Ants swarm like brains think - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/12/feedback/ants-swarm-like-brains-think <comment><USER2> There's an appealing idea that the core of human intelligence is one general purpose algorithm. I like thinking that there is something fundamental, simple and elegant waiting to be discovered like evolution by natural selection or Newtons laws (of mechanics).

A beautiful thing about Evolution by Natural Selection is that the principle itself is metaphysical, not physical. It exists in the same realm as math or logic. The principle is embodied in biology just like the concept of a square can be embodied as a planet. Even if we didn't have any physical squares our metaphysical ideas about metaphysical squares would still valid, hence n-dimensional geometry.

Another cool thing about Evolution by Natural Selection is that it is nicely self contained. It's the bottom of a finite rabbit hole. Understanding what evolution is made of will help us understand a particular instance of evolution, but not the principle. So, knowing about DNA and genetic mutations helps us understand evolution in biology but it doesn't tell us more about evolution in abstract. IE, it doesn't get us to a more fundamental understanding. Even if Darwin had been wrong about the origin of species he would still have discovered something awesome.

Newtons principles have a different kind of elegance. They are extremely fundamental and a pleasingly small number of them are needed. The difference is that they are very much _physical_ laws. They are fundamental enough to be treated as fundamental rules of the universe. Almost. Newtonic physics still leaves open the idea of more fundamental questions and answers. Learning what gravity is _made of_ does get us closer to the fundamental.

Darwin's evolution is fundamental in the way that math is. Newton's mechanics is fundamental in the way that atoms are. The way I have these defined in my own mind is _Philosophical_ and _Scientific._ It's a sort of fuzzy distinction and it breaks down a lot. But it seems useful to me sometimes. "Anthropic," for example, is something you need to get your philosophical mind familiar with.

Back to AI. The single algorithm idea hints, I think a "philosophical" explanation. We're looking for some metaphysical property of the universe that intelligence is an instance of.

<comment><USER3> We have come to a lot of the same conclusions, particularly w.r.t. evolution being a metaphysical phenomenon and its being deeply interwoven with (or perhaps analogous to) intelligence.

Do you have any favorite authors or texts in this area?

<comment><USER2> Not really. Richard Dawkins turned me on to the idea.

Interestingly, the whole "intelligent design" debate is a good proxy for 'evolution as intelligence' arguments. One side offers example of how biology/nature is 'designed' and the other finds explanations for how it is evolved. Evolution _does_ seem intelligently designed. It exhibits problem solving.

The similarity between the way an intelligent human thinks and the way nature "thinks" is striking. It's striking to the point that simply defining nature as _an_ intelligence (or even going further as defining it as an intelligent creator) doesn't seem out of the question. We know a lot about the mechanics of evolution. Less about the mechanics of human intelligence. In the absence of a better understanding of the latter, it's more or less just a semantic choice.

But, there could very well be a stronger connection. Maybe something similar to evolutionary intelligence powers human intelligence. Maybe both are instances of a more fundamental thing. I'm using 'emergence' as the placeholder in my brain for that fundamental principle/algorithm or collection of these. 'Emergence' also covers concepts from economics, culture and ecologies and finds logical solutions for things without the intervention of an intelligent human.

But no, I don't have good reading recommendations. If anyone does, I would love to hear them. Fiction, non-fiction. I would love to hear about these ideas from different perspectives.

<comment><USER4> I've been thinking about this a bit lately. I came to the conclusion that brain could basically be a process to simulate evolution (not computational, but analogous mimicry). If something seemingly 'intelligent' can exist because of evolutive process ('emergence'), brain should mimic the process to arrive at the same solution, faster. For example, when I'm thinking about this comment I'm unknowingly eliminating all the pathways that lead to bad comments and this is the only one that survives ('emerges').

<comment><USER2> Why 'mimic?' IE, if this is correct then biological evolutions mimics intelligence just as much as intelligence mimics biology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Douglas Hofstadter used this analogy in his 1979 book, Gödel, Escher, Bach. GEB presents an analogy about how the individual neurons of the brain coordinate to create a unified sense of a coherent mind by comparing it to the social organization displayed in a colony of ants. It's a fascinating book, and well worth the read for the inquiring mind.

<comment><USER6> This reminds me of how some biologists consider a colony to actually be a single organism, and each individual ant an organ system. The queen could be thought of as the reproductive organs, workers the limbs, scouts sensory organs. It's especially interesting considering that all of the workers are sterile, so fitness is shared, and dependent on the queen.

<comment><USER7> > It's especially interesting considering that all of the workers are sterile, > so fitness is shared, and dependent on the queen.

That's _why_ it makes sense to think of the colony as a single organism. In the same way, your hands can only reproduce when the rest of you does, in an orderly manner, and we think of you as a unified organism. If hands could bud off independent mini-hands, you might see less cooperation from them over the course of your life.

<comment><USER8> nightmares!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The 2004 ICFP contest was based around this theme. The contestants had to program an ant state machine in a very simple and resource-restricted language. Still it allowed for pretty complex strategies like ambushing opponent's ants trying to steal your food.

Here's the link to the results which also contains links to some summaries by contestants: [https://alliance.seas.upenn.edu/~plclub/cgi- bin/contest/resu...](https://alliance.seas.upenn.edu/~plclub/cgi- bin/contest/results.php)

</comment><comment><USER10> _The foraging response to food is an example of a positive feedback loop, and familiar to anyone who has had a picnic ruined by a line of ants marching in single file toward their meal._

Seeing how hundreds of ants in a long line harvest a package of cereal high upon the shelf is an impressive sight, despite the food casualty . . . :-)

Reading the article makes me want to heed the thousands of years old advise:

 _Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest._ (Proverbs 6:6-8, NIV)

IANAAE (I Am Not An Ants Expert), but even though colonies have queens, there is no central control from what I understand:

 _There are about 10,000 species of ants. They all live in colonies consisting of one or a few queens, and then all the ants you see walking around are sterile female workers. And all ant colonies have in common that there 's no central control. Nobody tells anybody what to do. The queen just lays the eggs. There's no management. No ant directs the behavior of any other ant. And I try to figure out how that works. And I've been working for the past 20 years on a population of seed-eating ants in southeastern Arizona._ [http://www.ted.com/talks/deborah_gordon_digs_ants/transcript...](http://www.ted.com/talks/deborah_gordon_digs_ants/transcript#t-30000)

<comment><USER11> > even though colonies have queens, there is no central control

This is important. A lot of times I describe to people how ants are a perfect example of a cooperative anarchical society, and they say "Well what about the queen!!"

"Queen" is a misnomer. She is really just another ant whos job it is to lay eggs. This job tends to be less expendable than others, so the queen is more protected (from what I know), but she's still "equal" in the sense that nobody gives orders, everything is self-organizing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> All sorts of things can be modeled on ants, like distributed message passing and congestion control algorithms, as well as routing in general. There's a list of ant colony-inspired algorithms here [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_colony_optimization_algori...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_colony_optimization_algorithms) And Google Scholar has a wealth of papers found here [http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=ant+colony](http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=ant+colony)

</comment><comment><USER4> Even rivers are intelligent, they find a way from the lake to the sea and carve a comfortable path for themselves. :)

<comment><USER13> Evolution and gravity are consequences of the natural computation of the universe.

</comment></comment><comment> V-2 "The Invincible" by Stanisław Lem comes to mind.

Spoilers inside! -> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invincible](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invincible)

<comment><USER14> They actually are. Depends on what you consider the river. If it is just the molecules of water, probably not. But if you look at the whole ecosystem of a river, you will be amazed. And in this situation with beavers building dams and changing the course, and everything doing its bit, yes, the river will do amazing things and will show to have a life of its own, just like the ant colony.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I just finished reading the paper about a model of ant foraging rates.

Observing that ant nest size should be a stochastic exponential process, depending on how many ants bring back food and how many die trying, is this model detailed enough to show that ants are performing portfolio optimization?

<comment><USER13> I want to know how ants got into a sealed bag of brown sugar when I can't.

<comment><USER15> These little investment bankers sure are sneaky!</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Difference of implication between co-founders - <AUTHOR> I'm about to create a startup (http://tufa.ai/). I happen to be lucky that some of my coder/phd friends are willing to join me.
We agree on almost everything (vision, equity, responsibilities)
However, there is one issue where we cannot come to an agreement: how to manage a difference of implication between the co-founders. I have no girlfriend/family and very little responsibilities, so I can and expect to put all of my time into this venture (minus sleep, eating and exercice). However, one of the founders has a family and the responsibilities that come with it, so the effort he can put in is more limited. The french 35h/week is ok for him, he can maybe do more sometimes, but with no guarantee.
My question: how can I manage the likely difference of implication, when it comes to equity/compensation and the implicit contract we have between each other.
I see a few possibilities:
- Tolerate it: each co-founder has equal equity and is expected to work 35h/week. More effort is not rewarded. I suspect this will be highly demotivating for high performers.
- Ban it: set a minimum of 50 or 60h/week, and refuse anyone who cannot pull it off. I am good friends with all my co-founders, so I don't like the idea of them not joining because they have a family. Besides, most of us will start a family at some point.
- Measure and scale: find some way of measuring implication and reward everyone including co-founders proportional to it. This introduces the problem having to measure, estimate or self-report the implication of each one.
Thoughts? <comment><USER2> Let me ask you another question: are you all equally capable and productive? Producing the same value for the company, given putting in the same hours? I bet you aren't. How to compensate for that?

Also working more than 8 hours a day will not make you more productive, especially over a longer period of time.

Also, you'll never get a family if you're working every free hour of the day.

Having good chemistry between founders is very important, more important than who's putting in a few more hours.

