50 CVEs in 50 Days: Fuzzing Adobe Reader - <AUTHOR> https://research.checkpoint.com/50-adobe-cves-in-50-days/ <comment><USER3> As much as many of us lament the state of much of today's software, if you think of products from a certain era - IE6, Flash, Java web applets - they all had a commonality in their code quality. These are mostly a non-issue these days, but it's not because they suddenly stopped having bugs and still get active use.

I remember rolling out Adobe Reader in those days and as a product, I don't believe its core has changed much. They've certainly managed to bolt on a whole lot of new features, but that can only make the position worse.

As much as this sounds like a call to kill Adobe, something needs to happen before that's feasible. For the average enterprise, Adobe Reader is far more ingrained than these products were. Case in point, in organisation I asked the question of whether Chrome's PDF viewer would cut it for them. One large department then ordered Adobe Professional for every user. They told me they didn't need it, they just knew I wouldn't propose removing a product they'd actually paid for.

Adobe Reader needs its HTML5 moment - an alternative that's not just "good enough for most people", but one that's actually better.

<comment><USER4> To be fair, in my experience Chrome's and Firefox's PDF viewers don't cut it. They are good for a quick preview, but especially when printing they occasionally render things slightly wrong, which is unacceptable for a file format whose entire point is to look the same everywhere. Also forms.

That doesn't mean that there aren't any alternatives. Foxit for example is pretty good. But in-browser alternatives just aren't there yet

<comment><USER5> pdf.js has had 26 pull requests merged in the last month. 5,622 additions and 6,991 deletions. That's just in the project directly, not in the dependencies.

Since it's such a quickly evolving project, I wondered where form support is up to. [https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js/issues/7613](https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js/issues/7613)

Form support is not complete. Seems like it required quite a rewrite to get the foundation in a good place to finish it off.

Are there rendering bugs? Yes. See plenty here: [https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js/issues](https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js/issues)

Of course, Acrobat also has PDF rendering bugs, and other various bugs apart from the security issues mentioned (their JavaScript implementation for example).

As for printing... browsers aren't even good at printing HTML. The best browser for printing is based on the old Opera software(PrinceXML), and Safari is probably second. Remember the Apple display system used to be based on PDF rendering... and they do a lot with CUPS and graphic designers.

However, printing PDFs on many browsers can go directly to the printer or the OS (which mostly all support rendering PDFs directly now).

<comment><USER6> > Remember the Apple display system used to be based on PDF rendering

Does Quartz not still try to match PDF in the way its render structure is composed internally?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Being able to run JS in a PDF sounds scary to a lot of people, but I wouldn't throw that idea out entirely.

If you follow the work by Bret Victor & others on "explorable explanations"[0][1] and interactive scientific papers[2], you probably appreciate the need for a self-contained format for interactive documents. Could PDF be this? I don't know, I hear the spec is too scary. But I'd say we should have something like that.

\--

[0] - [https://explorabl.es/](https://explorabl.es/)

[1] - [http://worrydream.com/ExplorableExplanations/](http://worrydream.com/ExplorableExplanations/)

[2] - [http://worrydream.com/ScientificCommunicationAsSequentialArt...](http://worrydream.com/ScientificCommunicationAsSequentialArt/)

<comment><USER8> Distill[1] is another example of interactive scientific papers (with a focus on machine learning).

But is there really a good reason to not just keep these in browser? I don't really know if there's much value in reading these locally. Maybe this would be a good fit for an electron app?

[1] [https://distill.pub/](https://distill.pub/)

<comment><USER9> I would like HTML files to mostly replace pdf documents. However, they lack a couple things:

* A way to save back form data. I believe google is working on a js api to access local files (given a few conditions). * A way to bundle the html with every js script, ressource, css, etc, in one file, without making a huge mess.

If you had a tar.gz with an index.html inside, and the browser was to transparently allow r/w access to the archive contents from contained js scripts, this could solve a lot of use cases (heck, even "electron" apps could be replace by this). One exception being printed documents (postscript), at which pdf is quite good.

<comment><USER10> I'm in the same boat with browser-based vs electron apps (see my question [1]). I don't think PDF-based forms are an alternative to reactive web forms though, as they aren't dynamic enough. The sole purpose of PDF is page- oriented print, which html(+js) can't deliver.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16773933](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16773933)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I recall listening to a presentation in RSAC around 2013 or 2014 where Adobe CISO or CIO or someone pretty much said that they don't give fucks about product security. E.g. zero impact on sales. I suspect it was thrown in as a bit of trolling attempt in a conversation but looking at their track record maybe that is the reality.

<comment><USER12> > they don't give fucks about product security.

More accurately stated as "we sandboxed it, so anything discovered is less likely to be critical." [https://www.adobe.com/devnet- docs/acrobatetk/tools/AppSec/sa...](https://www.adobe.com/devnet- docs/acrobatetk/tools/AppSec/sandboxprotections.html)

I've heard a variant of that talk delivered by a non-C-level at an appsec/prodsec-focused conference where the rehashed quote above (though I'm blatantly paraphrasing) was the justification used. Something more closely reflecting the truth might be "we can't realistically tackle the many security defects in Acrobat and Flash, so we sandboxed both applications instead to generally reduce the technical risks posed by any vulnerabilities in code."

<comment><USER6> Except somehow we still end up with horrendous security vulnerabilities in both. Putting things in a sandbox does not necessarily mean that you did it correctly.

<comment><USER11> Exactly this. Thank You.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Honest question: why can't Adobe hire product security engineers to do this kind of vulnerability discoveries or even hire 3rd party consultants to fix bugs/vulnerabilities before they even get into production?

Every CVEs exposed by outside 3rd parties like this is a shame on their software quality and reputation, IMMO.

<comment><USER14> This is a great question and I have thought a bunch about it and the only conclusion I could make is that they dont care enough. This kind of news does not affect Adobe's stock price or their profits. Their users probably mostly don't care. So why bother paying $$$ for security engineers.

<comment><USER13> If important zero-day affected by Adobe software causing rippling effects perhaps they will care more? At this quality and enough time, it probably is bound to happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you have a PDF document on your web site, please consider putting a link to [https://pdfreaders.org/](https://pdfreaders.org/) instead of unfair advertisement of Adobe Reader.

<comment><USER16> Which gives (except for pdf.js) more PDF readers written in C, some with a long history of CVEs, and typically not sandboxed by default.

Since many people are using a PDF reader to read PDFs from relatively untrusted sources, do yourself a favor and at least use a reader that does not have full system access.

macOS: Preview.app (uses macOS sandboxing)

Linux: Evince Flatpak on Wayland (Flatpak uses sandboxing. Wayland because X11 apps can read all keystrokes, mouse events, do screengrabs.)

Windows: no clue

All platforms: in-browser PDF reader with a browser that sandboxes.

<comment> rvp-x If you're counting on wayland to sandbox arbitrary code execution, you're getting in trouble.

<comment><USER17> Applications that can send commands to X.org servers can completely control it. The same isn't true for Wayland.

Flatpak is providing the actual application sandboxing, but being allowed to talk to the X server is a huge amount of privilege that can't really be restricted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's amazing browsers have so far decided to just not have an HTML archive format that could replace PDF. The majority of what PDF does can be better done in a webpage. Why not just an extension like .phd but is actually a .tar.gz that contains a webpages assets. Present like pdf's are, and done.

<comment><USER6> PDFs are supposed to look the same on every computer. Webpages can't do that yet.

<comment><USER18> I don't know how accurate that is for PDF's, but webpages are supposed to look the same, and given known compatible styling, it should be on any modern browser. Browsers are extremely consistent in content presentation, that's why webpages from early 2000s still look the same.

<comment><USER19> No. Take for example font-family: sans-serif. That can look like anything, can have different widths on different devices, etc. Browser windows can have any size, devices can have various pixel densities, users can work at different zoom levels, etc. The previous big thing was responsive design.

<comment><USER20> Same counts for PDFs. If the font isn't shipped inside the bundle, the PDF will look like shit.

<comment><USER19> Good point. I noticed that too. At least web pages are made so that the content is re-flown [seems like the whole point], so it doesn't look like shit. It seems like [many?] PDFs place each character separately so if the actually used font is different from the one used during creation, the result will look very messy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Acrobat Reader has been the poster boy for poor software for many years and it appears that Adobe have been good at adding new features to make it largely impossible for their competitors to keep up.

What is one to do?

Surely, the obvious answer is to ringfence PDF (or another new format) for the most basic features. These could more easily be handled by 3rd-party apps both securely and to render correctly. Let Adobe do whatever they want with their own format by adding loads of stuff people don't want, then the sell is harder for them:

Get a cheaper, safer app for writing portable docs which can do most things or pay more money for a very insecure format that does stuff you don't need.

I assume that others have attempted at some point to make an OSS alternative to PDF and I'm guessing it hasn't worked yet?

<comment><USER22> That is sort of what PDF/A is: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF/A](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF/A)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> What about having continuous fuzzing servers for just about any software ? kinda like virustotal.

<comment><USER24> Google does this with their oss-fuzz project (only for open source projects, since as Someone1234 noted it's very difficult otherwise):

[https://github.com/google/oss-fuzz](https://github.com/google/oss-fuzz)

<comment><USER25> Microsoft had 'project Springfield' which became 'Microsoft Security Risk Detection' ([https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security-risk- detection/](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security-risk-detection/)). Kind of like Fuzzing as a Service.

