A "bike platform" that temporarily swaps one car parking space for ten bicycles - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/modacitylife/status/1147119109672448002 <comment><USER3> Local governments (at least in the US) seem to systematically underinvest in experiments like this. Things like traffic congestion have a ton of weird, largely unpredictable positive and negative feedback loops.

Seattle removed its waterfront viaduct from service for a couple of weeks before changing over to the new $3.3B tunnel and traffic was mostly fine, despite apocalyptic predictions of gridlock. It's not entirely unfair to claim that they could have saved literally billions of dollars by just closing the viaduct for a month or two and observing what happens to traffic patterns.

Or businesses that predict their imminent bankruptcy when a few parking spots are removed to create a bike lane. Why not put down a few traffic cones to delineate a temporary bike lane and observe what happens to traffic in and out of the businesses?

<comment><USER4> I don't think something like this would be that successful in the USA - it's not lack of parking that keeps most people from riding, it's lack of protected bike lanes (or other "safe" routes), and lack of cultural acceptance of biking.

Plus, open, street parking isn't that safe in a lot of cities, if I could ask for some specific parking infrastructure, I'd ask for lockable bike lockers... though I'd rather see bike lanes and other infrastructure that helps me get to work safely.

<comment><USER5> In Japan the cyclists ride on the sidewalk, and use little bells that the entire pedestrian population is conditioned to understand means "move over please, I'm coming through". I've found bike usage surprisingly high in Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto compared to my experience living in/near numerous US cities (Philadelphia, Miami, St. Louis, to name a few).

Why the emphasis on bike lanes in US cities? Putting unarmored people on unpowered vehicles on the same transit medium as multi-ton high-powered enclosed vehicles with reduced visibility seems like a recipe for disaster. Hell, I rode a motorcycle for a little while here in Japan and stopped because I wasn't comfortable commuting to work and sharing the road with kei cars, let alone Cadillac Escalades or F-150s like in America.

While riding on scooters in Hanoi with my Vietnamese friends, I learned the "ways of the road" there: small things yield to big things. Dump trucks and other large commercial vehicles drive however they please. Cars get outta their way. Then cars drive however they please, and all the mopeds kinda swarm around them and move over as necessary. Smaller vehicles are more nimble and generally have better situational awareness, so they can react more easily. Operators of smaller vehicles take it upon themselves to avoid death at the hands of the larger vehicles. In a city where people on two wheels are like 95% of all street traffic....big vehicles have traffic priority. As an aside, ALL motorists strike me as hyper-alert and competent compared to the typical American. Vietnamese on Vespas avoid collisions at the last second with lightning-quick reflexes and maneuvers that tough-guy American biker dudes I know could never pull off. It's pretty amazing.

But cyclists in the States....they seem to argue "everything bigger than me on the road must adjust to accommodate me", even though they are the physically- smallest vehicles on the road, and the smallest minority of commuters. It all seems ass-backwards to me.

<comment><USER6> The Vietnamese traffic you describe sounds like a Darwinian system where only the most skilled have survived and dare travel.

I'm sure it works, but probably at a cost of a lot of lives, and probably a lot of people who just stay out of it.

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately, I doubt even the Vietnamese government has accurate accident metrics per capita/per km driven to compare to other countries.

But there is no real way to "just stay out of it". The public transportation infrastructure in Hanoi is pretty damn limited. There is a subway but I've never used it. I was told the government is hesitant to expand it as heroin junkies use it to shoot up. Your best chance is with taxis/Uber/Grab, so if the car hits someone at least you aren't the person responsible.

Anecdata: there was one probably life-threatening/ending accident when I was in Hanoi around Chinese New Years (dump truck vs moped). My Vietnamese buddy said that accidents were rare, but when they occur they are almost always gruesome. This isn't counting moped-on-moped scrapes that probably just result in a few bruises. I did witness some totally reckless teens basically crash through the traffic in front of them, knocking at least one woman off of her scooter....those 2 guys promptly got their asses beat by the nearest traffic cop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This concept would make a fun (thought) experiment for a street in the US.

Imagine a car parked curbside in a city street somewhere in the US. No one complains, because this is how everyone expects street space to be used - <USER2> storage for private cars.

Maybe there's a flatbed trailer attached to this car. Now add bike racks to the flatbed trailer. Next, add a stairway or a ramp. Then, gradually lower the trailer a little bit each day until it becomes a platform on the ground. Finally, take away the car.

Measure at which point homeowners start complaining.

<comment><USER8> I would hesitate to lock up my bike on a mobile object that could disappear without warning. It would need a ton of messaging, failsafes, and perhaps other things before I'd trust it.

<comment><USER9> You missed the point of his post. It's a thought experiment to demonstrate the intolerance of bikes in the US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It would be useful for cities with colder and snowy seasons like Toronto, where between summer and winter bicycle traffic varies greatly.

<comment><USER11> These already happen to be implemented in Toronto as bike corrals which take up the length of just under two car parking spots. They are removed for snowy seasons and reinstalled in the spring.

Picture: [https://www.toronto.ca/wp- content/uploads/2017/10/903d-Parki...](https://www.toronto.ca/wp- content/uploads/2017/10/903d-Parking-Stall-Design-Bike-Corral-350x263.jpg) More details: [https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/streets-parking- tra...](https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/streets-parking- transportation/cycling-in-toronto/bicycle-parking/)

FWIW, I feel more confident in parking my bicycle in these corrals than I probably would if parking on the platform featured in the link, as the bike corral is protected on the three sides facing the road.

<comment><USER12> We have those "corrals" in Cambridge and Somerville ma (USA) as well

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > A light, quick, cheap solution so good, it should be copied the world over.

It is. This can be seen all over... SF, LA, DC, Austin, Ann Arbor ... I have seen this everywhere (in the US)

<comment><USER14> Where in Ann Arbor? I live in it and have never seen a structure like this.

<comment><USER13> In front of the gay bar in Kerrytown. It's not a platform, but it's the same concept. There is a steel barrier/structure placed there to block cars from parking and the structure also serves as a bike rack.

<comment><USER15> map of the rest of them - they move year to year

[https://www.a2dda.org/wp- content/uploads/ddabikeparkingFB_04...](https://www.a2dda.org/wp- content/uploads/ddabikeparkingFB_042819.png)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A lot of similar "bike platforms" in Oslo/Norway. Guide from the municipality: [https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&...](https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&nv=1&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=no&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=https://www.tiltak.no/b-endre- transportmiddelfordeling/b-3-tilrettelegging- sykkel/b-3-3/&xid=17259,15700023,15700186,15700190,15700256,15700259,15700262&usg=ALkJrhj7tkTPS9CqXI45eqd3xRT-_5snlA)

Google Maps of all the bike routes, parking and "bike-self-service-points": [https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1oO7FZepl8zXxKmx22y...](https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1oO7FZepl8zXxKmx22yV91LUd1KZgYkU_&ll=59.92348788725151%2C10.730553549999968&z=11%20)

</comment><comment><USER17> I've seen a couple of these in Helsinki with the cut-out shape of a car, so they take the space of a parked car but fit a number of bikes inside. I think it sort of hammers the point home in the city centre...

</comment><comment><USER18> Seems like a good way to regulate escooters. Better for cities than sidewalks, better for companies than permitting the construction of infrastructure. Flexible enough to adjust to demand.

<comment><USER19> Santa Monica is doing something similar for escooters, and calling them "drop zones"[0].

[0]: [https://la.streetsblog.org/2018/11/08/santa-monica- installs-...](https://la.streetsblog.org/2018/11/08/santa-monica-installs-in- street-e-scooter-parking-corrals/)

<comment><USER20> It's regulation, but it's kind of forcing infrastructure and government to deal with a problem when maybe the model should be that these companies are forced to rent small areas of corners, parking lots, etc. for corrals and charging, kinda like the Fotomat drive-thru camera film development, or snow cone stands.

Seeing dead scooters laying in the streets here for days sucks, and while remarking the street makes sense in denser cities, it's a now semi-permanent eyesore too.

<comment><USER21> We don't require the same of cars. Why should we burden other modes of transportation?

It's worth noting that overnight street parking was illegal in New York until 1950: [https://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/17/realestate/streetscapes-c...](https://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/17/realestate/streetscapes- cars-when-streets-were-vehicles-for-traffic-not-parking.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I like how this doesn't have a frame around it, and is just an extension of the curb, including for safety reasons.

My city (walking distance to Boston, Mass., proper) seems relatively pro-bikes by US standards, and was experimenting with placing a pipe frame bike rack in parking spots, on at least one major street. But given the Boston-area prevalence of texting drivers, drunk drivers, aggression over parking spot scarcity (see "Boston space savers"), and high degree of animosity between some drivers and bikers... that frame looked to me like a deathtrap cage, for getting you mangled by a bunch of bicycles, if a car ever hit the frame at- speed while you were inside.

</comment><comment><USER23> My first thought? Bring a flat-bed and you have 10 bicycles.. Are there any security features in this concept?

<comment><USER24> > Are there any security features in this concept?

The fact that you'd need a flat-bed to steal the bicycles _is_ a security feature. People steal bikes because the penalty isn't serious. Who is going to risk a felony and their tow truck license for just a few bikes?

<comment><USER23> The avarage bike around here retails for about $1500, so $15000 in a single swipe isn't bad. I have seen an entire bike rack being pulled out of the ground using a truck and winch, so yes it does happen. Research has shown over and over again that penalty is seldom a factor in decision making, gain vs perceived risk of getting caught is, and stealing a single bike is still a felony. You don't need a tow truck license to own a flat-bed, craigslist is full of them.

<comment><USER25> > The avarage bike around here retails for about $1500

Average bike on the street? Do you have any source of similar claim?

