close its doors. At that point, surely they'd have to reveal something to the general public about said requests, and the fines, and everything else going on behind the scenes...

<comment><USER8> I was thinking about that because it seemed like a cost they could just afford to ignore ($91m/yr), this was probably not the limit of the penalties they could have faced.

<comment><USER9> At some point people would have started being thrown in jail and that's when resistance usually ends.

<comment><USER10> Right, but what would that look like? Would the FISA court jail a citizen without a trial, and can you imagine a FISA judge wanting to make that call, knowing that their decision will soon become public? Because once someone is prosecuted the U.S. govt would really have difficulty enforcing silence. It's one thing to force a company to be silent about surveillance, it's quite another to force individuals to be silent about being jailed. I'd like to think we haven't gone so far off the tracks that the first amendment wouldn't ultimately triumph in that case.

<comment><USER11> In an era of 'parallel construction', you build a separate case and use that as leverage.

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

<comment><USER12> That's simply blackmail, not 'parallel construction'.

<comment><USER13> Just as 'Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder' is simply 'Shell Shock'

Language changes depending on how you want the person to feel about a subject.

if you want people to hate and revile someone for doing something you do call it something strong and fierce (blackmail) if you want to do something yourself make it sound lawful (IE; parallel construction).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> $250K/day -- someone had to come up with that number.

Was it some high level official? An intern?

I can imagine this dialogue taking place:

\----

(Two bureaucrat monkeys. They just got back from lunch from cafeteria at Ft. Meade. Their tummies are bit heavy with greasy hamburgers. Settling in to finish their day before 2pm. One last thing needs to be done -- deciding on this PRISM non-compliance issue)

M0: What if they don't comply?

M1: We'll punish them!

M0: How?

M1: Well...we'll make them pay.

M0: How much?

M1: [Puts pinkie finger to the corner of his mouth] Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a day!

M0: Great idea, M1

(They wrap up before clock hits 2pm. Get in their cars. One goes to pick up kids from soccer practice. Other drives straight home, to his bachelor-pad apartment in College Park, MD).

\----

Wonder what and how the people who generated and viewed this documents feel about them being on the front page of news sites. I can only hope they feel a tiny bit violated and betrayed. Kind of like when someone breaks in and steals your things. Or violates your privacy.

<comment><USER15> Tony: Umm... Control?

Control: Yes, Tony?

Tony: If I may ask, how did you determine this sum of a 150,000 pounds a day?

Control: A very good question, Tony. You see, I simply took the figure that our American cousins have calculated using a supercomputer, and converted the currency.

Tony: That's very clever of you, Control.

Control: Thank you, Tony. It proves that what we lack by way of resources we make up for with good old British ingenuity.

<comment><USER16> Tony and Control. I can't believe someone even remembers this! Now I'm depressed thinking about how Control had to fire Tony :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Hmm...if they hadn't complied, in three months more than $20 million would have accrued.

Would that have been material enough to require disclosure in Yahoo's public filings? If so, how would it have been described? It seems as if by complying with SEC regulations, Yahoo would have been forced to violate secrecy rules with regards to the origin of the fine.

That would have been an interesting conundrum.

<comment><USER18> It certainly would have been material within a short amount of time. One could debate exactly how many quarters that line is hit at, but at $45m to $90m it starts to become very stupid to hide from shareholders from a legal standpoint.

Not reporting the exact details of a $90m acquisition is not a huge deal (for Yahoo). Not reporting on-going government fines that have amounted to $90m in a year, would be a huge deal. One is in theory the acquisition of value and enhances the business, the other is just a black hole of cash destruction.

Further, beyond the money, intentionally doing something against the US Government such that you're getting fined per day, is a big issue for shareholders to know about. Especially given the power the government wields these days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It would have been very interesting if Yahoo had simply said "do it."

A few months later the government would want to demand Yahoo pay them millions of dollars........ but be entirely incapable of explaining WHY they were owed this money at all. That would have been a very interesting event.

<comment><USER20> Yahoo would have to take $90M/year charge and either give a reason to the SEC or just declare it classified which would be as good as saying the NSA is taking it.

<comment><USER21> It's unlikely this would stop at just $90M/year.

There's no reason to believe the daily fine wouldn't continuously increase, or that executives wouldn't eventually be put in jail for contempt.

And keep in mind you can be held in jail indefinitely for contempt of court, as long as you remain in noncompliance.

<comment><USER18> Not to mention that if they really felt the need to break Yahoo, the Feds have a vast array of ways to do so. The fine is the most trivial approach in their arsenal.

And if we wander into nefarious approaches, well, Yahoo was going to comply no matter what if the Feds felt like they needed it to happen for PRISM to be effective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I applaud them for fighting this in some way but at the end of the day they'll probably comply somehow.

The curious mind in me would like to see a parallel universe in which a major company responds to these threads by leaving the US entirely (or threatening to do so) and then running an anti _agency here_ campaign for years to spite them. Or maybe a big enough company that takes them heads on and crushes them...well I guess I've been reading too much dystopia fiction recently and am curious how the megacorps > governments scenario would actually be kickstarted.

[the situation is too sad for me to think about it in realistic terms, sorry for the minor derail]

<comment><USER23> The company I worked for a few years ago (I'm not going to disclose who as I'll get shot) were an EU based insurance org and had a US subsidiary that they used for selling overseas. They had a 5 man legal team to keep the US govt off their backs. In the end they said "fuck it" and closed US operations down one afternoon with no noticed, cancelled everyone's policies and fired everyone (gave them 4 months pay at the same time).

Everyone was told why including the investors.