My advice: base everything on a normal work week, everything over that is voluntary. Family is the thing you work for, so that's always more important.</comment>


Bang Bang Control - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bang%E2%80%93bang_control <comment><USER2> Auto racing is an example of this being the optimal strategy, not just a simple or cheap implementation. Disregarding cases where you have to feather the throttle or brakes to maintain traction, the best racing line is always (I think) where you mash the throttle on a straightaway until the absolute last possible instant, then immediately mash the brakes to slow down just enough to squeak through the turn. It takes some getting used to.

<comment><USER3> Braking is also used to control weight distribution before cornering, shifting weight to the front wheels to allow for a sharper turn. Optimization occurs when the centrifugal force's direction is counter balanced by the friction of the tires, which varies with acceleration and braking. Optimal lines depend on the shape of the turn, but max braking always occurring right before the apex and shifts to high acc after. Really though, its max brake/acc without slipping not just 1/0\. Traction control/abs simplify the situation at the racer input level, allowing optimal strategy to approach 1/0 by functioning as a micro instance of the bang bang strategy. The abs/tcs is 1/0 due to optimization, not simplicity, since a variable input would not allow the wheels to return to a rolling state anymore quickly.

<comment><USER2> Great point about shifting weight to the front wheels. Real life racing theory is definitely much more complicated than my amateur understanding, especially when you're talking about high-performance cars and trained drivers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I see some typically Wikipedian problems with over-technical description in the first paragraph: it uses the word "plant" to mean (I think) "device" or perhaps "system," and includes the somewhat baffling sentence "These controllers may be realized in terms of any element that provides hysteresis"\--and "hysteresis" itself is quite poorly defined in its own article. (The best I can figure is that hysteresis refers to a system whose output lags behind changes in input, but I'm still not clear how a typical reader is supposed to get that from "Hysteresis is the time-based dependence of a system's output on present and past inputs. The dependence arises because the history affects the value of an internal state.")

<comment><USER5> Recognizing that the spirit of your comment is about the utility of Wikipedian descriptions in general (I agree!), I thought I'd build out some of these concepts in case someone similarly frustrated also happens to be curious about them.

"Plant" is a legacy term referring to the device or system acting on the state you're trying to control. Sticking with thermostats, the plant is the heating element.

A straightforward way to think of hysteresis is that the output depends on the history of the input. A simple example of hysteresis in a temperature controller would be to turn off heat if the temperature _rises_ above threshold A, but only turn on heat if the temperature _falls_ below threshold B.

"These controllers may be realized in terms of any element that provides hysteresis" \-- This is indeed awkward phrasing, since it could be read as though the property of hysteresis is fundamental to create a bang-bang controller. In fact, using hysteresis is "just" a best practice. Strictly speaking, you could make a hot water heater that turns heat on and off based on a single hard temperature threshold as measured by a thermometer, and it would work. However, any noise in the system will make the output jittery and cause unnecessary cycles. Having a "heat off" threshold higher than the "heat on" threshold makes for smoother transitions.

<comment><USER4> Great info, thanks! You should be a Wikipedia editor. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I find that this is interesting to compare with Pulse-Width Modulation[0], in which a system must alternate between OFF and ON at some proportion to "simulate" a non-binary signal (i.e. 60% of the time if the signal is on ON and 40% it's on OFF, then it looks like, on average, 0.6 rather than the discrete 1.0 and 0.0).

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse- width_modulation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse-width_modulation)

<comment><USER7> Two examples where I use bang-bang control for inflate/deflate valves on inflatable weirs[0] and open/close solenoids on hydraulic pressure units controlling hydraulic rams attached to pelton turbine deflectors[1].

But I calculate a pulse width - how long the valve should be opened for in order to correct the error.

For a turbine deflector loop it might execute every 1s with a minimum pulse time of 50ms and a maximum pulse time of 1s.

For the weir control it might execute every 60s with a minimum pulse time of 300ms and a maximum pulse time of 20s, because the weir continues to move after the output is de-energized and the response of the water level over the weir depends on the area of the body of water behind the weir.

I set a gain that determines how long the output is energized (the pulse width) for a given magnitude error.

In my case the actuators are still discrete so the signal stays as a pulse train, it is not filtered up to be a continuous time signal.

[0]: [https://www.google.ca/#tbm=isch&q=obermeyer+weir](https://www.google.ca/#tbm=isch&q=obermeyer+weir) [1]: [https://www.google.ca/#q=pelton+turbine+deflector&tbm=isch](https://www.google.ca/#q=pelton+turbine+deflector&tbm=isch)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Control theory is a super fascinating field.

<comment><USER9> Care to elaborate? What do you find fascinating about it.

<comment><USER10> Much of modern control theory is equivalent to machine learning. "Adaptive feedforward control" is a form of machine learning. So is "automatic system identification". Back in the 1990s, before machine learning had really got going, I thought that adaptive feedforward control was a path to AI. In a sense it was, but it took a lot of mathematical development in other fields to get it there.

Feedforward control is unusual. In feedback control, you look at the error and try to zero it out. Usually, there's some lag in the system, which leads to undershoot, overshoot, oscillation, and all the usual problems of feedback systems. Maxwell (yes, _that_ Maxwell) figured all this out in 1868, and his little paper "On Governors" defined linear control theory for a century.[1]

Feedforward control, though, is about measuring disturbance inputs, predicting what's going to happen, and adjusting controllable inputs so that the error remains near zero. An example is a heating system with an input for outside temperature as well as inside temperature. When the outside gets cold, the heating plant will be cranked up in advance of the inside getting cold. This is essential if the system being controlled has a lot of lag, like a big building's heating system.

Adaptive feedforward control is automatically identifying how the inputs affect the outputs by watching everything for a while. It's thus a form of machine learning. For the heating system example, a good controller might learn that a 10 degree drop outside means a 5 degree drop inside 1 hour later. It might also learn that the heating hot water temperature rises at 30 degrees an hour when the boiler is at full power. Such info can be used to decide to crank up the boiler half an hour after the outside temperature drops, so heating water will be available just when it's needed. This is a basic form of machine learning.

One big difference from the machine learning community is that controls people demand error bounds on their control algorithms. So the machine learning techniques used tend to be the ones ameninable to error analysis. Support vector machines, yes; deep neural nets, not so much.

[1] [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AOn_Governors.pdf](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AOn_Governors.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's also used on some rockets and guided bombs, which is where I first heard about it. It leads to rougher trajectories but it's a more reliable control surface since you only need to handle zero or full deflection on a given fin.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you – Style Components built using React/Vue/Angular etc. - <AUTHOR> UI developers till a few months back were writing styles in a separate SASS files which would compile down to CSS and be included into the HTML.
With modern frameworks, developers started writing their styles in the HTML directly. It felt natural to new developers who liked keeping their HTML/JS for a component in a single Template/JSX file.
In my 'opinion', inline-styles polluted the DOM and get in the way. Browsers have to take a break while laying out to process each inline-style they encounter with the DOM nodes.
Keeping styles for each component in their own JSX makes it difficult to visualize the entire hierarchy in a large project. It is very easy to visualise in case of a SASS file (if done properly.)
Enter, styled-components which lets you write CSS as templates in JS and auto assigns a unique class name to every component. Hence no more element level styles. It also auto links the class to every instance of the component.
Under the hood, we are adding <style> nodes via JS and the browser has to generate the same class during every execution of the app/page (showcased as a feature - no build process). IMHO, this does not seem to bring in any advantage over the fact that browsers can easily parse external stylesheets once and cache them.
Consider the case where you are creating a UI framework from scratch. You would encounter nested elements, e.g. button inside a modal needs to be different than a button inside a hero component.
Of course having the ability to add custom CSS via JS is a good feature to have. Would you use it while building a React version of Bootstrap from scratch or go with a tool like SASS to create the styles for such a framework?
Looking for inputs from developers who work on modern UI/Frontend on how you handle styles for your components. <comment><USER2> I think a global style file helps when the same HTML markup is repeated in several parts of your application.

However, a component based architecture, by definition represents the reusable HTML markup of your application. Since such a component brings along its own styles wherever it is used, there is negligible loss of reusability of styles.

This is in theory of course, but my experience (with Vue.js) has been the same in practice too.

With Vue.js at least, you have the optional "scoped styles" feature which gives you tuneable reusability in case you really need it. Most of the time, I find my self writing

     in my component files.

Edit: Regarding performance, I believe it could potentially be an issue on mobile devices (for now), and if so I would solve it by creating a global stylesheet by merging all individual stylesheets and appending the component name as a prefix in all selectors in both the styles and the markup.

This would be done programmatically using webpack or some other front end build tool. I doubt I'd ever need to do that TBH.

</comment><comment><USER3> As the front end community moves to a decentralized component based model, it doesn't make sense to keep your styles seperate. Being able to see exactly what a component does, how it renders, how it looks, how it manages state, in my opinion has these benefits:

1 makes the code easier to test 2 easier to onboard new developers 3 better developer experience 4 easier to scale 5 easier to create decoupled chunks for single page apps/progressive web apps.

<comment> rachel-ftw agree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Styles in components are the next pattern to be figured out for components. The considerations should be

1\. Styles should only apply to the component that they intend to style 2\. Keep styles decoupled from any specific component library 3\. There needs to be a communication layer between application interactions and the styles applied 4\. Provide scalable patterns 5\. Cache styles effectively 6\. Chunk styles to optimize site

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I agree with most comments which say that the modular approach is good for maintainability. But what about performance that takes a hit when the JS is creating and linking styles. Also, browser caching of styles is not possible in these cases.

