Ask HN: CTM gave CS the "kernel language". Is there a "kernel database"? - <AUTHOR> In "Concepts, Techniques, Methods of Computer Science" (CTM), Peter Van Roy takes the approach of teaching programming not as one paradigm or another, but rather a hierarchy of features for which each new feature set or stratification, maps the whole set to a new paradigm. (He calls this abstract set of features the "kernel language".) Thus you build up something like Object Oriented Programming from simple parts, the lowest of which is Declarative/Functional Programming. Then you can negotiate the tradeoffs effectively.
Currently I'm diving into databases, and I'm nothing but confused. It seems easy to get lost in the myriad of technologies and their features. I'm having a difficult time negotiating the tradeoffs, particularly without a real, central model of what a database is or what it's design space is. Is there an equivalent to a kernel language in the database world?
The cover graphic of the MIT OCW for databases (labeled 6.830 / 6.814) seems to give away that there is a basic set of problems that databases need to solve. So I think that a "kernel description" of databases can exist. I'm wondering if anyone here has come across any. <comment><USER2> I think you're looking for a set of roughly-orthogonal concepts that together make up a "database", right? Basically, you're trying to understand the different dimensions under which database products might make different trade- offs, defining the design space? If so, take a look at these concepts:

 _Schema_. This defines how the raw bytes of a data record are mapped into semantically-relevant pieces of data for your program. The relational model (behind SQL) is the most commonly used schema for commercial database products, but also check out things like XML databases, JSON data-stores, serialization formats like Protobuf or Thrift, etc.

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

 _Indexing_. This defines what data structures are used to quickly _find_ records on disk. Almost all the major products use B-trees, but these are not the only options: you can also have hash indexes, sorted string tables, bitmaps, bloom filters, etc.

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

 _Concurrency control_. This defines how the database deals with multiple clients trying to modify the same piece of data at once. Options include row- level locks, table-level locks, MVCC, STM, CRDTs, etc.

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

 _The memory hierarchy_. This defines where the data is stored, physically. Is it on disk, like most data-warehousing stores or distributed filesystems? Is it in memory, like memcached or Redis? Is it on Flash memory? Is there some sort of caching scheme where parts of the data are in memory and parts on disk?

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

 _Distribution_. How is data split across multiple machines, and then how are failures in the network handled?

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

Hope this helps. Most data-management solutions (even ones that often aren't considered "databases", like memcached or Redis or flat CSV files or MapReduce or the Google Search indexes) can be mapped onto this space.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, this is close to exactly what I was looking for. Between this and a database management systems book (as per paperwork's suggestion) I think I would get both "a lay of the land" and "a cathedral to build on" when it comes to understanding database systems. Thank you.

<comment><USER3> Old but classic is C.J.Date's "An Introduction to Database Systems". This book covers most concepts required for databases, and the reason why relational databases had been an improvement over prior key-value, hierarchical, and network databases.

One could consider relational language as a database kernel language.

<comment><AUTHOR> OK, I thought relational modelling was more niche than that, thanks. But as long as we're on the topic of the kernel language model, I'm getting reminded of the fact that every time we add a stratification to the KL, we don't get a _better_ language; instead we get a _different_ language, with its own set of strengths of weaknesses.

For example, if the relational language is the database kernel language (model?), why does the "degradation" towards key-value pairs benefit a cache like Redis?

I'm all for principles books on databases right now, so thanks, I'll take a look.

EDIT: oh, CJ Date wrote "Database in Depth: Relational Theory for Practitioners", which seems newer. Do you know how they compare?

<comment><USER4> I just finished _Database in Depth_. :-) It is short and readable. It's targeted to working database programmers with a few years of SQL already. I learned a bit, but it was a bit of a bait-and-switch: the book is really a polemic about why SQL is not relational enough and people should use the author's own Tutorial D. Every page belabors that point. More examples are written in Tutorial D than SQL. I was hoping for some math & theory, and there was some theory, but there was little effort to connect it to SQL except to show SQL's shortcomings. For instance I never once saw the term "outer join" (because Date wants to forbid NULLs). If you are interested in database theory and trying new things, it might be very interesting. If you are a working programmer who wants to solidify the foundations, there are probably better choices (I hope).

<comment><USER5> On the kernel language topic, though, Date and Darwen's work [0] on the specifications for an ideal class of database languages unifying OO and Relational models (D; of which Tutorial D is one realization intended principally for pedagogical purposes, hence the name) and their lower level work on an abstract relational algebra (A) to underlie D is probably useful in that regard, as frustrating as some of their work may be to people who just want to get down to using current SQL-based relational DBs.

[0] available at [http://www.thethirdmanifesto.com/](http://www.thethirdmanifesto.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've wondered this as well. However, I couple of notes. CTM is indeed an awesome book, but the idea of language kernel is older. I believe academic papers often start with a minimal language, like the lambda calculus, then show how it can be extended with one feature or another. If I recall correctly, I don't think CTM spends any time showing you how to implement these features using a parser/interpreter/compiler/etc.

If you are looking for a theoretical model of relational databases, you may look up relational algebra. I'm sure others will chime in about how sql is not a very good representation of relational algebra; however, if you are not aware of it, RA is certainly something to study.

I suspect that you may be referring to a kernel database, the way there are simple implementations of operating systems--written expressly to study how OSes work. I wish something like that existed for databases, but I'm not aware of it.

Finally, there are several text books on relational database management systems. I haven't used one in a while so can't recommend a specific one. However, these books often show you how to implement various parts of a database, such as b-treee for storage, indexes, how to design a pipeline to implement selection/projection/group by, etc. Make sure that the book is showing you how to implement a DBMS, not how to design a datamodel.

</comment><comment><USER7> This may be useless, but here is how I would do it. Its kind of related to the "kernel" idea in that I try to discover the heart of the problem a technology solves, what the traditional problems are and how a given technology overcomes them.

Figure out the problem something solves, try a bunch of simple solutions and see why it fails, ask questions about why things are done a certain way.

Example is much more helpful:

Q.Whats a database?

A. thing to store data

Q.why not use a simple text file?

A.well there is no way to enforce a schema that way. whats to stop me from adding a line "a,b,c,d" when the schema of the database has only 3 fields?

its probably not good for binary data either.

ok so well use some specialized format

Q.whats an index? why do the use indexes?

A.<do research - find they are B-trees that allow you to maintain an order over data>

Q. so what happens if multiple people try to write at the same time

A. we could global lock the whole table. so only one write is allowed at a time.

we could lock on the specific row.

with something like CRDTs, order of writes doesn't matter.

what if we didnt lock at all?

data will be corrupt. this is where consistency models like ACID etc. come in.

So my advice is think deeply about the problem being solved, what the difficult sub-problems are and then see what kinds of trade-offs different databases use to deal with them.

The more questions you answer, the more questions you will have, but about increasingly detailed slices of the DB/framework/etc. This is learning.

</comment><comment><USER8> Although tangential to your question, I feel you might enjoy presentations by Rich Hickey wherein he describes traditional database architectures and presents the whys and wherefores behind Datomic. For example:

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cym4TZwTCNU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cym4TZwTCNU) [2] [http://www.infoq.com/presentations/datomic-functional- databa...](http://www.infoq.com/presentations/datomic-functional-database)

</comment><comment><USER9> This is a very naive (and perhaps unsatisfying) answer, and I haven't read CTM so I may misunderstand the real concept of the kernel language, but you may be looking for either the Relational Calculus or Algebra[1][2] or, for less math and more application, straight up database-independent SQL[3].

These pretty much describe the underlying set of the things you can do with database systems, and different databases provide different implementations of them with different tradeoffs and abstractions.

        [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_calculus
        [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_algebra
        [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL

<comment><USER10> BeFS (BeOS) and "Cairo"/WinNT4 NTFS (with Object extension) offered a database API on top of the filesystem. And IBM stored its system files in a database like filestorage too, in its mainframes.

<comment><USER11> and the Newton had a db / query API on top of an object store (soup)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Van Roy's book is an awesome way to explain computer languages and computing itself. I'm not sure there's anything so approachable yet mind blowing for DBs.

I think Foundation of Databases, "The Alice Book", lays out the mathematical basis well. The relational algebra might be the kernel language. I think Ullman's books on databases provide more implementation details. Caveat: I haven't finished either. The Alice book is pretty dense.

I'd describe it this way myself:

A database is a persistent repository of facts about some domain.

The simplest set of facts might be a set of values. You can't do much interesting with that. This might be main memory or a hard disk.