Not a _major_ company (<$50M capital) but it stirred the pot big time in a particular sector of the insurance industry and pissed off a number of large investors in the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Here's a serious question - is the fine secret too? If Yahoo didn't comply and were slapped with a fine, could Yahoo object and table the fine in a court?

<comment><USER25> That would be an awesome item in the quarterly SEC filing: REDACTED $23M

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> So that's the price of having principles.

<comment><USER27> In general people/entities with principles and morals have a higher price to pay. For them it's worth it.

<comment><USER28> > In general people/entities with principles and morals have a higher price to > pay. For them it's worth it.

Or the reality of a destroyed life leads them to suicide as the only way out. Prison is pretty terrible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> What sloppy reporting.

"The company disputed the initial order in 2007 because it deemed the bulk demand for email metadata to be unconstitutionally broad."

That is neither what the government demanded nor the reason Yahoo appealed. How did the reporter get this so wrong?

</comment><comment><USER30> Let's just say hypothetically Yahoo said "No" and refused to pay the fines.

What happens next? Do the feds forcibly shut down the company?

</comment><comment><USER27> "But today's [document] release only underscores the need for basic structural reforms to bring transparency to the NSA's surveillance activities" and how would those reforms come when majority of population and hence politicians are okay with such surveillance? that's a dream. makes good hacker news debate and nothing beyond that.

</comment><comment><USER31> Just seeing the dates that the companies complied (or were forced to comply) is disappointing. A full year after Steve Jobs passes and stepped down as CEO, then Apple is added to that list.

Way to go Yahoo for sticking it our then.

</comment><comment><USER32> A smarter company would have treated the $250K as a marketing expense. It's peanuts compared to what Yahoo earns, and imagine the reaction when people figured out that Yahoo had gone to the mat for its users.

<comment><USER33> you understand that in order for this to be marketing it needs to be public information.

<comment><USER32> That's what the multi-million dollar charge marked REDACTED on your quarterly earnings report is for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.

</comment><comment><USER35> Happened in 2008, revealed today.

<comment><USER36> Imagine what kind of secret programs are being pushed today that we will hear about in 2020, or longer. I have some guesses but they are so absurd I would be laughed off hn.

<comment><USER37> Yet we keep electing the same politicians that went along with all this. We deserve the tyranny.

<comment><USER18> So many people I talk to think the expanding tyranny primarily comes from politicians or bankers or corporations (the blame targets). When it actually comes from their fellow citizens, effectively voting away rights election after election for decades.

<comment><USER38> The problem is that the system from the beginning was rigged against major change with the two-party system and the way state vs. federal authority is set up.

Most of the rights that we pride ourselves on today were gained by citizen action (strikes, demonstrations) that were more often than not violently oppressed by the authorities, until the pressure threatened to undermine the stability of the system, in which case they threw some bones and progress was made.

One could fear that the advanced state of surveillance, mass media brainwashing, and militarization of police forces has all but closed this avenue for change.

<comment><USER37> _Most of the rights that we pride ourselves on today were gained by citizen action_

Most of the rights were gained by those outside of the entrenched power structures, whether it was a handful of founding fathers at the Constitutional Convention, Martin Luther King in the streets of Alabama, or newly-minted labor unions in the early 20th century factories.

Over time, all of these institutions developed and ossified, creating a ruling class that sought to preserve their own power rather than pursue their original missions that were meaningful and beneficial.

 _has all but closed this avenue for change_

I feel like we've definitely passed a point of no return. We've lost the cohesion of purpose in this country to accomplish important things because the ruling class keeps us divided while they remain united, at least for the purpose of amassing power.

The only thing we have going for us is that most of the rest of the world suffers from the same set of problems, so relatively speaking, we're not that bad. The USA was something new for a while where the amassing of money was okay, but citizens recognized the evil of amassed power.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Yeah? I'd just refuse to pay, what are they going to do - publicize it?

<comment><USER40> Dig up that tax report 5 years ago you accidentally did wrong. Unofficially point the MAFIAA towards the fact that your kid pirated few songs and a movie last month. Or find something else entirely. You'll end up in jail or with no money for reasons (on the surface) completely unrelated to the case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> They fought it, but they're complying...

</comment><comment><USER42> might be worth it actually. if it doesn't increase, and if they can market with it. haha

</comment><comment><USER43> Dear Yahoo, move to europe

</comment><comment><USER44> A militarized police state, the state subjugating private businesses according to its needs, state intrusions into the most private spheres of its citizens, executions of US citizens without trial, kidnappings - it all looks like we are moving straight into fascism.

And I'm seeing the same pattern in the EU where I live since it basically copies whatever the US does.

"Fascist governments encouraged the pursuit of private profit and offered many benefits to large businesses, but they demanded in return that all economic activity should serve the national interest."

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

<comment><USER45> The US and Israel now have what the Nazis could only dream about.

<comment><USER32> Decent jet engines!

Seriously, you typed this statement and thought what? "Now we'll finally have a fruitful discussion on the hacker site"?

<comment><USER45> Frankly, I am appalled by the LACK of discussion of these topics on this hacker site. Why is there a taboo on politics? Why is it out of reach?

400 innocent children were killed indiscriminately in the span of 6 weeks in Gaza. But your vim configuration is more worthy of discussion here? Idk...

<comment><USER46> People don't approach politics rationally.

For instance: >400 innocent children were killed indiscriminately in the span of 6 weeks in Gaza

The bias implicit in this suggests that you consider that either someone agrees with your point of view, or else they support the slaughter of innocent children. Which further suggests that what you're looking for is not _discussion_ , but pro-Palestinian advocacy, as there is no room for discussion in your framing. And of course it's impossible for me to suggest the nature of your bias without expressing my own bias.