<comment><USER5> I would not care too much about performance in the context of linking and evaulating css for modern browsers. It has small if any impact. If it is better for maintainability - than it is good way to go.</comment></comment>


Why Start-Ups Must Pay Attention To What's Behind The Curtain - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2010/04/24/how-a-start-up-grew-by-paying-attention-to-whats-behind-the-curtain/tab/article/ <comment><USER2> This reminds me of an interview with Reddit's Alexis Ohanian where he said that they started out posting a lot of submissions under fake accounts just to get the content going.

<comment><USER3> Yep, I had a bunch of different usernames and with the help of a couple friends I browbeat and Steve, made up the majority of the early submissions to reddit. There's nothing sadder than visiting a reddit with no content (or stale content). This only lasted for a few weeks, though, thankfully. The moment neither Steve nor I needed to make a submission was the day we realized we may not have entirely wasted our summer :)</comment></comment>


Is this the new Facebook Paper? - <AUTHOR> http://paperprime.com Facebook is rumored to be working on a Flipboard killer. <comment><USER2> From the looks of the "Eventful front page", they're looking to launch before Feb. 2, so we'll know soon enough.</comment>


Trojan Disguised as Trend Micro Component Drops BitCoin Miner App - <AUTHOR> http://blog.trendmicro.com/trendlabs-security-intelligence/trojan-disguised-as-trend-micro-component-drops-bitcoin-mining-malware/ <comment><USER2> Interesting, but probably too late to do the author any good. Aren't CPU miners basically worthless at this point?</comment>


Ask HN: Any way to recover deleted surveillance video from DVR - <AUTHOR> Thought I might ask HN...in short some serious crimes happened to me at a gas station (abduction/kidnapping), I did everything I could to preserve the video, but as you might expect the gas station did not preserve the video and allege it was over written within 7 days.
I went in person to request the video 2 days after the crimes against me (and to file an incident report and request the name of the insurer), the employee said she would call the owner/manager to help me but actually called 911 and had me removed from the premises.
Then I reached out to the corporate franchiser (Sunoco) to request the name of the franchisee to serve a notice of preservation (required under state law), of course they dragged their feet just long enough to delay service of my notice.
Now the insurers (Berkshire Hathaway - Berkshire Hathaway guard) and their scumbag attorneys are alleging the crimes didn't happen to me and if they did they didn't happen on the property but across the street (they even published a written statement online to this effect, which the judge said isn't defamation and that I am just taking this to personal), notwithstanding the fact the guy was caught and sentenced to a total of 80 years in prison.
I'm sure I would need the make/model of the surveillance system DVR for a solid answer, but in the meantime, I thought HN would be a great place to ask if there is any hacks or hope of recovering overwritten video from these types of systems? <comment><USER2> File recovery software don't work very well with video in my experience. It sounds like you don't have the drives though, so that's your first step. I'm not a lawyer, but if the gas station is saying the footage is already deleted then you will have a very hard time convincing a judge to force them to hand over drives.

<comment><AUTHOR> We can get access to the DVR system easy enough. I suppose your recommendation is identify the drives (as in hard drives?) as opposed to the DVR make/model itself?

And then look for file recovery software they seems to work well with said hard drives?</comment></comment>


Paper USB Business Cards (Funded 250% on Kickstarter in 2 days) - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/812365891/swivelcard-smart-business-cards

<comment><USER2> Who would be dumb enough to stick a USB device a stranger hands them into their computer? After all the press on BadUSB?</comment>


Google Engineer: What I learned in the war  - <AUTHOR> http://postcards.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2011/11/11/google-engineer-war/ <comment><USER2> (I hope I get the tone right on this. I don't mean to insult any person or institution)

The interesting thing here is how military service is respected to such a high degree, bordering on worship, in the United States.

Other countries have voluntary armies too,and yes soldiers get _some_ respect as people who do a necessary and dangerous job, but you don't see the "start your conversation with "Thank You for your service" " style everyday deference outside the United States. This is a little baffling to a non American,especially since America's wars post WW2 are mostly invasions of random third world countries against underequipped,and mostly untrained enemies, and even then the victory/defeat ratio is very mixed.

Genuine question, why does a soldier deserve so much more respect than a doctor or teacher or fireman or policeman or engineer?

Specifically wrt the article under discussion,(to a non American) this article is a generic feel good article which doesn't say very much at all. (I am sure Dan is a great person. Just saying there wasn't (imo) much meat to the article).

<comment><USER3> Others have stated some of the big reasons why service members get so much respect: they risk their lives for their country, they give up some of their Constitutional rights (although they also gain some extra rights, such as Article 31 rights), and they generally accept lower compensation than they might get on the outside (still true, but not nearly as true as it used to be). I would add another reason: they accept the burden of spending many years of their lives away from home, often missing major life events (weddings, graduations, even the births of their own children), as well as the lesser burden of having to move every 2-3 years.

However, there's another side to your question: why is the U.S. like this, and not other countries?

My initial response would be to turn that around: why don't people in other countries hold military service to a higher level of respect, especially considering that some of the reasons given here for respecting the military (e.g. giving up rights or accepting lower pay) are _more_ applicable in some other countries? Just because the U.S. is unique in this regard, doesn't mean we're the ones doing it wrong. There have been others who felt their nations didn't give their troops enough respect: [http://www.web- books.com/Classics/Poetry/Anthology/Kipling/T...](http://www.web- books.com/Classics/Poetry/Anthology/Kipling/Tommy.htm)

That being said, I think that there are some important differences in U.S. culture that help to explain the difference. One thing relatively unique about the U.S. is that, unlike most nations, we do not have an ethnic identity. For example, Spaniards can feel united in the fact that they are all Spaniards, the Japanese can feel united in the fact that they are all Japanese, etc. Certainly there are ethnic sub-groups within most countries, but for the most part they have a national identity that is rooted in their shared ancestry, and of a shared history that in almost all cases predates the existing government by centuries. Since the U.S. lacks that, we have a national identity rooted in ideals, embodied specifically in the Constitution. There is certainly a great deal of political disagreement about the specifics of those ideals (and of the meaning of the Constitution), but the generalities are largely agreed upon.

So what does this have to do with the regard in which we hold military service? Well, part of it is an awareness, dating back to our war of independence, that our Constitutionally guaranteed rights were underwritten by a lot of individuals who left their homes to fight for those shared ideals which define us. We literally would never have come to exist as a nation if it were not for our military services.

We also have an ideal in this country of "Citizen Soldiers." It is not unique to the U.S. (I believe it originated in ancient Greece, but please correct me if I'm wrong), but I think that the only nations that currently subscribe strongly to this idea are the U.S. and Israel. It's the idea that our military consists primarily of individuals who are not lifelong military professionals: most of the people in our military serve for only a few years, then go back to being ordinary Americans. This means that we have a lot of veterans spread throughout our society, so that almost everyone knows at least one veteran, raising cultural awareness of military life. Conversely, in a nation where the military consists primarily of individuals who make a lifelong career of it, the military tends to be a little less visible to the bulk of the population because they don't have as many veterans to interact with. There are quite a few nations with universal conscription (everybody has to serve for a few years), but with the exception of Israel, I haven't seen this same "citizen soldier" meme in such nations. I think there are two reasons for this. First, the time spent is very short (usually 2-3 years, as opposed to the minimum enlistment in the U.S., which is 4-5 years) and at the end of that time the choice is "get out, or commit to a life-long career," as opposed to the U.S. military, which allows a succession of short re-enlistments. The second reason is most important: in countries with universal conscription, it's just seen as something everyone has to go through, like high school, and the conscripts are not fully integrated into the military: they are given minimal combat training and are used primarily for drudgework, with more thorough combat training coming only after an individual commits to a professional military career.

Finally, I can't end without addressing this:

> _America's wars post WW2 are mostly invasions of random third world > countries against underequipped,and mostly untrained enemies, and even then > the victory/defeat ratio is very mixed._

Our two biggest wars since WWII were Korea and Vietnam. The Korean war was really a war fought against China on Korean soil. The People's Army is hardly something to sneeze at. The NVA was also a modern army, equipped and trained by the Soviets and the Chinese. Our next-biggest war (and longest, by far) was Iraq, which showed that "underequipped, and mostly untrained enemies" can be quite deadly.

This statement also seems to imply that we should judge the merits of military service on the basis of our political views about the particular wars fought, and on the degree of success achieved. In reality, we judge the merits of military service on the basis that these individuals volunteered to make tremendous sacrifices in service to a noble ideal: our Constitution, and the concept it embodies (a self-governed people).

<comment><USER4> Your last paragraph really goes to the heart of the matter. In order to earn my respect, soldiers need to fight for a cause that I consider necessary for humanity as a whole and one that absolutely requires the use of force. Serving any nation's interests alone is not enough even if that country's constitution includes some noble goals.

In my view, many veterans are simply misguided, confused, dangerous instruments of populist politicians. Some are criminals, and some others are true heroes. Throwing them all into the same "veterans" bucket and honoring them all doesn't do justice to any of them.

I'm also skeptical that things learned in a life threatening situation within a militarized kind of structure are very useful in other situations. In fact, many countries are blighted by military thinking and many noble causes have been perverted by that kind of mindset.

<comment><USER5> I'm a veteran. Served time in Kabul in 2008/09 with the US Army.

While I don't expect anyone to thank me for my service (tbh, it makes me uncomfortable), I'm offended that you find it so easy to throw all Soldiers into a single bucket to be judged based on your own ethical standards.

The fact of the matter is that we cannot choose our commander, or our mission, but we trust that our leaders do their best to do what's right...the same way we try to trust politicians to do their duties. While it might be true that there are many bad leaders, Soldiers, and politicians, that doesn't mean we're all as ignorant as you might think.

