TV meteorologist objected to management's 'code red' orders - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/06/07/tv-meteorologist-objected-managements-code-red-orders-on-air-apology-he-might-be-out-job/ <comment><USER2> AFAICT there's no universally agreed upon meteorological definition for "code red day." Rather, this is just something Sinclair made up for "risk of severe weather." A "code red" is also used to refer to air quality[1]. And fire risk[2]. There's also the CodeRED alert system[3].

So since this is just made up by Sinclair and doesn't have any technical definiton, what's this guy complaining about? This is Sinclair after all.

1\. [https://www.education.vic.gov.au/about/programs/health/Pages...](https://www.education.vic.gov.au/about/programs/health/Pages/coderedabout.aspx)

2\. [http://voices.washingtonpost.com/local-breaking- news/dc/3rd-...](http://voices.washingtonpost.com/local-breaking-news/dc/3rd- code-red-air-quality-day-i.html)

3\. [https://www.onsolve.com/solutions/products/codered/](https://www.onsolve.com/solutions/products/codered/)

<comment><USER3> The problem is that most of the people who are watching don't know that "code red" has no real meaning, and they may decide what action to take based on what the TV station says. Those actions could end up being costly and unnecessary.

As the article says toward the end:

> Other meteorologists aren't a fan of proprietary alert days to begin with, > expressing reluctance toward alerts that don't originate from the National > Weather Service.

> "To me, the best option is communicating the risks issued by the Storm > Prediction Center," wrote Kit Cloninger, weekend meteorologist at KSNB in > Hastings, Neb. "It's simple, and consistency is key with broadcasting. > Otherwise, viewers may wonder why one station issued an 'alert day' while > another one didn't."

> Jamie Moker, a University of Arizona researcher working on improving weather > modeling, agrees.

> "Branding is not universal across all stations," he wrote. After all, the > National Weather Service already has more than 100 types of weather alerts > it can issue. Moker argued that the solution isn't for stations to create > more alerts but to work on communicating existing ones.

<comment><USER2> Since the term has no real meaning, maybe desensitizing people to it by overusing it is the best outcome.

I'd honestly be surprised if people acted on these faux alerts. I think folks are pretty used to local stations claiming just about everything is urgent, breaking, and important.

<comment><USER4> The problem is that people who've gotten desensitized to fake Red Alerts, are also going to be skeptical when the National Weather Service issues real alerts, because most people can't tell the difference. Do you know what specific terms the weather service uses for real alerts? I sure don't.

<comment><USER2> As it happens, I do. NWS alerts are either "watch" or "warning." I have a radio for alerts. The weather alerts are by type (flooding, thunderstorm, tornado) and severity (watch or warning). I've disabled everything but tornado warning (not watch) on my radio. That means a tornado has been spotted and I want it to wake me up so I can get my family into the basement.

[https://www.nws.noaa.gov/nwr/](https://www.nws.noaa.gov/nwr/)

There is a separate system for sending alerts to cell phones:

[https://www.ready.gov/alerts](https://www.ready.gov/alerts)

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

<comment><USER5> That's just you though. And me. Probably most HNers too. But our parents or friends? For many of them, it's all the same, some folks in telly communicating warnings they divined via arcane magic and satellites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I actually see a parallel between this and the Boeing Max issue.

Management's job is to make money. Since they don't actually do the work, they have a limited number of options for doing that. And they are not judged on the quality of the work, since someone else did it, only how much money the company makes.

They need people to watch the station. So they came to the conclusion that ratings would increase if they created a sense of emergency. Even if it's a totally false emergency. This is actually a public safety issue, because it means that viewers may not be able to determine when there is an actual emergency.

In the case of Boeing, the pressure to make more money caused executives to decide to implement a half-assed upgrade rather than do the new design work and have to recertify the safety of the new plane.

It seems that the pressure to increase profits frequently overrides integrity. I don't know how you're going to change that, because executives are only rewarded for making more money, not for integrity or anything else.

One option would be to place these executives in prison for endangering public safety. That's not going to resolve the core structural issue of profit conflicting with safety.

</comment><comment><USER7> I guess I'm not super concerned, because I stopped watching TV news a long long time ago. In general they do everything they can to spread fear, and this is just an extension of that.

<comment><USER4> Does it worry you that this kind of fear-mongering might be bad for society even if it doesn't impact you personally? You might not watch the local news, but many other people do.

<comment><USER8> It's just corporate media who no longer cares about informing the public in seek of profits. It guarantees a watcher all day to consume ads, on edge about extreme events to stay tuned and consume ads, while also normalizing severity. These things are already put out on TV, Radio, and over many SAME alerts by NWS in the event that there is a real emergency. There is also the easy to read convective outlook.

[https://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/outlook/](https://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/outlook/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This article is a study in the death of old news. It leads the reader towards a simple clickbaity conclusion "Sinclair bad, meteorologists good" but it doesn't come close to providing enough information to the reader or show any sign of independent investigation.

Basic facts that would inform the reader, like "how many days a year are 'code red'?" are missing. On one of the core points of contention - does corporation decide when a day is code red or do the meteorologists decide - we hear from a single meteorologist and a single corporate spokesperson who give opposite answers, but the reporter (Matthew Cappucci) apparently couldn't be bothered to call a few more Sinclair meteorologists (off the record) and figure out who was telling the truth and who was lying. Instead, readers are left to infer based on their previous biases - which, if you look at the comment section on WaPo's website - they have no problem doing.

Does this even count as journalism?

</comment><comment><USER10> I see this going in the direction of hiring models to deliver a fully-scripted weather report full of ads and politics and sex appeal with almost zero weather-related content.

</comment><comment><USER11> I heard a great quote once: Local news exists to scare the elderly.

</comment><comment><USER12> "Code red?" That doesn't even mean anything! Where is the word "weather" in that? Or "severe?" Or whatever it is that they're pretending to convey?

This is about as cravenly stupid as California's "red flag alert." WTF does that mean? Red flags will be falling from the sky, snarling traffic and causing mayhem?

Human stupidity is boundless.

<comment><USER13> "Red flag" actual has a legal meaning in California. Several places have restrictions that come into effect on Red Flag fire days, including no parking areas where vehicles can be preemptively towed because they may impede the fire trucks.

</comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 Living in the northeast US I have never heard of a "code red day". Is this a regional thing?

<comment><USER14> It's a Sinclair news thing. If you don't watch your local Fox affiliate for your local news, you'd never see it, regardless of what part of the country you're in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Their corporate contact email: firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER16> >Crain was not seen delivering the weather on air Thursday morning, and his bio has since been removed from the company site. Torossian declined to discuss Crain's employment status Friday afternoon, stating that "our policy is to not comment on individual personnel matters."

Christ its as if someones exhumed the corpse of Stalin.</comment>


That Time an Air Force F-16 and an Army Missile Battery Fought Each Other - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/war-is-boring/that-time-an-air-force-f-16-and-an-army-missile-battery-fought-each-other-bb89d7d03b7d

<comment><USER2> Shallow but interesting: _U.S. commanders ordered safety measures. They barred Patriot crews from placing their missile launchers on fully automatic modes. They told pilots to use the more-reliable non-encrypted IFF. The Army promised it would fix the Patriots._

</comment><comment><USER3> The modern armies rely too much on technology. Yes, it gives you an edge, but it is also a two-edged sword. That's why the old-fashioned insurgent armies of men with human eyes and an AK47 often outfight the soldiers with all the bells and whistles.

The Wehrmacht was very high-tech compared to the Red Army in the 1940s, but the Soviets (as did the Americans on the Western Front) threw quantity rather than quality at the Wehrmacht, and destroyed it. True, they lost a lot of stuff and men, but they won.