Which is fine, if that's what you want there are other forums for such things, but that's not what most people come to Hacker News for. One-sided political discussions are not very interesting, and never fruitful.

<comment><USER47> _" The bias implicit in this suggests that you consider that either someone agrees with your point of view, or else they support the slaughter of innocent children."_

There is no bias. Either he is lying, or he is not. You can sugar-coat the discussion any way you want to wiggle out of it, but facts and lies are what count.

And yeah, you're right. There is only one side, and that's the side of "the best available truth". Not that people understand any of that jazz with all the "bias" being thrown back and forth in the media. Your post included.

Honestly, I don't even know enough about this recent Gaza/Israel thing. Just commenting on your "bias" retort to the parent's assertion that 400 children were killed.

<comment><USER46> You are right, I don't understand the situation well enough to have an unbiased or objective opinion about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I wish there was a way to post anon here. I create a new id every now and then and post but no one sees the posting because it's new...

I wish more people would be outraged by where the u.s. Is going and just leave. If you're educated, have desirable skills, you can just come to Europe. If you think you can change what's happening in the u.s. I do not agree with you. You will lose to the political class. They have 100% of their time to focus on restraining you while you have to focus on building your business.

The u.s. has become a force for evil in the world. It has been at war for almost the entire time of its existence. In the past Americans were protected from that reality but now the u.s. seems to be even at war with its citizens and businesses.

If you don't like what's happening in the u.s. you can quit your company you're building and become a politician, or you can just take your skills and knowledge to someplace different. But don't forget to continue filing your u.s. taxes.

<comment><USER32> Some of us are outraged by where the U.S. is going but stay to try to fix it. Otherwise you get adverse selection effects, like when all the non-crazies left New Hampshire.

Plus have you ever _had_ a European burrito? It's not pretty.

<comment><USER49> Well, at least there is _finally_ passable sushi being made in Zurich. That's a very, very new thing.

All kidding aside - the euro countries are no better than the US in these areas. They have different code-names and the agencies are different, but they're all going the same direction.

<comment><USER48> You're just plain wrong. Not about the sushi. Europe doesn't have the means nor the corporate-government cooperation that the u.s. has for spying. It happens in Europe, even Switzerland, but for good, not evil. For example, Switzerland reoprting to the Red Cross the CIA rendition flights that it learned through its satellite communications monitoring program.

There's decent Mexican inn Basel. A Mexican and 1/2 Mexican Swiss have a restaurant.

<comment><USER32> Europe's a big place. My corner of it had a secret CIA prison.

Also there's a Vietnamese restaurant here called "Hong Kong Lounge". The crimes don't end at the US border.

<comment><USER48> Poland? Wasn't there political fallout from that?

<comment><USER32> About as much as in the US.

<comment><USER50> By which he means, not nearly anything close to what could even remotely be considered enough.

We in the EU like to smugly look at the USA with an air of superiority. But we're not much different — there is a small group that is outraged, and most people simply don't care.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Anyone who believes that America champions freedom of speech and expression only has to go as far as the closest newspaper to discover that it's a bull- faced lie.

<comment><USER4> NB: usually given as "bald-faced lie".

<comment><USER51> Since I am bald and respect my own hairlessness, I prefer the term "bull-faced lie", since I have much less respect for bulls. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> This is like being shaken down by the Mafia.

You are not gonna do what we like? It's gonna cost ya. Next we are gonna break Marissa's legs.

<comment><USER32> That's how courts enforce court orders. You can get philosophical and say that the state is just like the mafia, man, except legal. But surely you understand the need for some mechanism to force compliance from people who just say "I don't want to do that" to a court ruling.

<comment><USER53> Note that this argument applies equally well to enforcing the edicts of England's Star Chamber.

<comment><USER32> Yes. It has no moral content; it's the mechanism by which the state works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> When the terrorists stop using the internet, the government will stop searching for them with PRISM. Sound fair?

</comment><comment><USER55> > Feds Threatened to Fine Yahoo $250K Daily for Not Complying with NSA's PRISM

Luckily, they realized that nothing of worth is on Yahoo.

</comment><comment><USER56> Ironically, half of HN is circle jerking DuckDuckGo as some sort of privacy king pin every other week.

They are either in bed with NSA or will be very soon. I laugh how gullible some people are.

"But they owner told me that they will stand up to US government with 3M seed round guys!"</comment>


PowerVR Wizard GPU does real-time ray tracing at 10x lower power than Nvidia  GTX - <AUTHOR> http://blog.imgtec.com/powervr-developers/real-time-ray-tracing-on-powervr-gr6500-ces-2016 <comment><USER2> _sigh_

Why does pretty much all the marketing and examples of "groundbreaking" new/faster tech for raytracing/pathtracing always just show outside IBL-lit scenes?

These are _easy_ to resolve (generally within 32 progressions with MIS for diffuse surfaces).

Similarly, they rarely show anything other than perfectly specular glass, or pretty rough microfacet surfaces, which with indirect caustics off (which they obviously have in the above examples), again is pretty trivial to resolve.

Indoor scenes with many lights (lots of them sometimes occluded) with lots of indirect illumination is going to be a _lot_ slower, and for games I would have thought this is important: I don't see how this latter scenario is workable in real time, without lots of cheats.

<comment><USER3> If you gonna cheat just give up on RT - this is what precomputed shadow maps, light maps, speculate maps etc are for together with various cheats to clip shadows when they overlap or already at max "darkness" same thing with lights when you have multiple lights sources you usually approximate by stacking the combine illumination values for light sources of the same direction.

I really don't understand why are they chasing RT.

Also would be nice to know how well they can actually compute shaders, do tessellation and many other things because this is one heck of a fluff piece and I can remember at least 1 of these past 20 years that proclaimed that real time RT in hardware is here.