<comment><USER23> Its mostly an informed guestimate from spending time in bike stores and seeing what other commuters ride. But here goes: In 2014 the average retail price was $714 nation-wide ([https://www.statista.com/statistics/276088/average-retail- pr...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/276088/average-retail-price- bicycle/)) around here in Portland, OR people tend to prefer fancier bikes, the shop I worked for in 2006 had an average retail about $1700 back in the day but that was a higher end speciality store. In recent years e-bikes have gotten extremely popular here, their retail prices range from $2500 and up, skewing the average price point up further.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I expect that among many of the bike friendly policies mentioned in this thread one technological advancement specifically the cyclist / pedestrian avoidance systems that new cars have started coming with will greatly improve the safety for cyclists and ultimately increase the number of cyclists that feel safe sharing the road with cars. I dream that it might actually lead to a tipping point in areas where cycling make more sense than cars

</comment><comment><USER27> A few years ago my neighborhood did one better and replaced two parking spaces with a parklet: [http://moss-design.com/chicagos-first-parklet-in- andersonvil...](http://moss-design.com/chicagos-first-parklet-in- andersonville/)

People > cars, always.

</comment><comment><USER28> While bicycles are popular, it is hard to imagine that human-pedaled versions will become a norm.

It is impossible to imagine them used in a heat of Miami, or Atlanta (Georgia), or in Moscow.

There well populated and mild-weathered megalopolis (London, most southern CA, north east China) -- but the speed, distance and volume of participants -- just do not make bicycles practical.

I think the long solution is really de-urbanization of these megacities that act like a country-within-a-country.

On a separate note, I find the use of word 'platform' (even in quotes) is unfortunate.

Platforms, I though, mean something that provides composeable building blocks + principles for a variety of yet-to-be-anticipated needs.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm not sure I understand. From a safety point of view I'd be concerned locking my bike to something that is literally designed to be moved on a flat bed.. From a space optimization point of view, why would you put a bike rack in one of the only places you can park a motor vehicle while there is almost endless amounts of space around for bicycle parking/storage(relatively at least)?

</comment><comment><USER30> Something that often is neglected: Destroying Car parking for bike corals in inner cities tends to affect out-of-towners, people who _cannot_ bike into cities because of distance, disproportionally. Noone drives their car low distances within cities because that would mean losing their spot.

<comment><USER31> There are so many alternatives other than commuting by car and parking on the street...

1\. Bus 2\. Bike 3\. Walk 4\. Carpool 5\. Move 6\. Parking ramps

^ And combinations of these, such as park-and-rides, parking outside the core downtown area and bus/biking in, etc.

Not to mention, at least in my City (Madison, WI) there's thousands of off- street car parking spots in public ramps, and removing 5 spots for 5 corrals in high demand areas negatively affects nobody. Unless you happen to be the 0.00001% of downtown car traffic affected by this and needing to walking a block or two from the nearest ramp to park your private vehicle is such a big deal...

There's zero argument here.

<comment><USER30> Not every city is Madison, Wi, which you yourself considered to be a special case when it came to parking just seven little months ago.

And not everyone can bus - especially in America, where public transport is essentially a sad joke. Not everyone can walk - distances are actually a thing. Not everyone has the ability to find someone to carpool with (which might either be related to different schedules or different locations). Not everyone can move, especially not for rare city business (city living is expensive, not everyone is a VC-funded startup engineer). And parking ramps are a thing, but still limited - the issue is not with "parking options exist", but with "parking options in sufficient availabilities exist".

That being said, I would love to see you haul a fridge three miles on foot to your next parking ramp.

<comment><USER31> What city do you live in?

EDIT Also I am a little confused by

> That being said, I would love to see you haul a fridge three miles on foot > to your next parking ramp.

I thought we were talking about commuting? I am not saying get rid of your car, I am saying perhaps don't commute with one every single day and then expect to park on-street, because there might be better options...

<comment><USER30> > What city do you live in?

A small town with about 7000 citizens some 50 kilometers away from the city I work in in southern Germany.

No colleagues living near me, so no carpooling. Public transport, while arguably a lot better than in the states, is so fractures that it means leaving at 5 and returning at 21:30 - unless you need the "flexibility" of attending late-evening meetings or after-work activities, then it pretty much becomes unusable. Biking in? Sure, takes even more time (I average some 20 km/h, this is hilly terrain), and I am completely finished when I arrive. And moving here? I would pay four times what I pay now in rent for the privilege of living in an industrial wasteland.

Without the car, I could not do my job.

That being said, I am lucky that my employer provides a parking ramp at the location I currently work at. When they make us move locations again, there is a good chance streetcurb parking is the only option available to me.

What we need to do is to make cities places where cyclists, motor vehicle drivers and pedestrians can coexist. I think playing the cheap, political "divide and conquer" card by diminishing one side for the other will make them worse for everyone involved.

For starters, we should check if we can just move vehicle traffic underground for major arteries and use the space above for cyclists and pedestrians.

> I thought we were talking about commuting?

Ah, here's the misunderstanding. I am talking about access to the city, regardless of frequency. The problem does not go away if you prohibit commuting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Seems like it would minimize the number of things you needed to steal to make it worth your effort. One!

</comment><comment><USER33> I like the ones pictured lower in that Twitter feed where there is a big chunk of car shaped metal between the bikes and the road. I had a concern with the original that some asshole not paying attention to the road is going to sideswipe the spot and ruin 10 bike tires at once.

</comment><comment><USER34> A great idea. Bike parking spaces can be set up without going through any construction work so there is no big planning or paperwork required. If it is deciced to make that a permanent installation, construction can be done then.

</comment><comment><USER35> >The fietsvlonder is a "bike platform" that temporarily swaps one car parking space for 10 bicycles. If deemed a success, the curb is permanently adjusted, and the structure is moved to the next location.

What makes it a success or failure?

<comment><USER36> Success equals no serious complaints:

[https://www.denhaag.nl/nl/in-de-stad/verkeer-en- vervoer/fiet...](https://www.denhaag.nl/nl/in-de-stad/verkeer-en- vervoer/fietsen/fietsvlonders-een-plank-met-fietsbeugels.htm)

 _" Als er na 3 maanden geen ernstige bezwaren zijn van bewoners, dan wordt de vlonder weggehaald en vervangen door fietsbeugels die blijven staan"_ which translates to _" Should there not be any serious complaints within 3 months the platform will be removed and replaced with permanent cycle parking"_

<comment><USER35> Oh, interesting! Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> We have one of these in my small, snowy Vermont town. I think it's brilliant since it's easily removed in winter when the bike rack would hinder plowing/sidewalk clearing.

</comment><comment><USER38> quick survey : how many readers actually ride to work?

<comment><USER39> Why wouldn't you? I have a daily 10 mi. commute. In the spring and summer, I almost never drive my car. I haven't driven my car in 2 months, come to think of it.

<comment><USER5> "Why wouldn't you?"

The spring/summer weather hovers between 25-33 Celsius with 80%+ humidity. I like arriving at my destinations not covered in sweat. When it's not brutally hot and sunny....it's raining (this island gets twice as much rainfall as __Seattle __). And we are regularly hit by typhoons. You can drive a car in a weak typhoon. Good luck riding a bike during one.

The terrain is very hilly here, with many roads cutting across the island having elevation changes of ~70m. Attacking hills like that might be a great workout but I sure as hell wouldn't want to do it after a trip to my favorite ramen shop or tempura restaurant (both of which are at sea level, down the hill from me).

Finally....I'm a speed freak and a gearhead, and the experience of operating a powerful car, daily, is its own reward. I wouldn't be caught dead on a bicycle, but I also wouldn't be caught dead driving a low-powered commuter vehicle shitbox.

Climate and geography are major factors which I think many Americans ignore because most tech workers either live somewhere with mild weather, or live somewhere with flat, bland geography (most of the country, really).

<comment><USER39> > Finally....I'm a speed freak and a gearhead, and the experience of operating > a powerful car, daily, is its own reward. I wouldn't be caught dead on a > bicycle, but I also wouldn't be caught dead driving a low-powered commuter > vehicle shitbox.

Why you would actively choose to contribute more to climate change for what are essentially aesthetic/identity choices is beyond me, but many people do, so I'm obviously missing something.

<comment><USER5> I'd bet a dollar that the delta in total-life-cycle emissions for replacing every modified high-performance car with a crapwagon (kei car, Prius, etc...) wouldn't even be a rounding error in humanity's climate change footprint. Hell, building a container ship powered by an old Soviet nuclear reactor instead of bunker fuel would probably be a greener use of civilization's available time and manpower.

Secondly....I don't fear climate change. Humans are adaptable apex predators. It might stymie our progress up the Kardashev scale, but I guess that's the question:

Which is a more difficult resource problem to solve: having 10 billion marginally-productive mouths to feed while maintaining a high-tech economy, or having only 1 billion mouths to feed but being forced to recreate a shattered tech base from scratch with almost-no easily accessible energy deposits left?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> the real question is what colour it should be

<comment><USER41> Typical HN comment. Always wanting to talk about the exact nature of the fissile material, the startup neutron source and even the colour of the reactor shield.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> [https://www.denhaag.nl/nl/in-de-stad/verkeer-en- vervoer/fiet...](https://www.denhaag.nl/nl/in-de-stad/verkeer-en- vervoer/fietsen/fietsvlonders-een-plank-met-fietsbeugels.htm)

Here's a bit more information on the things, in Dutch. They have 10 of them in Den Haag (The Hague), they are placed on a parking spot and left there for 3 months. Should there not be any complaints the thing will be removed and replaced with permanent cycle parking within another 3 months.

The device seems to be free-standing and to rely on weight alone to keep it in place so those of you who commented on the possibility of harvesting 10 bikes at a time using a flat bed truck may be on to something. Then again, in the Netherlands there are so many bikes around which are easier to steal that I do not deem this to be a real problem, let alone the fact that those who attempt to load it on a truck will probably not get very far.

<comment><USER42> Similar thing here that Londoners can request from their borough. [https://www.cyclehoop.com/product/shelters- canopies/bikehang...](https://www.cyclehoop.com/product/shelters- canopies/bikehangar/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I've long said that we need something like this for dockless bikes/scooters. Just converting 1% of parking spaces in the city would drastically reduce the "littering" problem.