As Stalin said,"Quantity has a Quality all of its own." It's no good having men or equipment that has a 100-to-1 kill ratio, if the enemy can throw 101 at them.</comment>


Soaring housing costs forces talent to flee Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/id/102697372#comment-2041627771

<comment><USER2> This was posted yesterday with like 80 comments, search for it.

On the other post I posted in response to this article:

I think that maybe more accurate for entry level developers. Housing is an issue to work around for sure.

Seattle - Yes (but also quite expense)

Austin - Yes to a less degree

Portland - Maybe.

All of these are great cities with plenty of dev jobs. You really need a strong CS program to build around if you want think about not moving to Silicon Valley. University of Washington totally fits that bill, as does University of Texas- Austin, but I would have to guess that Portland has a good local university (but I'm not familiar with it from afar like the others)

<comment><USER3> Link for the lazy: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9589706](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9589706) (posted yesterday)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The standard of living is so low here, it blows my mind. Top end engineer? House from the 60's, which people consider "nice".

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> would be good to know the age demographics</comment>


Setup VS Code for Efficient PHP Development - <AUTHOR> https://blog.theodo.com/2019/07/vscode-php-development/ <comment><USER2> Been using vscode for a long time now and just love using it! It feels more stable and smooth for me than using the phpstorm ide.

<comment><USER3> Really? Guess I'll have to give it a try. I am a hardcore IntellJ fan but it's good to see what's out there.

<comment><USER4> My experience has been the following:

VSCode is far and away the best IDE for typescript. Nothing comes close.

PHPStorm is far better than VSCode for PHP. It is far better at handling imports, it's debugging is more flexible and makes running individual tests much easier (and debugging them). It has code generation for boilerplate like constructors, getters, and setters. As another commenter mentioned it handles references in doc blocks far better as well.

I can do some PHP programming in VSCode, but am far productive in PHPStorm. It's the other way around for Typescript though so I run them both all day and have the keyboard shortcuts configured similarly.

<comment><USER5> > makes running individual tests much easier (and debugging them)

This sort of polish is incredible. I love having it in RubyMine. If I had way more time I'd try to build a VS Code extension to make this work, but I really don't have the time.

Little things like this make an IDE worth paying for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've tried VS Code multiple times. Without prejudice. Really want to make it my primary editor.

After persisting with it for over a week, I had to revert back to Sublime. The typing experience of native is still just so much better.

<comment><USER7> Do you have a decent GPU? Because electron is GPU accelerated and probably would make a difference. I have heard complaints from people with integrated graphics not getting a smooth experience.

I'm very sensitive to issues like that and I find it buttery smooth. Though I am running it on a rather highly performance system.

<comment><USER8> sign of the times: you need a _good_ GPU to edit text

<comment><USER7> Makes sense if you want to edit colorful text in a gui wrapper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Last time I checked PHP extensions on VSCode couldn't understand if the imports where actually used in the docblock annotations. Well, they couldn't undestand most of what was going on docblock annotations to be fair. Things like "organize imports" and "rename symbol" were missing too.

</comment><comment><USER10> I am the author of the PHP Debug and IntelliSense extensions, awesome to see this get publicity on HN (aside from the Devsense fiasco [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18538432](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18538432), lol)! If you're passionate about PHP in VS Code and are missing some feature or see some bug, please don't be afraid to jump into the code and do a PR! I've built them as a community project from the start, with as many comments as possible and (the language server) intentionally written in PHP so PHP devs can contribute. I actually don't get to write any PHP anymore nowadays, but I am always happy to review PRs!

<comment><USER11> So are your IntelliSense extension and the PHP Intelephense extension competing solutions? Why? Isn't there a way to join forces?

And I have to say that I've had better experiences with the latter. Also "last commit: 14.11.2018" on IntelliSense doesn't sound that great.

<comment><USER10> They are fundamentally different - my language server is implemented in PHP so it can build on existing PHP parsers and PHP devs can contribute to it. Intelephense is written in TypeScript. They are two different approaches and both can coexist.

You can bump that date (and your experience), by making a pull request which I will happily review ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Last time I tried the 'Getter & Setter' extension, it was quite a pain compared to PHPStorm. I had to click on each of my variables to generate a getter and setter. Wish it was just let me choose which variables I want to generate getters and setters (issers and hassers) for.

I really like to work in VS Code when I am on my home laptop (as in: not at work) but things like these more or less force me to keep a PHPStorm trial version open in the background.

</comment><comment><USER2> Another thing why i prefer using vscode over phpstorm is that i can use vscode for almost every language. Mainly a php/react/typescript dev, but when working on other projects written in go, python or rust i just van use the same ide which i really like!

</comment><comment><USER12> would be great for VS Code to add OpenBSD support (I am using VSCode on Linux and Windows, but would like to move to OpenBSD since I no longer do dev work requiring phone emulators (which are unlikely to be on OpenBSD anytime soon)).

The article also gave me an idea to try SQLTools (I am having lots of trouble with using pgAdmin4... )

</comment><comment><USER13> I wont support VSCode for one reason (downvote to oblivion): it's "open source" sponsored by a near monopoly corporation, which makes VSCode a marketing tool for Microsoft. This kills the business model of InteliJ which does a lot of work in making great IDEs. Basically, Microsoft is using its wealth to dump a free product on the market and to kill its competitors.

Think about it for a moment: this kind of open source kills genuine businesses due to the monopoly position of the company "sponsoring" it.

<comment><USER14> Even if Microsoft is hoping to kill competitors, I don't see how it's a problem. If people stop using their competitors because VSCode is just as good, then people are using a program that is just as good, for free. That's a better state of affairs.

Perhaps you're imagining that at some point Microsoft will stop developing VSCode because it has served its purpose, leaving people with no options. In that situation, people can still use the software for free for a while, until the code rots enough that it won't run. Possibly by then, volunteers in the open-source community will have started maintaining it. Even if there aren't enough volunteers to maintain VSCode for free, anyone (such as JetBrains) could start a company that maintains their own fork of VSCode (which they can do because it's open-source) and charges users to use it. In that case, we are no worse off than before VSCode was introduced; we just had a few years where the popular IDE was temporarily free.

<comment><USER15> We had that with Google basically killing the RSS reader market, and it looks painfully hard to have it back to anything relevant, so this is a pretty bad scenario.

Now I don't think VSCode will kill its competitor, it's not that good IMO.

<comment><USER14> I don't know that much about the history of RSS clients, but I'm not sure that Google Reader's shutdown is comparable to VSCode's future abandonment in terms of its effects on the market. The crucial difference is that Google Reader was not open source. Maybe if Google Reader had been open source, someone would have kept a fork of it running. I don't know in what way the RSS reader market was "killed" or why that happened, though, so I can't say for sure that such a fork would have prevented the market from being killed.

I agree that VSCode is not yet good enough to kill off competitors like JetBrains, so there is little need to worry either way.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Blitz.io: Taking the sting out of load and performance testing - <AUTHOR> http://labs.mudynamics.com/2011/04/05/blitzio-taking-the-sting-out-of-load-and-performance-testing/

<comment><USER2> Thanks @pbreit and welcome to blitz.io. Check out the ruby gem (gem install blitz) for continuous integration and the chrome extension for in-browser load testing. And here's a quick blog on integrating blitz.io with @tropo so you can automatically schedule load tests and send an SMS: <http://bit.ly/i0etWX></comment>


Cyprus Bailout: Stupidity, Short-Sightedness, Something Else? - <AUTHOR> http://www.cyprus.com/cyprus-bailout-stupidity-short-sightedness-something-else-.html

<comment><USER3> Er, this turned in to a rambling rant. Some of it might be worth reading....