Anyone on HN has any experience to report with this ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> What a strange bar graph, where each column is color coded to a year rather than just putting the years on the x axis.

</comment><comment><USER27> Since KDE, GNOME, and FSF foundations recently got a significant contribution this year, I wonder why they wouldn't join forces and hire a couple full-time developers to make poppler and all poppler-based PDF viewers (Evince, Okular, etc) actually useful for PDF Forms, animated and interactive content.

</comment><comment><USER28> Adobe's software is large enough and ingrained deep enough that it seems people give it a pass with today's standards for software stability. Lowering the threshold of well-shaped review nearer to git and libgit2 would yield even more value toward stepping through the software stargate.

Git total loc: 279,993

libgit2 total loc: 219,887

Git CVEs (so far): [https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability- list/vendor_id-4008...](https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability- list/vendor_id-4008/GIT.html)

libgit2 CVEs (so far): [https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability- list/vendor_id-1606...](https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability- list/vendor_id-16066/product_id-35762/Libgit2-Project-Libgit2.html)

</comment><comment><USER29> Do people still use Adobe reader nowadays? Last time that I tried it in my school's library it took half a minute to load and render my document, and after that the whole UI was unresponsive.

I had a much better experience with Sumatra on windows and Zathura on Linux where my documents open almost instantly.

<comment><USER30> .. tried Zathura on LUbuntu just now for the first time ; appears to be a VIM for documents viewing or something.. no interest in Zathura here!

<comment><USER31> and just like that, you've convinced me to install it. Different strokes for different folks, I suppose. :)

<comment><USER32> I was also convinced to install it, although after trying it, it looks more like less for PDFs than vim for PDFs (as many of the commands search or scroll in complex ways, but none of them _modify_ the PDF).

Still, it's interesting to have something like less for PDFs!

<comment><USER33> IMO mupdf is the real less for PDFs. It is so lightweight and straightforward it makes everything else seem terribly bloated.

<comment><USER34> Zathura can use mupdf as its PDF renderer (it can also use poppler). I like using the mupdf library through Zathura rather than using the mupdf application, because Zathura has plugins for other file formats too, like PostScript and DJVU, and that way I learn a single set of keystrokes to view all sorts of documents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I may have missed something, but it looks to me like this is really a test of just the JPEG 2000 part of Acrobat Reader. It is possible that Adobe built this part of the reader by taking some open source implementation of JPEG 2000 (such as the reference implementation), and modding it - probably by changing memory allocation to be consistent with ARs memory model. So it is possible that some or many of the discovered vulnerabilities are in fact part of the JEPG 2000 library, in which case the problem goes beyond Adobe Acrobat.

<comment><USER36> You missed something, the article says at the end they fuzzed many different parsers not just the jpeg2000 one

<comment><USER35> Ah - <USER2>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Oh no, not Adobe again! This company has been putting out shitty (in terms of security) for 20+ years. Anyone remember Adobe Flash? (shudder)

</comment><comment> time-domain0 If you read the PDF spec from the late 90's, it is Stephen King novel-scary... container format, multiple encodings, encryption, embedded binaries, embedded JavaScript and more.

<comment><USER38> While working with the PDF format I sometimes get the impression that this complexity is what Adobe wants. As a result, Adobe Reader is the only viewer that implements the entire spec and can handle all (or most) quirks.

This is especially apparent when trying to edit arbitrary PDF files, which is sometimes not so easy or even impossible. Just the definition of fonts and the text layout is already so complicated that this is the logical consequence.

But perhaps the format has simply grown and led to additional requirements such as PDF/A, PDF/X, PDF/E and now PDF 2.0, the next standard that makes everything even more complex... Will this every stop?

<comment><USER39> The same could be said for the Microsoft Office file formats.

Or PSD, for that matter.

<comment><USER22> The Office formats are well specified, they are complex because that is the nature of the software but it is a world away from something like PSD or even PDF.

<comment><USER40> PDF is actually quite well specified, there are not many holes in the specification itself.[0] As to what Adobe Reader will do when it encounters an out-of-spec file, that is a lot fuzzier.

On the other hand, the Office file formats (especially Word) have many un- or underspecified cases.

[0] The only one I know of is finding the end of compressed inline image data.

<comment><USER22> I found quite a few areas that were vague when I was working with it.

The advantage of the office formats is they are Zip files with a ton of XML, ie they are well defined. The application parts are another matter of course.

<comment><USER41> Just because something is XML doesn't mean it is "well-defined".

<comment><USER22> No, but XML parsing is a solved problem, PDF parsing isn't.

<comment><USER42> The original criticism was that some parts are just binary blobs encoded in XML elements, which wouldn't suprise me at all, with Microsoft being allowed to tick the 'XML file format' checkbox and still getting to keep the binary format advantages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Wonder how many of these were already in use by state actors?

</comment><comment><USER44> Awesome work!

</comment><comment><USER45> I feel like if you're a corporate buyer of Adobe software, you've got grounds for gross negligence here?

</comment><comment><USER46> The fact that companies still have the email-> employee pc -> acrobat reader pipeline enabled says a lot about what companies really think about security, posturing aside.

(home users too, but they can plead ignorance)

<comment><USER47> The reason being that there are almost no high-profile breaches I can think of where PDF vulnerabilities have been blamed. Unlike Office macros, Flash etc etc.</comment></comment>


Mtgox Bitcoin At 230$ - <AUTHOR> https://www.mtgox.com

<comment><USER2> While many people in the Bitcoin community claim that this is limited to Mtgox (due to their withdrawal issues), let's not forget that Mtgox still has the majority of the trading volume. Once Mtgox enables withdrawals their cheap coins will probably drag down the prices on the other exchanges too.

</comment><comment><USER3> Perhaps more interesting is the existance of [https://www.bitcoinbuilder.com/](https://www.bitcoinbuilder.com/) where you can trade bitcoins outside of gox for bitcoins inside at different rates.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Probably due to the recent breach of security. Lots of people accounts have been logged into from china.</comment>


Apple Can Use Software to Break Phones Repaired by Independent Shops - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/bjv9jz/apple-ios-11-repair-screens-software-update <comment></comment>


Half of UK adults are financially vulnerable, City watchdog finds - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/oct/18/uk-adults-financially-vulnerable-fca-interest-rate-rise <comment><USER2> Note how the Guardian headline has seamlessly converted the report's wording "display one or more characteristics that signal their potential vulnerability" to "are financially vulnerable". I think that's self-evident distortion, just dropping the "potential" bit (let alone "signal").

Then again "vulnerable" is an extremely popular word in the UK media this year, and nobody's ever precise about what it means, so maybe it's all meaningless, I don't know.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's a feature of capitalism, not a bug. Can't leave money on the table.

<comment><USER4> It really is remarkable how efficient capitalism is at ensuring that proles are born with nothing and die with nothing. Every tiny bit of surplus beyond maintenance of the body is siphoned away into the pockets of the capital class.

<comment><USER5> Because in nature, organisms _don 't_ grow to the limits of their environment, right? They willingly limit their growth so that all enlightened organisms can share equally in a workers paradise, amidst songs of empowerment and fraternity, while marching collectively towards a bold new future!

Yeah... no.

Evolution shows us that organisms _do_ grow to the limits of their environment. A "capitalist" system is no different. Making thinly-veiled religious statements about the evils of capitalism means rhetoric is more important to you than understanding.

Edit: for the nay-sayers, who seem to have missed my point: These behaviors aren't a result of capitalism. Blaming capitalism, or using ideological rehetoric, is wrong. These behaviors are a result of _reality_. Of evolution. Of the Dariwnian struggle for existence.

Blaming capitalism for these behaviors makes no more sense than blaming capitalism for a disease like malaria. Malaria was around long before capitalism, or even people, existed.

<comment><USER6> Provided resources are finite and the sun's output is constant, gradually limiting growth would indeed be wise unless we want to fall off a cliff at some point.

————

 _Edit: in response to your edit:_

Healthy ecosystems strive at equilibrium. If a species consumes more energy than its environment can supply or produces more entropy than its environment can dissipate, things go bad for the environment and for the species unless it can move to greener pastures.

What is true for species is also true for non-biological dissipative processes. Capitalism and the growth-fueled financial system are not perennial. In this context, humanity is part of the environment, and greener pastures is the automation epidemics, where capital is becoming self- sufficient.

This is dangerous for humans.

<comment><USER5> > Healthy ecosystems strive at equilibrium.

Nonsense.

The only reason systems are in equilibrium is because of negative feedback. Predators eat prey. Diseases kill plants / animals, etc.

Remove the negative feedback, and you get un-checked growth.

This is basic biology...

<comment><USER6> Negative feedback is part of healthy ecosystems, because resources _are_ limited. These loops are necessary for long term survival.

What you describe is cancer.

<comment><USER5> Systems do NOT "strive for equilibrium". The only reason we see multiple systems at (roughly) equilibrium is that the ones _not_ at equilibrium destroy themselves and their environment.

I'm not denying that negative feedback exists. I'm saying that _without_ such feedback, systems _always_ run out of control, because _that 's the biological imperative_.

And no, growing systems are _not_ cancer. That's just a ridiculous statement to make. Don't straw-man me FFS.

<comment><USER6> > The only reason we see multiple systems at (roughly) equilibrium is that the > ones not at equilibrium destroy themselves and their environment.

Survival of the fittest. The fittest ecosystems are those who strive at equilibrium. Unchecked growth leads to boom bust cycles that are very destructive.