<comment><USER4> > I really don't understand why are they chasing RT.

1\. The highly-parallelizable nature of RT is ideal for many-core architecture we're heading toward. Note that the PowerVR hardware used in the demo has 4 cores, needs no fans, and uses 10x less power than a traditional rasterization-optimized GPU.

2\. The simplicity of implementing physically-based effects leads to a much easier time for artists.

<comment><USER5> I would argue that physically-based raytracers actually make things more difficult for artists, because they tend to be less flexible. Being physically correct is great if what you get out of the renderer is exactly what you want, but as soon as you need to cheat anything to achieve a particular look, it's much easier to not be bound by physical correctness.

<comment><USER2> Maybe, depends on whether you're doing CG animation (Pixar, Dreamworks style) or more realistic stuff - VFX, photoreal stuff.

If the former, then maybe a bit.

But the beauty of physically-based is that in many cases, you can take a model that's been textured and lookdeved and it will work nicely in many different lighting setups. Before Physically-based, you practically had to re-do stuff completely when you changed the lighting to get the look you wanted.

However, Physically-based still isn't a complete win - you can't looked something close up and expect it to look good in the distance - it just won't. You need to be aware of the LODs and create different asset variations appropriately for different distances.

<comment><USER6> It would be _really nice_ to be able to do things like this in RT:

[http://www.zeitguised.com/geistxyz#geistxyz01](http://www.zeitguised.com/geistxyz#geistxyz01) [https://vimeo.com/150824660](https://vimeo.com/150824660)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How times change, roughly 20 years ago I did real time ray tracing of some spheres (can't get simpler) on a DEC Alpha cluster and was amazed (low resolution).

</comment><comment><USER8> If you want to know a bit more about the details of the platform, these 2 presentations from GDC 2014 are still some valid material: [http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1020741/New-Techniques-Made- Pos...](http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1020741/New-Techniques-Made-Possible-by)

[http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1020688/Practical-Techniques- fo...](http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1020688/Practical-Techniques-for-Ray- Tracing)

</comment><comment><USER9> Imgtec's linux drivers are also pure garbage in the security sense. I would never install one of their drivers, it would essentially be the same as installing a backdoor.

<comment><USER10> nvidia or powerVR?

<comment><USER11> Powers at is a subdivision of ImgTec, so...your answer is PowerVR

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Photorealism in video games is around the corner, brothers.

<comment><USER13> Photorealism in video games has arrived. It's arrived at least 6-7 times, depending on how you count console generations. Even 16-bit consoles were called photorealistic in their day, and then their successors were, and then THEIR successors were, and so on. It's almost as though we're asymptotically approaching a carefully-chosen marketing-driven goal that can never actually be reached, but towards which we can continually make (ever-tinier) steps.

<comment><USER14> What you say may be true, but there's a difference between 16-bit photorealism and the photorealism possible today, and the difference is that it's possible to find rendered images that are hard to distinguish from real life today. In the 16-bit era? Not so much.

To give some examples, take a look at these images created in Blender:

[http://www.blenderguru.com/articles/24-photorealistic- blende...](http://www.blenderguru.com/articles/24-photorealistic-blender- renders/)

<comment><USER15> Most of those are pretty evidently distinguishable from real life...

The issue here - and the point being made - is that we are _already_ at the stage where many CG images can fool even close observers, and we've been here for some time.

We've been passing around these "CGI OR REAL?!!!!" images for a few years at least, and when they are first created people really can't tell the difference, but yet somehow when people get used to the tech and revisit these images a few years down the line they look _obviously_ synthesized.

Ditto older movies like Jurassic Park, whose cutting edge CGI of the time were convincing even when viewing frame-by-frame, but to savvy eyes appears downright obvious today.

So clearly "photoreal" is something we haven't reached yet. IMO the indicator that we've reached "true photoreal" is when an image rendered 5 years ago still holds up to fresh eyes.

<comment><USER14> One of those images was created in 2007, and still holds up as photorealistic for me (though admittedly I'm not viewing it on a large monitor).

I'd be interested to hear your take on the 'giveaways' on each of those images. I can see some on some of them, but not on all of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Assuming the claims are correct (5x performance, 10x less power), what's stopping this from going mainstream?

<comment><USER17> The results aren't good enough to compete in games. Gamers don't care if the reflections and shadows are more authentic if the shading as a whole regresses by several generations.

Just compare the subjective quality of their "accurate rendering" to what that Nvidia GPU they showed can do with cheap approximations:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAAPTiuFdwU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAAPTiuFdwU) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slc-- V2pi5c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slc--V2pi5c)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfZD22zMnUY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfZD22zMnUY) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwEuSxAEXPA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwEuSxAEXPA)

<comment><USER18> The results aren't good enough to compete in games that require an expensive dedicated graphics card that costs more than the device this gpu will go in. FTFY.

Compared to any current phone/tablet GPU, it's going to be a big step up.

<comment><USER17> Going by their claim of "10x lower power than 980ti" this PowerVR card is burning through 25 watts, so it being a visual step up from Snapdragon and Apple SoCs which draw 3-4 watts for the CPU and GPU _combined_ isn't particularly impressive.

<comment><USER19> From the article:

> The PowerVR GR6500 is a mobile GPU. Its die size, GFLOPS performance, > bandwidth requirements and power consumption mean that it is comparable to > the GPUs already available in smart phones today. But compared with a > console GPU or looking towards the smart phones and handheld devices of the > future, we see a roadmap that scales in capabilities and performance well > beyond the GR6500's specifications. The PowerVR Ray Tracing technology is > fundamentally scalable and the efficiency actually increases as we move to > more and more powerful cores.