Beyond that, the facts might be tuples (K, V) where K is some name or key and V is some unstructured value. Key value stores and filesystems are like this. You can index K and provide fast lookups

If the tuple has more structure, it might be a relation. Relations might be described as an ordered tuple of values where each value is selected from some domain. (Name, Age, HourlyWage) might be a relation where Name comes from Strings, Age comes from Ints and HourlyWage comes from Floats.

So, we might have a couple facts like: (Bob, 45, 14.50) (Jill, 19, 112.95) (Jim, 7, 1337.0)

Now, the repository of facts can provide a solver that answers questions. You define some constraints like HourlyWage > 100.0 AND Age < 10 and it finds the facts that match the constraints. It's more complicated than that and the Alice book explains the mathematical foundations well.

And the database remains a repository. You can add data to it. The repository may enforce the relations and reject facts that don't fit the domain of their values. Maybe it has uniqueness constraints on certain fields, etc. etc.

Beyond that it's mostly additional features. More complicated relational operators. Better query abstraction. Optimizations to solve queries more efficiently (query planning, etc.) Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation and Durability guarantees. Clustering and networked operations. So on and so forth in the spirit of CTM.

My intuition is that the mathematical foundation is fairly pure. So even "non- relational databases" could be viewed as implementing some non-standard form of the relational model.

</comment><comment><USER13> Off the top of my head, I'd say the kernels of database systems are the CAP on the operational side and ACID on the design side. More abstractly, what really matters is the _particular_ business logic [what problem are we trying to solve?] a database models not the implementation details [what code are we using?].

That said, the bigger abstraction is information storage and retrieval. For some purposes a printed book on a shelf is most appropriate, and it's helpful to think of the continuum of storage technologies as including hard copy simply because it filters out the noise of implementations: key-value stores, versus document stores, versus relational stores, versus column stores, versus CPU caches. The what and why and when come before the how and where.

For traditional relational databases, I found _Database Systems: The Complete Book_ very informative. But my intuition is that RDMS's are increasingly less likely to be the best choice for a lot of common applications.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER14> I thought this was going to be about why an OS needs a database for its own data, instead of a collection of flat files without locking or atomic updates.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is an interesting idea, I wonder if it has any merit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Warning: I am neither a skilled nor experienced programmer. I would say the kernel of programming languages is more practically something like C, assembly, or machine language. Kernel implies containing the core functionality, the building blocks. Van Roy's kernel language does seem to contain core ideas for ideal programming languages, even though it doesn't seem to translate well to existing hardware / machine language.

After reading a bit about it I started to think of it as pseudocode for programming languages, and I thought I'd share some results from my searching based on that idea [1].

"In terms of the kernel language itself, it is in fact its own programming language, a sort of "runnable pseudocode" that is executable in the Mozart/Oz platform."

Here's an interesting link I found by searching for database pseudocode [2]. This delves into the topic of "NoSQL", which might be helpful in your database basics research, but it also covers other database basics.

I am also not very skilled nor experienced with databases, but based on your request, one database that comes to mind for me is Berkeley DB. It is the building block for lots of other technologies, and is also considered one of the origins of the NoSQL concept. Here's a recent relevant discussion that probably made me think of it [3] (that and it is the basis for a distributed filesystem I'm studying). Also, check out the Wikipedia for it, and (maybe obvious to you already) searching site:news.ycombinator.com on Google can get you a lot more interesting discussions on any topic.

Here's one more random link I found [4], just because it has a lot of summaries on different types of NoSQL databases.

Again, this is all far from expert advice, which is probably really what you need, but I thought I'd just share with you what I found in my attempt to understand this "kernel language" concept and apply it to databases.

[1] [http://michaelrbernste.in/2013/02/23/notes-on-teaching- with-...](http://michaelrbernste.in/2013/02/23/notes-on-teaching-with-the- kernel-language-approach.html)

[2] [http://www.jeffknupp.com/blog/2014/09/01/what-is-a-nosql- dat...](http://www.jeffknupp.com/blog/2014/09/01/what-is-a-nosql-database- learn-by-writing-one-in-python/)

[3] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10148242](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10148242)

[another old one] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3613638](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3613638)

[4] [http://bigdata-madesimple.com/a-deep-dive-into-nosql-a- compl...](http://bigdata-madesimple.com/a-deep-dive-into-nosql-a-complete- list-of-nosql-databases/)</comment>


Cultural Etiquette Around the World - <AUTHOR> http://www.ediplomat.com/np/cultural_etiquette/cultural_etiquette.htm <comment><USER2> The section on Australia is not bad although seems a little dated. But thumbs up is not a rude gesture and "i'm stuffed" means either worn out or full, depending on context. Definitely not pregnant.

</comment><comment><USER3> The French section feels a little outdated, I'd say we're closer to American norms, even if most of it still ring true.</comment>


What do scientists think about the biological claims in the Google Manifesto? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-biological-claims-made-in-the-anti-diversity-document-written-by-a-Google-employee-in-August-2017/answer/Suzanne-Sadedin?srid=2n17&share=1 <comment><USER2> A very good response, particularly if you like references and such.

" _It's worth remembering that many of the first programmers were women, and that they made enormous contributions to developing the field of computer science. Female participation only declined when programming became a lucrative, gender-stereotyped career._ "

As an aside, this is not the only example of that kind of change. I'll insert my periodic recommendation for [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Suppress_Women%27s_Writ...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Suppress_Women%27s_Writing)

" _That's about sociopolitical structures, not evolution. There's no reason to think we can't correct it [that low status men are regarded as disposable by high status men] culturally — our ancestors maintained egalitarian societies in most places for countless millennia, until the invention of farming allowed them to concentrate resources across generations and thus reinvent chimp-like hierarchies._ "

I would really, really like sources for that last sentence.</comment>


Ask HN: What are the strongest arguments *against* Net Neutrality? - <AUTHOR> Proponents of Net Neutrality: What do your best and strongest critics say and where are they mistaken?
Opponents of Net Neutrality: What are the best and strongest arguments against Net Neutrality. <comment><USER2> See also "Ask HN: What is the "other side" of the Net Neutrality argument?" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15751789](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15751789) from 5 days ago

</comment><comment><USER3> The claim that "all bits are the same" is absolutely insane.

I do not want to pay the same rate when I'm downloading system updates or uploading a backup vs when I stream real-time video chat or work via remote desktop. In one case latency is irrelevant while in the other it's everything. It's important for ISPs to differentiate these bits and prioritize them accordingly.

Net Neutrality also raises the barrier to entry for new ISPs, which solidifies existing monopolies. A new mobile ISP that lacks the infrastructure to support video streaming won't be allowed to enter the market as they're obligated to serve the entire internet.

Cable providers won't have any incentive to offer channels over the internet as their users will have to pay extra (for the internet bandwidth it uses) when there used to be no limit (on cable). ISPs will likely have to invest in unregulated side-channels for distributing their content, increasing technology fragmentation.

<comment><USER4> You really shouldn't be posting this FUD even as a devil's advocate.

You _don 't_ (and hopefully should never) pay by the bit. The marginal cost of sending bits (any bit) is 0; the ISPs know this but would love to resurrect the SMS gravy train of charging for things that are free. Any packet inspection necessary to provide a non NN internet is only going to increase latency not lead to any measurable improvement to quality at the consumer end.</comment></comment>


Now it's exploding Samsung washing machines - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/09/29/first-it-was-samsung-phones-now-its-exploding-samsung-washing-machines/ <comment><USER2> We have a Samsung refrigerator. Worst purchase ever. The condenser coil in the fridge portion accumulates ice all over the fins and fan, and causes the fridge/freezer to gradually lose cooling.

Samsung refuses to honor the warranty about this issue.

I've jury-rigged 2 temp sensors with a photodiode to my existing IoT infrastructure ([https://hackaday.io/project/12985-multisite- homeofficehacker...](https://hackaday.io/project/12985-multisite- homeofficehackerspace-automation)). As of right now, if the temp goes over a set point for more than 5 minutes with door closed, an alarm will be sent to our lights and my laptop (wherever it may be).

But this alarm means I have to take out the bottom shelves, unscrew the panel, and clean out the ice with a heat gun. It's better than having spoiled food.

<comment><USER3> I have a 5 year old Samsung fridge also. It's a piece of shit - since Day 1 the freezer makes ice and everything else stink of chemicals. Even after numerous air-outs, cleans, baking soda, the works. I can't wait until it dies. Fuck Samsung.

