How I Did It: Philip Rosedale, CEO, Linden Lab - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/magazine/20070201/hidi-rosedale.html

<comment><USER2> I have no idea why MMORPGs run from virtual currency with open trading markets for real currency. Pitch that to any finance guy, and if he's smart he'd be on board. Sure there is lots of regulation. That's what we like to call a "barrier to entry" and a reason to work on the problem.

Further, there WILL be an exchange system, but it will have a great deal of loss. Think of what ebay and paypal win in exchanges outside second-life. I wouldn't call it "dead weight loss", but SL could have easily made money just on taking a cut of sales, and being the best exchange.

Either way, this glosses over the idea that SL is perhaps the most mind numbing way to waste time in video games. Maybe that will change with the crytek engine.

</comment><comment><USER3> The love machine concept and the way to handle budgeting are great.

</comment><comment><USER4> how i make furry secks?

</comment><comment><USER5> You can tell he is a true entrepreneur. Despite the fact that everyone thought he, and second life, were crazy, he went through with it. Who's the crazy one now?</comment>


Ask HN: How do we best use the technology we've built? - <AUTHOR>

At my startup, we spent months successfully developing a regression analysis based model to accurately and fairly price diamonds. With the goal of disrupting the retail diamond market, we built two free online tools that take advantage of this tech.
Our test advertising campaigns brought in a good deal of extremely high quality traffic (5minutes average time on site, <20% bounce, 10+ pages per visitor) - except that we saw little to no increase in brand awareness following the 2 month campaign. Our traffic returned to previous levels when we stopped advertising.
We've since tried improving our 'natural seo' and have moved up in the ranks for related search terms on google. While we've made progress in terms of ranking, our traffic figures still place the speedometer firmly in the 'without traction' zone.
How do we best use the technology we've built?
Do we return to the lab and pivot to a B2B based site targeting industry professionals? Raise capital to market nationwide, and hire a sales team to sell ads at rates better than adsense? Talk to search / tech / diamond industry players and attempt a direct licensing or outright sale? Keep the project on the backburner and wait for a competitor to have success and then copy what they do?
Suggestions/Comments/Criticism greatly appreciated.
(The site is: http://diamondpriceinfo.com ) <comment><USER2> interesting idea but I am skeptical...the diamond busy is a cartel, market based pricing isn't part of the business model. Not to mention people buy diamonds for aspirational reason so price comparison defeats that purpose. Again, there really is no retail diamond market, there is only the appearance of one. All dealers ultimately answer to de beers!</comment>


Amazon is beating Google in the race to the home computer - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/28/16378096/amazon-echo-alexa-google-home-competition <comment><USER2> is it though?</comment>


Ubuntu Security Podcast: Best Infosec Books - <AUTHOR> https://ubuntusecuritypodcast.org/episode-63/ <comment><AUTHOR> Ubuntu Security Podcast is a weekly podcast discussing the latest updates and developments from the Ubuntu Security Team. It discusses the weekly bug fixes the team implement which might interest you if you're technical enough. I'm not, and what I like about it is the chattier discussions between the two hosts.

In this episode Joe and Alex discuss their recommended reading list for infosec beginners and practitioners. This section starts at 10:17.

        - Red Team Field Manual | Ben Clark
        - Head First Programming
        - Linux System Administrators Handbook | Nemeth, et al
        - Robert Seacord's Secure Coding in C/C++
        - CERT Resilience Management Model (CERT-RMM)
        - The Code Book | Simon Singh
        - The Tao of Network Security Monitoring: Beyond Intrusion Detection | Richard Bejtlich
        - The Cuckoos Egg | Cliff Stoll
        - Linux Pro Magazine
        - Black Hat Python | Justin Seitz
        - Hacking: The Art Of Exploitation | Jon Erickson</comment>


Math visualization: (x + 1)^2 - <AUTHOR> http://www.billthelizard.com/2009/12/math-visualization-x-1-2.html

<comment><USER2> Cf. the binomial cube ([http://homepage.mac.com/montessoriworld/mwei/sensory/sbinoml...](http://homepage.mac.com/montessoriworld/mwei/sensory/sbinoml.html)), which has been part of Montessori preschool classrooms since, umm, probably since Maria Montessori herself was teaching them a hundred years ago. I think the Montessori cube was based on a similar object designed by Freidrich Fröbel, the man who invented kindergarten.

<comment><USER3> When I saw something like this at my kids' Montessori school, I thought, they could do that in a textbook. (Most Montessori materials involve manipulation that can't be done on paper.) I wonder if modern textbooks have this illustration.

[http://ourdoings.com/brlewis/photo.html?th=gw/cq/eviq.jpg...](http://ourdoings.com/brlewis/photo.html?th=gw/cq/eviq.jpg&d=2006-01-21#p)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thanks to one of the comments on that post I found <http://www.betterexplained.com>! This is a great resource that I plan on sharing with anyone who asks the "but WHY?" question (whichis a good thing).

<comment><USER5> I agree it's a great site. Kalid is also a regular contributor on HN.

<comment><USER4> Awesome, I bought and printed a copy of his book this afternoon!

<comment><USER6> Hey, just saw this thread in my referral logs -- thanks for the support! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have been collecting visual proofs for over a year now. I think I am gonna start writing an article series about math visualizations.

<comment><USER8> I keep meaning to write more of these too. My blog is (ostensibly) about programming, but I find that I keep drifting further and further into mathematical topics without tying them back into programming somehow. I should probably commit to one or the other, I just can't decide.