<comment><USER20> 28nm die size is previous gen mobile GPUs. But would be great to see how this performs for desktop use when they shift to smaller process nodes and scale it to match power consumption and cost with say, GTX 980</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Organ transplants down as stay-at-home rules reduce fatal traffic collisions - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/05/20/858712314/organ-transplants-down-as-stay-at-home-rules-reduce-fatal-traffic-collisions <comment><USER2> I'm in kidney failure and on dialysis. Also on the kidney transplant list and was expecting this would happen pretty early on. The stopping and slowing down of procedures plus the reduction of donor organs. It could easily add an extra year into the wait time. I myself havet 1+ year in the wait list but that will probably extend to 2+ years.

To give a sense of wait time, it varies from region to region. The bay area region is pretty long wait. I think UCSF is 10+ years of wait for a type O blood recipient. In Sacramento area its a 5+ year wait. If you are type AB blood the wait is almost half the time. Some parts of the country the wait times is as short at 1 year.

Although I am somewhat eager for kidney transplant, I also know its not a cure. They might last 10-15 years before you get rejection and have to get another transplant or go back on dialysis. But the anti-rejection medications have slowly improved. Mainly been trying to stay as healthy and stable as possible.

The stay-at-home rules has also been a blessing though because I do home dialysis and that takes a lot of time so not having to travel to work means extra time is available. I even have more time for exercise. My current job has generally been flexible before but I hope more companies will offer remote work after this. Even an extra half hour lost on commute hampers my treatment schedule.

<comment><USER3> How does this work? Is it possible to move and get on a different waitlist? It's hard for me to see why they would setup region-by-region waitlists. Fingers crossed for you.

<comment><USER2> This is for US but you can get on multiple lists at the same time. However you have to be able to travel to that center on a short notice. And there might be false calls where things don't work out. So most people can't list beyond the local and adjacent regions within a few hours of driving distance. However you can switch regions and carry your wait time credit over.

As for why the region-by-region setup probably because its a big country and patients can't travel from one side to another. Also its difficult to change because any change results is someone having increased wait time. And some of the states don't like to share their organ streams with others. The reality is those states with larger organ pool is because more people die there for whatever reason.

I've also been told that only a small percent of deaths result in viable organs for donation. I think like 2 out of 1000 is what a transplant coordinator told me.

<comment><USER4> A lot of the reason for the region by region waitlist is what you said, to make sure you are capable to get into the hospital within a certain amount of time to receive the organ. The other part is that it takes time to physically move an organ from the deceased to the transplanting hospital.

Time is the key here, the more time the organ is not in a living body, the less likely it is to survive transplantation. So if we didn't have regions, and you were living in San Fransisco and a kidney came from a dead biker in Florida, the likelihood of the kidney surviving is less than if that kidney came from Sacramento.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> But another article on HN says "Emptier US roads more lethal in coronavirus pandemic, report says (bbc.com)"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23257790](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23257790)

UPDATE: The other article states "14% jump in fatality rates PER DISTANCE DRIVEN." So the roads are more deadly per mile, but the number of drivers has decreased so much that the overall harm is down.

<comment><USER6> I think this serves as a great lesson in statistics being converted into news stories.

The roads are safer.

The roads are deadlier.

Both are true and both are false depending upon if you are looking at the total or the per driver (and perhaps even if you are looking at per driver per minute or per driver per mile).

<comment><USER7> That's why everyone need to learn to separate fact and opinions. Ignore the conclusions, instead look at the data. Critical thinking skills are in short supply.

The news is pretty bad in that it's mostly opinions pretending to be facts/information, with occasional data sprinkled in to support their conclusions.

<comment><USER8> But isn't the issue here that both points of view are fact/information-based?

<comment><USER7> Yes, but what people pay attention to are the conclusions, not the facts.

<comment><USER9> But those are both facts - less people are driving, but if you do drive you're more likely to be in an accident. Are those conclusions? Would a presentation of facts just be the data itself?

<comment><USER10> Are you more likely to be in an accident? Or are you more likely to be in an accident with a fatality?

It seems like heavy rush-hour traffic is prone to creating a large number of accidents with a low total number of fatalities. When I drive around now, I believe the risk of accident per mile is significantly lower (city dweller used to typically packed city roads), but due to higher speeds, I can't make the same claim about lower fatality risk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If people really thought about the number of people killed and maimed in car crashes, I wonder if we'd see greater support for alternative transportation. [https://jakeseliger.com/2019/12/16/maybe-cars-are-just- reall...](https://jakeseliger.com/2019/12/16/maybe-cars-are-just-really-bad- but-theyre-normal-so-we-dont-pay-attention-to-how-bad/)

<comment><USER12> The flip side of this would be to say that auto fatalities are fairly low and steadily decreasing, with a fatality rate of 1.25 per 100 million miles driven. For reference, that's 10% greater than the distance between the Earth and the Sun.

<comment><USER13> Cars are noisy and take up a ton of space. In cities bikes seem like a way better way to go, especially with e-bikes. They are quieter, safer, smaller, and healthier. Auto fatalities are only low compared to previous years of auto fatalities. Also, electric cars are still noisy. Tire noise at 35 mph is the same on both electric and IC cars.

<comment><USER14> For some short journeys in good weather - yes but as the rate of bike theft is massively more than car theft

Many offices / train staions don't have secure of street bike parking and I aint going be parking my bike on the street even if its a cheap £400mtb let alone a >£1200 Brompton

<comment><USER15> Bike theft and lack of bike parking seem like wildly cheaper and easier to solve problems than the mass of traffic infrastructure problems needed solved for cars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not one mention in the article about changing the organ donation system to be opt-out. That is such a wasted opportunity given the huge reach of NPR.

