How we fought bad ads in 2015 - <AUTHOR> https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2016/01/better-ads-report.html <comment><USER2> How I fought bad ads in 2016 (in order of impact on usability/performance):

[http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/](http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/) (transparent and no overhead, works on Android too!)

[https://www.eff.org/privacybadger](https://www.eff.org/privacybadger)

[https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock) (a handful of websites will detect it - you can then switch to visual blocking for that domain to get around it, for FF: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- GB/firefox/addon/ublock-origin...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- GB/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/) )

[https://noscript.net/](https://noscript.net/) (overkill for some, a lot of hand tweaking required to keep the Internet working)

Result: 0 (zero) explicit ads

Long term result: more money being poured into covert marketing

<comment><USER3> Agreed, __all __ads are bad.

And let's call the advertising business model what it is: a get rich quick scheme. Undercut the straight up competitors that charge for their product by fooling consumers into thinking you're offering what the other guy is offering, but for free. Come on, who could turn down that? Or make something "valuable" that no one is willing to pay for (WTF?), so again make it appear free.

Only the truth is it isn't free. We all pay in the end. The lunch is not only not free, it's costing us more and its loaded with toxic crap.

Admittedly I suck as a writer, but ever time I make my very strong case that advertising may be the primary evil of internet[1], I almost invariably receive a great number of silent downvotes. Upton Sinclair explains why:

 _" It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."_

-

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585237](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585237)

<comment><USER4> As someone who tangentially works in the industry, you couldn't be more wrong. Ads literally subsidize the vast majority of content you consume on the internet. More importantly, ads subsidize and promote innovation. Without ads, we wouldn't have sites like youtube, facebook, reddit or pretty much every website that doesn't rely on donations (wikipedia, etc).

It's interesting just how much of a disconnect young people have with this topic (in my experience, older people are skeptical of all the free content on the 'net. My grandmother thought she was going to get a bill from youtube for watching so many videos and not having to pay anything up front). Perhaps it's one of the reasons why they call our generation "the entitled generation". We've always had free content on the internet so we don't appreciate or understand how the people who create that content get paid.

<comment><USER5> No no no. Your grandmother grew up with free media: radio and television have always been free and ad-supported. In fact, the first thing that likely pissed her off was getting ads on her cable channels, because the "rich" folks paid for cable, which was ad-free (except, I believe, the broadcast channel, but we didn't have it so I'm not sure).

Internet advertising used to be done far less creepily. For example, you can do context-advertising: show me an ad for surfboards when I'm reading about surfing. I have no problem with that. You can guess that I'm interested in surfing if I'm reading the article. You don't need my shopping history for that.

<comment><USER6> Cable has never been ad-free with the exception of channels that people explicitly paid extra for like HBO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Go to Google right now and search for "passport renew" I see twelve sites which offer the service with no affiliation. All they do is ask for sensitive personal information, charge you an additional fee (on top of the passport fee) and file on your behalf.

Unfortunately I've had friends & family fall for this and similar scams (see also "birth certificate copy" "criminal record" "arrest record" "US travel authorisation" "US visa" et al), and sometimes they don't even file on your behalf (just take your money and run).

These things have been going on YEARS, and I can find numerous examples in seconds with no research. When is Google going to put a stop to this?

PS - It is disturbing how many less computer literate people have no concept of what is an advert and what is a result in a search engine. They'll just click the top thing, which is scary for the above examples.

PPS - Bing is much MUCH worse. More scams, and ads are harder to spot (by design?).

<comment><USER8> What do you think are additional things that Google could do? I can imagine how hard this is to police.

For example:

\- Let people mark different links as spam

\- Hire a larger team to police this

<comment><USER7> > What do you think are additional things that Google could do?

Certain searches should NOT be monetised at all. When people are looking at entering sensitive personal information (e.g. passport, visa, birth certificate, arrest record, tax filing) it is too dangerous to allow adverts which may contain phishing scams into the mix.

Too many people click ads thinking they're search results.

<comment><USER8> Do you remember when ads were called out in gray? Now most non-techy people I know seem to click on the first entry (the ad), converting good SEO into a payment to Google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >Unwanted software

I just visited the download.com page for Chrome and it has two ads served by Google. Both ads contain fake download buttons: [http://i.imgur.com/eAATuwb.png](http://i.imgur.com/eAATuwb.png)

Google ads are dangerous.

<comment><USER10> Theses aren't Google Ads.

It's interesting that you thought they are. What made you think that?

<comment><USER11> Google's buttons are in the top right of the ads. Clicking on them will send you to a Google page about their ad program.

<comment><USER10> I'm on mobile so I get Yahoo ads(!), but that icon looks like the IAB AdChoices icon to me: [http://rocketfuel.com/wp- content/uploads/adchoicediagram.jpg](http://rocketfuel.com/wp- content/uploads/adchoicediagram.jpg)

<comment><USER11> That's really strange because clicking on that icon does send me to a Google page. You can see the website here: [http://download.cnet.com/Google- Chrome/3000-2356_4-75205983....](http://download.cnet.com/Google- Chrome/3000-2356_4-75205983.html)

The website even claims the symbol is Google's: [http://imgur.com/tWV4ROd](http://imgur.com/tWV4ROd)

<comment><USER12> Yes adchoices symbols are used by Google Adsense ads. See this official post [http://adsense.blogspot.com/2011/03/new-in-ads-notice- label-...](http://adsense.blogspot.com/2011/03/new-in-ads-notice-label-and- icon.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > With powerful new protections, we disabled more than 10,000 sites offering > unwanted software, and reduced unwanted downloads via Google ads by more > than 99 percent.

Yet when I search for "download Firefox", the thing I see is malvertising. [https://i.imgur.com/IRQ85fx.png](https://i.imgur.com/IRQ85fx.png)

<comment><USER14> You can't just call it "malvertising" when it's just not what you wanted...

I just went and downloaded the app from that add and compared the checksum against the APK on my phone of the same version (version 42.0.2, downloaded from Google Play)

They both match. (Both SHA256 checksums are D0B5A524ABFD5AD9D73DFF4DA398423CB7B337797FBA0C039F3A44CAE259B4B0, if you want to verify it from me as well)

So that site is providing an untampered download of firefox, so there is no "malware" anywhere.

In fact that site (HTZapps) seems to be a curated list of "safe" apps available to download, an alternative app store much like fdroid or the amazon app store.

It even follows the Adsense guidelines on their download page (clearly called out advertisements, no more than 3 on the page, only one above the fold, they don't interrupt the flow of the page, etc...)

<comment><USER13> > You can't just call it "malvertising" when it's just not what you wanted...

It's an advertisement which seeks to get users to download software from an unofficial source. The site does not provide links to the official sources.

The advertiser has paid money to get users to go to their site instead of the official source. The advertiser seeks to misdirect users into visiting their site (which is loaded with ads) instead of the official one. I consider this misdirection to be malicious.

<comment><USER15> By that logic, every mirror site with advertisements is malicious. Don't be ridiculous.

<comment><USER16> Are they _official_ mirrors? Linked from the _official_ site? If not, I'm not trusting them. Incentives are not aligned properly. Also notice, that the more ads are on such a site, the less trustworthy it is. Do you think CNET / download.com are good places to get your software from?

<comment><USER15> CNET and download used to be, sure. Maybe not so much anymore. I'm just saying official or not, if the checksum matches - it's not malicious. End of story.

You're correct though in that just randomly picking mirrors is a bad idea. I seriously doubt your average person is utilizing checksums.

<comment><USER16> > _I seriously doubt your average person is utilizing checksums._

Sure, if you're utilizing checksums the way they should be then go ahead. But honestly, even I don't care that much - my ad-heuristic was sufficient so far :). I should probably start using them. I guess it's like with all things crypto - the UX sucks so bad that most people don't bother.

<comment><USER13> Checksums are particularly handy when the original source is inaccessible. In that sort of situation I can google the file name and verify authenticity easily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's not clear that Google are taking this tack, but, as with content, I feel it's time to introduce the concept to the Web.

Author and publisher accountability.

Advertising providers, and advertising _publishers_ , who forward "bad ads" are given a time-out.

Perhaps 10 minutes for the first instance, but increasing durations for repeat ocurrences. Days, weeks, and months for gratuitious violations.

Ad providers and publishers who find they're being timed out for violating standards are, likely, going to clean up their acts, and find ways to ensure that mistakes _don 't_ happen. Including direct vetting of content -- on their own if not by Google.

This is in Google's interest, because, as with others on this thread, the way I fought bad ads in 2015 was to install 60,000 lines plus of /etc/hosts entries, uBlock origin, Ghostery, Privacy Badger, uMatrix, and, for added pleasure, Styleish, to rewrite site CSS myself. On all my own platforms.

And across the desktops of users I administer for.

Virtually all advertising is worthless, targeted advertising doubly so, and Google are in for hurt if they cannot reverse this perception. Meantime they're best positioned to buy themselves a few more years of time.

