Nero's Rotating Dining Room [video] - <AUTHOR> https://news.cnrs.fr/videos/neros-rotating-dining-room <comment><USER2> That's a really nice overview of this archaeological find. Inspiring to think about what it would have been like to dine with Nero on this structure. Are there any other such structures? Perhaps even modern ones?

<comment><USER3> Well, one famous story about dining with Nero is that he would round up local Christians, dip them in oil, crucify them, have the crosses planted around his dinner table, and light them on fire so that the burning Christians would serve as torches for his banquets.

Let's see...he became emperor when he was 17. He had his own mother executed. He banished a wife for not bearing him children, and then when his wife after her died, he had her body stuffed. He spent all of his time faffing about with his lute and his chariot-racing, but of course being emperor, he would have all the great chariot racers fake losing to him and all the greatest artists say how much better he was than them, and then he go around talking about how he was the greatest of all time.

He grossly mismanaged the empire, and when large portions of Rome were burned during a great fire, he took the opportunity to annex huge chunks of downtown real estate to build an enormous, gaudy palace (featured in the linked video). The palace itself was such an embarassment to the administration that successive political leaders of Rome tore it down, sold off the valuable bits, and used the land for public benefit (the Colosseum stands over part of land annexed for this palace).

So, I think dining with Nero in this structure would be a bit like dining in Saddam Hussein's palace. It would be shocking to piss in the gold toilets and stuff but you wouldn't really have the capacity to take it all in because you'd be in abject horror of being burned alive for failing to praise the beauty of the emperor's singing voice.

Some people believe that all that shit in The Book of Revelations about 'the antichrist', '666' etc was code about Nero. Before Nero, the Romans pretty much regarded the Christians as weird hippies, mostly broke foreigners who spoke Latin with heavy accents if at all, but hey, if they wanna talk about love all day and live in communes, who cares. Nero, however, needed someone to blame for all the troubles (mostly caused by him), and so he looked to the Christians: poor, foreign, weird...perfect people to scapegoat. So he's the one who really got Roman persecution of the Christians rolling.

<comment><USER4> I think it's interesting that this occasional architectural trope was invented by a psychotic emperor.

Never mind a meal - it's more fun to imagine the initial design meeting with the engineers:

"An outdoor dining terrace that rotates, oh shining light of the world? Yes, I think we can do that. Oh - and gold toilets too? Yes. Of course."

<comment><USER5> France's most majestic castles are the result of megalomaniac kings and noblemen (Versailles, Vaux le Vicomte, etc).

<comment><USER6> Germany's Neuschwanstein also fits the bill: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuschwanstein_Castle#](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuschwanstein_Castle#)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The Hyatt in downtown SF has a rotating restaurant, but it broke down in 2007 and was never reopened. Here it is.[1]

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJoyN2P-M_M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJoyN2P-M_M)

</comment><comment><USER8> Watching the video, it reminds me of a old word-play:

Upcoming next, Nero burning Rome

Upcoming next, NERO Burning ROM _(=official name of once popular CD burning application)_

</comment><comment><USER9> Who can estimate the cost of building this same structure today?</comment>


EFF's DES Cracker FAQ (1998) - <AUTHOR> https://w2.eff.org/Privacy/Crypto/Crypto_misc/DESCracker/HTML/19980716_eff_des_faq.html <comment><USER2> It's called "Deep Crack" \-- because it proved there was a deep crack in the US Government's export policies.

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

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/Chip300.j...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/Chip300.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder how a 64-bit KASUMI cracker today would compare.

</comment><comment><USER4> change the order of s-boxes and crack. it was my homework.</comment>


My thoughts on the US government shutdown - <AUTHOR> http://jerzygangi.com/my-thoughts-on-the-us-government-shutdown/

<comment><USER2> > No one really knows what Obamacare will do to our economy

Bullshit!

On any measure the USA health care system is one of the worst in the world.

It seems the people in the USA are the only ones that don't seem to understand this.

In fact in some cases the US health system offers health care fare worse than some developing countries (i.e. see Mike Moore's health movie).

The rest of the world understands good health care does not equate to being born with a silver spoon.

So what will Obamacare actually do for your economy?

Nothing!

Obamacare is not designed to destroy the US economy.

But it is designed to take your third world health care system and bring it into the first world.

Some would actually say it is designed to make you health care system more fair.

That means your US health system will take on a more equal, Socialist feel.

And hence the problem for the republicans!</comment>


German developer prohibit the use of his program in nations welcoming refugees - <AUTHOR> http://www.treefinder.de/ <comment><USER2> 1- Germany (and many, many other countries) selled weapons to middle east for decades. West Germany supported also Sadam Hussein in the Halabja chemical attack.

 _Managing director of West German company Karl Kolb GmbH: for people in Germany poison gas is something quite terrible, but this does not worry customers abroad (1989)_

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

2- Some years after, crazy people under the 'random name of the jour' use exactly this stuff to kill innocent people and extend the subsidiated terror. Big surprise.

3- The once named 'most generous country of the world with refugees' is totally sacked. Still sunny in Germany.

4- Germany suddently realizes that german youngs can not be bloodsucked for much more time, they are not having babies, and pensions are in danger. They need refugees to keep the economy working.

5- Politics change its discurse to the mode 'all we need is love (and cheap labourers)'. TV help to spread the new ideas. Survivors fleeing the endless war try to move to Germany (and other countries) of course.

5- Young people in Germany afraid of the future and feeling cheated. Microjobs renamed to nanojobs... but the economy improves eventually.

6- Weapon manufacturers, richer than before, start drawing plans to new wars somewhere with more resources to achieve his new objectives.

I agree that the license should be respected and is his right to do so. I can understand also that the new situation can be frustrating to him, but he is not targeting the real source of his problem probably. I wonder also, what have done those humans to deserve to be shooted, killed, bombed, burned alive with caustic chemicals, raped and looted of all their properties.

</comment><comment><USER3> He's got some interesting views on life in general. I wouldn't read too much into this.

[http://www.treefinder.de/downloads.html](http://www.treefinder.de/downloads.html)

<comment><USER4> And interesting ideas:

[http://www.treefinder.de/ideas.html#5](http://www.treefinder.de/ideas.html#5)

<comment><USER2> Yes, the water pump is interesting but it just will not work for so long at this state. If made of concrete, aquatic organisms will block the lames in a couple of months.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well I guess it's his software, he does what he wants with the license. OpenSource and free information are not requirements on the internet. It's part of everyone's freedom to do what they want with what they create. I find it interesting that the license is used to communicate political ideology tho. It's some new kind of activism (to me at least).

<comment><USER6> "It's some new kind of activism"

Yeah that's an interesting way to describe racism, fascism and the general douchebaggery he seems to exhibit.

<comment><USER7> It's not racism to not want your country flooded with people that don't share the same culture than you and care only of the potential benefits.

The problem is not about skin color, but about culture, religion and economics.

At one point if you put too much water in your wine, it's not wine any more it's water with a strange taste.

<comment><USER6> You described the definition of racism and fascism and yet you say it's not that.

>> At one point if you put too much water in your wine, it's not wine any more it's water with a strange taste.

Ughhh... ok master aryan race. Do you even read what you write?

<comment><USER7> Apparently you don't read what I wright : "culture, religion and economics" line 2.

Do you even understand that blindingly accusing people of being racist / nazi or whatever, you're setting the stage for the real thing to come ?

If reasonable people like me can't express their feelings / opinions and are not represented politically without being compared to the worst of the worst humanity has produced, we just shut-up and vote until we are heard.

The longer it takes to be heard, the more extreme our vote. So if you don't want the far-right in power, you don't transform our country in a giant refugee camp because you feel oh so generous with our money and don't care about our culture.

<comment><USER6> I read it. Unfortunately you haven't even read the definition on wikipedia. Please do.

Also, by reciting slogans, almost ubiquitously used in all neo-nazi groups/parties, isn't helping your argument. A little history lesson wouldn't hurt. I understand you are not one of them, but your opinions have the opposite effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "(1) I want to protest against American imperialism, which I regard as the cause of most of all evil in the world: wars, tyranny, poverty, migration."

Having lived in a REAL totalitarian country in the middle east this always amuses me.

The way to view international geopolitics is purely from the perspective of game theory. If america wasn't as "terrible" we would be ruled by either the Russian or the Chinese. If the British had their way they would have loved to keep their colonies.

More often then not - real life decisions is not trying to get the most perfect outcome but choosing what is the least evil or harmful.

I can understand the reason for protesting. But this person seems completely unaware of modern biology. There is no "european" gene or "american" gene. Neither is there something called as a "syrian" gene. We do know that there is a homosexual gene - which means that homosexuality is natural. While nationality is not.

I would be interested to know his views about the german refugees during the 2WW to places like China/India ( while their european brothers ignored them ) and even the middle east ! Those immigrants even created there own large country last I heard.

The refugee crisis in syria is also a small drop in the bucket compared to the real refugee crisis humanity faces due to climate change. Large parts of London, New York. Since more than 50% of people live near coasts by next century most of us would be refugees anyway.