<comment><USER4> Weird—we've got an ~3 month old Samsung washing machine (uh oh...) that also smells strongly of chemicals. I'm beginning to doubt the smell will ever go away.

Don't have any complaints about it otherwise (unless it turns out to be an exploding model) but I've never had a new appliance smell so much for so long. You've got an hour, tops, to get the clothes out of it and into the (older, other brand) drier or they'll stink of Samsung chemicals and you'll have to run them again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is Samsung making washing machines without out-of-balance detection? That was figured out by 1960. Today, a 3-axis accelerometer chip is $0.86, quantity 1. If a microprocessor is running the machine, the way it should operate is to back off the spin speed if it detects excessive vibration. As water drains out, the maximum speed at which vibration appears should increase. If that doesn't happen, shut down and sound the out of balance alarm.

<comment><USER6> Mine is later than 1960 (but not by much), with all-mechanical controls, and I don't think it has out-of-balance detection since it will jump around and make loud banging noises long enough for you to notice and stop it. It's happened to me once or twice. A search of the Internet for "walking washing machines" reveals that this isn't uncommon, and there are many others discussing the balance problem with stories of machines moving several feet and shaking loud enough to be heard throughout the house --- but not any mention of "explosions", and very little mention of similar damage to the machine or its surroundings.

That really makes me wonder what's happening with these Samsungs --- the article has quotes like these...

 _One Georgia mom was pulling clothes from the dryer, with her 4-year-old son nearby, when she heard the boom and saw the damage._

...which make it sound like the machine was behaving perfectly normally, and then spontaneously self-destructed with no signs of vibration beforehand. That is very unusual. Even in the destructive videos on YouTube where the machine is deliberately unbalanced with an extremely heavy piece of non-clothing, they still shake loudly and viciously for some time before disintegrating.

<comment><USER7> If you buy sorbothane pads and put them underneath the washer's legs, they will dampen the vibrations and prevent it from walking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Some washing machines, the suit alleges, vibrate violently under heavy > loads, causing the tub to "become unfastened, resulting in a dramatic > centrifugal explosion that destroys the machine and nearby property."

Any washing machine, if not level and if overloaded, will shake violently. The picture in the article showed a very small, seemingly fragile washing machine. I imagine one must take extra care to not overload such a machine. In fact, I know that these machines do have warnings to not overload them. What more could reasonably be expected of Samsung?

<comment><USER9> > In fact, I know that these machines do have warnings to not overload them. > What more could reasonably be expected of Samsung?

Standard IANAL.

Unfortunately companies can't always offload all their liability to the customer in this manner. We will see with the result of this lawsuit whether this is such a case.

They're likely going to argue that a reasonable person who buys a washing machine expects that it will continue to operate safely with any amount or configuration of clothing so long as the it fits in the drum and the machine isn't modified. Sure, if you 'overfill'[1] the machine one might expect the quality of the wash to degrade, but not that the machine will become dangerous.

From a practical standpoint, it's perfectly possible to create a washing machine that can handle any amount and configuration of clothing simply by making a tumbler that strong enough to handle many times the weight of clothes. Or the machine could simply refuse to operate if it detects that it's over weight or off-balance. So Samsung won't get very far if they try to argue that it's not possible to manufacture such a machine and that their customers have no choice but to take precautions. But undoubtedly they will argue that it's cost prohibitive and that their customers are responsible for taking those precautions in exchange for the simpler and cheaper design.

[1] I use scare quotes because for sure they will call into question Samsung's use and meaning of the term.

<comment><USER10> I think it's not "offloading their liability to the customer", if company says that the washing machine can take 4 kg and the customer then loads it with 7 kg. It is perfectly reasonable to assume that if you do this, the machine will not be able to maintain its balance.

(Seen that happen and customer complain, in no way specific to Samsung.)

<comment><USER11> Would you say the same thing if a manufacturer produced a car that exploded if you put too much weight in the trunk? Or if it flooded the cabin with carbon monoxide if you missed an oil change deadline? Both are "covered in the manual".

<comment><USER10> This "explosion" was not actually an explosion, just an imbalance and mechanical failure.

But if I put way too much weight in the trunk of the car, and start driving, and the rear axle fails and there is an accident, yes, I'm still saying it's a user error.

(It's by the way worth considering how much weight you do put in the trunk, or perhaps more importantly, how much you put in a trailer. I transported some concrete garden patio slabs and without calculating the actual weight, put a bit too many of them both in the trunk and in the trailer. It was definitely not fun to drive.)

<comment><USER12> I think the issue here is, as many other have pointed out, that the imbalanced/weight problem for washing machines has been a solved problem for nearly 50 years. It's fine that we're moving away from all mechanical detection methods and more energy/water efficient washers, but removing the previously solved operational safety functionality just seems silly. I completely agree it's an issue of operator error, but that's not the problem - the problem is that it was a _solved_ issue of operator error that is now a problem again because it seems like there were no safeguards put in place. It would seem to me that there has to be a grand number of chances to figure this out during the QA stage for these washers and determine a simple software solution, even if that solution is the washing session cancels, drains, and the LED errors with "Overloaded" or something. The owners may be annoyed, but at least the machine isn't ruined and it can train them to use the correct load size.

Honestly, I don't think it's too unreasonable for any given person not to be able to estimate the mass of a load of laundry. I assume the recommendations (4kg, as you suggested) are educated guesses at best as it's hard to tell how much water any given item will retain during the spin cycle. Since it's an imprecise calculation anyways, wouldn't it make more sense to instead just let the machine dictate its own limits so the user can adjust their washing habits subsequently?

edit: mistyped and forgot to write "...because it seems like there were no safeguards put in place."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I hadn't heard of Samsung washing machines exploding before. Catching fire is what they usually do.

[http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/95yearold-woman-rescued-from- samsu...](http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/95yearold-woman-rescued-from-samsung- washing-machine-fire-in-auburn-20160813-gqrvzd.html) [http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion- post/news/81798360/Thousands...](http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion- post/news/81798360/Thousands-of-burning-washing-machines-still-at-large-as- another-goes-up-in-flames)

<comment><USER14> 200+ since 2010. Even "fixed" machines are bursting into flame, so Australian owners are being urged to go for a return rather than a repair.

[http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-14/samsung-washine- machin...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-14/samsung-washine-machine- recall-sydney-fire-nsw-white-goods/7732858)

[https://www.choice.com.au/home-and-living/laundry-and- cleani...](https://www.choice.com.au/home-and-living/laundry-and- cleaning/washing-machines/articles/samsung-washing-machine-recall-110815)

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3505540/Samsung- face...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3505540/Samsung-face- coronial-inquiry-washing-machines-recalled.html)

[http://www.samsung.com/au/washingmachinerecall/](http://www.samsung.com/au/washingmachinerecall/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Reminded me of that story about IBM's Black Team:

[http://www.penzba.co.uk/GreybeardStories/TheBlackTeam.html](http://www.penzba.co.uk/GreybeardStories/TheBlackTeam.html)

And wind turbine fail compilations:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfzgIxMEo8g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfzgIxMEo8g)

Physics is mean, especially when you're trying to spin heavy things really fast.

</comment><comment><USER16> _The news of another exploding Samsung product offered the Internet plenty of fodder._

I don't find it useful to reproduce sarcastic tweets in the middle of a Washington Post article. I believe it does not add any information to what the article is describing, and actually makes it look more like infotainment. The issue is already serious and interesting enough.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's sad that they knew about it, which meant they calculated that:

E{cost} = P(failure) * {expected lawsuit payout} < {cost of recall and actually fixing the problem}

Just like in Fight Club...

<comment><USER17> Except loss of brand image and trust is more expensive.

<comment><USER18> Like any typical customer buying a washing machine will know about this.

Like any shop selling washing machines will actually care.

Like any of us will remember about this six months from now.

Brand image is overrated. A lot of companies know that, and that's why they get away with all the shit they do.

<comment><USER7> Brand image is a marketing/PR problem, not a tech/engineering problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This seems like an odd case of defective parts leading to an early failure. I had a GE washing machine fail due to a defective pump (located under the drum and driven by the motor). There was no evidence of abnormal NHV and it is placed on level ground. The interesting thing was that the replacement pump (which cost me like $25 and took an hour to replace) was more robust. It has lasted twice as much as the original part.

</comment><comment><USER20> When buying a washing machine, there is really no point in buying anything other than a Miele or Bosch product. The same is true of most other kitchen appliances. They may seem expensive, but it's a false economy to buy anything else.