I don't agree with this analysis. Its a one sided argument against the current plan. Which is fine, but its certainly not the whole story. Part 15, the solution, is absurd. It has all the problems outlined in the previous 14 points. It is no solution, because there isn't a reasonable no pain solution. People are literally saying anything that pops in to their heads because the cant cope with the idea proposed already. I get that, but there isn't really an alternative. The country, or to put it another way, a big group of people, have gone way too far in to debt. An individual in the same circumstances would go bankrupt, but that is not an option for a country, as far as I know. In the end, they have to settle the debts. Not only that, borrow more money to survive.

What interests me is the reaction of the people. It all seems a bit civilised. There isn't much worse a government can do to its people, yet the people seems incredibly calm about it. I am still surprised that the people haven't stormed their parliament. This i the real test. How far can you push a population? Looks like you can push them pretty far.

Also, I still cant get my head round peoples who vote in governments then trying to separate themselves from the actions of that government. Or take out loans, then blame the banks for handing those loads out. Or scream hysterically about socialism, when its capitalism and its basic law of supply and demand that has caused the whole mess.

The biggest joke of all, in the UK at least, is that with a disaster caused by banks dishing out toxic loans, the banks are now under pressure to loan out more. Half the problem is people now working to pay off loans, reducing the amount of money that can be spent in general. We want them to borrow more, when their jobs are uncertain?

In the end, the problem is greed and impatience, and us the people demanding that we are loaned the money to satisfy that.

Im sorry, but IMHO, the whole system is a wreck, and no one wants to take responsibility for any of it. Governments are too interested in protecting votes, and that is making them avoid any harsh but effective solutions.

Anyway, point being, I'm not seeing any realistic long term solutions anywhere. The Cypriot idea is interesting to me, and rather than knee jerk against it, I am interested in seeing how it pans out. I mean, what if it works? The UK is said to have triple dipped, so what ever is going on here isn't much cop, we are just scraping along the financial gutter. Could a one off injection of all our money save the day? Its our country, our debt.

I'm stopping now. I'm boring and confusing myself....

<comment><USER4> Why is insolvency not an option for a country? It was in Sweden, which is doing fine now, and in Argentina more recently. Oh look, there's a whole lot more of them[1]. It only isn't an option for a member state of the EU. I sure don't see how Germany's strategy of starving those already struggling economies to death is going to work out.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_default#List_of_sover...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_default#List_of_sovereign_debt_defaults_or_debt_restructuring)

<comment><USER5> Sweden isn't in your list. In fact the last "rich" country was Germany in 48.

Btw, defaulting was an absolute disaster for Argentina

<comment><USER6> Could you expand on why do you think it was a disaster? Argentina was pretty screwed up, I'm not sure it got any worse than it already was.

<comment><USER5> This article describes things well, especially the last paragraph:

<http://www.economist.com/node/21533453>

<comment><USER6> Hm, while the economist's article points out how messy the process became, it doesn't makes an evaluation of how the default actually affected the argentinian economy.

I think that Greece and Argentina will make a good examples for comparisons of different approaches, when both recover economically (if they do recover, that is).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "You never, ever, ever, hit insured depositors."

The current deal only impacts depositors with more than 100K in the banks - more than this wasn't insured anyway.

"You should basically never hit non-insured depositors either."

Why? Since when is there a guarantee that banks are 100% safe? If people deposit large (i.e. over deposit guarantee limits) in a bank to benefit from the high interest rates they are taking a risk with a reward - if this goes wrong then why should other more prudent people have to bail them out?

<comment><USER8> Agreed that no depositor should be hit. The failure here is that of the ECB which has not managed to regulate banks properly to reduce the risks of failure.

<comment><USER9> I completely disagree with this idea.

It's trying to avoid avoid reality. What you are saying is that no one should ever be hit. banks shouldn't fail. The reality is that banks do fail. They fail because of bad management. They fail because of bad financial environment. They fail because of bad regulation. Whatever. They _do_ fail. That is reality.

We need rules that define what happens when they do fail. We need to be able to survive bank failures the way we can survive failures of other companies.

We can't just keep deciding that banks should never fail again.

<comment><USER7> Exactly.

Poorly managed banks should be allowed to fail just like any other business - creative destruction is a vital part of a free market economy.

However, what to do now that "too big to fail" banks are so common?

<comment><USER9> Case by case.

In Cyprus, I'd say put these banks into some sort of bankruptcy. Give everyone haircuts in whatever order a court (remember rule of law?), not some dark room full of politicians, beuarocrats and bankers decides is correct. Then have the Cypriot government or the EU (we also need to figure out who is liable here) make good on the promises to insured depositors.

I don't see how dooming the next generation of Cypriot taxpayers to high taxes and low public services in order to save uninsured depositors who _benefited from the high interest rates these risky accounts yielded_ from taking a haircut. Not from a legal perspective, or a moral one. It doesn't sit well with socialism or with capitalism.

I don't buy the argument that it will in any way preserve choruses ability to borrow in international markets.

<comment><USER7> I'm pretty sure that EU has no role in actually providing deposit insurance, it only requires that member states provide deposit insurance.

So what would happen if the Cypriot government couldn't handle the payouts required?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As an indie developer who had established an online business in cyprus and is now being hardly hit by the bail-in, i agree with a lot of the observations made. Cyprus offers high quality financial services for people who do international business transactions. I am not aware how much of this business is from russian mafiosos, but I was certainly not one of them.

Establishing a business in southern europe is risky anyways in the past 5 years with national governments failing left and right. The red tape and the ability of the state to impose arbitrary "urgent taxation" (has happened twice in greece already) hurts all business planning in an already shaky business environment. For me, cyprus was an obvious choice because of its "most lawful" status (the country is in the EU and in the euro for years, which requires a high level of transparency, and it is not in considered a tax heaven by OECD), plus when you don't do business in your home country you have the freedom of choice. Compared to the bailed-out european south, cyprus was actually the safest option. From my experience, i did have to provide adequate documentation for all business transactions and the red tape overhead was much reduced.

The whole handling of the situation until now is a hugely chaotic freak show, a pretense battle between white knights of capitalism and socialism, and a huge display of how ineffective it is to run europe without a central trustable government.

<comment><USER11> > huge display of how ineffective it is to run europe without a central > trustable government.

Thank our friends in Westminster who first bullied their way in and then have been blocking further European integration for the last 40 years.

<comment><USER10> > Thank our friends in Westminster who first bullied their way in and then > have been blocking further European integration for the last 40 years.

I wouldn't assume the spanish, italians, french are very much in favor of it either (given that they will have to accept a de facto german authority)

<comment><USER11> With a proper democratic parliament based on population size, Italian, Spanish and French could easily outvote German delegates. I don't know about Italy and Spain, but the impression of Germany in France and the other way around is one of the best[0].

[0] [http://www.germany.info/Vertretung/usa/en/__pr/P__Wash/2013/...](http://www.germany.info/Vertretung/usa/en/__pr/P__Wash/2013/01/22-Elysee- JointArticle-st.html)

> Recent surveys confirm that over 85 percent of citizens in each country have > a good or very good image of the other.

or [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/23/world/europe/france-and- ge...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/23/world/europe/france-and-germany- celebrate-50th-anniversary-of-elysee-treaty.html?_r=0) .

<comment><USER10> You 're assuming that these nations trust their own leaders / nationals only. If you were an italian having to choose between Berlusconi and Merkel based on their track record what would you choose?

<comment><USER11> Well, Berlusconi just got back into the Italian parliament together with that other clown, so I prefer not to take guesses at the outcome of Italian votes.

My point was that there wouldn't be such a thing as a 'German authority' to accept in a united and democratic Europe and that at least the French don't appear to be entirely opposed to the idea of working closely with Germany.

(Oh, and Merkel isn't all that popular in Germany – (un)fortunately, her social democract contender is the guy (not necessarily seriously) suggesting to send the cavalry into Switzerland[0] and pirates to Cyprus.)