</comment><comment><USER44> Yeah... but in the end, you still have to ride a bike.

</comment><comment><USER45> This introduces an element of temporariness into the fight between cars vs bikes parking. I think the issue needs to be dealt with at a fundamental level, do we as a country/city decide to use more bikes or cars? As far as I'm aware there has been a decisive victory by the cars in the US over the past 50 years mainly due to oil companies pushing for it and lobbying against public transportation. Using cars also pushes the boundaries of technological progress, anything that requires more technology (ie. cars more than bikes) will make the society more technological and will create more jobs in the technology sector. Even if the solution to transportation can be solved without as much tech, sometimes it may be desirable to create more tech for the sake of creating more tech and not because of necessity because there will be times when the same tech or expertise in tech can help solve an orthogonal, but existential problem. (eg. we don't need to have a space station but we do, ISS has allowed the creation of technological advances that have provided benefits to society on Earth in areas including health and medicine, transportation, public safety, consumer goods, energy and environment, information technology, and industrial productivity [0])

[0] [https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/Benefits- Stem...](https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/Benefits-Stemming- from-Space-Exploration-2013-TAGGED.pdf)

<comment><USER46> There is a chicken and egg situation with cycling and cycling infrastructure (as there is with any mode of transport). Any method that allows for incremental advances has got to be an improvement to the chances of increasing cycle usage.

<comment><USER47> I read a study a while back that suggested that there is a maximum of approximately 6% of any given population will use cycling as a means of transportation without cycling infrastructure isolated from automobile traffic similar to Copenhagen.

I'm hoping that the growth of things like electric scooters will drive more demand for such things.

<comment><USER48> Do you have a link to the study? I'd love to read it.

<comment><USER47> Oh, man. Uh... I'll try and dig it up tomorrow.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


You know what's fun? Game Development is fun. - <AUTHOR> http://notch.tumblr.com/post/9896830082/you-know-whats-fun

<comment><USER2> Actually, I find development in general to be fun. It doesn't have to be games... But you do get to play the games. :)

<comment><USER3> Maybe it's just me, but I think if software is well-made, it should be as fun to use as a game is fun to play. With the amount of richness and animation available to developers, there's no reason using even the simplest app can't be surprising and delightful.

<comment><USER4> It's not just you ;)</comment></comment></comment>


Billionaires Benefiting from a Tax Break to Help the Poor, Congress Investigates - <AUTHOR> https://www.propublica.org/article/billionaires-keep-benefiting-from-a-tax-break-to-help-the-poor-now-congress-wants-to-investigate <comment><USER2> I'm a partner in an OZ Fund and we created the OZ Score to help measure the impact in these communities. [http://www.oz-score.com](http://www.oz- score.com)

Would love to talk with Congress about this.

Funds website is [http://www.activatedcapital.com](http://www.activatedcapital.com)

</comment><comment><USER3> Hopefully all those professed haters of "trickle down Reganomics" will learn to equally distrust tax-break philanthropy.

Don't subsidize these developments, give the residents a good enough UBI so the demand alone justifies them.

</comment><comment><USER4> Unspoken premise being accepted: That the professed purpose (helping the poor) was the actual purpose. Just wanted that noted.

<comment><USER5> Disagree. That premise was explicitly spoken (that it would help the poor, that was a figleaf by the people pushing this), and it wasn't accepted by very many people, other than some rich people who thought they'd use it. At the time it was passed it was widely said to be likely to be a boondogle that would not make many real improvements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> They left it to governors to choose them, and allow anyone to invest in them.

And for existing property owners within those areas, eh, there is no tax event until a property is sold, unless somehow using mark to market accounting for real estate. Now they're deferring the tax event for 10 years.

Wealthy were always going to benefit from this obviously?

Many countries have free trade zones with similar characteristics. The whole point is to increase transactions themselves, if your country can only gain consensus by selling something as "poor people, jobs numbers" that has nothing to do with what's written in the law and the utility of what's written.</comment>


Nokia phones sent identifiable data to Chinese server - <AUTHOR> https://translate.google.com/translate?u=https://nrkbeta.no/2019/03/21/norske-telefoner-sendte-personopplysninger-til-kina/ <comment><USER2> I knew of that 9 months ago, but nobody was interested so I dropped it.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17329825](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17329825)

<comment><USER3> I wonder how often this kind of comments fall through the cracks like this. Happened to me too with something privacy related about one of the big Corps that then was noticed by everyone else a few weeks later...

I agree with others, better open a "Tell HN" in this cases.

<comment><USER4> Happens with a lot of posts, if they don't reach a critical mass of upvotes early on. In this case probably nobody could verify, if the claims were correct.

<comment><USER5> Maybe we should add a new topline category, "threat reports"?

<comment><USER6> This seems outside of HN remit, but definitely worth being a site of its own with an RSS feed. I feel this should be curated not based on community voting.

<comment><USER5> US-CERT is already a thing. But we all hang out here. I think this community has a special collection of talents that could foster positive relationships with the larger society.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Please don't assume this is a one-time event, or that it is specific to this brand or even to Chinese manufacturers. Nokia could actually be in the best half on that aspect, just got unlucky.

Most of such info leaks are hidden. I've already witnessed several OEM firmwares sending informations to many different parties. Too often, this is done through http, with payload encrypted. But it's always symmetrical encryption, and the encryption key can be computed from the fields in clear in the request. Such techniques are enough to stay under the radar of classic MITM, and require hard reverse engineering work to detect. I've noticed such behaviours on major Chinese OEMs, and white-label brands.

I never did actual reverse engineering on more western-ish brands, but the little I've seen doesn't look good. On Samsung Galaxy S9+ simply listing apps that can install apps silently (which is the master of all permissions, because this gives the right to give apps any permission), raises an advertisement company in Israel and a Telco in Singapore.

If you're worried about this situation (I do), I recommend you start lobbying about mandatory bootloader unlock, and easier OS replacement on smartphones. In this area, Nokia is amongst the worse, since AFAIK they still haven't authorized any bootloader unlock. Personally my work in this ecosystem is to make the Phh-Treble ROM, which is most likely the Android ROM with the largest hardware support (even though it requires the phone to be natively running Android 8 at least), and it is opensource.

<comment><USER8> > On Samsung Galaxy S9+ simply listing apps that can install apps silently > (which is the master of all permissions

Wait... what? Why is there such a permission in the first place?

<comment><USER9> > Why is there such a permission in the first place?

Google Play and F-droid require it in order to update apps automatically.

Essentially, you give one app a permission to install other apps. Whether it notifies you or not, it's up to the app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This has to be fixed by HMD and I hope for an official investigation as most other manufacturers are probably doing the same.

In the meantime, I recommend the following:

1\. Remove any unnecessary packages through ADB ([https://www.xda- developers.com/uninstall-carrier-oem-bloatwa...](https://www.xda- developers.com/uninstall-carrier-oem-bloatware-without-root-access/))

2\. Use Shelter ([https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.typeblog.shelter/](https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.typeblog.shelter/))

3\. Use a VPN-Firewall such as NetGuard ([https://f-droid.org/en/packages/eu.faircode.netguard/](https://f-droid.org/en/packages/eu.faircode.netguard/)) or NoRoot Firewall ([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.greyshirts...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.greyshirts.firewall)).

<comment><USER11> You suggest installing userspace apps to control system software that might run in a privileged context. NoRoot Firewall, for example, doesn't control iptables, it just pretends to be a VPN server and privileged software, I assume, can bypass it.

<comment><USER10> Yes, I'm fully aware of this. There's also the problem of having a closed source baseband processor in pretty much every device.

But bypassing these mechanisms is a decision they had to make. If they're just lazy or incompetent, these userspace apps should be sufficient as a mitigation.

Check this out for a more sophisticated way: [https://privacyinternational.org/node/2732](https://privacyinternational.org/node/2732)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's shameful of Google (but totally expected) that they don't supervise the Android One program AT ALL. All of the Android One mobiles appear on the top list of their Android One microsite and I'm sure most of them contain malware built-in.

[https://www.android.com/one/](https://www.android.com/one/)

Having said this, I never expected Nokia to be doing that, too. Both Nokia and HMD are Finnish, do they really need to outsource the creation of the ROM?!

<comment><USER13> HMD is Finnish, but AFAIK they have zero own software development in Finland. Not sure whether it is public knowledge where they buy the SW from. Of course the Google part is known, but I assume the application reported here is not from Google.

<comment><USER14> Yeah. HMD is just license holding company with nothing but lots of managers as employees. All of their software development is outsourced to Finnish and foreign companies.

I know some of those people (in Finland) who worked in these outsourcing companies, but they just worked on the more high level components like Android apps etc. Not with bootloaders or OS images.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> FWIW, I have a recently purchased Nokia 7.1 which is part of the Android One scheme (running Android Pie). This was through a legit high-stret UK retailer so not grey-import or anything.

I installed NoRoot Firewall as suggested in another comment here. So far NoRoot Firewall has not detected any activity from anything unusual running in the background (either idle, screen-on, or charging).

What _was_ weird though was that if I open the Nokia camera app, it tries to talk to edge-star-shv-01-lhr-facebook.com, edge-star-mini- shv-01-sof1.facebook.com & edge-star-shv-01-sof1.facebook.com. I believe this is due to the facebook live-broadcasting feature built into the Nokia camera app, although I have not got it logged in so not sure why it is phoning home just when I open the app.

<comment><USER15> So 24 hours later and still nothing odd going on according to NoRoot Firewall on a UK retail Nokia 7.1.

I'll keep running foir a few more days (I cant use my usual VPN at the same time as NoRoot Firewall so dont want to run indefinitely) and udpate if anything else happens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Very nice of the Chinese military to choose a .cn domain so even the Norwegians can see what is going on ...

<comment><USER16> It is obviously a bug / lazy programmer / broken project management. A phone with most of it components bought from China and in one of the many configurations just copied from the supplier's examples there was an URL which was supposed to be changed but didn't.