It may be an early propagation strategy (especially for autotrophs), but it is, in the long run, overcome by checks and balances. AFAIK short of catastrophic changes, ecosystems tend to reach equilibrium, because boom/bust is not competitive.

This is also true of diseases. New, aggressive strains that kill their host quickly usually evolve into milder versions of themselves that get better chances to spread (because the host survives longer).

Most animals have builtin growth limits that matches what they can reasonably extract from their environment. Within the boundaries of an individual, uncheck growth is literally cancer. BTW, you should have that growth on your nose checked (yeah, lame pun sorry ;-).

Humanity and its economy has a cancerous behavior right now. Even if the population stabilizes, economic growth requires a proportional growth in the consumption of resources (energy/matter) and thereby a proportional increase in entropy (heat/pollution/destruction/death).

At some point the rest of the earth won't be hospitable to us as a species, and that point may be precipitated by autonomous capital.

Farming and mining are being automated away. Transport is being automated. Manufacture has been for a long while.

Why would an automated market feed billions of idle meat bags? I don't know either.

Why do I care? I have kids, and I feel responsible for the mess I put them in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> cup-of-tea What does struggle mean? Not be able to eat? Not be able to heat their house? Not be able to go out as often?

<comment><USER7> I looked at the FCA report and it's not defined anywhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm no economics expert so there's probably flaws in this idea but I've been wondering if we should levy a tax on usury (in its older interpretation). Looking at all the ways that money flows from the poor to the rich, it seems usury (in the form of profits derived from rent and interest) are large contributors.

This has traditionally been the position in Judaism, Christianity and Islam (and I think many tribal societies would greatly frown upon it).

<comment><USER9> My guess is that increased levies or taxes on loans would end up being paid by the borrower and make the loan even more expensive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Over here in the States your rent increases just about every time you renew your lease.

<comment><USER11> In my experience, as long as you rent from small time owners who have day jobs, you can leverage being a good tenant into at least not raising rents for a few years. Sometimes even getting a discount, because that's how much of a headache bad tenants are.

If you rent from a big rental company, then they can absorb that risk so you lose out on those savings.

<comment><USER12> Can confirm - my rent has only gone up £150 in 19 years largely because I never bother my landlords.

<comment><USER10> Yes if you can make this work stick with it. 19 years is a long time you've probably paid off their mortgage by now!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The report itself is fairly easy reading.

[https://www.fca.org.uk/publications/research/understanding-f...](https://www.fca.org.uk/publications/research/understanding- financial-lives-uk-adults)

There are summary sheets for each age group, and detailed tables. I found the ones around self employment particularly interesting.

</comment><comment><USER14> I mean, that's $780 per year. I don't know what the, er, lowest hexile in the UK makes, but surely it's no better than $30k per year, right? And in fact probably much worse.

So they'd struggle if they suddenly had expenses that were 2.5% of their income or more? That doesn't seem revelatory.

<comment><USER15> Really? I think the framing that 1 in 6 people don't have at least 2.5% of slack in their finances is equally damning.

<comment><USER14> As others have noted, it's not "will collapse into a disaster," it's "struggle."

It is not news to me that in general, relatively poor people do not have a ton of slack in their finances. If it's news to you, well... okay. But I think you just weren't paying attention.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> would it mean that rents are not going to increase because people are not going to pay for it?

<comment><USER11> It could also mean that they cut back on vacations and other ancillary spending.

<comment><USER17> I really don't think you understand how bad the problem is. They don't take holidays as they have _no_ money. The amount of rough sleepers I've seen on the streets recently has risen beyond all comprehension. It's directly correlated to austerity (and universal credit implementation)

<comment><USER18> Indeed it has increased by 134% 2010 - 2016 according to this org

[http://www.homeless.org.uk/facts/homelessness-in- numbers/rou...](http://www.homeless.org.uk/facts/homelessness-in- numbers/rough-sleeping/rough-sleeping-our-analysis)

Now universal credit is being rolled out, this is likely to massively increase.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> having just left a long term rental(5 years), my new home is +50% rent :(

<comment><USER20> Wow! What city are you living in? If you don't mind me asking</comment></comment>


How VC's Get to "Yes" - <AUTHOR> http://robgo.org/2014/02/09/how-vcs-get-to-yes/ <comment><USER2> > fundraising is about "searching for true believers, not convincing > skeptics."

Interesting and well said. Makes sense, but I hadn't thought of it in those terms.

<comment><USER3> This is a Sales truism too. It's much easier to convince people who believe than people whose job it is to say "No". Early stage funding requires shared optimism between the funder and funded.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > For example, there is sort of a magic number for SaaS businesses to achieve > $100K MRR, which is usually a good benchmark for being able to raise a > decent VC-led series A or B.

Wait, what? If you have $100k MRR, why do you need any venture capital at all?

<comment><USER5> First two reasons I can think of.

Imagine you're doing that on an expensive cloud hosting setup and your expenses are really high. An infusion of capital could allow you the opportunity to build out your own server infrastructure(or pay annually on the cloud infrastructure) and dramatically lower your expenses and push your margins up a lot.

It would also offer you the flexibility in your funnel to offer back loaded deals to get larger clients onboard.

<comment><USER4> An extra large EC2 instance is $360-$3311 per month. Maybe I have an imagination failure, but I can't see how cloud costs could be past 10k per month. So, how much could the infrastructure cost, and still be worth the investment?

Maybe I just don't understand the costs.

<comment><USER5> First two ideas that spring to mind would be a realtime video encoding service and a CI service. In both cases your users to server ratio would be very low and in the first case your data costs would be very high. So you might be only making profit of $X per server per month even if your revenue is $XXX per server. When you're running your own servers you need a big investment up front but lower operational costs which is where the funding would come in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Relevant: [http://www.techendo.co/posts/what-venture-capital- companies-...](http://www.techendo.co/posts/what-venture-capital-companies- look-for-in-a-startup)</comment>


Learning From Failure: Apple's Most Notorious Flops - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/multimedia/2008/01/gallery_apple_flops

<comment><USER2> The most important rule when innovating is not to fear failure, and to carry on regardless of it.

Apple has grasped this better than many others in the industry.</comment>


CVE-2018-10901 in Linux Kernel Could Lead to Privilege Escalation - <AUTHOR> https://sensorstechforum.com/cve-2018-10901-linux-kernel-privilege-escalation/ <comment><USER2> When your kernel has millions of LoCs, all running in supervisor mode, this kind of thing is bound to happen again and again.

seL4 is where it's at; There's no need to run all this crap in supervisor mode. Not even for performance, as post-L4 microkernels have demonstrated again and again.</comment>


Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year's Holiday Parties - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-07/silicon-valley-is-sneaking-models-into-this-year-s-holiday-parties <comment><USER2> Yes, this practice of models at parties brings back memories. In 2000, a very well-known enterprise software company (Northeast not Silicon Valley) hosted a conference for customers and had a night party for the attendees. The most memorable thing I remember was the group of extremely pretty women on roller skates mingling with the crowd. E.g. they'd skate up and ask random attendees, _" Hey where are you from? Are you enjoying the party?"_

It's very strange how a logical brain processes what's happening. One the one hand, your rational brain says they're just paid to be there to loosen up the crowd and their smiles and questions to the attendees are fake. On the other hand, your emotional brain doesn't care and you smile and laugh back anyway. It's like the Disney World effect. You know it's a facade but enjoy yourself anyway!

<comment><USER3> IDK.

My logical brain says "it's not 1950 anymore; the PR blow-black has the potential to be truly brutal."

My emotional brain says "This is horridly objectifying and super awkward."

<comment><USER2> _> "it's not 1950 anymore; the PR blow-black has the potential to be truly brutal."_

For that particular party, there definitely wasn't blowback because the next morning, _everybody_ talked about how amazing it was. I think it caught everyone off guard because it was unexpected and it gave attendees happy memories. (Yes, maybe the attendees _should_ have been morally outraged but I can only report how they _actually_ responded and at that time, they thought it was a huge hit.)

It's been 17 years so maybe that company doesn't hire party models anymore.

 _> "This is horridly objectifying and super awkward."_

That's a valid opinion but just to paint the picture better, the women were not dressed up as "Playboy bunnies". They were wearing regular shorts and a themed tshirt showing no cleavage. The interactions with the models would be similar to a kid interacting with Mickey Mouse at Disney. Also, there probably were male models on roller skates as well but I don't remember them for obvious reasons.

<comment><USER3> _> >"it's not 1950 anymore; the PR blow-black has the potential to be truly brutal."_

 _> For that particular party, there definitely wasn't blowback_

PR is bigger than just internal opinion. Witness: this article.

 _> The interactions with the models would be similar to a kid interacting with Mickey Mouse at Disney_

Oy

 _> the women were not dressed up as "Playboy bunnies". They were wearing regular shorts and a themed tshirt showing no cleavage... Also, there probably were male models on roller skates as well but I don't remember them for obvious reasons._

At least we all eventually agree that the obvious is obvious.

<comment><USER2> _> PR is bigger than just internal opinion. Witness: this article._

This particular article has an extra angle about models _pretending to be friends of employees_ at a company party. I wasn't endorsing that.

I was relating a somewhat related story about models at a software conference. However, they were _not pretending_ to be in relationships with anybody. They were there to be hosts with bubbly personalities and to schmooze the crowd.

 _> Oy_

I was not exaggerating. The conference models were not there to show skin; they were there to _socialize_. The conversations (regardless of it being artificial and scripted from the models) are not of a sexual nature. It's lightweight platonic chatting designed to loosen up the crowd.

