High radiation readings at Fukushima's No. 2 reactor complicate robot probe - <AUTHOR> http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/02/10/national/high-radiation-readings-at-fukushima-no-2-reactor <comment><USER2> Somehow it seems strange that Japan, the motherland of robots, fails to build a robot.

Money can't be the reason. There has been an investment surge into radioactive cleanup technology starting with the damaged reactors six years ago.

Six years and billions of dollars later we get a robot that gets stuck and fails after just two hours. From what I've gathered they didn't even include a proper radiation sensor but used the camera noise in order to "guesstimate" the dosage after the fact. Did they not expect high radiation in that location?

<comment><USER3> Electronics of the shelve get very unreliable in high dosage environments. The radiation rewrites your loaded programs, by flipping bits and causing rising edges where there shouldn't be some.

So the program running on your camera will dissolve above some radiation levels, locking it in a watchdog detects and reboot cycle. There are approaches to circumvent that in low to medium environment- one is to have redundant systems and select the "majority" vote on computation results.

But at this level, the only solution is to not have computation near the source and put up with long cable/fibre cable delay- which is tough with complex sensors (aka computers) like cameras.

It is probably some snail-eye setup- the camera a remote mini-drone on cable, retracted on black out.

<comment><USER4> In my day-job, I (help) design electronics that is subjected to (much less) radiation, and we also irradiate our devices to check for long-term effects (and this is done with a comparable doserate in a facility for this purpose).

Damage to your electronics in practice is almost exclusively caused by Photons (convention is to call this γ-Radiation when caused by radioactive decay in the nucleus, X-Rays when created in an accelerator). β-radiation (fast electrons) is easily shielded by thin layers of metal, and α (He nuclei) can't penetrate sheets of paper.

Individual photons can't really deposit much energy at a single location in your semiconductor, so they aren't able to generate enough charge to "flip bits" instantly. Flash still uses a lot of charge/bit, so it's relatively stable, DRAM is constantly refreshed and SRAM would need a jolt of high current to flip, so that does not really happen, either.

What radiation does, however, is to slowly damage the Silicon and change its crystal structure (introducing defects) which increases leakage and moves the analog threshold voltages of circuits around in a funny way. So, what we often see is flash becoming un-programmable on a more global scale (rather than individual stuck bits), and most importantly the analog aspects (voltage references, brownout-protection circuits, voltage regulators) cease to function.

This is all very variable, but we normally observe effects starting at "a few 100 Gy" when testing more complicated modules. We don't research individual components, though.

One especially nasty type or radiation are neutrons, though. When being "moderated" (slowly decelerated by successive interactions with material) they tend to have a high likelihood of merging with some other nucleus (being captured), and the energy resulting from this capture effect can be huge and concentrated on a single spot. This can be enough to flip bits, and this indeed may be an issue near the funny isotope mixture present in Fokushima at various places. Having a strong neutron emitter is very uncommon, though.

Unfortunately these damages are not specific to digital electronics, and especially optical components (parent refers to long fibre cables) tend to be rather sensitive due to their large structures, so "keeping the computers out" may not help much overall.

<comment><USER5> So, simple question: why isn't everything electronic shielded inside big lead blocks?

I get why this isn't the prevailing approach in aerospace applications: weight. But for a ground based robot with an external power source, why not heavy shielding cubes with minimal connections to the necessary exposed bits?

And why not just load it down with 5x CotS sacrificial cameras, then expose them as needed when the previous one dies?

<comment><USER4> For typical Gamma radiation of about 1MeV photon energy or higher, you need about 1cm thickness of lead to reduce the radiation to about a third (by a factor of 1/ℯ). One order of magnitude of radiation hardness (reduce radiation to 1/10th) needs two centimeters of lead. That's getting heavy pretty fast.

Radiation intensity inside your box depends on the thickness t: I(t) = I₀·exp(-tρμ)

t: thickness, say 1 cm ρ: density of the material, for Lead 11 g/cm³ μ: absorption coeffcient 0.1 cm²/g [see ref 1] I₀: intensity outside of the box

        ...import numpy as np...
        In [5]: np.exp(-0.1 * 11.34)
        Out[5]: 0.32174370422037013

I(1cm) = 32,2%, I(2cm) = 10,4%

[1] [http://www.eichrom.com/PDF/gamma-ray-attenuation-white- paper...](http://www.eichrom.com/PDF/gamma-ray-attenuation-white-paper- by-d.m.-rev-4.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Could a future earthquake jolt the reactor back into danger mode?

<comment><USER7> It's still in danger mode, still leaking massive amounts of radiation into the pacific ocean. Based on what I've read of dying ocean life it's probably one of the worst environmental disasters in history

<comment><USER8> Reprising:

There are 187000000000000 million gallons of water in the Pacific Ocean, meaning that "radioactive waste" is 2.1 x 10^-10% of the body of water itself. The waste takes the form of HTO, tritiated water, which has extremely low bioavailability and has already been introduced in abundance to the ocean by other events. There are things to be alarmed about, but this isn't one of them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So, what's the long game with Fukushima? This has been going on for so long and it's concerning that seemingly very little progress has been made.

Edit: added "seemingly"... as I can say for certain the degree of progress that has been made.

<comment><USER10> Decommissioning a damaged reactor is insanely expensive and, in too many cases, not possible. Chernobyl is at best contained, not cleaned up. 30 years after the fire and meltdown, the giant curved roof built to cover it was moved into position last year. That will hold things for a few more decades. The next generation will have to work out the next steps.

The jammed AVR pebble bed reactor in Germany is contained, but there's no way to dismantle and dispose of it. Current plans are to wait 60 years and then try to figure out something.

Fukushima's mess will also take decades. The site generated huge amounts of contaminated water, and there's now a processing plant to take most radioactive contaminants out of the water. The water still has tritium after processing. The half-life of tritium is 12 years, so that will cool off in a few decades. Meanwhile, huge farms of water tanks store the stuff. Lots of radioactive dirt has been dug up and buried deeper somewhere else. There's a refrigerated "ice wall" to try to stop leakage into the ocean. Not much has been done with the reactor vessels themselves. As today's story reports, they can't even get a robot close to the reactor vessel.

This makes one very discouraged about nuclear power.

<comment><USER6> Solar panels folks. Solar panels. Wind. Batteries. We can do it, no problem. Electricity costs a little more, but your car ends up costing less. Less maintenance on fewer parts - just swap out the battery which declines in cost each year.

Keep fossil fuels and wood for the things solar & wind will have trouble covering: airplanes, ocean shipping, winter heating.

<comment><USER8> We cannot do it:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yNj1zEh- nM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yNj1zEh-nM)

You only need the first 15 minutes of this talk to see why current renewables won't scale. The world needs something like 15 terawatts. When this talk was recorded, solar electricity produced something like .001 TW. We're now closing in on .03 --- and there are huge parts of the world that still haven't industrialized yet. We'd apparently need to be printing and distributing and deploying solar cells the way we do newspapers to have any hope of using photovoltaic to offset our total energy demand.

Nuclear doesn't scale either, but the notion that we're all just holding back on renewables out of greed because all it takes is wind and solar... well, it's easily refuted.

<comment><USER10> Our descendants have to do it. Coal, oil, and natural gas have maybe a century left. Fracking made more hydrocarbons accessible, but the supply is still quite finite.

<comment><USER8> We can't do the thing suggested upthread, eliminating dependence on all consumable energy sources by harnessing current wind and solar technology. Ultimately I agree that we have to find a way to do it. But there's a virulent belief that we can do it with technology that is being produced today, or might be produced in the near future if demand changed. No.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm wondering, can't they use the radiation as an alternative to light (photons), in that environment? I'm guessing the radiation would scatter in a way comparable to light, so you would be able to get a similar kind of "imaging". Not sure how one would implement a radiation detector in silicon, but at least you could shield it by some layer of metal to get out of the range of overload and into the range of sensitivity.

<comment><USER12> High energy photons are quite different compared to visible light. They scatter instead of being reflected. They have a low cross-section which means you can't make tiny pixels. No reflection or diffraction means no optics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Are there any startup robotic companies that are doing robots that can deal with hard radiation? It seems that they are trying to wash off some melted gunk that is blocking their way into the area beneath the vessel where the core is suspected to be.

Will building a robot capable of completing such a task under such an environment attract any funding? Anywhere to apply?

<comment><USER14> One can arguably find the engineers who created robots used in Chernobyl, which were oblivious to radiation by using pneumatic tubing for control.</comment></comment>


Icon search engine - <AUTHOR> http://www.iconfinder.com <comment><USER2> I have been using IconFinder.com for years now and I can attest that it is the best icon search engine out there. Almost all icons used in VWO come from there. I just wish that icon library was more comprehensive that what it is now but all in all, a well-executed site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, man. I love your tool and I'm happy to provide you with icons.

Every week I add 10 new icon sets so the icon library is growing. I have chosen not to let the users upload icons directly to make sure the quality is high.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have been using this for months and the interface is really good and the rights management filter is a very nice touch.

I am hoping it starts indexing/storing vector files soon or maybe have accounts for the artist/shops behind the icons so that people can easily contact then hire them from the site itself.

<comment><AUTHOR> Adding vector version of the icons are definitely next step content-wise.

The account for designers is a feature that is planned and coming within 2 months.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks pretty much like findicons.com.