<comment><USER9> You don't need to. There are surprising connections. E.g. between partial differentiation and algebraic datatypes: [http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Haskell/Zippers#Differentiation...](http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Haskell/Zippers#Differentiation_of_data_types)

<comment><USER8> I guess my third option is to concentrate more on finding those connections. Thanks for the feedback.

<comment><USER9> Zippers are surprisingly practical. E.g. for a file system: [http://okmij.org/ftp/Computation/Continuations.html#zipper-f...](http://okmij.org/ftp/Computation/Continuations.html#zipper- fs)

If you want to read about Zippers and don't mind using your brain, then the presentation in "he Derivative of a Regular Type is its Type of One-Hole Contexts" (<http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~ctm/diff.pdf>) is right for you. He talks about the connection between math and computer science:

"Apart from the implementation of this technology, and the development of a library of related generic utilities, this work opens up a host of fascinating theoretical possibilities - one only has to open one's old school textbooks almost at random and ask 'what does this mean for datatypes?'."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here's all of permutations and combination (written in processing) in 3D space.

<http://pastebin.com/f18f24d8b>

      Permutations and combinations.
      Taking 3 (visualized as dimensions) from 7 (length of side).
      License: Public domain. Attribution requested.

      KEY:
      Permutation: (order matters).
       Repeating (Sequence): All (little cubies). Eg: Passwords.
       Non-repeating (Arrangement): All except the reds. (ie transparent + blues). Eg: Number of ways of podium finishes in a race.
      Combination: Selection (order doesn't matter).
       Repeating: Cubies with white outline. Eg: Number of 3 scoop icecream serving from a set of flavours.
       Non-repeating (Subset combination): The blues. Eg: Number of ways to choose 3 member committies from a group.

</comment><comment><USER11> I use to wonder why there was an outside and inside part when doing FOIL. It was after that I saw the visual proof, and doing other types of multiplication with multiple 'parts/terms', that it slowly dawned on me that there's cross- components. It's the same sort of thing when you multiple matricies or covariances. You need the contribution from every combination of terms.

<comment><USER12> Yeah...I was in a program called Kumon and learned most of my math there, more than I learned in school. There was a lot of multiplying together polynomials, so I got used to the idea of handling each combination of terms.

There was also a fair amount of factoring. Let me rephrase that: an unreasonable amount of factoring. Factoring down 4th and 5th and I think 6th degree polynomials by hand, for instance, in the equivalent of 10th grade algebra.

By the way, there are analogous patterns between even degreed polynomials, 4th degree polynomials look kind of like quadratics and 6ths do as well, with a kind of rippling pattern in the intermediate terms.

By the time anyone told me about FOIL, I just squinted and shrugged it off. I was so used to taking these polynomials apart that enumerating through all possible combinations was trivial to me.

Incidentally, I always considered it more artful to factor quadratic equations to solve them rather than applying the quadratic formula.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> That was pretty simple. See also this fun post of mine: [http://www.jgc.org/blog/2008/02/sum-of-first-n-odd- numbers-i...](http://www.jgc.org/blog/2008/02/sum-of-first-n-odd-numbers-is- always.html)

<comment><USER8> I had also included that one in an earlier post: [http://www.billthelizard.com/2009/07/six-visual- proofs_25.ht...](http://www.billthelizard.com/2009/07/six-visual- proofs_25.html) (scroll down to the 5th "proof").

I think I like the image you used to visualize the relationship a little bit better than the one I used.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Some people might be surprised to hear this but such visualizations are part of the curriculum for the CBSE of 10th grade (maybe 9th also) students in India. They have to do such things for lots of equations and some geometrical problems. This is called practical Maths, and comprises about 20% of our marks. We have to solve puzzles and do other fun stuff with math visualization.

<comment><USER15> This is how the EPGY software (I think? It might have been Hopkins CTY, this was over a decade ago) taught factorization in algebra: it was incredibly effective and simply _made sense_ , and was IMO far more effective than what I saw being taught in the classrooms.</comment></comment>


Francois Hollande 'quietly' Awards France's Highest Honour to Saudi Crown Prince - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/francois-hollande-quietly-awards-frances-highest-honour-to-visiting-saudi-crown-prince-a6915711.html <comment><USER2> The context is this: France has become one of Saudia Arabia's biggest trading partners. SA is probably moving away from the US as main arms dealer, who are deemed as having betrayed SA, e.g. by ending hostilities with Iran. Just recently SA bought a huge chunk of weapons from France [1]. SA also wants to buy French nuclear reactors ...

[1] [http://www.nationalinterest.org/feature/france-saudi- arabias...](http://www.nationalinterest.org/feature/france-saudi-arabias-new- arms-dealer-13533)

<comment><USER3> US citizen here. Not sure I'm concerned with having a trading partner (SA) who is exhausting their sovereign reserves at top speed to undermine domestic tight oil production.

TL;DR Good riddance.</comment></comment>


What if we had a great standard library in JavaScript? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@thomasfuchs/what-if-we-had-a-great-standard-library-in-javascript-52692342ee3f#.tcdwl9bu6 <comment><USER2> > Guess what? In the real world, this model quickly leads to a multitude of > issues. The most obvious example is that if a package is removed for any > reason, chaos quickly spreads... That's actually not the main problem > though.

Not only is that not the main problem, that has nothing to do with the use of small components. The issue with removal of packages is caused by not having an immutable package repository, which is actually pretty easy to fix with a system like IPFS.

> A standard library could easily be added to JavaScript without years of > committee infighting, stalled projects and failed approaches (remember the > bat-shit craziness of E4X?). ES6 took 6 years to finalize and browsers to > this day still don't fully support it. There are plenty of successful and > widely used libraries to draw inspiration (and implementation) for a first > round from, like Underscore.js (and it's predecessor in spirit, > Prototype.js).