Here are some videos showing the Disney character Garcon at the park. Not every Disney actor's face is hidden behind a mask:

[https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=disney+gaston](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=disney+gaston)

Clicking on some of those videos should give an idea of how the models interact with guests. The men that Disney hires for that work are all beautiful male specimens. (Women would typically categorize them as "hunks" or "beefcakes".) However, the purpose is _not_ for girls/daughters/mothers/women to grab their crotch or act out Magic Mike[1] fantasies. The Garcon actor is there to be funny and provide smiles.

The Garcon models are not allowed to exchange phone numbers with the park guests. There is no "let's meet up at Cinderella's castle" secret rendezvous after they show off their one arm pushups. So, if the women at the park don't get to engage with sexual foreplay at the park with Garcon, _why does Disney only hire attractive men_? Oy indeed.

The models at the software conference did similar work to the Garcon actors at Disney theme parks.

The reason you don't see public-relations blowback about the beautiful models at Disney is the same reason you don't see it about models at industry conferences.

On the other hand, the Bloomberg article about "models pretending to be friends of employees" is a whole different level of weirdness.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pathetic. The whole point is to celebrate with the employees and their families and recognize the hard work everyone has put in over the year. A stranger not connected to an employee would take away from that value.

If you want more women at the event, hire more women at the company and create a culture that encourages that.

<comment><USER5> "If you want more women at the event, hire more women at the company and create a culture that encourages that."

\-- Yes, some magic wand will solve it?

If they are tech companies and engineers are the primary value drivers, and only 16% of CS grads are female, what kind of rock will they find balanced workforce?

Companies hire because they need people to feel a role, (eg. engineers, marketing, sales, hr... etc). If they need more engineers they have to deal with the workforce supply issues, where only 16% of applicants are female.

They are a business that need to build and sale products, and not a charity.

I live in NYC, and they have the opposite is here, most PR or fashion firms are more female dominated...

It is, what it is. Not sure it justifies hiring models to balance the gender ratio in a party, but the workforce imbalance is there to stay as long as there is such an imbalance ratio in CS grads.

<comment><USER6> ~60% of the developers on my team are women. It's not magic. Also, in a big company most employees are not engineers, so the relative lack of female CS grads shouldn't mean there are so few women that you need to hire them for events.

<comment><USER5> Yes, for small team (sub 10), I have seen high ratio of females/males, but for larger companies, it is impossible.

If you are hiring 100s, or even thousands of engineers you are bound to the supply of the market. Unless you do some straight out hiring discrimination, and refuse to hire males. Similar to some Vegas clubs (they wont let males unless they have a female with them). Good luck building a successful business with those values.

It is Econ 101 dude... or dudette (not sure you are guy or a girl)

P.s. I personally would love to have seen balanced genders (working for tech companies sometimes it feels like you are in the army), but that's probably a utopian ideal that is not going to be fixed in my lifetime.

<comment><USER6> You are obviously bound to the supply of the market. What I'm saying is that the market is bigger than you assume. The number of women interested in and capable of a career in programming is much greater than the number of those who actually want to work at your company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was really hoping that this article was going to talk about some kind of machine-learned model that had been used to improve holiday parties. My hopes, dashed against the shores of reality.

<comment><USER8> haha, I thought the same when I first read the blurb.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> When attendance is so important to leadership theyre willing to do anything to insist their holiday parties are somehow different than any other corporations awkward, two drink ticket catered navel gazing event.

'non mandatory employee engagement' is generally how HR describes these sterile lifeless get-togethers. This inevitably gets translated into "i strongly encourage my team to attend" by management, which in turn results in every H1B employee showing up in cringing terror of being fired while every salaried non-exempt engineer and programmer brace for the inevitable "so, i didnt see you at the party last week!" from their manager.

Save the time and effort. split the budget for this dumpster fire masquerading as a social event, and add it to my raise.

<comment><USER10> I always heard no one ever gets promoted at the holiday party, but plenty of people get fired. So I show up early, have two drinks, say hi, and leave before doing anything regrettable.

<comment><USER11> I even skip the drinks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I actually don't see much of a problem. These models are hired to have a chat with nerds, and the nerds are actually paid (directly and indirectly) to talk to them. Everyone is paid to be at that party and look reasonably good for the appearance of a good time. Most 'nerds' there don't enjoy being there either, they do it because they are professionals... like the models they are mingling with...?

Any issue there? I mean, I rather enjoy talking to a model (female, or male in fact) -- it's not a business I understand, they are _professionals_ with possibly quite interesting lifestyles and stories. Wildly different from the 'colleague' grade. I used to hang out with ballet dancers in a different lifetime, it was fascinating.

Likewise, it's entirely possibly that models will be happy to work on their acting skills and so on to play that game. Perhaps the nerds can take a clue or two...

It's not a strip club, it's no more degrading for the models as it is to the employees, who _still_ have to put up and suck up to their managements -sometime abusive, in more subtle ways- for the sake of _appearance_ (just not physical), so how different is it?

Oh and remember, some models also _like_ parties. In the wild days of the 90's at computer shows, most 'parties' ended up in 'afters' with a whole bunch of the show models, because if you throw a bunch of (then) young people from different backgrounds together with a corporate credit card, stuff is going to happen, after business hours.

<comment><USER13> Under that reasoning, why bother with the party to begin with?

<comment><USER12> Because, appearances? I mean, in many companies, you _have_ to appear at socials -- remember, execs have zero clues what you are doing, all they know is what they can see and touch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is not new for sure, but it deserves discussion in light of the #metoo movement. In SV we're supposed to be innovators, why aren't we leading the way towards a more equal society? If our holiday parties are boring because we've hired a masculine monoculture, then maybe the solution is to hire more diverse people the entire year. It's objectifying to women and minorities if the only time we're hired is to make something more exciting for a few hours.

<comment><USER15> Because the honest truth of the matter is that the nerds that got bullied and discriminated against when they were young, only ever wanting to just be like others and fit it, got exactly what they wanted. They are just as bullying and obnoxious and discriminating as the people that bullied them.

<comment><USER16> Who is being bullied in the article's situation?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17>
      I was once invited to a recruiting event by palantir (it was in Israel) where I noticed a bunch of good looking women talking up other people. The weird thing was they were all dressed practically the same, wearimg a small black dress. Now, this event wasn't formal or anything, so I gathered that they were 'atmosphere models'. That was a very weird experience , to think that someone paid for pretty women to have human interaction with me. I don't get how this passes as a good idea.

Later I found out the organizer was a woman, so bizarre. Silicon valley is weird.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'd feel incredibly akward turning up to a works party and there's models there who were basically being paid to pretend they want to talk to me.

It's just awful and sad.

<comment><USER19> This would actually freak me out, I would probably need to leave immediately once I understood what was happening.

<comment><USER20> why?

<comment><USER21> Like joining a soccer game and finding out half the other team was hired to let you score goals -- not a very stimulating experience if you ask me.

<comment><USER20> What would be the analogous of scoring goals in the context of a work party with coworkers? Also, I think it would be a bit exaggerated to freak out and leave. Although maybe I'm imagining the situation differently to how it was.

<comment><USER21> Since you didn't get the analogy: I don't find it enjoyable to converse with people who are paid to deceive me, especially if I find out about it after the fact. I wouldn't mind it as much if the models were clearly identified as such so that I could either avoid them or engage with them knowing full well what's going on. I am shocked you find this surprising.

<comment><USER20> My bad, I didn't know they were meant to pass as guests! I imagined they would be clearly identified. I agree it's a very uncomfortable situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Huh. Seems like a better way to do it would be to just invite / hire a BUNCH of artists. No need to pretend; support an important part of why the Bay is the Bay, and expose your peeps to people they might not otherwise meet.

<comment><USER23> I doubt very many artists would be interested in spending their night having awkward forced interactions with random brogrammers and Kalanicks at a corporate christmas party. There's a reason these companies have to _pay_ women to show up and pretend to be interested in what their employees have to say.

<comment><USER22> > awkward forced interactions

Then you're "doing it wrong". Pay them to bring their art. Include them in the party (whatever degree of free drinks / food / access everyone else gets). Tell them that if someone's being a dick, they can feel free to be a dick right back.

Teach your people that no-one else is responsible for their happiness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> During the dot-com boom in Atlanta back in '99-'00, agencies and, to some extent, startups around the city were known for hitting the strip clubs for client meetings. It was pretty rife out there within the industry.

I doubt that would even remotely pass today. Just because some practices were "acceptable" over a prior timeframe doesn't exactly render it acceptable today.

<comment><USER25> I was in Atlanta from '78 to 2000. From '80 to '93 I owned several businesses. I had clients come in and ask to go to the strip clubs. I declined. We offered cab money. I suspect some of my employees went with them but I was never in the know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Submarine for Cre8? I can't imagine how an article like this crosses a writer's desk without a tip-off, most likely from the guy quoted in the article, who runs the agency. For all we know he could be totally fabricating the whole claim.

This is "journalism" ladies and gentlemen...

</comment><comment><USER27> This has been happening at tech companies for decades. Not only are there models at the parties, but there's entertainment, food, drinks, etc.

It's a good time, enjoy yourself and don't take it too seriously. This really isn't the end of the World.

<comment><USER28> It wouldn't be so bad if they had male models also. Actually, I'm sure someone could make that into a winning business.

<comment><USER29> The article mentions that they had a few male models. At this company, anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This has been standard practice for decades -- nothing new.