Are we going to play who is the last man standing or figure out a humane way to deal with this problem ?

</comment><comment><USER9> Its his property, there is nothing wrong with that.

<comment><USER10> You have a curious definition of "wrong". It's not illegal, but that doesn't make it a good idea.

<comment><USER9> Its a question of basic freedom of association. Some people choose not to associate with say, ISIS members. This guy chooses not to associate with people who support policies he doesn't like. Why should those people be able to profit off his labor?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If the disuse of his product is his goal, I can imagine that after such ravings, he'll have little need to pursue it much longer.

</comment><comment><USER12> "Whoever invites or welcomes immigrants to Europe and Germany is my enemy." \- Gangolf Jobb, 2015.

</comment><comment><USER13> I would love to read his book about his view on life, if he ever writes one..

<comment><USER14> It would be a struggle

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > USA has already been excluded from using Treefinder in February 2015.

</comment><comment><USER16> "Whoever invites or welcomes immigrants to Europe and Germany is my enemy."

This guy sound like an uber asshole..hope his shitty software gets burin to be never seen again.</comment>


Ask HN: Sell or Ride It Out? - <AUTHOR> Hi All - I was hoping to get some advice on a situation that I am conflicted with.
Myself and another woman started a company 5-6 years ago. About 2 years in - we couldn't work together as I moved states and working remote was too hard so I walked away from the business. I had vested some shares, but walked away from most. It was acrimonious.
She continued to the run the company and raised a few more rounds of funding. We haven't spoken since, I get minimal updates, just things related to funding rounds. I have no idea on the financial status of the business.
The last round was completed a week ago and I got an email from an existing investor with an offer to buy my shares at the valuation of the round that just closed. It is a decent amount of money, one that would put me in a much better financial position.
I feel in a huge lose lose situation. Either I take the offer and the shares end up being worth more and I will have left money on the table or I don't take the offer and could end up with nothing.
Does anyone have any advice? <comment><USER2> > I feel in a huge lose lose situation. Either I take the offer and the shares > end up being worth more and I will have left money on the table or I don't > take the offer and could end up with nothing.

It's also possible that you could take the money that's being offered today, and the company goes out of business tomorrow. In that case, you'd have won big.

If it were me, I'd be happy to take the sure money rather betting on the future of a startup. The odds of a startup becoming a unicorn are very small. Do you think your ex-partner has unique talents that would guarantee her success? What if a well-funded competitor entered the space?

</comment><comment><USER3> Accept that you don't have any special knowledge of or ability to influence the company's future value. Given that, it makes no more sense to have a lot of your net worth tied up on this company than to put, say, 50% of your net worth in Google stock or some random smallcap stock.

Diversify, not because the company might or might not be worth more in the future, but because participating in that bet - trying to predict the future without any unique information - is dumb. If you currently had cash instead of this stock, you wouldn't invest all of it in one smallcap stock… so don't.

More background on this: [https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-us/magazine/data- diversifica...](https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-us/magazine/data- diversification). This company is wheat.

Feel free to keep some portion of the stock (perhaps 5% of your current position?), as long as it's the amount you'd go out and buy with cash if you could. Don't keep it merely because you currently own it.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you desperately need something out of that money, sell. If you don't desperately need it, don't sell. If you need a small amount of money, sell some of it.</comment>


Basecamp: Until the End of the Internet - <AUTHOR> https://basecamp.com/about/policies/until-the-end-of-the-internet <comment><USER2> As is indefinitely means nothing when clients need updates.

Now if you promised to open source the whole thing when turning off the lights, along with the build tools, etc. That would be meaningful.

This is what I do for clients of my software and SaaS products. I give them the source code, build notes, and all related documentation. The only caveat is they cannot resell or use that software in any manner beyond their own implementation as long as my company is operational.

This is how I sell all my projects. The funny thing is, when every single one of them needs a fix 1-5 years later, they've lost everything I've given them. Fortunately, I archive everything for this reason.

This is like the "Lifetime Warranty" nonsense IMO. Just use your tools now, make sure you can export as necessary and if your core competency is using someone else's tools, make sure you're staying on top of those tools (and opportunities for your own company).</comment>


Fake App Becomes Real  - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/13/jotly-lives-parody-app-goes-live-in-itunes/

<comment><USER2> I wonder if being uberly social about things will eventually lead to the anti- social revolution. Who's in for creating the next big wave, "deface book"?

Actually, that's not a bad idea, Defacebook will let you create mustaches on your friend's profile pictures. ;-)

<comment><USER3> The marketing of apps has switched from "we're making old styles of connecting easier" (i.e. Facebook being a re-hash of existing college facebooks) to "you would never have really wanted to do this in the first place, but now it's easy so you will."

Word of mouth is STILL the best way to spread ideas, which is why platforms such as Twitter and Facebook remain viable. They're capable of being used in all sorts of ways, but their core strength is that they're simply about connecting people and then letting people decide how they want to share information. The more app developers attempt to structure what information people are sharing, the less useful the tool becomes - especially when it's information that was never really shared in the pre-social web age.

<comment> adam-a I agree, this is the aspect which makes this joke app more appealing in some ways than the real ones. The lack of constraints, the ability to rate anything, could be quite empowering for users and allow them to shape the service to suit them. In the same way that Twitter now has @links and #tags as a real feature but originally it was just text. This is paving the cowpaths and seems like a really strong way to build something as hard to nail down as a social network.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> When did this launch? I downloaded it 5 minutes ago, made a quick account and posted a photo of a candle... and since then there have been multiple other users "nearby" that have rated things. I'm impressed how many people are actually using this.

</comment><comment><USER5> Here's the posting on Scott Hansen's blog about the making of the original Jotly video. Quite inspired, although I shudder to think what would happen if Jotly _actually_ proves to be a success. I'm not ready for anti-marketing copycats.

[http://blog.iso50.com/25994/jotly-share-everything-with- ever...](http://blog.iso50.com/25994/jotly-share-everything-with-everyone/)

Incidentally, Scott Hansen is also the guy behind Tycho Music. I just love unexpected connections like that.

<comment><USER6> When I wrote that article, we were joking about making it real. Now we're joking about it becoming successful. Here's to hoping two jokes come true :)

<comment><USER7> Well, it's more fun than it has any right to be. I fear it's the kind of thing that could collapse under its own weight in that if it were to get too big, everyone would try to use it as advertizing for their products, making it boring.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Lesson: a working, usable idea + Techcrunch promo = adoption.

And adoption is all that social services really need to get going, even if they're a joke. Longevity is a totally different matter of course.

</comment><comment><USER9> Example of a rating via web. Thankfully they build a web view for ratings...

Stain on Couch: "D-" <http://www.jotly.co/jot/75025>

<comment><USER10> Jesus Christ. I Zillowed the house in which this stain occurs.

Even in Nashville houses are .5 Mil. WTF.

Where can one live any longer without requiring 200K salary?

<comment><USER11> most places.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I found the live feed of Jots fun to watch: <http://www.jotly.co/jots> (potentially NSFW of course).

Also, I rated my evening at the computer as a B- and the founder commented and suggested that I try to watch some TV. And that's just hilarious.

</comment><comment><USER13> Isn't this pretty much Oink?

<comment><USER4> Isn't that pretty much the point?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Recommend book(s) about monetizing a web site/application? - <AUTHOR>

I have a web application in the early development stage. I have a (humble but ambitious) plan to achieve reasonable amounts of traffic compared to the competitor sites or the sites with similar functionalities.
Let's assume (fast-forward when version 1.0 of the site is online) that the amount of visitors of the site are according to the plan. Since the functionality offered by the site is completely free, how does one monetize the traffic to the site? And more specifically, are there any books that discuss the general methods/mechanisms for making money out of "popular" sites?
I've researched for books about monetizing but I've found mostly books about making a product/site popular (something that I humbly assume that is already a fact).
Thank you for your time. <comment><USER2> If it's a web site/blog that provides content to a specific niche, I'd recommend listening to some of what Gary Vaynerchuck (search on Youtube) has to say. More than anything, he just encourages you to market yourself, cold call, and really be personal with your visitors.

If you're building a web application, there's Don't Just Roll the Dice (<http://businessofsoftware.org/ebook.aspx>), which provides an excellent guide to software pricing. Unless you're serving a specific niche that advertisers will like, add a price to your application. Actually, even if you're serving a specific niche, add a price. If you're looking to sell eyeballs, you'll need a _ton_ of eyeballs before you'll even recover your costs.

Your question was a bit vague, so I can't really give a specific answer. But assuming you are able to get hundreds of thousands of people flooding your site daily, you can slap some ads on it at any time.

</comment><comment><USER3> This guy has one interesting idea - <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY></comment>


Which FPGA programming kit and book? - <AUTHOR>

I am a programmer who wants to learn something different in my free time to have a little bit of fun. I was thinking of trying my hand at FPGA programming. Which board, book and resources etc. would you recommend? Budget is an issue as currently I am not sitting on much cash so cheap options appreciated. <comment><USER3> Don't buy a board yet. Grab a hold of a copy of Xilinx ISE (I think there are student editions out there as well). Learn verilog/vhdl a bit.