What did I learn in life threatening situations?

1\. If I can survive that, I can survive anything. 2\. I am more confident in making immediate decisions. 3\. I trust myself, and I trust the people around me. 4\. Hard work and discipline goes a long way.

While I have no interest in a lifetime of military service (I separated honorably in 2010), if it weren't for my time in the military I don't feel I would be nearly as willful, determined, and successful as I am today.

Soldier != Servant

<comment><USER6> It's interesting how the criticism of supporting those that serve usually come from people that have never enlisted.

Anyone that has served in a war deserves total respect for the sacrifices & suffering they endured every day, regardless of the ethics of the cause. All war is bad, not just those we think are 'worth it', so either give soldiers the respect they deserve every day or be quiet, because many of the liberties we personally enjoy (not just in US, but every country) have come through countless lives, right or wrong.

I realize it can make you uncomfortable, but I'll never stop thanking soldiers in uniform for standing in to defend our country so that I don't have to. Thank you.

<comment><USER4> Yes, many soldiers have given their lives to fight for the freedoms we enjoy and other soldiers have given their lives to take away those freedoms. That's exactly why I insist on making a distinction and pay respect only to some of them.

For instance, I do respect nhangen for defending Kabul against the Taliban. I do not respect the Taliban soldiers for trying to enforce some weird version of sharia law in Kabul even though they are also suffering and dying in a war.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've briefly met Dan. I work in the same office and some months ago we were in the same class where he was talking about his time in the Marine Corps. I often hear him when I'm in the micro-kitchen.

So while I don't know him you quickly get a sense of who he is. Grounded, humble, practical, having integrity and he has some amazing stories. I had no idea about the full details of his story (from this article) but it's really fascinating. It's just such a totally different world to the one that the rest of us, myself included, mostly take for granted.

I'm also glad to be working for a company that does go out of its way to support veterans and reservists.

<comment><USER8> He does a very commendable job of representing the best about the military and service that I remember.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> From what I've heard, Google does a particularly good job of taking care of reservists (there are federal laws about not firing, but good companies go beyond this). Outside of government contracting (where it makes a lot of business sense to hire reservists or former military), there don't seem to be a large number of reservists/national guard in the tech community; almost more foreign-country-compulsory-service veterans (from Israel, etc.) than US veterans.

Kind of a loss for the military, because tech startups are a great preparation for actual deployed military operations (which are basically the opposite of the peacetime bureaucracy). As well, the military is a more diverse organization in the US than almost any tech company -- it's a great way to get underrepresented minorities involved.

<comment><USER10> _there don't seem to be a large number of reservists/national guard in the tech community;_

Why do you/others think this is?

I'm not a US citizen, so that counts me out. But even so I wouldn't become a reservest because I feel I have a lot of unique and valuable skills (engineering, thought leadership in platforms, and media technology) that wouldn't be capitalizable by the military - certainly not as a reservist. I wouldn't feel I was utilizing my skills if I was a regular solider or even reservest officer.

It's similar to volunteering for charity: rather than volunteer to work a day in a soup kitchen I would be able to bring far more value to a charity by just work for a day doing my normal job and then donating that day's pay to them. _(yes you personally learn some good life skills volunteering but I'm talking about which is better for the charity)_

EDIT: perhaps folks who have downvoted me would like to leave a comment to help me understand where the skill capitalization for a tech founder/software engineer is in the reservists, seeing as they clearly feel I'm wrong.

<comment><USER9> I agree with some of your sentiment, but I think you don't have accurate information on all of the military. The big deal with the reserves/NG (in the Army, at least) is that there is a huge difference among units; the majority of army PSYOPs capability is actually in the reserve component, and is as good as anything in active duty; there are both active duty and reserve units in other specialties which are pretty widely regarded as incapable/ineffective. It kind of becomes an evaporative cooling thing -- good people who end up in bad units find ways to leave, and are attracted to great units. Basically the same as companies in the civilian world.

In some cases, the services (and government as a whole, and big companies) don't take advantage of pre-existing skills or aptitudes. In other cases, they do -- there are incentive/recruiting/fast-track systems for certain types of professionals. They've gotten better about this since becoming an all- volunteer force vs. draft. The big problem is that there is a "military way" to do a lot of things, largely focused on big-vendor enterprise in the IT space, and you have to work within that. Getting affiliated with a lab, DARPA, etc. is probably the way to use more interesting tech.

One problem I have personally is that they're very credential-focused; as a high school and college dropout, I'd be kind of screwed. Otherwise I'd be really interested in reserve/NG in certain specialties (psyops, civil affairs, infrastructure parts of embedded advisor teams, rotary/uav aviation, sigint, SAR, medical, diving). It would also be really difficult for a startup founder vs. an employee at a larger tech company.

For the donation/volunteer argument, rather than just donating money, my plan is to do NGO work on the side, and hopefully eventually be able to set up a specialty communications-in-conflict/disaster zones infrastructure NGO. A lot of charities ARE saddled by large numbers of unskilled volunteers (or at least without specific relevant skills), and structure their operations to be labor vs. skill intensive.

<comment><USER10> Your argument, if I read it right, is basically that I'm wrong and that the military is good at capitalizing on people's skills - and you give psyops as one example and also talk about people's credentials.

Sure, I don't disagree with you that in general, you can specialize in the reservists.

The point I'm making is that specifically for tech/software engineers/startup folks -- which was the genesis for the OP comment -- there _isn't_ a great deal of skill overlap and capitalization. I'm not sure anything you've said disagrees with that.

<comment><USER11> FWIW, I'm retired from the USAF. I also hold an ECE degree. In the military I did nothing that _required_ my degree (though I got to fly fighters for a career, so it was awesome anyway). The military has a different mission than the "real world", and using your background and expertise and self-discipline and stamina and perspectives and judgement and ethical view are called upon at any given time, and occasionally, all at once - and sometimes there is failure - and you continue. The great value of such service is in learning to do the mission, to live with the frustrations of political vacillation that can decide what was worth great risk one day now might cost votes, to work with others that humble you with their own talent once you mature enough to recognize it, to absolutely be there when someone depends on it, and to develop and develop with those around you such that you know they will also be there when you need it. I did get to do a multi-year job once that drew heavily on my engineering education, and it was great too - but following Heinlein's thoughts on over-specialization, sometimes breadth is worth more than depth - sometimes much more. Vince malum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I almost chocked on my cereal after reading the first paragraph of this article. The author appeared to be really suggesting that a person should consider taking a active duty stint in a war zone to learn things one can't else where to further their career goals? I hope some kid isn't reading this propaganda. War is not like playing the Call of Duty 4 game!

I am thinking Dan Cross, the Google engineer would have had a different perspective on his active duty time if his legs had been blown off... Really, there are other things one can do to learn the same lessens. Say like the Peace Corps...

</comment><comment><USER13> I spent four years in the U.S.M.C in the enlisted ranks. This article is an interesting read, but only really scratches the surface of what one learns in the military. I didn't spend a single day in a war zone, and still learned patience and acceptance. I also learned much, much more - and they are skills that have helped me in my civilian life - personally and professionally.

I won't enumerate everything here; if I tried, I would fail. But I will attempt to highlight many of those that repeatedly surface:

1\. Attention to detail. I don't think it matters what your military occupation is, you will certainly be subjected to this, at least in the Marines. It starts with boot camp, and continues through your career. The little things make a big difference. While some of the military training tactics leave you, this one seems to stay - at least that's been my experience.

2\. Initiative. If something doesn't look right, can be done better, needs to be done - do it! I don't even think I recognized this was instilled in me until I was back in the civilian sector. It does wonders for a career!

3\. Respect. Respect for everyone - above, beside and below you. This was especially difficult for me during my first two years of enlistment. I thought I knew it all. The promotion structure in the military has a huge time factor built into it. For me, I thought many of those of higher rank were ignorant. Guess what? It doesn't matter! You learn to respect them. You learn to understand you're ignorant too. You learn how to work with all different types of personalities, levels of intelligence, ethnicity, etc... - and you learn how to respect each of them for what they bring to the table. You never know what a person has been through to get to where they are now or why they make the decisions they make. There is almost always a reason. Respect them enough to try to understand. This has allowed me to work with and for all types of people in the civilian sector and I somehow manage to get along with almost everyone. In the rare event that I don't get along with someone, I'm able to deal with it without trashing them. It's usually representative of some flaw of my own anyway.

4\. Camaraderie. Especially true during times of war, but also true in times of peace. The "bond" Dan spoke about comes from a lot of factors, but they all boil down to difficult, common experiences and trust. Civilians don't always understand some of the methods in which these bonds are created. By the time I got my blood stripes pinned on, it was not an accepted practice because of media exposure. But I wanted to earn them and my unit allowed it. It's a hazing ritual that is very painful to go through. My wife thought I was nuts. I feel that I earned those stripes and I know my unit had my back during the process. You've seen stories in the media where some of these events have gone bad. Examples include: Blood/Wing Pinning and Shellback Ceremony. I would suggest boot camp is largely a hazing ritual in and of itself. Controversial as it may be, I believe these rituals play an important part in the life of a soldier. It may not look good on TV, but neither does some of the stuff that happens while fighting for your life in the middle of a battle (things I know nothing about).

5\. Tenacity. Everything isn't always easy. You don't quit at something just because it is hard or because you can't figure it out or because someone pissed you off. Keep pressing forward.

6\. Integrity. Integrity is more than just telling the truth. It's being the truth. It's being true to you and to your (fill in the blank). It's being professional. It's standing up for people when they aren't there to stand up for themselves. It's not gossiping. It's not trying to cheat to get ahead of the next person. It's about doing your best and when success comes, you know you earned it honestly.