<http://www.iconfinder.com/search/?q=rss>

<http://findicons.com/search/rss>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, findicons copied my site in February 2010. Iconfinder launched in 2007.

<comment><USER5> What are you hoping to gain by the "Show HN" post?

<comment><AUTHOR> Feedback from the smart users on Hacker News.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice service, just tried searching "save" and I find it funny that what apparently is the standard icon still shows a floppy disk. Somebody should survey 10 year old kids if they know what it means..

<comment><USER7> I'll bet before the floppy disk icon gets a chance to be replaced, the concept of manually saving files will be obsolete. It just might serve us 'til the end.

<comment><USER8> I don't think there is a Save command anywhere in the default iPad apps or the iWork apps. Even Office could easily switch away from forcing the users to save. They already have this nice, big menu with recent documents in their newest version, all they need to do is rework that into a sort of library of all documents. Then my dad, too, would no longer be confused by saving Word documents.

<comment><USER9> I don't like it when 'Save' is greyed out on Google Docs. I'd rather have it auto-saving and removing an asterisk that indicates changes have been made. Then I could see that I don't need to save, but still get the satisfaction of mashing the little save button (which evokes a warm and fuzzy feeling of safety).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nifty. Only the info window is 38px too far left in FF 3.6.11: <http://imgur.com/M7546.png>

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll fix that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I dont understand why people dont use consistent icons on their apps.

I always choose an icon set (Oxygen, Tango, etc) and use it for whole project. Sometimes there are missing icons, but i think its worth the consistency i get.

Same style and same palette for all my icons.

<comment><USER12> Most of the icons on the site are part of an icon set which is easily found. Been using IconFinder for a short while and it's a great service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Speaking of icons, I'm pretty much only interested in vector icons, because I can resize them any way I want and I'm doing the quality control when converting to PNG etc.

Bitmap icon quality, even the ones based on original vector artwork, are sometimes simply not up to my standards. My favorite free icon collection is the "Tango" collection, but it is also lacking in a few ways.

So I'm looking for another decent free or commercial vector collection that I can use for my projects. Most of the icon collections I see are selling bitmap versions only. Any ideas?

<comment><AUTHOR> These are probably the best vector icons out there: <http://helveticons.ch/>

<comment><USER13> Thanks for the tip. I see they are all single-color, but that's not really a problem since customizing them with colors or gradients is simple to do in Inkscape or Illustrator.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> That's just really nice and super helpful... Seems as though you have highly targeted content but have no real monetization. What are your plans for monetization?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm planning to have have a premium area where paying users can get access to quality icons.

<comment><USER15> The site has been up for 3 years without monetization? Has it just been on the backburner?

<comment><AUTHOR> It launched 2007, but it really took off in 2009. I'm still in school so I haven't had that much time to work on it. I'm doing ok from ads now and it is growing fast, so when I finish school in 2 months, I'm going to work on monetizing.

You can see the growth compared to Dropbox.com and Ycombinator.com: <http://icnf.me/brcjhH>

<comment><USER16> This may already be supported somehow, or otherwise planned, but one obvious way to monetize might be to act as a broker for contract designers. As a user, if I search for an icon and either don't find one that works for me, or find only icons with incompatible license terms, then the next thing I'm going to want to do is find someone who can design what I want. This is also going to be true in the event that I need a whole set of icons with a common motif or color/design scheme.

No matter how good a search engine like yours is, most of its users will be at least partially unsatisfied, and you may be able to turn that into an advantage. It might also be a good way to stand out from the copycat sites.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is not supported but I think it's a great idea. Perhaps doing something like 99designs, where jobs are posted and then icon designers can choose to upload their work. The designer who is chosen will win the "auction".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Looks great. Makes me wish I had something that needs icons!

The one thing that was a bit odd to me was the way the tiled icons don't often fill out the last line, even when there are many more pages of results. Typically an incomplete grid sends a message that this is the last page of results.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the feedback. The last row is always a bit of a headache. Google Images an iStockphoto solves the problem by having results from the next page shown to fill out the last row. So you'll get duplicate results in the search results - maybe that is the best solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Switched from iconlet. I really like it. The commercial usage filter is a killer feature. Great job!

</comment><comment><USER19> I created an account using Chrome but only the username seems to have been saved. Trying to edit my account results in a white screen so I can't add an email address or change my password. They username I signed up with is "abrahamwilliams"

<comment><AUTHOR> I fixed the bug - it should be working again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is great. Sometimes all you need is just a quick Facebook like button.

It's a great way to discover icons. Of course, you would usually want to use only icons from a single icon set, so your icons become consistent through your application.

However, sometimes you get into trouble when the set doesn't have a particular icon. This site could be a life saver if you don't have any budget to contact the original designer and ask for custom work.

Good job iconfinder

<comment><AUTHOR> You can search the different icon sets - just go to iconfinder.com/browse

When you have found a great icon set you can add a search term to the search query e.g. <http://www.iconfinder.com/search/?q=iconset:duesseldorf+star>

It works like Google when using the filtype: or site: keywords.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I would say its not legal. Many icons are licensed "for personal use only". So putting them on a website with advertising seems to be against the license.

<comment><AUTHOR> I only put icons with this license on the site when I have permission from the author.

<comment><USER21> Ah, ok! Didnt think of that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> We use the floppy disk for the save icon, but we don't use floppies anymore. Just something that has been bothering me.

<comment><USER23> We also don't throw our floppy disks into a trash can to eject them, but that's what the "intuitive" Mac interface proposed, all those years ago.

If these things bother you, you probably shouldn't study etymology. Most words (and concepts) retain leftover residues of previous strata of meaning. Such is change...

<comment><USER24>
      >> what the "intuitive" Mac interface proposed, all those years ago.

That was never intuitive. I thought that was a bad choice from the beginning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Very very nice. Is there any way to categorize icon styles or qualities as well? An example after background colour and file format I would need: "Web 2.0-styled" or "cool/warm". I find the only time I page through search results is looking for specific style qualities.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Categories are coming within a month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> this is great, I was using google images up until now for this... not anymore

</comment><comment><USER27> It has been around for awhile, been using it since about 2008. Cool service.

<comment><AUTHOR> 2007

<comment><USER27> Went and did a search on my email, the first time I recommenced it to someone else was the 13th Oct 2007. So yeah 2007 it is!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> First place I go when I seek a new icon. Simply perfect and easy to use.

</comment><comment><USER29> I searched for "Sword". Got a bunch of pictures of locks and keys. :P

<comment><AUTHOR> It searches for both "sword" and "%sword%" (with wildcards in both ends). It ranks results with exact match for "sword" higher than wildcard matches and what you are seeing are icons with the keyword "pasSWORD" since it hits "%sword%"

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Absolutely love the design. Did you hire someone to do it?

<comment><AUTHOR> I did the design, but not the logo. The logo was done by the talented TurboMilk -> <http://www.turbomilk.com>

They also did a nice illustration for the 404 page: <http://www.iconfinder.com/pagenotfound>

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> awesome. this definitely beats office clip art search. You should maybe have a section "User's who downloaded this ...also downloaded X icon"

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. That's not a bad idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Really useful site. The usual method for myself is to use advanced filters through google, but this is definitely more optimized.

</comment><comment><USER33> That is fantastically useful, thank you.

</comment><comment><USER34> The main problem I observe using iconfinder.com is the mess with different licenses selecting desire icons.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is not just a problem for iconfinder.com but for icons and free web design stuff in general.

<comment><USER34> I mean the lack of fine grain the search.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> How can there not be a bacon icon?!

<comment><AUTHOR> No narwhal icons either - sorry to let you down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> It's been my go-to icon search for a long time, but how are you bringing in revenue?

<comment><AUTHOR> It is only ad-based revenue at the moment and with 14MM per month it gives an ok revenue. I'm planning to add premium content in the coming months.

Would you consider paying for high quality icons?

<comment><USER37> I'd consider paying for the ability to use some icons for commercial purposes. Perhaps you could get some sort of affiliate program going? Then you could add another rights type - 'Allowed for commercial use (purchase)' or something like that. Then you could start allowing designers to offer their icons directly. A centralized place for purchased icons would be much nicer than what you have to do now - search all over the web and trudge through lots of designer's websites to try and find what you're looking for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Icon search engine: images.google.com, include the word icon, or specify size

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, you can compare the results here:

<http://www.iconfinder.com/search/?q=computer>

[http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&safe=off&biw=1342...](http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&safe=off&biw=1342&bih=702&gbv=2&tbs=isch:1&sa=1&q=computer+icon&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> This is fantastic. Thanks for sharing. This will save me many hours.

</comment><comment><USER40> Is there no support for SVG icons?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not at the moment - but it's coming soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> great service, one of the best.</comment>


Fields medalist Tim Gowers: Elsevier — my part in its downfall - <AUTHOR> http://gowers.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/elsevier-my-part-in-its-downfall/ <comment><USER3> I am an academic mathematician (albeit one with significantly less clout than Gowers). A few comments on both the article and some of the other comments:

(1) I wish I could upvote this article 100 times. I am in complete agreement with Gowers. I published a couple of articles in Elsevier journals in grad school, because my advisor thought it would be important to get my first job, but I'm pretty confident I can avoid this from now on.

(2) There are free online-only journals, e.g. <http://www.integers- ejcnt.org/>, unfortunately they are not very prestigious. I don't know what can be done to remedy this.