<comment><USER21> If you can afford one, this is good advice in my anecdotal experience as well. A family member had a supposedly fancy Fisher and Paykel (NZ) dishwasher that cost more than the Bosch they ended up sticking with, and didn't clean dishes nearly as well even after servicing it regularly and having it inspected by a company rep. Meanwhile, the Bosch cleans far better and more quietly though it does need its filter (?) cleaned more regularly, if I recall correctly.

Also, Miele vacuums are amazing for their reliability and durability compared to something like a Dyson, which has over the years evolved into an overpriced and poorly built item.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> So, almost all situations described in this thread would fall under legal warranty in the EU. Which is at least 2 years in the case of big appliances like washing machines.

Importantly, the warranty is between the buyer and the seller, not the manufacturer. They must either repair (within reasonable time), replace with equal or better model (at no extra cost) or give your money back. The point is that the buyer reasonably can expect a certain kind of functionality from the product when they buy it, such as a washing machine actually cleaning your clothes, not destroying them and functioning properly at least 2 years. If not, buyer and seller must come to a reasonable solution (it's all very reasonable). Although the seller tends to try to point to the manufacturer and sometimes manages to convince buyer to pay some of the costs, they shouldn't have.

Anyway, Samsung would be pretty stupid if they didn't pay extra care to manufacturing quality of products sold in the EU because of this. This implies that other regions that do not have this legal warranty because the free market demands it, necessarily must get slightly-less-carefully-quality- controlled items. Avoiding Samsung because of this seems like setting yourself up for the next brand to screw you over.

</comment><comment><USER23> My Samsung washing machine is already on the list of things to replace. It came along with the place I'm at, and the previous owners apparently didn't know that front loading machines need to be left open when not in use. Upon our initial load of the machine we discovered it to be filled with swathes of mold/fungus. Took a week of heavy, caustic cleaning to get it usable. Apparently it's a fairly common issue with frontloaders; only recently did manufacturers get around to including sanitizing features.

Knowing that Samsung is selling machines that explode and catch fire ... I guess I'll bump our replacement up on the schedule. I do like the little ditty it plays when its done though. Reminds me of traveling through eastern Asia. Cute ditties seemed to be very common over there, from vending machines to garbage trucks. It's a small thing, but it has a way of brightening your surroundings the way an ice cream truck in America does.

<comment><USER24> Front loading machines aren't supposed to be left open, are they? I've used decades one always closed, never had mold/fungus. Could it depend on the water quality?

Those were Whirlpool though, not Samsung.

<comment><USER23> Based on my research, prompted by finding the machine filled with mold/fungus, yes. It's a container filled with moisture, locked behind a water tight seal, with layers of soap; more or less the perfect conditions for mold. It's a prevalent enough problem that there were rumblings of a class action; though it's America, so take that with a grain of salt.

I'm not sure if there's another variable that would lead to different experiences. Like you say perhaps it's dependent on water. Water in my area is very hard. Perhaps it depends on soap. Some detergents contain borax which is particularly good at killing mold in this situation. Maybe some machines are better at draining and/or airing out when not in-use. Frequent use of bleach may help.

The previous owners of the machines were not ... the best of tenants. Perhaps they did something else to compound the issue. Excessive soap is an additional culprit.

<comment><USER25> > there were rumblings of a class action;

Not just rumblings. A recent settlement was reached and consumers who own various models of Whirlpool, Kenmore, or Maytag front-loading washing machines are entitled to numerous clams including a 5% discount on a new purchase, a $50 rebate, or a $500 reimbursement for previous repairs. [1]

[1] [http://www.washersettlement.com](http://www.washersettlement.com)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If this happens to washing machines, I guess it either was a pretty good idea for them to sell their Techwin subsidiary a couple years ago, or they miss working in that field. :)

</comment><comment><USER27> While this obviously is a bad thing, the article seems overly dramatic. "... could have been hurt" "... count have damaged".... But in fact not.

</comment><comment><USER28> How popular are top loaders vs front loaders in the US? This seems a flaw inherent to top loading machines. Gravity stops uneven loads in front loaders.

</comment><comment><USER29> I have a Samsung dishwasher and it's by far the worst large appliance I've ever had to deal with. I'll never buy Samsung again.

</comment><comment><USER30> Maybe they should pivot to be an army contractor?

</comment><comment><USER31> Is out-of-balance relevant to driver-less cars?

<comment><USER32> What do you mean?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Maybe they are slowly trying to make their way into the weapons industry :D

<comment><USER17> Nah, a subsidiary already produces automated cannons that are then placed on Korean border.

<comment><USER17> Ah yes, that has been sold and split off more strongly recently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> One might say that Samsung products are truly _dynamite_!</comment>


Ask HN: Will two similar processors process data in the same exact way? - <AUTHOR>

Friend and I got into a debate, the simple question: will two computer processors, one finished manufacturing right after the other, compute the same data in the same exact way, down to each transistor?
Opinions? Facts?
I appreciate the help here. <comment><USER2> No, they don't always achieve the same results but there is a lot of engineering dedicated to correct the errors.

You can find academic papers on the subject of GPGPU soft errors around 5 years ago when people started doing general purpose computation on graphics processors. GPU's did not dedicate as much logic to error correction because it doesn't matter as much for real time graphics.

</comment><comment><USER3> No, many of the current Intel processors come off of the same fab and are intended to be identical, but the devices that test worse become the lower spec versions. A quad core i7 with a core that performs significant'y below the others becomes a dual core model. When you are making 1.7 _Billion_ of anything there are going to be some errors, but a CPU is designed to compensate for this.

<comment><USER4> It was my interpretation that "binning" is because of the manufacturing and imperfections in the etching or underlaying wafer cause certain chips to not perform up to spec. It's not because there's 1.7 Billion of something, but rather because you're drawing at 22nm. The way a processor does math is identical in every single processor, but processor A may result in more heat discharge or higher voltages required than processor B at the same clock rate.

Where you get into "it may not compute identically" is the revisions. At Intel at least, going from A0 to B0 means the transistor layout on the wafer changed. Going from B1 to B2 means the wiring layout changed (though the underlaying metal layer remained the same). Again that's a "technically", whether that's followed to a T is something I'm not sure about. Sometimes features are added going between metal revisions.

<comment><USER3> Thanks. It looks like I was wrong. I understood that there was some redundancy build into chips, but that appears to be false. After some more research I think you are right that only the voltage/clock rating vary die to die, and that the transistors must be 100% working.

That means that the answer to the OP's question should be that if the data is stored in the same memory location then two chips in adjacent server racks will use the same transistors to do the same math.

<comment><USER4> Transistors may not need to be 100% working on 100% of the die to be shipped. If the fault is contained within a subsection, the manufacturer can set fuses to disable portions of the chip. This is generally used to distinguish features between product lines. Processor A could have VT-D failed in manufacturing, so it's fused off and sold as a cheap processor. Processor B could be fully working, but Intel needs to sell more cheap processors, so they intentionally disable VT-D on B. Sony did something similar with shipping Playstation 3s since they couldn't get the yields high enough initially. They disabled 1 SPU of each processor since they could reliably get 7 working ones in manufacturing. Those 8 SPUs are more interchangeable though, they're more like graphics chips in that regard than general x86 CPUs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yes, digital logic is generally designed to be as deterministic as possible since that makes everything easier. There's even a concept called lockstep: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockstep_(computing)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockstep_\(computing\))

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't think this is in the wild yet, but interesting all the same...

[http://www.extremetech.com/computing/151506-self-healing- sel...](http://www.extremetech.com/computing/151506-self-healing-self- monitoring-chip-rearranges-circuit-if-damaged)

</comment><comment><USER7> A processor can compute differently when it's over clocked.

[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2005/04/12/40756...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2005/04/12/407562.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER8> Well you didn't mention what memory bus the processors would be installed in...</comment>


Bay Area part-time profs:  why they work at Safeway, live out of cars - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/expensive-san-francisco/article/The-secret-lives-of-part-time-Bay-Area-professors-12529299.php <comment><USER2> I have done the adjunct thing, to spiff up my resume. My wife did it first because a friend asked for help and then because she enjoyed it. It is a wonderful thing to pass along useful knowledge, but honestly I don't see how anyone can make a good living--not in the Bay Area, not in Iowa--as an adjunct. I have known at least one person who managed to break out of the four classes at three schools thing and get a tenure-track job. The odds aren't good, though.

If I were a career counselor for Mr. Nguyen, I would suggest a job teaching high school history for money, and the occasional adjunct class for love. Mr. Balukjian's case is harder, in that he has a Ph.D., which in principle could qualify him for a tenure-track job; possibly a high school job could look bad on his resume.