[0] [http://www.euractiv.com/elections/outspoken-spd- chancellor-c...](http://www.euractiv.com/elections/outspoken-spd-chancellor- candida-news-515100)

[1] [http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/spiegel- gespraechsreih...](http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/spiegel- gespraechsreihe-steinbrueck-droht-zypern-mit-stoertebecker-a-885530.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Oh by the way

While Cypriots were queuing in the ATMs to withdraw 300€ tops (then reduced), Laiki Bank was open in London, and accepting all withdraw orders.

[http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-03-25/have-russians- alrea...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-03-25/have-russians-already- quietly-withdrawn-all-their-cash-cyprus)

<comment><USER13> What the fuck

<comment><USER14> UK banks aren't regulated by the EU, so the banks essentially act as if they were divorced from their counterparts in Cyprus.

The same thing happened to Cyprus banks with branches in Russia.

I'd be more than a bit pissed if I was from Cyprus, though if I was a wealthy Brit or Russian, I'd be very pleased about this...

<comment><USER15> Thats not entirely true. Laiki UK is a branch, which means it is regulated and supported by Cyprus, while Bank of Cyprus UK is a subsidiary, regulated in the UK. However some sort of deal seems to have been done with Laiki UK.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A great article. I think the EU made a big mess up by even considering not honouring the deposit insurance scheme. Now everyone knows that the insurance is not really an insurance and the government can grab it anytime a crisis happens. All the trust built up over the years is gone with just one action.

Also all the big accounts with a large haircut will now cause almost all businesses to be affected. It will be very hard to see any business surviving this cashflow crunch in Cyprus.

<comment><USER17> It has been reported that the initial idea to not honour the deposit insurance actually came from Cyprus, not from the EU. But I agree it was stupid move from the EU to go along with this plan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> To be honest, expect more of this crap.

The only question now is who's next?

<http://youtu.be/thSTpGnWEAs>

<comment><USER19> We are. The laws have been passed. Our (US) savings are now up for grabs. In return, you get some worthless stock.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I like the conspiracy theory about natural resources. Incidentally, Greece is also sitting on huge natural gas reserves: [http://www.globalresearch.ca/the- new-mediterranean-oil-and-g...](http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-new- mediterranean-oil-and-gas-bonanza/29609)

The way the greek problems were handled by the EU under german "leadership" could be interpreted the same way (extremely stupid or conspiracy).

<comment><USER21> Time to quote Hanlon's razor again:

"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."

I doubt there's any conspiracy at work here, it's just the outcome of large scale politics.

<comment><USER20> What if the action actually doesn't seem so stupid in the long run, if they manage to force these countries to give up their resources in exchange for a bailout?

<comment><USER21> Still doesn't make it a planned action by necessity. When the Spaniards discovered the Americas with all of its Aztec gold, it was an accident that made them very rich for a long amount of time; still it would be stupid to claim Colombus was sent on his journey with the task to deprive indigenous people of their treasures.

<comment><USER20> > still it would be stupid to claim Colombus was sent on his journey with the > task to deprive indigenous people of their treasures.

Wikipedia: "In the "Capitulations of Santa Fe", King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella promised Columbus that if he succeeded he would be given the rank of Admiral of the Ocean Sea and appointed Viceroy and Governor of all the new lands he could claim for Spain. He had the right to nominate three persons, from whom the sovereigns would choose one, for any office in the new lands. He would be entitled to 10% of all the revenues from the new lands in perpetuity. Additionally, he would also have the option of buying one-eighth interest in any commercial venture with the new lands and receive one-eighth of the profits.[31]"

<comment><USER21> Aw ok, I clearly didn't research this enough. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Maybe I missed it. What solution does the author offer?

<comment><USER23> There's a link at the top "UPDATED: What do we do now?" -- <http://www.cyprus.com/cyprus-bailout---what-to-do-now.html>

<comment><USER7> "Supplement with nationalization of pensions"

So the alternative is to take money people have saved for pensions rather than hit bank depositors over 100K???

<comment><USER24> And what will those people do who have their pensions as the only source of livelihood or major source?

<comment><USER7> I have no idea - seems an appalling idea to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is really interesting and makes the whole situation seem absurd. It makes you wonder what they (the EU) are thinking. It is really scary that this can happen in this manner. Each individual bank was not treated differently - <USER2> Cyprus banks stayed conservative and didn't put their depositors money at risk and are still being wiped out. Amazing - and scary.

<comment><USER26> Is that really the case? From what I've understood from the news, accounts in banks that haven't lost their customers' money are safe and operating as usual.

Depositors are only taking a loss at bankrupt banks where their money was wiped out by bad investments, and now EU and Cypriot taxpayers are refunding a portion of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> As we speak, laws are/were passed here in the US that will make it ok for predatory banks to confisticate your savings and give you some worthless stock in exchange.

It's open season on savers now.

</comment><comment><USER11> > Cyprus is a 78% services-based economy.

Well, fix that.

<comment><USER10> Why? Services (incl. tourism) are great; it's a tiny country in a region which actually needs financial services (arab countries, russia). Is the EU unwilling to save their banks? fine, let them bail themselves (which is what they are doing). Why the fuck do they have to order a whole nation what to do? What's next? ask luxembourg to start herding cows?

<comment><USER11> > Services (incl. tourism) are great

Until they fail, cause a world-wide recession and main street has to bail out wall street.

> Is the EU unwilling to save their banks?

Ideally, it indeed would be unwilling to save bloated up banks unrelated to the local financial needs.

> fine, let them bail themselves (which is what they are doing). Why the fuck > do they have to order a whole nation what to do?

They tried to get money elsewhere, but even Russia didn't feel like helping out. Now they want European money and I would assume it only to be fair to require that in order to get that money, they have to ensure they won't need it again in the near future, i.e. scale down their bloated banks which apparently threaten the actual economy on the island.

> What's next? ask luxembourg to start herding cows?

Basically, yes[0]. Though nobody minds banking as long as you don't request other people's money to continue banking and last time I checked, Luxembourg didn't need a bailout.

[0] It might be pointing out that you can run a nice economy not relying on banking even when not herding cows.

<comment><USER10> seriously, you expect a nation of < 1mil people to have a diversified economy? Have an example?

<comment><USER11> Saarland (1.013 mil, 7.6% unemployment rate), from Wikipedia:

> automobile industry, steel industry, coal mining, ceramic industry and > computer science and information systems industry.

Bremen (547000, 10.2% unemployment rate), from Wikipedia (paraphrased)

> Airbus, EADS Astrium, OHB-Systems, Mercedes-Benz, Beck & Co […] > Anheuser–Busch InBev (Beck's Brewery), Kellogg's, Kraft Foods (Kraft, Jacobs > Coffee, Milka Chocolate, Milram, Miràcoli), Frosta (frosted food), Nordsee > (chain of sea fast food), Melitta Kaffee, Eduscho Kaffee, Azul Kaffee, > Vitakraft (pet food for birds and fishes), Atlanta AG (Chiquita banana), > chocolatier Hachez (fine chocolate and confiserie), feodora chocolatier

Hamburg (1.8 mil, 13.9% unemployment rate), from Wikipedia (paraphrased)

> Berenberg Bank, M.M.Warburg & CO and HSH Nordbank […] Port of Hamburg […] > Blohm + Voss […] civil aerospace industry. Airbus […] E-Commerce […] Media > businesses employ over 70,000 people

<comment><USER10> Come on, those are german cities/areas. These cities have harvested the best talent from the total german population (80 million) to come up so successful. Cyprus is 1/80th of that. And Germany has a huge science and engineering tradition, it didn't exactly form ex nihilo.