If you do not have a digital logic background, first spend a bit of time getting comfortable with that. One of the most common problems I have seen with programmers coding on FPGAs is related to that - even though verilog coding looks like its just software coding, like C with a weird syntax, it really isn't. Everything you write actually allocates additional physical hardware on the FPGA. Every piece of that hardware works all the time - <USER2> "parallel" so to say.

Once you are comfortable with ISE, and have used its built in simulator to make some basic designs, then think about buying one of the $100/$150 Spartan kits from Xilinx. Once again, before you plonk down any money, make sure you really want to do this - FPGAs sound really cool initially, but they are less useful in a computing sense than they initially appear to be. They are very useful as glue logic but thats not why most programmers get initially interested in them. FPGA vendors have been marketing FPGAs as general purpose computing devices, but except for some very specialized cases, you are almost always better off using an Intel CPU for example, or even a GPU.

When buying a board, keep a list of atleast 2-3 significant projects that you would want to implement on it - that way you can select a board with the right IO connections. The particular FPGA device on the board in less important that having the right IO connectors - these are very difficult to add later on if you are not a pro.

HTH.

<comment><USER4> Any opinion on the open source alternatives, e.g. Icarus Verilog?

<comment><USER3> I hav every little (greater than zero) hands-on experience with it. The thing about such options is that it makes everything very theoretical. They do not deal with device "geometries", device specific hacks, Fmax targets etc. They might as well be logic simulators of old, just with a friendlier syntax.

A very large part of coding for FPGAs is to actually make your design work within very tight hardware limits, at a particular frequency, while satisfying routing contrainsts, very limited RAM, limited number of Fast Multipiers, etc.

So while Icarus would be ok when you are learning verilog/vhdl, it doesn't really help you learn any of the practical stuff.

To use a bad-car-analogy, its like learning to drive using a driving simulator on your PC, controlled with cursor keys instead of steering wheel. Yeah, I know. I didn't find that funny either :p

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This $49 development kit from Arrow is a good place to start if you are new to FPGA development but have a programming background: <http://www.altera.com/b/nios-bemicro-evaluation-kit.html> . There is a step- by-step tutorial included that shows you how to program the FPGA and how to set up an embedded processor on the FPGA that you can program in C.</comment>


Nobel Prize winning biochemist says all biofuels are nonsense - <AUTHOR> http://climatesanity.wordpress.com/2012/02/25/nobel-prize-winning-biochemist-says-all-biofuels-are-nonsense/ <comment><USER3> Here's an even harsher assessment of plant-derived ethanols from Dr. Tad Patzek, chairman of the Department of Petroleum & Geosystems Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin:

 _Basically, [corn] ethanol is obtained from burning methane, coal, diesel fuel, gasoline, corn kernels, soil and environment. We destroy perhaps as many as 7 units of free energy in the environment and human economy to produce 1 unit of free energy as corn ethanol, and make a few clueless environmentalists happier and a few super rich corporations richer. The story is even worse for switchgrass ethanol._

(As quoted from <http://www.theoildrum.com/node/9619> )

<comment><USER4> He's talking about corn. Generalizing this to "plant-derived ethanols" is a stretch

But yes, Corn ethanol is not good for a series of reasons. Other plant based ethanols may not suffer from the same problems.

Ok, I read the article, typical "only oil is good" atitude.

And by the way: efficiency with respect to sunlight _doesn't matter_ because sunlight is free. (enough) free * anything -> free (It matters in respect to other processes)

<comment><USER5> Sunlight is not free. In order to collect it you must use some land, and that incurs the opportunity cost of not doing something else with that land, such as growing plants for food.

<comment><USER6> That's not what he means. A solar energy harvester with 0.1% efficiency might still be worth it if the costs are low, it doesn't matter that you "wasted" the other 99.9% since it's unlimited.

<comment><USER7> It does matter when it comes to CO2 fixation though... if you only get 0.1% efficiency in fixing CO2 with biofuel production, but would get 1% with normal forestation, then there is a quantifiable difference.

<comment><USER4> But suddenly when it's the oil industry that uses vasts swathes of forest and arable land then it's ok and it's free [http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/campaigns/Energy/tarsand...](http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/campaigns/Energy/tarsands/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> He really, really misses the point: what matters most is economics, not technical metrics in vacuo.

 _"… these values even do not take into account that more than 50% of the energy stored in the biofuel had to be invested in order to obtain the biomass (for producing fertilizers and pesticides, for ploughing the fields, for transport) and the chemical conversion into the respective biofuel." [...] "The production and use of biofuels therefore is not CO2-neutral. In particular, the energy input is very large for the production of bioethanol from wheat or maize, and some scientists doubt that there is a net gain of energy. Certainly the reduction of CO2 release is marginal."_

In real world economics, biofuels are not energy; they are high-density liquid transport fuels. The economics make it clear: e.g., gasoline costs ten times as much as coal, per unit energy. You're paying for the chemistry, not the joules.

It matters _very litte_ in real life, that much of the energy (cheap) is wasted; that much of the energy comes from (cheap, external) sources. If biofuels are viable, they can be seen as a conversion of energy to hydrocarbons: of (comparatively) cheap electricity and methane/hydrogen to expensive liquid fuel. Not as a primary energy source. It's the carbon that's valuable.

Farming machinery can be electric powered. Nitrogen fertilizer can be created from nuclear- or solar- powered hydrogen. And voilà, it is carbon-neutral. Nuclear electricity, solar electricity, hydrogen -- these are only marginally viable fuels (c.f. the world market for EV's; opinions may differ). Converting them to liquid hydrocarbons is a very useful thing.

<comment><USER9> I'm having trouble following your point. He says the "input is very large" and you're arguing that the input doesn't have to be large?

<comment><USER8> More than one thread:

* He says the energy input is very large. I say it's reasonable for it to be so, because it's converting a cheap form of energy into a valuable one

* He says it is CO2-intensive because of the large energy inputs. I say this is just a reflection of the whole energy economy being CO2-intensive; that in principle the inputs can be CO2-free, and so biofuels can be CO2-neutral. (And they _unique_ in this aspect; there is no other way to make CO2-neutral hydrocarbons, short of chemically scrubbing CO2 from the atmosphere.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Headline is misleading. The important, specific point is in the conclusion:

        ...we should not grow plants for biofuel production.

Using biofuels from what would otherwise be waste (decomposing waste biomass, used fry oil) is still efficient and valuable.

Reading between the lines, if we want to run cars on solar power, we should do it with electrics and solar cells, not photosynthesis.

<comment><USER11> This sounds quite reasonable. If left to their own devices, plants don't optimize for energy content, they optimize for spreading.

However, we humans already managed to genetically modify them (using simple selection of seeds over the millenia) to optimize plants for nutritional content instead.

It would be interesting to know to what extent human selection and other forms of genetic manipulation could improve the efficiency of photosynthesis in plants to make them viable for biofuels.

After all, large scale agriculture is still much simpler to pull off than the kind of industrial process needed to build solar cells on a large scale.

<comment><USER12> I seem to recall that people were working on genetically engineered algae that would create hydrocarbons directly.

<comment><USER13> He trashes those too.

<comment><USER14> The article doesn't quote much on algae; it just dismisses them. In fact, there is no comparison of the actual economies involved; its just a sunlight- efficiency argument which is interesting but far from conclusive.

Solar cells cost something to build - ignored in the article. Using all sorts of minerals and industrial processes, very hard to trace thru our entire economy to get an 'energy budget' and thus a payback. So its easy to call them more efficient, if you don't actually calculate their cost.

Plants 'build' themselves - essentially nanotechnology for free. They can be built over and over again, or the land can be repurposed for food or grazing or parks or whatever. Solar cell farms are heavy infrastructure investments that have to be manufactured, hauled into place, installed, maintained, replaced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> He is absolutely correct that biofuels are not efficient use of land. But the market would quickly sort that out if it were not for biofuel subsidies. That is what needs to be stopped.

<comment><USER16> market can't solve the current CO2 problem - it assumes the price of emissions is zero, when it clearly isn't. belief that it'll fix biofuels is naive at best. carbon and other products of burning fuel need to be taxed to have a price; musk also talks about it.

<comment><USER17> Seams to me that the market it the only way we can slow global warning down. Its companys like Tesla that make a diffrence not some goverment that tries to regulate existing stuff.

The have neither the insentive nor the knowlage to do so.

Electric cars, solar cells are the things that will change the world, not goverment regulation.

<comment><USER16> engine type doesn't matter much, what matters is energy storage for use in that engine. batteries aren't even in the same order of magnitude of both energy density (energy per liter) and specific energy (energy per kg) compared to liquid hydrocarbon fuel and that's the problem that needs solving. tesla currently gets away with it by placing batteries in clever ways, but it's still inferior to plain old gas in multiple areas (recharge speed, maximum range, mass, etc.)

what's that got to do with the market? without pricing gas correctly, electric will always be inferior. technology can only help so much - it's a question of fundamental physics of chemical bonds.

<comment><USER17> Electirc cars are better in some respects. Nonreusable energy will get more expensive while reusable energy will get better.