<comment><USER17> This is far too much power for the govt or healthcare industry to have over people. A lot of people won't know they need to opt-out, and the opt-out can be, or become, very burdensome.

I know you want to stop wasting valuable organs from dead people that could go to help living people - and I do too! I just don't want people to lose agency over their own lives and body parts.

Then there are the wicked, amoral, heartless people - like me - who think people should be free to sell their organs if they want to. I would personally sell any of my organs (after I'm dead) for $1 each. But as a form of protest against the current system, I won't ever willingly donate them.

I hope you'll reconsider.

<comment><USER18> While I don't think being able to sell your organs is immoral or unethical, there are practical ramifications that makes it difficult to agree with your position.

If organ selling is legalized, poor people will be coerced by force or by money. And they may not realize the full health implications of that until much later, where they have no recourse.

As a society, we generally try to prevent people from entering such unfair contracts, e.g, you can't agree to become a slave, or establishing ceiling on interest rates to limit predatory lending. People willing to sell their organs are probably desperate enough to agree to anything, and saving them is worthwhile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The unintended consequences of covid-19 (both good and bad) are really surprising.

<comment><USER20> I think the best part it is that we're stopping to think about our behavior in general.

So much of what we do is inertial, normalized insanity that bears some introspection.

For example, it's interesting to hear so many people talk about how they miss shopping. I'm the same way, and it made me think ... wait a minute, I've saved more money in the past two months than I have in years, I don't feel like I'm missing any tangible goods ... maybe rampant consumerism is, in aggregate, bad for me?

Same with dining out, which I did with incredible frequency.

All of this makes me think not just about my behavior, but the massive drivers behind making us all want to spend money on things we don't need in the pursuit of manufactured pleasure.

<comment><USER20> If I may tack on one other observation, it's the sad attempts by companies to try to profit from the pandemic while looking altruistic:

[https://twitter.com/nkozyra/status/1263106625335734273](https://twitter.com/nkozyra/status/1263106625335734273)

It's a weird statement on where modern startup/retail is.

<comment> at-fates-hands There's been a lot of press about delivery services gouging restaurants now that a majority of them are being forced to use them.

I did see the other day Chipolte is doing their own delivery service now which is awesome. Not sure why more places ditch Grubhub and Doordash and just have their own in house delivery service. It's so much cheaper than outsourcing to companies who've been gouging restaurants and the consumer.

<comment><USER21> There will be an equilibrium between these things, and it's not necessarily just "gouging" if delivery services increase prices, given that the actual supply of drivers (as has been reported here before) is strained.

Basically contract delivery services have a premium to begin with, to take the delivery business off your hands. If you have dramatically more orders per day, it can actually make sense to have your own delivery people; especially since your managers have all the time in the world to focus on delivery now that your dine-in is closed or restricted.

<comment><USER22> Even if you have a high order volume, a delivery service should still have more deliveries near a given destination and be able to improve margins by grouping those together for delivery.

I may be the only person in my apartment complex ordering Chipotle for dinner tonight, but there are going to be several others ordering something.

<comment><USER21> That is a common assumption for people to make about delivery services, but it is not that correct with prepared food delivery, where it is unlikely that you will line up even two pickups without compromising the freshness/hotness of at least one of the orders; often this is difficult even if both of the pickups are from the same establishment.

Now, _unlikely_ and _difficult_ don't mean _impossible_ but there's more to it than meets the eye.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This has also been discussed as a consequence of every car becoming fully autonomous someday. Crashes will be way down. We need to keep making progress on lab grown organs.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is an old article, but cogently written: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2322914/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2322914/)

"Organs-for-compensation"

</comment><comment><USER25> Related from yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23251909](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23251909) ("Organ donation in England has moved to an opt-out system").

</comment><comment><USER26> Wow I read that headline wrong. I read it as 'Oregon Transplants..." and was wondering what reduced collisions had to do with people moving into state.

I've definitely noticed a lot more bad drivers on the road recently. I think I've hit my dashcam button more times in the last month than I have in all the years combined.

Wendover also just did a pretty nice video on risk ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtX- Ibi21tU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtX-Ibi21tU)).

</comment><comment><USER27> Saw a stat from ICBC the public insurance auto insurer in British Columbia. There's usually around 15,000 "accidents" (let's call them car crashes folks) a week in the province. With Covid, numbers are down 60% some weeks to ~9000.

Really shows how incredibly dangerous our automobile oriented transportation system is, and how effective removing cars from the road can be.

</comment><comment><USER28> This was somewhat predictable. I will be really interested in another piece of data. When we re-open fully (whatever that means) and people get back on the roads perhaps even more than they used to will it reset the waiting times because of _excess_ collisions and more fatalities?

</comment><comment><USER29> For some reason I keep reading this as "the number of people who move to Oregon is decreasing", and my brain can't draw any connection between that and traffic collisions. Maybe it's the HN bubble around news focused in tech hubs on the West coast.

</comment><comment><USER30> Also some what misses the fact that a lot of transplant centres stopped implanting patients due to covid-19,

There is a lot of medical debate on how to do implants / transplants safely in the current climate.

</comment><comment><USER31> Electrocutions, banana-slipping, fork-stabbing and ladder-falling down as forced self-imprisonment into madhouse soft-rooms reduces stupid domestic accidents.

Meanwhile in Russia, approx. 3000 people are reported to die of corona in 5 months. In 2019, 16'900 died in road accidents. That gives approx. 7000 in 5 months. Which is twice as many, but I can't remember anyone locking down the roads, scanning QR codes in order to unlock the car or zealously repeating the NEW NORMAL, THE WORLD HAVE CHANGED mantra out of every hole. Heck, neither can I remember anyone constructing concrete barriers instead of purely nominal double center lines between adjacent opposite lanes where possible!