(3) One commenter suggested that peer reviewers should be compensated, but I disagree. First of all, you don't really "sign up" to do it; typically editors pick someone they know and just ask them to referee. I do a fair bit of this. It is not an unproductive use of time, as keeping up with research literature and thinking critically about it is already part of our job.

In addition, we are paid in a somewhat unusual way; we get flat salaries (plus grants) and are expected to do "service" in addition to research and teaching. If refereeing paid substantial money, where other informal methods of participating in the mathematical community do not, I think this would lead to an odd system of incentives. For example, for me a referee report might well take anywhere between five minutes and twenty hours. What amount of compensation would be fair? And would there be pressure for more favorable reviews?

(Note that "informal methods of participating in the mathematical community do not pay" is only mostly true.)

Feel free to ask me questions.

<comment><USER4> Hi impendia:

I'm an academic scientist. There are still huge problems with Elsevier in science, but there has been a huge amount of progress in making open-access journals more prestigious, which may work in mathematics. My favorite example is the collection of PLoS journals (Proceedings of the Library of Science). PLoS Biology was started in 2003, and in 6 years, they became the highest ranking Biology journal according to the traditional (though perhaps highly flawed) impact factor rankings. This is significant, because there's more money invested into research in biology/medicine than all other disciplines combined, so winning in such a monetized market represents a great step forward.

The best part of the PLoS journals is that anyone anywhere can read them, you can send them to your colleagues, since they're licensed under Creative Commons. And they tend to have the best user interface of any of the journals' online access sites.

There's a downside in that PLoS journals tend to ask for contributions from publishing authors to help cover costs. This is less of an issue for, say, a large biology lab with millions of dollars in funding, than it is for a theoretical physicist, or in your case, a mathematician. I think it would be worthwhile to add a part to grants asking for money for publishing in open- access journals. I don't know how grants work in mathematics, but in biology they're pretty flexible.

<comment><USER3> +1, I'm glad to hear that the rest of science is doing better than us!

Mathematics grants are relatively small, on the order of $20-60k a year. But senior mathematicians (of which Gowers is most certainly one) typically have larger grants. In mathematics, $1-3k (the publishing fee for PLoS) seems like a rather high barrier -- but I hope the coming years prove me wrong here!

<comment><USER5> The fee does seem high for individual academics, but I bet the costs of running a journal are low compared to what libraries currently pay for getting them. Moreover, storing information and making it available is a library's mission. Therefore, I hope that _libraries_ , rather than individual researchers, start to host the next generation of open access journals.

Libraries also have infrastructure in place - they already host their own websites, so running a journal just requires adding another page to it.

The most annoying part would be coordinating the different reviewers, but I think that job would be done by the editorial boards, composed of researchers in the specific fields.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The currently pending Research Works Act is a SOPA-like debacle that seeks to impede the free flow of scientific information to a degree previously unheard of. Thank you for lending your voice to stop this counter-productive madness.

<http://publishing.umich.edu/2012/01/05/more-legislative/> [http://www.opencongress.org/contact_congress_letters/24541-H...](http://www.opencongress.org/contact_congress_letters/24541-H-R-3699-Research- Works-Act)

<comment><USER7> Derek Lowe wrote a good post about the RWA last Thursday, [http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/01/19/the_research...](http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/01/19/the_research_works_act_one_two_against_and_one_for.php)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Summary: Gowers outlines the extraordinarily oppressive business practices of academic publisher Elsevier, explains why they are able to continue to do so in spite of widespread anger amongst the community (collective action problem), and goes on to explain how we might be able to solve this problem by publicizing the actions of people who've taken a stand.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is quite important. The main lock in effect of a Elsevier journal is the impact factor. Researchers careers are made on the regard for their papers, and the most visible component of that is the citation rate. The academics who can afford to refuse to publish in Elsevier journals are the well known and well regarded ones. So getting the top academics - such as Gowers - <USER2> publicly disavow Elsevier is the first step.

</comment><comment><USER9> Considering the entire system of journals and papers is about reputation rather than profit (from what I understand, nobody in academia gets money from the publishing process), it's a prime candidate for disruption. If a small group of universities started publishing all their papers on an official website (maybe with an opportune system of ranking, to somehow reflect quality of the reviewing process and make it really equivalent to traditional journal publishing), then the incentives to publish in an Elsevier paper would disappear. The system could then grow as more universities join.

I'm surprised nobody has done it yet, there must be some stumbling block I'm not aware of.

<comment><USER10> A record of publishing in prestigious journals (many of which are run by the major publishers) is generally good for tenure review and grant proposals. Starting a new publication is challenging because you have to attract the best quality work in order to gain prestige.

The current publishing model is a frequent topic of conversation among my colleagues. We share and discuss papers (formerly on Google Reader, now using substitutes like G+) from many sources. I would like to see <http://arXiv.org> acquire a public review process.

<comment><USER11> I wonder if a prestigious department could start a practice of ignoring Elsevier-published articles in tenure decisions?

<comment><USER9> That's the main problem I see, really: buy-in from high-profile institutions. If a decent number of them started to publicize that they see papers published with New-Uber-Journal-System.XYZ as "preferred" over traditional papers, then people would queue up to publish there, and would force others to follow suit or be seen as "2nd rate". To do that though, NUJS better be have a bombproof method to produce quality reviewing (high-profile reviewers, a system of incentives targeted on quality not quantity etc etc).

<comment><USER12> You can do that _de facto_ in smallish areas through "journal revolts", which have happened a few times, where the senior people of the field all band together to endorse/run a new open-access journal, and basically say, "as far as we're concerned, this is now the top place to publish". For example, when nearly all the senior editors of the journal _Machine Learning_ resigned to form the open-access _Journal of Machine Learning Research_ (<http://www.sigir.org/forum/F2001/sigirFall01Letters.html>), that also sent a pretty direct signal that JMLR was the new place to publish, at least in these senior researchers' opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Okay, so where's the Reddit/Digg for scientific research papers and articles? There could be some sort of "dual voting system" where against each article two vote counts are maintained -- one set of votes by the editorial team ("peer review") and the other set of votes by the community at large.

The editorial team could be selected through a semi-democratic process, if required.

Is it that tough? How many big names in science are required to pull this through? The technology is dead-simple - the main problem is to cross the critical threshold of number of articles submitted and number of editors.

<comment><USER14> The technology isn't the hurdle here, it's the prestige. The academic publishing world is all about who you are, what institutes you belong to, etc. To put it bluntly, a Reddit-like journal site just wouldn't have enough "cred" to attract decent content.

<comment><USER15> Indeed, get someone like MIT to do an OpenJournal to complement the rest of their OpenX initiatives and you might start getting buy-in.

The problem is that the system is broken - publish n papers => you're better than before (ignoring the content of the papers of course). Academics are encouraged to publish (and re-publish older stuff with a slight tweak) to meet publishing 'targets' handed down by government.

This model feeds into the Elsiver etc closed publishing as academics are forced to compete to earn their stripes - so now we have a model that encourages re-publishing crap and then locking it behind a paywall, but when I ask PhDs if they think this is fine, they don't see the problem :(

<comment><USER13> As part of their "publishing targets", does the government mandate the exact journals, or type of journals, in which papers need to be published?

Are these journals explicitly named, or is there a criteria they need to satisfy to be eligible?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wouldn't a more effective boycott be of _citation_ of articles in Elsevier journals?

Rough on those articles, and will leave (some) gaps in your references, but that is Elsevier's actual source of power.

<comment><USER17> That's not really something I would want to try. Omitting references can lead to accusations that you are trying to claim as your own novel contributions things that others have already done.

<comment><USER16> You could reference another paper that discusses it (assuming there is one), perhaps one that references the paper in question, ideally by the original authors. It's common for authors to write a series of papers on some topic.

This doesn't give the ideal credit, but it addresses the concern you raise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This whole situation is doubly absurd when you consider clinical trials, where patients have risked their helath or died to prove that certain treatments work or do not work. That data then gets locked down by these shameless monopolising profiteers.

I think it is completely unethical that such a patient cannot access the final report about the trial they participated in without paying $31 to Elsevier, or just settling for an abstract.

</comment><comment><USER19> Is the peer review process explained in enough depth anywhere for a non- academic to try to build a tool to support it into some kind of publication web app?

edit; It turns out there is something worth taking a look at on the front page right now:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3494395>

<comment><USER20> There are web apps that do this already. The process itself is straightforward (at least for mathematics). An editor-in-chief and a group of associate editors (who are always top academics in related fields) accept publications, sometimes to their email addresses, other times through some automated system. The papers are then assigned to the appropriate associate editor who is handling that particular subfield. The paper is then sent to a referee (sometimes two or three, especially if the first review is not satisfactory). The referee will be an expert in the field capable of evaluating the work. The referee (after some months, or more) will return a written report. Part of the report will be for the editor, the other part for the author of the paper. Some journals also request that the reviewer fill out some additional details, such as scores on how important, correct, appropriate the paper is, etc. The decision is passed on to the editor and if the editor agrees the author is informed of the outcome, along with perhaps an edited version of the author comments. They may be required to amend some minor problems in the paper, rework it substantially and resubmit or it may just be rejected.

Publication itself can be complex. It often involves journal style files, professional typesetters, sending page proofs to the authors for approval, getting transfer of copyright forms signed, dealing with diagrams and so on. This side of things is the side that fewer mathematicians actually care about. Much of it is not relevant for web-only publications.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Shouldn't someone suggest credible OA journals to use instead of Elsevier's?