They have my sympathy.</comment>


How does your day look like? - <AUTHOR>

Do you mind sharing what you do from monday to sunday? <comment><USER2> Mon - Fri (wake up, bath, go to work, code, lunch, code, go back home, eat & watch movies/drama/code, bath, code/read, sleep)

Sat - Sun (wake up, bath, breakfast, code, lunch, code, night out/code, sleep)

<comment><USER3> Sounds about right.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to maintain Feature Flags for new feature releases? - <AUTHOR> We store all feature flags as constants in the repository itself. Recently, our CI has become quite slow because we added a lot of tests. So it takes bit of a time to reflect the changes in production.
However, at times, we might want to enable/disable a feature in production at some instant, where we can't afford to have any delay.
We thought that let's move all of them to database. It would solve the problem at hand, however, it would also result in extra network call. So how do you accomplish this? <comment><USER2> Hey. Disclaimer: Co-founder of [http://www.split.io](http://www.split.io) here.

We built libraries like this before at previous jobs and now created Split to solve these type of problems and more. I can share some insights below of things we ran into while developing such libraries.

Libraries should be optimized to avoid network calls as much as possible. Using local or external caches like Redis, CDNs, etc, and leveraging protocols like HTTP Cache are the corner stones to achieving the behavior you are asking about. Moreover, you can use things like Server-Sent events and websockets to make your system react in near-realtime when flags are changed. Although this last approach leads to a little bit more complicated architecture.

Other things you didn't mention but worth considering whatever your decision is, are:

\- How to manage old unused flags (tech debt). Processes are great but even better when enforced by tools. Often times people use task tracking tools to set reminders to themselves to remove a flag after X amount of days.

\- How to integrate that data collected to power things like A/B testing to augment your business decisions.

\- How to integrate your library with testing frameworks?

Happy to chat more about other topics we encountered while using flags.

</comment><comment><USER3> An extra network call may not be a problem. The question is your own application's performance and how and how often your feature flags are checked. You'll have to try a spike and figure out what your own performance needs may be.

Optimizing that is like optimizing any other database/network calls: find a caching strategy that makes sense for your application; avoid checks where you already know the answer or the answer doesn't matter anymore; find ways to bulk retrieve/cache a bunch of checks at the same time instead of one-at-a- time; etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've never used them but I've heard that's what [https://launchdarkly.com/](https://launchdarkly.com/) is for.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm going to make an assumption, if the application uses a database, then there is absolutely nothing wrong with that approach. This plays well into security models as well enabling you to 'allow' certain users access to features.</comment>


Swedish authorities told to prepare 'in terms of war' amid Russia tensions - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/sweden-is-preparing-for-a-possible-war-a7476316.html <comment><USER2> This seems like fearmongering and provocation to me. You don't want to be "preparing for war" against a country that has given no indication of attacking you.

It saddens me to see so many countries still falling for the Russian boogeyman - at least we'll have a POTUS now that realizes the cold war is over.

<comment><USER3> Hasn't Russia invaded Ukraine? Isn't Russia helping Assad?</comment></comment>


Impressive job Mercedes - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAMshbuQs5A

<comment><USER2> The purest of propaganda gibberish. Available from "your Mercedes partner" on the 15th of June. "Partner". Really? Don't you mean "member of the price- fixing cartel"? Because that's what a car dealership is in the USA.</comment>


Some Android games are quietly using your microphone to track your TV habits - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/2/16842294/android-apps-microphone-access-listening-tv-habits <comment><USER2> We've been tracking this SDK at MightySignal. I can confirm that the apps often record data for some time after the app becomes inactive and that the amount of data sent is enough to represent a full audio stream, multiple requests with sizable blobs per second, bothers me mostly because of the terrible drain this SDK must be putting on user's batteries. It's only present in ~280 low quality android games atm.</comment>


Ask HN: When do you use objects in functional languages that also have objects? - <AUTHOR>

I've been playing with Rust and now OCaml (in an attempt to understand Rust's type system better) and something I find myself confused about is when to use objects in these multiparadigm languages compared to other functional languages where you only have functions and data structures to work with.<p>What type of reasoning do you apply or problems you find yourself solving when you decide to reach for objects instead? <comment><USER2> The short answer is pretty much: when you want to.

There the obvious places where you have to use objects in boundary spaces between libraries/languages. For example in F# (another OCaml relative) you will use objects to interoperate with the larger .NET world.

Beyond that, objects are a tool in your tool belt. There are cases where a particular problem makes the most sense in you own head in an object-oriented abstraction, and the idea of a multi-paradigm language is that that is okay and you shouldn't feel like you have to spend the mental effort to refactor it to some other pattern.

This extends out to team development, too. An object-based approach might be easier to document and/or understand by the rest of your team. A team working on the back-end primarily in an OO language like C# might have the easiest time understanding a JS front-end the best if the JS followed more of an object-oriented approach than a functional approach. (JS is definitely multi- paradigm.)

The Python philosophy is "Code is more often read than written" and that tends to be a useful gut check for choosing paradigms/abstractions/tools. Will I (and/or my team) be able to read this tomorrow? Ten years from now?

</comment><comment><USER3> Almost never. I was an enthusiastic embracer of OO when I started with Python because it was pretty much the sanest way to manage state in that language.

But truth be told, once I moved to Lisps and FP languages I scarcely bothered to touch them. If you're not handling mutable state _at all_ , then an object that primarily exists to carry mutable state is of limited utility.

I did write an object-like system in Heresy, but I've yet to make much serious use out of it; it was largely an academic exercise.

<comment><USER4> Yes. You only _really_ need objects when you have mutable state. Without mutable state, what you have is just a module that contains data structures and related functions for processing them.</comment></comment>


Educationism: A Hidden Bias We Often Ignore - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20171219-the-hidden-judgements-holding-people-back <comment><USER2> This article did make some good points. But as a first generation college grad who went to a good school, it also rubbed me the wrong way at times.

"It wasn't so much overt stigma, but the hidden injuries of social class that kept emerging – people kept having to explain themselves"

You're going to meet people from different backgrounds. You're going to have to explain yourself to them. You're going to have to listen to them. I don't know how many times I've had to explain that having your parents buy a $30,000 car isn't poor, just because peers got a $60,000 car. There are people whose parents can't buy new cars. But that's the environment they grew up in, of course they can't understand. I had a hard time imagining that an adult would think buying a 16 year old a sports car is a good idea, given their higher accident rates and poor decision making skills.

Are we really lowering the standard this much? You can't be expected to have to meet people from different backgrounds? Which brings me to:

"If you have low expectations of the kids they'll sink to the level of expectations"

Exactly. Maybe setting the expectations that they never feel uncomfortable, never have their ideas challenged is a bad idea?? In the articles defense, they did mention telling all kids to set their goals high.

"Bourdieu pointed to the fact that the education system was invented by the ruling classes", "Here in Switzerland they abolished grades in one place but there was an uprising mainly due to parents who all of a sudden couldn't figure out how their kids were doing"

Maybe I am reading too much into these quotes, but really? The article mentions that education is linked to success, but also seems to try to paint the picture that the ruling class invented education to keep the lower classes down? And those evil parents, caring how their kids did in school? Can someone tell me if I am misinterpreting these quotes?

<comment><USER3> > also seems to try to paint the picture that the ruling class invented > education to keep the lower classes down

In a word, yes. It's not the first time I've seen such an argument made; Gatto (1) does so at considerably greater length and rather more forcefully, motivated by his own experience as a teacher and finding considerable substantiation in the published writings of many of those who worked to design and implement education in the modern style.

The tl:dr; version might be that, in purpose, this modern reinvention of a strictly regimented child-gardening scheme was of a piece with the Progressive Era's many other enthusiastic attempts at methods of engineering a more perfect society, and has proven to be no better advised or more humane than any - that, having been given an ample period to prove its value and having, at least in Gatto's judgment, signally failed to do so, the practice merits a place alongside eugenics in the intellectual and moral junkyard.

I tend to agree, and to find myself reminded somewhat of that marvelous satire of Progressive Era utopianism, _Brave New World_ , besides. But it would be remiss of me not to note that my own experiences may have predisposed me to do so, and to exert less effort than I otherwise might in seeking contradictory evidence. From the sound of it, you are unlikely to harbor similar confounding motivations, and I'd be most interested to hear your evaluation of Gatto's rather sensationally named, but nonetheless substantial, work.