Since we already have underscore, backbone, express, bluebird, and all these other libraries, why would we want to end the competition by pulling them into the core and having to support them in a backwards-compatible way for years to come? These libraries basically are JavaScript's "standard library"... they just happen to be optional.

<comment><USER3> > These libraries basically are JavaScript's "standard library"... they just > happen to be optional.

Optional is great and I'm siding on building APIs on the user-land side if possible.

Unfortunately, having n different libraries basically doing the same thing is just annoying. This thing you call "competition" is just developers egos gone berserk. There's no point in building 2 things that do the same thing, unless it's definitely better (which is good) or unless the point it conveys is "I'm better than you" (which most devs are, really). I mean look at this guy who tries to overtake jQuery 10 years after jQuery started: [https://github.com/drduan/minggeJS/blob/pr/95/README_en.md](https://github.com/drduan/minggeJS/blob/pr/95/README_en.md)

That said, Lodash and Underscore should just merge. Zepto and jQuery should just merge. Immutable and Mori should just merge. Inferno and React should just merge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The real problem is that these APIs don't come easy, and given that JS didn't bother to even start on this stuff until recently other languages have up to 25 years head start on JS. It doesn't help that the standards guys are just playing around implementing stuff piecemeal, so you end up with Map and Set, and the literally useless WeakSet, rather than just building a solid collections framework, or service workers where as soon as a feature is implemented in all browsers it gets deprecated because something shinier comes along.

Even the stuff that is announced is horribly documented to the extent that most people will never discover it or figure out how to use it. W3Schools hangs around at the top of search results like an unusually stupid cancer, chrome document nothing, and MDN does okay but is weak on tutorial and has some awkward holes.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think this article ignores that JavaScript's standard library has been growing in pace with new language features. The author mentions underscore as a good place to draw inspiration, but a ton of it's functionality has already been added to the language. forEach, map, reduce, filter, every, some, and others were added in ES5. ES6 brings find, includes, isArray, Object.assign and others. Promises were also added, make a library for them now unnecessary. Many of the current proposals aren't just for syntax additions to language, but to implement more standard library type of stuff (including string padding).</comment>


BBC staff told to stop inviting cranks on to science programmes - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/10944629/BBC-staff-told-to-stop-inviting-cranks-on-to-science-programmes.html

<comment><USER2> I really hope this works. I am glad we have the BBC here in the UK. I am also glad that they have these guidelines. Not because they necessarily result in optimal news coverage, but because it helps to keep the private broadcasters in line. It's shame there isn't an equivalent for print publications really, given the state of the UK press.

However, their coverage of climate change is frequently ridiculous, giving equal airtime to views "on both sides of the debate". In reality, when 99% of scientists in the field would say that the "opposing view" is just BS, there is no debate.

Just because science has to revise its facts now and then doesn't mean any random, baseless opposing view has merit. However this is the fallacy a lot of anti-science types seem to cling to. Up to now, the BBC has only been exacerbating that problem.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wasn't aware there were any science programmes on the BBC. It all started to go downhill once Tomorrow's World got the axe.

<comment><USER4> They still do Horizon every now and again, but it's not as hard core as it used to be, scientific subjects are covered in a wishy washy way that makes me feel they dumbed the programme down.

Also don't forget Brian Cox [0] who's presented some good physics/astronomy science programmes that can be watched by all the family. He does a great out- take where he vents his frustration at being told to dumb down programme content [1].

Then there's also Jim Al-Khalili [2] who presented a great series called "Chemistry: A Volatile History".

The BBC still commission science programmes, their biggest problem is that they're often hiding away on BBC2/BBC4 and many of them are produced in such a way that they don't do the science justice, viewers are assumed to have little or no attention span.

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Cox_(physicist)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Cox_\(physicist\))

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCIRkD71do4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCIRkD71do4)

[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Al- Khalili](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Al-Khalili)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Mbps How much do you pay and where (city)? - <AUTHOR>

For those of you who pay per Mbps, I am wondering how much you pay, which city / hosting company. When it comes to colocation it seems there is no standard pricing, its how well you can negotiate.
To kick it off, I have a half rack at AIS in San Diego and pay $125/Mbps. AT&T quoted me $500/Mbps unless I committed to 20Mbps at which point they might consider a price closer to $200/Mbps.
I also have a server at a friends rack at AT&T and they have an impressive data center. <comment><USER2> Less than $10/Mbps Colo4dallas with cogent bandwidth.</comment>


CryEngine 3 soft-body physics simulator - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/articles/games/cryengine-3-gets-awesome-soft-body-physics-simulator-20120529/ <comment><USER2> After we achieve mostly-realistic physics simulations I look forward to the new middleware that re-enables implausible effects. It turns out that most real-world physical interactions are nasty and short, and lacking in beautiful, orange and crimson fireballs.

<comment><USER3> I haven't had a good computer in about 10 years until recently (used a netbook in between), and I've tried many new games recently, and I'm disappointed to notice that the movements of the characters have barely changed over the past decade.

The graphics have gotten quite good, although I would've expected to see much better by now, and I think they started stagnating on visuals in the past 5 years (after Crysis) because of the rise of laptops, which are replacing PC's for most people.

But still my main disappointment was with how unrealistic the movements of the characters are. The characters "look" pretty real, but then that idea gets completely ruined by the way they move. It kind of ruins the experience.

Take Skyrim for example, great visuals overall, especially for the environment, but I hate the way the character moves and how it fights. While the visuals make you think you are in 2012, the movements make you think it's still 2003, the year of Morrowind.

<comment><USER4> It depends on the game. I think we're right at the point right now where some developers are making a huge push toward absolute realism (see: LA Noire's facial models and Battlefield 3's destructible environments), but it's still in the early stages.