The market will figure out if electirc cars are a workable, maybe it want work. Maybe we should have hydrogen cars or maybe something else. Maybe we just have to live with it, use all the oil and only then we will stop. Sure you can add a carbon tax or something but that will at most drag things out (or maybe make the adoption of diffrent cars faster).

Fundamentally the way we will live and how we will produce energy will be guided by markets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "nonsense" feels like an understatement. It competes with our food sources and even more so with ecological diversity. It should be one of those factors that assure that food prices rise to the sky with fuel prices and as they both go up, nature will fold. Feel free to criticise my ignorance of economics. I'm probably mostly wrong.

<comment><USER16> common sense didn't fail you here, you're basically describing what happened last couple of years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Elon Musk, in the Q&A section of his recent talk at Oxford (download here: <http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/videos/view/211>) also said he believes all biofuels are useless.

His point was that putting energy into biofuels is an inefficient way to use the suns energy, and then getting it out is also inefficient. He compared the efficiency to solar.

<comment><USER20> Not just "an inefficient way". In the best case, biofuels are 2 orders of magnitude less efficient than solar. That said we could theoretically produce around our current energy needs with a perfect biofuel. (Existing biofuels are much, much worse than this theoretical fuel.) We'd just need to convert all land we currently use for agriculture to that purpose. (And then what would we eat?)

If his numbers are correct - and I see no reason to doubt it - biofuels have to be a dead end.

<comment><USER17> The thing is that you can produce energy at one place and then move it around the world cheaply.

This does not work with solar. You can produce it but storing and disributing is much, much harder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't know a single thing about biochemistry or biofuels, but in reading this I can't help but be reminded of Arthur C. Clarke's first law of prediction:

> When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is > possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is > impossible, he is very probably wrong.

<comment><USER22> Hear Hear. Haven't heard that one before but it probably has quite some truth to it. Sort of like the old: "Science advances one funeral at a time" - <USER2> Planck.

Anyways. His criticisms are all good ones, and yet I can't help but feel like he's missing the big picture- that or he thinks we are just doomed.

In the short to medium term future (5-25years) biofuels are probably not the answer they've been hyped to be. Yet there are still some places where they will still work well, such as any thing that isn't in contact with the grid. These biofuels will be competing with oil that must be drilled through kilometers of ocean and earth, or from injecting massive amounts of steam into the ground... talk about inefficient.

Further, biofuels do not necessarily need to use arable land or potable water.

In particular I'd like to know specifics about reports of "higher efficiency" than should be possible. I wonder if these reports aren't based on efficiency as calculated from creating biomass. One thing that immediately comes to mind, is that perhaps simple circulation and dispersal of light in water can account for increased "surface area" that makes up for the "max efficiency at 20% sunlight" statement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> In the end, aren't coal and oil biofuel? Just fuels that take millions of years to make. That seems to be proof by counterexample that not <i>all</i> biofuels are useless. But at doublerebel says, the headline should really be "we should not grow plants for biofuel production". Which is not the same thing at all.

<comment><USER24> Taken to the extreme, yes. In practicality, the term is reserved for the kind that can be made in quite a bit less than millions of years.

Compare "natural materials" and "natural ingredients". In the end, it's all made from naturally occurring atoms, right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I like how everyone comes into this debate with a different concept of what bio-fuels "do."

If you think about supplying the worlds energy needs using bio-fuel it is a non-starter, and that is basically what the editorial says. Converting incident sunlight into useful energy through existing photo synthesis processes is inefficient and does a great harm in terms of food production.

If you think of it as a way of converting sunlight into something that pre- existing infrastructure can use (fuels) that can be justified on the expense of swapping out the existing infrastructure.

Big picture -> move everything to electricity and gas, since those two forms of energy are pretty readily convertible into the other forms we need.

Intermediate points -> you need a petroleum fuel cycle while you're converting everything else.

</comment><comment><USER26> There are different types of biofuel research. He seems to ignore the whole sector that is bioengineering the plants to solve these problems. One example that comes to mind (and I can't find a link to on my phone) involves changing the color of the leaf to absorb more light.

[http://biomassmagazine.com/articles/7341/cutting-edge- bioene...](http://biomassmagazine.com/articles/7341/cutting-edge-bioenergy- projects-earn-arpa-e-funding)

</comment><comment><USER27> Here's a direct link to Michel's article that the blog post pulls quotes from.

[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.201200218/pd...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.201200218/pdf)

<comment><USER13> This is a html version: [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.201200218/fu...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.201200218/full)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> We're actually _burning_ edible plants. Isn't it obvious?

<comment><USER29> No. Not all ethanol is made from corn or wheat - for instance, in Brazil it's made from the rejects of sugar cane, the other half goes for sugar.

The real problem is that you compete with food crops and water for fertile land, or destroy native forests.

<comment><USER14> "Competing with food crops" is a curious notion. When did we run out of space for food crops? Not on this planet.

Corn grown in Iowa could feed 2 United States. So we make all sorts of other things out of it, or the govt pays folks (me for instance) to NOT grow corn and keep the price up.

At this point in history, with our current distribution system, biofuels can make money. In the future they will become more efficient, perhaps orders of magnitude more in ways we haven't thought of yet (oil-drop lenses on the leaves; kelp that fills its pods directly with waxy carbohydrate films; seeds that can be eaten OR converted to fuel etc).

The dumb thing would be to stop innovating now, because of FUD about imaginary issues.

<comment><USER29> It competes with food crops for _fertile land_. That means: it pushes food production to places with worse water, farther from consumption centers, increasing waste and costs related to transport.

Maybe in the US the situation is not clear because you have vast plains so it doesn't matter if you cover the entire surface with corn, but here in Brazil, my state vanished with an entire forest just for sugar cane and soy crops. Google "Atlantic Forest".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Biofuels are of course nonsense from energy efficiency standpoint. Biogas is produced for a different purpose: it results in storable energy, which is theoretically supposed to balance energy produced by intermittent sources. Overally, biofuels are not supposed to be energy-efficient or net energy positive. If we can one day produce oil from nothing spending 2x the energy the resulting oil will contain it will be a great achievement, even a holy grail of all renewable energy work: storable, high density renewable energy good for peak loads and for transport (worst case: airplanes).

<comment><USER31> My pet theory is the reason they are so popular is "biofuels" has the word "bio" in it, which excites the sorts of greenies that don't examine things too closely.

Supporting evidence: aggressive marketing of "probiotic" supplements

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Plant based biofuels are only problematic if you imagine replacing all transportation energy needs with them. Cut that out! Develop all technologies and let the market decide. I predict that there will be specialist niche applications for biofuels, and that most of transportation will be electric. For a cheap, robust means of storing lots of energy, it's really hard to compete with a metal tank of hydrocarbon fuel, but this doesn't doom us to run everything this way.

</comment><comment><USER14> Headline: oil industry experts slam alternative energy.

Alternatives have only just begun being explored. Innovation in this area are very likely to surprise that chemist. E.g. steam from room-temperature water posted on HN today: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4824205>

Bioengineered plants may work any way we can imagine, not just the way an oil- industry chemist imagines.

</comment><comment><USER33> Irrelevant. If if a renewable source is 10x less efficient than non-renewable sources, the key here is NON-RENEWABLE. We've got to take the pressure off of petroleum based fuels until such time as we come up with some alternative system - hydrogen, high-capacity battery storage, etc.

PS. Adding Nobel Prize to someone's argument doesn't have the gravitas as perhaps it once had. I think Linus Pauling and vitamin C diminished that.

</comment><comment><USER34> Way to link to a Climate Change denial blog, HN.

</comment><comment><USER35> Elon Musk addresses this around 1hr 17min here <http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/videos/view/211>

</comment><comment><USER36> Damn you math! PV works just fine. Too bad we don't have a high density mobile energy storage method to compare to liquid oil. When that happens, sub power will rule all.

</comment><comment><USER37> Biofuels are also being produced from waste: <http://www.st1.eu/index.php?id=2876>

</comment><comment><USER38> I thought we knew this already.

</comment><comment><USER39> Damn, better jettison my wood burning stove.</comment>


Keep Your Startup Virtual - <AUTHOR> http://davidcancel.com/keep-your-startup-virtual/ <comment><USER2> Even in articles like this, there's an assumption that eventually you'll have to get office space. But companies like Automattic and 37signals make me wonder. Especially if you had a strong focus in hiring and developing processes to facilitate virtual teams, could you go indefinitely without having a headquarters?

<comment><USER3> I didn't take that from this article. The key question was : "Is getting an office space going to help grow my business?". Sure seems like David's saying that if you never answer a firm yes, you never need one.

<comment><USER2> _At some point we know that we'll have to get an office space. You usually reach that point when you need to hire outside your personal network or grow beyond a certain size, the exact size depending on your situation. When it's time to move it out of your house or the coffee shop, you will know. It's time to move out only when the the answer to the question "Is getting an office space going to help grow my business?" is a firm, "Yes."_

To me, that reads as an assumption that, at some point, you'll have to get an office. But what I want to know is: can you build a virtual Fortune 500 company?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> 100% agreed. I've participated with a startup/think tank recently (<http://webecologyproject.org>) and while we could have had offices- we didn't. It worked so much better for the most part.