Moreover, it's standard practice in a lot of big industries. Particularly advertising, finance, automobiles, and others.

<comment><USER31> A lot of things have been standard practices in various industries for decades. That doesn't mean they should be, and today's world gives everyone a new voice to challenge these kind of things.

<comment><USER10> What's the issue with this exactly? The models are getting paid. Presumably no one is compelled to work as a hired model at one of these events.

<comment><USER31> It's social papier-mâché, and the fakeness is demeaning.

However, that aside, the lack of disclosure is unethical.

<comment><USER32> Demeaning to whom exactly?

Im trying to figure out what your argument rests upon.

lol at lack of disclosure, call the FTC

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Nothing new, this has been happening for a long time. They are called atmosphere models.

<comment><USER31> A lot of things have been happening for a long time. That doesn't guarantee it should continue.

<comment><USER33> I'm commenting more on the article than the practice. It's clear that someone wrote this with a splashy headline and juicy intro to make it seem like some new phenomenon that perfectly dove tails with current events about sexual harassment or lack of company diversity.

<comment><USER34> How is that a splashy headline? Are you referring to "sneaking"?

> _"The companies don't want their staff to be talking to someone and think, > Oh, this person was hired to socialize with me," says Kermaani, who's > sending models to seven tech parties in the same weekend._

It's just accurate.

And where in the article is there any implication that this is an entirely new thing?

> _say a record number of tech companies are quietly paying [..] it's part of > an older trend. Tech companies have long used models to run their booths at > trade shows such as CES in Las Vegas, hype up crowds at product launches, > and direct foot traffic at conferences. That said, this year's record- > setting requests for the minglers, known as "ambiance and atmosphere > models," are a step beyond what the industry has seen before, says Chris > Hanna, who's run TSM Agency since 2004 and counts among his clients "one of > the largest search engines in the world."_

The agencies themselves seem to say it's reaching a new level in both number and now becoming about a generic fun-ness, rather than more specific tasks, like sit in this booth and be pretty. But other than that, the article outright says it's not new.

The record numbers are not up for debate anyway I guess, but as for the "type" of engagement, if you imply this has always been so generic and fake, what's your source for making that claim?

> that perfectly dove tails with current events about sexual harassment or > lack of company diversity.

So you are you saying it doesn't? Can you eloborate on how sexism has nothing to do with it, then?

<comment><USER33> It's a splashy headline. "Sneaking" is unnecessary. Replace the word with "Hiring", you don't sneak atmosphere models into a party, you hire them and they show up. There's also no point in calling out _this_ year's parties, this has happened at a bunch of parties for at least the last two decades. It's not even exclusive to Silicon Valley!

Tradeshow models, booth models, and atmosphere models are also not the same. Tradeshow models must at least know about the product they are representing to discuss it with a potential customer. Atmosphere models must be very sociable and capable of carrying good conversation with anyone, you cannot just turn a cold shoulder to someone you don't find interesting. Booth models are mostly there to look pretty and maybe help with generic marketing tasks like passing out flyers.

Pointing out that the practice isn't new in the article doesn't mean the article itself transforms into something new and becomes a breath of fresh air. It's still a rehash of old ideas made to feed off current events to produce a bit of ad revenue from people looking to keep their outrage up to date.

So yes, I'm saying this does perfectly fit into current events. It was designed to.

<comment><USER31> I think "sneak" means they are trying to pass them off of friends of employees, even instructing them to say so, as opposed to disclosing why they are there. Lying to your employees, even "white lies", is sneaky.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> > For a typical party, scheduled for the weekend of Dec. 8, Cre8 Agency LLC is > sending 25 women and 5 men, all good-looking, to hang out with "pretty much > all men" who work for a large gaming company in San Francisco

Who is it?

<comment><USER36> Educated guess, based on "large gaming company," "San Francisco," the number of models hired, hand selecting those models and giving them backstories, and the disregard for opinion in doing something like this: Kixeye. Honestly, that smells a hell of a lot like something Kixeye would do. Maybe EA or Zynga, but I doubt it.

As soon as I finished the paragraph, Kixeye popped into my head automatically. I will caveat that I'm very possibly wrong, but I'm just sharing my guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wouldn't mind this at all. Given the choice between a meaningless conversation with a model, one with what's-his-name-again from Accounting, or a generic work conversation with the coworkers I spend most of my life talking with, I'd choose the model.

</comment><comment><USER37> Having hosts at an event is one thing having people pretend to be guests of the party is seriously creepy. I've never heard of this happening at a bay area tech company (as in from someone who went to one) though perhaps they wouldn't have known.

</comment><comment><USER38> This article and especially the comments here are desperately searching for something to take offense to. FFS it's just a corporate holiday party. These things are usually so bland and sterile I don't even show up. Companies do all sorts of things to drive attendance: Good food, drinks, interesting venue, and entertainment. These guests are hired to further improve the atmosphere. Artificial? Sure. The end of the world? Come on.

The article specifically mentions that male models are also employed, so all of the knee-jerk ranting about sexism and misogyny is misplaced.

</comment><comment><USER39> Isn't the whole point of paying $5000/month to live in SF the access to cultural benefits? If you want a strict monastic environment for your company, rural Idaho would probably get the job done at 1/10 the price.

I'm reminded of a story a couple years ago when all incoming Duke freshman had to read Alison Bechdel's _Fun House_ , a graphic novel with slightly gay themes. Yes, a few were offended by this, and one person made the news for publicly refusing to read it. But I don't think it ended up as a PR loss for Duke. They said if you are coming into an elite liberal arts college, these are the type of things that are consumed and debated.

Everything makes someone uncomfortable, mine's Karaoke - if they have a machine there people will be like, "stillsut come up and sing Tom Petty with me". But we need to be firm about our desires and not let the heckler's veto erode the culture.

</comment><comment><USER40> This isn't new.

[https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2014/03/04/the-d...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2014/03/04/the- dating-ring-is-raising-money-to-fly-women-from-nyc-to-sf-because-dating/amp/)

They've been flying women to San Francisco for dates.

<comment><USER31> Totally different. The article you're referencing is trying to connect two dating markets (SF and NYC) where both sides are ostensibly interested.

Models at parties are actors, pretending to be real people.

<comment><USER41> Presumably models are also real people who have an interest in being there (their interest is in being paid).

If consenting adults are being treated fairly, I don't see any moral problem here.

<comment><USER31> The article says they are told to say "I'm (real employee)'s friend". If I go to a party put on by my employer and they are paying people to lie to me, I would say I'm not being treated fairly.

<comment><USER41> Edit: Oops. I misread you the first time. Maybe my comment is no longer relevant.

But you chose to accept that job. The actor on TV isn't being treated unfairly because he/she has to lie and say they're a detective, or whatever. I don't see why the model is being mistreated because her role is software company employee.

If anyone is being mistreated by the lie, it's the person being lied to, who is, you know, being lied to. That said, this is a balance between having a fun party, and possibly feeling dumb when it turns out the girl you thought you were flirting with is actually a model hired to entertain you. I think it's up to those companies, the employees, and the models, to strike the right balance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Maybe they should invite some other company to their party with the other gender ratio if it is such a problem.

<comment><USER43> My thoughts exactly. Or host semi-exclusive parties at larger public venues such as bowling centers, where employees have chance to mingle with outsiders, likely with better gender ratio (most such venues have split sections and people can walk across them. Thirsty Bear in SF is a good one). Not to even mention implication on gender issues, hiring models to interact with employees does not really help them improve their social skills.

<comment><USER44> We tried to host such a thing a few times in college.

Apparently female-dominated environments suffer from social awkwardness as much as male-dominated ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> It's been years since i attended my company Christmas party, last time i went C-levels were bragging how much money/things they have, specially to the new employees and everyone else was either discussing work things or the latest gossip on what c-level is going to get fired. SV parties looks like they are trying hard to make wolf-of-wallstreet-level parties.

</comment><comment><USER46> When I first saw this the headline was shrunk to "Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into..." and I assumed "the workplace" to be the logical conclusion of this. People paid to look pretty and sit at a desk and pretend like they work to adjust the workplace ambiance? Seems like a logical direction for this to go in.

<comment><USER47> Similar things have already been happening in Asian countries for years... e.g. [https://kotaku.com/in-china-women-hired-to-motivate- computer...](https://kotaku.com/in-china-women-hired-to-motivate-computer- programmers-1725573574)

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Kind of sad.

</comment><comment><USER49> Oh yes, I remember this. It ends up with prostitutes being hired by the company for the evening, sometimes on a banded scale such that the most attractive prostitutes are only for the senior employees. Used to be primarily in the finance industry, but modern Bro-tech companies are following that path. It's nice that some agencies screen out the obvious requests for that, but such customers will just move on to the agencies that don't.

</comment><comment><USER50> If I were Norvig-like I'd claim I was at the party for my looks.

</comment><comment><USER51> "Silicon Valley is" is real lazy and dumb reporting.

<comment><USER43> that's why companies in Bay Area need to at least try to be good citizens representing Silicon Valley. Generalization is a tendency in human nature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> This is pathetic. Either don't hire women to be there or just hire a bunch of strippers. I say this as someone who is irritated by both sexism and political correctness run amok.

<comment><USER16> Their job isn't just to be attractive. Their job is to help schmooze people who don't seem to be having fun. There are social skills involved, whether or not you value or believe in them.

<comment><USER53> This is honestly the most valuable comment on this page, and ironically it's the very last one that I see.

The models in this case really are performing a valuable job.