I think a huge part of the problem isn't a sudden move to laptops, I think it's that the current generation of consoles is _seven years old_ , and major developers (i.e. those with the resources to innovate) tend to design with the console in mind these days.

<comment><USER5> LA Noire's facial animation, while very impressive, was lifted from real people: so we're a bit far off from simulating that (in the sense that we're simulating physics in games).

For anyone who played Bad Company 2, I think Battlefield 3's destructible environments were a bit of a letdown: the levels got more complex but they really toned down what you were allowed to destroy (a wall here, a wall there, etc). I'm not exactly sure why they did this.

I agree that the current generation of consoles are holding us back. I can't wait to see what kind of games we get on next-gen hardware, I just hope it happens without too much of this online-required nonsense that seems to be becoming the craze..

<comment><USER6> Try out Max Payne 3. While there's still motion capture etc, the euphoria motion system is _fantastic_ and I think character movement is a nearly solved problem.

Facial animation I just wish they went back to Brütal Legend because they were cartoony, but the most expressive faces I've seen in a game.

LA Noire was just rubbish in every way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This looks amazing.I tip my hat to those guys, and would love to see this in a Burnout game.

I wonder how easy it is to incorporate this in a game model. In the truck model looks like each piece of the car is modeled individually and might be a lot harder for the artists to make models. And wonder how are materials calculated, some things in the model bend in different ways.

<comment><USER8> > In the truck model looks like each piece of the car is modeled individually > and might be a lot harder for the artists to make models. And wonder how are > materials calculated, some things in the model bend in different ways.

If I had to design the modeller/composer for this kind of thing, I would probably make some kind of "paintable" deformation weights. I could be totally wrong, but I don't think there's any way they could calculate tensile strength based on the model's geometry in (playable) real time. So they might have to manually set how weak/strong groups of vertices are...and tie those vertices to some soft body joints. I imagine if they only do the physics on those joints (movement, bending, crunching), it could be pretty cheap?

Example of how joints apply weights to vertices in things like humanoid appendages: <http://i.imgur.com/QiDDu.jpg>

If any of you brilliant Crytek guys are reading this, could you comment on the setup? :) I'm an amateur 3d engine guy, and I love this stuff.

<comment><USER9> While calculating material strength in real time is probably not possible, nothing stops you from auto generating those deformation weights using a lot of simulation time while the game is in development.

<comment><USER8> So you're saying they would create the model assets, and then do physical calculations on each component of the model, then bake those weights into the model? It sounds somewhat plausible.

My gut tells me they manually place soft body joints and then paint the weights for the models. It seems like that would be easier to maintain and more predictable for the deformations that they expect to see.

For example, you and I know how the front of a truck "should" look if half of it gets crunched in, but that deformation is because of an engine, the body, lots of metal/plastic components, etc. Obviously it's not yet realistic to model every single component of a truck, and perform a physical simulation "baking" step, so that the truck crunches in that way in the game. They have to fudge that kind of crunch...so it makes me think they're manually rigging the softbodies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One thing I noticed is that they didn't have any soft-body on soft-body collisions. They had second cars floating around the track, but I didn't see them collide the two.

It's probably just because the person doing the demo just didn't think of it, but it would have been interesting to see how it handled soft-on-soft collisions.

<comment><USER11> The creator said this on reddit (<http://bit.ly/K87f3X>):

whyareallthenamestak:

Looks really cool. Would have been cool to show a two vehicle collision though.

zinklesmesh:

Not possible just yet.

UNREASONABLEMAN:

Zinklesmesh, Is this physics system limited to Cryengine, or is it going to be a pluggable piece, much like Havok? Is anything else in the works, such as real-time dynamic breaking or deformation of terrain (so many games seem use some kind of swapping out of art assets cheats, I'd love to see actual cutting and deformation of the mesh itself, difficult as that would be from a texturing standpoint) Will you have the ability to up the soft body collision detection quality, and the polycount for those people who have high end systems? I think this is the most amazing real time soft body demo I've seen in a long time, and would love to see it pushed to its usable limits.

zinklesmesh:

We can port it to any engine pretty easily. We already support breaking apart of parts and meshes to some extent - we're still developing that. The collision is also a work in progress, and will be much better in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hm, looks sweet! One gripe about super-realism - usually "fun" stems from unexpected game-play variations (and decreasing entropy). In Quake 3, it was the rocket jump. In sandbox games, it's, well, the sandbox. This is also why finding (physics) bugs is so fun. Here, however, I'm not sure if one will be able to do interesting things. Can you, for example, smash half the truck away and be left with a "bike"? Just random destruction seems like it will get old fast.

<comment><USER13> Minor Pedantic Point of Contention: Quake 1 had the rocket jump "discovery"; by Q3, it was an expected part of the gameplay. However, this does not affect your argument in any way.

<comment><USER14> In Q3, it was more the way jumping impacted your movement speed which was a discovery. Another example would be the Tribes series, with skiing which was also an abuse of the game physics (and taken as the main movement mechanic in the latest game, Tribes Ascend).

It's nice to see such parts of gameplay emerging from simple bugs. I would argue that it's much more rare nowadays, with games which aim to be always more realistic, and blocking your movement.

<comment><USER15> > In Q3, it was more the way jumping impacted your movement speed which was a > discovery.

Not really sure what you're talking about. Rockets and grenades hugely impacted player speed in Quake 1, but not so much in Quake 3. Check the speed run of the following level to see what I mean:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=VpiNDxssUL0#t=653s)

The quad damage'd grenade jump at 11:19 is mind-boggling. I don't remember seeing that in Quake 3.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "most realistic damage model ever." I'm willing to bet that most car companies have far more advanced simulations which use extremely sophisticated finite element analysis to test designs. Albeit not in real time.