In other words - a non-story or at most a story about quality issues at the reborn Nokia.

But luckily the URL pointed to China ... so we can make the story about that ... with a big red communist flag, talk about mass surveilliance, human rights, future invasions and so on ...

I don't really think this is because of racism; I mostly just think it is because we are idiots that prefer big hyperboles rather than simple explanations of non-issues.

<comment><USER17> Huh? It's more than just that; the Android build comes littered with software from an unscrupulous source, even on phones that are supposed to be close to a clean version of Android.

<comment><USER16> Why do you assume they (the presumely Chinese provider of the component) are unscrupulous?

To me it is obvious that it is Nokia that is sloppy and having quality issues.

<comment><USER17> Why do you assume it's simply laziness? Regardless, it's not good.

<comment><USER16> Why is there a Chinese flag in the article and not a Finnish flag?

Because it gives more attention.

The real story here is that the venerable brand of Nokia now is being used to sell sub-quality phones.

<comment><USER17> Because the service and server in question are in China? Look I understand being skeptical of the narrative, but that's where the data was going.

Nokia isn't being shielded in the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It is kind of ironic for me to think my perception of Android as same as Windows as major malware distributor despite it is based on Linux. Android is now fast becoming Windows XP of mobile.

<comment><USER19> My Android phone came with a weather app preinstalled. The app cannot be uninstalled, is full of translation errors and some links redirect to Chinese websites. Who knows what data my phone constantly sends there?

Adding to that the fact that I don't receive system updates anymore, I have absolutely no trust in my phone. My next phone will be an iPhone, for the lack of better alternative.

<comment><USER20> Yeah, I recently switched from iPhone to Samsung Galaxy S10.

I don't have a previous experience so my reasoning was "well it's Samsung, at worst they'll have some shitty branded apps and some cruft". But I don't have an idea what these dozens of preinstalled apps running on my phone doing. Almost none of them can be uninstalled and only a handful can be disabled.

It is kind of scary to use a banking app on this thing. Never felt this way on an iPhone. I wanted to see the Android side after years of iPhone use, apparently it is still shit.

<comment><USER6> This is exactly why I am back on iPhone. I have had enough of unremovable shitware. I also value the simplicity of getting basic things done such as Bluetooth pairing. Stuff seems easier. The only thing slightly worse on iPhone is google 2fa, because it needs to use the gmail app.

<comment><USER21> > google 2fa, because it needs to use the gmail app you mean the Google app, > right? Not the GMail one.

<comment><USER22> Not the original poster, but yes you're right

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I did some research on zzhc.vnet.cn and what its purpose might be. Zzhc is probably an abbreviation of 自注册, meaning self-registration. There is plenty of documentation (in Chinese) on how to implement it (e.g. [1]), but so far I haven't been able to figure out what it's actually good for.

You can find implementations by Qualcomm and Mediatek on GitHub, the Mediatek one even comes with a minimal README [2]. That seems to indicate that it's gated by a feature flag "MTK_CT4GREG_APP" and is only supposed to be active when explicitly selected while the phone is in developer mode. That makes it likely that sending the data was only due to a misconfiguration.

Considering the long list of manufacturers starting at page 10 of [1], it's also possible that others are leaking data in the same way.

[1] [https://wenku.baidu.com/view/c2eaa9fc5022aaea998f0f7f.html](https://wenku.baidu.com/view/c2eaa9fc5022aaea998f0f7f.html)

[2] [https://github.com/griffins-testing- ground/android_vendor_mt...](https://github.com/griffins-testing- ground/android_vendor_mtk/tree/0edacb3eb0107237f68eabbab66293cdc8fb90a4/mediatek/proprietary/packages/apps/SelfRegister)

<comment><USER24> More articles about "补贴", from same user, [https://www.jianshu.com/u/3bff037f7a8b](https://www.jianshu.com/u/3bff037f7a8b) .

I assume the android implementation was done in China, then many requirements are related with "补贴", it is just part of them to submit some data to zzhc.vnet.cn. But didn't get deleted when they are making EU variants.

<comment><USER23> Thanks for the links. Actually, I had seen one of those articles before, but didn't understand it well enough.

My understanding now is that some 4G deployments are subsidized, and to correctly compute the amounts to be paid, China Telecom needs to collect more data than is usually available, so they came up with the idea of sending the data to zzhc.vnet.cn.

Still pretty hacky, but it kind of makes sense from a perspective of doing the minimum necessary to fulfill the requirements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> ALL Android phones users should go NOW and instal NoRoot Firewall. This will catch anything running over the OS (but I feel it wouldn't catch any rootkit). What information is missing in the article is "which app is leaking the data"? On all rooted android phones you can advise on uninstall xyz and be done with it. Then you can take screenshots and make a nice post in your blog. Unfortunately I don't own a Nokia 7 to do this myself.

<comment><USER25> Edit: just notice that autocorrect changed my: "adb pm uninstall XYZ"

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is pretty damning. The fact that HMD don't come clean and admit they were required to load this software in order to sell to the Chinese market is a little odd. Maybe the Chinese require companies not to admit the backdoors they place.

</comment><comment><USER27> I _think_ and assume part of the process, some Nokia Phones which were only meant to sold in China, or Software that were only meant to be installed in China's version of Nokia got muddled up into International version.

If you have been following the Nokia's Android phone, you will know they have always been launching new phones in China first before making slight update or shipping exactly the same one to International Market. So it could happen this is part of the logistics and Supply Chain mistep. I am giving Nokia the benefits of doubt here. Since HMD do have many original Nokia employees, it could be an oversight.

</comment><comment><USER28> So much for "Android One"....

</comment><comment><USER29> Shouldn't this be something that the NSA looks into and prevents?

The NSA works with US companies to secure their systems from espionage.

Shouldn't the NSA be analyzing consumer electronics to make sure they don't spy on US citizens, some of which will have sensitive information or trade secrets on their phones?

<comment><USER11> It seems that some companies do not like to be "secured" by NSA, according to the article [1]

[1] [https://www.wired.com/2013/10/nsa-hacked-yahoo-google- cables...](https://www.wired.com/2013/10/nsa-hacked-yahoo-google-cables/)

<comment><USER29> 'Do as I say, not as I do'?

Aren't those companies tryig to get all the information they can about us?

Perhaps they don't want to be "secured" because it costs money to do so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> One more reason to get a Purism phone I guess...

</comment><comment><USER31> If it was the Chinese who were trying to spy, it'd be pretty dumb to use a .cn URL isn't it?

Seems to support the US paranoia about Chinese gear and if proven as known evil, doesn't help huawei's 5g aspirations...

<comment><USER26> The Chinese don't have to be covert about their tracking activities. It's part of their society, and everyone (at least outside of China) is aware of it, and nobody _inside_ of China is allowed to talk about it.

<comment><USER32> People inside China are very aware of it; most just don't care that much. They (willingly, if not happily) trade what westerners might consider pillars of freedom for widespread prosperity.

When you consider the progress China has made over the last 50 years from the perspective of a typical Chinese citizen, you can see why they make that bargain.

<comment><USER33> I hear this often, but it kinda implies they prospered because they had this obnoxious rules, i fail to see if this is actually true. Wouldn't they still be better without this tyranical bullshit?

<comment><USER34> They would, but that requires a fight against a party apparatus of 1+ million people, that controls the police, secret services and the army. And that in 1989 did what it did in Tiananmen and wouldn't be afraid to do it again, I'm pretty sure.

So success would be far from guaranteed.

If I'd be Chinese I'd probably do the same trade they did.

After prosperity, keeping the lid on as hard as it is now is much, much harder. And if changes don't come easily and naturally, I guess you can emigrate.

<comment><USER35> So then maybe they aren't so "happy" to make the trade, but afraid for their status and lives if they don't obey?

<comment><USER34> Happy, probably not. Content? Most likely.

And what makes most people happy is having a rich personal life, rather than achieving their political goals, I've found.

<comment><USER36> Bread and circuses stave off revolution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Side note: I didn't notice the page was translated from another language until after I finished reading it and noticed the title bar. Machine translation between European languages has really come a long way.

<comment><USER38> Oh wow me neither. Just one word (ombudsman) stood out to me, but I thought it could exist in English. It does in my native language so I did understand it :p

That's a nice translation!

<comment><USER39> It does exist in English.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> It's a bug. The URL was corrected to mil.no/etjenesten in the software update mentioned in the article.

<comment><USER3> If this is a joke, it's a nice joke.

Ah... the times we live in.

<comment><USER41> What is the joke here?

<comment><USER42> Spying is ok, just data should end up in "Norwegian Intelligence Service" not China.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Whoa! I had a cheap Nokia dumb phone a year ago that sent a daily SMS to a number in China. Could never figure out what was in it, and support was no help.

</comment><comment><USER44> "Nokia" phones, while it's really R&D and manufactured Foxconn phones sold by reseller HMD which just slap Nokia sticker on them

<comment><USER45> To be fair. They are nicely made Foxconn phones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Guess Nokia devices are only the tip of iceberg. Apple works better: [https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/7/17832106/apple-utility- app...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/7/17832106/apple-utility-app-adware- doctor-stolen-china-removed)

Personally for me Google is an opposite of privacy.

</comment><comment><USER47> This is related to com.qualcomm.qti.autoregistration.apk :

[https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/191883/](https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/191883/)

[https://github.com/bcyj/android_tools_leeco_msm8996/blob/mas...](https://github.com/bcyj/android_tools_leeco_msm8996/blob/master/qrdplus/ChinaTelecom/apps/AutoRegistration/src/com/qualcomm/qti/autoregistration/RegistrationTask.java)

[https://twitter.com/drwetter/status/1081267425637814273](https://twitter.com/drwetter/status/1081267425637814273)

</comment><comment><USER48> Statement from HMD Global We have analyzed the case and can confirm that there has been an error in the packing process of software in a single batch of a telephone model, which by mistake attempted to send activation data to a foreign server. The data was never processed and no personal information was shared with third parties or authorities.