The other end they could try fixing is to make the results of _directed product search_ \-- that activity that happens when people are actively seeking products or services -- not suck as abysmally bad as it does now. Boot camp for vendors of how you should, and shouldn't, write ad copy, take product images, etc., might not be out of the question. Not that Google's to blame for all of this (not in the least) -- Amazon's product search pages are as bad as any I've seen online (Ikea, by contrast, does well, the moreso because they showed me what I wanted to look for at the store).

Or maybe it's time for a true Federated Retail initiative.

</comment><comment><USER18> For me, they did not, as they introduced the video ads in my region.

These ads push unrelated content in an unwanted way by aggressively interrupting the normal flow.

This is not acceptable - Internet is not a TV.

I think that the video ads are a huge detachment from the initial way Google handled the ads.

<comment><USER16> Video ads are what made me install AdBlock back. They totally destroy normal use flow and actually make YouTube less useful (unsuitable for playing music in the background, especially at a home party).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Christ people, shut up about adblockers. We get it, you use one. Congratulations, I don't care.

But stop spamming every article related to ads with comments about it. Half of HN readers work in a company powered by ad-tech and some of us actually want discussion about the article in question.

<comment><USER20> I work in AdTech and find it hilariously ironic that you're finding the constant and unmitigated discussion of adblockers in an article that discusses the constant and unmitigated flow of malvertising and dark patterns.

We built this prison.

<comment><USER17> Bravo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> _When ads are good, they connect you to products or services you're interested in and make it easier to get stuff you want._

They don't make anything easier. If I want something, I will get it, otherwise it's just annoying.

It's great that they are working to make ads safer (which is obviously in their interest as well), but they have already lost me (and I guess many others). Even AdSense ads are obnoxious these days (see [1] for a taste). On mobile many websites are completely unusable because of ads.

[1] [https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/185666?hl=en](https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/185666?hl=en)

<comment><USER22> There is value in advertising: as an information source and a mechanism to establish trust. The former value has been diminished by the internet (which some people call the information age). Advertising is still valuable for establishing trust between the two unknown parties though. Ads in Google work partly because of Google the brand name. Ads on Reddit r/HateSomething will not because, well, you know why. So it's in Google's interest to have good and safe ads (or the perception that they do).

<comment><USER16> My trust in a product and company is usually inversely proportional to the amount of ads they run. The more one is aggressive with their ads, the less I trust them.

<comment><USER23> While I don't doubt your analysis of yourself, you are an outlier.

<comment><USER16> I'm not an outlier, I'm just experienced in using the Internet. Something one gains with time.

People do have similar patterns of thinking in the more familiar real world. Which area in the city you think is safer, and has more honest businesses - the clean one, with occasional company name banner, or that with every square meter of vertical surface taken by an ad?

<comment><USER23> It doesn't matter what I think; I'm also an outlier. ;)

If we extrapolated the view you're describing to the world at large, someone would have already noticed the general lack of correlation between advertising and revenue and the ad industry would be decades dead. As it stands the correlation is pretty solid and advertising is still profitable to be in and sought after by those who want to grow and shape their brand image.

[http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/08/why- good...](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/08/why-good- advertising-works-even-when-you-think-it-doesnt/244252/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I wish there was a way I could opt out of all alcohol and gambling ads. Especially when I'm watching Youtube videos with my child.

And this article doesn't mention malgorithms. I do a bit of stuff around suicide prevention, and it's surprising how often rope sellers turn up after a search for [suicide rope], which feels suboptimal.

<comment><USER25> [http://www.marketingmagazine.co.uk/article/1335134/youtube-k...](http://www.marketingmagazine.co.uk/article/1335134/youtube- kids-app-offers-child-safe-ads-shows)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> >When ads are good, they connect you to products or services you're interested in and make it easier to get stuff you want.

Dear marketing departments, I do not want relevant ads. I don't like unknown third parties influencing my decisions. If I must see ads, I'd rather see ads for tampons and sports cars and business real estate, because I'm not going to buy those things, so you're not manipulating me.

Please stop perpetuating the lie that you're somehow doing me a favor with "relevant ads", they are exactly what I invest a lot of effort blocking.

<comment><USER27> You think all ads are irrelevant to you? Do you not use goods and services to raise your quality of life?

Don't tell me "I just google for something if I want to consume it," because truly innovative products and services are outside the realm of general imagination, that's what makes them innovative.

And all the great products and services you learned about from word of mouth? Guess how your friends heard about them...

Advertising is annoying as hell, but it has value.

<comment><USER28> Actually, yes, all ads are irrelevant to me. I have never purchased an item from an ad, and cut out ads form my life as much as possible. I run multiple layers of software to block advertising on all my devices, refuse to use services/apps that force one to use ads, and will leave a restaurant/airport lounge/other public area if they play content with advertising. I won't read print magazines because they have advertisements.

There is nothing an advertiser could do to convince me to listen to, read, or watch their ad. The hidden/in context ads are somewhat unavoidable (eg ads for YC on HN), but I write code to filter out such things when I see patterns. I'm working on releasing an extension that subs out all brand names on the web.

And yet, somehow, I still manage to live a modern life of plenty. If I need something, I'll look for it. In fact, I find that this leads me to higher quality and more innovative products that better fit _my_ needs - if a service spreads through advertising, that's very good evidence that it's both shitty and not targeted at me. If your memory is polluted by advertising, you'll tend to reach for inferior products first. Advertising has negative value for the individual and the ecosystem, because companies compete on marketing and not on product.

<comment><USER27> >And yet, somehow, I still manage to live a modern life of plenty.

This lifestyle works for you precisely because the vast majority of the rest of the market does not live this way. Capitalist economies (where the consumers are individuals rather than one large buyer like the state) require products and services to get public awareness. The best way to achieve public awareness is through paid for mass communication.

<comment><USER28> It's the easiest (not the best, IMO) way for companies to reach out to a broad market right now, because consumers as a whole haven't yet figured out that advertising is a negative quality signal and are currently terrible at controlling their information diet. But there are growing segments of the population that are getting better at reading healthy just the same as there's a growing segment concerned about eating healthy.

As more information-savvy and time-sensitive (read: higher-income) consumers reject advertising, companies seeking to target them will have to find alternate methods of reaching out to them. If information distribution continues to be disintermediated, then they might find that the only way to do that is by focusing on building things people legitimately want to use and tell their peers about. Traditional advertising will become even more a ghetto than it already is, and will primarily target low-value consumers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> What they still don't do, as far as I can tell, is make it possible to report malware type ads.

On a clean system I was watching stuff on youtube and got some random malware ad being served up (not a video pre-roll ad, one of the banners that shows up in the video area). It was the typical "Drivers are out of date" type bullshit.

I spent about 20 minutes trying to report that it was malicious,but couldn't find out how to do it. Clicking on the "Ad by Google" link just took me to a random Adsense marketing type page.

</comment><comment><USER30> Since I've installed uBlock Origin browsing the web is much more pleasing. I used to use AdBlock Plus but it ate a lot of RAM. Occasionally I might also turn JS off, although that sounds like an overkill and some sites don't work at all. I don't mind ads in general but profiling really gets under my skin. You search one thing on Google and then you're barraged by relevant ads all over the web. Thanks but no thanks. I liked the old days when ads were relevant to the content of the site I was visiting.

</comment><comment><USER11> Not surprised one bit to see most the hacker news comments are negative. But this is seriously impressive. They doing an impressive job to filter _hundreds of millions_ of ads. And they are also taking a stand against stuff that isn't even illegal. Blocking BS alternative medicines, and supplements, for instance. I'm upset when I see ads for "airborne" on TV or in magazines.

</comment><comment><USER31> "In 2015, we stepped up our efforts to fight phishing sites, blocking nearly 7,000 sites as a result." One of the 7000 "phishing sites" they blocked was a page on my personal site ([http://xpda.com/f18ebay/](http://xpda.com/f18ebay/)) that has been there more than 10 years and has nothing to do with phishing. It's not an important or high-traffic page, but it was irritating nonetheless to be falsely accused by Google and, as a result, a several other web institutions.

<comment><USER32> What _is_ it? Is it supposed to be a parody? It honestly looks like the site is trying to impersonate a (silly) eBay listing.

<comment><USER33> Yeah, it may be a joke, but it's obviously intended to deceive, which is what they're after. Why would this need to be in their index?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Google could have fought bad ads in 2015 by not serving up such manipulative 20th century dreck in the first place.

<comment><USER35> I know very little of how the ad business work, but everything on that blog seemed like "after the fact". Don't they look at the ad first then and approve it?

They make it sound like they maybe run the ad through some automated tests and then just send it out.

A decent human approver of ads would never approve an ad that looks like a big green button that says "Download now".

<comment><USER23> They do not. The volume of ads Google deals with is far above the capacity of human reviewers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Do you know if Adsense tried to make any agreement with ad blockers? Their ads are not so bad.

<comment><USER37> The content of their are OK, but their placement in a lot of blogs is not. Ruins the user experience tremendously.