<comment><USER17> It was probably implied that they meant to add "in a game engine".

<comment> a-priori Also real-time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There was an game that did this (obviously nowhere near as well) called 1NSANE. I spent hours smashing cars off of things, because I find the destruction so interesting and awesome.

Things I'd love to see:

* Soft body on soft body. Imagine Destruction Derby 2 with this stuff.

* Explosion modelling - Stuff getting ripped apart and sent flying.

* Aircraft destruction modelling - if you could clip your wing on a building and have your aerodynamics adjust accordingly.

<comment><USER19> In Carmageddon i completely bent my car around a light post. It could only drive in circles after that.

<comment><USER20> +1 for Carmageddon, still one of the best games of all time.

I can't even remember what the game-goal was (hit checkpoints or something?) but I do fondly remember randomly wrecking cars for way too many hours...

<comment><USER19> There were 3 ways to win.

* Smash all opponents

* Kill all the people in the streets

* Finish the race (1st)

Of the 3, smashing all opponents was the easiest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> How would one design & test this? How would one sanely design alien or futurstic looking vehicles?

It's very cool, nonetheless, but imagine if there had to be 2 people riding this thing, part of the gameplay, and now the truck looks so damaged, that placing these two characters inside would produce even bigger mess.

So what you do - you disable the truck collision for this case? You place the characters anyways?

Or just deal with a progression break, in now what would be much difficult ways...

<comment><USER4> Simple. Make two game modes: Indestructible Cabin mode and Hardcore mode. In hardcore mode, if you get into an accident and the cab happens to crush your legs, you have to finish the rest of the game in a wheelchair.

<comment><USER21> not for an fps game

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> In concept it is interesting, but I feel that it would add very little to gameplay beyond whats already been available. Many games feature pretty good vehicle destruction (mostly faked, but good enough to suspend disbelief).

As usual, I would prefer these companies invest their effort into more interesting AI and game mechanics. I played Crisis 2 a while back, and beyond the improved graphics, it did not feel much different from Half Life 1 to me.

<comment><USER23> Also, racing games often come with license mandating a certain maximum level of damage some cars can take: some cars can be screwed, while others can only be scratched.

<comment><USER24> Wait, what do you mean by "with license mandating a certain maximum level of damage"?

<comment><USER25> Some car makers only allow developers to use them in the game as long as you can't destroy their cars past a certain point, both to keep the car recognizable and to not hurt the reputation of the brand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Deformable physics like that isn't much of a problem if you only have one vehicle in an empty world on the most expensive consumer-grade hardware.

CryTek are showing off their _own_ physics engine here, that's the big news. There's nothing too special about their physics engine over others, it's more about the pipeline and the amount of work needed to create a soft-body vehicle.

<comment><USER27> It's not their own physics engine. It's a licensed technology:

<http://beamng.com/>

<comment><USER26> You're right. I'd heard that they were now working for CryTek, but I can't find that confirmed anywhere. They still appear to be independent.

But my point still stands. What is special here is the workflow in creating a physics-based vehicle. Other physics engines like Havok come with pre-made rigs, but tuning a vehicle for desired gameplay is still hard. Making it run fast in a game environment is harder still.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This user looks like a (new) pusher of Geek/Extremetech stories.

</comment><comment><USER29> Does anyone know the title/artist of the music in the video?

<comment><USER29> This reedit thread has the answer [http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/u9ek6/been_working_o...](http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/u9ek6/been_working_on_this_for_the_past_few_months_now/c4thnw2)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is there a way to filter out gaming articles?

<comment><USER31> Video games are one of if not _the_ primary driver of consumer hardware. You're reading these words right now using probably _dozens_ of technologies originally invented to make better games.

Gaming may not be your cup of tea, but the cutting edge of video game technology is definitely of interest to hackers. Calling this a "gaming" article is a little spurious, I feel.

<comment><USER30> This video is more interesting than most game stuff, and I really would like to read something about how the algorithms work, even though I don't ever code stuff like that.

I'm not too interested in consumer hardware though.</comment></comment></comment>


Memory Trick Could Speed Up the Web - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/38896/?ref=rss

<comment><USER2> _Ousterhout's proposed system is based on dynamic random access memory (DRAM). [..] In a data center, fetching bits from DRAM and sending them over the center's internal network should be 100 to 1,000 times faster than getting it from a disk._

So the "trick" is "caching data in memory" but with _more_ memory and spread across multiple machines. This is already the bread and butter for many infrastructure developers and sysadmins.

It'll be more interesting to see what memristor technology brings. The first commercially available solutions are due in the next couple of years and we'll most likely have cost effective, non-volatile DRAM-speed memory by 2020.

</comment><comment><USER3> See also:

        mkdir /media/ramdisk
        chmod 777 /media/ramdisk
        mount -t tmpfs -o size=1024M tmpfs /media/ramdisk/

Note: Do not copy/paste this in to your shell unless you know what you're doing. This will immediately seize 1 GB of RAM that you may or may not have free. Any data you put there will go up in smoke if your system loses power or is forced to reboot without first copying the data to persistent storage.</comment>


Decriminalise drugs, inquiry by cross-party peers says - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21004715

<comment><USER2> I've been following all of this information about decriminalisation closely, including what the results from Portugal, which I found really interesting.

I don't get David Cameron at all. This may be due to my upbringing, which is working class where Tories are generally hated, sometimes irrationally, but I don't think my confusion is irrational.