7\. Adapt and overcome. Speaks for itself.

Some of the comments here speculate about why the military doesn't have a larger tech representation. Other comments question the intellectual capacity of some of the soldiers. Let me say this: I worked with some of the smartest people of my life while in the Marines. I worked with some of the more challenged too. I worked with some of the smartest people in my life while in the civilian sector. I worked with some of the more challenged too.

I didn't reenlist for two primary reasons: (1) I wanted to make more money as a provider for my family and (2) I didn't want to relocate my family every two or three years. Yesterday represented 16 years since my last day of active duty service, and I can reflect back and say it was one of the best experiences of my life.

Happy Veteran's Day to all past and present military members.

<comment><USER14> Thank you for your words and your service. I too was in the enlisted ranks spending 6 1/2 years in the Army in Combat Arms (Scout) and Special Operations (PSYOP) and then was granted early discharge to start fall semester at UNC in 1997.

The article does a great job with the mention of accepting diversity. Understanding ethnocentrism was one of the fundamental teachings from PSYOP and enlightened me in ways like nothing else.

Codeslush's words ring true and reflect what I would say regarding another poster's comments about capitalizing on skills. The Army allowed me to capitalize on life. My sacrifices were miniscule for what I think I gained with my service. We are fortunate that military service today in the U.S. is voluntary and as such is a very personal choice that is often misunderstood by many (even friends and family).

Be a generalist and open to any opportunity. If you are good at what you do and are dependable you'll make great connections with all ranks whether their enlisted or officer(commissioned/non-commissioned or warrant). And if you really excel there will be plenty of opportunities to work directly for (and yes with) O-6s and higher and see an entirely different military. If you're able and willing, the world by way of the military can be simply amazing.

I have always been a techie and still remember being playfully bashed for carrying around my Sharp 286 laptop after rotation back to staging at Hohenfels in Germany. The next hot startup, the successor to Geocities -> Friendster -> Myspace -> Facebook and the next bubble will be waiting for you to provide your date of birth and phone number whenever you're ready. Social media will still be around and solutions will still need to be solved. What won't wait for you is your youth and the opportunities that are tied to it.

I would choose the same path all over again today if I was 18 (or even 30) and wondering about what life might have in store for me. Toujours Pret!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I like the point he made about not giving exact instructions on taking a box from point A to B.

Looks like it's better to hire smart, capable people and not micromanage them - than it is to hire cheap people and tell them exactly what to do.

<comment><USER16> Many of the enlisted men in the military aren't all _that_ smart, and most of 'em are pretty darn cheap.

If there's a takeaway lesson it's that even not-so-smart, cheap-to-hire people are actually surprisingly capable of doing stuff, if you create a management environment where they _have_ to do it and know they aren't gonna get any mollycoddling from the higher-ups. Here is the task. Go do it. Come back to me when it's done.

<comment><USER9> The argument of elite selection vs. elite training is interesting. I think USMC, particularly in WW2 and in general during the draft period, had general- population induction, but through training and organization produced an elite force. Other elite units, like the Navy SEALs, seem to focus on elite recruitment and selection.

I'm not sure which works better for a tech company. Clearly only the USMC process scales once you need to hire a lot of people.

<comment><USER3> The SEALs do both: they are very picky about who gets into BUD/S, BUD/S weeds out all but the best, and then they continuously train to stay the best.

I actually believe that the USMC's formula for success doesn't scale without limit. They are _way_ smaller than the Army, and I'm sure that's a big part of how they are able to maintain the kind of cohesive culture needed to sustain excellence.

Also, even during the draft era, the Marines had another tool that you didn't consider: attrition. I don't mean the combat kind, I mean washing out the people who can't cut it. It's amazing how thoroughly they can transform a young person, but even so there are some people that just aren't good enough, and the Marine Corps has always been the most willing of all services to get rid of dead weight. So it's not selection vs. training, it's a three-way combination of selection, training, and attrition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Interesting perspective on the fluidity of the chain of command. I think the stereotypical view of military life is that you "just follow orders", orders that are spelled out down to the last detail, rather than "Go solve this problem, and I trust you to figure out the best way to do it".

</comment><comment><USER18> Well-written and concise. And not a typical topic for HN. Yet still related.

</comment><comment><USER19> Excellent read, thanks for sharing.

<comment><USER20> I totally agree. Thanks for sharing.</comment></comment>


Facebook mobile app guru Hewitt trashes Android OS - <AUTHOR> http://www.fiercemobilecontent.com/story/facebook-mobile-app-guru-hewitt-trashes-android-os/2010-08-26 <comment><USER2> "it's really flexible, agnostic, and developer-friendly, but also really sloppily designed,"

Doesn't sound like 'trashing' to me. It sounds like criticism.</comment>


Where have all the science majors gone? - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2010/06/09/news/economy/few_science_majors.fortune/index.htm <comment><USER2> This article is using some anecdotes, a few outdated statistics, and poor mathematical analogies. The reason CS majors declined from 2004-2007 is because the stigma of outsourcing and failed dot-coms were still in people's minds. I know because I was helping recruit new CS majors at my school during that time, and jobs were the big thing we had to stress because parents were worried about that. According to people in my university, enrollments are back up in the last couple years because the tech market is still healthy.

Also, saying that you get 50 MBAs and 18 lawyers for every science/engineering PhD graduate is misleading. An MBA is a 2 year degree consisting of class work, a JD is typically a 3 year degree with some mock trial work and lots of book knowledge, and a PhD is typically a 6-year degree but that requires you to have successfully developed something novel enough to publish in peer- reviewed journals and/or conferences. Most people never finish a PhD, but that has little to do with them not liking science; it's about them not being able to take living in poverty any longer, when there are high-paying jobs in the real world they can jump to at any point. It'd be more interesting to see how many masters in STEM areas are given out relative to MBAs and JDs.

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science> is 95% or so relevant for men as well.

Also, if there really was a shortage you'd see salary inflation, which certainly hasn't been the case in "CS" and I gather not in the other STEM fields, outside of the occasional hot area for a brief time.</comment>


Ask HN: What do you think of my card game kickstarter? - <AUTHOR> http://kck.st/1JIBkpM
My best friend and I needed some more creativity in our lives, so we've just launched a card game kickstarter as a side project. We've played this a ton informally with our friends and many groups of people.
We've just launched to a few friends and family before our bigger launch Thursday. We can still edit any part of our pitch. Any feedback? Specifically, any ideas how to make the message to buy more compelling? Any concerns that we should address? Appreciate any and all comments! <comment><USER2> Have you looked at the CAH Kickstarter (an easy reference point)? [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/maxtemkin/cards- against...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/maxtemkin/cards-against- humanity/description)

While amusing, seems like your video is missing A) details about the game and how to play, B) face to face with your founders, C) people enjoying your product. Also the low tier would be much improved with a digital download.

Re: the game itself, this sounds like it might work with the right group of very tight-knit friends. Kind of niche. CAH, on the other hand, seems to work even with prudish strangers because no one has to take responsibility for what they're doing. And the "Life is Life" chant seems a bit cringe-worthy. I dunno, maybe that's just me.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for this! We did check out CAH and quite a few Kickstarters.

Agreed on the scope of our video. Our thoughts are: 1) Game is pretty simple, so you could get that from the text 2) This was probably a miss. We may try to shoot some footage and change up the video to add in a face-to-face. Thanks! We were hoping the strangely high production value of the video would add credibility and wanted focus on the game. 3) We found that people reading the cards and visualizing themselves played better than showing another group of friends playing the game.

As for the lower-tier, we were worried this would mix shift to the lower tier, when we really need manufacturing funds for a first run.

It is a BLAST with a close group of players. But also works really well with a few people who know each other well and a few other people who know each other well. We've also had strong success with a group of complete strangers where people are inebriated / and there's at least 1-2 outgoing strangers but you are right, not ideal for a group of all more introspective strangers.

The Life is Life cheers is strangely fun when you actually do it, but I get that it reads cring-worthy. As it's hard to visualize, I think you're right.

Thanks so much for the feedback. Will take it all back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Seems like a drinking game.

Games like CAH and Exploding Kittens are popular because people can and do play them with family. Half the fun of CAH in particular is getting your grandma to say something horribly offensive.

This game is more targeted at a group of similarly aged friends, and further still a group of friends who are into that kind of lifestyle (drunken shenanigans).

That being said, there is a market for drinking games, and $20 is very reasonable. Best of luck.</comment>


Earth will not remain habitable for long, says new research - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/166986-earth-will-not-remain-habitable-for-long-time-to-find-another-planet-says-new-research

<comment><USER2> In 1.75 to 3.5 billion years? Not for long?</comment>


Ask HN: I'm launching a story-telling site next Monday. Review my site? - <AUTHOR>

Not too long ago I made a site for playing Choose Your Own Adventure-like books by email...
Last Friday, I realized that I should share the writing tools with everyone for National Novel Writing Month! Unfortunately, that's in a week or so.
I just updated the landing pages:
http://adventurecow.com
http://adventurecow.com/init/default/writers_corner
What do you all think? Clear? (Needs more color?)
Thanks! -C <comment><USER2> I like the idea, but I think it could be more polished. For instance, once into a story, you have to keep hunting and clicking the "next page" link. Maybe an image would be better there. Also, being able to navigate pages using the arrow keys would be fantastic.

Also, from the landing page it's entirely clear what the site is about.

<comment><AUTHOR> Entirely or not entirely? (suggestions on rewording?)</comment></comment>


White Words - <AUTHOR> https://popula.com/2019/02/11/white-words/ <comment><USER2> The article in one sentence: saying that Eskimo have fifty words for snow is like saying that Europeans have fifty words for water (water, river, lake, dew, fog, cloud, ice and so on).