<comment><USER38> I also hate the heckling coming with ads unrelated to the site content. It's another significant load on my attention. If it was related to the site content, it might even be helpful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> What is up with the popup ads, by the way? I've been seeing them a lot lately when I enable JS, even on my bank's site. They were, in the past, tried with failure and all major browsers got a built-in blocker.

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm glad to see that Google has eliminated those scammy "iYogi" tech support ads.</comment>


Help modify an image for the cover of a physics book - <AUTHOR>

A physics professor wants to distorte/mutilate this clock face image in a really cool way, for the cover of a book. He is soliciting help from CS students at my school, so I figured I'd share it on here.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Zytglogge_clockface_detail.jpg
He's offering to pay $50/hr for the winning submission, but that time includes working with him to make some adjustments if he wants them.
But presumably, you'd get your modified image on the cover of a physics book, which is better than the money.
P.S. The cover is due this week, which is why the prof is desperately seeking student help.
Addendum:
For the record, I did not ask the professor if I could seek submissions from Hacker News, but I would presume it doesn't matter where they come from.
Also, this is not an explicit promise than anybody on here will get paid anything; it's just relying on trust.
If people could just post links to their submissions in the comments, that would be ideal. <comment><USER2> no other details besides "distort/mutilate"?

<comment><AUTHOR> The only other detail is that it's supposed to look like the clock is actually distorted in real life.

<comment><USER2> well, i have something for you. just a simple collection of basic distortions. not much time spent on it, lots of errors, none usable for a book cover. more time could be spent if anything is interesting.

<http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/295909/clock_distortions.zip>

<comment><AUTHOR> OK, I sent them to the guy. I'll let you know if I hear back.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Programming Minecraft on the Raspberry Pi - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wolfram.com/2018/07/05/programming-minecraft-on-the-raspberry-pi/ <comment><USER2> I used to joke that Voxel Quest was just a fancy 3d graphing calculator. I think the entryway for a lot of students to become interested in math is to make rendering more accessible. Shadertoy is one step towards this, but SDF equations are much more difficult to grok than binary on/off voxel plotting, and they have to be mathematically sound or you get buggy looking results.

<comment><USER3> During my university times, I often used EvalDraw as quick 2D/3D graphing calculator:

[http://advsys.net/ken/download.htm](http://advsys.net/ken/download.htm)

You type in some C-ish code, it gets immediately executed and drawn. Instant feedback was a winner feature here. Graphing y=f(x) was AFAIR as simple as typing "(x)" in the first line and writing an expression in the next. "(x,t)" for time-varying singals, "(x,y)" for 2-d functions with values viewed as colors, "(x,y,z,&r,&g,&b)" for full-voxels, etc.

I don't even remember how this little program found its way to my hard drive, but I had a lot of good times with it.

<comment><USER4> Thanks so much for sharing this! This is awesome :D

Me and my boyfriend are both math nerds and will both love this :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Another interesting environment to explore related to Minecraft is an open- source clone of that game: Minetest [1].

It allows extensions in the form of Lua scripts. There is an extension [2] that opens up a TCP socket which can be used to modify the environment in any language across the network. There is an accompanying Python library [3] that is quite accessible (I had to use the 2to3 tool to seamlessly convert it to Python 3 because of some dependency problem).

I've been trying to get it to work in WebAssembly (some notes here [4]) and maybe connect Blockly / Scratch to it, but unfortunately the WebAssembly shared memory model is postponed due to the Spectre and Meltdown debacle [5].

[1] [https://www.minetest.net/](https://www.minetest.net/)

[2] [https://github.com/sprintingkiwi/pycraft_mod](https://github.com/sprintingkiwi/pycraft_mod)

[3] [https://github.com/sprintingkiwi/pycraft_lib](https://github.com/sprintingkiwi/pycraft_lib)

[4] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14855176](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14855176)

[5] [https://github.com/WebAssembly/meetings/blob/master/2018/CG-...](https://github.com/WebAssembly/meetings/blob/master/2018/CG-01-09.md#update- on-webassembly-atomics)

</comment><comment><USER6> Lots of fun stuff you can program in Minecraft Pi Edition.

My son and I made a minecraft version of snake/tron where each player would leave behind a trail of TNT blocks as they ran around a closed arena. Hitting a TNT would set off such huge chain reaction of explosions that the raspberry pi couldn't handle it. After a few rounds of these explosions the minecraft world looks like a total wasteland.

<comment><USER7> I honestly wish they had some of that level of scripting for the desktop version too, I love the idea of doing Python with Minecraft. Plus fun ideas like that could scale a little better on a much more powered system.

<comment><USER8> have you seen Microsoft MakeCode? [https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/blog/code-minecraft...](https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/blog/code-minecraft/)

[https://minecraft.makecode.com/](https://minecraft.makecode.com/)

It's a scratch like programming environment that lets you do all kinds of cool things in Minecraft.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is fantastic. Minecraft is one of the big factors that made me want to learn Java (back when the game first came out), and indirectly spurred a lot of my own personal development. The easier they can make it, the better.

<comment><USER10> Minecraft, and in particular Bukkit (API for coding server plugins), is by far the single biggest factor in my own development as a programmer. Literally hundreds of hours spent coding plugins for my server, starting from copy- pasting tutorials in the early days and eventually being able to build fairly complex projects on my own. It's formed my personal belief that being able to visually see the effects of code and being able to write code that augments things that are already interesting are great ways to encourage young kids and teens to code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Snap! is an awesome scheme-like visual programming language that runs in the browser, which is a lot like Scratch (visual Logo), but like Scheme in that everything is first class, including functions, lexical closures, continuations, macros, special forms, user defined functions, control structures, etc.

[https://snap.berkeley.edu](https://snap.berkeley.edu)

ProgKids is a Russian site that integrates Snap! (and Python) with Minecraft, so kids can visually program 3d turtles that move around in the world and build things!

[https://progkids.ru](https://progkids.ru)

ProgKids. Строим дом, а потом ещё пару (Building a house, then another couple)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muNpsk4UH7c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muNpsk4UH7c)

ProgKids. Куда же без зверей? (Why do you not have animals?)

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

ProgKids. Как работает Snap? (How does Snap work?)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lh0mrqxFImQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lh0mrqxFImQ)

</comment><comment><USER12> Minecraft added a full set of command blocks (impulse, repeat, and chain) back in version 1.9 which allow players to make similar modifications to worlds, as well as create and equip entities with various items and behaviors. Basically you add a command to a command block in game, and then it executes when the command is activated. I think command blocks are an easier foray into coding in Minecraft although it would be nice to see more capabilities added in the future.

</comment><comment><USER13> anyone know what API wolfram is using here to communicate with the minecraft client?

<comment><USER14> Minecraft Pi has a built-in connection with IDLE. Take a look: [https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects/getting- started...](https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects/getting-started-with- minecraft-pi)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you own the Minecraft Windows 10 Edition, you can download their "Code Connection" server and start coding right away in JavaScript.

Links:

[https://minecraft.makecode.com/setup](https://minecraft.makecode.com/setup)

[https://aka.ms/meeccwin10](https://aka.ms/meeccwin10)

</comment><comment><USER16> Off topic:

What are some decent general tutorials for programming voxel games?

</comment><comment><USER17> A related project, not limited to the Raspberry Pi: [https://teachcraft.net/](https://teachcraft.net/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Imagine running the winning MARLÖ model on this. That's going to turn a lot of heads (most likely going to attract attention from kids as well).</comment>


Endurance athletes who 'go against the grain' become incredible fat-burners - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/11/151117091234.htm <comment><USER2> A very small population in the study, but they did at least control for VO2Max in addition to the other factors.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not a medical person, nor a nutritionist. So, maybe I'm being completely obtuse here and missing something. But isn't this already common knowledge?

When your body needs energy, it consumes [in order of preference]:

1: Its store of Carbohydrates

2: Its fat reserves

3: Muscle tissue [by this stage we're talking starvation levels]

So, by minimising carbohydrate intake and participating in long-lasting endurance sports, you're obviously going to force your body to move to 'number 2' on the menu sooner, as there won't be enough carbs to meet its needs.

<comment><USER4> The interesting observation from the study is that the rate of fat utilization achieved by the low carb athletes was higher than expected. The high carb athletes utilized fat energy at a rate that the researcher believed was on the high side for humans, and the low carb athletes utilized it at a much higher rate than that.</comment></comment>


Imagine Discovering That Your Teaching Assistant Really Is a Robot - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/if-your-teacher-sounds-like-a-robot-you-might-be-on-to-something-1462546621?mod=e2tw <comment><USER2> I've had worthless online TAs, but never did I assume that one was a robot. :-) Will the robots get their own social media profiles to perpetuate the myth that they're human? Or will students prefer robots?</comment>


Semantic analysis of text: demo of gensim over arXiv.org - <AUTHOR> http://aura.fi.muni.cz:8080

<comment><USER2> Does they correctly use word "Semantic". It may be OK for algorithm title(Latent Semantic Analysis), but results not so "Semantic", it is usual topic detection based on vector-space model. Usually "Semantic analysis" corresponds to next to syntactic level of analysis, some kind of understanding. We have no such analysis here. Also imho(not only my), word "Semantic" is marker for oil snake trader. Is there some quality measures? This algorithm gives 20% of other topic for random article in average.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, this is "semantics" of the statistical type.