(1) [https://archive.org/details/JohnTaylorGattoTheUndergroundHis...](https://archive.org/details/JohnTaylorGattoTheUndergroundHistoryOfAmericanEducationBook)

<comment><USER2> Wow, 440 pages, that is longer. I will try to respond back here, but it wont be tonight or likely tomorrow. I see you have contact info, so I will be in touch there.

"But it would be remiss of me not to note that my own experiences may have predisposed me to do so, and to exert less effort than I otherwise might in seeking contradictory evidence"

Refreshing to hear this :) Seems all to often people confuse their opinions with facts. Looking forward to the discussion :) Some thoughts so far(page 10):

"an assistant principal screamed at her in front of an assembly, "BIANCA, YOU ANIMAL, SHUT UP!"" ... "Do I make too much of this simple act of putting a little girl in her place?" ... "I picture this animal Bianca grown large and mean"

I think he does make too much of this. To put it simply, kids do not act in their best interest. IIRC, they do not start really taking long term consequences into account until 25 or so.

I remember hearing teachers tell kids they needed to try harder, and hearing the kids say, "but Einstein didn't pay attention in school". Unfortunate as it may be, and having known these kids since kindergarten, they are unlikely to be Einsteins. There is a difference between being bored because of a lack of challenge, and because they just want to play outside.

Now depending on what your view of a more perfect society is, this might be irrelevant. But it would seem to me that without an education, our society would be much more like animals. Between growing up in a rural area, and nature documentaries, I have witnessed many animals disciplining their kids. Why? Because they care more about play than finding food. So I am not seeing the alternative here.

"understand the personality of your particular child or anything significant about your family, culture, religion, plans, hopes, dreams"

A good teacher should try to learn about your kid. Easier said than done, especially in larger schools. As for culture, while I agree that multiculturalism is good, I see it like a Venn diagram. The differences are important, as there might be better ways of doing something, inspiration from one domain applied to another can yield breakthroughs. But there needs to be something in common, so that we can understand one another. Otherwise it breaks down into tribalism, which I believe to be much less perfect. That's what the school system provides, a shared culture/experience.

"The cost in New York State for building a well-schooled child in the year 2000 is $200,000 per body when lost interest is calculated. That capital sum invested in the child's name over the past twelve years would have delivered a million dollars to each kid as a nest egg to compensate for having no school"

I believe it is well documented that a large portion of lottery winners end up broke. Not understanding things like compound interest, inflation, or even basic math would make it hard to use that $1mm effectively. While I would not blame the 2008 financial crisis on lack of education entirely, I do think more education could have averted that, or at least mitigated it. I'm not sure what his point is here.

Okay, since this already got long, I plan to email you further.

<comment><USER4> One nitpick is that the $200k turning into $1M in 12 years is equivalent to 14% compounded annually. For context, the 90-year average annual growth of S&P 500 index before inflation (a commonly used standard benchmark) is only 9.8% (I'm guessing they backtracked this number since S&P 500 has only existed for 60 years) [1]. In 12 years, the expected value of that $200k would only be $614k. It's clear Gatto has cherrypicked his numbers by picking 1988 and 2000, which marked one of the biggest bull markets in recent history is by no means representative. What's more, the state can hardly be expected to invest in a pension fund composed of 100% equity, 0% bonds, so the expected return would likely be less than $614k.

[1] [https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/18/the-sp-500-has-already- met-i...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/18/the-sp-500-has-already-met-its- average-return-for-a-full-year.html)

<comment><USER3> Gatto may have cherry-picked to enhance his argument, I can't say, but if so it's severable - even the principal alone, even in unadjusted 2017 dollars, would be enough to make a solid start in life, whichever route one chose, so I think it's fair to consider that his point still stands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article highlights some interesting studies I think people should be more aware of, and a good defense of the argument that privilege compounds itself:

'"examiners" scored individuals lower on the same task when they were told that the pupil came from a less privileged background.'

'Those who were told they were "low status individuals" performed worse on both financial decisions and basic cognitive tasks.'

<comment><USER6> > '"examiners" scored individuals lower on the same task when they were told > that the pupil came from a less privileged background.'

I'm not sure how well-backed-up the assertions actually were (I've not followed up on the references) but the well-regarded and sometimes recommended-on-this-very-site _Influence_ by Cialdini has a chapter on the effects of appearance on others, and especially of wealth/class markers. In particular, it claims a study was conducted that found that pretty much no-one _thinks_ they would defer more readily, when driving, to an expensive-looking car than a cheap-looking one, but _in fact_ people do (in this case, IIRC, waiting longer for them to go after their light turns green before honking) and to a _very_ large degree.

Apparently these kinds of results are pretty typical for research along those lines, i.e. self-reported versus actual deference to people who simply _look_ rich/"classy"/powerful, even absent any directly-relevant hierarchy in the equation (i.e. just strangers on otherwise equal footing).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> when i was about 11, i visited my distant cousins on their farm in southern Illinois. My eldest cousin, about 30 at the time, was and is a high school graduate who finished, turned around and went right back to work farming cattle and corn.

i figured that 1. i was obviously hot shit at chess and 2. there was no way this hayseed could possibly beat me.

when the inevitable humiliating defeat was meted out to me, i did not forget it.

On the other side of the coin, i'm still trusting MDs with my medical problems, not the guy down the street whose grandmother has strange ideas about the curative power of crystals, prayer, and raw garlic enemas.

</comment><comment><USER8> The scary part is when enough politicians start believing this nonsense about "ableism" and "educationism" that the government decides to forbid companies from discriminating based on applicants' abilities. We're frighteningly close to that point already with demands from activists that every possible group be hired, paid, and promoted at exactly the same rate.

<comment><USER9> That would be a silly reaction. A more reasonable one might be increased support for progressive taxation/redistribution/social safety net, if we consider one's station in life to be more inherited than earned.

<comment><USER10> True, but politicians often make objectively silly arguments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "A subtle form of discrimination exists towards those who are less educated and it divides society in a number of ways."

Wrong - it's not always so subtle! For instance, there's widespread, _blatant_ discrimination against people lacking medical degrees for performing complex surgical procedures. We should really work to correct this systemic bias for a more equal and inclusive society.

/sarcasm

<comment><USER12> You're equivocating on the word discrimination. When activists or people in the media talk about discrimination as a societal problem, they're referring to discrimination based on irrelevant characteristics.

Not letting someone without a medical degree practice medicine is discrimination based on _relevant_ characteristics. Not letting a licensed surgeon practice because he uses non-standard English in a way that marks him as having an underprivileged background is discrimination based on irrelevant characteristics.

Nobody is arguing that we should allow blind people to drive cars. However, you'll face heavy resistance if you try to suggest that only people with a university degree should be allowed to drive cars.

<comment><USER13> The problem is that there is no distinction of kind between these two types of discrimination. The only difference is of accuracy.

For instance, say I am consciously biased against hiring black people because I believe them to be generally less qualified. This is the same type of discrimination as not hiring a credentialed doctor because I believe them to be less qualified; not only difference that one of these beliefs is _factually_ inaccurate. When you say that activists are only talking about the "bad" discrimination, you implicitly sweep under the rug questions about the factual basis for discrimination; and end up treating questions of fact as if they were questions of morals.

Unfortunately, determining relevant characteristics is incredibly hard (especially if people know what measures you use). Instead we use our intuition and gut feeling. It is important to be aware of _inaccurate_ intuitions we have to improve our assesments. However, there is no easy way to tell a-priori what discrimination is based on an accurate signal, and what discrimination is not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The intro example here is a bit confusing. It seems to suggest that the student was less educated than the others, but presumably he had roughly the same education level as the other new students. He just came from a poor background, and had an accent. That seems more like conventional class discrimination.

</comment><comment><USER15> The worst element of this is the idea that seemed to wash over the European labor parties in the 80s. That all social ills can be solved with a more educated populous.

End result was that said parties has taken a more rightward turn in their policies, and are only just starting to maybe realize their folly.

</comment><comment><USER16> If you have a Bias about something you dont have to "spend" as much brainpower to reach a conclusion. Its what allows us to function in our life because thinking everything over again would be too taxing. We would get nothing done. So we rely on social cues(thats the way most people do it...) our own experience in the past( biased data..) to make decisions.

So biases are kind of the necessary. But in some instances the extra effort for unbiased decisions is worth it. Ignoring "Educationism" as a recruiter should be one of it. But to eradicate a bias is kind of Impossible. Its just possible to change or replace it with another one.