Our downside to this was twofold however:

1) We choose our team poorly & it was too big. That isn't to say that these aren't all simply wonderful people, but for making a highly efficient machine- it was a hodge podge of people with various levels of interest, skills, experience and commitment. We crept up to 10-12 people quickly and since it wasn't a formalized business structure at first this seemed ok. We were however all in the same geographic location (Cambridge).

2) We had too many meetings, which people stopped attending and become ineffective. These became a time sink. People would defer conversation to the meetings instead of our internal email list (which for some conversations is the right thing to do), but then these became lengthy 4-5 hour meetings that stopped getting things done. Our coding slowed. Decisions stopped being made, interest was lost slowly.

These are points very specific to our group and I totally agree on holding off on office space until you MUST have it. Keeping costs down and excellent workflow up initially are a must. Just don't try it with 10 people and don't kill people with mandatory meetings. Use IRC or some other tool religiously.

If anything, look into a coworking space like Betahouse (<http://betahouse.org>) or New Work City.

</comment><comment><USER5> I agree with the point that you don't need office space early on. The key is being in constant contact with the other team members. Some developers love to chat/IM on skype all day long from home. It depends on your team dynamics.

But once in a while, you need serious face-to-face brainstorming. That's where your coffee shop probably saves you. No one has designed a tool yet that allows several people to really have a _brainstorming_ session remotely (hint for a future YC startup: if you have a solution to this problem, go for it).

</comment><comment><USER6> Completely agree with the premise David. I'm running CheapToday.com virtually. We have 7 people working remotely w/ Board Members in London but with LOTS of interpersonal collaboration & communication. Video conferencing has helped quite a bit. Essentially, money goes to essential needs - people & customers/marketing. Very liberating & cost efficient. Highly recommended approach.

</comment><comment><USER7> Your blog's design is extremely familiar. It might be wise to differentiate it a bit more.

<comment><USER7> Could someone explain why this was downvoted?</comment></comment>


A sneak peek at Elixir 1.10 - <AUTHOR> http://devonestes.com/sneak-peek-at-elixir-1-10 <comment><USER2> I love that the changes are getting boring. I can't really think of much more I'd like to see in the standard libraries.

Looking forward to a single Logger!</comment>


Who propagates fake news? - <AUTHOR> http://www.ronpaullibertyreport.com/archives/revealed-the-real-fake-news-list <comment><USER2> Why an image? There is no cross-reference to the source, isn't this way how fake news start to propagate? The link referred as being "sourced" on that page goes to [https://www.wikileaks.org/](https://www.wikileaks.org/). That doesn't help much.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the point</comment></comment>


The real world is mutable – consequences for system design - <AUTHOR> https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/tech/RealWorldIsMutable <comment><USER2> No, it isn't.

> _The reality of life is that the real world is not immutable. I mean that at > two levels. The first is that sometimes people make mistakes and publish > things that they very strongly wish and need to change or retract. > Pretending that they do not is ignoring reality. Beyond that, things in the > real world are almost always mutable and removable because lawyers can show > up on your doorstep with a court order to make them so_

That's not about what the world is. That's what some people think it should be, and systems (e.g. legal systems) have been created on top of real world to feature this mutability.

Real world is immutable with respect to time. What happened, happened; you can't change it without a time machine. You can't just unpublish something, you have to actively work to destroy all practically accesible traces of it (and fight the people with interest in preserving these traces).

So a better, more accurate way of phrasing GP's point would be: _systems designed by humans_ are mutable _by design_. Physical reality is immutable with respect to time and causality.

<comment><USER3> > Real world is immutable with respect to time. What happened, happened; you > can't change it without a time machine. You can't just unpublish something, > you have to actively work to destroy all practically accesible traces of it > (and fight the people with interest in preserving these traces).

That definition doesn't make any sense. Mutability necessarily requires time to drive a change - no time passing, no mutation. Also, you are claiming that immutability is equivalent to irreversibility and the arrow of time, which I also think is a bit wonky.

<comment><USER2> > _Mutability necessarily requires time to drive a change - no time passing, > no mutation._

The time that's required for mutability is the real time, the time outside of the system considered. You can mutate events recorded within a system. You can't unhappen events themselves.

> _Also, you are claiming that immutability is equivalent to irreversibility > and the arrow of time, which I also think is a bit wonky._

Actually, immutability is even more evident without the arrow of time; if world(t+1) = f(world(t)), then world(t) = f^-1(world(t+1)); f and f^-1 are themselves immutable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't think that the exciting part about immutability in large scale distributed systems is immutability itself, but rather referential integrity-- particularly from names to arbitrary data (usually seen as cryptographic hashes that function as pointers).

If that reference is mutable then there needs be some authority that handles which names resolve to which data at which times. This makes it difficult to determine at time t if the bits you received at time t-1 were the right ones for some name.

In immutable designs the complexity of deciding "which version?" Is moved up in the stack (where the answer is typically mutable). In many cases, pushing this complexity out to the user is indeed the right thing to do.

Sure, the ability to resist a government's desire for censorship _might_ be a design goal, but there are other reasons to prefer immutability.

<comment><USER5> I can only agree,

E.g. IPFS can be seen as a mostly immutable distributed system (due to content hash based addressing). But it can fully comply with thinks like copy right or privacy related take down notices. Mainly because it only guarantees immutability of existing data, but not that the data will stay existing. (At the same time it provides a re-sharing framework which can make it really hard for lawmakers to effectively enforce such polices if people want thinks to stay online).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I prefer to adopt Daniel Dennett's model of 'useful fictions' when trying to talk about what the world 'is'. The question for developers isn't if the world is immutable or mutable, it's if mutability or immutability are _useful concepts_.

To ask if the world is mutable is like asking if money is real or if the colour red is real. Does it make more sense to talk about RGB values or colours? The only reasonable answer is 'it depends'.

It depends on what aspect or properties one is interested in and what lens is best suited to solve problems or which one personally finds most insightful. The world can be modelled as an immutable sequence of state transitions or as a place full of stateful objects, there isn't any clear answer and programmers shouldn't be too literal about what they perceive the problem to look like but rather think about what toolbox is most useful.

<comment><USER7> I agree with that and therefore think immutable is not a useful abstraction as it does not approximate how things appear to be in what we perceive as real.

<comment><USER6> There are many domains where immutability makes intuitive sense. Accounting and bookkeeping for example, which is a huge domain within software development. A Git history is essentially a model of the world as a history of immutable states, and what we care about is the transition from one state to the next and its difference, as well as an accurate representation of each past state. But one name or ID is only ever associated with one state.

It would be really horrible practise if accountants or version control systems would mutate state and overwrite history. Another domain where immutability is useful for this reason is concurrency, where it avoids a lot of conflict.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Or is it, because physics!

you can model mutation on top of values and in fact immutable systems do this

<comment><USER9> The world (space-time state) is immutable. World space state is a pure function of time. If you call World(time) you always get the same answer.

<comment><USER10> Except that there is no such thing as World(time). We don't live in a Newtonian world, we live in a relativistic universe. Time doesn't elapse at the same rate in every location, it depends on gravity and the speed you're moving at. I'd argue that since time is a local phenomena, the mutable universe interpretation makes a lot more sense.

<comment><USER11> Just because the universe is relativistic doesn't mean that we can't model it. Mathematics is inherently immutable --- this is why describing programming language semantics requires the introduction of something "extra" (a state monad, hiding the mutability inside the operational / denotational semantics, whatever).

We _do_ have a mathematical model of the universe --- the differential equations that govern space-time evolution describe the universe in a pure fashion: universe(t+1) = f(universe(t)).

<comment><USER12> No, you're missing the point. There is no such thing as world(time), but there is world(location, time). If you don't respect that, you'll wind up with unsustainable system designs like using atomic clocks to guarantee consistency.

<comment><USER13> I think the problem here is the definition of "time".

You are talking about a relativistic time and they are talking about an absolute global time.

I don't know if it makes sense in some kind of way to talk about something abstract as a global time in any way.

If the global absolute time goes on for 1 second, some peoples relativistic time went on more or less than a second. Can we measure this abstract concept of time? Even if it made some kind of philosophical sense?

<comment><USER12> Relativistic time is a real thing in distributed systems, even without worrying about einsteinian relativity; the premise of physics relativity is that perfect synchronization is impossible and that is highly analogous to the impossibility to perfectly synchronize nodes in a distributed system.

<comment><USER14> There is a nice analogy between causal relations in special relativity and in asynchronous distributed systems, but it is no more than an analogy. Synchronized clocks are a physically feasible possibility in every realistic distributed system I've seen. The difficulties are merely of a technical nature.

<comment><USER12> Sure, you can get sufficiently close, and at what cost in terms of developer effort and physical infrastructure? Not everyone is Google, and in most cases if you explicitly have code that doesn't assume synchronicity you will avoid footguns that inexperienced devs will make.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > The first is that sometimes people make mistakes and publish things that > they very strongly wish and need to change or retract. Pretending that they > do not is ignoring reality.