He seems very ignorant, down to the core. This is a man who hasn't lived the working class life, hasn't come close to touching it. He is even descends from royalty.

He says his policies are beneficial to the majority of the UK, which simply isn't true. The increase on VAT hit the poorest families hard. The rejig on child support hit the families hard.

The problem is that it doesn't seem like he's even aware of these effects and it seems true here too.

He says that their current policies are working fine and that it's the right way forward yet "over-crowded prisons" have become a meme.

It's costing us money to house people in prisons for these crimes. It's costing us money when these people cannot contribute to society, which some may actually would have done if they weren't in prison.

I see kids influenced by drug dealers into trying things out. I know this, I was one of them (stupid, I admit). Once they've become accustomed to one thing, something harder is introduced.

It just seems extremely ignorant to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think he is ignorant at all - he knows fine well that the "traditonal" Conservative voter would never back a party that supported greater freedom (and commonsense) around drugs.

<comment><USER3> Which is ironic considering letting people do what they want with their own bodies is pretty conservative.

<comment><USER4> Conservatism isn't synonymous with libertarianism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I find it interesting that the recent conversations surrounding the legalization of cannabis in WA and CO have sparked discussions of legalization of synthesized drugs like amphetamines and cocaine. Cannabis is one of the few drugs sourced from nature without any purification or isolating processes. Not only is it naturally occurring, but it also is the safest among today's federally illegal "drugs".

That being said, I have to agree that the best way to get rid of illegal activity is to tax and regulate a product so as to provide a trustworthy, straightforward source. But there's a question as to whether it's advisable to allow citizens to consume drugs that have normally been known to drastically reduce peoples' health and well-being. These drugs actively cause addiction while suppressing other bodily functions, but so do cigarettes. Did you know that nicotine is as addictive as heroine, cocaine, and other alkaloids[1]? The question as to where to draw the line is very sensitive and I often wonder why did Prohibition stop at alcohol? Why didn't it naturally extend itself towards cannabis and then hard drugs? Does anybody know the history/politics behind this?

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/1987/03/29/magazine/nicotine- harder-t...](http://www.nytimes.com/1987/03/29/magazine/nicotine-harder-to- kickthan-heroin.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm)

<comment><USER6> > But there's a question as to whether it's advisable to allow citizens to > consume drugs that [...]

The current approach is very expensive, and very harmful to individuals and to society.

Someone injecting heroin will do so whether it's legal or not. But, if it's legal, they'll be getting clean heroin, and clean needles, and advice about how to safely inject, and be in contact with people helping them move down to other forms of heroin use.

While heroin is illegal people prostitute or burgle to get money; they re-use needles in unclean conditions; they inject dirty drugs in sub-optimal places; they have little or no contact with harm-reduction workers.

The costs to society are obvious: people spend many years involved in criminal activity to feed a drug habit. Police spend a lot of time tackling that criminal behaviour. People end up with life-threatening illnesses, or permanent maiming or losing limbs from dirty needles and poor injection practices.

Treating this as a public health measure is probably sensible. Having said that, alcohol use in the UK can't really be defined as ok.

> That being said, I have to agree that the best way to get rid of illegal > activity is to tax and regulate a product so as to provide a trustworthy, > straightforward source.

Probably, but look at the huge quantities of smuggled tobacco in the UK caused by the high tax rate.

See, also, garlic smuggled from Norway (not an EU state) through Sweden (part of the EU, which adds a 9% tax for garlic grown outside the EU.)

(<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20976887>)

(<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20667816>)

<comment><USER7> "While heroin is illegal people prostitute or burgle to get money"

The legality of an addictive substance doesn't make much difference to whether someone will commit a crime to get their fix.

Consider: people commit crimes to get money to buy alcohol. People also steal other legal goods they want e.g. TVs, laptops.

<comment><USER8> _Consider: people commit crimes to get money to buy alcohol._

How can you consider that, without also considering that most people don't? Price does make a difference.

<comment><USER7> I don't really see how that's relevant.

I was responding to the point "people commit crimes to fund their drug habit because drugs are illegal".

One way of verifying this (without de-criminalisation) is to compare drug usage to alcohol usage, and the crime rates of people funding either habit.

It's a hard study to do because there are other factors in play e.g. a pimp keeping his prostitutes dependent on drugs is a different situation to people prostituting to buy drugs.

<comment><USER8> _One way of verifying this (without de-criminalisation) is to compare drug usage to alcohol usage_

That's why the fact that most alcoholics don't commit crimes to get their fix is relevant. Sure, some do, sometimes, but on the whole, it's a vastly different picture; and the price, and not being pushed into shady alleys with shady people has to do with it.

Just consider the Prohibition, and also the experiences of all the countries who partially or completely decrimalized hard drugs, which is generally a success story.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It'll never happen under the current government for the simple fact that whilst all the research shows it'd be a net positive, it'd make the government look like it was weak on crime. Probably never happen at all given Labour is the only other choice and we saw what happened with Nutt when he spoke out against the current laws.

<comment><USER10> There is also strong lobbying in the USA from the industries that grew around the prohibition - namely private prisions and the DEA.

<comment><USER9> I did not know that, but I'm not overly surprised as legalisation chops the legs off their business model. Thankfully we don't have quite the same problems in the UK, but the government is so desperate to appeal to the groups that make the most noise by appearing 'tough' on crime, including personal drug use.</comment></comment></comment>


FBI: Delivery drivers involved in Amazon theft ring - <AUTHOR> https://www.wthr.com/article/fbi-delivery-drivers-involved-amazon-theft-ring-1 <comment><USER2> How on earth did Amazon not catch this first, that it took a police officer to notice?