</comment><comment><USER22> Another reason the arxiv should pursue a serious refereeing system. Perhaps it should work something like Hacker News--high quality work could be measured by community support.

<comment><USER23> _high quality work could be measured by community support._

Absolutely not. Assessing the quality and correctness of groundbreaking research requires a large amount of both talent and effort; a reddit or HN style voting system would swamp the signal with uninformed noise.

<comment><USER24> Absolutely agree. It seems to be really hard even for experienced researchers to assess which papers will be seen as important in the future [1].

However, maybe something like PageRank might work out well. The more citations your papers get, the more weight your reviews will have. Certainly, there are problems, like people learning how to game the ranking system. On the other hand, the current system is certainly worse in this regard.

[1] [http://www.bartneck.de/publications/2009/scientometricAnalys...](http://www.bartneck.de/publications/2009/scientometricAnalysisOfTheCHI/index.html)

<comment><USER23> That would certainly help. But more than anything else, I think what we need (at least in computer science) is a mechanism to penalize people who publish the exact same research at half a dozen conferences.

Running pagerank on authors with an unnormalized weighting function of "how many papers does author X have which cite something written by author Y" (so that if author Y publishes the same paper multiple times it doesn't have any effect even if both copies get cited, while author X publishing the same paper several times downweights all of his outgoing links equally) could work, though.

<comment><USER24> Don't search engines already penalize duplicate content? Maybe it would suffice to 'just' put all papers online, convert all references to hyperlinks, and let Google sort out what is important and what not. Actually, (at least in computer science) I don't think that stretching one's research across several publications is being done widely - at least when looking at 'top' conferences.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Tim Gowers is also the editor of the extraordinary mathematics companion Princeton Companion to Mathematics ([http://www.amazon.com/Princeton- Companion-Mathematics-Timoth...](http://www.amazon.com/Princeton-Companion- Mathematics-Timothy- Gowers/dp/0691118809/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1327179503&sr=8-1))</comment>


Wssdl – WireShark-Specific Dissector Language - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/diacritic/wssdl <comment><USER2> Interesting, but surprising they didn't look at how Erlang bit syntax works. [http://erlang.org/doc/programming_examples/bit_syntax.html](http://erlang.org/doc/programming_examples/bit_syntax.html)

It's considerably more flexible, much more elegant, and (in Erlang) battle- tested.

I wrote an Erlang-inspired version of bitstrings for OCaml: [https://people.redhat.com/~rjones/bitstring/html/Bitstring.h...](https://people.redhat.com/~rjones/bitstring/html/Bitstring.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is because wssdl is still within the boundaries of the lua grammar: the file you provide is still lua, so you have to abide by its rule.

I experimented with a key/value approach on the syntax itself (something like `{ src_port = u16 }` or `{ src_port = 16 }`), which was nicer, but the problem was that, in lua, table literals are unordered. The current approach uses the method syntax (`a:b()`) as a nice workaround, but this mandates the use of parenthesis after the type and other specifiers. This is fine though since a lot of the provided types are parameterized (e.g. `bytes(n)` which takes a number of octets)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Great idea! I have always felt that the Wireshark Lua bindings are not ready- to-use enough. They feel like the ugly stepchild of Wireshark.

In the last dissector I wrote, which was about 1000 lines of Lua, I built a very limited structure definition parser, not completely unlike wssdl. I did it to cut down on the repetitive code needed parse the structures: Typically I parse every field twice: Once to add it to the dissection tree and once to get its value as a Lua-held variable.

I'll definitely be using wssdl in my next dissector!

</comment><comment><USER4> Naming consideration, WSDL is already a very common name for XML API description files.

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting alternative if you're looking for something for your own tools: [http://kaitai.io/](http://kaitai.io/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Hooray does this mean the end of embarrassing Wireshark vulnerabilities?

</comment><comment><USER7> What does GPL3 license mean in the context of Wssdl? That if I write a dissector with it then it has to be open sourced?

<comment><AUTHOR> This means that if you distribute your dissector, you have to make your sources available.

This is nothing new though: all wireshark plugins must be GPL, since the API itself they rely on is GPL.

<comment><USER8> _v3_ means that if it's used (even over a network) by somebody, they can request the code, versus GPLv2 (Wireshark license), which says if you distribute binaries of Wireshark or software based on it, you must provide the source. The difference is that you could theoretically provide a web interface to a GPLv2 project and not need to supply the source, but if you provide such an interface to GPLv3 software, you could receive a request for the code.

EDIT: _I 'm not entirely correct_ There are _provisions_ for the network situation ("ASP (application service provider) loophole") I described, but I looks like it's not necessarily the default mode. See [0][1].

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

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

<comment><USER9> Nop The 'over the network' stuff is AGPL</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Obama not planning to endorse Clinton in primary campaign - <AUTHOR> http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/obama-not-planning-to-endorse-clinton-in-primary-campaign/ar-AAaWLZA

<comment><USER2> "White House press secretary Josh Earnest says the president is staying out because other friends of his may also run."

</comment><comment><USER3> No one expected he would endorse.</comment>


Tickets For Apple's WWDC 2013 Sell Out In Under 2 Minutes - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/25/apple-wwdc-2013-tickets-sold-out Sorry, tickets are sold out. However, you will still be able to take advantage of great WWDC content. Stay tuned for exciting announcements on videos and more. <comment><USER2> Why can't we stop this madness? I don't see how first-come-first-serve here serves developers well at all.

Why don't they let anyone with a credit card join a ticket lottery? Just trying for a ticket could cost say, $10 to discourage people from trying every one of their credit cards. Perhaps to make it more fair, a winner _must_ take their tickets, to discourage gaming.

This goes on for two days. Then the "real" tickets go on sale, the lotto winners get their tickets.

This way if you run to the computer at 10:03 or get out the hospital the next day or just simply forget until dinnertime, you still get a chance.

<comment><USER3> I honestly don't think the problem is _how_ you portion out the tickets. The system you describe does not seem to be any better at getting the tickets in the right hands. I'm not so concerned with the unfairness of the current system, but with the fact that many of these tickets will be completely wasted.

The real problem is that they've combined a 1 hour media event with a developer conference. So many people every year use their ticket JUST for the keynote. It's like combining the Super Bowl and JSConf, then reaching the conclusion that obviously JSConf needs a bigger venue because millions of people tried to get a ticket.

I'd be really curious to see how many developers would seriously be willing to throw down $1600 for a keynote-less conference that notoriously offers no free stuff (ala Google IO) and has many of the materials available afterward. Then instead of trying to solve the intractable problem of a lottery that leaves more people satisfied, you'd actually see who really cares about the content.

<comment><USER4> > It's like combining the Super Bowl and JSConf, then reaching the conclusion > that obviously JSConf needs a bigger venue because millions of people tried > to get a ticket

JSConf also sells out in like 10 minutes, which is why they moved to a lottery system. There are no media events or giveaways there (mostly), just a really really good event that refuses to get larger because getting larger may (probably will) spoil some aspects of the event that make it really good.

Think about the lottery this way: if WWDC sold out in two minutes, it's likely that more than the number of people that can attend were on there trying to buy tickets at the same time, so it was really down to a lottery of timeouts, latencies, and overwhelmed systems. A real lottery at least makes it slightly more civilized, doesn't give geographic or equipment-based advantages, and spreads out the entry times over a day or two to let all timezones take equal advantage.

So, there's not really a gain in the quality of the person who gets to go, but it does call a spade a spade and takes some of the frustration out of the physical process of getting a ticket (if not with the result of the attempt).

edit: I do like non-transferable tickets, however (with some negotiated process of refundable tickets). This can be mostly enforced by essentially requiring will-call for all ticket purchases. While some people might be willing to let you borrow their credit card/id, not that many strangers will. You will have to be prepared to be a jerk and turn people down, though.

<comment><USER3> Was this for some previous JSConf? I ask because from what I can recall of JSConf "back in my day", the price was pretty cheap and the seats were incredibly limited -- so I can definitely see ~200 seats @ $200 a pop selling out in 10 minutes and a lottery being necessary. I'm not so sure the same holds for WWDC however. I mention this because if I go to the JSConf US 2013 site right now, there seems to be 32 days till the conference and I am still able to buy a $2000(!) ticket (no sellout apparent at this price point, which leads me to continue believing my analysis of WWDC). This might be some sort of "special" jsconf though so I don't know.

<comment><USER4> This year was 100 early bird tickets at $650 with the usual ticket rush, then 200 tickets at $750 selected by lottery. I don't know what those $2000 tickets are...maybe extras held in reserve for sponsors or something that they ended up not needing.

I'm still not sure about your idea...it just seems to boil down to reducing the incentives while keeping the price high, so of course there is some point where you can adjust that mixture to where you will only sell the number of tickets available.

I agree with the argument that the keynote attracts some people that otherwise don't care (though the WWDC is always super crowded post-keynote), but considering the other conferences that have this problem, the volume of people buying tickets, and the volume of people upset with the process that denied them tickets, I'm not convinced that going keynote-less would be sufficient to erase the issues with ticket buying. And that's really the only knob you have except for raising prices, which certainly does your attendee demographics no favors.