<comment><USER32> But are traffic accidents contagious? We're at 10% infection now. What will 50% look like?

Its cute to deliberately conflate dissimilar things. Corona is different among mortality statistics in that, everybody can be at risk if we're not careful.

<comment><USER31> A relative of mine works at the central hospital in my city. She's been seeing with her very eyes that the department of infections is empty since the circus began. People with infections other than corona are sent home to cope or die, because empty beds are reserved for corona. Explain, please. And also explain by what magic the U07.2 in death certificates is transmuting into U07.1 for the news and statistics. If you don't know what that means, lookup the WHO's disease IDs.

<comment><USER33> > And also explain by what magic the U07.2 in death certificates is > transmuting into U07.1 for the news and statistics.

[https://www.who.int/classifications/icd/covid19/en/](https://www.who.int/classifications/icd/covid19/en/)

"U07.2 COVID-19, virus not identified" changes to "U07.1 COVID-19, virus identified" presumably when the test results come back. Probable cases versus confirmed cases.

It's not magic, it's pretty obvious.

<comment><USER31> It's when relatives of the deceased are bribed to sign an agreement to turn 2 into 1. Without 'presumably'.

<comment><USER33> Bribed by the lizard shapeshifters, I take it?

<comment><USER31> Yep, the adrenochrome junkie lizard shapeshifters from the other side of the flat deepstate Nibiru.

Can't you stupid flagging fucks tolerate these words even when used as sarcasm?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I get the feeling that shutting countries down saved more lives from fatal car accidents than the coronavirus would have ever killed if left open.

<comment><USER35> In the USA there are usually around 35-40k traffic fatalities per year. COVID19 even with the lockdowns has killed around 95k. With the release of restrictions, soon there will be more.

<comment><USER34> WHO claims that 1.35 million people die per year across the whole world in car accidents.

<comment><USER35> At the current count of a minimum of 354,000 deaths, we would have to mitigate 26% of traffic deaths world wide for the entire year before it would make up for the fatalities caused by COVID19. So far it appears that traffic fatalities haven't decreased that much during the lockdown. In California, where we have good figures for this sort of thing, there has only been an 8% decrease in fatal accidents for the first 3 months of 2020 despite an 18.6% drop in number of miles driven.

Unfortunately it doesn't seem that the decrease in traffic fatalities will offset more than a fraction of the deaths due to COVID19. Especially considering that the death toll is projected to easily exceed 1 million worldwide.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> As autonomy in cars becomes more common, organ transplants and small towns that run on speeding ticket income will have to find new solutions.

<comment><USER37> You are making a lot of unfounded assumptions in tht statement. As far as we can tell, 'self-driving' cars are no safer in real-world conditions any more than a trained driver is.

I think the biggest safety increse from transportation autonomy, whatever its form, we are already seeing with Uber et al. Those who would rather not drive, don't have to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I am not an organ donor. The reason is simple: Everyone in a transplant chain (Organ Procurement Orgs, Hospitals, Transplant Surgeons) makes money off a transplant except the guy giving up his organs. The rules for me are clear: I have a simple price on each of my organs should I be brain dead. Pay the price to me, and it will go to my beneficiaries in my notarized will, and you can hollow me out if I'm brain dead. Don't and I take them with me.

<comment><USER39> Lol,

Can't tell if this is satire complaining that you won't make money after death.

<comment><USER38> Haha, many people react in that fashion because I haven't yet met anyone who has also formed this opinion, but it isn't for me, it's for the family.

Other things that also act to make 'me' money after death: my wealth, my copyrighted property, my land. No one expects me to give that away for free even though many would benefit. So no, I won't be giving away my body either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Need more LVADs

</comment><comment><USER41> Another NPR article states March fatality rates spiked by 14% - [https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live- updates/2020/0...](https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live- updates/2020/05/20/859829779/as-states-locked-down-in-march-motor-vehicle- fatality-rate-spiked-by-14)

<comment><USER42> Both written March 20th.

<comment><USER43> Fatality rates are up, but overall fatality count is down as less people are on the road.</comment></comment></comment>


Is VPN required for home WiFi / internet use? - <AUTHOR> Are there any compelling reasons to use VPN at home since most of the services in finance/banking are already https ? If so, which are the popular services, both paid and open sources ? <comment><USER2> Tor can be used as a VPN (not recommended for anonymity unless used in conjunction with the Tor Browser). Orbot (Tor VPN) [0] for Android is pretty neat.

ProtonVPN, iVPN, Mullvad are oft suggested on news.yc in no particular order. Lantern.io is another alternative if you're looking to bypass stringent DPI firewalls.

Cloudflare's Warp offers a free tier, too, but is different from traditional VPNs.

Keep this in mind though, most VPNs do not claim to preserve privacy [1], some actively enroach upon it [2]. It is hard to achieve anonymity over rudimentary VPN setups [3].

Also see: [https://thatoneprivacysite.net/](https://thatoneprivacysite.net/)

[0] [https://guardianproject.info/apps/orbot](https://guardianproject.info/apps/orbot)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19601503](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19601503)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17889456](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17889456)

[3] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21601031](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21601031)

</comment><comment><USER3> The point of a VPN when using wifi provided by others is that you do not control the wifi hardware or the wifi environment (i.e., who else it connected to the wifi). Which therefore means you also do not control who else might be listening in on your wifi packets in those environments.

Presuming you have a good password on your home wifi, and are running the better encryption standards, then at home you _do_ control who is connected and what hardware is supplying the service, so you do not have others listening in on your wifi packets (unless you've given those others your wifi passwords).