There is no "understanding" involved. Just unsupervised number crunching.

<comment><USER2> Sorry, but there is no "semantics" of statistical type. You have semantics, or have not.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough, I see you take the linguist's approach :-)

You might try googling for "statistical semantics" though ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_semantics> ).

More relevant to HN, there are entire businesses successfully using this (admittedly primitive) notion of "statistical semantics": Chomp.com, SketchEngine.co.uk, SumoBrain.com , PearsonKT.com etc.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: My book on JavaScript Application Design (updated) - <AUTHOR> http://www.manning.com/bevacqua

<comment><USER2> This actually looks pretty interesting (from the table of contents). Since I'm the first commenter, how about throwing me a bone with a free ebook copy?</comment>


Genghis Khan's success was in due to his ability and willingness to innovate - <AUTHOR> http://delanceyplace.com/view-archives.php?p=2905 <comment><USER2> But did he respect intellectual property when innovating? I'm told this is Very Important. Also, did he have a process? I'm told that's Super Important.</comment>


Hacker/Designer Roommates - <AUTHOR> http://roomie.heroku.com/

<comment><USER2> For a while now, I've been thinking about collective living arrangements specifically geared toward communities like hackers. I'm a member of the Hacker Dojo in Mountain View and its just awesome to hang out with creative people with whom I have a lot in common.

Technology and creative thinking can both increase shared housing's quality and affordability, even in expensive cities.

One thing that could be done with a large space is repurpose most of it for business tenants during the day. And for tenants themselves who might like to have space to work during the day very close to where they live.

This might be accomplished using moving walls that enable you to compress bedrooms like Gary Chang does in his apartment:

[http://unclutterer.com/2010/04/26/video-incredibly- efficient...](http://unclutterer.com/2010/04/26/video-incredibly-efficient- efficiency/)

There would also locked storage in kitchen and bathroom and systems and personnel to encourage and maintain cleanliness.

The idea is to reduce the costs of things when you aren't using them, but still maintain privacy and security. Tenants could also share many things they don't use often, like tools, thus reducing the amount of storage space each person needs.

There would be a system that rents the space out during the day and you would pay a fixed price that covers your compressed room 24/7 and uncompressed for, say, 8pm – 8am weekdays or whatever suits you. Then the remaining space would be leased, with some auctioned off real time so that you can always stay home when you're sick. And you'd pay less when you're on vacation.

Overall, the purpose is to give young, single people the opportunity to live in a clean, secure, supportive situation at a great price even in a high cost area.

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't limit your perspective. It'd be a better idea to move in with a physics major and a poet than with 2 copies of yourself.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not looking for "2 copies" of myself...

There are a lot of people on this thread who think what I'm doing is a good idea.

Please explain why that moving in with a physics major and a poet is a better idea than what I have proposed?

<comment><USER3> You're looking for someone who is a fan of the same progr. lang. as you are, who uses the same text editor, the same VCS, and even the same libraries/frameworks. You're looking for a designer who uses the same _version_ of Photoshop that you're using, or at least uses the version you think he/she _should be_ using.

<comment><USER4> Yes, agree with both posts. You shouldn't care what language or library he's using.

There aren't "Ruby programmers", there are just programmers. I honestly try to stay away from people who claim they are _language x programmers_ and those who think one language is superior, because quite frankly they're often not that good.

Honestly are Ruby programmers really better than those who code in C or haskell and honestly what does it matter which text editor I choose to use?!

What would you learn if he knows and use the same things as you? Wouldn't it be a lot better, and a lot cooler, if your roommate could teach you about compilers, creating games or advanced algorithms or _something_ that you don't know already?

It's a great idea to get a roommate with similar interests, but really I think you're focusing on the wrong things.

<comment><AUTHOR> What makes you think I don't already know about compilers, algorithms and game creation.

I happen to know alot. Including Maya/3D Studio and even Final Cut/Vegas Studios.

I am not just a Ruby programmer, I also speak PHP and Objective-C...

I'm not saying a person should ONLY know Ruby, jeez! This person can have other interests and knowledge as well...

<comment><USER4> Way to go and miss the point. I said that he might know _something_ that you don't know which could be nice to learn, or are you seriously saying that you know everything?

I'm sorry that I offended you, I didn't doubt your knowledge.

And my point wasn't that he must only know ruby, but that you should focus more on programming skills and not focus on a specific language. A competent programmer should be able to jump between languages with relative ease as long as they have some related skill.

I guess I started thinking about a friend of my when I read your post. He's someone who says C is the best language in the world, poet is the only worthwhile site on the web and everyone who didn't use linux was bad and wrong. Different opinions was never allowed and he was right all the time.

Maybe it's me but maybe the post does give out a little smugness, like saying you want (prefer) him to love textmate.

<comment><AUTHOR> No you haven't offended me... and I haven't missed your point either.

But I do feel like you are putting words in my mouth: "are you seriously saying that you know everything"

Where the hell did you see myself saying that?

If you read my other replies - I said I have an intense passion for learning. This means I do learn from other people than myself.

You're right... A competent programmer should be able to jump between languages.

I don't think Ruby is the best programming language in the world - but it has suited me well for what I'm doing and allows me to iterate through development cycles quickly with ease, plus there is a large community built around it in San Francisco.

When something better for the job comes along I'll pick it up just as quickly.

<comment><USER4> No.

Initially I asked you if there isn't something your roommate could teach you which would be good and I gave the examples compilers, creating games or advanced algorithms.

Where you responded _What makes you think I don't already know about compilers, algorithms and game creation?_

This I read as a you're being offended and/or missing my question _or_ as if you're telling me that you already know everything about compilers and the something (which alas is everything).

It's great that you like to learn, just like me, and I think it's a great opportunity to learn and to get a roommate who knows a lot of good funky stuff. This is also why I don't think purely focusing on programmers who knows Ruby is a good idea, instead you should focus on good programmers who know stuff you'd like to learn.

I don't want to pick on Ruby, in fact I think it's great.

<comment><USER5> _isn't something your roommate could teach you which would be good and I gave the examples_

In many ways two specialists in the same area can teach each other far more things than two specialists in different areas. The problem is until you know a lot learning from a wiki is often the best approach, however the more you know about say java script the more things you can learn with that foundation.

Think of it this way, how long would you need to spend with tiger woods before he becomes significantly more useful than the average golf instructor. And how does that change as you go from a beginner to the pro level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think this is a clever idea. I know of a few people that have pondered getting housemates that have a specific skill set in addition to a good vibe.

I think you've missed the single most important requirement for a "kickass roomate" - has got non-work stuff _finished and launched_.

I would also advise you to scrap all the development/design criteria of tools, and focus on attitudes and passions. Like look for a hacker developer, and a designer that is obsessed with user experience. Any man and his dog can use a collection of tools but that makes them neither a developer nor kickass.

You might also want to put a link to a web product you've finished (you state "i develop web applications not only for work, but for fun. it takes up most of my time.") -- you have launched stuff right? :)

Good luck man.

</comment><comment><USER7> It looks like while this says "roommate" it really means "RoR project-mate"? Sounds like the implicit expectation is that you'll end up working on RoR projects with the poster of the ad?

I might as well mention that I want to move in with some free spirited artsy sciencey hackery types. (Currently living in a 1BR in Berkeley.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't get me wrong:

First and foremost, it's about making like-minded friends and reliable roommates.

Ideally, the goal is the create a valuable development team in the process - and then take on fun and creative projects through opportunities like ycombinator and kickstarter.

That being said, I am a Ruby developer. I do think that anyone I pair-program with should be familiar with Ruby.

However, I am not tied to the constraint that I have a roommate that is a Ruby developer.

<comment><USER8> The Ruby requirement makes plenty of sense to me. But the Textmate/Heroku/rspec criteria make for a pretty tight Venn diagram, especially since you should be looking for someone who doesn't think exactly like you do. And do you really care if your roommate uses a different text editor than you do?

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right.

It's a little tight.

I've updated the website to say Textmate is preferred rather than required.

The "heroku ftw!" remark is just a deployment option that I added in there to express my feelings towards the company. Technically it doesn't matter what platform we work on. I just happen to find them to be a rather unique and creative service that suits my needs.

As far as RSpec - it's a matter of personal preference, but again... technically it doesn't matter.

Anyone who doesn't meet the requirements EXACTLY should not feel unwelcome in sending me an email :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Working with designers is an important and underrated thing for developers. I worked at a design firm for years and learned an awful lot.

It's a great selling point too. Many web projects suffer from, shall we say, a bit of friction between design and implementation. I sell myself to potential clients on my respect for, and ability to communicate with, designers.