This has now been fixed and almost any device affected by this error has now installed the update. HMD Global takes the safety and privacy of our customers seriously.

<comment><USER49> If that's an official statement, it should probably come with a link to a corresponding press release.

Random hacker news comments aren't the most trustworthy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> That's some pretty bad QC on Nokia's part. It's not like it's clever even with some takeover of the lte chip, it's just up there in your face running on the application later.

</comment><comment><USER51> i just bought the 7 plus a few weeks ago, anyone has a tip on what could I do now?

<comment><USER52> If your are located in the EU file a DGSVO complained. In fact since HMD is based in Finland you can do this probably anyway.

<comment><USER53> *GDPR. DSGVO is the German name.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I purchased a Xiaomi phone 4 years ago and some of the Xiaomi apps (cleaner, antivirus, and link accounts) were sending personal info to China as well. These suspicious apps were impossible to remove.

</comment><comment><USER55> How can I check if my phone is emitting these packets?

<comment><USER56> Install NoRoot Firewall as HenryBemis mentioned, it's on the Play store. The app tells you what IP addresses apps are trying to communicate with in a fairly neat and simple way.

I've just installed it on my 6.1 Plus. Nothing sus yet but it's only been 5 minutes.

<comment><USER57> I did install it too on my 6.1 and found the System app trying to connect to several cloudfront IPs, cant find any kind of extra info, did you find the same?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> We need surveillance more on people and they actions! It's shame that android store let very suspicious apps uploaded!

</comment><comment><USER53> If the GDPR is any good, this should cost HMD a lot of money.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think it is also worth investigating whether phones secretly send any data to Western companies. Chinese authorities cannot do anything to you unless you come to China, but USA authorities have the power to extradite people from most countries. Sending data to US companies is much more dangerous than sending them to China. This can literally get you into jail.

For example, many apps, especially messenger and social network apps secretly or openly export contact lists from devices. Not only this is highly unethical, it might be a violation under GDPR because the information in the contact list is personal information and you must obtain the permission of that person for transferring the data abroad, not only the permission of the phone owner.

Almost every mobile app collects IMEI, a hardware identifier that allows governments and mobile companies to track the precise location of your phone. While such data are highly sensitive, they collect it without any second thought. Even a simple keyboard app was collecting all the data it could grab [2].

I can remember how Google was collecting WiFi data, without permission from access point owners. It was also collecting the traffic sent over WiFi [1].

It seems like the companies in every country have similar interests for users' data.

Also, I have a noname Chinese phone and when I examined its traffic with Wireshark, it was attempting to send data with IMEI to Chinese servers (luckily I had no SIM card inserted so it couldn't get a phone number). It was sending data to Google servers as well, but sadly they were encrypted with SSL and even installing a self-signed root certificate on the device didn't help to decode the contents.

So I think there should be better regulation of data collection. The general rule ("not a single byte" rule) should be that no data can be sent anywhere without explicit user's consent (not a phrase somewhere in the EULA). Also I think the manufacturers should put large warnings on the boxes, like the ones on the cigarette packs, like "This device sends all your private data to country X", "This IoT device will spy on you 24 hours a day", "This device uses a cloud in country Y", etc. So that the consumers better know who will spy on them.

[1] [https://www.wired.com/2012/05/google-wifi-fcc- investigation/](https://www.wired.com/2012/05/google-wifi-fcc-investigation/)

[2] [https://www.zdnet.com/article/popular-virtual-keyboard- leaks...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/popular-virtual-keyboard- leaks-31-million-user-data/)

</comment><comment><USER59> Nokia is just a name on the phone. The trademark licensee is HMD Global while engineering and manufacturing has been outsourced to Foxconn, a Chinese company.

<comment><USER60> Foxconn is a Taiwanese company

Edit: I am not disputing the "One China Principle". The fact remains that Taiwan is self-governed.

<comment><USER61> Which makes it a Chinese company, yes...

<comment><USER60> Regardless of border politics, Taiwan has its own government

<comment><USER62> regardless of government, taiwan is an island full of Chinese people, speaking practice every aspect of (traditional-ish) Chinese.

<comment><USER60> People's race has nothing to do with their alignment with other governments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Allegedly hacked entire OPM database, Marriot and other orgs. This allows them to potentially blackmail key personnel they want to control. Imagine what they can accomplish with the deployment of Huawei 5G.

<comment><USER64> This is bullshit. what's the connection? This is an Android based flaw. What could Huawei 5G infrastructure do that couldn't yet be achieved through their highly prevalent 4G infrastructure? Are we worried they're gonna spy us faster and with lower latency?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you deal with depression being kicked out of your startup - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,<p>I have confounded a startup seven years ago when I was still a student at the university. I joined Startup Weekend and met my cofounder there. Fortunately, we have won the pitch and the global startup battle. When we were forming the company, other two co-founders agree that I can work as part-time tech lead until I graduated from university. However, things changed when we are trying to raise series A. They played tricks to remove me from the director board at first, then forced me to sell my share to them at ridiculously cheap price (3k USD for shares that value around 100k USD) by giving me two choices: either sell my shares to them or they will liquidate the company. At last, I sold my shares to them at a very cheap price and I feel angry and regret after this. It is because I am the one who took the idea from shitty prototype to production ready product. A few years later, I still got the same feeling when I come across the company. They erased me from the history of the company, for example, they are the only cofounders who found the company. Therefore, I wonder how do you guys deal with the depression like this? <comment><USER2> The best revenge is success. My advice to you is to laser focus on a new venture. It can be a new startup or working your way up in a big company.

At this point what's passed is passed, there's nothing to be done to change it. But you can focus on the present and future. There you have the ability to make a difference.

So be a greater success than what you had been at the old startup. Learn from your experience and move forward.

Take an honest inventory of your skills, find someone that compliments them an move forward. You gain nothing by dwelling on the past. Force yourself to move forward, so start. Good Luck.</comment>


Should Future Fighter Be Like a Bomber? Groundbreaking CSBA Study - <AUTHOR> http://breakingdefense.com/2015/04/should-future-fighter-be-like-a-bomber-groundbreaking-csba-study/ <comment><USER2> I'm writing a sci-fi novel about a future war between Canada and the United States which mostly takes place between their fighter planes. For plot reasons all planes are required to have a human pilot (as per international treaty), but it seems preposterous that you'd have anything other than remote- controlled or AI controlled airborne machines in the future.

Having to carry a human creates a huge number of constraints. You can't maneuver as quickly due to G-forces, you can't make the fighters small, you can't have them hide-in-wait on the ground for days or weeks at a time. Human reaction time isn't as good, and humans can't coordinate with as many other pilots as a computer can. Pilots are also expensive to maintain.

Anyway, just some thoughts. I'm not an expert on the topic, which is why the novel is going to be a romance which just happens to be set in the future.

<comment><USER3> If computer-controlled aircraft have the advantages of high maneuverability, small size, fast reactions, and disposability, what do you get if you turn the knobs on all of those up to 11, and then fit the simplest possible kill mechanism? A very effective AI controlled airborne machine that already exists - called a missile!

The only question is how you get the missiles to the battle (because being small makes it hard to make them long-ranged), and how you get slow-but- powerful human brains and large-aperture sensors near enough to them to make effective use of them.

So far, we've got two ways of doing this. Firstly, by slinging missiles beneath manned fighter aircraft which carry the brains, and sending those out along with airborne early warning aircraft which carry the sensors (and more brains). Secondly, by fitting them to warships big enough to carry plenty of brains and radars themselves. The aircraft have the advantage of speed (and altitude, if that matters), whereas the ships have the advantage of range (and a few other things).

This battleplane idea can be seen as either converging the fighters and AEW aircraft, or as transferring some of the attributes of the warships to the fighters.

Alternatively, the idea could be seen as converging reality with a 1987 techno-thriller:

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

<comment><USER4> So one unintended consequence of SpaceX is that we might end up with missiles that can land, wait, and relaunch themselves when needed.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, but they'll be constantly posting pictures of themselves on Instagram, so they won't be hard to avoid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> To add to the article: Per one study by some leading defense thinkers, Vietnam is the last time the U.S. had a large number of air-to-air encounters. There, 80% of encounters had been decided before the loser had a chance to defend themselves. The authors conclude that situational awareness is key. [1]

[1] [http://csbaonline.org/publications/2007/03/six-decades-of- gu...](http://csbaonline.org/publications/2007/03/six-decades-of-guided- munitions-and-battle-networks-progress-and-prospects/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Sounds very much like the original concept for the F-111: a large aircraft with long range and large payload, which can do both air-to-ground, and beyond-visual-range air combat. Maybe the time is finally ripe.

Back then this was proposed top-down (by McNamara), and both the Air Force and the Navy hated the idea. I wonder what they will think this time around.

<comment><USER6> I was just thinking this.. "sounds like the F-111 all over again"

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hmmm, it's not clear that "a database of "over 1,450 air-to-air victories" around the world from 1965 to the present" can really help us understand a world that is infested with aerial drones. A supermegabomber might well carry enough missiles to drop scores of fighters before they even see it. What can it do about a cloud of thousands of tiny autonomous jet-intake-seeking drones? Even if it can see them, it can only disable a particular percentage. Then one drone finds a jet intake and the supermegabomber is a sitting duck.

For the wars that will be fought in the very near future, a bigger plane is mostly a bigger target.

<comment><USER8> A tiny drone won't have very good sensors so they can't find the plane. And if you know where the plane is you should send a missile instead of waiting for a drone to find a jet intake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Kinda reminds me of Flight of the Old Dog - in that case it was 80's high-tech stuffed in to a B-52, giving it 'escort' capabilities...

As many have pointed out, this type of air-to-air platform may make sense for knocking out our current opposition, but when that opposition is all drones?