Really? I'd say regardless what their wishes might be, pretending that they can is ignoring reality (at least in some cases). You change or retract things as you do in accounting - by issuing amendments. Not by pretending you never published something, but by updating what you published (i.e. publishing a new version).

> Beyond that, things in the real world are almost always mutable and > removable because lawyers can show up on your doorstep with a court order to > make them so, [...] If the court says 'stop serving that', you had better do > so.

How does that have anything to do with immutability? Immutability is not "The president is Obama", it is "At 01 Feb 2020 my belief was that at 01 Feb 2016 the president was Obama". You can trivially say that "At 01 Feb 2020 my belief was that at 01 Feb 2020 the president was Trump" without contradicting the previous statement. You can even forget what your belief was at 01 Feb 2020. And if the ministry of truth knocks on the door, you might end up to believe, at 01 Feb 2025, that at 01 Feb 2016 the president was Trump. This way, you satisfy the ministry's desires, without violating immutability in any way.

<comment><USER16> That's an idealistic argument. Sometimes you just need to delete things and there's no negotiation possible.

Whether that makes sense to you or not as an engineer or scientist doesn't matter much. There are tons of things that humans want that "don't make sense" but that you need to conform to regardless. A great example of this is typically the law.

<comment><USER15> "Immutable" does not preclude deletion, that's what I'm saying. Indeed, to delete something can simply mean to publish a new version with no content. If there's no reference to the old version, it will get 'garbage-collected'/ 'forgotten' by the system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This video talks about good programming practice regarding immutability and the mutable world:

[https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/boundaries](https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/boundaries)

</comment><comment><USER17> provocative blanket statements like "the real world is immutable" (or otherwise) aren't correct, nor healthy.

Some problems are more easily dealt with using tools like immutability, or mutation for that matter.

as with all things in software - it depends.

</comment><comment><USER5> Looking at immutability wrt. immutable data in the database/at rest then yes that a problem. Same if you build a system which can't be updated.

I just don't see how many other cases of immutability have anything to do with it (like general purpose immutable data structures, statically fixed data structures, or static linking). I mean you can always change your code to comply with changes, and I would be very irritated if people believe they can put put code out into the world and never need to update it (but _not_ modify it, updating means replacing it with a mostly similar new system while carrying over all data).

Through as a side not: GDPR deletion request basically have the effect that any event sourcing system which doesn't has (perma-) deletion features is unlawful to use (if you process any personal data). It also means that soft deletion is not always lawful wrt. personal data.

Now for some event sourcing systems that is quite a problem. Some might cope with it through snapshots which "compact" the state and as such can have perma deletion effects if the events before the snapshot are deleted, but that only works if you can do so every week or so or you will not be able to keep with deadlines. Given that some systems want to keep logs longer than that this _is_ a problem which can lead to major additional cost if you ran into it.

<comment><USER18> Couple of techniques;

Per-record keys where the key can be deleted (this is a hard delete as your system can no longer access the data).

Keep "sensitive" info out of messages (credit card stuff, PII, secrets?, whatever), events have pointers to a store just for this. All code that accesses sensitive data has to have guards in case the lookup fails.

Deletion is really interesting and forces its way into your domain. For example you might be in a position where you have to delete all info about someone _except_ their payments because AML forces you to keep those for X years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Interesting enough several quantum interpretations assume an immutable reality

</comment><comment><USER20> I've written a lot of software. Using both mutable patterns and immutable patterns.

I keep coming back to the immutable MODEL of things because it mostly works and it is easier to get right and maintain.

I think the author misses the point of MODELLING your systems as immutable

</comment><comment><USER21> A philosopher would say 'we don't know yet'.

In the world we live in, based on the human accomplishments so far in history, we can say the world i immutable. But over time, we can't be certain.</comment>


Meta, the AR Startup That Had Its Assets Sold to a Mystery Buyer - <AUTHOR> https://variety.com/2019/digital/features/meta-ar-startup-asset-sale-1203111585/ <comment><USER2> I give credit to Meta for having made so much progress as an "indie" player in AR hardware. They shipped a device comparable to Hololens or Magic Leap with a fraction of the budget.

That said, the main narrative around their shutting down (blaming the US-China trade war for spooking their Chinese investors) seems a little too convenient. The real problem with the Meta, as the founder alludes to at the end, is that it had no clear use case or killer app. If they had a successful consumer device, or even a dev kit that looked like it had a chance to one day be that device, I suspect the trade war would be a non issue.

For any other ambitious startups dreaming of AR glory, the CEO's advice here is good. Find killer app first, _then_ raise big money to ship hardware. Not the other way around.

Note that HoloLens and Magic Leap have the same problem. But they can get away with failing for a lot longer due to massive amounts of funding.

I was at CES this year and saw a few upstarts with promising tech. I predict something truly groundbreaking will launch by next year CES.</comment>


Show HN: Cue, project management for event organizers - <AUTHOR> http://cueapp.com/ I'm building a web app for people who put on events. I'm looking for event planners, meetup organizers, and conference builders to talk to. Please sign up to beta test if you're interested, and email me if you'd be willing to chat for 20 minutes at corey at cueapp dot com. Thanks! <comment><USER2> Looks interesting - I organize events from time to time and I used to be the Co-Chair for a national undergraduate conference in Canada. Would definitely love to try this out and maybe recommend it to the current conference Co- Chairs if it would fit the way we operate!

Would love to talk shop about how you handle outbound notification emails though, can I contact you?</comment>


Ask HN: Forums similar to HN, but for programmers exlusively? - <AUTHOR> I'd like to collect recommendations for forums similar to HN in terms of moderation, quality of topics, etc. but focused on programming.<p>(I realize HN is in part for programmers, but at the risk of sounding like a curmudgeon, HN isn't exclusively for hackers. Rather, much of its content these days is of interest to entrepreneurs, marketers, etc. In other words, I'm looking for somewhere which has just programming discussion, not marketing tips, valley gossip, and amateur philosophy etc.) <comment><USER2> There's a tool called HelloBox

[http://www.hellobox.co](http://www.hellobox.co)

Which lets you create your very own HN-like community. Check it out, you can always start one yourself!</comment>


The Birth Of Silicon Valley (timeline) - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2012/03/26/149404846/the-birth-of-silicon-valley

<comment><USER2> They anchored the start of Silicon Valley with Hewlett Packard. I think that Federal Telegraph 1909 founding is a much better starting point, See Timothy J. Sturgeon's "How Silicon Valley Came to Be" where he notes:

The fact that the San Francisco Bay Area's electronics industry began close to the turn of the Twentieth Century should lay to rest the notion that industrialization and urbanization on the scale of Silicon Valley can be quickly induced in other areas. Silicon Valley is nearly 100 years old. It grew out of a historically and geographically specific context that cannot be recreated. The lesson for planners and economic developers is to focus on long-term, not short-term developmental trajectories. Silicon Valley was the fastest growing region in the United States during the late 1970s and early 1980s; but that growth came out of a place, not a technology. Silicon Valley's development is intimately entwined with the long history of industrialization and innovation in the larger San Francisco Bay Area.

See <http://web.mit.edu/ipc/publications/pdf/00-014.pdf>

<comment><USER3> Thanks for that insight about the long term nature of Silicon Valley's development. And thanks for the tip about Federal Telegraph. I must confess I hadn't heard of them before - that's a fascinating bit of history, and I will read more about them.

I was curious to know where they were located and found the answer on this great page of photos, so I thought I'd share it:

<http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/svtour.html>

<comment><USER2> There is actually a CA Historical marker for the site from <http://ohp.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=21522>

NO. 836 PIONEER ELECTRONICS RESEARCH LABORATORY – This is the original site of the laboratory and factory of Federal Telegraph Company, founded in 1909 by Cyril F. Elwell. Here, Dr. Lee de Forest, inventor of the three-element radio vacuum tube, devised the first vacuum tube amplifier and oscillator in 1911-13. Worldwide developments based on this research led to modern radio communication, television, and the electronics age. Location: In sidewalk, SE corner of Channing Ave and Emerson St, Palo Alto

I blogged about this in [http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2008/11/05/steve-blank- on-secre...](http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2008/11/05/steve-blank-on-secret- history-of-silicon-valley-at-chm-nov-20/) because Blank also anchored the start with HP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> From Varian Associates, the Varians were originally Irish, Ginzton was originally Ukrainian.

Shockley was British.

Of the Traitorous Eight, Grinich was Croatian, Hoerni was Swiss, and Kleiner (yes, that Kleiner) was Austrian.

Good thing they got visas.

<comment><USER5> Agree with the general sentiment, but the Varians were American-born (upstate New York), so no visas needed. Their parents were indeed Irish immigrants, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> When I first moved here my favorite introduction to the valleys history was Steve Blanks The Secret History of Silicon Valley.

It's well worth the hour <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo>

<comment><USER7> Seconded. Also interesting is a small book "Geek Silicon Valley" by Ashlee Vance which lists various places of interest and their role in Silicon Valley history. It even includes places like notable restaurants.