I'm not saying it's not desirable to be well diversified, it's just unrealistic to do it overnight (or over-decade for that matter)

<comment><USER11> Actually, Hamburg and Bremen are likely to be the least successful states in Germany with the larger southern states (Bavaria, e.g.) usually taking the lead when it comes to economic strength and wealth. And while there might be some sort of engineering tradition, that doesn't mean said tradition is a prerequisite to form a diverse economy.

The real lesson here is probably that, while size is not a sufficient prerequisite for economic stability, it might well be a necessary one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Wow, great run down, kinda makes you wanna keep your money in a mattress though, especially if you're from some small country like that...

</comment><comment><USER28> The best analysis of what was really going on I've read up to now.

<comment><USER29> The Economist has pretty good analysis too, but then they would, wouldn't they? This is excellent, and refreshingly grounded.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> _(c) The banks are almost 100% deposit funded (something that regulators across the world have been encouraging because deposits tend to be sticky if you take care of them)._

Uh... if you pay 1% or less a year in interest as they in USA. Many Cyprus banks were paying north of 5% a year so they'd have to make maybe 7%-10% a year to break even after expenses and taxes.

 _8\. You never, ever, ever, hit insured depositors._

Great point, expect that no one is touching them. Deposits over EUR 100K are being hit /frozen, those up to EUR 100K are not touched, which just happened to be the insured amount. The banks could have bought private insurance and threatened to take down the next AIG with them (Now that's leverage), but they apparently didn't.

The real fault lies with the banks and Cyprus gov (or the people, indirectly). They could have cracked down on these shady deals and limited the bank's exposures to Greek debt. They didn't and Germans /N Europeans don't want to ask their taxpayers to bail another country. Someone has to pay, it clearly can't be the taxpayers given the ratio to GDP so it's the depositors and bank owners. To summarize:

There is no money.

No one wants to give them more money.

Banks are broke and as usual you can lose all the money that is not insured. It says so, or it should say so on the tiny print.

<comment><USER8> You are forgetting where and why the financial crisis started. Although in the US the financial institutions were saved by printing money in the rest of Europe the ECB controls the presses.

<comment><USER7> "You are forgetting where and why the financial crisis started."

I don't think it is accurate to say that the 2008 financial crisis had a single cause. If you think it was the boom in sub-prime mortgage lending in the US and the resulting popularity of CDOs and CDSs how did that cause the Irish problem (insane property speculation), Iceland (asset speculation in other countries used borrowed cash), Greece (fiscal irresponsility) etc.

<comment><USER11> Greece had very little to do with the 'global' sub-prime bubble, it was merely the following recession that exposed the fiscal irresponsibility, originally resulting from low interest rates due to Euro membership. When people realised that Euro membership does not imply northern European standards, Greek interest rates soared and since Greece couldn't print money as in the good old days, there was no way to fulfil these interest rates.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


IBM SyNAPSE project, ways to get in touch? - <AUTHOR> http://www.research.ibm.com/cognitive-computing/neurosynaptic-chips.shtml The site unfortunately doesn't offer many information at the moment but maybe I've missed something. I've been interested in hardware implementations of neural networks for a long time (although I'm more excited about possible implementations with Memristors in the future) and I'd like to explore the possibilities. <comment><USER2> The team members are listed, hit linkedin and find them, failing that hit Google and find the structure IBM uses for email addresses so you can figure out the teams.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd rather not bug the team members with my personal curiosity. I rather hoped to have missed some pointers torwards their work and achievements

<comment><USER2> Don't be shy, ask them. Worst case scenario is they won't want or be able to talk to you.</comment></comment></comment>


Node.js Tools for Visual Studio - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2015/03/25/node-js-tools-1-0-for-visual-studio.aspx <comment><USER2> This is great news, but aren't there bigger fish to fry with really supporting node.js & npm on Windows? The 255 character path limit bug has been around for a long time and still unresolved/broken on Windows (see [https://github.com/joyent/node/issues/6960](https://github.com/joyent/node/issues/6960) and [https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/5641](https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/5641)). Suggestions to fix it on the Windows side have been closed too: [http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual- studi...](http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual- studio/suggestions/2156195-fix-260-character-file-name-length-limitation) Would be nice for people to stop throwing it around like a hot potato and fix it for good. Although it sounds like an edge case, it's actually really common for some libraries to his this limit and be unusable on Windows.

<comment><USER3> MAX_PATH is the gift that keeps on giving __.

Thanks to Microsoft's fanatical dedication to compatibility I don't see how it will ever get fixed. I think they could take a lesson from Apple here and have DLLS/EXEs contain SDK versions against which they are built, then mandate that Windows 10 apps must support a larger MAX_PATH. Of course if they were into learning lessons, they'd have done fat binaries so a single install could easily support 64-bit and 32-bit (or a single DLL could contain 64-bit and 32-bit versions).

 __For those not in the know, MAX_PATH and PATH_MAX (ugh) are defined in the Windows headers as 255. Because it was public people copied that constant and spread it around. So many apps and libraries out there are hard-coded to expect 255 that even if you change it in the Windows headers a million things will still be broken.

Even if you overcame that limitation, you'd have a situation where paths no longer worked reliably if they got passed around (or worse, long paths would trigger buffer overflows in poorly written apps and drivers).

You could fix it by passing apps not declared as large-path aware a shortened virtual path but the testing/edge case burden would be enormous.

So this is an example of a really quick decision one programmer probably made by themselves many years ago that we are forced to live with because the pain of changing it is too great compared to the benefit we'd receive.

<comment><USER4> MAX_PATH is a #define, so it just gets literally substituted when compiling, there is no need for people copying it. After compilation it effectively is a hard-coded constant, indistinguishable from literally writing 260 (it's not 255).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Gotta hand it to Microsoft.

Behind the times on web dev for so long, now busting out open source left and right, teaming up on Angular with Google, jumping on with nodejs, modernizing their tools, "gently" pushing locked in MS web devs out of the darkness of that Web Forms madness into the light of real web development.

I've always been a LAMP stack dev but they have at least caught my attention as of late.

<comment><USER6> >"gently" pushing locked in MS web devs out of the darkness of that Web Forms madness

Minor nitpick on your otherwise positive comment, we have been using ASP.NET MVC for almost ten years now (ok eight). Webforms have long been a thing of the past, at least in the circles most devs I know move in.

<comment><USER7> I think it's think of past on new projects, but old and intranet project still use Web Forms. For me it's (unluckily) still most of my work.

<comment><USER8> I work on a 12 year old application that's still current, and we're just now making the transition from web forms to MVC in that application. It's so nice that MSFT has a big eye toward backwards compatibility, allowing web forms and MVC in the same project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Dev here - happy to answer any questions you have :)

<comment><USER9> Wow this looks pretty amazing!

How do you handle the super-long paths npm is so fond of? On Windows I often run into issues when searching or trying to manipulate a solution containing anything npm due to too-long paths.

<comment><USER6> I have run into this problem as well. Manually modifying packages is not fun.

<comment><AUTHOR> See my comment above, but if you do this frequently... we have a feature that enables you to right click on an installed npm package in the npm tree in Solution Explorer and open the relevant folder in explorer

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I was really excited about Visual Studio for a chance at Coffeescript intellisense, however I learned after the several gig download it wasn't supported. It seems there is basically no way to get proper autocomplete in any editor for CS, suggesting maybe I should just consider Babel for ES6/7 despite my massive love for CS and giant projects built in it.

<comment><USER11> Have you tried the (free) Web Essentials extension? It adds CoffeeScript support to Visual Studio, as well as a lot of other useful webdev features. [http://vswebessentials.com/features/coffeescript](http://vswebessentials.com/features/coffeescript)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I remember a bunch of problems have been discussed earlier [1] concerning node.js on Windows, such as file-system path length limits and broken symlinks and lack of modules actually tested on Windows.