Knowing a designer's vocabulary will make you better at what you do.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. I don't know if you checked out the link, but I designed and coded that in about one hour. I may not be a designer - but I definitely speak their language!

<comment><USER6> did you read your designer spec? it simply says "inspirational, loves photoshop and already using CS5" as a designer thats 0% content

<comment><AUTHOR> I know it's a little scanty. Would you like to give me suggestions?

But please stay away from negative comments. I wrote the spec, how can I not have read it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the support everyone :)

You're more than welcome to post this on your blogs or show your friends. I'd be super appreciative.

</comment><comment><USER10> Hm... might work ok if the hacking on projects together aspect of it was relatively low-pressure/low-commitment stuff, pitch in if you have time and find it interesting but don't guarantee anything.

But otherwise mixing two big-ish commitments (living together stuff, work stuff) could lead to some unpleasant friction if things don't go well.

Sometimes you do want a bit of separation between 'work time' and 'home time', not to have to feel accountable to work people about the way you spend your home time and vice versa.

I did live with the freelance designer from my work for a bit though. It worked ok because work is in the office, so pretty clear separation of work time and home time. But not really the same situation as you describe.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think unpleasant friction can occur whether or not your living and working together.

Anyway - enough speculation. I'll let you know how it goes :)

<comment><USER10> Heh. Yep true, although stuff like this can make it more or less likely!

In the end it'll depend entirely on the people I guess. Let us know how it turns out :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great idea! I'm looking for the same situation but in NYC (and because I'm homeless).

<comment><USER12> I am in NYC too! Except I got a home. It's hard finding people interested in design, programming and startups.

<comment><AUTHOR> I promise we'll create a "productive techy-roommate finder" once I find the right people :)

<comment><USER11> That's a great idea: techroommates.com. I would seriously pay for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My brain tells me you shouldn't start your first date by asking the person to move in with you. I have a feeling you've already heard this, and you will only accept this knowledge after your experiment.

Ahh, how wonderful it is to be a skeptic.

</comment><comment><USER14> Cool idea. Personally, I would make note of somewhere in that ad of how clean you are.

Hacking away all night with some buds is cool and all, but not when your sink is full of dishes and your floors haven't been wiped in weeks ;)

</comment><comment><USER15> "Already using CS5"? Ok, he doesn't understand designers (yet :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Enlighten me :)

<comment><USER15> It's not really necessary to have the newest and greatest CS. Many designers I know skip a version or two and they generally tread carefully (i.e. take their time) when transitioning. Don't judge designers by the version of the CS they are using :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. I've removed it from the requirements. Thanks for the good suggestions! Please keep more coming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Sounds like you might like living in one of the Hacker Houses? <http://hackerhouse.bluwiki.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> That's exactly what I need! Thank you so much, am looking into it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've got a hacker roommate, and I must say it is awesome

</comment><comment><USER18> >bdd

binary decision diagrams? Who wants to live with a static analysis researcher? They're not exactly the life of the CS party...

<comment><AUTHOR> no not binary decision diagrams... behavior driven development.

i am a huge fan of the agile manifesto.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Looks like you're a pretty decent designer too :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Initially, before I was a programmer I use to be a designer.

Once I started coding - I was hooked. I haven't really done any design work since I started being a developer, but I sure have had a few people ask :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Two. Thumbs. Up.

Good idea. Great execution.

</comment><comment><USER21> Great idea man. Keep us posted.

</comment><comment><USER22> Good luck man.

</comment><comment><USER23> Oooh Zak is cute ;)</comment>


The ISS Has a Supercomputer Never Mind the Fried Disks - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/the-iss-has-a-supercomputer-never-mind-the-fried-disks/ <comment><USER2> _can run operations 30 to 100 times faster than a standard iPhone or tablet_

"Supercomputers" are now only 30-100 times faster than a mobile phone?

Not sure if that says more about the "supercomputer" or the phone.

This was also amusing:

 _The computer also remained operational even thought it lost its primary upload and download connection to NASA up to eight times a day for periods ranging from 3 seconds to 20 minutes. That kind of independence might prove useful on an eventual moon base or mission to Mars, to work around communications delays back to Earth._

As if a computer that continues running when its communication link goes down is an accomplishment?

<comment><USER3> >As if a computer that continues running when its communication link goes down is an accomplishment?

These days? Compared to the typical case? Yes!

There was the story of Chrome (IIRC) crashing when it lost internet access. (Yes, it should be unable to access websites, but it shouldn't _crash_.)

JIRA will stutter on text input if its AJAX API calls fail or are too heavy.

I've seen developers set up a local mode of an app that somehow sneaks in an internet dependency.

Not even going to review Electron.

Similar overcoupling in the recent story about Google "no longer supporting login" if you're not running JavaScript.

So yeah, it shouldn't merit praise, but a lot of systems fail even at that.

<comment><USER4> The saboteur deserves some praise too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It doesn't sound like they're doing anything novel compared to computing in harsh environments here on Earth. It's pretty routine to monitor the output of computation and cross-verify when an error is hazardous and there is risk of corruption. Frequently when the system is used for some critical task and there's an error with a less critical subsystem it will operate in a "degraded state." And ECC RAM has been standard on these kinds of computers for ages.

The only thing novel about this is that they sent a computer designed in this millennium and it survived the radiation unshielded.

Regarding the SSD/NAND flash, it makes sense that it would die relatively quickly. It's constantly being bombarded by energetic particles and the cell sizes, geometries, and write voltages are low and small enough that I could see bit flips accumulating relatively quickly from cosmic rays. The drive's firmware would then determine that the write block had failed and mark it permanently as bad. What's probably needed here is a different firmware that attempts to erase the block and then tests it and puts it back into service if it passes. Or different cell geometries and higher write/erase voltages are needed. It's an interesting note.

</comment><comment><USER6> It sounds like the author missed the purpose of the experiment, when they mentioned the moon. This would not work on the moon. The ISS is within the radiation belts and has a lot of protection.

What this experiment is about is satellites. Which is a big deal. If you can put stuff in LEO and use COTS parts, that saves a ton of money. And a super computer is much bigger than the testing they've done with small systems and cube SATs. Moon hardware will always have to be rad hard, but this shows that the commercialization space can be cheaper than was previously thought.

<comment><USER7> Bury it a few feet and it'll work fine on the moon. With off-the-shelf rad- unhardened tech, too.

<comment><USER8> That works for stuff you want to put on the Moon permanently. But the ships that go there will need computers too, and so will surface installations.

<comment><USER6> Which brings up a fun thing that few people talk about: How do you ground?

Earth's ground is created by the giant revolving metal core. the Moon doesn't have that. So how do you do that for big permanent systems on the Moon, or Mars for that matter?

Rather I should say "How do you do it safely?", because it definitely is possible already.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > The experiment was designed to test the performance of the HPE Spaceborne > Computer, which is comprised of 32 separate cores that work together and can > run operations 30 to 100 times faster than a standard iPhone or tablet

That doesn't sound that super to me! "100 times faster than a phone" just doesn't have an impressive ring to it.

<comment><USER10> It is compared to the 386 processors on the main command computers. :)

[https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/08/spacex-is- launching-...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/08/spacex-is-launching-a- supercomputer-to-the-international-space-station/)

<comment><USER11> And it looks like it's not a clear winner over those, either.

It's sort of funny how many of the flaws of old computing hardware turned out to be hugely beneficial for use in space. Bulky transistors that are relatively safe from bit flipping, high power draw that means small fluctuations don't cause outages, limited processing and storage that forced efficiency and lowered the amount of _stuff_ exposed to radiation.

I'm not sure where the tipping points would be, but it wouldn't surprise me if getting a 386 working in space is easier than getting a Pentium 4 to achieve the same things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This feels like "old HP" aka "good HP" back when they were at the forefront of innovation.

Basically before they bought Compaq and sold off Agilent and when they produced calculators that weren't made of poop.

<comment><USER13> The project involves HPE, which is a separate company, not the PC and printer Hewlett-Packard.

<comment><USER12> Yes but it's the same brand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Hewlett Packard

The times change. Back when I worked in the MCC building, newcomers with an HP calculator were told "you better not bring that into the building again."

The chief flight director (Gene Kranz) apparently had a thing about HP.

<comment><USER15> Weird, older engineers I know all love HP calculators for the RPN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Now I'm just thinking of the logistics of running a datacenter in space. Energy and cooling seem like easily solved problems (solar and, well, space as solutions respectively) but I'm sure upload/download isn't great. That said SpaceX's satellite internet stuff was promising gigabit speeds IIRC. And obviously the shielding would be an issue.

<comment><USER17> > Energy and cooling seem like easily solved problems

Unfortunately, there are a few orders of magnitude difference between the ISS and a data centre. The ISS solar panels produce up to 120 kilowatts [0], assuming the station is in the sun. A large data centre can use power upwards of 30 GWh [1].