[http://www.amazon.com/Geek-Silicon-Valley-Sunnyvale- Francisc...](http://www.amazon.com/Geek-Silicon-Valley-Sunnyvale- Francisco/dp/0762742399)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> They should include Ampex, a company founded 1944 to reverse engineer German recording technology.

<comment><USER3> Ampex was also the home of an LSD-fueled research lab in the late 50s:

<https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ampex+lsd>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have always wondered when the cycle became self-fulfilling. From the timeline, it seems the turning point might have been late 50s and early 60s when you had the venture capital firms start to take hold with interest in small tech companies.

<comment><AUTHOR> As far as I read it looks like 1971 is the turning point, with the creation of the first Intel microprocessor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> How is Silicon Valley difference from the startup scene in, say, Austin or Boston?</comment>


Group Lasso Regularization - <AUTHOR> https://leimao.github.io/blog/Group-Lasso/ <comment><USER2> In Bayesian terms, ridge regression is equivalent to putting a Gaussian prior on the weights, which gets wider the weaker the penalty term.

The lasso is the same, but with a Laplace distribution as the prior.

The "elastic net", which combines the l1 and l2 penalties, even has a Bayesian interpretation, with a fairly weird prior [1, 2].

Anyone know if there's an equivalent Bayesian interpretation of group lasso? Maybe it's just a Gaussian prior but with block-wise correlation between the variables?

[1]: [https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/283238/is- there-a-...](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/283238/is-there-a- bayesian-interpretation-of-linear-regression-with-simultaneous-l1-and)

[2]: [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1198/jasa.2011.tm0924...](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1198/jasa.2011.tm09241)

<comment><USER3> From a Bayesian perspective, it's not entirely accurate to say that there is the same relationship between ridge/Gaussian-prior and lasso/Laplacian-prior. In the first case, ridge regression yields a "proper" Bayesian estimator (e.g., mean of the posterior); the latter is only the MAP estimator, which is not really recommended from a purely Bayesian perspective. Ridge is also a MAP estimator, but that's in addition to the stronger condition of minimizing the Bayes risk.

There is a way to compute a "true" Bayesian Lasso, but it doesn't yield a sparse model [0].

[0] [http://archived.stat.ufl.edu/casella/Papers/Lasso.pdf](http://archived.stat.ufl.edu/casella/Papers/Lasso.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not very commonly discussed, but great topic to be aware of. One particularly powerful use of this is in learning models with interaction terms: more powerful than a linear model but still interpretable, [1].

[1] R package [https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/glinternet/index.htm...](https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/glinternet/index.html) (paper linked therein)

</comment><comment><USER5> Nice post.

There's also at least one CrossValidated question on this topic, with good answers attached. For example [https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/214325/36229](https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/214325/36229)

</comment><comment><USER6> Group Lasso is one of those things I'm really surprised not to see used more often. Great post.

<comment><USER7> Why is that? The article doesn't say much about the benefits of using this type of regularization.

<comment><USER6> Say you want to represent a categorical feature that has many levels. You're likely to one-hot encode it. This can lead to a lack of parity between how sparsely you treat your continuous features versus your categorical ones, where continuous features can't be partially included, but one-hot-encoded categoricals can. Sometimes you want to be sparse on your original variables, rather than sparse on dimensions of their encoding. It's a good inductive bias that if, for example, profession is relevant to your model, then all professions are relevant (and you still get to ridge penalize the individual professions). Nice for interpretability too.</comment></comment></comment>


Republicans are reportedly using a self-destructing message app to avoid leaks - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/9/14561786/confide-messaging-republican-gop-trump-administration-leaks <comment><USER2> So the very same people who advocate mass surveillance by the state are concerned with the privacy of their own communications?

<comment><USER3> Until their (congresspeople's) privacy is compromised, we will not have privacy. Your old video rental records have more privacy than anything you do on the internet today, because a congressman's was made public so they immediately protected it. That's how this works.</comment></comment>


Facebook App 'Super Wall' Worth $10 Million? - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2007/10/04/rockyou-superwall/ Seems a bit high to me.  How much actual revenue does it bring in? <comment><USER2> If these guys think their facebook app (or ANY app) is worth anywhere near $10M they have a serious problem.

There's just no way to build an economic moat with a facebook application. Facebook can come in and crush you at any time. Who would actually pay that much for something that could so easily be destroyed?

Maybe I am missing something here.</comment>


WeWork's Adam Neumann sued over $1.7bn package - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/business-50351834 <comment><USER2> I really hope this goes forward and at least makes life difficult for SB. This level of golden parachute, for any reason, needs to end.</comment>


Mr. Fart's Favorite Colors - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@blakeross/mr-fart-s-favorite-colors-3177a406c775#.4b6z856uh <comment><USER3> I've run into the programmer vs normal person difference in thinking quite often with regard to customer support calls.

Occasionally I will be called by someone from some company or government department because they want to notify of something. Lets say for example, I forgot to pay my insurance bill.

At some point in the call they will ask me "I just need to verify your identity with some security questions." and ask me for something like my date of birth or my home address.

The only correct answer to this is "I can't give you that information. You called me. I have no idea who you are."

I'm always met with complete incredulity at this concept. About 50% of callers don't understand at all what I'm trying to get at. Most of the rest just don't have any idea how to continue.

What I tell them at this point is that the correct way to handle this is that they need to give me an extension number for them personally and I will find the external number of their company/dept myself on their website and then call them back.

Unfortunately a lot of these callers either can't (due to not having a personal extension number) or wont (it's off protocol I guess?).

The problem is, I feel like an asshole for taking a stand on things like this ("Why is this guy trying to make my job difficult"), but more people need to understand that it's all too easy to be socially engineered!

<comment><USER4> > At some point in the call they will ask me "I just need to verify your > identity with some security questions." and ask me for something like my > date of birth or my home address.

> The only correct answer to this is "I can't give you that information. You > called me. I have no idea who you are."

This ties in with a scam in the UK that exploits a feature / bug of the POTS.

The scammer calls, and claims to be from your bank, and that you've been the victim of crime, and that they need to sort it out.

Some people express doubt about the validity of the caller.

The scammer says something like "Have a look on the Internet at your bank's phone number, and give them a call, and ask for Mr Jones in the Fraud Response Unit on extension 537. I'll hang up while you look. But it's really important that you do this quickly, to prevent more of your money being stolen".

The person being called hangs up the phone, but the scammer does not. Since the scammer initiated the phone call they're keeping that line open.

When the victim picks up their phone to make a call the scammer plays a fake dial tone while the victim "dials a number". An assistant of the scammer then pretends to be a bank phone answerer and connects the victim back to the scammer.

This little bit of social engineering appears to be very strong. There are stories of people who were initially suspicious, but who then lost all suspicion because of this trick, and who lost tens of thousands of pounds.

And since the victim handed out the money the banks tend to refuse to give the money back. The victims really lose real money. It's very sad.

<comment><USER5> That's terrifying. How do you protect yourself from that? I'm not familiar enough with my bank's phone tree to distinguish the real one.

<comment><USER6> You use a mobile phone, another line, or walk to the bank. Other than that one must ask himself, what type of crime? Why does my bank's website show none of it? Is it related to any of my cards missing? Why is the bank contacting me and not the card issuer (VISA, etc)?

I must guess this kind of primitive social engineering can work around 1 out of 100 cases and still be practical. As far as I've seen though the real treat is phishing. Really easy to set up and for most people it works.

Just the other day I was playing around an unprotected server of a phisher that had just sent me an email and there was plenty of people that had fallen for their trick. It could be seen on a text file were they were lousily saving all these details. Scary stuff.

Two factor authentication and even one-time cards (some banks issue this) can protect from this; but as always people that worry about security are already secure. It's the unaware that will fall for the trick.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think this is a fantastic article - and I thought it was genuinely funny, but my sense of humor is about 80% butt jokes so I think that's just an unusual alignment of my taste with the author's ;).

Now, allow me to take this article about irreduceable complexity and reduce its complexity: the question is not even about which shade of security gray to go with. It's an ongoing psychological battle between security and security theater, which is an unrelated set of activities that is almost, but not entirely, exactly unlike actual security.

Security theater operates on the level of what feels right, instead of what is logically right. That makes it powerful. It offers an appearance and feeling of safety, and there's value in that. Of course, if you ask someone "do you want a phone that feels safe or is actually safe," they'll pick the latter, but actually, they want and need both.

That's the problem with this issue. The general public doesn't feel the difference between these two domains clearly enough to know how dangerous the governments plan for the iPhone is - they don't understand that it shifts the balance wholly from security to security theater, when what you actually want is a blend of both. You need The Great Tagliatelle and the locked cockpit door. You need laminated paper and you need to have pilots with secret codes. Without security, an iPhone will still FEEL safe - it just won't be.

The problem is, feeling safe is good enough for most. That's why we mostly have metal locks and not giant flaming Doberman-lauching turrets on our lawns. Until the public gets the need for a balance, this debate will go nowhere fast, and the government - who is very used to getting its way - <USER2> skillfully play on our desire to feel safe in order to get what it needs.