That was almost a year ago, so how do the things stand now?

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7914566](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7914566)

<comment><USER13> windows not being a priority won't change, because windows as a deployment target is pretty much a joke.

I mean... desktop environment on your application server ... lol?

There's so much friction legality and culture wise to getting a windows server to spin up, get developers to use good practices, encourage automation and resusability...

<comment><USER14> > windows not being a priority won't change, because windows as a deployment > target is pretty much a joke.

I take it you haven't done .Net development? It's incredibly easy though Docker and similar tech wasn't developed for Windows so some of that has lagged behind.

> I mean... desktop environment on your application server ... lol?

This is a pretty old way of thinking; it's simply another way of managing your application server. This really isn't a big deal anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Congratulations, guys! I've been following this since node tools since Hanselman's post [http://www.hanselman.com/blog/IntroducingNodejsToolsForVisua...](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/IntroducingNodejsToolsForVisualStudio.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER16> I know this doesn't really mean anything, but it's kinda funny that this is at v1.0, but node.js is at version 0.12.1

<comment><USER17> It does mean something, that Node.js has a backwards version numbering scheme. That's one of the first things the io.js people corrected in their fork (they are strict semver and started at 1.0.0).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Honestly, it's good to see a lot of .Net developers getting to see some sunlight. A lot of really interesting things have happened in JavaScript land over the past few years, and there are a ton of really good programmers who have been in .Netland for far too long.

</comment><comment><USER19> If they free up the developer license, MS will get lots of Apps in for their phone versions as well..They are already supporting javascript for native apps..

</comment><comment><USER20> Superb stuff. Now time for MS to help getting io.js working on Windows. With confidence.

<comment><USER21> What are the issues with running on Windows? These tools support io.js [https://nodejstools.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=io.js](https://nodejstools.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=io.js)

<comment><USER20> There have been some intermittent Windows issues: [https://github.com/iojs/io.js/issues/1005](https://github.com/iojs/io.js/issues/1005)

Not Microsofts problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> How many people do you think will actually use this?

I just really cannot ever see mass use of azure and visual studio in the web ecosystem. The people writing nodejs code are all using vim and unix, and you're asking them to give up their workflow and change operating systems. I want to be able to poke around in bash. (edited back in)

Sure, some people new to web programming might go this route. But the _next_ big web framework certainly will be on unix first. MS is now in this perpetual state of trying to keep up, and I just can't imagine why anyone serious about web programming wouldn't be on *nix.

<comment><USER23> _The people writing nodejs code are all using vim and unix_

No they aren't, that's just your perception because you are surrounded by those that are.

AFAIK Windows Node developers are still a minority, but that doesn't mean they're not a sizable group of people. A lot of code is written in corporate environments in C# and Visual Studio - adding Node to that mix is a sensible bet on Microsoft's part.

<comment><USER22> Yeah I was being hyperbolic, but my point still stands. The LARGE majority of developers have accepted unix as their overlord, and that poses a huge problem to microsoft as they're a second thought. They're forced to try to fit new frameworks into their ecosystem, rather than on unix where developers expect it to run.

I see it ultimately as damage control. With the overwhelming majority of developers on unix, you're not going to see microsoft hang out in the server market for very long. I think they'll hang onto the office crowd, but nothing on the backend.

This, of course, is just the opinion of a 20 year old unix nerd, who became one because his father is a microsoft fanboy. I rebelled in my teenage years by infuriating my father and installing linux. I still think I raise some valid points.

<comment><USER24> What evidence do you have that the majority of developers are on Unix? Just web devs or all devs?

I doubt that it's true in either case. IT departments around the world employ programmers to make all sorts of business apps including internet/intranet web apps. Even some very small companies have custom apps to do business and the vast majority of businesses are using Windows.

<comment><USER25> There seems to be a common thread on HN of people assuming that trendy startups are the entirety of the software industry.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Confirm Idea - Test ideas against real people with as little work as possible - <AUTHOR> http://www.confirmidea.com/ <comment><USER2> The "Yes" and "No" buttons are mailto links?! If you're going to go that route, at least add a subject in the links that differentiate between which button was pressed.

<comment><AUTHOR> That was a mistake and removed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure making people click "yes" or "no" does anything to confirm an idea, by which I suppose you mean validating a hypothesis for an MVP?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have similar reservations. The customer doesn't always know what they want. However, would you agree people often can predict how they will behave if accurately presented with a product? To spend 15 minutes to put an idea and a question out there, it could yield quality results for accessing a direction. Especially if A/B testing a screenshot or elevator pitch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think Kickstarter or other crowdfunding platforms, where people vote with their wallets, would be a better way to validate an idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right. But Kickstarters take money and time to do well.

This allows quick ideas to be tested.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Using numbers vs. longhand in domain? - <AUTHOR>

Should I use a domain like 5folders.com or fivefolders.com?<p>What if I can't get one variation because it is already registered, should I move on or is either one ok? <comment><USER2> I've found that people often remember longhand domains better and those ones have more direct visits. But overall I haven't really noticed a difference.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think people sometimes see numbers in a domain as spammy. But if there's a catchy reason to put the number there then go for it!

</comment><comment><USER4> Buy Both, and redirect 5folders.com to fivefolders.com or vice-versa.

</comment><comment><USER5> I went longhand with onedayonejob.com and onedayoneinternship.com

</comment><comment><USER6> The longhand version looks more professional.

</comment><comment><USER7> neither. Avoid numbers entirely.

</comment><comment><USER8> Buy both.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've found that people are more likely to type "fivefolders" over "5folders" into their web browser.

So if I was you I would ensure that I had the longhand domain, and if possible the number version as well.</comment>


'Making Rails Go Vroom' (but should you have to?) - <AUTHOR> http://cfis.savagexi.com/articles/2007/07/18/making-rails-go-vroom

<comment><USER2> That wasn't a terrible article, but some of these suggestions were bad. Why would slow performance stop you from using url_for() when you should be caching the resulting html anyway?

If you're going to take this approach to performance optimization, you probably should just not use Rails in the first place.</comment>


Two Factor Auth List - <AUTHOR> http://twofactorauth.org/

<comment><USER2> You should probably rename Google Auth to "TOTP" since that's what is actually supported.

Neat idea for a site.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I don't see why they list Google Auth and Authy separately when they both support the same TOTP system.

<comment><USER4> Authy also supports (it's own?) TFA system that is incompatible with the google app.

<comment><USER5> Yes, but you include TOTP sites in the Authy app and have them all in one place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> While this is all good(and it is, no sarcasm intended).

What I really want/care about is banking sites/companies. If this website could also compile a list for these institutions that would be awesome. It truly amazes me how most major banks lack 2fa.

<comment><USER7> I feel that I should point out that nearly every UK banking site uses 2fa for transactions, and many as an option for login. This only comes with chip & pin.

<comment><USER8> I setup a bank account in Germany in 2007 that issued me a hardware token generator (I forget the name of the bank). It was my first experience with 2 factor auth, and I'm a little surprised that I have yet to see it implemented with banks in the US.

<comment><USER9> Today, these usually work by transmitting some code via a flickering field on the website. You insert your bank card into the generator, hold it to your screen and type the number it shows on the device.

The German Wikipedia has some pictures: [http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transaktionsnummer#chipTAN_comf...](http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transaktionsnummer#chipTAN_comfort.2FSmartTAN_optic_.28Flickering.29)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would change custom to not show red if it doesn't exist.

It gives off an impression that it's bad that they don't have their own custom solution to 2FA.

</comment><comment><USER11> 1\. I thought Google auth and Authy were interchangeable.

2\. [https://library.linode.com/linode-manager- security](https://library.linode.com/linode-manager-security) for the dev section.