That's the real game changer - a drone wouldn't even have to 'launch' a missile, you could build one with a secondary impulse engine that would turn it in to a missile. Have dozens/hundreds flying on-station in high- efficiency/high-boredom flight paths, all controlled over-the-horizon, or from a standoff AWACs stop platform 100s of miles away.

The potential impact on naval warfare may be even greater...

<comment><USER10> Also, there hasn't been a full scale war with modern military technology in decades. So nobody really knows what actually works and what just sounds good in theory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> In short, they want a bomb truck that can lurk and loiter, it will carry missiles, the missiles will be more maneuverable than any manned fighter.

Going to be a hard sell for a "Top Gun" culture of fighter jocks at the pentagon.

</comment><comment><USER12> Bright article for once.

But, such a shame people don't understand what survival to the fittest means.

Bombers/planes are expensive. Some people think that if you are rich then having expensive toys is good. Less people are able to buy them so you should win the wars against almost all poor countries.

Right, it is a basic asymmetric situation. Survival to the fittest, is about using your advantage.

Well, how expensive is it in a poor country to build and destroy an expensive plane?

Stealth plane are stealth. They tend to absorb waves. Thus if you have a distributed grid of electromagnetic emitters you probably have a very cheap radar very efficient for detecting stealth plane. Once you have a vector, shooting a plane that has a given cone of future is quite trivial.

Well, that is called a mobile network. I am no genius, but I see a potential for reverting the assymetry. Ok, maybe I am wrong. But, war is assymetric. If you can invest 1% of the sum in military expense compared to your ennemy to defeat him, then you win in much more cases.

The fighter vs missile is known since they droped the MACH 4 plane studies (dassault).

The point about war is we can't prepare for it because we never know how it will look like.

My stupid opinion is: it is better to avoid war, and invest the saved money in education of fine citizens that will be smart in face of a new situation called war so that we may survive.

But one can also build very expensive planes... that can be defeated with very small cheap education.

<comment><USER12> I think I could actually evaluate the price it would cost for building this radar in one year (and quite a lot of cash for asking people that knows more than me) and give and exact amount of money for building it. And one more year for asserving missile on the target. And this means that we can know the cost of this idea for a fraction of the cost of the F35. Which at my experience means that it might cost just an order of magnitude more than the money to evaluate.

Which still means that I am amazed at how much money we spend on expensive weapons that one can defeat with far less money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The platform I think will decide future air superiority is actually fairly well evidenced here.

There definitely will be a need for high-performance/agile aircraft, but I don't know that it will be the traditional fighter pilot. The main reason is that the presence of a pilot creates an inherent limitation in performance - you have to protect a sack of meat/bones/blood from G-forces, etc.

With that in mind, I could see missiles that are extremely maneuverable and could spend a long amount of time tracking and eventually destroying a target (such as an enemy fighter plane).

At a higher level, one of the most interesting weapons of the cold war was the Phoenix missile. Designed for the A-12 (precursor to the SR-71), it was high- Mach missile that would launch, go to high altitude, power off and then lance down from above into the target. F-14's carried the missiles and were quite capable of removing a large number of targets at well beyond visual range (a "standoff" missile iirc). The biggest limitation was that the missiles required constant illumination by the fighters for their targeting solutions, which meant an opposing flight could attempt to close the distance to their own range before the missiles struck (or escape the terminal envelope).

While I'm a bit out of date on current AAM tech, I think we'll probably see missiles capable of this same type of performance but at even greater ranges and altitudes. A larger standoff-fighter that is capable of extremely high- altitudes (90k+ feet) that can loiter there could conceivably carry a large number of missiles well away from the threat zone - over an international border for instance - while still having target/kill capability.

500-mile range AAM anyone? Fascinating stuff.

<comment><USER14> AIM-54 was a Navy only project, not an A-12 armament. Perhaps you're conflating it with the AIM-47? The Phoenix is a natural derivative of the Falcon, but still a distinct system.

<comment><USER5> Fun trivia: in 1980 there was a study about modifying existing SR-71s to carry AIM-54s, to shoot down Soviet AWACS planes. It never went anywhere, but it sounds pretty bad-ass.

[http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,3780.0...](http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,3780.0/all.html)

<comment><USER14> Great link. I'm surprised that this was contemplated as I've always thought the Moss and Mainstay were considered crappy AWACs. It's also interesting that the Foxbat wasn't considered a threat to this mission. This also gives a lot of insight into the role of the F-22 should we fight a near-peer opponent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I feel like this is an obvious "duh" followed by "that doesn't go far enough." I feel like the real question is "do we need fighters or bombers at all?" Seems like we would just want delivery platforms for guided missiles since dogfighting is to air combat as the line infantry is to ground combat.

</comment><comment><USER16> For the same cost, maybe we should develop a few generations of unmanned fighters? Perhaps even hypersonic unmanned fighters? Hopefully, some of the R&D will make its way into the civilian sector. Defense projects ar incredibly expensive. I'd like to get more return on that investment.

e.g NY to Tokyo in 4 hours by 2035.

<comment><USER3> How about Brussels to Sydney in about 4.6 hours?

[http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/lapcat.html](http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/lapcat.html)

JFK-NRT is 6745 miles, BRU-SYD is 10398 - although the Reaction Engines plan would be to go the long way round to avoid bothering people with the noise, a distance of 10097 miles.

Generations of hypersonic unmanned fighters required: zero!

<comment><USER16> Sure, I've been following hypersonic flight for at least a decade.

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

We'll get there eventually. Have the DoD spend $1 trillion on development over a decade and we'll get there faster.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Note that the F-35 is already barking up this tree.

</comment><comment><USER18> John Boyd is probably rolling in his grave.

</comment><comment><USER19> bullshit. you always need visual confirmation of your target by a human. no matter what foe-friendly system you implement, it's down to visual range ID. you simply can't do this better than strapping someone in a fighter. you can't do this without high power to weight ratio and tight turning radius for dog fighting scenarios.

we are seeing revitalization of McNamara's failed Standardization policy in all fighter. The very fact that completely different plan designs came out for different theaters and purposes show this. A-10 for low flying, heavy, armor shelled plane. Tomcat that withstands naval capatapults and fly long range with good fuel efficiency (variable swept wings), and eventually the Hornet vs. using naval F-16 or F-15

<comment><USER20> > bullshit. you always need visual confirmation of your target by a human.

That would rule out the Phoenix missile, and yet it was built, and the Iranians of all people used it to considerable effect against Iraqi aircraft in the 1980s.

<comment><USER19> well I don't know about that since operational history from Iran tends to be shaky in credibility. I mean they have no training and maintenance capabilities after the revolution when the American technician sabatoged the Tomcats as well as critical parts.

Even the two times the Phoenix missile was fired they both failed. Not sure how a completely cut off Iranian air force with no spare parts or maintenance knowledge would've been able to fire at Iraqi, an equally incompetent force, my guess is the Iraqi air force actually crashed before the Iranians did.</comment></comment></comment>


Ingenious hybrid map design - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/cliff-kuang/design-innovation/ingenious-hybrid-map-why-didnt-garmin-think

<comment><USER2> The ringworld is unstable.</comment>


Ralph Fiennes blames Twitter for 'eroding' language - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/twitter/8853427/Ralph-Fiennes-blames-Twitter-for-eroding-language.html

<comment><USER2> I find it difficult to consider Twitter even much of an acceleration of the trend, compared to older things like text messaging, news tickers, and USA Today.</comment>


Ask HN: Moving to Taiwan - <AUTHOR>

Hello,
I live in a large North American city and I'm in my early 30's. I manage a team of talented web developers. I've worked hard and have achieved a lot of successes. I feel I'm at the top of my game, so to speak. My focus, productivity, creativity and drive are at an all time high.
I have a great relationship with my wife. She has never been completely satisfied with the North American lifestyle - she is a traveler at heart. She wants us to travel to Taiwan for a year or two.
To be honest, I am scared. This is a major life change involving leaving my job and starting over by bootstrapping a startup in a new land. I recognize that traveling and living abroad is a tremendously rewarding experience, but  I feel all the security, contacts and reputation I have worked hard over the years to build will be lost.
Has anyone made a major move like that? I'd appreciate any advise you have to offer. <comment><USER2> We moved our startup from Mountain View to Taipei: <http://cardinalblue.com>

Please contact me at john at cardinalblue dot com

There _is_ an active startup community with various activities (e.g. HTML5, Mobile Monday, Ruby Tuesday, AppWorks mixer).

It will help if you speak Chinese... or are willing to learn... but everyone in technology can speak English ok. Overall, Taiwan is a very friendly environment with some interesting technology development located here (e.g. Asus, Acer, HTC, Yahoo Asia HQ, Google Android).

As for the city, it's very safe, has good restaurants and the MRT (subway) is very clean and convenient. It's definitely not a bad place to spend a year or two.

</comment><comment><USER3> As others have said, Taiwan is very foreigner friendly -moreso if you are willing to Learn Mandarin (it's cheap), albeit with a TW accent. If you move to the south, then Taiwanese is also important, but you can get by with Chinese. English does not go far beyond foreign bars and western companies.

Couple of things. In the north the weather can be miserable in winter --humid/rainy and cold. It hardly drops to freezing, but it's bone chilling. In the south you have to think about pollution. It's really bad and it's dreadfully hot in the summer --I mean intolerably hot (most of the time it's ok b/c you're indoors with AC, but once you step outside you get drenched within a minute. There's an expression for respiratory problems people might develop in the industrial south "Kaohsiung Lung" for a kind of cough which some people develop in response to the pollution.

Some good things, taxes are quite reasonable. People are friendly and most things are relatively cheap -unless you are looking at Japanese and Western products, then they are expensive. You can drive w/o a license pretty much without repercussions, but if you're staying long, go thru the process, it's worth it. Healthcare, it's taken care of for you when you get a job. Co-pay is ridiculously low. Procedures are low. The medicine is pretty much up to standard, but realize most hospitals are privately owned by millionaires. Food is abundant and available at all hours of the day and night -for cheap. Again, unless you are looking for excellent Japanese or Western food, then you pay. Utilities are cheap. While apartments and condos are great, houses are weird. They are these weird 4 to 6 story very narrow monstrosities with very bad usability design, in my opinion. Government offices, from my experiences were very efficient --nothing required hour waits nor return visits (unless you forget a document). Documents are simple --but you need to understand Chinese of have someone help you).