<comment><USER3> If you enjoyed this summary, you might also enjoy:

Titanic: boat sinks

The New Testament: man killed

Crime and Punishment: Russians

<comment><USER4> > Crime and Punishment: Crime and Punishment

Come on now, the joke practically writes itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Excessively literal. But it's one way to direct research, like James Burke's _Connections_ [https://www.scientificamerican.com/department/connections/](https://www.scientificamerican.com/department/connections/)

I always read _Eskimos have 50 words for snow_ not as a statement about Eskimos, but that if you deal with something a lot, you'll know more about it. Similar: _the novice and expert see not the same tree_ or _Melbournians have 50 words for rain._

And not _literally_ "unthinkable" to not have those words, but that it would be silly not to.

</comment><comment><USER6> I really like how this article sounds like it's been written by Lemony Snicket.

<comment><USER5> Which here means...?

<comment><USER7> "Good"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "If in this I have been tedious, it may be some excuse, I had not time to make it shorter."

This writer could spend some time with Strunk and White.

<comment><USER7> You seem to be referring to "The Nasty Book", designed to make people insecure about the quality of their writing.

Google it. I'll wait.

The essay is thoughtful, nuanced, and not easily summarized. Poison for modern readers, savory for patient readers.

<comment><USER9> I Googled it, which was completely uninlightening.

I _presume_ that you meant some kind of a diss on Strunk & White. It may make people insecure about the quality of their writing, but it does so _in order to show them how to be better_.

As for _this_ essay... you may like it. I want to take away their keyboard until they learn how to stop wasting my time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is the author getting paid by the word? It is trying to be conversational or something but it just needs to get to the point.

</comment><comment><USER11> This was long and somewhat meandering, but offered a much more thorough explanation of the "50 words for snow" factoid's saga than I'd ever heard before. For that, I'm happy I read the whole thing.

</comment><comment><USER12> Wow! What a long and pointless article.

</comment><comment><USER13> Stopped reading after being informed that my thinking the word "Eskimo", which the author zerself used, is offensive.

</comment><comment><USER14> This whole article is about disproving the Sapir-Wharf hypothesis. While not entirely convinced, I do believe people tend to overemphasize it. In other words with a little effort it can be escaped.

<comment><USER15> Did you make it to the end (I'll admit, not an easy feat)? Because that's not what it's about at all.</comment></comment>


Monads in pictures - <AUTHOR> http://newartisans.com/2012/08/monads-in-pictures/

<comment><USER2> That's not really how I visualize functors. Let's go back to the function picture:

        ---          ---
        |a| -- f --> |b|
        ---          ---

This is fairly simple--using f, you can go from a to b.

Now lets imagine a functor F (with f still being our function):

        ---          ---
        |a| -- f --> |b|
        ---          ---
              | |
              |F|
              \ /
               V
        ----           ----
        |a'| -- f' --> |b'|
        ----           ----

So a functor is just a function at a higher level. A function maps values of one type to values of another type. A functor maps types to other types. In Haskell, types in the Functor class always map types of kind * back onto * , so they're much like functions of type a -> a.

The crucial part to notice is that it not only maps between types but it also _preserves_ functions. That is, you get new types corresponding to your old types and new functions corresponding to your old functions.

So the list type, for example, maps any type a to [a] and any function (a -> b) to ([a] -> [b]). In a sense, it is like a well-behaved function between types.

Coincidentally, thinking of functors like this is how I realized that functors in Haskell are _not_ completely unrelated to functors in OCaml--they're just different reifications of the same mathematical idea.

<comment><USER3> Unrhetorically,

What is the relationship between _fold + cons (::)_ and monadic _bind_? What is the natural transformation from fold to functorial _map_? Is there a sensical dual?

Thanks.

<comment><USER4> > What is the relationship between fold + cons (::) and monadic bind? What is > the natural transformation from fold to functorial map? Is there a sensical > dual?

Whew, working backwards.

Fold is like your swiss army knife for working with entire lists at once; you just need to tell it what to do when it sees a node (Cons) or a terminator (Nil). If, for example, you instruct fold to apply a function to each element of the list but leave the linked structure intact, you've implemented map! And for lists, the fuctorial map, or fmap, is exactly map.

The monadic bind in the List monad is a way of expressing Nondeterminism. Let's say I have two functions...

      b = makeSomeBsFromAnA(a); c = makeSomeCsFromAB(b);

In the context of the List Monad, you would evaluate the first statement to produce a list of Bs. Then, for each B, you would generate a list of Cs, and then concatenate all of those lists into a big list. That's why _bind_ is sometimes referred to as _flatmap_ in the List Monad - take each element generate in the last list computation to generate a bunch of new lists, and then flatten them (smoosh them together; concatenate them). _flatmap_ could of course be implemented using fold and cons.

The point here is that, since we're working within the context of the list monad, I can deal with a single B and a single C, even though the function calls are really giving back lists of those respective types.

By the way, in Haskell the code would really look like this

      makeSomeCsFromAnA a = do
        b <- makeSomeBsFromAnA a
        makeSomeCsFromAB b

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Site seems to be down, here's a cached copy: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&clien...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&sclient=psy- ab&q=cache%3Anewartisans.com%2F2012%2F08%2Fmonads-in- pictures%2F&oq=cache%3Anewartisans.com%2F2012%2F08%2Fmonads-in- pictures%2F&gs_l=serp.3...60377.63295.1.66800.8.8.0.0.0.1.193.880.0j6.6.0.les%3Bernk_fspiked..0.2...1c.xvj46ZWKaRg&pbx=1)

</comment><comment><USER6> Decent article, but I have something a little off ... it's an honest question though:

What compels people to use words like "grok"? Is comprehend, digest, understand, follow, etc. so insufficient that it necessitates an ugly sounding word meaning emotional absorption to be misappropriated as mental absorption? There's no good tense rules established and it's not widely known outside the domain of nerdom. So I ask, to what ends?

<comment><USER7> Here you go <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grok>

<comment><USER8> Also <http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/G/grok.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I know nothing about Monads, I know nothing about Haskell except for the fact that it's a functional programming language that has Monads. Yet I still found this really informative... Makes me want to play around with Haskell and see if this article makes it easy to grok how Monads work

</comment><comment><USER10> from a non-Haskell programmer here. It looks like monads are just a way to call functions in difference context, in js

      map(myObj, someFunc, contextObj)

Or am I missing something here?

<comment><USER4> It's a bit more powerful than that - consider what would happen if, every time you sequence two statements together...

      doThingOne(); doThingTwo()

... you get to pick what happens _during the semicolon_ depending on which Monad you happen to be working with.

For example, like praptak mentioned, maybe during every semicolon you can evaluate the failure state of your program and decide not to continue. I.E., "Maybe" the execution worked, and "Maybe" I have a valid computation at this point, but "Maybe" not!

The power here is that while you are really operating in this context with an implicit possibility of having failure, you can program _as if each step succeeded_. So now we can string together a whole sequence of possibly-failing computations, and create a bigger possibly-failing super-computation that error checks under the hood.

<comment><USER10> ok, gotcha that is a pretty nifty feature :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can someone point me more resources for category theory in the computer science point of view?

</comment><comment><USER12> Someone's not ready for the HN-Effect? Website not responding.</comment>


HSTS from Top to Bottom - <AUTHOR> https://www.troyhunt.com/hsts-from-top-to-bottom-or-gtfo/ <comment><USER2> The article mentions preloading but doesn't go into detail.

You can apply for Chrome preload via [https://hstspreload.org/](https://hstspreload.org/) which I ends up in Chrome source, the list is then replicated to other browsers by their maintaniers.

HSTS Preload will prevent initial-access downgrade attacks for clients using versions of browsers with your domain as a HSTS preload. The downside is preload removal is difficult and would take a fair while to propogate.

Also another common misconception is disabling port 80 will remediate the issue - if an attacker can intercept and modify traffic they are able to open and redirect the port to a node under their control. [https://letsencrypt.org/docs/allow- port-80/](https://letsencrypt.org/docs/allow-port-80/)

</comment><comment><USER3> From 2016:

"95% of HTTPS servers vulnerable to trivial MITM attacks"

[https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2016/03/17/95-of-https- se...](https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2016/03/17/95-of-https-servers- vulnerable-to-trivial-mitm-attacks.html)

HSTS making progress...

</comment><comment><USER4> Still doesn't solve the first-request problem. When can we start using DNSSEC to help prevent DNS hijacking in the first place?

<comment><USER5> The preload option is supposed to solve the first-request problem

<comment><USER6> It's not feasible to use preload on a wide scale. Do you think that every secure site should have to be included in the source of your browser to have security?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Do i remember correctly that Chrome wanted to deprecate HSTS about a year ago?

What happened with that?

<comment><USER8> You're thinking of HPKP

[https://raymii.org/s/blog/Chrome_68_is_deprecating_HPKP.html](https://raymii.org/s/blog/Chrome_68_is_deprecating_HPKP.html)

<comment><USER9> Which is a shame really. I understand why they're doing it, it's stressful as hell to configure, since if you do it really wrong you might as well just write off your domain name, but the extra assurance was nice.

<comment><USER10> IMO browsers should just use TLSA records instead. They already starting to use DoH, so DNS is secure even without DNSSEC.

<comment><USER11> It's less bad, but far from secure seeing it is not end-to-end encrypted.