<comment><USER54> Perhaps that's worth doing, no one wants to feel left out at a party. But then why do they need to be models, or focus on talking to the opposite gender?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> What's so wrong with enjoying the company of women with better genetics than most?

<comment><USER17> Are you used to paying for company?

<comment><USER55> Certainly don't pay to go to movies and watch ugly people

<comment><USER17> How is that relevant?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> sounds awful

/s

</comment><comment><USER57> Its kind of funny. These Silicon Valley types make $150k, but still can't get a girlfriend

<comment><USER58> It might be different in SV but my experience in IT has been that the vast majority of employees over 25 are in stable marriages and either have or are planning on having kids. Of course the Valley is its own special bubble but doubt singledom is going to be the path most end up on into middle age.

<comment><USER59> I'll anecdotally confirm this. As much as people love shitting on the awkwardness of nerds, most people get it together enough to find love by age 25.

People learn enough social niceties to get by, even if they never become the life of the party. Women start caring less about how cool the guy is and and start caring more about "Do I actually get along with this person?" Somewhere in the middle of those lowered expectations for coolness and increased social competence, nerds do just fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Why would you be upset if the models are not?

The models might be really upset if they don't get that job where they make $200 an hour. That might be the difference between presents under a tree and no Christmas for their kids.

<comment><USER61> I, too, frequently forget that there are people in this world besides me and "the models."

<comment><USER60> Well, yeah, that's my not so subtle point here. The only people who seem to be upset are the people who have to have paid actors pretend to be their friends for a few hours.

From the outside, it looks silly. I think it would be a shame to see their personal embarrassment and bruised egos ruin an easy job opportunity for a few people who would like to make $200/hr attending a party. That sounds like a pie job. Professional party attender.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> How incredibly cringeworthy. Glad to see Silicon Valley companies continuing to meet my expectations.</comment>


A powerful, precise language aptitude test is entering civilian life - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/12/feedback/secret-military-test-coming-soon-to-your-spanish-class <comment><USER2> I thought I was terrible at learning foreign languages -- French was the only course I flunked in high school, and I only barely passed Chinese in college.

Then I moved to Brazil and was speaking Portuguese fluently in about 6 months. Nobody was more surprised than I was.

Then, after spending a few years teaching English as a foreign language, I realized a few things.

First of all, pretty much anybody can pick up a new language, since pretty much everyone speaks a native tongue. Learning a second language really isn't any different. I was shocked at how natural it felt, picking up Portuguese -- I just felt like I was 3 years old again.

But second, unless you move to a foreign country and spend all day in the language, very few people have the time or exposure to learn a second language this way. It's just not realistic.

So third, this is why traditional language-learning classes fail for most people, because the teaching style bears so little resemblance to the natural way our brain picks up language. (This is not a criticism, it's just the reality of what you can do with a very limited amount of time and the classroom format -- and believe me, I know!)

But fourth, a few students thrive in the classroom format and pick up the language anyway. I'm not convinced that it's necessarily that they have better innate language aptitude -- they just seem to be the lucky few who are more compatible with the classroom format.

So I wonder, is the test described in this article identifying people who are actually better at learning languages "naturally", or people who are better at learning them in the very different environment of the language-learning classroom?

<comment><USER3> I learned French in my 30s, through a mix of immersion and an overly large Amazon.fr bill, and I speak it a bit below a "professional" level. I agree that if you "burn your ships", language learning can be surprisingly easy and natural. If your brain can't retreat into an English bubble, it will suck it up and internalize the new language.

One other interesting wrinkle: I know quite a few bilingual families. It turns out that kids are only amazing language learners when they have no choice. Kids will master the languages used on the playground and in school. But they don't always learn their home language to an especially high level.

So both children and adults seem to best when they don't have much choice. Or when all the cool books and TV shows are in another language.

<comment><USER4> > It turns out that kids are only amazing language learners when they have no > choice. Kids will master the languages used on the playground and in school. > But they don't always learn their home language to an especially high level.

Two additional factors: 1) Language aptitude is a continuous range, not discrete and 2) unused/unpracticed skills can atrophy. This is particularly evident in very young immigrants who exhibit "receptive" skill in their mother tongue even though they may have had fluency in earlier years. Immerse them in the native language, and they'll often pick up much much faster.

<comment><USER5> > This is particularly evident in very young immigrants who exhibit > "receptive" skill in their mother tongue even though they may have had > fluency in earlier years. Immerse them in the native language, and they'll > often pick up much much faster.

Do you have any cites for this?

I suspected it might be true, and tried actually putting together a paper on this for a class in the early 90's, but pretty much ran into a dead end looking for literature to review at the time.

<comment><USER6> Mother tongues are special. Generally immigrants will do better at foreign language(s), if also getting proper education in their mother tongue. There's also been studies with brain scans showing that even "bilingual" people usually have one mother tongue, and treat all other languages as "foreign" (separate parts of the brain deal with the two "groups" of languages).

On a more anecdotal level, I had a funny experience when I went to Japan -- I was somewhat passable in French before I went, and after about half a year of being in Japan (before I had really become fluent in Japanese) I tried speaking some simple French with a French teacher. It was impossible -- every sentence started in French, and ended in Japanese :) After I got better at Japanese, my French started coming back too -- but I'm still hoping to spend a month or two in France to really get it up to a usable level. Interestingly, I didn't have any problems with my English while there -- probably because I was already fluent in English (my mother tongue is Norwegian).

<comment><USER7> I, too, was starting mixing up French with Japanese. I learned French in school and Japanese on my own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I took the DLAB (Defense Language Aptitude Battery) along with all of the other military students who went to DLI (Defense Language Institute). DLI is without a doubt the most intense language school in the world, where you have to go from learning the alphabet to reading, speaking, and writing at a college level, and have at most 1 and a half years to do it. In the class that came after us, 2 people passed the arabic course out of 30.

As far as the predictability of someone's aptitude, the DLAB was a good baseline to show that a person had better language acquisition than the average student. When students barely met the baseline of 100 points on the test, they had an incredibly tough time in the beginning with a language as different from english as arabic. What the test didn't measure, however, is a person's will to persevere through the slow progress, constant mistakes, and utter frustration. Although the low scoring students had a tough time in the beginning, most of them passed in the end. The student's that ended up failing out of our class were, ironically, the students that did exceptionally well in the beginning. I mostly attribute this to them relying on the ease of understanding in the beginning, rather than studying at the level that the lower scoring students had had to learn how to do when they had started out.

Language learning is not a linear path where you can acquire x amount of words per day. Your language learning is affected by so many factors such as sleep, healthy living, happiness, motivation, among others. There also seems to be a point for almost everyone I was with where constant study results in a moment of clarity, where you start to believe in your skill in the language and lose the fear of failing in conversation.

All in all, I would say that learning a language is almost exactly like learning programming. The material to learn either is readily available on the internet, and each purely depend on your desire to learn them. There will always be those that just can't quite jump high enough to get past the initial hurdles, and that's what these tests are there to provide -- a way for them to get filtered out before money is invested in their ability. In that, it's similar in a way to giving someone a fizzbang test. It won't tell you that you have a great programmer, it will just give you a baseline assessment that you don't have someone that shouldn't be a programmer.

<comment><USER9> Fellow DLI alum here (Persian-Farsi, '98) and I agree with everything you've said. The DLAB was a decent stab at predicting my success of completing DLI, but it was grit and determination that allowed me to pass the DLPTS with 2s.

Funny that you associate it with programming-- I used that same hardheadedness to learn Python and now I write software for a living.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> A lot of the comments here seem to be missing the key point. The question is not whether immersion is a good thing or is better than classroom. The question the theory set out to investigate is what does it take for someone to become an outstanding learner of a foreign language, even when older. Why can some people do what is widely regarded as being impossible, achieve true native level fluency when learning >18?

</comment><comment><USER11> I've been attempting to pick up Japanese for about 15 years now. I've found a general pattern that I can go at it intently for 6-12 months, with about 4-6 hours a day of study. With that, I ultimately get to a point where for each new character or word I learn, I seem to forget a different one. Testing myself with flashcard-like custom software appears to confirm that. Eventually I burn out and cease studying for a year or so, which of course decimates a lot of knowledge and is really horrible to do.

It frustrates me to no end that this is the one thing I've really wanted to try and learn and do and failed at completely. Which is evidenced by why I still haven't given up. I refuse to be beaten, and I'm most certainly going to die trying.

Realizing it's not going to happen, I think it's time to start trying something new. So I'm currently looking into SRS algorithms and nootropics (piracetam et al.) I'll be curious to see if it helps or not.

In my case, the 2000+ characters aren't such a burden. It's the words that can have 500 different meanings (like the verb "kakeru") and the particles that can have 20 different purposes each that really ruin me. I find myself just guessing through all the different meanings and picking the least terrible sounding one, and I learn nothing from that exercise. I know it's all context, but I feel like I can't learn enough to clue into the contexts.

I can 'somewhat' handle the types of multiple-meaning words that are really just one underlying concept that we don't have a single one-to-one translation for. But some of these words just have so many of these that it's impossible to get a 'feel' for their underlying intent. And practically no language learning material out there tries to teach you these underlying meanings at all. They just give you the possible valid translations and leave you to it.

<comment><USER12> If you're serious about learning Japanese, you need to move there. I'm not sure there is any other way to properly understand all the uses of "kakeru" besides simply hearing them all hundreds of times to the point where you just "feel" when it's right to use it. There's just no substitute for immersion and pure exposure.