I also really have to agree with saurik that, even if you can reduce demand to have tickets sell out in, say, an hour, simple distractions that morning (kids, forgotten meetings, car problems) still mean you miss it, which will again heavily skew your demographics to the set of people glued to twitter who would never have missed the 30-minute, 15-minute, and 5-minute warnings of impending ticket sales. Some of those people are going to indeed be the true fans, but many will just be seeing those by virtue of attributes that bring no advantage to the conference, and may limit its reach. It takes all types :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Put bluntly: this is bullshit. The advance notice was _slightly_ better than last year, but the website was intermittently down for the entire two minutes tickets were on sale.

I was there, trying to buy them at 9:59am, at 10:00:20am the website finally went live, pressed the buy button and was greeted by "unable to process your request."

Seriously, Apple needs to figure this shit out. Whether that means opening up more seats, making tickets more expensive, or even just having a website that doesn't go down on you… something.

<comment><USER6> Worked perfectly for me. Sucks for you.

<comment><USER5> Lucky :).

But that's my point: It's not even first-come first-serve anymore, it's a server-load-powered lottery.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Everybody's reporting this "sold out in 2 minutes" number, but I got nothing but errors the instant they went on sale. I think they actually sold out immediately (where "immediately" means "as long as it took for the transactions to process).

<comment><USER8> I got an error in Chrome, then immediately switched to Safari which worked. They were all sold out by the middle of my buying process though... tickets definitely weren't saved in your cart until you buy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is the world becoming a smaller place? Google I/O has been impossible to get into the last couple years selling out in minutes, now WWDC too.

But it is not just dev conferences. As an avid runner I've run a number of races every year. Recently a number of them have gone from selling out 12K slots in months to hours. In grad school classes filled up in seconds as well when registration opened.

This is a manifestation of our JIT culture. No longer do you mark the registration date in your calendar. No, now your call family and friends and have everyone raring to go at 11:59 PM before registration opens. If you're keen, you might probe their API and reverse engineer the site to get a jump on others.

Now that everything is in the ether, there is no concrete queue. You can't get there early if you're diehard. It is simply the roulette wheel of HTTP errors that determines who gets what today.

</comment><comment><USER10>
        Apple's tickets sold out 95 percent faster than Google's tickets

Wow! Apple is totally kicking Google's ASS!

WTF kind of statistic is this? The measure of two tech giants is how ludicrously quickly they sell out tickets to their conferences?

<comment><USER11> I believe they were just being funny, reporting how ridiculous these event ticket buying process became, instead of reporting this as a comparison between two companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I tried to log in as soon as the site came back up, it offered me team selection for _another company_ , and even then wouldn't let me continue. I switched browsers to try again and they were already sold out. Very frustrating.

</comment><comment><USER13> I had a ticket in my cart, billing/shipping info filled out and everything. I hit the "Purchase" button, and the ticket was gone. It kicked me back out to the store page.

</comment><comment><USER14> Logged in at 10:04. Fuck me.

I thought I barely missed the cut, now I see that I wasn't even close.

</comment><comment><USER15> I was refreshing constantly after 1pm. I saw the sign-in button but got an error trying to access the store.

Looks like it sold out in the exact amount of time it took to process a transaction.

</comment><comment><USER16> When are they going to move to a bigger venue? This is crazy.

<comment><USER17> Why would they do that? Selling out in two minutes makes them look good, and the limited number of slots make the attendees feel like they're special.

<comment><USER18> Are you suggesting that the reason they aren't moving to a new venue is because getting their tickets sold out quickly makes them look good and the attendees feel special? As opposed to countless logistical concerns that come with organizing an event of this magnitude and importance?

I'll give you a moment to let the sheer stupidity of your suggestion sink in.

<comment><USER17> I'm not saying that it's the ONLY reason. I am saying that it is A reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> They should raise their prices. A lot. So the people who value it the most get tickets.

This is not an ideal solution but it's much better than the current one.

<comment><USER20> > They should raise their prices. A lot. So the people who value it the most > get tickets.

The problem with raising prices should be obvious -- it preferentially selects wealthier attendees, not necessarily those who "value it the most".

> This is not an ideal solution but it's much better than the current one.

I don't think you've thought your position through. All raising prices achieves is to limit attendance to those who didn't care about the high price.

<comment><USER19> You "don't think you've thought your position through" despite me predicting the complaint you made and pre-including an acknowledgement of the problem?

The fact is -- contrary to your claims, compatible with mine -- raising prices does both. It slants things towards people who value it more in dollars. People get a higher score for this both by valuing WWDC more and by valuing dollars less. That is better than random.

Next time leave out the meta discussion insults.

Note also that, "if demand exceeds supply, raise prices" is basic economics and standard advice on HN for many other things. e.g. if you're a freelancer with too many people trying to hire you, patio11 would say to raise prices.

you would not then reply saying he didn't think things through because all that is going to accomplish is having price-insensitive clients rather than good clients.

EDIT and how many people go to WWDC as a hobby? how many are really price insensitive? a lot of them, even if they have money, want to get business value exceeding the ticket price, or they will not go. filtering by who can get the most business value by attending would not please certain people with certain egalitarian mindsets, but would still actually be way better than random.

lots of people look price insensitive because the business value for them attending is $25,000 or whatever -- far more than the ticket price. but that isn't actually price insensitivity and it's a good thing to use a system that makes sure those people get to attend.

<comment><USER20> > Note also that, "if demand exceeds supply, raise prices" is basic economics > and standard advice on HN for many other things.

Yes, if the point is to maximize profit. If you have any other goal in mind, then maybe it's not the best strategy. For example, if you want diverse attendance at a conference, raising the prices to what the market will bear may not be the best approach.

> ... you would not then reply saying he didn't think things through because > all that is going to accomplish is having price-insensitive clients rather > than good clients.

And? Where's the counterargument?

> and how many people go to WWDC as a hobby?

Feel free to change the topic.

> Next time leave out the meta discussion insults.

It's only insulting if you've thought your position through. Clearly you haven't.

<comment><USER19> So you repeat the same insult. You're a troll and should be banned. Flagged.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Did anyone get in?

I got the error page that said to restart my browser at 10:00 am. Then the maintenance page at 10:01. At 10:02, it was sold out.

Should they go to a lottery system? It seems like who gets in is pretty arbitrary already, at least it would take the stress out of it. I was nervous about it all morning, and my heart was racing just before 10. Such craziness.

</comment><comment><USER22> I heard there was a pre-sale yesterday for the "blessed" companies (you may have noticed that the developer centers were down for a bit yesterday as they were again today). So there were probably not that many tickets actually available today.

</comment><comment><USER23> For future reference, is it possible to login to the developer center before the tickets go on sale, so you don't have to login? I didn't think to do that until 9:45 pacific, and by then logging in got a 'we'll be back soon' message.

<comment><USER24> A guy in my office was logged in before it went live, but when it came back up the session had been cleared. So my guess would be no.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> i felt that i had good timing for getting wwdc ticket last year. after seeing how quickly they sold out this morning, i know i was _very_ lucky to get a ticket this year!

like last year, i'll make a stop at the alternative wwdc (<http://altwwdc.com>) conference that has some good people from appsterdam spitting out the truth.

for me, wwdc is a great time to meet some cool people in town for the conference, but it's easier to meet people (and have a conversation) at the get togethers/parties/bars over a beer versus during the conference itself.

</comment><comment><USER26> Our guess in how this went down:

first 5000 connections with using account/session where the credit card was _already_ on file. This didn't work for us since we were attempting to pay with the corporate credit card.

<comment><USER27> The way competent ticket sellers work is that they give out tokens to people as they start the process. Once all the tokens are given out, new people get denied. The token has to be refreshed as they go through the purchase steps, otherwise it gets put back in the pool.

<comment><USER28> This was certainly not the case here. Many people (including me) were able to add the tickets to their shopping cart and start the checkout process, only to be received by an error after entering shipping and billing information.

<comment><USER28> Disregard that, I contacted Developer relations and apparently they may be holding tickets for all those in my situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I don't believe that it actually took 49 minutes for Google I/O to sell out - that's just when they put the notice up. I started trying to buy a ticket the second orders opened and still didn't get one.

</comment><comment><USER30> Anyone else get this screen in Chrome? <http://cl.ly/image/2E2a1y0u1g0N>

By the time I pivoted to Safari one minute later it was sold out.

<comment><USER23> I got it in Chrome as well, though a sister comment got it in safari. Any ideas on the cause? Would want to avoid this in the future.

The only exceptional thing about my account was that I'm a member of two dev programs, a business and an enterprise, on the same account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is pretty unbelievable. Refreshed at 10:00 and the site was already down with a "we'll be back soon" message.

Obviously, the bigger devs would have got their tickets days (weeks?) ago.

<comment><USER13> Meh. I'm a developer of one of the top 3 grossing music apps in the iOS App Store, and Apple doesn't give us anything.

<comment><USER30> Developer of the #2 music app here, didn't get shit ahead of time (or just now).

<comment><USER13> Hello, competition :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The tickets were in my cart. So close.

The videos are going to be released during the show. Anyone in NYC going to set up a WWDC East event?

<comment><USER33> Back in 2011, there was one guy who waited a few minutes before deciding to purchase, checked the site again minutes later. Then Apple gave the "we're all sold out" message.

He goes to check the Apple Store. It still says that there's something in his shopping cart. So, on a whim, he decides to complete the checkout process. Put in his address, name, info, credit card, clicked through a few screens.