</comment><comment><USER17> A poorly written article for a real issue is frankly, a disservice. Luckily, skill based hiring is quite common, at least in most 'hands on' industries.

<comment><USER18> Where in the article is hiring mentioned?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Its called "学歴主義" in Japan, and talked about a lot here (565,000 hits on Google vs 9,000 for "Educationism")

One of the most egregious example is that when scheduling for a job interview via Web form, when you graduated from a low-ranked university its always "schedule full". This is called "学歴フィルター(filter)."

</comment><comment><USER20> Who said bias is bad?

<comment><USER3> I mean sure, if you're not interested in accurately perceiving reality so as to act most effectively in the world and thus discharge the responsibility a share in which you inherited just as we all do, why care?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > A new report in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology named the term > "educationism"

More shoddy activism handwaving as 'science' for media attention and social policy change.

Coin a term for an "effect" with shoddy research meant to advance your poltical ideology. See: Stereotype threat, implicit bias. Sounds suspiciously close to "scientism" as well.

> the education system is "motivated to maintain the status quo" – where the > children of highly-educated parents go to university, while children with > less exposure to education go into vocational training or apprenticeships

This whole article is thinly veiled political ideology mixed with pop psychology BS. It's a charade.

> "It wasn't so much overt stigma, but the hidden injuries of social class > that kept emerging"

Uh huh.

<comment> 549362-30499 > Uh huh.

You're casually dismissing a reference to a pretty well known and important work in sociology: [https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Injuries-Class-Jonathan- Cobb/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Injuries-Class-Jonathan- Cobb/dp/039331085X)

I'm happy to buy a copy for you if you send me your address and promise to read it!

<comment><USER22> Ooh can I get one? I promise to read it and review it on my blog

<comment><USER3> Email me at either of the addresses in my profile to let me know where you'd like it shipped.

(eta: Also, have a look at the book linked from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16007116](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16007116), which is probably more on point to the subject of this thread. The next person I talk to who's also read it will be the first, and as I describe there, I'm interested to hear what others with an interest in the subject at hand think of it, too.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Epitaph for a Bronx Accent - <AUTHOR> http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/215862/epitaph-for-a-bronx-accent <comment><USER2> > Perhaps I should have recorded him the way indigenous people, in those > tribes that have been decimated, will sometimes record the last of their > older relatives who speak a dying language. But it is all of a piece: His > hunched shoulders, his dark eyebrows, the deep circles under his eyes, and > his acerbic tone—a recording could not do it credit.

Take a video.

<comment><USER3> how? he's dead</comment></comment>


U.S. Decides to Retaliate Against China's Hacking - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/01/world/asia/us-decides-to-retaliate-against-chinas-hacking.html <comment><USER2> ""Intelligence officials say that any legal case could result in exposing American intelligence operations inside China — including the placement of thousands of implants in Chinese computer networks to warn of impending attacks.""

That also sounds like hacking into another country's systems.

The rational move is a massive investment in security technology including strong encryption and the kind of work that the NSA used to do in the 1990s of working to make Windows and Linux more secure for American businesses.

Any attempt by our intelligence services to back door computer systems, instead of working to make everyone more secure, is a grave disservice to the American taxpayer.

<comment><USER3> > Any attempt by our intelligence services to back door computer systems, > instead of working to make everyone more secure, is a grave disservice to > the American taxpayer.

And that's what our leaders don't understand. If the NSA has access to backdoors in collusion with vendors, what stops China or Russia from exploiting the same backdoors ? absolutely nothing. If the NSA can hack phones because provider X or Z has setup a "secret" interface for that purpose, well it's going to be exploited by someone else, and foreign hackers will figure it out. How can the NSA be sure that PRISM and co themselves aren't compromised?

<comment><USER4> Our leaders have a poor understanding of technology. In the Washington Post there was a call for encryption with access for a "golden key". You know, so police, etc. can investigate if needed. They don't realize how that weakens the entire system, making it easier for your adversaries as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Retaliation is a side show. Focus on hardening. The same sets of laws that exist for products and environmental liabilty must be implemented for information liability. Make companies economically liable for hardening their software and hardware and the lawyers will get it done. If there is one thing our overly litigious system is good it... Its extracting economic penalties for failure.

<comment><USER6> Are there any proven (or speculated) damages? If no one was actually damaged, is there really liability?

<comment><USER7> In cases where damages in aggregate are obvious but difficult to prove in specific, laws have provided statutory damages or fines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "The White House could determine that the downsides of any meaningful, yet proportionate, retaliation outweigh the benefits"

And yet, the title is "U.S. Decides to Retaliate Against China's Hacking" \- this is quite sensationalistic.

<comment><USER9> You're absolutely right, there is no decision, there is no announcement, they even say the White House can't decide how to. NYT needs to add a [RUMOR] tag.

<comment><USER10> Doubt it's a rumor someone leaked this or talked off the record. The government wanted to get this out even it was just to save face.

<comment><USER9> I guess I've developed a (healthy?) distrust for anything I read that at this point reading they have a source is meaningless. Especially when you tie it to a link bait title.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In my opinion, seeing an article like this is a huge display of weakness of behalf of the united states.

You don't see other nations who engage in adversarial ways against the US broadcasting their intentions in public theatre.

If the US and obama administration really wanted to demonstrate power and deter china from cyber attacks, they wouldn't go chatting about all the things they're going to do. They would go do it and it would be heard of after the fact.

Has the concept of the element of surprise been forgotten?

<comment><USER12>
      "One of the conclusions we've reached is that we need to be a bit more public about our responses, and one reason is deterrence," said one senior administration official involved in the debate

This sentiment should probably be read as "so as not to appear impotent to the citizens at home" instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'd guess US would retaliate by releasing information that hurts the Chinese government politically, specifically corruption. I don't think it would escalate into anything other than stealing/releasing information. Full on cyber war is really unlikely as both sides would prefer to stay in power.

<comment><USER14> They've been purging corruption for the entire Xi Jinping's administration. Not that it isn't there.

They would also have to disrupt the world reputation of China - not just its domestic one.

And be rest assured the US already does and attempts to do this.

<comment><USER11> It's been documented that the "purging of corruption" has by and large just been a means for Jinping to attack his enemies.

<comment><USER14> Can you document that for me, and for HN?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Because, you know, the US has never conducted cyber-espionage against China or obtained valuable information before.

<comment><USER16> Agreed - The US is way too laissez-faire to get into that kind of nonsense

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> > While James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, said last > month that "you have to kind of salute the Chinese for what they did,"...

You have to kind of salute Clapper for what he did, committing perjury and then keeping his job

</comment><comment><USER18> I think cyber warfare is inevitable. Because systems are so complex, defensive techniques will always fall short. The only effective deterrent is an offensive attack or at least the fear of an attack. The US has to create a catch-22 situation for China so that it fears the repercussions.

<comment><USER19> mutually assured cyber destruction?

<comment><USER18> I hope not. I think it's like the nuclear arms race. Everyone wants one so that it can deter it's enemies but using a nuclear weapon can be disastrous. Similarly, the US strategy here could be to show China that it's capable of retaliating if it wanted to but doesn't necessarily have to resort to it.

<comment><USER20> I'm pretty sure that the nuclear arms race was largely driven by adherence to MAD. And what you're describing is exactly the kind of escalate-in-kind deterrence policy that was built on top of the mutually assured destruction philosophy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The Snowden documents showed that the US had already hacked SMSCs and other major communications infrastructure right across China. The notion that China is the aggressor here is laughable.

</comment><comment><USER22> We could have the US conduct a widespread, multi-day DDOS against Baidu which would be proportional considering the Chinese government used Baidu to conduct a widespread multi-day DDOS of github.

</comment><comment><USER23>
       "This is one of those cases where you have to ask, 'Does
       the size of the operation change the nature of it?' " one
       senior intelligence official said. "Clearly, it does."

But of course, that doesn't apply to NSA's bulk data collection, right?

<comment><USER24> Maybe China's just trying to help fight terrorism!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> If they weren't so conflicted about encryption, the logical response would be to get serious about defensive measures and make sure they're more widely available.

</comment><comment><USER26> "But in a series of classified meetings, officials have struggled to choose among options that range from......"

Apparently the meetings weren't really all _that_ classified.

Sadly, it has come to a point I don't know what to believe anymore. Whoever released the story has an agenda. Does the agenda in any way mirror factual reality? Beats me.

I'm a westerner. I support the west. My lively hood depends on it. So if they say we've always been at war with Eastasia I guess I don't know enough to say differently.