<comment><USER10> A simple solution is just to forbid http altogether. No properly encrypted HTTPS connection - no website, sorry (unless you downloaded some kind of firefox developer build). But we're not there yet.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Status of HTML5 Contacts API - <AUTHOR> Hi, I would like to know the status of HTML5 Contacts API. I remember it's been added to the specification. I couldn't find any status about it and I don't see it listed in caniuse.com. Can anyone update here? <comment><USER2> _I remember it 's been added to the specification._

It was part of FirefoxOS and then Google picked it up for Chrome, but the official spec ([https://www.w3.org/TR/contacts-manager- api/](https://www.w3.org/TR/contacts-manager-api/)) never made it past Draft status. The Google spec is here - [https://github.com/beverloo/contact- api](https://github.com/beverloo/contact-api) \- looking at the repo it seems people are still considering different approaches regarding things like security.</comment>


Russ Cox on Go's Error Handling - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/116810148281701144465/posts/iqAiKAwP6Ce <comment><USER2> 1\. Seriously, I have to the endure 20% of my phone screen covered by a floating absolutely positioned ad to join Google+? Why, because the website is so beautifully designed?

2\. Array out of bounds is an exception because array access is an operator, not a function? So we classify failure modes by the syntax of the call? Why can't a[j] return two values?</comment>


Bitcoin Mining - <AUTHOR>

I've recently gotten into bitcoin mining (as a lot have recently lol), what's your setup like? What's the best way to mine for btc? Is there any scripts and/or a way to mine btc using cloud hosting? <comment><USER2> I have been mining since June 2011. Running two ATI 5830's for about 550 mhashes/sec on a cheap motherboard with a cheap processor and barely any ram. All admin is done with SSH, only cords going in are network and power.

Been running basically non-stop since I built it, with the exception of a few months I spent away from home. Was hard to justify at 2 dollars per coin, but I am glad I left it on in the long run. Close to 90 coins mined!

</comment><comment><USER3> Get one of these shiny ASIC systems, CPU mining is dead since ages and GPU mining won't be profitable in a year, give or take a couple months.</comment>


'Accelerating' Advice from Microsoft's Dana'l Lewin - <AUTHOR> http://foundread.com/2008/01/22/accelerating-advice-from-microsofts-danl-lewin/#more-453

<comment><USER2> I think the most you can count on is probably high quality marketing. E.g. you get a broken link like the one for Plentyoffish on this page:

[http://microsoftstartupzone.com/accelerator/country.aspx?c=e...](http://microsoftstartupzone.com/accelerator/country.aspx?c=en)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Has anyone had any experience with these types of programs from "big" companies, e.g. the Microsoft Startup Accelerator Program, or Adobe Ventures, etc.? Ones where you are essentially showcasing their software (or hardware) and they give you "support" in return.</comment>


Google Code Blog: HTML5 Rocks - <AUTHOR> http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2010/06/html5-rocks.html <comment><USER2> Ah, after Apple's HTML5 fanciness website (<http://www.apple.com/html5/>), Google finally responds with a neato site! Btw, this is an excellent resource as well <http://diveintohtml5.org/> (of course, the site refers to it as well)

</comment><comment><USER3> The interactive demo presentation is very cool. I think there may be a small error, however, as the CSS transform associated with the "3" key seems to work everywhere in the presentation, and not just on the CSS transforms slide.</comment>


Bootstrap your startup: become a hacker tutor - <AUTHOR> http://blog.tutorspree.com/bootstrap-your-startup-become-a-hacker-tutor

<comment><USER3> I have a little bit of experience with tutoring from TAing a senior-level CS course in college. Even at that level, there's a big need for it, and as a tutor, it feels great to see that lightbulb moment when a student suddenly groks a concept you've been working with them on. If the idea of teaching appeals to something inside of you, go for it.

That said, it can be a massive time sink, and very frustrating, especially for students for whom programming just doesn't click at all (and they are out there). You can probably make significantly more doing freelance work, so if you know you don't have the patience to, for instance, _repeatedly_ explain that their Python script isn't working because they're trying to invoke it from the wrong directory, you might want to pass.

</comment><comment><USER4> i'd like a system like this where instead of getting money you get labor. some sort of informal internship, if you will.

would be cool to connect people learning to program with mentors who are looking for contributors to their projects.

</comment><comment><USER5> So does this mean you dropped the old requirement you had about needing to have previously been an educator.

<comment><USER6> That's a guideline we use focused on the k-12 subject matter areas (still our main focus). It's where the "being a teacher" piece is a response to parent feedback.

Here, for the hacking side of things, we think the dynamics are a bit different. We still want great people, but the formal teaching piece is not a requirement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seems like it's only for US guys. Has US-specific fields state and zip-code.

<comment><USER6> We've only built it out for the US for now. If you're international, Fill in your city and hit the zip with all 0s. When we rejigger it to allow for international, we'll let you know.

<comment><USER8> You could put those instructions on the sign-up form (or change the controls there). Are you deliberately holding off from doing that at the moment?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a pretty interesting idea and I like the idea of the site itself. What percentage of tutors get work at the rates they have posted and how many hours do they get on average? I'm curious to know if anyone is doing anything besides getting beer money (so to speak) with the site right now.

<comment><USER6> 100% of tutors are booking lessons at their posted rates, actually - no real haggling going on. I think it's a different situation relative to, say, freelancing. You're not negotiating with a business over a deliverable, you're part of a transparent framework where people are trying to get educated. It's a different kind of motivation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> TutorSpree folks, here is a search I made in Washington, <http://www.tutorspree.com/search/?q=washington> you have this two duplicated many times over. You may want to fix this.

<comment><AUTHOR> not sure what you mean - please shoot me a line at ryan@tutorspree

we haven't really expanded into the DC area yet but we're working on it.

edit: oops. you found an IE7 bug. thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is there a link to edit my tutor profile? When I log in, I don't see anything about it.

<comment><AUTHOR> under your picture on the left hand side of your Dashboard, click the "Edit my profile" button. perhaps we should make this more obvious.

<comment><USER11> All I see under my picture on the Dashboard is "Upcoming sessions - <USER2> upcoming sessions."

My tutor profile definitely exists, because I sent myself a message through the site.

Is there something messy with having a user account and a tutor account with the same email address?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How is this bootstrapping and not just working on the side?

<comment><USER13> some people consider "bootstrapping" to be equivalent to "spend most of your cycles on the startup, but also spend some time freelancing to fund it"</comment></comment>


Break Apart Rails Monoliths - <AUTHOR> https://www.bluebox.net/insight/blog-article/break-apart-rails-monoliths-using-this-1-weird-trick The framework is a servant of the application, yet the app becomes constrained by it.<p>A simple rule: Business logic should go elsewhere. <comment><USER2> "But dear developer: the framework is a servant of the application, not vice versa. If you embed your application logic in the framework, your application will lose its soul."

When I was working with frameworks in the past it was always a temptation to allow the framework to dictate the application organization. The discipline to not do this required me to understand the framework and how to bend it to my will. I wonder if this is a problem that others run into and thus get "trapped" in the framework?

</comment><comment><USER3> A useful reminder to step back and focus on an organizational approach to solving a business problem.

</comment><comment><USER4> a great read for a novice like myself</comment>


What is Trello? How to use Trello to Organize Everything - <AUTHOR> http://www.clear-coat.com/blog/what-is-trello-how-to-use-trello/

<comment><USER2> Nice post!

If you have a chance, please take a look at my site reportsfortrello.com. It tracks time by using trello actions. So with the movement of one card you are communicating with your client and tracking your time.</comment>


Google Hopes to Open a Trove of Little-Seen Books - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/05/technology/internet/05google.html?_r=1 <comment><USER2> I've always been a big supporter of this. Now they just need to get project Gutenberg on there... I'd rather read my books in Google's reader then some text document.</comment>


Startup Workaway: 20 founders. 10 days. 1 beach house in Costa Rica. Apply now - <AUTHOR> http://startupworkaway.com/ <comment><USER2> Do you want to concentrate on your startup or take a beach vacation?

Join me in downtown Detroit if you really want to work on your startup. I guarantee you won't be tempted to leave the building for ten days and will get lots of work done.

<comment><USER3> Is there a $500 application fee?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, it's $500 if you actually get accepted and want to go.

<comment><USER3> I was asking the guy who was saying he would do the same thing in Detroit. Maybe Detroit is cheaper?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> These bootcamp style hackathons foster a atmosphere that gives me that little extra boost I sometimes need to create.

This reminds me of the Buddhist idea of a 'Sangha' which translates roughly to "community with common goal, vision or purpose". One of the most important things that emerge from these communities are relationships that will be forged.

This is the hacker right of passage that I have been yearning for in the subconscious parts of my mind. I will be there, and I will make something beautiful.

</comment><comment><USER5> Somehow beach house and programming doesn't jive to me. When I am "in the zone" the last thing I want to do is leave my desk to enjoy the beach & when I am enjoying the beach the last thing I want to do is go back to my desk.

Ps. I talk from experience, as I am right now sitting in front of the beach ! (surfing HN!)

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vKvAy8svSE>

<comment><USER6> Nah, I need breaks man! Can't just be heads-down all day. Your work starts to deteriorate. May as well make your breaks _awesome_!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Please rig the house with cameras and make this a reality TV web show!

<comment><USER4> hah, I invision something like "Beauty and the Geek", but replace the girls with VCs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You have to pay a $500 application fee and cover the cost of your own airfare?

I stayed at a pretty nice place for $10 a night in Costa Rica, so $500 covers 50 days during which one can code or swim and ends up owning outright whatever they write.

Have to be crazy to take this deal, it makes no sense.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just to be clear, we're doing this at cost. We're renting a mansion with cooks and servants and stuff.

And we own 0% of your IP.