I studied Japanese at one of the most demanding University programmes for two years intensively (an hour of class, another hour or two of language lab time, another two or three hours studying PER DAY) but I honestly did not really start internalizing any of it until I lived it every day. It was watching TV, hanging out in bars, hearing the subway announcements, and texting my friends that actually let me become fluent.

It's like any other skill, actually... could you learn painting by reading about it but not using a brush all the time? Could you learn gymnastics watching demonstrations but never trying to do a flip? I'm not saying you don't practice - it sounds like you've worked very hard - but immersion is a completely different kind of experience. If there's any way you can, don't give up on your dream Move to Japan, even just for a year. Once you really internalize the language, it will be a part of you forever.

<comment><USER13> Even living in Japan is not enough. I'm able to get by for days in Tokyo with only please and thank-you's. Even one or two days using English-only, my SRS flashcards indicate I'm forgetting more vocabulary than I'm learning.

My suggestion is, wherever you are, find one or more native speakers to talk with at least every day. If aren't any in your local area, use Skype or some other video chat to talk with native speakers.

Just watching movies and TV shows and reading books doesn't usually work. You need to see the facial reactions of a native speaker as they listen to you speak.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My brother learned Cantonese fluently as a LDS Missionary. He then enlisted in the army after 9/11 and was given a battery of aptitude tests. I'm assuming this was one of them because he ended up at DLI learning Arabic and speaking that fluently as well.

DLI and being a Mormon missionary are about the two best places you can learn to speak a 2nd language fluently in a short amount of time.

<comment><USER15> > Before the participants took the half-day long tests they'd been sorted > according to how well they knew a second language

Does doing well in the tests reflect how well someone _will_ learn a second language, or does having _already_ learnt a foreign language (e.g Cantonese) affect how well someone _will_ learn another (e.g. Arabic) ? It could all be a mixup of causation and correlation!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have made great progress learning Italian by simply changing my homepage to google.it instead of google.com. I search for words in Italian and read my news in Italian as much as I can. I also watch Italian TV.

I'm not an expert yet, but my point is that learning a language just takes more effort than most people are willing to put into it. They are looking for some silver bullet that will teach them without any effort. Just like learning how to code, or run a business, you just have to jump in and get your feet wet. Make mistakes and learn from them. The "silver bullet" is to immerse yourself in it.

</comment><comment><USER17> Well crap. After reading the intro I hoped to find and take it (in order to, of course, confirm my own rather egotistical beliefs about my language aptitude), only to further read that it "will eventually be available for civilians." Oh well.

<comment><USER18> Actually, from reading the article, it sounds like you can get an approximation by taking tests designed to measure your working memory and associative memory.

<comment><USER19> Yes, it's not so much a "languistic aptitude test" as it is a test of general intelligence. The isn't about separating the math geniuses (or whatever) from the language geniuses, it's about separating the lower intelligence enlisted men from the higher intelligence enlisted men.

<comment><USER20> It'd be a waste of everyone's time if all their results were just a bad IQ test. I checked the first paper, and as expected from competent researchers, they did check for general intelligence, using RAPM scores: [http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/files/2013/06/Psycho...](http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/files/2013/06/Psychological- Science-2013-Frost-0956797612472207.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wonder if over time they'll adapt this sort of testing to computer science. I've often found learning new computer languages stimulating and exciting, frustrating at first but so much fun when I get closer to mastery. However many people see to lock into a language or a set of languages and never venture far from that root. I wonder if the same sort of issues are at play here. Perhaps we've all been pointing fingers at each other saying stuff like "languages are tools" and "right tool for the job" when perhaps the reality is some people are going to be really good at a handful of computer languages and we should focus them on problems that fit them well. Meanwhile others may be really good at a lot of languages and perhaps they should be part of the process of determining the right type of languages to apply to given problem sets?

Just a thought. I find it fascinating having coded for 30 years now that some people resist changing tech or languages so much. I still write in C often but most of the original languages I wrote in are dead now. I suspect if I get to write for another 30 years I'll still write in C once in a while and a whole new set of tools. Or maybe the computers will just code themselves finally.. :-)

</comment><comment><USER22> I wonder if high natural language aptitude translates to high programming language aptitude, that is, not the ability to write good code but rather to write code in diverse languages.

It seems the skill set often associated with good programmers in my general impression as well as in some papers I read (good working memory, good implicit learning) is present in language aptitude as well so this sounds likely to me.

<comment><USER23> Even more interesting to me is if one could create a test for prospective programmers that could be taken before one even knew how to program and would distinguish people who would be good at programming and those who wouldn't. Is this even possible? Programming is more complex than learning a new human language in that there are a lot more things that go into it than just knowing the language. But it's clear that some people are better at both programming and learning new programming things. Could one find a verifiable way to predict this ahead of time?

<comment><USER24> I suspect that at least two aptitudes are involved, and different programming languages/platforms place different demands on those two aptitudes.

One aptitude is essentially the math/engineering ability. The other is linguistic.

<comment><USER25> Also the working memory and a certain willingness to sit there doing purely mental work for significant periods of time (well I guess the latter is part of 'math/engineering ability'). The working memory aspect is what makes this sub-thread not a complete digression.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I already know my language aptitude and it's very low, it's near impossible for me to learn another language.

Could the language part of my brain be utilized for something else? Perhaps code? If so, I'd rather not know another language, English works fine for me.

Anyone have an fMRI I can borrow? [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris- parnin/scientists-begin-...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris- parnin/scientists-begin-looking-_b_4829981.html)

<comment><USER27> >Could the language part of my brain be utilized for something else?

Possibly, although as someone who has relatively easily learned as an adult 3 languages to varying degrees of proficiency, I've noticed that I learn the syntax of new programming languages with great ease, learning multiple PLs in the process, including ones of different paradigms.

My ability to learn new algorithms, on the other hand, is very much below average -- at least among my HN peers.

So if there indeed a correlation between learning natural languages and learning the syntax of programming languages, is possible that you good be bad at learning a new programming language but much better at algorithms, arguably more important to the working programmer, and definitely to the computer scientist.

<comment><USER26> What you said is definitely true from my personal experience, except rather than algorithms for me it's more that complex systems are easy.

I'd prefer to master a select few languages rather than risk getting syntax, functions, and language specific concepts confused.

Different languages (including programming languages) require memorization, and I'm much more of the type of person that can just figure things out rather than rely on it being memorized, not that either method is better, just an observation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Since working memory is so important, will there be any policy to get children to practice that while they have the extra mental plasticity? Learning languages takes skill, effort and dedication, focusing on the skills part early would give a good return on the teaching investment.

</comment><comment><USER29> Language learning becomes easier for the person who tries a few different languages, and for the person who formally studies linguistics, and for the person injected into an environment where the target language is pervasive. But somehow there is still individual variance in how rapidly and thoroughly language-learners learn in otherwise identical environments, so it is worthwhile for the United States government and other organizations to spot the learners most likely to be successful. For Hacker News readers who have to learn a natural language (for example, English) whether it is easy or not, I suggest referring to a set of language-learning tips posted 231 days ago as a Hacker News comment[1] back in the thread about Paul Graham's article "Founders' Accents." My tips refer to several issues for language-learners who desire to be understood by native speakers of their target language for business or for pleasure, based on academic research and my personal experience as a translator and interpreter.

I look forward to taking this test. (My background in learning languages other than my native language, General American English, is disclosed in my user profile.) I missed one chance to take an earlier general language-learning aptitude test in one previous employment setting because I was exempted from the test, having already demonstrated proficiency as a second-language learner of Modern Standard Chinese. But it would be fun to find out what this test says about my "natural" level of ability to learn a language ("baseline" would be a better adjective) after years of studying various languages.

I agree with comments posted earlier here that sometimes each new language attempted becomes easier than the previous foreign languages attempted. The first foreign language I was ever taught was German (it was mandatory for all elementary school pupils in fourth, fifth, and sixth grade in my school district in Minnesota, very unusual for the United States). German is also a heritage language in my family (German-Americans are a bare majority of my ancestors), so I was happy to keep learning it as an elective subject in junior high school and senior high school, with some interruptions caused by a move to another state with a school district where German wasn't available as a junior high language (even though that state, Wisconsin, has a higher percentage of German-descended persons than any other state in the United States). In the years since, I took Russian as a high school and university subject, and ended up majoring in university in Chinese. Today I can comfortably read a book on a familiar nonfiction subject in German, but I am much better at speaking and understanding Chinese than German.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6302816](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6302816)

</comment><comment><USER30> learning languages

</comment><comment><USER31> "There weren't enough trained language experts."

There were plenty, the military just fired them all for being gay.

<comment><USER31> Not sure why I'm being downvoted:

[http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/58_gay_arab_linguists_ouste...](http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/58_gay_arab_linguists_ousted_from_military/)

<comment><USER32> You're improperly conflating the two issues, though I agree DADT was a horrible policy.