Every month or so, run a report correlating customer reports of missing boxes or missing items in boxes, with all fulfillment and delivery people who handle it along the chain.

If there are any strong statistical correlations which pop up, bingo -- you've probably got a thief. Tail them and catch them.

Feels like delivery theft prevention 101, and so much benefit for so little cost.

<comment><USER3> 1\. Amazon is revenue focused

2\. 3% shrink is accepted in retail, that is 6+ billion dollars they are ok with losing.

3\. Data is large and hard to get at Amazon. Just getting access to a database without direct VP help is sometimes impossible

4\. Compute resources to 'run a report' on terabytes of data are even harder to get.

5\. Manager changes every six months

6\. Devs last ~18 months so no one is there long enough to care about solving a cost issue.

7\. There is NO REVENUE in catching thieves, so there is little to no exec sponsorship

8\. Often management is involved in fraud or theft rings.

<comment><USER4> you know what I think is funny? if 3% loss is acceptable than why do these people even get prosecuted? deterrent so that it's not 4%? sure but there's something unsatisfying about that as justification for imprisoning someone.

before someone accuses me of being a communist hippie I have a thought experiment for you: every 5 years I do spring cleaning by taking all of the boxes drawers etc of accumulated consumer goods junk I haven't looked inside of in the past 5 year and just take them to good will. I reason that if it hasn't been important in the last 5 years it never will be and that I would waste more time (money) looking closely. now the thought experiment: suppose someone had broken into my house over the last 5 years and stolen something from one of those receptacles that was eventually thrown out. should I be upset? now note that I'm not asking if I'm legally entitled to being upset but whether it would be rational to be upset.

but let me actually put on my hippie commie beatnik hat: there is so much money sloshing around in the economy and inefficiencies that entrepreneurs exploit to become wealthy. most of it is above board but some of it isn't and whether those people get punished or not is largely a function of whether they're caught before they're super successful or not. what is the difference here? these people saw an inefficiency and took advantage of it. to put a sort of hyberbolic point on it: why is this theft but selling toxic cdos not? in both "transactions" ultimately one party profited at the expense of the counterparty.

Edit: I love the downvotes. What exactly about my comment isn't "curious" as dang loves to exhort. God forbid someone questions the most totalitarian institution the human mind has ever conceived of: the law. HN is no different from every other pointless echo chamber that double speaks about freedom but suppresses dissenting opinions.

<comment><USER5> Look into the Broken Windows theory: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory)

If you let criminals get away with breaking into someone's house and stealing things, it sends a message to other people that crime is allowed. Crime rates start to rise because no one is doing anything about it. People who were not criminals before are now comfortable being criminals because they know they won't be caught.

If you don't prosecute the small crimes, it often leads to bigger crimes.

<comment><USER4> I pre-empted you

>deterrent so that it's not 4%?

My point is imprisoning someone to "send a message" rather than for the effect of the crime is cruel.

<comment><USER5> No, your response indicates you do not understand the broken windows theory at all. I would suggest you go back and read it. I linked it for a reason.

You're imprisoning criminals for the _crimes they committed_ , not just to send a message. But imprisoning criminals for committing crimes _does send a message_ and that message is that _crime is not tolerated_.

You might be okay with someone breaking into your house to steal your personal property without your permission but I'm going to guess you're not okay with someone breaking into your house and murdering your entire family. Would you then argue that it would be cruel to imprison the murderer? Because it would just be to "send a message" the murder is wrong?

No, of course not. They committed a crime, and that's what they're being punished for. Punishing criminals does not reduce the crime rate. It's the act of _not_ punishing them that _increases_ the crime rate.

Note that this comment does not remove the need for you to read the linked wiki article.

<comment><USER4> I responded to your comment rather than broken windows policy, on which the consensus is not at all as solid as your tone suggests

[https://cebcp.org/evidence-based-policing/what-works-in- poli...](https://cebcp.org/evidence-based-policing/what-works-in- policing/research-evidence-review/broken-windows-policing/)

>recent systematic review by Braga, Welsh and Schnell (2015) found that policing strategies focused on disorder overall had a statistically significant, modest impact on reducing all types of crime. This positive effect was driven by the success of place-based, problem-oriented interventions. In contrast, there was no significant overall impact of aggressive order maintenance strategies. Thus, they conclude that police can successfully reduce disorder and non-disorder crime through disorder policing efforts, but the types of strategies matter.

That was entailed in me conceding that letting these people go free would probably bump the shrink to 4%.

Now your comment was

>If you let criminals get away with breaking into someone's house and stealing things, _it sends a message_ to other people that crime is allowed.

To which I explicitly called back to by responding

>My point is imprisoning someone to "send a message" rather than for the effect of the crime is cruel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 6 years, 10 millions. That's ~1.67 millions per year, in a local zone only. I get it overall Amazon has a lot of stuff going on, but you do run local reports too, and those managing that local warehouse(s) should've catch that before police did. This smells they had coverage from a higher up in there as well.

<comment><USER7> They're not saying it all came from Amazon. Much of it seems to have been shoplifted from local stores.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> How does a guy (Zghair) convicted of reckless driving get a job as a _driver_?

<comment><USER9> Because reckless driving is a weak signal. It covers a huge spectrum of behavior. It should really be called "driving on the aggressive end of reasonable in the presence of a cop" because that describes more of the behavior it's written for than "reckless". Where I'm from it's what you get when they actually have no good reason to pull you over but did it anyway on a hunch that you look like you have drugs or something or if you're dumb enough to talk back at the cop. Sure, a few people are actually "reckless" but there are fancier charges with bigger fines that they actually get and that's what the insurance flags people on.