<comment><USER12> Not sure of the details, but according to [https://blog.cloudflare.com/choosing-a-two-factor- authentica...](https://blog.cloudflare.com/choosing-a-two-factor- authentication-system) they are not (always) interchangeable.

<comment><USER11> You are right, but the end of that article alluded to a bit of an interchangeability.

> They're adding support in the next few weeks for Google Authenticator tokens > to their system as well. That way you can use Authy's great UI to access > your Google codes through one app.

So I got looking, and it looks like now you can always use Authy for google authenticator tokens [1].

[http://blog.authy.com/authenticator](http://blog.authy.com/authenticator)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Random: I really like how simple the Google Authenticator's TOTP algorithm is: [https://github.com/tadeck/onetimepass/blob/master/onetimepas...](https://github.com/tadeck/onetimepass/blob/master/onetimepass/__init__.py)

It's only a few lines of code and other than having sync'ed clocks does not require any other running services. At one point I implemented it as a second factor for my most important servers that I ssh to so that my IP would be unlocked for 45 minutes after the initial connection.

<comment><USER14> Nitpick: It's not Google's, it's an open standard (OATH): [http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6238](http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6238)

There's also HOTP.

<comment><USER13> You are right, I should have elaborated. Just like most people, I first learned about it from using the Google Authenticator app.

<comment><USER14> Sure, I'm just clarifying that it's a standard (and thus awesome).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If it works with Google Auth, it also works with Authy - same algorithm.

<comment><USER16> That's exactly what I was going to say. I finally put 2FA on my Dropbox account a while ago. Scanned the QR code in Authy, and everything worked just ifne.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I use two factor authentication apps on my phone to generate my one time passwords. This works great for me but I always wonder what I will do if I lose my phone. I've backed up the authenticator apps. I am correct in assuming I can restore the one time password generators from the back-ups? Is there anything else I should do?

<comment><USER18> I have used Titanium Backup to restore Google Authenticator and Battle.net Mobile Authenticator onto a different device and both apps have retained my accounts with no problem at all. So yes, you are correct in assuming that you can restore OTP generators from backups.

<comment><USER19> I can also confirm this. AS well as local, I have set Titanium Backup to send an additional (encrypted) backup to a cloud storage service as well (in my case Google Drive). I have restored from Titanium Backup many times with different ROMS and different phones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I tried to setup Facebook Two Factor Auth and it says: "Make sure you have the latest version of the Facebook app on your device." According to your site, Facebook supports Google Auth but I am clueless on how to set this up without installing the FB android app.

<comment><USER12> Head to [https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=security&section=code_...](https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=security&section=code_generator&view) and click "Set up another way to get security codes."

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Evernote's documentation says they "recommend" Google Authenticator, but I've never managed to set it up because their setup process requires SMS. (Is the TOTP support premium only?)

</comment><comment><USER22> This is a great resource. However, the SMS column might require some expansion as although some of the companies on this list support SMS two-factor auth, they don't support it outside of the US. Paypal, for example, does not support Finland (checked last week).

</comment><comment><USER23> Great site. Is there a way (as a user) to mandate two-factor authentication on sites that don't natively offer it? I recognize that the obvious answer is no, but I'm curious to know if anyone has tried workarounds.

</comment><comment><USER24> [http://aws.amazon.com/iam/details/mfa/](http://aws.amazon.com/iam/details/mfa/)

amazon supports MFA, but the site seems to not know that...

<comment><USER3> Thats for AWS which is listed as supported further down the page as Amazon Web Services under the "Developer" section.

The Amazon they list above it is for the consumer store which AFAIK doesn't support MFA yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Sites didn't have a standard to follow and not everyone has the resources of Google to roll their own. Now that the Fido Alliance has big names on it, I hope to see companies use it.

</comment><comment><USER26> That's a great resource! The first step before increased security is to increase awareness. Big service providers must be put on spot about two factor authentication IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER27> or [http://evanhahn.com/2fa/](http://evanhahn.com/2fa/)

</comment><comment><USER28> There are sites that allow you to add 2FA to practically any site. Okta for example has this feature.

<comment><USER29> Even non-SAML sites can get 2FA support via Google Auth -our company Meldium ([https://www.meldium.com/](https://www.meldium.com/)) now supports over 1,000 web apps, while there are only a few dozen major SaaS apps with SAML support.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is there a decent hacker-friendly domain name provider that supports 2FA?

<comment><USER31> There's Dynadot: [http://www.dynadot.com/domain/security.html](http://www.dynadot.com/domain/security.html)

Also NearlyFreeSpeech, though the domain selection is very limited, as it's primarily a hosting company: [https://blog.nearlyfreespeech.net/2014/02/28/price-cuts- more...](https://blog.nearlyfreespeech.net/2014/02/28/price-cuts-more- security-and-recovery-options/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> This could do with a column for Yubikey support.</comment>


Cisco coughs up baker's dozen of vulnerabilities and other security nasties - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/09/27/cisco_vulns_h2_18/ <comment><USER2> > "It was not immediately clear whether or not the company has released any > patches for this, with the page on its website merely referring readers to a > login-protected page."

Or as I learned in the last week with Cisco, it doesn't even matter if you have an account! You can't download software updates to the hardware they sold you unless you pay extra for a Service Contract!

Leaving security holes in the software? Well gosh, we're real sorry about that. How 'bout you cough up a nominal fee for each of those "Security Appliances" you bought so we can give you the privilege of fixing our mistakes. Thanks!

<comment><USER3> That is completely untrue. You can open a case and get access to downloads outside your support contract if you reference a vulnerability that's affecting your current hardware.

<comment><USER4> > open a case and get access [...] if you reference a vulnerability that's > affecting your current hardware.

Ok, but that's bullshit, isn't it? Not all customers are going to be proactive/attentive enough to know their hardware is vulnerable. Cisco knows there is vulnerable gear in the wild, knows there is a fix, but withholds the fix until people come begging? Almost feels like the sort of thing that should be illegal (or at least on the losing end of a civil suit).

<comment><USER5> Didn't Microsoft do something similar by stopping support for Windows XP, but providing support longer for people who pay special support contracts?

Of course Microsoft also released some free security updates beyond the date too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > boils down to there being a "hidden command in the affected software", > according to Cisco itself.

It always amazes me that we continually release software with these backdoors in them. What is the thought process that's going on? Do they think security by obscurity really works? They must or else they wouldn't keep doing this. Cisco isn't a small company, they have the people-power, processes, and money to not do this. It literally saves no time or money when you figure in the cost to fixing the issue. US government conspiracy theories aside, I'm guessing it's just lazy developers, incompetent managers, or potentially intentional maliciousness from foreign governments or competitors.

<comment><USER7> I feel like software reverse engineering should be done in more curriculums so developers can see just how easy it is to find backdoors as a relatively unskilled attacker.

<comment> pure-awesome Whilst I think it would be useful, you're not teaching the more general lessons (such as not relying solely on security by obscurity).

I suspect the kind of person who left in that backdoor would, after going through the course, simply make a slightly harder-to-find backdoor. (If anything, they might be _more_ likely because they think they've taken into account THE vulnerability, when it is only a vulnerability).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A colleague said: "The three-letter agencies are done with these, so they can go public now" \- I wonder how true that is?

<comment><USER9> Likely. Considering the three letter agencies get early access to these things from other vendors: [https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2013/06/nsa-g...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2013/06/nsa-gets-early-access-to-zero-day-data-from-microsoft- others/)

<comment><USER10> This makes me wonder if this is how Stuxnet was birthed, very interesting.

<comment><USER11> A former coworker of mine who works in industrial automation told me that Siemens had to give US authorities access to their source code; I would not be surprised if that source code had "leaked" to the intelligence services.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've long heard the term but never really looked into where it comes from.