And he got in. All thanks to a cookie.

Alas, it doesn't seem like 2013 will have any "saved by a cookie" moments.

<comment><USER32> Maybe I shouldn't have taken the time to type in my email address and phone # right before I clicked my final submit? :-(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Well, seems like quite a few of the iOS developers I follow on Twitter with thousands of follower seem to have missed out.

</comment><comment><USER34> Respectfully: this demonstrates that Google IO isn't selling out quickly just because of the toys...

</comment><comment><USER35> 2 minutes after they went on sale…

<comment><USER30> One minute. I was on the checkout screen at 1:01 and it was sold out.

<comment><USER35> Same as us here. Just entered our info and bam, request failed.

<comment><USER36> Same here.

<comment><USER37> Me too.

<comment><USER38> Same thing happened to me and I just got off the phone with Apple support - they are saying that this has happened to a lot of customers and since it is a "developing story" they can not provide a lot of details. They did say however that if you made it to the checkout process your ticket was in fact reserved and once they get things sorted out they will e-mail you at your Apple ID to allow you to actually purchase your ticket.

<comment><USER13> I had a ticket in my cart and then got an error when I tried to actually buy it. I hope you're right!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> In reality they were sold out in 2 seconds. There needs be a better way to handle this.

</comment><comment><USER40> Under two minutes. Bonkers.

</comment><comment><USER41> I personally think that this is all a charade. Apple most likely preselected top developers for this conference. This is a conference with a non-disclosure agreement. Given how secretive Apple is, they probably wouldn't want to tip off competition.

</comment><comment><USER42> Feels ridiculous that this sold out so quickly. It's a shame.

</comment><comment><USER43> 1 minute 8 seconds.

</comment><comment><USER44> Blizzcon also sold out pretty fast. What's the point of this again?

<comment><USER45> The point is to take your money to be "the first"... akin to camping outside the apple store?

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Tickets were sold out way before the actual formality (such as opening website for crowd that is thinking that they can buy the tickets too).

<comment><USER47> I was sitting at my Mac Book refreshing like crazy. I got a ticket.</comment></comment>


Swiftype is a Static Showdown sponsor - <AUTHOR> https://swiftype.com/blog/static-showdown.html

<comment><USER2> I thought the idea of a static site competition was pretty cool, so I'm happy that we (I work at Swiftype) are sponsoring it.

It'll be cool to see what the teams come up with.</comment>


Early Quora Design Notes - <AUTHOR> http://artypapers.com/ap.log/thread.php?346

<comment><USER3> Do people outside the start up / technology world really use Quora? I've never seen anything there that's of value to "real people", and worse, Quora pages seldom (if ever) are returned when I search for something on Google (while other Q&A sites like StackExchange and others come up all the time). I personally find Quora confusing and the content in there more on the navelgazing side. Not sure I get it.

<comment><USER4> The question gets asked all the time quora is discussed, my 2c:

I guess it's hard to tell, but I don't know anybody who isn't a techie who is on quora.

On the other hand, I don't know anyone non-techie using *.stackexchange either.

And TBH, I don't even know anyone using yahoo answers, but judging by the number of results from YA I still get in random google searches, I'd assume way more people find it useful than we may expect.

<comment><USER5> I find that the Quora email digest is the only newsletter I'm looking forward to reading EVERY time it's in my inbox. I can't come up with anything that is as insightful, interesting, and fun on the internet. It takes the enlightenment of a TED talk and removed the bullshit. That alone makes for Quora to be a survivor.

<comment><USER6> Survivor in what sense? E-mail newsletters are not the stuff of huge cash profit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Quora would make a better first impression if they didn't force users to sign up to be able to read more than the first answer.

I also find their real name policy annoying, as they disable your writing privileges if you use a name that doesn't look real enough.

<comment><USER8> After having my account locked down because I didn't want to use my full name I closed my account, shortly after they turned into a more modern looking experts exchange and I wasn't so sore about not being able to contribute to the site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was an early and very active user of quora. I deleted my account when they mucked with privacy settings among other things.

I had a number of issues with the site: I think the UI is horrid. The site admins are complete dicks and they have a heavy censorship hand with no recourse. The ability to find various topics is difficult (it got better - <USER2> in the beginning it was abhorrent).

They are arrogant. They kept patting themselves on the back exclaiming how amazing their UI/UX was and effectively told people who didn't like it that they were too stupid to understand their methods.

I recently recreated my account to specifically ask Yishan some questions about reddit, and quora censored that post as well.

Personally, I think they are too arrogant and I choose not to participate.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm just not impressed with Quora's design; I think her initial mockup (which was essentially a StackExchange clone) was better than where it's ended up. Every time I go there I get frustrated with something; having to click to read each threaded comment, having to manually remove new notifications because instigating the drop-down or just going to the notifications page aren't enough, clicking to expand a user's description within their own profile, no less on the answer pages.. just a lot of little annoyances combined with poor typography, consistency and use of color.</comment>


Google's Project Vault Is a Computing Environment on a Micro SD Card - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/29/googles-project-vault-is-a-secure-computing-environment-on-a-micro-sd-card-for-any-platform/ <comment><USER2> This makes me very excited but also a bit sad. I'm developing a similar product, so this is great validation. On the other hand, this is quite the competition.

Could someone share a link to the original presentation? I'd love more technical details.

Is this SDHC or SDXC compatible? If they support SDXC, how do they reconcile "fully open source" with the fact that SDXC requires exFAT which is proprietary and protected by patents?

Building something like this requires an SD Slave Controller. It would be absolutely fantastic if they open source that! Fully verified and SDXC compatible? This makes me drool. Unfortunately the necessary information to implement and verify is walled behind NDAs (SD Association), unless of course you have reversed it with a logic analyzer. I don't think that's what Google has done, which makes me very curious.

If the slave controller is not open source, that begs the question of how data is transferred to the RTOS. A closed source core with DMA to whatever you run on it will exclude it from certain privacy-sensitive use cases.

If anyone at Google is reading this, consider using cores from cryptech.is for your crypto. You're already a funder so you might as well reuse them.

If anyone is interested in what I just said and you think you can contribute I would love to talk with you. Email me at firstname.lastname@example.com.

<comment><USER3> I've seen that happen before with a startup, they actually shutdown just because Google launched a superior product first.

Then less than 1 year later Google cancelled that project and now there is nobody to provide that service.

<comment><USER4> _> Then less than 1 year later Google cancelled that project and now there is nobody to provide that service._

This made me imagine some poor, bright but new-hire Google PR employee realizing this popular (and quite correct) view of Google ("CANCEL ALL THE THINGS" [1][2]) frantically trying to figure out how to actually communicate to upper management (without getting fired) the blunt truth:

This ongoing strategy of announcing projects and promptly canceling them after a few years is incredibly damaging to the company. Google's "ADHD-like low attention span" to projects is anything but confidence-inspiring. :(

1\. [http://memegenerator.net/X-All-The- Things](http://memegenerator.net/X-All-The-Things)

2\. HN likes numbered references and I do too

<comment><USER5> No one would get fired for saying that, but (clearly) the company has decided that the current strategy is the right one.

My take is that Google is less developer-friendly than Microsoft and Apple. Google does not rely on external developers as much, because so much revenue comes from web based, directly consumer facing products. Google is always trying new things, because they are looking for the next big user facing product. This might annoy developers who build against Google's APIs, but that is worth it because Google relies on users, not loyal developers. It is a fundamentally different approach from Windows or iOS.

<comment><USER6> Doesn't MS rely on users too? Users of Windows, instead of users of browsers, but it's still in both of their interests to get developers using their platforms.

At the end of the day, _all_ large companies have to dip their toes in new technologies, or die. Some of these projects will work out and others won't. Small companies do the exact same thing, except instead of announcing they are discontinuing a project they go bust.

My approach is not to get too tied to any vendor's technology, because if you do, you're setting yourself up for a fall. The rise of open source and standards has made this much easier than it once was, luckily.

<comment><USER7> Yea, exactly. But fan boyism runs deep in this industry, particularly on forums. It incredible to see my collogues get so caught up in one mega corp and then spend so much of their time trashing 'their' mega corps competition. I use each for what they are worth and I enjoy to watch them come, go, and compete.

<comment><USER5> I don't work for Microsoft, and it's sad that you assume anyone with a different opinion from yourself is a fanboy.

<comment><USER7> I said "But fan boyism runs deep in this industry, particularly on forums. It incredible to see my collogues get so caught up in one mega corp and then spend so much of their time trashing 'their' mega corps competition." Where am I generally calling people with different opinions than mine fan boys. I agree and disagree with many fan boys. I am a fan of the products I use, but I am quick to move to new products if I have the means and my experience with the other products is superior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Google's ATAP said the micro SD format made sense because there's already advanced security features on your phone, contained in the SIM card, which protects the things important to carriers. Vault is designed to be an equivalent, but designed to project a user's important content._

How exactly does this help on a mobile platform that is architected to enable easy and legal exfiltration of user data?

It seems like a difficult sell to imply I can't trust the smartphone's primary storage for key material, but to trust processes on the same system with the plain text.

I know why this is useful in the abstract (I use a yubikey as an openpgp card to keep key material off my computer and phone) but the class of attacks it is designed for are not the attacks smart phone users face daily and en mass. (I'd trade in the yubikey in an instant for a platform with a stronger permission system, and apps that don't send home a copy of all data I allow them to operate on.)