There simply weren't plenty of linguists before or after those discharges (which obviously didn't make the situation any better). There still isn't for languages like Arabic and Persian Farsi. Attrition rates for DLI are high.</comment></comment></comment>


Android 4.3 ported to x86, runs on desktop, laptop computers  - <AUTHOR> http://liliputing.com/2013/08/android-4-3-ported-to-x86-runs-on-desktop-laptop-computers.html

<comment><USER2> For those interested in the ISO: [http://android-x86.googlecode.com/files/android-x86-4.3-2013...](http://android-x86.googlecode.com/files/android-x86-4.3-20130725.iso)</comment>


Aging interventions from older publications that deserve a new look - <AUTHOR> https://srconstantin.posthaven.com/aging-interventions-from-older-publications-that-deserve-a-new-look <comment><USER2> > However, the reliability of the average publication has probably decreased. > If there are indeed "diminishing returns to science" in recent decades, as > Patrick Collison and Michael Nielsen argue [2], with roughly constant rates > of important discoveries (as rated by experts) and flat economic > productivity (a measure that we'd expect to correlate with technological > progress) despite exponentially growing numbers of scientists, publications, > and dollars devoted to science, then the quality of the average paper, > scientist, or dollar allocated to research must have gone down. In that > case, a randomly chosen older paper should be more trustworthy than a newer > paper.

I don't quite follow this line of reasoning. I must be misunderstanding something because Sarah is way smarter than I am. But it seems to me the diminishing returns in biological science are due discoveries having a smaller impact, not on the quality of the paper. i.e. a 1985 paper doesn't have more of an impact than a 2019 paper, but a paper released in 1985 has a bigger impact than that same paper released in 2019.

If older studies are more fruitful than modern studies I would imagine it's because they were wackier. Modern studies have to deal with a more restrictive IRB and also seem more likely to fit inside the box. I hardly ever heard of modern studies where someone was like "I hooked up a battery to a weird part of the brain to see what happens."

I have a theory that as colleges, PhD programs, and then professorships have gotten more competitive that we have been selecting for higher and higher conscientiousness which has led to greater conformity. My professors didn't seem nearly as wacky and they described their professors/mentors.

<comment> barry-cotter > I don't quite follow this line of reasoning. I must be misunderstanding > something because Sarah is way smarter than I am. But it seems to me the > diminishing returns in biological science are due discoveries having a > smaller impact, not on the quality of the paper. i.e. a 1985 paper doesn't > have more of an impact than a 2019 paper, but a paper released in 1985 has a > bigger impact than that same paper released in 2019.

Less competition leads to less p-hacking, less pressure to publish or perish leads to greater risk taking in experiments, fewer proximate measures of impact lead to more confidence that results are real rather than an artifact of finding _some_ intermediate measure that looks significant, and just random fashion leading to some areas going out of style that would actually have been fruitful if pursued further.

<comment><USER2> I guess I always assumed that ignorance was a more important cause of p hacking than cheating. But if it's mostly cheating I could see a high pressure environment leading to more p hacking.

If that's true that would mean that a great deal of professors are dishonest.

<comment><USER3> Rather than 'dishonesty' per-se, it is probably closer to 'wishful thinking' most of the time, with a side-order of 'don't look a gift horse in the mouth'.

<comment><USER4> Bingo. It hard to be critical when you are (or feel that you are) dependent on the paper for your grade/diploma/career progress.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


More evidence found for quantum physics in photosynthesis - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/12/more-evidence-found-for-quantum-physics-in-photosynthesis.ars <comment> da-bacon How important quantum physics is for biological systems is in my a very important question for the coming decades. It could turn out to be not important at all except for isolated cases like this. It could turn out to be important, but easy to simulate on a classical computer, and so amenable to study using today's tools. It could turn out to be very important and ubiquitous, so much so that large scale simulation is intractable. If that turns out to be true, then there is a strong case to be made for building quantum computers to attack this problem. I think most scientists think the first or second option is most likely, but if the last opportunity occurs this will represent a major shift.</comment>


Jezebel Isn't a Reliable Source of Information about Sexism in the Tech Industry - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/K3U8i1g

<comment><USER2> Hate breeds hate.</comment>


On Being Sufficiently Smart - <AUTHOR> http://prog21.dadgum.com/40.html <comment><USER2> It's now generally accepted [1] that C code is faster than all but the most carefully handcrafted assembly. How did that happen? C compilers got "sufficiently smart".

Extrapolating, I posit that high-level languages will one day be _faster_ than C, because of the additional implementation freedom they afford.

Consider maps. In C, there is no built-in map. I have to write one myself. So I choose an algorithm (a hash-table, say) and implement it. The compiler is then forced to do exactly what I asked for... But then, I wonder: would a binary tree be faster?

Write, profile, debug, iterate ... Most of the time, that isn't done. Performance suffers.

Now consider maps in Python. When I write d = {2:1, 3:3}, what algorithm does Python choose? _It may use any data structure it wants_. And indeed, it already has some heuristics to efficiently handle the most common usage patterns. Conceivably, it could silently try many different data-structures, profile the result, and choose the best one, JIT-style.

Python will one day be faster than "all but the most carefully-crafted C code".

[1] But to be honest, I don't know how true that is.

<comment><USER3> While it is very common to use C as the canonical fast language, it has some warts that really hinders the compiler from doing optimizations. The main one is of course pointer aliasing. This, for example, stops the compiler from unrolling loops that operate on two different arrays, since it can not know if they are the same. Among people doing heavy numerical computation Fortran still seems to be very much entrenched as the "fast language".

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This was mentioned here <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1836221> and I thought it deserved its own thread.</comment>


Salesforce CEO told LinkedIn he would have paid much more than Microsoft - <AUTHOR> http://www.recode.net/2016/7/23/12262588/salesforce-ceo-linkedin-sale-offer <comment><USER2> Hindsight is 20/20\. I'm sure he was at the table in some form or fashion

</comment><comment><USER3> This just means LinkedIn values Microsoft stock more than Salesforce stock. No?</comment>


How to implement a neural network: Part 1 - <AUTHOR> http://peterroelants.github.io/posts/neural_network_implementation_part01/ <comment><USER2> I'm doing the Coursera machine learning course. You guys can try it too : [https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine- learning](https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning) . It's very relevant to this topic. Good explanation is presented here too.

</comment><comment><USER3> AFAIU, it's a tutorial on old neural networks, not on deep learning.

<comment><USER4> What do you mean by old neural networks?

<comment><USER5> You know - the ones you had to start with a crank.

<comment><USER6> You made my day :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Oslo's Plan to Decarbonize Its Port - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/environment/2019/11/oslo-port-shipping-emissions-climate-plan-electric-ferries/601378/ <comment><USER2> All this decarbonization would pale in comparison to all the emissions from the oil that Norway refused to stop or slow down extracting. Norwegian government continues to issue new drilling licenses.

<comment><USER3> If Norway stops extracting oil then oil price goes up which just means producers in other countries start producing more which brings the price back down. We don't have an oil supply problem, we have an oil demand problem.

<comment><USER4> This crisis will not be solved unless oil prices go up. Demand will decrease only when cheaper alternatives are available.

But I agree that Norway not extracting oil doesn't solve anything. The only way to solve this IMO is to tax carbon emissions and do so in a way as to make the burning of fossil fuels very expensive. And also restrict imports from countries that don't have similar policies.

And I don't see that happening any time soon.

<comment><USER5> > This crisis will not be solved unless oil prices go up

Then we're well and truly screwed without a carbon tax or equivalent. Cheap oil is here to stay.

The price of a commodity is the cost of the marginal unit. IOW, if the world production is about 100 million barrels per day, with the cheapest barrel being $10 Saudi Oil and the most expensive barrel being $60 Canadian Tar Sands oil, and there's demand for 100 million barrels per day at a price of at least $60, then the price is $60. Canadians make no profit, Saudi's rake it in.

And looking at the production curve for oil indicates that Canada and Venezuela have massive reserves of tar sands, so there's a very effective price cap on oil at around $60. It fluctuates because demand can shift faster than production can be ramped up, but the long term cap is $60.

Given the above supply curve, there are two very likely sources of drops:

1\. technology could make oil sands production cheaper. This has happened regularly before so is likely to continue.

2\. substitutes could suppress demand. Wind power is at 3c/kWh and dropping, and batteries are steadily getting cheaper too. Obviously electricity won't and can't replace all uses for oil, but it can and is replacing marginal uses.

<comment><USER3> >1\. technology could make oil sands production cheaper. This has happened regularly before so is likely to continue.

Already happened. Oil sands is profitable at $40 or under, depending on the development.

<comment><USER5> True. And that's the price of Alberta heavy oil in Alberta. The difference between that and the benchmark West Texas Intermediate price is mostly shipping.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> An interesting conversation around decarbonization in ports is going on at [https://collective.energy/topic/29/green-hydrogen-from- sea-w...](https://collective.energy/topic/29/green-hydrogen-from-sea-water- renewable-energy-for-the-maritime-and-renewable-energy-industries/40)!

<comment><USER7> Off topic; does anyone know if collective.energy uses a ready-made forum software, or if it's custom made? I really liked it.

<comment><USER6> Hey nso, thanks! I'm the maker of collective.energy - as you identified, it was originally based on NodeBB but has been highly customized to the needs of our community. Over time, we're moving more and more to our own tools & stack. What specifically are you enjoying about it?

<comment><USER7> I really liked how snappy it felt, and how minimalistic the thread view is. It's hard to put in words but it feels like a combination of many other software I've seen, but that it hits a sweet spot.

I'm currently building a BB software \in c# .net core for my own use and with plans to OS it, and your site gave me some ideas and made me question some of the choices I've made. I've been adament agains AJAXifying the navigation between pages, but seeing how well it works on NodeBB I am having second thoughts.

<comment><USER8> NodeBB is one of the better engineered forums. The code is a pleasure to read. It's very modular -- makes uses of Node emitters frequently to implement plugin modules via PubSub.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=psychobunny](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=psychobunny) did a great job.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>