</comment><comment><USER4> yes, I use vpn to protect my data from online snoopers. It provides the high level of security. Plus it helps to bypass all restrictions. I checked info about best vpn for mac here [https://topvpncn.com/mac- vpn](https://topvpncn.com/mac-vpn) to find the reliable one.

</comment><comment><USER5> There is no compelling reason for most people to use a VPN at home.

If you live in a repressive regime that doesn't allow you access to parts of the internet, perhaps you would want to use one. If you're using hotel / coffeeshop wifi, that would be another good use case.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you know which are known VPN services available for personal use ?

<comment><USER5> StrongVPN, Mullvad, hmaproxy, etc... Even Tor provides sort of the same thing.

But it really depends on use case. Why do you need a VPN -- until you answer that question, you can't really make an informed decision on which vpn you need.</comment></comment></comment>


The death of e-mail: The young are abandoning email for IM, SMS and facebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2177969/

<comment><USER2> i call bs.

email is a great tool. i think the key is uniting sms & im. they really are the same thing. i have a feeling that sms/im and email are going to have the same relationship that email and snailmail did initially.

short quick and frequent messages (im/sms) and longer, better written message (email). hopefully soon mobile devices will really unite this all together. crossing my fingers for android :)

but really, email isn't going anywhere.

<comment><AUTHOR> Whatever happened to jumpChat?</comment></comment>


99 ways to say '(I love you) - <AUTHOR> http://matt.might.net/articles/i-love-you-in-racket/

<comment> mark-ruwt If only this had came out before Valentine's Day I could've sent it to my...oh, wait. Nevermind.

</comment><comment><USER2> God, Racket is awesome.

If you have the energy (and it DOES take energy), go through them all and understand why they work. It's fun and it will teach you a surprising amount about programming languages. The thing I yearn for most day-to-day is probably "match", especially combined with list-no-order.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm looking for Brainfuck version!

<comment><USER3> Thanks to this generator[1] it was easy

Code: >++++++++++ [>+++++++>+++>+++++++++++>+++++++++++>++++++++++++>++++++++++>+++>++++++++++++>+++++++++++>++++++++++++><<<<<<<<<<<-] >+++>++>\-->+>\-->+>++>+>+>\---> <<<<<<<<<<< >.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.

[1]<http://tunn.us/bf/generator.php></comment></comment>


Model View Controller isn't - <AUTHOR> http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/model_view_controller.html <comment><USER2> Great article !

During my bachelor even teacher were mixing MVC and MVVM, this article would have been helpful</comment>


New Heroku Status Site - <AUTHOR> http://blog.heroku.com/archives/2012/5/22/new_heroku_status_site/ <comment><USER2> I've always liked Heroku's status page. I got to work on a service for apps that provided this type of functionality, but quickly found out that someone here on HN had already tried to have a go at it (it's now down <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2110917>).

Is there any interest among app developers for a well designed, hosted status site for something like $5 a month?

<comment><USER3> For what it's worth we've (Heroku) thought about open-sourcing ours. Not sure how valuable this is to others — let us know.

<comment><USER4> Consider this a vote for "very interested".

<comment><USER5> +1!

<comment><USER6> Definitely +1, that is a lovely system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Would almost prefer that "RIGHT NOW/ACTIVE" downtime items be displayed separately from the timeline.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the feedback. We (Heroku) have been wondering if people would prefer that.

<comment><USER9> I would have to actually see it in action but I like the idea of having now be the top of the timeline.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> awesome job pushing trust/status in a clean way! It looks like salesforce.com's smaller divisions is really getting a handle on status pages, i.e. <http://desk.com/trust></comment>


What Makes Twitter Twitter? - <AUTHOR> http://alexkrupp.typepad.com/sensemaking/2007/08/what-makes-twit.html

<comment><AUTHOR> This is my first ever compulsory blog post. I am taking a 'psychology of the internet' class at college that compels us to write a blog post about something Internet related each week.

The class policy is such that if you say anything offensive or untoward you automatically fail the class without warning or chance for appeal. This is a bit upsetting since the way things work, if I fail the class and drop below 12 credits (a full-time student) I am no longer covered by my family's health insurance. So if I, say, link to that JWZ post about sex or the Wikipedia article about DeCSS then potentially I don't have healthcare anymore.

For historical comparison, last semester at Cornell there were two classes with about 50-75 students total who were forced into compulsory blogging. This semester it is somewhere between 300-500. So this seems to be a trend that is taking off. Now instead of people writing about their cats out of love, they'll write about their cats out of fear :-)

But anyway, this is the reason why the post contains a slight non-sequitur toward the end. I ran up against the hard word limit and there was really no way around it. If I were blogging for myself then I would have simply finished up the post the next day. As it were, it was 3am so I really had no choice but to post. Hopefully it kind of makes sense though. heh.

For reference, you can see what everyone else wrote here: <http://comm245blue.blogspot.com/>

<comment><USER2> > _The class policy is such that if you say anything offensive or untoward you > automatically fail the class without warning or chance for appeal. [...] if > I, say, link to that JWZ post about sex or the Wikipedia article about DeCSS > then potentially I don't have healthcare anymore._

Make sure you remember to sing the praises of the Professor and salute Great Leader Chairman Mao at least once per blog post! Actually, hmm, this would be a great way to poke fun at their policy. Don't say anything actually untoward, but I would just praise the infinite wisdom of the school, the class and the professor in a ridiculous over-the-top manner in your posts. Maybe even a throw in a straight-faced comparison to the wondrous insights of Chairman Mao at a place where it almost looks like it makes sense.

/at least I'm not Godwining the thread</comment></comment>