<comment><USER9> why aren't you using an iphone then? Apple's business model is not the systematic sale of your information to advertisers.

They're _far_ from perfect, but look at eg app permission systems. Android's next gen os finally catches up to what ios has had for quite a while. It's pretty clear where priorities lie.

<comment><USER8> Because I can use more than one criteria when making a purchase decision?

I've had iphones too. When I did, I was able to care about users other than myself, and how the status quo effects us all.

The difference in first party surveillance is real, but they both court developers to their platforms with little regard for how much surveillance they will or will not do. The problems are the same there, and the minor differences are merely dressing around the edges. They're just hyped to be bigger than they are because people love a rivalry and websites love clicks.

<comment><USER9> well yes, this is the real world and you have to make tradeoffs; privacy apparently isn't important enough to you

the differences are more than window dressing; one company is an advertising company and the other isn't. One company's messaging platform is only encrypted in transit to the company; the other's is architected so they can't read your messages.

Again, I'm not claiming apple is perfect on privacy, but they are better than google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _Onboard the Vault itself is an ARM processor running ARTOS, a secure operating system focused on privacy and data security._

Am I the only one wondering why there is no information available about that OS? Google is in many ways committed to Open Source and then it is using a proprietary OS where I do not find any information about.

There is a Wikipedia comparison table with an outdated link. There is an old entry on a blog with basically zero information, except there where only a single person involved in designing and developing this OS. Which makes it suspicious to me regarding the claim "safe and secure".

<comment><USER11> I think "ARTOS" is a mishearing of "a RTOS".

<comment><USER12> The only potentially relevant 'ARTOS' I found was here:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_real- time_operati...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_real- time_operating_systems)

Which lists an active X86 project and a defunct ARM project named ARTOS, both proprietary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Here's a link to the original presentation: [https://youtu.be/mpbWQbkl8_g?t=2851](https://youtu.be/mpbWQbkl8_g?t=2851)

Remember L0pht and cDc? This is a project lead by Peiter Zatko aka Mudge. His Wikipedia page is a piece of hacker history.

Also see [https://twitter.com/dotMudge/status/604295695751749633](https://twitter.com/dotMudge/status/604295695751749633)

</comment><comment><USER13> Isn't it ironic that Google's own Nexus phones won't be able to use this as they don't have microSD card connector?

<comment><USER14> I never thought of that! Hopefully if vault becomes a common thing, we'll see more phones with microSD card slots! To be honest, a large part of choosing my phone was if it had a card slot or not, they give so many extra capabilities.

<comment><USER15> It's mostly the Nexus line that doesn't have SD cards. Google was/is a big believer that multiple storage devices makes for bad user interaction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Such a thing, more or less, exists today. It is called Secure Element[1]. It comes in microSD + NFC or embedded as part of SmartCard/SIM card. Incidentally this "secure element" is why GooglePay was/is dependant on carriers. The carriers already have a secure element (in their SIM) to authenticate you on their network.

It seems the real value in what they've done is expand the software support for it by, hopefully, making it a key part of Android API.

[1] [https://www.datacard.com/downloads/ViewDownLoad.dyn?elementI...](https://www.datacard.com/downloads/ViewDownLoad.dyn?elementId=repositories/downloads/xml/NFC- micro-sd-secure-elements-data-sheet.xml&index=1&repositoryName=downloads)

<comment><USER17> That's explicitly called out in the article:

> ...there's already advanced security features on your phone, contained in > the SIM card, which protects the things important to carriers. Vault is > designed to be an equivalent, but designed to project a user's important > content.

SIM card is controlled by carrier, and protects carriers' cryptographic interests. The vault is independent of the Secure Element: it user-controlled, and protects user's cryptographic interests.

<comment><USER16> Correct. The carrier controls that SE, in this case Google is making it easier for people to work with their own SE by giving Android ability to talk to it.

You can/could do the same thing with carrier's SIM actually. All SEs run something called Java Card, which is a standard API you can write against (in Java). Each app gets it's own isolated part of the secure storage, and runs in complete sandbox from other apps and can communicate to apps on the host device.

The chip inside the SIM and the SDCard are pretty much the same. Just different packaging.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Vault is designed to be an equivalent, but designed to project a user's important content."

Gotta love a typo that, hilariously, says the opposite of what is meant.

<comment><USER19> It's valled double speak (see 1984)

<comment><USER20> I'm not sure I see the parallels to 1984 here. This seems more like a Freudian Slip [1].

1\. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freudian_slip](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freudian_slip)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> ATAP = Google's Advanced Technology and Projects group, for those who are not familiar with it.

<comment><USER22> Perhaps GARPA is a better name?

<comment><USER23> "Produced by GARPA under funding by DARPA" at the end of every video may be kind of entertaining to hear narrated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> How does this brings additional security?

If Alice types a message in her phone and the phone is compromised -- such as the telecom owning the baseband processor which can access all of the device memory -- how does it guarantee that the text entered is not captured by the telecom?

<comment><USER25> It means they can't steal the key, so the attacker has to actually have root on the device whenever new data is sent. That's risky for the attacker as they could be found out and possibly have their entry vector / zero day patched worldwide.

It also has open source random number generators, another defence against a passive attacker and requiring them to have root on the device.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> How is this different from let's say Swissbit ( [http://www.swissbit.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=ar...](http://www.swissbit.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=291&Itemid=599) ) or DeviceFidelity ([http://www.credense.com/](http://www.credense.com/)) or GoTrust ( [http://www.go-trust.com/](http://www.go-trust.com/) ) or any generic ASSD card ( [https://www.sdcard.org/developers/overview/ASSD/](https://www.sdcard.org/developers/overview/ASSD/) )? Those are all programmable using JavaCard and contain secure tamper- resistant chips.

<comment><USER2> None of those products are, to my knowledge, open source.

Vault might very well implement the ASSD specification. However, to use ASSD the OS needs to be able to send ASSD-specific low-level SD commands to the card. It would require patching the OS, and depending on the phone it might not work anyway.

Assuming Google sticks to the open source promise that will drive developer adoption. Using the standard memory interface and normal file system operations to do crypto makes it potentially compatible with just about anything. It's also easy to interface with. Everything is a file! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is super interesting for embedding into servers as an HSM-like device. A lot of servers have SDIO ports internally. Any idea what the cost is going to be?

<comment><USER2> If you're looking for an open source HSM take a look at cryptech.is

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> It seems it was discussed at the I/O session here:

[https://youtu.be/26Bma3d0wko?t=10m39s](https://youtu.be/26Bma3d0wko?t=10m39s)

Vault actually starts at 17:50.

EDIT: Hmm. There seems to be some problem with Google's videos. When another "live session" that's supposed to be added at the same video link begins, you can't watch the previously recorded video anymore.

</comment><comment><USER29> You can see all the code in

[https://github.com/projectvault/orp](https://github.com/projectvault/orp)

You can see the demo at [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpbWQbkl8_g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpbWQbkl8_g)

Cheers, Pedro

</comment><comment><USER30> Google so far hasn't shown much knowledge of endpoint security, uses many stacks with huge attack surface, and plays penetrate/patch. That's from their web services all the way to mobile. Third parties, both companies and FOSS types, are doing better at protecting Android than Google. Although there's exceptions, Google seems mostly unqualified or uncaring in terms of strong INFOSEC.

So, I have little trust in the security of ARTOS or Vault for now. I tried to review the ARTOS kernel's design but they pulled it off their site. So, we have nothing to go on but their word. I can't wait to get some more objective information about its design and implementation for a real review.

<comment><USER31> > Google so far hasn't shown much knowledge of endpoint security, uses many > stacks with huge attack surface, and plays penetrate/patch.

[citation needed]

> Third parties, both companies and FOSS types, are doing better at protecting > Android than Google.

such as...?

> Although there's exceptions, Google seems mostly unqualified or uncaring in > terms of strong INFOSEC.

Eh? What's your basis for this claim? They are pretty much always on the latest & greatest. ECHDE_RSA, certificate pinning, universal 2nd factor (FIDO), strong sandboxing & permissions (you may not remember, but those were things Google took mainstream with Chrome & Android). Google's also the company that took security vulnerability rewards and made that a thing.

Plenty of things to dislike Google about (privacy is always an easy target, for example), but security really isn't one of them. They have one of the best trackrecords you can have here.

<comment><USER32> > Third parties, both companies and FOSS types, are doing better at protecting > Android than Google.

I'm working on a 3rd-party OSS project securing Android [https://copperhead.co/android](https://copperhead.co/android) (/shameless self plug)

While Android is in pretty bad shape, I'd still give Google some credit, they have been slowly starting to improve their OS security in the last 2 years. But quite a few early design choices favouring performance over security, such as Zygote rendering ASLR ineffective, are lingering and holding back Android's security.

They are also using Linux kernels from 2012 or earlier (3.4) on almost all devices, although from what I've heard that is mostly the fault of vendors such as Qualcomm moving slowly.

<comment><USER30> Good for you. We Android users appreciate people picking up Google's slack. :) It looks like your people are mixing the regular hardening advice with some ported stuff from BSD/Linux security work. This is low-medium in that it won't stop serious attackers if you get popular. Yet, even baking in the basic hardening by default should reduce risk of many real-world attacks. The other stuff might do more in final form. Keep at it.