Launching nuclear reactors is also somewhat controversial.

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

[1] [https://www.techuk.org/images/programmes/DataCentres/Data_Ce...](https://www.techuk.org/images/programmes/DataCentres/Data_Centres_and_Power.pdf)

<comment><USER11> Interestingly, the ISS solar panels are actually below Earth-surface power efficiency despite getting ~33% more incoming energy per area.

It looks like the biggest reason (other than "it's 20+ year old tech") is that triple-junction panels weren't used to save weight. Rather than optimizing power-per-inch or power-per-manufacturing-cost like we would on Earth, NASA was targeting power-per-ounce, which meant gathering only the highest-power wavelengths. Add to that some issues with panel degradation from radiation, and it's a surprisingly tough way to gather energy long-term.

Short of sci-fi stuff like a space elevator or extraplanetary manufacturing, I'm not sure how solvable this is. Does anyone know of ways of getting high power output in space other than nuclear?

<comment><USER17> > Does anyone know of ways of getting high power output in space other than > nuclear?

The only thing we have at the moment is chemical rocket fuel. This is obviously impractical for an orbiting data centre because of the continuous, high launch costs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is it possible to better shield them or would that require putting the computer in an airtight lead box?

<comment><USER19> The article discusses that a bit. Water shielding is quite effective. Doesn't have to be airtight.

Shielding will mitigate a lot, but redundant hardware, error detection and correction, and resilient software will also be needed. It's a vastly more hostile environment for digital devices than anywhere on earth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> If half the disks are fired, how are the astronauts!

<comment><USER21> Humans have much better self-repair mechanisms.

Astronauts are a pretty small, fit population that get a lifetime of top-notch healthcare and monitoring, so it's a little hard to isolate exactly what their risks are.

That said, airline pilots are probably at greater risk, given the decades worth of exposure they receive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Can mods fix the grammatical abomination that is the title?</comment>


EU Net neutrality: Industry MEPs want stricter rules against blocking services - <AUTHOR> http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-%2f%2fEP%2f%2fTEXT%2bIM-PRESS%2b20140318IPR39210%2b0%2bDOC%2bXML%2bV0%2f%2fEN&language=EN <comment><USER2> For reference, here's the official press release: [http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-%2f%2f...](http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-%2f%2fEP%2f%2fTEXT%2bIM- PRESS%2b20140318IPR39210%2b0%2bDOC%2bXML%2bV0%2f%2fEN&language=EN)

yes, the headline is "Net neutrality: Industry MEPs want stricter rules against blocking rival services" which contradicts the translated headline above.

I think it all revolves around these two lines:

>> MEPs inserted strict rules to prevent telecoms companies from degrading or blocking internet connections to their competitors' services and applications

and

>> Companies would still able to offer specialized services of higher quality, such as video on demand and business-critical data-intensive cloud applications, provided that this does not interfere with the internet speeds promised to other customers

On balance, it doesn't seem like net 'neutrality' will be as badly eroded as in the U.S.

<comment><USER3> As usual I think the politicians fail to see/understand again how this can epically backfire: Example: Google pays your ISP to be faster then the competition. Now the ISP has a free "specialized service", and competition goes down.

<comment><USER4> I agree that it's less than ideal but an ISP can always get priority access to there internal network because it's closer to there customers. As long as they need to slow down the entire internet rather than slowing down service X then a customer will complain to the ISP that the internet is slow vs thinking service X is slow.

It prevents optimizing things like speed test.net which is vary common.

<comment><USER3> Not when you only have a few high-bandwith providers for some content. One will be the faster then the normal-speed rest. But the consumer will see this as service X is slow, and the fastest one is best.

<comment><USER4> If you have a low latency 20mibt connection to the internet then ALL video is fast. Below that you might have a point. However, this says an ISP can only change bandwidth and latency so if you allow one high bandwidth activity say downloading MMO's then must allow all high bandwidth activity. If you have low latency for gaming then you also have low latency for websites etc.

Sure, an ISP may simply chose not to offer high bandwidth to the internet but that's a much harder sell to there customers. And long term laws can change if companies start abusing them.

<comment><USER5> > If you have a low latency 20mibt connection to the internet then ALL video > is fast.

Just because they sell you a 20Mbit connection doesn't mean you'll always get 20Mbit out of it. Suppose that during peak hours you only get 4Mbit because the ISP's uplink is saturated. Obviously customers would complain...unless the ISP offers extremely low prices to Google, Dropbox, Netflix, etc. to get them all on the pay to play plan and bypass the bottleneck. If the sites 90% of the customers use 90% of the time are fast, the customers will blame the remaining sites for being slow, which forces the sites to pay the ISP. Meanwhile the ISP can raise prices on existing "customers" like Netflix one at a time until they're all paying monopoly rents to the ISP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder what the motivation for voting this way is as you see it here in the US as well. Are the legislators all simply driven by money that's thrown at them by lobbyists? Or do they simply interpret the concept of the Internet differently? I try to be an optimist and to assume that most lawmakers actually work from the idea that they are making the world better, even if I disagree with their positioning. But this seems so basic that it's difficult to understand how elite-educated people can act this way except through greed.

<comment><USER7> To politicians, particularly in the U.S., the internet is just another piece of of commercial infrastructure. Its for shopping on Amazon and the like. Very few people in politics have high minded ideals about the internet connecting people and disseminating knowledge and overcoming borders and whatnot. Partly because most politicians aren't of that generation, but also because idealists don't get very far in politics. To the extent they have ideals, its usually all about protecting private property,[1] not openness or fairness or such ideas many would consider hippie bullshit.

It would be great for the tech industry if it was all about lobbying, because the tech industry has more money than the telecom companies. Facebook could buy the full lobbying capacity of the top 10 DC lobbying firms for about half a century for how much they spent on WhatsApp. That's not the bottleneck.

[1] The particular challenge in the U.S. is that at least nominally, almost all the telecom investment is private money. There are subsidies, but the cable companies top the charts for capital expenditures. There is a strong disdain for the idea of telling companies what to do with the infrastructure they built. This is less of a problem in Europe, where much more of the infrastructure was built with government money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Don't believe the propaganda: this is still the proposal with holes big enough to enough to put priority traffic the size of an airliner through.

It basically says providers can still run the mafia style protection racket as long as they don't completely block traffic. The difference between slowing down traffic from A or prioritizing traffic from B is of course mostly academic: the result is the same. The extra bandwidth for the priority traffic doesn't magically appear out of thin air, and the fact that providers are allowed to charge for it (i.e., it's not about optimizing traffic for technical reasons) means it kills net neutrality stone dead.

Also, it would override the law in EU countries that have actual net neutrality.

So it serves three purposes: make it harder to adopt net neutrality in the EU in the future, make it impossible for individual EU member states to adopt net neutrality independently (would be against EU rules), and kill net neutrality in countries that already have it (ditto).

The whole idea behind this proposal is not some kind of compromise (which would be bad enough), it's to kill net neutrality in the EU now and forever.

The scariest part is that the European parliament, which is usually harder to manipulate than the backroom dealings of committees and national politicians (see ACTA), appears to have a majority in favor of this faux neutrality. Apparently they're looking forward to one last big "fuck you" before the next elections.

</comment><comment><USER9> Does anybody know where [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7421424](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7421424) ([http://savetheinternet.eu](http://savetheinternet.eu)) is?

It was on the front page (#2) like an hour ago and it just disappeared. I have searched in the first 5 pages and it isn't there, I guess it was removed from the front page for some reason?

</comment><comment><USER10> funny i was about to write, i'd be willing to bet that they manage to get this through one way or another.

i would like to quote myself at this point on another issue:

"you have to applaud the germans for their efforts though. after all they were able to temporarily halt the data retention efforts. i say temporary, because ..." [1]

for every member of the eu parliament representing your country there's four lobbyists[2]. but ultimately it was clear that this would pass in one form or another. sometimes because of money, sometimes because targeted disinformation.

the same has been going on in other areas such as eurobonds, or the european stabilization efforts, where now the eu can request funds from the bundesbank, and doesn't even have to justify it anymore.

the concept is always following the same pattern:

1\. outrage the public with some weird request. argue that it's a necessary evil for the stability and freedom in the euro zone

2\. pass the same request in a slightly lightened form. try to keep the request out of the publics eye as long as possible. as an older example ACTA was leaked, and required consorted efforts, but the effort to bring this one down, was way too late and way too little

3\. adjust the passed law over time to be closer to the original request.

4\. distract public with outrage over slaughtered giraffe.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7169968](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7169968)

[2] [http://aei.pitt.edu/31864/1/No_242_Rasmussen_on_EP_Lobbying_...](http://aei.pitt.edu/31864/1/No_242_Rasmussen_on_EP_Lobbying_final.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER11> Here is the full Proposal: [https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7682/RegulationoftheEuro...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7682/RegulationoftheEuropeanParliamentandoftheCouncillayingdownmeasuresconcerningtheEuropeansinglemarketforelectroniccommunicationsandtoachieveaConnectedContinent.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> If anyone can find me a list of who votes for or against, this can help me during next vote to vote for people with a brain. Also this is NO place to vote for such a thing. The EU was invented to pass laws that could only work when applied to the entire EU. I don't see how this law has to be EU wide to work.