Housing is cheap, unless you need to live in a "western compound" then it gets expensive.

Other bad things: traffic. Unless you can use the MRT (in Kaohsiung or Taipei) you will have to ride a scooter (or drive a car). Don't get into an accident. You will most likely have to pay a settlement fee -esp being a foreigner. There is no "central heating" so get used to cold winters in TPE. You run out of places to visit quite soon, so you might have to hop over to Japan. Driving is kind of ruleless. Well, they have rules but most people ignore them so it's very chaotic. There are no sidewalks. It looks like they exist, but they don't. What look like sidewalks are actually private property, most of the time used for scooter parking or for business fronts. The "sidewalk" are the actual streets --but since they are the street proper, they are dangerous --which is why people ride scooters for a half block errand (it seemed ridiculous at first, but it makes sense as you will earn).

Crime exists but for the most part, it's hidden from westerners --just don't try to pick up or look at a gangster's GF or whatever and you'll be ok -however, this is unlikely to happen, unless you go to "local bars"/KTVs/Touch-touch places as opposed to foreigner bars. "Gangsters" sport tattoos, short hair and some chew betel nut (bing lan). Guns are few, but knives are plentiful.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER4> I lived in Taiwan for two years and loved it; we just visited again this summer. It's a very foreigner-friendly place, and you'll be able to get by well, even if you don't speak Chinese - although I'd suggest learning, especially to read menus if you want to eat something other than McDonald's or TGI Friday's. Also, taxi drivers will love you if you can chat about their kids in Mandarin during the trip.

If you're looking at Taipei, take a look at Tianmu (which is part of Shilin district - there's a Tianmu rail station) - it's the North American expat capital of Taiwan, and you can find just about anything you'd miss elsewhere, such as Mountain Dew. If you have kids, there's also an excellent "American school" there, though I understand it's pricey.

If you're not used to humidity and heat, you may have a tough time at first - the humidity is very intense, especially when it gets hot in the summer.

</comment><comment><USER5> You should first ask to see whether you can keep your job and work remotely.

If you haven't been to Taiwan, don't plan for a year. Go for a month. If it's good, stay. If not, move to next destination.

<comment><USER6> I agree, Taiwan is an excellent place to move and run a startup. I moved to Kaohsiung in Southern Taiwan 1 year ago. The cost of living is very low, the people love Westerners, and it's very safe. Not to mention that the weather is very good all year around.

Taiwan is also a great place to learn Mandarin as it's cheap, and the accent is very nice. Hong Kong and Singapore are not bad options, but Taiwan is cheaper.

I manage a Kaohsiung City Guide; <http://travelkaohsiung.com> which has nice pictures and guides for people thinking of coming to here.

I do like Taipei, but to draw a comparison, Taipei is bustling like New York, whereas Kaohsiung is more laid back like LA.</comment></comment>


Modern JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://blog.rebeccamurphey.com/modern-javascript

<comment><USER2> I understand the desire for structured packages, but even in languages like python that have 'the python way' or what have you, there are still plenty of packages that don't quite fit. This isn't a problem with python, it's a largely philosophical/religious issue that has much to do with the idiom or mindset of the package (or likely the maintainer) at hand. But still, i don't see this as a problem that _javascript_ has to address rather than say, a problem that _libraries_ have to address.

You see this all the time in even jquery packages: are they $.pkg.method(elts) or $(elts).pkgmethod() or is it $(elt).pkgmethod(spec) or .... and so forth. Part of it is a matter of taste even if sometimes it goes against 'the jquery way.' Again, this is so religious that it's often not even worth fussing over.

Blaming browser vendors or our ecma overlords for package standards seems like a bit of a straw dog because _javascript_ isn't a package distribution mechanism, it's a programming language. If you want to build _apt/npm for browser js_ via require.js+jquery or your combination _du choix_ , then by all means, but this isn't a failing of the language just as brew failing to install mutt is _not_ a failing of ruby.

Certainly, there's bound to be some overlap in packages, but this happens everywhere and who cares? underscore+jquery seems like a strange example especially when the two are _complementary._ If the goal is to have a "lightweight core" with "components that deliver specific, isolated functionality" i mean, aren't we there _right now?_ And for where we're not, as mentioned by other commenters, coffeescript and friends certainly seem to be fighting the good fight.

I'm all for innovation, but i could do without "enterprise javascript" (isn't that was es4 was and, i mean, i'm not exactly losing sleep over _that_ decision). For proof positive that we're already getting the 'roll your own' strategy, check out the modernizr 2 beta (or, the less modest jq-ui).

If the point of modern js is that people are working together and optimizing, then yay!! but if the point of modern js is that we need to abide by some static discipline where each function only accepts a single spec object and conforms to some require.js loading protocol then, umm.. thanks but no thanks.

</comment><comment><USER3> Suddenly CoffeeScript makes a lot more sense to me:

"the language itself is held hostage by browser vendors, some of whom have shown a strong inclination to not give a fuck about owning up to and fixing their egregious mistakes"

So true. The JavaScript we've got now is the assembly language of the client- side. We can't easily change it, but we have to start building better tools on top of it.

<comment><USER4> >So true. The JavaScript we've got now is the assembly language of the client- side.

Huh?

Javascript is a high-level, dynamic language with very nice metaprogramming capabilites (compared to Ruby: [http://fingernailsinoatmeal.com/post/292301859/metaprogrammi...](http://fingernailsinoatmeal.com/post/292301859/metaprogramming- ruby-vs-javascript)). Totally bizarre to compare it to assembly.

<comment><USER3> I made the comparison in the sense that if you want to use another language on the client-side (like CoffeeScript, for example) you end up compiling down to JavaScript as the low-level implementation.

<comment><USER5> Machine language, then. Assembler is compiled, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The core message is good but I think Rebecca's obsession with jQuery just kills here ability to deliver it. jQuery is not a problem. jQuery's popularity is not a problem. Complex applications are the problem. People not knowing how to structure complex applications are the problem.

Let's see the context there: jQuery is wildly popular, but it _is_ the right tool for the job in most cases. Not all web pages jQuery is used on are webapps. Not all webapps are GMail. Yup, jQuery is "DOM, AJAX and effects" library which is great for trivial tasks. A lot of tasks _are_ trivial.

But there is no "jQuery divide", like there was no "Prototype divide" some six years ago. These are just tools that can be misused. Sorry, Rebecca, but if dojo were as popular as jQuery is the JavaScript land would not be any better than it is now. It would be just a different tool misused, that's all.

The second point she is way wrong (again, IMHO) is the API. Don't you ever underestimate the importance of the good API. When you have tools X, Y, Z which more or less do the same with more or less the same performance, API is the main differentiating factor it's the think you write and look at the whole day. jQuery's API is awesome for many reasons. Dojo's is not.

Structuring complex applications is hard, no matter what language you use, it's not some trouble only JavaScript has. True, JavaScript comes with a couple more complications in that regard but these are minor in the context of the problem.

What she is right about it's the lack of good examples going beyond the basics. But I think the reason for that is that we are just on the way to find out what works reasonably well. It will come, I hope.

So my point is: stop talking about jQuery and dojo. Talk about the core of the problem (and any js lib is not the core).

Oh, and I would like to see Rebecca's take on backbone.js.

<comment><USER7> I appreciate your feedback and understand that previous posts of mine have framed this as a jQuery vs. Dojo debate; I tried particularly hard not to do so in this post, and I think you'd be rather hard-pressed to say that this post was a "jQuery vs. Dojo" diatribe. Yes, it linked to my Berlin slides, but that's simply because a post in response to them is what got this whole post percolating in my head to begin with.

The fact is, though, jQuery and Dojo are the two libraries with which I am quite familiar, and so they are the two libraries I am most able to compare. Having used both, it is easy to see the weaknesses of ... both! I truly believe there _is_ a "jQuery divide" -- there are people who think jQuery is what there is to know of JavaScript, and that it can solve all of their problems; then there are the people who know there is more, either because they have always known or because, like me, they've discovered it through some painful mistakes.

What I am asking for, in this post and in my Berlin talk, is for the people who know there is more to take some responsibility for bringing the others up to speed, to show people what can be done if you leave behind the "get some elements, do something with them" mentality.

None of this is to say that jQuery is not a useful tool, and the right tool in so many situations! I have used it, I have contributed to it, I have taught it, I have recommended it. Its API is seductive and its API is a huge contribution it has made to the JS landscape. The point, though, is that it's _just_ an API -- an API that can be and has been be readily replicated. My experience has been that other libraries' APIs can have their own elegance, once you get used to them. The problem is that the appeal of jQuery's API I think is what can lead people to keep approaching problems in a DOM-centric way long after it makes sense. I do not fault jQuery for this, but I think as a wider JavaScript community we do well to discuss -- and not in an us v. them way! -- other viable approaches that exist.

Finally: Backbone is a viable entry in the field, and I am eager to see more complex examples (to-do list applications fall far short of this) that use it. I haven't used it personally, but I mostly like what I see and have heard good things about it. Unfortunately it had just come out right before my Berlin talk, and while I may have mentioned it in my actual talk, it isn't in the slides. (That said, I do cringe a tad that its examples suggest (<http://documentcloud.github.com/backbone/#Model>) that a "Sidebar" is a thing that should be a model.)

<comment><USER8> Oops -- that's a very good point about the Model example being a bad one -- I was just trying to use something visible, in order to see the "change" event binding in action. Perhaps we should swap it out for something more model-y.