<comment><USER32> Having read a few of your other comments I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on ways in which we could harden Android (on here or via email).

Our focus now is indeed adding memory protections to the underlying OS, to get Android up to date with at least 2004-era exploit mitigation. Before moving on to higher-level stuff :)

<comment><USER30> Linux is so inherently insecure that it's hard to say without processor & toolchain modifications. What you can do is follow lead of the others: combine a microkernel (eg OKL4, OC.L4) with paravirtualized Android with security- critical components running outside of Android. The Nizza Architecture [1] below illustrates this. A better, but commercial, approach [2] shows how to handle drivers and some other things better. It's been deployed in a ridiculous number of phones with success. So, standardize on a phone, audit/test the crap out of the drivers, put an OKL4/Nizza-style architecture on it, and pull out anything security-critical to run on microkernel with _careful_ input validation & state management. Should reduce TCB, increase reliability, and prevent spoofing if you fully implement Nitpicker for mobile. Hope that helps.

Quick note: be sure to clear all internal registers and cache if kernel transitions from trusted software to untrusted software if you're worried about covert channels (esp key leaking). Both of those can leak keys to professionals if they compromised the Android portion.

[1] [http://os.inf.tu-dresden.de/papers_ps/nizza.pdf](http://os.inf.tu- dresden.de/papers_ps/nizza.pdf)

[2] [http://www.eit.lth.se/fileadmin/eit/project/142/virtApproach...](http://www.eit.lth.se/fileadmin/eit/project/142/virtApproaches.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Where can it be used? On the contrary, I'm really worried about my privacy. Creating a backdoor in the firmware can be easier and more hidden.

</comment><comment><USER34> I guess I'm just _supposed_ to know what ATAP means.

</comment><comment><USER35> Reminds me of the Western Europe chip cards with Sun MicroJava runnung in it.</comment>


Code hosting provider ceases trading after "well-orchestrated" DDoS attack - <AUTHOR> http://www.cloudcomputing-news.net/news/2014/jun/19/code-spaces-rip-code-hosting-provider-ceases-trading-after-well-orchestrated-ddos-attack/ <comment><AUTHOR> This should serve as warning to anyone relying blindly on cheap cloud to keep themselves up and running.

This also remind me of importance of offline tape backup. Google still uses tapes[1], yet some of the companies have started thinking they can eliminate tapes and move their backups to cloud.

[1][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNliOm9NtCM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNliOm9NtCM)</comment>


An Open Letter to CA/Browser Forum Re: Personal Certificates for ".onion" - <AUTHOR> http://dropsafe.crypticide.com/article/11697 <comment><USER2> It might make more sense for Chrome/others to whitelist .onion as a domain that is already encrypted and thus features shouldn't be restricted based on its TLS status.

Using TLS to connect to Tor hidden services is completely pointless. While I don't disagree with the article, it's probably the wrong solution.</comment>


"Ode To Ubuntu's Unity Dash".  The Poem. - <AUTHOR> http://lunduke.com/2013/11/20/ode-to-ubuntus-unity-dash/ <comment><USER2> It's a shame that the dash is so slow - but there are some solutions:

        apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

and then apply [http://askubuntu.com/a/68552/128873](http://askubuntu.com/a/68552/128873)

You should also disable window animations and other funky stuff:

[http://www.techdrivein.com/2013/03/4-simple-tweaks-to- improv...](http://www.techdrivein.com/2013/03/4-simple-tweaks-to-improve- unity-performance-ubuntu.html)

It sucks that I have to write this here and that countless others wasted their time researching this.

<comment><USER3> Seriously people need to stop working around crap and just vote with their feet.

I just switched to Fedora 19 on the desktop and it's far better. It's lightning fast and everything just works out of the box; wifi, hibernate, SMB/CIFS networking, RDP. Miracle. Was zero config for me and it's polished.

It's got to the point, that I'll probably switch all my stuff to CentOS 7 when it comes out (this will be based on RHEL7 which is based on Fedora 19).

I just _need_ stuff that works these days.

<comment><USER4> Two things here:

1) The cost of work-arounds is incredibly cheaper than surveying the distro space to find one that works for you.

2) It is likely the case that the benefits of using Ubuntu outweigh the cost of the work-arounds (at least this is true for me and probably many others).

<comment><USER3> Sometimes

1) doesn't scale well. The amount of work just to get Ubuntu into a usable shape is increasing per release. I can't tell you the number of hours I've pissed out of the window on it over the last few years. It's the equivalent hack status of Windows now which removes every competitive advantage I have by using it to start with.

2) There are no explicit benefits to using Ubuntu other than you probably already have it. The benefits are disppearing faster as to be honest it's not really a fairly compatible Linux distribution. There are Ubuntu-isms creeping into other things and this is seriously bad news. Canonical just want their slice like the Unix vendors in the 1990's.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why _is_ the Unity dash so slow, and why does Canonical not seem to have any interest in speeding it up? Is it faster on their testing machines? Is it significantly faster on new hardware, if you're using an SSD, or if you have more than 4GB of RAM, or something? I quite like Unity generally, but the ridiculous slowness of the dash is a constant irritant.

<comment><USER6> it's a compiz plugin written in _python_. python is slow.

<comment><USER5> The dash itself is written in C++. It gets some of its data from python plugins, but a) not when it's searching for local files or applications, for which it uses services compiled to native code and b) there's no reason python should be slow for stuff that isn't hugely computation intensive like, say, searching a list of filenames. Whatever Unity's problem is, the choice of implementation language is not it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have a feeling it might be the lenses that connect to servers. I removed all unity-lens-* packages but unity-lens-applications and it's quite snappy.

</comment><comment><USER8> I was using Gnome-Do and later Synapse before Unity arrived and it is much slower which is one of the top UI felonies for new software.

<comment><USER9> Ditto for Launchy, which is cross-platform and replicates every feature of Dash. There are a lot of these search-while-you-type launchers out there, and none of them are as slow as Canonical's implementation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I once tried to run Unity under VirtualBox, and It was the fastest uninstalaltion/purge I have made so far.

</comment><comment><USER11> For me, the answer was as simple as "Ctrl+Alt+T; sudo apt-get install kubuntu- desktop"

</comment><comment><USER12> Dash, sometimes, is horribly slow. Rest of Unity has gotten usable, but Dash is a pain even now. Canonical should really focus on it's performance since it's the most important part of Unity experience.

</comment><comment><USER13> It doesn't bother me that much because it never misses what I type. I can hit the Super key, then 't', then enter, and I know that it will eventually launch a terminal.

<comment><USER14> CTRL+ALT+T might be faster in your case.

<comment><USER13> True, but you get the idea... I don't have to wait for it to "launch" before I start typing, so I don't feel like it's breaking my train of thought. This is mostly true with typing an address in Firefox too, because the history pane seems to ignore me at first which is much more annoying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If it wasn't for the HUD feature (tapping alt gives you a search bar to all the program's menu items) I would've switched to another DE already

are there any other DE's that provide something like that?

</comment><comment><USER16> I use Kupfer in Xubuntu. It's sort of similar to Quicksilver on the Mac: [http://engla.github.io/kupfer/](http://engla.github.io/kupfer/)

</comment><comment><USER17> Doing Crossfit would probably break the Dash even more.

</comment><comment><USER18> unity should go to hell, gnome-classic is so much better that it. I believe the high level of ubuntu is stupid to start the unity project, after years it's still a piece of shit.</comment>


Show HN: A web app that charts any TV show's IMDB ratings, by episode - <AUTHOR> https://tvchart.benmiz.com/ <comment><USER2> that's fun! seeing the game of thrones one made me sad i'm rewatching the show now and the first two seasons are so damn good. can't wait to re-experience the rest</comment>


The epic photography of Kenny Rogers - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/mar/23/remarkably-talented-the-epic-photography-of-kenny-rogers <comment><USER2> I like a lot of Kenny Rogers' music. His stuff is good, even for the era (which has a lot of good music.)

I felt sorry for him after his most recent plastic surgery, though. He got sort of a 'plastic' look, reminiscent of the Tim Allen movie with a fake Santa Claus.

RIP, Kenny. Thanks for the songs and photos.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Like many of Rogers's environmental photographs, it has real depth, > accentuating the shadows. It's as if he was suggesting that America, even at > its most beautiful, had something sinister lurking in the darkness.

This photo suggests something sinister is lurking?

[https://www.instagram.com/p/BslYwHdhR4H/](https://www.instagram.com/p/BslYwHdhR4H/)

That's a gorgeous photo that might be taken in any number of different locations around the world. It isn't suggesting anything sinister.

Half the article was decent, the other half was embarrassingly stupid. The author latched on to the bizarre, projected "sinister" line and reused it multiple times.

<comment><USER4> I don't think it's the fact that the pictures are taken in America that suggest there's "something sinister lurking in the darkness".

Pictures are taken by people, and the fact that an American chose to take such a picture may be interpreted as an expression of that person's then sensibilities. That can mean that " _he_ was suggesting that America, even at its most beautiful, had something sinister lurking in the darkness". That's because he chose to show those things, because those things are what he felt had "meaning".

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The photograph from the Lincoln monument is very powerful.</comment>


No Matter What They Tell You, It's a People Problem - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001033.html

<comment><USER2> Atwood does nothing but recycle what other people have recently and obviously had to say.</comment>