</comment><comment><USER8> It is really surprising the amount of paranoia and thought that goes into software security compared to pretty much everything else. A driver's license is mostly a laminated piece of paper with some holograms. Social security numbers are 9 digit passwords you share over and over again that can't really be changed.

I was recently asked to sign a receipt at a store when I'd used Apple Pay. My phone uses a fingerprint reader to authorize a one-time-use token for payment that's transmitted in a cryptographically secure way. But that signature - that's the real unfakeable proof.

<comment><USER4> The signature is used to help convict criminals.

It's a small part of a package of evidence that proves intent to deceive. If I use someone else's credit card I can lie and say it was an accident. I use someone else's credit card and sign their name, not my name, on the slip it's harder for me to make the same lie.

<comment><USER9> I always sign my real name, or sometimes a smiley face drawing when I am using other people's credit cards (with their permission!) No cashier has called me on it yet.

<comment><USER10> Almost certainly the person who owns the credit card is contractually bound such that they can't legally give you permission to use it, you don't have permission because the bank owns it and is the only entity able to give you such permission.

<comment><USER9> Legally speaking, perhaps. I still like to ask permission before using other people's funds though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The anecdote about the airline industry in the US is half-correct. It's true that cockpit protocol didn't change after the German crash, but that's because the airlines in the US already have a better version than the German one. When a pilot leaves the cockpit to drop a grenade, a flight attendant must enter the cockpit to sit with the remaining pilot until the bomber returns.

While this doesn't protect against a completely insane pilot (he/she could kill the flight attendant), it does eliminate scenarios where the cockpit only has one person present.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, I'm aware of this. But I don't think this prevents the germanwings outcome (which was, indeed, orchestrated by the "completely insane pilot" you mention).

The person plotting to commandeer the cockpit always has the upper hand, because they'll be the first to act. It's hard to defend against a sucker punch or a knife from first-class.

You could even argue that the two-in-the-cockpit rule is less secure, because it introduces one additional person who could pull off a germanwings scenario into the impenetrable control room. This is the same concern raised by the pilot quoted in this article ([http://www.smh.com.au/business/aviation/germanwings- australi...](http://www.smh.com.au/business/aviation/germanwings-australian- pilots-wary-of-the-new-rule-of-two-for-cockpit-20150330-1mbjy0)):

"It exposes the cockpit to more security risks than the isolated case of a homicidal pilot," he said. "I think flight crew are a better judge of fellow pilots' mental state. Now I have to judge the cabin crew member's mental state too before leaving them in the cockpit with access to things like the crash axe."

Originally I had a long aside in the article to deal with this point, but I axed it because I don't think it changes the core argument. Unfortunately Medium seems to have removed footnoting capabilities. But it's still a valid note. Thanks.

<comment><USER11> I'm not sure this guy was insane so much as severely depressed. He did kill a plane full of people but it was a much more passive act than having to swing an ax at someone else in close quarters. Why do you think he waited for the other pilot to go to the crapper?

Also, the argument about now having to judge other cabin crew members mental state falls a little flat since the pilot that left the cockpit clearly wasn't even able to judge the guy he was with. It's sort of like arguing that now you have to read two minds instead of one.

<comment><USER12> He was seeing a number of psychiatrists, and 41 doctors total, in part because he thought he was going blind and that the blindness would destroy his career. But doctors thought that problem was psychosomatic ([http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-27/germanwing...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-27/germanwings- co-pilot-was-unfit-to-work-on-day-of-crash)).

I'm not a psychologist though, so not qualified to weigh in on questions of sanity. For the same reason, I also agree with your point about crew judging each other's mental states. The part that resonated with me was more that there's now one more person in the cockpit who could potentially pull this off.

The fact that he waited for the pilot to leave doesn't prove that he wasn't prepared to pull off the same attack if the pilot didn't leave. He'd still choose to do it this way given the option. We'll never know, but regardless, it remains a possible vector in the future, yet the cockpit security remains in place (for good reason).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have nothing to say other than, author, if you're reading this, this opinion was... There's no other word for it: utterly fantastic.

<comment><USER12> I appreciate that. I've been working in tech since I was a kid and have been transitioning over to writing recently. It's been an interesting shift because it doesn't offer the same kind of motivating fuel (up-and-to-the-right graphs, etc). So comments like this are more encouraging than you know. Thank you.

<comment><USER14> After finishing this, but before reading the byline, I thought to myself, "Yeah, this dude definitely has some writing chops... hmm... maybe that Firefox guy who wrote the screenplay?" Turns out it was indeed you! Definitely looking forward to reading more of your articles/whatever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> <This is the moment you realize that some people just want to watch the world burn.>

Or, maybe the user is "kicking the tires" to see how robustly it was coded, concerned that poor data verification practices reflect weaknesses elsewhere in the code as well.

EDIT: s/inadequacies/weaknesses for clarity

</comment><comment><USER16> Good article, very click-baity title.

The article is about software security and how it compares (or doesn't compare) to real-world security, and what this means for the Apple case.

What drew me in is mostly that the beginning is written in a very light- hearted style, so it's a pretty easy read at first.

<comment><USER12> Thanks. And, I agree: [https://twitter.com/blakeross/status/706191059185872896](https://twitter.com/blakeross/status/706191059185872896)

Usually I go in the other direction and redefine bland, e.g. [https://medium.com/@blakeross/don-t-outsource-your- thinking-...](https://medium.com/@blakeross/don-t-outsource-your-thinking- ad825a9b4653). Had a little Friday fun with this one.

<comment><USER17> For what it's worth, you're a fantastic writer and this is one of the most enjoyable articles I think I've ever read. You've captured the essence of the subject perfectly, and your writing style is thoroughly enjoyable.

<comment><USER18> Seconding this. Maybe it's my love of anecdotes and analogies to illustrate points that may be hard for people to understand. Possibly it's my appreciation for well placed juvenile humor.

Either way, I identified with some of the points being made and easily picked up on the things I'd not considered from this angle thanks to the funny examples.

<comment><USER19> Everything above echoed, with the important addition that I feel I can share this article with all of my non-techy friends and family and feel they will step away with a much better understanding of the Apple discussions.

I still see unease with some of my friends and family about the topic, and although perhaps some of them have realized the ultimate question of should the cockpit or the cabin control things, I don't think they have a good understanding of why that is, or how this phone security compares to other things that are called "security," whether a door lock or the airport security line.

Very vivid writing that explains this for everyone. And I dig this type of humor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> In "thinking like a technologist", this post is missing the context/subtext in the airline security game.

The metal detector makes the airplane neither more nor less safe than the security theater porno scanner machine, and the precheck also doesn't accomplish anything. The only reason most of the people need to be diverted through the porno scanner machine is that the federal government spent a few billion on them in a handout to some senator's friends, and to scrap them now would make the tremendous waste of money obvious to everyone.

But at the same time, business travelers don't want to go through the new machines, so we let them pay a nominal fee (easily amortized down to trivial if you fly a few dozen times per year) to go through the old metal detectors instead. Bonus: they now get to take a shortcut in the security line that they didn't used to get. If someone without a real precheck manages to sneak through the metal detector line by counterfeiting some paper token, it isn't a real security risk.

<comment><USER12> Well, I did say at the end: "For as much money and time as we've wasted on printer-powered air security, only one innovation has prevented another 9/11: Locked, reinforced cockpit doors."

I agree that it's generally theater all the way down.

<comment><USER21> While locking the door is important, the real innovation is in the attitude of the passengers. It just isn't possible to hijack a plane anymore because the passengers will not allow it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I was astonished by how un-safe the road/traffic system really is 8 years ago when I started to learn driving. Just think about it, driving on road is extremely vulnerable: any other driver on the road could make a small mistake to get you both killed, accidentally or intentionally. Yet the road system is far more secure than its cyberspace counter part. Why?

* Potential damage is roughly symmetric. A bad/evil driver might kill others but very likely also kill himself.

* Threat is local. There is no way a bad/evil driver to kill all the drivers.

* The road system as a whole does not have the single point of failure.

I think the claim in the article is dangerously wrong. We should never be given a binary choice in such big issue.

<comment><USER20> The road system has killed tens if not hundreds of millions of people. How many have been killed in cyberspace?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I really liked the style of writing in this piece. The author certainly should consider writing a book. Reminds me of Malcolm Gladwell.

</comment><comment><USER24> Best read in months. Thanks for posting this.

</comment><comment><USER25> "Mr. Fart" is the best nickname for them yet, much better than that "Female Body Inspectors" one sees on t-shirts.

</comment><comment><USER26> Best article I have read in a while. Thanks for writing it.

</comment><comment><USER27> The best security: be honest and place complete trust in those you employ. Hire people you trust. If there is nothing that is blocking you, then morale is higher, and people get more focused on what is important. If there is nothing to break into, there is less temptation. Your employees won't be perfect, but if they are trusted, if you let things be, there's a good chance everything will be fine- at least as fine as it would have otherwise.

<comment><USER27> I'd like the people that -1'd me to explain why I'm wrong.

No matter how much defense you put up, if you are accessible, you are at risk for unauthorized use of data.

Employing only people you trust and showing them you trust them is a great alternative to security restrictions.</comment></comment>