Looking around at bureaucratic politic filled government agencies and big companies I don't see real protective measure being taken any time soon. The leadership of those places has been filling up for years with ass covers and bullcrappers, and a turn around towards effectiveness isn't going to happen any time soon. So maybe send some drones or something. Oh wait... we can't do that, because those are all reserved for poor Muslims who can't really fight back at any scale. So I don't know. I guess puffing around and taking the lumps is about the only option for now.

</comment><comment><USER27> Hardening security measures should be more important than announcing retaliation like a bunch of angry children. I don't know the nature of all of these attacks but didn't Sony get broken into via simple social engineering? The guy literally walked into main lobby and got ahold of network engineer's credentials or something of this kind. A lot of companies have very little to no basic security awareness, let alone any kind of significant security infrastructure in place.

</comment><comment><USER28> This will most assuredly end well. I'm sure the Chinese won't respond in kind by escalating even further, thus creating mutual demand in both markets for cyber warfare.

<comment><USER29> and what's the alternative? not retaliate and try to beef up security even more? obviously that approach isn't working.

<comment><USER28> Frankly, I do believe an alternative is to try to minimize long-term damage by being smarter about security and making sure hackers go for the low-hanging fruit that will be easily fixed. For example, make a prediction market for where hackers will hit, and play with difficulty and incentive factors so that you control the game, rather than simply begging the opponent to go for bigger, better (worse) targets, which is what I assume is going to happen with the current course of action.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Not that counterattacking is necessarily the best option, but from what I've heard from colleagues in China, the security ecosystem there is far worse than the US. Especially with respect to encryption, many companies and government services rely on poorly designed homebrew solutions.

</comment><comment><USER31> First of all, China likely has far less cyber surface area than US. Which means US will suffer more damage in the event of a cyber war.

Secondly, it is dangerous to suppress cyber attacks via negotiations, appeals and threats (as opposed to technological means) because then we'll be in the dark as to their capabilities and our exposures, and in the event of an actual war we'll be unprepared and they will cripple us easily.

Instead, we should do what companies such as Google and recently United Airlines have done: reward hackers who find vulnerabilities. Then disarm the opponent by fixing our vulnerabilities as quickly as possible.

<comment><USER32> Or simply drastically reduce the surface area of attack.

<comment><USER6> Both?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> China can retaliate by going after American economic interests, but ultimately they'd be cutting off their nose to spite their face. China is not a friendly environment for non-domestic companies, and American companies are going to need to understand sooner or later that this is a dangerous market to pin hopes of growth. Google got out of China and now they're liberated from China's coercion tactics. Retatiation would inflict some short term pain on American companies, but ultimately they'd rebalance and it would be China that would suffer from their economic withdraw.

</comment><comment><USER20> I wonder if this is how they decided to retaliate...by saying they would? This has the feel of an intentional leak to tell the Chinese that we mean business. If so, why telegraph our actions if we're actually going to follow through?

<comment><USER34> It is possible this is a leak by someone in the administration that opposes retaliation and thinks it will be less likely if there is press coverage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Tip to the Chinese: Seize all XBox and iDevice Shipments. Close down their production lines. Watch them cry. Easy win.

</comment><comment><USER36> This is complete speculation, but perhaps an interesting idea. What if the recent turmoil in China's stock market is a direct result of the US retaliation for this incident? Clearly, the US wouldn't admit that, but they might want the implication to exist.

<comment><USER37> It's poor speculation.

China's growth has been trending down for a decade plus. The fundamentals of their economy continue to get worse by the year. Keeping that picture in mind, their stock market lifted off to insane heights, in a matter of months, for absolutely no good reason other than a flood of margin that was encouraged by the State.

China's stock market crashed because it went up drastically for reasons that were never going to be able to support the new levels (ie not due to growth or general improvement in economic fundamentals).

The US has also not been crashing their real estate market the past year. That too is a mess of their own making.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> > _The Obama administration has determined that it must retaliate against > China for the theft of the personal information of more than 20 million > Americans from the databases of the Office of Personnel Management_

Someone tell me _what use_ China has for "personal information" of Americans from the _Office of Personnel Management_.

Seriously. What do the records contain and what is it to China? Wouldn't China be more interested in the "personal information" of their own peons?

> _But in a series of classified meetings, officials have struggled to choose > among options that range from largely symbolic responses — for example, > diplomatic protests or the ouster of known Chinese agents in the United > States_

So how classified were the meetings if you know what they talked about?

> _In public, Mr. Obama has said almost nothing, and officials are under > strict instructions to avoid naming China as the source of the attack._

.. But it's alright for the _New York Times_ to declare to the world that China is being naughty?

> _unless the United States finds a way to respond to the attacks, they are > bound to escalate_

Yeah, pretty soon the Chinese government will be hacking PayPal for Americans' credit card numbers! You know, for extra revenue and all.

> _In the Sony attack, the theft of emails was secondary to the destruction of > much of the company's computer systems, part of an effort to intimidate the > studio to keep it from releasing a comedy that portrayed the assassination > of Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader._

Why the hell would the Chinese government give a flying fuck about a comedy about Kim Kong-Un? Let alone to the extent of _" destroying Sony's computer systems"_, whatever that's supposed to mean? How do you destroy computers by hacking them remotely?

> _The Justice Department is exploring legal action against Chinese > individuals and organizations believed responsible for the personnel office > theft_

So assuming these people were working for the Chinese government, the US would have to extradite/kidnap them from China to get them convicted. How's that for "escalation"?

If kidnapping isn't in the plans, why would they "explore" legal action, knowing it would be a waste of time? Why would they publicize their plans for legal action? Do they just want to make themselves look stupid?

In reality, this article is just Cold War 2.0 propaganda. Who knows if any hacking even happened? It makes no sense for China to hack Sony over a movie, so why wouldn't this be bullshit too?

 _Russia and China are Bad, mmm 'kay?_

<comment><USER39> > Someone tell me what use China has for "personal information" of Americans > from the Office of Personnel Management.

> Seriously. What do the records contain and what is it to China? Wouldn't > China be more interested in the "personal information" of their own peons?

From what I've read, these files can potentially contain very sensitive information. As part of the background check for some government positions, many dark secrets are unearthed and documented. Why? So that the government has a heads-up on how its employees may be compromised by foreign adversaries. So if the Chinese had such files on 20 million people, they would have a treasure trove of information to use as leverage against US citizens.

> Why the hell would the Chinese government give a flying fuck about a comedy > about Kim Kong-Un?

They don't, and the article never implies that they did. "Admiral Rogers made clear in a public presentation to the meeting of the Aspen Security Forum last week that he had advised President Obama to strike back against North Korea for the earlier attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment. Since then, evidence that hackers associated with the Chinese government were responsible for the Office of Personnel Management theft has been gathered by personnel under Admiral Rogers's command, officials said." The DPRK is associated with the Sony hack, and PRC with the OPM one.

> So assuming these people were working for the Chinese government, the US > would have to extradite/kidnap them from China to get them convicted. How's > that for "escalation"?

"Legal action" could be sanctions, warrants, etc. Why do you jump to kidnapping so suddenly? (Not that I would put it past this government...)

> In reality, this article is just Cold War 2.0 propaganda.

Of course, it's in the NYT!

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> "the goal was espionage, on a scale that no one imagined before."

NSA comes to mind...

<comment><USER40> You are not wrong, however, I would have a hard time believing the NSA would hack a personnel database, and then sell social sec info and personal info to the highest bidder. I have no problem believing the chinese would.

<comment> barry-cotter The PRC is a state, not a criminal gang. They have the second largest GDP after the USA. Why on Earth would they _sell_ the information? The more people have the blackmail material gathered by hacking the OPM the less valuable it is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I really think if the US wants to retaliate they can just make it legal for US citizens to hack china's targets. Then just wait for the phone call "Prease make it stop!"

<comment><USER10> I was wondering about this. What recourse would the Chinese government have if you sabotaged some of their systems? Stealing their data would be the best move but causing some problems wouldn't be too difficult.

<comment><USER41> I didn't envision anything harmful like stuxnet. But It would be funny to see some 14 year old kid take ownership of Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> And so begins World War III.

We will look on in horror as the tools _we built_ are used against us.

<comment><USER43> If only war was completely in "cyberspace" and no one got physically hurt...

<comment><USER44> Well, may not be physically hurt but a full blown cyber war does affect everyone's lives.

<comment><USER34> If WWIII results in mass extreme inconvenience I will be a happy man.</comment></comment></comment></comment>