If you're like me, check this out: [https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/09/why-a- baker...](https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/09/why-a-bakers-dozen- is-13-instead-of-12/)

</comment><comment><USER13> This all sounds very dramatic but I'm pretty sure that to take over the system is not that easy. Most vulnerabilities, if they are mediocre, have zero probability and most scenarios are pretty unlikely</comment>


The Making of a Running App (without being a developer) - <AUTHOR> http://www.onemob.com/the-app-guy-podcast/2014/7/28/tagp123-mark-kennedy-fitnessrunning-appsrunnerapp-makeroutsource-coding

<comment><USER2> Great episode with Mark Kennedy - thanks for posting on Hacker News. Paul - The App Guy Podcast</comment>


Article claims NHK reporting that Fukushima plant is going into meltdown - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/were-told-not-to-breathe-the-air-ndash-its-scary-2240509.html

<comment><USER2> Yes, it did...about 48 hours ago. The article is written in the present tense to describe the experience of the last 3 days in a vivid manner, it's not meant to be a report of the latest events. This should have been obvious from the frequent references to the passage of time and events which took place on Friday or yesterday.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> "As we drive, we listen to live reports on the state broadcaster NHK, which says the Fukushima No 1 plant has started to go into meltdown."

Anyone found any other sources verifying this statement from NHK?

<comment><USER3> NHK World English has an online at <http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/> so you could listen in. I didn't see any mention of meltdown in the latest news there.

NHK's Japanese page reports a declaration of an emergency situation (apparently under official regulations for when a certain radiation level is reached) but otherwise nothing I hadn't already read.

It might just be the OP interpreting the situation as the beginnings of a meltdown.

edit: just spotted anigbrowl's post. Could have saved myself the googling (Ducking?)</comment></comment>


Xibalba – A WebGL Shooter and Making-Of Screencast - <AUTHOR> http://phoboslab.org/xibalba/

<comment><USER2> The soundtrack is really awesome and fits perfectly!

<comment><USER3> In fact, without the soundscape making it feel very lively i wouldn't have spent as much time on it as it did. It actually surprised me. The only other game i can remember which did it that well was Albion on DOS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pretty neat!

My only real complaint was the browser (Firefox 32 beta) started off nice and smooth but by the 3rd or 4th level things were very choppy and uneven. It wasn't detecting my keystrokes very well during the choppy parts, causing me to waste missiles on the headcrab-ish guys.

Also, it wasn't entirely clear that I had to shoot the final boss guy when he was mad that I beat him at simon. I just sort of had to guess based on behaviors of other games I've played.

</comment><comment><USER5> So does Impact support WebGL now? Last time I checked it didn't & they had no plans to support it.

<comment><USER6> It looks like it's using a plugin called 'twopointfive' that offers WebGL support, based on the minified JS source.

[https://github.com/phoboslab/twopointfive](https://github.com/phoboslab/twopointfive)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is sweet! You have intuitive controls, interesting enemies, and fun combat going on.

</comment><comment><USER8> Works really great on Chrome for Android.

</comment><comment><USER9> The Final boss fight was a little unintuitive for me. I thought it was completely a puzzle or a memory task, because you can't damage him right away. So I repeated his patterns with increasing difficulty, up to six beeps I think, waiting for him to implode from his anger. The fact that you need to shoot him while he's in the angry state wasn't obvious to me.

</comment><comment><USER10> The character design is pretty cool. The final boss was a surprise.

It's like a DOS game from the future!

</comment><comment><USER11> Very annoying that the space key scrolls down.

<comment><USER12> When my input is captured in the game window the space key fires the weapons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm using Chrome, but the game tells me to get chrome. Do I need cookies enabled?

<comment><USER14> Works well here in firefox and chrome. Does WebGL work on your machine? If not maybe that's it, and it is suggesting you update (although it does sound confusing).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wow, it is possible to implement an entry-level shooter using a flavour of OpenGL and a high-level scripting language? Who would've thought.

</comment><comment><USER16> Nice! I love The Fountain references :)

</comment><comment><USER17> Was recently released on iOS as well.

</comment><comment><USER18> omg I just submitted it only to be led here.

well, the game was so fun to play. like I finished the game.</comment>


Amazon SageMaker – Build, train, and deploy machine learning models at scale - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/sagemaker <comment><USER3> This blog post also includes screenshots: [https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/sagemaker/](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/sagemaker/)

</comment><comment><USER4> If anyone from AWS is in this forum, could you comment if the custom Docker training in sagemaker can also be used for general optimisation of any dockerised objective function, e.g. bayesian hyper parameter training?

In the blog post example there is this python code:

        def train(
            channel_input_dirs, hyperparameters, output_data_dir,
             model_dir, num_gpus, hosts, current_host):

Would I also write some kind of similar function for scoring the result of the training?

To provide some context, I work in bioinformatics where some of our algorithms have 100s of parameters. This is not ML where we want to classify or predict but rather optimise the parameters for a given objective function. If sagemaker allows general optimisation in an AWS lambda like way, that would be very useful.

<comment><USER5> Engineer on the SageMaker team here.

There are no restrictions on the types of algorithms that you can optimize using the HyperParameterOptimization service.

SageMaker is designed for machine learning which means it's optimized for algorithms that process a lot of data to develop a model where each run of the algorithm may generate an objective function value (or potentially many such as the value may change during training).

If this structure fits your problem, SageMaker could be useful to you even if your problem isn't strictly "machine learning."

<comment><USER4> That's great. Thank you for following up so quickly. Could you point me to where I could read about this, or see an example?

I took a quick search on the documentation and I could see anything on a cursory pass:

[http://docs.aws.amazon.com/search/doc- search.html?searchPath...](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/search/doc- search.html?searchPath=documentation- guide&searchQuery=HyperParameterOptimization)

<comment><USER5> Sorry, for the very delayed reply here.

The hyperparameter optimization feature is still in preview (though the rest of SageMaker is in general availability). We'll be putting up a page within the next week or so for you to request access.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> SageMaker

{1G}

Human Druid - <USER2>

{G}, Tap: Create 0/1 Plant Token named Seed of Knowledge

Sacrifice {X} Plants: Look at the top X cards of opponent's library

1/1

<comment><USER7> I thought MTG too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder how does this compare to offerings like DataRobot and the like.

<comment><USER9> "The process of incorporating machine learning into an application often involves a team of experts tuning and tinkering for months with inconsistent setups. Businesses and developers want an end-to-end, development to production pipeline for machine learning"

This seems to be a complete pipeline, including deployment to production. Edit: DataRobot too, I misread. Edit2: DataRobot seems to offer a "codeless" approach. Thanks for sharing, I'll check it out.

I was wondering at the difference with Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio (which I haven't used yet).</comment></comment>


Alleged Aussie hosting hacker arrested  - <AUTHOR> http://www.scmagazine.com.au/News/264901,alleged-distributeit-hacker-arrested.aspx

<comment><USER2> This is a really good example of a difficult to parse headline. Why is the person who was arrested alleged to be Australian? Was he hosting a hacker, or hacking hosting? Or maybe he's alleged to be an Australian who happened to host a hacker, or an Australian who hacked hosting. Regardless, we can say that he was arrested, unless he's an Australian hosting hacker who's alleged to have been arrested, which is the sort of thing you allow when you don't require the words directly following "alleged" to describe the thing that is alleged.

(The correct interpretation is "An Australian who is alleged to have hacked hosting has been arrested", but I only came to the conclusion that that was the right one after looking at the article - which has a different and much better headline).

<comment><USER3> Slightly better coverage here; [http://www.smh.com.au/technology/security/evil-the-hacker- re...](http://www.smh.com.au/technology/security/evil-the-hacker-refused-bail- over-nbn-plot-20110727-1hzdk.html)</comment></comment>