<comment><USER10> Why the downvotes? My experience mirrors that of the parent comment. Police in VA use reckless driving (along with several other statutes) as catch-all "I don't like the way you look, so I'm gonna pull you over and hassle you" rules.

Also in VA, anything over 80mph is automatically reckless driving, even when the posted limit is 70mph. Empty, straight interstate and 80mph? Criminal charges, a night in jail (better hope its not a Friday evening, or it becomes a weekend in jail), and expensive lawyer bills. At least residents know about the racket - anybody passing through better hope they don't look get on the wrong side of Johnny Law.

<comment><USER11> I mean, you could just not break the speed limit...

<comment><USER10> In most states, going 10 over is not a criminal offense (most traffic offenses != criminal offenses since the mid-1970s in the US, which is why you can usually pay the fine remotely, no court, no lawyer, no jail). It is a criminal offense in VA. And the police use it to selectively harass people.

Anyways, that was just one example. Reckless driving ("you pulled away from that light too fast" even when you were slower than the minivan in the next lane), illegal lane change ("I saw you swerve" even when you didn't), and other statutes are used to pull over anybody the police want with impunity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Last sentence in the article:

>Amazon has several requirements for third-party sellers on its website: They must provide a business name, address, contact information, a valid credit card, and tax identity information.

It doesn't seem like that difficult to comply.

<comment><USER13> That's not really the last sentence in the article. There's an ad break, then a bit more stuff.

<comment><USER12> You are right, haven't noticed that, cannot correct/edit the previous post anymore, just imagine that there is "near the end of the article" instead of "last".

Anyway, it seems to me very unlike a thorough "vetting" procedure for merchants that you are going to "host" on your platform, if the Author had used "a few" or "very few" instead of "several" it wouldn't have sound "strange" to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> How did the FBI obtain access to pawnshop transactions? Because the article makes no mention of a court order, making it sound like they were on a fishing expedition.

<comment><USER15> Remember Lester? Every pawnshop transaction is reported to the police department in some places to stop fencing and recover stolen property.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Like a few other commenters below have indicated - this is a confusing story.

The "fencing" part seems clear. Pawnshops had load of transactions from same people. Pawnshops appeared to be solely flogging new items online, via Amazon - indicating that they weren't functioning as you'd suspect - and were fencing from these amazon drivers and other shop-lifters.

What seems to entirely missing is "Where all this stuff came from?" Well the shoplifted stuff is on some books somewhere as 'shrinkage' \- but the stuff that came off the back of an amazon truck??

<comment><USER17> > The two contract delivery drivers working for Amazon had a clear-cut > assignment: They were supposed to bring packages from a warehouse south of > Seattle to a post office for shipping, or sometimes drive to Seattle-Tacoma > International Airport to pick up items that were being returned to the > company.

They stole that stuff. It was stuff going to customers, or returns coming back from customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Brings a new meaning to "Fulfilled by Amazon".

</comment><comment><USER19> It was a little intriguing reading this after reading another article: [https://www.npr.org/2019/07/30/746600105/1-in-4-food- deliver...](https://www.npr.org/2019/07/30/746600105/1-in-4-food-delivery- drivers-admit-to-eating-your-food)

Is delivery drivers stealing from customers' orders the new thing?

<comment><USER20> If you look at how much the overall volume of deliveries has increased in the past year, it doesn't seem abnormal. You have something with a very low barrier to entry, and plenty of alternatives to switch between. Contrast this with, for example, working for the US Postal Service. While companies like Uber may resist contractor background checks, when these contractors are doing things like raping your customers, suddenly those background checks may have protected your brand.

My friend has had Amazon packages stolen before, by the delivery person, who thought that as long as he took a photo of the package on the door step he'd win the dispute. I guess he didn't see the security camera.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Steal from Grandmas porch: labelled a "porch pirate", told by police "we don't respond to property crimes, fill out a police report online".

Steal from the richest man in the world: FBI is on the case with military- grade weapons, tactics and surveillance.

<comment><USER22> In California, at least, Porch Pirates have the law on their side.

California Voters overwhelmingly voted to end the "three strikes" laws, and also make any theft of less than $950 a misdemeanor. See [https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_47,_Reduced_P...](https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_47,_Reduced_Penalties_for_Some_Crimes_Initiative_\(2014\))

This means you can steal packages from FedEx and UPS or Amazon deliveries from porches to your heart's content (not USPS because they are covered by federal law) and almost certainly never have to spend more than a day or two in jail if you're caught.

The $950 limit was proposed because Californians thought it was "not fair" to be charged with a felony for stealing an iPhone.

In this particular case here, Bezos makes his money back because the article indicated that the stolen items were being sold on Amazon! He'll get paid either way.

<comment><USER21> I heard about that. Local news interviewed a 7-11 owner who said he's toast because they're so low-margin to begin with, and shoplifting is already high. Maybe one good thing that could come from this: stores move to either online- pickup only, or browse large posters/catalogs in the store and scan what you want, then pick up from the cashier. Products are located in a warehouse divided from customers and they pack your bags for you. 0 shoplifting loss (yes employees could steal), but the benefit for me is more efficient shopping.

<comment><USER23> The browse then pickup concept is an old one. Service Merchandise and Best did it years ago. They're out of business so maybe it didn't work so well.

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

<comment><USER21> They had tablets in the 90's. They never took off so it's obviously not a viable product.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Using Gmail with Mutt - <AUTHOR> https://smalldata.tech/blog/2016/09/10/gmail-with-mutt <comment><USER2> I'm not sure why everyone suggests the creation of a public key to protect their Mutt IMAP and SMTP passwords. It just clutters up your list of keys for no reason. I just use symmetrical encryption.</comment>