These days, if you're looking for complex Backbone examples, there's a bounty to choose from:

* <http://getflow.com>

* <http://m.soundcloud.com>

* <http://basecamphq.com/mobile>

* <http://getcloudapp.com>

* <http://www.documentcloud.org/public>

<comment><USER7> One other question: are there Backbone examples small enough to digest but large enough to be more authentic than a to-do list? This is where I struggle to come up with good teaching examples -- a whole real-world app is simply too much to take in when one is trying to transition to a JS app mindset (and of course the code is usually minified/obfuscated), but examples like to-do lists are _so_ simple that they don't show how a tool addresses actual real-world problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Excellent stuff. One issue Murphey's slides mention only glancingly is the Javascript-as-visual-design-aid vs. Javascript-as-programming-medium conflict. If jQuery is DOM-centric, well, a whole lot of JS jobs are "make it look professional using HTML, Javascript, Photoshop, and your trained artist's eye," so why shouldn't it be DOM-centric?

That suggests those who fight the good fight from a software engineering perspective will not win with a frontal assault. C++ and Perl were both subject to years intense pressure to rethink their basic assumptions; both refused* and carried on with more-or-less the same group of folks who loved them warts-and-all.

In other words, the evidence suggests that it will be easier to move forward by organizing and strengthening those who agree with Murphey (and Crockford, etc.) than by converting those who, to use her phrase, "don't know what they don't know" but can do amazing things with Photoshop.

* I acknowledge there is an argument to be made that Perl 6 contradicts my assessment. My point is that Perl 6 has not brought a bunch of previous Perl critics into the fold.

</comment><comment><USER10> I wish Javascript has an easy to use unified library/module system. Something like,

      require "http://ajax.googleapis.com/js/sha18.104.22.168"

In the browser, the browser would download and cache the the library and all its dependencies. For the server side, the server environment would download and cache the library and its dependencies in the same way.

Edit: Ha, a reply was deleted so fast that I didn't have a chance to reply to it. To clarify, Sha126.96.36.199 was meant to be an example of a library, not the SHA digest of a library, though that would be a nice feature. Also "require" should be a feature of the language, not using the html <script> tag so be able to work in the server environment.

<comment><USER11> If library writers were to use CommonJS Modules (i.e. just use require() and exports), we'd be most of the way there.

Require.js and AMD still feel like they are not appropriate in all scenarios (e.g., I really don't want or need a "loader" in simple single page applications).

This is my suggestion for a very light weight way of using CommonJS Modules in the browser which is agnostic about how your scripts are loaded.

<http://github.com/mckoss/namespace>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The problem is that browsers don't deal with libraries. You can implement a module and a script loader system, but in the end of the day you will concatenate most scripts for faster download and initial page rendering.

The big problem is that we still have: IE6, IE7, IE8 and probably IE9 too They are too slow, they will not allow you to write nice modularized code.

</comment><comment><USER13> Argh, I hate reading slides without the accompanying audio/video, because I feel like I miss out on 90% of the context.

<comment><USER7> As a speaker, let me just say that I have yet to figure out how to handle this. When I'm presenting, I want people listening to me, not reading the slides. When people are consuming the slides online afterwards, they can quickly get misconstrued without the context of my spoken words. All of that said, I'll add a link to the video from the blog post :)

<comment><USER14> I have come to the conclusion that communicators must present to different audiences in different formats. Slides used in public speaking are no different from hand gestures. Slides posted online for the same speech have to be touched up or completely redone for the new online audience. The audience who heard my speech _might_ benefit from having a copy of my slides as memory cues.</comment></comment></comment>


Intel is bringing back a 22nm Haswell-era Pentium CPU for some reason - <AUTHOR> https://www.pcgamer.com/intel-is-bringing-back-a-22nm-haswell-era-pentium-cpu-for-some-reason/ <comment><USER2> Our company doesn't have laptops to give out to employees. Intel has really dropped the ball. I suspect, as the article suggests, that Intel will be using these chips to supply niche applications like kiosks giving them a little more breathing room to supply current ven chips to desktops and laptops.

We're changing providers. Hopefully we will move to a company that is more AMD friendly than our current supplier.

</comment><comment><USER3> Pentium is a good CPU. And 2 x 3.2 GHz is nothing to sneeze at.

</comment><comment><USER4> > it's a dual-core CPU without Hyper Threading support

Hedging their bets against more vulnerabilities?

<comment><USER5> More like desperate to fill demand for chips for unsavvy customer who don't know amd exists yet, so pulling whatever old wagers they had in the garage. 2core 3.2GHz is fine for mass market PCs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nothing but bad news about Intel lately.

<comment><USER7> As they deserve. What was the last invention that came out of that huge juggernaut?

<comment><USER6> Meanwhile Huawei innovates like crazy [https://e.huawei.com/en/products/servers/kunpeng/kunpeng- des...](https://e.huawei.com/en/products/servers/kunpeng/kunpeng-desktop- board)</comment></comment></comment>


Don't be lazy. Don't use eval(). - <AUTHOR> http://blog.thetonk.com/archives/dont-be-lazy-dont-use-eval

<comment><USER2> The most noteworthy thing about this (misguided) post is that the blogger's professor responded, thoroughly ([http://blog.thetonk.com/archives/dont-be- lazy-dont-use-eval#...](http://blog.thetonk.com/archives/dont-be-lazy-dont- use-eval#comment-168)) and the blogger gracefully backed down( _"I was proven wrong. It happens."_ )

<comment><USER3> I have to point out that (IMHO) you've taken that quote a _bit_ out of context. If you'll read the rest of my remarks, you'll see the qualification text: I was wrong about eval() _in Python_ however my arguments remain standing in languages which don't support sandboxing - and, as a few readers pointed out, even Python's sandboxing isn't a sure bet. I used Python in my examples because that's where the original disagreement arose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think better advice would be "Don't use eval on user-supplied strings".

It is quite safe to use eval on strings you generate yourself. It's like using macros, but with added syntax errors.

<comment><USER5> That also works for marketing static typing - now with added syntax errors!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reminds me of an Instructor I had who insisted against using printf calls with the format string created outside the call.

<comment><USER7> because he was right?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Format_string_bug></comment></comment>


The World's First 3D Printing Pen that Lets you Draw Sculptures - <AUTHOR> http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2013/02/the-worlds-first-3d-printing-pen-that-lets-you-draw-sculptures-in-real-time/?src=footer <comment><USER2> Huh.

My childhood consisted of doing this with a five dollar product that's been around for ages.

<http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003L264JA/>

I mean its great, but this product has a lot more in common with the glue guns that I've known and loved for my entire conscious life than it does any 3D printing technology. I'm surprised that neither this site nor the kickstarter even _mention_ glue guns.

Judging by the fact that most of the video is sped up, I imagine it takes almost as long to 'dry' as it did when I was a kid, too, though it may cure a little faster because its a thinner glue stream.

<comment><USER3> Isn't there a couple of big differences though - the end product is made of plastic, so will last a long time. Also, the nozzle can pump continuously, whereas with a glue gun you have to keep pressing the trigger?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5248780>

</comment><comment><USER5> Same topics come up again and again here lately. Hn needs to detect duplicate topics not urls anymore...

<comment><AUTHOR> I want to apologize for reposting the same story. I missed the earlier one and since the HN didn't detect it as duplicate I thought it was new.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does a regular pen "2D print" drawings?

<comment><USER7> just as you could hook up a pen to a plotting machine ( <http://www.niklasroy.com/project/149/cardboard_plotter> ) and use it as a printer, you could hook this up to (e.g. lego mindstorms, arduino, whatever) and implement a 3D printer.

Arguably, humans are also (rather overspec'd) plotting machines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Glue guns are fun.</comment>


Why did these YouTubers give away their son? - <AUTHOR> https://www.thecut.com/2020/08/youtube-myka-james-stauffer-huxley-adoption.html <comment><USER2> Why not use a title closer to the article in question?

" _Un-Adopted_ : Influencers shared every step of their parenting journey, except last".

The article is a tragic story of a family that adopted a special needs child from out of country and the hidden nightmare of being (despite their best intentions) unprepared/unable to deal with the results. Fortunately for the child in question, they have now been placed with a family that has a parent with the proper medical training and I am assuming no other children. The other thing in play here is our society's perverse desire to produce and consume "reality porn".</comment>


A Very Scary Fireworks Show: Exploding H-Bombs In Space - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128170775 <comment><USER2> One of the purposes for detonating the H-bomb was to determine the effect of the explosion on the Van Allen Belts.

Typical of Robert Krulwich, and NPR in general, is to find some arcane piece of interesting news, ask some insightful questions, then only use and report on the facts that ultimately align with their opinion.

We never do find out if it was harmful to the belts, the atmosphere, or anything else. How many tests were performed by both sides, or what the effect of a missile malfunction might have been. No matter, he proffered his opinion. And that's what really counts.

<comment><USER3> For the record, the blast _was_ harmful to orbiting satellites, since the belt of high-energy electrons it released fried their electronics. See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime#After_effects>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "The plan was [...] to see: a) If a bomb's radiation would make it harder to see what was up there (like incoming Russian missiles!); b) If an explosion would do any damage to objects nearby; c) If the Van Allen belts would move a blast down the bands to an earthly target (Moscow! for example); and — most peculiar — d) if a man-made explosion might "alter" the natural shape of the belts."

Well... what did they learn then? I find it very insatisfactory when articles only state an hypothesis or the how of an experiment. Surely people are interested in the results too?

</comment><comment><USER5> Discussion from a few days ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1478114>

</comment><comment><USER6> One of the scientists from this adventure spoke at my school.

Apparently, one rocket fell, and the plutonium came crashing back down and landed a few feet from the island in the water.

water = absorb radiation

Or something like that.

</comment><comment><USER7> Krulwich concludes "...that we never want to see again." but I'd much rather those nuclear weapons making awesome fireworks shows than destroying the earth. Or am I missing something?

<comment><USER8> I imagine similar light shows would be seen when a really big spaceship leaves orbit, firing its engines to propel it into deep space.

It's definitely something I would love to see.

<comment><USER9> I'd like to see it in my rear-view mirror!</comment></comment></comment>