<comment><USER3> Er, OK, so the idea here is that it's a bunch of different guys working on random ideas of their own and afterwards they each go their separate ways? If that's the case, it's not so clear from the web site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have a feeling there may be more people interested in doing the reverse of this: Startup Workaway: 20 founders, 10 days, 1 house in Palo Alto.

<comment><USER9> Given the typical size of houses in Palo Alto, 5 founders to 1 house might be more practical :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sounds awesome. Almost guaranteed to get a sunburn and some techcrunch coverage if you come out of it with something cool, considering all the ink startup bus got.

</comment><comment><USER11> Take with grain of salt.

I'm all for supporting but these guys already tried this

<http://stomp.io/>

I signed up and did not receive so much as an email.

If the founders are on here:

Great work, I hope it happens and I get where you are coming from. But don't make this _just_ about you trying to get covered on techcrunch.

<comment><AUTHOR> I created Stomp, and I'm one of the organizers of Startup Workaway.

Stomp needs much more iteration before it's ready for prime time. I don't want Stomp tech crunched until then, and Startup Workaway is a completely separate project that doesn't even mention Stomp on the web site.

However, I do apologize that I haven't emailed the 10 folks who expressed interest in the Startup Workaway on Stomp, or notified them of the date change. That's completely my bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The concept is a good mix between a a fairly inexpensive vacation and peer driven entrepreneurial fun. It sounds like a refreshing alternative to being holed up in some corporate office for a weekend eating crappy pizza.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is a really great idea, and definitely something I would like to take part in. I would need more time to plan for it though - 3 months lead time is about right for me.

</comment><comment><USER14> Awesome looking house Nick! I'm trying to decide whether to go, already have a conference booked during same time. Congrats for getting this off the ground, I remember exchanging travel/tech ideas at SXSW.

I've been working with Chelsea on launching Startup Abroad - <http://startupabroad.org> \- this September, which is also about bringing founders together in an awesome place abroad.

</comment><comment><USER15> West coast Costa Rican resorts are awesome. I stayed at this one before => (Non-aff) <http://www.occidentalhotels.com/allegro/Papagayo.asp>

You can usually get 30-40% off list price, and they're truly all inclusive. I suggest hitting one before or after the startup weekend since you're buying the plane ticket anyhow.

</comment><comment><USER16> Take the $500 and put it towards your start up.

</comment><comment><USER17> I moved to Honolulu about 2 months ago. It's done wonders for my productivity. Need a break? Hop down to the beach, take a swim, and get back to hacking. It is awesome.

A 10-day sojourn might not work so well if you want to enjoy the area while you're there, but if you can manage a long-term getaway (tropical or not), I highly recommend it.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is a great idea. I wish I could apply for this one and I hope there are more opportunities like this. (I can't do this because of schedule commitments, but if it were two weeks later I'd be sending in my application.)

<comment><USER18> I'm applying, but if you feel like you can work in a simpler house and sleep either on a sofa/hammock/whatever, email me. I'm in the French West Indies, with a decent internet connection. No fee at my place, but you must be a decent guest - ie no loud music/boozing up/etc.

<comment><USER9> Thank you. That is a very nice offer. I wasn't specifically looking for a getaway but that is a very appealing idea.

<comment><USER18> Well you are welcome then. Seriously, you won't be the 1st guest I have :-) There's a bus stop nearby (20 min to the beach) so you won't need a car and a supermarket. And that will be a good motivation for me to code too!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Reminds me of Jason Kester's "geekbeach" idea. Discussed here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2213225>

</comment><comment><USER20> Kinda hard to create the next Facebook when you have a tropical beach next door, no?

</comment><comment><USER21> This is a brilliant idea.

Wish I had thought of this first, for Jamaica :(

Would love to know how it goes.

</comment><comment><USER22> Are they saying that the application fee is $500?

<comment><USER23> No. "the per-person fee of $500 covers all the basic costs (except airfare). We supply the housing, the food, and the fun."

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Any HN readers applying?

<comment><USER25> I'm going to give it a go. I like the idea and I love CR!

<comment><USER24> Good luck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm still waiting for Startup Canoe...We have startup weekend, startup bus, startup ________ ... but I want to build a startup while on a canoe!</comment>


How Russia Works on Intercepting Messaging Apps - <AUTHOR> https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2016/04/30/russia-telegram-hack/ <comment><USER2> It's all fine and good to point out how insecure SMS is, and various ways that 2-factor auth may have been improved, but I think the bottom line is that when your adversary is the government, police and telecom provider working together, the means you use to protect yourself are irrelevant, if they really want to bring you down, they will. The solution is in democratization and lobbying for proper laws to be passed.

<comment><USER3> The solution is to make it extremely difficult/costly for them. It is never democratization and lobbying, because for a person to see any kind of change in the direction he wishes, it may take years. And even then it's just asking your masters for permission. Technology gives us a quick way to bypass government, make it irrelevant.

<comment><USER4> > Technology gives us a quick way to bypass government, make it irrelevant.

If you actually could do that, it's very likely that said technology would be illegal. Just as it illegal pretty much everywhere to own your own tanks and fighter bombers.

Just because you ignore politics, doesn't mean politics ignores you. And puts you in indefinite detention, or execute you.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps temporarily, yes. You can outlaw cryptography, but the more governments resist it, the faster it will take over.

<comment><USER4> Take over what?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's one thing to rely on phone numbers for authentication, it's yet another to store the messages. The same scenario on WhatsApp would have given the attacker access to the account but not the message history, which is presumably what they were after.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's interesting that the Russian state relies on these multi-party procedures (security service contacts telco to cut off service to initiate attack) rather than unilateral interception, which as the author says, might not only be simpler but also less detectable.

<comment><USER7> Just because the teleco said something happened doesn't mean that's what happened. Lot of other ways even an average attacker could due this if they had the resources to do it, and unlikely that a service provider would tell a customer what happen; they could be the attacker testing the systems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This shows the absurd ignorance of many people (including security experts and even Snowden himself!) on using messaging apps that are based on phone number. As stated many times, there are limited number of phone numbers possible for every country, so even if the database only consists of some sort of hash value instead of the number itself, the system is vulnerable to identity theft and user identification. Practically in any country governments have a database of people's phone number (correlated to their social security numbers, banking info used to pay the bills, street addresses and even IMEI,MAC address of the devices they used or bought for that account). I wish someone could tell me why an app like Telegram or even Signal (which both make many claims on their encryption capabilities and are endorsed by activists) are based on such fundamental security flaw!

</comment><comment><USER7> Even E2E apps like Signal use a device's number to setup an account; meaning as of a month ago, at least for the app, the device number was required to created an account.

Maybe this isn't an issue, but seems odd to me.

<comment><USER9> I can confirm, Signal will not go through initial run without access to your IMEI, even for an existing account.

<comment><USER8> How is this a good thing for privacy?

<comment><USER7> What would be a better solution, why, and what if any trade offs might exists between the options? Do you use the app or code?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It seems unlikely that the Russian intelligence services would be _forced_ to this in such an obvious manner. But it might have been done in such an obvious way to act as a deterrent: like a van parked outside a dissidents house: We are watching you, and want you to know that we are watching you?

<comment><USER10> > We are watching you, and want you to know that we are watching you?

This. People they watching doesn't represent any real danger to regime as otherwise they would easily put them in prison for no reason. So in that case intelligence only goal is to make activists life as hard as possible and force them to leave the country or stop being activist.

They periodically confiscate their personal phones / computers during searches in their property and offices. People smart enough to use crypto and it's not that easy to get control over accounts on services that are not hosted in Russia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Lesson No 1: Don't tie your messaging account to your cell number.

E.g. Threema allows that.

<comment><USER12> What about Signal?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It would be nice to have a distributed 2 factor authentication using something like bitcoin or ipfs.com

<comment><USER7> Bitchains would leak a massive amount of metadata.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There is a couple of points I disagree with this article.

First off two factor authentication and resetting your account use sms's for recovery not so much to get access to your social graph and thereby "growth hacking", but because proving someone's identity you don't know personally digitally is a hard unsolved problem (pgp key ceremonies and web of trust certainly didn't solve it).

Second, saying you should use end to end encryption doesn't prevent someone from resetting your account and getting access, so it is not some sort of silver bullet. It does however prevent an attacker from reading your past messages, but after getting access they will be able to read all your current messages on multi device services.

</comment><comment><USER15> I love reading gray on gray. No, really, the web needs more of this. Let's also make sure the font is readable only on retina displays.

<comment><USER16> Maybe it's your monitor's issue, it looks very readable on mine.

<comment><USER17> It's readable fine on mine as well, but the screenshot in the article (black text on white) is much more pleasant to read.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Из пальца высосано :)

Cheers from the place

</comment><comment><USER19> A guy working for NATO thinks that Russia...</comment>


Harness Could Allow Dogs, Humans to Communicate - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/11/06/361730797/innovation-harness-could-allow-dogs-humans-to-communicate <comment><USER2> Dogs already communicate with humans - it's just that most humans are too 'dumb' to understand the signals being conveyed: body language, scent, vocalization, behavior...

</comment><comment><USER3> "My master made me this collar so that I could--SQUIRREL!!!"

First thing I thought of.</comment>


3/7 astronauts from observational data are not enough to say anything - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/articles/srep29901/tables/2 <comment><AUTHOR> Specifically, US Population Ages 55–64 death rate from cardio-vascular disease is 27%. That is roughly 2 out of 7.

Among Apollo astronouts, 3 out of 7 died from CVD. So, that is a difference of one person between matching the overall population and "a significant result." Of course, the difference between 28.5% vs 43% looks huge, but that is just one person.

These people would have flunked my Intro Stats class for using percentages with tiny samples.</comment>