<comment><USER12> Theoretically it should be visible on votewatch.eu however I'm having a hard time finding it.

<comment><USER3> Thank you, no votes for 18/03/2014 according to the site, not updated then yet. (Or no data I suppose)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> We moan a lot louder than we cheer.

This is a win. We should celebrate.

<comment><USER3> True, but it's a bit like the idiomatic "Throw out the baby with the bath water", but in this case we are keeping both the baby and the water.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Damn. I sent an email this morning asking a couple of MEPs to vote against it. So it goes.

<comment><USER15> Maybe your email didn't arrive yet, because...

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Leave it to EU to send us back to the dark ages...

<comment><USER17> It was shot down for not actually protecting Net Neutrality and giving companies way too much wiggle room. Reading is hard, let's go shopping.</comment></comment>


Why oil won't return to triple digits - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2009/08/19/markets/oil_price_fluctuation/?postversion=2009081914 <comment><USER2> I'm guessing it'll head back to triple digits soon enough, unless some major disruptive technology lowers demand. Maybe if plug-in cars become mainstream before the economy really picks up again gasoline will go the way of whale oil.</comment>


Ask HN: Google Voice as the main phone solution for a small business? - <AUTHOR> We use Google Apps for our 15 person company. We currently get separate phone service from ATT/local VOIP provider. I was thinking about moving all of those lines to Google Voice as our primary number(s), to save cost. If you've set this up, how has it fared? Is it reliable/enterprise-ready in such a context? Did you set up landline phones with it? Or just had headsets to go with the laptops? <comment><USER2> The quality of your telephone service -- voice quality and can people even reach you? -- is powerful marketing or antimarketing for your business.

If I am a customer or prospect and I call you, what will it sound like? Is your self-hosted solution the best use of your time? What if your VPS provider gets a DDOS attack and your VPS and phone service is unreachable?

An executive's time is worth millions. Don't piss it away saving $25/month per employee.

Oh. And Google Voice. A steaming pile of telephone call spam and text messages is what it turned out for me. Avoid.

Serious people use serious tools.

<comment><USER3> I haven't noticed the spam at all, I have my GV set to block spam calls, and have mostly enjoyed it with google hangouts app... I don't like that sending a text message in the desktop chrome/hangouts requires a weird UI, or that the contacts removed the send sms option.

I've been using GV since it was Grand Central before Google bought them out.

Although I wouldn't use it for a multi-user business, it's been pretty nice for me, since you have filtering options, can set custom outgoing messages per caller, and can keep the number while switching your mobile carries (T-Mobile -> Boost -> Simple Mobile -> Verizon) all while keeping my GV number as my main contact number.

I use an Obihai box at home connected to a regular pots cordless phone, and that has been pretty nice.

Weird thing, it will drop a call if you're on longer than 2 (or is it 3) hours, and if you're calling someone else on an IP/wireless phone, the lag/conflict can get interesting. Works better on obihai than cell phone, for example.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is useful. I ported my number to Google Voice in 2011, and have used that as my main number ever since (Iphone), changing providers quite a few times in the middle. Never used an IP phone with it, but this use case would require it.

>if you're calling someone else on an IP/wireless phone, the lag/conflict can get interesting

Good to know, didn't realize this was an issue.

<comment><USER3> It's just that each hop adds latency... cell phones are bad enough, and cell to cell is worse... gv is effectively cell + IP ... and with the two on either side, it's wild.

If you ever notice when you and someone else start talking, and step on eachother... it's mostly because of the additional latency cell and IP phones tend to add on top of what POTS phones would have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd probably lean towards using a virtual PBX hosted on digital ocean using something like twilio (OpenVBX) or tropo (TropoVBX). From that, you should be able to use most IP phpnes or use soft phone on a computer, combined with a decent headset.

That's a relatively inexpensive option, that would allow you to grow.</comment>


I have a customer's CC info.  What now? - <AUTHOR>

Him: from the UK, can't seem to use paypal. me: selling him advertising space. him: left me a voice mail with his CC info me: what do i do now?<p>help! <comment><USER2> Wipe it, tell him you've done so, apologize for the inconvenience, and refer him to Paypal's help page - or maybe there is some euro competitor to Paypal that might be easier to use. If you try and complete the transaction from your end it's likely to be flagged as unauthorized use; you might just get rejected, but he might have his card frozen. Of course, there is also the possibility that he's trying to run a scam on you and is unable to use Paypal for the good reason that he's using an invalid card.

<comment><AUTHOR> fuck. well, i didn't see this comment in time. i used google checkout and just ran the card. we'll see what happens :-/

<comment><USER2> It sounds like you do have a merchant account? If so, disregard my comments - I thought from the original post that it was like a hobby business and you were limited to Paypal, with no other options in place. But if you're doing regular business transactions I guess it's fine.

<comment><AUTHOR> well i just have paypal and google checkout (both as a merchant). I don't have a real merchant account anywhere except those two.

I'd go for authorize.net as a quick solution, but I don't have enough revenue to justify paying $30 / month plus $100 startup fee :-/

Anyway, I basically just sent money from my google checkout account to my site's google checkout merchant account using the provided CC info. I hope it works, I sort of did it without thinking...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


OpenStack-Docker: How to manage your Linux containers with Nova - <AUTHOR> http://blog.docker.io/2013/06/openstack-docker-manage-linux-containers-with-nova/

<comment><USER2> I would really like to see the Docker provider for Vagrant happen. Vagrant is so easy to manage, and it would make Chef/Puppet provisioning easy. It also makes cross-platform and EC2/DigitalOcean deployment easy with their respective providers. (i.e. you can deploy an image to EC2 that then runs Docker containers)

I'm not sure it will, it seems stalled.

<https://github.com/dotcloud/docker/issues/404>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I wanted to share our recent work on Nova. This is another hypervisor for Nova that enables the use of LXC containers as VMs. There is also a Glance backend that makes the glue with Docker's Index remote service. I am sure it improves the use of LXC containers in OpenStack (as an alternative to libvirt).

The code is still pretty raw but I hope it'll be just the beginning, I'd be glad to get feedback from anyone interested.</comment>


What makes a great logo? - <AUTHOR> http://hunterandbard.com/branding/what-makes-a-great-logo/

<comment><USER2> I'm having a bit of trouble following design advice from a site with such a mishmash of fonts.</comment>


Ask HN: Review my startup - social business name validation - <AUTHOR>

I've just launched my startup (http://suggestmyname.com) and would appreciate any feedback. Suggestmyname.com aims to make it a lot simpler to pick a good business name with an available domain and start building your beta list.
How it works 1. you choose the number of name or domain suggestions you want 2. briefly describe your website/business, and if it's a domain you specify which domain extensions you'll accept (eg. .com .net etc) 3. if (for example) you chose 100 suggestions you get 100 available domain suggestions from 100 different people located in the United States 4. those who like the sound of your idea can opt in to be notified when you launch 5. you can optionally choose the 5 best names and we'll get 100 people to vote on their favourite
The website is fairly basic (MVP), but any feedback on that, the concept in general or marketing strategy would be greatly appreciated.
I'm also looking for 5 people to beta test the service with. If you need a name for a startup or sideproject please let me know in the comments. For the beta test you'll get 100 domain/website/business name suggestions from 100 different people. Free of course. <comment><USER2> One of the sites that helped me find great name suggestions was <http://www.squadhelp.com>. I got 400+ domain name suggestions in 2 days. They engage people across the world who submit ideas – and the best idea wins the award amount. It sure beats the time and energy I would have spent myself to come up with names. You might want to check them out

</comment><comment><USER3> This seems like a walled garden approach, a better strategy may be a community where people can vote on names publicly. There's potential here, but more if it's public. Good start.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well it's currently configured to use Amazon Mechanical Turk to get the name suggestions and vote on the best.

The plan is over time to build up a community of people interested in suggesting names/voting on the best in exchange for early beta access, but this seemed like an easier way to start due to no need for network effects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cool concept. Domains seem to be a major time sink for startup teams. I'd be interested in jumping in on the beta test with my side project.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm in for the test. Definitely a good idea, I'm curious about the logistics.

email@example.com</comment>


Hackers use weak passwords - <AUTHOR> https://blog.avast.com/2014/06/09/are-hackers-passwords-stronger-than-regular-passwords/

<comment><USER2> >I looked at 40,000 samples of hackers' passwords and found that nearly 2,000 were unique and 1,255 of those were in plain text. Another 346 passwords were easily cracked from MD5 hashes, because they were shorter than 9 characters. That gave me a total of 1,601 passwords and 300 hashes

If a significant fraction of his sample is "hashes he could easily crack" isn't a biased sample? Because it seems likely that the longer, properly hashed passwords are more likely to be the stronger ones...

<comment><USER3> Well, he's saying that he has a sample of 40k hackers' passwords stored up somewhere, and between them there are 2000 unique strings, ~1200 of which were in plain text and didn't need to be cracked at all. So if this sample of 40k hacker passwords is a random sampling, then essentially he has a random unbiased sample of 1200 unique passwords, plus a biased set of 300 more.

He's not super clear about where the 40k passwords came from, so they may be a random sample, but it's quite possible that it's just a sampling of bad hackers - he mentions that he has gathered many examples of bots and shells and such, so you can imagine that he's looking at a sampling of 1. hackers whose bots store their passwords in such a way that he can reverse-engineer where they are stored and 2. hackers who store their passwords in plain-text.

That said, if he has 40,000 passwords that boil down to 2000 unique strings, of which only ~400-500 are either good passwords stored in plaintext or not easily crackable, then that means about 35,000 out of the 40,000 passwords he captured were easily guessable (I'm assuming here that there were no duplicates in the "good" password set), which is about 87.5% of his sample.

<comment><USER2> >it's quite possible that it's just a sampling of bad hackers - he mentions that he has gathered many examples of bots and shells and such, so you can imagine that he's looking at a sampling of 1. hackers whose bots store their passwords in such a way that he can reverse-engineer where they are stored and 2. hackers who store their passwords in plain-text.

Yes, that's basically my point. The set of hackers who use strong passwords and the set of hackers who don't well-protect those passwords in their bots/viruses/whatever probably doesn't have a lot of overlap.

Also, it sounds like he couldn't crack (and thus couldn't include in the sample) some of the hashed passwords. Passwords that he can't crack or brute- force reasonably are probably strong passwords. Not having those passwords biases the sample - it's like doing a standardized test when all the honors classes are on a field trip, by removing the top-end you downward-bias the sample and make the overall sample look worse.

<comment><USER3> I agree that the 40k sample is probably biased, but if you assume it's not actually biased, your second point doesn't hold, because the ones he couldn't crack are presumptively strong, so adding in the ones that he knows are strong because he found them in some plaintext form, that leaves about 500 passwords out of 40k that he couldn't find. If anything, the uncracked passwords bias you towards thinking their passwords are _stronger_ , since it's possible that some of them are just weak passwords stored in some non-standard way, or there's a salt included in the program that he missed or something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hackers use strong passwords on things they want to protect. No need for strong password on some public site with unimportant data. Even more if those third party sites get compromised, your main security focus is not compromised.

<comment><USER5> As another datapoint, I have a weak password for sites that I wouldn't care at all if they were compromised. For everything remotely important I use a separate random password at the max length allowed.

<comment><USER6> I would like to see LastPass et al add this to their interface: auto-detect max length, allowed characters, etc. it would be for user convenience but they could even phone those characteristics home and start shaming services that employ poor practices.

<comment><USER7> They already do something like that. (Tools -> Security Check)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Crackers_ use weak passwords on shells and such for machines they are actively exploiting. Pretty different in more than one respect.

</comment><comment><USER9> Or more verbosely:

Hackers that know what they are doing and care about that particular account use good password policies.

Hackers that _don 't know any better_ (perhaps I should use "people who claim to be hackers" to define this sub-set) or _really don 't care_ about that particular account, use bad passwords.

Just like the rest of us.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm wondering how a sample of various back-doors, bots and shells is the equivalent of hackers' passwords. More like malware creators' passwords to me.

Then again the use case of these passwords doesn't really call for secure passwords, so is it really surprising that they're not overly secure ?

I find this article poorly worded and misleading, telling readers "Hackers use weak passwords just like the rest of us." when it's not about hackers and is not about using weak password like the rest of the world, unless the rest of the world suddenly starts coding malware. Using passw0rd as password for a an easy to remember backdoor password is not the same as using "passw0rd" to access you bank account from the web.

<comment><USER11> Cyber crime is a major source of income for these guys. It's not unlike having a bad password on your bank account.

Also, malware is often configured by the operator. If badguy1337 uses someone else's IRC bot code, they are likely to change the password themselves. Same for poison ivy, china chopper, and every other publicly available backdoor/shell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Keep in mind this seems to be an analysis directed more towards script kiddies, based on the kind of files they were looking at.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's hard to take this seriously without mention by the OP on whether the weakness of the passwords were affected by the ephemeralness of the usecases here. For example, I use pretty weak passwords to signup for throwaway services or to try out startups that force you to do a nominal login...because I'm not going through the work of creating a "real" password for such one-time use cases. Are the revealed passwords discussed by the OP for utilities that are meant to be throwaway?

</comment><comment><USER14> realistically once you realize just how easy it is to actually get around passwords and such, you tend to go with something good enough to keep the rabble out and easy to remember. For example, my local windows password is a bit of a joke, because its so absurdly easy to get into a windows machine and do whatever the hell you want. Even easier if you don't care about getting found out. And I am much more concerned with someone getting my facebook or netflix password through social engineering than an actual "hack" anyway.</comment>


Chapter 9 of the Rails Tutorial is out ("Updating, showing, and deleting users") - <AUTHOR> http://ruby.railstutorial.org/chapters/updating-showing-and-deleting-users?version=3.2#top

<comment><USER2> The tests using put and delete do not work if session-based authentication is used (one of the exercises). using page.driver.put will redirect to <http://example.com> with seemingly the correct path, testable using have_selector, although I wonder if there are better workarounds.</comment>


Why We Should Tell Our Students to Turn Down the $3 Billion - <AUTHOR> http://ajjuliani.com/why-we-should-tell-our-students-to-turn-down-the-3-billion/

<comment><USER2> I am definitely one of those people who dont "get" snapchat. But as far as I can tell, running a social messaging service is not a long term business with the way the internet iterates currently.

Wouldnt it make more sense to take the 3 bils and start the business with more meaning and a longer term outlook?

</comment><comment><USER3> They should turn down the $3 billion, yes. Unless what they've built is only worth 1/10th to 1/100th of that. If they reject such lofty valuations, rather than a small 10-20% bump, then they've been made into fools. There's a difference between selling out and making out.</comment>


Inside the original Facebook house - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/28/technology/startups/facebook-house/ <comment><USER2> It's funny the founders think the house is good luck. I would view it as a lightning-never-strikes-twice-in-the-same-place type situation.

</comment><comment><USER3> can you operate a business from a house?</comment>


Public two-year programming trade schools - <AUTHOR> http://benhixon.com/2017/04/04/how-to-grow-virginias-tech-sector-programming-trade-schools/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'm running for local office in Virginia and proposing a two-year trade school degree that teaches coding and nothing but. Would appreciate any comments and suggestions for how to improve.</comment>


Ask HN: What do you struggle the most with when deploying personal projects? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN! I currently learning a lot about K8s and docker and I was curious about what are the main pain-points people experience when deploying personal projects.
I'm looking to start a new project that tries to address this problem and would like to know what people would find most useful.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Personally for me, I always second guess the architecture/approach of my personal projects. That's usually my biggest struggle! hahaha, weird as it may sound. Not the easiest 'internal' issue to overcome, because I don't know what I don't know. So I figured that just going deep into a particular domain will be helpful.

When it comes to deployment, I personally have quite a deep experience working with Kubernetes and docker at work. Not the easiest to learn, but definitely rewarding when you can get it right, I'm sure you have similar experiences as well! Would love to hear from you what are your personal projects as well (:

Here's just my attempt to learn and address my 'don't know what I don't know' issue: [https://blog.phuaxueyong.com/post/2020-05-03-3-more-cloud- de...](https://blog.phuaxueyong.com/post/2020-05-03-3-more-cloud-design- pattern)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, good point, I guess most of it comes with practice. Cool article! I really liked that you complemented them with videos.</comment></comment>


Why Do We Let Users Create Passwords at All? - <AUTHOR> http://drive.cabforward.com/blog/bid/206586/Web-App-Security-Why-Let-Users-Create-Passwords-At-All

<comment><USER2> My funny G+ post from yesterday: I told my colleagues that we receive at least 5000 "hack attempts" aka failed logins daily to any of our public Internet facing servers. One of my colleagues just said to me: "Well, you're having such a ____password policy, that maybe those are actually failed login attempts and not hack attempts at all." - It really got me laughing, yes, passwords, especially long complex and random ones are painful for users. Here's password of the day (opening and closing quotes aren't included in the password):"^j'lb#K-€3, <_úgWJdXå(n_6=41Bµ%cj!" Btw. Good luck guessing the password or finding it out using SHA-1 hashs or so. I know it's possible, it just might take a while. ;) p.s. This password still got less than 256 bits of entropy.

I prefer to think "password" as a shared secret, instead off a password. I hate it when people even say password. It's random set of shared secret bits, only a blob of data. Got it?

[https://plus.google.com/u/0/106938703242944328523/posts/8r2K...](https://plus.google.com/u/0/106938703242944328523/posts/8r2KkczgvAy)</comment>